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

[DaveV]

Regarding the AC, it was at 28 (!) last turn. Part of that is from PB razing a large Hippus city on my border, but I'm not sure where the other 8 points or so came from.

Yikes! Sounds like blight is imminent. Here's hoping it hammers PB pretty hard.

To be clear on where I attack, there's Hippus land that PB has captured, but also PB's settlements to my NW; should I dispatch a small force to bother them, or just leave them alone for the time being on the basis that splitting stacks is a bad idea? Maybe I can sic Sareln on them, although hunters aren't great city attackers.

Ideally, your units can sit in your cities and still threaten his. I'll check it out in the save. The turn order is wrong for you and Sareln; if it were the other way around, you could soften up a city and he could capture it. If he can keep flying his hawk patrols, that's probably the best you can hope for.

Edit: This just occurred to me, but if I vassalize Iskender... will I automatically be at war with PB?

Yes. That's how it's worked for me in regular SP Civ, and I don't see why PBEM FfH would be any different.

[Bobchillingworth]

Iskender's response:

[COLOR="Lime"]I'm not sure how vassalizing works, but Pb wouldn't mind declaring war
on you. In fact he might do it very soon with or without a casus
belli.

I'm not very fond of staying in the game with no prospect of making a
real impact on it. This actually is the reason why I rejected an offer
made by Pb, which in turn lead to war. I sent Cull my hoarded gc
(500). Feel free to split it among your three any way you wish.
Cheers.

Iskender[/COLOR]

My guess is that I was PB's first target, but he wanted an NAP with Iskender before moving in. He couldn't get that, realized that Iskender was planning to attack him, and decided to preemptively deal with the issue on his own, and I'm next any turn now.

[Dantski]

Is death 2 still worth it if the spectres are weak? Last I saw you didn't have that much death mana noded up.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, because skeletons are so slow and require an extra turn to get active. And don't benefit from raiders, either.



In turn 168 news, Iskender lost yet another 3 cities. He has only two left, and will probably be eliminated next turn. Next turn I revolt to warfare, and just about ever city will go to military builds- vamps, and possible a fair number of chariots depending on how long they take. Some of my cities can build moroi and some can't, even with the exact same buildings in both. I have given up trying to understand why this is, my best guess is that a city working on a vampire gets locked out of moroi builds, although who knows why that would be the case.



Dave, I sent you the turn I just played (168 ), no rush or commitment to look it over tho.

[DaveV]

OK, here's a longwinded stream-of-consciousness advice dump. Please note that I'm not trying to give you orders or take over the game: when I say "do this", I mean "I suggest you do this", or "my advice is that you do this", and I'm just too lazy to say so.

WRT the moroi situation: I was wrong about the <bNeverObsolete> flag. Moroi can upgrade to vampires or chariots, so once you have both a governor's mansion and a siege workshop, you can no longer build them. Advice the first: get Iskender's 500 gold from Cull, build 6 bloodpets (squeeze them into the front of the queue, ahead of vampires), send them to Prespur or Pavunar, and upgrade them to moroi, along with the 4 existing bloodpets who have a promotion available. Copy PB and switch to conquest at the same time as military state, so you can still take the mobility promotion. The extra food from agrarianism is less important than mobility, especially since you should be shrinking your cities now instead of growing them.

You implied as much in the above post, but I'll say it explicitly here: stop building infrastructure! Your very existence is at stake here, and buildings are not helping with that. You should have a lot more troops than you do, and you need to go crazy making up for lost time.



Next: blight could strike any time, all it would take is for AV to spread to one more city. Set your cities to "avoid growth" to keep a full food box, and start feasting/drafting them without letup until their large negative health numbers turn to large positive health numbers.



Your army is not too impressive: you need a lot more units able to move and counterstrike (thus the moroi upgrade plan).



PB has played a solid game, but he keeps leaving his units exposed. Here is a case where you could hit his stack with 3-move units. You have *got* to crank out some mobility moroi so you can take advantage of these situations.



It looks like maybe PB will do the scorched earth thing in Iskender's former lands, which will prevent him from attacking you just as much as you from attacking him. It appears the best path to attack him will be up north, following his chain of settlements back to his heartland.

More later.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah I need more troops badly. Bear in mind that I only got Feudalism fairly recently, so I haven't had time to build all that many vamps yet. I also wanted to finish some half-completed granary and smokehouse builds- they may come in handy for recovering from the blight, which will be important. The Breeding Pit build in wherever was just a placeholder for a turn, I wanted to grow a size before starting a settler.


I'm not sure that I need so many moroi... I understand why they are important, being able to potentially kill 4 units a turn, but those are going to have to be badly wounded units and I don't have fireballs or ritualists to get stacks down into red health. Considering that I'm going to have to throw away at least one moroi per centaur archer, which I'm sure that PB can produce at a rate close to 1 per turn (per city), I'm not sure that disposable non-summon units are very hammer efficient for me.


Regarding the conquest civic, is that wise with the blight coming? I'm not going to get any benefit from food adding to military production if I have a huge deficit from unhealthiness, and it will dramatically slow my recovery and increase starvation. Having all of my cities collapse into size 1 cesspools will be almost as catastrophic as a massive military defeat, if not more so- for one, I won't be able to afford to maintain a large army if I'm not working any tiles.


