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

[Tredje]

Turn 110:

Udenarat has fallen! I was so focused on attacking that I forgot to get a screenshot , but I have one that shows both the captured city and Cevedes:

Note that Sareln managed to pillage the Gems with a Warrior. As reparation I attacked his Warrior with one of ours for 5 xp. Gems can be hooked up again later, but xp lasts forever! If you look at my gold reserves you will see that I looted about 112 gold from the city, which isn't that bad. I then moved the stack to the jungle tile and summoned a Fire Elemental. As you can see he has three Warriors in his capital and one further north that I think he intended to pillage the Silk with. Not on my watch, you don't. I killed his pillaging Warrior and one Warrior in his capital. I was considering trying to farm some xp from his capital, but I decided against it. I could hit it with a couple of fireballs and hope that a Warrior is left with low hp, but it would delay the capture by 2-3 turns at least. Instead I think I will just capture it next turn.

And still no word from Iskender. The longer the silence continues, the more I start to think that something is brewing.

[Tredje]

Diplomacy:

Half an hour after posting that I have a longer chat with Iskender.

Most importantly, the attack is still on. He will supply six PoL with Tigers. Not a massive amount, but they should make a nice auxiliary force. He then told me that Sareln has managed to get a trade route through Sidar lands to Bob, and that he is supplying him with Body and Metamagic Mana, which means Haste and Floating Eyes. Yes, that is very bad. I am not sure if Bob has managed to upgrade any Adepts or not, but it will make us have to move more carefully, and it will give him detection against Into The Mist should Iskender want to use his worldspell.

By the way, trade routes are crazy... How are they connected? If I am not able to kill Sareln next turn, I need to try to cut the roads going east. Hopefully Bob hasn't been able to upgrade his Adepts yet.

Some other points:

By doing some C&D Iskender believes that Bob is heading for Priesthood (and Ritualists) or Deception (Gibbon.) However, he shouldn't have gotten too far by T120, which is to our advantage.

We have agreed to conduct all diplomacy with Bob together, so that no one throws the other guy under the bus. We also discussed the spoils of war. Iskender is willing to give us all conquered land in return for:

• 1: Orthus' Axe.
  
• 2: All gold from capturing cities.
  
• 3: Experience from already won battles.
  

I think that point 1 and 3 are easy to agree to. Remember that the turn order is me -> Bob -> Iskender, so I am the one who will finish our battles, which makes 3 difficult to arrange. Point 2 is the one that needs considering. If the war goes well the loot from cities will reach about 1k gold I think, maybe more. Both during and after the war our economy will be stretched to its breaking point, and we could use some cash inflow. However, we stand to gain all land, and isn't that worth giving up the loot for? We could try to haggle of course, but the deal is in my opinion worth making. With CoL we have cheap courthouses and should be able to recover reasonably fast.

Iskender also asked me if I would be willing to trade him Body Mana to make his forces more mobile. I'm really not comfortable with so many of our opponents having Haste, but it could be crucial in the upcoming war. I also think that we need to solidify our relationship with Iskender so that we have our back secure when we go after SL/Serdoa. Do you have any ideas what we could ask for in return? Perhaps we could try to make him share the loot from cities? Or we could ask for Enchantment Mana? I don't think Enchantment Mana is worth Body Mana, so maybe with a luxury?

[Mardoc]

Yeah, I agree, put Sareln out of his misery and move on. Farming XP is nice, but it's not something we're likely to be short on opportunities for, starting 10 turns from now.

On Iskender - one thing worth pointing out to him is that our Fire Elementals will naturally leave a lot of wounded soldiers lying around, helping him with 3. Perhaps he could bring along a few warriors to collect that XP with? Frankly, that seems like the best deal - the greatest problem we're going to have is with a horde strategy (ironically enough), since we can only guarantee killing 4 units/turn. If I were in Bob's shoes, I'd be going to Puppets and, if possible, Summons (this one depends on what mana he has/can get). But we ought to be able to produce lots and lots of wounded foes that Iskender can capitalize on.

I also agree, Orthus' axe is not a threat to us, particularly since it's Fire strength, to which we're resistant or immune. And since our focus is on hordes and Fire Elementals, it doesn't do us a lot of good, either. I'm happy to give it up.

