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

[Tredje]

I received this mail from Iskender:

Please treat the following information as confidential:

I owe Sareln Fire and Enchantment mana, we also had plans to trade Silk for Cotton. I'll leave it up to you to judge what effect it would have on your conflict with the Amurites. The agreement was made before the conflict between you two.

Iskender

Ok, so he is showing us some trust. I like that. Hopefully we can cooperate once the Amurite terrorists have been neutralized

I will agree to a NAP with Iskender. And I don't think that Fire or Enchantment Mana should make a big difference in our fight against Sareln. Do you agree? Blaze doesn't matter much and Enchanted Blades shouldn't be too annoying to deal with.

[Mardoc]

And I don't think that Fire or Enchantment Mana should make a big difference in our fight against Sareln. Do you agree? Blaze doesn't matter much and Enchanted Blades shouldn't be too annoying to deal with.

No, as long as we are able to finish him off in the near future, it shouldn't matter at all. I'm not even sure if Isk and Sareln have a trade connection, honestly (I don't think they do), but also yes, Adept-level spells are more about preparing the battlefield than directly affecting anything. So as long as we restrict him to only adepts, it'll just mean an extra 20% str on his Str 3 (maybe 4) warriors going against our Str 10 +50% Fire Elementals.

Now, if he gets to Sorcery, then we have issues, mostly the extra XP it would apply to his Adepts. But we're planning to finish him off in the next 20-30 turns, so...

[Tredje]

Turn 83:

A screenshot of the west:

You can see that he now has a Worker in Udenarat. I do not think we can stop him from mining the Copper, and I think we should expect to go up against Str.4 Warriors. There is a Lizardman and a Warrior nearby, and hopefully they can cause him some trouble. You will also note that I have drawn some arrows on the map. That is my proposed attack plan. I thought we could withdraw our Archers to meet up with 1 or 2 Sons on the circle. Then we can move in next to the city with Haste. I don't think it will surprise Sareln, but it should allow us to occupy a defensible tile before starting the siege. If anyone has different suggestions, I would be happy to hear them.

I also did some thinking on how to get our Sons across the fastest way possible.

The fastest way would be to drop them off on the Gems mine, where a Spider is currently residing. Or we could take the longer route north to avoid having to deal with the Spider. My take on it is that we want those Sons asap, so I am planning to build a couple of Goblins right before the first shipment arrives. Hopefully we will be able to see the Spider, and we can weaken him with a Warrior and a Goblin. Then the Son can move in and finish it. Any Goblins that survive can be disbanded on the same turn.

[Tredje]

1. I agreed to a NAP until T130 with Iskender. It comes with a CA (Confidentialty Agreement), whereby we may not divulge any information learned during the NAP.

2. I had a chat with Square Leg today. Apparently he and Serdoa are discussing peace, but nothing has been agreed on yet. Then he asked me an interesting question:

So I am just going to come out with it:
How are the Sons?

I tried to act as coy as possible, and he continued:

heh
I dind't think that you only got a couple of gobbo archers from your world spell
not after I did a WB test anyway
why else would you esearch what you have?
I just hope you don't come my way - I've had enough of war!

I didn't confirm or deny his assumptions in any way. I simply asked him if he would feel safer with a NAP in place, and he answered yes. We agreed on a NAP until T140.

[Mardoc]

You can see that he now has a Worker in Udenarat. I do not think we can stop him from mining the Copper, and I think we should expect to go up against Str.4 Warriors. There is a Lizardman and a Warrior nearby, and hopefully they can cause him some trouble. You will also note that I have drawn some arrows on the map. That is my proposed attack plan. I thought we could withdraw our Archers to meet up with 1 or 2 Sons on the circle. Then we can move in next to the city with Haste. I don't think it will surprise Sareln, but it should allow us to occupy a defensible tile before starting the siege. If anyone has different suggestions, I would be happy to hear them.

