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

[Mardoc]

T18 - @EOT, we've got a 2nd southern warrior, and Elder Council Numero Uno! Which will not be hiring a sage, want to keep the GPP pool open.

Also, we found a spider in the south, giving him a wide berth!

[Thoth]

looking good so far.

Note that we want to build workers with hammers as much as possible to take advantage of Ind's boost to worker production and the God King hammer boost.

[Mardoc]

T19 - What a temptation!



Not gonna do it, though, pretty sure spiders can see Hidden. Will mark the spot for later, though, if we ever leave the walls.

[Thoth]

Spiders can see Animal Invisibility, but I don't think they can see Hidden.

[Mardoc]

Spiders can see Animal Invisibility, but I don't think they can see Hidden.

I really hope you're right

18 gold, and spot the following


No idea why they're just hanging out like this, but I don't mind them waiting to fight until our archers have a few drill promos

[Thoth]

Yeah, Poison gobbos are a pain.

Our Archers should be well promoted by the time they arrive.

[Mardoc]

The button is calling....

But for now I resist. Soon we can imitate this with other units and not have to waste Light Mob II

[Thoth]

Yeah. Warriors are for waning. Archers and SoKs are for leveling up into Uber units.

[Mardoc]

Now *that* was an epic blitz. Thoth kept informed between chat and opening the saves himself, but for the rest of you, here's the state of the Sidar:

Techwise, we've knocked out Mysticism, Exploration, Agriculture, Calendar, and are working (slowly) on Crafting. We've got an Academy born in two turns, so we're saving gold at the moment.

After that, current plan is Crafting -> Education -> Mining -> Way of the Earthmother. We'll run priests next, to get ourselves some Tablets of Bambur, which in turn will enable Engineers for the Mines of Gal-Dur.

We still have only the two cities, as pretty much expected; technically the buy a settler event could have hit us, but it didn't. Here's what they look like:

Pacman:


Asteroids:

Reasoning behind our builds? Basically we want happy cap boosts. And the ability to run the above specialist paths. We're nearly caught up on building all the available buildings that we actually want - perhaps we'll knock out Palisades at that point, or perhaps it'll be time to start throwing warriors into the meatgrinder to get the ghosts out. Still - I expect to see that buildings list get much longer than it would in a normal game!

In terms of improved tiles, it looks horrible. Mostly a result of going Mysticism first, but also the barbs are greatly at fault here. However, the demos aren't actually that bad - and we've now got two workers and an academy that both ought to help the demos. It feels like we're very short on workers, but of course 2 workers ought to be able to improve tiles much faster than we can grow the cities. To further help the demos, we're nearly to the point of starting to farm for Wanes. We've been waiting to start that until we've got at least Apprenticeship + Conquest.

Once we have the ability to get decent odds via starting at 5XP, maybe also Enchanted Blades and/or copper - we'll aim to attack out at the barbs rather than let the archers clean up all the kills. That said - it's likely Bambur becomes a Wane sooner or later .


A trick that Serdoa let spill is to put bounty hunter on the archers. Why? Well - take a lookie here:


2 gp/kill actually starts to add up. Both archers are now Wanable, but that would also likely be a very risky play on our part. And would throw away their extensive promotion lists.

What do we know in foreign news? Selrahc got a Great Engineer early on, but ended up losing one of his archers in order to escort him home. Serdoa has found Selrahc. Selrahc's had the most barbs of any of us - I think he literally had 44 in sight at one point. And Bob is unhappy with his land. Ah..Bob found a map edge, as well, so we know it's at least not toroidal. Nobody's lost a city yet, although Selrahc came close. Oh, and Selrahc at least has copper.

We Into the Misted very early, so that our scouts have kept busy exploring and looking for huts. Haven't found our foes yet, however, or popped any techs - but they did probably earn us 200+ gold, one hut at a time. They're still going - 3400 land tiles on this map won't be explored in a day

Some other tricks that ought to help manufacture Wanes? We'll build Dereptus in Asteroids for the bonus 2 XP on Soldiers of Kilmorph. We're hoping very hard that we're first to Warfare and the Form of the Titan. Long term, we'd dearly love the Ride of the Nine Kings.

[Mardoc]

And the game goes on...

First thing upon opening the save - apparently the barbs took exception to our people having clothes - but lost the fight. I promote the warrior to Combat I. He'll stick with the workers for now.


We go ahead and finish the cotton plantation, then micro both cities to grow. With that goblin occupying the corn and no one in range to hit him but the archer - I look around and see that there's currently no northern barbs incoming, either, and decide to take the 99.6% shot. We win, taking minimal damage, and resume fortification duties. That lets Pacman grow a bit faster. In 2-3 turns, when the Pagan Temple finishes, we'll start running the Priest for the Tablets. What to build then? I think I'm in favor of a Herbalist here, actually, for the +10% heal rate. We'll be working on Education then, so we'll not be far from a lot of warriors fighting and getting wounded in pursuit of Shadedom. I could be persuaded to slip in a Palisade instead, though.

Speaking of cities, our Academy has arrived, on schedule:

It means that when I fire the sage, we're still at 33 GNP to the leader's 35. I hate to fire him as he's now worth 6 beakers, but I'd hate to lose the Mines even more. We can start running sages all the time after we've got these first crucial Great Ones achieved.

And, to wrap things up - I notice that in the south, we can take a couple of good-odds battles for the warriors hanging out. One barb warrior on the desert, without anyone around (so our warrior can retreat next turn) offers 75% odds; and the stack of 2 Goblins on the cow mean another warrior can have a 90% battle without leaving the city. I take them both; as I want the XP more than I want the bounty hunter gold. This puts both southern warriors to 4 XP . They'll regroup next turn and wait for the next good odds opportunity.

I think I'm changing my mind on our first shade - I think we want him to be a GSage in Asteroids. We're not as short on hammers as I'd expected; getting buildings erected almost as fast as they're unlocked. Although we'll be running Conquest mainly for the XP, it'll have the side effect of lots of production for units, as well. Meanwhile, our gold situation is pretty good, and Kilmorph is on the horizon to help out more. Not much point in accumulating gold faster than we can spend it, is there? So with hammers in decent shape and gold in good shape, beakers seems to be the place to go. Of course this assumes the Shade arrives before the situation changes .

So that was a good turn, I think . Academy, 11 XP onto Wanable units, no casualties, and everything else on schedule. Only decision I'm not sure was good was taking out the northern goblin; maybe I should have saved him for a warrior and just let us grow a little more slowly. It's just that Pacman is size 5, with a size 7 (soon to be 8) happy cap.