Square Leg is Garrim Gyrrrrrrr - An Angry Dwarf

[Square Leg]

T138

Research dialled up and due to some tile fiddling Mathematics drops from 3t to 4t. I'll fix that next turn.

I start an adept in Totoro and then realise that I have forgotten to request the Enchantment mana from Iskender... Damn it. I will slot a WG in the queue next turn and request the mana. That way I'll get Enchantment 1 for free. oops!

Apart from that... not a lot. Earthsea is happy again.

F1:

And lastly a QUESTION

Can warriors upgrade to chariots? Answer later on.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I suspect you can, but you never did explain why you regretted firing the golden age

[Square Leg]

I suspect you can, but you never did explain why you regretted firing the golden age

Oh yeah - I forgot about that...

I regretted it because I wanted to secure a NAP with Mardoc before firing it. I don't want to suddenly stand out as target No1 for him until I have a NAP! I am willing to concede quite a lot to get a 15-20t extension from him. Seriously - in 20t I will be in Conquest/Military State and building/cash rushing Gargoyles everywhere. I can kill shit with that which is exactly what I can't do now. Not str8 SoI, nor Fire elementals. It will also be really nice to lose my vulnerablility to fire at last!!!

Edit: I haven't converted to Conquest and Mil State yet. I do plan on doing it soon but I want the extra food from agrarianism for a couple more turns so that I can work good tile whilst in GA - maybe next turn or the turn after I will swap since most cities are at their happy cap.

[NobleHelium]

Warriors should be able to upgrade to chariots, yes.

[Square Leg]

Warriors should be able to upgrade to chariots, yes.

Time for the answer.....


Correct!

except for the Luchuirp....

The warrior upgrades to an axe/sword and then onto a chariot... Luchuirp cannot upgrade to a Wood Golem, their axe/sword replacement, and therefore cannot upgrade to chariots... Where is the miffed smiley...

I can only ever upgrade warriors to slingers. yay for me.

[NobleHelium]

Oh. Yeah.

[Square Leg]

Reply from Mardoc:

Square Leg,

I can't chat here at work, but I can still e-mail. Here's the general
situation as I know it:

Despite Iskender joining me, Bob nearly won the war. 70 skeletons in
one stack, every other turn, is a force to be reckoned with. We just
barely managed to kill Bob's nightwatch - if it had spawned one turn
earlier, or if CoE had appeared somewhere else, you'd likely have a
southern border with Gibbon, 4 puppet-spawning Sons, and then another
bunch as soon as Bob could sail Gibbon to Acheron's island and back.
This has been a very fun war to fight, just because it was so
touch-and-go for the duration.

Honestly, Iskender's decision to join in the war was based at least as
much on fear of Bob as it was about the Clan, as demonstrated by Bob
fighting us to a standstill despite the 2v1. Well, plus a bit of
desire for XP farming for Shades; we couldn't get through Bob's
skeleton/puppet stacks most of the time, but Iskender could always
grab a kill for a couple more XP.

Still, at the moment I think we've made it to the endgame of this war.
Last turn, out of either frustration or seeing a chance that the RNG
took away from him, Bob threw his whole stack at our stack, including
attacking with all his adepts and puppets. We won that battle, and
with it, probably also the war - without a critical mass of adepts for
skeleton spam, there's not much more Bob can do, although it'll still
take a while for us to finish him, particularly if he's got island
cities like I think he does. So if I were you, I'd prepare for the
entrance of Hyborem into the world .

As for a NAP - well, 'stop helping Bob' isn't a particularly useful
request anymore. My primary concern is that your GNP is significantly
above mine; if I don't force you to at least pay maintenance on an
army, you'll leave me in the dust. Which means that the only thing
that really tempts me is the possibility of you paying tribute, a
significant enough sum of gold per turn to allow me to keep up in tech
with you. I'm not sure why you'd be willing to sign that deal,
though.

That said, NAP expiration isn't necessarily a declaration of war,
either. So far I've pretty much just been implementing the decisions
that Tredje made, but I'm not committed to winning by conquest or
domination. I am, however, committed to trying to win, so the
question of peace will come down to what other possibilities I can
see.

- Mardoc

Yeah - to be fair - I'd have responded in a similar fashion.

Lets try this and see what happens.

Hey Mardoc,

Thanks for your reply, and your honesty regarding the status of the war. I think you guys were lucky that Bob got bored like he did and threw all that stuff at you! Otherwise you could have been fighting for a very long time! Still, it appears that Bob's play is always to rely on Hyborem as a fall back and when he is summoned, the AI will likely fill the slot of the Balseraph.

Hyborem could be a real threat to everyone. A rush with his mobility champs and longbows would be pretty devastating. I am surprised bob didn't leave all those adepts alive to be turned into manes when you eventually would have killed them.

With regard to my trades with Bob - I will be cancelling them soon anyway - it seems that he wont have the resources to trade to me in the near future anyway. You are quite right that there isn't really any value in that to you now that the war appears to have been won. I will have a silk resource open for trade if you are interested?

I completely agree that the fact that we don't have a NAP after t140 doesn't mean that we will be at war. That is a situation that I will have to live with. You will definitely be keeping me "honest"

You raise an interesting option in a gpt gift for peace. You say that this is something that i might not be willing to enter into but to be perfectly honest, you are mistaken. Being the only financial leader in the game I was always going to shoot off in GNP once the damn Sheaim left me alone. Thus my GNP is there to be used and if a donation of gold per turn is what it takes for peace between us, then that is an asset I am willing to offer. What sort of numbers where you thinking? Granted, there would be a delay until I got Currency but it wouldn't be that long and I could gift a back payment to catch up.

Here is an offer I am willing throw out there to get the ball rolling:

I will pay you 15gpt for a 15t NAP from the time I research Currency (which I will immediately head to) = 225g.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
SL

I will pay more most likely. 1.5t of saving cash is worth 15t of being left alone.

[Square Leg]

for some reason I am more nervous and on the edge of my seat about getting peace secured with the Clan than when I was fighting with Serdoa!

If Mardoc comes back with a counter offer I will be really really happy because that means he is considering it. The question will be - how much will I pay?

I have a number in my head. I'm not going to say it yet...

[Square Leg]

Square Leg,

I need to think about your offer, and discuss with Gaspar. I won't
commit to anything until I've thought about it more, but I'll make a
counterproposal so we can see if there's a zone of potential
agreement.

Frankly, 15 gold/turn is not enough for me to keep up with you. I was
thinking something more like 50 gpt, for a 20-30 turn period. Is that
in a range that you would consider?

Regardless of what we can agree on for NAP, I would be willing to sign
resource trades and open borders, but I don't have the game in front
of me right now, so I'm not sure what I have to offer .

I agree that Hyborem is best avoided. I'm not really sure how close
Bob is to Hyborem, except that I know he's had time to train Rosier,
so all that's between him and Hybie is the remaining beaker cost of
Infernal Pact. We're trying to reduce him as fast as possible, but it
may not prove to be possible.

- Mardoc

Well... for a counter offer but it is quite steep!

[Jkaen]

As I mentioned in chat, it sounds huge, but thats 10 turns of gold for 30 turns of NAP extension. that gives you the 20 turns of research you needed to get Gragoyles and a reasonable defense force, hence while I would negotiate its not too bad a deal if it becomes take it or leave it

(Take as an example sciz's turning down of a similar huge cash requirement deal, which was considered a big mistake in FFH2)