When I took over, we were at war with both of the other teams and things appeared to be in a stalemate. The Amurites have a large number of promoted firebows that makes it nearly impossible to attack them. Here's what our land front with them looks like:
By sea, they are only exposed at two cities, and my cautious attempt to probe their defenses caused us to lose our last four cultists.
In hindsight, it appears that this area is very difficult to invade. There is not a single tile in the bay that their firebows cannot reach from land. The only strategy I can think of to attack here would be to use a very large armada and attempt to draw out the firebows into exposed positions. Overall, it would be expensive and time consuming and probably still backfire spectacularly.
So, after several turns of building military with no clear goal in mind, I realized what should have been obvious. The best way to win the war would be economic, and they were slowly overtaking us due to their overseas support.
For comparison, here are the resources we have as of turn 181:
So clearly the Luchiurp were the weakest link. After researching Arcane Lore for several turns, I did a detour to Astronomy, and focused our military buildup seaward.
So, they've been partially blockaded for a few turns now, and whoever takes over next will be able to commence hostilities against the Luchiurp.
If my set weren't over, I'd use hit and run tactics to kill their units while remaining out of range of the golem fireballs. We can use the frigates to bombard all defenses away, basically for free, and then the arcane barges can soften up the defenders enough for the boarding parties to get good odds. We should be able to raze their coastal cities one by one without much attrition.
Once sufficient damage has been done, we may be able to start keeping cities, or else divert some units south to take over the second continent. Eventually, we should be able to start putting pressure on the eastern Amurite coastal cities. If they are forced to divert firebows eastward, it may even allow us to attack from the west.
Jesus, like if you seriously want me to play these turns I'm gonna, but don't expect anything else than slaughter, cause I'm not gonna spent 2 hours figuring out the best course of action here.
"Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
So, the first thing I saw was an offer of a peace treaty from the Amurite Perpy. The second thing I saw is a doomfleet - arcane barges, our hero ship, and a whole bunch of boarding parties - poised just off the Luchiurp coastline. Oh, and odds and ends of caravels scouting them out, showing things like single warrior garrisons in their coastal cities.
Oh, yeah, I want to play this out. Amurites sitting out while we're poised for a probable surprise strike on the Luch? And I don't even have to figure out the logistics, because Ellimist was just up?
Only handicap is that it's going to take some thought to run properly, so I won't really be able to start until the weekend. But once I wrap my head around it, the following turns should be easier.
Greetings Perpentarch the sea. I have sent a peace offering; while they can I think of ways to break the deadlock for us, I seriously have zero desire to try to cope with dozens of units random Reference and left me with. Let us make peace you can build on Ljosalfar continent before, and I'll win by large tower
Gave the Amurites peace despite Bob's threat to build the Tower. We can't hurt them much at the moment anyway, so it doesn't cost us much.
I think, actually, that Ellimist wasn't quite ready to kick things off. Not quite enough transports and boarding parties, especially. I thought about waiting, but ended up deciding to go in regardless. Couple reasons:
1) We have an advantage now. Give the Luch time and they may build enough to counteract that. We have awesome cities, but not many of them. Best to get started on the attrition front.
2) We've only a 10-turn period of guaranteed peace with the Amurites. That should be enough to let me steal our garrisons now, rebuild them later, but only if I move right away.
3)
We've got a lot more military than they do, but they're definitely building. Waiting might not actually improve our relative position any.
I also decided on the keep/burn front - keep! A) we really want the majority of the fighting to be at the coast. With a huge stack of fireball-ships, our stack having 8-9 moves, I'm honestly ok if the cities change hands a couple times as long as we get to kill Luch units every time.
B) We need more cities! We've got less than half of the Amurites' city count, and similar boat with the Luch. Plus, more cities on a separate continent will make us much more secure, even if Amurites do something nasty with their worldspell. We can own the waves without magic, just fine.
Before:
After:
We lost...um, nothing, actually, but fireballs. Frigates to knock defenses down to 0, Ritualists to kick things off, Fireballs to knock the units low, meant almost all our fights with 95%+ odds. May lose our garrisons.
Killed about 10 units, half iron golems, half other random stuff. Adepts, workers, even a hunter and his bear
I honestly expect the northern continent to be a real pain to take and hold, he's got a full-promoted Barnaxus and Iron Golems with Fireballs. And we don't have any fast movers at all, away from the coast, so his inland cities will be a real pain. Main goal up here for now is to hold his attention, kill units faster than he can build them. Capturing cities *does* wipe out their sculptors studios and blasting workshops, so any city captured will be worthless for anything but warriors, anyway. Southern continent, we can probably take. It looks like they'd started on colonizing it but not really gotten that far. In the long run, the southern continent should give us the resources and logistics to take the northern one regardless.
Anything we hold long enough to get out of revolt, is going to have some units cash-rushed to help with logistics. Although our logistics aren't bad with Queen of the Line ships: 10 cargo, 7-9 movement, that's pretty handy.
Next turn I'm probably splitting the fleet, half to head north and take cities, half to head west. Assuming a huge force of Luch units needing killing doesn't show.
Ok, so he killed our landed boarding parties. But then I found one of our adepts has Floating Eye, and I took a peek. This is the only substantial force he has...anywhere within sight.
3 Iron Golems, Kithra, Barnaxus, and some mages. That's IT. We might well be able to land and hold a port sometime soon - maybe with one of the incoming boatloads.
Took a city in the west, mainly to kill the Frigate that was built. Lost a Ritualist at 95% odds; guess I should have let him simply gather passive XP. Also used fireballs to eradicate the warriors trained in the two recaptured cities.
I'm a little bit stuck on what to do next here on the north continent. Maybe it'll get easier with reinforcements. But he's hardly got any units to kill, except that central stack, which I can't reach just yet.
In the south, we kept the city we took and started beating on two more. Ithralia's now guarded by 2 mud golems, while Grill Daddy has a handful of units - none I expect to survive next turn, though. I expect the whole continent to fall pretty fast, after which I'll vector the troops north.
Upgraded two of our Boarding Parties over here to Eidolons, and I'm probably going to use our last two slots here as well; we've a handful of Commando units who really would benefit from extreme strength and March promos. Sure, it's overkill for this continent, but Commando!
I'm starting to have some confidence we might just take out the Luch entirely before our Amurite treaty expires. Or at least take the Luch down to a nubbin; maybe our armies can't march fast enough to quite finish them off. But I don't see the Luch coming up with much that can stop us; yeah, they've got Ice Elementals and Fireballs and Maelstroms, but we've got sheer numbers of high Str units. Just need to put enough units in one spot, covered by Eidolons, say
Researching Poisons for future use against the Amurites. Debating whether the next tech should be Pass through the Ether for the Nexus, or another T4 unit unlocker. Might go for the one that enables Beasts of Agares.
In general, I'm having fun here. Bet the Luch aren't. Hopefully if I press hard enough against them, the other players can repeat the trick against the Amurites, and/or lose to Tower, before I have another turnset. .
. 
. I'll make time somehow. Thanks, Elli!
