The Kuriotates: A Tale of Centaurs, Hubris, and Unbridled Enthusiasm

[Mardoc]

I see the dilemma. I guess it comes down to the tradeoff between risk and reward; a T59 battle, if successful, saves us a turn and probably 3 Centaur deaths, but leaves that chance for things to go horribly wrong.

A victory would not only save time against Selrahc, but that would also help with every other war. We're stretched awfully thin at the moment, while Ilios and plako seem to be merrily teching and growing in peace. The Gela would turn finishing Selrahc off from a painful expensive process to one that leaves us with lots of well promoted Centaurs, so in addition to avoiding Blight, it probably also saves us casualties there, too. And the Gela plus a well promoted horde of centaurs is an existential threat to anyone, assuming we get that far.

I wish I had a better way to simulate a multi-attacker multi-defender battle. I don't have a good handle on what the likely outcomes are; a battle that kills Hyborem and Mr. Stucky while leaving Rusty and HOTDOGS gravely wounded deep in our territory is still a victory. Swap those around and let Hyborem spend two promos to heal...

Are there any other units we could add? Maybe if we add in three warriors to the softening-up brigade, that brings our odds to a happy place. Or if we can afford to divert a centaur or two from beating on the Orcs, that would help too.

[HidingKneel]

Okay, I made a mock-up of the turn 59 battle using worldbuilder, and ran it with ten different random seeds. Here are the results:

Wiped Bob's stack losing 3 centaurs -> once
Wiped Bob's stack losing 4 centaurs -> twice
Wiped Bob's stack losing 5 centaurs -> four times
Wiped Bob's stack losing 6 centaurs -> twice

Only one of the ten battles went "badly". In that one, I lost eight centaurs,
killed Hyborem and one champion, and redlined the other two.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 58 played. Here's the bad news:

First, Thoth built the Heron throne. [STRIKE]I wonder if that was in the capital (where it's not a military threat) or on land.[/STRIKE] It's in his capital.
Anyway, another reason we're not going to be able to ignore the Lanun.

But we've got our hands full right now. Up north, we're fighting Selrahc:



From this screenshot, you can see a couple of things. First, Selrahc's going with a mix of marked warriors and marked goblins. With marked goblins, he can raise the AC by 4 every turn. Which gives us another three turns before blight.

Another thing you note is there's a barbarian lizardman in view.

So, I killed one of his defending warriors with my centaur, taking a little bit of damage. Since I didn't want that lizardman to finish me off between turns, I promoted one of the other centaurs to CII to take it out... and lost . I was able to mop up the lizardman with another centaur, but the casualty hurts. We've now got only six centaurs up there, five of which are wounded.

The good news is that Selrahc has only one unmarked unit left. I'll try to kill that next turn. But then I think I'm going to need to try some risky battles if we're going to pull this thing off.

Now, the good news. By jiggering around, I've arranged for us to have an additional centaur on turn 59. Looks like Bob's going for Kwythellar:



What we can hit him with depends on whether he moves directly south, or onto the standing stones. If it's directly south, we've got:

9 C1/shock centaurs
1 C2 centaur
3 mobility II centaurs, one fatigued
Two warriors, one with C1, one with C2
A thane of Kilmorph

If he moves onto the standing stones, prospects are a little bit worse: the fatigued centaur won't be able to reach, and two of our C1/shock centaurs will need to sprint.

Either way, I think we're in good shape. We'll give Bob a bloody nose next turn, and send any uninjured forces up to join the war against Selrahc. Unless, of course, it all goes wrong .

[HidingKneel]

Turn 59 played! This was a big one.

First things first. Up north, we're fighting Selrahc:



He built two more marked warriors this turn. But I killed the last of his "for the horde" warriors. Every kill from now on will bring the AC down. We'd better hurry , though. Unless we act, it's two more turns until blight. Might need to have some of our centaurs sprint at the capital on turn 61.

But that's not what you really want to know, is it? You want to know if I attacked Bob! Yes, yes I did. Here's the blow-by-blow:

C1S1 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Carl Stucky to 3.1
C1S1 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Rusty to 1.6
C1S1 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Mr. Scratch to 11.4
C1S1 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Mr. Scratch to 9.9
C1S1 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Mr. Scratch to 8.2
C2 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Mr. Scratch to 6.6
C2 centaur goes in, dies, reduces Mr. Scratch to 3.5
C2 centaur goes in, killing Carl Stucky
C2 warrior goes in, dies, reduces HOTDOGS to 2.0
C1S1 centaur goes in, killing HOTDOGS
C1S1 centaur goes in, killing Mr. Stucky
Mobility II centaur goes in, killing Rusty.

Total casualties on our side: 1 warrior, 7 centaurs.

But no gela . Do we have to kill Hyborem twice for that? I thought he dropped it the first time. Oh well. Capturing the gela would have been awesome, but we didn't exactly come away empty-handed. Here's the centaur that landed the killing blow on Hyborem:



He was already C1S1, and now he can take three more promotions. I've got him sprinting towards Selrahc. No time to rest, but he can promo-heal on the way. Obviously, he needs a name! Any suggestions?

