Caution: Brainstorming in progress (Spoilers!)

[HidingKneel]

Okay, new turn in.

Ellimist used his worldspell:



Not sure why he was holding that in reserve? But I guess the thought is that it might slow our path to the settlements, if we have to go through his culture. Fortunately, we've recently acquired some units that can use enemy roads:



And that's it for the Kuriotates. Kudos for playing out a hopeless position, Ellimist. You had some held out a lot longer than I'd have thought possible, and came up with a lot of cool tricks that might have turned the tide if the fight had been a little more even.

The Kuriotate capital came with several nice goodies:



Also, we've spread Esus to the Empyrean holy city... I wonder if we'll get some cool unpleasant events out of that:

What's next? Beating on one of the dwarves? Racing for the Tower?

We've got a peace treaty with the Luchuirp but not with the Khazad. I'm going to send our army that way; it can be attacking Commodore the turn after next. I expect this will end in concession once he sees the composition of our army, if not before.

[Ellimist]

Nicely done.

I'm looking forward to catching up on this thread tomorrow, so thanks for keeping it well updated.

[Mardoc]

Looks good

If you're willing to let this drag on a bit, it might be fun to send the Phalanxes through the portal - maybe add in a Floating Eye adept and some filler units. I strongly doubt that helps us win - but it'd be interesting to see what Bob set up in there, and the Phalanxes seem the only units that might be able to hold a beachhead long enough for mages to accomplish anything.

[Ellimist]

Of course you'll send the Kurioate conscripts in to handle anything dangerous.

How many captured units did you end up with?

[HidingKneel]

How many captured units did you end up with?

4 Phalanxes, 1 Champion, 2 Rathas, and a Nightwatch.

So, another turn played. Kredom offered Open Borders, which I accepted (does he know about Esus stabs?).

I promoted 5 more mages (arranging our mana so they got Meta II, Death II, and Body I), and starting moving everything in the direction of the Khazad border. I'll give a proper rundown of our available forces next turn (which, I'm guessing, will be the last).

[Ellimist]

next turn (which, I'm guessing, will be the last).

I really hope this isn't the case, and the others let you play this one out.

[HidingKneel]

I really hope this isn't the case, and the others let you play this one out.

Ugh... why would we want that? Commodore's defending his borders with a handful of iron axemen (and Kredom's got less).
It would just be a matter of sweeping through and taking cities as fast as we can reach them.

So, I swapped 6 of our nodes to Death and parked this stack on Commodore's border:



In case you don't want to count: that's 4 Djinns, 1 Phalanx, 2 Rathas, 3 Air elementals, 14 Chariots, 2 Archmages, Gaelan, 24 Mages, 13 Spectres, 29 Skeletons, and 2 Puppets.

I then sent this gentle suggestion that it may be time to wrap this game up:



In other news, Kredom finished the Great Lighthouse this turn.

[Mardoc]

The full bore mage army with time to develop, is absolutely terrifying.

It did really help that we were Arcane/Org - I suspect Ellimist could have killed our stack if it were even five turns later, and a trait swap would have cost us more than that.

Out of curiosity, Ellimist: were you going for Tower? That was what prompted us to start pounding on you so early.

[Ellimist]

The full bore mage army with time to develop, is absolutely terrifying.

It did really help that we were Arcane/Org -

Yep.

I suspect Ellimist could have killed our stack if it were even five turns later, and a trait swap would have cost us more than that.

I'm not sure if that's true. It wouldnt have been enough time for me to set up buffer-zone settlements, and the rough unroaded terrain that you were attacking over made a counterattack nearly impossible without airships. As you could inflict attrition on me while remaining out of range of attack, I knew there was very little I could do to turn the tide.

Also, the event that caused Blight to be delayed was disastrous. I had expected StW to counter it, and instead it managed to occur at the worst possible time.

Out of curiosity, Ellimist: were you going for Tower? That was what prompted us to start pounding on you so early.

I read that. No, I wasn't... at all. Maybe eventually I would have but I never had more than 1-2 adepts and neither had nearly enough experience to promote to mage. I did plan to make use of haste and fair winds, of course, but the main spells I expected to use were Blinding Light and Ring of Flames.

Racing toward a peaceful victory condition isn't really my preference, when I have other options available.

[HidingKneel]

Arcane was certainly key. I'm not sure if Organized made too much of a difference. I'd even say Aggressive was more important: without Aggressive, we'd have needed to wait 6 more turns before Gibbon was a twincaster (and without twincasting Gibbon, your Eidolon defense would have worked).