The Kuriotates: A Tale of Centaurs, Hubris, and Unbridled Enthusiasm

[HidingKneel]

On the plus side, if we'd rather cut out the middleman, I can just build us a paladin force by hand in a jiffy. But seriously, we're in massive trouble, we need to kick ass and take names in at least one vector or another ASAP.

Got to build a military before we can do that!

But if we want paladins in a hurry... I think 1 turn of Kuriotates running 0% science will fund four axeman -> paladin upgrades, thanks to your ingenuity trait. So just keep cranking those out.

So, new turn, let's see...



Divination tech and adept arrived simultaneously. I built a second adept in Kwythellar this turn. They should be able to convert that to a mind node on turn 101, letting me start the tower of divination with lots of overflow, due to be completed at the end of turn 111. Commodore can build the second tower on turn 112. Might be worth speeding those up with a cash-rush of the first tower: they'll give us toys no one else can match.

Got an event:



It was good for a nice chunk of change, so I ran 100% science this turn. Got hunting at end of turn, and I can finish animal handling the turn after. Question is: where do we want to get our hawks from? If it's going to be a super-city, the obvious choice is Naggarond. It'll benefit the most from passive benefits of a hunting lodge, and doesn't have so much production that building hawks is crazily wasteful.

So, event log:



Plako snatched one of my workers between turns. I thought I had them all covered? Maybe he did something with fear? Anyway, I moved a courageous paladin to cover our workers in that area, as they build military roads.

Ilios hasn't moved. Got another look at Bob:



One of his beasts is missing. Teleported to the new acquisition, maybe?

Conquered that barb city to our south:



That gave me vision on Ilios's 4-moving tiger. Nothing good can come of a unit like that poking around. So I killed it with a second centaur. Both centaurs now healing in the city. I wasn't sure whether to gift it to you or not, Commodore, since you're still running God-King. It's in anarchy for 3 turns anyway, so I kept it for the time being. It won't cost me anything, and gives me a little more warning about enemy troop movements.

[Mardoc]

Might be worth speeding those up with a cash-rush of the first tower: they'll give us toys no one else can match

Rushing the Tower will cost us 6 gold/hammer (non-first-turn), a total of ~2900 if we rushed it second turn in Avelorn. If you gave me 2900 gold and carte blanche to improve our military, unlocking more things to build wouldn't be my first choice.

For the same cost, we could instead research up to Construction and upgrade every Centaur to a Charger. And have a little left over. Meanwhile, build some Confessors and borrow the Iron again. 21 well-promoted Str 8/6 units, that cost no extra hammers would be a lot nicer than even Eurabatres earlier. Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.

[HidingKneel]

Rushing the Tower will cost us 6 gold/hammer (non-first-turn), a total of ~2900 if we rushed it second turn in Avelorn. If you gave me 2900 gold and carte blanche to improve our military, unlocking more things to build wouldn't be my first choice.

Well, only 4.5 gold/hammer (it's a national wonder). And I wasn't thinking of rushing the whole thing, maybe just shaving a turn or two off the end, so we can time the completion of the first tower to coincide with the ability to complete the second. That costs about 200 gold per turn saved. Worth it? Let's make the call when the time comes.

In the meanwhile, yes, let's unlock an option to upgrade our centaurs.
Either masonry->construction or archery->stirrups. We'll make that our next priority, after Honor.

[Mardoc]

Well, only 4.5 gold/hammer (it's a national wonder). And I wasn't thinking of rushing the whole thing, maybe just shaving a turn or two off the end, so we can time the completion of the first tower to coincide with the ability to complete the second. That costs about 200 gold per turn saved. Worth it? Let's make the call when the time comes.

Oh, I hadn't realized that national wonders are treated differently than world wonders. That does make it slightly more attractive; I think the main question is going to be opportunity cost, then. In particular, what the Hawks discover and if we're just skirmishing, or need the centaur upgrades ASAP.

