The Haunted Forest: Mardoc puts the Sidar to the test.

[Mardoc]

[COLOR="Lime"]Hey Mardoc,

you might have seen that the war with Selrahc started last turn. So far I took 2 cities, one being his capital. I should take his 3rd city in 4 turns. His last might be more complicated, simply because I don't know where it is. I honestly don't care too much about that though as my horses should move fast enough around to find it pretty quickly. Anyway, I was wondering how to proceed after that. Obviously the target has to be Bob, else he'll run away and we both won't have a chance at winning. Therefore I would like us to work together against him.

I haven't really thought about how to do this in detail, but I thought I should at least let you know, maybe you have already thought about it?

Completely unrelated: I offered you a peace treaty this turn. Your forces are probably expelled from my lands when you agree. But you should be able to offer OB on your turn as I finished Cartography already. If so please do so.

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

Hmm. Very interesting...I'm frankly shocked that his war against Selrahc is going that well!

I went ahead and offered open borders, and ran the warriors who were expelled home to gather some new weapons. I do think we need to offer some sort of plan - probably starting with getting Serdoa to pop Bob's worldspell. But frankly I'm hoping Selrahc can tie Serdoa down for a while, or the two of them stand off.

I did play today's turn, not much newsworthy besides that peace; killed some more barbs, but don't yet have any new units to Wanable state.

Well, ok, KotE came in, and it's really cool. DS's and scouts are now pretty zippy - double movement, with half of it Flying, means they get where they need to be a lot faster. I'm started on Poisons, for lack of a better idea; if you have a thought on something that needs to come first, I'm all ears.

Here's what I'm thinking of sending Serdoa:

Wow, I really didn't expect you to do *that* well against Selrahc, I thought there'd still be 10 or more turns before we had to think about Bob. I don't have any details on a plan, just a few thoughts:
I'm sending some scouts his way, to make sure I know where he is. He's the one I haven't actually found yet.
He still has his worldspell, I think the first priority has to be forcing him to use it. Then back off and wait for it to expire.
I'll be able to contribute Divided Souls, but not really very many; being down to one city is hurting me there. I can, though, bring an adept or two with some useful spells. Bob has had Archery for a while, and might be to Longbows by now, so Blur will be useful. I can Enchant weapons, too, but that probably doesn't matter when you have a horse army.

I did offer open borders, you should see that when you play the next turn.

[Thoth]

Hmm. Very interesting...I'm frankly shocked that his war against Selrahc is going that well!

As I mentioned via email/chat...I'm not surprised at all. Selrahc's power rating was roughly equivalent to ours...only his was spread out over 4/5 cities and ours was concentrated. Serdoa's only danger was in dragging his heels for too long and letting Selrahc get to Vamps.

I went ahead and offered open borders, and ran the warriors who were expelled home to gather some new weapons. I do think we need to offer some sort of plan - probably starting with getting Serdoa to pop Bob's worldspell. But frankly I'm hoping Selrahc can tie Serdoa down for a while, or the two of them stand off.

OB and Bronze warriors = good.

No chance of a stand off ATM. Selrahc is toast RSN.

The only choice diplomaticly is do we support Serdoa or Bob? We're honour bound to our eot 135 NAP with Serdoa, but we are not yet committed to helping him vs Bob.

If the price is right (ie Asteroids/Missile Command) then sure, go ahead and support Seroda with everything we can muster.

If not, we are under no obligation to help him win the game.

Well, ok, KotE came in, and it's really cool. DS's and scouts are now pretty zippy - double movement, with half of it Flying, means they get where they need to be a lot faster. I'm started on Poisons, for lack of a better idea; if you have a thought on something that needs to come first, I'm all ears.

Poisons next sounds good to me.

Here's what I'm thinking of sending Serdoa:

I did offer open borders, you should see that when you play the next turn.

OB is fine, it fits with the current agreements.

But I think we want a more forceful tone in diplo.

