[SPOILER] Yell0w - Rhoanna, Hippus

[Mafro]

T92 played and sent. I switched our negative research to Medicine, seeing as I doubt we'll ever want to research it. Not sure when Yell0w will take over again - let me know when you're ready to take back the reins!

We're focused on completing the GotN - 1 turn left after hitting End Turn - and getting our economy ready for war. When it completes we should start the next turn with some 537 gold in the bank.



We're also about 3 turns away from hooking up Copper.



Meanwhile, the barbarians are growing a bit restless. We have one lurking on our southern border. Hopefully he'll impale himself against the extremely strong defenses of our southern citadel. Just in case he does not, I've started a warrior moving to back up the defenses of Conrond Mor.



And speaking of barbarians...Ultigar, City of Gold, to our northeast is heavily defended. Ideally, we'd get a few Mounted Mercenaries right when the bulk of the garrison comes to attack us. It would be nice to cut our teeth on them out in the field, before descending on the city itself.



Also we now have five warriors in Murousbane, our northwestern city bordering Molach's lands. If I end up playing the next turn I intend to move a worker into the jungle two tiles north of the city and build a road. This carries a slight risk, though I don't think Molach would open up a second war front just to poach a single worker.

And if we're able to complete the road, it should only take us one turn to research Cartography and potentially get the benefits of foreign trade routes. We could also use a Mounted Mercenary to scout 2 or 3 tiles into his territory without him even being aware of it. Best of all, it gives us the ability to trade Molach for resources, of which we are in dire need. Those could be a game winner for us.



Suttree has joined Mardoc and Molach in the arms race with a vengeance. He either built or upgraded a ton of units last turn. While part of me doubts he's already researched Longbows, Firebows would explain the spike. He spent a bunch of gold last turn, and given his declaration of war I'm guessing it was on upgrades. I'm glad he's at war with Mardoc, though with Ice Elementals being vulnerable to fire, if he's got Firebows then I'm sure Mardoc is sweating.



I'm glad they went to war before we got GotN, else we might've been seen as more of a threat and thus as more of a target.

It will be interesting to watch the Power graph in the coming turns. If Suttree planned the declaration of war to coincide with upgrades to Firebows, we will likely see Mardoc's power take a dive in the next turn or two, assuming Suttree is able to use his newly minted force to take a city.

With powerful enemies on opposite borders, Mardoc has GOT to be hating life....

[Qgqqqqq]

Do you plan on expanding any further?

[Yell0w]

Hey hey, I'm back. You did a great job so far and things could hardly look better for us =)
I enjoyed reading your turn reports you do them very well.

I also played this turn and I think it's a little bit important that the game continues with my save, for the simple reason that I shifted some Warriors and a Worker to Feiss Mabdon to be able to hire 4-5 mercs to attack right into Ultigar ASAP. Looking at the screen shots my micro is almost exactly the same as yours.

I also moved our scouting warriors near Mardocs borders back towards Clar Marrachir to save some unit expenses.

I'm really exited about GotN finishing and us entering the war soonish. In the next two turns we'll also finish a couple Money Changers bringing our bonus gold in those cities to 70%! We should be closing the 200 gold per turn marker in the next 10 turns.

I'll definitely go with your roading plans towards Molach.

And THANKS again for taking over and the fine job you are doing!


Concerning expansion: we can either start building Bath Houses to vertically grow or start building a couple of settlers and a few workers to continue to grow horizontal. I'm really not sure what would be the best course of action here to be honest but I'm tending towards horizontal growth with another expansion phase a little bit later. What we should do though is get 1 more settler out in any case to grab another most likely Wines

[Mafro]

Hey hey, I'm back. You did a great job so far and things could hardly look better for us =)

Great! Glad to have you back, and I agree things are looking pretty good for us.

I also think that from HidingKneel's perspective, things are looking pretty good for him. While his GNP isn't great, he's got more cities than us and has been sheltered from an unwanted war without having to spend his world spell. He's just going to sit back and grow, unburdened by the cost of maintaining a big army like the others (and soon, us).

I also played this turn and I think it's a little bit important that the game continues with my save, for the simple reason that I shifted some Warriors and a Worker to Feiss Mabdon to be able to hire 4-5 mercs to attack right into Ultigar ASAP. Looking at the screen shots my micro is almost exactly the same as yours.

