Losing is Fun: Kandros Fir Dwarf Fortress [Khazad Spoiler Thread]

[Ichabod]

Turn 124:


The turn started with an event that I had never seen before. At least it was a good one:

It's interesting that the unit was named and healed after that. The axeman was a pretty damaged one from the taking of Arkhrast (that's why he was left behind defending the city), but now it was fully healed. It would have been better if it had happened with a unit that was on the move, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

But that was the only good news about the turn. First, I spotted this:

And then, I received a message from Dantski:

Hey Ichabod

You probably saw with your hawk, but thought I'd tell you in case you didn't. Sciz is bringing back 6 warriors from Lanun lands, one of which has Orthus' axe.

Cancelled my water mana loan to Sciz this turn too, although I doubt that had much bearing on the war. : )

Good luck

Which led me to spot this:

And a much minor problem, albeit a pretty irritating one: a barb city spwaned near the place where I planned to settle for marble (you can see in the picture that I was toading there already). It will dealy my plan to connect the Marble, unfortunately...

So, things were looking pretty grim. Sciz could reinforce his capital with 6 warriors and the Orthus axe. All he needed to do was use his worldspell and get the 2 moves. if he used it on turn 24, he could reach the city in time and would be able to attack me going across the river.

And Selrahc could be making a backstab move going for my almost undefended core. If I move my troops back, I would never finish Sciz off. Then he could take back his cities while I fought Selrahc. And I don't think I could handle Hyborem with my current troops... Very, very bad.

This was probably the hardest time of the Hippus campaign. But I needed to do something about it. The first thing was to contact Selrahc about his stack near my borders.

Ichabod to Selrahc:

Hey Selrahc,

I've spotted your stack near my borders. What do you plan to do with it? We still have the NAP going on, so I wonder about it.

Are you just scouting the map?

Kind Regards,

Ichabod

He promptly answered my email and his response was the best I could hope for!

Don't worry. Not a NAP stab.

I'm on my way to trigger off Dantski's sanctuary spell.

I really, really hope that he's going to wait for Dantski sanctuary to wear off, trying to kill him after that, and just after all that he's going after me. That will give me plenty of time to prepare for his army. But I should worry about Selrahc later, I had enough on my hands then.

The pink squad was on a decisive turn. If Sciz couldn't connect copper in his next turn, i'd be able to pillage the mine. He could also attack my units, if he used his world spell. So there was a lot of expectation when I opened the next save.

Turn 125:

Turn 125 started with the HR tech splashscreen. Finally I could promote some of my troops to mobility when needed. It also made easier for me to spread the Runes religion, since the thanes could cover greater distances each turn.

Next thing to do was the most important: check if Sciz managed to finish Bronze Working in time.

He didn't! Actually, Sciz had a score increase last turn: 22 points. Enough for a tech. If he did, in fact, discover BW in the EoT, then I guess the bronze promotion only applies in the beggining of the next turn. Anyway, what mattered is that I could pillage his copper! So I promoted my axeman and did it!

The rest of the army assemble on the randevous point. We were just a couple of turns short of the decisive battle!

Domestically, I finished the route to connect Arkhrast to my core. This improved considerably the city situation. It's actually a profitable one now!

Hindenburg was finishing a Temple of Kilmorph. next build is the Form of the Titan. Hopefully I can beat Selrahc to it! +2xp on troop creation is a very nice boost.

And on foreign news, it seems that Sciz abandoned his captured Lanun city, since the turn log showed that it was captured by the barbs. That's very good news, since I can get rid of all the motherland unhapiness by conquering Sciz's cities near me:

[

Turn 126:

Turn started with another event. Wow, almost 2 in a row! That's very unusual, since I almost never get events. Unfortunately, this was a pretty bad one, making me lose the library I built in the capital...

Kurald Galain finally finished its revolt. It had some angry citizens, despite already being connected to my core. I decided to make the city build culture for a turn, making the bords expand on a single turn.

