Ugh. The more I think of the situation, the more convinced I am that we are doomed. This is Keelyn of the Bals. By the time that the NAP runs out, we'll be facing the nearly unbeatable twincast puppeteer summoner archmage.
I think we could have an attempt at fighting that, mainly taking advantage of the pyre zombies exploding, but that needs Gibbon to stand close enough to let the slow pyre zombies in close without ripping them to shreds with dozens of elementals.
The idea of a Keelyn allowed to bloom unimpeded is a horrific one.
FFH PBEM V spoiler
Bob wasted his advantage indulging his AV addiction, when he should have been grabbing Gibbon. I don't think we can rely on Kyan to be nearly so obliging.
On T140, Keelyn could have a dozen mages, with the casting power of two dozen, and an unbeatable hero archmage with the casting power of 8 archmages leading them. We could have around 20-30 mages, backed up by slow pyre zombies.
We need a Coalition to start forming. But we only know the elves, who are going to be heavily choked, and who we can't talk to properly.
I'll keep thinking it over. Obviously we have to do all we can to get the best damn army we can out in the field by T140.
Perhaps the best solution here is to grab Gibbon out from under the noses of the Bals?
Alright, so the Spectres, or whatever that the Balz mages will be throwing will have the puppet promotion. That's very handy. Big reason, the puppet race isn't immune to death damage. Our spectres will kick their spectres arses. If we get some goodly strong spectres, we could do some damage.
Now, if they don't use spectres, things aren't quite so nice. Hosts in particular could be nasty since undead are vulnerable to Holy damage. But we *should* still get good odds summon vs. summon even there since they won't be immune to our death.
Fireballs is an outside possibility. Fireballs don't get double duration from summoners, but the puppets would still let him double the numbers involved. In that case though, our summoners would be on much more equal grounds, unit for unit.
If the AC is fairly high, Sundered will give us a bit of a further boost, especially since their summons will be taking a 20% hit.
So, best case scenario is that they go heavy on the Death mana and Gibbon himself goes for Wraith summons. In that case each one of our spectres will have a qualitative advantage over even their Wraiths.
Now the secondary concern is destroy undead. If we rely entirely on spectres and pyre zombies.. we'll be very vulnerable.
I'm a little more optimistic now that we could hold out, if we get enough mages.
Hmm, how deeply do we want to jump in bed with the elves? I think we're really only restricted with regards to telling Gaspar of the nature of Kyan's army.
And I honestly had no idea the Bals were so terrifying. Then again, we can always pop our worldspell and land... 4... archmages?
Sorry about not replying to your query, my hands were tied regarding that. I felt that it wouldn't affect your plans too much, and figured you would meet them in a handful of turns.
I haven't popped any lairs in the agreement zone. I have no idea where the ogre is, has it approached from the west or the south? Have you confirmed that the Pyre is no longer intact? I haven't received the turn yet due to Aca's save issues.
Cheers,
Nic
Gaspar's reply to that:
Hi Nicolae,
Thanks for responding so quickly this time. I know itâs tough when youâre in a few games at once.
We were pretty confident on the Balz army, but itâs been really difficult to find things to talk about so phrased it as a question. I think itâs telling that Kyan felt the need to âtie your handsâ, especially right at the start of your relationship. But we all know who Kyan is. Little too competitive if you ask me, but you didn't.
On the C&D front, it looks like you recently got an Academy. Congratulations! We guessed it might be a sage from the dungeon or ruins near your territory.
The ogre looks like itâs made a direct beeline northwest from the Pyre, and Iâm not aware of any other lairs directly in between our capitals. A few very unlucky rolls could cost us a lot, but hopefully weâre safe. It has a combat promotion, and weâve seen no Clown units, so we can only assume that the Ogre took out whatever Kyan used to open the lair. As I said in my previous message, itâs a pretty low move by him that could easily have hit you rather than us, particularly since your "hands tied" comment seems to indicate you've signed a NAP.
Weâre talking with the Hippus about their further scouting. We wouldnât want you to miss out on RGâs fantastic roleplay diplo!
Regards,
Gaspar
My proposed reply to Gaspar:
Hey Gaspar,
I've been sending a dude north to gain vision on the Pyre tile itself. It may need to pull him back, depending on how Orthus spawns. How are you going to deal with the jerk? I've been taking it cautiously, and I think I have the numbers to taking him down, but the problem is my food/production is abysmal. You're right about the early academy, I got a lucky roll but I still don't think it will keep me relevant considering my other demonumbers. Congrats on landing early education, I'd love to get that and CoL and spam riverside aristofarms everywhere, but the only way to get those tiles productive is post bronze working. Not something you need to worry about, what with forest cottages that ignore the river bonuses . My 1st settler won't be in your face, he's going to be sent directly west in a handful of turns.
