Uncommonly Good: A Story of Elves

[Man Behind the Mask]

I apparently wasn't obvious enough in my complete indecisiveness.

On the one hand, I’m pretty confident that we’ll never have a better opportunity: Mages are injured; there are only 20 other units in the stack (rather than the potential 50+ skeletons); we can waltz right through the screen; Clown culture hasn’t filled in yet with the cities still in revolt; and a lot of the other summons have taken damage from thumping into the Sheaim.

However, we know we haven’t enough to kill all the Mages and we will be completely exposing the vast majority of our forces. Even Mardero and Beasts will die to 40 skeletons if there aren’t any other units to take some hits, so we need to make sure we’ve got a proper military when it’s our turn in the firing line.

I guess it comes down to how hopeless we think things are? If we think we can hold out for Brian/Llewwyn with what we’ve got/will have soon, then we sit back and wait for a more conclusive opportunity. If things are truly hopeless anyway, then a blaze of glory will be fun, and it might knock the Clowns into being more conservative. I think my gut says that what we really want is more time since there’s no way we can fight the Clowns alone, and that suggests the more cautious approach.

An offbeat thought – could we extort a c. 15 turn NAP from DaveV before the turn rolls on the basis that we could hit the Mage stack? We may as well finish the game as we started with a courageous threat? Lining us up so that we can build even more military and then hit at the same time as our other allies only has the disadvantage of leaving Nicolae out to dry. I hope he’d forgive us.

It’s a real shame that it’s impossible to sim battles with wounded units to see what we might actually be able to do to the Mage stack. Ultimately, I really can’t guess what’s best.

[Gaspar]

Let's not attack then.

As you may have noticed from the tech thread I'm more occupied than anticipated so if any of you lads get the chance and want to move it on, I trust your judgement. My only plan really is to start Mardero in the cap, Beasts elsewhere and disciples where needed so we can end revolts immediately. Probably beasts in Kaya, Where Its At, Paradise City and Hash Pipe.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah I spoke to Gaspar earlier and we pretty much agreed that it's not worth it to attack them. We need a substantial number of units or the new goodies that will be available very soon will be totally ineffective.

[Gaspar]

Well, I can't report the turn, but I wanted to play it so it wasn't sitting there any longer. Just a rough weekend for me, sorry.

I think you've all looked at the actual save though, so you should know what's going on.

[NobleHelium]

I thought you were going to retreat the stack if we weren't attacking.

Well we didn't kill any mages or adepts presumably but you can probably talk Lewwyn into attacking sooner now...

[Gaspar]

Honestly, this is what happens when you rush a turn during war, cold/hot or otherwise.

We're pretty well screwed. Rosier is no big deal, really, nor Ritualists/DC. Losing the PoL hurts though, since we're probably not going back to leaves this game. And he'll be on our borders right around the time we can do something about it, so Nicolae is truly toast now.

I suppose we should just concede, though I'll see if the rest of the team wants to talk me out of it.

[Man Behind the Mask]

Um.... Oops!?!

To be honest, there was a crushing inevitability about this if he can wipe out our stack the same turn he tears through a Nicolae city.

If Llewwyn can cash in his Mercs, charge in and raze some cities (putting the Balz on strike), then there's a chance somebody else might might win. I think it's unlikely to be us anymore.

[Mardoc]

Again, I think we've got a chance here. We can buy ourselves ~5 turns by popping the worldspell, and Beasts might be sufficient to keep ourselves alive after that. Yeah, we messed up, but it's not the end.

Edit: the main thing is, DaveV can't afford a mistake either. We kill his mages (somehow), and he'll have a devil of a time replacing them. Certainly a tough time replacing them before the other allies can come into the war.

If...if that snit in the tech thread hasn't persuaded people they don't want to play anymore. Looks like there's bad blood between a lot of the remaining civs, and maybe it's not worth it.

[Gaspar]

As you can see, I had a nice snit myself.

I haven't actually even opened the save myself to survey the damage - it really gets my goat when people try to retroactively justify bad behavior. If you want to misbehave, do it - just don't expect me to eat it with a grin.

Probably I should just shut up, rebuild our army and play my turns but the fact that I know I've been dragging a bunch of people who don't want to play to play has weighed on me for some time now. If the rest really don't want to end it then so be it. But the esprit de corps of this game has been pretty foul for some time. That and the fact that we've not been having our usual fun in thread has made the game a lot more of a burden than a joy - though I think the month or so of getting a turn every 4th day or so probably sucked the life out of it more than anything for me.

Anyway, if this is indeed the end I can't say enough how much fun this game was for the first 125 turns or so and how much I enjoyed playing with you all - Mardoc, MBTM, NobleHelium, Azoth - thanks so much for making this such a great experience. Hopefully we can recapture some of it in FFH17, but there's nothing like your first time.

[Gaspar]

Okee, so assuming we're still playing, we're fucked.

Here's the event log, first off:



Complete massacre. They Maelstromed everything down as far as it would go first, naturally. A look at the battlefield, which now exists in our borders, as it turns out.



I had a heavy debate about the beasts - could I afford to lose the culture on the interturn? Doubtful. But there's a nonzero chance that we lose Hash Pipe and Where Its At this turn so I figured I should at least get the units out. Suppose I could have popped the world spell.

Ah well.