[SPOILERS] Alignment unknown

[plako]

So the question was what to do. It seems evident Ilios is prepared to help out Bob and probably attack HidingKneel's stack. Now I had several options to choose from. I could bring everything possible here and weaken the stack as much as possible. I could also go somewhere else and ignore the battle or choose something in the middle. In the end I decided to weaken the stack a bit, but not go for full blown effort. My units weren't in optimal position either. I could only reach HK's stack with Spell Extension I Earth elementals and so far I did have avoided to give that promotion to Hemah to hopefully reach Enchantment III at some point. I decided therefore not to give Spell extension yet to Hemah and keep those extra elementlas as stack defenders.

1st I gave 2 doses of Maelstrom. I really would have liked to get dispel magic too, but I didn't have the Mage close enough to do it.

Then 4 Earth Elementals (Archmages):
Valkyrie 42% WIN
Paladin 46% LOSE
Paladin 52% WIN
Centaus 89% WIN

I'm really surprised concerning the selection of the defender. Sphener wasn't hit much by the Maelstorming, but still he didn't defend at all. Now this hopefully left a bit of a challenge for Ilios to overcome, but still odds good enough to attack. After this I moved Hemah and twincasted Earth Elementals to protect my most valueable units.

I still have 1 Mage that can Summon Spectre and I use it to capture couple of workers and pillage the road. Again other worker flees. Very annoying feature. Situation looks like this afterwards.

[plako]

After that it was just handling of usual affairs.

[plako]

1 little finding. I couldn't pillage the road above Mirror of Heaven with Spectre.

[Mist]

1 little finding. I couldn't pillage the road above Mirror of Heaven with Spectre.

It's probably because Mirror of Heaven is also an improvement, can't be pillaged and roads can be pillaged only if there's no other improvement present.

[NobleHelium]

I'd consider that a bug.

[Krill]

Yeah that is a bug...

[plako]

Got a slave ring event. No idea what that meant, but I did chose the option of paying 24 gold. It didn't seem to cause any positive or negative effects this turn. I'm hoping this means few slaves next turn. Really crossing fingers it isn't some sort of crime decreasing reward . I also got undercouncil vote and chose the slave ring. Gambling ring could have been other alternative, but this might be useful.

HidingKneel had lost a lot that was already pretty evident from banter thread, but he still has lots of powerful units around including Basium and Dragon. This is probably 1st game where we really see Dragon in action. Ilios probably has lost some too especially mounted units, but I didn't send flying eye to his direction to see, if they just had been moved further away from front lines. I retreated my troops and might try to raze the closest city (Amatheon's Alms) of Mercurians next turn. I've also option to move some of my units through Thoth's land to hit HidingKneels backyard cities that are weakly defended (Avelorn has just 3 warriors in it), but that is quite a distance to travel.

[plako]

T120

Finally I did get some time to play the turn. At 1st I took a look at what Mercurains have Amatheons alms. Not much although pretty clever to mainly put immortal units there. I considered, if trying to raze it would make sense and decided to do it. One thing to notice is that HidinKneel has moved his Earth I adept out so the defenses are 35% instead of 60% this is significantly improving my chances. Again attack follows normal pattern. This time I had dipsel magic mage close enough so I started with it then Maelstrom and apparently I need to get couple of more of Maelstorming mages since I've lost 1 when upgrading to Archmage and 2 just doesn't seem to be enough to force all units to -30%.



After that it was 8 Earth Elementals and Spectre that were enough capture and raze the city. In the end Valkyrie's and Basium were resurrected in the capital. btw. are immortal truly "immortal" i.e. can I get them somehow killed?



This is probably my share of weakening Kurio/Mercurians alliance and I'll probably focus mainly on defending after this.

At the end of turn CoE was founded in Gadium. Pretty unoptimal spot near the border of Ilios.

[xenin]

I believe the only way to kill immortal units is to kill them at the capital on the turn they were reborn.

[NobleHelium]

Yes. Although Basium isn't fully immortal, he needs to kill a unit (it's supposed to be demon or undead, but it's bugged in EitB v8 and works for all units) to regain immortality.