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

[darrelljs]

I think I can safely say that right now, Darrell loathes me for picking your third city site perfectly.

Bah...this doesn't even make the top 10 list of why Darrell hates Krill.

Darrell

[fire&ice]

Not if it's 12:01 March 7th and 11:59 March 8th: 47 hours, 58 minutes.

Darn, ok your maths wins

how does that math make sense 12:01 on march would be 23 58 minuetes apart. I think you ment


12:01 March 8th and 11:59 March 7th

But, I still believe that Pb promised us a turn every 24 hours and thus he should have lost a fleet of centaurs already.

[SevenSpirits]

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tim...+March+8th

[Profane]

Maybe Pb is from a different planet...

[pocketbeetle]

Your scorched lands look like they have been nuked!

They have been cleansed of all heathen artifices.

I think I can safely say that right now, Darrell loathes me for picking your third city site perfectly.

Bah...this doesn't even make the top 10 list of why Darrell hates Krill.
Darrell

Interesting.
IIRC I offered several options. Did you point that site out before, or just get it spot on afterwards?

In terms of city locations: I've been really happy with how I've placed all my cities.
Despite the huge chunk of land wasted between it and my starting point, Caledor has been a beast of a city (although starting to tail off in research now due to only half its tiles being cottaged, but that's understandable, I needed the production to land all those wonders); Kwythellar has done exactly what was said on the tin (early game research centre, commerce falling off into a military pump mid and endgame), while Avelorn is now starting to come into its own with the completion of the ToC.
The only disappointment has been KK, and the reasons for that have already been lamented at length: lack of food.

In terms of Avelorn itself and the location of that Mithril deposit: to be honest it doesn't really matter.
Mithril is a great resource, both for the weapon bonus on units and the tile yield - that grassland tile if mined would be 2f/0c/8h. I'm not going to though.
Avelorn is now all about food, surrounding hills are being windmilled, I'll get my Mithril from the vein near ATM.
But its nice that I had a source reasonably close (Although still closer to the Illians! :neenernee).

Not wishing to be picky but:
Time of post 1102 - March 7th 00:42
Time of next post (1109) - March 9th 00:21
Since that is only just shy of 48 hours, clearly a day was indeed missed!

The forum clock is off; the hour rolls at about XX:25, and I'm 99% sure that the day for PB's timezone rolled between those two times you posted.

My point is no matter what clock we are using, in a period of 47+ hours, a day must have been missed.
I don't really mind too much, its not like the rules of the game says PB has to start killing off units or anything!

Not if it's 12:01 March 7th and 11:59 March 8th: 47 hours, 58 minutes.

Darn, ok your maths wins

how does that math make sense 12:01 on march would be 23 58 minuetes apart. I think you ment
12:01 March 8th and 11:59 March 7th
But, I still believe that Pb promised us a turn every 24 hours and thus he should have lost a fleet of centaurs already.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tim...+March+8th

Maybe Pb is from a different planet...

Lol, a fleet of them!
It would seem that in channeling some of the WW format, we've brought the rules arguments across too.

Long answer short, if I post one turn on Monday morning, the next on Tuesday night, one after on Wednesday morning and next on Thursday night, it not only makes things easy for me, but fulfils the turn-a-day obligations too.
Final ruling!

In truth, it's looking like the number of Centaurs I have is going to be unimportant anyway, as Selrahc has an interesting message for me...

[pocketbeetle]

Diplo:

Received the following message from Selrahc this turn:

I've been making a series of troop reviews, cutting out the dead weight from the Illian military. Most of the troops were found to be good and true worshippers of Auric, and sent peacefully back to their homes to enjoy the benefits of our scholarship focussed(and expensive) society.

A few however were found to harbour heathen religious practices, and were purged a little more excessively. You may see their disembodied spirits serving on the front lines of the infernals. Apologies if that is the case.

To be honest, I really wasn't expecting Scholarship to be so expensive. When I loaded up the turn, I was running -10 at 0% income. I've pulled that up to +30 at 0%, and probably doubled the science rate with specialists, but it is all still fairly tenuous. Whatever your masterplan is, it won't have to be that devious on current showing. I don't have the forces to protect more than a small area of the empire. I don't have the funds to hire more forces, or to upgrade that army of qualified adepts into mages. And you only need a tiny portion of my land and populace to win a domination victory.

If you still feel you can pass over a law mana, I'd appreciate it. I didn't request it because it has been a few turns since you made the suggestion, and you might have changed your mind. Once I've got currency and the second palace in place things will be a lot better, but for now even that marginal help could do a lot of good.

I'd suggest a belated T200 card tournament, so I'd have a chance of winning enough money to keep me in the black, but I can't even cover a 50G entrance fee right now let alone the 500+ cost it would take to fund my economy properly.

So.. yeah. You want a good end game struggle on T220, and I probably can't give it you, unless we come to an agreement that you'll only attack my capital or somesuch.

