[SPOILERS] PB1- Mardoc buys a can of paint for Thoth and Ellimist

[Mardoc]

indeed.
Couldn't you have staged on the grasshill west of napa?
So that they didn't see it?

Maybe could have staged there, but that's still within Floating Eye range so they'd have seen us regardless. They probably saw the army last turn when it was still approaching, actually. We figured it was better to be closer, so that we can chase down any runaways.

For instance, last turn Saltus had an ice elemental and four puppets guarding it, but no Priests of Winter, Adepts, or Mages. But they have to be fairly close. Once we own Saltus and it's connected to our road network, hopefully Calabim fast movers can run them down. Getting Saltus itself would be handy - but the real point is to destroy their ability to resist, and take out half their empire.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that they try to resist, or at least don't run far enough. Taking Saltus itself won't hurt them much, but taking Saltus and killing half their army and having free rein on every nearby city...that would be a major blow.

Pics...um. One of these days I'll find the time. Probably. Unless Thoth or Ellimist does it first?

[Thoth]

indeed.
Couldn't you have staged on the grasshill west of napa?
So that they didn't see it?

They have Floating Eyes, so they saw at least some of our forces last turn. They'll definitely see them on their t113 no matter where we place them. So we might a well place them as far forward as we can in order to maximize our striking range next turn. (note the 4 Orc workers at the bottom of the stack in Napa )

Maybe could have staged there, but that's still within Floating Eye range so they'd have seen us regardless. They probably saw the army last turn when it was still approaching, actually. We figured it was better to be closer, so that we can chase down any runaways.

For instance, last turn Saltus had an ice elemental and four puppets guarding it, but no Priests of Winter, Adepts, or Mages. But they have to be fairly close. Once we own Saltus and it's connected to our road network, hopefully Calabim fast movers can run them down. Getting Saltus itself would be handy - but the real point is to destroy their ability to resist, and take out half their empire.

Mostly correct except for the mission objectives.

Taking possession of Saltus makes a huge difference in our ability to defend the Calabim core.

The fact that it will give us raider access to theirs is just a bonus. If we can do some unit killin' and some city burnin' on the cheap as well, so much the better.

But just having Saltus in our hands building a BP a turn in GA vs Saltus in their hands building a Warrior a turn is worth the price of admission.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that they try to resist, or at least don't run far enough. Taking Saltus itself won't hurt them much,

Oh yes it will.

Losing Saltus fucks up their defensive plans in the area and gives us the terrain advantage.

but taking Saltus and killing half their army and having free rein on every nearby city...that would be a major blow.

Killing some Uber Units and maybe and Adept or three would be a nice bonus.


Power graph is kind of funny from last turn btw:

Both Orcs and Illians show significant power drops.

Orcs build some stuff with SoKs. Illians lost some Arcane units. But it looks like we fought an actual battle with the Illians.

[Thoth]

Oh, and I almost forgot:

We passed two milestones t113:

We're now at over 40% of world pop.
and the Elohim are now in #4 for food production and rising fast.

[Mardoc]

Well. Saltus is just about guaranteed to be ours next turn.

And...Gibbon has now been born.



I suspect we'll be seeing some form of level 3 summon next turn - 11 tiles from Napa is just too far to be able to kill him before he can act, even with Hasted Raider Chariots. They might actually be glad he's an Illusionist, that means his summons will heal in between defeating any living unit, we can't wear them down by numbers, have to actually get odds. I feel I ought to point out that Spectres, being Non-living, would be able to wear down a summon. Have to wait and see what they picked; maybe an Ogre could just power through it.

On the other hand - all we need is one mistake from them, and we'll be able to kill Gibbon. And we've our first pair of Hawks entering the battlefield next turn, to help us discover said mistake.

[Qgqqqqq]

Welp.
Still, I think in general ribbon wouldn't be used for summoning, because of the illusion thing, and they'd instead be going for snowfall.
Besides, they'd need the nodes setup, which you could probably work out.
Has anything happened on the other fronts?


