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

[Thoth]

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.

We also took zero casualties on our side and picked up some valuable xp.

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.

4 undamaged cats plus 2 that are highly damaged but have a promo in hand.

We can burn a city next turn given their current force deployments. But that might be too expensive. We don't want to over extend and open up the possibility of counter attack. Remember, they have GoM so if they turn off tech, they can whistle up a decent size army of st6 eb Merc PDQ.

We'll have to play it by ear and see what we see next turn. That extra tile of Clown culture from 2nd border pop in their Gems city sucks. We want some more Raider boots down here.

We also want some more units in Elohimia along the Gnome borders. I'd like a couple of Moroi for Rum both as real defenders and for the fact that it frees up a highly experienced warrior and a highly experienced BP to get charioted.

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.

One more dead Cat is awesome. The Chariot was top defender showing, until I selected the Griffon. Innate 50% vs mounted meant the Cat defended. And since it was stacked and we attacked from the lake....we're still on the lake.

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.

In GA, 8 base hpt. 10 net towards Blood Pets. And those are Clown hammers we're building them with.

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.

1 Illian Mage, 4 Illian Adepts and now one Clown Adept.

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.

We do have rather a lot of scouts. And a very large GNP. 1 or 2 Assassins won't do much. 20 or 30 OTOH might just be useful. Just less useful than Empy Priests and Raider Rathas. And Iron and Losha and Paladins and Eidolons for all and sundry.

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.

Actually, we've pretty solidly all military in our core Calabim and we'll be adding more and more Orc cities on *Whatever duty as the turns roll. HE finished up in NBA this turn. TY and then probably a Stonewarden or 4. Then Ogres. Marble needs to go to Calabim t115 for their epics.

Once PHood is in, Monks in Tequilla and Whiskey rather than SWs and Chariots would be fine builds.

I 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.

We're currently making about 950 beakers per turn.

Somewhere around 130 or so of that is GA commerce.


We're getting +1 trade routes in all of our cities from Single Currency next turn. There's around 30bpt or so.
Plus we'll be growing some and adding Aristofarms/more offshore cities/better trade routes thru growth ect. Figure another 20-30 bpt for the Elohim and another 20ish bpt for the Calabim before the GA ends.

So we'll drop to around 900 bpt. I'm ok with that.

But to do that we need to keep Orc gold flow up.

Discovering that the central land mass is mainland is a bugger. In order to colonize the Eastern Isles as Orc, we need an orc Galley in the area to transport the Settlers. (or build Elohim settlers.... :vomit: ). So I'd like to settle the Uberfood port as Orc on t115 rather than Elohim. Shockingly* we just completed two settlers in OSH this turn. A bit o cash in 3t or so means we can settle the Eastern Isles for even more offshore traderoute gold. (and beakers )















*Not much of a shock, actually. OSH has produced the lions share of our settlers this game. More are queued.

[Thoth]

Also:

Any bets on when we see a Gnome Hemah with Snowfall?

[Thoth]

At the very least, we should be able to pick up some Raider pillage gold next turn while depriving them of a couple of happy resources:

[Mardoc]

We also took zero casualties on our side and picked up some valuable xp.

Yeah, it was a good turn. Just didn't quite live up the the expectations I'd built for myself, of killing half their army and burning two cities on top.

But realistically we got all that we could expect to against a competent opponent, and it was certainly in our favor.

We can burn a city next turn given their current force deployments. But that might be too expensive. We don't want to over extend and open up the possibility of counter attack.

Yep, wait and see. Personally, I'd say any time we can exchange 2 of our hammers of military for 1 of theirs, or better, it's worth doing. We've the production potential to come out on top by attrition.

Remember, they have GoM so if they turn off tech, they can whistle up a decent size army of st6 eb Merc PDQ.

180 gold per, unless that was adjusted by EitB, and we ought to be able to watch their gold stockpiles. They can make some, but I don't think they can surprise us with something huge.

We want some more Raider boots down here.

Ayup. And we also want those Raider boots to have 5 XP, don't we? I figure it's worth the delay to get our Command Posts up.

