Vets Turn 7

Interesting turn. I may need some time for this one. I'll post more tomorrow morning.

I took all my provs. But some interesting forces are up against me now.

Attacking 106 and 62, moving an expansion army to 89 for eastern expansion.

Spotted Caelum at 114. Eriu might be best suited to take him on, Air magic thugs > lightning and archers.

Found +2 astral site. Thau 4 in 2 turns.

Baalz, sorry about the dominion creep, but there isn't much I can do about it. Awake pretender, no temples, no preaching.


DrP, if you had that 600 to 800 spare gold, I can start a fort next turn. I have 250 spare myself, so no need for other donations.


Screenshot coming:
https://2img.net/h/oi41.tinypic.com/1z65mt.jpg

Well. It appears Ctis is driving at me in full force soon.

They have a dragon. Oooh, Scary Dragon.

Anyway, I think I can hold and probably flank him.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f86/13/76/96/87/ermor_12.jpg

thank you all for the gold i am able to start my first fort this turn!
and i had enough left over for 1troop and 1elder researcher still


my next fort is scheduled for ene umrul 285 can start construction in 2turns if i manage to save enough or get a few donations next turn or it can be delayed indefinitely as theres a spare commander to start the construction



taking 244 this turn ... wish me luck! (the indies are easy but i might get unlucky and have my badass sc get cursed)

DRP please try to head east moreso than north so we don't run into eachother more than nessassary also if we could see a screenshot of your nation it might help me avoid running into you?




on another note i'm probably almost never going to be able to afford any of my sacred troops despite having plenty of resources for them so if anyone ever thinks a sacred giant would be better than whatever they are about to spend 125gold or 150gold on feel free to send it my way (you can even pick which giant i get... speaking of which... i think i might switch from the 125gold variety to the 150gold variety which are easily 20% stronger (since gold is my bottleneck not resources)

Hitting 205 and 268 this turn - unless I shouldn't. This is a lot of gems - I can make various items or I can wait for Con 4 and make stuff that's good - fire brands and things! Turn after next, or it'll be delayed if I forge now. Also, I didn't get my death hero, so I'm forwarding all these death gems to... who? Any other advice/requests?

I got a 1500gp event this turn. So, after buying a Cel. Master and my fill of heavy cavalry, I've still got >2000 gp left.

That's enough for me to start a fortress (finally) *and* send 1,118 gp. TheDemon/Marignon asked for money - so he gets it, unless someone else has higher-priority expenditures (i.e., mobilization for war.)

Seriously, each of us should buy a modest force of patrollers and tax our capitals at 200%. The noobs are going to kill our pop anyway, and that's a big buffer against unrest spells when they may arive.

I take full responsibility for Ctis and Pyth in the north. I will fight them both, while Namad gains strength.

Ctis worries me a bit. Pyth does not so much.

I do have forces in the cap though, that can go out at once. They are reanimating as of now.

Send death to ermor I think, he'll have con 2 at some time in the future. If you can get him a hammer he can forge horror helms.

DrP, I only need 800, why don't you send the rest to atul and he can also start his fort.

Okay, sending 800 to TheDemon/Marignon and 318 to Atul/Vanheim.

I am MA Ermor after all. I think I can take on two Noobs.

Well, I guess we will see.

Okay, guy to my left is Arcoscephale, coming in with elephant/cardaces. At least the small army in picture's just a indy trasher.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f89/13/89/61/11/kuva_510.jpg

Jotunheim didn't move from 15 but built a temple there, strange. I'm moving 2 armies to striking distance of his lands, snuck already a small detachment of Vans in. So three provinces turn after this if all goes well.

And the increase in my gem graphs is Iron Order plus assorted goodies, now my E income is 8 per turn and S income's 6 per turn. Yay.

If you already have 245 then definitely take 268... if you don't have 245 take 245. (you posted that screenshot after i posted i think...)

if you could plan to take 264 and south and east of it and leave me 285 281 that would be nice... if you take those from me you are gonna start boxing me in it looks like? plus 285 is an 800gold for me

i will probably have const2 around turn 13-15? haven't done the math exactly but i am going to have alt1 after turn8 and alt3 probably after turn 11-12


i could probably start my 2nd fort on turn9 if i recruit no troops at all or if next turn i get some extra gold in an amount specifically told to me (so that i don't recruit a couple troops and ruin it but also don't recruit no troops and waste the chance to get a few)

DrP, what's your situation on hammers? We have guys with E3 mages, so you don't necessarilly have to earth boot it up. Or is it taken care of?

