The Black Sword's Tale: For the Kurious

[The Black Sword]

T100 update
(or the turn the Khazad finally surpassed my score )

10t sounded like far too long for the next GP and then getting 2 in the next 9 didn't look good either. So I made the dubious choice of researching Mercantilism(4t), paying 3400b for a Great Merchant. I might regret this if I'm a few mercs short at the end.

Everything is now going to move to a tight schedule I think, I need to try finish these Towers ASAP.

The South West Node:

4t more turns till this is ready. I think it will be the nature node, out of sight of all but the Grigori in case people aren't checking my mana each turn.

The South Node:

Again 4t till it is running, the limiting factor being the road this time. Probably an air node.

The South East Node:

The settler, adept and sword are on a boat, another worker is coming in to help road. 4t again. Meta node.

The Eastern Node by Avelorn will be ready as Air next turn, the West Node by Kwythellar will stay Body.

The Northern Mana Node:

Lost an adept at the usual 72% odds last turn. I can't really complain since that's the 4th time I've tried it and it would only bring the adept to 7xp so not so important. The capital delayed things to get another adept out to try his luck next turn.
This will be a meta node. I'll have a stack of 4 adepts here in 4t, when the double meta and air nodes are ready. 1 gets upgraded to a mage then I cast Dispel on the node, change it to Enchantment and I can immediately start on the Tower of Alteration. I then need to get a similar stack prepared for the East node in case Sian notices things and cancels his life mana deal.

Kwythellar:

I think I might have to leave out the Bazaar of Mammon here, just too much to fit in. Need a Money Changer and Tax Office next, definitely a gambling house and carnival for happiness. During breaks between Towers(there shouldn't really be any but we'll see) I should fit in an archery range for drafting longbows, along with a walls and palisade to bring total defensive bonuses up to 140%, probably fit a wall of stone in as well.

Avelorn:

Instead, the Bazaar will probably go here, Avelorn makes almost as much commerce as Kwythellar, despite not having Deruptus. Similar building list otherwise, building military in between.

Naggarond:

Needs to build up more overflow to fit the buildings in, should be easier during the GA. I'll get my Kilmorph temple here, and get out a few Priests during the GA, for shield of faith and other temples.

My current military:



I'm rather worried by the fact that both Calabim and Dwarves are building military though:

The vampires I am not too scared of really. I think I could hole up in my capital and survive them. Dwarven Druids do too much collateral though, they will need to be met in the field.

Also I got an event this turn!

2 turns after building the Guild .

[The Black Sword]

Lost another one .

I wasn't sure if this was a good idea, I had to take C1 to get odds, but then 64% is quite low so that's probably quite a few xp if I win. I thought it might be enough that this guy could eventually get up to Mage too and give me access to mutation. Anyway he died and I decided I'd just have to live with unmutated units. I killed him with a Hunter for 2xp and a promo. Then Valin went into the lair, destroying it and getting a supplies. That's pretty handy actually, it will probably become the archery range in Kwythellar.

Losing the adept does push my timetable back by a turn but Kwythellar actually couldn't start the Tower until the following turn anyway, needing to fit in a Tax Office, Money Changer and Gambling House.

I should be able to 2t all of the lesser Towers though, through the magic of cash rushing. There doesn't seem to be a penalty for National Wonders, so it allows me to convert 3g -> 1h, and I'm going to have a lot of gold.

Having decided I was done farming adepts xp, I sent Donatello into the dungeon in the south:

Not really a bad result either, just more xp for my units(or maybe more captured Tigers for me). My hunter targeted the spectre and then the Tigers won't attack inside my culture so I'm safe:

I shouldn't have given a kill to that sword tbh, I have a couple of Centaurs coming down who'd be better for the xp.

Elsewhere my Hunter's added 2 more elephants to the cause:


and jalapeno was kind enough to show me the first vampire:

Still not scared.

