A Very Perpy SG

[Brian Shanahan]

Some turns were played! (if this is too spoilerish I apologize!)

Turn 1 – Ok I see exactly why Selrahc only played one turn, turn times are long + the loading at end of turn takes a minimum of 5 minutes. Anyway we’re only at war with Illians (one city) and we have one HotA (horseman) on our eastern doorstep. Goal is obviously to eliminate both. I also switch from Animal Mastery research to Arcane Lore.

Turn 2 – Horsemen took a Freak and is now running towards Cassiel’s cities instead. Around 8 units are heading to the final Illian city to try and finish the job.

Turn 3 – Tebryn breaks his ties with Alexis. Stephanos does an about turn and tries to kill Harley Quinn (I don’t know the reference to the name btw). Guess I’ll have ot deal with him after all.

Turn 4 – New traits! We are now…



Creative/Financial/Charismatic and still Insane! I also trade for Varn Gosam’s Life mana so its slightly easier to deal with Stephanos.

Turn 5 – Goal #1 complete



Mimic stole a hero promotion from Wilbomen as well pretty nice. No problems finishing them off, I promoted Rosier (I mean Warhorse) to blitz and he doubled up with a Mimic to take out 8 defenders.

Turn 6 – Well actually I’ll play a nice round 6 turns, Stephanos is still sitting around in our land not doing much. Got Arcane lore this turn so I’ll et the next person decide what tech they want.

Dantski, to answer your question:

Harley Quinn is a former psychiatrist, turned into the Jokers love-slave sidekick. She appeared in the animated series of the '90's first and became quite popular for some reason:

@ Bob's offer of a spot to someone, if you were willing to wait until next week, I'd be willing to plant a Four Mile Circus in the back yard, if I'm acceptable.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'd like to keep the game moving without pausing for a week, but if we're still at it when you are available to play (which should be the case), I'm fine with you joining, baring any objections from the others. Just play with the intention of keeping the game fun for all =) (and don't rename cities someone else has already claimed ).


You should stop lurking the game now if you do want to sign up for later.

[HidingKneel]

I'm too badly spoiled to jump in, but this game concept looks like a blast (it's been fun to read, too). Anybody interested in another game like this when this one is done? (Maybe with base FFH rather than EitB?)

[Brian Shanahan]

I'd like to keep the game moving without pausing for a week, but if we're still at it when you are available to play (which should be the case), I'm fine with you joining, baring any objections from the others. Just play with the intention of keeping the game fun for all =) (and don't rename cities someone else has already claimed ).


You should stop lurking the game now if you do want to sign up for later.

Well I was only putting it out as an offer if ye can't keep the pace up. But I'd definitely be interested.

As regards the names, only foreign or new cities would get my names, scouts honour.

[pindicator]

So I realize I'm up now but I need to step out. Bob, if you can play it today then go ahead and slip in ahead of me; otherwise I'll get my turn in later today.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'll wait for you, otherwise I'll have played two sets with only about ten turns between them.

[pindicator]

It's beginning to take a while between turns...

Report to come, but I'm passing it along after 6.

Edit: Report!

Admittedly a small report.

I started turn noticing we had a 20 strength barbarian camped in our west. So I drafted some freaks out there, but then when I tried to attack the freaks were afraid. So I stayed in my cities. And found out the barbarian does not move.

In the west I was locked into peace with Rhianna, so I decided it was time to rid the world of archeron. But first



We're now Financial, Organized, and Expansive. So lots of lighthouses, moneychangers, markets, harbors, and courthouses were started in the empire.

After Ritualists knocked everything down with circle of fire (and not my units this time!) I brought in an Eidolon with CR3, gave it Orthus' axe, and attacked Archeron at 80% odds.



We won, and it was all cake after that.



I didnt' do much more. Lots of infrastructure, and a few mime builds. In the east there's still the barbarian menace.
And Alexis built hte Tower of Tolerance on my last turn.

[Bobchillingworth]

Whoo boy. Played less than 10 turns as well.


Report coming tomorrow, after I sort through the ten billion screen caps I took.



Save attached.




Edit: The Report:

First off, I just want to note how thankful I am that, while this game involves stupid long turns and constantly taking pictures in Steam and loading them to dropbox and then here, at least we don't have spreadsheets like a certain other RB FFH SG going on :neenernee




Anyhoo, the turn began with the regular Fixing of Strange Things ritual.


* We are now Org, after spending seemingly a bazillion turns with our old traits, so I cue up Command Posts pretty much everywhere. Pin Seems to have set most cities to Courthouses with the same intention of taking advantage of the newly (and almost certainly temporarily) cheap buildings, but the Org-exclusive CP are better for obvious reasons.


* Our military looks great, lots of tough & well promoted units, but it's really spread out. We're a little short on ritualists as well, we have enough units for about three or four nice attack stacks, but not enough priests for them to each have the minimum of four which I'd prefer. Lots of adepts in the east for some reason, many T1 non-Veil priest units hanging about as well. I am going to assume that these were left for me to pop the borders of captured cities, which is precisely what I shall employ them for.


* I set research to Animal Mastery instead of Precision since I think Beastmasters are more useful, but I also turn science down to only 20% because I want to save as much gold as possible for Mercenary garrisons & upgrading our piles of adepts.



The main goal for my set will be to finish off both Rhoanna, who has lost both Basium and Auric already, and Cassiel, who has been a good buddy but needs to die now if we are to achieve Domination within a decent timeframe. To that end, I begin forming three armies in the west to eliminate the Hippus and two in the east to take on the Grigori, which I'll show shortly. All interior cities have their garrisons emptied, save a single MP to keep them from rioting. We don't need to worry about the AI striking at our core, not at this late stage of the game. The dispossessed garrisons are shifted off to whichever soon-to-be front is closest to them. Vulnerable border & coastal cities get teams of between 1-4 mercs hired depending on how likely I think the AI is to make a move on them.







