[Spoilers]Auro is prepared: You shall not pass!

[Jabah]

With only 3 real cities, wouldn't 3 academies be worth it for extra GS (or do you have one almost no commerce city ?)

[Aurorarcher]

Here's my 3rd city:



So with Academy it would currently make 26.5 beakers more per turn (100% tech). Only thing I'm thinking: is Academy better than GA? I will make another GP in ~15 turns so maybe the GA can wait. I would anyways go into GA earliest on T106 and maybe it would actually be better to save the GA for later.

Also, Edoras will get a lot more commerce once I build Jeweler and Tailor so that's +1 for Academy.

I'm not sure how much I want to tech after "some key techs" though so that's -1 for Academy. When running culture slider Academy is worth nothing but the +4 culture it gives...

[Aurorarcher]

T102 came but need to think about this a little.

First the turn opened with this.



Then I saw this.



Dave wants to do a trade mission, presumably to Rivendell and give me some cash for it. For 100g I definitely won't do it.

I will probably ask for World Map, cotton and 100g. And give him back some extra happy I have. He should be getting about 800-900g out of the mission. It'll help him speed up to Mages which is not in my favor... but, making friends is never bad. He might be close to coldrain. Of course he could well use the gold to his advantage and attack me. Need to think about this. I also could be an ass and snipe his GM. But that could backstab later badly. So probably not.

I tried to check the signup thread if city trades are allowed or not. I didn't find anything. In general they're not accepted I think but in this case maybe they're because there's no info about that? If I want to signal something back I'd like to use Rivendell there. But if city trades are allowed he might actually accept it leading into total catastrophe . I could use something else but it might make the message harder to read for him... Any help from lurkers?

[Jabah]

I would suggest propose a deal of "his WM+100g+cotton + open border" vs "open border and whatever lux you want to give" ?

[Aurorarcher]

Good idea. Only downside is that I really don't want to give OB to Dave. Two reasons: I don't want him to scout my land and benefit from TRs too much. I won't benefit from TRs much as I will revolt to Mercantilism soon (no foreign trade routes). But, it's a friendly signal and I could use OB with him to potentially find coldrain's land through his territory. I ended up offering this.



Rice for Rice signals peaceful intentions. Hopefully on both sides.

[Aurorarcher]

T103.

First the turn opened with two trade offers from Bing. First OB + WM to OB + WM. Then he offered me Pig (mine isn't roaded) and 4 gpt for Jewelry. I accepted both. And man, he knows almost all the world! I now know where coldrain is, he is between Bing and Dave. This makes sense and is good news for me. It's beneficial for me to help Bing and probably Dave also. For me, in the perfect scenario coldrain attacks either Bing or Dave later and the other one joins to help against coldrain. One can only hope...

Cultist found something nasty from Shipwreck.



Shipwrecks around this island don't seem to like us. First Sea Serpent and Drowns and now Pirate. I moved into safety. I can easily kill it with help of Tsunami if it moves up next turn.

Dave didn't accept my offer and instead pushed bravely forward with his GM. Maybe he wants to make the trade mission first and then give me the gold?



I moved my Centaur towards it showing that I could've sniped it this turn had I wanted. But now that I know where coldrain is there's absolutely no reason to do damage to Dave. I decided to ask a bit less this turn and I asked for WM + 100g this turn. I think he'll pay only after the mission. I might even let him do it without any payment. But I would really like his WM to know their border situation as Bing's map info is really outdated.

xist has some nice army over here. The barb city will fall shortly, it should cost him some units though.



I offered him this trade as I'm unlikely getting cotton from Dave. Hopefully he accepts.



What could help this cause is I have a stack of Cultists in Bree that could hit his coastal city next turn. I have absolutely no plans to do so but it might make him consider doing me a favor... obviously the trade benefits him also (2 happy).

