[SPOILERS] Tales from the Enchanted Forest - Thessa of the Ljosalfar

[Nyktorion]

Turn 107

The turn started with a positive, but insignificant event:



Somebody (probably Mardoc) got a great sage.

Vallus has been almost abandoned:



So, I just attacked with Gilden and took it. The pilaging gold should suffice to let me research Sailing directly after KotE at full speed.



I then moved my hawk from Yonna to Vallus in order to see what Mr. Yellow was up to in his last city. He fittingly renamed it to F.Destination:



Also, what remains of his reinforcements is moving towards F.Destination, so taking this capital will definitely be harder than Vallus.



One can also see two warriors running away from Vallus here. They were still in reach of my stack of 5 tigers. I killed them, but lost 2 tigers (despite favorable spots); no problem, I just summoned two new tigers, who even have an empowerment promotion each now (due to their summoners having Combat I). The battle even netted me two new slaves. The battle log:



End of turn pictures of my own empire:



Here you can aso see the current content of Vallus; since Mr. Yellow gave Trinity a more fitting name, I also decided to change the name of Vallus to the more fitting "Pink Dot".



Diplo:

Thoth is not so committed to helping me with taking Trinity anymore - fair enough (I was already pleasantly surprised with what how he helped until now, even though he didn' really have to anymore). Still, I can speculate about the reasons: is it just the loss of the 6 units? Or is he disappointed about my rejection of his defence pact proposal? Speaking of the defence pact, I already listed some reasons why Thoth would strategically be a bad partner for me in last turn's writeup. However, more generally, I'd even say that with March of the Trees in reserve, and my current military strenght, I actually shouldn't be signing a defence pacts at all without some good compensation. Also, speaking of Thoth, I just wonder whether he already knows about all the pictures I sent to Mr. Yellow...

Hi Nyktorion,

Best wishes for your campaign to liberate East Bannorland!

Mr. Yellow moved his remaining 6 warriors 1 tile east onto the roaded plainshill. It looks like he will be able to get that stack into Trinity by t108. I have a Cultist offshore near Trinity who should be able to prevent his workers from forest chopping but due to the losses I took last turn I won't be able to commit any other troops to aid your liberation efforts.

My main concern with the Infernals is the damage they could cause if they appear near either of our civ's borders. Iron champions backed by a st13 hero unit can inflict serious damage should they happen to spawn near a weakly defended area. Not to mention the damage that hell terrain causes to forests and floodplains. (of course there is also the possibility that the Infernals spawn on an offshore island in which case they would not pose much of an immediate threat).

Should you change your mind about a MDP let me know and I will be happy to discuss terms and conditions.

Thoth

I also got some answers from Mr Parkin and Irgy. Nothing really impotant though (just as my own message was unimportant considering that we can't have open borders):

Hi Nyktorion,

It's great to finally have a trade connection with you. No worries about the Silk error, by the way.

Opening our borders to one another seems like a perfectly sensible and logical idea, and I'm sure we'd be happy to agree to that. However, for the moment it seems neither of us has the technology necessary to open them, so we'll have to wait a bit. When one of us has the technology available though, I'm sure we can work out a deal there.

For the moment it doesn't seem there's much else available on the table. We may perhaps be able to make use of your spare Sheep at some point in the future, but we don't have any spare health resources to offer in return. I guess for now we'll just have to wait until we connect up more resources before we can make any other trades, unless you have any other ideas.

So yeah, it's great to have a trade route connection with you at last - I'm just sorry that we don't have more available for trade at the moment. I'm sure that'll change in the future though.

Cheers,
Lord Parkin

>... my tarding connection to WarriorKnight ...

Classic typo that I just had to quote on you

Lord Parkin's already replied, and happy with what he said, but just wanted to
add that if you are happy to consider mana for resource trades then we might
have something to talk about in more of the short term. Not sure how you
compare them, not sure how I do myself either to be honest. Although having
said that, you don't have any palace mana that I'm particularly after at this
stage either so maybe it doesn't matter.

Irgy

Here's to going away on holidays for making one reply to things out of order...

Looks like the risk of Mr Yellow wanting the copper again has passed already
anyway, sounds like you delayed the trade connection just to be on the safe
side. Fair enough really.

