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

[Darkmantle]

Do you have any waneables around to pull you out of economic disaster?

[Mardoc]

Just curious, how much XP did you get from Basium?

Edit: Was it Elfs Suck or NiP that killed Basium? I originally assumed it was the assassin that killed him, but realize that this was a flawed assumption

Nip did the killing, with the Netherblade, on his own. It was worth about 20 XP, I didn't count exactly. Still, pretty good for a ~99% battle It's good to get XP onto the high-strength units, too. I presume most of that was because Basium was a hero.

Do you have any waneables around to pull you out of economic disaster?

Um. Sorta. If things get too bad, we can retire the field army, although we might as well concede if we have to do that. We have been arguing over the disposition of others, but there are a couple warriors, couple axes, and couple ritualists I have mentally planned for Waning. None are there yet, though. Now that the new cities have their basic infra in place, they've been building a few Wanabes. But every Wane is a potential fighter, of course - could have been a horseman for pillaging, or a Hawk or half a Ranger. Turns out Werewolves can't wane, so there's only a handful of units we have who can and we'd be willing to see go.

Economic disaster aversion is planned mainly through conventional means at this point, though. Sometime soon, we're planning to use one of the dungeon GP (I think the Sage - was originally planned for the engineer, but then we got the sage) to start a GA, revolt into City States/Undercouncil/Sacrifice the Weak. Still leaves us Apprenticeship/Conquest for starting XP, but should dramatically cut costs. It's amazing - City States is worth about 30 gpt more than God King, even with all the settled Merchants - and it gets further ahead if we we have a chance to do any more conquering at all.

Plus, y'know, golden age . We're just waiting to be confident we can pick up Infernal Pact by the end of the GA, and that Religious Law is close enough that it can come in by the time the Grimoire is done. We may go ahead and burn the Engineer on the Grimoire - either that or save him for a second GA soon after with whatever GP we get from the capital next.

Plus, we're intending to get some High Priests of the Veil out of the whole Infernal Grimoire Plan, so I've got to leave some of the good-levelling Ritualists alive.

Oh, and if I can ever get the tactics right, we're hoping to supplement our income with city captures and/or pillaging

[Tasunke]

Hmm.

So what tech are you planning on popping with the Infernal Grimoire?

[Mardoc]

So what tech are you planning on popping with the Infernal Grimoire?

I think it's named Theology. The one that unlocks High Priests. Never gotten that far in the tree before, so I'm not certain on the name

Although that's not set in stone. There's a chance we go for Malevolent Designs instead, especially if the Ritualist XP-gain process ends up too slow. In any case, both are ~7000 beaker techs, so the Grimoire is the only way to get them in time to be relevant.

Channelling II + Unholy Taint = (40 - current XP)*1.5 chance/turn of gaining XP; but we still need 26 XP Ritualists for Profanes, and they only start with 5 or 7XP each (depending on source). This is the main reason we're building Ritualists like there's no tomorrow - we probably ought to also send them to go fight barbs, now that I think of it.

Ritualists can do all sorts of things for us:

• Ring of Flames, of course, will be our go-to collateral once we build a slow-mover stack (which, admittedly, will be something like move 2 + Haste, so not *that* slow).
  
• Medic II is nice - add in Courage for extra good healing.
  
• They can upgrade to Profanes, and summon Balors for breaking defenses or defending stacks.
  
• They can create temples of the Veil, for AC boosting and bonus beakers/happiness and culture and enhancing build queues in the colonies. And they get the most passive XP of any of our options, so make the best Waneabes, as well.
  

The only trick is balancing, because of course we want all of the above, yesterday. In fact - on reflection, I should probably not Wane or settle as temples the current top 4 Ritualists, if we're to have a hope of getting Profanes in a timely manner. Which kinda messes with the current plans, but it'd be very silly to gain a bit of gold and lose the benefit of the Grimoire.

Main way to solve that dilemma, of course, is to keep building Ritualists as though they're money. Because, well, for us they are. Sooner or later. They'll either be capture gold or beakers/turn or gold/turn. Just have to overcome this minor shortfall that we're experiencing at the moment. Which hopefully the golden age/city states plan should manage. And hopefully blight/SacWeak will buy us a little more time.

[Selrahc]

Profanes(and other high priests) will abandon your civ if you switch religion. You probably know this, but it's something you should be aware of if you were still planning on going for an Altar victory as a backup plan.

