On turn 71, I attacked the lizard with one of the unpromoted warriors, to save the combat 1 guy for the killing blow and lair exploration.
Unfortunately, he did very little damage to the lizard, so I sent in the other unpromoted guy:
He damaged the lizard into the yellow, and the combat one guy won at 89%. He popped the lair, and the results weren't good:
Next turn, my cities were under pretty heavy siege:
The azer killed a warrior in Lakis, then hid under a scorpion. Meanwhile, one of the lizards moved into position to attack the city.
Note the Doviello borders to the south.
I missed some screenshots, but the azer promoted to C2, killed a warrior, promoted to C3 and killed another warrior, then finally died attacking the last defender in Lakis.
Fast forward to my last turn: I've put four turns into a plantation, but a lizardman chased the workers away.
Ouch, well now that was an annoying result from the lair! Looks like we managed to survive without any critical losses. Losing 125h worth units sucks but at least Lakis held.
On the other hand, good job on the defense! Glad we didn't lose anything too critical. And hey, now we have a guard of scorpions to the south to get in Mahala's way if she wants to invade .
Despite how that went...as soon as we rebuild our army I think we should probably try again. That result was just about the worst possible, I believe - and we survived it. The case for clearing the lair out of the way still holds, plus maybe next time we get luckier.
Ok, so I cleaned up the barbs in our borders, letting a lizard suicide and then attacking out to get good XP from a skelly and warrior. But the real interesting goings on were outside of our borders.
Yikes, that's close. we're going to be a bit cramped in that direction. also FotL FIADL.
This had me worried for a minute, but no wolves in sight by the end of T90, so we should be ok.
Once I had a good stack of warriors, I dangled them on a hill to bait the gargoyle. 2 warriors down, but got 6 xp. Heal and reposition warriors, then pop the lair? Or we can wait. 3rd city is coming soon, and once it's in our borders it's trivial to garrison the lair.
Finishing that mine will speed the settler by a turn. Unfortunately, building the other two plantations will add another unhealthy, but I think it's worth it.