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

[HidingKneel]

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.

Much more, I think.

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.

I'm not so sure about that. Even at this point in the game, if Plako were out, I think we'd have a shot (maybe a long shot) against Ilios. Especially if Plako were out because of a costly war with the Elohim. Plako completely shut us down because we're relying on a dozen or so super-units due to our tech lead. With his mfg lead, Ilios can instead bring a huge stack of not-so-important units at him, which I think will be a lot more effective.

I think Ilios is playing this right. Militarily speaking, time is on his side: it's not like Plako's going to build more archmages, but Ilios is building a lot more of everything. (Of course, Ilios has to worry about a tower win... but that's still a ways off: Plako's only built two of the lesser towers, and IIRC he's not Industrious anymore).

[HidingKneel]

Well, as you can gather from the banter thread, Plako put Eurabatres down this turn. I had him parked on a mountain at full health, promoted to C4.
Plako softened him up with four air elementals, then went in for the kill with this guy:



I don't think I can put it any better than this:

The one bright side is that Eurabatres counts as our hero, so we can now build Shrine of the Champion. Which is probably not a good idea for the same reason that RotNK is not a good idea, but I queued it up in Avelorn anyway (not like it matters much at this point).

The turn before, Plako started pillaging us. We lost a farm and an enclave. And there's basically nothing we can do to stop him, he's way out of range. I see his archmages here:



As he builds a road that he can use to fork our supercities. I could have taken out his workers this turn by sacrificing a centaur, but I decided not to. I want some road there.

Commodore, we're done for. What do you say we go out "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"-style? Gather our forces in Naggarond, and charge south into certain annihilation? Not a terribly good plan, but neither is sitting tight and waiting for the annihilation to come to us...

Alternative: since we can't win the game, our goal is to exterminate all the demons on Erebus. So we gather our forces and charge Bob, leaving behind enough slow units to try to hold our cities long enough to eliminate him.

[Mattimeo]

I second the latter option. Go crush some demon scum!

[Commodore]

Well, it's your game, but we have to be looking weaker now, Eurabatres' death can only help make us look less scary. Ilios' power keeps growing geometrically, as well. Bob is in this to kill us, no doubt about that, but I think the two in it to win it (plako, Ilios) might start worrying about each other a little more. Actually, I should probably withdraw from Elohim lands and just look prickly at plako. Altar Win is still my vote, with a Philo swap and a ton of priests being run. Conquest isn't viable, but we're still hell to kill.

[HidingKneel]

My concern is that I am going to lose Kwythellar and/or Naggarond over the next few turns. Together with 2/3 of the Kuriotate army, which is spread out between the supercities. So if we want to bloody some noses, we might want to act fast.

But I suppose that has less appeal given that we can't actually reach Plako to bloody his nose. The altar plan is as good as any, at this point. Might have been a fantastic plan if we'd started much earlier. A possibility for the "much less aggressive" road not taken that Mardoc was alluding to.

So... national epic in Avelorn, and maybe also one in Kilmorph's? And a turn 146 swap to philo, if we're still alive? Naggarond and Avelorn both have a hefty amount of GPP stored up (back from before our first swap). But of course, no guarantee they'll produce prophets for us.

[Mardoc]

A possibility for the "much less aggressive" road not taken that Mardoc was alluding to.

I was thinking more along the lines of one war at a time . But sure, we could try for the Altar. It works well with Mercurians anyway: +XP on disciple units is +XP on units likely to be Angels sooner or later. And we do still have a lot of mobility, especially when we're on our own roads.

[HidingKneel]

Game goes on. Plako's dismantling our economy... we've lost many of our enclaves now. Also, war weariness is almost starting to matter... Avelorn is at the happy cap because of 12 unhappy faces from war weariness. Well, that shouldn't matter if we're staying in our own territory.

Working some priests in Avelorn and Naggarond. Should bear fruit over the next few turns.

[NobleHelium]

You should probably rename yourself.

[Druxee]

"Zombie Eurabatres"

[HidingKneel]

You should probably rename yourself.

Never!

Game continues. Plako's slowly destroying improvements, but we're still pulling in 250gp per turn. About out of units to upgrade, unless I want to upgrade what's left our our warriors to phalanxes (I guess they're not likely earn their immortality anyway).

Avelorn's unhappy now... must have lost access to a happy resource this turn, or something. I could fix that by building a dungeon.

In other news, Avelorn finished the national epic and got a GP out. Unfortunately, that was a sage.