Nov 1412. Only 3 years have passed. (This game has very long turns. There are so many units.)
I've finally got Freya on the back foot. First attempt to fortress strike failed; I underestimated gorgons with a beastmaster. (Plus she has enough skill to cast petrify/cracks call for like 20 turns or something obscene - ok probably not that high, but long enough for any battle I've ever fought so 10-13 turns.)
So I had to rebuild, research lionheart, and try again. Took out a few more cities in the meantime. Succeeded that second time, though lost most of the stack, but my 10 barbarian cities all have inspiration so I'm producing a stack every turn, so I've got stacks of 8 bezerkers everywhere in a logistics trail to just constantly replace units, and leave a stack of 6 in every new city I take.
I've now banished Freya 3 times, and I'm casting consecration on my cities (skipping inspirations on non barbarian cities until consecration is done.)
Horus is down to 3 cities but we are now allies, Freya is down to 9 cities (all of which were Horus' originally). I've finally passed Freya's army strength.
Sss'ra has plane shifted in Nov 1412 (I haven't researched plane shift, nor have any towers been cracked), so I've met him. 4 sorcery, 2 life, 7 chaos, Myrran, and Runemaster! No wonder he got both just cause and aether binding with so few books. I'm very glad I've started consecration spam - I expect Armageddon and/or Great Wasting any time now. Meteor Storm would be a disaster for my logistics replacements. Suppress Magic would be almost as bad. Time Stop would be bad IF it results in Sss'ra cracking the towers.
Sss'ra found 1 book, I've found 1 book. Not a lot of books/retorts found in this game - and I have to assume virtually everything on Myrror has already been looted, given Sss'ra ALSO has more army strength than I do. (Doom Mastery plus Myrran races does that.)
The stack that plane shifted was: Windwalker Mage, Amazon, Paladin champion, 1 troll magician, and 5 efreeti. I have no idea what they're going to do. Actually, he's a ruthless expansionist. He's almost certainly going to declare war on me (fair land and I have 26 cities, and while his army strength is higher than mine, it's only like 1% higher) and then just bomb something with that stack.
Given that, I'm going to have to maximize all my garrisons, which I probably can't do fast enough for this stack, but should be able to do before the next plane shift. I might lose a few orc cities, but that really shouldn't actually do much.
I will end up with 5 very rare life spells; so far I've seen Consecration, Enlightenment, Life Force, and High Prayer. Good ones so far, although of course I dearly want Crusade cuz, champion bezerkers with Torin! But realistically Archangel would be better. (Torin is gaining xp, but I don't want to lose his items so I'm careful about not risking losing him) Sss'ra of course has Aether Binding so he's spamming Disjunctions (and targetting Divine Order because there isn't anything else helpful cast yet; I'm still researching Enlightenment and apparently Freya's Zombie Mastery - which does literally nothing, there are several dozen zombies wandering about that can't attack me and don't get used as garrisons; they just clog up space; although watching ships turn into zombies is amusing - and Survival Instinct are less important than Divine Order. Which, given 7 chaos books, makes sense.)
If Sss'ra uses Plane Shift too much, I'll probably lose my ability to crack the towers because I'll be too defensive, but I don't think anything Sss'ra has can actually attack my full garrisons, and Consecration should stop any major damage. Which means, I 'should' be able to win with bezerkers and Torin. But it may be a very long, slow game. If he gets Meteor Storm, it will become ... even slower.
I've finally got Freya on the back foot. First attempt to fortress strike failed; I underestimated gorgons with a beastmaster. (Plus she has enough skill to cast petrify/cracks call for like 20 turns or something obscene - ok probably not that high, but long enough for any battle I've ever fought so 10-13 turns.)
So I had to rebuild, research lionheart, and try again. Took out a few more cities in the meantime. Succeeded that second time, though lost most of the stack, but my 10 barbarian cities all have inspiration so I'm producing a stack every turn, so I've got stacks of 8 bezerkers everywhere in a logistics trail to just constantly replace units, and leave a stack of 6 in every new city I take.
I've now banished Freya 3 times, and I'm casting consecration on my cities (skipping inspirations on non barbarian cities until consecration is done.)
Horus is down to 3 cities but we are now allies, Freya is down to 9 cities (all of which were Horus' originally). I've finally passed Freya's army strength.
Sss'ra has plane shifted in Nov 1412 (I haven't researched plane shift, nor have any towers been cracked), so I've met him. 4 sorcery, 2 life, 7 chaos, Myrran, and Runemaster! No wonder he got both just cause and aether binding with so few books. I'm very glad I've started consecration spam - I expect Armageddon and/or Great Wasting any time now. Meteor Storm would be a disaster for my logistics replacements. Suppress Magic would be almost as bad. Time Stop would be bad IF it results in Sss'ra cracking the towers.
Sss'ra found 1 book, I've found 1 book. Not a lot of books/retorts found in this game - and I have to assume virtually everything on Myrror has already been looted, given Sss'ra ALSO has more army strength than I do. (Doom Mastery plus Myrran races does that.)
The stack that plane shifted was: Windwalker Mage, Amazon, Paladin champion, 1 troll magician, and 5 efreeti. I have no idea what they're going to do. Actually, he's a ruthless expansionist. He's almost certainly going to declare war on me (fair land and I have 26 cities, and while his army strength is higher than mine, it's only like 1% higher) and then just bomb something with that stack.
Given that, I'm going to have to maximize all my garrisons, which I probably can't do fast enough for this stack, but should be able to do before the next plane shift. I might lose a few orc cities, but that really shouldn't actually do much.
I will end up with 5 very rare life spells; so far I've seen Consecration, Enlightenment, Life Force, and High Prayer. Good ones so far, although of course I dearly want Crusade cuz, champion bezerkers with Torin! But realistically Archangel would be better. (Torin is gaining xp, but I don't want to lose his items so I'm careful about not risking losing him) Sss'ra of course has Aether Binding so he's spamming Disjunctions (and targetting Divine Order because there isn't anything else helpful cast yet; I'm still researching Enlightenment and apparently Freya's Zombie Mastery - which does literally nothing, there are several dozen zombies wandering about that can't attack me and don't get used as garrisons; they just clog up space; although watching ships turn into zombies is amusing - and Survival Instinct are less important than Divine Order. Which, given 7 chaos books, makes sense.)
If Sss'ra uses Plane Shift too much, I'll probably lose my ability to crack the towers because I'll be too defensive, but I don't think anything Sss'ra has can actually attack my full garrisons, and Consecration should stop any major damage. Which means, I 'should' be able to win with bezerkers and Torin. But it may be a very long, slow game. If he gets Meteor Storm, it will become ... even slower.
