Winter Wonderland: Selrahc's FFH 2 thread

[Selrahc]

Where is your research coming from? Is it mostly specialists, plantations, cottages, or just a Palace+Academy?

It used to be all specialists. I've kind of kicked that habit now. I'm making 60 beakers/turn. 9 of that is from specialists, 5 from Elder Councils-Marketplaces.

The capital is pulling in 33 beakers on its own. It's definitely my commerce hub at the moment. If I hadn't thrown away the population it would be bringing in 36 by working another cottage.

How many workers have you got at the moment?

7. 3 more are going to be built after the current round of settlers, and I'll be aiming to keep it at a level of 1/city+2 for a while.

How does Slavery work in FFH?

Without a powerful granary it is significantly less useful than in base civ. It also gives less hammers per population point. It is still useful though, for the same reason it is useful normally. It allows you to convert food into hammers.

Of course there is one advantage to slavery in fall from heaven. Every combat gives you a chance to create a slave unit. Slaves are similar to workers, but with two differences.

Firstly their buildiing efficiency is cut in half. It takes them twice as long to build improvements as a normal worker, although this is particularly bad for races with a penalty to work rate. Orc or Elven slaves work at a snails pace, taking 8 turns to build a road. Dwarven slaves on the other hand are almost as good as workers, due to that races bonus efficiency. Of course slaves do count towards upkeep, so it's not always a good idea to keep them.

The other thing slaves can do is attempt to hurry buildings, in a similar manner to a great engineer but with a drastically lower payload. Each slave sacrificed gives (I think) ten free hammers to construction. If slaves are eating up your maintenance, use them to rush a cheap building.

What buildings are worth whipping?

I'm going to be whipping marketplace, elder council, monument in my new cities to make them a net asset to the empire as soon as possible. And of course in the appropriate regions Temple of the Hands are going to be slaved in as soon as possible.

In the mature cities I'm going to be using slavery to speed up the production of settlers and workers.

Slavery is probably a relatively short term civic for me. Once expansion is complete I'll be switching over to military state(And conquest, which is the other "Food to Hammers" civic, but applies only to military units).

Are barbarians causing any trouble?

None at all. The barbarians are being pretty passive this game. Even Orthus wasn't much of a bother.

I've been keeping two to three warriors in each city, which gives you a nice buffer from the early barbarians. Later on they start to send in kill parties of 4 axemen from their cities, but we're a while away from that point.

Where will the new cities go? Do you have a dotmap in mind?

You can kind of see it in the signposts of the T100 report. I've got a good idea where to put the cities. They're going to be pretty spread out so that a lot of land falls under the snow.

Also, any news on the diplomatic front?

Hmm...

Oh, yes. Finished up the peace treaty with Cull. It was kind of a protracted negotiation mainly because Cull is fricking impossible to get hold of.

50 turn NAP
Cull is to give me two mana, or two luxury resources as soon as we have trade routes in perpetuity
Territorial agreement which I'll need to grab some screenshots of. Basically, he has agreed not to settle anywhere that I have an interest in.

[Selrahc]

Been waiting until the golden age finished to do an update. It finished this turn.

It went relatively well. Here are the main events:

1. Set up a trade with PB. Cotton for Ale and Silks. Since that was my only source of cotton I only gain one point of happiness from the trade. PB gains a point of happiness as well, but also gains 10% commerce in every city which has built a fine tailor building. He is making a gain from this trade... but I think it is worth it from my perspective. Happiness is a lot harder for me to gain than him.

2. I've implemented a civics swap to slavery and agrarianism. Thank you golden age. So far I'm not really using slavery all that much as I don't want to be whipping away golden age tiles. Next turn though I'll be whipping out two settlers.

3. Wonderful Time has finished building a monument, gained its first border expansion, finished being connected to the trade network, and whipped out a market.

