[spoilers] Off balance, missed the bus

[DaveV]

Are those numbers on the right the odds? Hunters should get decent odds against hill giants.

Giants are beasts, not animals, but hunters do apparently get a 50% bonus against them. An in game check changes the odds to 69% and 76.5% against the giants. That's what I get for not investigating that earlier, I guess.

@Amicalola - the plan is to build lots of Centaurs and find something to do with them.

[DaveV]

In another very convenient bit of RNG luck, mack established a holy city in his border city:



In other news, Cairo popped borders in a city on the southern sea to establish contact. I sent a centaur over and proposed open borders, but he declined.

I had a bad event (-1 population in Alex Lifeson) and a worthless event (pirate chest). The turn 70 Adaptive switch happened, and I picked Arcane, as mentioned earlier.

One of my exploring centaurs killed a tiger on defense; the tiger had 11% odds of winning, so I guess that was a little lucky for me.

[shallow_thought]

Bah. It feels a bit grim out there. But that would be true of Erebus even without Mackoti.

[DaveV]

I'm behind on my reporting again. I had sent some centaurs out scouting, and found a hunter who captured a gorilla. The last thing mack needs is more culture in his border city, so let's see if we can do something about that:



Next turn:



Apparently he attacked with the gorilla, at 0.00% odds and getting one hit (85.7% chance of doing no damage). The centaur who was mauled by the tiger ran back to my borders; the other one stayed stacked with mack's hunter.

In the far west, I was hoping to step onto the ancient tower and do some scouting.



He killed my centaur by the tower, at what had to be coin flip odds at best (combat 1, 25% defensive bonus). And he either deleted the gorilla-capturing hunter or pulled of some teleportation magic with the war declaration.

[DaveV]

In regard to my mysterious tech thread post: I generated a Great Sage and expected him to partially bulb Sorcery, per the bulb list here. Instead, he wants to bulb Divination, which I am much less enthusiastic about. I generated that list a long time ago, probably from the original FfH mod, and I remember some changes being made at some point. I probably don't still have the program I used to produce the original lists, but maybe I can reconstruct it.

[DaveV]

It turns out I did still have the program, and it produced the same list. What I had missed: I haven't researched Writing, a prerequisite for Sorcery. Oops.

Edit: and I forgot to mention, mack keeps offering white peace, and I keep declining. This turn, I sent back an offer of peace for DealuNegru, his pink dot city. I feel as though mack has spent the whole game smacking my face with his glove, then throwing it at my feet. Since I lost this game in the picking phase, I have no incentive to let him push me around.

[DaveV]

Lots of news since my last update, which I'll try to summarize:

Mack sent several more white peace offers, but I'm not having it.



I sent in several centaurs to pillage mack's farms, and the road on the forest east of Pink Dot. In addition to starving down Pink Dot, the 30 gold will let me fund deficit research for a few more turns. Interesting wrinkle: haste and sprint do not stack as I was expecting they would (so only +1 movement, not potentially +2). If I were putting more effort into this game, I would have checked that out.

Note the (supposedly) barbarian griffon in the west, under the list of Pink Dot units. Odds that this beastie belongs to mack: 99%.

He can certainly kill my centaur on the desert, west of my gems, but I can in turn counterattack for an almost sure kill of his killer. The centaurs on the forest 2E1N of Pink Dot have a 65% terrain bonus, but that's probably meaningless in the face of mack's ongoing RNG luck.

Aurorarcher sent a warrior through Cairo to make contact, meaning the layout is probably mack-me-cairo-auro-miguel-mack. This is germane because the log shows Barnaxus being killed. Could mack be at war with miguelito on his other flank? Or did mack sacrifice Barnaxus so he could build Shrine of the Champion? Barnaxus is a good unit, 6 strength and 2 moves, but he heals at a glacial rate.

I have two centaurs positioned to attack the barb warrior mentioned in the log once he moves off forested hills (i.e. next turn).

I got the treasure chest event, worthless to me. At least it wasn't a bad event.

Aurorarcher built the Heron Throne, so at least that's one wonder mack won't get.

[shallow_thought]

So, continuous war to the death against Mack then?

[DaveV]

Exactly. Especially when he keeps pulling crap like this:



I can't be bothered to look up whether ancient forests spawn at the beginning of his turn or the end; the left-hand numbers are for regular forest, the right-hand numbers for ancient forest. Going back to last game, he has a streak of ~30 straight early to mid-game combat wins against me during his turn, with exactly one loss: his 25 HP gorilla which attacked at 0.00% odds and still managed to get a hit.

I sent a C1 centaur against his griffon at 27.4/18.2 retreat, and redlined it, so there's some luck for me. Then I finished off the griffon with another centaur.

[DaveV]

Since it's turn 100, I should probably update. I popped my third great sage (at 81%, I contaminated the pool to speed him up), and finished bulbing Sorcery. I've been sending one fireball a turn to bomb down the defenses in Pink Dot. Mack has a pretty massive garrison; unless I'm miscounting tiles he can't quite reach me, though. On the other hand, I can't do any real damage against his anti-horse units, but I am tying down most of his army.



Aurorarcher and mackoti seem to be splitting the wonders: