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

[Mardoc]

If you're going to do it anyway...

Thank you for saving me the time!

Relevant details for our unit mix:

T2 Melee->Diseased Corpse(!)
T2 Recon->Hellhound
T2 Arcane->Imp
T2 Archery->Archer

These are all decent, approximately what we'd want anyway. Trading Axes for Corpses would be quite useful, actually.

T3 Recon->Assassin

Ouch. Trading Rangers for Assassins, in a situation where we're losing a lot of units, hurts a lot. Especially if they're Assassins not Ghosts.

T4 Recon->Beastmaster (The demonic sprite for beastmaster looks awesome by the way.)

Nice, but I'm afraid our tech rate makes it mostly irrelevant.

All units start without XP and on half health.

...and here's the key. Half health XP-less units are just fodder, even a newly produced Horseman can probably kill anything on the list that we can get to. It'd work better if we went melee, but still probably not well enough.

So...Mokka's only matters in the situation where we can hold out, but Serdoa can kill the odd unit here and there; it'd help a war of attrition rather than a battle.

I tend to think that means it's a red herring, therefore. From what I've seen of Serdoa - he won't bother to try for attrition. He'll look at the odds, and either commit his whole force, or stay away. In either case, resurrecting our units won't matter. Best case for Mokka is for him to attack with everything, kill most of our soldiers who resurrect...but then his victorious troops and withdrawn losers can beat down Mokka troops.

So...I think my goal for tonight is to get a spreadsheet to calculate exactly, to the beaker, how we can arrive at Animal Mastery EOT 134, with maximum gold in the bank to make Beastmasters on T135 (and maximum hammers along the way). Mokka's would be fun - but it won't solve our basic problem of surviving Serdoa throwing his whole stack at the walls on T136.

[Mardoc]

Hmm. On a less pessimistic note, I finally recalculated the cost of upgrading a Ranger to Beastmaster. I had been comparing the Quick cost of a Ranger to the Normal cost of a Beastmaster, and thought I was looking at 285 gold/upgrade. Turns out, when you do the math correctly, it's only 125g/upgrade, same as the cost for DS -> Ranger. So...we already have two Rangers. I'll definitely manage to get to 250 gold to turn them into Beastmasters, probably without even thinking about it. The trick is going to be finding the gold for #3 and #4, as well as the gold for as many extra DS-> Rangers as we can. But...if Kithra was scary enough that Serdoa wouldn't attack, I do look forward to his reaction to a CV Beastmaster with Netherblade .

So...tonight I'll try to see what I can do to optimize this plan. And figure out if we can afford some Engineers mixed in with the Sages.

[Mardoc]

Alright, it appears we can afford 2 engineers/1 Sage, turn Science very low on T132, and get to Animal Mastery at EOT134.

Assuming no expenses or extra income (aside from assuming we settle the Sage due on T131), that puts us at about 570 gold on EOT 134, enough to pay for two Ranger -> Beastmaster upgrades and one DS -> Beastmaster. Details depend on the exact cost of our army, which in turn depends on how much is outside borders any given turn, and how many units we manage to build.

If we turn next turn's Wanes into Sages instead of Engineers...then we end up with about 700 gold, with science turned off 4 turns earlier. Which buys us one more upgrade, at the cost of losing those 9 hammers for 13 turns, a Ranger and a half. Basically it would let us convert one more experienced DS to Beastmaster instead of a new Ranger, at the cost of having fewer Rangers. Or we can split the difference and do one Sage/one Engineer, ending up at ~640 gold, enough for still 5 upgrades. (and an empty bank). I think I like this the best - trade 58 hammers for the ability to have one more of our Beastmasters start at CV? Yes please .

We ought to be able to build something on the order of 5 Rangers from scratch with this approach - or else 3 from scratch but also a Shrine of the Champion. I think we'd rather have the extra bodies.

So...with that said, this turn I Waned a Sage. Assuming neither of us catches an error in my math, next turn we will Wane an Engineer and a Sage.

If you want to play with the spreadsheet yourself, I've got a Office 2007 and Office 2003 version available.

I played the turn, and had some bad luck - we lost a 9 XP DS and a 5 XP Warrior, both on ~80% odds battles. Did kill 5 or 6 barbs, to partially make up for it. Also...our wounded Ranger has these odds on Myrean:


I think, once he and his buddy are healed, that we'll have good enough odds for this to be worth taking after all. It's a 6 turn round trip, assuming no barbs met en route - and of course we can bring along DS's or Ghosts to handle those. I think Myrean will be a net profit in the timeframe we're considering, due to capture gold, assuming we don't lose either Ranger. I'm strongly tempted to do it.

Here's our current army, to which we can add those 5 Rangers and 4 units upgraded to Beastmasters:


Here's what it looks like we'll be facing: 26 Horsemen and a Thane:


I think we might pull this off after all!

[Thoth]

I'm liking the idea of sending off forces away from Pac Man less and less.

We should have good odds on Myrean, but we'll need support troops in order to hold the city vs barbs.

And there are 26 horsemen within striking range of Pac Man right now.

<---Does not like.

We really should have a better garrison in Pac Man than we currently do. The only thing that will get Serdoa back into this game economically is to take Pac Man.

TBH, what I'd like to see on the board over the next 4-6 turns are a warrior/Archer/warrior/Archer combination (with possibly some chops/turns into the Shrine....but probably not doable). With Warfare in we can take CG II on the Archers and with the Adept get CII/EB warriors fortifying.

Against the numbers we (currently) face, we'll want a lot of units in Pac Man if we are to hold it. Rangers and (hopefully) Beastmasters to help bolster the defence and let us go on the attack, yes. We'll need them. But we also want lots of boots on the ground to hold Pac Man as well.