Now, what about Bob? He's still dangerous. A very experienced, very pissed-off Mr. Stucky will respawn in Dis. With Gela intact. Next time we fight him, he won't be so easy to take down. Not sure how soon to expect that, though. He'll at least need a few turns to heal up, and I doubt Bob will want to send him out alone. I'm going to use my mobility centaurs and the Mirror of Heaven to keep tabs on the situation:



Now, the big question: what do we focus on now? Obviously, Selrahc's a concern. The centaur Avelorn produced this turn wasn't needed to deal with Bob, so is now headed toward Selrahc. Between that and our highly experienced centaur, I think we'll be able to keep him under control. And I'm worried that all of this "saving the world" stuff is causing us to fall behind Plako and Ilios. So I decided to stop building centaurs, and focus on economy for a turn. Kwythellar and Avelorn are building 2-turn libraries, and Naggarond's building a 4-turn smokehouse. Avelorn grew at end of turn.

Oh, and we're due another great person at the end of turn 60. It'll be either a prophet or a sage, 50/50 shot at each. If we get a prophet, we'll use it to bulb priesthood. A sage can build an academy in Avelorn. Both would be handy, but a prophet would be a lot more handy: Avelorn's still not producing very much commerce yet, and producing a sage later will be easier than producing another prophet (Avelorn and Naggarond have both been accumulating great sage points, and are about to build libraries.)

[Mardoc]

It's unfortunate that the battle ended up at the expensive end of your simulation - looks like we didn't get any withdrawals. I'm very pleased that we gained the XP and eliminated the threat for a while, though! As for a name - we could indulge Bob and name him Alan Wake .

But things ought to get easier from here, certainly. It will be a while before Bob can be a serious threat again, even if we can't finish him fast. He'll probably be building Diseased Corpses next, but we've bought some time.

What do we focus on? Honestly - we need to finish Selrahc. Bob would have been easy if we had 7 extra centaurs at home. Perhaps that'll require more building of centaurs; I don't have a good feel for what our army looks like anymore. If you have centaurs who can't do anything soon, because they need too much healing - have them be a pillage party. If we can cut him down to only building goblins, he'll be a lot easier to finish. Plus a few extra gold can't hurt us any .

As for finishing off Bob - honestly, I think the easiest path to that is to get some Holy damage on the board. We could swarm him under with Centaurs, but that'll be super expensive, compared to getting to the Gate and/or Order. In the meantime, we can certainly spend more effort on economy, growing onto cottages, building Libraries and spreading Kilmorph. And taking advantage of Kilmorph perks, like getting everyone Shield of Faith'd. There's still quite a bit of room for us to grow, even before we add Basium to the mix.

Just need to keep enough of a standing army to keep the demons away. And maybe to go raze the AV holy city

EDIT: Also, no trash talk?

[HidingKneel]

EDIT: Also, no trash talk?

I almost forgot!

(I had a really good line in mind, but it doesn't make sense if I didn't capture the gela )

[HidingKneel]

In all seriousness, please hurry up and throw some Centaurs at Cauldron Lake. Eight should be enough. Eliminating me means I don't have to fuss over "double installs" for the new FFH PBEM starting up

Has Bob forgotten that Hyborem respawns in the capital? Once Mr. Scratch has healed up and taken C3/formation, it'll probably require ten centaurs to face him alone on open ground. Fortified in a city with two C1, iron longbows? Sounds like it would take upward of twenty.

[Mardoc]

In all seriousness, please hurry up and throw some Centaurs at Cauldron Lake. Eight should be enough. Eliminating me means I don't have to fuss over "double installs" for the new FFH PBEM starting up

Bob, 8 would be enough - if Big Red weren't there too. Making it so that our shock centaurs fight longbows and our cover centaurs fight Mr. Scratch, and giving us an expected body count of 10+ dead centaurs for the dubious profit of...um, a Gela. While Selrahc finally builds to Armageddon and the other foes build to victory.

No, I'm afraid if you want to suicide, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way, and empty your cities.

Edit: Hah, crosspost! Yep, I'm finding less and less that I can tell you and have be actually new . I agree 100% with your judgment on what it would take to finish him.

[HidingKneel]

Bob, 8 would be enough - if Big Red weren't there too. Making it so that our shock centaurs fight longbows and our cover centaurs fight Mr. Scratch, and giving us an expected body count of 10+ dead centaurs for the dubious profit of...um, a Gela.

A Gela and nightmares. (Centaurs benefit from those, right? The pedia says "mounted units", but I haven't tried it in game.) That'd be a hefty boost for us, but nowhere near preventing blight on the priority list.

[Mardoc]

A Gela and nightmares. (Centaurs benefit from those, right? The pedia says "mounted units", but I haven't tried it in game.) That'd be a hefty boost for us, but nowhere near preventing blight on the priority list.

Well, if the AC isn't controlled, we'll have plenty of other tiles to pick up nightmares from anyway