Freezing the World below Absolute Zero - Illians Succession Game

[Aurorarcher]

Yup, beakers.

[jalepeno]

wow, I've never gotten that event so late in the game (usually it's an obvious choice for the prophet). I tend to agree on beakers coming first. I'd like to wait to use our next GA for ritual building, and I'm doubting we'll ever get to the 3-man GA regardless of a free GPro.

[Qgqqqqq]

Gah, my pictures are playing up and I can't preview them, so I'll just stick them at the end as illustrative.


Played 10t (mostly because I did 6 and wanted a round number).

Rebuffed Falamars massive stacks, although it cost me ~ a dozen real troops (but no mages) to do it. First noticeable dip in his power graph, too:

Only captured one tiger in the process, although our hunters got to target his Satyrs, which was a bit of a bonus. It's still edgy getting from the wounded-enemy stage to the cleanup, which is why I want snowfall soon. Especially now that he has Arquebus up for spammable strong defenders - the strength of our current strategy lies in now small part to the shitty defense of Falamar's best spammable unit (Satyr), and that a large bulk of his power is tigers. With his demos still tracking up, and snazzy little extras coming available, I can see the Enchanted Blade/E5 Ice Elementals proving inadequate to knock down his top guys enough for feeding time. Pit Beasts *are* nice, but are generally either a win-more tactic, requiring him already to be beaten, or rest too much on his splitting stacks.

Anyway, point being that pre-Archmages, we're kinda fielding the best units we can, and it's only just winning. If he gets peace with Sheelba, especially, we could be ruined.

Having said all that, Varn took back his city and Falamar has no big forces in the immediate area atm, so we've a bit of a breather.

I pulled everything away from the other borders, or all but, and even drafted a few front cities. Then Tum-Tum came raiding with a small escort just as I was cleaning up which was a bit worrisome, but I handled it. He died at low odds to a Ice Elemental



I saw that the Great Scientist from Arcane Lore was still available, so headed there. I didn't realise that we didn't have Iron Working yet, and I think we should head there now.

Did a ton of micro on the first turn, but then by-and-large focused on military for the rest. Down to +450gpt, although I think most of that is due to war weariness. Laid down a bunch of cottages - which, btw, I think we should spam instead of lumbercamps, as we care more about gpt than hammers, and we have good civics for it - and planned a couple of farming routes.


I think a good tech path is IW->Engineering/Strength of Will->Alteration/Divination->The other->Fanaticism->Commune with Nature->Divine Essence/Omnescience.

Also, I think if we plan to finish ToD before finishing research on one of the 'big two', we should ToD DE, because it gives us just so much more than Omnescience does, which "only" has Auric Ascended.

Other techs that might be worth slotting in are Drama (culture), Mercantalism (for GM/post-cottage growing specialists), and Poisons (Undercouncil/Assasins). I could see Poisons soonish, Mercantalism probably isn't worth it until past SoW (although getting soon for GM, reasoning it'll be researched eventually, might be sensible), Drama is probably never worthwhile but lord do I want it.


Signed peace with Volanna (who broke away from Alexis), giving us some gold and a WM.

[Mardoc]

Solid turnset!

I'm fine with your proposed tech path, especially since you were considerate enough to get us a third of Strength of Will for free.

I want to go forward and pillage some of Falamar's lands and kill more of his troops. I'm simultaneously worried that our war weariness is getting very high, and you had a tough time handling him even inside our culture with our current unit mix. Not sure how to thread that needle.

One quibble:

Down to +450gpt,

I'm not sure I understand how 450 is less than 320. I am now much more confident that we might be able to finish our needed techs before we run out of time, though .

[Mardoc]

Um, hmm. When I opened the save, we're still at war with Volanna. Did you forget to save after making that deal?

Next player should probably re-propose it.

[Mardoc]

I've a thought for a low-priority goal: once we get to Iron Working + Strength of Will, we probably have enough to take on Acheron. I expect it would require most of our army, since we have to overcome summoners instead of whittling a stack down, it's got to be a sledgehammer blow. A dozen fireballs plus 4 fire elementals a turn isn't a small threat, either; need to bring a stack that can soak that. We'd have to pick our timing based on a quiet period on the Lanun front. But Snowfall + Archmage summons + regular summons could probably get the job done, with enough mundane units to protect the stack and soak damage.

