Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Miguelito]

No progress here yet. I would have had to allow the scorpion to attack us on desert, and that was only about 80% with the injured huntress, too little. Those bears make everything extra complicated of course. Worst case we have to walk around the desert. Am I willing to sacrifice the huntress, eg attacking the scorpion on a tile where we would get hit? good question. It would be worth it, the question is just, how do we get home then (well we do have the other huntress catching up, but there's really a lot of barbs all over the place.

I would expect Auror to expand W if he stays peaceful with us. Now the scouting with the spider pays dividend in providing us the crucial information that he can only go N or W from where he currently is.

Yes, and N means through us (he has some backfill in the east, but needs progress in other directions or he'll get, well dwarfed.
The problem is that W, which we would prefer, is just rather barren from what we can see:



Anyways, with the mines finished, if I don't see his power spiking a lot next turn or the one after from axe upgrades, I will have hope that he wants to wait at least until trebuchets.

Also somebody got KotE last turn. mack had researched hidden paths just recently, and you would expect that he'd need to save some first, or perhaps he has the economy to do that. Or Auror wants adepts, although I don't see what for. (his starting mana is enchantmen/law/earth, and he's gett ing the effects of enchantment and earth from Bambur already.

[Bobchillingworth]

Auro would want Adepts for two reasons:

First, Haste will significantly improve his mobility, though Trebs don't benefit from it.


Second, Dwarven Adepts with the Enchantment I promotion can repair damaged siege units, which is necessary to sustain a decent pace of operations with Trebs, since they otherwise take ages to heal once redlined.

[Miguelito]

   
We caught it, on defense. Poor huntress is seriously injured though from the 94.2% fight, and poisoned, so she will take 17! turns to heal (in the wild). The scout is also poisoned, still from the spider that we caught at Auror's some 20 turns ago. Luckily, from now on we're not only on the receiving end when it comes to poison, and so....


Sure thing, right?



... but alive. Good thing the reinforcement huntress will be there next turn, glad to have sent her. Also the scout will take Sentry II and is 1 promo away from Perfect Sight at 50 XP... which is actually only half the XP needed for a fresh huntress, so I should definitely go for it. The upgrade to huntress is 54 gold though, which is like a turn and a half of saving at the current rate.   She'll also heal to half XP, that's good.
Pity that we can't make contact with Dave yet. Maybe the fresh huntress can go that way once she has brought the party home.

The whole scorpion hunt has been very fun and thematic. Venturing into the wild and unknown, looking for the big prize, finally catching it after several disappointments... very nice.

GOt a bad surprise here:


I did not know, but FFH2 has a different GPP progression than vanilla. The first GP is still 100 points (at standard speed, 67 in quick), but the ceiling for each subsequent one increases by 150 (100 at quick). So this will take a bit longer than expected. I'm on the fence whether I want to bulb hidden paths if it turns out a prophet; in light of these costs we might need to use it for a GA, since the one after will cost a whopping 267 GPP! (I'm already starting on the 3rd GP in Idris fwiw).
As I've mentioned a couple of times my idea is to use the GA to revolt into Apprenticeship and Foreign Trade*, and likely city states as well. Run pacificsm at least during the GA, and at the end of it decide between religion and nationhood.
I'm thinking though whether this delays Apprenticeship too much. An alternative would be to tech Poisons first, right after Sailing, and revolt to Apprenticeship + Undercouncil with an anarachy turn. Poisons is crazy expensive though, about 20 turns at current breakeven. I am asking myself if I should not really have waited for Apprenticeship with the God King revolt.

* readers who don't have detailed knowledge of the mod may ask why, considering we have OB with no one yet and no island city either (and the one uncovered island has nothing but two depressing jungle tiles without seafood ). Well together with the one from the tech it's still 2 extra trade routes per city, which will help even if inland. More importantly, it has the +100% cottage growth effect (BTS' emancipation), and I think our workers will spend the remainder of the game building forest cottages whenever they're not connecting resources - not strictly true, I'm building two mines currently, but not planning for anything else.

Meanwhile we made good use of our first GP, finally:


Started on priests in the cap, Gereth Minar, and Idris in the east right away. The capital can <2 turn  them, elsewhere they take ~5 turns. How do we handle tigers? On the one hand we want to have them summoned, as they can't move the turn they appear, otoh they cost maintenance... Auror's graph is flat; if it remains so I'll be tempted to start blooming right away. But of course they take some time to arrive in the south. So likely best to send the first few there.

Meanwhile mackoti started his second GA, after the one from Bone Palace, leading to depressing demos:


I think he used the great commander, as he already used 2 engineers, but maybe he's just that good and one of the recent great sages was his as well. His power is also skyrocketing. I hope poor Dave can hold, but it's going to be hard. I don't know which good units mack has though. Maybe chariots. Maybe he also wants to prove that you can acutally pull off a conquest with golems.
The greatest city in the world, with 14 pop, is mackoti's capital. It should be Dave's of course, if things were developing normal. Form the top 5 list, his biggest city seems to have 10 pop, which is too little considering he has no more than three.

Auro would want Adepts for two reasons:

First, Haste will significantly improve his mobility, though Trebs don't benefit from it. 


Second, Dwarven Adepts with the Enchantment I promotion can repair damaged siege units, which is necessary to sustain a decent pace of operations with Trebs, since they otherwise take ages to heal once redlined.

