Part 58: Turn 50 Retrospective
I haven't really explained my current strategy, have I?The plan is simple. I'm surrounded by AI. AI is easy to kill. I need more territory to fight off Ulm, and, soon, Mictlan. So I'm going to grab as much as I can from AI.
This is a tight balancing act. I don't want to overextend, but I also don't want to slack off. Every territory I grab now is a territory Mictlan won't have, but if I actually manage to lose an army or two against the AI I could be in bad, bad shape against the real human players. So we're extending, but . . . at a reasonable pace.
Meanwhile, T'ien Ch'i and Gath were apparently allied in some sense, so I'm watching for a near-inevitable attack from Gath. I'd actually be fine stalemating against Gath while I clean up the AI - the AI is likely to be a juicier target than Gath is anyway - but that does require me to have significant forces pointing Gathwards. Conveniently, I've got two entire armies that just finished off T'ien Ch'i's capital, and they're right next to Gath. Tally ho!
Now, the obvious What Am I Doing Wrong thing. That Tartarian you saw . . . well, he is pretty crummy. But he's not that abnormal. Tartarians usually show up with horrible afflictions and I should be expecting that far more than I currently am. It's almost not worth getting Tartarians until you've secured Gift of Health or the Chalice, so I probably should have re-ordered things a bit, as right now I'm risking a bunch of worthless Tartarians sitting around. Additionally, getting a huge number of Tartarians going requires an absolute shitload of Nature gems, and I really should have put up Mother Oak earlier. 50 Nature gems to cast, but it creates 10 Nature gems every turn. I could use that! I'm planning on casting it next turn, but it would have been a good idea to get it going before starting up Tartarian production.
Additionally, I've stopped sitesearching. This is mostly laziness on my part but it's kind of inexcusable. I could at least be scanning T'ien Ch'i for fire, which they had no access to, and I really should be scanning them for everything, especially given what low gem incomes everyone has right now besides me.
I'm only just now realizing how much attrition my scout network has been taking and am starting to replenish it. I also should almost certainly be building more temples to push my Order out more strongly (and, in retrospect: I really, really should have picked up one more point of Dominion, even if I needed to make some sacrifices.) What I'm not realizing right now, that someone in the thread mentioned, is that temples make money - my dominion turns into Order, order turns into taxes, and taxes turn into mages. More temples = more money, and I could probably get away with one every few turns and still come out on top in the long run.
I think my basic strategy right now is good. Now, is my implementation good? Well . . . we'll see, won't we?
At least I finally took most of T'ien Ch'i.