The following post is really long and rambling, but suffice it to say from my point of view no forge is worth delaying the turn on which you achieve const4.

if you have spare mages you could start making a couple dragon helmets and bracer of protections which are both const2 but theres no real rush to get them online right now ideally you'd would only make some if it wouldn't effect the turn on which you reached const4, right? Ideally i'd like 2or3 sets of gear consisting of brand/dragonhelm/bracerofprot/antimagicamulet by turn10(i'm aware this might be an unrealistic goal) or so but... if lingchih already has dibs on the only two nations near me... there might not be any rush at all ... i haven't figured out which remaining noob nations could be flanking me...

dragon helmets are not critical, however I've always considered them to be almost costless, due to the wide lack of things to spend fire gems on, in any case where they are not nearly costless they aren't that great of an idea.. given your RP constraints it would probably be best to wait until you have achieved more rp goals before making any dragon helmets at all... in fact the setup of brand/bracer/bracer/antimagic is in most situations superior to the dragonhelmet version... i just figured we're gonna end up with fire gems leftover and massive shortages of all the other types... perhaps this is false


thoughts? plus baalz also has a plan heavily heavily reliant on gear you should probably find out from him what all item's he is in need of?


***I opened my test game to grab some specific numbers****


in test games an adon armed with nothing but a bracer of protection has 27protection after blessing himself.


with two bracers of protection a dragon helm and an antimagic amulet the adon has 57hp 33prot22morale(dominion maybe altering this by+1)22mr enc5 6regen

with one bracer of protection the dragon helm the antimagic he has 27protection *conclusion* helmets don't provide a ton of protection so the dragon helm is mostly because a) morale b) gives 100fr due to the units base fr50 c) very low cost and easy to make (an ideal setup wouldn't include dragon helmets at all)

i suppose an a2h2 adon with alteration 3researched would really only need the brand the one bracer and the antimagic amulet to then self buff bless/luck/body ethereal and go on a rampage

does anyone else on the team have an e9 bless? bracers of protection are bugged to work like double or quadruple strength or some such when comboed with that bless... i'd make these a hot item on your forges

I'm not sure on our gems situation but since Eriu needs brands as well, and only TC has water income, you might end up getting fire brands instead. That would be fine too yes?

e: this might be really cheesing the game, but according to llamaserver score charts abysia and shinuyama both have a VP. Since I know the VP at 118 is indep, that means that one of them is in the vicinity of 127 and another is near 314. 267 is ashdod's, and that leaves 199.

So, northwest, except abysia or shinuyama below pythium. Either would be a good match vs Ashdod I think. Southeast, Abysia or Shinuyama above Arco. Might be a far tougher match, especially abysia with their fire resistance and tower shields vs Marignon.

I specifically stopped saying anything about frost brands because fire brands are fine. heck they're better! the only reason i listed frost brand before is that... i was listing the cheapest setup i could think of and in my opinion frost brand is cheaper than firebrand ... an upgrade into firebrand is exactly that an upgrade...

although specifically against abysia i think frostbrand might be better than firebrand, maybe not?

Alright, Eriu production facilities online! 3 heavy raiders rolling off the line each turn now, I haven't encountered a enemy yet but expect a pretty aggressive indie expansion until I do. Attacking 198, 179,223, 132, 161. Sending 216 gold to Vanheim and some more gems to TC.

As for my items, as I mentioned all I really need is a vine/gold shield and a brand. We can get creative if our gem stores dictate something else, but that's my goto equipment. Fire brands are fine, the only catch is they eat into gems for golden shields, if its either or I'd rather have the shield.

I may also need something specific depending on who I'm attacking (fire resistance, etc.).

I'm swimming in water gems from events, so, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I'll be making:

Frost Brand / Gold Shield / Pendant of Luck
for Eriu?

Ashdod can default to the same equipment, or I can get fancier, as circumstances dictate.

I'll be making a set of winged shoes for Knife Bright Insight herself, but otherwise it looks like no air items - gems are probably better saved for Cloud Trapeze anyway. The gems that are in short supply are *air*.

My research is going to suffer a bit when I start cranking out items.