Serdoa wants our help to win the game. Fair enough.

But we also want to win the game.

He'll need to make it worth our while if he wants help vs Bob.

[Mardoc]

More diplo, and a turn:

[COLOR="Silver"]
Serdoa,

The easy part first - yes, I accepted peace and proposed open borders.
That'll help a lot with keeping the barbs in check.

I'm a bit amazed Selrahc fell that fast - well played.

Now the harder part - I'm willing to help against Bob, but I pretty
much need Asteroids back if I'm going to be able to. And a bit of
time to build something worth sending, maybe 10 turns for something
like 10 divided souls and an adept to start (or 15 DS's and no adept,
but I think you'll want Blur against Bob) (or other mixes of DS,
axemen, archers, if we want variety instead of speed). Is that
something you're willing to consider? If it is, we can negotiate
details; if not, then I can still guard Asteroids from the barbs for
you, and maybe extend that to your homeland, but that's all.

If we do join, we'll join all the way. That 10 DS/1 adept number is
just what we'd start with, not the limit of our contribution.

Oh, and we can't do much of anything until Bob uses up his worldspell.
Can you threaten him well enough to make him use it without losing
half your army?[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Lime"]Mardoc,

I understand your desire to get Asteroids back and I was already thinking about that. But it is more then 30% of my economic power + can 2 turn horses, so I think you understand why I need to think about that more thoroughly. I am not sure if 10 DS are really enough to make up for not having it.

As for Bobs worldspell: I think I can threaten him so that he blows it. 30 horses should be threatening enough I think. If not, I probably can run from outside his territory to his city and attack it. Depends how much culture he has and if he has forests everywhere or not. We will see. If I do lose half my army though this game is over because neither you nor I will be able to do anything against him in that case. I understand that you guys need me to not run him over like Selrahc to actually stay in competition with me for the win but right now I think you should still be more worried about Bob. He does have his troops available already, differently to Selrahc who still tried to reach vampires when I hit him.

Anyway, I need to think about your idea.

Kind regards,[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Silver"]Serdoa,

If it's just the number of troops that's the question, I can see if I
can find a way to optimize for more. I just didn't want to promise
anything I wasn't sure I could deliver, and I didn't have the save
open in front of me (well, plus it's hard to know exactly what
Asteroids will produce). I'm pretty sure I can get 15 of any
combination of DS's, Axemen, and Archers, or trade 5 of them for an
adept. And of course if you're willing to give me more time, I can
produce more.

As for Bob - if we can't kill him before our NAP runs out, we've
probably lost anyway, so I wasn't planning to hold back. It's just
that I can't let you be the only one to profit from warring with him,
which is why I request Asteroids. And maybe also the newest of his
cities.[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Silver"]
Also, I have four Divided Souls on hand that could be added, plus two
invisible ones for scouting.[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Silver"]
Nevermind, just looked closely and I lost the invisibilty when I
upgraded. Make that just 6 normal DS's.[/COLOR]

So...Serdoa is on the fence. I think I've pushed about as hard as I can, if he turns us down now, so be it. If Serdoa doesn't want to deal, then I think we warn Bob and aim for a T136 reconquest of Asteroids.

As for the turn itself - good news and bad news. First:


Another Waneable! 2 are due to settle in 2 turns; if they're both Sages, our research rate will take another big jump. Although I'm starting to think one of them may have to be a Merchant, our GPT surplus is being eaten away by the constant unit spam.

Second:
Apparently it's actually Sever Soul that destroys invisibility . This is probably a bug, but I won't put it in the EitB thread just yet. Want people to believe in invisible teleporting Ghosts.

Finally:
Ouch, Selrahc! Ouch!

You should have offered to deal with me, Selrahc. If you'd hit Serdoa's empty cities instead of the barbs, you might still be a contender.