And (of course) pics?

[Mardoc]

Hey, we're up. And it's a big turn! I'll be available around 6-7 Central tonight, but have some thoughts now in case you get itchy fingers, Thoth.

With only four units defending, Saltus is pretty much guaranteed to fall. I'd aim to take it with the least force necessary, and as much of that force being Elohim/Clan as possible. They evacuated, we need our Raiders for hunting down stragglers, not for the actual conquest. We might still need to use a catapult or two to ensure we can conquer with minimal casualties.

Welp.
Still, I think in general ribbon wouldn't be used for summoning, because of the illusion thing, and they'd instead be going for snowfall.
Besides, they'd need the nodes setup, which you could probably work out.

Funny you should mention that. The bait node, that's been giving our Spider tons of XP, it's now Metamagic. They already had at least a couple sources of Meta according to the trades we can see (makes no sense to see that in AW, but it's there, so I'll use it). I'm guessing Djinn, therefore.

Or, of course, since he's a Summoner Puppet Gibbon, we could see both spells. Snowfall would also be scary, and I suppose since he was built with 5XP that's possible in 3 turns or so (doesn't start with a promo, only one Ice source means he's not born with it, so he needs 10XP which could be as little as 3 turns).

I suppose one main advantage to the unit spam approach we've got going on here is that even if Gibbon gets to Twincast, he can only kill four units/turn with his summons, on their turn anyway.

Has anything happened on the other fronts?

Nope. But the turns are moving glacially at the moment, it's not been very long in game since the last you asked. Things can change.

Speaking of which - this turn we have 2 Hawks. I'm 100% certain we need to rebase one to Saltus after we take it and look east. Hoping for juicy targets, but even just knowing we've got to hunker down would be useful knowledge. What do we do with the other? I'd kinda like to take a look at the Wizards; I think our scouting net and the sheer distance will give us sufficient warning on the rest of the Clown front, at least until next turn.

Although another possibility, depending on our luck, is to use Hawk #2 to scout further east from another Clown city, if we can take another and choose not to raze.

I definitely want SSD to build another Hawk pair this turn, even if that means losing overflow hammers. Seems like one Hawk on each front is the bare minimum. I'm sure we could use 10-12 of them, but the first few are the most important.

[Thoth]

Hey, we're up. And it's a big turn! I'll be available around 6-7 Central tonight, but have some thoughts now in case you get itchy fingers, Thoth.

With only four units defending, Saltus is pretty much guaranteed to fall. I'd aim to take it with the least force necessary, and as much of that force being Elohim/Clan as possible. They evacuated, we need our Raiders for hunting down stragglers, not for the actual conquest. We might still need to use a catapult or two to ensure we can conquer with minimal casualties.

I'll be home from work around 9 est (8 central?)

Speaking of which - this turn we have 2 Hawks. I'm 100% certain we need to rebase one to Saltus after we take it and look east. Hoping for juicy targets, but even just knowing we've got to hunker down would be useful knowledge. What do we do with the other? I'd kinda like to take a look at the Wizards; I think our scouting net and the sheer distance will give us sufficient warning on the rest of the Clown front, at least until next turn.

1st Hawk scouts from Napa. That will inform our tactical descisions.

#2 I was thinking flying from Saltus to get a bit deeper of a look, but we can play it by ear.

Although another possibility, depending on our luck, is to use Hawk #2 to scout further east from another Clown city, if we can take another and choose not to raze.

I definitely want SSD to build another Hawk pair this turn, even if that means losing overflow hammers. Seems like one Hawk on each front is the bare minimum. I'm sure we could use 10-12 of them, but the first few are the most important.

I'm thinking finishing up the Shaman pair first (1t remaining) in SSD, then *Hawk, * Hunter for awhile.

[Thoth]

Full report to follow,

Saltus is ours with no casualties on our side, the Elohim Wolf Rider killed yet another Illian Adept and our Lake Griffon killed a Gnome catapult at 76% odds (giving him enough exp for C1/mob II next turn.)

