FFHSG1 - The Perilous World Of Erebus

[King Bulrush]

use the giants to farm xp for now i guess? shouldn't we maybe use one of the giants to explore a bit into our neighbors' lands, and keep 2 at home for defense? we could even rotate who's on walkabout so that they all can farm xp from teh gobbos

edit: got it

Seeing as we aren't acutally facing any crisis at home at the moment, I would say keep a giant at home and send to (for mutual backup) to explore enemy terittory. We don't know what they will find there.

 

[pholkhero]

I began our faithful journey by moving two giants eastward towards Bal, thinking it would be easier to get to him than around those mts to the west.

Little did i know there was danger lurking


(though now, i see the village down there anyway, but . . . )

we survived but that was enough to convince me that i don't think we could defend our capital and the eastern city w one giant since lizards starting popping at our Eastern Duo fairly . . .

i also misclicked on an event so we got this guy:


I left him in the city as I have no idea what promo would be best for him, and i'm not sure of the exact mechanics of spellcasting....do enemy units get a counter attack? or is it like a siege attack??

i also got bullied


i gave in as he is #1 and the other guy is evil so automatically hates us (i think) so i wanted to keep him on our side for now.

after mining came in, i went w fishing to help improve Ude in the short term. I stopped when it came in, and just sleected Education randomly as I'm not entirely sure where we need to be heading.

we're going to build up a spellcasting army correct? should we just have a fair number of productive cities like any conquest civ and start the ol' smashy-smashy or are we looking for something else?

our Eastern Duo is being walked back to Nimarail as we could use the space to heal up a bit. I think we should clear that tribe (unless that's the one we want to collect xp from and maybe clear the one by the capital...this may be the better option i think).

oh, and mahala's GA ended and they adopted Conquest fwiw.

 

[pholkhero]

Ozbenno >> UP NOW
King Bulrush >> on deck
pholkhero >> just played

 

[Ozbenno]

OK good turns pholk. Getting an adept from an event is awesome (even if it was from a misclick). I'll try to explain the arcane promotions in my set.

Now we have the Hill Giants, Mahala isn't as much of a threat. Now she has our map (and knows where we are) I reckon she's going to attack. We should be able to defend with the giants and then take the war towards her if we feel so bold.

Got it for tonight. BTW, I'm away from Thursday-Tuesday inclusive.

 

[lfgr]

But on turn 191, a giant killed Loki!!! I did not expect this to happen and I don't even know if it is a bug. I thought he was supposed to retreat.

Was that in a city? Units cannot retreat from cities.

Loving the reports so far!

 

[Ozbenno]

An introduction to Spellcasting.

Arcane units have the ability to cast spells. They get access to different spells via promotions, ie the more XP they have the more spells they have. As arcane units don't (as a rule) engage in combat, they instead accrue XP slowly over time.

There are 18 different spheres of magic as pictured below and seen in the top left of the screen



You need access to the sphere before you can access the promotions so you can access the spells.

We have Body (the fist), Fire (the fire and Metamagic (the pink glowy thing). You can gain access to more spheres by certain wonders but mainly by building on mana nodes (see below).



There are 4 technologies that between them open up all spheres (Elementalism, Alternation, Divination and Necromancy). Once you have researched one of these techs, an option to build a particular node appears for a magic user.

Each sphere has 3 ranks of spells. The 1st rank is open to Adepts (like we have). Once we research Sorcery and the Adept is level 4, they can be upgraded to a Mage and can cast level 2 spells. Archmages can be upgraded from level 7 Mages after we research Strength Of Will.

Level 1 spells are, on the whole, useless except for a couple. Luckily one of those is Haste.



I give our trusty Adept the Body I promotion and he can now cast Haste (give an extra turn of movement)



While I'm at it, I promote him to Fire I because the Fire II spell is Fireball and its awesome!

I also change techs to Festivals, as markets can help with the finances and Carnivals with happiness. The worker can probably do more good back home mining and crafting, coupled with the second worker about to pop will help improve the two big cities first. I send the adept towards the two giants, as haste can really help you get out of sticky situations.

Form of the Titan BIADL, someone is more advanced that us, hopefully not Mahala.

The wine is crafted, fish netted in city #2 and a mine in the capital about to be chopped.



We could win this game purely by being alive and not being eaten by whatever is ravaging Erebus.



Someone took Loki's death hard! Think we should be fine....



Same turn Mahala cancels open borders because of .... reasons ...

But that's not the worst bit of news of the turn



Bugger

Have to do this the hard way.

I'm not entirely sure which city he is after so hedge my bets and place the giants with a couple of warriors each strategically to cover both



If we could draw him into attacking the combined forces on the forested hill or draw them into a city.

Festivals came in last turn and I selected Masonry but not really sure what is best.

