Burning Down the House [Mr. Cairo Spoilers]

[Mr. Cairo]

My first free unit   And it came with enchantment 1, which is ironic since I just offered to trade my chaos mana for auro's enchantment mana (which he asked for free), so if he accepts it will have been for naught.

Speaking of Auro, he lost all his cities but his cap last turn, the fact he's still sending me trade offers/requests tells me he's still in it, so good for him, I really want to know more of what's going on there. The good news for me is that mack must have raised those cities, since the AC is now at 9%. From what I know, the AC needs to get much higher to effect the chance of units coming through, so I guess it was just a coincidence that I got a unit when the AC went up? Maybe? In any case, it's Mobius Witches from here on out, in every city that can build them, even if it takes 10 turns. They are so valuable, Mages I can build without needing to tech Sorcery   Yes please.

I also founded one more city:


It cost me 6 gold/turn right now, so it wont take long to pay for itself.

It seems, despite everything, that the game is continuing, so I decided to send Dave a peace offer, perhaps he'll get the message that we need to work together against Mack, but its more likely he's given up on fighting mack and is all in on ruining me. Which is fair enough I suppose, just means I'll have to conquer him first.  

[Mr. Cairo]

Auro lost his cap, and people are posting in the lurker thread, so I'm assuming there's questions over ending the game by conceding to Mack?

So I'll just say this now, I very much DO NOT WANT to end this game right now. Mack is probably going to win, but I'd rather he show he can beat all of us, not just Auro (after many many turns). Bob's power is going up, and I'm starting to really get decent numbers of Mobius Witches (one popped through this turn, came with Shadow 1, Enchantment 1, and Entropy 1). In 10 turns I'll be able to either break through Dave, or hold him off while burning some of mack's cities (hopefully with Bob's help. Re: Dave, all I want to do is crush his army and then start burning his cities, make it so he can't bother me while I fight Mack.

[Mr. Cairo]

Just got 2 more Witches through the gates, while finishing another one naturally. One of them came with no spells , one with Mind, Nature, and Water, and the other with Wind, Nature, Death, and Sun .


I suppose now I could talk about what spells are the most useful for me, and how I plan to mostly use these Witches.

The Mana I have (and therefore what all my Witches have access to) are Death, Fire, and Chaos. However, I'm currently trading the Chaos for Bobs Body, and have upgraded my one Adept to get Haste.

Death 1 can summon Skeletons that stick around (unlike other summons), so useful to supplementing armies. Death 2 summons a Spectre, which can get very strong with more than 1 death mana, but I'm nowhere close to getting any more mana, so they're aren't as useful.

Chaos 1 casts a spell that gives a temporary extra first strike, and Chaos 2 mutates living units the stack, which can have all sorts of effects. In either case it's not something that stacks at all.

Fire 1 is mostly useless, it puts smoke in a nearby tile, which I think can eventually burn down a forest. It also blocks LoS I think, so can be useful that way. However, Fire 2 is the most useful, summoning a Fireball that flies and causes collateral damage. Lots of them can devastate a stack, and my plan for Dave is to open the attack with barrages of Fireballs against his main stack of warriors. If I can just pummel them with Fireballs each turn he'll have no choice but to pull back his warriors, letting me get closer and reach his better units I know he has somewhere (his power's been going up but the # of warriors in those stacks haven't been).

Now, Mobius Witches get random level 1 spells when they are built/spawn, so I have access to a lot more spells than just those of the mana my palace gives.

For me, my favourite is Air, since the Air 2 spell, Maelstrom, is an AOE attack that effects units on every tile in a 2-tile ring around the caster (including friendlies, so got to be careful).

Some others:
Body 2, Regeneration can let units heal while moving in enemy territory, should probably give one of my witches Body 1 before the trade deal with Bob runs out. Although, this, like many other spells that give bonuses to friendlies, only effects living units, so not my Pyre Zombies.

Enchantment is good for the level 1 spell, effectively being another Combat promo for melee units. 2 is useless as I have no Archery units

Entropy is a good one to have, with the Entropy 1 spell Rust making enemy units weaker. Entropy 2 summons a Pit Beast, which aren't bad, but not as useful, especially as I'll never get to summon them in significant numbers.

I'd love to get Metamagic or Ice, for their level 1 spells.

Earth, Law and Life aren't useful, and I don't have them anyway.

Mind 2 is very good at negating enemy stacks, preventing them from attacking (situationally better than Slow, from Ice 1, as 2-move units can still attack with Slow, and Slow is better resisted: 30% chance vs. 20% for Charm Person).

Nature is also good to have in a Witch, giving all my units the Poisoned Blade promo, which is a straight +1 strength in most cases (I'm guessing there are some units out there that are unaffected by Poison combat?)

Shadow is good when attacking enemies with First Strike. Shadow 1 is Blur, which lets units ignore First Strikes and Defensive Strikes. Shadow 2 is Shadowwalk, which lets units ignore Defensive Strikes and building defenses (walls) when attacking cities. I don't think Dave has a lot of archery units though, so it's not very useful.

Sun 2 is so very good, immobilizing units that are affected (30% chance of resisting) for 2 whole turns. Absolutely brutal if used well.

Water isn't very useful, I'm not interested in turning deserts into plains, and with only one Witch with Water, I don't see a lot of use giving it water-walking.



You know, laying it all out here like this, I'm a lot more confident in attacking Dave now that I know I'll have access to these spells.

I'm picturing it now, as under a relentless rain of Fireballs he's forced to send his Warriors back, letting me move forward, using Haste to get a bunch of units up next to his main stack(s?) and negating most of them with Blinding Light and Charm Person, then crushing them all with more fireballs and my shuffling tide of burning zombies.

[shallow_thought]

So I'll just say this now, I very much DO NOT WANT to end this game right now.

So glad to hear this. This is fun .

[Mr. Cairo]

It's a lot of fun, especially now that I can actually play with magic in one of these games.

Speaking of, three more witches came through the gates this turn, as well as one being built. So that's the max number of free witches, since I've gotten 7, out of 7 total gate+guilds. I think I might build some Carnivals in a couple cities next, see if I can't entice any Chaos Marauders through. Now I just need to wait for my witches to build up xp so they can grab Fire 2, and then I can bring the hurt to DaveV.

I'm also getting a Hunting Lodge in one city so I can build a Hawk or two for scouting.

[Mr. Cairo]

Oh hey, you need Animal Handling to build Hawks. I'm still pretty far away from that unfortunately.

Also, the existence of my Witches isn't a surprise anymore:


The position of that Horseman and the fact my workers are awake despite being fortified on that tile for a while tells me he sent that guy up for a scouting mission. So he knows about my Witches, it'll be interesting to see if he continues to send that forward each turn, if he does I'll have to hide the rest of my Witches from it, he only saw 6 and I have 14 in total.

This is somewhat annoying, but just a little bit, it doesn't change my plan, although not having a Hawk is very annoying. I also don't have horses (the one by my cap has a Town on it), so I can't do the same thing he did and scout with a 4-move Horseman. Maybe I can get Horses from Bob? Or I can just use Scouts with Mobility and Haste. Send them in to see what can be seen.

[Mardoc]

Death 1 can summon Skeletons that stick around (unlike other summons), so useful to supplementing armies. Death 2 summons a Spectre, which can get very strong with more than 1 death mana, but I'm nowhere close to getting any more mana, so they're aren't as useful.

Spectres can move and attack and pillage the turn they're summoned, while Skeletons can't.    A mobility/haste witch who summons a spectre can hit five tiles away from where she started the turn, a fork radius of 10 tiles (or pillage several tiles away from the stack with a unit you don't care about losing).  Skeletons are good for anywhere you can predict in advance you want more units.

Spectres aren't as useful as Fireballs for powering through a stack - but they're great for taking advantage of mobility.  I seem to remember Fireballs having a limitation - either 'cannot kill' or 'cannot capture cities' that Spectres aren't subject to. So it really depends on your opponent - whether you are more interested in breaking a stack or harassing or tying them down to defend everything.

