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

[Miguelito]

Looks like this game might be moving towards a conclusion.

mackoti captured all 3 of Dave's cities, including the remote former barbarian city of Hyol which is close to us, in one turn . Judging from demos he did not have relevant losses. I had a bear in Dave's land which never saw any unit of his.
He also declared war on us in order to kill the bear and a hunter with an open promotion at Hyol, without losses . He used a chariot. He offered peace, but I didn't take it. Which might be pretty stupid, as we have very few units at either of our borders, and are also blind for the moment.
The plan is to research HBR, for mobile priests, and Animal Handling, for hawks, back to back, followed up by Feral Bond. Then get peace with mack when we are ready to attack Cairo. The possibilities of it backfiring are manifold.
But if he offers peace it's for something, for example he could proceed to brun through Cairo while we have to look on. We also are getting unhappy from fight against brothers in faith, which he'll also get, so maybe there's some continued incentive for peacing out (we have 2 unhappy citizens from it, but can quickly connect pearls).

to Dave. Of course I don't know the whole story, but you put up a brave resistance in face of the inevitable. I was quite impressed by your stack when I saw it 6 turns ago, wonder where it's gone

[Miguelito]

Ok it might become interesting.
Auror has declared on mack, and mack in turn on Cairo. We are allied with Cairo now, with OB and map trade. For the time being. OB gives certain options, should my paranoia about mack ever recede .

Auror and mack have optics, and we researched it this turn (slotted in ahead of animal handling, which will come next turn instead). I'm trying to get iron for all our mana from Auror in order to build frigates.

What will probably happen is mack razing all our coastal cities from the fog in 5 turns. Not sure how, but the likely way of things. So I'll try to reduce the fog, and build up meat. Summoning tigers, however bad that is for finances.

[Miguelito]

The world war continues, mostly cold.
I found mack's stack:


I don't see how we could attack against this as long as we don't control the seas (together with Auror), but I think we could beat it on defense (defending Cairo's land, that is). Surprises do happen though.
The most annoying thing is that with magic eyes he can see any advance easily (even Cairo's ) .
That unroaded jungle is an interesting, or annoying, speedbump for everyone involved.
Have to take a lot of care about the commando hero which should rightfully be ours.
He has converted the visible mana nodes to the Necromancy types, so he's building that tower right now.

Auror has a medium downturn in his power graph, with no corresponding one from mack. He's recovering though. I'm seeing druids and frigates, which are both technologically ahead of mack. The problem is that mack has better mobility with air adepts (and he can cast spells like maelstrom from ships, right?).

I did not research Feral Bond this turn, as it would not be useful next and this way we protect the event fund.

Demos. Mack researched Sanitation and with Dave's cities his CY lead is rather obscene. Best MfG is Auror though.

[Bobchillingworth]

Trying to defend your coasts isn't necessarily a bad idea, but bear in mind that naval combat in FFH is much more deadly than in BTS. There's nothing stopping Mack from, say, loading up several Caravels with Mages who have Water Walking and Fire II promotions, and then moving several tiles with the boats, unloading the Mages, and then having the Mages walk a few more tiles before casting a barrage of Fireballs, which can themselves potentially cover up to four tiles a turn. Essentially, initially is incredibly important in naval combat, and you don't have Mages or even Adepts, so you've got very little chance of your boats surviving against a dedicated naval push. You'd be better off trying to get Sorcery ASAP so that you can belatedly catch up on the magic front, and continuing to pump PoL and Assassins.


You're also going to need to take the attack to Mack before he can consolidate control over almost half the map, but without at least Haste you probably aren't going to manage to accomplish much.


Mack getting that barb city was unfortunate, too. Would have been better to at least raze it with Tigers if you thought you couldn't afford it. I think you may be overly concerned about the state of your economy, you're close to having all the tools you need for your military (just need at least basic Arcane support for Haste mobility), and the game isn't going to last long enough for you to get much use of the high-end toys. Rangers would be nice, but Assassins can suffice, and are better for countering Mack's Mage-heavy military, anyway.

[Miguelito]

Trying to defend your coasts isn't necessarily a bad idea, but bear in mind that naval combat in FFH is much more deadly than in BTS.  There's nothing stopping Mack from, say, loading up several Caravels with Mages who have Water Walking and Fire II promotions, and then moving several tiles with the boats, unloading the Mages, and then having the Mages walk a few more tiles before casting a barrage of Fireballs, which can themselves potentially cover up to four tiles a turn.  Essentially, initially is incredibly important in naval combat, and you don't have Mages or even Adepts, so you've got very little chance of your boats surviving against a dedicated naval push.  You'd be better off trying to get Sorcery ASAP  so that you can belatedly catch up on the magic front, and continuing to pump PoL and Assassins. 


