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

[Mardoc]

Yeah regen

I had forgotten the command posts though.

How are vamps 5xp then?
CP/FoT/what? (Presume not conquest/apprenticeship because of agrarian/drafting)

v8 EitB Command Posts are worth 3 XP. Form of the Titan rounds them off.

Do you plan to skeleton spam at all?

It's not a main plan, but it'll probably happen as a byproduct of our other plans. Skeleton spam isn't worth building 120 hammer vamps for on its own - if all we want is numbers, we can get that by building 8 warriors for that cost. Or 16 Orcish warriors. Spectre spam is much more valuable to us, because Spectres have more mobility, more strength, and don't cost upkeep or cause WW. But once we have the vamps, if they have any downtime, we might as well make some more boots to dilute collateral and soak up attacks, sure. I don't think skeletons will ever be the piece of our army that people fear, but they ought to manage to be worth having, at least.

Here's a fun thought for Vampire cities with GMs that are well under happy cap: With Empy we can draft Radiant Guards for one pop and +3 unhappy for 6t. IOW, we get a 60h unit (with 2xp in our CP cities) and an extra 18 base hammers from the unhappy over the next 6t.





(of course we need to invest some hammers into Vicars for spreading first Soon.

That feels like cheating . One pop into 78 hammers? I suppose we don't actually have all that many cities that fit that category, though. And it's nearly time to start harvesting pop for XP, too.

I don't think it's worth buying a Vicar just for the ability to draft RG's, but if we want it anyway for Ratha, say, then we might as well pick up some RG.

I don't think we have the range to burn Wind Drake t122, but unless they step lively I think we have a shot at burning it on t123.
If the Fawn/Worker stack moves as expected, a road 1 NW of the pigs lets us hit the Fawns with Chariots/WRs. I'm not sure if we take the shot or not. It's likely going to cost a chariot or two to kill that stack. A worthwhile exchange under most circumstances, but we'd probably be a bit light on bodies t123 for the assault on WD. I'd rather engage the Fawns in the flatland city than on a hilltop. They can keep the workers. If we burn WD, they won't be doing much for a few turns anyway and we might be able to bag them later.

The real prize here are those Villages. That's a *lot* of pillage gold and we still have 3 highly promoted warriors in search of chariots.

I would like to - but two more turns ought to be at minimum two more warriors. Plus the centaur in the area. Plus the Fawns, if they're thinking about an overall defense and don't just run east, yes. Plus anything that can be provided from neighboring cities. I know their power graph is low, I know we have eyes on probably most of it in the north...but do you really think they have *nothing*?

Anyway, I would contend that the capture/pillage gold is nice, but the real prize is forcing them to either:
A) Build/draft a lot of warriors, all over the place
or
B) Remove their centaurs from the strike force and turn that into a zone defense instead (or even wizards for zone defense?)
or
C) Keep losing cities

Anyway, we can wait and see what they do. If they're going to stop us, they need to bring up reinforcements from their backlines, pronto.

As for the Fawns - I don't think 25% for a hill is really much worse than 10% for a city (or, ahem, 50% for city + river crossing, depending on our mobility). If they move to be relevant, I'd rather hit them when they're on their own than let them stack up. I'd say there's a decent chance they stay unengaged, though, staying put or moving further east or something. They don't seem to be thinking in terms of killing our stack, instead thinking in terms of defending everywhere. If they move somewhere that we can keep ignoring them, I'm in favor of that. Their worker needs have been declining as their city count does, so killing workers wouldn't hurt them that much

[Thoth]

Not buying Vicars, building 1t Vicars in Riesling. We'll want one for Zinfandel for some 1t Mob 2, Raider Rathas, one for Chardonay (happies, spec slots and +10% beakers), Pinot Grigo (happies, +10% beakers) and Mead (happies mostly) for sure.

We have a Vicar on the board (t122) who heads south towards the Stalingrad front. Eot 122 we finish another Vicar in Ries. T123 Vicar proceeds to Champagne (which will have just grown to size 13 and will be working a crap tile) and founds a Temple. Draft the crap tile away as a Mob 1 Radiant Guard, and dial up a 2t Vicar. T124 new Vicar from Riesling heads to Zin and builds a temple. Zin pauses 1t Vampires in favour of a couple of 1t Rathas, then alternates Vamp/Ratha.
t125 Champagne's Vicar either heads to the front or builds a temple in Eiswine (draft, dial up 2t Vicar). Reis Vicar heads to either Pinot or Chardonay

ect

I'm thinking Sutter Home, Champagne, Mead and Eiswine can all be drafted once profitably. They're all circa size 10-12 which sucks for Feasting, and they'll be growing into weak tiles atm. (we desperately need to divert some worker turns into completing the Mead/Eiswine road)

Ries, Chardonay, Pinot and umm....can't remember it's name...city NE of Reis are all decent sizes and I'd rather Feast in those cities than draft them.

I'd also like to pry one loose to build a temple in the Elohim capital. We could really use the +2 happy there.


As far as what we can do in the Westlands.....we'll fly some Hawks next turn and see what we can see.

