[Spoilers] What's Sheaim to do? Irgy controlling Tebryn

[Irgy]

Sorry for the delay. We had a blitz session on Saturday, and have played another two turns since. We're up to T30. Let me summarise most of the last 10 turns or so:
I pressed enter.
Oh and I looked around a bit to make it feel like I was really doing something. Every now and then I even took a screenshot of the demographics.

Other than that, below is a summary of what else happened.

So, look familiar?


No, I'm not just reposting the same news to try and squeeze twice the content out of it. Turns out you can get the same event twice. In consecutive turns. I guess those stars are taking their time moving across the sky, had to do up their shoelaces or something. Half wasted since I was nearly finished the tech, but gift horses and mouths and all that. As a result I possibly mucked up my micro a little during the blitz session - I may have been better off switching back to the wines sooner, since mining has the 20% pre-requisite bonus and the wines put me to the good side of a multiple of 5. Only a beaker in it though.

The worker finished, and I started another worker. It'll be done at the same time as mining. The worker has just now finished improving the wines. I'll then move it in place to mine the pigs tile (since it will take me a long time to get around to Animal Husbandry). The second worker will mine a river grass hill. I'll build 2 warriors then a settler next. That's basically that on the home front.

The rest of the post is the story of my mighty warrior in the west. I really need a name for him, anyone got an idea?


So, pursued relentlessly by goblins, they found their way to a forested hill. They decided enough was enough. Warriors should not run from puny goblins. Here we make our stand, we fight, and maybe we die, but either way we regain our Freedom! They braced themselves for the attack...

Clearly that show of courage put the goblins off. They weren't sure what to do about it. So, let's try this again with a 5% fortify bonus and more health:


They survived! Now I just have to wait... what?! 13 turns?? On Quick! That's T40. I'll have an academy and at least two replacement warriors by then.

However, the stars continued to be on my side:


Ok so still another 6 turns, but it cut 5 off at least. Pretty good for what's normally a non-event event.

I can only imagine though that they're going to get eaten by a well promoted griffon just as they finally get themselves back in shape.

[Lord Parkin]

No, I'm not just reposting the same news to try and squeeze twice the content out of it. Turns out you can get the same event twice. In consecutive turns.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's considered a bug or a feature. I recall getting the event where you choose between +1 food and +1 commerce on a tile twice in a row on consecutive turns, for the same tile. This was right at the start of the game too. That was one heck of a Corn tile! I also see some of the other events cropping up in consecutive turns. It's odd, but I just bear with it.

The worker finished, and I started another worker. It'll be done at the same time as mining. The worker has just now finished improving the wines. I'll then move it in place to mine the pigs tile (since it will take me a long time to get around to Animal Husbandry). The second worker will mine a river grass hill. I'll build 2 warriors then a settler next. That's basically that on the home front.

Okay, sounds like a plan. Going to be a relatively late Settler, but that could be fine.

The rest of the post is the story of my mighty warrior in the west. I really need a name for him, anyone got an idea?

Hmm... Durnik, maybe? Are you looking for a particular theme or just random names?

They survived! Now I just have to wait... what?! 13 turns?? On Quick! That's T40. I'll have an academy and at least two replacement warriors by then.

However, the stars continued to be on my side:

Ok so still another 6 turns, but it cut 5 off at least. Pretty good for what's normally a non-event event.

Not bad. Poison is a really annoying effect, takes ages to wear off... anything to shorten that period is a nice bonus.

I can only imagine though that they're going to get eaten by a well promoted griffon just as they finally get themselves back in shape.

Heh, that'd be Murphy's Law...

[Irgy]

Forgot to mention earlier; my borders have popped out to the third ring. Revealing nothing of great interest, other than that the land to the SE looks even less likely to connect through to anywhere.


Those with very keen eyes might spot the goblins in the southwest. Coming from that same accursed fort. I switched to a warrior, done in 3 turns, before I continue the worker. I don't want to move the warrior off the capital, nor Tom (I've named him after Mr Bombadil) off the barrow.

