Freezing the World below Absolute Zero - Illians Succession Game

[Qgqqqqq]

Auric absolutely has a different Snowfall power, which does kill, and has increased radius. Also I believe he cools tiles he travels on?

Also agree with various that the point of playing on is to play with Auric and Drifa. It's a rare late-game versus the AI where it isn't a grind by this stage anyway. I mean, in my latest 1-2 sets I was deliberately holding back on advancing with the hope of leaving strong enough opponents.

A signup to play in Bobs game after this. Given the slow pace of this game, I don't need a break - though I'm not busting at the seams to play. Remember that early turns are an entirely different level of effort to these.


So I've added something here, I believe that the rituals no longer cause world war. That was changed for the Victory rituals at least (by Sareln), but it may have been done for the Illians as well.

[Aurorarcher]

Care to fix Celestial Compass for next version, Q? I don't know whether or not there is a simple solution to it though...

Tested Auric, and it indeed can kill. It has a snowfall that does damage between 0-100% within 2 tiles, and so can kill, and also turns surrounding tiles to ice. Despite civilopedia saying 3 moves, it has 4 moves to start with. What a monster, had totally forgotten.

[DaveV]

I'm ready for a break after this game. I've sat down several times to play my set, and haven't made it through the first turn yet, thanks to this:



She has a couple pretty scary stacks, including one in our backlines thanks to open borders and teleportation. I'm still finding all our units, and need to play very carefully to avoid losing cities.

[Qgqqqqq]

Care to fix Celestial Compass for next version, Q? I don't know whether or not there is a simple solution to it though...

I'll try, of course. No promises.

[Aurorarcher]

@Dave: During my turn Sheelba was moving his units back to his "main" territory from the backline city but apparently a lot were still on their way. I'm not certain how a lot of them ended up to backline territory when I thought they were closer to their "main" territory. I'm not too familiar with teleportation mechanisms but I'd assume that it teleports units to the closest own/neutral tile.

I checked the save t360 and the south is indeed almost without defenders. There are two adepts and two mages though next to Clan's borders. Maybe promote to Ice1 as much as you can, one of the adepts can be upgraded to mage with sun II which could potentially with Ice I make a lot of the troops immobile (a lot of them seem to be 1-mover Longbows). AI doesn't like to move forward if the remaining 75% of units can't follow. I guess that could give you enough time to bring reinforcements to deal with that stack of ~40 units.

[jalepeno]

Hey, things are happening again! (and have been for awhile - I guess I'd forgotten to check here in awhile).

Anyways, nothing to contribute right now; just glad things are moving along.

[DaveV]

I made it through five turns of whack-a-mole with Sheelba. Here is the eastern stack that had me worried:




There are two crossbowmen hiding under the interface, making the stack essentially impossible to attack without collateral.

Of course, Sheelba could have done a lot more damage by killing our two adepts and two mages sitting on the mana node just outside her territory, and then maybe marching on Evermore instead of setting off for a slog through the wilderness.

Here's the western stack:




Not as scary, but still has a crossbowman defending on a hill.

I wiped the western stack on my first turn, and sent a stack of mages to deal with the eastern stack the following turn. I switched research to Engineering because I wanted more mobility to defend our sprawling empire.

Meanwhile, Hyborem is threatening our isolated city of Dark Sky. He has more than enough to take the city, but is reluctant to pull the trigger for some reason.




Finished Guilds at the end of my set, which did indeed do nice things for Innsmouth's production. That's four turns to complete Stir from Slumber, since it's hard to read. Aylesbury is in revolt because of Lanun cultural pressure. I moved the Lyre into Villanon to try to help a bit.




I could easily have taken Acheron's old city away from Sheelba, but just killed her stack of chariots down to one unit instead. I couldn't resist taking Heimserer, though, to give us a solid block of territory (see the minimap in the last screenie).

[Qgqqqqq]

Looks good, DaveV! Not much to contribute given the complexity of these sets, but I agree with every decision you listed.

Jalapeno, it's your turn.

[jalepeno]

Ok, I'll grab the turn sometime this week (probably take the whole week to get through 5 turns).