I'm not worried in the short-short term. I'm worried in the medium term, when Falamar's insane research gets him enough goodies that we can't just coast, the Malakim probably die, and his/Sheelba's war ends.
And Snowfall really is that good. Snowfall changes it from maybe 20-50% chances (including Maelstrom, here) for our mainline summons on Tigers (and you better believe he'll field something better eventually) to 80-95% odds on virtually every unit.
Edit: I think the issue with CC is that our bottleneck is almost certainly going to be tech, not hammers. I'll look at it sometime, but I kinda doubt it will be worthwhile.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Um, wow. I seriously underestimated the amount of beakers we still have left to collect. Just for the remaining three rituals, no detours, we need something like 60,000 more beakers. Our current breakeven research rate is just under 200 bpt. If we can't boost that, we're looking at 300 more turns - and then building the rituals - and then conquering the rest of the world. There's only 400 turns left in the game before Score victory comes out!
And I want several of those detours! I also really, really, do not want this game to be a race against the clock with 10 more turnsets for each of us. So we're going to have to pick up the tech pace.
Looking at the tech tree, we've already got the majority of the tricks unlocked. We can use the Tower for 10-15K beakers somewhere along the way...but mostly we're going to have to improve our tech one city at a time. Courthouses, markets/elder councils, tax office/moneylender, and of course building and growing onto cottages. While, of course, simultaneously keeping enough military production to survive and thrive
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On the 'bright' side, most of the wonders we're talking about are already built by the Lanun. Celestial Compass, Guild of Hammers, Form of the Titan, Pillar of Chains, City of a Thousand Slums....all Lanun. Along with a bunch of less vital wonders. So we don't have as much reason to divert from our 60K beeline as I'd thought. If we could figure out a way to conquer the Lanun with Drifa, that would be a huge boost to our empire...
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And, because Molach asked for it, the State of the Military, T290:
We've also got a handful of animal units and summons, not shown.
It looks awesome and mighty - but it's only the fifth biggest military on Erebus:
And bear in mind, that apparently unaffected increasing slope of the Lanun has been while we've been killing 5-10 units/turn. Mostly that's because the dead units are mostly summons - but this is why we worry. And continue to put so much of our production into military despite our economic doldrums.
Yeah, the amount of beakers we'll need is enormous and we need to decide on ToD. It's gotta be either Strenght of Will or Divine Essence.
But indeed like Mardoc pointed out even if we use ToD for 15k beakers we still might run out of time. A lot depends on how and when (or maybe even if?) Falamar will bring a huge doomstack on our borders, it'll be hard to both improve our economy better to get those techs and keep pumping out enough military to be safe. It's going to be tricky to balance between these.
I think the main question now is whether we want to head towards Divine Essence or Strenght of Will first - or do we want to grab something for our safety before those? I think Q has been in favour of SoW but I'm not so sure of others. I personally would start to tech towards Divine Essence as soon as possible.
The GS from Arcane Lore is still availabe (none of our opponents have Sorcery) in case we head that way for what that is worth. Sadly the GS can't bulb SoW before Pass Through the Ether.
EDIT: I just realised by opening the save that I had declinded the Iron deal (for some reason), so the next player should definitely re-offer that trade.
A fairly uneventful set for me. I switched research to Smelting, to check whether we have iron. In the meantime, we might as well take some of Varn's.
It turns out we do have iron, and it's even already mined!
And a good thing, too, because Varn decided it was getting very lonely being our only friend.
I clicked on the "Buboes has been killed" text, and this is where the screen recentered, so here is the place where the deed was done.
Mahala dredged up a stack of three injured beastmen from somewhere to the west. I won two 67% battles for 7 XP on two adepts, and a 98% battle for 4 XP on a hunter. Thanks, Mahala!
Varn has a pretty good stack with a couple Radiant Guards and a very buff Bambur that can't break through the mountains (I filled the gap with a bunch of javelin throwers).
When I was looking at the screenshot, I realized I made a mistake and left a stack of workers within range of Mahala's fawn. The next player should be able to wake up a couple javelin throwers and cover the workers, if that's considered legit.
I have a pretty good strike force ready to attack Mahala, but I think we need some collateral to take her cities without too many losses. I would vote for the two southern cities, since they have some good resources and lots of ancient forests.