Barbarians won't leave the newly named Dunrik alone either:


He'll almost certainly win, but likely at the cost of being stuck on that hill for the rest of eternity. Oh well. Maybe he'll get a promotion some time soon, which will speed it up a little. 2 more xp at the moment and not sure he'd get 2 from this fight.

[Irgy]

Okay, sounds like a plan. Going to be a relatively late Settler, but that could be fine.

That late settler comment worries me, but I can't see how to get it any sooner now.

Hmm... Durnik, maybe? Are you looking for a particular theme or just random names?

Durnik it is. Actually Dunrik at the moment for no good reason. Why Durnik though?

I'm just going with random scattered names at the moment. Not usually one to use a theme, only reason I'd do it now would be to "fit in". Happy to just name things on impulse based on significant things about them.

[Irgy]

While not much is happening, here's some thoughts on mobility which I wrote a while ago and had been saving.

In my, admittedly limited, mutliplayer experience, one thing that seems to really stand out as much more important in multi than in single player is mobility. I'm also certainly not the first person to say this.

Mobility is often under-rated in single player. The AI spams units, and defends its cities equally. The AI doesn't really react to what you're doing. The AI invariably manages to give you the initiative. Mobility in single player means wasting less turns finishing them off but that's often about it. The much more important thing is to have a stack big enough that it doesn't get wiped out by the stream of unit spam that will be smashed into it.

In multiplayer however, and especially in FFH, it's a very different story.

Firstly, the big fat stack of doom is not so invincible at all. Ordinary BTS has seige, which, by way of collateral damage, allows you to take down even the most well defended stack profitably. So, when two big stacks face off, the one which makes the attack, and therefore hits with its siege, has the advantage. Often even to the point of almost completely wiping out the other stack, despite that other stack being capable of having done the same thing. Being the one to be able to make the attack is sometimes referred to as the "initiative".

FFH takes that and turns it up to 11. Although the only siege units are catapults, with the flat unit strengths and an upgrade to base 80% (!) withdrawal chance they're better than ever. However, catapults are just the beginning. FFH also has numerous "area of effect" spells which hit entire stacks (as oppose to seige which hits many units but is limited), summoned units which can suicide attack for no long term cost, a number of units with greater attack than defense base strength, and of course assassins. Between all of those factors, it's very rare that you can't make a profitable attack, and having the initiative can easily more than double the effective strength of your stack. There are other minor factors helping it along too. With the increased promotion bonuses the defensive bonuses (terrain and city) become less significant (and the forest defense bonus is reduced anyway). Also in general there's a lot less native rock-paper-scissors style unit-type bonuses - nothing as big as the spearmen +100% against mounted for instance, so the defender advantage of choosing the best defending unit isn't such a big boost.

So how do you get the initiative? Well, you need mobility. With the same movement, two stacks simply stare each other down. With more movement, you can chase the other stack around. With more than double their movement, you can run them down. With more than three times their movement you can hit the enemy from outside their range, then run back out of range of retaliation as well.

If being the one to attack is a huge benefit, does that give the advantage to the aggressor? Not at all, because the player who is the aggressor, in terms of the war in general will struggle to gain the initiative and be the attacker when it comes to the actual fight between the stacks. The defending civilisation has the cultural advantage of road-movement within their borders (unless the aggressor has the "raiders" trait of course). Also, if you're the aggressor, then you're not going to be happy to see the two armies just staring at each other across a no-man's-land gap. To take cities, you need to step in and leave yourself exposed to counter-attack, otherwise why declare war in the first place? So although the advantage is to be the attacker in terms of the fight between the units, that gives the advantage to the defending player in general. Which is how it should be, to counter the natural aggressor advantages of surprise, choosing their opponent, choosing the timing and chosing the battleground.

