Cultural Domination in Balance: EitB Succesion Game

[Qgqqqqq]

Okay a short report, but then nothing really happened.
Met Ameliancher T72:


Just his scout. Our unit in Svartalfar lands got killed when I hit Pristinus by mistake
Fortunately the Gargoyles should be firmly their problem

T74:


We missed Octupus Overlords, which fell to Decius
Also got a annoying jungle growth, and a swarm of barbs from the east.
Otherwise, just micro.


I’m pretty well certain that that is a city where I’ve marked which has had a culture bomb.


Given that, I couldn’t really see any half decent places to plant, so I built a settler which went to the clam spot in the west (founding next turn). I chose there for the incense (commerce), copper (easy to build workboats) and decent food, which I think should get it up and running quickly. After this we should start founding pressure cities though, like the one near the Svatalfar. If people can see anywhere better, I’m all ears – its not too late to move it.
I’ve set Jubilee to grow on a freak – we don’t need it per se, so feel free to change to something more useful, maybe even a carnival.
I presume we still want OO after this? I stayed on fishing for the new city.
Anyway,the save

[Molach]

Opening the game.
IHT.


I took the 69% shot, attacking lizardman with the Combat II warrior. This warrior was born un-aggressive, so it's not _that_ big loss if he loses, any replacement warriors can quickly get 2 xp and be as good. But I win, and he gains 5 xp so he can level up next turn. I plan to shift warriors around a bit, use the heavy rod warrior more actively, because he will reliably win even attacking in a forest and gain some quick exp. So I shuffle them around a bit.

I also switch tiles to get fishing in 2 turns.

T 76
The barbarians have created Orthus. I am not sure how best to handle this. Usual plan is hole up in my cities, let him attack and kill one warrior then kill him on counterattack. However....he can attack out of the goblin fort and be untouchable. Hm. Heavy rod warrior should be a match for him, so I stick him in city.

Interturn Orthus attacks, and donates his axe to the defending archer in the fort. Ugh. Tempting, but we really can fight barbarians without it. So settlers and more warriors, stake out as much land as able. City in Orcs' face, City due west near bannor, city NE to block and one due east.

Okay, nothing much happens. Freak finishes, I start settler in capital. Fish city finishes workboat, switch to grow off the fish. Grow till cap then settler spam.
Event:


And Archeron (note position on minimap)

This is good for us, AIs can't take him anytime soon so he will block them from here. Need a plan to take him out in turn 200 or so.


OO spreads to capital, nice. Didn't revolt just yet, we don't need the happy. But I do revolt to god king - capital will be able to get some decent production, we might need it for temple + zealots.

Interturn before T90 we get a trait change. Keep industrious, gain spiritual (yay) and raiders (bah).

Faeryl has settled towards us, so we need cities east too. Perhaps our 3rd city should have gone further afield. For now, I say nothing but freaks while growing then settlers till we've filled all available spots. Our military is good enough.

Tech towards drama, I think.

Settler is 1 turn off, and so is MftD. Revolt to OO will let capital grow more, but revolt also means no free culture from any other religion we may get. And end-goal is Esus, obviously.

Some shots about closing position:
Bannor area - or whack a barb. This freak is gonna become a show, so perhaps better to get a warrior from the city to do it next turn.


The Svartalfar area:

Half thinking about popping dungeon before new city border pops. Futher north is a shock warrior who can kill a skeleton and pop it's barrow this turn. Or just do the kill for exp.

New traits:

I played 15 turns because Q played 15...onwards to 10 now?

[Mardoc]

Definitely agreed, it's time to start some real pressure brewing. Fortunately, you left me the tools I need to start.

IHT: I think this could be a pretty decent location, to take over Faeryl's city and start pushing back Orc culture for a later better culture push on the bombed city. I do think we can overcome bombs, we're the freaking Balseraphs, after all.