[Qgqqqqq]

W00t!
Any other cities down?

[Mardoc]

Because they retreated we only killed one warrior, one sword, and one adept in Saltus (plus a Ice Elemental, but I'm sure he's back this turn). Not quite sure why they left the adept - maybe a misclick.

No other killings this turn, they withdrew to defensive positions where we didn't like the odds with just Raider chariots. Although we're now pushed forward 3 tiles, in particular pushed forward with 3 undamaged catapults, so maybe T115 we'll get something else killed. I'm hoping that something is their southern city, but we've a while yet to figure out if we can manage this or not.

and our Lake Griffon killed a Gnome catapult at 76% odds (giving him enough exp for C1/mob II next turn.)

Ah, I missed that opportunity. Good choice to take it, should hopefully force them to stack up some more and restrict their options. Plus, of course, one more dead unit is always good.

Total dead hammers from all our killing last turn: 16+30+60+60+60 = 226. Plus, arguably, 145 for the settler that became Saltus. I suspect that T114 will be net negative for their military, even ignoring the tactical change. Which is significant in itself - we've gone from them having a forward base on a hill behind a river, to us having a forward base on their road network on a hill. The city itself isn't worth a lot at the moment, it's working mostly unimproved tiles, but that'll change if we can establish military control over the area.

We've now killed, what, 5 adepts/mages? I'm starting to think that once we neutralize Gibbon, they won't have critical mass to handle us with mages alone. Certainly if we can keep the pressure on at this rate, we can keep them suppressed and thinking defense.

Something that was pointed out to me that's happy news: Gibbon's Illusion summons inability to kill is more significant than I'd thought. It means that as long as we keep a stack that's at least 4 units bigger than necessary for defense, he can't break through himself. He'll redline the first four defenders, but not kill any, and the rest of the stack will still hold ground. Plus, you never know, this would give us lots of opportunities for a unit to be heroic and win - and if they did, they'd pick up a lot of XP. Net result: Gibbon isn't much of an offensive tool in their hands, until the situation changes.

In other news - speaking of neutralizing Gibbon - we decided to pick up Empyrean and Priesthood next. Vicars' Dispel Illusion spell is just the ticket. It's annoying to put off both Iron Working and Feudalism, but, well, it's clear that the only thing that'll keep us from breaking Team Clown in the near future is Gibbon's Djinns. We can swarm them under with our current army if we don't bounce off super high Str constant healing Djinni. We might manage to find and hit a weak spot or two, keeping the pressure on, but we won't kill them until that's neutralized. Priesthood will give us other bonuses, like healing and Warrens temple spreading and Shield of Faith.

The other possibility that wasn't really considered is Poisons and Assassins. Because...well, on the one hand, we only have to get lucky once, but on the other, it doesn't take a lot of thought to simply stack a few Puppets with Gibbon to soak up the assassins' blades.

Since we don't want to try breaking through Djinns until we've Empy, and this is looking like it'll end up as a long war, we've mostly set the core to infrastructure at the moment. Calabim cities are pretty much all putting up Command Posts, Elohim cities are still growing up, and Orcs - well, they're mixed.

If they come up with something else while we're addressing Gibbon, then the stalemate might continue until we get yet more in hand. And realistically Vampires, although delayed, are still due within 10 turns or so. We've gotten our research rate to the point where we're knocking out the mid-game techs in a couple turns each, and that will probably just keep improving. Well, a slight setback is expected when Vamps golden age ends, but hopefully that'll be outweighed by the general rate of improvement by means of more and better tiles worked in our empire as a whole.

In general, now that we've got a large hammer advantage and now also on top a tech rate advantage, we're quite confident. It's just that it may take a while yet to apply those advantages in a way that wins this sucker. The main thing is to keep the pressure on, so that they don't have the chance to build up a critical mass of summoners and make hammer ratios irrelevant.