[SPOILERS] - Tredje and Mardoc are Sheelba of the Clan of Embers

[Gaspar]

Iskender or no, I'd cancel the NAP. The only way you're not going to want to fight Bob in 14T is if the Sareln campaign goes disastrously, and in that case, it doesn't matter, your game is lost anyway. Realistically, there's no way Sareln can stop what's coming, and the sooner we take the fight to Bob the better. Knowing Bob, he's probably just trying to figure out a way to justify switching to Hyborem anyway.

[Tredje]

Turn 107:

The siege has begun. I checked the log and Sareln had killed our scouting Warrior.

However, our Warrior didn't die without killing one Warrior and Sareln must have deleted the other. I can live with that exchange. I then moved our Sons in position and summoned three Elementals. I was a bit surprised to see the odds:

75%! Sareln must have had his Swordsmen doing some kettlebelling or something, because they are pumped! And our first Elemental died. The next two had 90% and 95% odds, and both won. The way I see it there is only one strong defender left, the rest shouldn't pose much of a threat. Here is the garrison of Udenarat:

Only two Swordsmen left, the rest are Warriors. I don't think he can hit our stack on the next turn.

[Mardoc]

Only two Swordsmen left, the rest are Warriors. I don't think he can hit our stack on the next turn.

Wow, +80% on a sword! That's really something else - he must have eaten a bunch of our barbarian comrades, the bastard!

If that's all he has in the near vicinity, it might be appropriate to skip the Haste and just hit him with 4 Elementals starting next turn. Better to just power through his stack and move on than to worry too much about cleverness. Or to phrase it differently, remove his options by killing his troops, not by tactics. That looks like only 1 of his units per unit in our stack, and we've got Archers and Sons to his Warriors, so I have no fear for the Sons, merely for the timetable. The only way I'd worry is if he has units hidden in the fog somewhere. But again, if he does, the best way to handle that is to kill everything else that could support them.

And yes, given this situation, cancel the NAP with Bob when T110 comes around (well, the latest you can according to however you wrote the agreement, might be T109). We want to limit the warning he gets, but we ought to have Sareln broken by T110, maybe even be pushing on his cap by then. Gaspar may be right about escaping to Hyborem, but if he's aiming for that he's not aiming for something that could actually hurt us in our conquest. We ought to be able to handle anything but puppet/skeleton spam with the Sons, and should have bronze warriors and/or axes by then to handle that approach too. And it won't get any easier if we wait.

[Ravus Sol]

Yes, that is what I have been doing so far. All four Sons have been given Combat V promotions, while two of them have Body I for Haste. None of the other promotions seemed to grant them anything of use (such as Nature I), and they might see hand to hand combat so I reckoned str. promotions would be useful. Would you have given them different upgrades?

With what you have you don't have many options. But I Might have tried taking one up to body 3 and the promotion to add more speed to a summon instead of strength.

The Body I "haste" is allways good as is the faster healing from Body II. Body III gives a permanent Flesh Golem, which is dead useful early on, you can cycle out all your obsolete units with promotions onto the Golem to make it a strong unit. If it can be hasted it can be a strong defender for the stack. If not send it out alone as a distraction and choker. You can allways summon another if it falls.

The speed promotion would be good so that the Elemental for that Son could be used for scouting instead of killing.

But for the main part you don't have any other useful mana so yes powerful Sons are very good

If you could have worked out a trade or gotten some nodes improved the only worthwhile mana for this tactic would have been, enchantment for spellstaffs, Maybe entropy for rust and pit beasts (they stick around an extra turn after every kill so they can be good for mop ups) and wither for a stack attack that sticks around and slows healing. Those are the only two worth considering with the Strong-arm summoner Sons.

Of course people would have to be fools to trade you mana now they know what you have :neenernee

-

Looking good on the attack! Will you plan to raze the cities you take or keep them?

[Tredje]

Turn 108:

The turn greets me with this event:

Since our Monument is only 4 turns from completion, I decide to grab the money. Temporary happiness is useless. I then notice something odd in the west:

Sareln has roaded his way to my borders. This is puzzling. Does he intend to strike at our lands while my stack is stationed in the south? (By the way, the only possible way of doing that is to road and then delete the Workers, right? In my experience they can't be hasted.) Luckily I brought a Worker with the stack, and he has finished a road. Since the stack can move four tiles on roads I decide to head north and position myself on the jungle hill. I reckon that the stack should be safe from any direct assault due to the +50% defense bonus.

I move and:

I run into Sareln's stack! At first I was worried because I thought that if I fought my stack would be left on open ground. Then, I look more closely at his stack and realize that the odds are firmly in my favor. I summon three Elementals and hurl them at his army. Then the four Sons have their turn. This is what remained after they had done their job:

I do not wish to let him escape, even if all he has left are a handful of Warriors and two Adepts. I decide to throw away my Warriors in order to annihilate his army. I can always produce new ones. Income, not production, is my limiting factor right now. The first three Warriors perish at <30% odds, but then my Archer gets a win at >80%. The rest of the battles are all in my favor and I take no more losses. The triumphant Warrior reveals some Amurite stragglers:

I have nothing to attack them with, so instead I opt to move my two high health Fire Elementals to protect my captured Workers.

