[Spoilers] Mahala in the Mist - the Doviello

[Mist]

Heh, that sucks even more. Anyone out there willing to give me Hunting for birthday? No? You people are just no fun

Turn 26 brought third border pop.
Must... Have... Purplish... Goo..

So, there's actually something interesting on that side of the mountains. Looks like I got myself another good commerce site there. I think I should push landgrab a little higher on the list of priorities.

And reconsider the dotmap.

Sareln, a question. How would you settle this area within following guidelines:

-Expected city size is 10, anything above is nice, but low priority
-Hill site is preferable to a non-hill one. plains hill > grassland hill > desert hill. All this due to defense considerations
-Hunting and Fishing are a third priority tech, Animal Husbandry is even lower
-I have Calendar. It's c.a. 20 turns to Mining. BW is next in line.
-I'd prefer settling eastwards
-I'd prefer not to settle below the dyes line

I've got some ideas on that, but I'd like your input to improve on them.

[Sareln]

Which way is east? Right?

[Sareln]

Calendar and mining resources are the only ones you can use anytime soon. I would scout more of the red arc to see what's there before making final decisions.

You want to settle *on* the dyes, because that means you'll be able to plantation the other and collect something absurd like 6 - 7 commerce, while hooking up the happy immediately.

I would *claim* everything north of the blue line with my southern neighbor.

The gold city seals your border, you feed it with farms near your capital (I'm thinking the southern grassland specifically).

Other cities go down where you've placed them at your leisure. The original dotmap seemed still fine to me.

[Mist]

Calendar and mining resources are the only ones you can use anytime soon. I would scout more of the red arc to see what's there before making final decisions.

In hindsight I should start on that sooner, as there are no barbs prowling around, but there were gryphons stalking the south which put me of a bit. I'll send Lucian with an escort, he should survive long enough.

You want to settle *on* the dyes, because that means you'll be able to plantation the other and collect something absurd like 6 - 7 commerce, while hooking up the happy immediately.

Now this is brilliant. I considered settling on the hill 1E, but idea of settling on the dyes somehow never came across my mind. I'm actually strongly tempted to make this the next city spot as opposed to the wheat site, due to the long term impact of extra commerce. Shame about not having initial trade connection to the capital. But on the other hand - extra commerce might allow me to squeeze in Exploration between Mining and BW.

I would *claim* everything north of the blue line with my southern neighbor.

This is sorted already, we have agreement with Uberfish not to settle each others side of the jungle belt. Vampires shall be dealt with by plenty of fire and liberal application of stakes anyhow.

The gold city seals your border, you feed it with farms near your capital (I'm thinking the southern grassland specifically).

Yes. It's still kind of poor on food, but borrowing water mana from someone and perhaps a lighthouse should sort that.

Other cities go down where you've placed them at your leisure. The original dotmap seemed still fine to me.

I don't like one particular portion of it that splits initial valley between a weak coastal city and a okayish plains hill one. Now that gold site provides me with a port I'll probably merge these two together.

This leaves me with :
Dyes site

Wheat site

Gold site

Ivory/Cows site

[Sareln]

Also, as a note: Incense can be improved at Calendar, but does not activate until Philosophy, so a city can draw commerce from it early game, but you'll get no happy until the end of the early game

[Sareln]

Hey Mist, how's the game going?

[Mist]

Slow :]

No events. Festivals due in 5. Settler due in 8. Scouting stack sent to explore red arc will start doing that next turn.

Uberfish found the Sepulchar somewhere between him and the vamps, says he plans to explore it for denial purposes.

[Mist]

I think red arc scouting might be assumed complete. Found mostly peaks and jungle, but also a floodplain and riverside cows.

The red arc

That floodplain seems enough of a reason to shift dyes city site slightly. To the little blue star.

Festivals in 3. Settler in 6.

[Mist]

Heh, I just have to share this. It's huge. You see, I had an EVENT And now I shall rule the world !

Mwahahaha!

You asks what it does? Well, duh! It improves chances in diplomacy of course.
But how exactly? Now don't be a pain and dig in for details.
Soo... How? If you need to know, it gives you temporary +1 to relations with all other AIs in game.
And exactly how many of these do we have here? Well...
Zero? Zero. Nil. Zilch.

So uh, yeah. It's worthless. But I shall still rule the world if only in spite of this goddamn annoying RNG that can't even serve a proper event in 30 turns :neenernee

And now to ask myself - did I really have to write that?

Trouble. I bloody hope it's a glitch.

This little thing will hit me next turn.

How do I know this? If you load a PBEM save created after your turn ends ( hit enter, save for next player is made, game pauses, you can save/load/exit to desktop ) it shows you among few other things ( like your updated graphs, point increases, results of border pops due to happen ) any random event you might get ( without actually resolving it since the game is paused ).

It's first time I ever saw this. I never heard of it either. I don't know what it does. But if I was to take it literally by description... I'll have Guardian of Pristine Pass spawned somewhere near. And it would be the worst thing I can imagine right now. There is no way I can contain the Guardian right now. I will not have any means of cost-effective containing it for another 150 turns or so. The prospects is scary. Any one had it or can offer insight?

And on this bright note I'm off. Merry Christmas to any lurker that happens to stumble here.

[The ShiningOne]

Hey Mist, Merry Christmas! Now about the Guardian message, I don't think the Guardian of Pristine Pass actually moves around. I think it was probably something the mod makers intended the feature to do, but never got around to adding. I've gotten that message many times and it's just like the other messages warning you of unique features being present on the map. I think if you look around in the fog after you get the event it may uncover the tile where the world feature is. Hope this helps.