[SPOILERS] A threesome becomes a twosome

[NobleHelium]

Can you cast spells when it's not your turn?

[DaveV]

Can you cast spells when it's not your turn?

No, you can't select any units, so no spells. But we need at least 10 turns of no Arcane Lacuna to make any headway against the forces of evil. 20 turns would be better still.

Or maybe [they'll] just pillage more of the roads.

[plako]

Not a too big of a problem we road the gem tile and move Djinn and all replaceable units there. We can attack next turn. Almost all of our units have 2+ movement points.

[DaveV]

We're going to need a lot more mud golems at the front lines. Team Evil has a bunch of Sun I shamans standing around: I'm expecting a Scorched earth retreat (expect all plains tiles to be desert by the time we reach them).

No adepts at 10 XP this turn. I'm 11 gold short for 100% science.

[DaveV]

OK, we're lined up for attack on the newly renamed Stalingrad next turn. I expect to see it emptied out by then.

Adept roster at end of turn:





Note that I am the proud owner of two Light adepts now. These guys could be very useful.

[NobleHelium]

You should rename it to Dunkirk after taking it if it's empty.

[DaveV]

You should rename it to Dunkirk after taking it if it's empty.

Great idea, but they left a pretty sizeable garrison behind. We really need to get that Body node so I can haste my adepts and finish off some redlined units for that last bit of XP.

All the high-mobility units were evacuated - counter-strike coming?

From the event log, it looks like the Evil Empire took another nabaxo city. Vampires are now Empyrean and in Golden Age. So, Blinding Light is coming soon, doubtless.

[plako]

I took a short peek. We should make desicion after checking the situation with eyes, but this seems pretty good possibility to farm some experience.

[DaveV]

One thing I forgot to note: our defacto allies, Warbaxia, have Arcane Lore now. Govannan can't be far behind.

I've been doing some research on Blinding Light, and its odds are pretty bad. Base resistance is 50%, +10% in cities, +5% per level of unit, +20% for hero. So Gibbon would be at 95% resistance outside cities, 100% in cities. One more promo needed for 100% resistance outside cities. If that's their plan for counterattack against us, I think I'll take those odds.

For my own reference, I'm adding a list of promotions on the caster that will alter the resistance of units being attacked (Rathas/Radiant Guards don't start with any of these ):
Avatar -50
Channelling II/III -10 each
Potency -10
Metamagic I/II/III -5 each
Puppet +20
Tower of Alteration -20

Spell damage:
Combat I/II/III/IV/V +5 each
Metamagic I/II/III +5 each
Puppet -10
Unholy Taint +10

On defense, units get a base resistance of defense*2 + level*2 + (city cultural defense)/4. Any type resistance (death, fire, lightning, etc.) is added to this base number.
Nominal damage is the base damage of the spell (40 for Snowfall) plus any modifiers. Two random numbers in the range (0-nominal) are generated, and added together. This
sum is multiplied by (100-resistance)/100.
If this modified damage is greater than the spell max damage (80 for Snowfall), it is limited to the maximum.

tl;dr: two snowfalls should, on average, do the max damage. The variance on damage is very high, so there may be a few lightly damaged units.

Snowfall will turn all land tiles surrounding the caster to Snow for 3-8 turns, and has a 2% chance per tile of spawning a Blizzard. It will put out smoke or flames.

[DaveV]

I jumped in the game to run a floating eye recon, and found the stack: they're waiting for a counter strike. I'm thinking that means I can only cast one snowfall, since I need two djinns to cover the city and the attacking stack. I'm planning to attack from where the puppet is standing; that will give snow on the least amount of city territory.

I have a lot of skeletons and puppets that can soften up any units that don't get the nominal 45 HP of damage from snowfall.

I need a road and a body node from you, plako. Are there any units you want to farm XP for? I have enough adepts to use up all of those defenders, even if I lose some battles. I plan to choose adepts depending on the attack odds: let the 9XP adepts take the 99% attacks, use the 5XP guys to attack at 50%.