We also want some more units in Elohimia along the Gnome borders. I'd like a couple of Moroi for Rum both as real defenders and for the fact that it frees up a highly experienced warrior and a highly experienced BP to get charioted.

Yes...and a Hawk or two...and maybe some vamps...and some catapults wouldn't go amiss...and maybe a navy to go see if they have any ports and burn them...and a couple more settlers and workers to prepare more forward bases to make them pick between Gibbon at Saltus and Gibbon up north...

And the Wizard and Hippus borders are quite light, too.

I have every confidence that every single unit we can build, we can use.

One more dead Cat is awesome. The Chariot was top defender showing, until I selected the Griffon. Innate 50% vs mounted meant the Cat defended. And since it was stacked and we attacked from the lake....we're still on the lake.

In GA, 8 base hpt. 10 net towards Blood Pets. And those are Clown hammers we're building them with.

Which raises the question: should we be building Archery Range instead? The better our garrison and defense bonuses are, the more units we can spare for Raiding.

Also, did you have anything in particular in mind for those Soldiers of Kilmorph, or were they brought along in case of tactical hill movement?

1 Illian Mage, 4 Illian Adepts and now one Clown Adept.

Cool. Gonna keep a tally, I think, that's a lot of potential hurt avoided.

We do have rather a lot of scouts. And a very large GNP. 1 or 2 Assassins won't do much. 20 or 30 OTOH might just be useful. Just less useful than Empy Priests and Raider Rathas. And Iron and Losha and Paladins and Eidolons for all and sundry.

Yeah. 20-30 Vamps would let us straight up power through a stack, after all. 20-30 mixed vamps, Ogres, and Vicars would be even better.

Poisons would be worth doing if we could have it work with a small number of hammers. And may be worthwhile when we switch focus to the Wizard front, too. Just not quite yet.

We're getting +1 trade routes in all of our cities from Single Currency next turn. There's around 30bpt or so.

All of our cities, or just all cities in Overcouncil?

Discovering that the central land mass is mainland is a bugger. In order to colonize the Eastern Isles as Orc, we need an orc Galley in the area to transport the Settlers. (or build Elohim settlers.... :vomit: ). So I'd like to settle the Uberfood port as Orc on t115 rather than Elohim. Shockingly* we just completed two settlers in OSH this turn. A bit o cash in 3t or so means we can settle the Eastern Isles for even more offshore traderoute gold. (and beakers )

I'm ok with that. Perhaps we should give some of those offshore cities to the Elohim, though, to turn into beaker producers. We've got a gold surplus at the moment, it'll only be converted into beakers if we build more science cities.

Well, hmm. Or I suppose we could just expand Elohim toward the Golems, assuming we get enough boots in the area to be comfortable with that. Already expanding the Calabim into Clown territory (w00t!), that could use up Orcish gold too.

Also, it seems like nowish is a decent time to pick out a Summer Palace location or two. IIRC, that's like 120 hammers and will save us a lot of maint. Either that, or finally give up on Aristocracy for the Orcs, and start paving over farms with cottages. I don't want to give up Foreign Trade for Conquest, those trade routes are too valuable, so uber food surplus may not be useful anymore over there.

*Not much of a shock, actually. OSH has produced the lions share of our settlers this game. More are queued.

Excellent. Now that it's clear last turn's strike isn't going to win us the war by itself, we've got to keep expanding. Hopefully the rest of our empire on military focus can keep up and give those settlers clear spots to land.

Aside for Q: no, I'm actually not joking here. OSH on settler duty knocks out 2 settlers every 3-4 turns, I'm honestly in doubt whether the entire rest of our empire can keep up with that rate of expansion. Especially now that we need more than token garrisons on the borders.

Thoth, you're the one whose been moving workers, are we still good on that or do we need some more in queue? I'd think that a lot of our core cities are approaching finished status, unless we want to swap out of Aristo.

Also:

Any bets on when we see a Gnome Hemah with Snowfall?

