DaveV and Keelyn: even though you broke my heart and killed me

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher easily recaptured Willow, then Thane-bombed it.




His galley is missing from Shambles. I piled a few extra units into Mardoc's capital, to try to protect it from a naval attack.

In the Forbidden Zone, I lost a chariot but took the barb city.




As promised, I have trade routes:

[Bobchillingworth]

You have no idea how relieved I am to see that city paying for itself :P


We, uh, maybe didn't test that part.

[Qgqqqqq]

Hush you! I tested that extensively.

[DaveV]

There is a weird interface bug with that city, though. It's showing 11 commerce from trade routes, and three from tiles, but the income is 15 gold. In the F1 cities screen, I'm pretty sure it shows 12 commerce from trading.

[DaveV]

More reportage: Auror researched KotE. Does he go on to Divination, and mass scorch the Forbidden Zone, or Necromancy to stack up death mana for his spectres? Stay tuned...

[Qgqqqqq]

Huh. Maybe fractional commerce is being counted?

[DaveV]

After an unusually slow turn, the news was not good. Aurorarcher wiped Pine off the map:




He has just enough good defenders in each stack to make sure I'd have to sacrifice all my units to kill maybe one of his, so I retreated to Mardoc's capital and moved up the next wave. His best move now is to consolidate the stack and just keep on advancing.

Two more adepts down the tubes. I'm not doing a very good job of protecting them this game..

Edit: I forgot to mention that Aurorarcher has Engineering now. So his advance will be pretty quick once he clears away city culture.

[DaveV]

As predicted, he consolidated the stack on an ancient forest tile. No way to attack, so I retreated my catapult and chariots.




Lurkers: I formally concede. My only hope has been that plako would gain some traction on his front and force Aurorarcher to pull back some of his forces, but it doesn't look as though that's going to happen:




And if the pincer ever closes, I'm dead. Just the northern army could roll over me without breaking a sweat.

City list, while I still have them:

[DaveV]

Post mortem: I'm happy with my play this game. Ingenuity turns out to be pretty good: it only cost me 67 gold to upgrade a warrior to a chariot (133 for non-ingenious leaders). Unfortunately, that meant turning off research for the last 15-20 turns of the game.

Sorry about the map whining, Bob and Q, it was an interesting map. As usual, late game stuff didn't happen, but I'm not sure how to avoid that.

I'd forgotten how slow non-arcane adepts are in gaining XP. Even if I hadn't managed to get three of them killed in battle, I would have had to wait another 20 turns or so before I would have had a shot at a mage. Also, I think the hammer cost of Freaks should be reduced to 30: it just doesn't make sense to me to build a unit for 40 hammers and then upgrade it to a unit that would have cost 30 hammers.

Not to take anything away from Aurorarcher, but I think the vampires need a nerf (even I can win with them ). As I said in Mardoc's thread, the Calabim have a well-defined path that gives them strong production, good economy, and powerful units. Vampires' ability to cast three very useful mage-level spells from the moment they're built is a huge strength. Suggestion: move Governor's Manors to Feudalism, and Vampires to Priesthood.

[Miguelito]

So it's over? Congratulations on being alive still, and thanks for the nice reporting g
Also sorry for not being any helpful, I've not really been into civ lately, but was always observing with interest