[SPOILERS] Might Makes Amurite -- Tatan tries not to screw up

[Tatan]

Well, as anyone reading the Trash Talk thread or Darrell's thread should know by now, I got wrecked. I never got around to reporting on the turn before the disaster, so I'll take some time to report it now and analyze where I made the biggest mistakes.

This greeted me as I opened the turn:



Lol, as if!

Darrell made no attacks on the interturn, so my stacks were positioned like so:



I was faced with a dilemma here. I needed two movement (AKA haste) to raze those cities, which precluded the use of a floating eye for scouting (I REALLY wish I brought 1-2 more adepts along). I elected to go forward blind with both forces. Here lies the first lesson:

1) DON'T SPLIT YOUR STACKS IN THE FACE OF A NUMERICALLY SUPERIOR ENEMY! The only reason I ever even had two stacks was that part of my army was lagging 1 tile behind, and I didn't want to waste a turn waiting up. This isn't single player; it shouldn't take a genius to suspect he would lay a trap for me. I thought about it and realized that I might have screwed up big after I sent the save, but by then it was obviously too late.

Anyway, back to the game. I moved a firebow in the western stack up to Dendrom and, finding it abandoned, took the city (I at least had the sense to raze it). My firebow then used his fireball to scout, discovering this stack:



Hmm, that's not pretty. But five firebows could fight it off, right? So I move my whole stack over onto a nice, pleasantly open grassland. Maybe if another certain event hadn't occurred, this would have turned out fine. Still, it's bad practice regardless to leave a whole stack just lying out in the open. Given the information at hand, I should have held off razing for another turn or left the lone firebow to die.

Meanwhile, my eastern force faced a similar dilemma. One firebow walked up to Idul, discovered a single warrior (who was promptly incinerated), and took the city. However, in this case, the rest of my stack didn't cover him, it walked further into enemy territory:



Being all fancy and clever and stuff, I thought to myself, "Hey, that firebow's probably safe where it is right now. And if I move to that ancient forest, then next turn I'll be able to surprise Darrell by promoting to mobility and taking Berk!"

Which brings me to lesson number two:

2) SCOUT! Seriously, if I had bitten the bullet and just used a floating eye, I would have immediately discovered both this stack and the stack to the west of Dendrom. I mean, I knew that Darrell had at least a moderately large two-move military due to spiritual PoL + Tiger spam, so simply blundering into the dark was, to say the least, folly. Again, SP tactics =/ MP tactics.

Despite all of this, I still probably could have escaped with my army at last somewhat intact (maybe even untouched!) if it weren't for one last boneheaded mistake. I knew something was wrong when the subject line in Darrell's email with the save read "Turn 116 (carnage turn)". The final lesson:

3) KNOW THE GAME MECHANICS! For some reason I thought that when Darrel cast March of the Trees, he wouldn't be able to move his treants right away, giving me a 1-turn warning and the first strike against them.

WRONG!





So, that's it for my attack. Only two firebows survived: the one who razed Idul, and a lone survivor from the ruins of Dendrom (forgot to take a pic, sorry). Both have since been honored with names, though I expect the one from Dendrom to croak next turn to Darrell. If I want to launch another attack, it will take me a long time to build up enough firebows again (especially since Darrell will be more vigilant now).

To put it more succinctly, here is the power graph, which lags one turn behind:



Yep, I just got into 1st. And here are the demographics, which reflect Darrell's slaughter:



: <-- giant pink elephant stomping on all my hopes and dreams.

[Tatan]

I founded a new city!



Look, I named it and everything! Yaaaaay!


Oh, and look (figuratively of course, I forgot to snap a picture). Silly Darrell's trying to get peace. Lol, he's so funny. Look, he's even trying to marshall an army!



I hope he attacks with it. My little pyromaniacs would have such good time frying the elfsies' flesh. :fireball:

I have plenty of pyromaniacs, too!



Their numbers will increase by the turn, so long as I remember to feed them and care for them and love them every day.

[Tatan]

Before my very eyes, Darrell's stack dissipated by the day, until one day my fireballs found an empty flatland. My fortress, on the other hand, only became more crowded. Finally, the first of my adepts reached foothills of forests beneath the mountains and sent their ocular tentacles to grasp the heavens.



So, they elves thought they could rebuild. Darrell must think himself a phoenix, capable of rising again from the ashes. I endeavor to prove him wrong.



We shall see, Darrell. We shall see.

[Tatan]

Guess who's getting their worldspell on? Plus, you know, blur. Sadly, that'll have to wait for a turn or two while I build the node... In the mean time, the assault on Darrell continues.


Before:



After:




Wait, crap, that hardly did anything. Well, um, I killed one archer, so that's good, right? Honestly I'm just trolling Darrell at this point anyway.

[Tatan]

I forked two worthless cities. Hell yeah.


THIS TURN IN THE WAR (PHASE II): CASUALTY COUNT
Fried one hunter, one tiger, and two archers in Helion. Incinerated a lone archer outside of Gon Gatha. At this rate it'll be no time at all before I break even in hammers!

[Tatan]

Suck it, regenerating wall of tigers!


The situation at the beginning of the turn:



Couldn't attack Helion with great odds this turn, so adjusted my troops to be in place for an attack next turn.


The master plan, as envisioned in MS paint in about thirty seconds:



Since I don't think Darrell has Construction (I can't see any irrigated farms) or enough workers in the area to build one-turn roads, Bruti's garrison shouldn't be able to reach Helion. And he *shouldn't* be able to hit either of my stacks, either. (FAMOUS LAST WORDS)

Oh, and this turn's fire toll is 1 warrior, 1 hunter, 2 archers, and 5 tigers.

