Cultural Domination in Balance: EitB Succesion Game

[Mardoc]

Guys, I'm sorry, but I don't have the energy for a report with this turnset, beyond a basic summary. You'll have to look around yourself, and make your own conclusions.

Researched Sailing, Philo, part of Trade. We have Pearls in Yonna, once we have free hammers for a workboat. We have Bone Palace started - in the capital, despite it being worth 10 culture/turn, because the cap has like 3x the hammers of anywhere else and I really want to extend the GA yet again. I mostly built econ stuff, except in the far east cities that stayed 100% culture.

We're putting serious pressure on Nameless Tower, up to 13% culture I think, but Faeryl stuffed a bunch of garrison in, so we probably won't actually take it until after we get Esus. Might be worth researching Deception next to start on that, so we can advance the Lyre?

We're in Slavery for the moment, but it hasn't mattered yet. May be worth whipping here or there. I expect we'll want to leave it once we get to Mercantilism, but for now we might get a free slave here or there.

Got one city founded, and stupidly lost a settler to barbs by putting him on goto.

Got a little bit of Freak Shows and Zealots spread out, but not as much as I'd like to have.

The Save

[Mardoc]

Is there a youtube video or a tutorial anywhere about how people do these intensive micro plans? How they set up the spreadsheets, how they glean so much information from the demographics screens? I'm the kind of person that needs to see something done once and I can learn it quickly, I'm not as good at puzzling it out on my own.

I don't know of any youtubes except maybe Sullla's that could help. But there are some posts and threads worth reading, I'll think on it. Maybe after I catch up on my sleep I'll be more use.

I think you're up now.

[Qgqqqqq]

Remember we're getting pearls from Sheelba.
What units can get HN in V9?

[Molach]

Had a look.

Agree a lot about bone palace right now, right away. 10 culture is ONE artist spec, losing the wonder would set us a lot further behind. I see theatre of dreams is going up, I'd say micro that to finish as fast as possible.

We can advance the lyre further east now. I propose Myrean, once that completes theatre it can run an artist spec and have enough base culture to qualify. We might be able to get the tentatively marked "city" location to the east, to really put pressure on Ljosalfar. Our front with Svartalfar capital is established, so that is a long-term proposal.

We will not need to take nameless tower, we have already bypassed it and settled east. Once we take out garrison it will fall but that won't be nessesary for a while. Besides it will not flip in 50 turns, it still has second ring. So I say mercantilism (plus any cheap techs that will speed us there) and then Esus.

I do think we should send scout-loki south of svartalfar and see if we can found/take a city down there. It will be crap, ice and at best tundra, but a good way to expand down there. There is at least one barb city there, we should send a hunter-killer team and wipe them out and capture/raze and replace our own city there.

Also see if we can fit a city south of bannor, just denial purposes.

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED

HN units - the 3 hilly giants, but they are Ljosalfar in this game. Animals, but they generally aren't good enough. Perhaps we could go elephant-hunting, upgrade to war elephants. However Esus doesn't take long to get, and we don't need to capture stuff either. We can get bowyers for regular nightwatch, but they are kinda weak. Guilds for courtesans (start without HN but can mask) but perhaps better just to go straight for warhorses. Orthus axe + rod + raiders (if we don't retain the trait we can quickly level him up to take the promo normally) means pretty fast removal of bothersome garrisons.

[Mardoc]

That's a fair point on Nameless. No rush - it's not like our cultural dominance is going to go away. Better to keep going for more culture tech.

On that note, I realized this morning that I still forgot to use the Savant. Next player should really not delay that any more. But also - I think we should go ahead and research Hunting and Way of the Forest. They're fairly cheap, would let us take over the Spiders we've found - and more importantly, give our culture cities another temple they can build when they run out of other things to work on. Probably after Trade, before heading toward Mercantilism. I don't see anything else that's likely to help the econ, except of course the Merc prereqs.

I do think we should send scout-loki south of svartalfar and see if we can found/take a city down there. It will be crap, ice and at best tundra, but a good way to expand down there. There is at least one barb city there, we should send a hunter-killer team and wipe them out and capture/raze and replace our own city there.