Oh dear, looks like the Illians are running up the white flag.
I can understand why - we’re in lategame now and the Illian lack of economic traits is starting to show.

I’m less confident than Selrahc seems to be about reaching the Domination limit, but as things currently stand, I agree that I could probably roll over him militarily. That will only become more facile if he really has disbanded a significant percentage of his army.
Hemah is still king of the collateral, I still have the mobility advantage on a bunch of highly promoted units, and with Mithril Working I now have a huge tech advantage - CCs off the production line will be base strength 9 on attack. (6 xp = 2 promotions, C2 = +40% for an easy str 12.6 on attack, not including other buffs available (Stigmata / SoF etc)).

In terms of Illian options, Domination would seem to be out, Cultural and Religious are obviously not feasible, nor is an Altar victory on account of their perma-Evil alignment.
That leaves Tower of Mastery or achieving a Conquest courtesy of summoning Auric Ascended. The latter I think is not a huge worry, to quote a very old post by me:

Am I concerned about the Ascension ritual? Not so much. It requires him to have researched all the way up the tech tree with a leader lacking economic traits in a no tech trading game. Cross that bridge when we come to it.

The Ascension ritual requires Selrahc to research the Omniscience tech which costs over 10k beakers. I’d make a wild guess that his current GNP is around 250bpt (?) which means a 40t research time for that tech alone. In short, I expect the game to be long over before Ascension becomes a concern, which just leaves the Tower of Mastery.

I *have* noticed Selrahc’s interest throughout this game in maximising his mana sources and with hindsight realise I’ve even been helping him towards that goal (loans of Sun mana, current Water mana loan). His rushing of the Tower of Divination was understandable - it netted him Arcane Lore and the free GSci. While I believed him at the time, when he said that his next target: the Tower of Elements was for +1 str Ice Elementals, I'm less sure now. If he’s now abandoning military plans and finding himself unable to upgrade adepts to mages (so can't summon Ice Elementals), yet still steamrollering ahead with the tower (recent Fire and Earth mana node conversions, gathering adepts on his current Metamagic node, the disappearing GEng) that probably suggests he’s aiming for that peaceful goal.
On the other hand, to reach Omniscience you have to pick up the Feral Bond tech (Baron Duin Halfmorn), which we know Selrahc has/had plans for. So confusing signals there, but possibly suggests he was going for Ascension, but has now abandoned that plan in favour of the ToM due to economic factors. One advantage of the Tower of Mastery goal is that it requires a lot less research than Altar or Ascension, you only need to focus on the magic section of the tree, which is where he’s been most of the game.

Am I concerned?
Depends, the ToM is nice in that it gives a lot of warning - the victory tab lets you know when each individual tower has been constructed. However if Selrahc is building the Elemental Tower manually, saving that recent GEng to rush another tower, and happens to pop a second GEng… well then things could get close.

Time for a review of where I stand I think, but in the meantime let’s take a look at the turn.

.

[pocketbeetle]

Turn 208:

Mithril Working splashscreen on loading the save.



As mentioned I offered Law to Selrahc, turnlog says that Hyborem’s GA ended.



After going on about pretending to chop that forest, I did end up actually doing so - makes it easy for a mage to get close to the city, lob a fireball and retreat all in one turn.

The interesting screenshot of this turn however is the following:



Why is a guy that is complaining about upkeep, moving a large portion of his army onto a hill in neutral territory, near one of my settlements?
That stack was in Auld Lang Syne last turn, so while it could just be moving West, why not move it via Mistletoe n Wine?
Is there an element of an ultimatum in Selrahc’s last message? Going out in a blaze of glory?

Long dormant ‘sneaky diplo’ brain cells are hastily bundled out of retirement, let’s delay and wait a turn. If Selrahc demands a reply asap, then we’ll know he’s up to something:

Hey Selrahc,

Offered Law, give me time to think about the rest and reply properly.

Kind Regards,
Pb

I’m not truly worried though, we’re still under MDP, that settlement has very little value, and a review of border cities shows that he has undoubtedly deleted some garrison warriors, which you just wouldn’t do if you were thinking of declaring war.
(Fortunately, the Infernals haven’t gained any manes either.)

Shot again of the victory tab:

Looks like Dantski had a point about the population part - despite my megacities growing, the Illian cities are starting to sprout too, and he can grow faster than my maximum of 4 pop/turn. So my population percentage is going down.

Ending turn completed a champion and the first arquebusier.



There was also a pointless WLTK event in Prespur (already zero maintenance).

[Krill]

Interesting.
IIRC I offered several options. Did you point that site out before, or just get it spot on afterwards?

I named it immediately after you revealed Caledor city site, and yeah, Mithril wasn't considered when it came to choosing the city spot, because you couldn't see it. Couldn't exactly say that earlier though...

[pocketbeetle]

Yeah I'm going to be late with this one.

Maybe I can cunningly edit it before anyone notices and get away with it...

Too late.

Stand by for write-up.

Shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

[Cyneheard]

Too late.

Stand by for write-up.