I worked out my GP plan for the golden age as well. I'll need to revolt to Pacifism on the first turn of the GA. I have so much military multipliers already that should be fine. It's also why I need the Gambling Houses to be sure of my happy. I need to think about if I want to stay in Foreign Trade. Then my first GP will come out on 3rd turn of the GA, the second on the final turn. If the first is a Scientist, he can be used to bulb Arcane Lore. Let's hope not for the second. I do have some redundancy, in that I can use the Great Commander from precision for the GA instead of recruiting, but I'd much prefer to recruit.

Naggarond scrounged together enough hammers to finish it's Alchemy Lab, and it will grow for probably the final time next turn. Avelorn is building a Tax Office in 2t and Kwythellar built a Money Changer first so that it can hire the Merchant next turn. My demos look rather spectacular now that HK's golden age is finished:


I'm not sure the others will have time to convert their food advantage into production.

[The Black Sword]

Mmm, level 6 turtle. Donatello captured 1 tiger between turns, I decided to get a level 3 Charger with the other.

I put up a floating eye over the jalapeno front showing not much military, and his newly born great merchant, guess it's his golden age time too. That might scare me a little .


Avelorn is going to have a bit of unhappiness at the start of the golden age unfortunately:

The first 2 turns are cash rushing the Bazaar of Mammon, so can't build a Gambling House until the third. I think Tax Office was the right choice here though, since I'll be going near to 100% cash next turn. Kwythellar built the Gambling House instead, but that's because it has much more multipliers on it's output.

EOT my GM was born.

The most interesting thing was the diplo though:

TBS,

Your Stonewarden has arrived in Naggarond. However, he has sent word back that he cannot enter the city because a wild animal is rampaging through the streets. If you could be so kind as to leash the creature (Declare Nationality) or otherwise remove it from the city, he will be glad to construct a Temple of the Earthmother.

In other news, the Calabim have proposed to us an alliance to eliminate your glorious cities from the face of Erebus. Now, you've been a faithful friend and business partner to the Khazad, so that proposal doesn't sit well with us. Seems to me that getting in bed with a vampire is a good way to wake up with a couple of fang marks in the neck. They've got Necromancy now, so it's only a matter of time before they're able to swarm us both with their undead hordes.

So I think the time to act is rapidly approaching. The question is, are you with us? It'd require you to deactivate your deal with Jalapeno, which would give him a few turns of warning... but with proper timing, they'll have to worry about a lot more than just you this time.

I'm sure he'll accept the Calabim deal once my first Tower goes up, so I just need to stall him a bit, the longer he goes without putting 100% towards military, and cancelling our NAP, the better.

Flintheart,

Apologies about the animals, a party got a bit out of hand I'm afraid, it should be all clear now for your Stonewarden. We were planning on devoting some serious capital to fund this faith ourselves. The most important date in this project is the second temple in Kwythellar T106. If you could beat this date(though I appreciate it's short notice), we'd be happy to pay for it.

On less happy matters ...
We certainly prefer the scenario of you allying with us rather than the Calabim. Only last turn we caught sight of our first fully fledged vampire, who happened to be guarding an adept improving a mana node. It was certainly an image to drive home our troubles. It also seems they're having some success against the Elohim. I regret not trying to include them in the peace deal now, I thought they would be safe enough with their worldspell.

What timeframe would you be thinking of for such an attack? We have a couple of final kinks in the system to be ironed out, particularly getting our Maelstrom mages fully trained, but we could be ready to fight them very soon.

TBS.

(He offered to provided more stonewardens in a previous mail.) I obviously don't want to activate the pact with jalapeno myself, and give him the right of first-strike. If pushed, I'll cite a date 10t in the future, such that the Khazad couldn't activate their NAP in the meantime to stop my ToM run in time.

[The Black Sword]

I have no time this week, but the thread deserves a picture:

[The Black Sword]

Update time. I screwed up my plan quite badly in places tbh.