Thanks for the explanation of why Mr Yellow knew about the war before I did -
not that it's any of my business anyway, but normally I'd expect him to be the
last to know

Look, it obviously doesn't really do me any good if you're grabbing Bannor
lands rather than someone else. But honestly at this stage anything that might
help prevent Thoth from running away with it is good in my books, and what
you're doing might just be the best option for that so I can't complain. Just
a shame I have no real capacity to dive in and pick some meat off the bones
for myself really, being stuck in a distant corner of the map as I am.

Best of luck with it,
Irgy Arbandi

[Nyktorion]

Turn 108

We have Knowledge of the Ether! Researchc continues at full speed towards Sailing; in order to catch up with Thoth, I'd like to settle the island east of Evermore soon. Also, Yggdrasil should enable some more vertical growth. Here's two city spots I have in mind here; settling the southern one has priority over the northern one:



Here's what my hawk revealed about the Bannor this turn:



Mr. Yellow already has a second catapult! If I decide to march towards F.Destination, I should really be careful and do some combat simulations before moving; I don't want to get my stack obliterated due to those catapults. Anyway, for this turn, I left my main stack in Pink Dot to let Gilden SIlveric heal up. I just moved out some archer in order to pillage some mines; this should slow down the catapult production. On the other hand, I don't really care as much about F.Destination getting some food or commerce, so leave those farms intact for now; after all, I hope that the siege won't last too long, and one day, I want to use that city for myself, too!



End of turn shots of my empire:





As can be seen, I got rid of the unhappy citizens in Evermore and Bruti by whipping them into some usefule buildings (Carnival + Market). Now, I'm training some units to settle that island, i.e. a settler and an archer as protection from wildlife there. When I get sailing, I'll bring out some galleys next.

Diplo:

Thoth is interested in how the Bannor war is going:

Hi!

Congratulations on your swift liberation of Pink Dot. As neither your nor Mr. Yellow's power seemed to change last turn, I assume he abandoned it in favour of defending Trinity?

Thoth

So I just tell him a bit about it:

Hi Thoth,

thanks! No, it's not exactly like that. Two defenders indeed ran away, but one warrior (which seemed to have been freshly trained that turn) remained. However, he was no match for Gilden. Also, the two other warriors did not at all get far: my tigers immediately caught them, and those warriors are no more.

However, the defence of Trinity/F. Destination is a bit more worrysome. In return for the lost warriors, he just got a second catapult in that city. I'll yet have to see how fast I can indeed take it.

best regards,
Nyktorion

[Nyktorion]

Turn 109

First thing I did was to check out the positioning of the Bannor units. Since I moved up my tigers towards Mr. Yellow's workers last turn, he protected them with some warriors. He just chopped that forest, probably into another catapult.



The garrison of F.Destination:



As the catapults make life quite dangerous for my stack, I recreated a similar situation in the world editor, and played around with it a bit. If a place my troop onto the plains immediately in front of the city, the stack as a whole seems not to be in danger. If he does a full-out attack, I'll probably lose some archers, but it will cost Mr. Yellow plenty; I'll happily trade my archers about 1:1 against his remaining bronze warriors. Gilden seems not to be in danger against such a catapult attack yet. Therefore, I moved my stack forward. I also pillaged the first mine in order to slow down catapult production.



In other news, here's what my southern hawk found after his hunter passed Elohim territory:



I noticed that I have a trading connection with Thoth now. I don't see any worthwhile trading possibility yet, but here are his resources:



Domestically, I finished a work boat for the clams of Evermore, an archer in Yonna (who will defend Pink Dot), and an archer in Bruti (who will move to the island as soon as I have a galley). Yonna is now building a market to help my tanking economy, Kabhalg gets a mage guild (this will be my adept training city), and Bruti gets another archer (for the second island city).

[Nyktorion]

Turn 110

The turn started with a pop-up showing a trade proposal by Irgy.