Ah - that would be why Loki's wounded . Sent him down, he got beat up by the Gargoyles. There's at least one razed city in the area, plus the barb city. We can and should expand there, but we'll need something serious to do that. Either a whole bunch of swordsmen, or wait for later and use something stronger like shadowriders.

[akatosh]

Where do you guys want to found AV?

[Mardoc]

Where do you guys want to found AV?

Somewhere with a lot of commerce. 6 culture/turn max isn't enough to worry about, so instead put it somewhere we'll build a library and maybe Academy, if we ever get around to building the shrine.

Guessing that's the capital.

[akatosh]

So launched the save. Status of the empire:

1) 15 cities
2) 17 workers--still a fair amount of undeveloped tiles, and we need more workers in the eastern portion of the empire. I will probably build 1-2 more workers and shift some workers eastward
3) Looks like all AI cities have at least the second ring in culture, so there's nowhere we can steal a city. However, we can send Loki to the empty area in the south, and start picking off cities as they get founded
4) We have the opportunity to found AV; where? I am thinking the capital, it already has Deruptus.
5) We are 11 turns from the Theatre of Dreams (moving tiles around), 7 turns from the Bone Palace and 3 turns away from Trade with a +5 gpt surplus.
6) 10 turns left of a GA, if we get the Bone Palace we'll be up to 13 turns after it's done.
7) We need to get our hands on some water mana, we've got a lot of desert tiles in the empire.
8) Summer and winter palaces are both available. As someone suggested we should build the winter palace in Myrean, and see where we need the summer palace later.
9) Tech path--go for Deception to found Esus, or work towards Feudalism and economic techs?

[Molach]

Agree with all. AV in capital is fine.

For tech I vote Mercantilism.

It's not just culture, it gives pretty good beakers and gold as well. 3 free specs in every city, plus as many as our farms can support. With some workers and chain-farming everywhere, we'll be set to push.

Then caste system, more beakers and culture, should be quick.

Then all the rest. KotE, and elementalism ain't too bad. Get water, spirit and metamagic so we can change around.

Also the stuff on the way to Merc. helps with finances. I'm not sure if money changers are worth it, or if it's best to build wealth instead. In the high-commerce cities it should pay back, but haven't calculated.

[akatosh]

Not too interesting turnset. Will post the major developments...

It looks like some of Faeryl's back cities don't have much culture...


Faeryl wants to trade. She originally wanted to trade Festivals for Cartography, but I didn't want to give her any way to build more culture sources. However, I don't mind if an elf civ builds farms and adopts Aristocracy...


But Faeryl isn't sitting still. She's got a settler on the move, escorted by a bunch of animal-capping fawns. Loki's waiting for his moment to strike. OTOH, there's a real risk that the barbs will sack the city as soon as we flip it. We'll have to watch carefully how the situation develops down here.


And on the last turn, we found Esus and get the Theatre of Dreams. We built the Bone Palace so we still have 13 turns of golden ages left. Civics unchanged, Traits unchanged Ind/Spi/Raiders. Next player may want to revolt into Undercouncil. We also have a HN Nightwatch that we could use to farm some XP off weak units, if we can buff him and get him some levels, that's going to be a great Aeron's Chosen-->Shadow candidate. I think we need to bring him the Rod of Winds ASAP, and when we revolt to Esus have him cast the Esus poison spell. Don't want to leave OO yet though.



Next steps:
1) Get the Nightwatch the Rod of Winds, and have him start kicking ass. Revolt into Undercouncil.
2) Get Feudalism and build the Hall of Kings.
3) Get Elementalism. Get 1 water node to improve our land, and then air nodes for our Nightwatch.
4) Fill out econ techs. Get Guild of Hammers, Pillar of Chains, etc.
We control the holy cities of Esus and AV. Shadow mana will be useful, not sure about Entropy. Also, consider whether we want to get out of evil alignment while we're still spiritual. We are never going to adopt AV and since this game is going to go on a long time, hell terrain might become an issue. We could try to build the Prophecy of Ragnarok somewhere for +8 culture, and controlling the AC as well...