Losing is Fun: Kandros Fir Dwarf Fortress [Khazad Spoiler Thread]

[Ichabod]

Hey Ichabod,

Glad to hear that this game is going again as I always enjoy your updates!

I like updates alot too.

Thanks, guys!

I realized that a big part of the fun that we have when playing games at RB is the turn reporting. When the game is over, it's very nice to go and read what your opponents were thinking and planning. So, I'll try to keep this updated from now on.

[Ichabod]

Played next turn and a Great Artist was born!

Full report to come soon.

[Ichabod]

Turn 106:

The big strategic decision of this turn was what to do with this worker:

I was wondering if I should make a road in the hill 1S of the worker. It would help with the attack against Sciz, making easier reinforcement lines and making it possible for me to move from my borders straight to the ivory tile (I'm confident that Sciz can't see the launching point from inside my borders due to the hills blocking the view). The problem is that Sciz could see what was coming when he sees my worker roading. So, I sent him this message:

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Hey Sciz,

I'm writing to notice you that I'm going to plant a city near your borders. It'll be on the hill that my gryphon (yeah, that gryphon is mine) is currently standing (north of your 3rd city). It'll get gold and ivory and will collide a bit with your borders. But it won't take any of the useful tiles of your city, so I hope you don't mind.

I'm getting KotE for spring next, so the site will be useful, even though it's really lacking right now (apart from the resources). If you want, we could make a deal regarding using spring in your land (if that's possible, I still haven't checked it yet). What do you think?

Kind Regards,

Ichabod[/COLOR]

Which he replyed too:

[COLOR="Lime"]can't spring in others lands i think

im planning to spring too soon though, so those tiles you say are
worthless will be decent with spring. You should plant your city one
tile north of your proposed dot, imo.[/COLOR]

I need to answer him now. I feel bad about deceiving him and attacking. I know it's just a game, but it makes me feel bad... But, well, the show must go on (specially since we have a Great Artist now :neenernee). Ah, by the way, I decided to build that road!


The artist was born at the end of the turn. I was kind of worried that I might have missed the notification on a GArt being born in the previous turns. But, yeah, I got it!

Warfare is a 4 turn tech not on a golden age, so there's no way I'll not be able to revolt. I value military state higher then arete (the civic), so even if I decide to go for Arete (the tech), I won't have to wait.


Boatmurdered finished a trebuchet with a really good overflow this turn (the city grew a pop too):

I can finish a trebuchet in two turns with the overflow or a thane of kilmorph in 1 (coupled with the GA, since the 40 hammers will lose 10% due to apprenticeship), to act as a medic in the Sciz campaign. I'll probably build the thane, because I hope to take the oportunity to make quick progress through Sciz's cities. If only I had more mobile troops... Or a second stack to attack the western city...

I hope to grow boatmurdered to size 10 to work another plains hill mine. I'm very proud of this city right now!

Titanic is a city that served its purpose of adding a good amount of early commerce to speed up the teching. But that's about it... The city will never shine properly without a springing adept. Well, that's civilization for you. I'm hoping that the early boost that the city gave me will make up for the lack of a better future spot.

Just a quick remark about the map. See the ivory here:

It's the only one on the map. I think the dragon bones used to be here and Maksim took them out while editing the map. But he left the ivory resource that gets placed together with the bones (probably unintentionally). Or maybe he likes me and decided to give me a close ivory! Either way, I'll settle it later.

[Thoth]

Ivory isn't quite as good in FFH as it is in BTS....no WEs and no doubler building. All it will ever give is +1 happy per city. Better than a slap in the head with a dead fish, but not unbalancing IMO.

[Ichabod]

Ivory isn't quite as good in FFH as it is in BTS....no WEs and no doubler building. All it will ever give is +1 happy per city. Better than a slap in the head with a dead fish, but not unbalancing IMO.

Yeah, and it needs a very expensive tech to improve and doesn't have a very good tile yield. Dyes, for example, are way better. It doesn't even get doubled by a hunting lodge (fur and deer do). It's really not imbalanced, it's just curious that there's a single jungle tile in the middle of the desert with ivory.

