The Fifth Game: Towers of the Amurite

[fromage67]

21: Our scout discovers the ruins of the barb city just south of the river.

23: Acheron the red dragon awakes somewhere in the world. There are some fish and clams, as well as more dye to the south. Unfortunately, no way to get both the fish and the clams in one city.

25: Our 2nd warrior kills a lion and gains a level.

31: That barb city to the NE is defended by only a lone warrior. Very tempting.

32: Warrior in Cevedes. Start another warrior.

33: The West turns out to be just a small peninsula. There is a mana source and some pigs, though. There is also another barb city to the North of that.

We meet our 4th evil neighbour, Sheelba.

35: We discover Mysticism and I proclaim ourselves God King. I order our wisest men to find the secret of cultivating those rice plants near Cevedes.

37: I toy with the idea of attacking Deluoc, but unfortunately they succeed in training a second warrior to defend it in the nick of time.

40: And our time is done.

Roster:

Dienekes the Second
fromage67
Lone Wolf
Dominicius
Diamondeye

 

[Dominicius]

Ok I've looked through the save. Here is what I think,

since we are philosophical we should get an elder council and a great scientist as fast as possible and use him to bulb KotE. After that we should focus on getting a GP, you will see why.

Since we are going after the tower we start with the Tower of Elements and since we already have 3 mana near our capitol it should not be a big problem. For religion I would suggest either OO or RoK (I suggest RoK since it will offer a bigger early benefit) since those can give us either earth or water mana. After that we just covert the two mana spots into wind and whatever else we need. I have found that Amurites benefit a lot from ToE as it is both easiest to get and provides its benefits early for any civ with access to fireballs.

Anyway, since it seems that we will have two fire mana we should consider trading the second one away while it is not needed. We should also consider to whom we want to trade it as it gives very big diplomatic bonuses and we could use an ally on this land.

We also have piss poor production in our capitol and a jungle has grown over our farms... We should go for mining as soon as we nab calendar if possible.

 

[Xin]

lurker's comment:
you can "explore" pyre of serafic to get pure fire mana and than use matamagic spell on it to get raw one

 

[Diamondeye]

I believe we plan on playing without dispelling, but perhaps that is not the case with natural doubles of our palace mana?

 

[AntiTwelve]

Ok I've looked through the save. Here is what I think,

since we are philosophical we should get an elder council and a great scientist as fast as possible and use him to bulb KotE. After that we should focus on getting a GP, you will see why.

I always put up an elder council and head right for a GS, as well, but I favor an academy. We will have very few opportunities to trade due to our numerous enemies. Plus, getting to Bronze Working and producing axes quickly probably outranks Adepts who can't cast any fireballs right now.

What does the rest of the team want. Build KotE or build an academy?

Since we are going after the tower we start with the Tower of Elements and since we already have 3 mana near our capitol it should not be a big problem. For religion I would suggest either OO or RoK (I suggest RoK since it will offer a bigger early benefit) since those can give us either earth or water mana. After that we just covert the two mana spots into wind and whatever else we need. I have found that Amurites benefit a lot from ToE as it is both easiest to get and provides its benefits early for any civ with access to fireballs.

Dominicius, we are following restrictions that have us focusing on founding Empyrean. I have not stated we can't found other religions, but I'd rather we don't. Make sure to understand these rules by reading over the first post again.

I believe we plan on playing without dispelling, but perhaps that is not the case with natural doubles of our palace mana?

I didn't say anything about dispelling... I said we couldn't use our world spell until we have all the mana necessary to build the towers. See, words can be rearranged to be your enemy as well as your friend in the same context. I probably should've added something in the rules about dispelling, but I think I'll allow it if we have extra mana of a certain type. Good eye, diamond... eye.

Roster:
Dienekes the Second
fromage67
Lone Wolf
Dominicius
Diamondeye

Lone Wolf just finished a set in another SG, so he's probably recovering from an intense intake of amazing before picking up this save.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I'll play tomorrow.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Downloaded it. Playing now.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Played it. Few things to report. Discovered Agriculture, started Crafting, since I believe some mundane military is a must in our situation. Build an Elder Council in Cevedes, hired a Scientist, started a Worker to improve stuff.

 

[Diamondeye]

I for one would appreciate a more detailed report. It's what differentiates SGs from SP games. At least a couple of pics with the most important things, or some timing and so on.

I think we should get an academy, as it looks like we will be making a pretty coin in Cevedes, and we need BW and preferably to be the first to Emp aswell, and we do want some magic aswell.

Roster:
Dienekes the Second
fromage67
Lone Wolf
Dominicius
Diamondeye

 

[Dominicius]

Turn 1: Inspect our land, leave everything as is. Keep exploring with the scout.

Turn 5: Crafting in. Start Calendar.

