I played as the Illian's and find you get a prime start. I never really fully appreciated their affinity for snow until playing this scenario. The 2 starting cities are just powerhouse's with the initial civic option's available. I took over a barbarian city to the north, between the Lanun and I. Although this was initially a 'nothing city' deep in thick jungle, after quickly spreading it's culture and building a Temple of the Hand, it instantly become another monster of a city. I now had 3 powerhouse cities, which apart from later taking Lanun cities to make boat's, are all you need to attain victory. I never bothered with the barbarian cities in the desert region directly to your east; just blocked them off with a couple of unit's. I traded with the amicable Lanun.
While I had 3 pumping cities, the poor Doviello still had their 2 starting cities on pop 2 & 3 and were just spamming Son's of Asena and getting nowhere. I managed to stumble upon a barbarian city that had popped up to their west, so they were ultimately gifted it. I never bothered risking the Samhain ritual, as the situation was too fragile, and my allies and I were in the prime location where they'd turn up. I forces were too focused on the enemy to be side-tracked with pillaging Frostling's etc. When I completed The Deepening ritual, tundra was randomly spread throughout their land's, giving my struggling Doviello allies a truly massive boost! They spammed harder, but I noticed Lucian stayed at home all game. They created Gibbon, but he was sent south of their capital to stare at some mountain's for the entire game.....
While I fortified a few blocking unit's on the hill's outside of Vallus, I also set up a small specialist force to block the two 1 tile chokepoint's leading to the Lanun peninsula. Once secured, I continued building up a force to break through the tough Bannor defence and hopefully expose the gooey insides. The Doviello were suiciding into them with a trickle of small stack's. I was getting nervous about the enemy receiving too much XP, but The 3 Stooges, backed up with axes, quickly dispelled all my fear. There were some heavy loses though, with Larry getting impaled through the eye by Valin the Bastard! The Doviello, suddenly awakened by my success, emptied the excess unit's from their cities and helped me take out the rest of the Bannor. I gifted them all of the cities, as the maintenance bill did not appeal to me.
I got the bulk of my army running back toward's the Lanun by road before the last Bannor city fell. When it did, and war was auto-declared on everyone, I was just outside the chokepoint's I had earlier cemented to bottle up the Lanun. From here I cast my World Spell and rolled in. I found the bulk of the Lanun army were Archer's which were just getting upgraded to Longbowmen. They had a few melee troop's, but must have squandered a lot of resource's on trying to dominate the sea during our time of peace. I basically caught them on the hop, with my Stasis spell robbing them of any more upgrading or reinforcement's. They were efficiently dealt to by Priest's of Winter backed up with giant club's, axe's and fireball's!
Conquered them to find it will take me 31 turn's to discover Astronomy.....
I thought about just building Caravel's with expanded hull's to get my stack across. But after seeing how many Grigory Caravel's were appearing from the darkness to the west, I thought it safer to wait to get the better ship's so I didn't lose any valuable, promoted troop's. By the time I got across the Grigory had upgraded to a lot of Longbowmen, not knowing my focus was only their lightly defended capital. I landed the stack 2 tile's to the east of Costa del Sol. I used a Hawk to spot their capital and just bee-lined to it via the line of tree's offered to give you safer passage. The Grigory tried to shadow and pester my stack with heap's of troop's, but were never going to prevent the inevitable and crush me. Their capital just had 2 Longbowmen, a Chariot and an Axeman guarding it! They should at least have a 'held' Crossbowman....or 3!!!
It was like the Grigori had pumped out so many unit's that they crashed their economy early on and had never truly recovered. Lot's of quantity, but little to no quality....