So, mobility helps gain the initiative, or at least helps avoid losing it to a particularly fast aggressor. For two well structured stacks, gaining the initiative is a massive boost. Don't forget that all of what I say above is in addition to the significant conventional and more direct advantage of mobility in multiplayer. Which on offence, is to be in range of (or threaten to be in range of) multiple targets and force the enemy to divide their forces, or better yet to reach undefended targets before the enemy can react. On defence it's to be able to respond quickly to the aggresors moves. These are big enough on their own, but combined with the whole initiative thing it's huge.

So overall, while it can be happily ignored in single player, mobility in multiplayer is crucial.

[Irgy]

How, then, do I plan to gain mobility? Pyre zombies are certainly very slow, and there's no getting around it. However, summoned creatures can be very, very fast.

With spell extension 2 and using haste, my spellcaster stack can:
* Move once (onto a forest hill for all they care).
* An adept casts haste.
* They move again.
* Then, although they're out of movement, they can still cast.
* With natural movement 2 for spectres and wraiths boosted up to 4 by spell extension 2, the summons can then move three squares and attack a fourth.

All up then, I can hit something from 5 squares away. Not with full force though, just with the suicidal summoned creatures. I could also hit with a Maelstrom from 4 squares away, and a Ring of Flames from 3 squares away.

Or an alternative:
* Move once.
* Summon creatures.
* Move the summons 4 spaces.
* Cast haste.
* Move the main stack back.
* Next turn, move the summons another 4 spaces

This lets me assault something with the spellcasters remaining 9 squares away from any counter-attack. They can counter-attack the summons themselves, but no one wants to throw away real units attacking summons, so unless they have units that can kill Wraiths at high success rate (and also then move back to safety) this is still strictly profit for me.

In enemy territory I can also use the high-movement summons to pillage roads and thereby keep my spellcasters safer from counterattack.

It does have a weakness that although I'll have a big range, units with genuinely faster movement (particularly mounted units) will be able to chase my stack down, as it still only actually moves at two tiles per turn. So I'll still need a fair few living units for stack defense. Clever use of terrain can help as well, as haste will let me move through any two tiles even if they're both jungle covered hills, at which point I can keep pace with mounted units.

[Irgy]

Further to my discussion earlier about the Arcane trait, I made some graphs of the number of turns take to go from 0xp to 10xp as an adept, and from 10xp to 26xp as a mage. They serve two purposes, one being to demonstrate the improvement, the other being to help estimate how many turns ahead I need to plan my mages.


So, the biggest gain is getting from adept to mage, with a huge difference of 28 compared to 65 expected turns to cross the 50% mark, and even bigger difference of 45 to a whopping 128 for the 99% mark. The difference for the mage to archmage transition is less because the potent bonus (20) is smaller relative to the base value (20 + 30 - 10 = 40, rather than 20) for that transition.

Overall I can expect my adepts to take somewhere in the range of 45 to 75 turns to make the complete transition. This can of course be sped up by running civics that give them an xp headstart. It will also be slowed down by taking too long to get sorcery and upgrade them to mages.

[Lord Parkin]

That late settler comment worries me, but I can't see how to get it any sooner now.

Yeah, just have to make the best of it. Shouldn't be too bad, as long as none of your neighbours are settling too aggressively. That early Academy will do wonders for you, even if you do get off to a slower start expansion-wise.

Durnik it is. Actually Dunrik at the moment for no good reason. Why Durnik though?

Durnik is the blacksmith from a favourite fantasy book series of mine (The Belgariad being the first part of that).

I'm just going with random scattered names at the moment. Not usually one to use a theme, only reason I'd do it now would be to "fit in". Happy to just name things on impulse based on significant things about them.

Sure, that's usually my style as well. Sticking to just one theme is tricky when the names start running out, anyway.

While not much is happening, here's some thoughts on mobility which I wrote a while ago and had been saving.

A very interesting read. FFH2 certainly offers some even more powerful options in terms of mobility, further enhancing the first strike advantage. The Raiders trait should be the king here, at least theoretically. I've never tried it in competitive play, but on paper it should give quite a huge edge in warfare. Certainly if there were a trait that gave you Commando promotions on most units in BTS it would be rather ridiculous. Could be that the other extremely powerful combinations in FFH2 kind of balance it out though. Will have to give it a try sometime, anyway.