We definitely want him onboard, that will let us focus our production on workers instead of axes for the most part. Which is why I'd be willing to give up the loot, if necessary, but this is his initial bargaining position, right? So I wouldn't be surprised if you can talk him down to half the city looting gold or so. Especially because XP is money for him, potentially literally.

On the question of Body mana - that is a tough one. On the one hand, Enchantment does work pretty well with a melee horde strategy, which is bound to be half of our army from here out. Starting all axes with bronze weapons, Combat I, and Enchanted Blades is pretty big.

On the other hand, you're definitely right that it would bite us if Iskender goes hostile. It's a shame we don't have KoTE yet or in the near future so we could offer to bring along adepts for his stacks . I think, all in all, I would trade it to him for enchantment eventually, plus a larger share of the loot. But I'm less sure on this point than the others. The big difference here is that to make effective use of Enchantment, we need 1-3 adepts, at home and guarded; if we're careful it can benefit our whole army the whole rest of the game. To make effective use of Body, he needs an adept for every stack. If we're careful, lucky, or if Bob is careful or lucky, Iskender's supply of Body adepts will be limited and shrinking as the game goes on.

[Tredje]

Turn 111:

I move one of our Sons to get vision of Cevedes.

Three Warriors in Cevedes. Three Elementals are summoned and attack the city. The result:

Cevedes is captured and the Amurites have been conquered. Not much to elaborate upon here, really. After the big battle all that remained was cleaning up. I'm going to write Sareln a message and hear what he has to say about the game. Up until now I have maintained radio silence, mostly because there was nothing to discuss. Our goal was his elimination.

The task now will be to get our troops back to our capital in preparation for the Balseraph campaign. I want to start training more troops, and I want them to start with a promotion, so I decided to do the civic switch now:

I'm not sure if it's because we are playing on quick, but I could do 3 switches in one turn, so I did. By the way, I now have a decent amount of gold stacked. Does anyone know if I need to have my Warriors in a city with a Training Yard to upgrade them to Axemen? If so I might chop some trees in the capital to get one out fast.

[Mist]

Does anyone know if I need to have my Warriors in a city with a Training Yard to upgrade them to Axemen? If so I might chop some trees in the capital to get one out fast.

IIRC unit to upgrade must be within your cultural borders and within cultural radius of a city that has the required building. I'm not 100% on that, it might be more strict as in within BFC of a city having required improvement. But I distinctly remember upgrading units more than two tiles away from a city.

[Mardoc]

Cevedes is captured and the Amurites have been conquered.

Alright! One down, 4 to go. And probably the scariest late game one gone already. Now it's just a matter of getting Amurite lands integrated with the empire, and as you note, getting ready for the next campaign.

I'm not sure if it's because we are playing on quick, but I could do 3 switches in one turn, so I did. By the way, I now have a decent amount of gold stacked. Does anyone know if I need to have my Warriors in a city with a Training Yard to upgrade them to Axemen? If so I might chop some trees in the capital to get one out fast.

I have occasionally been able to do up to all 5 switches in one turn; I'm not sure if this is FFH being more forgiving, or quick speed, or both. I am pretty near certain that we need a Training Yard to do our upgrades, although I'm not sure which of Mist's possible options are correct. We'll likely want the Training Yard in a Warrens city anyway to be able to handle miscalculations of needed force.

It might be worth burning some of that gold to get to BW faster, and then turning off science once it's in to get it back; that would give somewhat more flexibility with building the Yard at home. Also - chops in FFH only give something like 8 hammers each; it could help, but the bulk of the construction will have to be by hand, I think.

Also, it would be handy to get Rantine built and start claiming the Barb lands for our own, especially the areas south of Sareln that can work coast to pay for themselves. I expect our score to be growing rapidly as we both take down the leader and grab more land, so we don't want to wait too too long to shrink the barbs.

[Sareln]

As I mentioned to Tredje in Chat, GG & WP.

[Tredje]

Turn 112 played.

Increased the slider to get BW in three turns. Cities are now growing faster with Agrarianism. Maintenance in most cities is above 5 gold, and courthouses will be needed when Clown lands are assimilated.

I also wanted to share my correspondence with Bob. I have noticed a repeating pattern in his reaction, which I find rather amusing. When I say something that could imply that our intentions towards him are hostile, he immediately responds with a statement about his readiness to fight. Then, after I make a disarming remark, he calms down and renews his offer of peaceful cooperation:

My first message:

Hi Bob,

The Clan would like to inform the Balseraph nation that the NAP between our empires will enter its period of expiration on T110. As per our agreement the NAP will continue to hold effect for another 10 turns before finally ceasing to function.

