New EitB succession game

[DaveV]

Play is taking longer, and time available is less than anticipated. I'm still playing.

[DaveV]

Sorry for the delay, I'm finally finished.

Notes from the start: we're researching Medicine, which is an expensive tech that gives us +1 health and access to a very expensive building that gives more health. I switched to Engineering for better road movement so we can traverse our burgeoning empire more quickly. Guild of Hammers gives a 25% hammer boost to every city, at the cost of -1 health. I'm not thrilled with Slavery instead of Military State, nor Agrarianism instead of Conquest, but I guess I'll whip out some buildings during no-revolt time. Also, with Blight looming in the near future, it is handy to be able to whip away starving population.

I also dispatched a detachment of three Ritualists and three Diseased Corpses to walk through Os-Gabella's territory and finish off Volanna. They'll arrive right when the peace treaty expires.

In the mean time, I explored Bradeline's Well with Rosier:



A great merchant; good for our first Golden Age when we're ready to switch civics. Again, with Blight on the near horizon, it's not a good time for a GA right now. After moving the merchant to the capital to await a more propitious time, I discovered that we already had a GM on ice. I sent one of them off to the west for a trade mission. Ithralia is the world's biggest city, but Braduk the Burning is farther away.

I settled some more cities, Scorched and Springed a bunch of marsh and desert tiles respectively, and finally reached Volanna:



I explored a shipwreck with one of our triremes, and wasn't as lucky as before:



The named sea monster killed one of Os-Gabella's ships and is weakened. I think our triremes have a good chance of beating Mart-Zth and his flying friends, but they still have a movement point if the next player decides not to risk the loss of our entire navy. There's a ritualist slowly making his way west who could help turn the tide of the battle. Plus, our Volanna-killing stack is making its way back for some more support.

Os-Gabella declared on Decius, and it looks like she'll take at least one city:



One last shot:



Assuming nothing catastrophic happens from the ritualist exploring the barrow, the adept on the oasis can move NE, spring the tile marked "c", and then the settler can found a double oasis, sheep and mana city. There's another settler moving to the south to found the last city on our new peninsula.

I also have a devout near Hyborem to Sanctify some of the Hell terrain (note: be careful not to Sanctify the nightmares (+1 strength for Rosier and any other mounted units) or the Sheut Stone (+1 Death strength to all units); Sanctify affects all surrounding tiles).

After we finish Sorcery, it would be very useful to convert one of our new mana nodes to Metamagic, then we can stack our nodes to grab the various Towers. They are all pretty useful, especially the one that gives a free tech.

I made a couple gold-per-turn for resource trades; it's worth scanning periodically to see whether more are available.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'll grab this now and play tomorrow. Looking from the screenshots that we're moving into watching the world burn time.

[Brian Shanahan]

Played the first five turns tonight, will finish tomorrow. From what I've looked at and done, I believe the plan should be finish off infrastructure, start building an army, take over our continent.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry for the lateness of getting this up. I was away all day yesterday, with the good weather I went out to Kinsale and stayed there all day.

I've played my set over about 2.5 hours, mostly trying to be careful with the micro.

In terms of the set itself it was mostly buildup.

Tech went Sorcery->Fanaticism->Smelting->Theology->Taxation (for the wonder only, we don't have enough cottages, build it in our highest pop potential city for mucho hammers). I also took Malevolent Designs when the Grimoire was built (the warrior carrying it is called Grimoire Bearer).

Cities with high hammers got building military infrastructure before going back to units (or starting on them), those with low hammers or coastal got building more economic infrastructure. We should be ready to spam units from about seven or eight cities now, with more coming on line after their infrastructure comes good. Newer unit pumps should concentrate on chariots as they catch up well. I've put notes besides some cities with their current unit build capabilities.

I popped a golden age on the first turn as we had two merchants and no really useful tech to bulb which gave me twelve turns of golden age (two left). We got a Prophet at the end of the set so next player can extend the golden age.

I reckon we're about 20% behind the Luichirp in army strength, but with one more set we should be ready to go on the offensive, even if the numbers still say we're behind. Just hit hard, flame with priests and capture cities.

Decius kept founding new cities in the path of the Sheaim army, so they kept getting razed, final toll in that war was one proper city razed, one captured and two more new cities razed. They made peace at the end of the turn.

And last but not least (and most definitely worst), the AC counter hit 30 this turn, so the bigger cities are all massively unhealthy now. Get to whipping out stuff and building health infrastructure. That's the only thing really stopping us from going to war against Beeri.

Sorry for the lack of pictures or a more detailed report, but it would read Turn 1 Build five things, Turn 2 lots of worker micro, build 6 things and so on. Without a war these mid to late game turns are a drag to report.

The save.