So, the biggest gain is getting from adept to mage, with a huge difference of 28 compared to 65 expected turns to cross the 50% mark, and even bigger difference of 45 to a whopping 128 for the 99% mark. The difference for the mage to archmage transition is less because the potent bonus (20) is smaller relative to the base value (20 + 30 - 10 = 40, rather than 20) for that transition.

Very interesting indeed. Of course, the more base XP you can cause the Adepts to start with, the smaller the difference in turns between the two cases. But either way, it's still pretty potent (heh, unintended pun).

[Irgy]

Not much news in-game. Dunrik (I think I'll leave it mis-spelled to make him special) fought off the skeletons, and now has 10 turns required to heal, finished on T43. At least the next attacker he survives will give him another promotion. The goblins have circled around south, which keeps them away from the northern worker currently waiting on the pigs for mining to finish.

Out of game though, there's been some diplo. WarriorKnight initiated contact, to point out our NAP was running out and offer an extension. I've got my just reply below, it quotes basically all of what he sent.

[color='DeepSkyBlue']Greetings Irgy[/color]

[color='DarkOrchid']Hello![/color]

[color='DeepSkyBlue']How goes the life of the mighty Sheaim empire? We're sorry to hear that your scout has met his unfortunate end, the animals can be brutal in these parts.[/color]

[color='DarkOrchid']They are indeed. Our scout, pursued by goblins, was slain shortly after meeting you by a griffon which it never even saw coming. Our envoy to the elves was eaten by a spider having barely left our borders. Our other intrepid warrior Dunrik has been poisoned by goblins and attacked by tigers and skeletons, but yet survives. The wretched goblins are even marching into our land, but won't get far.

All in all though it hasn't affected us too much. We hope things are going better for your warriors.[/color]

[color='DeepSkyBlue']Our NAP will expire soon (next turn to be precise). Are you interesting in extending it? I'm open to suggestions for the length but how about to around t55 or so?[/color]

[color='DarkOrchid']We are indeed happy to extend the NAP. Unless you happen to catch someone with their pants down, fighting warriors against warriors is somewhat pointless at the best of the times. And regardless of this we are still committed to a peaceful northwestern border and future co-operation for the forseeable future.

We'd prefer to extend it to some more substantial time like T100 though if anything. T55 just seems a bit pointless - you could send your whole army our way this turn and they wouldn't arrive for 20 turns anyway. I'm not worrying about that in particular, but you get the point. If t100 is a bit too much of a commitment we understand though.

In any case, it's good to hear from you. We're always interested in news from afar. We've had very little news ourselves, other than fighting with barbarians nothing has happened. We've yet to make any other contact. Which I suppose is better than having everyone crowding us and breathing down our necks anyway.

Best wishes,
Irgy Arbandi[/color]

Not much to add, just kind of saying what I think. I dare say there's some sort of trickier strategy I could employ but saying what I think will have to do for now.

[Irgy]

The rest of the diplo exchange with WarriorKnight below. In short, we agreed to a T80 NAP.

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Irgy Arbandi

Thanks for the reply, it's always good to hear from you.

(part of my previous message quoted here)

I see your point. Still, a NAP until t100 is a considerable length of time on quick speed, and that's a bit too much of a commitment for us at this time. How about until around t80?

I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of news to tell either, but that's to be expected this early on. However, I do know that the elves have apparently contacted the Bannor. I'm not entirely sure where they are in Illyria, but I'm guessing somewhere to my north/northwest. Aside from that though, nothing significant has happened.

Until next time,

WarriorKnight
Supreme Elder Monk of the Elohim[/COLOR]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Yes, I'm probably not completely adjusted to quick speed yet. t80 sounds good
to me, let's go with that.

Irgy[/COLOR]