Winter Wonderland: Selrahc's FFH 2 thread

[Selrahc]

Nothing has really changed on the Orthus situation this turn. He moved one square closer.

The city grew to size 6 and I reallocated it's tile for max production. It should be able to produce a warrior/turn right now. God-king blesses my food/hammer rich start. If I was in nationhood right now I'd actually be getting a fair degree of overflow on the warrior.


Near Jingle Bells PB's scout is running between mine and Sareln's border with a lizardman in pursuit. He is sitting near a dungeon and I hope he doesn't explore it.. That would probably be a smart move though. It's a million miles from him and his scout is already in mortal peril. Writing off the scout in the hopes of unleashing some nasty barbs in the region would have good potential for short term gain, although there'd be some diplomatic ramifications.


Hippos are way cooler

Our scouting in the west has uncovered a horrific monster. Luckily it's just an elephant.

Elephants have the highest base strength of the animals, so you might be scared of them. Don't be. They have a pacifistic approach to life, content to wander the map never harming a soul.

If you can get a hunter or ranger to capture one then it lets you build war elephants. This is almost always not worth the hassle. The time and effort involved in getting a squad of hunters with subdue animal to track down and capture an elephant almost inevitably means that the unit is near obsolete when you acquire it.

Despite my earlier gloomy predictions Northwind is actually having a rather pleasant trip. I'm hoping he gets all the way to Kuriotate land.



Flothers on the other hand has met a grisly end. The barb build up in the far south was too much even for that seasoned veteran. RIP Flothers.

[Selrahc]

*Caution: The following post contains story rather than game content*
I'm a big fan of Refsteel's in character Orion reports, and while I felt it would be far too big an undertaking to attempt to do this entire PBEM thread in a narrative style, I have had some ideas floating around. If you just want the gameplay, probably better to skip this post. Hopefully it will be at least mildly entertaining.

This one basically serves as a prequel to the thread, telling of the destruction of the old Illian empire and the rise of Auric Ulvin.



[SIZE="3"]Selrahc's Journal
[/SIZE]
Entry 1: Destruction and Rebirth
As I reflect on recent events and the trials and tribulations that face our kingdom I find it necessary to write down my thoughts. It is perhaps best that I explain my life, and how I came to be chancellor of the Illian empire and chief advisor to his Eternal Majesty, the Winter King. My early life is typical enough for a Winterborn, but I should recount it for those of us who were born outside the Illian empire.

I was born in the year of our greatest defeat, the year of the death of Mulcarn. I was a bare 3 weeks old when Mulcarn died. With his demise came the end of the age of ice. I have no memory of that grim time, but my parents told me that it was a time of devastation and despair. The great ice cities of the Illian empire melted into nothingness. The beautiful ice fields that once covered the world were dissipating rapidly and the very elements themselves seemed to rail against us. Volcanoes, earthquakes and hurricanes ravaged the land, erasing all civilization. The one aspect that dominated my parent's memories of the cataclysm's was the hopelessness that engulfed our people. Our god was dead. He had looked after our people since the dawn of time, and shepherded us to greatness in the age of ice. Without him to look over us, what hope was there? The other gods had colluded to destroy our patron, to turn to those jealous cowards for help would have been unthinkable. If my parents had not had myself and my siblings to look after they might have lost themselves in despair, as so many others did.

I note that I was born before the cataclysm, but that should be obvious to all who see me. I have the appearance of the winterborn. Coal black eyes, pale white skin, cold blood and hairless features that mark me out as one of the last of the true winterborn. More than that though, the winterborn have an inner serenity. Others refer to us as cold souls, and say we live more like soulless automatons than true humans. I disagree. The winterborn can feel and experience as deeply and vividly as any other race but we have a detachment which gives us unmatched clarity. The winterborn of today are less pure. The loss of our god has lessened the effect of his gifts to us, the newborns look more and more human with every year. Some are still born that are as close to winter as any scion of old, but most exhibit the traits in lesser manners. Despite this, we still bond together as a nation. Even the most human babe in our empire can still stand the winter snow better than the hardiest dwarven berserker or human strong man.


I spent my childhood in one of the many small village communities of Illian refugees. We gathered around Letum Frigus. Growing up in the shattered remnants of a broken empire, watching the despair and desolation that had come to be the norm I watched as our small communities struggled to survive. I learned many important skills in those early days, but the utter despair of our community prevented us from growing beyond our humble roots. I believe if events had taken a normal course we would have eventually been absorbed into a foreign or destroyed by one of the other races of the world. I have nightmares sometimes of my home village, despoiled by orcish raiders. The last remnants of the once glorious Illian Empire unceremoniously snuffed out. Thankfully fate isn't done with us yet.

In the 40th year since the cataclysms a party of horsemen arrived. It was led by a young human, born from the remnants of that great Patrian empire that had waged war against our god. Ironic that a scion of our bitterest foes would become our salvation. He was to lead us back onto the road to greatness...
[To be continued in entry number 2]

[Selrahc]

Looks like no turn today, so let's talk lairs.



I'm not sure how useful that rope is going to be buddy

I've said that I was scared that PB might decide to explore the dungeon, and my recent multiplayer misadventures have reinforced just how dangerous the enemies that spawn can be.