4. I picked up the Sign of Cerridwen event. This gives evil civs either some free beakers, or they can pay some gold and get a great prophet. Sadly I had no gold. Still, took two turns off my technology clock which was nice. Events like this are why it is a good idea to stockpile some gold. I'm not going to be doing that until I have sorcery(and after sorcery I'm going to need a steady flow of gold coming in to set up unit upgrades).

5.I've founded the city Let it Snow next to the cotton and wheat. With trade route in place and working the cotton tile, it easily pays for itself even with just one pop point. It's building a market place.

6. Researched two technologies since way of the wicked. Animal Husbandry to improve cows and sheep, and Knowledge of the Ether. Got a city working on a mage guild right now.



So where do I want to go from here? I think what I need to do is focus on sorcery as soon as possible. Once I start getting mages up and running I should be relatively secure. How fast can I get sorcery up and running? In order to get sorcery I need one of the 4 second tier magical technologies.
These four technologies give you access to mana nodes of various flavours. I'll get onto that in the next post. You also need to research writing, which is a fairly cheap technology that gives you access to libraries, and is needed to unlock trade.

I'm also going to be researching masonry. I've got a plan in place to get Sorcery as soon as I can. There are two stages and a bit of timing necessary to enact it.

The plan is to research divination, then while my adepts are connecting up the mana to build the tower I'm going to research masonry and writing. With masonry I'm going to build the Dragon Bone Palace as quickly as possible to get a new golden age. The golden age will supercharge the building of the tower, and then that will slingshot me along to sorcery.. Hopefully!

Anyway, I've got a post about the magic system written up now that I actually have KoTE and can start interacting with it meaningfully. I'll put it in the next post.

[Selrahc]

[SIZE="4"]Magic Explained[/SIZE]

There are three arcane magic units, adepts can only cast level 1 spells, they upgrade to mages which can cast level 2 spells, and they upgrade to archmages which can cast level 3 spells. You can only have 4 archmages, and the spells they cast are generally very powerful. Only adepts can be built, in order to get mages or archmages you must upgrade. Arcane units gain a passive xp gain, like the priests of winter which means that over time they will gain levels and promotions, this is necessary as promotions are what unlock spells, and without them you have a crappy and expensive warrior. To upgrade to mages or archmages you need to reach a certain level of xp, so start building adepts as soon as you can if you want to get mages later!

Access to spells comes from mana nodes, which are unlocked by the second level arcane technologies(And also sorcery). If you have multiple copies of the same node then your arcane units can get free promotions. I have two Ice Nodes, so all of my adepts will gain Ice 1. If I had 3 ice nodes then all of my mages would get Summon Ice Elemental for free.


The four second level arcane technologies let you build different mana nodes, and each node gives your casters access to spell promotions, unlock different towers needed for the Tower of Mastery victory and often have a useful secondary effect. I've talked about them a little before but I probably need to do a more in depth analysis on the magic system, since it is what I'll be focussing on. The four different technologies are:

[SIZE="3"]Necromancy[/SIZE]

Caution:Slight chance of ending world

Necromancy controls the "evil" mana. In SP games they carry a diplo malus for use in many cases. They also have a lot of powerful effects. The four mana that come under necromancy are

Entropy. Entropy nodes make opponents heal slower in your territory. With a few entropy nodes controlled it actually has a noticeable impact on enemy forces, particularly ones without medic. Not one of the better secondary effects, but not one of the worst. It allows some good spells as well. Rust is the low level entropy spell and is one of the most useful in the game. What it does is remove metal promotions until units go to a forge. Very handy little spell, and I'll make sure to have a few adepts with that ability when I get an entropy node. The other spells are moderately good. In my opinion both are overshadowed by Ice spells though, so I won't be using them.

Shadow. Shadow sucks. It has no secondary effect. It has poor spells. I rarely if ever make use of it. I'll be getting a node off Sareln to build the tower and that is it.

Chaos. Chaos is fun. It doesn't really have a secondary effect to building it, but occasionally your units will spawn with mutations. It's spells are decent at all levels, and I'll be making a few chaos adepts to give my units dance of blades. I'm not going to be using the two higher level spells. Mutate can cause either good or bad effects, Wonder can be the most powerful spell in the game or it can screw up and actively cause you harm. Both are a good sideline for use by mages and archmages.. but I'm not going to use them in this game.

