Losing is Fun: Kandros Fir Dwarf Fortress [Khazad Spoiler Thread]

[Square Leg]

I'll go for a b and c.

But probably a first!

[Ichabod]

Turn 48:


We are getting very near the Orthus spawn date. Since we are currently number 1 in soldiers, having agressive warriors and bonus defending cities (which the Khazad palace gives), I'm not too worried. In fact, I'd like Orthus spawning near us, since the axe would be a very nice boost to the army (and the xp from the unit that kills it is nice too).


The turn would be very uneventful if it wasn't for a micromanagement decision. It regarded what tiles to work in the capital. So, here's the situation:

The plan is go Elder Council -> Settler. The Elder Council had 25 hammers invested and it needed 40 hammers to be built. The settler costs 145 hammers. The capital has the +50% hammer bonus from GK and recently grew to size 5 (last turn actually).

So, the new citizen can work a 0f/3h/0c tile (plains hill hammer), giving us 10p in the capital (2 from city center + 1 palace + 1 wheat farm + 3 cottages + 3 plains hill forest) + 50% = 15 hammers per turn. Here's the result if we do it:

Notice the settler in the production queue, 10 turns to build it. The Elder Council will be finished this turn, with no overflow. So, we'd have a settler in 11 turns, but we would lose a lot of commerce.

We can also put the new citizen in a cottage, netting us 8 + 50% = 12 production, but more commerce. Let's take a look:

According to the screenshot, the settler will be built in 12 turns, but this is wrong, since it doesn't count the food surplus (+1) that will be used as production, giving us 13 hammers per turn. 13 x 11 = 143 + overflow from the elder council = settler in 11 turns. So, we would have Elder Council in 2 turns and settler in 13 (2 + 11), but a lot more commerce.

I took a long time to make a decision. Another important factor was the turns to tech Animal Husbandry. If we go with the first option, it'll take 5 turns, with the second, 4. The second is better regarding the second city development.

So, what did I do?

Went with option number 3. Option number three is: work the plains hill for the next turn, completing the Elder Council in 1 turn. Then, work the cottage for 10 turns (130 hammers invested into the settler) and switch for the plains hill in the last turn (130 + 15 = 145). This way, we'll have the settler in 12 turns (1+11) but with a lot more commerce than option 1. Also, AH will be finished in 4 turns. It seems to be the best way to go, but I haven't made any tests to confirm it. Hope I'm right!

Meanwhile, Hindenburg is growing one of Boatmurdered cottages. I finished a farm in the cow, but working it would mean a 5 turn AH, which is bad:

Demographics:

Overview after EoT. The turns needed for AH will drop after next turn micro:

Diplomacy:

Secured RoK non compete agreements with every player but Sciz. Here's what each one got.

Mardoc: 10t earth mana loan, RoK spread with a thane, non compete for the Bone Palace.

Dantski: goodwill, he didn't want anything. I mentioned the whole change aligment thing, but I won't be able to keep it, unfortunately. Some of my choices depends on a certain aligment, so I can commit to this.

Jkaen: Mardoc sent a message for him in my behalf. He agreed on letting it go for goodwill too.

Selrahc: he's going for Council of Esus to get Gibbon as an early vitalizer (it remains to be seen how will he get nature mana), so he also passed it. Unfortunately, I offered him a 10 turn earth mana too. He didn't say anything about it in his response, but I'll have to comply if he asks for it. The problem is that I just gave his archmage hero a very good summon (11 strenght), which he can double, since he's a hero.

It's not that scary though. Gibbon is an illusionist mage, so his summons can't kill. Also, the earth I and II spells are very bad ones, so he'll have to burn 3 promotions to get the good spell. If he wants nature 3 and earth 3, he'll have to wait a lot and give up on other good spells, like Maelstrom, other summons (fire elementals are better, since they do collateral damage, for example), etc. Not optimal, but not game breaking either. Actually, I don't think he'll want to promote Gibbon with earth spells.

Need to talk to Sciz now that he's back.


I'll wait a bit to close the voting on the prefered strategy post. Thanks for the support Rawkking and Square Leg.

[Ravus Sol]

You certainly seem to be getting the most out of those early cottages!

But um, your overview shows that your capital is LOOSING food?! I thought the plan was that it would be stagnant for a turn before switching to the new cottage?

Anyway just pointing that out in case of a mix up.

Glad you have all those none compete agreements! That should help a lot! Although is one of the ones that can gain a lot from the Religion too... Hopefully diplomacy picks up with him.

