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

[Thoth]

(we burnt the city). Note that there are 3 Malakim workers underneath the Fawns on the Ivory.

Yeah . Unless they have something both awesome and fast in the fog, our worst case next turn is ganking three workers and running away . Good chance we can get at least one more city, and possibly the workers on top.

The Fawns/workers can move to a forest on their way home, so they should be safe from us next turn.

But it will be interesting to see what they put into Balderham and what they do with their Centaurs/Wizzzards. If they pull them south to cover that flank, they open themselves up to an assault in the north. If they don't....they may have enough boots around to cover Blderham.


But did you notice the Purple borders to the south? :evilgrin:

Excellent! I was nervous about that 20% Merchant chance .

I was jumping up and down in my chair as I hit end turn and waited to see what we got. Massively happy we got something other than a GM. We'd have had a 40ish% chance of a non GM from Chardonay in a few turns, but we'd have had to eat the turn of anarchy t121 in order to get Vicars and Rathas rolling in time.

As it is.....this should help put the game away quickly.

Should be able to build a Vicar next turn, too, right? Just need 56 base hammers in Riesling, and last I looked it was at about 44 - a little bit of GA and some overflow ought to push us to 80.

I haven't double checked, but yes we should be able to 1t Vicars from Riesling during GAge.

I'd like to send the first one south for anti-Djin duty. The second founds a temple in our HE city which then pushes out 3/4 1t Rathas. Immobilizing most of their stack is almost as good a killing it.

#3 covers the North, #4,5,6 and 7 build Temples for Chardonay, Barefoot Man, Pinot Grigo and Mead.

I really want to strip away their Djinni, even if we can't follow up and kill stuff, it should at least push us back to a stalemate. Which we can then hopefully break with a mess of vampires.

We aim to immobilize and cripple that huge stack in Liti with Rathas/Cultists. Then we raze the two northern Gnome cities while their main army and attention is elsewhere.

There are 40ish junk units + the real units in Liti. We'll need a metric crapton of units to kill them all.

We'll need far fewer to burn the Gnomes out of the north.

(we'll need some more boots and combat workers to assault the north.....this is doable in a fairly short number of turns)

Anyway, if we can get control of Team Clown again, then the next 10-20 turns should be enough for victory. Maybe we can even win this before the vamp GA ends .

Tech plan:

t121: Elohim dump their beakers into Smelting (they'll come up just short of finishing it). Vamps trigger GA, swap into Empy (suffering some unhappies in the process. BFD) and finish Smelting with a ton of beaker overflow.
t122: Found the two Eastern Orc Island cities. Elohim 1t cartography. Orcs swap into City States. Calabim 1t MftD.
123: Zealot heads towards Shiner Bock (eta unknown. Depends where the Zealot spawns.). Once OO is spread in SB it builds a 2t Temple of the Overlords then the Orcs swap into OO and SB starts pushing out Cultists (some to spread OO for more Cultists, some to spread havoc ). Elohim and Calabim put a lot of beakers into IW.
t124: I think we'll nab IW after GA teching finishes.
t125: Start ?? AV would be awesome to have (orcs can swap once it's spread a bit and we have enough cultists ) so would Fanatacism. both are ~3500b. Math/Eng is ~7k.

I like AV/Fanat/Math/Eng/Mithril Working. But (AV or Fanat) + 4 Node Techs and Sorcery is kinda sexy too.

Mages and ritualists are non useful during AL. But if Warbaxia trigger AL while we still have a strong Eastern Army....we'll WTFpwn the puppetless Clowns. So they're worth grabbing even if we have to do without magic for 14t.

[Ellimist]

Calabim demographics before triggering the GA:




Military status:




Empire status:

[Thoth]

MFG t120:

Note that the Calabim are producing almost as many hammers now as they were at the tail end of their last GA.


And we're about to trigger another GA for the Calabim on t121.

And now we have Vamps with Vicars and Rathas soon to follow.

And soon Cultists for some waterborne fun.

If I'm not mistaken, if we head to Fanat straight after IW....we should be able to 1t Losha on overflow in Zinfandel.


I'm thinking this is pretty much GG. We'll still have to convince the other players on the battlefield ofc, but barring any massive blunders on our part this game is in the bag.

http://youtu.be/AyenRCJ_4Ww

[Thoth]

Obligatory "we gots Feud and Vamps" spam post:

http://youtu.be/OKRJfIPiJGY

[Thoth]

The Loyal citzens of Stalingrad appear a bit unhappy about being greeted with "welcome to the Empire, here's a club. go report to the ramparts"

[Mardoc]

I'm thinking this is pretty much GG. We'll still have to convince the other players on the battlefield ofc, but barring any massive blunders on our part this game is in the bag.

