[Spoilers] Biggus Decius and the Sucking Vampires (Bobchillingworth / Calabim)

[DaveV]

Extra research from God King will be minimal, since your capital is pretty weak on commerce. Say you're running 50% science at size 5: I calculate about 15 commerce, so God King is giving you an extra 3 gold. Much better to turn all those floodplains into 3-commerce tiles sooner. As for weak production, you're going to be building settlers and workers with your 5-food floodplains, and God King won't boost them at all. Ancient chants is indeed good for a monument, but it's on the path for CoL. To my mind, mysticism is a waste of your precious beakers at this point.

Edit for meta-gaming: two bloodpets mean you traded spots with the Khazad, since I think they're the only ones who start with two warriors.

I am curious whether you think my idea for gifting a vampire to save my ass in a possible desperate situation might work.

I'd certainly find it tempting. The problem is, by the time you can give away a vampire, your danger of being killed will be very low. Your greatest danger is in the early game, and your potential killer would have a long wait for his bribe.

[Bobchillingworth]

Edit for meta-gaming: two bloodpets mean you traded spots with the Khazad, since I think they're the only ones who start with two warriors.

Yeah, I already have considered this actually; either them or the Kuriotates, as I have contact with pocketbeetle. Doesn't really matter though.


Your thoughts on God King are well taken. Once I get my hands back on the game I'll look into how long CoL takes to research... if it's a long time, then I'm still going to be building stuff with hammers, but I suppose that getting mining earlier works out just as well because I can simply chop out workers / settlers / bloodpets.

[Bobchillingworth]

Didn't take a screenshot because not much happened for turn 5- moved Beef onto the ruins... normally in sp I'd be a big fat cheater and explore it, and then reload if it spawned something awful like " 'Fistkill the Unrepentant', blitz-promoted barbarian assassin", but can't do that here :P



Fortifying on that lair does seem like such a waste, but I really don't want to have to deal with an endless stream of lizardmen chasing my workers, who I can't even beat in the field.

[darrelljs]

Fortifying on that lair does seem like such a waste, but I really don't want to have to deal with an endless stream of lizardmen chasing my workers, who I can't even beat in the field.

If memory serves, this does not help. The barbarian unit can spawn underneath your unit and you end up sharing the tile.

Darrell

[DaveV]

If memory serves, this does not help. The barbarian unit can spawn underneath your unit and you end up sharing the tile.

I've never seen a barb spawn from an occupied lair (in fact, I think that would crash the game). This even works with Bradelines Well and Broken Sepulcher (until some AI with open borders explores it )

[Bobchillingworth]

Something spawns from Bradeline's well? I never figured out what the purpose of that unique feature was besides the potential value from exploration.


Come to think of it, I've never had Barbatos the Lich ever spawn from the Sepulcher either; I've gotten the message that he is "said to reside within" or something similar, but nothing ever actually appears at the site.

[darrelljs]

Something spawns from Bradeline's well? I never figured out what the purpose of that unique feature was besides the potential value from exploration.

No, I don't believe so unless you get a bad exploration result.

Come to think of it, I've never had Barbatos the Lich ever spawn from the Sepulcher either; I've gotten the message that he is "said to reside within" or something similar, but nothing ever actually appears at the site.

In earlier versions he spawned turn 1. If you happened to be near him you were pretty much screwed.

Darrell

[DaveV]

Hmm, maybe that's why my blocking warrior was so effective . I thought I remembered one of those two features was spawning skeletons or spectres in one of my games.

Edit: I checked the XML, and SpawnUnitType is NONE for both of them. I bet the units I saw were the result of the aforementioned AI exploration.

[Bobchillingworth]

I haven't gotten my hands on the save yet, but it sounds like the Illians have deployed Stasis.


What a really strange time to use one of the best worldspells in the game! I honestly don't see it doing much good besides slowing early development a little and forcing people to be circumspect with their scouting. I guess someone who was relying on an upcoming warrior build for defense might be screwed.

Personally I think Selhrac would have been much better off initiating the spell at the start of an invasion- freeze the enemy, and you should easily be able to run someone down on quick speed in 15 turns with them being unable to produce reinforcements. In SP I always use stasis for a free kill vs. the AI to unlock the Illian dragon hero.



Right now I think I'll keep scouting with Beef the Bloodpet counter-clockwise around Prespur, keeping him close enough that I can run back in a few turns if I'm faced with some combination of lizardmen and orcs / goblins. Or I could just run him back right now to fortify, my guy currently in Prespur has a hill defense bonus in addition to the fortify and innate warrior city defense ones, but one low-odds loss and I'm done.


What do you think, Dave (or anyone else lurking) ?






Hehe also everyone is going to be pissed once I knock all their cities back down to size 1 or 2 not long after we get out of stasis

[DaveV]

I think you should march Beef back to the capital. Barbs sometimes travel in groups of 2-4; you could also get a low-odds defeat, as you said.

Missing out on exploration is unfortunate, but your first priority is survival.