We just watch. And Judge. FFH PBEM III Lurker Thread.

[Selrahc]

So here is an utterly unfair question for all us spoiled lurkers.. If you were Hyborem now what would you do?

He could be really handy for the alliance. If he passes Iron out to them, then WarriorKnight could be building paladins and the Alliance forces in general would be stronger. Coupled with not losing a decent city and a chunk of forces and/or a worldspell or two and the alliance has ample reasons to play nice with Hybie.

But having said that, they could wipe him out. Thoth couldn't stop them. And at this stage the Infernal forces aren't terribly good.

Odds on Hyborem surviving over 5 turns are low I'd say.

[Bobchillingworth]

Wow, what a terrible location for Hyborem to spawn. Hardly any tiles to work, and utterly indefensible. It would be very tempting I think to just throw most of the units at WK and try to clear away as much of his land as possible, but he amazingly still has his worldspell. Being part of the "coalition", assuming it doesn't fall apart before combat even begins, is simply a losing proposition- nothing at all can be done with the tiny corner of OO-vulnerable land the Infernal currently possess.


I guess I'd (optimally) try to engineer one of the following two diplomatic outcomes:


* Work with WK to destroy the Sheaim, to claim at least a little bit of land for myself & collect some manes. Might have WK raze Dis at the end of the war for a palace relocation.

-Or-

* Pretend to agree to go along with the coalition, maybe even see if the Sheaim will fight a fake war with me so that I can kill some savants for manes. Tell them that I want to settle on Thoth's borders with the free settler, in order to try to ruin his FP via burning sands. Once the settler is a safe distance from coalition sniping (shouldn't take too long with OB and the starting settler bonus), beg Thoth for some sort of sanctuary in his backlines, settle there, and turn on the CoW with the expectation that most of the starting units will get wiped out and Hyborem + the Gela need to be gated to safety before Dis falls. Forcing WK to waste his worldspell should be worth a very long NAP for the Malakim.

[Selrahc]

Being part of the "coalition", assuming it doesn't fall apart before combat even begins, is simply a losing proposition- nothing at all can be done with the tiny corner of OO-vulnerable land the Infernal currently possess.

It's dire land indeed...

But if the Infernals get an unlimited specialist civic then they're in a pretty good situation as far as population growth goes. As active participants in the war we potentially have:

Thoth: Troops from OO, AV, Kilmorph, Empyrean. Evil or Neutral alignment which gives manes on city raze.
Mardoc: Troops from OO, Esus. Neutral.
Irgy: Troops from AV and evil spellcasters. Evil.
Nyktorion: FoL, Neutral.
WarriorKnight: Order, Good. Blech.

So WarriorKnight is a lost cause for manes, and Nyktorion will only generate some if the war goes badly for him. Everyone else though should give Hyborem a steady input of manes over the course of the war. If Dis was size 300, with every specialist being a priest or sage that would be something however bad the land.

The poor position though is a definite negative. Hyborem needs to get inland.

[Bobchillingworth]

Getting to something like 300 pop tho I think would require more units to die / cities to be razed than at all feasible. And the lack of tiles means hardly any workshops or mines, so production involves setting the vast majority of pop to comparatively low-yield priests or citizens. And it's awfully difficult to support a conquest army in FFH when playing OCC in an MP environment like this. No mana nodes, so tower is out. Always Evil, so no Altar. Can't do culture or domination with three cities. Religion... needs the Veil holy city.

Hyborem's only chance at real relevancy here is to buddy up with everyone in separate private chats, get very long NAPs with whoever he can't take on, and start stabbing backs to grab some lebensraum- essentially, basic divide & conquer, except played from a position of significant weakness, which is not an easy feat to pull off.

[Bobchillingworth]

Haha, and away he goes! Pretty short-sighted move; WK will just fire off the worldspell and then return to crush the Infernal with Corlindale & demon-slaying monks. Darrell should be building an escape boat if he wants to have any chance at survival. Also he probably should have moved his extra settler with his attack stack- the special extended vision range and movement makes it a great scout.

[NobleHelium]

WK can pretty much fire the worldspell and then Snowfall with impunity from within his borders. So, yeah...

Darrell probably has no idea that Corlindale and Snowfall are in play.

Although I just went into WK's thread for the first time. His entire military is 5 monks? I'm not sure he can kill anything even with Snowfalls...

[Gaspar]

I don't think his ploy is necessarily terrible, but I think he'll regret not opening a diplo channel with WK first. I'm sure they'd have been plenty happy to bring Hyborem into the Anti-Thoth coalition if that option presented itself. But yeah, Sanctuary -> dead Hyborem seems like what we're looking at right now.

I think Bob has it spot on - build an escape pod, ask questions later.

[Selrahc]

Do Basilicas gain the benefit from the Infernal Palace? I've never noticed Demon Altars getting a boost for the Infernals and they're non-temple state religious buildings too. I think it might be just temples but I'm not entirely sure.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm finding that Heisenberg's reading of the game direction hilariously off, especially considering the amount of work that has gone into the coalition. He's taken a look at the game and worked out a "what should happen" scenario (i.e. WK will swallow him on T170) which I can find no fault with, but unfortunately he's imputed "what should happen" into "what will happen".

This is leaving the coalition dangerously unhinged IMO as one of the partnerships is not really working towards getting ready, and I believe it will make a WK attack on Heisenberg all the more likely as he'll then have an army and nothing to do with it, and a posititon strategically where he'll need more land to counterbalance the two big dogs in the game atm (Mardoc & I forget, my memory's completely gone, of the Malakim).

I think the coalition against the Malakim is probably the last chance for either WK, Nyk or Heisenberg to win the game, though I think it'll hand it to Mardoc if he plays his cards correctly. So if Heisenberg keeps being paranoid about WK then the game may turn into a 2 horse race quickly.

[Gaspar]

As always, subs and new players ruin all the carefully laid plans. Reason #2352 diplo is often an exercise in verbal masturbation. Reminds me a bit of BTS PBEM 3 where Amelia completely changed the calculus in the game. But basically Heisenberg's misreading of the game plus the other players lack of interest in pulling him in, combined with WK/Mist's change of heart, combined with Darrell's shortsighted attack and misunderstanding of the Elohim worldspell means...

Thoth wins.

At this point, if I'm Thoth, I negotiate a NAP extension with WK and then take out Nyk and/or Mardoc. At that point, even if WK eats Sheaim, he can't do enough to win with the Thoth's advantages already in place, plus all that extra territory. I agree with Brian, if the coalition had gone off as planned and were successful, Mardoc would have been the favorite. But I have no confidence in Mardoc to hold off Thoth without coalition support. All in all, I think the other players have been too passive and/or shortsighted to stop Thoth this game, and the Infernals have cinched that. This is why I'm against a Hyborem human takeover in my game, its just too messy to add another human into the mix 150 turns into the game.