And finally the star player of Necromancy

Death. Death mana has no secondary effect, but is by far the best mana in the game. At first level it summons skeletons, which are handy disposable units to help in garrison duty, as mage bodyguards or just to mildly injure the foe before an assault. At second level is summon spectre. This spell is insanely good if you have focussed on building death mana nodes. As soon as I have the luxury to do so, I will use as many death mages as I can. Spectres are hypermobile, and with death affinity become hyper strong too. Seriously scary critters. The third level spell is summon wraith. A fairly good summon spell, which works well with the aforementioned spectres, the fear they induce can be used to push enemy stacks into open ground away from hills, where they will be carved up by spectres with ease. Death 3 also allows you to create liches, which mean that instead of the 4 archmage slots that you would ordinarily have, you can effectively have 8. Yowza.

The big achilles heel of Death Mana is life mana, although only partially. More on that later.


The tower of Necromancy is one of the better towers, but it heavily focusses you towards death magic. It gives you a free Death Mana(Nice) and makes all your Undead units strong(+1 str also very nice). If you aren't going to be using many death magic summons though.. it's pretty useless. Since I'm going to be using Ice Elementals for quite a while, this will be the last tower I build, and necromancy will be the last of the magic techs I research.

Necromancy also gives access to the Mokka's Cauldron wonder. Mokka is a frostling hero spawned by the Samhain ritual, so I'm a little curious what his cauldron is doing under this technology. It resurrects units killed in the city it is is built in as weak undead. I guess it could be useful for a border guarding city, but I've never really tried it.

[SIZE="3"]Alteration[/SIZE]

Because playing god is fun, and what is a god without the ability to mold flesh?

Alteration is a weird one. It is annoyingly high up on the great sage lightbulb list, making that specialist pretty useless until you have researched this. It gives access to only three mana instead of 4, but 4 mana are still required to build the tower. The tower itself doesn't actually help the mana associated with Alteration at all. However it gives access to two of the best mana in the game, and the tower is a pretty useful accompaniment to many strategies.

The three mana it gives access to are:

Enchantment. Enchantment has one of the best secondary functions, comparable only with mind or law as a non magic users node. Every node counts as a luxury resource, giving a free happy face. Not content with that it also gives access to three exceptional spells. At level one it gives enchanted blade, which is a 20% bonus to melee units. Essentially a free combat promotion. At level two it gives the flaming arrow spell, which gives archery units +1str, and is really awesome if you focussed that way(Ljosalfar, Amurites, I'm looking at you). At third level it gives access to Enchant Spellstaff, which essentially lets you save up a turn of spellcasting to be used when it is needed. Getting an extra archmage spell in can turn the course of a battle, so that one is nice.

Body. Body has a nice secondary function, increasing heal rate. Far more importantly however, it has some of the best general use spells available at its first two levels. Haste gives a bonus movement point to all units in a stack. At second level is the equally lovely regen spell. This is like a free march promotion for every unit in the stack(although it wears off after the unit is fully healed). Both of these only apply to "Living" units. Demons, angels, elementals, siege weapons, golems and undead do not gain this effect. Tough luck for the not alive I guess. At third level is flesh golem. This spell makes a frankensteins monster that can gain the abilities of units added to it. It's a lot of fun to piss around with in SP, making an unholy death machine that would make Eurabatres himself shudder in fear, but we're definitely not going to be doing that this game.

Free access to haste and regen(as well as spectres) is part of what makes vampires so insanely deadly. Although the incredibly easy experience gain also helps. Part of what makes centaurs good is their ability to cast haste naturally.

Nature. Nature has no secondary effect. It is a fairly underwhelming mana, first level is mostly junk that can be good situationally. The second level spell helps you if you're going for recon units, which I am not. The third level spell can fix crappy terrain, and is incredibly awesome in SP, when you can create a lush grassland over the desert. I don't need it, I have Temple of the Hand. Not going to be using the spells from this mana. It's another one I'll get from Sareln, build the tower, then not think about again.

