[FFH] - Erebus in the Balance

Gaspar~ said:

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.

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Agreed.

darrelljs said:

Very nice Gaspar ! 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

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Sure, no problem. I'll play a little later today.

Edit: Just realized that darrel fooled me to play the war turns...

I think we need at least 10 FB to be absolutely sure we crack that city. Don't forget, once you capture the capital, check what Perpentach is willing to give you for peace.

Also, with all his culture gone, we should have a Settler ready grabbing the coast to the Balz cap's SE (maybe south of the grass Cotton?).

Turn 100-110 Report: The King of the Circus!

Turn 100:

I microed the Civ a bit. I got the village from BulletCatch and gave it to the Capital and I made the rice - corn trade witth Beeri. Income went from 87 to 95 gold per turn.

I also realized that this very important tile here was about to flip:



If we could road that tile, we could move firebows, summon fireballs, move the bows in the city and bombard Perp's capital, all in the same turn. A nice advantage to have.

Turn 101:

Nothing important happened. Built warriors, ordered some more. I think I started bombarding Perp's capital too...

Turn 102:

Perpentach decided to really live to the "mad clown" stereotype:



Thanks, mate. Looks like the war is going to be fought in my turnset after all!

Notice that the settler is still there. He moved his swordsmen to something other than settler protection. I decided to upgrade 3 5/2 xp warriors to firebows, since that was a great chance to not take.



Turn 103:

Hey, what's that? Looks like Perp was trying to sneak attack us:



Some pretty powerful defensive troops there. Luckily they aren't defending his capital, rather lurking north, doing nothing. I promoted 5 more warriors and moved the first 6 in. I attacked Perps capital with fireballs, greatly damaging his defenders.

Turn 104:

Here's how the stacks were divided:



6 attacking FB's (with another one lurking behind) and 4 defensive ones. In the above picture you can also see the north stack of Perps after some fireball shower. It was very difficult to kill this stack, since it was very defensive. I managed to kill it after a lot of turns of fireballs (not just 4 from the defensive stack - he moved the stack back to defend and I was able to throw like 8 fireballs in them + the attacking Firebows).

And here's Jubilee after the bombing:



Easy capture, right? (By the way, I started teching KotE in this turn, with 100% research).

Turn 105:

Well, it was easy, but I managed to lose a Firebow at 97.7% odds. I still had a lot of fireballs to attack the city, but I wanted to use them to kill some out of range troops, so I attacked with the Firebow...



He died... Bringing us to 10 Firebows (I upgraded one more to deal with the lizards in the north, so we currently have 11). In the end, we captured Jubilee, getting a very good gold bonus. No buildings in the city, just a settled Great Bard.



I kept on killing some of Perp's units with Fireballs. He still had two cities after we captured his capital, since he captured a barb city some time ago.

Turn 106-108:

It seems I forgot to take screens from these turns. I kept going west with 4 Firebows in the direction of Perp's next city. 2 FBs remained at Jubilee and the defensive stack started moving southwest, following Perp's north stack (that was retreating).

KotE was teched and I decided to one turn AH, revealing horses in the north of Dove Pan and enabling pastures. I also started a Mage Guild in the capital (it has a partly built carnival and a partly built cave of ancestors too).

Turn 109:

Finally managed to kill Perp's northern stack:



The fights were all in the 90% range. One unit managed to retreat.

In the picture above you can also see the attack stack nearing Combee View. I was going to be able to attack it on turn 110 with 4 FBs and 4 Fireballs after previous collateral. The city had some warriors and freaks defending it (4, I think).

Turn 110:





No buildings again and no Great bard this time, though. We also met Mahala after capturing the city. She's the current scoreboard leader. We can open borders with her, but I didn't do it yet. What do you think?



What about Perp? We could easily finish him, but how about some extortion?



So, in my turnset we managed to tech: KotE, AH, BW, Cartography, Drama, Fishing, HR, Hunting, Masonry, Philosophy, Warfare and Writing.

We have a lot of things to build everywhere, so I think is best if we discuss what to build where before the next turnset. We need to discuss about what to tech (currently trade is selected as a placeholder).