Here's the land between Dave and coldrain, it's very outdated I believe.



coldrain also has a metamagic mana connected so his adepts (and mages) start with floating eyes. I'd assume fireballs and maelstrom to be his choice later. He seems to be spamming adepts hard according to power graph. Making it even smarter idea to help his neighbours before it's too late.

[Aurorarcher]

Finally the culture plan can begin...



Couldn't revolt on T105 because I revolted to Republic 6 turns ago, but on T106...

All my settlements look like this:



And my mega cities look this:



Just finished Guild of the Nine here. Next Syliven's Lyre.





If you are wondering why I was running sages, well, I wanted to 1-turn Honor. I also need to tech some more techs before I can turn on the culture slider. Notice that I am also making gold while running 100% tech.

Demos look ridiculous but most of that is of course culture. Still really nice.



I want to tech all the religious techs that have temples so RoK, OO and CoS left. That should take 5 turns. Then build all the temples. And finish the Lyre. Then I should be good to go full culture maybe.

I might consider some military techs like Poisons against future mages or something else. My tech is so good (650 beakers per turn) that it's so tempting to pick other nice late game techs like Warhorses for my hero or Animal Mastery for Baron. But, I don't think I will need those. Of course my opponents, once I get closer to culture victory, will obviously try to beat me. And one of the most annoying thing still is Brian's WS...

[Aurorarcher]

Anyway, the Culture Victory is still far away. With current bonuses I could get capital to Legendary in 37 turns without going all in and about 32 turns if I went all in. In other cities add about 10 turns to that. So still quite a long way to go...

With all the temples capital can go Legendary in 25 turns. I didn't calculate the other cities but probably about 10 turns more. So estimated time of victory is T146...

[Aurorarcher]

Wait, I didn't count Lyre into that... Well, those numbers I calculated are the "at least when" I should've won.

[Aurorarcher]

T111.

Annoying fail to spread religion.



End of turn I now have all the religion techs.

Temple (6) count for my cities + Carnival (1):

Minas Tirithl: 2/7 (building the wonder for the moment)
Rivendell: 4/7
Edoras: 4/7

Next turn I should add two more temples. I will revolt to Corruption of Spirit and add couple of their priests for collateral purposes on land tiles. I have cultists already if anyone dares to stay close to water.

Capital working on the wonder.



With chops it should be 3 more turns to finish it.

The health is starting to become issue (not that much yet) but I offered this to xist anyway:



Basically saying you don't need to fight me or rather please don't fight with me... heh. I could use some of that health. I do have my own Cow too but I don't have time to road it.

xist has stack here.



My culture is pretty dominant around his captured barb city.



The city might flip I guess but I don't remember how easily that can even happen.

Victory screen.



Still very far away. But the key to success is to run culture slider and from here I might start to use it... or do I need to tech a bit more?

The question is do I need better defense for later? Probably. Do I need to prepare already and how much? Definitely some because obviously when I get closer to victory date all my neighbors will probably attack me.

I was thinking of grabbing Feral Bond and Animal Mastery (4 turns) for Beast Masters and Baron. High str units (BMs are 14) to use on defense if they'll come after me. Also quite cheap to get to (techwise).

Other options for later is to tech Poisons or even Guilds for Shadows (requires Council of Esus as my religion though) to deal with Mages.

Or to get Religious Law (for Chalid) and Righteousness  (to use Chalid's Pillar of Fire). Chalid already has Crown of Brilliance which seems to do automatic damage with range of +1 to all units next it at the beginning of each turn if I read it correctly. It can wear off (+25% chance) but I can cast it again anyway. Teching to Righteousness and Religious Law is 9 turns. Very nice to have but this would delay my culture run by quite a lot. So probably not.

One even crazier idea is to tech Righteousness and Infernal Pact. Build Infernal Grimore and pick Divine Essence as my free tech . And then build my hero: Eurabatres the Gold Dragon . At current rate that would take me about 10 turns to get Divine Essence. That would be pretty hilarious to do but again would delay my victory run... still, very tempting . So maybe worth to consider...