Of course, I'll take it! I doubt that I'd have any other use for my second sheep at this point. I also sent IRgy the following e-mail:

Hi Irgy,

thanks for your in-game trade offer. I gladly accepted it
As we did not negotiate any special terms for this trade, I assume that we just use the standard ingame mechanics as terms for the trade (i.e. that it lasts for a minimum of 10 turns, and after as long as nobody of us wants to cancel it). If there's any other idea you have concerning trading, I'm always open for new deals. For istance, you might be pleased to hear that Necromancy will be my next research project, so we might be getting into mana deals quite soon.

best regards,
Nyktorion

We also got Sailing this turn, so we can start settling that island quite soon; I already started up Galleys in Hyll and Kabhalg. I plan to whip out the one in Kabhalg next turn (with all those 4/0/1 tiles, its quickly growing to its happy cap), and put the overflow into the mage guild.

Next, here's a screenshot of my southern scout. It seems that getting to Mardoc won't be too easy, considering that that bear has Combat III, and the hill giant has Combat II.



Now, let's get to that war against Mr. Yellow. As you might have seen in my pictures of last turn (I did not mention it in my text though; sorry for that), I sent my five tigers to block Mr. Yellow's workers and three warriors protecting it from getting back into F.Destination next turn. The result: they took the two-turns route, and more warriors went out of F.Destination in order to protect them.



Great! This means that F.Destination will have lighter defence when I decide to attack it; at least the fortification bonus will be lost for quite a few warriors. My top tiger had about 10% chance to win against the top warrior on the attack (the picture already shows the state after this attack); I remember that 10% chance to win is usually enough to be certain to wound the defender considerably (actually, what I remember is that two 10%-attackers are enough to have a good chance to take out a defender). Since I figured that my second tiger would have similar chances against the next warrior, and my third tiger would get to attack a non-bronze warrior (giving it even higher chances), I decided that this would be a good chance to weaken some defenders of F.Destination. Also, defenders get only half the usual amount of XP, and the highest promoted units defend first (i.e. the units which take the longest to reach their next promotion), I attacked. The result: the first and the third defender were wounded enough to be effectively out of action for some turns (the dead tigers were immediately resummoned by my priests), and the second tiger actually got a lucky win (at ~11%) against one the Mr. Yellow's bronze warriors!



End of turn pictures:

My army sieging F.Destination:



The northern part of my empire:



The southern part:

[Nyktorion]

Turn 111

The turn started with an event:



Too bad that it just hit the tile that's not in the BFC of any of my cities

As planned, I whipped out the galley in Kabhalg, with the overflow going into my first mage guild. I'd like to pump out some adepts soon. While I don't think I'll go into another war soon, adepts take some time to get powerful; I'd like to give them that time.



I used the whip once more this turn, in Yonna, in order to power out a market, and to free two flood plains for Pink Dot, which will come out of anarchy next turn.

On another domestic note, the goblin camping near Yonna was removed by my nearby priest; once it got Combat I, its chance to win improved to 95%.

Finally, my southern hunter is moving back towards Elohim territory in order to avoid the Combat III bear. O the way there, my hawk took a last picture, this time to the north west, adding Golden Igloo to my map:



On to the Bannor war... here is the garrison of F.Destination:



Since some defenders were still wounded, and many currently don't have their fortification bonus, I figured that this might be a good time to attack. Also, tigers are expendable so I decided to just attack with the tigers and see the results.

I noticed that some defenders (those which were attacked by my tigers last turn) now have been promoted with Cover I. Great! That means that they have a promotion that's useless against tigers and priests. Also, I like that all those Guerilla I promotions will be dead in this siege.



Well, considering the combat odds of those tigers, that was to be expected. Still, I was very happy with the combat results: all six defenders were wounded significantly. Even the first tiger managed hurt Jackpot, Mr. Yellow's best warrior (Bronze Weapons, Combat III, Shock I, Heavy, Mutated) by 50%. This improved Gilden's chance to snipe a defender from ~75% to ~95%. Also, the priests had positive odds after Gilden's sniping, so I went for an all-out attack on F.Destination. The result:





I lost 6 tigers (3 of them were resummoned immediately) and 3 archers, while Mr. Yellow lost 5 warriors and a catapult. In particular, Jackpot and all of the bronze warriors are gone now. Concerning the cover promotion: most of the Cover I warriors were indeed already brought down by tigers and priests once I got to my archers.

All in all, I'm now quite confident that I'll be eliminating Mr. Yellow in my next turn.

