ROTQM13: Rolling Over The Quintet's Magic

[King Bulrush]

Valin is 7 XP points away from leveling up. It looks like he is gaining XP very slowly now (1 per combat), but he has blitz from Orthus' Axe, so this may help.
Most of our southern army is close to him so we could launch a raid into Svartalfar lands. On the other hand, I found long treks through the wilderness with 1 Move units to be very frustrating. One more reason why I favour turtling and development at this stage in the game.

The svarts may have swithched religions but the Balseraphs still have OO, so we may see Saverous in their army (I'm not sure they have the tech to build Hemah at the moment). It won't help them, however, since our heroes are probably far more experienced.

On the other hand, the Amurites worship Kilmorph, so while I didn't check, I think most of the army we just annihilated was eligible to be reborn as Mercurian Angels.

 

[King Bulrush]

One more thing: If anyone is interested, I went back to the save from the turn where the Mercurian gate was completed and I choose the option to play as the Mercurians. I then saved the game again and you can find the save attached here, if anyone wants to experiment playing out this game as the Mercurians. (as a side project - I am not suggesting we make the swithch in our succession game)

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The amurites are definitively going to be our biggest concern judging by the size and quality of stack they keep throwing at us.

 

[pholkhero]

i've got it.

Oz suggested Maths>engineering? good for the immediate tech path?

if i can i'll try to sneak in one, maybe two, settlers to either backfill behind Spilan or expand our frontiers in the east of south

 

[PPQ_Purple]

We have IIRC 3 spots marked out. 2 behind spilan and one next to the merurians. I would settle them in reverse of that order.

 

[King Bulrush]

I am also in favour of founding new cities. I did some experimenting and it looks like we can squeeze in as many as 4 cities norh of Spillan with minimal overlap:

The land there looks rich in resources so it seems worth colonizing. We can build the summer palace/winter palace there to help with the upkeep.

Other than that, we might build at least one city south-east of Ventry, and one on the B01-spot (already marked previoulsy), take Uddrur in the far nort-east, and I would suggest also founding another city in the Tundra for the fur resources (there is a spot nort of Uddrur with access to fresh water and a wheat resource that may grow into a reasonably productive city).

One worthwile sideproject may be to get some XP with one of our remaining hunters so that we can capture bears again (for culture in the new cities). But as mentioned before, please do not destroy bear dens, as we want them to keep spawning.

As for tech, I think Mathematics was meant to unlock the Bazaar of Mammon, so we can bild it in Vallus (where we have a shrine) as soon as possible. Vallus should become the financial capital of our empire. I have no other suggestions regarding tech - there are just too many things I want now and it is hard to choose.

 

[pholkhero]

On the inherited turn, there was just some mvmt left, and I pushed enter.

More moving.

427: Maths in, Currency is in the q already. i let it stay instead of swapping to Eng as we could use the money to upgrade and keep our tech advantage.

28: more builds were auto-q'd in cities. I also scouted some cities to our south:

not very well defended at all.

Holekk (GEng) was BIDL

29: Tent: Crusader>Archer to help defend our new cities when we arrive to cleanse them
30: Torr: Conf>Cat
32: Rod of Wind captured as we moved next to Loki
33: Torr: Cat>Cat
34: Astrium: Harbor
Venily: Worker>Settler
Diragen: Archer>Settler
And, after just about one attack per turn from our hero:

got the wand back; Donal has it now

After this excitement, there wasn't a whole lot left besides scouting and pushing enter.

35: Currency and another tech is q'd
also, a GMerchant was born. I kept him in Vallus, but I think we should probably settle him there anyway

38: a moderate Amurite stack was wiped out outside our new city. I was hoping they'd suicide on the city, but they just moved around it.

440: end.

it was a lot of mvmt; i can definitely see the use of Eng to help, and we should think about sending workers to connect these bigger roads as well to our network.

here's below our new city:

Here's a disposition of our forces:
The east:

I think this front should hold. I send the hawk out each turn or so to scout for incoming threats, but barring a couple SoDs, we should be good here.

The west:

(note the 'response' stack) and further south:

Also, with the Amurites seeming to be the bigger obstacle, and the Mercurians not wanting the new city as a gift, we could leave and let them take it, raze it and then send the western army on to the Amurites rather than continuing south and worrying about dending against a stack from them.

At that point, we could link up these fellas:

and this new mini-sod i started to mop up what we started adn then head to yellow lands (while continuing to produce units of course).

finally, I think we're talking past each other a bit. I'm not 100% what our groupthink has come up with for a strategy, and everyone has ideas, but then someone plays and we get new ideas, but no real overall thing we're all looking towards.

that being said, I think there's support for turtling a bit before going out, keeping expanding and nibbling on the AI as our empire grows larger, as well as sending out SoDs to them now. I opted for that last option for my set.

I feel like we're in a position now that the mercurians hold our east, we can move out and clean up. our economy is going great, and while i q'd up settlers, idk that we really need to settle anymore unless we really just don't want the empty space. we could move towards mostly unit production and steamroll them.

also, some of our cities just dont have anything very useful to build imo. the harbor i started for instance: it could maybe just go to sci or gold production at this point. the 2 gold (for example) we're going to get from some of these smaller improvements might not be worth the hammers invested over 20 or 30 turns.