Plus one thing that matters more for a conventional mage than a Witch - Death 1 is much more useful than Fire 1.  So Death adepts can be a still useful while Fire adepts aren't particularly, and a mage with Death 1/2 can sometimes get more done than a mage with Fire 1/2.  But of course with Witches you can skip right past the 'how do I make my adepts useful' question.

[Mr. Cairo]

Death 1 can summon Skeletons that stick around (unlike other summons), so useful to supplementing armies. Death 2 summons a Spectre, which can get very strong with more than 1 death mana, but I'm nowhere close to getting any more mana, so they're aren't as useful.

Spectres can move and attack and pillage the turn they're summoned, while Skeletons can't.    A mobility/haste witch who summons a spectre can hit five tiles away from where she started the turn, a fork radius of 10 tiles (or pillage several tiles away from the stack with a unit you don't care about losing).  Skeletons are good for anywhere you can predict in advance you want more units.

Spectres aren't as useful as Fireballs for powering through a stack - but they're great for taking advantage of mobility.  I seem to remember Fireballs having a limitation - either 'cannot kill' or 'cannot capture cities' that Spectres aren't subject to.  So it really depends on your opponent - whether you are more interested in breaking a stack or harassing or tying them down to defend everything.

Plus one thing that matters more for a conventional mage than a Witch - Death 1 is much more useful than Fire 1.  So Death adepts can be a still useful while Fire adepts aren't particularly, and a mage with Death 1/2 can sometimes get more done than a mage with Fire 1/2.  But of course with Witches you can skip right past the 'how do I make my adepts useful' question.

I built one Adept so I can give it Body 1 (after I traded for it from Bob) so I didn't have to give it to any of my Witches. But of course, now a few of my Witches have come with Body 1 so it's not as useful.

Spectres would be pretty useful for a surprise attack, for sure. Maybe if it looks like I can't get through his main stack I'll send some stuff around the flank, or through Bob if he'd let me. Maybe I can burn enough of his cities that his units will start to go on strike. I doubt it though, Auro managed to maintain a pretty powerful army with only a couple of cities, although I'd guess it wasn't huge numbers of Warriors.

Fireballs can't capture cities, but they can kill units, so they're good against stacks. I'd also want to weaken the stacks with Maelstrom first as well. And if I need to, I can always use my Worldspell to soften his stack(s) up a bit. I've also got a bunch of my PZs that can take promos that I'm holding back for Mobility once HBR comes in. So what I'm waiting for is essentially HBR to finish and my Witches to gain more xp.

[Mardoc]

Spectres would be pretty useful for a surprise attack, for sure. Maybe if it looks like I can't get through his main stack I'll send some stuff around the flank, or through Bob if he'd let me. Maybe I can burn enough of his cities that his units will start to go on strike. I doubt it though, Auro managed to maintain a pretty powerful army with only a couple of cities, although I'd guess it wasn't huge numbers of Warriors.

It matters more in a different style of war - I wasn't speaking so much to your current war with DaveV as to spectres in general.  In particular, it's extremely strong against an enemy where you share a border that's several cities wide, and against an enemy where you can beat their stack but only if it comes close to your stack first (for Maelstrom or zombie explosions or etc).  There you can either pick off a couple units every turn if they try to defend all their cities, or gradually pillage/raze/take all but one city on their border, whichever ones they aren't defending at the moment.  It's extremely annoying to be on the receiving side as well - you can't charge their stack because Maelstrom + hitters, but every turn you open it up to find another couple units dead, or a resource pillaged, or a missing city, or...

[RefSteel]

Some clarifications (I think) on the spells you listed:
- I think Nature 2 only gives the "Poisoned Blade" promotion to Recon units, not to everything.
- Light 2 theoretically freezes units for two turns, but in an MP game of EitB, I think it's de facto one turn: The counter ticks down at the beginning of the victim's player's turn (if I remember correctly...) so if I'm right, first you cast it and it shows "2 turns" then their turn starts and it says "1 turn" and the unit(s) can't move. Then it's your turn and it shows "1 turn" but it ticks down to zero again before their turn starts, so they get to move again.
- You are correct that fireballs can kill but can't take cities. Also they can't capture workers or settlers (merely killing them).

Thanks for the great reporting lately!