I wonder if AH will reveal any horses...

EDIT: I'll go with the trend and choose A) for GP plans but I do want to see C) for third city plans and see where you decide on in the end.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

E: nm

[Ichabod]

You certainly seem to be getting the most out of those early cottages!

But um, your overview shows that your capital is LOOSING food?! I thought the plan was that it would be stagnant for a turn before switching to the new cottage?

Anyway just pointing that out in case of a mix up.

Glad you have all those none compete agreements! That should help a lot! Although is one of the ones that can gain a lot from the Religion too... Hopefully diplomacy picks up with him.

I wonder if AH will reveal any horses...

EDIT: I'll go with the trend and choose A) for GP plans but I do want to see C) for third city plans and see where you decide on in the end.

Ah, sure, I made a mistake with the overview picture. I was trying to do some tests to see how many beakers were needed for completing AH in 4 turns, so I took the citizen of the wheat. I can finish it with 29bpt, but not with 28bpt.

Rest assured that I didn't end the turn with my capital starving. Unfortunately, it was the only overview shot I took during the turn. So, we'll have to go with it.

Ah, I'm doing some C&D while I wait for the turns (yet again a whole day passed without the save ). I'm not sure about the results, but I'll post them later. I think Sciz went calendar as his first tech and Jkaen went Agri -> Calendar. That doesn't make sense for a civ that starts with AC, but there you have it. It's either Calendar or some event that gave him beakers to finish Myst quick. When I finish doing it with all the turns (currently at turn 25) I'll post my findings.

[Ichabod]

Edit2: I changed my post based on Thoth's correction. Changes are in green.

Edit: This post is based on false assumptions (see the post below from Thoth) and should not be taken into account. I'll work the plans again and post them corrected later.


Great People Plans:

To get some benefits out of Great People (GP) in this game, we'll have to do careful plans. The lack of food makes working specialists a costly choice and we don't have any trait that helps with GP creation (financial is almost a "anti-GP" trait). Also, we don't plan to adopt any of the more common GP generating civics, like pacifism. Arete - a civic that we plan to adopt - gives a 20% boost to GP points (GPP), which is pretty minor, but might be helpful.

We can't, of course, rely on the 25% GPP generation bonus from the dwarven vaults, since that requires a whooping 500 gold per city !

So, we have to make some plans. First, we have the very special numbers: 67, 134, 201, 268... This is the number of GPPs we need to create our first, second, third and so forth, GPs. Since a philosophical civ can get 12 GPPs early in the game by working a scientist from Elder Council and priest from Pagan Temple, it may seem a little. But for the hard working Khazad, that's a lot. So, what can we do?
[COLOR="Lime"]
Edit: Actually, the GPP progression is different in FfH than it is in BTS. It goes like this: "GPP costs escalate by 134 pts each after the first. The progression is 67/201/335/469/603" (thanks again, Thoth). It makes getting a pure GPP pool almost impossible for our second GP. A big loss, but what can you do?[/COLOR]

1st Great Person:

The 1st GP will be generated in Hindenburg. It'll be a Great Prophet and it'll be used to make the RoK shrine.

So, the planned builds for Hindenburg are Monument (we NEED those second ring sheeps to feed our priests) -> Pagan Temple (1 priest slot) -> Filler before we can build a RoK temple (a market will be built for sure) -> RoK temple (priest and merchant slots).

At size 4, Hindenburg can work the sheep, the cows and 2 specialists, with still a 1 food surplus (a cottage, if we reach size 5). That's a severe blow to the city growth, but it's necessary. By working 1 priest specialist, we'll have the Great Prophet in 23 turns. That's definetely a lot. I don't think the RoK temple will be built in enough time to decrease this by much, but c'est la vie. If only the Tablets of Bambur (RoK shrine) could be built by a Great Merchant (like the CoE shrine, for example), we could work the merchant specialist from the market without any fear of a wrong GP. But that's not an option here...

We'll probably have the GPro in less then 40 turns, before the 100th turn.

Edit: No reason to change here, 67 is still the number.