I considered an immediate attack but thought we might want bronze weapons beforehand, to minimize casualties. I haven't done the calculations, but if odds are good enough that we don't need it, then let's hit it. Lord knows we need the Gold resource.

I also moved our scouting warriors near Mardocs borders back towards Clar Marrachir to save some unit expenses.

Sounds good. Considering how busy Mardoc has got to be, I don't think there's much of a chance we'll need an early warning system against him. Also, it'll be good to get bronze on them as well. That said, I would like to make sure we don't have a stack of firebows suddenly show up on our borders. If we could put a fortified unit on the forested hill 1 tile south of the sheep tile that is northeast of Clar Marrachir, that would give us early warning of any Amurite movements.

I'm really exited about GotN finishing and us entering the war soonish. In the next two turns we'll also finish a couple Money Changers bringing our bonus gold in those cities to 70%! We should be closing the 200 gold per turn marker in the next 10 turns.

It'll be nice to finally have the capability to act. That said, we need to figure out how best to use that capability. I'm inclined to still want to go after Suttree, especially if he starts making gains against Mardoc. If we can get a decent stack of Mounted Mercenaries into his territory while his main force is in Mardoc's lands, we could potentially get a bunch of pillage gold and conquered cities at relatively little cost.

Concerning expansion: we can either start building Bath Houses to vertically grow or start building a couple of settlers and a few workers to continue to grow horizontal. I'm really not sure what would be the best course of action here to be honest but I'm tending towards horizontal growth with another expansion phase a little bit later. What we should do though is get 1 more settler out in any case to grab another most likely Wines

Personally, I like horizontal expansion. The additional cities will add to our maintenance costs, but if we use them to grab resources then we can expand vertically as well without the significant cost of bath houses.

Breaking news...as I write this the latest save just came in, with huge implications.

First, Mardoc and Molach have made peace!

Second, Molach has placed a worker in the tile 2NE of Murousbane. This gives him visibility on our city and with the inevitable road a potential invasion route (though if he leaves the tile open after building the road, we could put defenders on it...maybe even build a fort as well). That said, he could be thinking trade routes, just like we have been. I'm inclined to continue with our road in the jungle, as we can then pillage the other road in future and kill access to the plains next to Murousbane.

Third, Mardoc's power has taken a minor hit while Suttree's power continues to grow. That says to me that it is likely that Suttree is invading, presumably with firebows, and starting to do some damage. It also suggests that Suttree's homeland is lightly defended. Lastly, Suttree must be feeling confident, else he'd have used his world spell to remove Mardoc's Ice Elementals from the equation - another reason why I don't think Suttree is the defender in this conflict.

How much time do you think we have before Molach starts fielding vampires? Could we slip into Suttree's lands and take him out before that happens? If so, Molach would just see our power grow and presumably think we're holding it in defense (he still hasn't made contact with Suttree, so he wouldn't see us go to war with the Amurites). A strong power graph and a decent sized war chest might keep him from invading us while we pare down Suttree (our first turns attacking Suttree could see our coffers filled with pillage gold). If I were him, I'd keep the peace while going towards vampires...either that or start a minor war with HidingKneel in the hopes for some pillage gold or the spending of the Elohim world spell. Either would be worth it.

Or do we leave Suttree to take down Mardoc, assuming he can, and instead try and take Molach out ourselves? That scenario probably involves less immediate risk, but we lose the potential for foreign trade routes helping to fund the war effort. We also may end up fighting a conquest-bloated Amurite empire in the not-too-distant future. I don't think we need to worry about getting hit by HidingKneel, the only one not committed to war, as his land seems far enough away that we don't have to worry about him (though his scout found our southern border this turn).

The more I think about it, the more I like the simpler plan of going after Molach. We know he's got S5 bronze Moroi. We'll soon have S6 bronze Mounted Mercenaries, S7 if we use our world spell (though I'd prefer to save it for our second war, if at all possible). His closest city to us holds a Copper tile, so it's possible we could rob him of Copper with the first city we take.

And heck, he might be seeing us as a target...trying to take us out before we get GotN. Little does he know....

Anyway...lots of destruction to plan...!

[Yell0w]

It's gonna be a hard decision whom to attack thats for sure... Mardoc is a no-brainer but both Molach and Suttree could become lategame powerhouses, while HK might just get a turn ~110-125 ToM or Culture victory.

