The Orc Clan: Following the Princess Rule

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Turn 142: Even a Lawful Evil Wizard can be tempted by Chaos[/SIZE]

AC is currently 63/134 or 47%

The EVENT. Yes I use capitals. I already commented on this turn as I was playing it. This is the turn everything changed. I had a plan and I threw it away to wing it on luck and a prayer.

The plan was to go to war against Mackoti the Vampires with the Alliance of Orc and Elves and Men. Then during the war, either when we are deep in their territory or about to die, Pop of a massive surge in the AC. It would have kept me safe in an alliance and kept everyone's eyes on Mackoti.

NOW i'm stuck with people eyeing me. Especially as this was during the slow period. Perhaps if the turns had still been going at a turn a day my rivals wouldn't have had enough time to properly wonder about it. But they did. It just became a matter of time. I was the bad guy.

[SIZE="4"]The Event of a Lifetime[/SIZE]

Here it is. In visual form. I actually only had just enough money to pull it off. But the +10 to AC was far too tempting.

[SIZE="4"]The Empire to End Empires[/SIZE]

Both my Hero's are heading to the East. I might try to get Rosier to the front but the other guy (you know I can't actually remember his name.) will wait until I upgrade some warriors to axemen for the second force.

You can also see the awesome boost in AC here :neenernee

[SIZE="4"]Power Graph[/SIZE]

Mackoti continues to grow ahead and Mist continues to stagnate in power.

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Turn 143: Here rides the Horseman of Domination[/SIZE]

AC is currently 65/134 or 48%

Stephanos is the Horseman of Domination. Who needs a horseman of Famine?

[SIZE="4"]The First Horseman[/SIZE]

Stephanos comes into play, this blurb shows he has entered the map.

[SIZE="4"][/SIZE]

For some reason I got to see where Stephanos appeared on the map. It was here.

Yep, right next to the Bannor a very fun position, but this made Mr Yellow pull out of the Alliance.

[Ichabod]

Mist power looks scary... Scary for him, of course... What is he up too? That graph is what, 7/8 warriors?

And so, the riders of Rohan realized that they have beem played by Ravus, the white, and Ichabod, wormtongue (:neenernee), for the whole time and decided to try some sort of crazy rebellion... What does he have as an army? Horse Archers or Horsemen? Can you ask Sareln to close borders with him?

I think Spiritual ritualists + Stonewardens can tackle this menace, but the Hippus are certainly a pain to play against. Too much movement, possibility of taking Blitz. That damned worldspell...

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Turn 144: The path to hell is paved with good intentions. So why not just throw yourself down the stairs and skip the boring part?[/SIZE]

AC is currently 67/134 or 50%

The background for this turn? Mr Yellow declared he was pulling out of the alliance and I sent my... pointed reply. You've already seen, and laughed, at the message.

What I haven't posted is the talk myself and Sareln had after Mr Yellow response. We upped our NAP to 175 and talked about what we should do about the war... or not. With the loss of our quick army I agreed to the defensive war that Sareln seemed to prefer. We figured we would spam settlers and try to lure Mackoti to our combined army.

At least that was the plan THIS turn.

[SIZE="4"]The AC[/SIZE]

Here is the AC just before I ended the turn. I fiddled around to get to 50% just enough to spark off the next horseman. I figured between all of my ritualists ready to settle into temples, the Prophecy City, the Shrine and Hyborem I could get to 60% next turn.

You can see that even at 0% research i'm still going to get the Infernal Pact technology.

[SIZE="4"]Pulling back never looked so pathetic[/SIZE]

This is one of those times I regret cutting all diplomatic contact with Mackoti, how silly did this look from his point of view? A Elvish and Orc army appear from nowhere... then back into the mist.

It could be scary. In some world. But i'm pretty sure he would just laugh at us.

You can see a few stonewardens heading home. I selected those with the lowest AC and figured I would use these for Runes Temples and Replace them with Ritualists instead. In fact I figured I might do this a lot seeing as how much more useful Ritualists are compared to Stonewardens.

[SIZE="4"]Temples of Sin[/SIZE]

I only needed to settle Ritualists in two cities in the end. I kept the rest for next turn.

-

Note: I'm rushing a bit in these turns and just picking what pictures are needed. I want to get up to date tonight for the big climax

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Turn 144.5: People try to compare falling with flying. They lie. Flying is mankinds dreams, a act of hope. Falling is a nightmare, a act of fear. Shall I fly or fall?[/SIZE]

AC is currently 67/134 or 50%

This is just the OET of 144, because it got a bit wierd.

