Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

So it was my turn to sit on a turn. Came in early, had to work til late. Ah well, my window hasn't even started yet for whatever that's worth.

Anyway... pretty uneventful stuff really, but let's re-acclimate to the game. We lost one of our Hawks to splash damage from PZs - unfortunate consequence of being allied with the Sheaim. Only really need one at the moment, but probably a good idea to either give our meta adept SE1 or bang out another hawk in Hash Pipe after the Grimoire is done. Anyway, here's what the Clowns are currently packing. I've ignored the puppets/spectres/skellies because they are innumerable and largely irrelevant in terms of offense - we want to be attacking mage stacks, not spectre stacks.

NW = Nightwatch
M = Mage
A = Adept
S = Sword
F = Freak
W = Worker

I'll try to keep that updated every turn. You can see that Dave has started to move past New Orleans which is very heavily garrisoned and is moving on Babylon, which is not. I actually think Nic is starting to get spent a bit, but its hard to say. His PZs are all roundabout half health. The problem right now is I just can't get there with enough in time. Sure, but the time he's on our borders we're going to have a fearsome military, so there's little danger of us going down anytime soon. Unfortunately, he could be near our borders before we can really get the cavalry called in.

To get a better picture of the issue:



I've been stacking our units on the 2 red box tiles. The one in the west is easier to get through Nicolae's territory from. The one in the east is easier to get our units to. While I've got the lazy workforce aggressively roading our territory now, its far too little, far too late. It just takes too long to get anywhere - compounded by not having construction, let alone engineering. Anyway, if we call the purple box where we want to be, the white line represents all the moves required to get there. Bottom line - its going to take time.

Anyway, I continued gathering units and also summoned a good batch of tigers this turn after promoting the PoL up the combat line.

I also offered Nicolae our Body Mana after giving a pair of adepts Body I. One adept is making her way back towards the front, the other is working on giving us an Enchant node for the DC as well as happiness.

In other domestic news... there is no domestic news.

Fanatacism is due in T144, Grimoire T145. At the moment every city that can is building either a Diseased Corpse or a Ritualist. (Poor Mary Jane )

Regardless, here's an overshot of the homefront.



And the EOT Demos:



Two interesting things there - 1. We're now second in soldiers, though barely within a whimper of the Clowns and 2. We're basically even with Rawkking in GNP and he's in a Golden Age.

[Gaspar]

As an aside, check out that unit positioning. If the Lanun were in the game that'd be pretty much it for that invading stack with 1 shot of Raging Seas. Cultists would also be awesome there.

[Mardoc]

I'm confused. It ...looks... like you played a turn. Only I thought the game was dead

Speaking of Cultists - at what point is Lewwyn willing to come in? Should we be including him in the recon reports?

[Gaspar]

I'm confused. It ...looks... like you played a turn. Only I thought the game was dead

Let's not get too excited until we see another one. :neenernee

Speaking of Cultists - at what point is Lewwyn willing to come in? Should we be including him in the recon reports?

He's not going to break a NAP - especially in a game he just joined. His reputation might be as a bit of a <censored> but he's honorable. Unfortunate for us. He'll be involved on T161.

I've stopped the recon reports just after they started - Nicolae is handling his own with floating eyes. We do kibitz after every turn or so. I passed along the info about puppets vs undead and he was quite pleased. Sheaim and Ashen Veil are probably the two unit groups they'd least like to be facing. Well, save a few cultists offshore. :P

[NobleHelium]

No need to go 2S of Mount Brokeback before going west. The river ends there, you can just go SW from 1S.

[Gaspar]

Nicolae tells me he killed 4 mages at a cost of 9 PZs.

I did tell him that mage stack wasn't properly screened a couple turns ago. The terrain is really in our favor here. It will be less so once New Orleans falls.

[Gaspar]

Turn 143 hath arrived, sound the trumpets...

And the turn arrives to some interesting news...



Not good. Guild of the Nine is a good wonder for Lewwyn if he has the cash. New Orleans falling bad. The general picture around Nicolae's cities is especially not good. Odds look pretty strong for Babylon to fall next turn:



That's really about the size of it. Moved some troops into Nicolae's lands - if we can potshot a stack with some RoF, we have to take advantage of the opportunity, I think. But I'm beginning to be less and less confident we can stop the bleeding before it gets to our borders. At home - that's a different story. But this is going to be tough. I call this screenshot - "Why Keelyn is broken" by Gaspar:



Though let there be no remaining doubt why Kyan/Krill/Dave's economy is in the toilet - 70 f'n skeletons - ridiculous.

[Gaspar]

For what its worth I think the best thing we can do at the moment is try and find a spot where we can harass the Clown stack without actually engaging. If we can collateral down his offensive stack, maybe Nicolae has some hope of not dying to it. I did move the first bits of offensive force into Nicolae's territory this turn - I figured we had to at least have a shot at stopping him before he gets to our borders. The stuff being trained now can be wave 2, and I suspect everything after that will need to stay home on defense. What we really need is just a ton of units. Sure, Beasts/Eidolons (if we get there) make for a good stack defender/top unit killer, but beyond that its just having enough stuff to soak up the bone wall.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Hopefully Nic can take out a couple more Mages with his damaged zombies, but I have no doubt there are more on the way.

Unless the Sheaim have a lot of units around New York, then I can't see them holding things together for very long. We need to do some testing and start thinking about the best timing for Marching the Trees, as if the Adepts and Mages are available, I think we might need to push the button.

Getting Fanaticism in, and then being able to turn off tech for the rush-buying should help us whip together a fighting force more quickly than we have been. Getting Hash Pipe off wonder-duty and back to units will be useful too.

[Mardoc]

Mostly agreed. Especially on the need to collateral down DaveV's stacks, but the only one worth hitting head on is the Mages. That would make Nicolae's job easier, too - either fewer PZ's to collateral a stack to dead, or at least a better chance of surviving another turn.

And that yes, it's time to start thinking about what we can do with Treants when we push the button. I don't think we're ready for that yet, but it's the one thing we've got that might be able to actually wipe that mage/adept stack rather than just stand up to it. I wouldn't push the button for anything short of the mages, though.

Skellies at 1.8 str, 60 HP, are pretty much just free XP. Well, even more so for undead against whom they count as 1.2 Str. They shouldn't even protect the mages; I'm not entirely sure why DaveV is bothering with them, except as a piece of overkill. And - I'm not sure about this, but since they're permanent summons, I think they're not only a cash drain, but they're War Weariness as well. Which means if there's a 'main mistake', that's probably it. After we collateral them, any time a unit has nothing else to do, it might as well kill a Skeleton for XP and Clown War Weariness .

It's the Spectres who worry me. We can't collateral them down, really, he'll just resummon them. They're fast, to boot. But if we can kill those 14 Mages, the rest of the war will be merely a slog, not a threat.