[Spoilers - Flauros (sunrise089 and darrelljs)]

[sunrise089]

Email sent after discussion with darrell:

Elsa,

Oh boy...in-character emails from insane clowns, this may be challenging

How about this: We'll offer a cease fire in game. We can sign a NAP for a mutually agreeable length. We can make some sort of NAP-duration settling agreement not to settle up on each other (for instance, Calabim can agree not to settle any cities as close or closer to your cap than our current northern city). And, Loki doesn't enter our lands for the duration

What do you think?

-sunrise089

[darrelljs]

Okay I couldn't reach you so I went ahead and played t55:



I re-declared war on Serdoa. He could create a puppet which could flip our city. Which is, uh, something we forgot about. I also moved one Axe back into Nubia and moved one Bloodpet from Nubia down to Prespur. I hope that Lizard suicides. Both Workers are in Prespur, we need to use them to farm first, then road as we are going to be in Aristocracy in a few turns. Work them as a team.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Here was the reply I was waiting to discuss with darrell before playing:

Dear Sunrise,

we agree to the cease fire as well as that Loki won't enter your borders. Do you
wish to put forward a duration for such a NAP? I am not sure what would be
appropriate. Oh, and I guess you realize that there are 2 coppers, one next to your
capital, one near my cap and in the vincinity of your second city (but not in its BFC)?
We will have to settle 2N of this copper. Our BFCs will therefore touch on one tile. It
will be a mountain tile though. The one which is 1NE of your gems. I think we don't need to
fight for that? Please let me know as soon as possible how to proceed in this matter.
You can be sure that we won't try to culturally take more then the BFC for our city.

Yours faithfully,
Grepe Wirutwo
First Clown of the Balseraph Empire

PS: You don't have a bloodsucker available to play with for Elsa? She can get quiet ...
determined about stuff she wants. It would make her happy - and believe me, you want
Elsa to be happy.

[darrelljs]

Look at this shot from before:



That is the "after" shot. When I opened the save, Loki was NE of Nubia. I hit him with the Axe, and he withdrew to the north of Nubia. I then hit him with a Bloodpet and he withdrew to the west of Nubia. Finally, I hit him with another Axe and he withdrew to tile you see him on (the Axe is Dwarven and could return to Nubia). There are basically two possibilities:

1. Serdoa genuinely wants to give peace a chance.
2. A Loki puppet can't enter a tile with units on it without OB.

Otherwise, Nubia would be dead. I'll run a WB test tonight to confirm or deny #2.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Wait, so he re-entered our land post-email, no? In that case then I've got no clue...but I guess I lean towards the puppet game mechanic not being understood by Serdoa. If so, that's damn treacherous.

[darrelljs]

That is a very old shot from the first turn we saw Loki. He was adjacent to our border but not in our border. A puppet two-move would have flipped Nubia.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Puppets have movement when their casters don't? So they operate just like summons?

[BCAgamer]

They are summons. By the way, are you sure that the puppet could flip the city? For some reason I'm thinking that puppets only inherit Loki's promotions, but they can't entertain or disrupt. I could be completely wrong though.

[darrelljs]

BCAGamer is correct; Loki's puppets cannot cast Disrupt .

Darrell

[Profane]

With the clowns being in-character, would that also mean they may capriciously break NAPs?

Stinks to lose 2 opportunities to get a GProphet in a single game, I must say...

What spells can Loki eventually learn, by the way?