1) Brian (done)
2) Shallow Thought UP
3) Bing Xi Liao ON DECK
4) Amicalola (unfortunately lost to the Veil, aka real life)
5) Dave V

[shallow_thought]

Got it.

Looking good.

Well, actually, it's horrible - but that was always the plan.

Part of me wants to kill Hyborem first as he's right there and a good alpha strike could take him out of the game, while if we go for the golems he'll probably grab some of their land himself.

Might take me a few days to actually play, as my time is limited this evening, and I'm expecting this set to take a while.

[shallow_thought]

T259
----
I switch from Aristo into City States, in order to get more food (why do we have 14t of GA left? Not that I'm complaining).  This drops us from 182g/917b to 184g/731b, but we basically only need Taxation and Iron Working now (although there is no source within our borders) IMO.

That still leaves a few cities losing food and a couple actively starving; they all start on smokehouses (better than granaries because of toads if I can get them hooked up) or granaries, unless they are already on harbours. A couple that are actually starving get a dry whip.

I need to think about how to promote our adepts to mages: death or fire? Probably the former, given spectres' affinity. A few fireballs wouldn't go amiss for culture reduction / finishing off damaged stacks; better would be a fire elemental from Corlindale. Neither is great against the Infernals, of course.

I also (normally) whip a trireme that was already queued up to go deal with a barb galley that's messing with us.


T260
-----
We have Corlindale; I start him up the Fire line for twincast elementals (eventually), but for the moment he can inspire the capital.


T261
-----
Rosier's ongoing explorations net us a Great Commander (joined to Rosier now).

Toads are the new, healthy delicacy in our empire. Double the benefit when smoked!


T262
----
Taxation is in, start the Pillar in Garyvoe, and start on Iron Working.

Our one source of crabs is destroyed by a barb Trireme.

On the other had, we have Sheaut Stone, so our big stack visits a city to get upgraded a little.

T263
----
I start to stack Death Mana nodes to boost our spectres (once we've promoted our adepts). I make my mind up and move our big stack against Hyborem.


T264
----
And am blindsided as the Luichirp declare war (would have been so much worse in a few turns time - BtbLtG). Beeri has summoned Basium, and he in turn has used his World Spell, so a lot of our units are damaged. But there was no enemy plan, no big stack ready to invade (I was looking), so all we have to do is switch back to our original intentions and have fun. Our stack isn't even out of position ...




Iron Working is in so I start stacking gold to upgrade all our adepts, and turn a couple of high XP warriors under a "Promote" sign to Eidolons.


T265
----
Let's go kill Basium.

We also have a Great Sage so can ... I dunno. Push for Arcane Lore?


T266
----
An event that happened to the Luichirp drops the AC by 5, which is actually quite nice. I'm OK with keeping the counter below 40 if possible.


T267
----



I carelessly fail to get the Basium kill XP onto a unit we actually care about. We keep the city; aside from anything else I think we now get the 20% war weariness reduction from the Mercurian Gate.


T268
----
The Luichirp have frigates. This could _just_ be a problem for our coasts, and we may want to research Optics ourselves

T269
----
Falamar wants help against the Orcs. Nope.

We have both Mardero and our first Beast of Agares.

The Luichirp having Ice Mana for slow is annoying - Haste doesn't work on a lot of our units.




End notes:
- I didn't switch our civics back around, deciding to leave that for the next player. Personally I'd recommend Theocracy/Mil State/Conquest; I think we have the health ceiling now. Slavery instead of Mil State is an option if we want to whip infra in new cities.
- I moved our main stack into the hills rather than try to hit heavily-cultured Mutanbo across a river. I then failed to hit the last unit in a small enemy stack with a spectre, so we've got a chariot (and a couple of slowed corpses) uncovered. Let's hope the AI is tactically even dumber.
- Our "reserves" back in our own territory and one stack of workers have yet to be moved this turn. I lacked inspiration.
- I think I've scorched all the marsh; if not you'll need a new adept down south
- Keep the toads, nightmares and sheaut stone when sanctifying!
- I've been using Corlindale for more collateral, but there's probably an argument for getting him killed and building Shrine of the Champion.
- We have three spare Great People (P/M/S) plus the Commander joined to Rosier. One more of any type would let us run two more GAs.

[shallow_thought]

1) Brian
2) Shallow Thought (just played)
3) Bing Xi Liao (Up)
4) Amicalola (unfortunately lost to the Veil, aka real life)
5) Dave V (on deck)

[Brian Shanahan]

I don't know why we had 14 turns of golden age, unless I accidentally triggered the second one just before passing on.

[shallow_thought]

I don't know why we had 14 turns of golden age, unless I accidentally triggered the second one just before passing on.

Except the great people were still around. I suspect an event we didn't notice during the handover. Or just a lucky bug .