 

[pholkhero]

Roster

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

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I can't understand all the x > y things. What do they mean?

Other than that I'd say we should keep the captured cities and force capitulate the svats before handing them back as a gift. That way we get a vassal that's actually strong.

 

[Tinadafish]

Personally I'm all for razing them and the rest of our enemies into dust. I picked up the save and will play tomorrow, give us time to discuss war strategy, tech wise I think engineering, sanitation, smelting and ironworking should be next, stack composition wise I think we should focus on crusaders and other disciple units with catapults as support units, with spiritual personality and Order our disciple units are just straight better than equivalent melee units, especially against the demons and undead we'll soon be facing more and more of.

 

[Ozbenno]

Nice report pholk, good idea of the lay of the land in terms of armies. Basium is doing quite well.

I can't understand all the x > y things. What do they mean?

It means x was produced in the city and replaced in the queue by y

Other than that I'd say we should keep the captured cities and force capitulate the svats before handing them back as a gift. That way we get a vassal that's actually strong.

Don't we need Feudalism for vassalisation? Is it an option in the game setup as well that defaults to off (can't remember if I turned it on in that case). If we can't vassal now, maybe better to raze them (although there are some nice looking cities there).

 

[pholkhero]

iirc the new city we just took has 4 gpt in maintenance so not crippling, esp if we can build one of the palaces in the old capital.

The real issue in the west is not guarding our Amurite flank if we continue south straightaway. The stack he sent had *about* 8 units so keeping that large of a force back might be a pain. Which is why i vote the army we have there now in the west head that way more and take the fight right to them, rather than having waste units defending here.

We would need, of course, those two mini armies to link up and take the fight to Svert. They could probably handle the 4-5 units in each of the cities down there.

We could then bring a worker or two down with another small stack, past the castles marks and road out that way as well. Reinforcements will be ready to get down there asap. Maybe we settle down that way, too, just to have a way-station (though that could be courting disaster in the form of attack)


edit to add: the mercurians were very picky about which cities they wanted of ours as gifts. the new one was NOT one of them; they just don't see the benefit or some such. I'll show them teh benefit . . .

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am concerned with overextending strategically. Like if we take the entire svat empire and make it our own we'll end up having to defend it. And I'd rather have a compact but defensible realm that we can lash out from than a sprawling one exposed to attacks from all sides. So if we can't capitulate the svats I say burn them.

 

[Tinadafish]

I only played 10 turns this time round but they were pretty packed. We researched taxation and that unlocked two pretty powerful civics, Republic and Caste System, and it might be a good idea to swap into either or both of them soon. I thought it best to leave it up to the group to decide though. I continued massing an army of crusaders and confessors from the core cities of our empire, moved Valin and 2 axemen up north to finally deal with the barbarian orc threat and claim that luxurious cotton (presumably we've all been wearing bearskin so far).

In the south the war with the Svartalfar rages on, one of our confessors tamed a tiger with the voice of Junil, which I thought was pretty neat.

Spoiler :

We also started burning down the villages, towns and hamlets of the neighbouring elf city, which provoked the elves into sending out their closest thing to a "hero". Donal made short enough work out of Alazkan and won himself quite the pretty trinket though.

Spoiler :

I may have been premature in leaving our new city down there to fight the elves though because the amurites finally showed up again outside the city gates and burned one of our villages town, the black mirror proved especially helpful dealing with these guys, shame our confessor couldn't repeat the trick with the tiger on the wizard however.

Spoiler :

It's a good thing I sent Valin up north, that orc camp has started sending out axemen to harass us and our north isn't particularly well defended, its never needed to be, there's only been bears up there before.

Spoiler :

I started the Empire's research on engineering so it won't take as long to cross our realm in future, it might be worth looking into Religious Law and Theology next so we can upgrade our best confessors into Priors and really start spreading the word of Junil but that is of course up to the next ruler.

 

[Ozbenno]

Roster

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

 

[Ozbenno]

Has Valin reached level 15 yet? If he is up north and is, then he should rescue Brigit. If he isn't keep him down south to get there.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

So what is the final consensus for our strategy against the svats? Do we conquer, raze or capitulate them?

 

[Tinadafish]

I'm firmly on the side of razing them which is why I was pillaging all their towns for quick cash, but I didn't take any cities my turn so you could turn course if you want.

 

[King Bulrush]

IMO vassalization (through capitulation) is by far the best option in a normal game, but I thought that we had decided it is against our house rules.

Second best option is to raze everything (and maybe pillage the land too), except for cities that have wonders in them. For the rest, maybe we can ocuppy the land later when we can spare the workers and garisson troops.

Also, I see that some peopel are worried about the Amirites. Since the Svartalfar are already crippled and the Balseraphs have been relatively nonthreatening, maybe we should gather up our strongest troops and send them on a raind in Amurite lands. As I mentioned before, many Amurite units are eligible to be reborn as Angels, so after a while the Mercurians should snowball to the point where they can go on the offensive by themselves to help us win faster.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I am worried about overextending and having our army slowly get chipped away until there is nothing left or worse we loose a hero. Will raze those cities first thing tomorrow.