But the biggest news of the turn is that my troops finally reached Starvald Demelain. The interturn was going to be a very decisive one. I didn't take a picture, but Sciz stack with the Orthus axe could attack my troops in this turn, if he used his world spell. They'd need to do it across a river, but there was still a lot of potential damage to be made. I was pretty nervous about it...

I couldn't wait to open the next save...

[Ravus Sol]

I have a style?

But anyway, the war looks like it is going well. The retooled plan is much better, cutting of the copper and bringing in Bambur to repair potentialy damaged siege units. Bambur really helps dwarven warfare. You've had a amusing mix of good and bad luck in this. Bad luck on some of the events and good luck on the timing of the mine pillage.

Mardoc beat me to it explaining the blight, although I was sure it was a random number between 1-14 not a flat 10. But either way its still a lot of extra unhealthiness especially when you are starting to push against your healthy cap.

[Ichabod]

Turn 127:


After my deliberate cliffhanger in the last post, here's the next part of the Hippus war chronicle.

So... Did Sciz attack my stack? Unfortunately, he did...

But only with his catapults! And I even managed to kill two of them! One with my almighty elephant! :

The attack wasn't capable of inflicting much damage at my stack. I don't understand why Sciz didn't use his worldspell. It was the perfect time for it, a last stand scenario, where he could hit me with quite some units. Maybe he already used it and I didn't notice it. Be that as it may, I was ready for a direct attack in his capital, with a lot of collateral!

Here's my stack after promoting some of the more damaged trebs:

First thing to do was use repair to fix the trebs. After only one cast of repair, all trebuchets were back at full health:

Then it was time to start the attack! Sciz Orthus axe stack was one tile from the city. So, I wanted to capture his capital and still have a good number of units to garrison it against his possible revenge. That meant not wasting trebuchet attacks, attacking with the troops near a promotion (for the possibility of healing them afterwards with a promotion) and saving some healthy units for garrison.

Anyway, first thing to do was using the siege:

The battles went like this:

1. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 2, commando warrior - 87,3% odds - Retreat
2. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 1, commando warrior - 91,0% odds - Retreat
3. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 2, commando, 87/100 HP warrior - 92,8% odds - Retreat
4. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 2, commando, 87/100 HP warrior - 95,2% odds - Retreat
5. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 2, commando, 74/100 HP warrior - 98,4% odds - Retreat
6. Combat 1 trebuchet vs. combat 2, commando, 55/100 HP warrior - 99,7% odds - Retreat

I wanted to keep the 2 trebs left intact and use them to garrison the city, so I started attacking with my combat units now:

Combats went like this:

1. Combat 3, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 72/100 HP axeman vs. combat 2, shock 1, commando, 35/100 HP warrior - 98,5% odds - WIN!
2. Combat 2, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 76/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, shock 1, commando, 30/100 HP warrior - 99,1% odds - WIN!
3. Combat 1, Enchanted blade, 73/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, commando, 36/100 HP warrior - 97,3% odds - WIN!
4. Combat 2, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 82/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, commando, 35/100 HP warrior - 99,8% odds - WIN!
5. Combat 1, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 91/100 HP axeman vs. combat 2, shock 1, commando, 55/100 HP warrior - 99,8% odds - WIN!
6. Combat 1, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 82/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, commando, 30/100 HP warrior - 99,8% odds - WIN!
7. Combat 2, Enchanted blade, 80/100 HP warrior vs. combat 1, commando, 35/100 HP adept - 97,9% odds - WIN!
8. Combat 3, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 52/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, commando, 25/100 HP warrior - 99,4% odds - WIN!
9. Combat 1, Enchanted blade, shock 1, 100/100 HP axeman vs. combat 1, commando, 25/100 HP warrior - >99,9% odds - WIN!
10. Combat 2, 100/100 HP gripphon vs. combat 1, commando, 25/100 HP warrior - >99,9% odds - WIN!
11. Combat 3, 100/100 HP hunter vs. 4/100 HP catapult - >99,9% odds - WIN!
12. Combat 3, Enchanted blade, 80/100 HP warrior vs. 1/100 HP catapult - >99,9% odds - WIN!

A flawless victory!

