EitB AI Takeover SG

[Brian Shanahan]

I think the real problem with the game was Basium. Without him we'd have been able to grind out a win, though it would have taken time. Eating the Balseraphs would have given us the power to eat the Elves and both Dwarves and from there it would have been pretty clear sailing.

But the Lanun built the Mercurian gate and all planning went out the window, from the looks of it simply because we captured Coombe View and the Broken Sepulchre.

[Bobchillingworth]

Tricky set, no doubt. I do have a few comments of strategy, understanding that I may be getting the sequence / nature of events mistaken, and that my own set was far from ideal:


* Why did we throw away "hundreds of hammers" killing a single War Tortoise? Just toss Tigers at it until it dies. The Tortoise could only kill a maximum of one (summoned) unit a turn, so it had no chance of doing any significant damage to us.

* Why did we throw away hundreds of beakers on a tech which unlocks a borderline useless unit which requires we first build a borderline useless Hunting Lodge? We realistically are only going to be able to squeeze a few thousand more beakers out of our civ before either unit maintenance or city losses kill our teching almost altogether. We must invest them in techs like Necromancy which we need to actually take Basium's capital and weaken incoming stacks.

* Where are our Ritualists? Why are we still in the Leaves? We cannot keep replying on inefficient, slow, expensive Catapults! Our PoL are useless if our Tigers can't kill full-health units. Switch out ASAP.


Also, some ideas about how we can turn this thing around:

* We should take advantage of the fact that we have the two single best defensive tools in the game available to us- Halls of Mirrors and the Cauldron. For the former, stick some summons in a city to prevent it's capture, and the strongest unit laying siege to it on any given turn will come to us as a PERMANENT summon. I've used this tactic to win Deity-level OCC games. For the latter, put some of our best units in it as defenders and they'll come back as Demons if they die. Either is highly exploitable and can allow us to hold on for a very long time, even against seemingly overwhelming odds. We can freeze units attacking us with a combination of Slow and Ring of Fire (they'll almost always pause to heal- another reason to start building Ritualists ASAP).

* In general, defend with Skeletons and Tigers instead of real units whenever a city is only being attacked by solo units or small stacks. We don't suffer WW for combat deaths in our own territory and can delay until such a time as Hannah / Basium advance a kill stack, buying critical time.

* DO NOT UPGRADE THE ADVENTURER TO A RITUALIST! A hero Ritualist is almost worthless. We do not need to twincast Ring of Fire, the damage is capped such that we just need four Ritualists in any attack stack. Upgrade him to a Chariot so we can kill Basium's top city defenders. I'll say it again, Chariots are our best attacking units. They hit hard, move fast, and can retreat.

* I would not burn Corlindale for peace unless it was that or elimination. Snowfall will wreck any enemy stack, provided we hit it with RoF and Rust first. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how much we really need to be building Ritualists and Entropy Adepts. I'm mediocre at best at MP, but I do have some idea as to how to win SP, and those are easily our most effective tools against the AI.

* Exploit the hell out of Buboe's sword, it's like a +3 boost for our summons.

[Qgqqqqq]

I'm pretty sure we already have Hunting Lodges for hawks. And like I said, the lack of vision was making me nervous.

The Tortoise was forking cities with a warrior defending. We didn't have the tigers necessary to kill it that turn (I used all that could reach it). I didn't try moving units to defend those cities, but given it attacks the top defender that would have meant losing chariots on defence anyway.

I take the point about staying in leaves.


@Cairo, I think my issue is not using the .jpg tag at the end, which doesn't seem to be copying naturally. Thanks!

[DaveV]

I guess I'm next. Got it; I'll probably go with 5 turns as well.

[shallow_thought]

I know I've kind of had the quiet, buildery turns (all 20ish of them!) but this whole thing is uncharted territory for me, and I think I'm still interested in working it through. Or dying horribly, but in an entertaining fashion.

I like the fact we now have hawks for general "what the hell is coming our way next" knowledge. Whatever other options may have been available, I think that ritualists are definitely a thing we should try now (the roleplayer in me is crying a bit lot).

I still don't know why Basium/Hannah declared when they did. Our death mana was actually under elven cultural control at the time. And doing it the same turn that Decius (who they were already at war with) did? Meh.

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh, I think there's plenty of role-playing potential! Basium declares on our civilization of tree-worshiping nominal pacifists after we refuse to burn a city of necromancers, ironically forcing us to form pacts with devils to survive.

[Bobchillingworth]

I still don't know why Basium/Hannah declared when they did. Our death mana was actually under elven cultural control at the time. And doing it the same turn that Decius (who they were already at war with) did? Meh.

We have / had two Death Mana IIRC; one from the world feature, another from the wonder which turns dead units into demons.


Unless I'm mistaken, in which case the most reasonable answer is that Basium is incredibly aggressive and was only cautious with us.

[DaveV]

After taking a long look at the save, we are indeed in a crisis. We only have one city that can build Savants, at 4 turns each. Monks can't be upgraded to Ritualists. Basium/Hannah seem to have units with Subdue Animal in most of their stacks, ruling out weapon-boosted sacrificial tigers. Lots of their T4 units don't have metal weapons, meaning Rust is not a magic bullet. Half our cities are building infrastructure, when we badly need troops.

@Bob: it's the Soul Forge, not Mokka's Cauldron, that gives Death Mana.

I'm thinking our best bet is to revolt immediately to Slavery and start building toward Ritualists. A 40% reduction in strength does wonders to turn around the odds in a battle.

[Qgqqqqq]

Monks can be upgraded into ritualists! We just need to be in AV.

[mackoti]

Monks can be upgraded into ritualists! We just need to be in AV.

Only if someone fixed that i remeber when i played like ethne i made some test and coudnt upgrade monks to ritualists.