This was pure BS. Titanium seal advice ?

[lord_lox]

Hey people. I generally don't bother posting , but i just finished a pretty terrible titanium seal run , and i'm posting half to vent , and see if i could have saved this in any reasonable way , and half to get a bit of advice on how to tackle a similar situation in the future.

To put things in context , i have completed p20 runs before (tho my winrate is probably around....25-30% ? I'm by no means and expert on very high prestige runs, , and it depends a lot on what caravans and modifiers i encounter , but i don't think i'm that bad either , and i have failed no seals up untill this one.

I don't have a screenshot of the game , so i don't remember all the modifiers , but i've had a beavers , lizards , harpies caravan , tackling a blightrot infestation/charged rain combination of modifiers. Yea, it's annoying , and can snowball out of control , and i'm pretty sure i had encountered blightrot + villagers killer modifier before , so i know it was comming.

This wasn't the issue tho , because i haven't even reached charged rain level of hostility. What happened is that i've died in the literal first blight cycle , when i rolled a plague of darkness (the one where you can't sacrifice and storm is 100% longer). The literal first blight killed me. I had 2 oppened forbiden glades and 1 small glade and like 3 ...maybe 4 ? points of impatience. I had like 20 something workers because i rolled a small camp in the small glade , and escaped convicts in one of the dangerous glades , so i guess i've had too much hostility from having too much villagers ....?

Anyway , first blightrot cycle rolls out (i have 1 blightrot post stacked with like 8-9 purging fires , with another 1 just completing as the storm starts )....and then everything goes to ♥♥♥♥. I roll a plague of darkness ....everyone has negative resolve because i can't sacrifice anymore , and i was obviously having too high hostility (i think i was around 3) , and once the first 3-4 villagers left , blightrot took over , and the corruption simply killed all my remaining villagers. For unlocked buildings , i've had a lumbermill , a smokehouse , an press , and a tavern from what i remember. I was hoping to eventually aquire a temple , and reduce hostility by spaming oil sacrifices. It doesn't really matter , because i never even got around to even building the tavern even (crude workshop was the only thing making bricks/fabric) , tho i doubt that the resolve bonus would have saved me from the first blight storm. I couldn't really increase resolve via food either , because i rolled no fertile soil building . I was lucky enough to roll the biscuit delivery order from the queen , and completed it just before storm hit , but i think it was a bit too late to matter.


Since this was a titanium seal , you can all imagine that i took me half a day to reach this point , and since you get just one shot at closing it .....any failed attempts means that you've wasted all that time. Could i have saved this in any way ? What could i have done to save this run ? Or was this just an unfortunate combination of modifiers that just snowballed ?

[arjensmit79]

Its too hard for me to read that story, form a picture based on that and tell you what could or should have happened differently. There's 1 thing i notice and that is you saying "it took me half a day to reach this point" For me, half a day is 1 game. (4 hours per game average) So reaching a higher seal takes multiple days. How long does a game take for you ? Maybe more pausing and more deliberation ?

Another thing: You can look at the seal and know what plague will be coming next storm so you can prepare for it. Kinda goes in tandem with the other point of course. At the start of the year, check your situation, check whats coming next storm and figure out if you are ready for that. It is not rare for me to spend an hour on pause at the start of a year while making notes and plans.

Of course there is the tower on the seal maps that seems to be kinda intended to counter plague problems when needed.

[lord_lox]

i don't think i ever played a game longer then 2 hours , even on higher prestige , let alone 4 hours. I also play by ear most of the times , with no actuall plan , while trying to adapt to what i roll with.
I dont' tend to have any set strategy on beating any given map , at the start of the game. A lot of the times , the way i beat the game (either via resolve , trading or just unlocking crates) is decided depending on what i roll on any given map (blueprints/cornerstones/forest events) , and most of the times , it's probably a mix of all that + order completion. I also tend to just simply....not pause the game a lot.

All that being said , i don't see how i could;ve avoided that situation , even if i knew it was comming.....other then not picking up so many people earlier in the game.
The tower could have helped , but i never got around to building it either, for the same reason i never gotten around to building the tavern : early game , with only crude workshop for fabrics and bricks. And even if i woul;ve built it , and let's say i could have used the hostility reducing effect in that given year , that's a one time thing , and this combo effects is really hard to beat. Rellying on the tower is not a long term strategy imo.

[kory]

You did not "roll" a plague of darkness on the first blight cycle, it is hard coded. The first three plagues are always mosquitoes, malady, darkness, in that order. After that it is random.

[lord_lox]

Ahh , i've always assumed they were always random. Guess i could've prepared for the 3rd year storm better if i knew that.

[kabill]

Originally posted by kory:

You did not "roll" a plague of darkness on the first blight cycle, it is hard coded. The first three plagues are always mosquitoes, malady, darkness, in that order. After that it is random.

Oh, that's good to know!

Originally posted by lord_lox:

All that being said , i don't see how i could;ve avoided that situation , even if i knew it was comming.....other then not picking up so many people earlier in the game.

