FFH2: Paradise Regained

[Ozbenno]

AC is a healthy 23 as the Sheaim have founded AV. We can't allow this can we?

I cancel the nature mana deal to Tebryn.

Divination comes in replaced by Animal Handling. The elves dig that nature stuff!

We meet a new contestant, come on down Alexis.



I trade her cotton for fur.

Our GP will now bulb part of Religious Law, we may want to think about that.

Animal Handling is in and as Tower was mentioned, Alteration selected.

I have built a water node and have an adept casting spring on the desert squares.

Overcouncil elections (I traded Honour to Sabathiel and got him to join as well as we're Friendly). Never got anything saying who won though



We have a Great Bard, who will research Hidden Paths. Now we actually have forests, Hidden paths would be good.



I stop at Alteration's completion, Hidden Paths maybe?

I'm building a settler for a city due south of Evermore to catch the clams. We can build another to grab the mana up north if we want.

The game is drifting along, we're building plenty of forests and turning desert into plains. We'd have to grab many more mana sources for a tower win (we have all 4 techs BTW) so would have to look at expansion. What do we think?

 

[reverend oats]

Imo, artist should bulb hidden paths

 

[stuge]

You're up, oats. Bulb away.

Besides hidden paths, our tech choices should aim at raising our offensive capabilities. The Sheaim will bring Hyborem into play at some point and I'll be damned if this empire gets covered with hell terrain.

 

[uberfish]

My vote is for Feral Bond if we're planning to pre-emptively hit the Sheaim. I noticed they have reagents too. Lightbulbing is fine.

 

[reverend oats]

Got it got it

 

[reverend oats]

A build-up turnset
Bulbed WOTF, finished Feral Bond on last turn. Research tentatively set on sorcery. Did not adopt GoN yet, as we have lots of farms.
Sabathial got dogpiled by Kandros, Rhoanna, and Alexis. I believe the latter two were bribed, but Kandros has a significant stack of champs, soldiers of kilmorph, and trebs. He has taken two cities.Tebryn, as expected, converted to AV. Sandal declared war on Alexis.
The only military action was a naval battle. Our crab nets were destored but I managed to kill the barb galley with a trireme.
The SS below is only about 1/3 of the dwarven stacks.

 

[Ozbenno]

The plot thickens!

The baron should help our cause out somewhat. Sorcery seems a good next target as mages and fireballs might be needed.

Does GoN give us an extra food for ancient forests? If so, lack of Agricukture civic will eventually be made up.

 

[Morganknight]

GoN does not give extra food.

After self deliberation, I think we should go for a cultural victory...

 

[uberfish]

ok took a look round our empire.

We only have 4 adepts right now so I decide to only leave the one promoted as water and give it Mobility, and try and train some more if I can. Switched research to Commune with Nature anyway for now, since it seems Druids can get the rank 3 sorcery offensive spells and we can get Yvain sooner to build up his xp (imo, it's worth using our prophets to build Altar even if we aren't going for that victory condition, just for the disciple unit XP bonus)

Hyll: queued Training Yard then Baron in front of ranger and switched the city to work forests instead of coast
Evermore: queued Kithra in front of archer
Bruti: queued Settler in front of ranger

t1 - Sabathiel offers us cotton for pigs, decline for now (hey those are our pigs he stole)

t2 - realise that we have a settler in our capital, why did no one mention this? The large stack from Kandros is moving in on Sabathiel's next city.

t3 - Sabathiel has proven that the world is round. Sandalphon offers us sanitation for divination + 170 gold, decline as I want to keep our 170 gold

t4 - Tentationis goes down to the 20 unit Khazad army. Tor Achare's expansion shuts down the 'culture flip' build position for a new city

t5 - Sheaim demand we cancel our deals with Bannor. I refuse but they now have "enough on their hands", I start gathering adepts toward Hyll

t8 - Hippus now want us to cancel our deals with Bannor, again I refuse. Alexis offers us fur for sheep. Sheaim complete Stigmata on the Unborn.

t9 - Kithra is out, send him towards the Sheaim front

t10 - Another Bannor city goes down to the Khazad. I have planted a bunch of forests on that front for defence.

t11 - Tebryn Arbandi declares war on us bringing the number of civs not involved in a war to 0.



