[SPOILERS] Emissaries from the blighted lands; Mardoc and Jkaen take on the world!

[Mardoc]

ok, its official you open all our huts from now on!

Sadly I think we're mostly out . Although certainly I'll keep my scout alive in case your Hawking can spot more.

In other news a lizardman took out another of my hunters e.o.t turn, making another in the capital now and will have to start sending them out in pairs, these barbs are brutal

I wouldn't spend too many hammers on hunters, even for capturing animals. We'd rather have more cities right now. And very soon you should be able to do the barb absorption with cheap bronze warriors, not Hunters.

This turn I then attacked a skele at 95% odds with my hunter with capture animal and lost

. I wouldn't have done that any differently. Sometimes the RNG just hates you.

[Mardoc]

Played my turn, nothing noteworthy this time. I'm starting to think about popping the dungeon to my southwest, but will wait until I have bronzed all my warriors.

I think my next city will be city8, to the SW. I'll post a picture next turn.

And, I think you have Yin on Avoid Growth. You probably ought to let it grow a size now that it has Leaves.

[Jkaen]

Played my turn, battery is dying so cant mess with screenshots, so will beg Mardoc to cover for that again this turn.

Can say we have sighted a big red nasty up north (held)

[Jkaen]

ok at the office now.

Seems that about on the midway line between us and north team is a held heavily promoted (at least combat 5 drill 4) Archeron above a dragons hoard (but not a city). I can't see the 3 tiles north of him but the other 5 surrounding him are mountains, hence I assume he is fenced in.

Given that its very late game I guess before we could get anything capable of killing him and rescuing the hoard

[Ellimist]

You could probably manage it with numbers and collateral.

[Jkaen]

But its numbers that can cross mountains, hence so far Mr Griffon

[Mardoc]

But its numbers that can cross mountains, hence so far Mr Griffon

Unless Mist happened to leave a pass in those last three tiles, the only things I can think of are Airships and Air Elementals. If he did leave a pass, sufficient Spectres ought to manage, if not, maybe we let Ichabod and Ravus live a while longer and try to loot it from them afterward. I don't think it's worth going for archmages just to loot acheron, though.

Given that Ichabod took Tasunke, not Rhoanna, and they seem to be still choked by the orcs (although I admit I haven't looked at power lately, their score suggests it) - they're probably a low priority target anyway. We ought to be able to out tech them.

In any event, I see why Mist thought Acheron being pre-placed was still essentially in the spirit of 'no Acheron' - it's practically true unless we roll a 1 in 10000 battle with the griffon, or until very late game. Err...not recommended to try the griffon thing .

So that makes two prizes so far on the borders, one of which failed to work as intended (the Ice mana). I wonder what other little surprises Mist has provided...

[Ellimist]

You can probably already determine which tiles are peaks if you want. Zooming in and goto orders make them relatively easy to identify in the fog, even if you can't see the spaces directly adjacent to them.

These techniques are demonstrated a bit in my FFHpbem-14 thread(spoilers):

Flying camera fog reading:[SPOILER]

Goto orders fog reading:

And the two methods can even be used together if I want to observe the elevation changes from a different camera elevation:

Foggy peaks and water mapped:

[/SPOILER]

[Mardoc]

Good turn all around. Pepper was founded; its garrison is en route, and with the ready pig and windmill, it ought to grow quite rapidly.

I decided to rebuild my treasury for a turn, but Bronze is within 3-4 turns (3 turns if I had researched straight through). The copper we need is nearly mined:



Here's the big guy, himself. Zoomed in it's obvious that there's at least 2 more peaks; I decided that I'm not curious enough to play with flying the camera around, but I bet tile 9 is also a peak


My next settler is already nearly ready; I'm thinking it ought to go here:


Although I'm tempted for alternate sites here or here:



I'm really looking forward to getting some culture into my lands! Just don't want to pay for it . Well, Drama's not that far away anymore, and the Bard is still unfallen. Adding the Shrine and the option to build culture both ought to help significantly.

[Jkaen]

ying just lost a warrior, I now have 2 warriors, 2.1 with drill 3 and 1.6 against a lizard, a goblin and 0.1 str orc