Chief Tain - May the Svarts be with you! [Ilios Spoilers]

[Ilios]

What is it with you and getting ganged up on?

They all want my Lunch Money!

Cryptic Teaser: That Elven attack bonus in forests isn't as worthless as I thought it was...

[Mardoc]

Cryptic Teaser: That Elven attack bonus in forests isn't as worthless as I thought it was...

You do know how to incite curiosity, don't you!

Maybe I'll go bug Ichabod for a report .

[Thoth]

They all want my Lunch Money!

Cryptic Teaser: That Elven attack bonus in forests isn't as worthless as I thought it was...

If you don't start posting real updates the Lurkers are going to want more than just your lunch money.

[Ilios]

You do know how to incite curiosity, don't you!

Maybe I'll go bug Ichabod for a report .

If you don't start posting real updates the Lurkers are going to want more than just your lunch money.

Well, let's say Ichabod had probably imagined his invasion to go a little smoother. I'll try to post some pics tonight.

By the way...

<checks PBEM X thread>

Mardoc, Thoth, pot, kettle, etc

[darrelljs]

Mardoc, Thoth, pot, kettle, etc

Seriously...we have more posts than the other teams combined. FFH10 spoiler:

Which actually aligns rather well with the rest of the game .

Darrell

[Ilios]

So, this is what greeted me at the start of the turn (T115):

White line shows the main stack movement, green line shows movement of a small stack of Tigers.

I was kind of nervous, because I thought Ichabod would move his stack between my two biggest cities, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to defend them both.

That small Tiger stack headed north:

I just couldn't afford the units to try and defend the city, and the amount of rivers made mobile defense very difficult. So in the end I just drafted the city one more time and fled the city, promising its citizens a very swift return.

As you can see, I amassed an army of Warriors, drafting and building in every city, building Scouts and upgrading them to Hunters, allowing cities to one-turn Hunters with the overflow.

And then it hit me. Ichabod moving onto another Ancient Forests deep inside my borders was a blessing! You see, Priests of Leaves have Channeling, which means that they have a reduced chance of being the top defender. That makes them so strong, because you can just keep moving around with your mobile meat shield (=Tigers), and not worry about people taking out your expensive Priests.

But!

Tigers don't receive defensive bonuses, Priests do. Because Ichabod's stack was on an Ancient Forest, his Priests were clearly much stronger defenders than the Tigers, so they showed up as top defenders.

I did this:

I threw every Tiger, Warrior I could throw at the stack, until finally, his strongest Tiger became the top defender.

Then came the Hunters.

Because Hunters have an innate 50% versus animals, the Priests went back to being the top defenders, even in their damaged state.

Thanks to the Sinister trait, and the 10% attack bonus elves get in forests and ancient forests, my Hunters actually had pretty good odds.

Here's the ones that survived:

Most of them are stacked on the forest tile west of the Bannor stack. Turns out, my research of Way of the Wicked wasn't wasted after all, because I just promoted my first Hunter to Scourge, which gives the unit 40% against Disciple units.

I then went on and attacked with most of the rest of my units able to reach the Bannor (losing more units in the process).

This is the end result:

Now, I'm happy, but not very happy. I'm going to sacrifice Kemet, because it was only defended by one unit, and it was only size 6 anyway and still didn't have any cultural defenses.

Unless I'm missing something, the Bannor stack is toast, and Ichabod should either disband it, or throw everything at my Hunter stack (Heishan has too many troops and to many defenses). So Ichabod could throw all his remaining Tigers at my stack, and then mop up with the (promo-healed) Priests.

Unfortunately for him I've got two Subdue Animal promoted Hunters in there as well, so any Tiger he throws at my stack will go over to my side until the Hunters can be either damaged enough to stop showing up as top defenders or they are killed.

Let's see what happens next turn.

[Mardoc]

Glad to see that I was right about the wisdom of attacking a Sinister Hunter guy with Priests of Leaves

Mardoc, Thoth, pot, kettle, etc

Hey, I update in most of my games! [SIZE="1"]Course, you can't look at 16, but rest assured there's reporting going on there.[/SIZE]

[NobleHelium]

In hindsight, would you have preferred to attack Ichabod's stack before you lost the small city to the those tigers?

[Thoth]

Well, let's say Ichabod had probably imagined his invasion to go a little smoother. I'll try to post some pics tonight.

By the way...

<checks PBEM X thread>

Mardoc, Thoth, pot, kettle, etc

As opposed to say XVI or XVIII where we have more posts than *all* of the other threads put together. Including the Tech and Lurker Threads?

:neenernee


Thanks for the update btw.

[Ilios]

Glad to see that I was right about the wisdom of attacking a Sinister Hunter guy with Priests of Leaves

Yeah, Ichabod just wasted close to 1500 hammers to kill two small cities of mine.

In hindsight, would you have preferred to attack Ichabod's stack before you lost the small city to the those tigers?

Ofcourse I would have preferred keeping that city. I just didn't have the troops to do so.

You have to realise that I was basically caught with my pants down. A small part of my army was at the other side of the empire skirmishing with the Kuriotates when Ichabod attacked. I would have to reload an old save, but I basically had 2-3 Hunters near the combat zone when the Bannor Priests appeared.

I first needed to make sure Heishan (my Academy city on the border with Bannor) was safe before thinking of attacking that stack. Ichabod was so sure he'd be able to kill that city right away, he actually built a road connection in my borders! (to be able to quickly reinforce his troops once Heishan's culture was gone)

I drafted and built Warriors, built Scouts and upgraded them to Hunters, and hand-built Hunters and Priests.

On the turn I attacked the stack, I finally had enough Hunters to take on the damaged Priests.

As opposed to say XVI or XVIII where we have more posts than *all* of the other threads put together. Including the Tech and Lurker Threads?

:neenernee


Thanks for the update btw.

Oh, you mean you only update when you're in the lead?

You're welcome!