[Thoth]

More diplo, and a turn:

So...Serdoa is on the fence. I think I've pushed about as hard as I can, if he turns us down now, so be it. If Serdoa doesn't want to deal, then I think we warn Bob and aim for a T136 reconquest of Asteroids.

Try sweetening the pot a bit....Asteroids is a valuable city (for both of us) but it's a lot more valuable to us than to Serdoa. But we really do need that city if we want to be a contender.

If Serdoa is willing to give us Asteroids back we can waive the right to the barb cities (if needs be we can give him the rights to those barb cities) and definitely increase the amount of units we can provide to support an attack on Bob. Two cities building units will let us field a much more impressive force than 10 - 15 DS's. And it will let us do it sooner.

More military support + other concessions might be enough to get Asteroids back. 10 DS's isn't going to cut it.

As for the turn itself - good news and bad news. First:

[
Another Waneable! 2 are due to settle in 2 turns; if they're both Sages, our research rate will take another big jump. Although I'm starting to think one of them may have to be a Merchant, our GPT surplus is being eaten away by the constant unit spam.

Two more GS's at this point I think....we're still at a gold surplus at 100% tech and we have another GP due soonish with odds on for a GS. More tech = faster shiny toys on the board.

Second:
Apparently it's actually Sever Soul that destroys invisibility . This is probably a bug, but I won't put it in the EitB thread just yet. Want people to believe in invisible teleporting Ghosts.

Hidden is removed once you either attack or cast a spell.......Sever Soul is a spell. Not a bug.

Finally:
Ouch, Selrahc! Ouch!

You should have offered to deal with me, Selrahc. If you'd hit Serdoa's empty cities instead of the barbs, you might still be a contender.

Yep. We'd probably still be toast, but I think both Selrahc and Serdoa have misplayed their strategies in this game. In Serdoa's shoes I'd have gone for an early take down of the Vamps (who pose a serious mid game threat militarily) and then stomped on the Sidar (who would have been a very tasty target with multiple Wanes).

I don't know the terms and details of the deals between Selrahc and Serdoa, but Selrahc didn't build enough military to both expand and defend against a possible attack from Serdoa.


Random thought: Now that Serdoa has Cartography, we can exchange maps....

http://youtu.be/vklyIhg9PM8

[Mardoc]

If Serdoa is willing to give us Asteroids back we can waive the right to the barb cities (if needs be we can give him the rights to those barb cities) and definitely increase the amount of units we can provide to support an attack on Bob. Two cities building units will let us field a much more impressive force than 10 - 15 DS's. And it will let us do it sooner.

Really? In 10 turns, the absolute max I think is remotely plausible is 20 DS's (1/turn/city), and that assumes our gold supply holds out.

Edit: I mean, if you can give me confidence that we can sweeten our offer, I'm happy to do so. But worst case situation is to offer something we can't deliver.

[Thoth]

Is the attack frame 10 turns?

If so we can't do much more than 10ish DS's + Archers. If the attack time is longer than that we can add some Axes/Adepts/Ghosts.


We (and Serdoa) need a bit more than 10 turns to put a proper attack force on the board. If we go in too early, it's "no future for you"

http://youtu.be/Kn8EFxiA1c4

[Mardoc]

Well, at least we're not the first dead.

Played T99, killed more barbs, brought our expenses ever closer to our income (but that should improve next turn when our Wanes go away).

Have several more units on the verge of Wanedom; if we had enough time and a guaranteed crippled Bob, we might be able to manage from here...as it is, it's still looking like Serdoa's game, but at least we're still ahead of him in GNP.

[Mardoc]

Played T100

Ah, what a difference a pair of Wanes make:
Pre:

Post:


We've got another Waneable, in the south, too! (well, ok, we've got a pair, but one of them's a DS so I'm resisting the urge). And three at 15+ XP . We might, if Serdoa and Bob mutually annihilate, pull back in this thing yet.

And, an Academy due in 4:


We might have to fire the sages at that point; at least I don't have a good idea what we'd do with another GSage.