A couple more Ghosts to clean up retreated Horsemen would also be nice.

[Mardoc]

I'm liking the idea of sending off forces away from Pac Man less and less.

We should have good odds on Myrean, but we'll need support troops in order to hold the city vs barbs.

I foresee it building nothing but warriors, and hoping for CII/fortification/warrior city bonus to be enough to hold. Which...it well might be. Str 3, with +90% strength, probably can hold out against axes. Remember it's already size 4, with a lot of food and forests - looks like 6 base hpt, so it can make a warrior every three turns for a while. So long as we clear out the barbs within 3 turns (which we want to do anyway for XP), it probably can hold on its own.

And...Is it really a tragedy if the barbs retake it?

If I agree to send no reinforcements whatsoever, would you be ok with grabbing it? I want it mainly for giving Serdoa something to think about, and for starting to prepare for after the war, but I agree it's not worth investment if that causes us to die on T136

We really should have a better garrison in Pac Man than we currently do. The only thing that will get Serdoa back into this game economically is to take Pac Man.

Yes - soon we need to pull back all our training units from everywhere and let them fortify. I just am trying to get a last couple promos in first, maybe one last Warrior to Wanedom . Fortunately Courage + Medic I causes a really nice healing rate.

TBH, what I'd like to see on the board over the next 4-6 turns are a warrior/Archer/warrior/Archer combination (with possibly some chops/turns into the Shrine....but probably not doable). With Warfare in we can take CG II on the Archers and with the Adept get CII/EB warriors fortifying.

Against the numbers we (currently) face, we'll want a lot of units in Pac Man if we are to hold it. Rangers and (hopefully) Beastmasters to help bolster the defence and let us go on the attack, yes. We'll need them. But we also want lots of boots on the ground to hold Pac Man as well.

Um. Are you convinced we'd get our hammers' worth out of archers and warriors? It's not like they caused Serdoa a lot of heartburn the first time around. It's true that we can 1-turn either at this point, with overflow to go into other things like a Shrine or Rangers. And if we'd rather have boots than elites, the Shrine starts to look much more appealing.

A couple more Ghosts to clean up retreated Horsemen would also be nice.

Why don'tcha ask for the moon?

Seriously, Ghosts don't help defend, not with Str 4 and -50% in cities. I'm not going to spend anything on them until we're confident in our garrison. No point in having them if Serdoa kills them outright on T136.

OTOH...T136 and beyond, if we're still alive, Ghosts would be probably priority #1.

[Mardoc]

Played. Lost a DS on a freakin' 97% odds battle Decided to reel in the CV one who was hanging out in the SE, therefore. Not worth tempting fate on a prime Beastmaster candidate.

Built an archer. Should leave enough overflow to finish the Ranger next turn. On reflection - we do need numbers in addition to the uber units. Add in 65% city defense and 60% unit strength, and no more Warcry, and Warriors/Archers ought to do decently. And with overflow, we might not even sacrifice that many Rangers from the queue.

Settled a Sage and an Engineer. Likely that's the last of the Wanes before the war - we can settle more if we win. We can always take the warriors/archers barb hunting later.

Nearly time to decide on Myrean. I still lean toward taking it, but I'll check the odds again when the Rangers are fully healed. Also nearly time to start marching the southern warriors home, like it or not. Might manage to get one more to 17 XP, only he'd arrive home on the eve of war, so probably shouldn't wane.

[Thoth]

I just looked at the save...

And something hit me over the head.

The Heroic Epic is 134 base hammers, so 67 hammers for us.

It's worth 25 hammers per turn given our current tile configuration. More than that once we swap over to max hammers.

It will pay for it's self before long before t135 and gives us a source of Great Commander points.

[Mardoc]

It will pay for it's self before long before t135 and gives us a source of Great Commander points.

Er...yes, it will. Take about 3 turns to build (2 if we can arrange for lots of overflow from something), pay back in about 3 turns as well. It doesn't mesh very well with the infinite boots on the ground approach, but would work quite well with Ranger production.

And if we got a GC...that's just icing on the cake!

Two more turns until we can start building it.

[Thoth]

Er...yes, it will. Take about 3 turns to build (2 if we can arrange for lots of overflow from something), pay back in about 3 turns as well. It doesn't mesh very well with the infinite boots on the ground approach, but would work quite well with Ranger production.

And if we got a GC...that's just icing on the cake!

Two more turns until we can start building it.

3rd ring chops?

We'll want a mix of fodder and top units. HE helps with both.

Also, I noted that the two Rangers you want to send off vs Myrean both have C3/4 + Formation, and one of them is one of our Homeland units. These are going to make awesome defenders vs Horsmen.

I'd really rather wait on Myrean until after the showdown with Serdoa. I don't think the city will add enough to our chances in time to make a difference in the upcoming war. Once Asteroids is back in our hands, then we can afford an expiditionary force, but I think we'll want all our troops at home, healthy and well fortified.

Those two Rangers are currently defending at around strength 20 vs Mounted units (assuming full fortify).

[Mardoc]

3rd ring chops?

Looks like the timing works out pretty well for that, yes

I'd really rather wait on Myrean until after the showdown with Serdoa. I don't think the city will add enough to our chances in time to make a difference in the upcoming war. Once Asteroids is back in our hands, then we can afford an expiditionary force, but I think we'll want all our troops at home, healthy and well fortified.

Those two Rangers are currently defending at around strength 20 vs Mounted units (assuming full fortify).

Well...I did just lose a 97% battle...and those Rangers are destined to become Beastmasters if they live...

ok, it can wait.