[SPOILERS] Woof! Woof! Bad dog! No biscuit! Charadon of the Doviello

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I thought it was only for outside your borders, in neutral/friendly/enemy territory. Check the F2 screen and compare the the F5 screen.

[Ellimist]

I just received the save. I'll post the new F2 and F5 when I get home.

Let me know if any other screenshots are desired.

[Ellimist]

[SIZE="7"]More Forward Progress[/SIZE]


And I get to see another eventful turn. I'm definitely in clean up mode on the Calabim front, so things should be winding down soon.

I started the turn by adding shock II to my super beastman, along with an appropriate name. After the promotion, he had good odds to kill the next defender, so I took the shot and won. He'll promote again next turn and the Calabim are pretty much doomed.
After combat:

Ichabod had not attacked my lone wolf 1W of the city, so I moved it to the hill as planned, and found the missing Calabim workers.

Unfortunately, they were just out of range of my wolves this turn. Or were they? Wolves are a fun unit, and I have been practicing with them in the sim. I had found a trick that I could use to give them some extra reach, and this seemed like the time to use it.

By forming a new wolf pack, both of my wolves were deleted and a new unit was formed with full movement available. I used my C3 wolf, and none of the promotions carried over, but the experience did so it will be able to promote next turn. Now the workers were within range of my new wolf pack, and I could proceed to capture them.

I even managed to snag a free wolf in the deal, and I moved him back to the forested hill with the rest of my troops.
Whenever a wolf pack kills a unit, there's a 10% chance of producing a new wolf. I didn't realize this applied to workers, but I guess I got two chances at the RNG for it. Thanks to another Doviello feature, I can either keep the workers or spend 20 gold each to upgrade them to beastmen. I'll probably keep them as workers, but if I need more reinforcements, they are available.

So at the end of turn, this is how things stand:

Here's the event log as a bonus. It doesn't seem to include a few things, such as killing the Ljosalfar scout, but it does include all of this turn's events.

[Ellimist]

Here are some less interesting images relating to economics side of things.
Military Advisor:

Finance Advisor:

Culture graph showing Mist's settled great artist:

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Ouch, 14 units and you only have free supply for 7. That's painful.

[Ellimist]

Ichabod, when you read this after the game, I just want to say that I really appreciate your determination to keep going and your refusal to give up. I had hoped for a very quick victory(as I had vs the Lanun,) but you've managed to hang on and several times put the outcome into doubt. I have definitely enjoyed the challenge.
I started out by repeatedly lying to you, and I am sure the enjoyment level has been declining for you even more lately, but you've maintained good sportsmanship and courtesy despite this. You're a very skilled player, and if our roles were reversed, I doubt I'd have managed to hold out so long.
Unfortunately, playing Charadon doesn't really give me a chance to genuinely cooperate with other players and still retain a shot at winning. If we should play another game together after this one, I hope that circumstances will be different.

[Ellimist]

Does anybody know the formula for unit maintenance? Is the number of free units I get based on number of cities, population of those cities, or some other factor or a combination?

[Ellimist]

So I managed to come up with another crazy plan that I could implement as soon as I'm done with the Calabim. It would primarily take advantage of this map's large food surplus.

Basically, I would revert to a pure farmer's gambit, stockpiling gold and workers in the process. I'd settle cities for max food and max commerce, and take advantage of my barbarian trait by building roads toward the Ljosalfar. Once I had a decent stash of workers and gold, say, 15-25 workers and 300-500 gold, I'd send all of the workers toward Mist. They have 2 moves and the first wave can build roads, so they could arrive very quickly. Then i could turn them into beastmen for 20 gold each. The basic concept of the plan "instant army out of nowhere" would be the same, but they'd be beastmen instead of wolf riders.

This plan has some advantages versus building beastmen directly. First, the workers can be produced faster thanks to abundant food. Second, workers move faster and can build roads for even better movement. Third, workers won't affect my power rating, I don't want Mist building too many units. Fourth, the workers can be put to use while I am accumulating them.

[Bobchillingworth]

I would be more worried about animals killing the road crews than regular barbs, tho. You'd likely still want to escort them.

[Ellimist]

I would be, but I haven't seen a single animal yet. I'd definitely escort them, though, it would be pretty silly to march a stack of 15 workers over for Mist to capture.