The reward is two pieces: first, a good chunk of land, in a time period where we aren't allowed to grow any other way. Not just his own city, but we could probably slip in a couple fillers once the barb culture is removed. Second, IIRC, we don't have Gold, so the Dragon's Horde would give us additional happiness. We could always use more of that.

If it weren't for the variant restriction on conquest, Acheron would be probably the most expensive way to gain land. But instead he's the only way to gain land in the near term. So I think that's worth keeping in the back of our minds, and keeping our eyes open for an opportunity.

[Qgqqqqq]

Correct save attached.

Some things I missed:

I switched nodes to death. I think we need some extra strength casters (as elaborated above). Before that I had both on Air, so we've a few who can take collateral easy.

I think it is very important that we don't miss out on free promotions on our mages/adepts. Before me they were split on Air/Entropy, which is fine in a jam but we should always be transitioning to something which gives free mana (I don't mean to lock us in to death forever/too long, just so long as we need it).


I rushed a monument in the north to speed up Whales. +1happy everywhere is worth a lot.

I want to go forward and pillage some of Falamar's lands and kill more of his troops. I'm simultaneously worried that our war weariness is getting very high, and you had a tough time handling him even inside our culture with our current unit mix. Not sure how to thread that needle.

So do I...but I don't think it's worth the risk of losing the stack. If we had peace with Malakim, and could use their land then I'd do it, but as is, we don't have the ability to retreat fast enough (especially as I pillaged more roads to slow the Lanun advance).

I would like to raze Timberling, and I think that is practicable in the next set, assuming Malakim and Lanun keep fighting over it.

Besides which, I really doubt that Lanun will give peace for anything less of a mammoth effort. This is probably my fault in the previous set for letting them take and retake Hyll so many times.

Oh! And I really think we should move a small stack into Acherons territory to destroy some of his roads towards us, to give us a bit more warning when his/Sheelba's stacks come.

I'm not sure I understand how 450 is less than 320. lol I am now much more confident that we might be able to finish our needed techs before we run out of time, though

Oh, phew! I thought you had +550/600gpt, for some reason. Guess I can stop beating myself up about that!


Agree with taking down Acheron. Note that we don't have to weather his summons at all if we move into range and attack in one move, which is possible with Spectres/Spell Extension.

[Aurorarcher]

Played to T331 accidently, sorry about that.

Razed Timberling.




And Malakim was ready to make peace right away. I also got OBs with him but it doesn't give any TRs yet because of the recent war between us.




I got tired to Lanun keeping so small garrisson near our western border and decided to go for a visit. If not for anythign else, then at least for pillage gold. I had some help from Varn, he even gave shield of faith to my stack. Anyway, things went a lot better than I expected...

First Bolans got razed.




Which also made AC high enough for Yersinia to spawn.




Have fun Falamar .

And it seemed that Falamar's huge army was somewhere else so what's next?







.

This city was a keeper obviously. I used the Thane to pop borders of Innsmouth. Basium has some annoying angels (especially those AoDs that work like assassins), but it seems that they're just sitting in the city.

Demos look pretty good now, GoH is awesome. Where's your army Falamar? I am razing your core and you're just happy to watch that? I'm okay with that though... The power of Lanun hasn't dropped much so the big army must be somewhere.




Okay, maybe one more city.




I stopped here. Could probably move deeper but if Basium moves his angels out that could cause some trouble, also if Falamar finally would bring some forces to the frontline things could change.

I researched Alternation in the middle. Haste should help with our logistics a lot. We might need Spirit mana too soon (forgot the tech name) incase one of the Armageddon monsters spawn nearby and we fail to kill it with summons. Strenght of Will is 2 turns away, need to do little pillaging to be able to do that but not anything to hard.

Regarding our cities I pretty much build adepts in some cities and others focused on buildings to boost our economy. Right now we're getting around +640 gpt.

Clan did attack a few times but nothing too dangerous, one time they had tons of assassins one time and I lost a couple of adepts IIRC, but I also managed to get a few adepts some nice xp when gambling at 60% odds.

Here's the save.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nkhiklw60q58t...dSave?dl=0

[Mardoc]

That's...rather more accomplished than I was expecting to be possible

Pillar of Chains + Tower of Eyes ought to help with our war weariness a fair bit.

[Qgqqqqq]

We should resettle some of that Lanun land, if possible.