Well, it'd be fine if the route wasn't more or less one-way, though my original plan would have put you in a rough spot, so, yeah. I don't mind you guys fighting at all, I just mind that I accidentally made the map uneven.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(July 5th, 2013, 22:50)Merovech Wrote: Well, it'd be fine if the route wasn't more or less one-way, though my original plan would have put you in a rough spot, so, yeah. I don't mind you guys fighting at all, I just mind that I accidentally made the map uneven.
Hopefully it's a good show, at least. That's a big part of the reason I upgraded my plans from "one boat full of moroi" into a full fledged "Operation Overlord" style invasion. My general tendency is to go for whatever simple advantages that I might have available, but Mardoc really deserves something more committed than just casually razing his capital.
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FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers
EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Thanks. I think shipwrecks choose from a smaller set of possibilities than most of the other lairs, so biggood and bigbad results have a higher probability of occurring. I'd be surprised if anyone else has explored their shipwrecks yet, but I'm curious what the results will be when they do.
I'm also not sure if surrounding the lair with units actually prevents the bigbad lair results or just prevents their effect if they do happen.
The second one will finish next turn.
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EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
Okay, I spent a lot of time on turn 109 getting the details figured out for the party. The attack will take place on turn 116 and include 11 ships and 32 land units. I'll have 3 adepts, 1 zealot, 1 spider, 6 bloodpets and 21 moroi. I'll be able to attack three major Balseraph cities on turn 116, and after that anything can happen.
Mardoc has Trade so I can see that he definitely has Sailing, but so far my sentry Griffon hasn't seen any ships. Unfortunately, the path is wide enough that I might not notice him getting past it, but every turn could make a big difference for how many units I'd have to face.
He sent me a message the other day probing whether I was planning to attack him. I sent back a carefully worded wifom reply, subtly encouraging him to build troops during his golden age. All I'm really going for is uncertainty; I expect him to prepare but hopefully not too much. I didn't turn down the NAP offer, I just asked for a price he wouldn't be willing to pay. He hasn't responded for the three turns since I sent it, so I think the irritating parts of my message have done what I intended with them.
Mardoc turn 104 Wrote:Ellimist,
I see you've started to build a military.
Any interest in signing a NAP, so you can apply it safely close to home? I'd have to insist that you stop pillaging my dungeons, but I'm sure you can find other uses for that griffon.
- Mardoc
Ellimist turn 106 Wrote:Mardoc,
I'll stop exploring your dungeons immediately. At first, I'd expected that you wouldn't notice, but once you did all you had to do was ask!
You've probably seen me in enough games by now to know that I'm not a fan of NAPs in general, and so far I haven't agreed to any in this game with anybody. I'm not automatically opposed to one, except that I'm pretty sure you can't reach me and a NAP wouldn't benefit me at all. Feel free to offer something else(maybe a one sided map trade plus mana or something else) that makes a NAP worthwhile for me, but I wouldn't really mind if you used your golden age to make yourself more comfortable by building more troops. Maybe this time I don't even need a Griffon to keep you honest
I'm still at work and haven't loaded the turn yet, but I expect that you'll make contact with Molach very very soon. If you haven't yet, send Loki directly north to make contact with his warrior. Sorry for not replying last turn, but I got turn 105 at 2 AM and wasn't sure how to respond since we haven't talked for awhile.
Ellimist
I also made a quick deal with Molach not to trade maps with Mardoc. GtAngel's sentry scout visited Prespur a long time ago, and it would be pretty inconvenient for Mardoc to know the exact proximity of my capital to his lands.
My final unit builds will finish next turn, and I'm not sure what to build after those. Infrastructure is tempting, since I've put a lot of things on hold to build units instead. On the other hand, if Mardoc is able to stall my offense I'll want to have a second wave on hand to finish the job.
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EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
(July 6th, 2013, 23:13)Ellimist Wrote: I think shipwrecks choose from a smaller set of possibilities than most of the other lairs, so biggood and bigbad results have a higher probability of occurring. I'd be surprised if anyone else has explored their shipwrecks yet, but I'm curious what the results will be when they do.
They have different spawns and some other subtle differences, but the main roll that determines bigbad etc. is still the same.
(July 6th, 2013, 23:13)Ellimist Wrote: I'm also not sure if surrounding the lair with units actually prevents the bigbad lair results or just prevents their effect if they do happen.
The latter. You can still get a bigbad spawn result (A powerful enemy emerges to defend the lair), but the game can't place the spawned units on the map so nothing actually happens.
Right, that makes sense. So something like a golden age is probably more likely because there are fewer potential results for biggood, but the overall odds of biggood aren't affected.
So turn 111 was the turn where I loaded the last of the invaders into ships and moved them to the edge of my territory. I had planned out the ship locations and which units would be on each, but realized last night after doing the turn that I'd made an error and had to correct for it this turn.
One of my Moroi didn't have bronze weapons! When I stopped trading copper to Molach, I must have missed this one and loaded him on the ship without ever giving him a weapon. Two of my adepts were needed to cast haste at other locations, but fortunately I didn't need the third one for anything else. There was a complicated little shuffle involved to make things work, and the only real consequence is that I no longer have the option to attack a turn early with two ships. I wasn't really planning to do that anyway, so no big loss.
I advanced the Triremes this turn to screen for any interference. I don't really expect to see any, but caution isn't going to hurt anything. Neither my sentry griffon nor the triremes saw anything, so if Mardoc has any navy at all he's keeping it closer to home.
My main stack of six galleys is on track to follow the signs and arrive on schedule. One galley had to fall back one space to load the final unit out of Nubia, and one will advance two spaces ahead of the others to provide advance recon via a spider.
I wasted a fair amount of time figuring out which units would be on which ships, and which limitations existed to prevent certain units from being able to join the same ship. It didn't occur to me that I can use the unload+haste trick to shuffle cargo around during the voyage, so I'll do that next turn and also apply enchanted blade to the melee units.
Trade finished at the end of the turn, giving every one of my cities an extra intercontinental trade route. I'm tempted to switch to foreign trade at the end of the golden age, but agrarianism might be better even though I have Sanitation now. I'm planning to run 0% science next turn and possibly the turn after, since techs are getting expensive I'm not sure which one to go for next. Possibilities include Feudalism, Priesthood, Optics, or one of the mana techs.
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EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
Mardoc is definitely aware at this point that I'm coming for him, but I'm not sure how much that will change things.
I'm pretty sure he can defend any of his cities that he chooses to, but I'm also pretty confident that he can't defend all of them and I can hit several of them on the first turn of the war.
Sun Tzu Wrote:We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.
And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.
The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.
For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.
Right now my hope is that he underestimates my reach. For example, if there's a road on the tile 3 east of Trapeze, I can reach High Wire on the first turn of the war.
I can do this with a Moroi if I give it haste, burning blood, and a mobility promotion after it unloads from the ship. Mardoc's second coastal city(high dive) is also within reach, and there may be more cities in the fog. He can try to defend the routes between his cities, but that will mean there are fewer units actually in the cities, so it's not going to be easy for him to figure out what the best moves are on turn 115. I can either spread out and attack everywhere that isn't well defended, or focus into a smaller number of super-stacks and capture one or two priority targets.
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