The tower of alteration is really nice.. but not for helping alteration spells. It reduces enemy chance to resist spells by 20%. Spells like slow, blinding light, charm person, dominate person , entangle and a few others are all made better, and they're all already pretty good. I'm going to be building it third. After the tower of the elements. The non-alteration mana it requires is life.

[SIZE="3"]Elementalism[/SIZE]

Raw unfettered power

Elementalism gives access to Fire, Water, Air, Earth and sadly not ice. The tower is almost always awful, but I think in this game it may actually be pretty good. The mana in this category are.. I'd call them solid. Nothing awful, nothing insane. Only Earth has a secondary effect to owning nodes.

Water. Water is probably the worst of the 4 on this map. The first level spell is junk for me, but is normally a useful terraforming spell, turning desert into plains(It also counters fire 1). The second level is junk on this map(Water walk can be used to bring an attack from an unexpected angle, but only PB and Cull have worthwhile coastal cities. Against Iskender, Bob or Sareln I'd probably only take out fishing villages. Not worth the investment.). The summon spell is.. well it can be broken with a twincaster on Keelyn. It is one of the big reasons to be building the tower of the elements, as Water Elementals are made more than twice as good. I'm probably not going to be using it, but the water elemental is one of the better summons.

Fire. Fire is solid and dependable. Each spell has a function. You'll never be annoyed that a mage took a fire spell. Fire 1 sets forests on fire. A great screw you to the elves who absolutely need forests. Fire 2 creates a fireball. This is effectively a free catapult, it can either reduce city defences or attack units and cause collateral damage. Fire 3 gives you a Fire Elemental summon, which is a decently powerful unit, but more importantly causes heavy collateral damage. I don't use Fire Elementals all that much though. Fireballs are almost always going to be handy though, and I'll probably have a few mages with that ability.

Air. Air is a mixed bag. It has an awful first level spell. It then has an incredibly good second level spell. Maelstrom does up to 40% damage to all units within two tiles of the caster. Its a really really useful ability, and a typical mage attack force will lead with a few maelstroms to weaken the foe, before attacking them with summons. Air3 gives Air Elementals, which aren't all that powerful, but are fast, ignore terrain and are good at cleaning up weakened foes since they create weak Lightning Elementals. I'm going to be getting quite a lot of Maelstrom mages.

Earth. Earth is one of the better manas. It has a secondary ability which is to drastically increase the chances of discovering new resources in mines. If you stockpile 10 earth mana then it is not unusual to be discovering multiple new resources every turn. The spells are all good too. The first level creates a stone wall in the city, which is helpful for defence in a pinch. The second level gives Stoneskin to the mages, which turns them from assassin fodder into actually legitimately tough units. The last spell is earth elemental, which is a slow lumbering unit which has a very high base strength. A very nice stack defender.


The tower of the elements gives all elementals the strong promotion. It also creates an elemental guardian for the city, which I have never ever needed. Earth Elementals, Fire Elementals and Air Elementals as well as the Aurealis summons from Sun all don't care too much about being strong. The two elementals that really feel the benefit are Water and Ice. Ice Elementals because they can't get much mana affinity, and have a much lower base strength. Water Elementals because their special ability is to split, and strong water elementals can split then split again, making them a hell of a lot better.

Anyway, the boost to Ice Elementals and the fact that Ice Elementals are a core part of my force means that I'll be getting this technology and tower early. Early access to Maelstrom is also a key feature.


[SIZE="3"]
Divination[/SIZE]

Because knowing is half the battle

Divination has 5 different nodes associated with it, although only 4 are needed to build the tower. The tower of Divination is awesome, as I've already said. Of the mana that can be used with divination, 2 are almost always useful, 2 are almost always awful but have good secondary effects and 1 is situational. It also unlocks the Shrine of Sirona, a vaguely useful wonder that gives out some free healing.

