Caution: Brainstorming in progress (Spoilers!)

[Mardoc]

Oh, I think I just figured something out. Ellimist gaining Sheut Stone. He must have built that settlement on the marble, gifted it to Hyborem, then declared war and took it back.

[HidingKneel]

Oh, I think I just figured something out. Ellimist gaining Sheut Stone. He must have built that settlement on the marble, gifted it to Hyborem, then declared war and took it back.

Very clever of him...

New turn in. New undercouncil resolution to vote on:



Er... don't remember what this one does. Something about destroying tile improvements maybe? Anyway, sounds annoying. I voted no.

Now, the main event. I decided the time for subtlety was over, and moved our big mage stack over next to Ellimist's city.



First we fired off Domination (got ourselves a Phalanx and a Nightwatch). Then Maelstrom and Rust, then a bunch of other stuff (Djinns, Air Elementals, Fireballs, Pit Beasts, Chariots, Spectres, Ellimist's units from last turn). Cleaned up the redlined Eidolons with Gibbon and Archmages at 99% odds for a little extra experience.



Had two spells left... used one to give the stack Regeneration, and the other to fly an Eye over one of Ellimist's remaining supercities:



He's got his two remaining Rathas in there, but not much else as you can see. Didn't fly an Eye over the other supercity this turn, but we did last turn and there were just two units there.

Our stack is sort of exposed. I tried to make some kind of wall to prevent us from getting Blinded, but there were just too many ways he can come at us with a 5-move Ratha; there are some weak points that he could punch through if he wanted.
But it hardly matters; two Rathas alone aren't going to do much. If he wants to hurt our mage stack, he's got to punch through our new Phalanx .

So it looks like this is pretty much over... possibly we could even finish Ellimist off next turn. He's only got enough gold to hire 3 mercs, on top of the units he can build and draft between turns... nothing that can stand up to the kind of beating we can dish out at this point, especially if we're positioned to fork his two remaining supercities.

Got our 8th node online. Layout now is 2 Death - 2 Meta - 2 Body - 1 Mind - 1 Enchantment.
So all our adepts will start with Death I, Meta I, Body I, and Mind I.

[DaveV]

It doesn't look as though you're going to get much use out of Gaelan...

[HidingKneel]

It doesn't look as though you're going to get much use out of Gaelan...

Yeah...

For some reason, I thought you could upgrade him to an Archmage. But it looks like that's wrong; he's just a Mage with the hero promotion. Which would be a pretty nice catch under some circumstances; since we're the Balseraphs, he could eventually do the work of 4 ordinary Mages. But we don't exactly have a shortage of those...

[Mardoc]

Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would!

I'd agree, it's worth trying to finish Ellimist next turn. I saw our Air Elementals have 5 moves of their own, on top of the movement from the mages and puppets, so the main issue is simply whether he can put in units strong enough to require Maelstrom/Rust, or if we can just bash our way in. But I'll feel a lot better with our stack at the hub. That is, assuming we don't simply provoke a concession

Got ourselves a nightwatch? With two size 20+ cities likely to fall next turn? Seems like a nice combo to me!

The FFH manual does say Gaelan is upgradable to Archmage - but a) he probably still has to be level 6, and b) I bet he counts as one of the four, so we might have to delete one of our current archmages to do it. I think that'll be worth doing for Twincast, but not yet.

[DaveV]

It doesn't look as though you're going to get much use out of Gaelan...

For some reason, I thought you could upgrade him to an Archmage. But it looks like that's wrong; he's just a Mage with the hero promotion. Which would be a pretty nice catch under some circumstances; since we're the Balseraphs, he could eventually do the work of 4 ordinary Mages. But we don't exactly have a shortage of those...

xml says you can. You may just have to wait till he accumulates 6 promotions. By which time the game will be over, of course.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm not certain, but I think the "fund dissidents" option simply gives a happiness penalty to anyone running Overcouncil.

[Ranamar]

I'm not certain, but I think the "fund dissidents" option simply gives a happiness penalty to anyone running Overcouncil.

I thought it was anyone not running Undercouncil, but same idea...

[HidingKneel]

Huh... I did a worldbuilder experiment with Gaelan, giving myself a Gaelan and all magic techs and leveled him up to 6,
but it didn't give me the option to upgrade. Maybe I forgot something. Anyway, he'd make a nice heroic archmage; wish I'd thought to get him some decent free promotions on birth, though (Meta II would have been nice).

But true: it doesn't matter, because this game is over. To the point where I'm not going to try to optimize any more; we could have swapped our nodes around to have Strength 16 Air elementals or Strength 11 Spectres, but I just settled for Strength 8 Air Elementals and Strength 5 Spectres. This wasn't quite enough to get the job done:





We wouldn't have been able to finish him off this turn anyway, because I think we also have to kill his settlements. But we can do that next turn.

Got ourselves two more Phalanxes this turn, too.

[Mardoc]

Looks good . A bit sad that the conversion of a winning army to an actual win will take a while; hopefully you can at least keep interested enough to keep from losing mages.

What's next? Beating on one of the dwarves? Racing for the Tower?