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

[HidingKneel]

I don't want to threaten plako. I want to kill his mages. Which requires pretty much the opposite strategy from threatening him.

I realized recently that he can hit Amatheon's from his current tile after all - move two squares south along the road, summon puppets, move back - meanwhile the puppets advance and attack.

Well... threatening him could buy us some time. Time to get some more rathas out and to upgrade a stack of chargers.

For the lurkers, here's what the fuss is about:



By my calculation, he can't hit us like you say, at least not with Hemah. Puppets are only 2-movers, and earth elementals are only 1-movers unless he has spell extension. Which one of his archmages has, but Hemah doesn't.
If he wants to hit us hard right now, he has to leave something within four tiles of us. (I think... but I've been wrong about these things before.)

Of note: against units with holy damage, one of his archmages is defending the stack. We need a hard-hitter to take advantage, though, since it's defending at strength 16 or so. Our current crop of centaurs would only get themselves killed (and knock stoneskin off the mage, so it doesn't defend anymore). So I've moved them all to the staging grounds; left only the ratha and three paladins in the city.

But after Mercurian workers build that road next turn, bring them to Amatheon's (with an escort, so Plako doesn't snatch them). A road outside the city could give Basium 4 tiles of reach, which might give him a chance to mash an archmage, or Hemah. All this assumes that Amatheon's is still standing at that point, of course.

So... played the turn. Thoth denied my request for open borders (well, he offered open borders in exchange for a world map, 300 gold, and all of our mana. I declined.) I sent Ilios a cease-fire offer. Plako's ahead of him in score now, in a golden age, with access to very dangerous top-tier units. Hopefully Ilios might see him as a greater long-term threat than us. He could really mess Plako up, I suspect.

Didn't do much other than shuffle units around. At the staging ground, I've got all of our centaurs, and Chalid. That's 3 chargers and about ten regular centaurs.

Builds: Eurabatres in Kwythellar (2 more turns), aqueduct in Avelorn, centaur charger in Naggarond (1 more turn). I teched military strategy while saving a bit of gold. Next turn I'll start a heroic epic in Avelorn and save more. When the epic's done, we'll start churning out rathas.
Once we've polished Bob off, we can use the gold to replace any Mercurian paladins lost, then loan the iron to the Kuriorates and mass upgrade some iron nightmare chargers.

[HidingKneel]

My thoughts on tactics for the coming battle (I know, you know all this):

a) Don't risk Sphener or Valin on battles with less than 95% odds, unless we get desperate.

b) Don't attack BoAs with paladins. Too dangerous.

c) Our 22xp and 23xp angels should try to pick not-too dangerous fights that will push them over the 26xp threshhold.

d) Killing heroes is worth lots of xp. Try to do this with either a low-xp angel, or an axemen (an axeman will lead to a high-xp angel if it dies anyway, or could be promoted to a Mercurian immortal if we get 26xp while still alive).

e) Save some paladins for breaking Hyborem. His drill promotions make him difficult to wear down with axes. On the other hand, you can throw sacrificial axes at his other units.

f) We've got a variety of unit types, so keep an eye out for opportunities. For example, Valin's a good unit to send in when a longbow is defending the stack (as long as he's got decent odds).

g) Most likely, you'll want to send the Valkyrie in first, to break whatever unit got luckiest on its damage roll.

h) Once the fighting's done, some Mercurian units (Valin, Sphener) should have some movement left over. They should get ready to help defend Amatheon's. If Amatheon's is still standing, that is.

Hoping for a detailed blow-by-blow!

[HidingKneel]

Wait a sec, h) is wrong. Sphener shouldn't go to Amatheon's, he should stay to cast unyielding order in Cauldron Lake, so it immediately becomes another production center for the Mercurians.

[Mardoc]

My thoughts on tactics for the coming battle (I know, you know all this)

Yes...but it's important. Worth being sure we're on the same page.

Hoping for a detailed blow-by-blow!

