Good plan Jusos. I followed it, neglecting the settling and what have you in favor of war. I also didn't change civics and for now we're with City States, Religion, Military State, Conquest, all of which are at least a bit sensible considering the current situation. City States mitigates the high number of cities we have, Religion is good for happiness although it could well be switched to Consumption for that +20% gold and as soon as we're done warring, the military civics can obviously go. For now, however, I was content with them.
I changed a lot of cities to infra builds and I'm fairly sure a lot of them are suboptimal so you can switch around if you see fit but the main goal was achieved and it was done so in a big way. Who knew what 50 groups of axewielding men can do to forests and their inhabitants.
Anyhow, to the game:
Started with River of Blood so -2 people everywhere. Hmph, not a big deal though. Alexis followed through on the same turn by taking Kabhalg aka "Sweet Spot":
Then Arendel showed me something I had totally forgotten about and was certainly fearful of.
Gilden would come back to bite me/us in the ass but not in the way I had imagined it happening. The end shall reveal what happened.
Minor things back home:
There are now 3 dungeons in the backwoods. Definitely worth taking a look, perhaps there are techs inside. That, or monsters.
So anyway, did I mention that trumpets were blown and the event henceforth known as "The Great Rally" had gathered men from far and wide...
...and they had an axe to grind. Literally. Every free axe minus those left garrisoning were called and the picture still doesn't show them all as the more distant cities without proper routes took some 14 turns to reach the goal.
March through the elven land was uneventful and Evermore was reached soon:
The stooges and a few longbows on flat. Psh, laughable.
He did upgrade all his hunters to assassins - not to attack with them but instead defend. Ah the smart AI. Anyway, the bravest or the foolhardiest of axemen were used as projectiles flung to the ramparts of Evermore but they did their job. Losing something like 10~ axe, the prize was ours:
And what a prize indeed:
Game. Set. Match.
And like dominoes:
Yes, that's our city. Or was. Now its Gilden Silveric's hangout. The single axe was no match and I had no military foresight to prevent it. Shouldn't be hard to reclaim with a few suicidal axes tho, it's on flat. Gilden has 4-7 FS though.
Ah yes the dominoes:
Last one burned as suggested. Evermore is free of pressure but still in revolt.
The elven annex:
36 Axes remaining although a few were built during the set on top of the existing ones. They were so far into their production that I didn't see a reason to stop them as war was imminent.
Thoughts and ideas:
-Song of Autumn - I had actually started farming for a prophet in Torrorerial, stupid me for not doublechecking - it might be possible that Arendel completed it during my set but I missed it but we can doublecheck the date on the replay afterwards anyhow.
It is a huge boon to our economy and will undoubtedly take us far. We can recover so fast with that kind of money coming in and I suggest we swap to consumption and try our best to get all sorts of money multipliers going in Evermore asap. It's our golden calf now.
- The war and the aftermath. I didn't mention it during the screenshots but Auric declared 1 turn after we dowed on Arendel. I didn't have a backup army but it turned out that one wouldn't have been necessary anyhow as no units have showed. This may change though and is definitely not an issue to be taken lightly as Auric can be really persistent when push comes to shove.
Astrum should be retaken but I'm unsure whether we should extend ourselves to the remaining elf cities. We're already huge in terms of size and number of cities but I guess more can't hurt. I started building courthouses everywhere to alleviate the economy and I'm sure the Song of Autumn will do a great job at that as well. Fun fact about the economy though: Sandalphon has not cancelled the GPT deal and I'm wondering whether or not it's a bug. If he keeps on sending money indefinitely, we should cancel the deal just so we don't abuse the system too much.
Research is set on Smelting but we still lack a lot of ~basic techs (incl. Hunting, KotE). A lot of catch up to do but we're definitely doing strong. The war suggestion was great.
Oh, and the spell to upgrade terrain is "Vitalize", Nature 3 so all we need is an Archmage... or is it a High Priest of Leaves with said ability.
I guess we'll just live in the swamp.
, I was hoping for +40.
I only checked the wonder list, but now that I think of it SoA might not be listed there. Now we need some markets and then +100% gold building in Evermore (I don't recall what's it called in FfH).
