FFH2: Paradise Regained

[reverend oats]

Great set, looks like I will get to play with some fun toys.
Maybe we can get the Khazad to declare on Bannor and take those cities. Or is that too optimistic?

 

[uberfish]

The Khazad might just take the Bannor out on their own anyway. I have to confess I don't really want to fight the Bannor, since there is no way, for example, to communicate to the AI that we want them to plant forests and will compensate them with Khazad lands in return.

 

[reverend oats]

Fun turnset. Burned one city, captured three- Grottiburg, Stadistad, and Torgustad. Only lost one unit, a ranger, softening up a Beast. Man, those guys are really nasty. Ungy did a great job gassing the Sheim though. In a stroke of good fortune, Rathus Denorma was killed and I managed to grab his Netherblade, which gives +2 death and +80% versus heroes. I forested some more land and continued researching SoW. WW is about 17. I founded clam city with the settler, and traded for Feudalism with Sandal for Summoning. Not much elso happened.
For some reason I can't access "upload" so the pics will all be thumbnails.

 

[darrelljs]

Nice...I have a feeling these guys have the Crown, might want to check for it before burning it. If I was them I would have put it in the AV holy city.

uberfish is up, right?

Darrell

 

[Morganknight]

We know the Khazad have the Crown.

 

[uberfish]

Crown is unfortunately owned by the Khazad. We're in a great position.

Had a quick review of the war situation. Our hero stack is terrifying and the Sheaim are down to 4 cities and tier 1/2 units, this should be a quick mopping up operation.

t312 - Overcouncil re-elects us as leader.

t313 - There's about 15 Khazad units moving through attempting to take Sheaim cities, but they are move 1 and therefore much too slow to keep up with us.

t314 - Our forces reach the Sheaim capital and Kithra kills all the defenders singlehandedly after bombardment. I decided to keep it since it has a shrine and mana source, winning all fights at 99+%.

t315 - Alexis wants to trade us Animal Mastery for summoning and 735 gold, I renegotiate it so we give her poisons as well and she pays us 80 instead. The ratcatchers' guild moves to Evermore.

t316 - Accurate last words:

I raised the AC by 10 or so by razing the other 3 Sheaim cities because their position was so terrible. Kithra made it to blitz.

The barbarian city down there with so much culture can only mean one thing:

Our heroes (and the combat 4 druid who I figure can be sacrificed) head down to slay the dragon.

317 - Overcouncil vote comes up, I pick Open Markets. Kithra only has 29.1% odds against Acheron so I start bringing the Baron down with the sword.

318 - Took control of the reagents near Skadistad with a disciple mini culture bomb.

319 - Even the Baron won't attack Acheron at 70%. Never had this problem before, not sure how to get around it. Started Aquae Sucellus in Hyll.

321 - We reach Strength of Will, I'll leave it up to the next player to figure out how to kill the dragon if Kandros doesn't get him first. Most of our best units are standing around next to Domir being scared of the dragon, and a few were wandering around the former Sheaim lands trying to clean them up.

 

[reverend oats]

Good set, uberfish. Do we have spirit mana though? Otherwise it's gonna be near impossible to take down the big red guy.

 

[darrelljs]

Meteors and summoned units will be the only way without Courage I guess. There should be some mana nodes in the former Sheaim lands we can also convert one of those to Spirit.

Looking very, very good now though. When do we want to move on the Khazad? With Archmages I would say no time like the present.

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

Isn't acheron immune to fire? I believe we have a spare mana in our north somewhere that hasn't been connected in any case if we want to get Courage for this purpose, or we could just forget about it and go for Khazad.

 

[reverend oats]

In my experience, meteors can kill him anyway.

 

[Ozbenno]

There is a spare mana source in the north of our lands somewhere for a spirit node if we want. Were plenty of adepts around as well.

 

[stuge]

What's the reward for killing Acheron?

 

[Morganknight]

You receive the Dragon's Hoard if you destroy the city. If you don't destroy the city, the Hoard will stay where it is. A mobile wonder, (you can take it back to the city of your choice) that provides Gold and Gems and +1 Great Commander pts per turn. In the halcyon days of FFH it provided Mithril as well, but alas, no longer.

 

[darrelljs]

stuge, you do know you are up right?

edit: nevermind, just say your "got it" post .

Darrell

 

[stuge]

-Bought taxation and blasting powder from the Calabim. The price was quite high but our economy is now extremely strong.

-Started terraforming the Sheaim province, don't know if we should raze all the cottages. Might be easier just to forest farms, mines, pastures and the like.

-The extra mana node was converted into a spirit node.

-Our stack is ready to have a go at Acheron, boosted with three archmages and a mage with spirit I. Smack the bugger with nine meteors and he should be ripe to fall.

The save's an autosave, due to a game crash. Hopefully it isn't a persisting bug.

 

[darrelljs]

Got it...probably need 24 hours to play.

Darrell

 

[darrelljs]

Played 10 extremely laggy turns. Killed the big, bad dragon with Meteors and Kit. Move the Dragon's Horde to our Bazaar city, it does just what Morgan Knight says:

Unfortunately Alexis founded a city in OUR lands. I revolt to Caste System and cash rush several Settlers to claim the rest. Most have had Priest of Leaves build Temples, two cities haven't but fresh Priests are auto-routed there. The rest of the turn was focused on getting the new lands terraformed. Unfortunately one of our Druids can't get Nature III and therefore can't vitalize. The other two are on full terraform duty, we might want to consider getting the third one killed in battle so we can upgrade a new Priest of Leaves to a terraformer. The Archmages are with all our other cool units in the east, ready to attack. I'd say declare now, since Sabathiel and Alexis just declared on poor onc city a Rhoanna (note the Great Bard...Golden Age?):

We are close to getting the Free GM from Mercantilism for some good cash rushing. I'd go for Mithril Weapons next to speed this thing along.

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

Sure looks a different place to when we started

 

[Morganknight]

Got it for tonight!

 

[Morganknight]

Pretty quiet set for me. A little disappointing, but I'll get to that later.

Rhoanna was destroyed.

The Bannor finish the Temple of Temperance before we can, but we manage to finish the Aquae Succelus.

I go ahead and settle the GM from Mercantilism in Evermore. We get Deception and Guilds from the Sidar and Stirrups and Warhorses from the Calabim.

I researched Theology and upgraded several of our priests. I was sad to discover that at some point, they took out Patriarchs. At one time, in the not too distant past, the highest ranking (most experienced) priest of a specific religion could become that religion's patriarch and call holy wars. I would have loved to call a Holy War against the Khazad. Looks like we'll have to do it the hard way.

Feel free to build our full compliment of Flurrys and Beastmen to use in the upcoming war.

I built our Heroic Epic in Ahepetr since with the double gunpowder there, it had become our most productive city. Feel free to keep it pumping out units.

Our military force is in position to begin assaulting either the Khazad or the Bannor (I vote Khazad.) I examined the 3rd level sorcery spells our mana spheres give us access to and decided that Maelstrom looked pretty good, so started giving our Archmages water promotions...