[SPOILERS] DaveV and Averax end the revels

[DaveV]

Turn 140. Horsemen are dying and being born:



TBS has one of his super galleys ready to load up (or already loaded and ready to attack?). Is he going to try to finish off Bob, or try to pick off some of my cities?




The city screen spells out my plans for the immediate future: use the merchant for a golden age, slave out a unit in just about every city, swap to Apprenticeship so said units can take a Mobility promotion.




With superjm finally having built Govannon, I sent him all my mana (including canceling my death for body deal with Bob: sorry, Bob) in hopes that it will encourage him to fire his worldspell.

[DaveV]

Turn 141. I built a bunch of units, but I'm stuck on the defensive until superjm deigns to cast Arcane Lacuna.

[DaveV]

Turn 142. Yet another turn of no Arcane Lacuna; yet another turn of TBS putting the game further out of reach.



TBS is up to 35 cities now, to 10 for superjm, 14 for me, 2 for Bob. Yeah.

Here's the city screen after the unit builds. I'm finishing off a few infrastructure pieces that were in the queue, then going all zombies all the time.

[DaveV]

Turn 143. Bob is now down to one city.



TBS is trickling non-mage units into the site of our future confrontation. It's way too late to attack him.




I don't know what superjm has in mind, but in his wettest dreams he has no chance against TBS. I'm ready to end this farce, lurkers.

[DaveV]

Turn 144. Bob and Buboes are dead.



This is me, twiddling my thumbs until TBS decides it's time to come and kill me.

[DaveV]

Turn 145. TBS is pillaging seafood.




Yawn. I'm building nothing but zombies. Maybe someday superjm will cast his worldspell.

[DaveV]

Turn 147. Hammer time finally arrives.




Yes, that's exactly four guys in my stack that can move. Blinding Light is annoying. Two of the zombies had Mob1, so I moved them 2S of the city where they could splash both stacks when they died. He has a lot of healing, so I'm sure he'll have enough stuff to clear the city. Then, there's not much left in the heartland.

And, for good measure, he's coming from the north with a few guys.




I guess it was unrealistic to hope that TBS would make a mistake. My only chance was for superjm to cast Arcane Lacuna, and he seems determined to sit on that spell until the game is over.

Well played, TBS.

[DaveV]

Turn 149. This would have been so much better three turns earlier, when I had thirty more zombies...



But, I'll do what I can. I should at least be able to recapture all my former cities, which seem to be garrisoned by a host of Hosts.




Edit: and here's the north.




Mardero is carrying all of his item goodies, and Yersina may actually be able to do some damage. If only...

[DaveV]

Turn 150. I checked the log to see how many cities superjm had razed or captured, and was shocked to see the answer: zero. This is after he spent the whole game preparing, and frittering away the chance to have an ally who would actually have made a difference. If he's only going to take one peripheral city every two turns, this is not even going to put a dent in TBS.

I'd figured TBS would have to strip his defenses to protect his holy city, Form of the Titan city, and capital. Apparently not:




What I want to know: how the heck did he do his promotion juju while Arcane Lacuna was in effect (that's the only way I know that he can get the "Cannot Move" status). Anyway, this is looking like a replay of my earlier failure to bring enough units.

In the north, I'm trying to accumulate a stack.




Yersina killed the top defender without taking any damage, but turned out to be the worst Plague Carrier ever:




Since this is turn 150 and I'm not likely to be alive for turn 175, here's my last comprehensive report.










Graphs:

[DaveV]

This is crazy. I took some screenshots for turn 151, but what's the point? superjm once again failed to make any progress, TBS has huge stacks in all his cities that could wipe me out even without magic, and this game feels like a waste of everyone's time.