This Time for Sure: Mardoc reprises the Lanun

[Thoth]

War plans sent by email.

Good call on the Cease Fire. Suggest we decline a Peace Treaty if he offers one.

[Mardoc]

Honestly, although I appreciate your paranoia - the important detail is that we're planning to attack, not any details about how. Particularly with such a piece of overkill as you've proposed :neenernee

That said, your proposed overkill probably only sacrifices 2-3 turns, and I'd feel really dumb a week from now looking back on a post about overkill when Tatan's firebows slaughter the last of our expeditionary force; so if I can figure out how to set up the logistics (particularly chariot production) as recommended, I'll go with your plan anyway.

That is not a warplan....it's a recipe for disaster.

Hunter's shouldn't land until t136 (and they should be landed as far south/east as possible and widely separated). The same turn (136) rebase two Hawks to the Hunters.

137 move Hunters towards Tatan's core, fly Hawk missions and decide on final troop movements.

We'll want two galleys for each of the Southern Amurite cities....5 chariots + 1 Cultist and 1 Zealot and a Mob 1 Longbow in each galley pair. These need to be within 6 tiles of their landing zones on t136. If Hawk scouting on t 137 shows Tatan's cities to still be weakly defended, we land in two places in position to take the two Southern cities on t138.

In the meantime, 8 chariots (including the upgraded 20 xp axes), Saverours, 2 Phalanxes, 3 Cultists (4 or 5 if we can manage it...but I think we'll be short), 2 (three would be ideal, but 2 is good enough) Zealots, 8+ Boarding Parties, Asssorted and sundry Archers/Longbows all get on the main invasion fleet on t136 and sail North West towards the tile 1 se of the "WHEAT!!!!" sign that is 5t E, 1t S of Moonlight Mansion.

T 138 the fleet moves 6 tiles to 1 E of Moonlight Mansion and the Boarding Parties promote and capture the city. Galleys move into the city and unload (you'll need to manually re-select the Galleys as they'll be out of movement). Then the Chariots move on Tatan's capital and take it (hopefully). Then the Cultists build temples of OO and then the Zealots culture bomb the cities out of resistance.

In the meantime, the southern chariot forces should be enough to capture both of Tatan's southern/eastern cities. If strong resistance is encountered at one city, they should be in close enough support range to take one of the cities at minimum. Cults and Zealots move up in preparation for the t139 Temple/Culture bomb combos.

So we'll also need at least 10 Mob II galleys plus some Frigates/Pirates for stack cover.

Also: We want some more naval assets deployed vs Illios. I'm not sure what he's up to, but if we get the chance to kill his Cultists.....take it.

And Phalanx 3 and 4 can wait a couple of turns, get another trio of 4 promo chariots on the board from the HE city.....then finish up the Phalanxes.

Thoth.

The main thing I'm debating, actually, is your plans for the Hunters. I don't think there's a place we can land them without Tatan seeing, and the real reason I think we've a good chance here is a Wizard army currently located somewhere in Elven lands.

Well, that and...8 boarding parties to take one city? A city that's currently defended by one solitary warrior?

Edit: Oh, one other reason I'm willing to go this route: we need a military like that which you describe, anyway, simply to defend against our neighbors.

[Mardoc]

Most merciful mages of munificience .

Darrell

Eh?


[SIZE="4"][COLOR="Red"]
DAMN IT, THOTH, WILL YOU QUIT PREDICTING THE FUTURE ALREADY?[/COLOR][/SIZE]



Ok, so maybe Tatan's army won't be in elven lands while we sneak in with a couple chariots to take all of his cities. Maybe we do need a real army and a real plan.

In other news: Hyborem! And only one possible candidate for the Pact: Mr. Armageddon himself.

Do we kill him? I suppose not yet, our focus is elsewhere.

And, Darrell offered a map trade. I debated this one for a while, but decided to indulge my curiosity. Sadly, he didn't have Tatan's map. We've got maps for Ilios and Uber, though.

What else this turn...

Well, we popped a GA. Doesn't look quite as impressive as the first one, proportionately:

Before:

After:

I mean, sure, the MFG increase was more than the 2nd place civ's entire production and the GNP increase was more than the average income - but compared to our base....oh, heck, I can't pretend anymore . The only way we lose from here is to do something really stupid and let the other take advantage of us. I wouldn't put it past me to lose with a 3X lead in both hammers and gold over the next rival, but I'd have to work at it.

In other news, just worked on the logistics to get our invasion force ready. Which was already largely in progress thanks to you, Thoth.

Finally, one bewildering bit of news:

[Mardoc]

Oh, man, this is going to be so much fun! This is quite an army that's staging

This turn, we dropped off the Hunters. We'll see if Tatan decides that's a problem, or if he thinks we're just curious. I'm sure he won't mistake our intent next turn when 10 mithril chariots+ land on his shores...

Looks like we'll have what Thoth described, and perhaps a little bit more. Also, I'm pretty sure we can take Tatan's northern city, if lightly guarded, by using mobility chariots. Which leaves only one as yet undiscovered. How we take that...well, it depends on where it is and what it's guarded by. Hawks should tell us. Fortunately, we can rebase to, say, Tatan's capital, and run a Hawk mission right from there - the main trick is going to be economy of force to make sure we can take everything possible, without (hopefully) losing any to a counterattack.

[Mardoc]

I'm swinging back to the perspective that we might be aiming to crack a nut with a sledgehammer, Thoth. Which is weird, he had enough to force a March of the Trees, at least, yet I can't find anything beyond 1 warrior/city, an archer, and a couple adepts. Maybe Darrell did more damage than it appears in the graphs?

