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uberfish Wrote:Why is Iskender even in this war? He can't gain any land and I'm sure the unit maintenance is not helping his economy any.
I have a strong feeling this question is primarily rhetorical. Iskender's last couple of posts have indicated that war-weariness is also getting more unpleasant, along with the costs.
I havenât been checking Iskenderâs thread that religiously, but I believe his actual reasoning has three main points:
- The Balseraphs were already ahead on score and territory, and a Gibbon-wielding puppet-spamming army would be extremely difficult to defeat. Therefore the Clan were actually the lesser of two evils, and eliminating the Clowns gives the Sidar a better chance in the endgame.
- The puppets and skeletons provide ample opportunity for XP farming so that Iskender can get some more units to wane. By letting the Clan do the heavy lifting, and cleaning up where he can, this military action provides the best opportunity to help his long term economy with the super-specialists.
- He thinks the âworld-spell-NAPâ with the Clan means that they wonât be able to use the Sons in any military action against the Sidar. Therefore he hopes to delay them long enough that his capabilities outmatch the non-Sons capabilities of the Clan. The Orcs feel differently about the nature of that poorly-defined agreement.
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Iskender entered this conflict in order to train priests.
This statement from him sums things up.
(Post commentary on a chat where Bob reveals his skeleton adept idea)
Iskender Wrote:Aha! So that's the idea. I like it, it could actually work, four disposable summons (five actually as far as the limit is concerned - 2 puppets and 3 skeletons for 3 Death I units) for the cost of one adept. Several adepts and the Clan will find themselves unable to grind through all the cannon fodder. At least until the priests and the big cats join the fun. For me this is perfect news, the priests will have a hell of a training and if everything goes well I might be able to Wane every one of them.
His treaty over the war with the clan also entitles him to a lions share of the loot. Money from city captures, the Orthus Axe and a guarantee from the clan to let him get XP when possible.
However, I think the other big factor in getting him into the war was inertia. The Clan and the Sidar have been planning a joint operation against the Balz from almost the beginning of the game.
Just for reference, here is the "Worldspell NAP"
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I don't want be annoying, but I'll do another comment regarding bob's play.
I don't think he should be summoning that many skeletons. He's paying a lot of maintenance on useless units. He just need to defend the city with the number of attackers +1 (maybe +5 to avoid any eventualities). This way he could tech a little better and get Infernal pact faster.
But now I understand the frustration of being attacked in a PBEM, so I share his pain (and his situation is way worst than mine, since it's a dogpile and he played a pretty good game until the attack).
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Actually, if he could kill the normal units, he could theoretically neuter the Sons by surrounding them with 9 summons on each adjacent tile. And hey presto, they can't move to reach a city 
Current games (All): RtR: PB83
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Krill you're drunk don't forget Iskender's tiger summons.
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Nicolae Carpathia Wrote:Krill you're drunk don't forget Iskender's tiger summons.
Priests = normal units. kill the priests and then the tigers can't get resummoned, so in effect the tigers are normal units.
Current games (All): RtR: PB83
Ended games (Selection): BTS games: PB1, PB3, PBEM2, PBEM4, PBEM5B, PBEM50. RB mod games: PB5, PB15, PB27, PB37, PB42, PB46, PB71 PB80. FFH games: PBEMVII, PBEMXII. Civ 6: PBEM22 PBEM23Games ded lurked: PB18
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Krill Wrote:Actually, if he could kill the normal units, he could theoretically neuter the Sons by surrounding them with 9 summons on each adjacent tile. And hey presto, they can't move to reach a city
That would be an incredibly hilarious way to win a war. Too bad we probably won't see it.
Bobchillingworth
Unregistered
Figured I'd comment on a couple things here-
Ichabod Wrote:I don't think he should be summoning that many skeletons. He's paying a lot of maintenance on useless units. He just need to defend the city with the number of attackers +1 (maybe +5 to avoid any eventualities). This way he could tech a little better and get Infernal pact faster.
Yeah, all those skeletons really did absolutely kill my economy. One issue with cutting some out to tech is that because of the tigers & overall large numbers of enemy units, I'd have needed a lot of skeletons to hang around in case they threw everything out me anyway, so my teching would have been pretty awful regardless. The reason why I didn't delete the excess though was because I wanted to have the max number of skeletons ready at all times for a counter-attack. All of my adepts had Earth I thanks to my many earth mana sources (I'm kind of surprised that Iskender thought I was actually promoting them all to Earth I... I mean, really dude?  ). So every city had a Wall of Stone, and combined with Dance of Blades the skeletons in places like Jubilee actually had some pretty good defensive odds. So if the Clan / Sidar had gone "all in" with an attack, they'd have had hopefully a lot of wounded units, and my excess surviving skeletons could try to get some kills. Plus summoning the full quotient all the time was the only way I could have those big 60+ skeleton stacks which got me my few kills.
Krill Wrote:Actually, if he could kill the normal units, he could theoretically neuter the Sons by surrounding them with 9 summons on each adjacent tile. And hey presto, they can't move to reach a city
Yup. I really wonder now whether I'd have been better off ignoring philo, way of the wicked, drama, trade, and deception and just going for hunting -> poisons instead. Okay, Gibbon would have been best of course, but as it turned out I never did get to use him, and think I could have made excellent use of taskmasters. Rusted warriors and axes would have been picked off before Iskender's tiger spam defended, too. Same with the enemy adepts. And heck while I'm fantasizing, what if I had then gone for Alteration after Poisons? I could have used the huge influx of slaves to rush Halls of Mirrors! Or for an even sillier scenario, I could have had Overlords to go with the taskmasters and hoarded gold to transform slaves into Lunatics! Well, I probably didn't ever have enough beakers to get that many techs (or the hammers for the hunting lodges + asylums), but that would have been pretty cool if it worked Even without Gibbon I could have beat this attack, but I think it would have required tools that I couldn't reasonably have been expected to have the foresight to obtain.
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On the possible plans thing, I don't think the Tower of Necromancy would have been very good. Puppet skeletons wouldn't get the strong boost.
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What does Hall of Mirrors do?
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