Edit: we have two Air 2 mages in Hyll. Falamar doesn't seem to be doing much of anything, so we could probably send them east, especially since we should be picking up some more soon.
so, is there consensus on killing mahala v. vassalizing v. using her as a training ground? I lean towards the 3rd choice, if only because the whole world is against us and we need more mages.
I'm leaning towards killing Mahala but training ground might have its uses too, so I'm not against that either. Definitely not vassalizing, I think that'd violate our rules to some extent.
Good consolidation set. Up to 11 mages, with three more adepts on the verge of upgrade And now enough culture in the west that no one can 1-turn our cities. I'd feel a lot more comfortable hitting Mahala now than before your turnset, that's for sure.
Very glad to see we have Iron. Just need 3K more beakers and we can actually *use* the stuff.
Glad to see you were able to find the breathing space to start working on the economy again, too. Looks like maybe half our cities are doing something that will help there.
It would figure that Varn would spend 20 turns letting Bambur just stare at Sheelba's units, but now he wants to make something happen with us...
@Jalepeno: I would be happy to kill Mahala at this point. Backlines security is worth a good bit, and she might be causing us some War Weariness. Plus, y'know, extra cities. I think we can turn Falamar into a pretty good adept training ground with the right preparation. A base adept attacking a 60 HP (post-Maelstrom) Empower 5 Tiger should have 45% odds and get 8 XP if he wins. I figure Falamar will keep throwing tigers at us basically forever.
Edit: Agreed with Aurorarcher. If we vassalize Mahala, then we can't turn her corner of the world into Ice!
Quote:@Jalepeno: I would be happy to kill Mahala at this point. Backlines security is worth a good bit, and she might be causing us some War Weariness. Plus, y'know, extra cities. I think we can turn Falamar into a pretty good adept training ground with the right preparation. A base adept attacking a 60 HP (post-Maelstrom) Empower 5 Tiger should have 45% odds and get 8 XP if he wins. I figure Falamar will keep throwing tigers at us basically forever.
This. Killing Mahala means we only need to concentrate forces in 1-2 areas, puts us that much ahead in prepping our land for the long tech ahead, and we should be able to train on the stacks that the west will throw at us (I'm thinking more of units wounded by summons than just straight out attacking with adepts, though.
Also, who vassalized Varn? It doesn't come up in the screenshot, but seems the rational explanation.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Kept both cities. I've been pillaging the countryside around them too, even towns/villages/hamlets/cottages. The gold you get now is more than the amount you forgo by having to regrow them, especially since we're in foreign trade. So let's strip these cities bare. We've got plenty of workers around elven lands who can shift over to rebuild.
Decided to queue up the pretty good library here in Spilan. a couple cities (including the capital) could get it done faster, but Spilan's quite out of the way. next player should micro to finish faster.
I settled the copper city and stuck our protective mage stack here as a better zone defense spot. all quiet on the western front though, not so much as a tiger has entered our lands over here.
ummm, yeah, all war isn't so bad
Volanna has a strong stack of assassins coming in here. good thing for their -50% v. city. I'd hoped the disciples of acheron would whittle them down more. moved the adepts outside of the city just in case. they can take a shot if they get decent odds.
We need to do everything we can to tech as fast as possible in order to finish all of the rituals or we're just going to run out of time. here are my thoughts on how to accomplish that.
switch tech to arcane lore next and try to build the crown of ahkrein. the GS is still available there too. we don't need IW, since we just picked up 2x copper and our army is all about the mage.
then tech SoW for arch mages and snowfall, which is what will really enable offensive warfare
and we really need offensive warfare because pillaging is the only way we'll get enough gold to get all our teching done. So we need to get our mages out there and start capturing cities. each city needs to be weighed as to whether or not it's worth keeping or should just be razed. lean on the side of raze and pillage. improvements should be stripped bare.
tech path: AL->SoW->fanatisicm->divination->CwN->Divine Essence->[ToD] Omniscience
obviously, this path isn't ideal for getting hammers for the last couple rituals, but I think snowfall will be key to going on the offensive. I don't think there's a single other tech that will help us win faster, and we can't afford "nice to haves"
tl;dr - gotta tech fast to reach our goals. to tech fast, gotta get gold. to get gold, gotta burn the world. so time to light the fire. by getting snowfall.
And now enough culture in the west that no one can 1-turn our cities. I'd feel a lot more comfortable hitting Mahala now than before your turnset, that's for sure.