[Tatan]

So where were we? Ah, yes, the attack on Helion. Well, it worked--at first. Darrell's other forces could only reach the tile north of the city, as expected. I went in first with all my fireballs, and after my most elite firebow won a coin-flip battle against Gideon it was all >95% odds. I stopped one unit short of taking the city because I knew Darrell would counter-attack and wanted my entire army in one place.

Which brings us to this:



Ouch. To say the least, I did NOT expect these results. My entire stack was red-lined, and almost half of the firebows were dead... ouch. Naturally I was forced to retreat:



And on top of that, Darrell built his first longbow--which basically means I'm doomed. The fact of the matter is, I overestimated firebows. Darrell was able to take advantage of roads again and again to launch counterattacks that did much more damage than I expected. And now, with my stack redlined, I would have to sit out so many turns that the Arcana would wear off just in time for Darrell to begin spamming tigers again.

So I failed. I never expected to sweep through like an unstoppable crimson bloodbath, but Darrell sure put up a much tougher resistance than I expected. Whether it's because he's really good, I really suck, or firebow rushes aren't very effective, I have no idea.

Anyway I offered peace:


(Yeah, of course I tried to get something out of it! )


I also offered a cease fire to Mardoc a turn ago (which was accepted), because I happened to glance to the east and see these:




*spews coffee across monitor* I can't believe I didn't notice these until now.

[Tatan]

Fiends!

[Tatan]

In light of my second defeat at the hands of Darrell, I have been thinking about Amurite military strategy much more. *WARNING: PUT YOUR HELMETS ON, INCOMING WALL OF TEXT*

A GUIDE TO BEING ANNOYING WITH THE AMURITES


When it comes down to it, aside from the occasional tower rush, the Amurites are solely a late-game rush-and-crush civ. They have two main military paths, one based on the sheer firepower of firebows, the other based on the mass magery shenanigans of wizards and Govannon. Theoretically, you could combine the two in a very long, tech-oriented game, but realistically that is never going to happen. I'll go into both paths one at a time.


Firebowyers

Firebows are really, really, really good at attacking. Seriously. Each of them basically comes with a summon-able catapult, and has decent inherent combat strength. However, the problem is that firebows aren't actually that great on defense. Even with copper, Darrell could still pretty easily shred my stacks with tigers and PoLs. Without EitB's buff to their defensive strength, I probably wouldn't have a stack at all right now.

With iron, they can be pretty tough, sure--but researching Iron Working takes forever, and the building Mines of Galdur isn't always a conveniant solution. Plus, since you usually want to expend the first two promotions on fire II and mobility, and your opponent will generally have at least combat 1 on most units, firebows are generally at a disadvantage to units of a similar base strength.

Still, this isn't usually a problem when you can get the first strike in, because massive fireball collateral will redline your opponent's stack. But when you are in enemy territory, if you can even hit the enemy stack first at all, they'll just heal most of the damage off anyway. So to actually keep the stack around long enough, you really need 3-4 solid defensive units with any major offensive stack of firebows. I suppose axes would suffice in many cases, but you'd need quite a few for any extended campaign. And in an ideal firebow rush, your opponent will crumble long before an extended campaign can take place.

But don't be fooled by all these caveats: the firebow rush is still a devasting strategy. Notice how in this game, even with all the factors arrayed against me (defensive map, sucky economy and city count, a very delayed rush, March of the Trees), I have still managed to assemble over thirty firebows and deal a not insignficant amount of damage to Darrell. This is because of how little tech is actually required for the rush. You only really need Knowledge of the Ether, Bronze Working, and Bowyers itself to put a dent in the enemy. And if you are playing Valledia and don't mind derailing your economy, building archers and upgrading them is a very easy method of accumulating firebows in no time at all. I played this pretty poorly in this game, so it really isn't a very good example, but think about if I had expanded better, built a crapload of archers, adepts, and axes before researching Bowyers, and then upgraded the archers in one fell swoop.


Govannon Shenanigans

On the other hand, you have Govannon. I have obviously don't have the same experience with this strategy, but I'm starting to think it could have been very formidible on this map. The main roadbump with this strategy is teching--which is why you play Dain. Sorcery and Arcane Lore both go a lot faster with a well-placed bulb or two (you could even set up a Tower of Divination slingshot).

Wizards themselves are nice and all, but the real meat of this strategy is using Govannon on priests to get insta-mages who can actually fight. The religion that stands out to me the most for this is Order. Confessors have a pretty decent strength themselves and can use bless on top of that, and with Order you can usually throw together a bodyguard of crusaders to buff defense even further. Throw in regeneration (which combined with the medic promos on priests gives you 1-turn healing even in enemy territory) and the tier II summon of your choice, and you have a pretty mean stack.


So yeah, anyway

So I honestly think that the Amurites can be pretty good when used correctly. The worldspell is great for disruption, and assuming you set up your early ecnomy well, a determined mid-game assault can be very difficult to stop. Don't be fooled by my performance here, which was mainly born out of my own mistakes. I certainly don't think they are top-tier by any means, but EitB really helped make them pretty dang scary IMO. And, perhaps more importantly, they are really fun.


tl;dr
The Amurites are awesome. Just don't play them like me.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I've heard that Govapriests aren't as essential as before. EitB potency adepts have a huge buff to xp gain, which means it's easier to build Adepts and upgrade to Wizards. Govannon is also pretty useful, as it means you won't need to spend promotions on Level 1 spells, and can instead spend them on Combat, Mobility and Spell Extension.