[SPOILERS] - Tredje and Mardoc are Sheelba of the Clan of Embers

[Tredje]

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I was too tired to do so.

Today, however, I bring you a report.

Last turn Sareln settled his city on the hill 1SW of the Copper. I was a bit surprised by this, as I had assumed he would settle on the Copper tile itself. This does make the city itself more difficult to attack, but it also means that he will get the Copper hooked up later and that it is possible to pillage his mine.

This is the western front on turn 62:

Sareln now has 14 Warriors. His capital has shrunk to size 5. Notice that I moved the two Archers 1SE and that I decided to heal our Wolf Rider. Next turn I plan to move onto the plains hill next to his capital. If he puts Warriors there I will attack them with the Wolf Rider (should be 97% chance of success or thereabout).

We also had an event this turn. It has massive repercussions...

Will settle our third city next turn, Fishing will be done in 2 turns.

[Mardoc]

I happened to open up the save to look around and take a couple supplementary pictures - I figured you were busy but the lurkers would like to see what's happening. Of course you show up while I'm composing the post , but I figured I'd post those portions you haven't already covered.

Sareln did not plant on the copper. Really?? Sareln, I know that's a much stronger long term site, but unless you can break the choke, you don't have a long term. It does, for instance, get him the gems in first ring and both sugars - but those only matter if there aren't orcs around keeping you in the stone age!

That puts him up to 5 tiles, plus the cities, that all have to be improved simultaneously. Which ought to be managable, given odds like this:



Note that's with the wounded wolf, attacking onto a forested hill. Once the wolf heals, or we get to attack on less punishing terrain, our odds get even better. And he's only at 8XP - imagine what the odds will be once he munches a few Warriors and gets some more promotions on there!

I agree with your tactics this turn, Tredje - the archers aren't in any particular danger, but they threaten to move onto 2 separate squares of Sareln's planned road, and if they do make it into the hills, they'll be essentially unmovable - Str 6, +25% for hill, +25% for archer on hill, +20% for Combat I, 1 first strike, and all Sareln has in the area are Str 3 unpromoted Warriors. Now that we know this is Sareln's desired route, it makes sense to leave at least one archer in these hills. And definitely I agree on healing the wolf, he's our trump card and hence we need to take care of him.

If we're lucky, Sareln decides to split his stack of Warriors on the worker, and leaves him vulnerable enough to pick off. A free worker would be quite handy, and it would almost force him to train a new one instead of warriors, as well. If he doesn't, well, we can undo his worker's road faster than the worker can create it

There's a barb city spawned to the south of Sareln, which ought to help with harrassment, anyway, although I don't have lots of confidence in the timing of barb warrior attacks. It is, however, an excellent site for future Rantine-assisted acquisition, and a convenient forward base should we need one.



At the current tech rate, Sailing is 23 turns away after Fishing. Since we'll have a fairly developed site with which to build galleys, call it ~30 turns for the first galley, ~40 turns until the first Son touches the mainland . I don't expect our rate to remain constant, of course - Fishing opens up several lake and coast tiles to work, the new city ought to decrease our army maintenance costs, etc.

And, in foreign news, it looks like Serdoa's either taking Square Leg's threat seriously, or plans to attack someone on his own; I'm guessing this is Pyre Zombies:

[Tredje]

So, I had a small chat with Square Leg. It appears that Serdoa got a free GM next to the Sidar, and the Sidar allowed him to run a trade mission. His recent power spike is due to him upgrading several Warriors to Pyre Zombies with the gold acquired. Square Leg has talked to Serdoa, and has apparently been informed that Serdoa will attack him sometime soon.

A free GM? Are you kidding me? This will definitely cause Square Leg some problems (which may turn out to be beneficial to us in the end.) However that war turns out, it looks as if the Sidar and the Balseraph will be allowed to expand in peace while the rest of us fight.

[Tredje]

Turn 63:

On the Amurite front Sareln moved his Warriors onto the plains hill, and I had about 99% win chance with the Wolf Rider. I attacked and...

won without taking any damage I then decided to play a little bit risky. I left one Archer with the Wolf Rider, while I moved the second one onto the forested hill 1S. He does have 3 Warriors next to it, and he could try to suicide them in the hopes of killing it. But it will be defending at about 12 Str., so it should be safe. If we manage to lodge our Archers there, we will have a good stronghold from which to launch our attacks I think.

I also settled our third city this turn.

Now, I wouldn't trust my C&D skills to be correct, but looking at the graphs we can see that Sareln's production has taken a big dive, while his food has increased. To me it looks as if he has started producing another Worker in the capital.

I also think we need to decide what to do regarding Sareln's source of Copper. We could move one Archer and the Wolf Rider east and attempt to delay it, or we could stay near his capital and pillage + disrupt any road building. Splitting our forces is a risk, but the longer we can delay his access to Copper the better.

[Mardoc]

I also think we need to decide what to do regarding Sareln's source of Copper. We could move one Archer and the Wolf Rider east and attempt to delay it, or we could stay near his capital and pillage + disrupt any road building. Splitting our forces is a risk, but the longer we can delay his access to Copper the better.