You're also going to need to take the attack to Mack before he can consolidate control over almost half the map, but without at least Haste you probably aren't going to manage to accomplish much. 


Mack getting that barb city was unfortunate, too.  Would have been better to at least raze it with Tigers if you thought you couldn't afford it.  I think you may be overly concerned about the state of your economy, you're close to having all the tools you need for your military (just need at least basic Arcane support for Haste mobility), and the game isn't going to last long enough for you to get much use of the high-end toys.  Rangers would be nice, but Assassins can suffice, and are better for countering Mack's Mage-heavy military, anyway.

That post came 2 turns late, sadly.
I knew all of this in theory, but still gullibly ran into the trap and got my 4 privateers killed. Forgot for a moment that they also carry mages, not just galleys do (which is a bit silly, but ).
I maybe could handle mack's mages though with their no-limit AoE spells and str7 spectres, but what really leaves me defenselessis his crazy mobility. 6 moves on his hero and chariots, and also on the spectre summoners effectively with spell extension.
I've seen a 7 move ship when ours have 3-4. Part of that is my own fault for not keeping up with magic. The other part are his absurdly well promoted units. Look how he mopped up my expedition stack:


I knew that his mounted units would be able to reach. I also knew that one air 2 mage would be in reach. I decided to still try it, with the forest defense bonus and my units being rather well promoted.
But first off, he gets insane luck with Maelstrom. That spell has a damage range of 0-30%, supposedly centered around 15%. Well look at the log. He had to fire it just once. I also did not expect the spectres (had not seen death mages before), and I admit that I may not have checked the promotions on the bulk of his army carefully enough.

We did research KotE this turn. I'll try to get haste and air I adepts to increase our mobility. I am also considering researching Message from the Deep to get collateral on the sea at least (or Ashen Veil so it's universal?). We could switch religions if we get the GA in 7 turns.

Btw the barb city was conquered by Dave while it was way out of our reach still. Mack then took it over the turn he took everything from Dave.

But it's all moot, he'll always have the initiative, his promotions are terrifying while we would likely need 2 dozen turns to get promotable adepts. If he wants to he can raze our coast from the fog any turn, and probably get as far as the cap easily. It is just a question of whether he wants to keep playing with his food. We (Auror and us) even have tech superiority on the seas (he can't build frigates), but it's useless because he can just run circles around us while shooting fireballs.
A shame, because the empire has a very good economy since the GA, and I think we could do pretty well against Auror. But no match for this. This is concession; if Auror wants to keep trying (or maybe he has an actual plan?) I will try to hold of course.

[Bobchillingworth]

This is also a good example of the value of Tigers (and summons in general); they're utterly expendable, so cram them into vulnerable cities. Delete & re-summon them as needed. They're essentially ablative armor for your actually useful units and cities, plus a source of pseudo-collateral. I don't think Cultists are worth giving up the ability to produce PoL. I do love Ritualists, but I don't think Mack is going to let you get close enough with them to Ring of Fire his stacks, and it's going to take you a while to adopt the Veil and then spread it around and build the appropriate Temples.


Basically, just build PoL and Assassins and Fawns and Adepts. If you had, say, 40 PoL, you could force Mack to commit a very large army actually conquer you, and force him to kill armies consisting of dozens of Tigers again and again, so long as you kept summoning replacements. Like I said, you already have almost all of the tools you need, you just require more of them. Pursuing new wonder weapons won't end well, assuming this game isn't already completely decided.

[Miguelito]

The idea behind Cultists/Ritualists is to get access to collateral without having to wait for adepts to mature, applicable of boats. Also Message from the Deep is pretty cheap. We could also use it just during a GA to get a number of them running. Ritualists would also burn down our forests if used on defense, right?

Tigers do not defend before other units right? So fawns /priests or whatever is in a city still dies first, correct? I just don't see how they're a winning strategy. A big mass may be able to stall him for a while, but they do nothing to ever gain the initiative, and with his own summons I fear he'll kill our collateralled units at a rate greater than one unit per turn for each of his.

Fwiw we're back to 12 priests. I understand you would have gone harder for them, but they (and the temples) are not exactly cheap either.