If we were up against anything but summon spam, I would be convinced too. As it is...well, we're in a good position, but I wouldn't say GG yet.

Also, excellent banter post by DaveV. Snowfall is kinda equivalent to nuclear winter, right?

[Mardoc]

But it will be interesting to see what they put into Balderham and what they do with their Centaurs/Wizzzards. If they pull them south to cover that flank, they open themselves up to an assault in the north. If they don't....they may have enough boots around to cover Blderham.


But did you notice the Purple borders to the south? :evilgrin:

Ayup!

My only disappointment with this little push, is that it's not magical enough to cause a Lacuna. But...that's kinda like saying my only disappointment with this lottery ticket is that I only won $100K, if I'd matched the sixth number it would have been millions .

I'd like to send the first one south for anti-Djin duty. The second founds a temple in our HE city which then pushes out 3/4 1t Rathas. Immobilizing most of their stack is almost as good a killing it.

#3 covers the North, #4,5,6 and 7 build Temples for Chardonay, Barefoot Man, Pinot Grigo and Mead.

I find myself in agreement here. We need enough Vicars to stay near Gibbon and neutralize him, but other than that the real value of Empy is Ratha. It's a tad frustrating to build them instead of Vamps, but those two have very different reward ratios - the first Ratha is worth a ton, the 2nd through 4th are worth a lot, and pretty soon they're not worth much. While Vamps are the other way around - one single vamp isn't terribly scary, but a stack of 20 is terrifying. So yeah, let's get some Ratha out to buy us time for that huge vamp stack.

We aim to immobilize and cripple that huge stack in Liti with Rathas/Cultists. Then we raze the two northern Gnome cities while their main army and attention is elsewhere.

There are 40ish junk units + the real units in Liti. We'll need a metric crapton of units to kill them all.

But...don't we need a metric crapton of units to keep that stack under control anyway?

Also, um...isn't that a pretty good training opportunity? We could get all kinds of nice XP onto our Moroi and Chariots once Djinn aren't a problem anymore.

We'll need far fewer to burn the Gnomes out of the north.

(we'll need some more boots and combat workers to assault the north.....this is doable in a fairly short number of turns)

I agree a second front will be more useful than the difference between defense and offense in the Saltus area. Just...let's be careful not to let that stack loose. We're still going to need a steady stream of reinforcements that way, of one kind or another.

I like AV/Fanat/Math/Eng/Mithril Working. But (AV or Fanat) + 4 Node Techs and Sorcery is kinda sexy too.

Our shamans are doing well, for exactly zero effort into getting them lots of starting XP. But they're not doing *that* well, not with the awesome tech pace we're looking at. We could be at Sorcery in 10 turns, and have something like 1 Shaman with 10XP. I think it needs to be delayed a lot more. I'm sorta tempted to pick up Alteration, so we can get Enchanted Blade onto our melee hordes, but other than that, we can't benefit much from the arcane tree just yet.

Particularly Engineering. I'm strongly tempted to go there before AV and Fanaticism, our recent military successes were all due to having more mobility than the enemy. Well, at least AV - Fanaticism would be worth a lot to us, granted.

And, um, if we get AV real soon now - which civ do we use for Ritualists, exactly? Orcs are going to be busy with Cultist production, Vamps will still be on Empy duty when they're not vamping it up, Elohim are soon to be busy with Ogres, that doesn't leave much excess for AV.

I would go for something like Smelting/Carto/OO/IW/Fanaticism/Math/Engineering, and then consider AV to swap the vamps into it at the end of their GA, but probably Mithril to make all our units uber. Really, I think we can win this with Ogres/chariots/Vamps, so let's focus on the techs that boost those units, not another shiny that takes 10 turns to get in play. And that means Engineering/Mithril.

I'm willing to make an exception for Fanaticism mostly because I want to see Losha, Corlindale, and vampiric Paladins/Eidolons, not because I think those units will turn the tide .

Although - y'know those combat master vamps I just suggested we make? They'd be excellent candiates for upgrading to Eidolon/Paladins, wouldn't they?

Mages and ritualists are non useful during AL. But if Warbaxia trigger AL while we still have a strong Eastern Army....we'll WTFpwn the puppetless Clowns. So they're worth grabbing even if we have to do without magic for 14t.

Yes, if that could force AL, it would be worth it on its own. But I think we can force AV with either vamps or Cultists, if we're going to have a chance of doing it at all.

[Mardoc]

Also, good news - the road pillaging worked. Team Clown has moved up closer, and rebuilt the Gems road, so next turn we need to evacuate Saltus, but they haven't killed anything but the wolf rider who was alone.