On the subject of centaur upgrades: I think we probably want to unlock both paths, despite the cost. Centaur Chargers, with Iron, are a better unit for anything but defending and killing heroes with Drill promotions; higher Str, lower cost. 80h instead of 107h makes the upgrade cost 85 to a Charger, but 139 to an Archer. Ideally any defense we perform will be active, striking out at the enemy, so we'd never notice the lack of defensive strikes or strength. Given the number of upgrades we want, it's worth picking up Construction just to save on the total gold investment in upgrades.

But...we definitely want to go up to Warhorses, as well, so Archery - Stirrups is on the list sooner or later. And at least the units upgrading on to Lancers can be either Archers or Lancers, no real difference in total cost. And despite intending to use Paladins or other impressive T4 units as stack defenders, we may have times where only a centaur can reach what needs defending, in which case we'd rather he be an Archer.

[HidingKneel]

On the stirrups side of the ledger: centaur archers also get a free first strike (I think) and a bonus to flanking, both of which benefit them on the offense.
And they don't require us to play hot potato with the iron: if we want iron chargers, that's 10 turns that Commodore's producing weaker units, and unable to upgrade or build paladins.

And I think we might be needing to play defense soon. Centaur archers are much, much better on defense.

On the cash-rushing question: there are a other obstacles between us and the super-units where the cash-rush might be more efficient. For example, instead of saving time by rushing the tower, we could get more value for our gold by rushing a grove, or rushing Eurabatres himself. We'll have to see what makes sense at the time.

Oh, and here's another fun toy to grab: 5 turns after we convert to OO, we can convert to FoL and build Yvain.

[Mardoc]

On the stirrups side of the ledger: centaur archers also get a free first strike (I think) and a bonus to flanking, both of which benefit them on the offense.

Yes, both are true. I don't think either outweighs the extra strength and ability to have 50% more units for the money. At least in a sim of head-to-head, a charger attacking an archer has ~66% odds.

And I think we might be needing to play defense soon. Centaur archers are much, much better on defense.

The main question is, what kind of defense? Huddling in a city while someone pillages our Enclaves away? Yes, CA's are better. Defending a stack in someone else's territory for a turn? Again, CA's are better. But for both of those, Paladins are better still .

And they don't require us to play hot potato with the iron: if we want iron chargers, that's 10 turns that Commodore's producing weaker units, and unable to upgrade or build paladins.

Oooh, that's a good point, though. A very good point, nice and sharp. Especially now that Commodore's got a lot of hammers and the basic infra built to be able to use Iron all the time. Picking up Iron Working, while useful, definitely would outweigh the gold savings.

Ok, let's go straight for Stirrups (after everything else on our list).

On the cash-rushing question: there are a other obstacles between us and the super-units where the cash-rush might be more efficient. For example, instead of saving time by rushing the tower, we could get more value for our gold by rushing a grove, or rushing Eurabatres himself. We'll have to see what makes sense at the time.

Ooh, good idea. On balance, I'd definitely use the gold anywhere but where we get the wonder penalty. Besides, that has the advantage of shortening the time people can have to react. They can tell when we pick up Divine Essence, so it's best if we can exploit it ASAP.

Oh, and here's another fun toy to grab: 5 turns after we convert to OO, we can convert to FoL and build Yvain.

I don't want to commit to FoL, though. Str 8 isn't that impressive if we can't give him the time to grab Heroic promotions.

On a different note, Commodore's suggestion to attack somebody:

Hitting Thoth is the fight that's most likely to be easy, once we have flyers or water walkers. I almost would rather keep him alive as a buffer, though. And as a Eurabatres training ground .

Hitting Bob is the one most profitable; he's close to our lands, so would be easy to defend, and he's got all those nice Hell terrain resources. Like, oh, Nightmares. Can you say Str 8 Centaur Archers? And Basium's WS + Paladins ought to mean he's the second easiest to handle, when we get around to fighting.

Hitting plako - I dunno. It's very tempting, especially at the moment while he's dangling mostly unguarded mages in front of us. I don't think we could hold anything, given his distance from our core. It would be an awful lot of fun to go on a pillage party and kill off his mages, though. He's not arcane, and doesn't have the Titan, so replacing them isn't trivial. Maybe he'd make a good target for our first batch of centaur archers? Or an even better target for our first batch of angelic horsemen . He's got roads almost up to our territory, too

Hitting Ilios: recommend against. I suspect he's got the power to do very nasty things to us, and of course the WS if we start winning. That said - once Commodore's gotten bored with pillaging plako's property, no reason to let Ilios keep his improvements . And if he wants to play attrition with the Angels, I'm happy to let him try.