The biggest mistake was taking 2 meta nodes and 2 Air Nodes instead of 3 of one and 1 of the other. I realised this when I went to upgrade my first mage, I had to take my promo for 10xp before upgrading and getting meta 1 and air 1 for free and then of course I only have 1 promo left. I didn't want to delay my Towers though, so last turn I upgraded 1 mage to meta 2, didn't take maelstrom and changed a meta node to Enchant to start that Tower. Then I set up this for T105:



I managed to get 2 adepts there, 1 mage and 1 potential mage. First I cast dispell.



Then 3 of them build an air node to get me to 3 air nodes and my final two potential mages upgrade to Air 2 and Meta 2.



Then 1 of the adepts casts haste, giving everyone 1MP back, the new mage casts dispel and



We're back to an Enchant node to finish the ToA.

Next turn I need to dispel the node, mage+adept puts 2t into a (Entropy) node, cast haste, they finish the node, the other 2 move 5 tiles along a road to the body node to meet another adept who has moved 5/6 tiles and change that to Death. In the south, the same trick will allow 1 mage and haste adept to change the nature Node.

The other problem was that I got the cash rushing formula wrong. Or rather, there is a bug for Deruptus, which is what I tested in the worldbuilder. Deruptus doesn't suffer the Wonder penalty but when I checked the Bazaar, I realised both it and the Towers do. They exchange 4.5g for 1h. I'm still going to rush the Towers, building them in 2t is too important. I'll save gold next turn to rush the ToN, with the overflow I get I can 2t the ToE normally, finally I'll rush the ToD for maximum overflow into the ToM.

The Bazaar though, probably won't be rushed, meaning I really messed up the management of Avelorn.



Instead, it spent the first 2 GA turns building the Gambling house to deal with unhappiness. Now if finally looks as pretty as it should. It is finishing the Money Changer this turn because next turn I save gold for the ToN. Next turn it builds an archery range, then Bazaar -> Centaur -> finish Bazaar in time to rush the ToD.


Here's Naggarond, again completing the gold multiplier in time for saving. I'm researching Bowyers next turn to begin drafting longbows, so it will build an archery range as well. Then it needs 2 Stonewardens for Shield of Faith, a Gambling house if it's going to draft, Gibbon/Hemah and Mary Morbus.


Kwythellar already has the archery range from the supplies. I've been debating drafting an ordinary archer, for the extra hammers from the Pillar of Chains but decided to wait for the Longbows. Target for the ToM is T117 a 6t build, that's ignoring Mokka's Cauldrom though and assuming the vampires don't interfere too much. I've agreed with the Khazad to de-activate my NAP with the Calabim on T106. Assuming they don't de-activate until T107 they'll be too late to do anything.

It is cutting it quite close though and I'd prefer to force the vampires to de-activate on me. It is tempting to lie to HK here, the results are strictly better than telling the truth. The worst HK can do is de-activate the pact which I expect him to do anyway, tbh I consider it a bonus that he didn't do so last turn. And I might even gain a turn or two in the confusion as we send around 1 message per turn. I don't like lying and I'm not sure I need to though, any lurker advice?

Some pics from my floating eyes and scouts:


Former Elohim city.


Empty Calabim border.


Finally sight on one of WK's adventurers.

Power:


HK has got Hawks, and appears to be saving gold for the vaults. The Calabim have Honor and Corruption of Spirit and a GM sitting around for a GA.

Demos:


Diplo:

TBS,

The attack Jalapeno proposed had a fifteen turn timeframe. The phrase "more toys for the vampire army" figured prominently. I don't think we should wait: the Calabim have the most to gain over time. They haven't yet fired a golden age, haven't yet adopted a religion (but have researched the Veil), will steadily accumulate Death mana (they've connected one node already!) and build vampires. They're also poised to trigger a Blight (a few Veil spreads and the recruitment of Rosier ought to do it), which will hit your super-cities hard (between Sacrifice the Weak and their ability to feast, they should emerge from it relatively unscathed).