Honestly - at least 10-15 turns. If he's not Amurite instead. I'm pretty sure Team Clown doesn't have Arcane Lore yet, and I think we can keep enough pressure on them that they don't want to spare the hammers for the ToD. But even if I'm wrong, they've still got at least one turn for that, 2 turns to find the 120 hammers (or rush gold) for Hemah in an OO city, and another 5-8ish for him to acquire the XP for Snowfall.

And they might prefer to keep Ice mana in Balseraph or Illian hands for Slow and Ice Elementals, if we haven't killed off all the candidates for the promo . I would bet on a Snowfall Gibbon before a Snowfall Hemah.

At the very least, we should be able to pick up some Raider pillage gold next turn while depriving them of a couple of happy resources:

Yep . Honestly, that was probably a mistake, should have done that last turn but Elli and I didn't think of it. Wish we had a bit more time to actually play that one.

We need to leave the roads, though!

We should try to log in during T4's turn, and take screenies of the Clown battlefield after they've moved but before the Hawk missions end. That way the Hawks can go somewhere else this turn and do double duty. If that happens while I'm around, I'll do it, but maybe one of you two will have the chance instead.

Besides, that might well give us time to cogitate on best moves, depending on how much time T4 takes to play.

[Mardoc]

Okie dokie, they seem to have gone full defensive:

My gut says that we could certainly burn Thrax, and we would likely pay too much for it and lose Saltus the next turn.

What I really wish we could do is shift the focus northward a bit, they have a lot of cities unguarded or with token guards. But we don't quite have the mobility or the roads to pull that off.

I'm hoping I'm missing something. In particular, I'm hoping I'm missing something that would let us burn Atrium of Time, the Esus holy city guarded by one (1!) sword and a Great Engineer. But so far I can't see any way to make it work. The only thing that I can figure out how to reach is the lake griffon, and odds against a CI/EB Sword are probably just too poor.

Griff could kill a mud golem next turn, though.

[Thoth]

we can kill a MG with the Griffon and retreat onto lake.

Kill the Warrior on the rice with the C2 calabim chariot.

Carefully pillage the shit out of the Gems, Farm and Road 1 W of Gems, Ivory (leave road), and Rice (2 W of Thrax, leave road intact).

That kills two happies, the road connection from Liti to Saltus (which we can re-road at will so long as we have 2 combat workers in range) , Rice (Health and maybe Brewery commerce).

Gibbon has Ice 1. So Ice 3 on t119.

We'll have Empy t115. If we found it in Calabimia, we can draft a Radiant Guard t116 and upgrade to Ratha the same turn. If Empy founds on the Islands....it'll take a turn or two to relocate the Ratha. Damndamndamndamndamn. Didn't think of this in time. The Folly should have moved to Port t114, Sherry t115 and ship the Disciple and Ratha over to the mainland t116. We healed a turn in Red Cap instead, so we'll be a turn off if we spawn Empy in the Islands. We're more likely to spawn it on the mainland, but the RNG can be a bitch sometimes.

In any event, we should have at least a Ratha or two plus maybe a Vicar by turn 119. So we should be able to give better than we get.

[Thoth]

As far as settling the Islands as Elohim for beakers vs Orc for gold:

Each of those cities is going to cost ~11 gpt in Elohim maint. They'll produce ~15 bpt at size 1. They'll need expensive infra in order to grow at a reasonable pace, so they won't have a lot of bpt upside.

They'll cost ~13-15 gpt in Orc Maint. And generate ~22 gpt at size 1. So instant profit.

We're currently making 325+ bpt in Elohimia and we're growing the new cities like weeds (check out Rum next time you're in game. We settled that fucker t108. ). We'll be adding Aristofarms, a Lake Pearl, Incense plantation and Silk plantation over the next few turns. We've plenty of upside here without incurring further costs.

Calabimia is also getting a shot in the commerce arm over the next few turns from growth and added tile improvements. We're ~630 bpt right now in GA. Once the GA ends, we'll wind up around 550 bpt or so (factoring in growth and trs).

We'll be pushing out better than 900bpt empire wide so long as we can continue funding it. Given EitBs dirt cheap tech costs, that's plenty to get us to Empy/Phood/Smelt/IW/Fanat or Fued or both/Math/Eng/Poisons in good time. Plus we can slip useful things like CoS, Alteration, Divination ect in there afterwards. Or just turn off tech after Poisons and put all of our commerce into rushbuying t3 units in warrens cities.