Sun. Sun has no secondary node effect. It has what is for my money the best spell in the game, as well as two decent spells. I'm actually annoyed at the Sun 1 spell "Scorch", because it gives people a method to destroy some of my lovely snow . It also turns plains to desert. Whoo. The 3rd level spell summons an aurealis, which has mana affinity 2, making it very powerful if you stockpile sun mana. Aurealis have no fun secondary abilities though, so I've never been a big fan. The main draw of Sun however is Blinding Light. Blinding Light immobilizes any enemy units within one tile of the caster for two turns. There is a chance to resist, but it can blunt an assault incredibly effectively. Even non living units can be affected. This spell gives you so much time.. letting you pull up defenders, or rip apart an enemy squad. It's a nasty nasty spell, and will be key to my defensive strategy.

Mind. Mind is the other really good mana in Divination. Brilliant spells at every level. Brilliant secondary effect. Every mind node gives a 3% bonus to research rate. If you aren't using your nodes, you could do a lot worse than set them all to mind nodes to get that research edge. And speaking of research edge, Mind 1 gives the spell Inspiration, which adds 3 research points and a Great Sage Point to a city. That is better than an elder council. At level 2 is Charm Person, which is kind of like a slightly worse Blinding Light. It stops them attacking, but lets them move and is partially countered by Law 1 and doesn't affect non living units. Mind 3 is domination, which lets you steal the best enemy units. Very very awesome, although it has a resist chance, and if the target resists then you lose the ability to cast the spell. Also partially countered by law 1. Mind is one of the best mana in the game. It's not going to carry the day on its own, like death, but almost every empire has a good use for mind mages.

Law. Law spells suck. It does however have a really good secondary effect, dropping maintenance by 5% per node. If you stockpile this then you can effectively run your empire for free. Law 1 acts as a counter to mind spells, and the command promotions. Law 2 is a crappy summon. Law 3 is a decent unit buff that really belongs at level 2. I think Law would be a lot better balanced if they put order high priest spell which allows an infinite Happy Cap as the law 3 spell, removed Host of the Einherjar from the game and put valor as the level 2. Law is not going to be used by me, even though I have the node in my capital.

Spirit. Spirit also sucks, but slightly less. Probably worth getting 1 guy with spirit 1 or 2 to give the promo. Spirit 1 gives Courage which is a slight buff to heal rate, and allows units to ignore fear effects, handy on rare occasions mainly involving dragons. Spirit has a handy secondary ability to increase great person generation, but I find Mind, Law or Enchantment are generally more useful when focussing on economy.

Life. Life is either awful or brilliant at every level. Extremely situational. Sanctify is great if you want to cleanse hell terrain, but bad if there is no hell terrain on the map. Destroy undead is fantastic against an undead heavy enemy force, as one of the few lethal spells it can kill entire stacks of undead easily, but bad in any other situation. (Although remember, summons like spectres will generally be created on the opponents turn so will attack before you can destroy them. It completely wrecks their utility as stack defenders though, and if you can kill the mages then the spectres are gone.) Resurrection is really nice if you have a good civilization who died unluckily, but bad if you have a crappy civ hero (I can take an archmage out of commission for 7 turns to bring back Wilboman with no XP? Pass). Not going to be using life at all this game unless I need to.


The free technology from the tower of divination is great. It means I can get to sorcery fast. Divination also includes the fabulous Sun and Mind mana, which is another reason to prioritize it really highly.

[SIZE="3"]
Sorcery[/SIZE]
The last type of mana is unlocked at sorcery. Sorcery is an extremely important technology because it unlocks Mages, the level 2 spellcaster. But it also unlocks Alchemy Labs, a nice but expensive science boosting building. And metamagic mana.

