[Spoilers - Flauros (sunrise089 and darrelljs)]

[darrelljs]

Doh!

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Okay sent .

sunrises089 it would be good if you could analyze possible counter-attack strategies. I will try and get us HBR so we can have Mobility vamps WITH at least one that can cast Haste. Let's say we want to move in with around 10 to maximize impact.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Any bets that Freak turns around next turn? Power is getting closer, if he's building Catapults he's hiding it with Warrior deletes.



Darrell

[darrelljs]

Eastern Hawk:



Northern Hawk:



Barbarian invasion:



Darrell

[darrelljs]

I plan on text with those pictures, but I have to run to little league. Later I will update.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

What's up with Amelia? Is she trying something?

[darrelljs]

Okay, so this is what our eastern Hawk sees:



Its actually quite innocent, here's the exchange with Amelia:

Amelia: as you can see, Saverous has moved slightly near you. Rest assured, as he's actually on Goblin Archer Duty. Said goblins have tried to pillage my copper plenty of times, so now at last i can stop them. Thus, do not be alarmed.
Of course, if you think 1 Saverous + 1 Swordsman is a threat... erm... yeah
Darrell: : Okay, no worries thanks for the heads up. I was under the impression we had a NAP in any case, so wasn't too worried :-). Does this mean you and Ilios were able to work things out?
Amelia: Yeah, i managed to convince him that attacking my lands were not in his best interest, due to no rivers, only coasts (Which he can't use effectively) and coves, which i can pillage off.
Wait, we had a NAP? I can't remember it actually. Want to make a new one instead? Till like T175?
Darrell: Okay, sounds good to me.

The northern Hawk shows Perpentarch pulling away from our border:



Some diplo with Serdoa:

we haven't talked in a while. I've seen you have got Vampires now, gratulations. Had I known that you are only shortly away from them, I had asked to wait with our invasion. Some vamps actually would have given as a chance I think. Though I am bad in FFH2-warfare, so who knows.

Have you already decided where to go from here? I am still a little bit hesitant to commit to anything again, as I simply don't see me making much progress as long as I need like forever for stuff like Hunting.

Yeah, I think Vamps + Cats would have worked better. Your NAP with Ilios is about 50t, not sure if they will be as relevant then, and not sure what we can do on our own. Now Amelia has Saverous and Swordsmen on our borders, not sure what that portends :-(. Our power is low even with Vamp technology, we need to get back up to at least where you/uberfish/Amelia is pronto.

We've got I think two more city sites to found, and we need more Workers as well to feed them. Its too bad we can't trade units, I'd love to get some Freaks for VAmpires in as we could use the culture (still no religion). I think all the religions are going to be gone before we can get any of the techs :-(.

So yeah, that's more than a bit disingenuous, but I'm still not sure what to believe. Someone I trust has let slip Serdoa sold us out to Ilios, and let's face it he's done that in other games. This could very well be an aborted attack when he saw we had Vampires. I mean, why else offer a cease fire instead of a peace treaty? On the other hand, I don't really have defnitive proof of any treachery. Ergo:

Ilios: I keep forgetting to offer peace, and have finally remembered on this turn.
Hope you are doing fine.
Darrell: Ah, good. Was beginning to think you were going to hold a grudge ;-). We'd very much like to chat with you sometime in the near future. Is it possible to arrange a time to meet online?
Ilios: Somewhere over the weekend should be possible. I'm on CET, and should have some time on Sat afternoon around 1-2 pm, or Sat evening from 9 pm onwards.

The cynic in me thinks he heard about our Vampires and decided to play nice in case I was insane enough to try another attack. I say this because I offered in peace in game not 3 turns ago and he said "no". So my guess is that he and Serdoa are still cooperating to some extent, but I can't be sure. Hence the chat request. I plan on a) trying to secure a NAP from him, and b) trying to see if Serdoa really did sell us out. I'd also like to secure either a non-compete on Chalid, or a confirmation he's headed that way. This is a bit tricky as if we are in a race, I don't want him to know about it .

How is our little Barbarian situation proceeding?



I think they are affected by Spectre fear, because they bounced down a tile now. I'll have a second Vampire in area soon, and will go on the offensive.

Next Steps
Well, we could stay at peace and tech. We have one city site uberfish ceded to us that requires the destruction of a barbarian city. Cows, floodplains. Not a bad site, but definitely not a great site. Then we have a really bad site near our border with Amelia (but non-overlapping). Lots of tundra, but it does have Horse/Deer/Mana. This would allow us to grow our cities while feasting a core of really strong Vampires. We'd tech Kote, then go for AV and get Ritualists + StW to grow like crazy and build a much stronger army. It would give us time to get Commando for our vampires, although the Ritualists wouldn't keep up.

What do you think?

Darrell

[Krill]

Q: If the spectre kills a unit, does the Vampire get XP?

[Square Leg]

Q: If the spectre kills a unit, does the Vampire get XP?

Nope, the spectre gets xp though, of course it will on the turn change though

[darrelljs]

Okay, so it looks much more likely Serdoa is not going to attack. I think we should go military for a few more turns just to be safe, if he and Amelia double up on us it would be bad. Neither of them seem to think there is/was a CoW NAP, I need to go back and look at the e-mail.

Darrell