Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[endomorphious]

Just finished my turn but one more player left. That Celestial Emperor was lvl 8 astral and honestly dont remember the other, although I'm thinking it was nature.

Building my first castle this turn. NO money for anything else ...did find a nice batch of sites in my last province total of 5 gems produced from that one. Hit con2 so gonna load my pretender up with a horror helm, barkskin amulet, eye shield, errm and something else i think..cutting into my research for a turn but with how tough these indies are turning out to be, I really don't want to gamble him without some insurance.

I really want to work on the suggestions given for charming. So I'm gonna try and work out a plan for that. I don't think I can reasonably work my way into using hell bind heart due to NO blood access. Would very much like to trade for some blood slaves. Not sure what the usual gem per blood slave ratio is typically in trades?

I'm thinking a group of 10 C'tis shamans with boosters to N3 spamming Charm. With vine men as guards so as not to kill the lovely future slaves. Should I equip them with Vine shields as well? If I can get enough blood slaves I'll work on making BlackHearts, but rather hate the idea of "wasting" them on the shamans. Isn't there a Summon Succubus spell? Can't seem to find it in the manual.

Hmmm alot of mental energy on a secondary objective...lol need to focus on what will work against the giants when it finally moves to war.

[Mauxe]

I just took an indie fortress.
so that was nice.

[Hrum]

Originally Posted by Mauxe

I just took an indie fortress.
so that was nice.

Nice! I'm jealous!

Turn 12 is up.

Congrats to TNN for picking up the Renegade Sage. I guess I didn't bid high enough.

AI intel in the south:

Atlantis has made landfall - he's got a pair of provinces on the coast of the southern continent (on NE coastline - provs 65 & 68).

Niefel's southern fort (22) has so far only managed to expand into 5 neighboring provs (that I can see, moving scouts up to see if he has done more westward expansion crawling the southern edge of map); he hasn't done any northward or eastward expansion in the last few turns. Looks like he's blocked from expanding further north on the east side of the great north-south river by 2 provs: 1st is the province I previously described (fossil warriors and basilisks) and the 2nd is a troll province (~40 trolls).

As of turn 12, I've got 11 provinces. In a few turns I will have conquered all of the indies I reasonably can at this point, and the easiest expansion at that point will be through an AI. My choices are Abysia to the east or Niefelheim to the west. I'm just starting to scout Abysia; I've got eyes on his fort at 54 and he hasn't done any expanding south, not even the provs neighboring his fort. I think Niefel is the way to go, since he threatens both C'Tis and I. Atlantis has a pair of provinces along the coast to the north of me, but I have no intention of starting a war with him.

My first fort just started going up last turn (turn 11), but it's a hillfort so it's cheap and quick to build. My research has been really pitiful, but now that my income is starting to be decent, I should be able to crank out a few forts and pick things up. I'm stumbling along towards alt3 (once I'm done researching alt2, that is), and then I'll start on construction research so I can get hammer production rolling (and I can kit out thugs). And oh yeah, site searching. I should get on that.

Last turn the monkeys and the sacred yavana, along with their newly recruited human light infantry (arrow catchers!) defeated a province defended by several sages and a great sage. The great sage was an astral mage of tremendous power (s7, 8 or 9 - not sure if the path boost from communion or banner shows up..? he was showing s10 thanks to the gear), but the spells he chose to employ against my forces weren't all that effective (mindburn spam). The monkeys were pleased to relieve him of 3x slave matrixes, a crystal matrix, a starshine skullcap, a banner of the northern star and one pair of boots of the messenger. Not a bad haul. I suppose with enough research there might have been a way to turn him to the service of the monkeys and their god, but that wouldn't happen any time soon so it was decided to put him to the falchion and let the monkeys take his stuff. Slave matrixes are shiny.