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

[HidingKneel]

I guess four paladins/Sephenr/Basium/two repentant angels + assorted trash isn't enough to soak those rock dudes up and punch back?

I doubt it. He's other things to hit us with (spectres, maelstorm, ...). Maybe after that our top defenders can each absorb one elemental the first time, leaving us intact. But we're slower than him... we charge forward two tiles, he moves two tiles back, and hits our stack again the next turn. Sphener can heal the living units in the stack between turns, and we've got some march promotions, but I'm guessing he'd be able to wipe us before we could catch up to him.

[Commodore]

Righto then.




How does a lovely Heron Throne site sound? It's what passes for secure in these parts, too...plus, a hawk based there ought to scout for us anything Plakonian.

[HidingKneel]

How does a lovely Heron Throne site sound? It's what passes for secure in these parts, too...plus, a hawk based there ought to scout for us anything Plakonian.

It sounds excellent.

So, another turn played. Quiet again. Bob brought another imp out to start scorching his territory. For lack of a better snack, I munched on it with Eurabatres. Only worth 2xp, but the dragon actually took quite a beating:



Might need to promo-heal again. But the top defender in Cauldron Lake right now is a tiger, which might be worth some xp if I take it out in my present shape.

Bob also recaptured that infernal worker I snatched, and deleted it. I killed the offending scout with a centaur, and moved a paladin to cover it. I don't think anything's in range, but you can't be too careful these days.

Speaking of which, Ilios has fanaticism now. So expect him to have his own batch of 3-move paladins promoted from PoLs, and Corlindale. He refused my peace overtures, so I guess he'd rather fight us than Plako. I'm a little worried about security in Kwythellar, so I moved some of my ratha-lancers there. Repentant angels will do a better job guarding Avelorn, anyway.

Need more rathas! Switching to Kilmorph was silly. Well, I don't think it did any harm or good. I'll switch back ASAP, though.

[HidingKneel]

Alright, another turn played.

The bad news: Ilios built Corlindale and the Guild of Hammers.

I remember when we talked about building that. Back in the days when we talked big, and the Kuriotate empire was the envy of the world .

The good news is: at least Plako didn't get that stuff. Surely Plako and Ilios will need to come to blows eventually.

So, what else is going on? Eurabatres continues to chow down on the infernals:



Killed a warrior for 4xp, so I'm now 1xp away from that march promotion.

Commodore is busy conquering Thoth's island city:



So, I think we should be very concerned about retaliation from Thoth. For example, it won't take him long to tech optics and use the worldspell on us. He's running Veil right now, but he could always convert to OO and build more cultists. And of course, he can build ships to replace the ones we've sunk. So we should stay active on this. Taking away his coastal cities will really help. Commodore, looks like you're using Basium to snipe defenders from that Monkey city (forget the name)? Looks good to me. A counterattack from Plako just means Basium loses immortality, and at least we'll know where Plako is.

Now, once we capture Bigtop, we're going to need to figure out a way to get it connected to our trade network. That means we need a coastal city, right? Two possibilities: take one from Thoth, or build one of our own. Of course the first is preferrable, but we're doing a pretty lousy job of holding anything against Plako. (Thoth's cities are on Thoth's road network, so especially vulnerable to Plako.) Maybe what we need to do is use the Ophanim for hit-and-run pillaging, cutting roads and ending turn over water to avoid counterattack?

The alternative is to build a Kuriotate settlement on the coast, say over the sugar. Wouldn't cost us much, and would be safer from attack.

Converted back to Empyrean this turn, so Avelorn's building rathas again.
I'll keep the other cities turning out centaurs and promoting them to chargers. Soon it'll be time to turn on science again. Iron working will make all those chargers hit a little harder, and nightmares will be even better.
I've got our last Kuriotate workers building a road towards Bob, being covered by a paladin. I'm skeptical about whether or not Plako and Ilios will let us hold Cauldron Lake, but we might as well try.

[Mardoc]

I noticed something *very* interesting. Bigtop has nightmares. We don't really need Cauldron Lake (for that purpose), therefore. Not that I'd object if we managed to get and keep another big Angelic city.

[Commodore]

[HidingKneel]

I noticed something *very* interesting. Bigtop has nightmares. We don't really need Cauldron Lake (for that purpose), therefore. Not that I'd object if we managed to get and keep another big Angelic city.

Ooh... let's get our hands on those.

Thoth built a galley in Rabid Monkey. Those Ophanim are pretty beat up, and don't get defensive bonuses. I think we'd better hurry this conquest along.

