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

[Thoth]

best they can do is 3 fireballs,

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

Good point. But those spellstaves are all one use. They may not want to use them yet.

And as you point out....it's Orcs vs Fireballs. So if they go all in with Spellstave fireballs and all of their Centaurs, they might be able to take Griffon Ale (we have enough numbers in Waterloo Dark to hold vs horse, but if they throw the Mages at redlined units they can possibly take WD). In either case, their stack will be dinged up and within range of at least some of our fast movers t116. And a lot of fast movers t117.

So they might be able to force us to build a replacement settler for one of our crumple cities. But it'll cost them most of their current stack. They can also kill a border worker or two. Annoying if they do, but it won't cost us all that much. The workers they can kill are singletons improving tiles for expendable cities.

If they see our moves and decide to wait, then we'll have enough to deal with a great deal more than their current stack very shortly.

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

Helps to keep the game interesting.

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.

Saltus area: We've got Calabim units incoming, so depending on what they do we may or may not be able to advance.

NE: We've got a couple of Moroi moving in to help out plus we have a couple of Orc Axes in the Elohim North that can be vectored towards the Gnome front. We have 4 Hawks to fly t116 (assuming we still hold Waterloo). One from WD to scout the Wizzards, one from Mead to see what the Malakim have been up to, one from Saltus to keep vis on the Clowns.

That leaves one. I'd like to scout north from one of the frontier Elohim cities. If there isn't a stack incoming then we can move the Orc Axes towards Abisinthe and Rum. If there is a stack incoming....we'll figure something out.

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 -

It's likely an opportunistic attack. They'll have seen that we captured a city from the Clowns plus the Military Graph makes it look like we fought Orcs vs Illians a turn or two ago. So they figure we committed our stack in the East, so we're weak in the West. Reasonable logic. But we have the production and land to hold them away from our core. Soviet tactics work in our favour here. Throw bodies into the front and count on superior production to carry the day.

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.

I'd like to take some Malakim cities. Hawking will show us opportunities But I suspect that it will be Orc Chariots/WRs that do the deed.

All we did on the Clown front last turn was kill a warrior, mud golem, and do the pillaging Thoth suggested.

Yeah.

You probably did the right thing by moving the Elohim Wolf Rider away.....but I really wanted to see if the xp farm was still open for business. ;p

[Mardoc]

Soviet tactics work in our favour here. Throw bodies into the front and count on superior production to carry the day.

[Thoth]

http://youtu.be/YYoCvgAAiQ8

[Thoth]

Unmentioned, but still important:

The Calabim birthed a Great Merchant this turn. Reisling can push out another gp in 5/6 turns. We should replace the merchant spec in Reis with an Artist t116 to minimize the chance of another GM.

[Mardoc]

So, Team Wizard declined battle. Rather than attack, they simply used fireballs to knock down our cultural defences. They didn't much reinforce their stack, either, just consolidated it. So I expect them to continue to decline battle, as their odds are only going to get worse as our reinforcements arrive. We therefore only built a couple more warriors on that front, let each defender start collecting fortification, and generally turned orcish builds back to something more long-term. Chariots and Warrens instead of Warriors - not exactly peaceful infra, but focused on the next 10 turns instead of the next 2 .

Scouting Hawks reveal that this is either their only real stack, or at least their only stack in our direction. The Malakim near city is defended by 4 Fawns, further back by just a pair of non-copper warriors. We're pretty sure they have Bronze Working, so we don't understand why no copper weapons. But...a handful of 5-movers - like, say, newly born Clan chariots with Mob I and a shaman - ought to be able to take out the Malakim city from ours. Or else we could use them to cripple their offensive/reaction stack in the north, and then run rampant.

On the Clown front...mostly a good turn for them, actually. They've a second Djinn in play guarding a second city, backed Gibbon off to a safe(ish) distance, and pretty much have ground us to a stop until the Vicars arrive. They also got a scout to find our spider, so the free ride down south is over. Although we did kill that scout, and if they don't have another in the area we'll probably manage to escape, at least. And - this may have been going on for a while, but we noticed one exception to the rule of 'all mana goes to the Balseraphs' - Fire mana to the Luchiurp. Blasting Workshops have to be fairly close, which will shut down the Elohim airforce, then make life in general harder for us. Meanwhile...we added a couple chariots to the general northern area, and that's about it. There's stuff going on in our core that will affect them soonish, especially the Vicar production, but nothing new this turn.