Metamagic. Metamagic is a handy node. You're going to want a few mages to know some spells. It has a secondary ability of making your spells more powerful, mildly more damaging or harder to resist. The first level spell gives you a floating eye minion. Handy for recon. Second level is your bread and butter in a tower of mastery strategy. Dispel magic is the spell that makes this victory condition a possibility, since it lets you shuffle around your nodes to your hearts content. It also removes spells that affect your own or enemy units. Summon Djinn is the capstone ability. A summon that has affinity to all mana, it can often end up being the strongest summon if your nodes aren't set up to specialize in Earth, Air, Fire, Water or Sun but it is a bit generic. Metamagic is an essential mana, at least on a few mages.


Going forward I will be setting up around 4 or 5 mages to act as Nodemasters, with dispel magic promotions to dispel and rebuild nodes as needed. Properly controlling your nodes is a very important part of the magic based gameplan.

[Ilios]

Thanks for the Magic summary!

Do you plan on building the Towers one at a time as you unlock the required technologies?

[Selrahc]

Do you plan on building the Towers one at a time as you unlock the required technologies?

Yep. Quickly as I possibly can, with the hope of getting them done right around the time that I unlock Strength of Will. That's a pretty big ask though, because the towers take quite a long time to build, what with getting the nodes lined up right and researching the various technologies. I'm not going to be able to build more than one tower at once due to the mana requirements. I would normally be finished with researching Strength of Will before I'm finished building the lesser towers.

I'm hoping that one of the side effects of the order I'm building the towers in is that I'll start focussing on Death Mana around about the time I unlock Archmages, letting me get some Liches into play at the same time. 8 is twice as good as 4 after all.

But the first step is mages! The goal is mages before turn 175.

[Maksim]

A Sorcery beeline is interesting indeed, especially with the Tower slingshot. Do you have sufficient number of raw mana to build all the prerequisite nodes for the Tower, or do you need to expand and capture more?

Divination -> Masonry -> Writing as the current tech plan - how many turns will this take at current research rate? How many do you expect it will take in the end?

There's probably three new cities up and running since we last saw the Ilian empire (can we have a screenshot, please?). Is it still compact enough so that the priests can handle any barbarian uprisings? Are they still traveling in a group, or have you split them up by now?

Also, as Cull has not posted in his thread for a couple of months now, you are our best source of information about him. Do you know what he's doing, or how much he has expanded? Are you worried that he'll come looking for revenge once the NAP is up?

Thanks, and good luck!

[Dantski]

Believer he has at least 4 nodes available once he expands into the space. One for meta, get dispel on a mage or two then he's good to go.

More interested in how well a mage orientated defence can hold off a potential 1v2 or 3. Not sure how magic fights will go between humans

[Selrahc]

Alright, sorry for the delay in answering the questions.

A Sorcery beeline is interesting indeed, especially with the Tower slingshot. Do you have sufficient number of raw mana to build all the prerequisite nodes for the Tower, or do you need to expand and capture more?

I've got 2 nodes immediately inside my borders, 1 immediately outside, which will be picked up by cultural expansion from one of the new cities.

Coupled with the law node in the palace and I'm set for the mana needed to create the Tower of Divination. In order to get the metamagic needed to create other towers I'll need to do a little expansion, but not all that far.

Divination -> Masonry -> Writing as the current tech plan - how many turns will this take at current research rate? How many do you expect it will take in the end?

I can't really answer that properly at the moment. I've trashed my tech rate at the moment, while focussing on pumping out settlers. Divination is currently listing as taking 14 turns after a few turns of research, but in the golden age when I was emphasising commerce it would have only taken 8.

All in all... I'd say the technology will probably take around 25 turns to complete. Masonry and Writing are both a lot cheaper than Divination. I really have no idea how long it will take to build the tower though. I've got some intense lag on my system whenever I load up the game, so simming things up is a little difficult.

There's probably three new cities up and running since we last saw the Ilian empire (can we have a screenshot, please?).

I've actually been waiting on all three cities to be up before posting a screenshot. The settlers are still in transit for two of them.

I definitely need to grab a screenshot soon though.

Is it still compact enough so that the priests can handle any barbarian uprisings?

