Freezing the World below Absolute Zero - Illians Succession Game

[DaveV]

Thoughts?

Sounds like a plan. Such a good plan, in fact, I went ahead and played.

The first few turns consisted of defending against marauding lizards and trying to build some tile improvements without getting any workers killed.

But then a big stack of skeletons came marching out of Acheron's lands:




I thought I had stuffed in plenty of defense, but they proved not to be up to the task:




Fortunately, I was able to kill the victorious skellies before they promoted to spectres or wraiths or something.

On turn 129, Mysticism finished:



I noticed trade arrows on the scoreboard for Mahala, and she was willing to make a deal.




I moved out the settler that Aurorarcher had started, and tried to squeeze in another city to the southwest.




Turn 130 overview:




I'm hoping the worker at Sopor doesn't get nuked by fireballs. If he does, you guys can all yell at me.

As I understand the rules, we have to build Temples of the Hand everywhere now that we can. I assumed I didn't have to abort the current build.

[DaveV]

Double post: I didn't even notice until after I'd built Sopor that the Ljos borders had disappeared. I hope that means Mahala is busy and will leave us alone.

[Mardoc]

#1 We can't settle many quality cities anymore (assuming the north is dead-end and poor land). Looks pretty dry regarding rivers at least.
Thoughts?

Now that we have Temples of the Hand available, no land is poor. Or rich. It's all either ice or pre-ice. But I like the idea of getting the PoW out anyway. Security or growth, they're useful either way.

As I understand the rules, we have to build Temples of the Hand everywhere now that we can. I assumed I didn't have to abort the current build.

We have to build enough of them that at least half of every BFC is ice. Given our dotmap, I don't think that can be done without building them everywhere, but technically we don't have to.

I don't think we specified exact priority. Do we need an exact rule? Can we just go with 'high priority, but be reasonable'? If we have to slip in warriors, or finish up current builds, that's ok, but remember the goal is an Icy world, and killing off the foes is just a means to that end?

[DaveV]

One other thing I failed to note: we got a spread of FoL in Lakis, which gives us an extra +1 culture. It would be nice if we got a spread into Sopor.

[Mardoc]

I don't know that I want to rush for the Deepening, though. 1400 beakers is a lot this early.

[Qgqqqqq]

Damn, Dave, the barbs hate you this game!


How far away is Philosophy?


I agree with all the above comments.

[jalepeno]

I'll grab this sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, any further thoughts on tech? I think I'm in favor of philo for PoW next, although I'm not sure they'll be enough to move on Mahala. Slavery could also be quite useful.

Also a fan of the "reasonably soon" guidance for building temples of the hand.

[Aurorarcher]

#1 We can't settle many quality cities anymore (assuming the north is dead-end and poor land). Looks pretty dry regarding rivers at least.
Thoughts?

Now that we have Temples of the Hand available, no land is poor. Or rich. It's all either ice or pre-ice. But I like the idea of getting the PoW out anyway. Security or growth, they're useful either way.

I should've been more accurate when calling the land in the north poor. What I meant was that it's pretty poor considering growth (no rivers = no farms) at least pre Construction, and I don't think we want to grab Construction before going for PoWs. For this reason settling north pre Construction seems like a waste to me. Should probably do some scouting in the north but the area seems dangerous; lizzards, barb city, skeletons maybe some animals too.

Also, I agree with "reasonably soon" for building temples of the hand.

[Mardoc]

I should've been more accurate when calling the land in the north poor. What I meant was that it's pretty poor considering growth (no rivers = no farms) at least pre Construction, and I don't think we want to grab Construction before going for PoWs. For this reason settling north pre Construction seems like a waste to me.

Well, if we have somewhere else to expand, I suppose that makes sense. But any city is better than no city. Growing may be slow with just grass/ice cottage tiles, but maintenance is low still and we need more worked tiles. And those cities will end up as powerhouses, even if they take forever to get there.

Or, we could research Hunting (525 beakers isn't super expensive anymore) so at least our first city can have a deer tile.

Should probably do some scouting in the north but the area seems dangerous; lizzards, barb city, skeletons maybe some animals too.

Fortunately I think Javelin Throwers ought to be a lot safer exploring than warriors were. But...I do agree with the decision to spend our focus building the southern cities instead of scouting.

Maybe the first mission of the PoW could be to grab that city the barbs have pre-grown for us in the north

@Q: We have 470 beakers remaining in Philosophy. Priesthood (for the Deepening) would be another 1400.

[Aurorarcher]

Yeap, Javelin Throwers should help exploring and we also should probably pop the lizzardlair near our 4th city. I think we can put units around it to prevent BigBad from happening (can't spawn Stygian Guards from lair on land IIRC)... I'm not sure if that blocks the BigGood as well, though.

I think I kind of disagree with settling to poor land before we can even put farms around it. But I guess you're right... putting cities down and making them grow cottages for us would be useful eventually, but to me it just seem like a waste because a city without farms (or other food resource) will grow very very slow. That slow is so slow that a city that only has 2f tiles available could work one cottage for 11 turns before hitting size 2. Then another 12 turns to work 2 cottages to grown size 3. I guess that's still better than not settling any cities. Grabbing that barb city should help though as it has already probably grown some so it can work more cottage tiles.

My inital plan was also to bulb Priestood to eat a big chunk of those 1400 beakers. I'm not sure if Academy would actually be more useful to us, in a long run it obviously would be. This all is assuming we want to run any specialists at all in near future.