[SPOILERS] "Welcome to this Crazy Time!": Bobchillingworth's Fist of the North Star

[fire&ice]

Hey Ellimist, do you mind if I play your turn? I am reluctant to, but I'd like to get two in today.

if you play his turn I demand an update on his city

[Ellimist]

I promise to post pictures and details.

But... I think we can move up our victory date to T195.

Bob seems willing/able to prechop 6 of my ancient forests and complete those chops all on the final turn. Assuming I haven't miscalculated... that should be enough.

[Bobchillingworth]

Turn 195 being earler than Mardoc could even physically attack the city, even if he started moving out next turn.

[Ellimist]

For the record, I do think it would be fun to delay a few turns and give ourselves a chance to wipe out whatever stack Mardoc sends. I would enjoy capturing the Baron, many werewolves, and any Beasts of Agares he brings.

Basium already has two demon workers, maybe he can start a zoo for demons and werewolves.

[Bobchillingworth]

He's probably going to start moving out next turn, or the turn after... but he'll be too late.



I'd rather just win sooner than later anyway, fun as crushing Mardoc's army might be. Besides, blight might knock our win time down somehow far enough that we end up doing battle anyway.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hooray! Finally won one of these things!




I'll give Ellimist a day or something to post final pics, showing our crazy defenses, tower status, and what his cities actually looked like

[Bobchillingworth]

Some pics from the end of the game (followed by final thoughts):



Ellimist's capital, with Ultimate Defense & plenty more units arriving every turn:



[Not pictured- among other things, Ellimist's C IV, 19 strength Herald w/ subdue beast & 2 exp away from CV]


The Tower was going to be cut by a turn or two thanks to chops- we had 8 workers in his territory already, and I had 11 more arriving in the next few turns.



Mardoc's stack was impressive:



... but I believe that our garrison could have wiped it with minimal loses, in the space of one or two turns. There is not much that can survive a half-dozen maelstroms, blinding light, +8 strength tigers (via Rod of Winds), and the dozens of other elite units we had on hand.



Not that it mattered anyway, since he could not possibly reach our city before we won:





Blight would not have made any difference, especially since Ellmist could easily afford to shed several population without taking any turns off the completion date.



Ellmist's other real city:





It existed to claim mana nodes, not much else to say about it really.



Ljo demographics at the end of the game:






And Ljo kill totals:








Final Thoughts


I know that I wasn't too great about updating this thread for most of the game- for a while I had very little to say, and then at the end I was worried about lurkers ruining my team's plans. But this really was a fun game! I would play a no-settlers game again, although maybe with more bans It had the feel of a SP game really throughout, but managing a collection of city-states encouraged both greater city specialization than I would have normally done, and it really made every population center a precious, unique resource.


I was mean to Xenin about the map earlier. In the end, I suppose it didn't really differ much from a completely random map, save everyone got copper, a node, and I had lake fishes which never got netted. Highlands ended up helping me a lot, since the forest coverage was so immense. Having exclusive access to Iron was awesome, and probably would have determined the fate of the game, had Serdoa remained at war with Mardoc & it come down to me vs. Selrahc.


I was slightly concerned to read the threads today & see how certain vocal lurkers repeatedly tried to influence Mardoc, not just Tasunke's strategy ramblings but also a lot of bizarrely impassioned stuff regarding human takeovers for Basium and Hyborem. I'll be honest, I don't forsee myself updating any other game threads I make very much. I am not sure why this game seemingly had a widespread lurker narrative of Innocent Sidar vs. Sinister Elves & Outright Evil Hippus (also Vampires I guess), but when the end result is lurkers attempting to change the game, my response has to be to simply leave lurkers with very little material to go on.




My basic strategy for this game was to play cautiously, and let the innate elven / Leaves economy propel me ahead of the others. After I landed the Great Library, I began to transition to a specialist economy; as cool as the EitB super-elven towns economy sounds, it was never viable for this game, where I could not leave GoN for Foreign Trade because I had few resources, and where Taxation would have both taken a long time to research & Republic would have been only at best marginally better than Godking when I still had only two cities.