I thought that it doesn't count for anything unless it connects to the capital, although I would appreciate it if lurkers could clarify that one way or the other.

Assuming that's the case, pillaging around the capital accomplishes our goal anyway. It also gives us an opportunity to keep farming XP on at least the wolf (I see we got a promotion out of that last fight! ). I'd lean toward pillaging around the capital until we finish, then heading to Udenerat to repeat the process.

Part of the reason for that stance is that the combat II warrior Sareln's got is, at least currently, too beefy to attack with confidence, while as long as we face unpromoted warriors, we can dominate the battlefield. So let's stay where he's not, at least until our troops are promoted enough to handle him too. The other thing is - I expect it not to take too much longer to finish pillaging Sareln's capital, after which we can head to Udenerat anyway and pillage whatever he's managed to accomplish there, too.

If I'm wrong about how copper counts (if it would improve the warriors at Udenerat, for instance), then we should absolutely go there first. Or, if Sareln declines to give us any XP-farming chances here, we do know the copper is on flatland, so it ought to have nice juicy targets as well. The only possibility that makes me think at all is that even our archers might be able to have safe attacks against warriors on flatland, which would let us level everyone, deplete Sareln faster, etc. If we can get Shock onto them, that would give us a lot more flexibility in separating our forces.

And, I think our wolf is getting close to having decent odds against warriors in a city, even. Not good enough to risk him trying that, but good enough to feel smug, anyway.

[Tredje]

Hmm. You raise an important point. I don't know why, but I was under the impression that if you connect Copper to one of your cities, the Warriors in that city get upgraded weapons. But you could be right in that it has to be connected to the capital. I will run a test game today to determine which is right, as it has implications on how we proceed from here.

[Tredje]

Okay, I just played a test game to see what happens if you hook up Copper with one of your cities that doesn't have a trade route with your capital.

As you can see, the Warriors in my second city were upgraded to bronze weapons. This means that if Sareln builds a mine on his Copper, the Warriors in his second city will be upgraded. If that is something we wish to prevent, we need tomake sure that he doesn't manage to build a mine.

[Mardoc]

I don't know why, but I was under the impression that if you connect Copper to one of your cities, the Warriors in that city get upgraded weapons

Apparently you were under that impression because it's the truth

In that case, yes, I agree, we have to go for the copper directly. Fortunately it's on flat ground, not in hills. Our combat III/shock wolf ought to be able to handle the top defender, whoever it is, and honestly I think combat I archers ought to have pretty good odds against warriors if Sareln uses them just for bodies. The real trick is going to be seeing if we can get there in time, the worker should be there next turn, after all, and he's got too many warriors in the area for the wolf to take out on his own, especially in three turns. On the other hand, it is probably worth it to us to force Sareln to fight in the open, and even if he upgrades his warriors, if we get enough XP before that, we still ought to have good odds.

It's getting pretty clear at this point that 2 archers and a wolf aren't enough to keep him completely choked, whatever we do, but we do have that nice trump card of the Sons, with the time to acquisition ticking down... . We also have a good justification for Sareln after the game, why we chose him to choke - it's not just the late blooming, aggressive settling deal - it's also that he's the only one who can stop the Sons.

[Tredje]

Turn 64:

On his turn Sareln moved his 3 remaining Warriors into his capital. I am now convinced that we should put all of our energy into denying him Copper for as long as possible. Consequently I have started moving our forces in that direction. This will enable him to finish his road, but without the Copper it won't do him much good, and we can't afford to split our forces at the moment. I did, however, pillage a farm with our Wolf Rider.

One of our Archers could have moved onto the jungle tile 1NW of his two Warriors, but I decided to move the two of them together. The road will finish next turn, and I don't want him taking out an Archer at the cost of 1-2 Warriors. Note that there is a C2 Goblin close to Sareln's capital. Hopefully he will decide to pillage a farm, but judging by standard FFH2 barb behaviour he will most likely suicide on the city.

Fishing is done and I started working lake tiles in our second and third city. We are now pulling 17 beakers at -1 gold per turn. Sailing is due in 17 turns, which I think is about what it will take. We will get some more commerce when our smaller cities grow, but we will also produce some units.

Regarding units I am thinking we should build a couple of more Warriors to reinforce the choke on Sareln. It would be nice to have expendable troops for the inevitable fight that will happen next to the Copper. It might delay the Sons' coming by a few turns, but it could help us prolong the choke by a fair amount. We will also need a bunch of Warriors as support for the Sons when that time comes.

[Mardoc]

Looks good to me. I'm a tad confused Sareln has apparently decided to build his road before mining the copper - the only explanation I can think of is that he believes he has to connect it to the copper, like I did before you set me straight. Or he doesn't actually have Bronze Working yet.

Still, this is the best news of all:

Sailing is due in 17 turns

I think there's essentially no way Sareln can break the choke and actually threaten us in that time period. The main question now is how we handle forcing him to cast his worldspell and surviving the aftermath until the Sons can do stuff again. We might have to use them as Str 7 melee units for a bit.