I also like the spot one of you two marked, this other orcish pressure spot:



But, those both can wait for the moment, because the Bannor are temporarily vulnerable. And this site can be good without the ability to chop jungle:



Decided not to risk the Freak, better to collect the goblin XP on a unit we'll be keeping. I did swap Hexam back to a workboat, I think the extra food will pay for itself before we would have needed that Freak.

T91: Goblin goes away, maybe we'll have another shot later. OO is in, and we can't actually research Drama just yet; need Education first. Well...I do like Education and Drama, but let's take a quick detour to enable some food for our Bannor pressure city: onto AH!

Where to stick the Zealot? Thought about it, and the best place I can think of is...in the Bannor pressure city. Start it off with OO and a Freak, build some more culture, and we'll be looking good here. It'll have a while to grow, and an OO temple and some missionaries out of here should hit the spot nicely.




I take a 95% shot at a skeleton, and of course I get the 5%...
Also, I hate to accose people of , but why the heck don't we have plantations on all the silks by now? I realize we want to start conquering, but it'll be easier if our cities are strong, I promise!



T92: While scouting, I find another decent future spot, for pressure. It won't have much food until after we claim the fish, but Cows + bronze ought to pay for a good bit of cultural infrastructure, methinks.




Also, I finally remember that we're Spiritual, and we have a religion now. I realize it's not our ideal endstate, but some extra happiness now will be worth a fair bit later.



T93: Damn it, we weren't fast enough. This must be the OO holy city, with the Necronomicon...a good prize, but it's going to take a lot of effort to convert .


I debate for a while, but end up deciding to move the city 1NE. We still need the sheep for food, we'll just have to add another pressure city in the area. Perhaps we can eventually whack that barb city and resettle it closer to the Bannor.
Also, we find Acheron's city:



T94: Free spider! Some assembly required...


Still, as long as no one brings a scout to the area until we're ready to capture, it really ought to be a free spider with no downside.

Also, looks like Coombe View is going to be even stronger than I thought:



T95: Runes of Kilmorph is founded in a distant land.
We get our first pressure city founded:



It's born with 4.4 culture/turn, and I start it immediately on a Temple to the Overlords to add another big chunk.

I'm reminded of something, though: Loki's Disrupt ability subtracts culture from enemy cities. He's worth building - probably about as soon as we run out of good pressure spots to found cities in. That might help us tip cities over the edge into our camp.

T98: Amelanchier revolts to Kilmorph, and Fellowship of Leaves is founded somewhere distant too. So no holy cities for us! But that's ok, we weren't counting on them.

T99: And Faeryl was the Leaves founder. We'd best get some pressure onto here ASAP, too...fortunately I just had a settler complete. I think we should stick it here:



It's a strong city in its own right, and also it's a good site for pressure onto two civs at once. And we've already got worker support and warrior support in the area; just need to add in some culture.

I also get the last of the silks improved this turn; now every city is working only improved tiles! Can we keep it that way, please?

T100: And I save, passing it back to Q. Workers and garrison are in place to settle that elf pressure city next turn, if you agree. Or else to pasture the horse and divert, if you want to try somewhere else.

The Save

[Mardoc]

Tech thoughts: I'm torn between Drama next and Bronze next, with a side order of Philo next. I see the point, that we want all the cultural tools unlocked at Drama, and we want them soon, and there's not much point in waiting. But we also want to be able to clear out jungle, now that we're grabbing cities in the jungle. And we've started stacking up Bard GPP, the rate of that should start to increase now, and so we'll be able to bulb soonish.

Not as urgent, but we'll also want Sailing at some point, to plant some cities beyond the current foes. Need to fill out the walkable area first, at least with border cities, but the snowball has started to pick up.

[Molach]

Good turns, we are firmly on our way now.

Actually, I'd argue that for the next few turnsets we should just found cities as close to AI as we can, and worry about how how crappy they are and our diminishing tech rate later. Drama is not really needed for theaters, as we have too many things to build already, but for the free GA. Any normal "ai will fight" games BW is no-brainer, but sucks to lose the GA now.

