Part 236: Sauro - Turn 71
Turn 71
In which I'm reminded just how uneventful some of these turns were for me.
- Schneeble/SauromatiaSeriously, this is hands down the most boring turn I have ever posted. Even more boring than turn 1. No sites uncovered, no battles involving me. Two random events give me some death and nature gems, which is nice but still boring. The most exciting thing that happened this entire turn?
My pretender cast Forest Dome on my main non-capital fort. I don't have a lot of dome access but I figure I can use some protection against the inevitable remote attacks that will come my way and I might as well start preparing now, while it's quiet. Forest dome has one of the lowest chances to stop incoming spells, but unlike all the others it lasts forever until it's hit by a fire spell, at which point there is a 50% chance that it will burn away. Also if the caster dies, but the caster is my PG so if that happens I have bigger problems than losing a Forest Dome. Dawkish.
Anyway, that is seriously it for the whole turn. Instead of giving you a map this turn I will give you a mess of charts!
Check out Mictlan's line. That is what a successfully waged 3-on-1 war looks like, people. It can be done, but the parties involved have to communicate (we coordinate our attacks we worked together to cast global enchantments). I don't expect this to be reproduced in the wild, but I want you all to know that with clear and constant communication almost anything is possible. Also on this graph I'm third place and have been third place since our temporary ceasefire with Mictlan.
I am tied with Pangaea for first place. Woo. Basically I put a fort on most anything I could want to protect, as soon as I could afford it. Mictlan and I have the highest forts to provinces ratio (not counting Lanka because his calculation generates a divided by zero error), which is a good and expected thing when you are or expect yourself to be on the defensive. Hinnom has the lowest, which means that whenever we go to war he should be the easiest target... except, you know, for the fact that he has a hojillion Iron Dragons, Mechanical Giants, and Cyclopes able to quickly respond to any threat.
First place! And I've been spending all of it every turn. The majority goes to upkeep, but I can still squeeze in some recruitment and occasionally some fort-building. With the variety of mages available to me from my handy sites I am able to turn this gold into diversity! Unfortunately I've never been comfortable with forging so I am ill-equipped to take advantage. We'll just have to see how it pans out in future turns.
I'm a solid third place. Without globals I would probably be tied with Pangaea for second. If gem generating items were on here I would be embarrassingly far behind. The windfall from T'ien Ch'i has kept me competitive but gems are power, especially at this stage of the game, and I am very, very far behind the other two powers. I've managed to do a lot with a little bit before, maybe I can do it again!
My research sucks. If I had it all to do over again I would have cast Burden of Time at the absolute minimum and made more Skull Mentors earlier on. I'm still forging a few even now, but I should have used up every single available death gem on Mentors many turns ago. Lesson learned, but it's too late to do me much good here. To reiterate: forging is absolutely my biggest weakness.
I'm third, and not in danger of being dominion killed. Lanka is losing candles, that's good and encouraging enough to keep me on my current path of killing him softly.
The least useful and least surprising of all graphs. Pangaea has a million Maenads. We get it. I am leaning on my Elemental Royalty monopoly to keep me safe, and my mages are too busy desperately researching to summon dudes who wouldn't be able reach enemy provinces anyway.
I am not even on the board here. I don't have spare gems except in Earth and Fire. I don't want any of the Fire globals except maybe Eternal Pyre (the gem generating one) but I don't have enough of either type to let me put up a global that could compete with what is already up. I might have tried it if I didn't have such a good idea of how much my allies put into their own casts, and most likely I would have wasted gems in the attempt. It's sad, but at least it's not wasteful.
I'm not on the board here either. Most of my fights have been carefully calculated to involve the least amount of death possible, and typically involve mages who went back into the lab after their work was done. I'm probably not going to have anybody on this board except maybe at or near the very end of the game. Sorry, guys!
I do think it's interesting that :Zero Emissions: has 0 experience. Is that because lifeless units can't get experience, or is there some other explanation?
Irrational Objectives:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. Summon 9 Elemental Royalty or cast each of the 6 Royalty summons at least once (current progress: 6/9 or 3/6)
6. Make my final contribution to the LP (no slacking off!) on or before December 12, 2012. (Estimated odds @ current pace: 29%)
E: Corrected a couple of typos.