Would not describe myself as an expert player: have 200 hours play with only 2 losses but only recently started plating at P20. Some thoughts.

1) For me, playing into 2 Forbidden Glades by year 3 seems super-aggressive (although maybe you mean Dangerous Glades?) and leaving yourself really vulnerable to bad outcomes.

2) Unless you got really unlucky losing villagers mid-purge, I don't see why a few losses would impact on your ability to control blight if you already have the fuel made up (three workers in the blight post from the start of Storm should always be enough to destroy the cysts in time, unless you had some bad modifiers from events or something?). I wonder whether you had a full crew of blight fighters ready, or missed them leaving (and / or didn't replace them).

3) I assume you prioritised getting specialist housing / hearth up to level 1. But beyond that, prioritise building things that give villagers specialist resolve boosts and / or getting water and engines on the go. Former doesn't seem very helpful from what you say about buildings / species but water engines in a few places would help. And if Darkness is guaranteed to trigger in year 3 then it always seems worth doing some prep like this (it's saved an early game Seal for me before).

4) This only works if you're narrowly below the resolve threshold, but toggling favour on and off can help. This is especially good for lizards as their resolve drops slowly, potentially allowing you to favour another species for longer while lizards are coming down, or prepping before the storm by favouring lizards and turning off just before to give a bit of extra time for their resolve to decrease. Probably would make little difference in this situation but might delay / avoid one or two departures.

Hard to say for sure without seeing the board state exactly. But from what you say, I don't think this was an unavoidable loss.

[Samseng Yik]

Hostility management is 1 of the uber importance skill.
But since getting the cornerstone is counting on luck, I created a cult to solve this and set myself as prime example for others to learn.
Welcome to the cult of trader robbery, many person over-value the importance 1st trader.
In my eye, they are just fresh meat to chopped, and food to eat.
Robbing a trader at the beginning of year 2, give you few point impatience (Trust me, the losing game is not always caused by impatience), and nearly 200 resources + some BP and cornerstone.
Impatience is so good in my eye, I consider most players "bad managers" if they win the game with impatience less than 2.
Why ? Because if you have 6 or 7 impatience, you have greater hostility reduction.
Greater hostility reduction mean
- generate resolve earlier, thus if utilized, the game should already win at least 1 or 2 years earlier.
- Cutting down 1 level of hostility level
- You can utilize better the rebellious spirit (impatience reward productivity and resolve), which make people easier to generate reputation and survive storm.

About villager quantity, very carefully manage the qty to not reach a new hostility level threshold is the key.
If +1 level of hostility will reach dangerous storm modifier, hell bend to avoid it.
You only need villager who enough to fill up necessary job.
Example, if taking extra villager will give you blood flower in storm, hoho good luck man.
The so call "extra villager to produce food" just doesn't cut in as the blood flower will drain your food way faster, and that is on top of extra people = eat more food.

Taking too much is death sentence to run and Viceroy and above, unless you have very very good hostility reduction technique (non sacrifice)

[Samseng Yik]

Do you use the Queen Bell Tower ?
In my eye, the queen assistance is "no use equal waste", this include food resource.

[lord_lox]

Originally posted by kabill:

1) For me, playing into 2 Forbidden Glades by year 3 seems super-aggressive (although maybe you mean Dangerous Glades?) and leaving yourself really vulnerable to bad outcomes.

2) Unless you got really unlucky losing villagers mid-purge, I don't see why a few losses would impact on your ability to control blight if you already have the fuel made up (three workers in the blight post from the start of Storm should always be enough to destroy the cysts in time, unless you had some bad modifiers from events or something?). I wonder whether you had a full crew of blight fighters ready, or missed them leaving (and / or didn't replace them).

1. Yes , i meant dangerous , not forbiden.....and i have completed them. As i said , 1 of the even was the escaped convicts - that i solved by taking the people , while the 2nd one was the one with the ancient seal. I don't think i was playing particulary aggresive at all actually.

2. As i said , i had blightrot infestation as a modifier. Each leaving/dying villager spawns 4 more cysts. Once villagers start leaving , the corruption skyrockets , which in turn kills your people , which in turns spawns more cysts , and so on. Once a number of people have died , your ancient hearth also loses upgrades (and corruption resistance) and everything spirals out of control.

[hardy_conrad]

Opening two forbidden glades by year three would be pretty darn impressive though, heh. Even two dangerous glades isn't half bad at all. The convict event can be tricky because while it's tempting to boost your population for the rush, there's a real risk of it raising hostility to more than you can handle. Been there, done that. Since the plague of darkness can absolutely wreck you I generally play conservatively until after I'm over that hump. Although I'm definitely not the best person to ask since I've been stuck on the last seal since forever.

While it's rarely (if ever) insurmountable, the random aspect to the game is real. Sounds like you got some rough luck that time. That said there's an old story about a two golfers, it goes something like this. The first golfer makes a hole in one. The second tells him that's some great luck. The first one says "I know. And the funny thing is, the more I practice, the luckier I get!"