[SIZE="4"]Do Barbarians move when you blink?[/SIZE]

I ended turn and I'm pretty sure that the Barbarians moved! Since i'm sure Mr Yellow is last in turn this was a tad confusing.

[SIZE="4"]Hard to find demons[/SIZE]

Also the Horseman and Hyborem seemed to spawn NOW. I guess somehow the Infernal Tech getting completed forces the Barbarian turn to happen early so that Hyborem can come into effect before his turn?

Anyway it was trick to catch because I wasn't ready but Bubodos the Horseman of War spawned in the North West somewhere

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Just because you do Diplomacy over Xmas does NOT mean it is a time of giving[/SIZE]

[SIZE="4"]Sareln of the Elves - Pre Turn 144[/SIZE]

[COLOR="Green"]Hi Ravus,

Sorry for the extended silence. I've gotten a lot heaped on my plate recently and it was struggle enough to play the turns. It's looking like I don't get a replacement for this game, so the tradeoff will be that my turns will take longer to process as I scrape together the time to play properly (to not play properly would be to throw the game to Mackoti and we know we don't want that, make him earn it at least ).

Umm, this is going to sound a bit direct, but what's the overall strategic goal with the AC spike now? Mr. Yellow has just announced to me that he *must* pull his HA's back in order to contain Stephanos (it's not clear that he has enough to do that, but I guess he'll find out the hard way if that's the case won't he?). It's a good event if Stephanos moves against Mist, since he needs some more fighting in his life, but Mr. Yellow is so far under his sway that he's been called back. He wasn't much interested in hearing any offers to keep him in the fight against Mackoti. This development leaves our priest stacks exposed, and I don't think we've got good odds against Mackoti without the large pincer forcing him to allocate his forces to two theaters.

Thoughts on how to proceed tactically from here would definitely be appreciated.

Sincerely,[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Orange"]To Sareln,

I did notice the thread you started in the General Discussion asking about a replacement. It's understandable if you have lots heaped on you, thanks for continuing trying to play the turns even while searching for someone to replace. You might get lucky.

I'm a bit annoyed Mr Yellow didn't send myself a email about his pulling out. He has hinted at it, but I was hoping with Stephanous so far away and only near the Bannor that he might stick it out for at least one city razing. But even with his retreat I hope we can make things difficult for Mackoti.

On the AC, the original goal was causing Blight (as we were the best able to ride it out.) The goal I was working towards before Mr Yellow asked me to stop doing ANYTHING that could boost the AC was spreading Ashen Veil everywhere so that I could get the Infernal tech and switch over to Sacrifice the Weak & Conquest to spam priests everywhere. The reason for my current low military is all down to the AC Agreement Mr Yellow had me sign. With his retreat i'm going to call it voided and do the switch next turn. I have so many things that I've had to hold off on because of that gentleman agreement. The recent AC boosts were all down to events mainly yours and mine.

Tactically we are in a bind now. I'm tempted to say we should pull back and re-enforce our troops so that we can do a pincer movement ourselves. If I have a few turns to switch over the economy I can be pumping out 5-10 Priests per turn. I don't care how good Vampires are, they can't keep up with that kind of spam ability. If I was going to pincer with my own army I would say going through Amelia's territory would be better. Provided he doesn't sell the information to Mackoti. We could try to Settler spam and play defensive. I could even sell you cheap settlers from my warren+sacrifice cities. This would be playing the long game, compared to the reinforce option. If we want to attack now we should be prepared to lose. We might take a single city before reinforcements kill us... We could try to raze the city closest and then retreat before the inevitable counter attack?

Those are the three options that spring to mind;
1) Attack and retreat
2) Reinforce then Pincer attack
3) Defend and expand aggressively and lure Mackoti into attacking us
Hope that makes things clearer

Ravus - The Red Wizard[/COLOR]

Option 3 is probably best. Pull back to my nearest city then and plot out the details from there. This leaves Amelia high and dry, but for some reason I have a hard time feeling bad for him...

[COLOR="Orange"]Consider it done.

I will start changing out the low level Runes priests. Swapping them for the better Veil Priests as I get more. Runes can always be very useful for expansion cities. Speaking of, do you wish to buy some cheap Orc Settlers? Now is the time to expand as new cities do not suffer from blight.

Next turn I will switch over to Sacrifice the Weak & Conquest. [/COLOR]

[COLOR="Green"]I think I'll be able to handle native settler production on my own without too much trouble. The constant priest spam is getting hard to support anyways.