[Mardoc]

Profanes(and other high priests) will abandon your civ if you switch religion. You probably know this, but it's something you should be aware of if you were still planning on going for an Altar victory as a backup plan.

Yeah . Fortunately we can get some use out of them if we do that, and Wane them along with Rosier.

I think all in all, though, the only way we have a chance to get to Altar before Bob Towers is if we wreck his civ pretty badly. And if we can do that much, then it's much easier to just finish him off. And AV is probably the best war religion for us, so we'll stick with it.

I still think we've less than a 50% chance of winning - but it's much better than I thought our chances were a hundred turns ago.

[Mardoc]

Uneventful turn. Moved the stack via DS only so they could heal. They're now forking Sludgehome and Nubia, on defensive terrain. Bob brought in a million Tigers to Sludgehome, which at least is a cost to him, right? At some point soon we're going to have to take some Subdue promos, just to keep him honest on the Tiger spam.

GNP continues to look bad for now. Went for Religious Law, so that we can get it out of the way. Pacman's building an Alchemists Lab, everywhere else is on random stuff. And I couldn't upgrade the adept in Hippusland, so I put the Mage Guild back in the queue. Maybe it was just insufficient gold, but maybe it was was the lacking guild.

And I labelled the Profane's to be, sent them out adventuring. Every other Ritualist can focus on the normal stuff, like becoming a giant Temple .

[Thoth]

Uneventful turn. Moved the stack via DS only so they could heal. They're now forking Sludgehome and Nubia, on defensive terrain. Bob brought in a million Tigers to Sludgehome, which at least is a cost to him, right? At some point soon we're going to have to take some Subdue promos, just to keep him honest on the Tiger spam.

A Subdue promo or two sounds good. Be careful with that stack....it's our elite core and has the Nether Blade

GNP continues to look bad for now. Went for Religious Law, so that we can get it out of the way. Pacman's building an Alchemists Lab, everywhere else is on random stuff.

Ummm. What?

RL next...ok.


Alch Lab? When we could be building a fast Prophecy?.....the sooner we trigger Blight the better. Blight is going to hurt us a bit.....it should cripple Bob for quite awhile.

If we're going to be building non-unit stuff in PacMan PoR is what we want.

Random stuff? Focus.

And I couldn't upgrade the adept in Hippusland, so I put the Mage Guild back in the queue. Maybe it was just insufficient gold, but maybe it was was the lacking guild.

mage guild not bad. We want some more Adepts.

Lack of Upgradeablitiy Due to Lack of Cash, not Lack of Mage Guild.

[Mardoc]

A Subdue promo or two sounds good. Be careful with that stack....it's our elite core and has the Nether Blade

Yes, was half the reason I elected to heal this turn. Might spend next turn healing, too, depending on what we see. Really I want to go kill Kithra, only Bob's keeping her back far enough we might get swarmed under.

Alch Lab? When we could be building a fast Prophecy?.....the sooner we trigger Blight the better. Blight is going to hurt us a bit.....it should cripple Bob for quite awhile.

If we're going to be building non-unit stuff in PacMan PoR is what we want.

Random stuff? Focus.

Well, here's my reasoning, for what it's worth:
We want Blight, yes. Which should happen at 37/122 on the AC. We're currently, after Stigmata, at 27/122, and have four more cities that will go AV as soon as the ritualists arrive. Puts us at 31/122. Big H is worth 5, and he starts with two settlers, each worth 1 - 38/122 as soon as he founds his cities, putting us to Blight.

Only...we don't want Hyborem until we're ready to grab the Grimoire. Which in turn means RL needs to be out of the way. And most of our beakers come from Pacman, so this one Alchemist's Lab is significant, and speeds the path to Infernal Pact (worth about 30 bpt at 0% science, more as AV spreads).

So really, by speeding us to Infernal Pact, I'm speeding us to Blight.

[Mardoc]

Be careful with that stack....it's our elite core and has the Nether Blade

What are you, an oracle?

Apparently my thinking on a safe distance was not actually accurate. Bob hit us with a ton of tigers, Maelstrom, and then, it appears, a Beastmaster, 3 Champs, and a Satyr.

We lost our Aeron's Chosen, another Ghost, both Beastmasters. Fortunately the stack is still intact, we can grab the Nether Blade and run for it. Bob appears to be trying to prevent that, by surrounding us with workers and Tigers, but ineffectually.

So...blah! Gonna have to run for now, and try to come up with something that'll stop this stack before it starts conquering us.