If we can see off Perpentach, it might be worth going on the attack and getting rid of him, as we need to expand quickly I think. Otherwise, build settlers, mage guilds, adepts, elder councils and expand towards him. Maybe!!!

 

[King Bulrush]

In his nation's hour of greatest need, King Bulrush the 5th ascends to the Amurite throne, ready to lead his nation in war. "Victory or Death!" he proclaims before ordering his troops into battle.
The news of his ascension to the throne is enough to make the enemy break off their march on the capital. Unfortunately, they decide to head towards the less defended coastal town of Udenrat instead. Most of the Amurite army is sent north to intercept them. Fortunately we have the haste spell and can use roads, so our mobility should be better. The feint convinces the enemy to refocus his attention on the capital. Unfortunately for them they decide to camp in the nearby wood. An opportunity for our local hero Curly to show off his woodsman skills:

He attacks and scores a glorious victory. We draw first blood in this fight and take out the enemy giant.
Moe also takes a turn at showing our foes the error of their ways:

And Larry finishes in style (and without taking any damage himself!):

Our counterattack stops there, as there are no more easy victories. I decide to station a small garisson on the hill to the southeast, in order to prevent an easy enemy advance towards the poorly defended Nimarail. In the intertunr they are overrun and wiped out (3 warriors lost) but they take out 3 freaks, forcing the enemy to split and weaken his forces. More importantly they kill the diseased freak that could have infected our entire capital garrison.
Over the next turns, the remaining freaks do attempt to move towards Nimarail but they are pursued and killed by our giants without any more losses.

I also take two somewhat risky decisions:
One is not to immediately counterattack. My reasoning is that the Balseraph terittory is quite far away, even for hasted troops, and they will probably rebuild their army before ours can reach them. Also, we don't know what the Doviello are up to, and there is a real risk we will have to fight a two front war, in which case it is better to keep our troops at home for the moment. I think we should build a few more adepts first (for metamagic 1 and the floating eye spell). Once we have that we will have a much better situational awareness and will be able to act accordingly. We do however sacrifice the chance of a quick knockout aginst Perpentach, if such a chance actually existed.

The second decision is to try and build the Heron Throne wonder in Udenarat. It is probably too late but maybe we still have a chance to get it, and we do want to make that place one of our top production cities in the long run. And if we fail, it will at least give us a lump sum of gold which should help seeing as we are currently loosing money (and will loose even more if we try to campaign outside of our terittory. I also reason that we still have our capital available to pump out units in case of an emergency.

We finish researching Masonry and I select archery as the next tech as it is relatively quick to research, allows us to improve our defense and allows us to more efficiently use forests (of which we have many nearby).

Since I settled on a strategy of defense and development, I also start to work on the Deruptus minor wonder in our third city.

A few more turns pass by uneventfully. I send the giants to kill some goblins at the distant goblin fort and on turn 238, we make an unsettling discovery:

It seems that the entire Doviello army is on the move. And what is worse is that Mahala obvoiusly knows Bronze working. That is really bad news. The somewhat good news is that judging by their position maybe they are going to attack Perpentach.
I immediately start to build more warriors, but what we really need is for enough time to finish researching archery to upgrade them, othewise we are lost.

Final turn: It looks like the Doviello army is indeed headed towards Balseraph terittory. I tentatively breathe a sigh of relief. It looks like we have a bit more time to build up our strength. I save and end my reign for now.
(one last note: we did overrun the eastern goblin fort but I decided to abide by my "don't explore with giants" rule and bring a warrior to do the deed. He should arrive there on the next turn, so let me know how the exploration goes)

 

[Ozbenno]

Woo hoo, we're still alive!

 

[King Bulrush]

Yesterday wen I played I was a bit tired and ended my report somewhat abruptly here are a few more notes that I should have perhaps included, mostly strategy suggestions for the future:

- there is a mage with metamagic 1 (and thus the ability to summor a floating eye) near the eastern edge of our lands. I suggest that it continues to move east and use the floating eye to follow the movement of the Doviello army, so we can know where they are going and what/how they are doing. They are likely to be the most important threat to us in the near future.
- I spent a lot of time trying to improve the economy as it looked like the best choice at the moment. However, after archery is researched I suggest that we start to build an archery range or two and start to build/upgrade archers as our current defenses aren't really adequate.
- Maybe we can also research bronze working (for swordsmen) after archery. Also, we should try to get the shock promotion on as many units as possible when we gain more XP. It looks like we may have to defend against a lot of infantry assaults in the near future.

Was that in a city? Units cannot retreat from cities.

Loving the reports so far!

Yes, it was in a city (I should have realised that was the reason, but I thought Loki was somehow exempt from the rule, and besides he was in a foreign city)

 

[Ozbenno]

If we're using the adept for scouting I'd make sure he has a suitable escort.