I'd actually like to propose moving the timetable up one turn: staging on turn 109, with the messy business starting on turn 110. If we've got your support, we'll plan to throw everything we have into the war effort. You wouldn't even need to risk your own forces: just breaking off your NAP and keeping a military presence on the Calabim's western border will force them to expend some resources defending on that side, which means fewer resources spent on the east (and possibly that we catch them out of position). Trust me: once the Khazad forces are in position, the Calabim aren't going to be looking your way. So your own military could play as active or passive a role as you like.

It's hard to say no when you offer to do all the work . We revolted to Kilmorph this turn, so I can get out again T109, it should be possible to 1t a hero, so that will be out T110. I can probably cancel T106 then, will have to doublecheck the wording on the Calabim Nap, I remember he wanted an extra clause to clarify the first strike ability.

TBS.

TBS,

Excellent. We'll plan to have our boys in place on turn 109. I think we're doing a good job of keeping up with the Calabim military machine. They've just researched Honor, and are perhaps planning a Golden Age/religion swap next turn (though we've been incorrectly predicting that for several turns now). Better to hit them on our timetable rather than theirs.

Ok, T106 looks fine to me, it allows him to attack T111, and me on T112. I've been expecting the golden age for a while too, he has the Merchant sitting in his capital, I'm not too sure exactly what he's delaying for. I imagine he'll slip into either the Veil or Empyrean for the golden age, pick up Rathas/Ritualists and then finish in the other. You're right it would be good to fight him before he gets both of those on the field. Also, his empty cities are taunting me again while he continues to carve up the Elohim.

TBS.

[The Black Sword]

It is tempting to lie to HK here, the results are strictly better than telling the truth. The worst HK can do is de-activate the pact which I expect him to do anyway, tbh I consider it a bonus that he didn't do so last turn.

I realised what a terrible idea this was soon after writing it, doesn't matter though:

TBS,

I'm afraid that timing isn't exactly what we had in mind. Moreover, it appears that time is of the essence, because you're getting ready to build yourselves some of those fancy magic towers. And we can't just allow that. It pains me to bring an end to our many turns of cooperation, but I have a responsibility to our shareholders. I'm therefore triggering the deactivation of our NAP. If I'm reading it right, that means that the agreement will be in effect until the end of turn 114, and that you have the right of first strike on turn 115.

Regretfully,


Flintheart Glomgold, Founder and CFO of the Royal Khazad Mining Corporation

It will be interesting to see if the Calabim de-activate immediately or time it to co-incide with the Khazad. Best chance of stopping me is to immediately cancel probably, but that makes it more likely that jalapeno loses his army to me and HK suffers little losses, so maybe he'll wait.

Also, he must have a good idea of my timetable if he felt he couldn't wait 1 more turn for me to cancel with the vampires. Should be fun.

[The Black Sword]

Rolled an Engineer! Not too sure what to do with him though. He'd only save 1 turn in total I think, because I couldn't cash rush another Tower. I think the 3 person golden age is more important, so it's a question of Enginer rushing a Tower or the Great Commander recruiting 22 units.

That Tower of Necromancy will almost certainly be cash rushed next turn. I'll give one adept Death 1 to summon the 6 strong skeletons.

Checking at the end of the turn after picking up Bowyers, Longbows cost 2pop to draft . I hadn't realised that. Still, a fair amount of drafting will occur.

[The Black Sword]

I've been doing a lot of calculations on optimising the Towers today. I think I can hit the T113 date thanks to this engineer without interference. If jalapeno serves me notice next turn(T107) then the first turn his army can attack is T113. Assuming he can't wipe out my entire army stacked in Kwythellar in a single turn I should be set.

The T113 date means that my 3 people golden age is only effecting turns 112 and 113 ... not great value. It's only worth ~70h in Kwythellar over those 2 turns so I don't think losing out would push me back. So, no need to generate a new GP, I can use my Great Commander to recruit anyway and we're also left with a GS. I've never had such a useless GS before. Pass through the Ether is next on the bulb list. Interestingly, Alteration is ahead of it, if I knew I'd get the engineer I could have used it to bulb that. Anyway, it's probably settle, maybe that final Academy in Avelorn.