Anyway, he let our Hunters live, and in fact it appears he had no choice, I can't see anything that could have killed them. We've found his last city - also found a settler. Ok, so we don't *know* his northernmost city location, we just extrapolated it from the borders we can see.





Anyway, that's the shape of his empire. Actually would be fairly defensible by land, or against someone he saw coming in slow ships. Or someone who needed Cultists to crack the defenses.

I'm not sure if we'll manage to take Carrot Castle on the first turn of the war, it depends on how well behaved the culture is. I think we ought to be able to reach it after some Zealot works, but I could be wrong. The rest of his cities are certainly reachable in the first turn, the main question is whether we have enough chariots to do the job, split 6 ways (especially since we also want to grab any workers we can, right?). It's possible that this becomes a 2-turn war. The main problem is that the northern force has only 10 chariots, to go three ways. The southern cities ought to fall, the coastal city ought to fall, but 10 chariots may not be enough to get the three remainders all at once.

Or, well, it's also possible that Tatan has something in the fog that he can get to a reasonable place. Presumably he has Haste, and MobI and roads, and of course fireballs have pretty good range too. Although, unless it's in a city, my instinct says we want to ignore it, and just take out his cities, let the firebows die for lack of support.

Here's what our sledgehammer looks like (not counting the 10 mithril chariots already landed in the south)


And, while that's going on, we continue heading toward victory.



I love this town! We may pause the Tower for a turn to slip in the Theatre, just to make sure it keeps growing, but we should see the Tower of Elements built within 5 turns, at worst.

End of turn was kind to us as well - we popped a Merchant, plus got the Sage from AL. Just need a Prophet/Engineer/Commander and we're good for extending the GA one more time. Which we ought to have, and then some - I'm pretty sure Poopdeck can generate another, and we're touring the tech tree via at some other handy free Great Ones.

Finally, one last question for lurkers and/or Thoth: Can we promote The Black Wind to Magic Resistance/Cold resistance? It'd be quite handy to have a ship on hand that's resilient in the face of Tsunami; I know we could do it if it were a living hero, but I'm not sure about doing that for an unliving one.

[Thoth]

Note that the AC is now at 27.

Medicine would be useful as would an expeditionary force to kill off Hyborem.

Looks good otherwise.

If I'm reading things right, the tile 1S of Moonlight Mansion will be neutral territory once we capture Moonlight Mansion. If that is the case we can hit his Capital with two move Phalanxes and Boarding Parties, which should allow a strike on Carrot Castle with Chariots.

I'd have expected Tatan's army to be visible by now, but I'm sure we can spot it with Hawks next turn.

I trust that the Military-Industrial Complex is continuing to spit out multiple ships, Cultists and T3 units each turn?

[Mardoc]

I trust that the Military-Industrial Complex is continuing to spit out multiple ships, Cultists and T3 units each turn?

Definitely. Although I'm starting to consider changing the focus a bit toward adepts.

But yes, Uberfish is going to be looking for a chance to do this to us. And for that matter, the best defense is a good offense . And Big H needs to bite it, and there's Ilios to worry about.

I don't want to take on Hyborem until we've got collateral on the board. It's one thing to run over warriors with Mithril Chariots - a whole different ballgame to kill off Iron Longbows fortified in a city.

[Thoth]

I don't want to take on Hyborem until we've got collateral on the board. It's one thing to run over warriors with Mithril Chariots - a whole different ballgame to kill off Iron Longbows fortified in a city.

Pah. We can produce a quad promoted and a triple promoted Mithril Chariot per turn. Plus two available Phalanxes (with 4 promos). 6 chariots plus the Phalanxes is probably enough to kill off Hyborem. I'd aim to bring 8 Chariots, 2 phalanxes and a few swords/Boarding parties. Priest/Zealot support isn't really necessary as we want to raze Dis.

[Mardoc]

Pah. We can produce a quad promoted and a triple promoted Mithril Chariot per turn. Plus two available Phalanxes (with 4 promos). 6 chariots plus the Phalanxes is probably enough to kill off Hyborem. I'd aim to bring 8 Chariots, 2 phalanxes and a few swords/Boarding parties. Priest/Zealot support isn't really necessary as we want to raze Dis.

Hmm. Well, on the one hand, we'd take casualties. On the other - Blight would both really suck, and hurt us more than anyone else. Maybe I do need to make a priority of arranging for Mr. H to go to Hell.

...if Tatan would hurry up and play his turn so he can die already . Yeah, I know he even warned us. And this is a turn that he'll probably want to play carefully, that's his only chance to live.

[Mardoc]

The war is started, and over. And sadly, I was too absorbed to really document it in the detail I should have, so I'll instead describe what we did with Paint.


But here's a few glimpses, anyway:

The log:

After spending promotions, I think our lowest odds battle was around 96%; and we had enough extra that we could have let some of the workers be, and instead have extra bodies if we'd lost any of those battles.

Tatan seems to have underestimated our mobility, and/or numbers - he evacuated the south, while putting an army of Firebows just outside his capital and another mini-stack in Carrot Castle. But thanks to amphibious assault enabling us to unload chariots and immediately attack with them, we were able to clean up, and also gather in all of his workers within range.

If we'd only had the southern pincer force (or, well, if we'd only had the force I was originally going to throw at Tatan willy-nilly), then he'd have been able to counterattack after losing a couple cities, and really tear us up with his Firebows. But since they were outside his cities and we had the northern sledgehammer, we pretty much just ignored his army and went for the cities.

Anyway, time to play the rest of the turn, see what I've been smoking while focused on war.

Tatan, if you have any questions, I'll be up for another couple hours and can answer them. I'll send you my password via e-mail, too, if you want to recreate the war and see the stuff I forgot to screenshot.