And it's already T4's turn, so perhaps tonight we'll get to play again.

[Thoth]

A few shots of some up and coming Orc cities:

Fat Tire:

[/quote]

Awesome Gold pump that will get better with time. Target size 16 (eot 122). T123 we'll work River Cotton, Riverside PH Mine and 14 cotts/hamlets/villages. SFA for hammers, but oh my oh my would ya lookit that gold potential. The Brewery will be finished up in a few turns with the help of two SoKs from NBA and the two SoKs currently in Stalingrad.


Lakeport Honey:

[spoiler]

We're grooming this up as another gold city. It could make a decent hammer city but we're a bit pinched for gold right now and the city doesn't have Warrens so we'll dump the chop hammers into LH/Harbour/Inn and cottage the shit out of it instead.

Samuel Adams:

YAGC. Harbour is already in place, LH and cott spam soon to follow. It'll lose the PH mine to Bud come t122 and swap to either a cott or a 3c coast tile.

Wildcat:

Excellent potential, but has been gimped by no food specs and 3 food farms. Growth curve will accelerate nicely come t122. Pearls make for some nice easy gold production while we grow into mines/build LH/Harbour/other stuff.

Steeler:

Rough, dirty and effective. It'll grow a bit and pick up a few more hammers once we swap into CS.

Shiner Bock:

Lynchpin of our SW defenses this city is rapidly shaping up to be a production monster. We'll use these hammers to push out OO.

[Thoth]

My only disappointment with this little push, is that it's not magical enough to cause a Lacuna. But...that's kinda like saying my only disappointment with this lottery ticket is that I only won $100K, if I'd matched the sixth number it would have been millions .

Yeah, our un-egged beer is still pretty nice.

A swarm of Cultists/Ritualists leavened with some Vamps backing up our Western Armies might just do the Lacuna trick. If not, I'm sure we can find something useful to do with them.

But...don't we need a metric crapton of units to keep that stack under control anyway?

A few Cultists and or Rathas should do the trick nicely.

Also, um...isn't that a pretty good training opportunity? We could get all kinds of nice XP onto our Moroi and Chariots once Djinn aren't a problem anymore.

Possibly....assuming we still hold Stalingrad t122. If they retake Stalingrad on their t121 we'll be in position to thump on them t122 from Napa. Only fly in that ointment is that I don't think we'll have a Vicar in range until t123.

So we may lose Napa as well on t122.

After that, we should be able to counter attack effectively on that front with Vicar/Ratha support.

I agree a second front will be more useful than the difference between defense and offense in the Saltus area. Just...let's be careful not to let that stack loose. We're still going to need a steady stream of reinforcements that way, of one kind or another.

Under control I think.

Our shamans are doing well, for exactly zero effort into getting them lots of starting XP. But they're not doing *that* well, not with the awesome tech pace we're looking at. We could be at Sorcery in 10 turns, and have something like 1 Shaman with 10XP. I think it needs to be delayed a lot more. I'm sorta tempted to pick up Alteration, so we can get Enchanted Blade onto our melee hordes, but other than that, we can't benefit much from the arcane tree just yet.

Particularly Engineering. I'm strongly tempted to go there before AV and Fanaticism, our recent military successes were all due to having more mobility than the enemy. Well, at least AV - Fanaticism would be worth a lot to us, granted.

And, um, if we get AV real soon now - which civ do we use for Ritualists, exactly? Orcs are going to be busy with Cultist production, Vamps will still be on Empy duty when they're not vamping it up, Elohim are soon to be busy with Ogres, that doesn't leave much excess for AV.

Can't do Calabim AV if we want to keep the Calabim in Overcouncil (and I think we do) so AV will need to be Orc. There will be some lag time between teching AV and getting it spread to Orcdom + temple built so we'll have some time to push out Cultists. If needs be, we can delay swapping Orcs into AV for a turn or two in order to get a couple more Cultists out. .

I would go for something like Smelting/Carto/OO/IW/Fanaticism/Math/Engineering, and then consider AV to swap the vamps into it at the end of their GA, but probably Mithril to make all our units uber. Really, I think we can win this with Ogres/chariots/Vamps, so let's focus on the techs that boost those units, not another shiny that takes 10 turns to get in play. And that means Engineering/Mithril.

I like AV after IW for the Shrine chance. +1 beakers/city with AV is junk. But Entropy Mana is pure gold. And we can push out either a GS or GP from the Elohim easily.

Although - y'know those combat master vamps I just suggested we make? They'd be excellent candiates for upgrading to Eidolon/Paladins, wouldn't they?

Yeppers.