Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Miguelito]

eek:


Moved into safety SW. It very much looks like a landbridge. Of course I'd want to catch that fellow. Now do I understand right that spiders never move, unless they have an attack opportunity? If yes then this is a dead end fror now, as we can't get through the jungle quickly. Promoting the scout to woodie and attacking gives 56% odds which is too low.

Without a promo it also does not look like it has a dwarf in its belly, shame. Still makes returning more difficult for him.

Auror shifted hammers to commerce pretty massively this turn. He's exceeding our GNP, and ours gets inflated by 4 culture points that we get from Cre. Let's hope the gems/gold is enough of a boost to get us to the top there.

[Bobchillingworth]

Spiders do very rarely move on their own, though I'm not sure what causes them to.


Btw, don't forget about the power of Settler Scrying! That's the technique wherein you use the viable city interface that appears when you select a Settler to scout for enemy borders and hostile units in tiles you have revealed but do not currently have visibility over. Notably, you can use this in FFH to locate tiles occupied by barbs (they won't show as valid city sites, even if they otherwise would be), EXCEPT invisible ones such as Spiders (or, much more rarely, Mistforms).

[Kaiser]

That is a nice speedbump for anyone trying to settle up on us from that direction.

So Auror shifted Food -> Production -> Commerce in the window of 2-3 turns?
Could that be an indication that he finished Deruptus?

[Miguelito]

after eschewing our northern and southern scouts somehow, Auror shows up again at the near worst possible moment:




The picture is from after our turn. His warrior is at 2.9/3 and promoted to C2. In addition, you see 2! barb warriors that showed up just this turn as well.

Our scout in the city who was near dead from fighting the goblin got promoted to shock, but is still pretty battered. I hid the other shock promotable scout on the corn, in an attempt to lure him into advancing. I'm willing to burn a unit or two in order to get rid of that thorn in our side, so I hope we get him within reach.

I had to pull back the worker that was going to start farming the rice this turn.

Both cities finished warriors this turn, and Thariss can follow up with another one next turn if necessary. The settler is delayed for at least a turn. I grew the cap to size 6 two turns before the gems come online, so we don't have to interrupt the settler in order to grow. If we can start the settler next turn (ie we don't need another emergency warrior), we don't even lose food on the unhappy citizen .

I had to do make some hurtful assignments to enable the potential double warrior:




(the other FPH was needed in Gereth Minar)

[Kaiser]

That is tough and already great value for Auror here. With 3 Warriors the upside is with 3 Warriors and 1 Scout we should be able to handle both Aurors Warrior and the two barbs.
We also have directly the force at hand to defend the settling of B!

[Miguelito]

The problem is that against the C2 double hill movement warrior we'll need a lot of units to just cover the worker, if he just keeps hovering around. If he moves in it'll also be bloody against hill and river crossing, but I'd likely take it, even if it costs us one of the good scouts.

So far the cost is just delaying the settler 1 turn and the rice 2-3, which we can stomach. But it might get worse yet.

[Kaiser]

Can we not assign the worker to Mine PHF instead, there is no hill connection there from where he currently is and we can see if he tries to go around.
Can you send me a recent save next time, I will do some more land analysis and see where we can catch this guy.

[Miguelito]

Good suggestion on the FPH mine. Maybe should have done that over the rice anyways? That will give us time to chase away the barbs with the help of the healthy scout, without the need for another warrior from the cap. The level 4 scout can heal and we have another shock promotable one coming up from the south to hopefully catch that little guy.
I'll forward you the t40 save.

[Miguelito]

 
Curious what he does next. If he just goes south it's tricky for us. Even on a forested hill our C1/shock scout only gets 50% on defense. News, scouts suck on defense. I think I'd try to find a way where he can attack one of the warrior or scout, but then the lvl 4 scout gets a counterattack.

Alternatively drive him into the spider

[Kaiser]

Hopefully the barb attacks him, you have two places where you can catch him on less defensive ground though.



Here if he steps on the desert hill (E-E-E of Thariss), which he should not as apparently they do not give any bonus.
He would only have 25% bonus on the PH (sign 12), so you can catch him there with 2 Scouts.

I guess though he will move S instead as this guy might just be scouting the terrain for a later invasion and will almost definetively stick to HF terrain where possible.



Here you can catch him, as he has to get off hills into Jungle for one turn. Jungle still gives 25% defense and we do not get the Elven bonus in it, but the Shock I promotion combined with C2 brings the odds slightly in our favour.
Realistically we have to calculate sacrificing one Scout to get the kill though. The lvl 4 Scout has the best shot to catch him in the jungle area as he already has W1 as well, but he needs to heal first.

Do we have any way to get rid of Jungle soon?
I doubt it, but if yes we could increase our odds and / or improve the defensive position S-S-S of 3 by removing the jungle on the gems and SE of the gems.

NW of the spider might be another city spot, it should be defensive but it is not as there is no defensive terrain here outside of the forests. Having some Woodsman I units in this area will be necessary later on.