Kind Regards,

Tredje (& Mardoc), Orc (& Goblin)

His reply:

Haha, end of the line I guess. Well, thanks for the advance warning anyway. I'll be sure to have a proper reception prepared for you should you ever desire a tour of my great cities.

My second message:

I can inform you that Queen Sheelba is tired of bloodshed and destruction. All she now wants is time to rest and focus on things that are really important. Such as getting Silk and Dyes hooked up so that she can get those purple dresses made that will prove once and for all that she is the prettiest woman in all of Erebus.

His second reply:

Hah, alright- fair enough


Has Queen Sheelba considered wearing Fish? We've got quite a few of them over here if you want to trade for some, and I hear that they make great gloves or sticks or whatever. Keelyn has lately taken to wearing Gold chains, leather gloves, and lizardman-skin boots (and little else), putting her so far out on the cutting-edge of fashion that she's a lethal weapon.


I suppose that it's a good thing that you cast your Worldspell a little bit early. There's like 15 Sons at Mulcarn's Folly, it's stupid (plus around 30 warriors / archers). The game would be truly over if you had an army like that. Really we should have just banned Acheron, or Uberfish should have at least stuck him on an island reachable only with Optics, but what's done is done.

As it stands right now, I think all of the others are hoping that you'll attack the #1 demographics guy (me, obviously), get bogged down in Puppet Summon Spam Land (our greatest attraction!) and in doing so neuter yourself into irrelevancy and "slow" me down. We should, like, prove them all wrong (uh, about the fighting part, not the "irrelevancy". Yeah.) :P If you're trying to win by Conquest I guess we will have to eventually fight it out, but I don't think killing each other is necessarily necessary for any of the others. Personally I'm probably going to try for a basic Tower win or whatever. Killing everyone is just too much work :P I'm doing pretty well demographically I'll admit, but I'm starting to plateau now that most of my cities are already working every decent tile improvement and I have few expansion spots left. But "Tall Ppppy" being what it is, I doubt anyone really cares (or even necessarily believes me).


Well, enjoy the smoking ruins of poor Sareln's empire. I'm around if you want to trade or conspire evilly about stuff or whatever, blah blah etc.




-Bobchillingworth

I am not saying that Bob wavers, only that his immediate reactions are rather volatile and probably not very controlled. I think his second message is much more in line with what he really wants (us not to fight now, so that he can get whatever it is he is teching for before we do fight.)

[Tredje]

T114:

RoK is founded in a distant land. I'm guessing the Dwarves got it, but it could be someone else as well. Dyes are hooked up and capital grows to size 9. Other cities are growing fast with Agrarifarms. We have overtaken Serdoa in the charts, and are just behind SL. As I train more Warriors our economy continues to deteriorate. We have to walk a fine line if we want to reach CoL before the economy breaks down alltogether. Hopefully the two new cities will give us a much needed boost. BW is in this turn, CoL is next.

I am negotiating with Iskender about war spoils. Nothing has been finalized yet.

[Tredje]

Reply from Iskender:

Hey

I also find Body mana more valuable than Enchantment mana, so I believe your offer is a fair one. I suggest a 50/50 division of capture gold, harmonized with the military situation (ie. no delaying capure if it would clearly affect the chance of our success).

Bad news for today: in a chat Bob suggested that he's seen my hawk. I can't think of any other way that he could've seen it than casting Floating Eye, so he's supposedly got Metamagic on some adepts. To keep a low profile for several turns I'll limit my scouting to relocating the hawk back and forth. I believe he still has no clue about the priests surprise.

Iskender

So, here's the deal: Iskender gets Orthus' Axe, he gets to kill stragglers, he gets a loan of Body Mana and he gets half of the capture gold. We get an ally to a war we would be fighting anyway, we get to keep all of Bob's land (granted we capture it), we get a loan of Enchantment Mana and we get half of the capture gold. To me that is a very good deal. Iskender gets xp, gold and he gets help in taking down the current leader. However, he might see his southern neighbor grow into a behemoth. We will see who has made the best deal here.

Also Bob probably has Floating Eyes, so his scouting will be as good as ours. That is unfortunate, but not catastrophic.