Wow, I did not expect that to happen. I have some questions. Why would Sareln construct a road against my borders that early? Couldn't he have waited one turn and roaded -> moved his stack into my territory? I don't think he would be able to hit my cities in one turn (since they are surrounded by difficult terrain), but he would at least be able to move close to them and end his turn on a more defensible tile. I think his stack would have been destroyed either way, but he would have been able to inflict more losses that way. I can't be sure what I would have done if I hadn't spotted the road, but I expect I would have made the same move as last turn and hit Udenarat (which should be more or less deserted by now) with Elementals. And upon noticing that it was more or less empty, I would have to speculate whether Sareln had retreated to his capital or moved out further north. I'm also not sure why he stopped on that tile, and not one further back. Didn't he notice the Worker with my stack? If he was one tile further away I would have moved onto the hill and only been able to hit him with 3 Elementals. He would sustain some losses, but he would be able to escape.

Whatever his reasoning may be, and perhaps he will inform me at some point, I think it is safe to say that the Amurites have been defeated. Udenarat will fall in two turns. The capital I estimate will last another 5 turns or so. The Amurite campaign might be completed by T115, giving us ample time to redirect our forces to the east.

Looking good on the attack! Will you plan to raze the cities you take or keep them?

I intend to keep them, especially now that Sareln's stack is gone. Not only will his cities bring a welcome increase to income, I also do not want Iskender to settle that area. It's mine!

[Mardoc]

I can't quite see his reasoning either, but maybe it made sense with fuller data. Maybe he didn't expect you to be roading the tile with the army on it, so thought the stack was unreachable there; maybe he was hoping to bait you onto flat ground and then attack. After all, only one worker, if you hadn't started promptly you couldn't have finished. Regardless, I doubt 'escape' is that high a priority when there's Elementals climbing the walls of 'safety'. Maybe this was just the best he could think of to try.

One thing I do notice, however - his 'straggler' stack has Str 3 warriors! Since I know we haven't cut his copper, he must be trading it to someone. Might be a good idea to check who?

Also, probably a good idea next turn to check to Power graph and make sure that was actually most of his army. And on further thought - if you're going to be moving around like this in future wars (and I don't see why not) - we should probably stick Body II on one of the Sons. That would prevent you from having to debate heal or move.

[Tredje]

One thing I do notice, however - his 'straggler' stack has Str 3 warriors! Since I know we haven't cut his copper, he must be trading it to someone. Might be a good idea to check who?

Nice catch! I did not notice that. Looking at the "relations at a glance" it appears that the only person that Sareln has OB with is Iskender. Yet I am not sure why he would trade away his source of Copper at this crucial point. Perhaps he feared that Udenarat would fall shortly and wanted to do his ally a favour before the Copper was lost? If he thought the decisive battle would happen shortly he could be of the opinion that he would have to win or die with his current army and that Copper or no Copper wouldn't make a difference anymore.

[Tredje]

Diplomacy:

Had a chat with Square Leg. He wanted to know if he could settle a city 1NE of the Gems in the east. I said I didn't mind that. Now, I do consider that as part of Clan lands , but it is on his side of our settlement agreement, and right now I want to focus on Bob. Let SL improve the area and then we can take it from him with our Sons after Bob has been dealt with. Besides, it will be many, many turns before we are able to expand further east. We will need Rantine before that becomes possible.

[Mardoc]

Diplomacy:

Had a chat with Square Leg. He wanted to know if he could settle a city 1NE of the Gems in the east. I said I didn't mind that. Now, I do consider that as part of Clan lands , but it is on his side of our settlement agreement, and right now I want to focus on Bob. Let SL improve the area and then we can take it from him with our Sons after Bob has been dealt with. Besides, it will be many, many turns before we are able to expand further east. We will need Rantine before that becomes possible.

Sounds reasonable. One front at a time, and we definitely need to get our economy boosted to keep up with our conquests. On that note - good thing you stole Sareln's workers!

I know the war's more exciting, but how is the homefront doing? Do we have a second warrens yet? Or a bunch of villages? If Sareln can produce a force that requires we supplement the Sons, anyone else will be able to do that too.

[Gaspar]

Sounds reasonable. One front at a time, and we definitely need to get our economy boosted to keep up with our conquests. On that note - good thing you stole Sareln's workers!

I know the war's more exciting, but how is the homefront doing? Do we have a second warrens yet? Or a bunch of villages? If Sareln can produce a force that requires we supplement the Sons, anyone else will be able to do that too.

Homefront? Homefront?! You wanna talk about Homefront?!? [$0.25 to anyone who catches the reference]

Kill, Kill, Kill!

(Kidding aside, nice stack annihilation there Tredje. Hopefully Bob will make similar tactical blunders. And I agree with Mardoc, definitely need to keep churning support troops. At this point, pretty much going to be at war until everyone else is dead or the Sons are, so more cannon fodder is a must. Also, anyone want to wager 20g on Bob switching to Hyborem after you wardec? )