Next turn I put a turn's production(~200h) into the Tower of the Elements. Then I cash rush the Tower of Necromancy, cash rush the Tower of the elements and engineer rush the Tower of Divination for the full 536h overflow into the Tower of Mastery. Then roughly 3t production + chop down all my ancient forests to finish the 1340h Tower of Mastery.

The biggest choke point is getting enough commerce to save another 1500g and research Arcane Lore over the next 4 turns, I think I still have enough overflow for Divination. It looks like I should have a small bit of a cushion here, but I need the full 4 turns and will be completing the ToD and Arcane Lore on the same turn.

[The Black Sword]

It's a good thing I posted that plan here, couldn't remember what I was supposed to do when I opened the save.

Anyway:

The biggest choke point is getting enough commerce to save another 1500g and research Arcane Lore over the next 4 turns, I think I still have enough overflow for Divination. It looks like I should have a small bit of a cushion here

HK stole my cushion. Those trade routes were really lucrative for me, because they go through all the crazy multipliers. Time to get it back:



(EOT pictures)

I thought I might be a few beakers off Arcane Lore, and given there doesn't look likely to be much fighting in the end, seemed like a good idea to hold off drafting/unit production this turn. Building research is a crappy conversion rate but missing the overflow turn would be terrible. I rushed the ToE this turn, got me a Water Elemental guardian for Kwythellar. I need 1476g for the ToN next turn, which you can see I have. So I have 2 turns full research to finish Arcane Lore.

I figured it's best to get as much research, rather than wealth, outside of the slider, so I can run a lower slider for Gambling House happy.

Floating eyes still aren't showing much military units for my opponents.

[The Black Sword]

The ToN was cash rushed last turn and it was time for Ethel Agames to do his work:


I was temporarily scared as I couldn't see the hurry production button. Turns out that doesn't show up if you can 1 turn the building anyway. I had to take the citizens off the production tiles and put them back on afterwards, which seems a bit silly. Anyway, we got our overflow on:


I managed to squeeze out Arcane Lore at 80%, to save some happiness, and still got a full round of drafting done. Naggarond recruited Arthendain to the cause. My planning in the case of this engineer was pretty bad, but then the engineer is so powerful it doesn't really matter. I have my last golden age turn next turn, so even if I researched a religion, I couldn't convert to get Gibbon or Hemah. I quite possibly could have researched OO last turn and still finished Arcane Lore with the overflow, but there was no need to risk it I think. Since Yell0w just rebuilt Valin, and I don't have enough GA turns to revolt civics, Arthendain and RoK is a good consolation prize. Next turn he's joined by his foe Mary Morbus.

Avelorn built a scout(cheapest unit and can still be upgraded to something good), hopefully getting enough overflow to finish off the Bazaar of Mammon next turn. That's a bit(very) questionable really, but with only 1 turn of gold saving it will repay at least 1 mercenary back.

I finally caught sight of a vampire stack:


He's going to need a bit more I think. Though his power does indicate that:


My army:



In more questionable moves though, I generally have a crusader and a swordsman guarding each of my settlements and sizeable garrisons in Naggarond and Avelorn. I hoped I'm not being overconfident there. He only has 3 death mana, so S6 spectres aren't very scary, still I hope to disconnect two of them on my first strike on T112. He also clearly needs some Ritualist collaterall, but he's running out of time to recruit them.

WK has a few chariots running around his territory, but nothing too scary, and 2 of his adventurers remain un-upgraded. Guess he's happy enough either for the game to end, or to let the 3 of us fight it out and bring him back into contention.

Demos:


Another weird point btw; the Tower of Necromancy is supposed to increase my skeleton summoning limit, but my death adept still can't summon another. Is my understanding wrong here?