[Spoiler] Another collection of Sianic Games

[Mardoc]

Yeah, that wasn't quite what I meant. I'm not sure *when* he spawns, exactly.

I have visibility on maybe 40% of the world. Plus I would expect him to gravitate toward civilization if he spawned somewhere barren. So if he spawned at the turn roll last turn, and he was somewhere that he was *my* problem, I'd expect to see him already. But if he spawns at the turn roll this turn, I'm not out of the woods yet.

[Qgqqqqq]

No idea, sorry. My instinct is that he would spawn on the barbarian turn immediately preceding the notification popping up, but it's nothing more than instinct.

[Mardoc]

Well, I still haven't seen the Horseman. And HK's Power rating has taken a bit of a drop sometime pretty recently. So I'm guessing he showed up in the ice.

Since I missed showing it lately, here's the part of elfland I kept. Brian got Rosier this turn, but we're still at peace. I've got a city on bloodpet duty sending reinforcements this way - if Brian stays away until my borders pop, this land will be pretty secure.



I'm consolidating forces near the remnants of the elves. Still likely 2 turns before I can go in, and three before I can finish him off.



Still, the demographics tell a good story. I'm now to double the hammers of the rest of the world combined - and that's with the elven cities still in revolt. I've now got a vampire in a queue, and a settler; once the current wave of Moroi complete, I'm planning to stick cities about half-and-half on vampires or economic things. HK still has more Power than I do, probably including a heck of a lot of summoners, so I'll play this slowly and cautiously. But that MFG diiference means I probably have to really mess up to lose from here.

[Mardoc]

HidingKneel finally invaded...just after I convinced myself he was staying home



That's...basically the same army he used to kick me out of his land. Most notably - no mages!

It turns out I was overconfident in the power of the catapult, though. I was able to wound every unit in his stack...by 10 or 20% . It was enough to let me strip off the top three javelin throwers, but I fully expect to lose Weselton next turn. I managed to pile in enough bloodpets and redlined catapults that he'll basically have to use his entire stack to do it, though - including probably all his own catapults.

I offered him peace for Weselton and Forever, but I don't really expect him to accept. The more relevant fact is that I pulled back every Moroi from the elven front, barring one who needs to lose Burning Blood and the three holding my new cities. The first ones should arrive in the vicinity of Ghost next turn, and the last in three turns. That will likely be enough to counterattack, depending on the RNG next turn.

On the other hand, I'm still pretty confident in the long term prognosis. He should have hit me 10 turns ago; now I can completely abandon the elf front without worrying too much.

I think I can confine him to just Weselton and Forever, and I'm still ~150 hpt to the rest of the world's 60. I just need to kill this army without losing too much land, and he won't be able to replace it, while I can definitely replace mine. I'm not quite in emergency mode - I left two vampires in queues, even though they'll only finish in 7 and 10 turns. IF he accepts peace, I'll be swapping every single queue to vampires - but if he doesn't, I still think I can achieve reasonable attrition with Moroi.

Ah well. Still likely to be another week before I see the next save, which is plenty of time for second-guessing and so on

[Mardoc]

So I guess I've won. How'd that happen?

Basically, three factors.
- Governor's Manors are the bomb! They let me build so many units, enough to fight constantly from Yell0w's first invasion until the end of the game. We never had a tech advantage, on either front, but quantity has a quality all its own. We basically managed to produce more units than the Illians and Svartalfar, combined. I kind of think they should be nerfed, but I don't have any good ideas on how. I guess Qgqqqq has nerfed Manors somewhat since this version, maybe they're better now.
- Raiders is awesome too. It let me turn any momentary advantage into a permanent one, and greatly increased the number of possible mistakes a foe could make. Moroi go very well with raiders - three moves lets you fork an absurdly large radius.
- HidingKneel pushed his farmer's gambit just a smidge too long. He was ahead by miles. He had the tech to stop me - and the production, too. After all, he stopped my advance in something like five turns after I invaded. He just didn't have the army on hand. It still would have worked out for him if I weren't Raiders; five turns was only enough to wreck him because I could move so fast.


That said: I'm not 100% confident that I had the game in the bag. HK's stack was pretty big; I think I could stop it after losing only one or two more cities, but only by using up basically everything I had, and only with some luck. If he had anything at all coming behind, I wasn't going to be able to survive that.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well done!

Before I can discuss GM balance, what version were you playing in? I think in v10 I do the separation from Courthouses thing.

[Mardoc]

It was v9. So GM's have already been nerfed from what I experienced.

Also, it's possible they're not quite as OP in other situations. HK outproduced me until I razed half his cities; Yell0w and Brian apparently fought early wars while I just grew?