Black Charadon brings Heaven to heel

[The Black Sword]

The war against Dave went pretty well, I've mostly wiped out his armies in both north and south:





I had to retreat though because I have 2 other problems to deal with first:



Jim's army is 1 south of his city. I evacuated Amarok since he could hit it with summons. My army, highlighted in the last shot is on the Lucian symbol. We also have Yersinia for my northern army to deal with. So, the Sheaim get a reprieve for the moment.


Taking my time here.

[pocketbeetle]

I see you splashed out and built a forge in one of your cities.

Steady on son, aren't you worried about the hammer wastage?

[The Black Sword]

I know, that thing won't even have repaid itself in the ToD's lifespan.

I am actually putting a bit of infrastructure up these days. Particularly in my coastal cities I decided to put LH and harbour in where I have a decent number of water tiles to grow onto. Seemed like a good way to turn my massive hammer advantage into some commerce. Now that IW's in I realised I have half priced Shipyards thanks to Aggressive too. Now that is some infrastructure that really is worth it!

Also, most cities are just growing on Granaries and Storehouses.

Anyway, in more interesting news, Jim did indeed attack and cast Arcane Lacuna on me.


Amarok fell and my borders in Perrin dropped due to a Beast of Agares finishing(Savants can't culture bomb which I hadn't realised). I wasn't worried though, I had plenty in Amarok to hold against his summons, should just give me xp. He did throw a lot of units against me, enough that I think he may have used some spellstaffs, but I'm not sure. The only loss was one of my Beasts at what must have been very low odds. Without haste or summons, there's no way I have the range for a counterattack. I'm just going to wait for Lacuna to wear off rather than advance into his territory and get hit by summons every turn. I might be able to do that but why risk it?

The loss of Sharku, my island city was much worse than Amarok


I thought I had enough defenders there but I forgot about the Amurite spellstaffs. I killed that wizard at least and the remaining 2 on the boat have no spellstaffs left so they'll be easier to deal with.

Dave evidently sensed some weakness at my retreat and pushed the rest of his forces up:


but that did not go well for him:



Finally, we have Yersinia in the south, who killed a Son of Asena last turn and is sitting on a lake tile. I left some worker bait for him to try get him onto solid ground. He's dead once I can hit him, half his strength is Poison or Unholy which Demons are immune to. Mardero already has over 90% odds.

[The Black Sword]

Mardero's been tricked out:


My Battlemasters were too afraid to attack Yersinia since I never got a chance to cast Courage on them. I did try suicide 1 Son of Asena, but when he died for no damage I just sent in an injured Beast at 16% odds and Mardero cleaned up. He originally had 80% odds but I felt that was too risky.

[The Black Sword]

Superjm has done this to me in the north:



Really pushing home how difficult it is to deal with Amurite mages on ships. I finally got some hawks out though(pretty short sighted of me not to get them in anticipation of the worldpsell tbh) and set up some payback.



These galleys are a pain in the ass. He had defended his city better last turn though. This turn he moved the galleys up, threw some fireballs at me and then back into the city:



Those 2 Beastmen were my only losses. I was pretty sure no amount of fireballs would break through Mardero, and I was right. This turn he has no Hosts guarding the city, and I've re-jigged the units in my boats so that they're all pretty expendable. He looks vulnerable.



One of my veterans from the Bob campaign deals with his only good defender, the archer. 5 Attackers for 5 defenders, it's all going well:



Until the last guy fails. That means I have to send in another galley with 3 more units who will die to fireballs. Still, it was to be expected that I couldn't win 5/5 at those odds. We send in a new galley and



Sweet revenge! For some reason there is also a single Amurite wizard defended by a Host of Einherjar on the pigs tile. I still have 2 more attackers. I lose a 77% roll on the Host but injure him enough for the wizard to defend.



Lose. Doesn't really matter, I have 6 move galleys and my final galley can move 3 into range and then 3 back into the city:



The mage finally bites it. So, 2 galleys lost each, I lost 8 units, 3 battlemasters, 1 veteran SoA, 4 green SoA for the city, 1 wizard, 1 archer, 2 warriors. Pretty good. Most importantly though, there are no more ports in the south. That makes it so much easier to defend this.

Also:



Dave retook both these cities, garrisoned by 4 warriors and 1 zombie. They all fell at 99% odds. I'm not bothered defending them, if Dave wants to repeat these lines, it's fine with me.

[DaveV]

Dave ... just revolted to Foreign Trade/Slavery, which really confuses me. Why play slavery in a cottage economy without even Sanitation farms? And what are you going to build with Slavery anyway? Units won't start off with any xp, and infra isn't great in FFH.

A succinct summary of why that revolt to slavery was a Very Bad Idea. You were probably going to win the game anyway, but I certainly didn't help myself there.

[superjm]

Not that it would have changed anything but my crucial key mistake in my war against you was not properly defending Bolero. All my units there had Death I so I really should have just made skeletons there when I had the chance. Also because I am an idiot who evidently doesn't play Civ enough I forgot that units embarked on galleys don't actually appear on city tiles, so I both didn't realize you had a strike force in galleys ready to attack my city nor had my Firebow/other mage up to defend it. The plan was to knock out the defenders in your island city and sneak in with some units to take the city but of course strength of numbers + Mardero made that a lost cause.

[The Black Sword]

Why didn't you pick up OO for Hemah btw Jim? I also didn't see much of Govannon, I guess he was promoting all your troops but 2 archmages was one of the few things that still worried me at the end.

[superjm]

I was using Govannon to promote my units and the lack of Hemah was just a dumb oversight because I don't have enough experience with this game (and with mage strategies in general) and I was playing a lot quicker than I usually do.

Not that two archmages would have done much against you anyway. Or maybe I just underestimate the ability of even one archmage. Though if I had landgrabbed properly and gotten my four nodes like I should have and ToD'd SoW the point would be moot anyhow.