Fisticuffs with TBS

[The Black Sword]

Bone Palace and heroic epic completed!





I'm finishing off Currency now and then I'll revolt to my final civics City States/Consumption/Apprenticeship/Conquest. I'll put up some adventurer guilds to get me to that elusive 6xp threshold. City States loses about 10gpt to Agrarianism btw, but gains 17 food. I then have 7 GA turns left making about 100gpt, so I think I should unlock some tier 3 unit; Horse Archers. They're the only one cheap enough I can reach really. Longbows are the only other realistic option, but you're still probably talking about a delay of 10ish non-GA turns, unless pillaging is productive. I think Auro is going for hawks, since I've seen a Hunter around the place.

Btw, I wonder whether Horsemen should really have +40% archer attack? Horsemen are already a good unit that gets use, archers aren't. The best use for an archer over an axe is to sit in cities and protect against fast attackers. If a big slow force is coming in then you're going to want to attack out with offensive units. Except the fast units get +40% against the archers whose only real role is to defend against them.

[Qgqqqqq]

True. It's a carry over from base, though.

[The Black Sword]

Turn 150 :



This slow waddle into my opponent's territory can't possibly work can it? He's seen me coming a mile away, so I'll stick to the hills, instead of moving into cat range this turn. There was a forest on the T0 tile I was hoping to use but he chopped it in time. I'm up about 300k power I think but he's got cats too and I had to leave stuff at home. I was pretty tempted to offer a draw but that hardly seemed fun after spending this time building up a 90 unit stack.

His full force was not inside the city. It could be in range behind but if I get attacked it's probably next turn, not this. Next turn I'll strike btw and then after that I'll live on pillage money(I switched to Raiders T145).

[The Black Sword]

So, this was the force waiting for me:






The attack seemed too risky to me, I thought I'd likely lose the encounter if I moved in range of all those promoted catapults. So we agreed a draw at that stage and I won the coinflip to get the point from the game. We also played out the battle to see how it would have gone and I would have lost most of my stack over the course of a few turns. He would have taken some casualties too but he'd have a really well-promoted force from all those attacks.

GG Auro.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm happy to start our duel whenever you want. I think you're in charge of proposing the map / settings? Lemme know if I need to.

[Aurorarcher]

GG TBS. After reading the thread I found that you were reading my game very well, nicely done! For sure something that I should try to aim for: "What is my opponent doing/trying to do right now?"

Felt like you were always a step ahead of me in that, so well deserved win - even with a coinflip.

[The Black Sword]

New Duel started with Bob:



Bob settled in the original position, 1N for the first ring oasis. I'm Kandros, he's Thessa.

All the dungeons represent a rather interesting problem. I wasn't willing to risk opening them yet. I decided to camp one warrior on the lizard ruins, where he could also protect my capital and the other dungeon from any elvish scouts. I don't really mind some skeletons spawning so I left that alone for a bit. I want to get something over to explore Bradeline's Well quickly though. That's far enough away to give me some time to react and I don't want Bob taking it. My other warrior has picked up 18g from a hut, in addition to a constellation event, so I only need 3t saving to get +25% production from the vaults. I didn't feel it's worth it yet we'll see. I'm hoping to finally play an Aristo economy this game. The map is a cylinder and difficulty is only monarch so maintenance isn't so bad.

[The Black Sword]

Two score increases for Bob, I guess he's popping some stuff.

[The Black Sword]

Funny game so far.

I'm pretty sure Bob has popped something from those lairs, because I don't see how his GNP and production could be so high otherwise. Meanwhile I've got a bunch of gold, which is actually pretty good for Khazad. I popped the Lizards vs Dwarves event, which translated into 1 free Lizard and a lot of xp. Yes, I'm a kinslayer, I'll get over it. Bob also stole my first worker, due to a stupid mistake by me.




At the moment, I've got the Lizard and a bunch of aggressive scouts out subduing animal. I've got a good supply of bears for border pops and I just got this C3 gryphon. Found a spider to tame this turn too.




Tech has gone Agri -> AH -> Calendar -> Exploration -> Mining.




Pretty nice to have an opening that favours AH over Calendar, though I was delayed hooking up the pig due to the worker steal. I'm probably going straight to CoL now, I picked up mining first, because I figured access to the silk, gold and copper would be worth it.




Second city was settled to be cheap, quick and work the Cap's river but it doesn't add much. 3rd city is going over by the spider for the gold, 4th will probably go south, there's some good tiles to work down there. Bob already has 3, tempted to pay a visit to the 3rd one.

[The Black Sword]

Just got myself to Code of Laws:



The only thing Bob has over me is Mysticism. He certainly doesn't have CoL and possibly doesn't have AH.

I had been planning to invade Bruti a few turns ago, with some high xp units and Orthus' axe(cost me a bear to kill him and netted me my FotT unit). However a massive barb invasion occured at about the same time and I had to call it off. On the bright side, I have a lot more xp now and the barbs didn't effect my micro at all.




At the same time my wolf popped the Pyre for the Timor Mask but he couldn't cast the spell to pick it up so it got eaten by bears as he ran away.

Demos look good for me:





Bob has 8 extra pop, so if you subtract 16 food then he has no advantage there. I'm pretty happy with that trade of gold for hammers. Seems Bob has been caught a bit by the expansive trap. I'd guess he's not working improved tiles with his pop advantage. His power is above me now though, so I decided to call off the invasion for good and invest in Bronze Working in case he gets any ideas about leveraging those hammers. After that I can start thinking about some first-to boni, I should be able to pretty much sweep them.

I've continued popping borders with bears, and I slowed down expansion a bit to get up to 7 workers, starting 2 new settlers now in Halowell and Khazak. I do have a 4th city at size 3 by the gold spot.

My gryphon has done well for himself:



Killed a warrior and a worker and getting me some nice vision. I sent my spider to pop the second pyre just outside Bob's borders. Unfortunately, he walked straight into 2 fawns and another Hill Giant that Bob popped from the second Bradeleine's Well close by.