[Mardoc]

Didn't take a picture, but I did log in last night. We have a very promising option - not sure if it's a misclick or just overlooked, but the Clowns have two stacks near ex-Saltus/Stalingrad (now Dunkirk ). One is the mages and Gibbon, covered by Djinn, inside the city. The other, though, is adepts, puppets, and skeletons, and nothing much else, one tile NE. Something like 10 Adepts, 10 puppets, 10 skellies.
Maybe they moved more onto it after I looked - it was still their turn when I saw this. If that happened...well, depends on what exactly they did.

If not, though...I want, badly, to kill that stack. It wouldn't cripple them, but it would hurt them a lot, to lose most of their up and coming mage candidates. Would cost us about 20 units to kill 10 adepts - I doubt we'd lose m(any) battles, but they could probably kill anything we use on their turn. That's about half our current stack, 2/3 of our hitters.

Still, trading ~800-900 hammers of Moroi/chariots for 600 hammers of adepts seems like a good deal to me. Adepts are worth more, particularly summoner adepts who've had lots of time to gather XP, plus we have a dramatic production advantage. And it wouldn't be automatic or guaranteed that we lose the whole force, they'd have to work at it.

On top, it would presumably buy us another turn, as they'd most likely spend their time killing our survivors instead of pushing forward. They'd still have Gibbon, a handful of mages, the Priests of Winter, and their conventional units, but our leftovers and the units we're building ought to be able to deal with that, given the time.

Given the pace, we probably have a full day at least to think about it and double-check that they're exposed.

[Thoth]

I had a look.

There are 11 skelletons, 2 st 4 ice eles and a Heroic Defense 1 warrior that we'll need to wade through to get at the Adepts.

If we can do it, it would gut their Arcane forces. They have 3 mages and 4 adepts (plus Gibbon) in Dunkirk. Killing off 10 Adepts would be huge.....IF we can do it.

We'll need a road (we probably won't be able to cover the combat workers), a dead Spectre (EB, C1, E3) and 14 attacks in order to expose the Adepts. If we flub on one or more of the attacks, then we'll need another attack or two. In order to avoid the river crossing penalty, we'll need to use 3 1/2 movement points to move 1N of their stack.

Hasted Mounted units can do that (4 Orc, 5 Calabim Chariots + Hero and 5 WRs IIRC). Send in Hero first to clear out the 5 Def Warrior, then the chariots and enough WRs to expose the Adepts.

After that.....Hasted Mob 1 Burning Blood Moroi can move 4 tiles (and have Blitz). If we cross the river, we maximize the chance of an Adept kill but we'll be out of moves. Once the top Adepts are cleared out, if we get good enough odds, we could attack across the river and hope to take little enough damage to be able to attack a second time with high odds. I'm not sure how many Moroi we have in Napa, but I don't think it's enough.

We'll have a lookie see tomorrow once we're finally up again.

[Thoth]

And we definitely want to fly a Hawk mission first.

I'm looking at puppet promos.

In between Dunkirk and the exposed stack, there are 13 puppets with Light. Only one of the 14 Adepts we can see in those two stacks has Light as a promotion.

I'd really like to know where those 6 or 7 Light Adepts are before we spend our Army.

Though it does occur to me that killing those particular Adepts would be most useful. They all picked up xp against Stalingrad's redlined defenders after 1 Snowfall, 8 million dead puppets, a few dead skellies softened up the defenders. We did manage to kill two Adepts on defense though.

[Mardoc]

In between Dunkirk and the exposed stack, there are 13 puppets with Light. Only one of the 14 Adepts we can see in those two stacks has Light as a promotion.

Puppets get to roll again for Mutation promotions, in addition to picking up the ones from their parent adept. It'd be terrifying, if they weren't Str 2.

I'll worry about extra adepts in the fog if you find puppets with spells you can't find on the adepts, but I'm not going to worry over extra Mutation promos.

[Thoth]

I've gotten most of the domestic stuff done. I still need to run through the Orc cities post City States swap to double check them.

We've got a bunch of warfront decisions to make, but I need to go to bed so I'm going to pause the game until we can discuss in game.

[Mardoc]

Figures I would make it home 20 minutes after you're done for the night.

Still, I was hoping for an early evening, so I guess I've got that. I'll do my best to make it home earlier tomorrow.

[Mardoc]

Huh. I do see a reasonable alternative to striking now. That is, to retreat once more, let them have Napa but not our army. Next turn, our Vicar and Radiant Guard both can be in range of their stack, if it stays put or advances. It would be even more effective to attack with the catapults brought along, and with our first set of Vamps/spectres.

Only trouble is, I don't quite see where to stage. If we empty Napa, they can probably hit our stack after taking it. And if we leave behind enough troops to force them to use snowfall again, then I'm not sure we have the hitters needed to finish them the turn after. And Blinding Light, though good, does have a resist chance - all they'd need is one of Gibbon or his puppets to resist (and survive), and they could nuke us again. Gonna need some thought.

[Qgqqqqq]

Cab held units cast spells?