Or maybe it's just a joke about the killer elephants from dwarven fortress.

[Thoth]

Yeah, and it needs a very expensive tech to improve and doesn't have a very good tile yield. Dyes, for example, are way better. It doesn't even get doubled by a hunting lodge (fur and deer do). It's really not imbalanced, it's just curious that there's a single jungle tile in the middle of the desert with ivory.

Or maybe it's just a joke about the killer elephants from dwarven fortress.

It's a good thing for you that wild elephants in BTS can't attack given your theme.

[Ichabod]

When it appeared that the game was back on its tracks... another big delay...

Keeping the motivation hasn't been an easy thing to do.

[Mist]

When it appeared that the game was back on its tracks... another big delay...

Keeping the motivation hasn't been an easy thing to do.

* Mist looks at a certain FM save that's buried under a mountain of dust, cobwebs and growing mold

[Ichabod]

Turn 107, finally:

The good news of the turn came before I even opened the save. Bob sent me an answer about the NAP with the Infernals:

By the way, Selrahc posted in his thread about five days ago- he said that he was indeed amenable to signing the NAP with you, although he didn't actually specify any terms or say whether I have the authority to bargain on his behalf (although I'm going to assume that it was implied). He also didn't mention why he hasn't been able to play the turns or when he'll be able to take over again, which is very frustrating, especially since I've asked like twice now in the thread, and separately in PMs and emails. I'm working off of minimal instructions, very little map knowledge, and a sparse thread to give me game context, and he didn't actually formally hand over control of the Infernals to me for all time or anything, so I can't just do whatever I want with the civ. As a consequence, I'm playing very conservatively at the moment, which means that your NAP offer appeals to me, but I wasn't willing to accept anything without permission.


Anyway, my point is that if your offer still stands, I'd like to take that NAP and I'm perfectly happy for you to kill of Sciz (which might also improve the turnpace some ). Uh, let me know if Selrahc already signed something with you in a separate email and nobody bothered to inform me :P. We can discuss the exact terms whenever you want.


-Bobchillingworth, Confused Demon

Well, well, well. Exactly what I wanted to hear. If Selrahc himself wants the NAP, I guess I'm pretty safe. I haven't yet answered to them, but I'm very happy about it. I'll try to negotiate a iron deal too. We'll see.


This means that we are definetely going to war against the Hippus. But the question is: when? My idea is to make a two front attack, so we'll need to prepare for a bit longer. Sciz has quite good production, but I guess he's only building infrastructure, because he has no army. By delaying the attack, I risk the chance of Sciz getting BW and copper, which would be bad. But bronze warriors won't be able to defend against Trebs and highly promoted forces, so I think I'll wait some more to make a decisive attack with more troops.

I'm a MP noob, so I really have no idea about what would be best here. I could safely capture Arkhrast Kovalain, Sciz closer city, with the troops I have now. But then he'd switch into full war mode and I'd have a hard time pressing forward, since I don't have that much troops. With 2 stacks, I can quickly capture 2 of the 3 productive cities of his empire, breaking his moral and infrastructure. So, I'll trust what he said about going for KotE and hope he'll waste a lot of hammers into Mage Guilds and adepts. Ah, I'll send a message to Sciz saying that I won't be settling the city near him, but rather one that gets marble and furs in the ice. I'll ask if he want to trade the spare furs to see if he's teching hunting or not. Hopefully, he is.

Here's the attack plan, red is the main force, blue is the secondary force. I'm guessing that 10 axemen/warriors + hunter and griphon + 4 trebs will be the main stack and 6 axemen/warriors + 2 trebs will be the secondary stack. We'll see, I haven't really made the math regarding how long it'll take for me to build this units.