Think of lairs like a riskier version of huts. You can make a rough heirachy of danger from exploration going
Huts->Graveyards->Barrows->Lairs->Dungeons->Unique Dungeons

It is almost always worth exploring a hut or graveyard. Huts are fairly self explanatory. Graveyards can only spawn very weak enemies from their bad results, and offer a good chance of giving you free technology or large amounts of gold. The graveyard has an entirely unrelated table of results compared to the other lairs. One minor effect of graverobbing is the raising of the Apocalypse Count by a point. Hopefully that doesn't prove important!

I don't think I've seen any graveyards this game, which is a pity. Graveyards have a late game purpose related to life mana if you can bear to refrain from looting. Casting sanctify calms the apocalypse count, and casting resurrection will give you an experienced champion unit.

Barrows and Lairs both spawn enemies until destroyed(or until you place a unit on top of them), which makes taking them out more of a priority. Barrows spawn skeletons and Lairs spawn lizardmen. Skeletons are a lot less problematic than Lizardmen, due to their lower base strength and movement.

Dungeons and Unique Dungeons(Some of the named features like the pyre of the seraphic or broken sepulcher) will not spawn enemies. If these features are near your lands it is best to leave their exploration until you have a decent military force to spare.


So how does exploration work? When you are on one of the dungeon like improvements(as opposed to graveyards or huts) a small picture of a dragon will appear on the explorers unit interface. Exploring a lair is basically a dice roll on a table, with the table determined by the lair. Heroes have a bonus to this roll. As far as I can tell high level units also have a bonus to the roll, but that is just speculation.

The weaker lairs will normally give you neutral results. Weak enemies(spiders are quite common), minor damage, or minor buffs or hindrances. Things like mutation or disease are quite common.

The stronger lairs have a much wider variance. Dungeons and Unique Dungeons are likely to provide you a rich bounty, but in order to get to it you might have to endure multiple negative events. The best results from lairs include useful magic items, great people and resources.

Of course the fact that a lair can spawn powerful bad results can be exploited...


Join the Illian Exploration Corps they said. See the world they said. Never said nothing bout being halfway down a monsters gullet

Some of the monster results that can spawn through dungeons and epic dungeons can be truly horrible. If you're near your own lands you don't want to see a heroic ogre; a cannibal black knight; a blitz wraith; a mobility mistwalker or any of the other big gribblies coming in and wreaking havoc. If you're near the opponents base however that could be very welcome indeed.

Exploring a lair near an opponent is almost a win/win. Many of the negative results become very handy if you want to give a speedbump to your opponents and don't mind losing a scouting unit. On the other hand, getting a positive result is still very handy. There are only a handful of results that you want to avoid in that situation. Giving a nearby rival a free grassland gold on a river would not be part of the plan.

[Selrahc]

Greatest city in the world. Vampires and Kurio's have both reached size 7. I'll not be growing for a little while, despite the spare happy cap.



Orthus is nearby, but didn't move onto the corn tile one N of his current position. Not sure why.


And finally, I've been struck blind. In the interturn my scout was killed. For the first time I've got no explorers out in the wilderness

[Selrahc]

Couple of pieces of news today.



PB did indeed explore that dungeon, finding a savant inside. A savant is an ashen veil disciple unit, and can spread the religion. This can indeed found the religion.

I'm not, and can't go for Veil, and I think I should be able to handle the apocalypse as well as or better than the others. This isn't a big problem to me, although it is a good break for PB.

There is another dungeon right next door. I get the feeling that one will be explored too.

Sareln sent me a message about PB's exploration before I saw it on my turn, and he was quite annoyed at the way it put us at risk. I'm honestly not too annoyed, I'm pretty sure I'd be doing the same in PB's situation.




On the Orthus front things look set for the showdown.

[Selrahc]

In the previous turn PB explored the second dungeon and got a free Great Commander. That's a really lucky break. A great commander isn't like a normal great person, but they can trigger a golden age, build a military academy, recruit troops, or join a unit to give it bonus strength and xp gain so they are very useful, but won't be giving him a tech lead. The scout could piggyback the great commander back to base fairly quickly, or the commander could be attached to the savant to give them both a higher chance of survival.


One more step in the eternal quest for more shiny things

Orthus is dead, and Sleet has a very real claim to be the most dangerous unit on the map right now. Not even a single casualty taken from the dread barbarian lord.

Sleet is now Combat 3, Shock 1 and has Orthus's axe to take him to strength 4. He'll be a welcome addition to the priests assault force.



Speaking of which, it's currently 14 turns until the priests are due.



And the current big issue of the day is still barbarians. Rather than hunker down in my base, I'm going to take the fight to them for the first time.

Sleet will be brilliant at clearing barrows, having an effective strength of 8 against skeletons. If I take him and a retinue of 2 warriors then I should be able to destroy one of the barrows and stem part of the tide of skeletons, but still be back in time for the grand assault.

[Ilios]

Congrats on taking out the Big Orc! Would you happen to know the odds he had of taking out Sleet?

[Selrahc]

No combat log in FFH, so I can't give you exact odds.

Sleet is strength 3 and had C1(20%), Shock(40% vs. Melee) and Homeland(10% in own borders), and was in a city with a 20% cultural defence.

Orthus's strength was 6 and he had C1(20%) but attacked over a river.

Based on that I'd guesstimate I had around a 70% chance to win.

[darrelljs]

Why the ninny attacked over a river is beyond anyone's guess .

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Selrahc, the warrior also had a 25% city defense bonus, right?