[SPOILERS] Tholal chooses a civ

[Tholal]

Eeny, meeny, miney, moe, catch a Demon by its toe, if it hollers, dont let it go, for it will feast on your dark, warm soul!


Just a little something to get things started! I just realized that it's nearly 1 am my time and I haven't thought about my civ picks yet! Gah! I need another shot of Scotch to help with this. Be right back...

Players and civs in this game:

Weezel: Varn Gosam of the Malakim
Yell0w: Cardith Lorda of the Kuriotates.
Tholal: Arturus Thorne of the Khazad
Kyan: Rhoanna of the Hippus
Ellimist: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
HidingKneel: Arendel Phaedra of the Ljosalfar

[Tholal]

Ah.. there we go, a little lubricant to help the creative juices start flowing. And a big cheers to the mother-in-law for leaving a bottle a Glenfiddich the last time she visited!

OK, so on to the game. This game should be interesting from the get go as everyone will be given an extra Worker (so starting techs could play a key role), an extra Settler for quick expansion, and last but not least, a starting Shade to settle in our capital!

For this game I'm hoping to play a civ and/or leader that hasn't had a lot of success in FFH games here. Let's take a glance through ye olde manual...

[Tholal]

Amurites - Maybe. It's tough to get a solid foothold in multiplayer games with them
Balseraphs - Nah. Though I do love all the unique units, buildings and tricks they have, they seem to be a popular choice
Bannor - Nah.
Calabim - Nah.
Clan of Embers - Nah.
Doviello - Nah. It would be hard to follow-up Ellmist's successful win with them
Elohim - Nah. Already playing them in another RB game
Grigori - Maybe.
Hippus - Nah.
Illians - banned.
Khazad - Possible. I do like the Dwarves. Their lack of upper tier magic hinders them quite a bit, but I like to test myself so this could be a fun choice.
Kuriotates - Probably not. I'm currently playing them in FFH XIV, but with Thessa as a leader instead of Cardith Lorda. After my experiences in that game, I'm interested in seeing what I can do with their proper leader. But playing two games at the same time with the same civ would probably be too confusing
Lanun - Nah.
Ljosalfar - Nah.
Luchuirp - Maybe.
Malakim - Nah.
Sheaim - Maybe. Another popular choice, though I dont think they've ever done particularly well in any FFH games so far.
Sidar - Nah.
Svarts - Maybe. They have a pretty useless worldspell (at least in MP), but Sinister is a pretty sweet trait and I would love to try and Kidnap some settled Great People!

[Tholal]

Alright then. Looks like I have it narrowed down to 6 civs.

Amurites
Grigori
Khazad
Luchuirp
Sheaim
Svarts

At this point, I want to also start thinking about what I will do with my starting Shade.

Great Bard: +3g, +12 culture
Great Sage: +1 hammer, +6 beakers
Great Merchant: +1 food, +6g
Great Engineer: +3 hammers, +3 beakers

Those are all tough choices (except maybe the Bard - seems like there would be limited scenarios where you would need that much culture at the start of a game). Sage would let me research faster and make sure my Worker has productive things to do from the start. Merchant would let me field troops and run my economy at 100% science for quite a while. Engineer makes the capital into a production powerhouse (especially with God King).

[Tholal]

After some thought, I think I'm going to choose the Khazad as my first choice with Arturus as the leader (yes, I'm passing on Kandros Fir just for the hell of it). If I settle the Shade as a GE, that extra production, combined with Industrious, should let me nab a couple of early wonders.

2nd choice, Os-Gabella of the Sheaim. Someone has to bring the world to ruin!

3rd choice - Faeryl of the Svarts. Sinister Satyrs and Werewolves prowling the dark forests will be my plan.

Still going to think about it for a few minutes. I might change the order, though I plan on keeping these as my 3 choices. I doubt anyone is up at this time of night, but if you are reading this and have any thoughts, feel free to chime in!

[Mardoc]

Tholal, here's your land:

[Tholal]

Nice mountainous starting area. Great for us dwarves! Chokepoints and hills and such. And what dwarf doesnt love the sight of a beautiful mountain?

We build our first city on the shores of Lake Khazak, situated on a hill overlooking the river valley and fields of dyes. A Shade settles into the city in a scholarly manner, giving us a permanent Great Sage. I considered the idea of trying to get somewhere with the Merchant (would have been great for the Vaults) or Priest for extra production, but the immediate +50% to my research was too much to pass up on turn 1. And from the demos, it looks like everyone else agrees.

