[SPOILERS] Charriu and Zalson are fighting the honorable post count war!

[Zalson]

Just slow down Elkad!

[Zalson]

Magissa will be your last city, unless there are galleys already in the water.

You should be able to hold Exdeath for some time. I'd recommend sacrificing Liquid Flame for Exdeath: can you get the stack back through your territory?. Alternative: dispatch that stack and go burn some cities! VENGEANCE!

[Charriu]

I will try to slow down Elkad, but I do hope that Shallow shows up with his galleys.

[Charriu]

T166:

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Superdeath offered peace. Ha that's one enemy down. But to be honest, he propably knows that he does not have a chance of taking Siren and chose to ease the turn splits.



So Superdeath only took Byblos and Galura from. Not the best captures, because both border Elkad and make his border with him (finally) bigger. But he got wine and a second iro, which could be crucial for him, later. Oh and my archer in Sandworm managed to kill a chariot from Elkad. That's the spirit.



Shallow moved in to take Siren, which will be no problem for him.



So Elkad did not raze Sandworm. He's really desperate for a southern sea port. He continued to move towards Wing Raptor. I opted to leave just one axeman with full fortification bonus in Wing Raptor. Elkad only has that horse archer with Combat 2 on the marble hill. If he takes Wing Raptor with just this unit, then he can feel lucky.



Elkad also moved a horse archer on my iron tile near Liquid Flame and pillaged it. I attacked it with a spearman:

Spearmen C2     vs     Horse Archer Flank 1 Sentry = 95.6% WIN (3.4 HP)

Yeah, a tiny success. I moved the highlighted units above into a position to counterattack Elkad and Raze Sandworm. Elkad should not see them and I predict the following scenarios:

• Elkad continues most of his army to Wing Raptor leaving Sandworm in a bad shape. I raze Sandworm.
  
• Elkad checks if there are units from me W of Sandworm. In this scenario he will leave some more units into Sandworm to defend it. This at least slows him down.
  

With Elkad pillaging all my iron tiles and Shallow caputering Siren, which holds my last iron tile, I have to look for another source of iron to continue producing CKN and Maceman. So I offered Magic Iron for Pig. As far as I can tell he has no pigs and I don't need healthiness anymore.

[Zalson]

I think you shouldn't have accepted peace with superdeath without concessions from him. He chose to attack you; he should at least have to eat the war weariness until he can make meaningful concessions for his aggression.

He also broke some sacred deals yes?

[Charriu]

You are right, but I also don't want to delay the turn pace any further.

[Charriu]

T167:

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No, just no. I have my pride too you know.  



Elkad's forces west of Liquid Flame have disappeared. Strange.  



I think I was a bit too afraid of loosing my iron as even after Siren has fallen I still kept my iron there. By the way Magic returned my offer, which I accepted. Shallow will still need 2 turns until he can bombard Exdeath, but he may need more troops to get it.



Elkad moved his main army towards Wing Raptor just as I hoped. He also tried to take it with his horse archer, but it had to retreat. But he will get it this turn.



I took the opportunity to retake Sandworm:

Swordsmen C2 Shock     vs     Praetorian C2 = 91% = WIN (1.2 HP)
Axeman C1 CR1     vs     Chariot C1 = 90.4% = WIN (5HP)

Great to see that the axeman is unhurt. Maybe it will be able to take out one of Elkad's units. Unfortunately I forgot that I can't raze a city that I retake while it's in revolution.
Nonetheless with Elkad's forces disappearing I moved almost all of my units, except for a small defense against horse archers, into position 1W of Sandworm. I hope that I can strike another blow against Elkad from here. It will be an interesting battle with my army consisting of fewer, but better promoted units of CKN, Macemen and trash against his many, lesser promoted units of Praetorians and a few others.

Another nice side effect of me not accepting open borders with Superdeath is that I also kicked out his spying impi. But wait that's not all:



I mentioned that I still had one chariot in Magic's territory. As you can see he's badly damaged, so I wanted to move in to pillage at least a cottage before the end of the game, when I found 3 unprotected workers from Elkad. I took them and deleted them together with the chariot. Don't want to give Elkad any more experience.



Great to see that I made a little impact on Superdeath's power.  



I noticed that I accumulated a lot of unhappiness in my cities. So I swallowed my pride and send Superdeath this Ivory and Wine for Open Borders deal. This won't hurt him, as these resources both are duplicates for him.

[Zalson]

As always, you remain a gentleman.

[Charriu]

Sorry, blame it on my bad education. I just find good sportsmanship more important then winning.  

[Charriu]

T168:

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I can't say that I'm not lucky that axeman killed another praetorian with only 3% chance.



Shallow concentrated his units this.



Elkad moved all of his forces to the east. That allowed me to take Sandworm with ease and hold it.

Axeman C1     vs     Praetorian (3.8 HP) C1 CR1 = 99.2% (4.2 HP)

I did move most of my army into Sandworm. I thought for a while about moving all of them 1NW of the marble, but I feared that Elkad may just attack and kill my stack there. With all of my CKN it would be better to attack him instead of defending against him.



Elkad's units are back west of Liquid Flame, but it should still be safe. I will be able to upgrade another highly promoted archer to a CKN next turn.



I noticed that Magic has no horse connected, so it was a natural deal. While we are on the topic of deals, Superdeath did not accept my open borders agreement. What's wrong with you? It's not like those two resource will hurt be missed by him. That way he only helps his enemies.



Superdeath's new cities are really close to Elkad, which will be a problem. I also noticed that he's collecting money for construction for quite a while. His high power rating seems to hurt his economy.



Hey, my capitol is still the second largest city. Exdeath was the only city that I spared from the whip . That way it generate a good amount of money, which I did use to upgrade some highly promoted axeman and archers to maceman and CKNs.