Plenty of mistakes were made. Having Ellmist build the Heroic Epic in his capital was dumb, since that city only ever produced three paladins and a champ by way of military. I was slow to cottage non-forested tiles in the mid-game, came up with a number of impractical plans which eventually got abandoned, and I stuck with Godking for at least a dozen turns too long. Overall though I think I did a pretty good job- my only real military losses vs. human players were a champ and a fawn vs. Serdoa, and a PoL against Mardoc. It seems that other players underestimated how fast my units were- I had a network of Haste adepts spread across my empire who sped units on to their destinations, and my road network was excellent. I also had visibility over roughly a third of the map continuously in the late game, via floating eyes and/or hawks in every city, hawk/hunter pairs stationed in key border areas, and a number of roving rangers. Mardoc could not have attacked me anywhere without my having had at least a few turn's notice, time enough to prepare tiger spam & consolidate my seemingly-scattered forces.




Finally, some words for the only people who really matter, the players of this game :



Selrahc- Thank you for pointing out to me that my LB-army plan was moronic, and huge thanks for sharing pictures of Serdoa's stack before you were eliminated. I was disappointed that we didn't get to have a grand Champs vs. Vampires battle


Serdoa- Kudos on being the first person to play the Hippus the way they were meant to be played, and for rather convincingly demonstrating the power of flanking promotions on mounted. I personally am appalled by some of the lurker comments directed towards you for this game- you were, as ever, an exceedingly honorable opponent. Also, sorry for not sending Gilden to help vs. Mardoc, although I was heartened to read that we were both mutually intending to (honorably!) betray each other anyway


Mardoc- Your performance this game was outright heroic, hanging on after a grievous setback, and then somewhat literally clawing your way into being a world-dooming threat. Thank you for making the game competitive even into the final turn, for arguing against a boring conclusion circa turn 140, and for the Netherblade =)



And last, but most certainly not least...


Ellimist- Many thanks for being RB's first Basium & Angel Buddy extraordinaire! We won this as a team, and your input was invaluable even before I brought you into the game. I predict that many new FFH games on RB will now feature the Mercurians, after we discussed only a fraction of the crazy shit they can do





That's it from my end. I'm glad to finally win one of these things, although the experience of the game itself was the real reward.

[Mardoc]

maybe with more bans It had the feel of a SP game really throughout, but managing a collection of city-states encouraged both greater city specialization than I would have normally done, and it really made every population center a precious, unique resource.

Frankly - different bans. After seeing how it played, I'd be happy to unban the Kurios and the Clan, but definitely ban Sidar next time around.

I was slightly concerned to read the threads today & see how certain vocal lurkers repeatedly tried to influence Mardoc, not just Tasunke's strategy ramblings but also a lot of bizarrely impassioned stuff regarding human takeovers for Basium and Hyborem. I'll be honest, I don't forsee myself updating any other game threads I make very much. I am not sure why this game seemingly had a widespread lurker narrative of Innocent Sidar vs. Sinister Elves & Outright Evil Hippus (also Vampires I guess), but when the end result is lurkers attempting to change the game, my response has to be to simply leave lurkers with very little material to go on.

As it happened - that's when I really decided to dig in my heels. It was one thing when I was arguing with my dedlurker, totally different when the idea was general lurker amusement.

Mardoc- Your performance this game was outright heroic, hanging on after a grievous setback, and then somewhat literally clawing your way into being a world-dooming threat. Thank you for making the game competitive even into the final turn, for arguing against a boring conclusion circa turn 140, and for the Netherblade =)

You're welcome for most of that :neenernee

Granted, I do think I should have given in and contributed to the Hippus crusade against you even without compensation...but that's hindsight. I just underestimated the elven economy, and overestimated my own!