Well if it's that I'm on board with it. With haste he still can walk only one tile through our forests, 2 if we have to let him go over hills. So that's not an improvement for an attack on us. Which would change though with mobility on top. Why would he not take that first though (he doesn't have HBR)? He also revolted to GK without Apprenticeship, thankfully.
On the repair thing, he does not have construction yet either. Wouldn't it make sense to first get some trebs? Alteration isn't cheap either, so if he techs that instead of worse stuff, great.
Maybe he wants adepts first so they can gather some XP?

Bob, can you explain how great commanders work, especially how they're acquired? I know of the tech reward, and GPP form FotT, Guild of the Nine, Command Posts, ...? Are there more ways, in particular through combat? I think I have done that, but likely in EMM.

[Bobchillingworth]

Congrats on the Scorpion! Keep it alive at all costs.


Auro doesn't need to gather lots of exp on his Adepts, he can't upgrade them to Mages, and you generally want your spellcasters to specialize since they can only cast once per turn under normal circumstances.


You've already confirmed the various ways you can acquire Great Commanders, which are the least useful Great People. In addition to sparking Golden Ages like any great person (typically their best use), they can also do the following:

* Join a unit for a +1 combat strength boost and bonus exp on kills; unlike equipment however the Commander is lost if the unit it's attached to dies.

* "Recruit" a random assortment of units in a city based on its population and your current techs level; this consumes the GC. Generally a waste.

* Found a Command Post, which grants +2 exp and a 25% production bonus for units, plus +1 GC points; only way to obtain one if you aren't Organized.


You cannot earn them from combat, experience points in combat are solely used to promote units.

[Bobchillingworth]

Also, the demographics suggest that Dave is in a lot of trouble; not sure if Mack has Priesthood himself, but if he does he may have preserved a single Golden Hammer and is using it for a +1 strength boost on Tiger summons.


The way this would work is simple; the first Tiger in a stack picks up a Hammer and attacks. If it dies, the next Tiger picks it up; if it lives, delete the victorious unit, and then the next Tiger equips the Hammer. Tigers don't cost anything and you don't suffer WW for deleting them, so there's no real downside.


I've never actually tried using it in this fashion, but in theory you should be able to exploit the Black Mirror your hero units comes with in a similar fashion, to effectively double your # of Tiger summons by having each Tiger summon an illusionary copy of itself prior to attacking. May want to test this.

[Miguelito]

mack has no priesthood yet (last confirmed tech was hidden paths). Dave should have some serious power as well, looking at the rival average (Auror is last and Cairo has about ours, so he should have about 220k). But the problem is of course mack's gigantic hammer advantage.

Edit: nice suggestion with mirrored tigers, will try!

[Bobchillingworth]

No need to test- was curious enough myself I gave it a try.


Unfortunately it doesn't work- the reason being that picking up the Mirror and using it both count as "casting" spells, and of course the Tigers can only undertake one such action per turn, so they can either pick up the Mirror from a dead / deleted Tiger or use it to create a copy of themselves, but not both within the same turn.

[Kaiser]

Great work on the priesthood bulb! I am looking forward to Tigers and Blooming. Can we bloom any tile (like desert or floodplain) or does it need to be Grassland or Plains?
Do you have identified any area you want to start blooming early?
I guess you want to exchange the Jungles with forests at some point, right?

Why is there a worker in the desert near Kalocly? Do you want to road it?
Maybe Cairo places his Marble/Copper city for the marble? Is there anything worthwhile to build with Marble?

[Miguelito]

Bloom afaik can only be cast on tiles that could naturally have a forest, so grassland, plains, and I suppose tundra (irrelevant). The tile also must not have a terrain feature already, so we can't bloom floodplains, even if we converted them to grassland with druids / nature 3 mages (pie in the sky ofc).

High priority for blooming are all non riverside non grain resources and cottages (like the one that we're building 2S of Thariss). Riverside tiles lose a commerce from blooming, so likely I'll hold off until we can convert hammers into commerce directly (at writing). Long time still worth it ofc, an ancient forest is +1/+1/-1 on a river. Grain resources don't get the forest hammer as long as we're in agrarianism, and lose the commmerce if on a river. I'm on the fence as to whether bloom riverside tiles at Gereth, as I'd like more hammers in that city.

Jungles should be converted into forests yes, particularly on the border. But we're really running low on workers. Will have to fit in a few, as I've started BW this turn (due next).

Workers S of Kalocly are roading at painful 4 turns per tile (1 for movement included). The point is for 2-movers to be able to hit the sugar tile from the fog without crossing the river in case Auror sends a stack.

The best marble wonder is Bone Palace which mack already engineered. Heron Throne was taken by Auror. What else... Great Library is ok (but he doesn't have writing, though should take it soon to get sorcery), epics are good ofc (I think he researched warfare so that might be on the way for him), and a few late game wonders that are not hugely relevant I think. Nothing to place an atrocious 5th city for though. He does not have masonry yet either (I'm checking KTB every turn because as long as only mack has it, Auror is not on his way to trebuchets yet), and will not for a while most likely as he's mining the marble right now (curiously without springing it first, which would save worker turns. I know he can because he did it already on a gold mine. But maybe I'm the only one starved for workers, he's been sitting on 5 cities for a long while).
Btw I think Cairo should really use his assumed masses of warriors and adpets to take the size 4 barb city in the middle of floodplains to his N. Not complaining, taking the scorpion home would be vastly more difficult if he had done so.
He's also in a golden age now, which might be his sorcery push?

Auror has a new city and I don't know where, but it can only be in his SW. I'm scouting with a spider.

[Miguelito]