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

[HidingKneel]

Yes...given a little bit of time. Only, we can gain 5 units/turn if he gives us that time. I'm more afraid of a straight-up defeat than anything fancy.

Yeah, me too. I think the biggest danger is him hitting Avelorn before we can protect it. But you're right: if he wants to hit it with tigers, that'll take three turns rather than two (I think; I'll need to look more carefully at the save). That ought to be enough time to get some paladins in place. But send Basium there. He can get back to Kilmorph's pretty quickly, if need be.

Eh? I think we've actually got pretty decent odds, except for keeping Lugus' Light.

I think I'm consistently more paranoid than I need to be. But this situation does call for a healthy dose of paranoia .

[Mardoc]

I think I'm consistently more paranoid than I need to be. But this situation does call for a healthy dose of paranoia .

Granted.

I am freakin' tired of just reacting all the time. All our game, except for the brief exception of founding the Angelic cities we've been losing, has been one emergency after another.

I'm therefore strongly tempted to suggest you stay in Conquest/100% gold until we've got a veritable horde of Centaur Chargers, and use that to make someone else react for a change. Ilios, Thoth, Bob, I don't really care. As long as it isn't us!

[HidingKneel]

Granted.

I am freakin' tired of just reacting all the time. All our game, except for the brief exception of founding the Angelic cities we've been losing, has been one emergency after another.

I'm therefore strongly tempted to suggest you stay in Conquest/100% gold until we've got a veritable horde of Centaur Chargers, and use that to make someone else react for a change. Ilios, Thoth, Bob, I don't really care. As long as it isn't us!

Heh... I was just thinking that this game has been awesome, for exactly that reason. We keep just barely scraping by . Let's see if we can do it one more time.

So, played the turn. Revolted into conquest, swapping to 100% gold. Looks like that'll allow us to upgrade four centaurs per turn. Meanwhile our production in Kwythellar and Avelorn us just under 60 hpt (so we can produce around 50/50 centaurs/centaur chargers) and our production in Naggarond us just under 40 htp (so we can produce a centaur per turn there, every turn after this one).

Sent the hawk to Amatheon's, and had a look to the east:



Doesn't look like Ilios is coming at us from that direction (who knows about Plako, though). Also of note: he's got some priests in that city, so probably under 17 in the stack. He's also got 4 unprotected workers. Under normal circumstances I'd be tempted to grab a mobility promotion, sprint a centaur in, and delete them. But I think we can't spare the forces right now.

Got an adept into Kilmorph's and gave it a wall of stone. I'm not as worried about that city: looks like we can have six paladins in there next turn, along with plenty of angels. And Ilios can't hit it the turn after next, unless he wants to do so without tigers.

Avelorn's a bigger concern. If Ilios deletes tigers, moves 3 tiles SW, and summons his tigers again, he'll be able to hit Avelorn with all his tigers, then all his other units, the turn after next. So I think sending that paladin down there without iron was definitely the right move (both for having a strong unit in the city, and also to bless all the units which are in the city now).

So, here's what I was able to get into Avelorn by EOT:



After one more turn, we should be able to add the following:

1 Mercurian paladin (who can bless all the units in there now)
1 Kuriotate paladin (promoted to C3)
Basium
an adept (who can cast wall of stone, bringing the defensive bonus to 55%)
a warrior (w/ bronze, bless, and C1)
another centaur charger
a crusader
three more centaurs
and hopefully that acolyte will get traded for another acolyte and a crusader

Four of those centaurs can be promoted to chargers. Not sure if that's a good idea the turn before we get hit, though.

Do you think that'll hold? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[Mardoc]

Four of those centaurs can be promoted to chargers. Not sure if that's a good idea the turn before we get hit, though.

Agreed. Promoting to Charger is a thing to do the turn before we hit back, not the turn before we get hit. Because I'm pretty sure Chargers don't get the defensive bonus, and 55% is significant.

Do you think that'll hold? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

On balance - yes. And at the very least, if Ilios wants to break it, he's got to sacrifice the majority of his real units, not just Tigers. If he sends in the Tigers only, I'd expect us to pick up a lot of XP and lose hardly anything. And then the Medic II/Courage on the Paladins would heal us back to full.

I'd still hate to lose Avelorn, it'd be a huge blow. But I think if I were in his shoes, I'd decline to attack. Satisfy myself with being the pillage party of doom, and pull the priests back before we get organized enough to kill them. Because there's a very good chance he attacks, and loses his whole army in exchange for a couple centaurs, a temporary death on Basium, and maybe a replaceable Paladin.

Either that...or he sends in Tigers, hoping to get lucky. If Basium can kill enough of them without getting wounded, he'll back off; if Basium has a bad fight, then Ilios presses the attack. We get a little bit of luck ourselves, and that could be another promotion for our Immortal friend .

