Aurorarcher is looking for blood

[Aurorarcher]

When I opened T111 I found that Mardoc had spawned a Treant which tried to kill my C4 Moroi. I was lucky to survive that fight will standing in AF. Also Shambles fell, it had 8 defenders mostly Warriors paired with some Hunters. I lost one Moroi at coinflip battle but otherwise all combats were around 80% odds, some (with my best units like Vamps) 99%. I kept the city and immediately ate two of it's pop to give my 2 Morois new promotions on T112. Plan is to use RoK Thanes to pop borders quickly in captured cities, I'll have them coming shortly.

I also moved one of my Moroi to scout if Mardoc would have any units behind. Turns out not really but I found, PoL, Tiger, Fawn and a Warrior in the next city. The city also had Dave's Chariot in it, that's where Dave's power is coming from? He is almost at plako's level and I guess there are bunch of Chariots then. Who knows. I also found Dave's Warrior in FZ, maybe he is planning to, or already has a settler on his way to settle somewhere there. I have 2nd settler on his way to Extermination, which is building galley that will be bought with cash next turn, then I'll settle Marble/Pearls spot as soon as I can.

Plako is spamming cities like crazy, I think up to 17 cities now, while I'm at 14 and Dave around same. That's smart of course for the guy with tons of TRs, all of his coastal cities will be profitable immediately with 3 TRs (no Trade for him yet). I'd guess he is aiming for Priestood next, currently plako is saving bunch of money (around 500) and getting +145 GPT. Dave is also saving gold a lot, for upgrades (not that likely) or just to research, but he is getting over +220 GPT. He is still in GA though.

I just got Maths recently and Gambling Houses are going to be put into some cities. I also have unhappy penalty from war in some cities. I also grabbed Animal Handling quickly for Hawks which should come in handy for scouring in 2 turns (I'll get first one build on T112). Even without GA my MFG is really high because of GMs; that's why the next step is Engineering - if I can get GoH that'll give me a lot of hammers, and by a lot I mean around 60 hammers/turn. That will pay itself (the wonder costs 335h) back quickly, and those hammers don't even take into account other nice additions: +1 happy from Forge with gold and +15% multiplier for hammer while building units which don't show in demos of course. Military Strategy is currently working nicely for me, I have 0 unit costs! I don't think the case is same for other players with Apprenticeship.

[Aurorarcher]

Scouting Pine T112. That's Mardoc's mainstack probably, 14 defenders.




Then I killed that warrior NE of Vampire, took some damage but not much. I wanted to see what was inside Cypress. Turns out, one warrior.




I get to use the neat trick that Vampires can do. Sacrafice a BP to attack again, I had forgotten it also heals the unit (even though it cleary reads there obviously).




And I razed the city.




I moved the Vampire on hill 1W of Cypress and put some defenders on it, actually a bit more than I should've but more on that later on this post. Ended up with stacking this many units. Actually I think I added one more but forgot to take pic. That was way too many considering he didn't have many hitters nearby.




On T113 Mardoc suicided with 3 Tigers and was able to put my top Moroi down to around 50 hp

Dave is settling FZ.




On T113 I took Willow with my Commando Vampire but was severely injuried (well I promohealed afterwards) so I was forced to pillage the road (and the Rice) with my spectres under Pine so that he couldn't kill it on T114. Pine now has 19 defenders so it was reinforced.




10 unpromoted warriors, hunter, fawn, 3 PoLs, 1 disc of Leaf and 3 Tigers. Notice the visibility on the area; I have Hawk in Shambles. He has put 2 warriors both in Oak/Ash to prevent me razing them with my Commando Vampire. I wouldn't even if they had just 1 - the unit has 50 xp and is very worthy for me.

Anyway, I didn't have that many units to move there due to moving too many units to protect my Commando Vampire on T112. Anyway I had brought Bambur to Shambles and gave Enchanted Blades to all my troops and here's my stack (on Forest) waiting for Mardoc to either sit or try his luck with RNG.




He has 19 vs 9 of mine which could be bad. But I have very well promoted units, even if some of them are warriors but they defend well enough (and also before Vampires). Even if he attacks and kills the stack, which is very very unlikely to happen - I can hit Pine from Shambles with about 8-9 units. My prediction is that he'll attack with Tigers, that's for sure, but then he'll stop most likely. If he'll get really lucky and kills my top Moroi (which btw has +130% strenght and +25% from the tile) then he might continue but we'll see.

