EitB AI Takeover SG

[shallow_thought]

No, Leviathan can't attack land.  Nice set! Who's up?

Thanks. I'm glad we're not about to get a S22 monster ravaging Ithralia. Well, not this turn.

I just wish I'd been a bit clearer on planning to finish off Furia.

• Bob ON DECK
  
• Brian 
  
• Me
  
• DaveV
  
• Shallow_thoughts JUST PLAYED
  
• Cairo UP
  

[Mr. Cairo]

Turn 311:

Basium moved it's stack towards Coombe View, for some reason pillaging everything on that tile so they can't use its road. At this point I thought about surrendering Coombe View, but with the peace treaty with Furia about to end, I realised that with Sanctuary (and hopefully a dead Furia), we can do some shenanigans to Basium if we keep Coombe View. For example, taking Rhylod and popping it's borders right away with a Disciple.
So I fired Sanctuary here.

Turn 312:

I sent in the Chariot first to have a look, because it could still take Mobility and therefore have four moves if it turned out there were too many defenders. I figured taking Furia out right away was worth the risk of a few turns of higher WW. I was right to do so, because Furia's last city was not very well defended.


The end of Furia, I also got a nice haul of slaves I'm going to use to rush some buildings up in our core. No losses, and the main stack is heading towards Coombe View to fight Basium from the safety of our borders there.


I also had a look at the Khazad, and decided not to try and take him out for now, I'd rather focus on hurting Basium. We also picked up the pieces of barnaxus, for whatever that's worth (nothing, is the answer).

Also, this happened:

It got injured attacking a Lanun Pirate, so I took the shot while it was hurt, hoping that I could use the Galleys to finish it off. But the Frigate won, gaining a lot of xp and removing a serious threat.

Turn 314:
First strike against Basium:

Lost only 1 Catapult (despite the 80% odds to retreat...) and some Tigers, so got to kill all that without losing any units that can create more Angels for Basium. This is basically what I planned on doing for the entire turnset. I also just teched Warfare, planning on getting to Mil Strat to swap into Military State. I think the extra production is worth the lost xp. I'm also building Guild of Hammers in the capital.

Turn 315:

The end of Decius. I also used most of the slaves to finish a Mage Guild in Inishbofin, I want a few more Adepts (speaking of, I have one down in the southern cities creating a Body Node for Haste)

Turn 318

Took Riylod. Once again only lost Tigers and a Cat. I then attacked with some of my remaining Tigers at some of the units next to the city. Turns out that city has Mokka's Cauldron in it, and the Tigers got resurrected as Demonic Scouts. Not sure what use that is, but still, interesting. I didn't want to try it with any other units, because I don't want to create more Angels for Basium.

That was the last of the major fighting. The situation as of turn 320:
-Stack in Riylod, not a lot of Basium's units around anymore. We might be able to pull off another city capture+border pop at Acaia to the south, attacking from Khazad land. I have another Disciple of Leaves in the queue for that purpose.
-With the ex-Luichiurp cap (currently building a disciple of leaves to spread to Guell so it can pop its borders) we can build a Sculptors Studio and start building either Wood Golems for relatively strong and cheap units, or Gargoyles for strong defenders. It can also build PoL if that's preferable, although I'd rather build Monks and upgrade them into PoL (it only costs 5 gold and they come with Mobility 2) although we can only build those in our own, original cities.
-Finished Mil Strat and revolted into Military State, which actually improved our income.
-We have caused some damage to Basium, but he's been hurting the Kuriotes, and probably gained a bunch of Angels from those units he's killing:

But still, that's a definite decrease in power overall.

-Obviously, with Sanctuary, we're safe from attack, so I think the goal should be to continue to hurt Basium as much as possible until either him or Hannah are ready to sign peace (we can always trade away the death mana to remove the -4 opinion penalty). If we manage to grab a few crappy cities in the meantime we can always trade them away for peace. If we get peace with Basium/Hannah we can either focus on domestic stuff and infrastructure, or attack Thessa to expand our power base for the eventual final showdown with Basium/Hannah.

Bob UP
Brian ON DECK
Me
DaveV
Shallow_thoughts
Cairo JUST PLAYED

[Bobchillingworth]

Got it!

[Brian Shanahan]

To get rid of the Death mana malus we could always pop the Sepulchre. As long as we don't build a node over it we don't have it.

On the game itself, IIRC Basium's power is much inflated. I think both the Mercurian and Infernal palaces give a huge boost to power numbers. So about half his power is from his palace.

[shallow_thought]

That was a really nice set from Mr Cairo. Firing Sanctuary and sniping was what I had in mind, but I doubt I could have executed it so nicely.

I also like the decision to grab Mil Strat. Did we already have Conquest available, but were just too locked into GoN to use it? I do love being SPI and spending alternate blocks of turns in FT/Conquest (with other suitable changes).

I wonder if it is worth going Sorcery if our economy can manage it. Assuming we have a spare node, then Metamagic would get us vision, which I felt I lacked in my turnset. It would also let us re-purpose the Pyre and Sepulcher nodes (if we pop the latter) to get free Maelstrom on mages, or just stack Death if we want to (not particularly great against Basium, of course).

