It's the end of the world, and Dave feels fine

[DaveV]

Finally, a report on turn 104.




Aurorarcher finally moved his units out of Maelstrom range, and also rusted a bunch of jalepeno's units. I did some more pillaging with my spectres, used a fireball to kill his stack of two workers and a slave to the NE of the city, and cast Blinding Light again. Next turn I'll have two more witches in range to throw fireballs at the city. jalepeno is adding units to his stack at an impressive rate, though.

Another witch was born at EoT:




Life mana, meh. I'm up to nine witches out of ten that my gates will support. I really need to get going with the city razing.

[DaveV]

The long-awaited turn 105. Aurorarcher moved his stack down to the hill with my spectre. That's a good spot, because a 3-move water-walking witch can take out one of jalepeno's island cities .

He keeps piling units into Treason's Harbor. I killed a galley SE of the city with a fireball at ~65%, and did very little damage with another to the stack east of the city: three swordsmen and a warrior.




Here's hoping Aurorarcher moves his units out of maelstrom splash range, and he keeps rusting the defenders. I'll have another fireball witch next turn, and another who can summon fireballs or spectres. I have a water I witch SE of Nimarail; my other water I witch is in Cevedes, and cast Spring to convert the desert hill city tile to plains hill (you're welcome).

[DaveV]

Turn 107. jalepeno razed Gloriane, and Aurorarcher pulled back his stack. Six move galleons are ridiculous.




I had to take a couple promotions I didn't want to, and probably could have managed my haste adepts better, but I wiped out the invaders. I didn't record the odds, but the results were probably about as expected. I won a fireball attack at ~20% odds, but lost a spectre attack at ~80%. The galley was already damaged, so I had 99.9% odds with my fireball.



I was checking the tech screen, and how the heck is jalepeno fielding adepts without having researched KotE?

[Bobchillingworth]

Presumably the same way you were fielding an Adept on the first turn.

[Dreylin]

Spoilsport! You could have played that one for longer...!

[DaveV]

Thanks, Bob! And , Dreylin.

Thoughts on the game: having a city razed has increased the mouseover counter to 10, and the actual AC to 8. Once it hits 10, my gates can support twice as many witches and are twice as likely to spawn them.

The bad: jalepeno is defending on a very narrow front, in a great defensive position. If Aurorarcher is reluctant to move forward again to where I can threaten the island cities, it's going to be hard to make any headway against Treason's Harbor. Mardoc and Molach don't seem to be making any moves against the obvious runaway. Sigh.

[DaveV]

Turn 107: no progress. An event gave me a couple extra hammers, which is nice.




I flew some fireballs against his trailing stack, but no luck. The last two were against the city; I'm not going to get anywhere there unless I can use Maelstrom and buffed spectres.




He has a couple catapults incoming, but only one worker. Some more workers are straggling in, but killing his stack a few turns ago was very helpful. I'll probably have to scorch a couple of the plains tiles to stay out of range of his cats.




Note that I ran a huge deficit to finish off Necromancy. It's now or never, I think. Actually, it was probably 10-15 turns ago or never, but I'm still trying to do something. Our games lately have had a disturbing pattern of an unchecked runaway cruising to victory, and I was hoping to break that string. No thanks to the oblivious Mardoc and Molach.

[DaveV]

I take back all those nasty remarks about Mardoc. Molach is still on the naughty list, though.




I killed the goblin at 99%.

I couldn't see jalepeno's adept anywhere: I'm guessing either Mardoc assassinated it or it hopped onto a boat. If the latter, I don't think he can reach the new desert tile next turn. Here's hoping Aurorarcher gets the idea and I can finally cast Maelstrom again next turn. I won't finish any more Death nodes next turn, but should have two more on turn 110.




I had a really bad run with the RNG, but I guess at least he still has to pay maintenance on those units.

You can see I'm running a deficit at 0% research. I need some pillage gold or something pretty soon.

[DaveV]

Turn 109. That galley in Nutmeg Consolation worries me; if the adept is on board, he can spring the desert and hit our stack.




So I passed up an opportunity to generate an attacking unit to cast Regeneration. Also cast Dance of Blades; every little bit helps. Just in case the adept isn't in range, I also scorched another plains tile.

I noticed when I was previewing this post that I forgot to delete my spectres. Free XP, I guess.

I did manage five attacks against his trailing stack, and had pretty average results:

[DaveV]

Turn 110. Aurorarcher pulled out his warriors and adepts; I don't know where they went. I pillaged the village in Aurorarcher's former lands to scare up enough cash to keep me out of strike for a few more turns. My spectres did better than expected on defense:



And my fireballs had a great series of rolls on offense. The first attack was at about 45%, and the odds got steadily better from there. One more fireball and I could have killed the two workers under the horseman.




jalepeno can really end my game now if he springs the desert; I don't have Aurorarcher's units to screen mine any more. If jalepeno doesn't attack, I should be able to start whittling down his city defenders: my (now strength 7) spectre had 45% odds on his top defender.