[FFH] - Erebus in the Balance

Well, the Great Houdini is now at 37 exp, so I suggest we either keep the promo for healing or promote to C5. I'm not a big fan of promoting highly experienced units to either Shock or Cover. After C5, we should take Mobility 1, and after that (if he still lives) to Heroic Strength 1 and 2.

It's a pity we'll never be able to turn Houdini into a Firebow (I'm assuming we'll promote him to an Axe as well).


Nothing wrong with a l7 Axeman. Especially once he's been buffed with the Axe.

Agreed 100% on not going shock/cover until after c5/commando/march unless the tactical situation absolutely calls for it.


Lurker: Yeah. Only one thing wrong with this scenario: They aren't CHA!!! :D

In Erebus, CHA is really king because of the enhanced promos. You want promos, faster and more. That warrior with Combat V, Mobility I and Shock/Cover would be :drool:

:) True, no Cha here. But you have to play the hand you're dealt, not the hand you might want. ;)

Cha is a great mid/late game FFH trait, but it's a bit weak in the early game (as far as military goes, the extra happy can be key early on depending on the map).

Axe crush is pretty dull, but our options are a little limited given how Perpy's forced our hand. I'd prefer trotting out some Firebows but Bowyers is still prohibitively expensive at our current tech level. And while KotE will add options to the table in and of itself its not going to solve our current problem. Let's take Perp off the board with Axes then hopefully settle into a nice Amurite military afterwards.

Dull? Axe rushes? I've never been bored with them. :hammer:

They're a bit bog standard, maybe. But dull? Nonsense. Nothing more fun than spending your early production on a pile of Whoopasss and hoping your opponent doesn't spot it until too late. ;) (waves at Darrell and Selrahc :D )

None of these suggested techs is going to greatly increase our research/production/etc, in my opinion. Going Bowyers, even if its going to take a while, is going to give us a lot (Perpentach cities and probably Beeri cities as well). So maybe we should just beeline Bowyers and that's it.

By the way, since we have an academy coming soon, might be worth to go 100% gold until we get it, then switching to 100% science.

EDIT: We could use the GSci for bulbing KotE. How useful would it be? We can get another GS by running 2 scientists somewehre (from EC + Mage Guild) for the academy. We would get the very interesting floating eyes. But that's pretty much it...

Bowyers as a tech target looks good, but if we're planning on some kind of long term game here then the Academy is probably the better bet.

If we're going Kzinti, then go ahead and bulb KotE. ;)
 
The second advantage to going straight for Bowyers - it means my turnset can be played quickly. Which is good, since I have more to worry about in my PBEMs than I expected.

Have a quick report.

:cry:


:D


:)




Gaspar, I guess you get to do the honors and finish off Bowyers, while regrowing from River of Blood and finishing Dereptus. Hopefully you can also get a Firebow or two and start getting revenge for Houdini.

The Save
 
Poor Houdini... :(

I glanced at the save:

- Bullet Catch should build the Cave of Ancestors instead of the Carnival
- Twister should build a Market instead of the Monument (it has enough tiles to work)
- Good job on the Open Borders with Beery! I suggest offering him our surplus Corn, for the resource diplo bonus. It looks like we're about to get a Thane spread RoK to one of our cities! :goodjob: I suggest converting asap.
- Mismade girl: Monument?
- We have 6 turns to grow our cities back into their happy caps, and start building the 5 exp Warrior
- After we get Bowyers, we obviously need to shut down research and start upgrading to Firebows (better upgrade the Warriors who didn't take promotions already)
 
- Bullet Catch should build the Cave of Ancestors instead of the Carnival

Only if we swap back to Religion. That was the one civic switch I disagreed with, Ichabod. But it means the Cave doesn't do anything for us happiness-wise.

Otherwise I agree with your comments.
 
Only if we swap back to Religion. That was the one civic switch I disagreed with, Ichabod. But it means the Cave doesn't do anything for us happiness-wise.

Otherwise I agree with your comments.

Yeah, I was pretty unsure about that one. In the end, that damn -10% from apprenticeship made me do it. I hate seeing you lose a full hammer just because the game rounds it down.

Poor Houdini, it was his last trick...
 
We will be switching back to Religion, just not when we're building up our forces. Ichabod, I've concluded that the hammer penalty from Apprenticeship is negated by the extra food from Conquest.If we get some free RoK spreads, we'll really need to consider switching back once we get access to Military State.
 
Okay... enacted most of Ilios proposed changes though I left the Carnival build because I'm not certain we're going to have time for a revolt anytime soon. I desperately want to go binary but it will ultimately lose a turn to Bowyers so I stuck @80%. My objective for the turn will be to grow our cities and horde cash for the next player to get some Firebows on board. I also gifted Beeri the Corn - be sure to cancel that when he actually has something to trade us.

T91: :zzz:
T92: :zzz:
T93: RoK spreads in Dove Pan. I decide to wait until Bowyers is in to convert. Maybe if we're lucky Beeri will ask us to and we can get the bonus for agreeing.



T94: Beeri has Rice online, so definitely swap the Corn gift to Corn for Rice on t100. Bowyers due in 2, Dove Pan @ happy cap but time it to grow again once Dereptus is done. Lower slider to still get Bowyers in 2 but start accruing cash. Bullet Catch is also @ happy cap so do the same thing as Dove Pan. Then 1t warriors for everyone!





