[SPOILERS] The Subjuggulator's Mirthful Messiahs (Kuro, Gamzee of Balsegraphs!)

[Kuro]

I think it's worth noting that our Adept currently has 22 EXP, so just giving it 4 more EXP should unlock Form of the Titan, shouldn't it? Does the free promo it give make it count as 6 already? Either way, should be easy. I'm not really sure how well a plan requiring the Altar pieces will work, but even churning out 8 EXP Adepts/Savants would be good.

Assuming we go Hunting -> BW, just immedietely going Warfare -> Military Strategy should secure us the GC with our tech rate. The only issue is I don't much like delaying a CoE rush three techs, but KotE is pretty cheap...

Something else to note: I think, if we get Insane'd to Organized, we can build Command Posts. This could be useful.

Another option for collatoral I want to put out there: After going CoE, found Empyrean, go up to Religious Law, flip to Theocracy for 10 EXP Insta-Mages and Chalid. Odds are with a Golden Age and, if we go Golden Age, then switch out at the end back to Aristo after building an army of Insta-Mages + Chalid. But of course then we lose Aristo, at the least for a while...

Shrug I dunno, fortunately we have until Hunting -> BW ends to decide.

[Caustic Soda]

IIRC, the FotT is unlocked by a unit that is level 6, not the total XP. You should be able to check it in game. If we ever become charismatic, we'd need less XP to trigger the Titan. If we end up organized at any particular time, building command posts may well be worth it, other things equal.

I think I would prefer going CoE before going for Mil strat. Nox Noctis is way better than being partway to mages, since it leaves us flexible to go other ways if the mages plan falls through.

I keep forgetting about Theocracy. that's also a possibility, if it is easier for us to spend the beakers than GPP on the Altar. Since I don't know what our GPP pool is like, you can judge better than I how much we'd have to go out of our way to get prophets. The techs aren't really a barrier for the altar though. We can already get a stage two altar, and stage three once we get to philosophy.

[Kuro]

IIRC, the FotT is unlocked by a unit that is level 6, not the total XP. You should be able to check it in game. If we ever become charismatic, we'd need less XP to trigger the Titan. If we end up organized at any particular time, building command posts may well be worth it, other things equal.

I think I would prefer going CoE before going for Mil strat. Nox Noctis is way better than being partway to mages, since it leaves us flexible to go other ways if the mages plan falls through.

I keep forgetting about Theocracy. that's also a possibility, if it is easier for us to spend the beakers than GPP on the Altar. Since I don't know what our GPP pool is like, you can judge better than I how much we'd have to go out of our way to get prophets. The techs aren't really a barrier for the altar though. We can already get a stage two altar, and stage three once we get to philosophy.

Our current odds of getting a Prophet from a second city is probably going to be in the range of 50% next time and 33% the time after that. The issue is I can't see us getting two Prophets/a Prophet and a Merchant and such, and I'd rather have Nox Noctis from that rather than an Altar. I mostly say we can't get both because CoE has no Temple, so we're stuck at a max of 6 GPP for Prophets, so we have to further dilute it for any effect since we will be pushing 400 GPP for it and we odds are will not stay in Philo the whole time. Also, assuming Level 6 and not EXP, I believe that the Adept either has or will soon unlock it, so we can assume Form of the Titan. I presume we'll want the Command Post in enjoyableEvening, as our primary production outlet?

[Kuro]

Also, another idea: If we end up Insane'd to Charismatic, we do not need a full ten EXP to upgrade to Mages I think? So if we get Insane'd into it, we'll wanna go on Adept production faster.

Also, we don't need to actually switch to AV for this plan, yeah?

[Kuro]

Turn played, not much happening aside from the Goblin shitting on the Wheat tile for a turn and now heading towards familyFun.

Well, except for there now being a decent case for moving City D one to the right.



Horses in BFC worth it?

[Caustic Soda]

Horses in the BFC is indeed a good reaon to move east. Even without horse I would supprot a move E, but thatm ust not have come across clearly.

You are correct that if we become charismatic, then we will need only 8 XP per mage, so that would be a good time to push out svanats/adepts. On that note, you are right that we do not need to switch to AV to make use of the Savants. They can be built anywhere that has an AV temple, no matter what religion we're running. That's part of the reason I'd like if we could mass produce Mages, since relying on Ritualists as our main force clashes with Gibbon.