My first military action is to go after Stephanos, who is presently being a dick over in our eastern holdings. He kills a Phalanx on the defense, gets redlined by about a dozen summons of various types (puppets do surprisingly good damage on their own in large numbers), and then everyone else is somehow too afraid to attack him

Whatever, I can deal with him next turn. I continue to consolidate troops on both fronts, leaving enough garrison troops in the east so that Stephy can't take anything should he heal IBT.


Western Hippus Annihilation Teams:









Team Alpha is the main strike force, and will capture most of her core.

Team Bravo is intended to hold on to our present holdings in Hippus territory, lockdown nearby enemy troops, and then later synch up with Alpha for the final assault.

Team Charlie is just our two best mounted guys (I later also added a priest for healing and a merc for cover), intended to remove the Hippus from the south.



After about 5 minutes of my computer straining over the evidently insane number of AI moves, I finally get to play my next turn.





Stephan healed to about half-health with a promotion, so I brought him back down to the Red Zone using the regular array of pitbeasts and Hosts and puppets. I tried to get the kill using a permanent unit to take advantage of the exp, but nothing would attack him, despite like a dozen units having 99% odds


So it all got wasted on a puppet






In more delightful news, I declared on Rhoanna.





This city will take a few turns to fall due to the need to heal, but it's nothing I can't easily handle.





Kind of pathetic garrison here. Her other cities had tougher units (generally a Knight each and LB instead of archers), but weren't much more impressive. Rhoanna still has some tough units, but they're widely scattered.





Hell yeah, free culture bomb!




Crunch.



Bwoing




I had enough leftover units to attack Ihara and wipe most of the garrison, but not quite enough to take it. Thanks, Former Raiders Trait!





Thus ends Round One in the south.



Meanwhile, in the East:


The Eastern Grigori Annihilation & Destruction Squads have formed up:













IBT AI moves only take about 2 min this time around. They got shorter with each successive turn.


The next couple turns were a bloodbath, and great fun to play out.














The AI are nothing if not opportunistic:





Some time about this point I also started naming our newly captured cities as a string of insults / rant directed towards whatever simpering manchild decided to name several of our units after characters from "My Little Pony" Seriously, Internet People, it's a fucking little girl's TV show. Stop ruining every cool & interesting corner of the Internet by quoting it all the goddamn time. You're like some kid dragging a blow-up doll to prom for his date. Please have the good sense to keep your pathetic hobbies at least semi-private, like the rest of us do. Thanks.



Annnnd, after having pointlessly alienated RB's doubtlessly strong contingent of gormless cryptobabies, it's on to the rest of the report!



Turn 252: More Stuff Died-







(Culture Bomb)




(Warhorse Bomb) [This was the only city I razed, I was worried it would flip to the Malakim]



About this time I realized that Vassals were on. Cassiel is done, so let's see what we can squeeze out of him.





His terms were generous.





Very generous.






Time to vassalize Rhoanna as well. She's at war with Alexis but Alexis is pleased with us, so we won't inherit a war.





Standard terms. (She actually canceled the gifts the next turn- not sure if we lost a trade route or what She's still a vassal, I guess Dave or whoever can re-ask if he really wants the mana).



Concluding picture... :





I think I found out why the AI turns are moving slowly!



This game is far from over- this isn't even all she has, I think she has full compliments of every T4 unit in the game now except maybe Master Vampires.


Stay tuned!

[DaveV]

Got it, but can't play tonight, and maybe not tomorrow. If someone else wants to jump in, go ahead, but I should be able to play by Friday.

[Selrahc]

For Bob

Some time about this point I also started naming our newly captured cities as a string of insults / rant directed towards whatever simpering manchild decided to name several of our units after characters from "My Little Pony" Seriously, Internet People, it's a fucking little girl's TV show. Stop ruining every cool & interesting corner of the Internet by quoting it all the goddamn time. You're like some kid dragging a blow-up doll to prom for his date. Please have the good sense to keep your pathetic hobbies at least semi-private, like the rest of us do. Thanks.

Eh. I didn't do any of the MLP renames. I'd also agree that MLP gets over played. Some of its fans are pretty evangelical about it in an aggravating way.


But I don't think its at all out of place in this game. Unit renames are just a way of throwing in some silly stuff to the game. I know I put in unit renames based on A Song of Ice and Fire, Batman, Catch 22, Planescape Torment, Sandman, Warhammer Fantasy and probably more. I put in signs referencing Bad Santa, the Grinch, Chzo mythos, House of Leaves, Cthulhu, Pearl Jam and Memento. I named a city after a country band called Freakwater. Other people, including you, are doing the same thing in their turnsets. We've got an empire strung together on countless references, to every kind of media imaginable.

That is exactly the kind of context that MLP references are fine in. A whole geeky stew of random references built out of a collective to give an impression of manic insanity.

So, taking the trouble to personally insult someone who threw another reference onto the sea of references, because you don't like the thing he is referencing... well. It seems like a bit of a rum do to me.

Don't take it so personally.

EDIT: And for context, I do quite like MLP:FiM. About as much as I liked.. I don't know... Dexters Lab? Pinky and the Brain? I think it's a pretty good kids show, and I don't regret having watched the first series of it as an adult. I do think talking about it like its the second coming is dramatically overselling it though and far too many of its fans do pretty much that.