Turn 7: Witch event in Capitol.

Turn 11: Scout almost became griffin food, so I called for I quick retreat. However, we did discover Odio's Prison.

Turn 16: Borders Expand. Our scout has stumbled upon the lands of the Sheaim are.

Turn 19: Auric has completed the Samhain! Frostlings enter the land! We also get a good view of the Sheaim capitol. Os-Gabella has a lot of mana lying around, including the Broken Sepulcher.

Turn 20: Two wolf riders are homing in on our capitol but with four warriors there we are in no danger. Calendar in three turns, worker in four, Great Scientist in one(!). The guy after me will have a lot of goodies to play with.

Now is the time to beeline for Bronze Working. I also agree that the Acedemy makes more sense.

P.S: sorry for the lack of images. I will try to figure how to include them in my next play through.

 

[fromage67]

Almost a miracle that that scout is still alive! We are getting a ton of mileage out of him. Well done.

I am new to this forum, and I used Image Shack: http://my.imageshack.us/v_images.php

Easy to get an account. A bit tedious to be honest, but seems to work. I just need to figure out how to size my images properly, so that there is no need to sidescroll when viewing them.

 

[Diamondeye]

I know I'm up and I'll try to play it one of the next days. I use photobucket for my screenies

 

[Diamondeye]

I only played 15 turns:
Build order was
Worker (inherited build)->Warrior->Settler (in progress)

We got Calendar the turn before the Worker, and a Dye plantation is up - perhaps we should unassign the sage to continue growth?

We fought off the two wolf riders with a single casualty, and our scout (who is still alive!) spotted a wolf harassing the Sheaim:

I ended my turn early because I'm not quite sure I'm doing the right thing, keeping the Sage while building a Settler - even building a Settler could be questioned with so many barb cities around. I think it'd be good to settle south, though, whether in the ruins there or on the coast.

Also, on the final turn (95) I got a message that might or might not be a quest - well within our reach:

As you know (and can see in the background) we have the Pyre. Should we try and explore it?

 

[AntiTwelve]

Team, great work. I'm glad we've all played the game enough to get through the opening turns in quick succession.

@Diamondeye: I usually take the scientist off its researching in order to pop a settler quicker. Also, the explore the pyre event will produce nasty fire elementals and will create wildfire (a plus without those elementals). We shouldn't tackle this obstacle until we have strong axes or champs.

When we do get that settler... the real question is where to found the second city. We need great food and great production, so I'm questioning the western coast with the pig and mana. I"ll try and have the turns done by tonight or tomorrow... from now on we should slow down, discuss more, discuss more, discuss more, and then provide more detailed reports. You've all done admirably thus far, but time to work our grind and make this win happen.

Roster:
Dienekes the Second
fromage67
Lone Wolf
Dominicius
Diamondeye

 

[Dominicius]

I say we found RoK, get an open border with one of the neiboring AIs and make them neutral. After that, convert to RoK ourselves and trade away that fire mana! That would pretty much assure us an ally.

I know the rules are that we must found empyrian but can still have another religion untill we get up to that point, eh?

P.S: the rules also state that we don't need to actualy convert to Emp, just found it, heh... although once we do found it we still might want to convert. Chalid is amazing.

 

[reverend oats]

Lurker's Comment

Beware of destroying the Pyre sacred to the fire goddess!

Spoiler:

Spoiler :

In previous versions, (not sure about this one), 4 strength 8 fire elementals spawn when you do, but in return you get a golden age.

 

[Diamondeye]

I actually think keeping the fire mana from the Pyre for a while would be good; our adepts would all start with Fire I for free, easily giving them access to Fireballs when we hit Wizards.

 

[fromage67]

I checked out the save, and I looked at possible city spots for the settler.

There are really two options IMHO.

City1 has pigs and a mana, and plenty of hills for production.

City2 has fish and 3 hills, plus some dyes for gold.

I think City2 is superior, but City1 is good.

The other possibility is invading one of the two barb cities to the North, but they are not in great spots themselves, and we don't really have the guns.

My recommendation: Mining will be researched in 1 turn. Chop out a settler while clearing those hills West of our capital for mines. I would leave the sage specialist assigned. We only gain 3 resources at most with it, and chopping will be quicker anyhow. This way we get a city and bronze working most efficiently.

 

[Dominicius]

Actually I prefer we only go up the arcane tree just enough to get elementalism and head straigth for boyers after that.

If you want one extra free promotion for our mages just build them before we trade the mana away. I'm not saying that we must trade it away but the AI will give you ludicrous deals for mana and the relationship bonus is also quite nice.

It will be a while before we get dispell so we might look for a way to put the extra mana to use.

Also I think we need a production city so I am leaning towards spot nr 1.

 

[Diamondeye]

I think spot 1 is nice for production.