I was hoping he'd send a main stack which we could defeat making it easier to counterattack him, but however he is only sending isolated units which I pick off with Gilden and Kithra. We're quite light on units so I'm not counterattacking him yet, hoping for a real stack to show up which we can defeat.

t12 - Found another filler city



t14 - Alexis converts to Fellowship. I trade her maths + divination + way of the forests for Smelting. We have iron, unfortunately I built one of my two new cities on top of it. Our 4 adepts are now close to the point where we could upgrade them to mages if I'd stuck with sorcery, sorry I forgot we were arcane.

t15 (249): stop here. Turn summary: We're 3 turns from Commune with nature and 8 turns from Baron. Almost all desert in our lands has been restored and lots of forests were bloomed. Founded 2 new cities and trained 2 new workers.

 

[reverend oats]

Oops, my bad on the settler. He was completed in my turnset, but I didn't know what to do with him. I made a note to include it the report, but I was very tired and missed it.

 

[Ozbenno]

I started the settler and mentioned a city south of Evremore to catch the clams. We can always build another.

Annoying we lost the mama to Sabathiel as well.

The Baron can be CR trained so might be able to start expanding the war effort after he arrives.

 

[darrelljs]

Wow, I can't believe we are first in score at Immortal and with no wars. Maybe we should add a "no taking cities" rule .

Darrell

 

[Ozbenno]

If we go on the offensive against Tebryn, how are we going to deal with the AV cities, raze and resettle or capture and use an Inquisitor later to rinse the AV. The AC is at 34 so getting close to 40 which will destroy our improvements.

 

[uberfish]

A few more comments -

- the smallest AI pumped out military and punished the largest AI severely for its overexpansion. I'm surprised at this display of AI competence.

- I built more workers to help us grow forests over improvements and so that we are ready for the Blight event

- Also recommend we play defence for a while. In 10 or so turns we can have fireball mages and the Baron in the field with Yvain/Druids to follow soon. I would probably tend to make the next node enchantment for Haste. We can keep the Veil shrine if we want to attempt the Tower victory since it's a mana source.

 

[stuge]

Tebryn has just stuck his arms in poo. Time to make sure that he understands and regrets it.

I think we should raze AV cities if there isn't something completely awesome inside. It'll lower the AC and make the campaign faster. We'll want to bloom that land anyway, so might as well make a clean start.

 

[stuge]

Update: The report will have to wait until tomorrow morning 'cos an unexpected job interview popped up.

Things have gone south, although hopefully not so far that we can't crawl back.

 

[stuge]

The turns went pretty smooth after all, all things considered.

That was one steep price, but I think it'll be worth it. Longbows are a big step up from archers.

And it looks like we really need that step.

Someone wished to see some real Sheaim stacks. I hope you're happy now.

After some mild whimpering, I set out to do what a man got to do. With lots of lip-biting and sucking.

In the end our only loss was a 2exp ranger. Three things saved our collective backside here.

1. The priests who could be promoted to life2 and who could cast destroy undead.

2. Our heroes and the axe of Orthus. Juggling the axe between Kithra and Gilden was extremely powerful, allowing those two to wipe out 4-5 enemies per turn.

3. Our dextrous archers, serving as a handy mop up force.

The front is quiet now. Tebryn created Rosier and he showed up, but retreated back into the fog before the Baron, who just arrived on the front, could sink some teeth into him.

We'll be able to field Yvain, druids and mages soon. At that point Tebryn should be quite gassed and we can go on the offensive.

With the arrival of Rosier and Hyborem, the AC jumped over forty. The Blight set our teffaforming efforts back considerably, but we got quite lucky since we didn't lose any resources. Our adepts all have water1 now, however. That is far from optimal, but the Blight brought lots of desert with it and mass starvation is even further away from optimal.

The Overcouncil elections came up and we were chosen as the head honcho. Or possibly as the head honchesa. Soon a bunch of resolutions came up.

Strangely enough, none of the resolutions require a majority vote to pass. Just for kicks, I decided to put forward resolution #27: Dogpile Tebryn. It passed with three ayes, making Hyborem the most peaceful leader on Erebus.

That was worth some giggles.

And now the mandatory moment.

Kithra had just reached 37 exp. and I wanted to give him blitz, so I made the above trade. Imagine my surprise when the civilopedia informed me that biltz requires drill4.

 

[darrelljs]

Looks pretty darn good stuge, you had me worried last night . I got it and should be able to play in about 6 hours.

Darrell

 

[uberfish]

nice, looks like a well played defence. Bonus points for finding a use for destroy undead and getting Kithra 30 xp in 12 turns.

 

[reverend oats]

Good turnset, you had me worried there.