ROTQM13: Rolling Over The Quintet's Magic

[PPQ_Purple]

Either way razing cities with AV drops the AC.

 

[King Bulrush]

Got it! Before I play: do you think we should give some of the more distant (and high maintenance) cities to the Mercurians?

 

[pholkhero]

Given the Carthage treatment.

feels a bit like a python sketch -- it is an EX-city

osing only 8 gold a turn at 60% with over 2k in the bank is sustainable for the foreseeable future

what's our next big tech objective? is there one?

also, didn't seem to be any attacks from Bals or Svalt right? or just nothing of note?

 

[pholkhero]

Got it! Before I play: do you think we should give some of the more distant (and high maintenance) cities to the Mercurians?

they're picky (or they were several sets ago when we first entered Svalt lands)

 

[Ozbenno]

The maintenance isn't killing us at the moment. Dis would be the only city that is really far from our core and it had some wonders to capture so is defendable to capture rather than raze. Every other AV city was razed.

what's our next big tech objective? is there one?

Not sure, I think we've got this under control. Maybe something for the economy, or Righteousness for Sphener or Feral Bond for the Baron but don't think we need them.

also, didn't seem to be any attacks from Bals or Svalt right? or just nothing of note?

The only attacks we had were from the Ljosofar who insisted on sending bunches of mages and adepts our way to feed Valin and Brigit.

 

[King Bulrush]

Ok, so I started playing my turns. Before I get to the account of my reign however, I first have some good news about Basium. It looks like the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated:

Spoiler :

I have also checked and he is not interested in any of our cities. Probably doesn't have the troops needed to hold them anyway as his army seems greatly reduced in size.

And now for the main event...

Scene: the Bannor throne room. Capria, regent queen of the Bannor, earthly representative of the Great Sabathiel himself, is keeping herself busy with the affairs of the realm, when the doors of the throne room burst open. The newly appointed grand chancellor Bulrush, runs into the room, barely stopping for a short bow before shouting out: "My Lady! I humbly report a great victory!"

Spoiler :

"The Sheaim, vilest of all magic users, the choosen of Ceridwen herself, summoners of demons and worshippers of the unholy ashen veil, are no more. Donal Lugh reports the capture of their capital city. Tebryn Arbandi has been apprehended and will answer for his crimes agains creation. He was so eager to consort with demons, so now he and his people can follow Hyborem all the way down to the underworld. Of our mortal foes, they are the first to fall, but will not be the last!"

The city did not have anything particularly usefull in it, but surprisingly, I was given the option to "return" it to the Mercurians, which I did. We got 77 gold from the sack of it first.

Another thing that I did on my first turn is that I changed the civics. I choose consumption, as was discussed previously, and I also switched from conquest to foreign trade (which sounds a bit silly given our current situation, but it did significantly improve our financial situation. At 60% research we went from making 5 gpt to 47 gpt. And I really wanted to get out of conquest as it forces us to either stop building units or to stop growing our cities. We may not build units so fast now, but we can hire mercs with the extra cash.

As for the rest of my reign, it was more of the same:

Spoiler :

I sent Donal Lugh and his army to deal with the Amurites, which they did with some success:

Spoiler :

Not everything went perfectly, however. Unfortunately, I got careless and underestimated the elves, and as a result we suffered a severe defeat outside of Eaca, with most of the reinforcements meant for Valin's army, including the entire siege train, being ambushed and wiped out. This did somewhat delay the fall of the even capital, but eventually, the inevitable happened:

Spoiler :

We now control both the FoL and the RoK holy cities. The later sadly doesn't have a shrine. Maybe we can do something to get another great prophet for it?

Anyway, that's it from me. Donal Lugh has set up camp under the walls of the amurite capital and will be able to storm the walls on the next turn. I leave the honor of ordering commandint the assault to the next player.
As for future strategy, it looks like there may be a yet undiscovered land bridge between the Amurite ald Ljosalfar lands. I propose that Donal finish off the Amurites and then attempt to link up Valin and then they both return to our core lands via the northern route, taking or sacking elven cities as they go. After that, pick up whatewer reinforcements we manage to produce in our core and then head south to finish off the Svartalfar too. Hopefully Basium will be done clowning around by then and we will able to take our victory.