I had to sim this actually to see what it'd be like. I did 10 sims where Marodc attacked:
- 8 out of 10 sims he lost all battles. But strangely my top Moroi was almost always injuried down to 0.5-1.0 health after 3 Tigers.
- in one sim he managed to kill 4 units somehow winning 3 straight battles around 20% victory chance.
- in one sim he managed to kill 2 units.

After doing that I feel a lot more confident. I've been fooling too many times already with my "superior" promotions and units versus double the amount of units. But here I think I'm safe.

[Aurorarcher]

Mardoc suicided Tigers as predicted and no lucky rolls for him. Spotted Dave's chariot stack: 10 chariots and 2 cats. Currently in Mardoc's cap. They could together with Mardoc's units do something ugly to me in 2-3 turns.

In FZ I spotted 3 workers of Dave's. I declared and captured them. He's working against me anyway so might just do some damage when I can. He also got GS and can improve death nodes, probably bulbing half of Sorcery? The summoner might just come into play after all.

Myself I settled new city in FZ. All good except that it rised expenses by about 20 gpt. I hate the inflation system, hard to know when it spikes (inflation was raised by 4 gpt due to that city). Of course the city is also bringing 8 gpt back from commerce. Settling Marble/Pearls next turn.

[Aurorarcher]

Of course I was too greedy and didn't want to delete those 3 workers. Next turn Dave appeared with Chariots and took them back (and also killed one of my own, that sucks). Also, declaring on Dave might have made plako and Dave trade manas. Dave now has haste adepts. Think they would have done that anyway later but yeah. It's Bloodthirsty vs. the rest now! It's going to be a rough route, Dave has very high power only about 70k short of me. 3 turns to Engineering, plako is keeping quiet settling new cities and not building that much military.

I am a little bit in trouble in Liquidation (former Willow) as there's over 30 units in Pine. I am playing a bit defensively now, and I did a lot of pillaging. Also killed one Chariot that had Stoneskin promotion which put it as top defender.




Main idea was to pillage the road 1SE of Pine. Then they both can't hit me next turn, and surely Dave won't do it alone. Also dodging cats for now is nice. I'm not sure if they'd have attacked anyway but I can't risk 30 vs 10 combat here. Actually that'd be only 20 vs 10 on next turn considering those warriors have no mobility but later it's easier for me if they have to move units deeper 1 tile 1SE or 1S before trying to take the city back. And when/if they do that I can attack the stack and retreat to city. Also another reason was that I have 2 workers close to "road" -signs and I don't want to lose those as I try to connect Liquidation quickly for easier reinforcing. I have now two Commando Vampires which can pick up units from here and there if the opportunity comes.

Here's the stack in Pine.




Demos.




Notice I got GS end of turn. Probably another Academy down somewhere in my 2nd best beaker city... another idea is to bulb Necromancy for Death nodes for stronger spectres. I have quite many mana nodes (5 actually) inside borders already. It of course takes quite a lot of time to get them all connected.

[Aurorarcher]

Notice I got GS end of turn. Probably another Academy down somewhere in my 2nd best beaker city... another idea is to bulb Necromancy for Death nodes for stronger spectres.

Of course GS bulbs Alternation first, so I did indeed put my 2nd Academy down.

On T116 Pine had these units.




And there were 3 more chariots + haste adept behind to reach the city on T117. I thought I was safe as long as I could avoid his 3 cats. But on T117 it turns out Dave found a way to avoid my road pillaging and such to attack with cats and all his chariots. He pulled up a move I never even thought of here. But it's quite so clever. When you read this after game, Dave, that was just brilliant!

So what he did can be seen from this log. Notice 3 dead Vampires, otherwise losses were mostly just garbage units. But I had left those 3 Vampires without promoting them fully (because I thought he couldn't attack in any way!).




When I opened the save I was like WTF for 5 minutes untill I noticed the war declaration in the logs. So this happened:
1) Dave declared war on Mardoc making all his units teleport next to Liquidation.
2) Then it was easy to attack with cats and kill all.