Even though the odds were massively in my favour, its still nice to see everything working right!

Final outcome of the battles:

So, I captured Starvald Demelain, getting a nice bonus of gold! I'm managing to keep the vaults in low level, which is pretty nice!

The capital came with a decent amount of infrastructure, including an academy! This city will be very beneficial to the empire with the changes that I'm planning for! It also has a Mage guild, meaning that I don't need to build one when I want some adepts! I'll probably try to make some adepts to spring my lands.

Sciz is reduced to his tundra city of Omtose Phelack. I need to conquer it to get rid of motherland unhapiness. I think I'll keep it, though I'm not sure. The idea behind keeping it is not to raise the armageddon counter even more...

I managed to garrison Starvald Demelain with 11 units, so, the worst thing that can happen was if Sciz counterattacked and killed some of my units. He could even kill Bambur, if he was lucky. But I doubted he'd do that.

BTW, Orthus axe will be a very good boost to my military! After this war is over I'll need to think about what to do to defeat Selrahc and its not going to be easy. I'll write a post about him and about my plans later. I need to start planning my next steps in the game (well, I already made a pretty big step in turn 128, but that will have to wait - shameless cliff hanger again!). A good thing is that Dantski goes after me in the turn order. There's definetely potential for combined arms!

[Ichabod]

Read the quoted post for more details, if you're interested.

Thanks, Mardoc.

I have a style?

But anyway, the war looks like it is going well. The retooled plan is much better, cutting of the copper and bringing in Bambur to repair potentialy damaged siege units. Bambur really helps dwarven warfare. You've had a amusing mix of good and bad luck in this. Bad luck on some of the events and good luck on the timing of the mine pillage.

Mardoc beat me to it explaining the blight, although I was sure it was a random number between 1-14 not a flat 10. But either way its still a lot of extra unhealthiness especially when you are starting to push against your healthy cap.

Not sure if it's a style, but your updates are always amusing. They aren't constant, but they surely are interesting when made. BTW, are you going to make a spoiler thread for PBEM XVII? I think I'll dedlurk you there too, especially if its a diplomacy game. Can't wait to see a game featuring your and Gaspar's diplomacy.

Regarding blight, the only good news is that my cities are small. The worst news of it all is that Selrahc won't suffer anything from blight. I think I'll build some herbalists in some cities and I'll probably spam farms. I've heard there's a bug that applies the blight unhealthiness more than one time to some cities, is this bug still around?

I'll also try to keep the AC at low levels. Doesn't help that the damn Lanun built the prophecy of ragnarok (EDIT: The Lanun built the Stigmata on the Unborn, not the Prophecy of Ragnarok!). Couldn't they build the Infernal Grimoire to avoid Selrahc from taking Malevolent Designs? Damn AI...

Anyway, I'll have trade soon so I can take a look at Selrahc's techs. It'll help me getting a bigger picture of the situation I'll be facing.

[Thoth]

He didn't! Actually, Sciz had a score increase last turn: 22 points. Enough for a tech. If he did, in fact, discover BW in the EoT, then I guess the bronze promotion only applies in the beggining of the next turn. Anyway, what mattered is that I could pillage his copper! So I promoted my axeman and did it!

AFAIK, the game checks for and applies the metal promotions 1) at the start of turn and 2) when a unit moves into a city.

[Sareln]

AFAIK, the game checks for and applies the metal promotions 1) at the start of turn and 2) when a unit moves into a city.

It does exactly this, and nothing more.

[Gaspar]

Not sure if it's a style, but your updates are always amusing. They aren't constant, but they surely are interesting when made. BTW, are you going to make a spoiler thread for PBEM XVII? I think I'll dedlurk you there too, especially if its a diplomacy game. Can't wait to see a game featuring your and Gaspar's diplomacy.

Sorry to disappoint, but I won't be handling diplomacy for our team in 17. I will be raging in the background however.

Appreciate all the work your do in this thread Ichabod, one of my favorites to read!

[Ichabod]

AFAIK, the game checks for and applies the metal promotions 1) at the start of turn and 2) when a unit moves into a city.

