The Baalz Drop Doctrine

[Micah]

Heh, thanks for the complement. I actually think I haven't played any of the nations you've had a guide out for, so maybe some day I'll give things a go your way and see how it treats me.

You certainly have plenty of valid ideas though, I basically employed this overall blitz strategy verbatim with Fomoria in the original RAND...I crushed Marverni early just by applying my giant foot to his face, but then my second war was won on the first turn by sneaking a group of Nemedians to Mictlan's cap, attacking the cap with them the same time I used a site-searching Fomorian King to take out the 1 PD next door, and moving my army to our former border. This allowed me to friendly-move my entire thunderstrike force to Mictlan's cap.

If I had had to face his army plus a screen of PD I would have lost horribly, since jags cut right through fomorian giants if they can close to melee, but by denying him access to his PD I was able to blast his elite infantry to pieces before they could close to melee. I then followed this up with a massive Fomorian King airstrike on Ulm, taking out about half of his provinces in a turn.

All in all that was one of the easiest games I've won, taking into account the strength of the other players. (I also got shadow seers very early, which helped a lot.)

Anyhow, strategy anecdote aside and back to your pillage story, my initial reaction to your account is that you were able to outplay the Hinnom player, which would have a lot more to do with your win than the pillaging. I'm also not really equating what you did there with the blitz strategy in general since you were the one being attacked. In a true blitz situation I think it's better to choose your target and your opening moves so that the war is never close enough to need to pillage. Obviously in your specific situation you did what needed to be done in order to win given your initial disadvantage.

That being said, if you think you can seal the war by doing it then go right ahead. In fact, due to the stupidly large unrest spike of FAILED pillaging you can use your scouts to pillage, which does very little population damage but spikes the unrest into the stratosphere, effectively taking the province out of play for the duration of the war but leaving the victor the spoils. Using scouts also means that your real troops aren't tied down for the turn, which is one of the major drawbacks of the command.