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

[HidingKneel]

Another turn in.

No sign of Plako. It looks like he pillaged the roads outside of our culture, and moved his mages further north. Possibly he intends to come at us from another angle. Danalin's? Avelorn? Anyway, we need to be ready to mount a defense whereever he decides to go.

When looking at the Mercurian turn, I got an idea about how to get ourselves a cheap Mercurian workforce...



If he keeps his workforce out like that, it'd be easy. Just run in Basium and another fast unit to kill his defenders (Mercurians don't have other fast units yet, but they should have a bunch soon).

The big news of the turn is that I swapped to agrarianism, and we're no longer starving! Well, we're no longer starving in Kwythellar and Avelorn. Naggarond never did get around to building an aqueduct, so it needs to starve for one more turn.

Production and commerce took a big hit. But I think we'll still be able to get warhorses researched in three turns.

Started another ratha in Kwythellar. Avelorn built a centaur charger. Trying to build up some overflow there to make a run at Ride of the Nine Kings. I know, I know... I need to stop building wonders, and start cranking out units. But it's such an awesome wonder for us... three free promotions on all our mounted units. Also, I ran a test in worldbuilder: the production bonuses from horses and nightmares are cumulative. So getting control of some nightmares again would be pretty awesome for us, for a number of reasons.

Naggarond doesn't have much in the way of production right now, so I decided to start a temple of order. When that's done, we ought to be able to 1-turn centaurs, or 2-turn centaur chargers, or 3-turn rathas.

Where's the action? Only got one unit in the thick of things right now... Eurabatres. Looks like it might not be as hard to pick up xp as I thought.
Killed an infernal axemen in one of Bob's cities this turn. It was worth 4xp and did a bit of damage, bringing us down to strength 17 or so. It was enough to make me worried about leaving him out in the open, so I promo-healed to mobility I and parked him here:



Still a bit wounded, which I think is not necessarily a bad thing: riskier battles mean more experience. And more risk, but I think we've basically got to take those at this point. Still regretting that drill promotion. I think I'll avoid throwing good money after bad, and promote him in the direction of march.

Finally, here's a look at the demos now that we've come out of blight:



Not looking so great. Bob's beating us in mfg, and Bob's barely in the game.

[Mattimeo]

What promos does a dragon desperately want?

I'd think Blitz and March as absolute basics. Is it going to be faster getting exp if you heal a little each turn, or if you can hit multiple times but don't heal unless you waste a turn?

(not a leading question in any way, I'm actually curious as to the answer myself but can't be bothered running numbers or tests)

[Mardoc]

I think Ride of the Nine Kings is a horrible idea at this point. Especially in Avelorn. 400 hammers could buy us 8 Centaur Archers! Maybe even 4 CA's and 4 Lancers. We've already got the strength advantage on our mounted units, we've still got plenty of people to beat up on for more XP; what we really need is a horde. Build a horde, and we have a chance to hit plako's stack and wipe it. Build a handful of super units, and we have merely the chance to defend.

We might still consider picking up Guild of Hammers, although it would have paid much better if we had kept more than three Angel cities. But Ride?

Plus, even if we do want to build the Ride - wouldn't we prefer it in Mercurian hands? A reliable sources of 10XP units means we needn't fear running out of T4 Angels.

What promos does a dragon desperately want?

I'd think Blitz and March as absolute basics. Is it going to be faster getting exp if you heal a little each turn, or if you can hit multiple times but don't heal unless you waste a turn?

(not a leading question in any way, I'm actually curious as to the answer myself but can't be bothered running numbers or tests)

In my opinion, it all depends on the foes. But I'd think March will pay the best if Bob keeps feeding us units. And Combat - don't forget those boost the Breathe Fire and Roar abilities, too.

Blitz - is only important if we're using Eurabatres without backup, and only after we have enough raw combat power to be sure he doesn't take damage while doing so. It doesn't help him win battles, or defend the stack. I still wouldn't put him up against 8 Earth Elementals, for sure!