Oh, and Serdoa's still on the fence about us:

[COLOR="Lime"]
Diplo I have to discuss with my ded-lurker. I am really unsure about the best path. [/COLOR]

Do you think we're to the point where we can be confident that if we get Asteroids, we can deliver Ghosts instead of DS's? Maybe that would turn the tide - but again I don't want to promise anything I can't deliver. But on the other hand, Poisons is down to 13 turns without Asteroids; probably go to sub-8 with it.

On the third hand - would that scare Serdoa, you think? We need him to believe we're the junior partner here, now and forever. Even if I'm starting to think Rangers by the time of NAP-end are plausible (and that CII Rangers can get decent odds defending a city against CV/Shock/Cover horses)

[Mardoc]

Even if I'm starting to think Rangers by the time of NAP-end are plausible (and that CII Rangers can get decent odds defending a city against CV/Shock/Cover horses)

...I looked at tech costs, again, out of curiosity. Beastmasters are only 1800 beakers beyond Rangers. Basically the same cost as the current path to Rangers. They'd *definitely* be able to hold cities against any reasonable number of horses.

I'm starting to consider abandoning Poisons entirely in favor of attempting to make it to Beastmasters by T136. Thoughts?

I suppose it partially depends on if Serdoa wants/needs an ally against Bob. Trying for both is much more likely to work if we have Asteroids helping out the GNP.

[Thoth]

Played T100


We've got another Waneable, in the south, too! (well, ok, we've got a pair, but one of them's a DS so I'm resisting the urge). And three at 15+ XP . We might, if Serdoa and Bob mutually annihilate, pull back in this thing yet.

56 bpt at turn 100 isn't much to get excited about. But at least we're teching again.

And, an Academy due in 4:


We might have to fire the sages at that point; at least I don't have a good idea what we'd do with another GSage.

We'll want the Sages for their beaker output I think....once we get a few improved tiles we can fire them, but I think we'll want those beakers atm.

Oh, and Serdoa's still on the fence about us:

Do you think we're to the point where we can be confident that if we get Asteroids, we can deliver Ghosts instead of DS's? Maybe that would turn the tide - but again I don't want to promise anything I can't deliver. But on the other hand, Poisons is down to 13 turns without Asteroids; probably go to sub-8 with it.

That depends on Serdoa's timeframe for an attack on Bob. If he wants to hit Bob now, our contribution is obviously limited. If it's 20 turns from now then Ghosts + Somthing else is doable for sure.

On the third hand - would that scare Serdoa, you think? We need him to believe we're the junior partner here, now and forever. Even if I'm starting to think Rangers by the time of NAP-end are plausible (and that CII Rangers can get decent odds defending a city against CV/Shock/Cover horses)

Serdoa will have enough gold from city capture/pillaging to get to Horse Archers by t135 I think. Rangers are possible for us, but it's 600ish beakers for Animal Fondling (hawks would be nice) and another 1k or so beakers to Rangers. And that still leaves us with no stack damage capacity.

...I looked at tech costs, again, out of curiosity. Beastmasters are only 1800 beakers beyond Rangers. Basically the same cost as the current path to Rangers. They'd *definitely* be able to hold cities against any reasonable number of horses.

I'm starting to consider abandoning Poisons entirely in favor of attempting to make it to Beastmasters by T136. Thoughts?

I suppose it partially depends on if Serdoa wants/needs an ally against Bob. Trying for both is much more likely to work if we have Asteroids helping out the GNP.

We *really* want Poisons. Ghosts and our Hero (who comes with a nice Artifact and can be Waned 12 t after he is built to enable the Shrine of the Champion....which we probably don't have the time to build but is worth considering).

Ghosts/Assassins aren't great without a source of stack damage or disposable summons but we will get Aeron's Chosen and a nice Artifact to go with them.

I haven't gotten a save since t97, do we still have one Scout/DS with Hidden? Or did you cast Sever Soul with both?