It does exactly this, and nothing more.

So maybe I got really lucky with the timing. Well, we will know soon enough, since I'll have the trade tech before I finish Sciz.

Sorry to disappoint, but I won't be handling diplomacy for our team in 17. I will be raging in the background however.

Appreciate all the work your do in this thread Ichabod, one of my favorites to read!

Thanks, Gaspar! I feel bad about my constant lack of updates, so it's good to know that they are good when done.

[Mardoc]

Thanks, Gaspar! I feel bad about my constant lack of updates, so it's good to know that they are good when done.

Oh, they definitely are. I couldn't wait for the conclusion to your cliffhanger!

And I'm still looking forward to see if/how you can deal with the Infernals.

[Ichabod]

[SIZE="3"]Recovering the economy - The new Khazad era[/SIZE]

Well, the war with Sciz is technically not over yet. Ellimist is a more agressive player than Sciz, so maybe he can pull some trick to do me some damage, but I really doubt it. I'm in a crazy good position to finish them by turn 132 (I already played turn 129) and that's because I'm playing extra careful.

So, my new challenge is to recover the economy, that was severely damaged by the war preparations and especially by the war effort itself. The troop cost was very high and that's with me being in Military State. The situation was so bad that Selrahc managed to pass me not only in production, but also in GNP. I avoided looking at the demographics screen for some time to avoid getting too disappointed. At least I'm owning him in crop yield! :neenernee

That being said, the current update will be more about domestic management then anything else.

[SIZE="2"]Turn 128:[/SIZE]

Code of Laws splashscreen greeted me when I loaded the save. This is perhaps the key ingredient for my economic boosting plan. I'll probably only play EitB games from now on. Why? Because if aristocracy is the way to go in vanilla FfH even in a full plains map, then the economy of the game is too uninteresting.

Yeah, I will adopt aristocracy + agrarianism. At my current state, 3/0/3 tiles are better then 3/1/0 ones. And with blight coming, the more farms I can work, the better. It certainly helps that I'm financial, but there are so few cases that aristofarms are not the way to go that it makes me kind of disappointed...

I selected trade as my next tech. The +1 trade routes per city aren't going to give me that big of a boost (I already ran ouit of foreign routes with dantski - I plan to open borders and form a trade route with the Lanun AI, though), but I'm desperate to have the knowledge of my rivals techs. I could ask Dantski about his, but I'm more interested in Selrahc. And I can get chariots too, if I'm not mistaken...

Here's a good idea! Founding CoE and farm a GP or GM. Something to keep in mind. It'd definetely make Selrahc think twice before attacking me... OH BOY! I had an epiphany here! I'll probably start doing it next turn on civilization V (could be in Hindenburg, but it'd be owned by Blight... Civ V not so much). I can work 2 merchants and a priest. 9 GPP per turn... Argh... 23 turns... God Damn! Well, better late then never. I'll start doing/planning it next turn.

Sorry for the sudden stream of counsciousness, but this seems like a pretty good idea. Selrahc needs at least 10 turns before attacking me and I don't think he'll start the countdown in the next turns.


Anyway, I positioned my thanes near Starvald Demelain. They'll reach the city next turn. One acting as a medic, the other pushing the cities border (by the way, my stack is healing in Starvald, while the trebs are being fixed by Bambur).

And after everything was ready, I revolted. Getting out of God King reduced the maintenance a lot, especially in my new cities, pretty distant from the capital. Conquest is a very good civic and I'll probably adopt it again in the late game. But right now I need agrarianism to keep growing. I have enough happy cap right now! 3/0/3 tiles are better then 2/1/3 tiles, in my opinion.

The effects of the switch will be presented later in this post.


[SIZE="2"]Turn 129:[/SIZE]

Big news of the turn was ending the revolt in Starvald Demelain.

The city screen shows that the city is already being a quite productive asset to the empire. The public bath that remained is a pretty good boost, since it avoided a lot of unhappy faces that would have plagued the city:

The troops remained in Starvald healing. It'd take 2 turns for all the units to be healed fully. I'll start moving the units to Sciz's last stand next turn, though, while keeping enough troops at home to avoid some Warcry infused crazy rush by Ellimist. The injured units will stay at home.