I'm planning on it. Assuming the save shows up at a reasonable time, anyway.

Mercurian immortal if we get 26xp while still alive

There is no such animal. Can't build immortals, just Valkyries. Similarly, it turns out I'm forbidden from building phalanxes, too; Mithril is still good for lots of other purposes, but not that one.

If I do manage to get a lot of Angels with good XP, more than the Valkyrie supply calls for, then I might start pushing a little harder for Rage or Guilds or Animal Mastery or something. Not a current concern, though!

[HidingKneel]

There is no such animal. Can't build immortals, just Valkyries. Similarly, it turns out I'm forbidden from building phalanxes, too; Mithril is still good for lots of other purposes, but not that one.

Oh, that is unfortunate....

If I do manage to get a lot of Angels with good XP, more than the Valkyrie supply calls for, then I might start pushing a little harder for Rage or Guilds or Animal Mastery or something. Not a current concern, though!

How about warhorses? That unlocks two top-tier angel upgrades, and lots of goodies for the Kuriotates too.

[Mardoc]

Oh, that is unfortunate....

Don't complain too much! We still have room for 8 Immortal/Immortal UU's, after all, if we can ever get some XP on Kurio melee units. And 8 Paladins, and simultaneous heroes from two religions, and...

How about warhorses? That unlocks two top-tier angel upgrades, and lots of goodies for the Kuriotates too.

It would be a very nice tech to have. But it's irrelevant for me until I get a bunch of 5+ and 10+ XP Angels, beyond what's needed for Valks. And in any event, at the moment Airships would help us more than Repentant Angels and Ophanim.

So...put it on the back burner. With Mithril and Guilds and Sorcery, in the 'nice to have if we survive the next 5 turns' category .

[HidingKneel]

It would be a very nice tech to have. But it's irrelevant for me until I get a bunch of 5+ and 10+ XP Angels, beyond what's needed for Valks. And in any event, at the moment Airships would help us more than Repentant Angels and Ophanim.

Disagree. With twenty-odd units to kill in Cauldron Lake, a lot of the gruntwork is going to fall on the dozen or so axemen/crusaders currently having 3xp. So I expect it should be fairly easy for you to get four angels with 5xp. Which you could then promote to C2/mobility 1 repentant angels. Equipped with iron, those are 4-move units with effective strength 25.2 (at least until they kill a living unit). Easily replaceable, too.

[Mardoc]

Disagree. With twenty-odd units to kill in Cauldron Lake, a lot of the gruntwork is going to fall on the dozen or so axemen/crusaders currently having 3xp. So I expect it should be fairly easy for you to get four angels with 5xp. Which you could then promote to C2/mobility 1 repentant angels. Equipped with iron, those are 4-move units with effective strength 25.2 (at least until they kill a living unit). Easily replaceable, too.

I think there's going to be FOUR chickens. From those eggs there .

You might be right, getting 5 and 10 XP is a lot easier than 26. I still think Airships would do us more good, but I'll admit I can think of quite a few uses for Str 18 base units. And they can always be deleted and replaced once they're too saddened by the deaths of the living.

But let's try to get through the next turn or two before we get too far into this debate.

[HidingKneel]

But let's try to get through the next turn or two before we get too far into this debate.

Well, if we're going to go for warhorses, I think we should sprint there. If we feed the conquest gold to the Kuriotates, we can probably unlock the tech in 6 or 7 turns. And my guess would be that we could arrange to instantly upgrade four repentant angels, and maybe an Ophanim or two (if Plako kills Amatheon's, he's going to give the Mercurians two or three 10+ xp angels).

If we're going with airships, it makes sense to save gold this turn, and start upgrading.

