[Spoilers] Defining the phrase "€˜Hung Like a Horse"€™: Pb & the Kuriotates

[pocketbeetle]

I'm amused to note you noticed Buffy's immunity to haste before you needed 'her' in battle. I was hoping that would have involved some indiscriminate cursing at some point!
I think you have much to fear from the LOS'ers.

Evil lurker!

Did you honestly think we would miss the little OO priest sign you have on that lake near the fort? Or did you just think Bob would never think of it

I’m trusting Selrahc enough with an uncensored screenshot.
Bob almost certainly has considered the full implication of cultists and water tiles, but I’m not willing to quash the slim hope that maybe he screws up.

Tactically, he’s doing well so far, the spectres on the cow was good.
In terms of overall strategy though, I’m starting to think that he believes walking a bunch of scruffy vampires up to other players' lands will be enough to make them fall down and surrender to him.
See below.


Diplo:

Received a PM this morning:

Just a quick PM that I sent you an email detailing some (numerous) terms regarding peace, which you may wish to read over before you play your turn. Or not, whatever. But if you do want peace, it's probably for the best that we work it out sooner rather than later, since I'm going to treat our relations as total war until we sign something.

Normally I would wait and collate some diplo posts together, but this one I just had to post straight away!

So. I see that the Kuriotates are as cowardly as ever, willing to literally turn their craven tails to avoid combat, rather than stay and fight for their own settlements. I suppose I should have expected no better, given their only previous combat experience has been the slaughter of the clearly helpless peaceful Hippus farmers and pastoralists.

Though you started this war with plague and malice, and I would be well-advised to wipe your wretched presence from Erebus, I remain as magnanimous in triumph as I am while guiding my precious fod...er, friends. I believe that my terms are just, given that you have no possible means of protecting your laughably overextended empire and clearly cannot match me in the field. They are as follows:

* You will make peace with Me, Cull, and Sareln. You will not impose any conditions on your treaty with Sareln- he is to be considered my vassal for all intents and purposes [OOC: I only haven't vassalized him yet because I'd steal some of his tiles due to culture mechanics... just pretend he's my official vassal for the rest of the game]

* We will sign an NAP. I am amendable to negotiating the length; as I informed you in our chat, I think until turn 220 would be an easy to remember figure. I have no preference as to whether there should be a "cool-down" period clause attached; if there is, the length of the NAP should be shortened to compensate.

And the list goes on…

* You will gift me the four remaining settlements that make up the core of the former Hippus empire. Should I have miscounted and there are other settlements in that area, you will concede me those as well.

* You will gift me the settlement of Zaonce, or allow me to raze it. It is too close to my empire to be allowed to exist. If you wish for me to raze it, I will agree to not resettle the location, should you wish to make that a condition of our peace.

* You will not settle any of the land formerly occupied by Hippus culture. We can discuss you refounding towns in this area later should you desire to do so, but land in that region will have to be granted to you as part of a separate arrangement.

And on….

* You will gift me water mana for 10 turns so that I may get spring on an adept and fix your desecration of the earth.

* I will gift you any resources which you lose as a result of gifting me settlements. If there are doubles on a particular resource, I get to keep those. The Hippus mana node does not count as a resource for the purposes of this term, and therefore I will retain it for myself.

* You will be willing to trade me your entropy mana should I ask for it; I will supply you with one of my own mana in exchange (or some other resource should your slavering ratmen desire baubles or fruit instead).

And on.

* You will not settle any land between my empire and the Eastern and Southern coasts. I am honestly not sure why you would ever do such a thing anyway, but I seem to recall you threatening to do so lo some many weeks ago.

* The terms of our peace are to be kept between us alone. I will uphold this principle as well.

* You will allow me to found The Order.

* We will sign Open Borders, but not allow scouting through said borders. So for example, we can view each others land via hawk, but may not base said hawks in each others cities, unless given explicit permission. Missionaries are allowed, provided that you announce which city you intend to spread your faith to and head directly to it without diverting to investigate elsewhere. No spreading the Order to Veil cities or visa-versa. No using "inquisition" without written acceptance.

*You will remove "vanilla ice" from my Eastern borders and send him back to your own empire.



