The Sinister Six: A Competitive EitB SG

[Bobchillingworth]

the game evidently is won through Stirrups

- The save I loaded up had the same form as the one I received, i.e. eot 20, with units moved, but it's up to the next player to hit enter. I think that's good in principle, but there's potential for abuse there, as I could move one of the other avatars into a bad position, but the loss would count towards the other player's score, without him being able to do anything about it. Can we agree that a player loss during the first interturn counts towards the previous player's score?

Good points- about Stirrups (I may be a little biased ), but more importantly how we allot penalties and points from EoT activities. I had left you the ability to make adjustments based on prior SG etiquette, not thinking of how it may impact scoring. Going forward, it's probably simplest to just end turn rather than leave it for the next player to roll things over.

[DaveV]

Lugus appeared to Dave in a vision, urging him to change his name to DaveVenus. "You will be the morning star, the bringer of light," said the god. "But not the warm, nurturing light of comfort and growth. Instead, you will be the searing, unbearable light of purification. I send you forth to cleanse this land of the infidels!"

But after Dave ran some numbers through the holy spreadsheets, he decided that he needed more strength from his god before he could purify a city on a hill. In the meantime, he could send his fellows to gain some more strength:



Later, Dave was favored by another god:



By the end of his short period in command, the Six were somewhat better prepared to venture forth:





OOC: Courage was a good suggestion, so I took it, along with some March promotions. That 20% healing bonus neatly offsets the Withered penalty, and the ability to heal on the move is a great timesaver. My avatar can take Heroic Strength with his next promotion, which will still give him only 88% odds against a fully fortified C1G1 warrior in a city on a hill (the AI loves the guerrilla promotion, so there's a good chance Rivanna has some in her hilled cities). Alternatively, we can take a longer walk to attack some cities that aren't on hills, and have much better odds (96.8%, according to the holy spreadsheet). We've also grown onto a couple cottages and can better afford support costs.

I killed some random barb goblins and warriors, but mostly spent my turns healing and giving the Courage promotion to our small army.

On the bad side: our griffon was eaten by a spider (marked). But Auro captured the lion and bear to our south (the lion was eaten by the bear after capture, but a lion isn't a great unit anyway). I've also marked a wild bear in the distant southwest, and another by the Amurites.

As recommended by Bob, I ended turn, so Brian starts with a clean slate on turn 31.

Brian is UP, shallow_thought is ON DECK!

[Brian Shanahan]

I see the save will grab it tonight and play tomorrow. I'll be too busy watching AI Survivor to play after work.

[Miguelito]

Had a look into the save last night. Development seems to be going ahead nicely. With the second worker finished, we'll be growing very fast, so we have to take care to connect the wine in time (as a tile I think it's worse than an FP cottage, at least while we're growing. Nice to see how those are going up).

I noticed that Ennios is researching calendar, while I think the plan was to go for mining (which is set for us, art 0%). I think you can tell him to change his research in the diplo screen?

Else maybe we can get out some warriors now to soften Rivanna's cap enough for our avatars to attack? Of course atm we're working food tiles mostly.

I have to admit that I wasn't aware of the heroic strength promo, that should be very valuable especially now before the heroes can upgrade to better bases.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok I've the set played,  it was very uneventful.  Most of what I did was push around our units so that they're facing Rivanna in a stack (mostly, I sent Dave off chasing a goblin coming to our borders so he's one turn behind, and Shallow_Thought attacked a goblin last turn to get more XP).

During the turn I went off and popped the dungeon for the extra two points, got diseased for my troubles.  I also picked up another spider along the way.

Domestically I hooked up the wines and settled a bear for happiness, the cap is now twelve.  I also got Einion to go after Mining from turn 32 (I only remember this after popping back into the thread to check the scoring and reading Miguelito's post, thanks very much for reminding me).

Oh and I decided to swap over to warriors, and put two of Fort Defiant's citizens on hills. The tailor is still in the build queue (I suggest putting a turn every so often in it to preserve hammers). We need the warriors if we're going to go after somebody soon, which I think we should do soon.  One more set, get a few warriorpults and direct Einion after Rivanna and see if we can take her out.

Sorry for the lack of pictures or anything else, it was a very unexciting turnset, no events, no attacks and only random barb combats for breaking the tedium.  Sorry for the lack of pictures, but nothing really happened.

[DaveV]

I had completely forgotten about the ability to direct research and attack target for our ally. Nice to see the ETA on Mining under 400 turns.

I don't think we can expect any real help from Einion on offense, though.

I suggest putting a turn every so often in [the Tailor] to preserve hammers.

That's not how it works. After 50 turns of working on something other than the Tailor, consecutive or not, the hammers start to decay.

Warriors cost us unit support, and are slow and weak. There's a good chance they'll just bounce off a fortified defender on a hill (26% for drill 2, 22% for combat 2, 24% for guerrilla 1/combat 1). I think we're better off using our mobility to strike wide and fast.

Edit: and, of course, the odds are even worse than that. Since this is Deity, AI-built units start with three promotions (check out Einion's units). The units at the beginning of the game start unpromoted, so there's some relatively easy meat scattered in there.

So, make that a 27% chance of doing no damage against G1C2, 38% against D3, 24% against C3.

[Miguelito]

For the record, Shallow Thought, it's your set

[Aurorarcher]

Some random thoughts looking at the save:

- Work more commerce on cap (at least two cottages there currently not being worked), we don't need hammers much at the moment.
- We don't need warriors either, they just cost us a lot of money. Rather build that Tailor.
- We can use the animals to soften the defenders on attack. If they die, well, at least we gain some money. I know against Svarts animals aren't the best idea.

[Miguelito]

Also looked into the save. The unworked cottages hurt. I had also argued for warriors, because I assumed we would need something to soften the cap defenders, but of course if we now wait for them to arrive Rivanna builds 5 more in that time. We have to ask ourselves though what happens if the Doviello or somebody else appear with a stack from the NE. Ennios' second city has just two warriors in it . Maybe smarter to send one or both hunters back, as they get the city attack malus anyways?
After our immediate tech needs, we'll also really want some roads to move units fast towards possible attack targets and back home in case of emergency. I think after Calendar (Ennios got halfway through that already) set research to exploration.
I also don't like the research rate of 10%, we're losing a commerce to rounding there already.

[Bobchillingworth]

HBR and Centaurs would be most useful for taking out Rivanna and defending against incoming forces. With at least Flanking I from the Apprenticeship exp about half should survive running into Rivanna's defenders, assuming several retreat and one or two win. We could also get a fair amount of benefit from having Mobility promos on our Avatars, particularly myself and Shallow.


First and foremost though we need Myst if we don't have it already- Godking is the best civic we can run, and we should be working a Sage both for the beakers and an Academy.