[HidingKneel]

Agreed. Promoting to Charger is a thing to do the turn before we hit back, not the turn before we get hit. Because I'm pretty sure Chargers don't get the defensive bonus, and 55% is significant.

Only: those are likely to be the same turn. If we think Basium, 2 paladins, and 2 crusaders are going to be able to hold the line, we'll want as many chargers as possible the next turn. If we're not worried about the city falling, the next priority is preventing as much pillage as possible. The only units of his that can pillage are the horsemen, which will be defending the stack.

Another question: if Ilios does lunge for Avelorn, maybe a palisade would be a good build next turn? An extra +10% on Basium and the paladins sounds like it'll do us more good than an extra 4-strength unit at the bottom of our stack.

[Mardoc]

Only: those are likely to be the same turn. If we think Basium, 2 paladins, and 2 crusaders are going to be able to hold the line, we'll want as many chargers as possible the next turn. If we're not worried about the city falling, the next priority is preventing as much pillage as possible. The only units of his that can pillage are the horsemen, which will be defending the stack.

Well, the thing is...we could be wrong. I'm only mostly confident that we'll hold.

In any event - do remember that whichever city isn't hit can provide help in killing Ilios' stack. Tigers can't move fast enough to fork them, they're 5 tiles apart. Along with Valin, and the new-built centaurs, and maybe even an axe or angel or two.

Another question: if Ilios does lunge for Avelorn, maybe a palisade would be a good build next turn? An extra +10% on Basium and the paladins sounds like it'll do us more good than an extra 4-strength unit at the bottom of our stack.

Measured in dead Tigers, a palisade seems to be worth about 1/hero, so about 3 tigers? (that is, to get the same odds of victory, 1 more Tiger is needed). Maybe a little more if it boosts the mundane defenders enough.

A centaur, unpromoted, looks to be worth about 1.5 Tigers. Plus the palisade increases the number of Tigers Ilios has to spend to get the first point of damage onto Basium, which might convince him to stop. So it's better for defense, certainly, given our expected garrison.

Incidentally, the Wall of Stone is worth ~2, 2.5 tigers per Str 13 defender. Which makes the adept worth as much as another paladin, all things considered.

But, of course, the palisade is worthless on the counterattack. So...I guess it's the same as the question of upgrading centaurs to chargers or not, in the end.

The main trouble is, this is an awfully complex battle. It matters a lot whether the Blessed units fight Basium or a mortal, for instance, which in turn depends on luck and the order units attack. And every Blessed unit will change in strength during the battle. And one bad RNG roll early in the fight will swing it a lot. For example, the fourth Tiger attacking the Kurio Paladin has about 0.5% odds of victory. That's not the same as impossible. Yet we don't get to 50-50 odds until the twelfth tiger. An eight-tiger swing, if the fourth one gets lucky.

I have no confidence in knowing the outcome until we open the save and count the casualties.

[HidingKneel]

Alright, had a look at the Basium save.

Ilios razed Lugus' last turn. I'm actually a little surprised that he's razing the Mercurian cities: a Mercurian palace would be an awesome build for him.

Looks like Ilios is making for Avelorn. He's got his stack on that hill to the northeast of the city. Defensive terrain, but that doesn't help him much when his top defenders don't get defensive bonuses. The unfortunate thing is that the terrain slows us down: 3-move centaur chargers won't be able to get back into the city after attacking. All of my chargers sprinted last turn, so I'm not sure how many will be able to attack.

An unrelated bright spot: it appears that because of the hawk flight I ran on my turn, the Mercurians have vision on everything that has transpired near Amatheon's last turn. That's pretty helpful. There's a puppet of Plako's, and Ilios moved his PoL in our direction. I think it might be a good idea to send the axemen from Junil's up there. They won't be able to make it to the front lines with Ilios fast enough to make a difference, and we might as well try to hold at least one of our Mercurian cities.

What else? Well, Basium and that paladin should get to Avelorn, and the paladin should bless everyone there. Promote yourself another paladin, and I guess bless everything in Kilmorph's; there's a centaur there who can reach Avelorn next turn, and every little bit might help.

On my turn, I'll build a palisade and get everything into the city that I can.

[Mardoc]

Pretty much did as you recommended. Except I think I sent the axe to Kilmorph's, on the theory that would free up another centaur to head south. I guess we're about to find out whether high strength or numbers matters more. We're certainly off the edge of what's easily calculable - plugging numbers into Sareln's spreadsheet shows me things like 11 Priests of Leaves attacking Basium have a 4.82% chance of killing him.