[HidingKneel]

I think Ride of the Nine Kings is a horrible idea at this point. Especially in Avelorn. 400 hammers could buy us 8 Centaur Archers! Maybe even 4 CA's and 4 Lancers. We've already got the strength advantage on our mounted units, we've still got plenty of people to beat up on for more XP; what we really need is a horde. Build a horde, and we have a chance to hit plako's stack and wipe it. Build a handful of super units, and we have merely the chance to defend.

Well, I think it'll only take us 5 turns to get it built (could be mistaken about that), so we're missing at most 5 units from our horde. And our main problem in hitting Plako's stack is our lack of mobility. We're not running conquest anymore, so mounted units we build now are only 3-movers. After building RotNK, they could start as 5-movers, with a combat promo.

IMO, it depends on how long we've got. If Plako's just repositioning to hit us from another angle, then we need the units now. If he's decided it'll be better to take out Ilios first, or to take Thoth's mana node so he can get started on those towers? Then we'll want the wonder.

What promos does a dragon desperately want?

I'd think Blitz and March as absolute basics. Is it going to be faster getting exp if you heal a little each turn, or if you can hit multiple times but don't heal unless you waste a turn?

I think March, definitely. That first drill promo was a big mistake... now I'll need to get to 37 xp before I can get there. And once I've got C3... I'm thinking C4 -> commando is the way to go. Make him a 12-mover over enemy roads, and he can start to be useful against our real enemies.

[HidingKneel]

Well, I think it'll only take us 5 turns to get it built (could be mistaken about that), so we're missing at most 5 units from our horde.

Wait, I'm thinking about this wrong. What I should be counting is the number of hammers. If we don't have nightmares, RotNK is 536 hammers build with a +75% bonus, whereas military in Avelorn gets a +160% bonus. So effectively it costs us 796 hammers of military. Which could be seven and a half centaur archers, or more likely ten centaur chargers.

If we do manage to get control of nightmares, the calculation changes a bit, so that the wonder only costs us 619 hammers of military.

In any case, I think it might still be worth it, if we've got the time. And building a little overflow for it doesn't cost us too much: just means Avelorn is building a charger per turn, rather than a ratha per turn. We've got another 3 turns to decide if we want to chase a wonder or not.

As for whether the Kurios or the Mercurians should have it: I'd think the Kurios. Avelorn can build it faster, and build a lot more units that will benefit from it. Some of those could go on to become angels, but we need a mounted army, too.

[HidingKneel]

Another turn played. Not too much to report.

Commodore, I've dispatched two workers to improve the land near Danalin's, where I guess your worker is headed too? We should be really careful with them, though. Plako sniped some workers near Danalin's earlier when I had no vision on him. Not sure if it was a spider or a spectre. Anyway, leave signs on the tile you want improved and some defense (maybe that Valkyrie, or a couple of angels?)

Not sure where Plako's mage stack is. Hawk flight revealed only this:



So he's building a road towards us? Or maybe towards Bob? Dunno. Anyway, I still think we need lots of defenders in Junil's. But maybe we can ease up, just ever so slightly. I feel like we need to be doing something. Maybe, like Mardoc suggested earlier, we could take a Valkyrie and just charge it at Ilios, force him to give us some experience.

Ideally, of course, we should be picking up Mercurian cities. But I'm not sure the best way to go about that. Plako and Ilios are too strong to take cities from at this point. Bob's the obvious choice: I'd still like to get my hands on those nightmares, and Cauldron Lake is well-developed. But we wouldn't be able to hold it... Plako would be able to fork Cauldron Lake and Junil's with his 8 earth elemental madness. Then again, maybe we want to tempt him into trying that, and smack him? Not sure. I think we need a plan, though.

Eurabatres swatted down another infernal axeman this turn. Another 4 xp (earning a promo), and got a bit wounded:



I'll probably take another attack next turn without promo-healing. Need to speed up this dragon-training.