One last subject: Uddrur, the barb city you just captured. Is almost exactly the same distance from the Angel Capital as Sirona's Succor. And therefore should cost about the same, 7 gpt. I think it's worth turning over as soon as we have it connected to our road network, city tile + Trade Routes ought to be worth at least 6 gpt. Course, I don't know where the workers to do that will come from; maybe Naggarond can alternate workers and Hawks?

[HidingKneel]

Turn 100 played.

Our time is up. We need to come up with more units, fast. Bob's got a beast on our borders. He might have a beast coming up in the other direction, from Thoth's territory. Plako hit our northern city with two doses of maelstrom this turn. Ilios has large, mobile armies within striking distance. There's no way we can defend our territory with what we've got right now.

So I think the Mercurians should start promoting axemen and crusaders to paladins. Promote whatever you've got next turn, tell me how much gold you'll need for additional promotions, and I'll give it to you. Also, I think you should cash-rush a military building in Junil's Justice, so it can start pumping out units: five more turns is too long to wait.

So, the turn opened with a new tech (as they all seem to, these days):


We also got to pick a new overcouncil resolution:



I went with "open markets".

Got us one last stonewarden:



Meant to convert to Order this turn but forgot; I'll do that next turn.

Here's the event log:



The action is going down near Sirona's Succor. I guess Commodore must have used Basium to kill one of Plako's elephants, because he's pretty badly beat up. I moved a paladin into the city to defend, and took a shot at killing the second elephant:



This let me take a crack at the mages. Lost one centaur that way (). Then the top defender was a spectre, and our units were too afraid to attack.

I had to postpone the road-building effort to Sirona's Succor, because we don't have any units that can protect our workers (centaurs won't do: maelstrom + spectre will kill them). Anyway, I've got two paladins up there now, and one paladin in Junil's Justice staring down this beastie:



As I mentioned earlier, I'm worried about the possibility of a (promoted?) beast of Agares coming up from Bob's new acquisition, so I moved a paladin in that direction. That means I'm completely bluffing right now: there's nothing guarding our border with Cauldron Lake. Hence the need for Mercurian paladins, pronto.

Also:



Junil's Justice needs to work that forge.

Animal Handling came in at end of turn. Next up was going to be Honor, but I think I'm going to postpone that in favor of archery -> stirrups.

Kwythellar built a temple of Order, Naggarond started a hunting lodge, and Avelorn finished its forge. Next turn we should finish our mind node and start the Tower of Divination. Then our adepts can start giving loyalty/courage promotions to the troops.

[Commodore]

Just rushed it, I'll engineer this turn. Bad news; looks like I can't promote those axes to Paladins. I'll have two Crusaders -> pallies this turn though.

[Mardoc]

I assume Kwythellar's next task is to build one or several Confessors? Blessing all our units would definitely help with making bricks without straw here.

As will getting a bunch of Axes on the borders, they can be Str 7 with Confessors which isn't too shabby.

Ah, that reminds me, I noticed that Valin isn't Shield of Faith'd. We should really fix that. Probably there are other units that also need a boost.

[HidingKneel]

Oh well, axemen aren't the best pre-paladins anyway. I'd definitely promote what you can ASAP, though. We'll need them to hold our border cities, and I need to start pulling Kuriotate paladins back to check Bob. I'll try to throw some SoFs onto all the units that I pass on the way.

Hawk intelligence will be really helpful for deciding what needs to go where, but that's still a few turns away.

In Kwythellar I'm thinking acolyte->confessor->confessor. (Acolyte can spread to our other cities, which is good for a couple of extra units). We're going to want shield of faith/bless/loyalty/courage on all troops soon. I think I'll have an adept/confessor/stonewarden triple set up shop in Kilmorph's Kith for that purpose, since that's where the most troops are going to be coming out of.