My empire:





Diplo:

Irgy answered me, confirming our trading plans:

> Hi Irgy,
>
> thanks for your in-game trade offer. I gladly accepted it
> As we did not negotiate any special terms for this trade, I assume that we
> just use the standard ingame mechanics as terms for the trade (i.e. that it
> lasts for a minimum of 10 turns, and after as long as nobody of us wants to
> cancel it). If there's any other idea you have concerning trading, I'm
> always open for new deals.

Yeah that's about what I was thinking. Happiness is generally better than
health, so I'll try and get a better deal later, but in the meantime I'm
getting use out of the sheep and don't need the spare gold for anything else
so I might as well trade it.

> For istance, you might be pleased to hear that
> Necromancy will be my next research project, so we might be getting into
> mana deals quite soon.

Great. Fire for Death was on the cards, right? You'll also notice I have Ice
connected now. I'll say straight up that I'm quite reluctant to trade it at
all though.

Irgy

Hmm, I'm currently not really interested in Ice anyway; and I'd rather take fireballs than slow and ice elementals in order to have some real collateral damage.

My response:

Fire for Death seems like a good general exchange to me. Actually, Ice would even be behind Fire in my personal priority list, so I'm quite fine with fogetting it for our trades right now.

About our resource trade: if you still want to continue our resource trade in10 turns, I'd be interested in exchanging the gold I'm getting from you for the surplus gems you just got. Would this be fine with you, or are you having other plans for the gems?

On another note, my war against the Bannor is going quite well. I just managed to take out the most highly promoted defenders of his last city and severly wound the other defenders with most of my losses being just tigers. I expect to to capture the city in the next turn.

best regards,
Nyktorion

I saw that other people have surplus gold available, too, but not gems, that's why I asked about the trade change.

[Nyktorion]

Turn 112

First, I'll catch up with a thing I forgot to mention last turn. As you could see on my pictures, I started to build the Heron Throne in Evermore, and I already put 3 slaves into it. While Evermore was doing quite well up to now, it would soon run out of good tiles to work; therefore, I decided I should make its water tiles; the Heron Throne and a lighthouse would be quite good for that.

Now, on to this turn. Here's the events that happened since I hit EOT the last time:





Looks like the Heron Throne in Evermore won't be happening, after all (according to the top 5 cities screen, Thoth has it). Also, looks like Thoth only wanted OO for that set of cultists. Mr. Yellow tried some attacks against my stack, but did not have any success. Speaking of the Bannor, here's what's left of their army:





I first cleaned up the fort with my priests for some XP (all fights were at ~99% after I spent all their free promotions on Combat). And Gilden Silveric had the Honor of storming the capital (again, his odds were ~99% after I spent his free promotion on Drill II).



No special buildings were left standing by the capturing (unlike Pink Dot, which kept its monument and market), but there's still that great artist. With four additional workers being mine, I can put all slaves into buildings now in order to save some maintenance cost. I'll also throw away all my tigers soon, probably into that goblin fort next to F.Destination.

My southern hunter entered Elohim territory this turn, so as a sign of courtesy, I put my hawk somewhere else: I made a scouting flight to the west of F.Destination.



Build queues: I finished my first galley in Kabhalg this turn, and Hyll will produce another one next turn. So, I'll start settling that island quite soon. As planned, Kabhalg is putting its overflow into a mage guild. Evermore abandoned the Heron Throne and is getting a disciple for spreading FoL into F.Destination now. Yonna got its market, and will be the second mage guild city.

With all the gold I got from capturing F.Destination, and which I will get from failing to build the Heron Throne, I can now research Necromancy at full speed.

With Pink Dot coming online right now, and F.Destination coming online in 6 turns, and the settling of that island, I catching up with the lead Thoth has built up will be the next task. The GNP graph and the demo show quite well how much of a task this actually is:

[Nyktorion]

Turn 113

The turn started with a trade popup by Thoth:



Considering that I had the agreement to trade cotton to Thoth after the war, and that Irgy still has surplus gems, I accepted with the explanation shown above. I can cancel and renegotiate (meaning "Gold -> Gems") my trade with Irgy in 7 turns.