It's nice to be in a position to decide whom to attack though =)

GotN finished and we'll wait another turn after the next to hire Mercenaries. I need 6 to hit the city and we need additional gold for that. I might just hire 1 next turn for movement purposes.
I'll post some screen shots here today showing some of our cities, HK's Graphs etc.

Build a mine on the copper, I'll road the tile next turn and we are good to go!

Who said we have enough workers btw. I feel like I could use like 4-5 more right now

Also how many MM's do we need to hit Suttree? 10 or 15? depending on that we have the forces in 4 or 8 turns ready. I'll start roads towards Suttree ASAP

I didn't realize that minus research actually gets counted. Thanks for pointing that out for me =)

[Mafro]

Actually, I don't think the decision is going to be as hard as we thought. Molach just declared on us and there's a stack of 16 S5 Moroi on the jungle we were roading within striking distance of Murousbane (time to rename it!). There's another 2 Moroi immediately behind it as well.

We have enough coin to add 4 S6 Mounted Mercenaries to Murousbane (be sure to connect the Copper before recruiting them), using the Worker to recruit one of them. We also have 3 Warriors in the city, two of which have the Shock promotion - good against Moroi. I'm not sure the order of things...will our Warriors get the Bronze upgrade before he gets to attack? I hope so. If not, then we should probably move them out and back in to the city. It will cost one of them a 25% fortification, and two of them 5% fortification (the Shock promoted), but it will effectively give them a 33% increase in strength (moving them from S3 to S4).

That said, if he throws everything into the attack, including Burning Blood, he'll likely take the city. However, it should cost him dearly. We also have to consider that he might move his force to the forest 2E of Murousbane, which would allow him to fork the city with Feiss Madbdon (he can probably guess that there's a city there, based on visible culture).

This might be the time to use Warcry, sadly. It would be quite a strategic waste, considering the units it would be applied to, but it might save Murousbane (and it might not). I'm more inclined not to use it and instead to offer him a cease fire. If he sees that an attack on Murousbane would be costly, AND considers that we have GotN, AND that we have Bronze, AND that we're about to use Warcry...he might back down. Then again he might not.

Also, not sure about RB culture and AI diplomacy...the diplomacy screen typically has to be answered first and obscures everything...not sure if we're "allowed" to view the state of the game first and then reload to deal with diplomacy or not. I may ask that question on the tech thread.

If we do use Warcry, then we've got to be all in, and it will be a tough war. We may STILL lose Murousbane, as each defender will have to defeat 2 attackers. However, that should cost him most of his army and we'll have lost relatively little of ours (though admittedly our best units). As it stands we should have enough gold to recruit another 2 Mounted Mercenaries next turn, but we also need to be building warriors everywhere. We have more cities than he does, so we should be able to out-build him, with 1 or 2 MMs bought each turn for good measure.

The one thing I don't think we should do is use Warcry and then offer a ceasefire. It's just too much of a pansy move.

Anyway...enjoy the turn!

[Yell0w]

Hmm I WB tested this, without Warcry he'll lose about 4-6 Moroi
with Warcry he'll lose 7-9 Moroi, which still leaves him with plenty of units.
I'm biting myself in the ass now for shifting the warriors out of Maurosbane and not hooking up the copper faster. 2-3 warriors with +25% fortify would make a huge difference. This attack will be costly of course but MM's go down pretty quick to be honest. For str. 5 units to get 25%+ odds on str. 7 units with 20% defense boni is hard. Well Moroi are really really fucking strong. Mind that he got only two Moroi with any extra promotions in his stack. He'll be able to continue with about 11 Moroi and he'll be able to promote 7 of them two times. With city raiders they get odds on anything we can field. Honestly I don't know how to defend against that, they are fucking cheap too, not like he can't afford to replace any of them without damaging his economy too much.
He's gonna be able to attack with all 18 Moroi as well. He needs to use burning blood a lot ofc..... let's hope a lot of his Moroi will turn barbarian and attack and kill other Moroi.
Oh yeah, the Palisades really do matter now. All in all I'd say we'll lose 1-2 cites depending on the direction he takes, but he'll be able to pillage the shit out of us if he wants to.

My civ installation also crashes a lot with this save ...

[Yell0w]

Ok. So I used everything I can I shifted another 3 warriors into Maurosbane and hired another Merc after pillaging a cottage with a warrior thanks to Warcry brining us to a total of 12 units. Depending on RNG luck he'll be able to take the city with medium to heavy losses or maybe not at all. It's more likely he'll be able to take it though. Wasting Warcry like that also will take it's toll on any future defense or war effort made. So if he gets lucky we'll be almost done for, leaving only skeleton defenses in our other cities.

