[spoilers] - pindicator is excited for the next Realms Beyond league mechanics

[pindicator]

167

Okay, the disaster of my attack has had consequences and Yamaguichi fell to Mouseferatu's troops before I thought it would.  I really should have put up walls there earlier; this was my fault, and the longbows there were lost with minimal losses from Mouse.

I was very worried because every city is 3 tiles apart: he could have moved a pair of workers up and hit Naichi from out of the fog without any warning.  Instead he moved his units and the workers onto the roadless grassland and gave me full view of his attacking force:




The numbers of the cities are when they were drafted.

I moved all the crossbows and the maces that I could out of Nachi, and left a small token force.  The city is on top of a hill and behind walls I'm hoping to strike that balance of too few units to waste collateral on yet still strong enough that it will take heavy losses to fall.  But what surprises me is that there are only 4 catapults for the whole stack.  Even if he has some a just out of sight they'd be 2 turns away from being able to hit Naichi.  (It was really good that I decided to take out the catapult stack when he left them open!)

There's possibly another mistake here, but we'll see.
 
To the west:




Minimal units.  The privateer is the only concern.  I'm dedicating most of my navy to go after Mouse's main stack between Yamaguichi and Ushijima.  They moved back enough that I could not scout them with the small stack to the east.  I've got 6 privateers coming up, but I'm not sure that's enough yet:  what I saw was 2 privateers and 6 caravels, but they're all promoted for movement while my privateers will be C2 or C3.

I ramped up the drafting near the front.  I really want to wait until Gunpowder until I start a second wave rolling from the south end of this peninsula, this time of muskets.  I think I can get Combustion in 2, and then 1-turn Gunpowder after that on the last turn of the golden age.  So drafting muskets in 3 turns.  Which means I'm only going to get 15 more maces on top of the 20 I've drafted so far.  Which is a lot of units - enough to turn the battle back in my favor.  However many of them are a long ways away.  It's a bit of Congo line between Betrayal and the capital right now.  There's also the survivors of the failed attack on Ushijima which offloaded in Nemesis and are coming around.  (The camel archers are likely going to stay behind as a defense force.)

Since all the drafting is giving me the ground troops, the cities are building collateral.  A few pikes and longbows.  But then everything else is navy.

[Cornflakes]

I think I can get Combustion in 2

[Thoth]

Combustion before Gunpowder is a nice trick. 

[pindicator]

Oh yeah, my brain slipped. That should be Constitution in 2

[pindicator]

168

So if you were paying close attention to the screenshots last turn you could see that Mouse had left Yamaguichi undefended. I loaded a mace and a camel archer on board 2 caravels in range, and this turn he covered the city with a pike.

Unpromoted mace gets 96% odds in an amphibious attack against an unpromoted pike.




This time we burned the city.

I spotted he had his navy in range, so I covered up my caravel with a C2 privateer.




I wonder if he tries to take the shot at my ships there. I hope he does; I have 6 more privateers to the south.

Mouse and BaII have played this really well. Not perfect - nobody ever does, really - but they've stayed cool in their defense and are actively pushing back and I over-extended. Now they're retaking while keeping their losses minimal and gathering more steam. There have been a few things I'd quibble on: they should have whipped more early on, especially in threatened cities. THey are playing a little too timid on defense and need to send out units to cause me to have to react more. There was that mistake a Yamaguichi just now. But for the most part they're putting together a real competent defense and kudos to them for it.

Right now he decided to bombard down defenses. He added several more knights to his stack this turn and a few more catapults. My units need to hurry up, but until then we have to try and delay as many turns as possible.

Here are the bulk of the first wave of draftees.




There are a couple of stragglers from Gemling Island that are still farther south, but this is the majority of my maces. We're up to 25 now - about 15 of them are in this screenshot. I did decide to draft everywhere, and I'll draft out of the capital as well next turn. In 2 turns we'll have Gunpowder (maybe 3) but I won't draft widespread a second time until whip anger from the first is down. I'll probably draft everywhere near the front lines, however.

What I'm going to be lacking is sufficient siege. So every city with production is building catapults. Yes, Crossbows are more versatile and stronger - but catapults do better collateral damage and are cheaper to build.

I think I can get the majority of these troops onto Mouse's landmass within 5 turns. I'm pretty sure there will be enough galleys to cover everything, and I've built several more. In addition the ones from my failed attack on Ushijima will be at the capital in 2 turns.

[pindicator]

169



It's worth at least 100 bpt for me right now. When I solve the happiness problems in the few cities that have it then it'll be worth even more.