With Bigtop conquered, Commodore's got some paladins and axemen beating on Thoth's defenders in Rabid Monkey. They're pretty beat up, and I suspect Thoth can kill them next turn, even with just his warriors. I brought one of our ratha-lancers to help out. Blinded one of the warriors in the city, and killed the top remaining defender (lucky battle; had pretty low odds). Thoth can kill that too, next turn. But if he does, it can return as an Ophanim .

Junil's Justice grew past the happy cap, so I offered the Mercurians my sugar. I don't have a duplicate, but it doesn't matter... Kuriotate cities are nowhere near their happy caps.

Turned science back on this turn, and teched half of iron working. Commodore, if you've got spare cash next turn after possibly upgrading new paladins, I might be able to make some use of that conquest gold.

Put a hawk in Bigtop and surveyed the landscape. No sign of Plako's mage stack. But that doesn't mean much... he can probably still hit our units outside of Thoth's city, if Thoth himself doesn't.

On the Bob front: looks like two of our Valks got sent back to Kilmorph's.
I wonder if those might be better used against Thoth right now. I think disabling him is more time-sensitive than disabling Bob (9 turns until Bigtop comes out of revolt; it would be great to have one of Thoth's coastal cities by then). And Thoth's cities are pretty tough nuts, even though he's defending with warriors. None of our inexperienced centaurs have good odds (even the lancers). I guess that's why we need collateral .

Word of warning: if Ilios wants to annoy us, he can throw his tigers at our repentant angels. Something to be aware of (note that some of the tigers in Cauldron Lake are mobility promoted).

Oh, and our cities are growing again. Kwythellar went up a size at EOT.

[HidingKneel]

Haven't updated this thread in a while.

Things aren't going well. Plako killed all our Ophanim with air elementals, retook Bigtop, and gifted it back to Thoth. He also wiped out our stack next to Rabid Monkey. The Mercurians were able to retaliate with Basium and two repentant angels, killing one archmage (but losing our units in the process).
So the full tally is that we're down 8 top-tier units (3 Ophanim, 2 repentant angels, 2 paladins, and one lancer), and Plako is down one. Well, at least ours are easier to replace than his.

Had a look at the most recent Mercurian turn. Bob killed two angels with BoAs. Basium can regain his immortality by killing one of those.
Also, it looks like Junil's Justice is due for a great person soon. It's working a priest right now; we should switch that to an engineer. I say we use it for
RotNK in Avelorn (assuming that engineers can rush wonders in allied cities). Avelorn's our best production center, and is building mostly rathas which are near-guaranteed angels.

Oh, and I got the Oghma event last turn that gives bonus research. That almost completed iron working for us, so I finished in on my turn.
Axemen are now obsolete, but we need to be building more mobile units anyway. Mithril chariots...

[HidingKneel]

Haven't updated for a while. Partly because the game's been so slow, but also because enthusiasm is flagging... our position is basically in a long, slow fall.

But I suspect that will change shortly! Because Plako finally seems to be moving on us. This past turn, he killed a pair of workers guarded by a paladin in the middle of my territory. Hawk flight reveals this to the south:



Note that his archmage puppets have spellstaff promotions. Double the fun!

He seems to be building a road towards Kwythellar, or maybe to fork Kwythellar and Naggarond. So, it may be time to mount some kind of last-minute defense. I pulled some centaurs out of Avelorn, promoted a new paladin, and I've got Eurabatres headed south. Got him to 50xp, which is enough for a C4 promotion. Would be enough for a commando promotion, if I hadn't started him off with Drill I . Well, he won't be able to do much on his own in any case.

Mithril working came in at EOT. And there appears to be no mithril on this map . Or at least on the half of the map that we have visibility on. So... er... I guess that wasn't such a good idea after all.

Next turn I'll turn science off and start promoting centaurs again. And I think I'll swap agrarianism for conquest. Unpromoted centaurs are too slow to be of much use, at this point.

[Mardoc]

Haven't updated for a while. Partly because the game's been so slow, but also because enthusiasm is flagging... our position is basically in a long, slow fall.

But I suspect that will change shortly! Because Plako finally seems to be moving on us. This past turn, he killed a pair of workers guarded by a paladin in the middle of my territory. Hawk flight reveals this to the south:

Um, yay?

I suppose it's been obvious for a while that we can't stand up to plako. In retrospect, we should have been either much more aggressive, or much less aggressive; I just didn't expect Archmages to be that easy to get, or puppets to be that effective.

So at least if he kills us, he can go on to kill everyone else too. Or build his tower and win. It's been obvious for a long time now that Ilios has been focused on the wrong target, anyway.