So, what about the economy?

Here's the demographic screen before the civic switch:

You can also see my breakeven research rate in the sliders. 63 beakers per turn with +2 gold per turn.

Here's the demographic screen after:

143 beakers per turn with no gold surplus. The production took a big hit, but my main focus right now is research. I can worry about production later. There are major techs that I need to research and the tech costs are starting to climb.

I'm pretty happy about my position right now. There's a lot of room for growth in my cities, be it to work mines or aristofarms. Can I beat Selrahc in the long run? I don't know... Again, I'll save my thoughts about it for later. It's my main focus right now, rest assured.


To give a better picture of the situation in the empire, I'll show pictures of some of the advisors:

Religious Advisor - I need to spread it to Starvald to increase the happy cap there. The thane that is currently healing my stack could be used for it, but I think I'll use to expand Omtose Phelack borders.

Military Advisor - My army is not that powerful as it seems... I'll probably add some more elephants to the mix, since there're quite a few wandering around my borders. They are strenght 8 after all (and I can upgrade them to war elephants now that I have HR too).

Financial Advisor - it's a small army, but it's sure costing a lot... And that's with the Military State civic, mind you:

City Overview:

Most of the cities are focused on growth and getting some infra built to avoid disaster during Blight...

Boatmurdered - growth! That's what I need here. I'm rebuilding the burnt library, but depending on what happens next turn, maybe I'll change to an herbalist.

Hindenburg - Getting the FotT would be massive to help any late war that I might fight. Now that I'm off the xp civics, it becomes even more important. If I get back to conquest, I can build 6xp units in the cap (dwarven units only, though), enough for 2 promotions!

Titanic - Not a lot to see. It was always a short term city. It'll improve when I finish KotE and start springing it, but not by much, I'm afraid. Blight will own it...

Civilization V - it was destined to be a production city. Now, it'll farm my next Great Person to allow the building of the Nox Noctis!

Kurald Galain - this city has a lot of potential. When Sciz is gone, it'll grow a lot. It has farms, food specials and a neat 0/2/10 gold tile. Unfortunately, Sciz didn't finish the job of springing it (that was my fault, though ).

Arkhrast Kovalain - this city is a pumped up Titanic. Already springed, with more good tiles. Another city with lots of potential. Same formula: kill Sciz, grow!

Starvald Demelain - my second capital. Comes with a free Academy and yet more potential. It's interesting to see the differences between my capital and Sciz's capital. bear in mind that he was not in aristocracy, so the city produced almost no commerce. My capital had some fully developed towns. I think my best play in this game was to tech education before Mysticism. It made a lot of difference in the long run.

To wrap things up, here's a quick defensive maneuver that almost cost me a lot.

There was a stack of 4 combat 1 barb warriors heading for Kurald Galain. I had a hunter near the area, that was moving from the war stack to help the city defend. When the stack entered my borders, I decided to attack the stack, thinking that the hunter could retreat to the city afterwards. But the unit lost all the movement after attacking. Now, I had a hunter (combat 3 and animal capture!) and a hawk in danger.

I attacked with one of the warriors inside the city (there was 2, one recently built) and killed another warrior, but mine was pretty injured after that. Now I could lose two units due to a stupid attack. So, I decided to attack with my second warrior. It had a promotion, which I used for mobility, thinking that I could attack the barb stack and still return to the city to avoid unhapiness (it'd have been a crippling amount of unhapiness). The warrior won a 70% battle and managed to return to the city.

Now, I have a combat 3, 3.4 strenght hunter against a combat 1, 3 strenght barb warrior. Still risky, but that's the price you have to pay for playing things without thinking. I really need that hunter to capture more elephants, so hopefully the barb won't attack or dies trying. By the way, the hunter can get combat 4 next turn (after the xp from the battle), part of the reason that led me to attack.


I'm planning to make a "Where do we go from here" post in the weekend, to explain my plans and thoughts about Selrahc and the game as a whole.