So, let's see what we've got:

Airship plan: Requires 3500 beakers of tech. That'll let us build airships, but those aren't cheap. That's a delivery system for extra long range attacks, but only by Kuriotate units. Right now, we don't have any Kuriotate units that will have odds on one of those archmages. Much less that can punch through the whole stack. Even if we ignore everything but the archmages, Plako can summon 4 earth elementals per turn to use as stack defenders. An airship can carry 7 units at most. The only way we'll be able to scratch him is to use our heavy hitters: Chalid and/or Eurabatres. Maybe that would be enough to do a bit of damage, but we'd almost certainly lose everything to his counterattack.

Unless... maybe the plan should be to load the airship up with rathas, and hope not to wipe his stack but to slow it enough for Mercurian heavy-hitters to reach? That might work, but requires a bit hammer investment: I'm not sure how soon we could have that ready to go. It's also risky... if most of his units resist, we'll just lose a bunch of rathas and an airship, and be back to square one. Also, we can execute this plan without airships. If we're willing to risk rathas and workers, we can use 4 workers to build two tiles of road, which will let mobility-promoted rathas attempt to blind units up to seven tiles away. That's enough to reach any mage stack that's threatening with elementals, certainly.

Warhorses plan: Requires a heftier investment of ~6000 beakers. My guess is that it will instantly pay off by enabling some angel upgrades. Repentant angels will defend cities as well as Basium, and we won't have to worry about them losing their edge to Plako's earth elemental bombardments. They're also 4-movers, so they ought to be able to hit him if he's going to get close enough to lob the elementals at us (especially if we're willing to build roads out to him). Doesn't give us as much range as the airships, but Mercurian 4-movers are actually 12-movers as soon as they reach the enemy road network.

And that's just the repentant angels... the tech also unlocks Ophanim (which we may or may not be able to take advantage of), centaur lancers (a nice thing to build in Avelorn), the Kuriotate hero, and the Ride of the Nine Kings (though maybe that's a con, if I can't stop myself from building the shiny wonder in place of units). Iron lancers with nightmares and bless are strength 15 on the offense, so they've got a much better shot at getting through his defenses than our current crop (who'll be strength 9 at the most).

[Mardoc]

All right . D-Day is upon us! A quick glance around the empire verifies that Amatheon's hasn't been burned yet, and the builds are pretty much as I want.

First step - verify we still own that plot. We do! [SIZE="1"]barely[/SIZE]



Second step: put a road where we want it:


Third step: Advan- wait a sec?


Well, we've found Ilios' army, I think. Here's a closer look:


Bob - thank you not only for building us a road, but for making sure it passed through the Mirror of Heaven!

We still have time to abort, if you want, HK. I'll wait for your input before I play the rest of the turn. We'd lose the workers, and potentially have to worry about Rosier rampaging, but otherwise return to status quo.

Only I'm not convinced anything gets better by waiting - and for that matter, I think we might be able to take on Ilios - his army hasn't improved nearly as much as I was afraid it might. Same as before, with a couple changes. He's replaced the horsemen, added a pair of horse archers, and given them all Nightmares. And...he's added 5 more priests of leaves and a confessor to his stack. I think. I count 22 Tigers, but only 16 Priests - I suppose the question is whether that represents Priests from elsewhere in his empire, or if the UI is faulty. Still, his stack hasn't improved nearly as much as ours has! This might even turn into a golden opportunity, if he attacks us anyway, to pick up XP and finally cripple his main army.

I would make a couple changes to the plan, though. First, I'd aim to reduce Bob to a single defender, but not quite take Cauldron Lake this turn. We need our stack in one tile, not two, and we'd prefer CL not burn on top of that.

Second, I'd skip casting Sanctify, and instead save Sphener for a post-battle Heal cast.

But I think the angels can take Bob's main forces, and still be left with a pretty solid stack. And then you'll be able to reinforce with that pile of centaurs and Chalid, to make the situation even better. Yeah, our forces will be somewhat wounded, but we're still talking 25 Angelic units + 15 Kurio units minus casualties, all high quality, to defend against Ilios' 62-unit (or 56-unit, if the priests I don't see aren't there) stack, almost all low quality.