I think you're already considering this - but any charger who can hit Ilios' stack and get to safety afterward, should. They'll be most effective that way. I think that it might even be worth sacrificing some of the less-promoted ones, if they kill a horseman and survive, they're removing one more attack onto Avelorn if Ilios cleans them up, and on defense they're probably only good for one kill each anyway.

As for Ilios - yeah, I'm surprised too. Especially when he's still got Sanctuary, so he could definitely hold cities even on our border.

[HidingKneel]

Played turn 105. First off, I decided to take a peek to the northwest from Amatheon's:



That city isn't too heavily defended. Those mages just finished an entropy node... another reason centaur archers might have been better than chargers, but too late to worry about that now (also, since Plako seems to have invested everything in the arcane line, Eurabatres will really ruin his day. If we ever get there.)

One thing to beware of there: that used to be a metamagic node, so he has dispel mages. Which could dispel our loyalty promotions... something to look out for.

Of course, the real news is our war with Ilios. He's poised to attack Avelorn. But I think Mardoc was right, we've got more than enough to counter him.

Things I did this turn:

1) Attacked out with centaur chargers and a couple of centaurs, killing five of his seven horsemen. No losses on our side, though some of our forces are wounded (and, of course, won't have the bless promotion when Ilios counterattacks).

A couple of things
a) If a centaur attacks and the enemy withdraws, the centaur keeps the bless promotion. This happened a few times.
b) The remaining horsemen are the most annoying ones: they've got mobility II and no other promotions (and are not blessed).
c) I couldn't get at those because now priests are defending the stack. Which is good news.
d) Some of the horsemen withdrew in the direction of Avelorn. This let me attack out with our adept at 99% odds. Which was enough to get him to 5 xp. Next turn I'll promote him to spirit I, since we need to heal our forces up as quickly as possible.

2) Moved everything within reach into Avelorn.

3) Built a palisade and the adept cast wall of stone. Got a +65% defense bonus in the city now.

4) Promoted four more centaurs to centaur chargers, gearing up for the counterattack. It doesn't look like the city is in much danger, but just to be safe I went with the ones that looked least likely to defend.

5) Spread order to Avelorn, netting us another crusader to defend.

Here's a view of the battleground:



In the blue corner: 2 horsemen with mobility II (strength 4)
10 priests of leaves with mobility II, combat I, bless (strength 7.2)
7 priests of leaves with mobility II and bless (strength 6)
10 tigers with empower I (strength 4.4)
7 tigers with no promotions (strength 4)

In the purple corner:
Basium (defending at strength 35.75, immune to holy damage)
One Kuriotate paladin (defending at 30.55)
One Mercurian paladin (defending at 22.2, at least until bless wears off)
Two crusaders (defending at 9.9)
One warrior (defending at 9.75 until bless wears off)
Nine centaurs, varying states of health/promotions.
Eight centaur chargers, varying states of health/promotions
One acolyte
One adept

And if we do hold out this turn, we'll get two more Kuriotate paladins, a confessor, a centaur, and a centaur charger to back us up. Plus, Avelorn has enough overflow from the palisade to build a wall in one turn.

So yeah, I think the city's going to hold. But we'll find out soon enough.

[Mardoc]

So yeah, I think the city's going to hold. But we'll find out soon enough.

We managed to get 25 units there?

Suddenly I have tons more confidence ! Yeah, I think we can win 12 of 36 battles, when we've got the Str advantage in the vast majority of them and a 65% defensive bonus on top. My lack of confidence was mostly when I thought we'd only manage 10 or so defenders. But yeah, I suspect Basium can win 12 battles on his own, let alone what the rest of the defenders can do.

Time to start thinking about how to make sure this army never comes home

Unless things go really haywire, I bet we'd much rather another Charger than a set of walls.

c) I couldn't get at those because now priests are defending the stack. Which is good news.

Yes! It will probably only be true until the Priests lose Bless, I know Channelling II makes Tigers defend a stack normally, but of course they don't really have an option for leaving that behind at the moment without dying in the process .

Well - unless that's the effect of the hill. Tigers don't get terrain defense either. In either case, I'm much more confident now than I was. We can survive this, and we can attack the units that count. Only real question remaining is how many terrain improvements we'll lose, and how many units we have to lose to kill the 1360 hammers worth of Priests. And, maybe, how many Elohim cities we can raze in retaliation for the lost Mercurian ones.

Huh. That reminds me - weren't we supposed to get Angels for razed Mercurian cities? I'm pretty sure we haven't been.

That city isn't too heavily defended. Those mages just finished an entropy node... another reason centaur archers might have been better than chargers, but too late to worry about that now (also, since Plako seems to have invested everything in the arcane line, Eurabatres will really ruin his day. If we ever get there.)

Well - there's nothing that says we can't build some CA's too. It was just slightly more difficult to reach at emergency pace.