I find the goblin fort next to F.Destination (which will be my border city with Thoth!) to be rather annoying, and my core troops will get XP automatically anyway (Gilden, the priests, and now adepts), and in the north, there's another fort in reserve, so I cleaned out the fort. I first sent in two tigers at low odds; one of them actually won (it has 9 XP now). The other two were cleaned up by a Combat III priest and Gilden. The result of exploring the fort:



Good thing I only used my warrior to explore; those forges for removing the rust effect are still a while away...

Now that the Bannor are eliminated, how do I proceed? First, I'd like to improve my economy, which has suffered from the war; elder councils and markets in all new cities, as well as foresting everything with my priests should help with that. Second, I want to claim that island with 2-3 cities; two galleys with the first settler and an accompanying archer are already on the way to Yggdrasil. Third, I'd like to make some military investments that are more long-term. I'm starting to get some adepts, who will have the opportunity to slowly accumulate some XP points while I'm at peace with everyone. Fireballs and maelstroms should be quite useful if I get into another war; and I think that at some point, another clash with Thoth is inevitable. Here's my empire, showing the implementation of what I described:







Speaking of Thoth, I'm wondering what he's up to now. His military is still the strongest (with me being a close #2), and he hasn't really used those cultists from his world spell yet except for some coastal exploration. It would be quite strange if he wouldn't go for annexing some more territory than just west Bannorland with what he currently has at its disposal.

The best scenario would be if he hit WarriorKnight next. Sanctuary will make such a war quite drawn-out, but the scoreboard would still give some motivation for such an attack. Entering such a war on WarriorKnight's side might be a good opportunity to take down Thoth from his leading position, and if WarriorKnight's would be forced to use his sanctuary, that would be fine with me, too. On the other hand, just sitting back and growing peacefully would be good, too, provided that WarriorKnight is able to defend against Thoth on his own after sanctuary runs out.

The next possibility would be an attack against Mardoc, which Thoth has already hinted at in one of his last messages to me. Indeed, cultists should yield the biggest leverage against the Lanun, so I consider this scenario the most likely one. However, if Thoth could indeed overrun the Lanun, I wouldn't really like that, that would be quite bad for the balance of power. I would probably be forced to attack Thoth in that case, since that war might be the last point of time where preventing his victory is possible.

Last, I should not ignore that I might be a target for Thoth, too. Right now, I think that I could withstand a straightforward attack against the east Bannorland. With Shock II, Gilden is promoted for maximal effect against Thoth's biggest threats: General Martok, and the adventurer who was promoted to a warrior. The only way I could see Thoth really hurting me would be a cultist-based attack against the back of my empire (Evermore, Hyll, and my island), so I should take care not to neglect my navy.

[Ilios]

So, if I understand correctly, you're getting Necromancy to gain access to the Death Mana from the Broken Sepulcher, which you'll trade to Irgy for Fire Mana?

[Caustic Soda]

Have you considered eventually building a city near the Pines for the mana? Say, sometime after settling the eastern island. The mana might come in handy if you're going mage-heavy.

[Nyktorion]

So, if I understand correctly, you're getting Necromancy to gain access to the Death Mana from the Broken Sepulcher, which you'll trade to Irgy for Fire Mana?

Yes, that (I already told Irgy I'd get Death mana now) along with getting to sorcery relatively soon was my motivation for choosing this research. However, in retrospect, I'm not even that happy with this choice anymore; I think going for Writing and minor stuff (Mining in order to get something out of those uncottagable plains hills) first would have been more precise play.

Have you considered eventually building a city near the Pines for the mana? Say, sometime after settling the eastern island. The mana might come in handy if you're going mage-heavy.

I haven't really thought further than those island cities yet, but such a city would definitely be needed in order to claim the mana though; I also have to think about the kind of mana I would like to get from this node. Such a city will definitely come after the island cities, since it won't be really productive with all those peaks and water tiles, and the most important mana types (fire and air for siege capability, and water for protecting my forests) can be accessed through either my own palace or trade.

Funnily, I did have some thoughts earlier (which never made it into my actual play) about founding a filler city in the north ; these wild ideas involved claiming the deer, and then attacking Mr. Yellow with elven deer "horse" archers (fyrdwells) rather than with tiger priests.