My memory is hazy on this next point but I think we have NAP right now to T150. Would you like to Re-up to T175?[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Orange"]Re-up to turn 175 accepted. I've completed the Infernal Tech so that I can switch over, this does bring Krill into the game, but while he could be a threat for Mist, Mr Yellow or Amelia I doubt he would cause much damage to ourselves if he spawned close to us. For some reason when I ended that turn I got a flash showing where the next horseman was. Not sure why, horseman mechanics seem to change it didn't happen straight away last time. So I wasn't prepared and couldn't find the exact spot but I think the next one spawned near Mr Yellow again.

On another note, I was wondering if I could buy a settler spot from you. Our agreement stops me from expanding past the Misty Mountains and I've stuck to that. But I was wondering if I could buy a one-off spot. To the east of the mountains is a spot with Ivory by the coast. Elves get nothing from coast, and the land itself is mainly desert, and it seems like a good position to act as a forward base/staging area If I want to move through Amelia's land. I'm prepared to open with an offer of a settler in exchange for the position (I can get you an exact position if you'd like, but it would be on the coast to minimize border contamination) I could also offer money if you'd prefer that. [/COLOR]

Sorry, Once again I'm just throwing this out. You should be able to follow my thoughts here. Sareln is the old Ally. The First neighbour that we ended up playing nice with. At this point Sareln is the only ally I care about keeping happy. The Minute he stops talking to me is the minute I start counting down the turns to a dogpile.

I honestly didn't remember when our NAP ended so I just re-upped. He was angling a bit too much about the AC so I tried to hand wave as much as I could. Thankfully with Mr Yellow leaving the alliance I have a reason to up everything.

Playing the Defensive game is probably not a smart move. But hopefully I can up the AC enough before Mackoti gets through Amelia and Sareln. Considering Sareln is my meat shield we can play the war his way.

I think i've mentioned the spot I would like from Sareln before. I'll post a picture of the spot in the next turn. Its a nice little place on the coast will be good as a place to keep the army, build a road to amelia, and keep an eye out for any vampire units sneakthing through his lands.

[Ravus Sol]

[SIZE="6"]Warning! Warning from an Ally Message![/SIZE]

This is the message that made me realise Turn 145 was going to be mad!

[SIZE="4"]Sareln of the Elves - Turn 145[/SIZE]

[COLOR="Green"]Mr. Yellow just moved all his units through my border and announced that he was going to hit you over my objections (citing the AC spiking, screw him). He has abused our NAP and our Open Borders. Borders are closed, deals are off, and units are redeploying to defend against this new threat. His bismirching of my good name demands that I exact a retribution. A start, of course, is this message . He's in range to hit the Lonely Mountain, but his entire stack is (14) horse-archers promoted for retreat with move 5 or 6 and commando, plus warcry in reserve. The peace with Mackoti is real, the price was firing 7-pines to reduce the AC (and implied is Amelia's head I presume). I don't care, I need to avenge this abuse by Mr. Yellow to preserve my reputation.

When this all cools off, you're welcome to that Ivory site, no problem.

You probably have all the tac-info you need. Everything you see from Mr. Yellow is all that there is.

Good Luck. Let us kill every Hippus Horse Archer for this betrayal.[/COLOR]

[Ravus Sol]

Mist power looks scary... Scary for him, of course... What is he up too? That graph is what, 7/8 warriors?

And so, the riders of Rohan realized that they have beem played by Ravus, the white, and Ichabod, wormtongue (:neenernee), for the whole time and decided to try some sort of crazy rebellion... What does he have as an army? Horse Archers or Horsemen? Can you ask Sareln to close borders with him?

I think Spiritual ritualists + Stonewardens can tackle this menace, but the Hippus are certainly a pain to play against. Too much movement, possibility of taking Blitz. That damned worldspell...

Yeah could be, I think he would get some power from techs and pop right? Either way he is running low.

The Riders have turned. I honestly am not sure if Mist's hand is behind this or whether i've just rubbed Mr Yellow the wrong way with my last message. Oh well... you know what they say, "If you can't do something right... just keep doing it wrong". I may have that saying miss-quoted, but thats sort of the point :neenernee

Icha-tongue! No not sure that works. But yes wormtongue the Riders have turned against us! Time to kick ass. (What? This is a parody of LoTR where Isengard is awesome. We can kick ass!)

We can indeed tackle them, we just need to buy a turn or two to reinforce. Hippus are too quick.

[Ravus Sol]

Wow I need 15 pictures for this turn. Will take a bit to sort this out.

[Ichabod]

Oh man, I really, really hope he can't take Lonely Mountain next turn. I'd hate to see the AV shrine get burned to the ground.

By the way, wasn't this attack a NAP-stab? I can't remember if you had a NAP.