EDIT: imgur is crapping out on me, for whatever reason - so have some links instead of embedded photos. Sorry!
First things first, I reoriented the capital to push out an adept in one turn, which will let us attack next turn:
https://imgur.com/d361uTp
Decide to weaken with summons - most will fail, but can resummon and should weaken some…
https://imgur.com/tJLy73t
RIP his taskmasters have Animal handling - d'oh - lose the Axe.
https://imgur.com/SnDeOzY
Clean up easily the next turn. Only real loss was a PoL, a catapult, and a fawn which was ready to be a Satyr (but had not been promoted).
Here's Saverous dying:
https://imgur.com/Mmeoj5h
And stack dead:
https://imgur.com/9cYHM3Q
Having taken out this stack, we see her power drop:
https://imgur.com/fcsRzVJ
But surprisingly less than I thought. By the looks of things, Furia still has a lot out there - but it's not on defence near the city Hexam. I decide its important to move quickly, to take it and get us some breathing room for the core. The easiest place for most of our stack to attack from is actually Thessalonica's lands (no picture)
Next turn, Hexam falls.
https://imgur.com/a/DlkMN37
Found the stack…and it's big. I'm worried we'll lose our entire army. Still, I hope we can keep the city and save our army if we keep back. I pop the borders of Hexam
https://imgur.com/EUMkJdx
And position our army behind.
The stack advances.
https://imgur.com/SwTvpwV
Funnily enough, us taking the city freed Arturus - who doesn't have OB with Furia - to start moving his (doomed) stack through our territory. I presume this stack will eventually be gobbled by Hannah and Basium.
Anyway. I'm worried, so I pull out of the city, and hit it with some collateral and the Satyrs, and move the army back a bit.
But Furia decides to pull back (We got an event, I take it for the beakers).
https://imgur.com/b9zTLMN
You can also see the Luchuirp stack moving. This will be a theme throughout the turnset - and gives us the chance to do some creative things, by hiding units from Furia in his territory. I didn't abuse this too much, but it did give some intel:
https://imgur.com/deAfajX
Hexam is doing okay, though very culture crushed in two directions.
https://imgur.com/9l2NapY
Sidenote, some economy things.
I don't agree with going for mage techs. I don't see any reason to ever get Sorcery, and none of the techs seem that useful. Instead, I think we should focus on strengthening our army through the spiritual line, but as we have a strong enough army for now, let's head here for the economy instead:
https://imgur.com/Hp6mmAW
The Guild of Hammers is the prize here. It hasn't been built yet, and is enormously powerful on a map this big. 3-movement would be nice for logistics as well. After that, Consumption gives us a big economy boost (as well as TR), and Taxation rounds out our cottage-based economy. (Speaking of which, we need to solve our happiness issues so we can leave GoN and get into FT, stat.)
In the meantime, we're saving gold on Sani whilst the capital builds a market. But I think this should be the plan, unless we interrupt it for a Chalid beeline, or to get AV down.
By the end of the set we've got sanitation, and mathematics:
I queue up a settler:
https://imgur.com/a/DcEE3Wj
And decide now is the time to go for a golden age:
Incidentally, we should be building PoL via Devouts, which let us get extra moves on them. This is the focus of my military buildup - cats, and Devouts->PoL's. I don't think chariots, Fawns, or Axes are that good anymore.
https://imgur.com/Nl5sWvw
Also
* War weariness also gets more icky as the turns go on.
* Decius wants us to attack the game-leader. Um, no.
* Hannah wants us to attack the Luchuip. As nice as this would be in ~15t, for now it would place another doom stack on our doorsteps, so that's a no. We toss her some copper to make sure there's no hard feelings
Back to military.
Strangely enough, after Furia pulls back (we can't hold the stack in place because Furia has Body 1 adepts), she never moves back towards us. I put some Tigers to watch the stack. It seems that Furia is more interested in attacking Beeri then retaking her land.
https://imgur.com/a/XRY9qrS
Which gives us some…opportunities. Looking at the map, Furia's core is far from her stack. And her core is poorly defended. Which means if we move fast, we can blitz her core. I begin advancing on her capital with a small, elite group of tigers, two-move cats, and Satyrs.
https://imgur.com/xN3N8c0
A couple of turns later, we crush the capital. It turns out she really doesn't have units outside her main stack - I slap down a couple of stragglers, but besides needing to dislodge archers it's easy going.
https://imgur.com/j7KgaF9
It's a nice city, too - I plop a Tiger cage for some extra culture (sidebar, we should prioritise carnivals in culture-crushed cities for this reason - not that I thought of this whilst playing). I also pop the borders, not that it does any good - oof:
https://imgur.com/PUOyLx4
The rest of her western cities are equally poorly defended:
https://imgur.com/HaUyrqM
I advance on [], but don't manage to take it before the turn ends.
https://imgur.com/BMTpSr6
Note that her stack has not come closer during this time - it even moved a bit further south, and sacrificed a unit to my scouting tiger:
https://imgur.com/T3bML0w
Here's the rest of her core, including the one tile of Luchuip culture that may allow us to roll up the rest of her lands:
https://imgur.com/W6cvgA7
I recommend keeping most of the PoL in Hexam, and building up more of them + catapults for when her stack eventually wakes up. We don't need much to take her poorly defended cities, and PoL allow us to effectively teleport units, by deleting tigers near the front and re-summoning them. I think if you feel worried, from some collateral at her, they tend to want to heal up.
Also, there's a settler aiming for that spot, though I chose not to settle on it because I wasn't sure we had the army in the area.
Annoyingly, I finish the set by losing two villagers to a lunatic, after taking the time to protect all the nearby ones
forgot about RAI.
https://imgur.com/dQOZLZ6
Anyway, Dave's up!
.
. But I would love to be able to swap between FT and Conquest depending on whether we were pushing tech or units ...