The main stack will be attack through Kurald Galain due to it being closer to Sciz's capital. Not only closer, but also with good terrain path and this:

Sciz's capital is almost entirely surrounded by rivers, so I can only attack through the west. The bad side of attacking through Kurald Galain is that there's no good tile for me to attack the city -> I'd have to station my troops in the desert (-25% defense) or attack crossing a river. Hopefully the highly promoted troops will deter any attack from Sciz. If he hides in his capital, that'd be the perfect outcome, since I have an uber siege unit in the trebuchet.

Here's a pretty important thing about the city of Civilization V. It'll pop its third ring borders in 9 turns, so that it'll be closer to Sciz's city of Kurald Galain.

Civ V grew to size 4 at EoT, working another plains farm for a very good surplus. After that, it'll grow into plains hills and become a production city. As you can see, there's a training yard queued there already. But I'm not sure if I'm really going to build it. One of my ideas is to tech to warfare and stop research, doing warriors -> axeman upgrades (only 27 gold due to the ingenuity trait). Maybe just building warriors will due, since they'll probably only be doing mop up after siege and good troops already attacked.

Here's what the borders of Civ V will look like:

As you probably noticed, I haven't fired the GA yet. I realized that I could tech Warfare in three turns with a small deficit, so I decided to wait until its teched. This way, I'll switch civics in the first turn of the GA and all the GA hammers will get the military state and nationhood bonus.

That's the reason why I switched the build in Hindenburg from man axeman to the partially built hunting lodge. I need the hunting lodge for the city happy cap, so I'll build it while I don't have bonus for military units (I actually have a -10% modifier from apprenticeship -> the 13 hammers that the city produces turn into 11 after the -10% due to rounding down, which is very annoying). After the hunting lodge is ready, we'll go *axemen.

Finally, this will be the latest addition to our mighty war stack! Who would think that one day elephants and dwarves would fight side by side, huh?

I think 88% odds is a bit risky, but, well, its worth it. A 8 strenght unit will be very helpful for stack defense (I don't have AH, so I can't promote it to an war elephant), which is pretty nice!

Any questions, feel free to ask!

[Ichabod]

Diplomacy with Selrahc:

Ichabod to Selrahc:

Hey Selrahc,

First of all, I'm glad to see you back in the game!

As I believe you already know, I want to sign a NAP with you. My intentions (and I ask you kindly not to reveal them to a third party) are to attack Sciz. But I can't afford to have my undefended core for you to take while I do it. That's the reason for the NAP proposition.

I'm going to fire a Golden Age with the drama GArt in 2 turns, so that I can adopt military state, conquest and nationhood, going full military. I'm fielding trebuchets and axemen, but Bambur and Kilmorph priests aren't far behind.

My idea would be to sign the NAP until Sciz is dead, with a cooldown after it (like 10/20 turns). I offer to only capture the 3 core cities of Sciz empire, razing the rest to give you manes. I'd also ask you for a potential Iron trade. It would significantly speed the Sciz campaign, giving you the manes more quickly. But I don't have much to offer in return besides that, since you don't need resources for happy and health and its a NTT game. I'll get Iron soon enough for myself, so it's not like you'll be causing yourself much damage.

If you don't accept the NAP, I'll have to rethink a lot of my game strategy, though.

That's basically what I wanted to talk about.

Kind Regards,

Ichabod

Selrahc to Ichabod:

I can't really sign up to this deal without some added incentives.

When I dumped the Lanun, I gave Sciz 10t warning and a deal. I delete the forces in the Lanun cities, he tasks the Lanun cities to building manes, at a rate of not less than 1 per 5 turns. He apparently screwed up the timing, and didn't get forces over to the Lanun cities in time for a quick conquest. So he is dragging his heels on paying me the manes I'm due. But he will have to pay eventually, so I have a vested interest in keeping him alive.

I tell you this, because I am willing to make some sort of deal. But you'll have to sweeten your side of things, or it won't be worth the investment to me.

I'll think about an answer... But deleting all the troops from the Lanun, while giving the control over to the AI and making a deal with another player to conquer that land is not a very fair play... Letting AIs play the game is bad enough, but abusing them is a little bit too much...