Those are all of the terms I request. I realize that the list is somewhat cumbersome, but my most trusted demonic advisers have warned me of your treacherous nature, and I wish to leave no loopholes for you to abuse. It may seem to the dull of wit that I ask for much in return for peace, but in fact peace costs you very little. I seek no restitution in gold, and I offer you a means to preserve your military and what little dignity you may still possess. Should you swear to uphold peaceful relations with the Calabim and endeavor to restore your empire into the esteem which we once held the Kuriotates, we may discuss means of continuing peaceful relations once our NAP expires. It has never been my intention to utterly annihilate the Kuriotates, although the longer this war continues the more attractive such a proposition sounds.


I am willing to discuss some of these terms, but I warn you that my tolerance for revisions is very limited. I have considered well our relative positions, and believe that I ask for no more than I could simply take for myself regardless of your consent. I trust that you will think over my eminently reasonable proposition carefully. The sooner you reply, the more lives will be spared.



In Agares we trust,


-Bobchillingworth AKA Decius

Hear that rumbling Bob?
That’s an avalanche of pain about to crash down on you!

Edit:
I mean comon, I've been preparing for this fight for the last heaven-knows-how-many turns.
I'm not going to just surrender and flop over, that's... boring.

Note to self: Found Order.


Sareln gave a good reply:

Faeryl is apparently that kind of person.

I can't do that while we're at active war, one started by a defense
pact between Calabim and Svartalfar. When you and Bob come to a peace
agreement, I will be happy to provide you with that mana. Until then,
I'm sure you're lawyers won't mind pinch-hitting as infantry,
stake-handlers, and medics.

The fault is mine, I should have had a war-clause in there, but it
seemed unlikely that you and Bob would come to blows, with Iskender in
between and relative balance seemingly in place. My apologies, but
that is all I can offer at the present time.

Best of Luck.

-Sareln-

He actually seems to have considered my ludicrous request, which makes me wonder if I should push some more.
Probably a waste of time and effort, but I’m considering it!

[Square Leg]

I take it you aren't interested in the offer?

Do yu see this war moving from old Hippus lands anytime soon or are you happy to spar on the graves of the horselovers for some time to come?

[pocketbeetle]

I take it you aren't interested in the offer?

I have passed it over to my trusted advisors, who will reply in their own time.

Do yu see this war moving from old Hippus lands anytime soon or are you happy to spar on the graves of the horselovers for some time to come?

Well I've taken a quick look (haven't played it yet), and that's what's surprised me about this turn.

I thought Bob would push on to Radonnor and try to claim the mana node by force. I would've been more than happy to fight him in what I'm calling the "Blasted Lands". (Doesn't matter how much terrain there gets temporarily turned to ice, and it's a lot of flatland with a solid road running through.)
Instead though, he's chosen to just raze FML and retreat.

Looks like he's try to split my forces and catch me flatfooted by going to Zaonce now (Rosier is on the move). But that's my strength...mobility.
And guess who's 2 tiles from Riedquat?

[Darkmantle]

PB I offer you the immortal words of Jack Snipe.
http://www.erfworld.com/book-2-archive/?...-07-08.jpg

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 186:

First off, the turnlog shows Sareln made a big civic switch, while Bob received yet another positive event… :rolleyes:



On the brighter side, the ATM Metamagic node has been completed.
Only one problem now, I need the Metamagic II spell: Dispel to be able to reset mana nodes.
For that I need a mage and two spare promotions, I only have one mage, he only has one promotion.
Hmmm.

As alluded to in the previous post, for reasons I don’t completely understand, Bob chose to withdraw his army.
Not a problem, gives me more time to get that Body node built.
Here’s where everything is:



Based on Rosier’s position, I said earlier that I thought Bob would be going for Zaonce.
However on closer inspection, it would have been faster for him to move his vamp stack back onto the Acaia road and diagonally NE. Instead he’s chosen this offroad path in the middle of nowhere.
From that, I’d say either:

• He really does think he can split his forces and take on Riedquat and Zaonce at the same time (he’s probably seen Zaonce’s weakened garrison).
  
• Or, he’s simply moving the stack in such a way to maintain pressure on Riedquat, before taking on Zaonce.
  

Either way, my choice is simple: move most of the CAs back North.

