Against the grey

My first goal after scouting around a bit was to try to see where to settle and make a link between my two cities. I realized there was the problem of a Sidar city in the way (how rude of them!). I also was shocked to see the Sidar building so many cities.

I probably could win this by sitting back and building Chalid and then just killing everything, but I pretended I really wanted to play this 'right'.

My city in the south became very powerful with a good economy; in the north I had good hammers. I was building settlers and escorts along with workers. The Sidar weren't very aggressive. I got a great commander, and attached it to my camel archer, along with Decius from the beginning; these were my 'strike force'.

I didn't get any metals, so I was building the camel archers as my main attack unit. This saved me later because of their speed. I got a great engineer and built 'Form of the Titan'.

My 'problem' was that I was playing as though it were a 'real' FfH game, not a duel - clearly I should have just pumped out military units. For instance, I built the Great Library (why did I?) I got enough units to capture the Sidar city, and I finished a road and cities linking my starting cities. I got a ranger to clear out the animals in the north.

The Sidar city I captured ws garrisoned with about 8 units, including my now highly ranked starting units and my two units with commanders, my horse archer with Decius ws level 8 or something.


And the Sidar finally came with their SoD. It probably had about 11 units; many had city raiders; This shouldn't be a problem, but I don't have defensive troops, I 'm hoping I can hit the city raiders on the defensive.

I went to attack the top unit, and my rank 8 horse archer had about a 20% chance and a 20% retreat! What is going on - oh, it is Rathus! I considered the 'run away and wait until I build Chalid' strategy, but I decided to attack! I got lucky -- I won the combat, and Rathus retreated. Even so, only 3 units survived (my originally Fyrdwell, my horse archer, the monk). I did kill Rathus in a few turns and in top of this being lcuky, I got the nether blade.

I know I had now won the game. Since I built up my infrastructure, I now had a stronger economy, more troops, etc. To be sporting I probably should have played without Chalid, but I did finish him (Ok, I'm not sporting). I acutally survived one more SoD but this wasn't nearly as dangerous and the rest was mop -up; it was now more about logistics than actual combat.