Also of note: Bob is scorching his terrain to turn it into burning sands, making it impassible. Could have swatted the imp instead, but it would have been worth less xp. Apparently meteor doesn't have good odds to do damage (imps are immune to fire, maybe?) Anyway, I'm inclined to let him keep doing that. I'm not worried about Bob at this point, but wouldn't mind having some terrain to our north that's impassible to Ilios and Plako.

Brought Naggarond out of starvation this turn. Realized I could have saved us another size by not working the dragon bones last turn . Oh well. We're just barely going to finish warhorses at the end of next turn. Which brings us to the queston of what to research next. I now have a pretty good idea of how fast we'll be researching: breakeven right now is around 650 beakers per turn. That'll improve as we regrow from the blight, get more enclaves, etcetera.

Here are the five techs that look most appealing to me, in reverse order.

Rage: 9327 beakers (14 turns?). Unlocks Seraphs for the Mercurians, and berserkers for the Kuriotates. Seraphs could be handy. But they need 26 xp before they can start summoning fire elementals, and we presently don't have any other candidates. Tech is super-expensive, and berserkers are meh.

Guilds: 4389 beakers (7 turns?). Unlocks angels of death. Anybody know exactly what can see those? If they could actually get the drop on Plako, they'd be amazingly useful. If they're visible to floating eyes, they're mostly useless.

Sailing -> Optics -> Astronomy: 3479 beakers (5 turns?). Unlocks airships.
Note: we need iron to build airships. That means either we tech iron working, or we loan iron back to the Kuriotates.

feral bond -> animal mastery: 4114 beakkers (6 turns?). Unlocks Heralds for the Mercurians, beastmasters for the Kuriotates, and the Baron. All of those are awesome. Also, if Bob builds more beasts of Agares, we could subdue them to get even more top-tier units.

iron working -> mithril working: 4936 beakers (8 turns?). Huge boost to all the units we already have, increase our production with mithril mines, allows Kuriotates to build phalanxes. Assuming, of course, that there's actually mithril on the map. Otherwise terrible.

Thoughts?

[Mardoc]

My gut says Iron to Mithril. We don't need more T4 options, nearly so much as we need a bunch of hammers and T3 units. Heck, we still don't have any Kurio Immortal candidates, what's the rush to unlock other T4's? And I think literally every Angel would be boosted by Mithril.

[HidingKneel]

Some random ideas:

Once we've got enough rathas, what about swapping back to Kilmorph?
We've lost the Empyrean hero, but we could probably tech Arete in a single turn and build Bambur. That's worth a +20% boost on all our angels, and potentially an experienced angel if we get him killed at some point.

We've got a trade connection with Thoth, and all the mana needed to build a tower of Divination. Is there some way to make that work for us? Maybe offer him a loan in exchange for a couple of cities? (Hard to imagine it'll work in a no-diplo game, and maybe it's not such a good idea for us to let Thoth build that tower anyway. But we're no longer the frontrunners, so I think strengthening Thoth is good for us. As long as we're not fighting him.)

[Mardoc]

enough rathas

Impossible!

Ok, maybe possible.

I think that could be a good thing to do, but I'd request it be delayed until we've also got a bunch of Vicars busy collecting passive XP. At our current tech rate, it's not unreasonable to expect we'll eventually make it to Theology, and when we do, I'd like to have Luridus candidates ready.

Since plako doesn't seem to want to kill us directly, that is.

We've got a trade connection with Thoth, and all the mana needed to build a tower of Divination. Is there some way to make that work for us? Maybe offer him a loan in exchange for a couple of cities? (Hard to imagine it'll work in a no-diplo game, and maybe it's not such a good idea for us to let Thoth build that tower anyway. But we're no longer the frontrunners, so I think strengthening Thoth is good for us. As long as we're not fighting him.)

I don't think it's likely we can make this work. But I agree there ought to be something we can trade for.

[Commodore]

I guess where I come from on all of this is this: How do we want to win? If it's altar, then we need to start heading there now, and retool a super-city towards priests. If culture, then it's time to think about death camps and the tech/building goals needed. If conquest/domination, then we need less tier four cool toys, more boots on the ground to wreck stuff. Goals ought to inform the tech here.