Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Gaspar]

Well, my concern with the skeletons is mostly that even at effective Str 2 enough of them can take Nicolae's units out.

But I do agree - any point we see a shot to take out mages, we have to be willing to hit any button we have to take it. 11 turns until Brian's involved, 18 for Lewwyn. Those are the targets we need to have in mind.

[Gaspar]

Our gameplan is complete - Basium here I come!





Grimoire finishes next turn, I'll take MD and get some Beasties going.

Other than that, I've positioned units in such a way that I can conceivably help Nic next turn. Here's our current stack - would almost look impressive in another situation, particularly considering how little time was spent on it:



But then you look at what's going on in the "blue corner" and you weep a little:

[Man Behind the Mask]

Grimoire finishes next turn, I'll take MD and get some Beasties going.

Beasts are going to be about 300G to cash-rush after we’ve put a turn of hammers in. It might work out better to slow-build a couple at Hash Pipe and Chronic. We need the Disciples on hand for the culture bomb as well.

Here's our current stack - would almost look impressive in another situation...
<snip>
But then you look at what's going on in the "blue corner" and you weep a little:

That is indeed a fair old army, with collateral, disposal summons and some pretty well promoted units. I agree that it would be pretty intimidating against anything other than what we are actually facing. I know it’s important to hold the Clowns off as long as possible, but unless we’re going to go slave/draft crazy very soon to kill off unhappiness, we need to watch out for War Weariness by fighting in foreign lands.

Looking at our allies, on the other hand, tells a less good military story. Based on the Power stat, I don’t think Nicolae has anything we can’t see – only 5 Zombies left and down to 5 Adepts for the Bone Wall. Llewwyn’s production has spiked in his Golden Age, but his power doesn’t seem to be rising. I presume we’ve impressed upon him the likelihood of imminent annihilation, but it might be worth emphasising the full weight of the Clown advantage. He is saving a lot of gold, mind. Brian is still down from the peak of his military during the Grigori rout, but he has picked up Stirrups to upgrade his Horseman army (although he still lacks Bronze Working).

[Gaspar]

Little time, but this depressing news came in from Nicolae:

This is the end. I've lost my best production city and copper, so I'm hitting up Lewwyn for a spare source: He doesn't need it right now.

Grats on Malevolent Designs, though losing population in large Elven cities must suck. Plus, you need Iron for Eidolons. At least Beasts treat Spectres as strength 3.

Two things: One, the trireme off the coast of FEMA death camp can probably hit your size 4 city on the coast. Second, DaveV has stack of 16 Death II puppets 1SW of Babylon. I don't know what summon status they are on, but they can move 99 and hit your stack on flatland. With Maelstrom, he'll even have collateral.

Cheers,
Nic

[Mardoc]

It might work out better to slow-build a couple at Hash Pipe and Chronic.

I think we ought to start all four Beasts ASAP, and rush them as soon as we can afford to, in the less-productive cities first. But we need stack defenders to keep our offensive units alive against those Spectres, and we need them now.

Little time, but this depressing news came in from Nicolae:

I'm afraid that pretty much conforms to our own analysis. Maybe if our stack threatens DaveV, we can stall him long enough for Nicolae to build something more.

Uh..can we request from Lewwyn a Cultist-built temple somewhere? A few Drowns would clear out that Trireme and give us at least one secure flank.

[Gaspar]

Uh..can we request from Lewwyn a Cultist-built temple somewhere? A few Drowns would clear out that Trireme and give us at least one secure flank.

Need to research MftD to build anything, though, and that's not in the budget.

Oddly, Nic saying he's spent is not my main concern. Me losing that stack because Dave might be able to hit it is my concern. I thought I had checked for that.

Really need to find a way to get at that mage stack.

[Mardoc]

Need to research MftD to build anything, though, and that's not in the budget.

Oh, right. Agreed. For now anyway, keep the focus on surviving.

Still...if you could persuade Lewwyn to part with a missionary while we're still on the same side, it'd help greatly for future...[SIZE="1"](if there is one)
[/SIZE]

Really need to find a way to get at that mage stack.

I notice that DaveV is keeping some extremely injured Mages around, without taking a healing break. Maybe Poisons wouldn't be a waste after all?

Still, no research is worth doing until we've got the Beasts deployed. And really, if we can just clear a path for Nicolae's last few PZ's, they can kill nearly dead Mages too.

[Mardoc]

Have only a minute before I've got to run, but I opened the save and noticed something possibly important. DaveV hasn't actually declared war on us yet. That means we can just walk straight through his screening spectres/skeleton stacks.

I haven't quite figured out how to use this to kill his mages - but maybe you can find a way, Gaspar. If not this turn, perhaps next turn

[Man Behind the Mask]

Crosspost with Mardoc since I started typing/looking at the save.

I'm not going to play the turn, given the pivotal point in the game and the fact that Gaspar knows what he was planning much better than I can guess.

Nobody beat us to the Grimoire. Chronic can do 1T Beast or 2T Mardero (I'd suggest the latter to keep the Pop up). We can get 2T Beasts, with 1T Disciples to cover the revolts from a couple of places. The even better news is that we do still have our stack, although it took a bit of fire damage (presumably zombie explosions) between our turns.

The Trireme looks to have the Longshoreman promotion, which means there should be no cargo capacity.

The big Mage stack is 1 SW of Babylon, and they're still not healed at all. Unfortunately, there are about 20 units (Skeletons and Adepts) to wade through before you can get to the injured Mages. Getting rid of the Adepts wouldn't be a bad thing, given the Puppet/Skeleton spam we're seeing.

I think that because we're not at war with them yet, we can actually move through the Clown units to get to the empty roaded tile 1NW of the Mage stack. Hasted 2-move units would still have movement left to attack the stack if we declare war from there once all our units have moved.

However, that would basically leave our stack completely surrounded, and potentially all injured (except for any freshly summoned Tigers) if we want to go all out on chewing through the cover for the Mages. I've got very little sense of whether the risk is worth the reward. I don't think we've got enough units to get at the baddies we really want, there's no chance for Nicolae to follow up, and we could be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of fresh summons. On the other hand, as Mardoc notes, the window of opportunity could only last for as long as we're not at war with the Clowns.

[Gaspar]

Since there's clearly no rush in playing the turn - Nic is nowhere near me and the save doesn't move anyway, I'll pause for feedback:

I estimate with the move MBTM suggests we can kill ~7-8 Adepts and 4-5 Mages plus some number of Skeletons. We probably won't lose anything but disposable tigers which can then be resummoned. This still leaves ~10 mages in range of the stack, plus countless wounded summons. There's a nonzero chance we'd lose the whole stack on counter which right now forms the bulk of our military - the PoL in particular really can't be replaced anytime soon - so 4 Ritualists, 6 PoL, Rosy etc.

Is this worth it? My gut says no, but I also suspect that we're not likely to get a whole lot of cracks at his mage stack particularly at a point where they're so wounded as to be essentially auto-kills. Thoughts, team?