I think it will be smart that we use our 3 developed cities now to just spam settlers. Capital should probably build the temple and some zealots (temple means it can grow another +2 because of religion and incense), so new cities can start slowbuilding their own temples for the culture. But we need like 6 cities settled as quickly as possible. We got all the time in the world to backfill and work land, city locations are a one-time diminishing resource.

Just my opinion. So I prioritized farms and mines and roads over plantations.

In a brief test game I could not gain much ground, and no cities at all before mercantilism. Once we get that tech we will gain ground, but a deep behind-enemy-lines plant now will pay back then. Nevermind if we slow a bit on teching, only thing we really need now is space.

I also found that a city lost to AI culture will NEVER flip back to me. Now we're not creative we need to watch for that. Have a spare zealot or freak with settlers should work.

My ideas for the west:
(I put in my own signs here):

Our capital pops borders in 9 turns, so Faeryl won't be far behind. So I'd argue for going for a settlement behind enemy lines. Faeryl will settle her backline soon, this way we save 50 years of cultural wars. So I'd say take the settler around Nameless tower and found somewhere in the backlands. After that we found on the Orc/Elf border to block that land from them.

In the west bannor front, I hope that we can flip the barb city before Bannor takes it. That will be a critical city for us. Improve sheep right away, then work max hammers for the temple, hopefully we can flip it. Or take it. Then the west will be won.

[Mardoc]

I don't mind farms and mines either, true - but you were working the silks! I probably ought to have built more workers, then, if we're simply short on worker turns.

Part of the reason I want our pressure cities to be decent in their own right is so that we can get Monument and Temple and etc. put up at a decent pace. And afford to run Bards once we build slots for them. We can only get 4-6 culture/turn in a city that's totally worthless (zealot, freak, slave or animal or something).

My biggest worry about settling over by Acheron is that's the area of greatest barb pressure, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. I don't want to invest in the military it would take to hold and improve that area. I'm also not sure I see the point in grabbing deep sites if that forces the AI to settle the open ones closer to us. Part of the advantage of the close site is that it'll probably flip Nameless to us; Nameless has no culture at all just yet. And then we could use Nameless to grab control of that whole area, instead of needing to use three settlers to do so.

I'd rather save the deep sites for after we have a border established. I'm definitely ok with saving backfill sites until later, but I don't see the point in grabbing a deep site and just pushing the AI to grab the good sites currently between us. Hopefully this prioritization gets easier as our core cities keep improving, though.

I suppose, yes, it's worth hand researching Drama to make sure we get the Great Bard. We should settle him in a pressure city, not bomb or save him for a bulb. We'll have more Bards over time if we want to bulb anything, and Sullla's probably right that a settled bard is worth more than a bomb.

[Mardoc]

Hmm...Loki's probably worth building fairly soon, actually. I forgot he can convert cities to us directly, if they're cultureless. Less than the cost of a settler, so he's worthwhile even if he only gets us one city; a big profit if he gets us more than one.

That would mean we'd rather move the settler somewhere else, true, since Nameless is Loki-vulnerable. Maybe to the cows/copper site right by the Svart capital?

[Qgqqqqq]

I think Drama too, but I personally think a bomb is the best course. If we fire a bomb in say a city 3E of Nameless Tower, then a) we'll take all of its tiles, leaving it open to a Loki flip and b) we'll claim a huge swath of territory that they can't expand into.
Sulla is probably right that settling is best for established culture, but a well placed bomb could save us a lot of land from the AI and let us send our settlers in the other direction.

I like the cows/copper site to the east too (especially as I marked it last set ).

I'll get to this tonight.

[DaveV]

My ideas for the west:

West of what?

[/NobleHelium]

On the Loki plans: has anyone done a worldbuilder test to see exactly how he works in an Always Peace game? No point in building him if he won't work; on the other hand, he could be really useful if he can move into cities and there's no way for the AIs to kick him out. Just watch out for HN units...

[Qgqqqqq]

I can't see any reason why he wouldn't work. I'll test first though.