Also, what fascinating thing has Kyan done now? I've only followed PBEM4, 12 and 17. In the first one he did well with good mechanics and unassertive insecure rivals, 12 he had FWs, and 17 I think he just played really well while letting nospace take the heat. I haven't been following WW or Diplomacy, I've been too lazy for deep reading comprehension
Cheers,
Nic
Selrahc, what do you think? I seem to place way too much thinking on lairs, but honestly, I don't care about them too much unless they're spawning barbarians. Do you think it's safe to telegraph to Gaspar my interest on those jungle river tiles between us, but at least counterbalance that by saying I won't be settling them immediately?
The note seems decent enough. Friendly, quite general, but gives some low level information of direct relevance(academy).
If you were going to summarize your diplomatic aims with the elves in a sentence, what would you say? If we have a goal to aim for, it might be helpful in making sure that we keep long term coherence in diplomacy.
I'd like nothing more than to kill them and take their shit, I tend to hold grudges (in-game only). It's a matter of honour, they extorted me using an embarassingly low amount of force.
But until then, I'm not really sure, Kyan is a potential runaway.
5:01 PM me: oh hey you're online
Patrick: hey
5:02 PM me: i sent you an email, feel free to reply after your lurker retinue has vetted your response
Patrick: lol
5:03 PM I have a bunch of dl's, I have to let them feel involved, especially since the turns are mostly "moved worker, hit enter, still a million turns to next tech"
5:04 PM me: whoops accidently closed tab
Patrick: np, just whining about the ffh early game being so slow
me: yeah, T50 and i dont think me or the elohim have even settled yet
5:05 PM i had 3 cities around this time in base bts
Patrick: its pretty painful
definitely need an early turns blitz
5:06 PM me: alas, schedules
Patrick: yeah
5:08 PM me: also, i bought it up in the email, but what did kyan do to piss you off?
Patrick: well
5:09 PM i think we have a bit of natural antipathy to be fair
and more to the point I think I've pissed him off, most likely my lurker thread from pbem12
5:10 PM me: i only read first couple of pages because i tend to like pretty pictures of city screens and 2/1/7 towns instead of chatlogs and diplodumps
Patrick: yeah my pbem12 thread was pretty dull
5:11 PM pbem14 and this one are much better though. pb4 is worse. maybe nakor somehow demotivates me from taking screenshots
5:12 PM me: pbem14 is great
5:13 PM Patrick: I dunno how great the game is, pretty early to be a 2-horse race, but I keep a decent thread at least
me: wish the others would post more, miss sandover's pbem3 thread
5:14 PM Patrick: anyway, to answer your question, my side of the beef with kyan basically boils down to two things: 1. I think he's slimy in diplo. I thought that when I was on the receiving end in pbem12 and I think it when I read about it elsewhere.
5:15 PM (sandovers pbem3 thread was amazing. I think hes a bit busy, as we're pretty closely allied in 14 and he doesn't get back at me very quickly. I'm sure it'll perk up once war starts in earnest.)
PBEM17 spoilers:
[SPOILER]5:18 PM 2. I think he values winning above all else including the rules and fair play. I thought he flouted the rules in 17 (contact w/rego before they met in game) and I thought it was pretty slimy to negotiate an OB deal with nospace and cancel it 5t later after he got what he wanted. I just don't think he can be trusted. That's my beef, I can understand if not everyone would see it my way though.
5:21 PM me: dude sounds friendly enough, but i guess everyone does, maybe im not paranoid enough in diplomacy
but yeah, i should be able to see the pyre tile in ~3t and have a better understanding of the situation
Patrick: well, pyre was definitely popped
5:22 PM theres nowhere else for a named ogre to come from
and he has a promo, so he had to have killed a human unit
5:23 PM (these are the things you can get learn when you have too many lurkers.)
me: is there a way to mouseover ffh features? i know you can tell if a resource is improved or hooked up in base bts
5:24 PM Patrick: mouseover for what? you can mouseover a feature for a description and/or tile yield
wont tell you if its been popped though, because you can pop and get a bad result and not destroy the lair
5:25 PM me: ah, that makes sense
Patrick: and since pyre only gives bigbad or big-good
pop -> named ogre -> ogre kills kyan -> lair still there is entirely possible
me: they only disappear if you get a good result and it's "cleared"
5:26 PM Patrick: no it can disappear on a bad result, its just not a definite, I think at least. the first part i know is true because we dug around in the xml when i popped a named spectre a bit ago. not 100% positive on the clearing bit
5:27 PM ive had terrible luck this game. tech from a hut early and then a giant middle finger from the rng since
5:28 PM me: oh yeah, i landed the great engineer event, and i was missing 1 gold
one. gold.
