Anyone up for an EitB SG?

[Mr. Cairo]

The problem with attacking Tasunke any time soon is that he's giving us basically all of our happiness right now. I'll see what I can do though.

 Yeah, that's true enough. It was more of a long term thing, but we should have a look at rustling up some other sources of happy.

edit since this post created a new page: my report is done, on the previous page. Lots of stuff is happening.

[haphazard1]

Exciting -- and scary! -- times, Mr. Cairo. And some good turns.

If the Hippus/Bannor conflict allows us to claim some more decent land, that would certainly help us. Confronting the Hippus directly might not be easy, at least until we are stronger. Pyre Zombies are great units in many ways, but opposing fast-moving raider units could be a tricky problem.

Heading for KotE and some magic could be good, with our unique units. Of course, we might have to actually take back some of our mana.

[Brian Shanahan]

On the Hippus and Khazad mini stacks, unless diplomacy took a nose dive during your set Mr Cairo, I'd not worry at all about the dwarfs. He was friendly all during my set. And while I didn't pay close attention to Tasunke, I think from trade alone he should also be on good enough terms ( and with a hot war going he's unlikely to start another).

[DaveV]

The AIs like to put stacks together and go after barb cities. Unless they have too much on their hands, that's where they usually concentrate their firepower.

Things are improving in the zombie empire. KotE is a good goal, but we also need to build up some sort of economy.

[haphazard1]

Do we want to try to do anything with religion? We have some nice big old trees, at least.

[superjm]

So the beginning of this is pretty overwhelming. Lots of different options, lots of potential avenues for attack and growth. My first consideration is what exactly we're going to be doing with KotE. Mobius Witches are really good, but there are a couple of problems. One is that we have no mana. Sure, we could cancel our deals with Hippus but even if we took back only our Death and Chaos, we would lose two happiness immediately AND our copper. now granted, two happiness isn't the end of the world especially since the Ivory can be had if we detour to Hunting, which we probably should do anyway so we can improve the deer in our areas, but the lack of copper would be troublesome. The one hope is to cancel the deal and trade just the Chaos mana for some of their stuff.

The other consideration is cost. For mobius witches, we need the Planar Gate AND the Mage Guild, which is 220h of upfront investment, and the witches themselves cost 150h. It's gonna take quite some time to get enough witches to make that investment worth it.

Nevertheless, I still plan to finish KotE so we can leave our options open. I was toying with the idea of leaving Sabathiel alone for a couple turns while I consolidate our forces, get a big stack going and really try to push hard on him later on. Then I saw this:






That's right, Great Lighthouse a mere four tiles from our capital. Counting Grottiburg and the barb city to the NW, that's 12 extra trade routes immediately in our empire. I dunno about you, but that sounds like a huge economic boost coming out of a golden age, wouldn't you say?




But first things first. This is a tricky one because we have 7 units fighting against 5, and archers on a hill to complicate things. Worldbuilder tests are a bit iffy so I doubt I'll be able to get the city this turn. If I can knock most of the defenders down though it should be fine, worst case scenario I move the zombie from Hyol to reinforce. First the unpromoted zombies valiantly blow themselves to smithereens.




Hmm, the damage on the defending archer is not ideal, but I think we can manage. I promote a C3 zombie and attack at 85% odds and get the kill, so no harm no foul. The C1 axes have iffy odds against greener zombies still, so I promote two more zombies to shock I to gain an edge, 95% and 87% odds go through. Our last 100HP zombie can only promote to C1 though, and that gives 50/50 odds at best. I wanted to see if I could get away with promoting our super-zombie to march or even mobility immediately, but I decide to give it shock as well since it's at 45 XP.




Hmm, 93%. I really, really don't want to lose this unit on something as trivial as a barb city kill, so I decide to gamble on the C1 zombie. If it dies, it dies, the remaining zombie will pick up a kill barring exceptionally bad luck and we'll have four attackers ready on the next turn.

