[SPOILERS] Tales from the Enchanted Forest - Thessa of the Ljosalfar

[Nyktorion]

Turn 173

So, what happened during this turn? First, let's have a glimpse at the other side of the world:



Not looking good for Mardoc...

I'm not certain where that peace came from. Maybe Thoth used the seven pines in order to teleport some units out of Mardoc's land?

Second, here's a picture of Teldrassil:



So, the next city is lost. I expect to be at war with Thoth next turn again, and to lose Berk. Eodd should hold out one more turn, but I expect it to fall immediately after that.

[Nyktorion]

Turn 174

Mardoc sent the following message to WarriorKnight and myself:

I guessed wrong on which city Thoth would take last turn, so I lost
Hemah and Saverous and a bunch of other troops. I'll probably be able
to hold my island since I have Cultists, but the mainland is doomed,
it's only a matter of time (and not much of it).

WarriorKnight, feel free to come in while Thoth is focused on me and
his troops are out of position. I have killed a number of Beasts of
Agares and other Malakim troops, so it's now or never for you. I'm
willing to concede to Thoth at any time, though I'll keep playing as
long as you think you've got a chance.

- Mardoc

So, last turn's impression about Mardoc's situation seems to have pointed completely into the right direction.

The following picture shows the essential part of this turn for me.



This looks absolutely grim, too. Considering that there's just one heavily wounded warrior left for city defence (and a second one added upon clicking EOT), I'm rather certain that Thoth will be eliminating me this turn.

[Square Leg]

Hey Nyktorion,

Just wanted to say thank you for keeping your thread updated so dilligently even whilst fighting a losing battle! I really enjoyed your posts.

Is there antthing that you would have done differently now with hindsight?

[Nyktorion]

Hey Nyktorion,

Just wanted to say thank you for keeping your thread updated so dilligently even whilst fighting a losing battle! I really enjoyed your posts.

Is there antthing that you would have done differently now with hindsight?

Thanks for the kind words!

I've been typing up my thoughts on the game before reading your post. These thoughts make up the remainder of this post here. Some ideas of what I could or should have done in a different way are also included there

~*~ The End ~*~

Now that Thoth has officially confirmed the destruction of the Ljosalfar civ, it's time for me to post some retrospective thoughts on this game.

First, I'd like to say that I enjoyed playing this game here very much! Certainly, this game took a lot of effort: through each turn of this game, I went a lot slower than I would have ever done in single player (of course, this behavior is encouraged both by the fact that this is multiplayer, and by the 1-turn-at-a-time nature of PBEM), and I never documented any of my civ games in turn-by-turn fashion as I did here. On the other hand, all this effort caused me to think through my actions much more, and made the game a much more intense/immersive/involved experience for me, and that certainly made all the effort more than worth it.

Now, on to the in-game level:

I was destroyed, and it looks like Thoth will be reigning supreme, and his supremacy has been looming ahead for almost 100 turns. So most likely, I did not do everything right.

I did generally like how the starting phase of the game went for me. As long as I had settling space, I was consistently ahead in number of cities, agreeing nicely with the part of Thessa's EXP trait which I announced I was looking forward to. Unfortunately, water and the cities of Vallus and Kabhalg put an end to my settling spree already after founding my fourth city (Yonna).

My approach to handling this situation was by taking Kabhalg and the East Bannorlands by force. All of this went very well militarily (my hero's position in the tech tree was perfect for this), and yet, there are some second thoughts inside me doubting whether this was really the right approach. Despite my success on the military side here, my army of elven archers and priests was still a considerable investment, which could have gone into settling Teldrassil much earlier, too. However, in the end, I'm leaning towards the opinion that this was the right decision - after all, Thoth would have gotten even more land the other way, and the priest part of my army was still useful economically after the Bannor war.

After the Bannor war, my slow diplomatic realignment towards Thoth came. I'm pretty certain that it was good not to join him against the Elohim; such an approach would have been certain not to give me any better than the 2nd rank in this game, and I would probably have burned all my diplomatic bridges that could have had any hope of helping me shift in front of Thoth. I think I was too silent towards Thoth, though. Our hostility by T150 was too blatant. Maybe I should have done some further minor mingling with him, and also kept the option of further cooperation after my "sitting on the fence in the WarriorKnight-Thoth war" open (or at least some appearance of that - in one chat, when I declined an immediate alliance against WK, I maybe told Thoth too openly that I was afraid of his runaway position)?

During this phase, I also prepared for my war against Thoth. I think my army choice was not at all optimal there, and I focused too much on mages. Sure, fireballs are nice, but it takes them a lot of time to get to 10XP. While the time they had was indeed sufficient (it was a close call), they are still clumsy in the sense that I can't recruit any new mages on demand while the fighting is going on (and even my ARC trait, and XP civics like apprenticeship, or conquest with the Warfare tech would not have been sufficient to deal with this). I also think (even though I'm not SPI) that I could have profited a lot from including other religions than FoL into my strategy. A few cultists of my own could have given my much better a fighting chance on the naval side, and the ring of flames of ritualists would have outperformed my maelstroms by far (damage cap: 40% vs 30%, and it doesn't require 10XP to be cast). In the actual clash, I could also have profited a lot from access to Sun II, either via yet another religion (Empyrean, but I'm not sure whether THAT many religions would really have fit in), or giving it to my maelstromers instead of Air II.

In the actual war against Thoth, there's the most blatant thing I would have done differently. After small victories I got through my world spell, I became too greedy towards Golden Igloo, and ran straight into Thoth's fresh Sun II mages. I thought that with some treants and my magical support, I might get through and cut off that source of iron, but as you could see, I was horribly mistaken. Had I kept most of my units piled up in F.Destination, and focused my magical energy (maelstroms and fireballs) on the naval Eidola around Khandar for that time instead, I think I might have held out a bit longer. After all, even without an OO navy, the reach of my spell extension I onto the water would have been threat to be taken seriously by Thoth. With such a more defensive approach, I believe I could have held out longer than the way I actually played it.

One last thing that went wrong was the Elohim-Sheaim breakup in our alliance. However, in contrast to the thing I described above, I don't really know what I could have done better in that issue. Missing 2 allies which I thought I would have, and being alone in fighting Thoth for 10 turns more than I initially thought definitely hurt me. Sure, it is to be expected that people play for the well-being of their own civ rather than the greater good of an alliance. However, WarriorKnight's betrayal (actually, it was even the breach of a NAP!) came so unexpected because I simply did not see how that betrayal would serve the well-being of the Elohim rather than the Malakim (who essentially get to pick off their opponents 1-by-1 that way). Frankly, I still can't see it . Maybe reading WarriorKnight's spoiler thread, seeing how the Elohim-Malakim showdown will turn out to be, and waiting for the actual outcome of the game will enlighten me there.