Arise, Riders of Rohanna! Ride for Molach! [SPOILERS!]

[Thoth]

Another possible option is, if you're going to need to build units anyway and want to keep teching, you could go for the Empyrean. Rathas give you a special chariot that can cast blinding light. (They also upgrade to Knights, but this game is going to be actually over before that will matter, I expect.) Blind might give you a further mobility edge by pinning down some of his units. (And they're mounted, so they get the horselord bonus...) I'm not entirely sure it'll be worth the hammers, though, especially since I think they require a temple.

Radiant Guards and Rathas do not require a Temple, only that Empy be present in the city and have Empy as state religion.

[Molach]

Thanks for the support.

I've seen that in recent games, Clan is on the 'ban' list....with huts on, anyway.

Turn 99
Took the barbarian city, losing a catapult. The new one, I still have a combat I cat.

Kept the city. Wines for +happy, then farm all the flat and mine the hills.

Re-established Orcamon.

Alternative to settling this is pillaging all the roads around here. And I'm not doing hedgehog defense just yet....first building monument, then carnival, then some + defense buildings and/or units. Archery range, maybe, see how many I can stuff in here.

Victory screen.

RoK would give me some gold. The tech is pretty cheap to research, get a free spread. Temple would be +happy along with the +gold and ability to build more gold-missionaries. But if I go for and spread RoK, will I give Whosit a religious victory? That would not be fair way to win this...

My army:


GnP graph, power (sigh) and demos:

It seems I can pay for 1 warrior->chariot upgrade per turn. And I'll probably build 2 once I get some cities grown, and siege workshops built. In the long run, 3, but this won't last the long run.

Next time I fire up the game, I'll take a look at tech costs and such and see what I can afford. Empyrean would be fun, but costly.

Any chance of victory depends on the balseraphs, so now barb city is pacified I'll send out an explorative force to make contact. My GA is about 10 turns away

[Molach]

Picket up this from another thread:
"I may be interested if my current game actually does wrap up soon. The other conditional IF is whether you guys think a newbie like me can actually be a contender in this game. I'm not really interested in jumping in another game with one or more experienced players. "

So Whosit is ready to end this game, has no game-winning trick up his sleeve, and sees no possibility of victory even with the hooves of wrath on his side.

I'll still make a beeline to his lands and talk a bit.

[Molach]

Even missed the "Let's concede to Serdoa" thing. Hmf.
I'd propose that we do a "ride of the two kings" - see how much damage we can do and then concede the game after our brave forces are dead.

What are the mechanics for religious victory? Says 80% influence needed. What does this mean? 80% of all cities need to be RoK? Suppose I could seize _Whosit's_ RoK-holy city, then (same turn, of course) mass-convert my cities to RoK....or do I need to be in RoK to win as well? Is there a 4 missionary limit like Civ?

Just thinking out loud here. I'd like to contact Whosit, but see he has proposed concession to Serdoa in the main thread as well. If he has a NAP to , say, turn 125, it would be hard to stop Serdoa.

But I could meet him, and say that religious victory is a possibility (only not mention that it would have to me _me_ winning it).

So, any lurker input on how one can win religiously? Technical stuff?

[Ichabod]

I don't know much about religious victory, I guess it's better to test it in SP a bit to see all the conditions. That being said, I think it's a wonderful idea. Get WotE and produce some thanes for each city, without using them, like you said (grow your cities as high as possible can be a good thing, if the % of religious influence is based on pop of cities, which I think it is). Maybe try to get a NAP with Serdoa, if at all possible, and attack the clowns to get the Holy City.

I don't think there's a missionary limit like Civ, I think you can have as many thanes as you want. Not sure if you need to be in RoK to win, but I guess you have (can you get a GP for a golden age soon?)

Serdoa is probably spreading RoK to his cities, since he profits a lot from it (especially if he has priesthood). So, I actually think the victory is possible.

Great idea.

[Molach]

From the Wiki:
"The religious victory requires a religion where you possess the holy city, and which is currently your state religion to have a religious influence of 80%. "

This is not true, I did a few WB-experiments. I did not require the state religion. Holy city is needed, (not the shrine).
However 100% is not enough in itself, I think there needs to be certain pop number to win.