Ofc I switched production in almost all cities to warriors, our capital will build a Training Yard within 3 turns and I let the Money changers finish in two cities since with the overflow we'll get warrior at the exact same turn either way. I'll be able to swap to Nationhood/Apprenticeship/Conquest next turn, depending on the outcome of the battle that will be necessary.

Screen Shots:

[Mafro]

Very nicely done! I loved the pillage after Warcry to get that one more Mounted Mercenary.

Obviously it's not ideal, but Molach has GOT to crap himself when he sees the combination of MMs, Warriors, and Bronze in the city.

He's got 18 Moroi, the vast majority without any promotion. With Burning Blood and their +10% city attack bonus he should have an effective strength of 6.5 for most of his units. The one with Combat II will be at 8.5 and the other with Combat I will be at 7.5.

Against that we've got 5 S7 MMs benefiting from our 20% defense bonus with an effective strength of 8.4 (looks like one doesn't have Bronze...hopefully it gets it before Molach attacks).

We've also got 7 S5 Warriors with various promotions (I'll assume none are fortified). They get a city defense bonus of +25%.

1 Combat II, Shock - 11.25
1 Combat I, Shock - 10.25
2 Combat I - 8.25
3 Unpromoted - 7.25

If he goes for the city, this is definitely going to be a tough battle likely to wipe both sides out. That said, you are correct that he may end up holding the city, but it certainly won't be the walk in the park that he was likely hoping for.

Good luck!

[Mafro]

Just got the new save and saw this:



Molach is offering 60 gp and peace. He must've seen that the city was renamed "Maurosbane".

I can't click around the screen, but clicking on the enemy alert icon centers the map on the source of the alert and shows that he appears to have removed all forces from our territory except for one Moroi forking Maurosbane and Feiss Mabdon.

I suppose 60 gp covers the worker he took from us, but it does nothing to offset the loss of Warcry. I clicked on the Gold he offered, and he even has 134 available, so we could possibly counter with our own peace offer and demand more. Heck, he might end up buying us a MM.

At this point, we are just going to get relatively weaker each turn as Warcry wears off.

I think we either go after him as hard as we can, perhaps taking a few turns to build up our own overwhelming force (saving gold and recruiting a bunch of MMs), or we counter offer peace for 134 gp and use this turn to kill his Moroi, scout his lands, and possibly retake our worker (which I see working his tile north of the jungle he stole it from). If we counter offer peace, we use the 10 turns (assuming he accepts and the peace is enforced) to build up MMs and hit him immediately thereafter. Not sure that's in our best interest, as we'll be getting weaker due to the gradual loss of Warcry, but if we can outbuild/outrecruit him, then it might be worth it. Last I recall his manufacturing was about the same as ours, though his economy was half our size. We could also use the time to continue expanding, which he seems to have stopped doing, or even go after the next round of techs.

In the event we go full war footing, it will be tough to take full advantage of our mobility. We'll need to get into his territory to pillage and preferably keep our forces away from his main stack until such time as we can squash it. Ideally we'd head west, to what is presumably the heart of his empire, and cut any roads to where his main force is. His interior just can't be well defended given the size of the stack he marched into our territory.

I guess a third option is that we accept peace with him and use what remains of Warcry to immediately go after Suttree. I don't see Molach breaking the peace in the short term, given that he just sued for it, and with him still not having contact with Suttree he wouldn't be aware when we went to war with the Amurites. He'll be sitting in a defensive posture, building and maintaining an expensive army, teching towards vampires, while we hit the Amurites from behind. This would essentially be the plan previously put forward, but with Warcry having a small part in the war.

This seems a rather risky play, one that could end up with us looking pretty foolish if we're caught with our forces in Amurite lands, but it has the potential for a huge payoff if we catch Suttree unawares. Molach will probably be feeling pretty good about himself, having caused us to use Warcry, and he'll probably just build up for a few turns, keeping a defensive posture while teching towards vampires (slowly, with his GNP). Or he might use that expensive army of his to invade HidingKneel, hoping to at least force him to use Sanctuary (which would be in our best interest as well). I'm sure it would seem poetic to him if he could get two opponents to blow their world spells with minimal losses....

Nah...the more I think about it we just need to hit Molach hard.

HidingKneel's got to be loving this....