It does die, and the axe is redlined, so attacking with the super unit would have been fine. Oh well, risk and reward is a thing after all. Hopefully the bear doesn't get a ridiculous combat roll and we can clean up next turn.




This city is terrible and growing it isn't gonna do anything right now. I decide to give it something useful to do for the time being.

I'm deciding to shift gears a bit and get some economy going. The cities will finish their zombie builds and gather towards Sabathiel, and then I'll be putting the cities on courthouse/library duty (I could do markets, but remember, in mid- to late-game it's far more beneficial to reduce expenses rather than gain gold because of inflation). Maybe squeeze in an Elder Council in Decius's old cap so I can work two sages. Oh and get a Planar Gate in the capital just to get that going (does the gate still spawn random units in addition to them being buildable?)

As for tech path, the plan is finish KotE, then go Writing->Trade->Hunting(for ivory)->Smelting for the workshop hammers and possible iron. Other possibilities are stirrups for horse archers (probably too much setup), Animal Handling for hawks, Military Strategy for Heroic Epic and the military civics and such, magic techs, or even Currency for Consumption at some point. We'll see how things progress this turnset.




Tasunke has chariots near Grottiburg, so I have to be careful. I'll declare on Sabathiel now, but I can't attempt to take the city until I'm absolutely sure we have the numbers to succeed immediately. That Great Lighthouse is absolutely vital.

Unfortunately we'll likely lose access to Galveholm's water tiles and maybe some trade routes in the process, so let's hope things go well.




Uh, the redlined axeman that was here is gone. What? I redid the combat from last turn just to make sure I wasn't seeing things and yeah, the axe was sitting right there. Is there some weird barb mechanic I'm unaware of?




Oh, well then. Now I feel like a dummy. And exceptionally lucky, given that it was a damaged zombie it was attacking. I didn't know spiders actually attacked barbs too  

Unfortunately, losing the golden age really took a bite out of our income, so it's gonna be slow-going for a bit. I like my tech path even more now tbh, we need to leverage Decius's land as best we can to be able to knock down the top AIs.




Oh geez. That could actually be a problem, since if he travels up our coastline he'll be able to pillage the pearls we just picked up in our northern cities. Not a good thing. I may end up trying to sac a couple of our galleys if it decides to keep going.




It heads towards the cap instead. Not ideal if it decides to park on our coast but at least the capital does have other tiles to work and there's nothing to pillage. I'll be following this.




Meanwhile, Grottiburg remains with three warriors against 8 zombies, albeit not heavily promoted. This should be good enough.




Aw yeah Got a lucky 26% kill on the third zombie and a 64% kill with the next one, so only two casualties from the attack.




And we get our sweet, sweet trade routes immediately Things are looking up, provided we can keep Grottiburg.

Meanwhile, I have a couple zombies gathered near the Bannor border city east of Golden Leane. I'm considering whether we can snipe this city and cut off Sabathiel quickly and easily, so I promote a zombie to mobility and decide to take a peek.




Oh.

Yeah that's not happening right now. I'm presuming this is where Hippus is right now. Hopefully he'll leave my zombie alone.

Next turn: Yay, he didn't attack my zombie for some reason! Let's see what's going on--



(Disclaimer: I took this shot using a previous autosave because something keeps eating my print screen inputs and I lost the screenshot I originally took for this. Don't worry, apart from the stack this shot does not represent the current game state.)

 

That could be a problem.

I promote some warriors and try to gather as many zombies to Golden Leane as possible. I queue up some units just in case and hope that that stack isn't going my way.

Meanwhile we get an event to convert 4 of our cities to FoL (screenshot was eaten). It's a nice opportunity to get some free culture in our cities, and possibly even get some much need happiness in our capital! Except that none of the four cities affected are our capital. Go figure.

At least I can get rid of a monument queue now.

