The Haunted Forest: Mardoc puts the Sidar to the test.

[Tasunke]

I guess considering the war in 30 turns, highly promoted recon will be more important than extra engineers/sages/merchants.

If you had a second city engis in said city might be more important, but as things are I see your point.

The early game would have been the time to settle units into Engineers as soon as they had the level, nearly regardless of Barbarian threat (as long as you had enough meat shields).

If you had engis and merchants to flood your cities with archers/hunters/warriors earlier the war with Serdoa might have gone differently, even with no promo units.

Does EitB still have Aeron's Chosen promotion? And does it do the same thing as in Base?

[Mardoc]

The early game would have been the time to settle units into Engineers as soon as they had the level, nearly regardless of Barbarian threat (as long as you had enough meat shields).

If you had engis and merchants to flood your cities with archers/hunters/warriors earlier the war with Serdoa might have gone differently, even with no promo units.

...except that's pretty much what I tried. Serdoa captured a bunch of engineers, and my three living merchants in Pacman were probably the only reason I could 1-turn the archers/DS's that convinced him to go elsewhere. Who knows? Maybe if I'd focused harder on military earlier, I'd still have two cities. Or maybe my defense would have been sad enough that I'd have none.

Does EitB still have Aeron's Chosen promotion? And does it do the same thing as in Base?

To the best of my knowledge, it hasn't been messed with. And yes, grabbing it is high on my to-do list .

[Tasunke]

I thought you lost 4 or 5 waneables during the war?

I guess not much you could of done though, if they were only recently waneable >.>

[Mardoc]

Nothing much to report this turn. A Lizard was born and promptly slaughtered one of our intrepid DS's . But we killed four barbs this turn, in revenge.

I think I'll be spamming scouts for a while. The main limits on our XP growth are number of units and their healing times, we're nowhere close to the extent of the barbs. So we therefore need more units out and about.

Although I'm starting to also think getting our Courage Adept sooner rather than later would be a good idea, I want to delay most of the building construction until our Mines are done and Sages settled, to hopefully cut some turns off of it.

[Thoth]

Nothing much to report this turn. A Lizard was born and promptly slaughtered one of our intrepid DS's . But we killed four barbs this turn, in revenge.

I think I'll be spamming scouts for a while. The main limits on our XP growth are number of units and their healing times, we're nowhere close to the extent of the barbs. So we therefore need more units out and about.

Although I'm starting to also think getting our Courage Adept sooner rather than later would be a good idea, I want to delay most of the building construction until our Mines are done and Sages settled, to hopefully cut some turns off of it.

Try and time the infra builds with pop growth...IIRC we can grow one more pop point with the ToK. A Courage Adept (and a Spirit I Thane) would be very nice for healing.....but we do need live units to heal for that to work.

I've not been getting the saves since Selrahc was eliminated (I had thought I was tied into the tracker....apparently not. Thanks Selrahc for the forwarded saves, it was appreciated. )

[Mardoc]

Try and time the infra builds with pop growth...IIRC we can grow one more pop point with the ToK. A Courage Adept (and a Spirit I Thane) would be very nice for healing.....but we do need live units to heal for that to work.

And could grow another pop point if we ever rebuild Dereptus. Currently that's a 6-turn endeavor, though.

I've not been getting the saves since Selrahc was eliminated (I had thought I was tied into the tracker....apparently not. Thanks Selrahc for the forwarded saves, it was appreciated. )

Actually, this game has no tracker. I think I asked for it early on, and Selrahc was kind. Lemme see if I can set up a filter of my own to forward it your way.

[Mardoc]

We started off nicely, with a FoL constellation event, worth about 50 gold (or 1 DS upgrade ).

At home, overflow finally corresponded to enough to 1-turn a DS; since our cashflow is not yet awesome, I decided to do that rather than a scout. Also because I want to get a bunch more DS's training ASAP, and not spend the time on buildings just yet. Besides, we really don't have any trouble coming up people to work all our tiles yet - the workers have gotten it to look less pathetic, but that's not the same as good. Not much point in growing a size in order to work a 2/1/0 forest, methinks.

We settled a GMerch this turn. I miscounted, next turn we get to settle 2! Wanes, probably both as GSages. And we have a fourth en route, and several warriors in the wilderness who are getting close.



Here's our current military. Not really that impressive, except for a 1CC. My main goals at the moment are to train and Wane all the warriors - and simultaneously build enough Recon units that you have no objection to me doing so . If I can manage that - this is certainly enough Wanes to carry us well past my current horizon in game. So I don't plan to build any more Wanabes - every new unit will be intended to stay and fight. The main trick is going to be coming up the the hammers and cashflow that we can upgrade them all to where we want them - right now we can't even afford 1 DS/turn, let alone 1 Ranger or 1 Beastmaster. I think therefore that after the next three Wanes, who will be Sages to get us our guaranteed Animal Mastery in time, the next many will have to be Merchants so we can afford our upgrades. Either that, or Engineers, and plan to build DS's/Rangers directly rather than upgrading them from Scouts. Thoughts?


I don't understand Serdoa. Why are these guys just sitting here?



