[SPOILERS] Balseraphs: A Guide to Mis-Management (by Kyan and TT)

[DaveV]

Ok, the defenses look a little thin, but our powergraph is so awesome that maybe people will be afraid to attack. First priority seems to be revenge on Nicolai. We started with an interesting tactical problem:



The big puppet stack couldn't reach New Orleans with summons this turn: the tile north of the single puppet was filled with flames and we couldn't move through it. The irrigated tile west of New Orleans is marsh, and costs two moves.

Fortunately, there was a Spring adept nearby; his puppet put out the flames, and the stack was able to move to the tile west of the mountains. Nick had a secondary stack with some pyre zombies and adepts on the hill tile northeast of New Orleans, and I concentrated my firepower on that one, wiping it out. The cool thing about attacking against pyre zombies is that their death splash damages neighboring friendly units, so his stack at New Orleans is pretty badly damaged now:



And none of that damage is from direct attacks, so he can't use promotions to heal. Since I pillaged the road off his pig, he'll have a tough time hitting my stack with his pyre zombies. With luck, I can take out both New Orleans and Babylon next turn. A lot depends on what that stupid stack of Azers decides to do. It would be nice if they attack New Orleans.

[Krill]

OK, got a bit more time now. I'm not spoiled, so can still answer any questions you have.

The stack of Azers got popped from the shipwreck and has sat on that tile for the past couple of turns.

Also, nicely played. Nox Noctis should give you a nice little defesnive bonus AFAICT, against Brian and Rawkking (who teched Poisons which is junk against a bunch of adept spammed puppets protecting the mages).

The capital and Al Koholic have basically been spamming the 8XP adepts and probably could keep on doing that until the end of the game. The rest of the cities are pretty much ready to take on Blight so you can trigger that whenever you want, and after blight is triggered you could always pop the WS and into agrarianism if you felt you needed the food. Other than that, just kill people, and if you really want to, you can expand over to the former Grigori city that is ours that Brian is holding onto. Not I think it's a good idea necessarily.

[novice]

What does your world spell do?

[DaveV]

you can expand over to the former Grigori city that is ours that Brian is holding onto. Not I think it's a good idea necessarily.

Is that the one called "InsertNameHere", in revolt and garrisoned by three Elohim horsemen? What's the deal there? Can I just gift it to him for some "Our trade relations have been fair and forthright" bonus? It's pretty much indefensible.

Do you know whether any of the other civs have used their world spells yet (I know you already said Brian hasn't)?

Just in case any lurkers are reading, here's a shot of the aforementioned awesome powergraph:



Edit for crosspost with novice: double length golden age

[DaveV]

More questions: do you have any feel for the Hippus-Ljos relations? If I were Gaspar, I'd be trying to make an attack through Hippus territory while the Balls forces are busy in the devil worshipper lands. Does our deal with Rawkking include a "no enemy right of passage" clause? I guess this will all be moot if Lewwyn doesn't honor the treaties, but let's assume he does.

Do we have any right of passage through Hippus lands? A pincer on the elves might be a fun idea...

You said we have no NAP with Brian: do you think he's gearing up to attack us, or is he trying to hide behind his WS and achieve some peaceful victory?

[Krill]

More questions: do you have any feel for the Hippus-Ljos relations? If I were Gaspar, I'd be trying to make an attack through Hippus territory while the Balls forces are busy in the devil worshipper lands. Does our deal with Rawkking include a "no enemy right of passage" clause? I guess this will all be moot if Lewwyn doesn't honor the treaties, but let's assume he does.

Do we have any right of passage through Hippus lands? A pincer on the elves might be a fun idea...

You said we have no NAP with Brian: do you think he's gearing up to attack us, or is he trying to hide behind his WS and achieve some peaceful victory?

No one has used their world spells yet I think.

NAP with Hippus involves no right of passage IIRC.

Brian is probably just trying to bide his time and will invade when the others do, but tbh his army is a bunch of horsemen and Valin. 6 mages and 6 adepts could hold off what he has currently, and he doesn't have much better stuff he could build anyway.

You can gift that crappy city back if you want. Other option is to set up to invade him and destroy as many cities in a single turn, before he can trigger Sanctuary then retreat to hide behind NN.

I have no feel for Hippus-Ljos relations because I never did any diplo, but I suspect that they were cordial and will only improve with Lewwyn joining hte game.

[DaveV]

I made a couple big mistakes last turn: not realizing Nicolae had Engineering, and not blocking the roads to prevent him using his extra road mobility to hit my stacks. He killed a bunch of puppets and a few mages, but it could have been a lot worse: he probably would have wiped my mage stack if he could have come up with another pyre zombie or two.

After this turn, here's the situation:



The unit listing on the lower left is the stack north of the azer stack. He can probably kill some more mages if he attacks my mage stack (to its northwest). Alternatively, he can try to recapture New Orleans. My goal is to wipe Nic as fast as I can, since he'll just keep grinding out pyre zombies.

The stack listing for Babylon clearly shows that it's already a 3 vs. 1, probably soon to become a 4 vs. 1. This is not going to end well .

[Krill]

Just keep on going, you're doing great. Getting out of that bottleneck was the biggest problem for any invasion, if it cost you 6 mages or less, then I think that's a reasonable cost fwiw.

[DaveV]

Hey, Krill, there were a couple workers on autopath back home from one of Brian's cities; they looked as though they might have been captured from the Infernals?

[Krill]

Yeah...I captured both of the Infernals starting settlers.