Luckily I had moved my top Vampire away just on T116 (to Shambles) but I still lost C4/Commando Vampire, C3 + Shock Vampire and one 10 xp Vampire without promotin it . My losses were 488 hammers total. That sucks, and Dave only lost 140 hammers attacking.

Notice where Dave put his units, in the jungle and close to my borders. Had he kept them 1E I couldn't have done a whole lot, but now as they were quite vulnerable I was able to do some cleaning. I think he made a mistake here.




Dave was left with 1 injuried Chariot and 1 injuried catapult. While I collected some xp. Dave lost about 1100 hammer worth units and his power dropped by 120k (that was 20% of his total power). Of course he had probably used money to upgrade bunch of warriors to Chariots with his ING trait but still it was nice to get a comeback here. I was lucky to not lose any battles but all of them were above 80%, most above 95% chance to win.

Also some other good things came out of this. Dave lost TRs with Mardoc (and vice versa) but they can get them from plako of course so I don't think it'll matter that much. They also signed peace right away and Dave gave Liquidation (Willow) to Mardoc. I'll take the city back on T118 unless something real crazy happens, which I'm sure will happen .

Taking a look at Foreign Advisor I found that they signed Peace Treaty (10 turns) instead of Cease Fire. I'm not sure why they chose that option (now Dave can't pull similar moves for the next 10 turns). It also shows that Dave has Entropy mana. That's fine once I build the GoH of course.




Notice also that plako built the Bone Palace. Wow, that was well played. I believe he started it as soon as he got Philosophy and it took ~20 turns to build it but still a good play, I had been slowbuilding it for copule of turns (100h invested only) but I didn't want to build it without Marble for real. Afterall GA isn't worth THAT much for me considering hammers (I'm stil #1 Prod without GA, also my GNP is pretty impressive as well).

In the south plako is putting up a good army, he has about 20 units total that I can see with Hawks (I can't see as far as I would like to though) so there's more in the fog for sure. Recently he has added Chariots with Mobility promotions.

Demos EoT 117.




Plako is #2 in both Prod/GNP and leads in Food. That #2 power is Dave but I wouldn't be surprised to see plako's power start going crazy in the near future.

[Aurorarcher]

Got Liquidation back, also popped it's borders with thane which made defending the area a lot easier.




There's also a chance to attack Pine on T119 if I want to.

Full logs of T118.




Can anyone explain to me the war weariness mechanism? Do all units count for that? I notice that Mardoc is putting a lot of Tigers on defense sometimes and I do wonder if those give him any penalty at all? Maybe summons don't give war weariness, even if they're permanent ones? If you're on defense in your own land and lose a battle does that give you war weariness? Does attacking and losing cause more WW than attacking and winning? I've never quite got hang of the mechanism behind it in general... I do think I know that the amount of WW depends on where you fight, whether it's your own territory or neutral/enemy territory but beyond that I'm pretty clueless.

[Bobchillingworth]

Tigers give WW.


Not sure about the rest.

[Qgqqqqq]

Skeletons and Spectres don't give WW.

The exact breakdown of WW I'm not entirely sure on. I know you get less in your own territory than in enemies/neutral.

[Dreylin]

I believe that you don't get any/much when you are on the defensive in your own territory. It can/will rack up pretty quickly if you are attacking and losing a bunch of units in someone else's territory.

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks guys. I did some tests and found these:

1) Attacking unit that is in your own territory always gives 0 WW, doesn't matter if you lose or win.
2) Losing a unit in your own territory to enemy's attack doesn't seem to give WW either. So Dreylin had this right.
3) Attacking a unit in neutral territory gives less WW than in enemy territory, in my tests neutral WW was 2/3 of the enemy one.
4) Razing a city gives a huge amount of WW to both the razer and the one who lost city. The amount might depend on the size of the city.

Another puzzling thing is which cities will get the "War... what is it good for?" -angry citizens? In the game my capital (size 16) is getting +3 WW unhappy citizens so it seems like the bigger the city the more likely they're going to hate the war. Similarly cities between 11-14 sizes are getting +2 unhappy people but oddly my size 8 city has +2 unhappiness from war but my size 10 city only has +1 unhappy from war.