He's going to beat Bob with one hand tied behind his back? Or...he's planning a NAP-stab, and wants to make it obvious? Or, he's got so many troops that he's lost track of these five? He's still not at war - but I see no profit for him in waiting.

[Tasunke]

I think I'd go Sage -> Merchant instead of Sage -> Engineer.

[Thoth]

We started off nicely, with a FoL constellation event, worth about 50 gold (or 1 DS upgrade ).

Nice.

At home, overflow finally corresponded to enough to 1-turn a DS; since our cashflow is not yet awesome, I decided to do that rather than a scout. Also because I want to get a bunch more DS's training ASAP, and not spend the time on buildings just yet. Besides, we really don't have any trouble coming up people to work all our tiles yet - the workers have gotten it to look less pathetic, but that's not the same as good. Not much point in growing a size in order to work a 2/1/0 forest, methinks.

True...but growing a pop point to work another Philo specialist is worthwhile.

We can grow by finishing up the ToK and building a Mage Guild. A Spirit 1/Enchantment 1 Adept would do wonders for our healing capacity plus get us Enchanted Blade on our Warriors (and mebbe if we can squeeze the hammers....Axemen )

We settled a GMerch this turn. I miscounted, next turn we get to settle 2! Wanes, probably both as GSages. And we have a fourth en route, and several warriors in the wilderness who are getting close.

Nice.

Here's our current military. Not really that impressive, except for a 1CC. My main goals at the moment are to train and Wane all the warriors - and simultaneously build enough Recon units that you have no objection to me doing so . If I can manage that - this is certainly enough Wanes to carry us well past my current horizon in game. So I don't plan to build any more Wanabes - every new unit will be intended to stay and fight. The main trick is going to be coming up the the hammers and cashflow that we can upgrade them all to where we want them - right now we can't even afford 1 DS/turn, let alone 1 Ranger or 1 Beastmaster. I think therefore that after the next three Wanes, who will be Sages to get us our guaranteed Animal Mastery in time, the next many will have to be Merchants so we can afford our upgrades. Either that, or Engineers, and plan to build DS's/Rangers directly rather than upgrading them from Scouts. Thoughts?

Sages yes...let's get to our toys if we can. Engineers, I'm not sure about. Our gold will look mighty fine with a ToK + a Merchant and 2 Priests so some upgrading is doable (not to mention the fact that with 5 specs hired we're pushing out a net 30 GPP per turn). OTOH, Engineers are 6 (net) hammers and 5.25 (net) BPT. Given our current BPT pinch (if we want anything other than Beastmasters) another Sage or two might also be handy. BUT. There is a hard limit on the number of Wanes we can get vs getting some promoted units out on the board.

I don't understand Serdoa. Why are these guys just sitting here?

Best guess...they're here to farm exp from the barbs.

He's going to beat Bob with one hand tied behind his back? Or...he's planning a NAP-stab, and wants to make it obvious? Or, he's got so many troops that he's lost track of these five? He's still not at war - but I see no profit for him in waiting.

Damnfino. He's probably a bit nervous about heading into Elf territory while MotT is active, and might be waiting on Stirrups for HAs...time will tell.

If he blatently NAP stabs us, we'll probably be out and his reputation will be forever shot to hell. I'm ok with that.

[Mardoc]

True...but growing a pop point to work another Philo specialist is worthwhile.

We can grow by finishing up the ToK and building a Mage Guild. A Spirit 1/Enchantment 1 Adept would do wonders for our healing capacity plus get us Enchanted Blade on our Warriors (and mebbe if we can squeeze the hammers....Axemen )

Ok, that makes sense. As soon as I'm comfortable with the number of DS's out and about, we'll take a break to grab an adept and grow.

Sages yes...let's get to our toys if we can. Engineers, I'm not sure about. Our gold will look mighty fine with a ToK + a Merchant and 2 Priests so some upgrading is doable (not to mention the fact that with 5 specs hired we're pushing out a net 30 GPP per turn). OTOH, Engineers are 6 (net) hammers and 5.25 (net) BPT. Given our current BPT pinch (if we want anything other than Beastmasters) another Sage or two might also be handy. BUT. There is a hard limit on the number of Wanes we can get vs getting some promoted units out on the board.

I think..Merchants are more flexible - gold and food can turn into lots of things. On the other hand, Sages get the best multipliers right now - that'd let us consider touching the slider... You're probably right that we don't want Engineers, hammers are the one thing that's easiest to waste.

Damnfino. He's probably a bit nervous about heading into Elf territory while MotT is active, and might be waiting on Stirrups for HAs...time will tell.

Y'know - I bet this is it. He doesn't want to bring along his whole army at first, just enough to make Bob sweat and push the button. Probably would prefer that to be mostly withdrawers, too. He can wait to bring the rest until the ents go back away.

If he blatently NAP stabs us, we'll probably be out and his reputation will be forever shot to hell. I'm ok with that.

Frankly, if he were going to NAP stab - this is about the dumbest possible way to do that. Have you seen any sign so far that Serdoa is dumb?

Yeah, me neither.