2nd Great Person:

This GP is strongly connected with the plan explained above. Why? Because the RoK shrine gives Great Engineer points and a engineer slot:

Yup, the second GP will be a GE, created in the RoK holy city, using the Tablets of Bambur eng points + an engineer specialist -> 5 GPP per turn. That's 27 turns (134/5) to get it, with no way of speeding things up (the other engineer specialist building is the forge - dwarven smithy for the Khazad - avaiable at the expensive smelting -> since we are going for the Guild of Hammers - gives a forge to every city - that is avaiable in another tech, we won't be going for smelting). Maybe the planned revolt to Arete can come in handy, making the 5 GPP -> 6GPP per turn (5 + 20%).

This engineer will be used to hurry the production of the Mines of Gal-Dur, that give 3 sources of iron + 3 engineer slots:

[COLOR="Lime"]
Edit: With the new values, it'd take 41 turns to get a Great Engineer as our second GP (5 GPP p/t is the best we can achieve for a long time). There's nothing I can do to get it faster, the 5 GP Eng Points is my bottleneck with what I currently plan to have/know.

I thought about a Golden Age with the Drama Artist, but it won't do much good, reducing the time for 9 turns. Maybe if I used to change civics and go into RoK too. I'll have to think about it.

The other option is polluting the GP pool with points for other Great People type. I would be able to run priests with the RoK shrine, merchant from the carnival, scientist from an elder council... I still haven't decided which would be better (probably a scientist, getting me an academy faster - then I'd have to rethink the third great person)... Losing the GE would be very disappointing, since the Mines of Gal-Dur are very important (iron for troops and to boost the dwarven smithy). We'd have to rely on luck, unfortunately.[/COLOR]

Third Great Person:

It'll be a Great Scientist generated in the capital. I'll use the Great Library GPP (2 from the wonder + 3 from the free scientist specialist) with the help of the library and elder council scientist slots. I'm pretty sure I can beat the Kurios for the Great Library, since it's in my planned tech path (writing is needed for mathematics, which is needed for engineering) and I'll focus on it.

We need 201 GPPs. The Great Library alone gives 5 GPP p/t and with 2 specialist, we'll have 11 p/t + arete bonus = 13 GPP p/t. Since I plan to get the Great Library built before the Great Engineer for the Mines, it won't take so long.

Here's the Great Library:

The Great Scientist will be used to build an academy at the capital, boosting our research.
[COLOR="Lime"]
Edit: It'll take a lot more time to get the Great Scientist, but there's nothing I can do. At least it isn't that important.[/COLOR]

Fourth Great Person and Beyond:

The city with the RoK shrine will be gaining 3 GE GPPs (2 from the shrine, 1 from the mines) without any specialists and we'll be able to work 4 engineers there. I don't have anything planned for the 4th GP, but a GE is always useful. I really don't have the slightest idea regarding the timing, but we may be able to use him to hurry the production of the Guild of Hammers. But I really haven't thought about it yet.

Edit: No changes.

Bonus Great People:

I plan to get the free Great Bard from Drama and use him to bulb sanitation. Drama cost less beakers than sanitation, so I'll use the beakers I planned for it and get double the benefits. Drama will also help with my culture problem. I don't want to keep wasting hammers in monuments for my new cities and since RoK doesn't give culture in a city, building culture becomes a very good option.



So, there you have it, my GP plans. Comments are appreciated! Hope you guys enjoy it.

[Thoth]

There is one slight flaw in your calculations.

GPP costs escalate by 134 pts each after the first. The progression is 67/201/335/469/603 ect.

[Ichabod]

Damn, I thought it worked the same as BTS...

Well, maybe I'll have to shuffle the order and get the scientist first, then slowly crawl to the great engineer, maybe even with the help of the guild of hammers...

Argh! I'll have to rethink everything...

Thanks Thoth!

[Thoth]

NP.

The steep GP ramping costs are a big factor in making specialist based economies poor in FFH. (the weak bulb path for GS's is the other major factor)

[Ichabod]

The save keeps moving very slowly. We are up to run 50 now, almost a whole week to play 2 turns. Orthus will spawn at the end of turn and since I'm very prepared, I'd like him to spawn near me.

I'm feeling a bit indisposed today, so I'll hold on the full turn reports. Nothing special happened. AH is due in 1 turn, settler and monument are still a bit far from completion. My GNP is leading, a bit better than Mardoc and Selrahc (it'll probably change when Mardoc settle his second city, which will happen soon - it's practically impossible to get better demos then the Kurios in the beggining if the game). The workers are idle, waiting to put a pasture in the hindenburg cows.

Dantski settled his second city. I'm pretty sure I'll be the first one to three (my third city will give me 20 commerce at size 4, a great boost for the economy). It'll be named Titanic.