yeah, that got the lurkers in a tizzy
Patrick: 1 gold?
man, that really sucks
5:29 PM thats the sort of thing that makes me discard a save when im playing SP lol
me: i like to imagine most people get screwed equally in ffh
take all our whining about random chance and turn it up to 11 in this game
5:30 PM Patrick: yeah. ive argued that the lairs/huts/craziness is what makes ffh fun, but I must say, I'm less amused in an MP game.
5:32 PM me: i get the feeling that ffh was made with very much a single player experience in mind
it has a similar feel to civ5 as well
5:33 PM resources are less important, as you can spam aristofarms everywhere, decoupling land from growth to an extent
Patrick: yeah, and the early game is painfully slow in both
me: plus, the rpg-ish quests, which don't sync up with the strat game "rat race" where you try to gain any turn advantage you can get
5:34 PM Patrick: theres a much higher random element to both than vanilla civ4
5:35 PM me: definitely for ffh, but i actually like the idea of deterministic combat in civ5
Patrick: though i find ffh much more playable than c5, which ive played 50 turns of since november
me: its just that the strategy grid is so borked, the scale is wrong
Patrick: i understand why they did what they did
5:36 PM me: yeah, im a huge build-whore, as i said, i like pretty pictures of city screens
Patrick: but actually the thing that turns me most off civ5 is the tile yields. i cannot get around a civ game where city placement/worker actions really doesnt matter
5:37 PM me: the builder game in civ5 is screwed, don't know how to fix that considering 1upt, our resident guru Sulla says nope
Patrick: i guess its kind of how civ 1/2 were, but back then the concept was fresh enough that i was enjoying the game without delving into why they all played out the same way
5:38 PM me: never really touched those, but i did play a bit of SMAC (it got released recently on good old games.com)
5:39 PM Patrick: i played a bit of SMAC, but I didn't get too deep in it. I was a much more casual gamer in those days
5:40 PM me: now we're all hypercompetitive nerds who love to show off our skills to like minded nerds
Patrick: so true
me: tell me about it, i used to play starcraft and warcraft by turtling up until i have a maxed out army of the best units i could build all at max hp/mp
5:41 PM while operating off the basic economy
5:43 PM Patrick: yeah. when before i started playing SGs and the like I usually played base Civ4 on noble and would huddle up and not invade anyone until I had tanks.
anyway, its ridiculous o'clock over here, so I should catch some shuteye. I'll be sure to get something back to you re: your email soonish.
me: no prob, take it easy dude
Patrick: you too
5:44 PM me: i think my main question of my how should i deal with kyan was answered
cheers
Patrick: likewise[/SPOILER]
Mostly banter, talk about game theories and mechanics, and lots of fishing for information on my part. He listed why I shouldn't trust Kyan, especially considering he broke the "no lair pops" "agreement", and I would love it if you guys could tell me I have he wasn't faithful to the NAP (probably not going to work). Actually, that's probably not a good idea, it would start a huge shitstorm.
Attacking Gaspar on T100 isn't off the cards, but I still don't think he trusts me.
Nicolae Carpathia Wrote:He listed why I shouldn't trust Kyan, especially considering he broke the "no lair pops" "agreement", and I would love it if you guys could tell me I have he wasn't faithful to the NAP (probably not going to work). Actually, that's probably not a good idea, it would start a huge shitstorm.
Can't confirm or deny the accusations obviously, but I'd consider opening lairs near people without warning or permission a clear NAP violation in FFH considering how much damage early Mistforms can do.
You mean I no longer have a 100+ turn NAP with one of my neighbours? Fricking sweet!
But whatevs, this game is weird as hell anyway. Don't know if I'd go that far, I'll treat the NAP as valid for now.
I think I'll poke Kyan, ask how goes the quest to hamper the elves (I don't know if he'd even bother sending more animals across the map), feign ignorance regarding the existence of the F4 screen.
Argh, Orthus apparently just spawned on my border, according to Kyan. I have 4 warriors, 1 on C2/Shock, one with C1 and an unused promotion, and 2 with no xp. Unfortunately they're a bit scattered throughout my empire, though I should have enough time to regroup them at my capital and train an extra warrior.
. My 1st settler won't be in your face, he's going to be sent directly west in a handful of turns.