Certainly, we should build Nox Noctis before Altar pieces, but remember that we do not need to be in a religion to build its temples, although it may not be as effective to hard-build temples as it would be to build them with priests. So we would have AV temples available, possibly Empy temples if we end up going for that.

[Kuro]

Yes, the point on temples is true, though even with 3 Priests/9 GPP, that is 44 turns until a Priest, which is a bit long. We'd really need at least three temples(OO? Pagan? Both?) to help it along(33T with 12 GPP, 26T with 15 GPP).

I'm thinking about what we should promote Gibbon too...if we are going Skellie Adepts to Mages, it seems like promoting Gibbon to Death III is a good idea. We have enough mana nodes to make that +2 affinity a real pain. After that, I think that we can either go Air I(Maelstrom just in case) + Nature III(With all that desert, Naturalize would be awesome) or just up to Twincast. IDK.

[Caustic Soda]

If I understand correctly, a religious hero gets reset if the owner switches religion, and if rebuilt comes with 0 XP and only the base promotions. This means that we will need to consider when and if it would be feasible to build Ritualists/Gibbon. On the topic of base promotions, we may want to get Metamagic II on our first Mage so we can switch mana around as needed. It may make sense to build Gibbon with Vitalize first, do some vitalizing, then switch to AV, and finally have nodes ready to give him relevant free promotions when we build him a second time. This would get us to Combat V and Twincast that much faster.

Wraiths don't have affinity +2, only the Sun III summon (Aurealis) has that. All the other level three summons have affinity +1 for the relevant node. I think we should avoid Death III, because all Undead, Demon or Elemental units are immune to Death damage. That leaves Wraiths as str 6 against them, which is quite lackluster. If we use Spectre Spam, we will definitely want an alternative to Death damage so we don't leave ourselves vulnerable to obvious counters.

I think getting Water Elementals would be better, since they have higher base strength. Water Elementals split into two new units when destroyed, and if they have the Strong promotion from the Tower of Elements they split twice. We can't get to Keelyn-level silliness since we lack Summoner, but that is still potent. Besides, Water I would help with the desert. Alternatively, we could get Air Elementals. They're weaker, but we already have Air Mana.

Once we have either of these, I would suggest heading to combat V and Twincast before going anywhere else, in order to maximize Gibbons combat potential.

After we have those, I think we should consider Mind III. Puppets nullify the risk of using Domination, making it a much better choice.

[Kuro]

For some reason, I thought they had +2...

I do like Water Elementals, but I mostly figured since we were going up Death for Skellies going up for Spectres and stuff might work too. Water and Air Elementals are good too: One thing to consider is that, with all these mana nodes, we could build enough Air nodes when we make Gibbon to auto-give him Air III for Air Elementals, then switch to Water Nodes and make Water III. Air I also gives Maelstrom. We use the Air Elementals on weakened enemies or to scout ahead, because of their high speed + Sentry and making Blitzing Lightning Elementals, while Water Elementals bludgeon people and then split. We would need to reconvert some nodes back to Wind though to make Wind Elementals worth it: But we have like 6 nodes around us, so we could easily put 1-2 on Wind and then more on Water.

I'm not sure we have the time to build Gibbon, Vitalize, switch out, build Ritualists and then build Gibbon again. We could make do with just an Adept turning them to plains.

Mind III + Puppets is quite fun, so.

[Caustic Soda]

You're probably right that Vitalize would distract too much from our other goals.

How do you intend to get free promos twice from the same nodes? That could work for Adepts=>Mages=>Archmage, but Gibbon is an Archmage right off the bat, so our nodes would only count the moment we build him. Note also that Maelstrom is Air II. Air I is the useless Fair Winds, which grants an extra move point to our non-existent navy.

I think what would make sense for our nodes would be to make the first couple Death nodes so we get the free promo on future adepts. In that light, you may be right that it would make sense to go for Death III on Gibbon, since we can't get Metamagic before we tech Sorcery. Water Elementals are better than Wraiths, but getting them soon is incompatible with Skelespam.

If we go for Ritualists, then it would be ideal to tech Sorcery so we can get metamagic and reconfigure nodes before rebuilding Gibbon. With a Dispel Mage we can always switch back to Death to facilitate Spectres. But as you say, it is very possible we won't have time for such a switch.