Not seeing a great spot for my second city yet. I have pretty much everyone out scouting except for my Worker who is sitting on top of the barrow mound. The Barrow will only ever spawn a single Skeleton since its inside my borders, so I just want to keep it undead free until I'm ready to explore it. I'll get someone to replace the worker once we finish researching Agriculture (and obviously Calendar is after that). Mining and Way of the Earthmother also seem like obvious choices.

[Tholal]

Turn 5: I take a chance and pop the barrow that was right next to my capital. It yields a small stash of gold coins.

Turn 6: Jonas Endain (aka Ellmist) has cast For the Horde. His power shot up to 9800 (nearly 11x my power), so he must have scored with a nice haul of fresh troops from the Barbs. So he's obviously planning on trying to get an early elimination on at least one player. I haven't seen any barbs yet myself aside from a single lizardman guarding his lair. Nor do I yet have contact with any other civs, so I feel fairly secure at the moment. Both of my cities have a warrior as defense and both are currently building troops (1 warrior and 1 scout). Nonetheless, I switch my working tiles in Halowell to make sure the warrior is completed sooner rather than later.





Looking at the Demos, it looks like the Clan's influx of new troops is also killing their economy!



It's interesting to see that someone has 28 GNP. They must have settled their Shade as a Great Bard, which seems like a strange choice unless they are pursuing a cultural victory.

[Tholal]

And after the Orc Hordes multiplied suddenly and in extreme numbers, there was much gnashing of the teeth. Fortunately, it was agreed that we play on. Dont know if I could have handled yet another game abandonment.

Anyway, on turn 8 we were contacted by the Clan as one of their Archers passed east of Hallowell.



We exchanged a couple of pleasantries. I have 2 Warriors in Hallowell and lots of production in both cities (the Khazak Peoples are currently leading the world in industrial output), so I'm not worried about an eminent Orcish invasion. Worker is on the way to farm the Corn north of Khazak. By the time he's done with that, we'll have completed Calendar and he can build Plantations on the Dye.

I'm going to try to be a bit conservative when it comes to early expansion. Not only do we have a toroidal world which brings with it heavy maintenance costs, but we also need to keep a steady supply of gold around for the Dwarven Vaults.

Given the potential gold income from the Plantations near the capital, I think we have to go for Ancient Chants->Mysticism before Mining.

I now have two scouts out exploring, one to the North, one to the South. Nothing especially interesting as of yet.

[Tholal]

Turn 14 we meet the Kuriotate People whose lands lie directly to our north. We send greetings and offer an Open Borders agreement, which they accept in complete silence. It was a little eerie (Us dwarves are more used to loud, boisterous negotiations. And to be honest, these half-horsemen kind of creep me out!)

Our Scout takes advantage of the new agreement to pass through their lands for further exploration. Along the way we spot this lone Warrior outside of their capitol.



Notice that the Warrior has cast a spell this turn. Looks like they also started with a lair right outside of the capital. I'm guessing that he went ahead and popped his open this turn so that he could safely accept my Open Borders offer.


Turn 15 opens with an event, my first ever event in multiplayer! And.. oh... Truffles on the Peak tile. Just great.



And here are the scores as of turn 15.



The orcs have a sizable lead. He's obviously managed to snag a couple of huts (I still havent seen a single one). It's interesting that the Kuriotates are also ahead of everyone else at the moment. Damn Griffon to the south killed one of my Scouts (at 50/50 odds) without getting a scratch on itself so my exploration efforts have been hampered. I'm building another Scout, but at this point I can pretty much count myself out of the Hut Lottery.

Calendar is done and my Worker is building Dye Plantations. Ancient Chants is next in the queue. I'll probably go for Mysticism after that. The Kuriotates are already running City States. I'm guessing that Cartography was their reward from a Hut.

Though I see no signs of battle, it seems that the Orcs and the Centaurs are at war.



Perhaps next turn my Scout will reveal the location of the Orcish troops.

Of all the players for the Orcs to pick as a first target, I have to say that I don't mind it being the Kuriotates. They seem to be a civ that could potentially reap many benefits from an advanced start, especially if he's already found a good spot for his 2nd mega-city. I wonder what Ellmist's reaction will be to the Open Borders agreement I made with his foe. Hopefully he doesn't decide to send any of those Archers my way! As far as I can tell, Ellmist isn't disbanding any of his troops. He's just absorbing the brunt of the maintenance costs while slowly building his economy back up.