I do admit that going Feral Bond before KotE was a bad call; against his more mobile stacks the rangers are not that useful anyways (I'm still starting on a few of them) It would have been possible to get KotE early in the GA at the latest, so we'd already have adepts maturing and probably at least 1 of body or air mana connected. Which would be a better deal on defense, although I still don't see how we'd get into a position to attack him with his high promoted and super mobile units.

One thing though, Auror and us both have higher MfG than mack, at least at the moment. Theoretically we might be able to outnumber him. It would help if we stopped losing medium sized stacks without mack suffering any losses. It would also be useful to coordinate, but we don't even have the tech to send gold counters

[DaveV]

Ritualists would also burn down our forests if used on defense, right?

I'm pretty sure ancient forests can't be set on fire. Normal forests can, although smoke sometimes goes out by itself rather than turning into fire. You can use Spring to extinguish smoke/flames.

Tigers do not defend before other units right? So fawns /priests or whatever is in a city still dies first, correct?

Each channeling promotion roughly halves a unit's strength when picking a defender, so tigers will definitely defend ahead of priests, and adepts or mages as well. Fawns, rangers, etc., will defend ahead of tigers.

[Bobchillingworth]

Tigers are good for defending Arcane and Discipline units for the reason Dave mentioned, but there's also really no reason they need to be stacked with important units at any point.  There's nothing stopping someone from, say, sticking Mobility I on several PoL, hasting them, and then having them run into a vulnerable city, summon their Tigers, and then run away.  Other, stronger summons (and most are stronger) are good counters to Tigers, but it's difficult for the majority of civs to produce Mages in numbers comparable to PoL (Adepts are only 20 hammers cheaper, require an equally expensive building, and of course require enough exp and gold to upgrade). 

Tigers aren't really game winners on their own, although enough of them will wear down just about anything if someone gets sloppy and lets you pile them on en masse, but the point is to stall your opponent, until you can either get your counter units into position (Assassins in this case), or your allies can relieve the pressure on you.  Plus they're living units, so they can benefit from Haste and Regenerate.  The downside, besides their mediocre attack power, is that you can't summon and move them in the same turn (actually, you might be able to get around that by hasting them, though that'd still only be 1 move), but with creative positioning they're essentially hit points for your cities and important units which you can regenerate every turn.

Sorry, I don't mean to come down too hard here, and I'm just a backseat driver who hasn't even been replying to most of your queries promptly, but what I'm trying to say is that PoL are more-or-less your best unit, and you should be building them non-stop from most of your cities as soon as they're available.  I haven't even touched on how incredibly important they are to the Elven economy, or how they can found Temples, or that they're actually decent combat units in their own right. 


Completely unrelated, make sure you promote a level 6 or higher Hunter to an Assassin if you haven't already, for the Aeron's Chosen promotion.  Unless Cairo already got it.

[Miguelito]

Maybe you would like to have a look into a save? (I don't have your mail adress)

The problem is that even with hasted mobility assassins it will be quite difficult to get a first strike on anything. I am building PoL fwiw, but I admit that it could have been more. Fwiw the economy part I think has worked out rather well. I was hesitant to bloom river tiles when we were at breakeven between 10 and 20%, but that is fixed for now and I'm catching up on that, so our land is largely covered in forest, besides the deserts.

Cultists would maybe enable us to collateral against his ships, or even coastal towns if together with Auror we somehow manage to control the seas at some point.

Unlikely, because he has Nav promoted ships already, as well as range 2 with Maelstrom (the continued existence of this spell in this state, in a balance mod, makes me wonder - I love using it in SP of course but it's pretty crazy. I am aware of the downside of it hitting your own units outside the caster's tile. Actually, making it also affect the caster's tile could maybe fix it?). But it should be a lot faster than maturing adepts. We could also switch the religion just for the duration of a GA. Right now actually Leaves gives us more red faces than happiness because of the war against our dear brother in faith. Veil would work in the same way, and additionally on land, but it's a bit more expensive.

Adepts are only 20 hammers cheaper, require an equally expensive building, and of course require enough exp and gold to upgrade

Good thing that mackoti has the mage guild wonder . And XP on his mages does not seem to be a problem either (might not be true, he's also building chariots and even boar riders. But he also needs just one to make any stack of ours his units' playthings with Maelstrom.


And I did promote the lvl 8 Perfect Sight hunter to Assassin this turn upon your hint. Unless I misclicked and made her a ranger, unsure right now. The sad thing is she has some way to go to mobility.