Roster

Ozbenno
King Bulrush >> just played
pholkhero >> UP NOW
Tinadafish >> On Deck
PPQ Purple

 

[Ozbenno]

Nice progress! Did we have a Prophet lying around already or did I miss us using him for something else!

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Yes, we have a prophet left over from my turn. I put him in the capital for safe keeping.
This said, do we really want to be running consumption? IIRC that one makes your dependent on your gold percentage.

 

[King Bulrush]

Yes, we have a prophet left over from my turn. I put him in the capital for safe keeping.
This said, do we really want to be running consumption? IIRC that one makes your dependent on your gold percentage.

That's a good point actually. Maybe switch back to social order once more of our cities grow past the happy cap? Or even to crusade?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

That's a good point actually. Maybe switch back to social order once more of our cities grow past the happy cap? Or even to crusade?

I dislike crusade for anything but short periods as it locks us into only building military units. And frankly I think we don't need to ever build any more of those. If it were up to me I'd just bunch all our heroes into a single death stack with a couple support units (like the upcoming tier 3 priests and paladins) and move that stack around burning every AI city down to the ground until we win a conquest victory. We are after all pretty much unstoppable at this point anyway. Taking cities only really dilutes our forces for no gain.

For the same reason I feel we don't need a siege train either. I've been taking and burning cities with our heroes without the need for siege weapons all my turn.

 

[King Bulrush]

We only need to stay in crusade a minimum of 10 turns, after which we can switch back to something else. While in crusade we can build some flagbearers who can stay around after the crusade ends too, and can buff our units when attacking cities. We can also build a few more military units to garisson our conquests.
On the other hand you are right that we probably don't need any of that at this point.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Basically, and maybe I am wrong here, I feel we have more or less won already and the rest is just cleanup. Short of some hilarious bad luck on our part I just don't see what noble AI is going to throw at us that will reverse that. There are a couple things like the elven worldspell that could slow us down. But ultimately that's about it.

The only thing that can still get us is if one of the AI pulls out an altar victory or something.

 

[pholkhero]

Basically, and maybe I am wrong here, I feel we have more or less won already and the rest is just cleanup. Short of some hilarious bad luck on our part I just don't see what noble AI is going to throw at us that will reverse that.

this is also my view. however, with that in mind, that's why i like only building units so that we can just end the game as fast as possible.

doing it one city at a time seems slow going, but happy to with whatever the group decides.

 

[King Bulrush]

There are a couple things like the elven worldspell that could slow us down.

I am 99% sure that the elves have alredy used up their worldspell. I mentioned during my previous update that when I first scouted their lands I noticed some treants and lots of new forests, but that I lost that screenshot so couldn't post it.
As for the altar victory, thankfully it is to early for that. The AI doesn't have the tech level needed for the final level.

I also agree that we have won already and all that is left is the mop up. My only ideea at this point for speeding up victory is to rush for the feral bond tech and the baron Duin. He can turn defeated enemies into werewolves that can create more werewolves in turn which would allow us to cover more ground faster. Do we have any other tech priorities at the moment?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Or go for high priests and paladins and splendor. Like can you imagine that combo along side our existing armies? Pure massacre.

 

[Tinadafish]

Clean-up duty without haste is the real challenge of this run lmao.

It was dicey at a few points iirc, maybe the next one (if there's a next one) the difficulty could be bumped up a bit, not too sure the AI handles always war too well either.

 

[pholkhero]

feral bond tech and the baron Duin.

Or go for high priests and paladins and splendor. Like can you imagine that combo along side our existing armies? Pure massacre.

i say we go for whichever one is closest first, and then the other second.

And then we see how many fun screenshots of our righteous paladin and werewolf army we can make

 

[Ozbenno]

Well Mr pholk, as you're up you can decide which one we go for. The Baron is definitely more fun as spawning endless werewolves is great but is probably further away.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Maybe next time we might want to pick a victory condition that is not easy to brute force like say the tower of mastery?

 

[Ozbenno]

Maybe next time we might want to pick a victory condition that is not easy to brute force like say the tower of mastery?

Agree, a culture, altar or tower victory are more difficult to achieve.