[SPOILERS] Bobchillingworth Presents: The Six Million Dollar Golem

[Bobchillingworth]

Rev pops WS, Thoth has mages & is mutating units. Ask him about his hero "Valen", if he hasn't discussed it in his thread. It is the coolest goddamn unit ever, holy crap. Drill IV, Combat III, Blitz, Strong (mutated), Aeron's Choice, Rod of Winds Assassin.



Empy arrives in 2 turns.

[Bobchillingworth]

The turn pace for this game is incredibly good. We're getting like on average four turns a day. FOUR TURNS, KURO.



Ahem.


Anyway, est. 17 turns until I can start the ToM, which isn't great (or, uh, good) but that's just how it is. I just don't have the hammers to spare for all of the libraries, alchemy labs, etc. I'd like, which could speed up the research time.


I'll build the Tower of Necromancy the old-fashioned slow way I think. Great engineer will complete the Tower of Divination, and the other two will have to be cash-rushed. ToM is a cash rush job as well.



My kingdom for some hammers

[Bobchillingworth]

Well, the game will be over soon- probably before the weekend. Thoth will surely get the ToM tech via Divination shortly, and the big Tower itself not long afterwards.


I continue to found new cities, just because I can I think my defense plans are pretty solid, but I simply cannot produce anything I need in any decent timeframe. Units all take too long. The land doesn't support enough hammers for most of the buildings I'd like.



I've said a bit on the subject already, and I'll probably say more come post-mortem time, but the summarized explanation for my hammer woes is this-


I needed at least twice as many hammers as any one else in the early game to build my workers and military. This set me behind both because I couldn't invest them in infrastructure, and because I had to stay in Godking for a long time, to maximize hammer output. I could have just built units slowly, but then I wouldn't have been able to take out Kuro (which besides solving the turn-pace issues *did* net me a lot of land and two free academies in the end... plus a holy city). I also would have been a soft target that way, and I still needed to invest hundreds of hammers in Mud Golems, unless I wanted to work lots of jungle tiles.


My hammer issues have if anything only worsened in the late game. Although the Rainforest script has never been great for hammers, I'm suffering particularly badly because of my civ. Mud Golems are still expensive for any city which doesn't work at least a few mines. Gargoyles aren't cheap, even with marble and free forges. I can't draft anything but warriors in most cities (and even Radiant Guard aren't as nice as the Champs or LB someone at my relative tech level could be drafting). I could run Conquest, but the exp bonus would be wasted. I can't use Slavery to actually get some use of my high growth rates, because I badly need the bonuses from Military State. I do admit that I could cash-rush stuff, although that would slow my teching even more.

[SevenSpirits]

Which military state bonuses are important to you?

[Bobchillingworth]

All of them?



+15% military production matters a lot when you don't have many hammer tiles & are building 120 hammer units.


Although most of my cities can only draft now-useless warriors, the drafting is still important so that I can at least get a few Radiant Guard out quickly (the stupid religion has only spread to like two cities in the 100+ turns I've had it, so drafting is slowed by my needing to spread the faith manually first).


The lower unit maintenance saves me a few gold per turn I guess. This isn't a major benefit, though- especially since the civic has high maintenance.


It also unlocks cash-rushing, which is the only way I could possibly get the ToM in any reasonable timeframe.

[SevenSpirits]

Edit: Dang, it lost my reply.

[Bobchillingworth]

My feelings toward my empire are most adequately described by the introduction of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior-




"They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded..."


Okay, that might be slightly out of context



But it does convey what it feels like to manage my large (not Thoth-sized enormous, but still bigger than average), empire- a grand machine sputtering and threatened with imminent collapse as soon as Thoth decides to stop ignoring me. I really wish he'd just hurry up and rush the ToM, but I suspect he wants a climactic final battle instead, & it wouldn't be right of me to just concede too quickly and deny him that. But I'm not looking forward to the upcoming turns if we do end up fighting it out; I'm late-19th century Turkey to his (oversized) England or France.



I'm adding two more cities in a couple turns, just to see my empire at its apex, and then that's it for expansion. I'll take some final empire pics then; I'll start shedding cities fairly quickly if / once Thoth makes his move (even gargoyles simply can't hold out vs. the number of 2 promo + enchanted blade champs he can throw at me, and I'm not well set up at all to handle heroic archmages and/or powerful, specialized commando units).

[Bobchillingworth]

After playing a couple more turns with Thoth & exchanging a few emails, we've decided to call the game in his favor. Not only is he winning in every possible metric with little chance for me to catch up or slow him down, but he got a free golden age from a lair this turn, making the game well and truly finished.



Although it's kind of abrupt to end the game before any blood was even shed between us, Thoth says he was spending hours on his turns (or at least far more than I was), and based on his play I have every reason to believe him. So there wasn't a lot of point to running out a forgone conclusion. Plus, had he decided to invade me, the turns would almost certainly have become a lot less fun for both of us.



Final empire pics / demographics coming shortly. Final thoughts coming something later

[Bobchillingworth]

Pictures!

[Thoth]

Whoever has the top GNP is just scary.

Thoth really loves those heroic assassins- this one seems set to blitz away adepts from a golem stack.

:hat: Them and catapults. Heroic Assassins is a ver, ver nice.

(and so are Iron Champions/DragonSlayers. )

And Thoth is building Dragon Slayers with lots of promotions. Ugh. It's kind of cool to see these little glimpses of how he's managing his empire- Thoth is a very good FFH player to begin with (I'd say he has a strong claim to being the best on this site), but he also makes use of combined arms to a greater and better extent than most other players. So he's marching about archers, assassins, dragon slayers, HA, and adepts (no mages seen yet, but I'm sure he can make some). Kind of a sampling from all of the various unit lines the Grigori can pursue (except, strangely, medics- but I'm sure he's keeping any he has in the back lines anyway).

:blush:

Not sure about being the best FFH player on the site (there are some very good players here), but thanks for the compliment.

Combined arms are just plain good sense in FFH (and BTS). A huge melee stack gets cheaply WTFpwned by a cheaper stack of Shock units. Mix up your units and those Shock warriors don't look quite so hot.

Medics were in the pipeline at that point, but they are very expensive (201 hammers for an Infirmery + 120 hammers each). They rock, but they aren't cheap.

Ask him about his hero "Valen", if he hasn't discussed it in his thread. It is the coolest goddamn unit ever, holy crap. Drill IV, Combat III, Blitz, Strong (mutated), Aeron's Choice, Rod of Winds Assassin.

Thanks man. Rod of Winds was my prize from your Treasure Chest....and it did me exactly 0 good. I didn't hook up an Air node until t149. But it sure did look purty.



Thanks for posting those final screenies, I'm figuring on just being lazy and posting turn 150 + password in my spoiler thread.