[Qgqqqqq]

Nice set. I appear to have been too optimistic earlier. I do think we should focus on the religious tree now, in order to replace our collateral reliance on catapults (which are expensive), and slightly reduce it on tigers (which cost WW). Remember, one Ashen Veil temple could give us 10 5-gold ritualistic the turn Basium declares again. I think that's a much better approach then having to wait a long time for mages to mature - especially given we get 3-move channeling priests, and no boosts to mages. Or alternatively, Order would give a lot of strong units, and longer run Empy or High Priests of the Order would give us deadly collateral.

Not that we don't want more POL - they're excellent - but I think that's our long run trajectory.

Also, I forget what tech gives Hawks these days, but I'm sure that's cheaper than meta magic.

[Qgqqqqq]

How many turns is sanctuary these days, on normal speed? 13? Important to keep track of that.

Is Basium still at war with Cardith?

[Mr. Cairo]

How many turns is sanctuary these days, on normal speed? 13? Important to keep track of that.

Is Basium still at war with Cardith?

It's 30 turns according to the tooltip.

[Bobchillingworth]

T319 Inherited Turn thoughts:

• I concur with Cairo on using the WS to do as much damage as possible to Basium, and with Qg to tech toward the Veil
• I’ve been left with a rather large army, and intend to use it.  





I capture Acia (Acai?  Whatever) from Basium with a small portion of our main stack, no non-Tiger losses.  

T320:

Combee View revolts to Ljo in the interturn.  I’ll remedy that soon enough.  

I position forces to take Prespur next turn.  

I’m a little confused as to why we have four Galleys when there’s absolutely nobody we can navally invade currently, but whatever.  


T321:




Prespur taken, no real units die.  I don’t like the location, nor that it’s on desert, so I burn it.  


T322:

Basium captures Hallowel from the Khazad, and burns it.  Fine by me.  

Basium builds the Nox Noctis.  Won’t help him much with one city remaining.  


T323:

Units moved in place to siege Kingsport, Basium’s capital.  

Pop a couple Angels and a War Tortoise.  No losses we care about.  


T324:




Kingsport is unfortunately very well defended.  I bombard the defenses down to nothing and throw Tigers at it.  The results unfortunately are not particularly promising; the Repentant Angels are brought down a bit in strength from killing living units, but Basium has so many highly-promoted T4 troops that most never show up as defenders and aren’t scratched.  I may pull back next turn.  


T325:

Basium shows substantially fewer defenders in his capital for some reason this turn.  I think maybe he loaded them into his Galleon?  

I throw all of our Tigers at the city again.  Goal is to get as many combats with the Repentant Angels as possible; I end up reducing all of them into the “killable in a future turn” range.  

Thessa founds another bullshit city on our border.  I’m annoyed I’m having to waste time on Basium, but if there’s a chance I can take him out now I need to take it, endless streams of super-elite T4 units are no joke, and his AI has a killer’s instinct.  


T326:

I throw all of our Catapults at Kingsport, in the hopes that between them and the Tigers I can pick off a defender or two.  None die, surprisingly.  

All of our Tigers die, but Basium’s units are almost getting into the killable range- 35% odds with our best Satyr.  If they don’t heal completely next turn, I may be able to afford risking combats- WW is getting bad though with throwing all these units away, so I’ll either start taking real combats next turn or retreat.  


T327:

Karond Kar falls to the Lanun.  Hmm.  That’s distressingly close to our borders.  

Basium’s units have all fully healed.  Argh.  

Catapults and Tigers go in again, but the results are worse than last time.  One Catapult lost, and not enough damage to the top defender to risk attacking.  


T328:

Basium burns the Khazad city of Riylod.  

I order a retreat.  In the end the siege didn’t accomplish much, but we didn’t lose much either.  

T329:

Our Frigate, which I had pillaging Hannah, dies, but kills a couple boats first, including Black Wind.  

Sand Dolphin somehow manages to lose a city to the barbs.  

Our stack is safely back in our land.  

Oh, somewhere in here we landed the Guild of Hammers, too.  



Thoughts on the set:  

Reducing Basium to a OCC was fun, but he’s unassailable for as long as he has most or all of his T4 units holed up in there, with our current forces.  We’d need Blur, Rust, and at least four Ritualists to stand a chance.  I would build some more Adepts to that end, and start spreading the Veil and building Ritualists as soon as we can.  


I’ve also set the next player up to start capturing / razing Thessa’s cities.  We should be able to take at least three on the first turn of the war.  She isn’t at war with Hannah / Basium and won’t declare on them, so she’s useless as a meatshield.  Might as well capture what we can and build some defensive depth.  


I’d tech Necromancy next, then Fantacism.  Snowfall would have been enough to start killing Basium’s units, I think.  


We aren’t in a bad spot, though I did raise our WW substantially and have queued Baths up all over the place to keep it manageable.  Ritualists, Adepts, maybe Corlindale, and the hitters we can already build should be enough to win.  We just need to preserve our strength until we can get to that point.  

Also, confession- game crashed on the final turn, so I had to replay the last two; everything went the same as before, except I forgot to pick up the Orthus Axe when retreating, and so deleted it and added it back via World Builder.  Didn’t snoop around or nuthin’.

[Brian Shanahan]

Got it. Will take a look in a few hours and play tomorrow.

Edit:

Had a quick look at the save, taking the war to Thessa would be the logical choice, so I'll be aiming for that. I might hold off until a turn or two in, because I don't think our forces are optimally localised, plus I'd like to get Ashen Veil tech done before declaring as with the happy situation we'll need to go back into Guardians of Nature if we take on a second war. Will look to see what damage I can do over the ten turns tomorrow.