DrPraetor wrote:I'm swimming in water gems from events, so, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I'll be making:

Frost Brand / Gold Shield / Pendant of Luck
for Eriu?

I think namad said he'd prefer Brand / Dragon Helm / Bracer of Protection / Amulet of MR, with priority going to Brand / Bracer. All his randoms have been astral so far, the non-astral ones I would say would need a lucky ammy instead of MR ammy, but namad will have to confirm that.

**Bracers of protection are incredibly badass for any nation with e9 bless i'll be wanting several.**
They provide about quadruple the protection that they should provide for no apparent reason on a unit that has already received an e9 bless. No joke!



Please discuss the below issues/points below with me on IRC, or here.

brand+bracer+antimagic+bracer (hopefully the full set of 4 before reaching enemy territory) are the most important items for these two specific units i specifically already have. (feel free to argue this point with me on irc)

As you said the fire and earth adon's will want brand+luck pendant+bracer+antimagic but I have 0of those so far (i'll have more later).

When a unit has 27prot or 33prot (one bracer or two bracers) the need for a shield is lowered, although they'd certain still take a shield.



My reasoning for listing the above setup is that as the least experienced player of the lot, I do not want to be too demanding, nor influence our group strategy too strongly. The above setups are absolutely minimums. Below I try to argue the case for fully outfitting the astral adon unit. The astral adon unit with just a small amount of RP invested into buffs becomes stronger than virtually any hero of the MA. (the earth adon is sortof stinky, and the fire adon/deathzamzumite both require higher rp levels before their use becomes as apparent)



There is a case for delaying the deployment of these units until they can be more fully equipped though. It might be worth giving the adons a vine or gleaming gold, because they are capital only units. I have to give up the chance to recruit a rp10 15%forge bonus capital only commander to get them. Also for the majority of the early game my astral adon's are going to be FAR FAR better than my earth/fire meaning that the astral adon's will be nearly irreplacable while the earth adon's would service as thugs that would be acceptable to lose. In reality as a team we should probably give the astral adon's a shield and a boots of the messanger which would result in brand+shield+default gear armor (2enc 16prot)+boots of messenger +bracer of protx2+antimagic amulet=57hp 6regen 33protection 8reinvigoration (4enc+shieldenc)+luck buff+22mr+body ethereal (15morale). If the unit was given a vine shield he should end up with 4enc and 4reinvig which might suffice, however if given a charcoal or gleaming shield he would have 5enc and 4reinvig and considering he needs 20-30fatigue worth of buffs he would then need the boots of the messanger... it looks like our income is heavy into earth/fire that is why I figured a 5nature gem setup would be preferable to a 10nature gem setup even if the 5nature gem setup uses more non-nature gems. Then the best counter I can see to such a unit would be to route him and cut off his retreat. Which is why I suggested a few dragon helmets despite it not really adding anything at all to the package. Putting all your eggs into a single basket is a bad idea ESPECIALLY due to magic duel problems of this strategy, however all game long I may only be able to ever recruit 3-5 of this specific unit (astral random path adon) so replacements will be substitute units of a weaker sort. If a single type of evocational damage besides fire threatens to be an issue to this sort of adon the chest peice is free for an item of cr100 or pr100 or sr100. With a lead shield or rainbow armor mixed in he would hit, what? about 25mr? which might suffice for gorgon slaying riskfree? If MR becomes critical I dip into ench1 later in the game on anyturn and provide him with resist magic the buff, this fourth buff, bless luck bodyeth resistmagic will cause his starting fatigue to be even higher. Which is another point in favor of the boots of the messanger +non-nature shield.

Speaking of MR concerns, these guys can teleport with starshine caps and with the above setup their biggest defensive hole besides morale (which is rarely abused) is MR... teleport is way out of my way in terms of research goals though ... so far out of the way that it's a point I might never reach? unless you guys think i should go alt3ench1thau3(maybe const2thrown in) and focus entirely on astral adon's because alt7 is too far into the future? the badass-ary of alt7 fire adon's is just so high i'm tempted to shoot for it even if doing so loses the game, thoughts?




On an unrelated note, I think we need to decide now which nation is going to make dhammers? I could try prioitizing that... since there seems to be no pressure on me at all I could delay getting alt3 to get const2 (and try recruiting the discount dhammer forger everyturn till his randoms luck out? or ... maybe vanheim could do it since his guys are guaranteed to have it?)