Edit: This picture is obviously before I jiggered for growth. So, urm, yeah. :smoke:

T95: :zzz:

T96: We did it, ma! :cool:




I dump overflow into KotE since we really haven't decided on a next tech yet and anyway we'll be saving gold for the whole of the rest of my turnset. Beeri has enough on his hands, btw, though I can't imagine that's us since we're at +6 and he's streaming thanes through our empire.

Since pretty much all of our warriors have already taken promo's, I decide to upgrade the once carrying the axe for the moment and hold off otherwise until we have churned some new ones out. (Worth noting, btw, once we get more of these online might be worth sending one to the Rice to burn the jungle since BW isn't anywhere on the short term plan.

T97: Beeri wants to trade Rice for Ale. I don't love the idea, so I decline. I'm sure we can renegotiate the Corn trade in 3t. With Dereptus in I throw Quickchange on a CoA placeholder build to hit max size before commencing warrior spam. Beeri, champ that he is has spread RoK in Mismade Girl. Great Bard BIADL. Drama still shows the Bard on mouseover, so amazingly that hasn't fallen yet.

T98: Drama bard is gone now. :lol: Pretty busy turn for Beeri. We now have RoK in 4 of 5 cities, so if Beeri doesn't pipe up asking us to swap shortly, we should do so. Start some warriors.




T99: More of the same, upgrade another warrior.

T100: Have upgraded warrior take Fire II and summon a fireball to get a look at Jubilee. Quite doable, I'd say:



Beeri now has fur, so I do fur for ale. Don't forget to cancel corn and get rice for it. We don't really need the improved happy cap atm, since we're on warrior spam duty. Unpromoted warriors should be streamed to Bullet Catch which has the Nations only Archery Range. That's all the news fit to print, I think Darrell probably gets 10t of preparing for the final battle and Ichabod gets to enact it. Though I'd go for it as soon as its feasible - Perpy has trade so hopefully we can take his cap and wipe out his army, sue for peace involving all his techs, then come back in 10t and finish the job.

Anyway, here's the save.
 
Nice turns, Gaspar.

We can give the improved cottage from Bullet Catch to the capital, since it'll be worth more there.

Things are definetely looking nice! Perp's capital seems to be pretty good. Another gold, floodplains for cottages, another happy with cotton.

:D

EDIT: Twister should work the cottage 2N of the city so that it can grow it for the capital.

EDIT2: The attack will be pretty easy, IMO. Our top firebow (with the axe) gets 85% odds attacking Perp's capital and that's without bombarding and collateral. As soon as we have 5/6 firebows we can go in.

EDIT3: We can cancel the corn trade and do the corn-rice trade before ending turn 100. We get +5 gold, due to the 10% from the Brewing House.
 
Things are looking up!

Could we grab KotE, quickly build a Mage Guild somewhere and build an Adept? Haste and the Eye will be really handy for when we move in.

Also, I don't understand how Perpentach is doing so well at two cities. He has about 6-7 techs up on us. :crazyeye:
 
Very nice Gaspar :goodjob:! This next turnset feels like a solid hour to play and report. I won't have more than 10 minutes to myself until Tuesday :(. Ichabod can I get a swap?

Darrell
 
Things are looking up!

Could we grab KotE, quickly build a Mage Guild somewhere and build an Adept? Haste and the Eye will be really handy for when we move in.

Also, I don't understand how Perpentach is doing so well at two cities. He has about 6-7 techs up on us. :crazyeye:

Agree on Perpy - makes no sense. Though I haven't played a lot of EitB at Deity so maybe the smarter AI combined with cheaper tech costs means they're all doing close to that well. We have only met 3 of the AIs.

As far as KotE, once optimized, we'll make enough gold for 4 firebow upgrades every 3 turns, so instinctively I'd say go ahead and grab another ~5 FBs and go in, then we can research KotE with the capture gold. Won't give us scouting and speed for this shot but I also don't really see how he's going to spring a surprise. Waiting to get KotE, bang out a Mage Guild and the train an adept would probably delay the attack by at least 8t, maybe more. Instinctively, I don't think that's worth it atm.
 
Agree on Perpy - makes no sense. Though I haven't played a lot of EitB at Deity so maybe the smarter AI combined with cheaper tech costs means they're all doing close to that well. We have only met 3 of the AIs.

As far as KotE, once optimized, we'll make enough gold for 4 firebow upgrades every 3 turns, so instinctively I'd say go ahead and grab another ~5 FBs and go in, then we can research KotE with the capture gold. Won't give us scouting and speed for this shot but I also don't really see how he's going to spring a surprise. Waiting to get KotE, bang out a Mage Guild and the train an adept would probably delay the attack by at least 8t, maybe more. Instinctively, I don't think that's worth it atm.

Lurker: As far as I can tell, those are just 2 cities that you can see. He could have a bunch elsewhere that you haven't seen, seeing as you guys didn't really explore the place much...
 
Lurker: As far as I can tell, those are just 2 cities that you can see. He could have a bunch elsewhere that you haven't seen, seeing as you guys didn't really explore the place much...

No, I checked the last save, he only has one city to trade when you talk to him.
 
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