I don't see the stack on our borders so hopefully it's either in the city or trying to take on Tasunke. If I don't see it for a while I'll probably get a bunch of those zombies up north to start pressing his northern cities again.

The next 5 turns go pretty uneventfully. Sabathiel has a trireme near our capital, but he took some damage killing the barb trireme so we should be able to take it out no problem with attack-focused galleys. Still no movement on the former Malakim front, maybe he really is just hanging around fighting with Tasunke.




...Or not.

So uh, 9 zombies against a gazillion axes. I really regret not sending the rest of my zombies northward Taking a look at that southern city really kind of led to some bad luck it seems.

The good part is that some of the zombies in the city are well promoted, including our super zombie, we're on a hill, the stack is going to be attacking over a river no matter where it attacks from, and any zombie deaths are just going to significantly weaken the stack. I gotta be honest though, I'm not liking our odds here. Or maybe zombies really ARE too strong and their units will simply be too weak to finish off the stack. There are about 25 axes I count there btw.




Our glorious (but fragile) empire.

Well I sure left the rest of a team in a tough spot, didn't I Bullet points per usual.

-There are 11 Pyre Zombies coming back from Golden Leane. If you're really, really worried about holding Grottiburg you can promote them all to Mobility this turn so they can be at the city in two turns, or at least be able to hold the cap.
-Golden Leane popped its fourth ring and will quickly take it's bottom three BFC tiles from Hippus. Kuldevind has already popped its third ring, so I'm not opposed to moving the Lyre to Golden Leane just to apply even more pressure on his city.
-Vargstad is actually looking pretty dang strong with Remnants and the food from the fish. I'm surprised. Even Hyol has some decent potential with the fish and deer and plenty of potential water tiles and lumbermills to work.
-We're no longer the lowest scored player!
-We're back to about the commerce production we had during the golden age, which is pretty encouraging. We're definitely now in position to get whatever tech we need to continue our play. Assuming we can hold off Sabathiel, we should soon be able to get Planar Gates and other stuff in our other cities so we can start getting higher tier units out in earnest.
-The Hippus happy deals are still in place until we at least get Hunting for the ivory. Getting Philosophy might be an option too so we can trade out the incense.

haphazard1, it's all on you now

[haphazard1]

Lots of things going on, and a very scary enemy stack. Some cities gained, and the Great Lighthouse. Looks good, superjm. We do have some significant problems to deal with, though, apparently. That Bannor stack being the most obvious.

OK, I have the save. I will try to get to it today, but I have a couple medical procedures scheduled so I may not manage to play until Friday morning. Will have to see how long everything takes. Top priorities look like holding what we have, if that big stack comes against us; if it does not, maybe we can resume pushing for more territory. If anyone has ideas for dealing with that giant stack of axemen, other than just defending with as good of odds as we can get, feel free to suggest them.

[Brian Shanahan]

My advice see what Sabathiel wants for peace. After that assume the emergency landing position :O

[haphazard1]

Sabathiel actually has two big stacks of axes -- that we can see, anyway, there could be more. About 30 axemen, plus archers and hunters. So yes, peace would be good if we can get it.

Tech I am thinking Hunting for the deer and ivory. But after that I am not sure what would be most useful.

[superjm]

I like Smelting for the workshop hammers and to get Iron. Maybe even Iron Working so we can make our zombies stronger assuming we have iron in our territory. This would also remove our dependency on copper trades.

Looking at the save again, Sabathiel is willing to make peace for Grottiburg. It might be worth just taking the peace, consolidating our forces and then retaking it ten+ turns later when we're in better position. The economic buildings are finishing up in all the places that matter so we can go back to pumping out zombies or planar gates. Maybe get baths to mitigate happiness in our large cities so we can reconfigure our Hippus trades and get at least our death and fire mana back so we can finally get witches going.

Currency might be a good option too, so that in emergency cases like this we can just bribe the AI for peace instead of having to give away a city.