Now how to:
* Convince Whosit to play on - ally, say we'll attack serdoa at some point, and if that fails, I give him religious victory. All this while absentmindly forgetting about signing nap with him.

* Get a NAP with Serdoa without him smelling a Rat/Rok. say ill race him to the towers, i guess.

[Molach]

Turn 100 already? Time for a state of my empire.

My empire....
could do better.

Our scholars have concluded that military victory is off the table.

Or is it?

We shall use our military, ironically enough, to try and capture Whosit's holy city, at the same time converting our whole empire to Runes of Kilmorph, thereby winning a back-door victory.

I'll trust anyone viewing this to the full. If it is later discovered that a lurker has mentioned the word "religious victory" to any of my opponents, well, nevermind noone is that stupid. Trust. Law III.

So I will research RoK in 3 turns now, getting my thane of kilmorph. He can convert a single city, which will start building a temple and then spamming discuples of killmore, one for each of my cities. They will get mobility-promotion, and be stationed somewhere secret, somewhere safe, ready to 3-move to target city and convert it. Can't have them hanging around in border cities or scouts might see them.

At the same time, I'll scout out the way towards Whosit lands, get open borders, ask how long NAP he has and such, find his holy city. When all is ready, I declare war...on whosit, seize his holy city, convert all my cities to RoK and win the game.

Whew.

Some possible complications:
a) No clear path to holy city.
b) Serdoa invading my lands.
c) Even with converting all my cities, not quite enough to get to 80% religion
d) Need to keep holy city in my grasp for one turn before victory kicks in
e) Any of the other 5 things I forgot to think about.

Wellwell. Our official plan, as far as Serdoa knows, is that I'll invade him with a big stack of chariots. He is preparing for this, getting ready to smash it then counterattack. But what if I don't show up? I think Serdoa will act a bit like Montgomery; wait until victory is assured before fighting. He won't wait forever, but perhaps long enough for this to work?

Research RoK- 3 turns.
Build temple and 8 disciple-guys - 20 turns.
Invade Whosit, take his holy city, convert all my cities to RoK - 1 turn.

So. Victory by turn 124.

Cowardly opening a big lair. Level 5 units means more than 50% chance of big good...but still.

1 mistform + 4 mistform followers would ruin my lands, as my buff units suck on defense.

My cities, what they're up to:


Got 'carried away' here, literally...Axeman 'had to' kill a griffon. Which showed a bear in range, which my adventurer chariot had to kill to protect him. Fortunately no more units here.
Remind me to get a scouting warrior here, to watch for Orcs (Barbarian or Serdoan)

I'll keep the adventurer safe & tucked away from whosit - since it is eligible for 'raider' promotion. Had to take combat 5 for it to have sensible odds, but raider is still fair game. No point going drill, I'll never get blitz enabled.

And these Tenacious Demos:

[Ichabod]

Is it secret?!! Is it safe?!?!

How much happiness do you have across your empire? Focus your cities on growing population, when possible. That'll help with the % later. More happiness would make things easier, but growing into unhappiness is not a problem (like UN victories in BTS, more pop = more votes, no matter if the pop is unhappy). If you have spare worker turns, I'd farm over cottages and second copies of resources. You don't need commerce anymore (can we get to Horse Archers soon? they are probably still worth it and we won't have zero teching power anyway). If it was at all possible to do without a revolt, getting out of Aristocracy could be in order.

Edit: We need to find a way to discover how much population we have in the world right now. Then we can calculate how much our cities would be worth in the religious influence percentage (if I understand how it works).

Hopefully Serdoa won't go for a new religion (hopefully he's teching for Tower and IW), but hope is really the only thing we can do about this.

[HidingKneel]

I love it.

[Mardoc]

Edit: We need to find a way to discover how much population we have in the world right now. Then we can calculate how much our cities would be worth in the religious influence percentage (if I understand how it works).

The victory screen would tell you this, under the Domination section.

Which of course is how you're planning to win