I'm inclined to let Cull hold most of the gold for me for the time being, both so that he can serve as a bank and because I want him to benefit from the full vaults so that he can build me that Mines of Gar Dul quickly.


In rough numbers, how many dudes do you think I should sent to attack PB via his settlements? He'll see me coming too, but I suppose that will happen anywhere.

[DaveV]

I'm not sure that I need so many moroi... I understand why they are important, being able to potentially kill 4 units a turn, but those are going to have to be badly wounded units and I don't have fireballs or ritualists to get stacks down into red health. Considering that I'm going to have to throw away at least one moroi per centaur archer, which I'm sure that PB can produce at a rate close to 1 per turn (per city), I'm not sure that disposable non-summon units are very hammer efficient for me.

Spectres are your disposable softening-up units. If PB moves in with a stack of 20 units next turn, how are you going to kill it?

Regarding the conquest civic, is that wise with the blight coming? I'm not going to get any benefit from food adding to military production if I have a huge deficit from unhealthiness, and it will dramatically slow my recovery and increase starvation. Having all of my cities collapse into size 1 cesspools will be almost as catastrophic as a massive military defeat, if not more so- for one, I won't be able to afford to maintain a large army if I'm not working any tiles.

I really think you need to be thinking short term right now. Maximize your chances of survival now; worry about the consequences later. If you're starving and losing money, anarchy may not be such a bad thing.

I'm inclined to let Cull hold most of the gold for me for the time being, both so that he can serve as a bank and because I want him to benefit from the full vaults so that he can build me that Mines of Gar Dul quickly.

Um, Cull has what, 700 gold and 6 cities? That would put him at break-even on the vaults, and some 500 gold short of any production bonus. If PB can finish you off, Cull can't possibly hold out, no matter how much gold he's hoarding.

In rough numbers, how many dudes do you think I should sent to attack PB via his settlements? He'll see me coming too, but I suppose that will happen anywhere.

5 vamps, 1 royal guard? More would be better, sooner is the most important. If you can get him to split his forces, or sieze initiative, that would help you a lot. Right now, you're just reacting to his moves.

[Bobchillingworth]

Honestly, if PB attacks with 20 CA I'm probably going to lose a bunch of cities no matter what. My strategy would be to initially use my most well promoted vampires to pick off his top defenders when I can, and gang-rushing any units he leaves isolated with whatever I have handy, specters getting sent in first. Moroi will do precisely jack-nothing against a huge pile of shock-promoted CA except give them a few more combat promotions.


5 Vamps and a royal guard... yeah, I can certainly put that together quickly with drafting. The more I think about it though... should I really rush to attack him? If he's determined to attack me anyway, sending guys off to raze settlements probably won't cause him to break off an assault, and will just leave holes in my defenses. It occurs to me that my biggest advantage here is that I can simply out-produce him. He gets approx four units a turn if he doesn't want any more infrastructure, whereas I may be able to get about 10 vampires a turn for a few turns if I draft a lot in a blight, plus whatever builds naturally. And my units will be closer to home.

He has a huge power advantage over me right now because he sped through the tech tree more quickly, so he was building centaur archers back when you / I were still spamming bloodpets. That power difference should decrease the longer that we don't fight, not grow larger in his favor. I can probably burn some of his settlements right now, but I'm nowhere near strong enough to be able to march a large column straight into his core and defend my territory at the same time. And defending my land comes before hurting PB, because no matter what I still have to deal with Selrahc when the dust settles, and a Pyrrhic victory over PB ruins my chances to win the game as bad as outright annihilation at his hands.



Good point about Cull & the gold, btw. I hadn't realized that it wasn't having much benefit for him, and no extra production. I'll "borrow" a lot more next turn (I already asked for like a 100 of it the turn Iskender gave it to him). I can use it to rush units too, which is neat.


Sorry if that block of text is a bother, I'm trying to reconcile my hesitation to act rashly with my desire to take charge of what appears to be a steadily deteriorating situation. I should have gone with my second (or was it third?) choice and been the Elohim for this game... that worldspell would be really nice right about now, and I'd probably be fielding my own personal Svarts and Khazad thanks to tolerant. Or I should be Shelba of the Clan, and simply murder everyone with warren chariot-spam. Bah! :neenernee

[DaveV]

defending my land comes before hurting PB, because no matter what I still have to deal with Selrahc when the dust settles, and a Pyrrhic victory over PB ruins my chances to win the game as bad as outright annihilation at his hands.

I guess you have to decide whether blight will hurt you or PB worse. His cities are bigger, but I'm sure he has all the health buildings. And you have a couple means of turning the unhealthy population into good units, while he can draft warriors .

Or, maybe you could ring him up and offer to trigger Seven Pines and halve the AC in exchange for an NAP? Otherwise, razing one or two of settlements could bring on Blight.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh well I figure that the blight is going to arrive any turn now just from the veil spreading or a one of Iskender's last cities being razed (he still has two left).