I've been a little disappointed at the lack of events this game. I've had 3 all game, and they all have been so minor I can barely recall them: 1 extra experience on a unit, 100 culture to a city, 14 beakers towards the next tech. But this is my best event so far this game. It let me cancel my Gold to Gems with Rusten. Rusten is starting to run away with this game now. He's almost to Rifling and has been picking up speed teching lately.

Mouse didn't take the bait as far as moving up his whole navy, but he lose a privateer trying to sink the boats, and left another caravel behind which I destroyed. He also lost an elephant trying to kill the mace that burned Yamaguichi. I feel like attritioning out units like this is in my favor, so I doubt you'll see me delete any units going forward. I moved up my boats.

Gunpowder is comfortably finishing at end of turn. Again, I'll likely start double drafting all the cities on the Mouseferatu mainland. Actually, I've already been drafting Bokuto for 4 turns straight now. I keep expecting Narita to fall, and the fact that Mouse has taken so much time on bombarding down the defenses has let me get 3 more maces out and will probably allow me to have a Castle built at Hashiumi by the time he arrives. Heck, my maces might get to Hashiumi before Mouse's stack now, and I had expected to need to fall back from that city as well.

A picture of the war out east: OH has finally cracked Elkad's shell

[pindicator]

170

Spending too much time in the new Path of Exile league, so this report comes by way of pictures.













I did have a long think about moving all 8 of my camel archers north past his army, and then sacrificing one to cut the road on the forest north of his stack.  I also thought about cutting all the roads around his stack.  But my maces are starting to bottleneck as they wait for galleys and I want to wait for them all before I'm ready to attack.  More important is to wait for the collateral.  Need to soften that army up good before I send my hitters into it.

[Miguelito]

Can you give us a picture of the stack compositions when you get to it? How's Delirium? I'm continuing my Metamorph char in standard, as I didn't feel inspired for any new build to start over with. May do a metamorph writeup later, it's been fun.

[pindicator]

171

Mouse and I continue to trade control of Narita, the city losing population with each recapture. He killed my pike last turn; this time I killed his knight.1







It's getting harder to put the units together with the image and it still make sense, so I've separated out the main stacks this time: his on the left, sitting on the hill just north of Narita; mine on the right, sitting inside the city of Hoshiumi.

The unit counts are pretty even; I'm waiting for my collateral to make it across the narrow sea before I make my push.

I made Narita a little more difficult to recapture this time: I put a longbow, pike, and a newly drafted musket inside the city. But I'm really happy to continue trading units like this. And my caravel has him scrambling to cover cities that he thought were safe, preventing some of the reinforcements from arriving to the main stack.

Here are the units that are still coming up:




That's another 14 maces and 15 catapults, and about 9 galleys trying to shuttle them all across in this screenshot. Not all of them will be going to Narita, however. I have some other ideas, since maces do so well by sea now.

My power has become the top in the game. And we're going to start round 2 of drafting in a few turns, as the first bit of whip anger has almost worn off. Will these units also go north? Or maybe they'll bolster defenses on the border with OH. But with this wave I doubt I will be drafting from the core.




And I need to figure out what I'm going to tech next. I think either going for frigates or it's finally time to get universities and try for Oxford. I do need to start looking at my economy again, and all this drafting does have me feeling confident about the war - it feels like the outcome is firmly in my control again.

[pindicator]

I'm continuing my Metamorph char in standard, as I didn't feel inspired for any new build to start over with.  May do a metamorph writeup later, it's been fun.

So I seem to be in the minority when I am really enjoying Delirium and think the mechanic and monsters are really good. Yes, the first day was a bit of a death-fest at times while I tried to figure things out - and especially as I was playing a summoner I wasn't able to see exactly what was going on so well with certain animations. But I find it a little funny that one of the complaints about PoE has been the go-go-go faster-faster mentality of the game, but every time they add a mechanic that causes people to slow down then there's a bit of backlash. Anyway, I'm enjoying it.

My character was a bit of a janky homebrew: a take on Guardian Summon Raging Spirits, with some Zombies and Phantasms thrown in. It's done all right and I've played all the way to yellow maps with it. (My brother and I played a lot this weekend!) But it doesn't do well against the damage reduction in the Delirium fog. And then we got a drop that made me instantly want to start a new character.




If you haven't seen the previews, this was one of the unique cluster jewels they showed off: the notable gives you 60% more attack speed and 10-15 physical damage for every 10 dexterity, but at the cost that you cannot wear weapons, off-hands, or gloves. Even so, it is insane. I was doing 2,000 dps in Act 3 and the only thing holding me back is my movement speed and keeping enough resists due to lack of gear. This screenshot is at the start of Act 7, and I'm doing around 32k dps at max frenzy charges: damage close to what I would be happy with in yellow maps. I'm really interested in seeing just how far this one can go with damage like this.