Still, the pushes so far have done their job, I think. We pushed them onto the defense, with favorable terrain and access to their road network, and we damaged their economy. I note lots of covered Mud Golems, lots more Wood Golems, general stacking up, and no new cities founded in our direction - all of which can be attributed to our pressure. We didn't quite manage to take them out before Puppeteer archmages, but we did manage to mostly neutralize that with numbers and the Saltus push. It appears we've delayed the puppeteer mage critical mass, as well. And of course Saltus is producing Bloodpets instead of adepts or freaks.

If trends continue, we ought to be able to slowly grind them down over the next 15-20 turns. I don't expect any dramatic breakthrough followed by smashing them entirely, but rather a gradually improving position. We've such a dramatic production lead, and the techs in play or almost in play, that we ought to be able to make their position untenable, but they're too good as generals to keep their army where it can be smashed. The only thing I can think of that might save them, is if they've a lot of adepts nearly ready for Mage status, and lots of golems ready for fireballing. If they can combine Gibbon with 10+ real summons, before we have the same number of vampires in play, they can start dealing us casualties greater than we can replace. But...I tend to think if they had that sort of force, they'd have used it already.

In other news, Calabim are about to start unit production in earnest. We finished three Command Posts and a Heroic Epic this turn, allowing most of our core to begin pumping out 5XP Moroi at 1/turn...except Zinfindel, which needs another turn or so for its Command Post and then ought to manage 1-turn chariots or vampires. It's not even done growing, and it's already at 50 hpt, before modifiers. Counting everything into the Heroic Epic, 196 hammers this turn - easily enough to make it in one turn, with overflow. Granted, part of that is golden age...but still, this is a beautiful unit pump. The main question in my mind is whether we bother to put up Granary/Smokehouse/Breeding Pit here, or just start immediately on Raider Chariot production. Well, ok, on second thought that's probably not much of a question - of course we start right on units. We just have to resist Feasting this city if we don't build it Granary et al. It can already manage 1-turn 5XP Tier 3 units between the Heroic Epic and Command Post, there's not much room to improve on that. Sure, vampires cost more than chariots, but by the time we're to them, slow growth ought to have fixed the no-GA problem. Better a city that's only making a unit a turn with no overflow, starting now, than a city that's making a unit a turn with lots of overflow, starting in 5 turns.

We got most of Priesthood in this turn; the Elohim ought to be able to finish it off, while the Calabim start in on Smelting. Smelting and IW are probably about three turns, maybe four, then we'll finally go on to pick up Feudalism. Meanwhile our Empy disciple is sprinting south, hoping (but going to fail) to arrive in Calabim lands before the current GA ends. On that note:

Unmentioned, but still important:

The Calabim birthed a Great Merchant this turn. Reisling can push out another gp in 5/6 turns. We should replace the merchant spec in Reis with an Artist t116 to minimize the chance of another GM.

So...2-3 more turns for the Empy disciple to walk to a Calabim city and spread the religion, 2 more to put up a temple...seems to me to make sense to wait to revolt to Empy until we get the Great Person. We'd save a full turn of anarchy, in exchange for 0-1 turns delay on making the first Vicar. Probably should check exact numbers here.

All in all, we're in the calm before the storm . The next 4-8 turns will see us getting most of our core cities to full bore military production, and unlocking Ogres, Vicars, Vamps, and Ratha. We're already causing issues for our neighbors with just axes/chariots, but we're about to send our power graph vertical. We'll have all the tech and buildings we need for a balanced military: chariots, vamps, axes, shamans, priests, Ogres, Hawks. And we'll have the top two manufacturing economies in the world, by far, to produce that military. With Warrens as the cherry on top.