We also got Perp's world map, which revealed pretty much everything there was to be revealed:

The Grigori:



The Calabim:



The Luchuirp:



The Doviello:



The Bannor:



The Ljosalfar:



And what's left of the Balseraphs:



Here's our newly acquired real estate:



And some potential for expansion (there's a settler currently being produced):



And, finally, the civics we can choose:



We should probably go for a military state + religion switch. We can build the FotT now, so getting out of apprenticeship wouldn't hurt. There's no gurantee we are going to get the wonder, though...

Well, we could pretty much spam warriors and upgrade them to firebows from now on. We have enough to finish Perpentach (FBs are now 6 strenght due to copper weapons) and we can now build adepts, hunters, swordsmen, horsemen... The list goes on. We could probably conquer everyone... Should we do that? Attacking Beeri is probably a good idea, his cities are very close to our core.

Wow, great turnset, and great report!

Well, now we know how Perpentach managed to do so well, I mean look at Coombe View, that city is just awesome!

Those Firebows are really scary, 1200 beakers might be a tad cheap...

That Bard certainly explains why there was so much cultural pressure.

Lose the monument build in Coombe View and just build culture instead. Jubilee will give you lots of cultural dominance over the center anyways.

Really good work, Ichabod.

I'd certainly say its logical to take at least one more opponent out with our Firebow spam. I'm inclined to leave Beeri be for the time being since we're friends and all. Maybe go hit Alexis?

Definitely would go for Religion + Military State and convert RoK soon. Maybe build FotT in the capital and then go City States along with them? Or can we pop out a GP soonish and fire a GA for it?

In the realm of balance we definitely got a T3 unit on the board very early but in a competitive MP game our opponents would probably make similar choices - certainly could have Champs on the board in about the same time frame.

I suppose we could just roflstomp Erebus from our current position but it might be more fun to head off to spam out some nodes while teching towards Govannon and see just how uber those FBs can be.

Okay I got it...will play in 20 hours. I am a few turnsets behind in the action, so I'll hold off any comments until I have time to read them .

Darrell

By the way, if we settle the wheat spot, we will get another 10% commerce boost in the capital. So I think the settler should go there.

Lurkers comment: Don't you guys use immediately-out-of-revolt-disciples? Or is that considered too much an exploit?

fjordan said:

Lurkers comment: Don't you guys use immediately-out-of-revolt-disciples? Or is that considered too much an exploit?

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No exploit, in my opinion, but we don't have the ability to produce them yet (no religious techs teched yet). And maybe the EitB mod did something about it, even though I doubt it.

We certainly should plan to have them to our next war.

Nicely done, Ichabod . I'm particularly impressed by the better than 1t/tech rate .

Personally, I'd go after Beeri next. He claims to be a friend, sure, but all he really did was settle up on us, and trade us resources that should rightfully be ours anyway .

I don't think I necessarily want to conquer the world with Firebows, but that's an aestetics preference, because I want to play with other magic too. I've got no objection to clearing away one more foe with them, anyway.

Opening the save I would go after the Doviello because they suck and their land is better, but I'm not bothered either way. I am going to have to ask my swap become a skip . I just don't ahve enough time right now to do a proper job of this.

Darrell

Ilios is up, then?

Ichabod said:

Ilios is up, then?

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I think that's true. No rush, though, my week continues to be quite busy. I'm sure I'll be able to play by the weekend, but I've no confidence in playing before that.

Maybe we should just put this on hold till Darrell is back, Mardoc has more time, and Ichabod's and I get over the initial excitement of RB Pitboss 7.

Ilios said:

Maybe we should just put this on hold till Darrell is back, Mardoc has more time, and Ichabod's and I get over the initial excitement of RB Pitboss 7.

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Leaves Gaspar out in the cold - but I'll admit, it looks like the alternative is to do a three-person round. Up to you guys (even if I do want to get a chance to play with Firebows)

Unless another timesink comes up, next week I should be back to normal.

Ilios said:

Maybe we should just put this on hold till Darrell is back, Mardoc has more time, and Ichabod's and I get over the initial excitement of RB Pitboss 7.

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<Best Chunk voice>Hey you guuuuys!

Gaspar~ said:

<Best Chunk voice>Hey you guuuuys!

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You're free to grab another ten turns should you feel like it.

Go kill something Gaspar !

Darrell