[SPOILERS]- Crazy Keelyn is trippin’ Balz: Bobchillingworth of the Balseraphs

[Bobchillingworth]

[COLOR="Orange"]Dear Keelyn,

As a young girl my deepest desire was to become the most beautiful girl in all of Erebus. Unfortunately the gods blessed me with abnormally high levels of testosterone instead of soft female curves and long eyelashes. Needless to say that left me at a disadvantage against the girls who displayed more feminine traits. I realized that if I were to become the prettiest girl in Erebus, I would have to go about it in a different manner. So I decided to root out all competition. Valledia with her dark complexity, full hair and elegant posture was the first to go. Now, dear girlfriend, your time has come. Your slender figure, your enchanting eyes and your adolescent demeanour may have the men of Erebus gawking at you, but when you are dead their attention will be all mine!

Signed,

The future Miss Erebus,

Sheelba of the Clan of Embers[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Yellow"]Deep within the heart of the grand Palace in Jubilee, Keelyn sat in a meeting with her greatest generals to confer over the strategy which would finally crush the brutal Clan empire. Well, "sat" was a bit of a misnomer, as she mostly danced by herself in a corner, but she was present nonetheless.

"Tell me what the plan is! I wanna know NOW!" she cried, while attempting to perform a handstand with limited success.

Her most favoured, trusted general and erstwhile nanny arose from his seat with an air of greatest confidence. The veteran of many foreign wars, he was a highly decorated & brilliant commander.

"My lady, we have known that this was coming for quite some time, thanks to the floating eyes supplied to us by our Amurite allies before they succumbed to the Orcish menace. I have been long preparing a grand plan for our defense & eventually complete triumph over the foul Clan, and am now ready to finally present it. First we must-..." The general trailed off and abruptly clutched his chest. "Augh! My hard drive- I mean, heart! Nooooo..." And with that, he slumped over and collapsed, dead.


Everyone in the chamber sat in shocked silence, stricken at the spectacle they had just witnessed. Even the formerly-mincing jugglers stood still, looking amongst each other nervously whilst clutching their balls. The general's understudy, a junior commander by the nom-de-guerre of DaveV was the first to speak up and break the silence.

"Fear not, ladies and gentlemen! For before he died, my unnamed superior wrote an exhaustive tactical manual for my use, describing all of his plans in minute detail! Now, unfortunately I happen to be illiterate. But don't worry- I've already enrolled in a correspondence course intended to fix just that issue! Actually, kind of a strange concept when one thinks about it. Uh, we're not going to be attacked, like, this month or anything, right?"


In the back of the chamber, some of the jugglers fainted. [/COLOR]

[DaveV]

Well, Bob, I'm sure that was all very funny, if only I'd been able to read it

I just got a new laptop and FfH was one of the first things I installed. Unfortunately, the screenshots didn't seem to work right. So, wall-o-text summary:

The orcs sent in their four fire elementals, who killed 4 warriors. Serdoa came through with the death mana (thanks, Serdoa!), and I was able to pump in a bunch of puppets and four freshly summoned skeletons. Your move, orcs.

I really have to give a shout-out to Serdoa: I would have been completely dead without the death mana. It will still be tough even with a horde of skeletons, but I have a chance now.

[Bobchillingworth]

Heh heh, sorry Dave. It was either that, or that the furious 10,000 word rant about the game I had all typed up in my head before I realized that it was indeed just a game, and I had more important things to obsess over.



Yeah, please just spam the hell out of that city. If you can only hold on to it until Gibbon completes, his elementals will be powerful enough to start killing off Tredje's stack. This is why I was (and still am) very worried that the death mana should have come through days ago, when I first requested it and noted here that you needed to ask for it in-game. Skeletons will never be able to defeat his stack, but they might just be able to hold it off until someone who can arrives.


Of course mind-controlling a Son is even better than killing one outright. Since you *should* be getting free Earth III on Gibbon (please please finish the nodes and get the Earth mana from SL!), he can go straight for domination with his first promos, unless something like Spell Extension is more important for survival.

[darrelljs]

It was either that, or that the furious 10,000 word rant about the game I had all typed up in my head before I realized that it was indeed just a game, and I had more important things to obsess over.

But rants are so much fun for the lurkers .

Darrell

[DaveV]

Heh heh, sorry Dave. It was either that, or that the furious 10,000 word rant about the game I had all typed up in my head before I realized that it was indeed just a game, and I had more important things to obsess over.

Yes, I appreciate your restraint. I can only imagine how frustrating it can be to spend months building up your civ only to have some bozo traipse in and fritter it all away. Again, sorry for my lack of reading comprehension (usually one of my strengths).

Yeah, please just spam the hell out of that city. If you can only hold on to it until Gibbon completes, his elementals will be powerful enough to start killing off Tredje's stack. This is why I was (and still am) very worried that the death mana should have come through days ago, when I first requested it and noted here that you needed to ask for it in-game. Skeletons will never be able to defeat his stack, but they might just be able to hold it off until someone who can arrives.

Of course mind-controlling a Son is even better than killing one outright. Since you *should* be getting free Earth III on Gibbon (please please finish the nodes and get the Earth mana from SL!), he can go straight for domination with his first promos, unless something like Spell Extension is more important for survival.

Problems with that: the fire elementals will be the top defenders once he moves his stack adjacent to the city. And he doesn't have to stand next to my strongest position hammering away, but can move into position to fork 4-5 cities at once.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yay thread subscriptions.



Hmm, good point re: fire elementals. Sareln said that Tredje always deleted them after making successful attacks, but there's no guarantee that he'll do the same again (plus he obviously doesn't have to attack with all of them every turn). The Sons should defend occasionally I think, but probably not often enough due to the channelling promos.


I think the Sons should have high odds of defending vs. a Domination attempt, although I admit that I'm not entirely sure how the defender is chosen. In my test attacks on Acheron, the Sons seemed to defend roughly half the time against Domination, in a stack which contained both them and several warriors / archers. Gibbon at least should be able to out-manuever them, if you can pair him with the haste adept.


If everything is falling apart regardless, and Gibbon has no chance of damaging the Clan's stack, stick him and some friends on the fleet & go capture Tredje's island. I only need Gibbon (and preferably my timor mask and Orthus Axe) to pull off the silly "Dominate the Sons" plan, after all =) A city on the Eastern island outside of fireball range would help too.

[DaveV]

Okay, a couple questions for computer geeks in the presumed audience. First, my new laptop is a Toshiba, and the Print Screen key is a second function of the End key (I have to hold down the Fn key while pressing End). This results in the screen being copied to the clipboard, but it doesn't go into the Screenshots folder. I have to Alt-Tab, paste the clipboard into Irfanview, and save from there. Am I stuck with this roundabout method, or am I missing something?

Second question: how did my adept defend ahead of a stack of skeletons?
I don't see how his fire elementals could possibly have had the Marksman promotion. Here's the report on the Orc turn:



And here's the stack at the start of my turn:



Here are the city defenders at the end of my turn, after some massive skeleton spam:



And here's his attacking stack.



So, I see no way for him to take the city. He can try to kill off my adepts, but most of them should be out of range. I finished one of the earth nodes this turn (that adept is vulnerable to killing, unfortunately), and the second will complete next turn. I finished the spread of FoL to Square Leg's city, and asked for his Earth mana.

Research is just short of Deception next turn, but it should come in the following turn for sure.

[Krill]

Elementals do not take death damage: skeles are therefore S2. An Adept is S3.

[DaveV]

Thanks, Krill, I figured I must have been missing something obvious.

[Krill]

Just returning a favour