[Thoth]

I make it t118 as fastest possible Empy spread, t119 if we go for Reisling (and I think we should).

Reisling can bang out the temple in 2t and can bang out 1t Empy Disciples until GA (maybe...we'll have ~70% odds of a non GM GP).

Eiswine (home of the 1t HE) can build a 2t temple and 1t Vicars (with ooodles of overflow)

I like Ries first as both the +1 Happy (from Empy temple + Incense) and the +10% beaker boost are useful in Ries, but no so much in our hammer heavy HE city.

Reis can get a Disciple to Eiswine in good time for Eiswine to start pumping Vicars stat post GA swap. In the meantime, Eis can put it's hammers into good use finishing up the CP and some more cats (now with 5xp out of the box )

[Thoth]

Also: Radiant Guards are draftable in Empy following cities.

A turn or two of max cash plus a round or two of drafting in Calabimia once we're in Empy.....

[Mardoc]

so, we're up for T117. Time will be tight for me tonight, but I should be able to be around, somewhere in the vicinity of 7-8 Central (8-9 Eastern) til 10 Central.

I make it t118 as fastest possible Empy spread, t119 if we go for Reisling (and I think we should).

Reisling can bang out the temple in 2t and can bang out 1t Empy Disciples until GA (maybe...we'll have ~70% odds of a non GM GP).

Eiswine (home of the 1t HE) can build a 2t temple and 1t Vicars (with ooodles of overflow)

I like Ries first as both the +1 Happy (from Empy temple + Incense) and the +10% beaker boost are useful in Ries, but no so much in our hammer heavy HE city.

Reis can get a Disciple to Eiswine in good time for Eiswine to start pumping Vicars stat post GA swap. In the meantime, Eis can put it's hammers into good use finishing up the CP and some more cats (now with 5xp out of the box )

Sounds about right. Except that it's Zinfindel with the huge hammers and Heroic Epic - Eiswein is the sugar/jungle city.

As much as I know a Vicar will greatly change the front, there doesn't seem much point in pushing so hard for that that we ignore everything else. So yeah, unless Hawks or something in game suggest otherwise, I agree with that plan.

We should probably make sure one of those Disciples goes to Clan lands, to give us the option of using Empy there later. Spiritual means it wouldn't cost much if we decide Clan should leave RoK for a while.

Also: Radiant Guards are draftable in Empy following cities.

A turn or two of max cash plus a round or two of drafting in Calabimia once we're in Empy.....

Um. Rathas are very useful...are they as useful as other things we could do with that level of investment, though? A turn of max cash means an extra turn without Iron weapons, an extra turn without being able to draft Ogres. Makes vampires further out, too.

Or, if we're going to spend that much cash, we could spend it on rushing the galley in the east, or on upgrading a bunch of Moroi to vampires, or finally getting a nice set of Subdue Animal hunters and pulling in the elephants.

I just don't see Rathas as something we really need en masse. I'd rather build them slower, a couple handbuilt, maybe the first 2 as draft + upgrade, but the 3rd through 10th? I don't see how they're worth that kind of rush.

[Thoth]

I've done most of the domestic stuff.

We've got some solid garrisons in GA and WD (13 units in each once we move the Moroi from SB to WD). Plus a nice sized pile of mobile units in the backlines to counterstrike with if needed.


Don't panic when you see the OMFG sign over the redlined 12 xp warrior.

At the start of the turn it was a 2 xp warrior and there was an elephant on the road blocking our reiforcements. So I sacrificed the warrior at 3/8% odds.

And he didn't die.

OMFG.



So the troops got where they needed to be.

I haven't finished up, but I'm off to bed. We still have three more Hawk missions to fly plus some griffons to either move or stand fast. I think we skip the 76% shot at the MG with the damaged lake griffon, but he could attack and if he survives he can be back on the Fish same turn.

[Mardoc]

Scouted a bit, Elli might finish it, or we might pause and leave it for tomorrow. Not sure how much he's comfortable finishing on his own.

Did take the shot on the Mud Golem, won. Figure griffs are a perishable asset, any turn now they'll get fireballs and start shooting them down.