Anyone up for an EitB SG?

[DaveV]

Also, the world spell only works against units in cities.

Fireballs are great against stacks of six units, not so good against 100. They also don't benefit from Summoner extension of duration. Maelstrom and Blinding Light are our best anti-stack spells at the moment, and Pit Beasts and Hosts of the Einherjar can potentially hang around forever if they keep winning, but are slower than spectres.

[Brian Shanahan]

Should have the turns finished in a few hours and the game posted. Went for a walk in the snow today (thank you Beast from the East for two days off), and got sidetracked.

[haphazard1]

Now I am having visions of Brian, in armor and with his bronze weapons, venturing into a dungeon.

Good luck!

[Brian Shanahan]

Now I am having visions of Brian, in armor and with his bronze weapons, venturing into a dungeon.

Good luck!

Stalhrim given the weather.

On the game front I give up, not because of overwhelming odds but because of what happened when I played turn 316.  Kandros' stack stood outside the gates of Froihk in the interturn aside from some dwarfen slingers and assassins who decided to try their luck down in the flood plains.  Turns out I had managed to freeze most of the units.  I pounded the stack in turn 316 winning the expected number of fights for the 60-80% range and looked at whether he would take peace, he said give me Hyol.

I mulled it over, moving units around, decided to attack twice with spectres winning one and losing the other, and went back into diplomacy.  Kandros wouldn't talk. I quit out of the game in frustration.

So here's the save at the start turn 316,  I'd take the peace if it's available after attacking the stack.

Aside from that frustration tactically the game is much the same as when I inherited the save. I actually think that Tasunke's a bit of a paper tiger. Aside from the stack which initially took Torrolerial he hasn't much by way of units showing, so he may not have many reserves and showing power mainly through tech, advanced units and pop. I'd try and hold steady in the east, until we've peace in the west and if we have a decent stack left in the west after peace use it to take out Basium if we can.

[haphazard1]

The AI will do some very odd things sometimes with peace negotiations. I do not fully understand the process in base Civ, and am even less sure in FFH/EitB, but I believe that the game calculates a "war success" score based on things like unit losses for each side, cities taken/lost, power rating, and so forth. If certain threshold ratios are reached, then peace will be considered.

So the two extra spectre battles, one win and one loss, may have been just enough to shift the war success across a threshold. Just very poor luck that it happened right then.

Do we have any idea why Kandros keeps declaring on us, other than our being a tempting target? Is there some factor we could try to change to keep him peaceful while we deal with the east? Both times our relations with him have been decent when he declared. In base civ I would guess someone had bought him into the war, but in FFH/EirB I am not sure if there might be something else alignment-related, or Basium-related, or whatever. It is rather frustrating to have decent relations with him but still get attacked repeatedly. We could probably handle one of Kandros or Tasunke, but both at the same time.....

[Mr. Cairo]

OK, I've got the save, playing now. I am somewhat time constrained, so idk how many turns I'll get done.

[Mr. Cairo]

I ended up playing 10 turns, and we're pretty much in the driver's seat now. I don't see a reason why we shouldn't be able to swap in the next turnset or two.

I'll go from the start.

First things first, I had the Khazad invaders Brian mentioned to deal with. IDK what precisely you did Brian to get the situation you mentioned, but in my case Kandros wouldn't talk to me at all that turn. I held most of the stack in the flood plain with Blinding Light, and wiped out the stack that was stuck on the hill next to Froihk.

I also saw this panic-inducing little force:

Luckily they decided to turn around next turn  

The next turn I finished off the units in the fp then went to talk to Kandros:

Sure thing buddy.


So now we only had Tasunke/Basium to deal with. That Horseman/Chariot stack ended up moving next to my Mobius Witches up from Froihk and were easily killed with summons. I meanwhile sent summons/hawks to scout the enemy to the south.

Here's the Angels:



Balderham Garrison:



Feiss Mabdon Garrison:



And Hippus stack moving from Ventry:

We had a bunch of wounded PZs and a few Witches near Ventry, but with Tasunke moving that stack West, I pulled it back into our territory and started it west, shadowing the Hippus stack.

I made this deal with Kandros:

Fire Mana is worth more to him than Death Mana, and I had decided to go all in on Death Mana anyway, since we got that source by Gridmok. We ended up with 4 Death Mana, resulting in strength 7 Spectres 

The enemy going on the "offensive":




The next turn Blight hit. Considering most of our units aren't actually living, this didn't hurt military operations at all. The unhealthiness is just something we're going to have to live with.

Here's a power graph:



After wiping out those two stacks from Tasunke/Basium, I went on the offensive, taking Balderham:



Lovely lovely.

Then I went after Basium himself:



So by now our main offensive weapon is a stack of Mobius Witches ~30 strong. I use most of them to summon Spectres, and a handfull of Hosts and Pit Beasts. I then cast up to four spells to enhance them: Enchanted Blade, Blur (for immunity to first strikes), Shadowwalk (to nullify the effects of walls and similar structures), and Dance of Blades (for an additional punch). If you stack up two turns worth of summons, well, it's hard to lose. Basium was certainly a challenge however, but in the end:

If you're wondering how that Pit Beast has so much XP, it's because it had already killed Basium the turn before at low odds. I encountered a bug the first time I killed Basium in that he would come back over and over again. I had actually already "wiped out" all of Basium's defenders the turn before, but since Basium himself kept coming back, I couldn't take the city. At that point I had to leave anyway, so I saved. When I came back home and loaded the save the bug was gone, and I killed Basium twice this turn and he died as he should have.
IDK, it was a very strange thing.

Anyway, moving on from the bug, that same turn I took Conrond Mor with massed Spectres. I moved some more up to Radonnor, which is more heavily defended (Tasunke has Xbows). But I summoned them this turn, so we can just summon a whole new load next turn and probably swamp the defenders.



At this point, Tasunke is willing to make peace:

If the next turnplayer is so inclined, you can replace Kabhalg with any city you like in a peace deal, Radonnor is the obvious choice, it has a number of wonders in it and is near our borders. Or, you can just keep going until we swap.

The latter might however, be harder than it appears, with most of our cities starving thanks to Blight, and our economy tanking (and still 5 turns until the Song of Autumn comes online). Either way, we're basically in charge now. That stack of Mobius Witches can kill anything the AI could throw at us.

So, things were looking pretty grim when the two top powers in the game attacked us, but we've turned things around on the backs of OP Mobius Witches and idiotic AI. Aren't you looking forward to doing it all over again with the Elohim in a bit?

[superjm]

Great work Cairo. I just hope we haven't created a monster that our pious little pacifists can't deal with

Should I take the next turn or wait for haphazard to do so?

[haphazard1]

I believe you are up next, superjm. Then I should follow, and we will be back to the regular roster order.

Excellent turnset, Mr. Cairo. Amazing how things have turned around from where we were, not very long ago. Mobius Witches are pretty amazing.

Were you using primarily summons, double-stacking them and adding enhancements? Any AoE spells? I am curious, and trying to learn new tricks to improve my play. Thanks!

[DaveV]

Coincidentally enough, the Elohim are probably the best possible candidate to deal with stacks of death summons.