Let’s look at the South:



Sareln wisely chose to run away and save his other hunter, but Kuriotates justice is not so easily evaded.
Do I want to kill that unit for burning my settlement?

What kind of question is that? Hell yeah.



An easy battle, the tricky part is surviving the retaliation.
The hunter on the mine NW of Thariss is highly promoted, plus I don’t have vision on the Thariss garrison.
Two turns ago though, I know that it contained a single (but decently promoted, think C 2-3) warrior, and I’m prepared to risk that he hasn’t brought anything extra in the mean time.
One Mobility promotion and Sprint later, those trees will hopefully protect me from any vengeful Elves (irony!).
Used Sirona to make him a more than a match for at least one warrior.

Honour redeemed, the next question is whether I use some of my CAs to farm up those spectres Bob left lying around, or just move straight back to Riedquat?
While mulling it over, I came up with a plan to get that Dispel mage faster.



I will bravely throw that adept at the fort and hope that he wins at 0.1% odds.
If he does survive, he’ll be a mage in no time!

...Or maybe not.

But I do have that fort there for xp purposes, and I do have a source of collateral damage.
Telling myself it wasn’t just the temptation to press the big red button, I decided to test out my nuke.



With a splooshing sound (seriously, they should have used the Earthquake spell soundtrack), the 3x3 around Hemah becomes ice and the two Goblin archers take 40% damage while huddling in fear.
This is fun!

Sensing the opportunity to pick up some easy xp on Buffy, I took the 99% battle taking him to 9xp, will reach 10xp and another promotion next turn.
He’s immune to poison, and a simple promote + Sirona should take him back to full health.



Unfortunately the odds for the adept were still in the 50-60% range, so I broke the spellstaff and splooshed again.
That gave me 90% odds, and one short battle later, my adept reached the requisite 9xp which will let him promote to a mage next turn and get Dispel and then – hold on a second.

9xp?!?
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

What a waste of time.
Now I’m stuck hoping that adept picks up another point of xp passively from Channeling, and trust me that’s not been too successful so far.
Most of those 6xp adepts that I’ve been producing are still on 6xp, some 7, one or two 8xp.

But hold on a second, what’s that under the adept?

Oh cool! A fort!
Should I really be exploring dungeons with the LoS on my doorstep and vampires rampaging across the countryside?
Not really, but if he’s going to insist on the offroad route then what the hell - maybe I’ll get something nice out of it.

So I clicked the explore button.



Oh what the ****.

A bunch of Scorpions, who’ll poison any units that attack them for slow healing.
Yippee.
Ah well, that’ll teach me!

Pixiefoot, who has been loyally guarding Riedquat all these turns, fords a river to take on the King Scorpion.
Melanchaetes, a recently produced Stigmata CA from Avelorn, takes on another.



With one slaughtered and the Head Scorpion captured, that leaves Dryalus to successfully put down the remaining beastie.
He then moves NW, further away from the nasty Calabim stack.



Which means he joins that adept in the forest…oooh!

What’s this?

That fort wasn’t destroyed by the adept exploring!
Which means I could explore it again.


Would you do it?







…







I did.




………

Now you’re just screwing with me.

Thaumas is brought up from the Radonnor fort to put down the second Scorpion infestation.
Luckily, most tiles were covered so only one spawned.



It was a close battle which Thaumas survived, meaning he can heal/promote next turn.


This time I’m not screwing around, I’m bringing in an experienced dungeon crawler.

Yup, Mimas.


Try me this time RNG.

On the eve of war, I defy you!

<<Editor’s note: We apologise, but we seem to have lost contact with the author of this thread.
We are working hard to resolve the issue, please check back another time.>>

[Mardoc]

On the eve of war, I defy you!

I haven't laughed this hard in a while! Thanks

[darrelljs]

Nice cliffhanger .

Darrell

[Irgy]

This is such a great thread that I absolutely need to up your postcount by at least one. Keep up the good work.

Gotta love that scorpion text too. I dare say it's not meant to say that, but it sure gets the message across. Goodies! Exploding! Scorpions! Bad! Oh noes!

[The ShiningOne]

Another instant classic entry into the epic of the Kuriotates! Entertaining as always, thanks PB!

[Amelia]

I did notice you now have a pet Scorpion though, are you using it on defense to stave off nasty Vampires?