[Ellimist]

Okay, final update time.

We were a little wary of posting our towers progress for awhile there. We didn't think that a lurker would actually pass any information on, but we didn't want anybody to inadvertently convey a sense of urgency to Mardoc before we were ready. We were hoping the final several towers would be very quick, at which point it wouldn't matter if he reacted.

Here's the timeline for our tower victory:

• Turn 171
  Finished National Epic
  
• Turn 172
  Started and finished Heroic Epic
  
• Turn 173
  Built a Paladin. Thanks to the multipliers, I had more than twice as many hammers for it as I needed.
  
• Turn 174
  Started tower of alteration with 1 full turn of overflow.
  
• Turn 178
  Pause the tower of alteration to build a paladin. Mardoc is really scary at this point.
  
• Turn 179
  Built another paladin.
  
• Turn 180
  Finished the tower of alteration
  
• Turn 181
  Built a paladin.
  
• Turn 182
  Started tower of necromancy with 1 full turn of overflow
  
• Turn 184
  Cash rushed tower of necromancy
  
• Turn 185
  Rushed tower of divination with great engineer
  
• Turn 186
  Started tower of elements with 2 full turns of overflow(from the previous two towers)
  
• Turn 187
  Cash rushed tower of elements. Started golden age.
  
• Turn 188
  Started tower of mastery with 1 full turn of overflow from tower of elements

Each ancient forest would provide 20(base) hammers when chopped, but also cost me 1 hammer of normal production on the final turn. My multipliers were +75%.

At the end of turn 189, I had 380 out of 1340 hammers into the final tower, producing 127(73*1.75) per turn. I had 6 more turns of golden age production, meaning:

EoT190: 507
EoT191: 634
EoT192: 761
EoT193: 888
EoT194: 1015

This would require me to get at least 325 hammers on the final turn. With +75% multipliers, I'd need at least 186 hammers(base).

Chopping 6 ancient forests would provide 120, while reducing my hpt output for that turn by 6 to 67. 187 * 1.75 = 327 THUS we would have finished on T195.

We had enough workers in place to chop more than this if necessary. Elven workers are great for prechopping and clearing forests because they don't lose movement from moving onto the tile.


Here are some images related to our towers:

Finishing the Tower of Alteration on Turn 181:

Finishing the Tower of Necromancy(via cash rush) on T184:

Finishing the Tower of Divination via Great Engineer on T185. Also Hyborem:

On Turn 186 I choose Strength of Will... eventually:

We also squeeze out enough hammers and gold on T186 so that we can cash rush the Tower of Elements on T187

I start my first and only golden age on T187, because the entire turn's production will overflow into the Tower of Mastery on the following turn:

On T188, I start the final Tower:

Tower progress on the final turn:

My other two cities:

Dis, the short lived home of the Infernals civ. Worthless city, and not likely to contribute anything at all in the next few turns:

Bourne the Gleaming, the city we founded with the settler I spawned with. We settled at this location to claim the two nodes, but we ended up not needing them. The plan was to pump units, but the city didn't grow fast enough to be relevant. Also note how I need 20 hammers for the +5% multiplier to be relevant, and I have only 19.

A brief history of the short-lived Infernals:

Bob did most of the heavy lifting here. I only had one unit able to reach the city in time.

Killing Hyborem (the first time) on T186:

Killed the last of the Infernals and captured the Gela. We didn't want the Ljosalfar civ to capture the city because we wanted AV to be auto-purged.

My badass Herald with Gela. This guy was actually spawned by one of Mardoc's Rangers.

[Tasunke]

6 turns for the first 4 towers and 6 turns for final tower (or less with chops?)

holy shit that is epic :D

--> I wonder if Tower Victory should be tweaked at all? On the one hand Tower Vics seem pretty quick, but on the other hand I haven't seen a Tower Vic get completed by a team that wasn't "at the top of the totem pole" during said game.