We could do with a city or two more. I'd consider running a GS where we have an Elder Council as they bulb along the magic line.

 

[pholkhero]

Ok, I've got it, and think i can steer us between these cliffs.

the best we could hope for would be a stalemate to our east, but it seems like Mahala may wipe out Bal. what's the feasibility of them conquering the cities and having an empire that spread out, or of them just razing them all?

in any case, it seems like building up our own empire is the best short-term solution so i'll work on that, plus more in the next installment of What's Going to Happen Next . . .

 

[lfgr]

Is it still feasible to wake up the gargoyles to deal with Mahala's army? That would be epic.

 

[pholkhero]

Sent a warrior to Udenarat
Then farther north to explore a tat.

He saw an elephant and just ran home.
As punishment, we lost the Heron Throne:


Our water's red; that's no good:


A trail of Blue Men in the eastern wood:


Tech's done, sharp flying points for us:


Ah cripes, now he makes a fuss:


Now the Blue Men, upon us they set:


all in all, my best turns yet

 

[pholkhero]

so, it appears we need these gargoyles you speak of

i only played 9 turns, and stopped at his DoW. Not sure what there is to do but hole up and hang on. I swapped to walls in Nim, but not sure they'll be done in time to help. (though, there are a lot of units out there.) i've got a couple of our more veteran warriors heading SE; perhaps we should start promoting them to archers? or they may not be there in time.

all in all, it's a sticky situation, so i'd actually prefer to hand off, if only not to lose the game on my set. i have a reputation to maintain.

but really, besides upgrading and turtling, is there anything else to be done except pray?

 

[Ozbenno]

I won't be in a position to continue until Tuesday probably, so either KB picks this up or we wait a few days.

 

[pholkhero]

I won't be in a position to continue until Tuesday probably, so either KB picks this up or we wait a few days.

i think i read it opposite: tues-thurs.

Iirc we adjusted to 10 turns anyway during war times in SGs (is that right?) so, we can go down to 10 turns per set for now, and skip you this go round.

alternately, there may be some of you who've been following the SG and see now as your time to rise to the occasion, adn take up the mantle of Ozbenno's sub. (and then watch helplessly as we rope you into more and more SGs . . .)

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Yea, nope. I am watching and reading this but I'd rather not join just so I could be the guy that lost the game. xD

 

[King Bulrush]

Is it still feasible to wake up the gargoyles to deal with Mahala's army? That would be epic.

Activating the Gargoyles won't help us now. Pristin pass is indeed the shortest route between us and Mahala, but she already sent her army on a long detour to attack us from the other direction. Either the AI is smart enough to not want to cross that pass or they really did plan on attacking the Balseraphs and changed their mind. Right now the gargoyles may cut them off from reinforcements but I don't think they need those.very much.

I also can't play today but I will see what I can do over the weekend, unless there are other volonteers.

 

[King Bulrush]

Ok. I did try to play today. And the results were not good. I could see from the start that Nimrail is undefensible. However, I devised a plan where I would try to bring as many troops there as possible while emptying the other cities. I thought this would make the AI try to bypass Nimrail and try to attack some other city, at which point we would use our superior mobility to relocate the army to the threatened city and repeat the process, while also harassing the enemy along the way to slowly reduce their numbers.
It didn't work and the AI did not follow the feint. On the next turn the Doviello army stormed Nimrail anyway and killed the garrison including all our giants and a bunch of warriors....
At this point I consider the game to be effectively lost.

Just for curiosity I decided to reload a save and try another strategy. I evacuated Nimrail (which the Doviello then razed) withould a fight and retreated towards the capital to make a stand there. This wend a bit better in that after 15 turns we still have our capital, we have archers, and we killed half the Doviello army including Lucian. The bad news is that we only have the capital, we lost half our own army including the giants, and the rest of the doviello are besieging the capital while slowly pillaging everything around it. So... Game over again.
I think with a bit more save scumming I could get to a situation where we actually repell their attack, but I am tired now, and I don't know if I should bother since that is against the spirit of the game anyway....

BTW. Recon via flolating eye revealed that the AI actually is dumb enough to activate the Gargoyles in Pristin Pass. But that doesn't help us now because as I pointed out, their main army already bypassed a pass as they took a detour to get to us. Which makes me think that their original target really were the Balseraphs but they probably rebuilt their army faster than we did. Well, I guess that is a lesson for next time...

 

[pholkhero]

it seems the SG is deceased.

passed on.

kicked the bucket.

expired.

we have an ex-SG.

Oz is gonna be so mad at us when he gets back should we just try to start a new SG, and pretend its the old one, and hope he doesn't notice?

on a serious note, did we just get smacked with by the RNGod with a poor start, or did should we have done something differently?

going further, while i can't speak for oz, i think he'd be ok if we rerolled with the same settings (or different too, even)