Psyringe: My war with Raven was bit dissapointing. I overestimated their defense and built up way too many troops. My attack consisted of 80 Seraphim, 20 Dragons of Light, and 10 or so Archangels. Completely overran them. I was thinking about taking on Lo'Pan but decided to start a game with the new version.
grumbler: 4 or 5 units has been the average for defensive units in city from what i've seen, even in capitals. The only time i've seen more is when an AI is doing really well, or when they're preparing for an attack. They also probably had the units their before the monastery, so the monks didn't play a part in determining if it was defended.
This might be a problem if a war went on a long while though, so maybe boosting warrior monks to 1/4 would be good. They already take 12 turns to produce, 2 longer then crypt skeletons. I agree on the dragons too, they should at least get +2 hp, if not an extra def point. On the other hand, make them too strong defense wise and they could rampage through an enemy territory without being at risk, so I dunno.
Drift: I like the changes for the new version, thanks for not removing the production bonus from Death Mages. I don't think losing doubles city growth will hurt, granaries aren't hard to build.
But anyway, I started a new game with the patch playing as Sss'ra. Still playing on Standard, Pangea, 70% water. I started out on the base of a pennisula, with Raven on the tip of it. Needless to say, Raven was my first conquest. Hordes of fanatics can do wonders early on, heh. After that I built the couple more cities needed to secure the pennisula and focused my troops southward.
Gathering them in my border cities I upgraded them and set them loose apon Vlad. He never saw me coming, heh. I took his city and secured the entire pennisula for myself, then extorted tech from him. After that I built up till I had a decent army of Chaos Warriors/Devils/Trebuchets. Then I set about conquering Vlad. It turned out to be rather easy, Rjak and Vlad were right next to each other and had been fighting for ages.
I only got three cities out of that, so I was going to press on to Rjak but Ariel beat me to the punch. Using ships/ROP with Tlaloc she stormed through him pretty fast. At this point in the game i'm way behind in tech, only just now having gotten two techs into the second era, the other civs are away ahead of me. Even so, I decide to focus on cash instead of science(gotta upgrade my chaos warriors to ettins).
While i'm upgrading my guys Tauron asks for an MPP and I accept, since they're close to Tlaloc and Ariel, the only two civs bordering me now. And as luck would have it, Tlaloc tries to extort cash from me a few turns later, so I deny and war erupts. Tauron joins in on my side, Oberic on Tlalocs. Since all my forces were on my border cities anyway I easily beat back his attacks and take a city on the first turn of the war.
After that I pay Ariel 30 gpt to attack him, and trade Lo'Pan two luxuries to attack. With that done, the only civ bordering him that isn't against him is Oberic, who i'm not about to waste gold trying to bribe, since he'll probably be busy with Ariel/Tauron(who are closer to him) anyway. Over the next few turns I capture two more cities, bringing me into range of his capital. Suprisingly Lo'Pan has captured two or three cities in the north, and Ariel one or two. Tauron hasn't done anything, but hopefully hes keeping Tlaloc's troops busy.
So right now a world war is waging, with Tlaloc/Oberic heavily outnumbered, but there is still a wildcard left. Merlin, he rules the southwest after having destroyed Freya, if he enters he might be able to destroy Tauron/hurt Ariel, but I think Lo'Pan is too far away for him. At this point the top ranked are:
1:Tlaloc(Green), rules the center of the continent(more or less) 1060 points.
2:Merlin(Blue), rules the southwestern end of the continent 985 points.
3:Ariel(White), rules the southeastern/northern part of the continent 685 points.
4:Sss'ra(me, Orange), rules the east/northeastern end of the continent, 667 points.
5:Tauron(Bright Red), rules the southern part of the continent, 585 points.
6:Oberic(Off white), rules the western strip connecting the continent to Merlin, 535 points.
7:Lo'Pan(Dark Red), rules the the land east of Ariel, north of Tlaloc, 405 points.
Incase thats all confusing, I also included the minimap. Chaos is kinda fun to play, with their strong units/extra hp hordes of units can work pretty effectively. I also can't wait until I can use the flying fortress, that just looks so cool. But thats all of that game, I hope my account of it hasn't bored anyway.