Since the priests arrived back in the empire they've killed a pesky wandering bear and a goblin. The road network is good enough that they can get anywhere needed in the case of a large force, but for the moment I'm letting local forces handle barbarians. I'm slightly over burdened with warriors at the moment so if I lose one or two it isn't that big a deal.

Also, as Cull has not posted in his thread for a couple of months now, you are our best source of information about him. Do you know what he's doing, or how much he has expanded? Are you worried that he'll come looking for revenge once the NAP is up?

Honestly you guys probably know about as much as me. The negotiations didn't really lead into any more discussions. I'm hoping my terms were generous enough that he doesn't have a grudge though...

More interested in how well a mage orientated defence can hold off a potential 1v2 or 3. Not sure how magic fights will go between humans

Heh. Me too. Well I'm happy to be the guinea pig for this particular experiment.

[Selrahc]

Some screenshots of the newer cities.



Let it snow! is primarily in place to take advantage of cotton and wheat. With a market, elder council, temple of the hand and monument it should be a decent border city that will slowly grow into a pretty good commerce location. At the moment it's too busy whipping out its core buildings to merit much worker attention, but by the time its done with that I'll have some cottages and farms in place for it to work.



Deck the Halls is a town that will find a temple of the hand painful, since it has a lot of river and some useful floodplain. In the short term it's going to be a commerce city with lovely riverside cottages. Looking to the distant future I'd say it's going to crank out adepts under conquest civic, using farms to boost production.

It's grabbing yet another corn resource, as well as a more important mana source.



Wonderful Time is a backline commerce city, whose job it will be to make as much science as possible. A wonderful site for a Temple of the Hand, to get rid of all those tundra tiles. It doesn't have much production, but a plains hill and a horses is helping it get its early buildings completed, it has a decent food surplus with Deer and Sheep to help it work a lot of cottages fast once build mode is over. You can see it's already recieved a bit of tender loving care, and it currently has 3 workers in it's radius.

It's a fairly vital city to the empire in general because of the presence of Letum Frigus.




And finally I'm getting in position to found a city on this river to the south of Jingle Bells. With flood plain in immediate range and more flood plain and irrigated corn in the BFC it should set up fairly fast. It also has two plains hills to work for a bit of production. This is another city that will find it painful to build the Temple of the Hand, as it would hurt food, production and commerce.

Strategically this city claims my 4th source of mana (magic number 4 means I'll never be hurting to build those towers =)) and sets up expansion towards a site to the west which will grab sugar and copper.

You might note the Signpost on that picture saying "World Well". That was just a little something I put in because I was rather taken by the imagery of a mana node sitting inside a ring of mountains at the centre of the world. I wonder if that was deliberate...



The core four towns are hard at work as well. Silent Night, Jingle Bells and Chestnut Roast are all busily building yet more settlers, meanwhile Twelve Days has just finished construction on what is probably the first magical institution in Erebus. The first winterborn adepts will be collecting their official pointy hats in no time. Twelve Days has been permanently seconded to the training of the Illian Empire's best and brightest for the foreseeable future.



Lastly for this update, I'll throw in a demographic screen so you can get an idea of where I am.


Despite putting a wrench to my population I'm sitting fairly well in the demographics. Looking at the graphs 2nd, 3rd and 4th in GNP are all within a few points of each other, while PB strides out miles ahead. I'm a solid second in Food Yield, and steadily catching up to PB, but my production barely exists at all. I'm relying heavily on slavery and food to provide the means to produce at the moment. I'd say I've got a fairly decent production capacity to fall back on if the need arises though, since most of my mines are laying unused while I focus on cottages, farms and plantations.

PB and Bob have both almost caught up to me in soldier count, at least when Ice Elementals aren't included. I know Bob is building a good amount of Moroi, but I'm unsure why PB has made a jump. My instinct is that he has discovered Horseback Riding and is going to be creating a centaur military. I'll be keeping an eye on the situation though. If they both keep rising I'll start getting worried.

[Ilios]

Thanks for the update!

Could we maybe get an F5 screenshot as well? Thanks!