[Mardoc]

Thank goodness for Hawks ahead of vamps. We spotted a pack of 7 centaurs, 4 wizards, and a few odds and ends right on our border this turn. Some quick reinforcements, and we'll hopefully be able to hold. If we have another turn before they come, we're certainly fine.

Unfortunately, that diverted a fair bit that would otherwise go to the Clown front. It's amazing - we're tops in world hammer production by a very large margin, not even counting Warrens, and yet it still feels like we're scraping the bottom of the barrel each turn for units.

[Thoth]

We've got a few more now.

2 axes, 4 shamans, 2 wrs, 6 warriors and a trireme hit the board when Orcs ended turn.

We can cash rush Coors chariots plus warriors in GA and WD t116.

Looking at the incoming Adepts, I'm not certain they're planning an attack this turn. maybe in a turn or two.

But if they do hit us this turn, best they can do is 3 fireballs, 7 Centaurs and 3 non-copper warriors plus a fawn or two.

So they can kill either GA or WD if they're willing to pay the price. They'll probably lose 1 or two units in the attack. And we can kill another 2-3 on our turn with the chariots/wrs ect we have on hand in SB. We don't (quite) have a perfect shaman net in place yet, but we're getting there.

Vodka, NBA and Kipa have shamans present. Budweiser just built two to help cover the south. Plus we have our first Orc cat incoming on it's way to the Wizzzzerd front.

They can cost us a bit if they attack now. But we should be able to kill their stack over the next two turns if they don't have Archmages. If they do get Archmages (quite possible) then we'll have to trade some land for time. With the production we can muster, we can do that.

[Mardoc]

best they can do is 3 fireballs,

Ah - 6 fireballs. Those are Amurite wizards, they all have spellstaffs unused.

Don't get me wrong - I'd rather have our problems than theirs! We've probably got as much production as both Wizards/Clowns combined, as much army as them both combined, and quite a bit of upside. We've a lot of cities growing like weeds onto good tiles, 60ish workers, and still lots of potential from just leaving OSH on settlers. And we've got the best tech rate, and the Titan, and we're on the verge of unlocking most of our best uniques.

And, ahem, we've got Orcs vs fireballs. 25% resist vs Fire damage isn't huge, but it's a help. Their strength is all Fire type, after all.

Just...at the moment, we've got a bit of a tricky tactical situation, is all.

For overall strategy - as I understand it, anyway, we've enough in Saltus for the moment, except that we'd really like a few Vicars and Rathas to go with. We'll be directing some production toward the northeast to open a second front vs the Clowns, and the rest toward the wizards to prune them back a bit.

Wizards...well, they're running awfully light on military according to the graph. Light enough that I don't really understand why they're going on the offense - unless they thought our passive posture was necessity rather than hope. If we were stretched to defend against Clowns, then their approach could make sense, I guess. They probably only have what we see, plus a few garrisons and new production. I suspect if we apply a few turns of the majority of our production to them, we'll be able to get the advantage pretty quickly, and exploit it.

Speaking of applying pressure - now that we have more Hawks we can confirm this, but I suspect the Malakim cities are lightly guarded. Obviously we can't do anything about this instantly, but in 2-3 turns I bet we can have a big enough stack to make them sweat. Honestly, I would bet 6-8 Moroi/chariots and a shaman would be enough for a serious threat down here. Especially since they still don't have copper.


News for others: we've proved, definitely, that which teammate gets the religion is not controllable. We finished Honor with Calabim beakers, and the holy city showed up on Elohimia. Which is an annoyance, but it could have been worse, it could have been the islands. At least now we can get it to Calabimia with roads and shamans we already have.

All we did on the Clown front last turn was kill a warrior, mud golem, and do the pillaging Thoth suggested. And *then* we discovered the Wizardly plots, and became glad for the defensive deployment. Our units are mostly all healing now, collecting fortification bonuses, and the roads we pillaged mean that team Clown has a delay if they want to attack us - while we can put those roads back anytime.