Well, the biggest concern I have is that it would put our stack, with no movement or spells left, directly next to at least 7 warriors. Granted, archers are strong and so are Sons, but they're both irreplaceable. Maybe it would be worth weakening Sareln first? Park on the staging tile for a while, sending in Fire Elementals to attack Udenerat every turn, and wait to move up until we whittle him down a little. Those are move 3 units, so they can hit Udenerat from there, and yet even with combat workers he can't hit us in return without warning. Once we've killed off a few warriors and wounded the rest, then is a good time to move in for the kill.

It won't be substantially different in terms of the damage we inflict, since we were planning to rely on the Elementals for the bulk of it, but keeping back will greatly limit the damage we can be dealt.

I don't think a defensible tile is nearly as important as the initiative. If we maneuver correctly and scout appropriately, Sareln will never be in a position to attack us anyway. But as we've seen, even a slight misstep can lead to a horde of warriors coming down on your head, and given enough of them, you can still kill anything.

The fastest way would be to drop them off on the Gems mine, where a Spider is currently residing. Or we could take the longer route north to avoid having to deal with the Spider. My take on it is that we want those Sons asap,

Yes, a fire elemental ought to be able to handle a Spider, I would think. Assuming that he can be summoned while on the Galley, which probably breaks the passenger limit if nothing else. We probably have to drop the first one off 1 N of the Gems and use a summoned Fire Elemental with a gobbo to kill the spider immediately.

Diplo...

Well done to Square Leg! It's true, there's hardly any reason for us to go to Sailing ahead of economy or Bronze Working otherwise. Conversely, well done to you! That puts us with a nice staggered pattern of NAPs which should let us focus on people one at a time. I still think their only hope is either for us to make a mistake, or for a 5 v 1 dogpile, and the latter's not going to be happening anymore.

[Tredje]

Turn 85:

Our city on the Gold Island has been founded.

I will let it grow to size 2 while we wait for the Worker to be ferried across. Next turn I will settle our Incense city as well. The first Son has boarded the Galley and is ready to be transported to the continent. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Serdoa and Square leg made peace on the previous turn.

Regarding the attack plan on Sareln I think your suggestion is very good Mardoc. Why should we jeopardize our Sons when we can safely hurl elementals against the city from a distance?

[Rawkking Goodguy]

Augh, meant to respond to this a while ago :T

By the way, does anyone know if a city can be flipped by barbarian culture? The city would experience cultural pressure from the barb city further south.

I've seen an AI city be put into nearly permanent rioting by acheron's culture, don't know about flipping.

[Mardoc]

Ah, thanks RG. So...sometime before Acheron's city makes it to Legendary, we need to come up with a culture source. I think we can probably manage .

Things are generally looking good, Tredje. I'm finding less and less to suggest, anyway.

Did Square Leg lose any cities to Serdoa before making peace? Did either of them lose a lot of army? What are the odds that Square Leg told Serdoa about the Sons and we'll be seeing a stack of Pyre Zombies soon?

[Tredje]

Yes, I agree that there's not much to discuss until our Sons start approaching the Amurite borders. By the way, thanks for your input RG. Once we are able to I will try to get a source of culture in our island city, as well as in some of our other cities.

I did actually speak to SL today, and although he said that part of the peace deal was not disclosing its content, he did mention that he was forced to pay some form of reparations. I can't check the save right now, but I don't think SL lost any cities. Last time I checked the power chart Serdoa was below us by a small margin. It is of course possible that he decides to trek across the jungle towards us, but that would be a very odd move. Not only is our power quite high, but he would have very little to gain from it. In fact, I think such a move would only benefit the current leaders (Bob and iskender.) Add to this that SL has been at war with Serdoa, while we have always had a good relationship, so I think the odds of him mentioning the Sons (which he can't know for sure that we have) are pretty low.

Oh and by the way: There are some barb cities between us and SL. SL said that he could help us raze the one next to the cotton at a later point. If we decide to wait with building Rantine, that might be an offer we should consider.

[Ravus Sol]

Here's an important question:
Will the Sons of Inferno get their own individual names?