Buddy/Ignore List
07-02-2023, 08:46 PM
So now that I am unbusy again, you will have to endure, or ignore, my thoughts ramblings and such... Here is what I was thinking the other day.
Plundering a population center, I think, satisfies a desire to make real changes to the Alamaze map. Sure you can change the food, gold and census values for PCs, eliminate unusual findings by challenging the encounter, but nothing seems as substantial, and permanent, as plundering a PC. There are many reasons you might want to plunder rather than capture and I was thinking about them this morning while I lay in bed, very long after I should have gotten up, dressed, had breakfast and started looking for a job since my recent election loss. Aside from the reason, “because it's fun” here is what I was thinking:
The Recruit Plunder: Companions are recruited with the 560 order, movement is 720, so if you are sitting on a PC, want to attack and move to the next, but also need to recruit companions, you would have to move off the PC. Next turn you would recruit while you move to a new PC. Either that, or you would have to recruit from the PC, which some kingdoms can't do, or don't want to. So you can plunder a PC and recruit companions from the open ground right beneath before you move on to the next PC. This saves a turn allowing you to grow your army while eliminating PCs by any means necessary.
The Training Plunder: I have written extensively elsewhere on training troops, suffice it to say it's very important for having an effective force. Attacking a village to capture it will never, as far as I have been able to see, result in a brigade promotion. However, if you plunder a village, you can get a veteran unit. Also, if you suspect that the PC you are attacking will not generate the 5% loss you require to train a unit, you can choose to plunder instead, which raises the defense to 175%, so they say. This additional defense may result in a loss great enough for you to train a brigade.
The Tactical Plunder: There are a couple of reasons why you might want to get rid of a specific PC. One is that it serves as a base for enemy agents or political to enter your territory. I was in the Untamed lands one time and noticed that only a single village existed in such a place where you could move between Nyvaria and Untamed. While the regions seem close, sometimes they can be pretty far apart since Nyvaria is so “tall”. After I plundered that village, moves from Nyvaria into Untamed would require movements through Pellinor. Another is that water PCs are more difficult and dangerous to approach militarily than land PCs, and if you find yourself at a water PC, you might decide that you don't want to be forced to come back to it in the future. Lastly, a players capitol, when plundered, results in the death of his characters 50% of the time, this exceeds the escape rate in some cases. Secret passages, for example, or some kingdoms have special abilities that allow them to escape at greater than normal odds during a capture.
The Strategic Plunder: Sometimes the best way to defeat a foe is not to meet him on the battle field, but to deprive him of that which he needs most. This is my favorite plunder. My very first experiment with the strategic plunder was against our new lord and master himself, Brek. Brek played the gnome in Nyvaria and I could see he was building a very nice, large army. As the Warlock I built four specter armies capable of invisible teleporting and plundered every one of his villages in two turns as he moved to attack the Untamed lands (a happy coincidence, we moved at the same time). As he was otherwise unprepared to produce food, his army quickly withered and he spent the rest of the game sitting at his capitol raising wizards. I think I finished off what was left of his army with four simultaneous summon deaths.
I am currently experimenting further with the strategic plunder. In a game I am about halfway through now, I noticed that military heavy kingdoms dominated the south, as they usually do, Giant and Lycan in this case. Prior to the village purge, I raised the high council issue three times to lower food production for towns, thereby assuring that only villages would reliably produce food, making them an even more effective target. I have been a bit lax in eliminating all the villages in Untamed and Mythgar, as I was also re-testing a 2-troll theory that again did not work out. I was having to use wizards to assist, failed to make a group invisible one turn and got caught by a Giant army. I would invite the Giant kingdom player to comment on the result of this strategy, even as it was only partially completed and still ongoing.
Very quickly, the 2-troll theory: I figured since trolls 1) gain a very nice bonus vs PC 2) have excellent defense and 3) regenerate damage, you could have invisible teleporting brigades of trolls plundering villages without needing to stop for any reason. I tried this years ago and they were just not tough enough to withstand the damage. This time I added forged armor and weapons, and still, they take too much damage to regenerate even with the presence of a power 5 and 4 wizard (minimum level to teleport invisible brigades for most kingdoms). SO, the 2-troll theory is dead. UNLESS you train the trolls to elite first, then I think it could work. Maybe some day I will try it. Anyway, since you can have 5 trolls now instead of 3, I suppose you just raise your wizards one more level each and go with the 5-troll division, which could easily not only plunder villages, but probably capture towns as well. Its just that recruiting 20 brigades instead of 8 takes, well, 2.5 times as longer... and, of course, raising 8 wizards one more level is expensive as well. I was looking for fast and cheap, just like I prefer my women.
My favorite kingdom to use the 4-small-army strategy with was the Warlock, since he gets teleport a level before any other kingdom, but they took trolls away from the Warlock, that was very sad. The druid is actually not bad, with 3 hill giants and 2 mammoths are very tough so you don't really need regeneration. A heal spell now and then, maybe.
In any case, appreciate comments, thank you, and good hunting.
Plundering a population center, I think, satisfies a desire to make real changes to the Alamaze map. Sure you can change the food, gold and census values for PCs, eliminate unusual findings by challenging the encounter, but nothing seems as substantial, and permanent, as plundering a PC. There are many reasons you might want to plunder rather than capture and I was thinking about them this morning while I lay in bed, very long after I should have gotten up, dressed, had breakfast and started looking for a job since my recent election loss. Aside from the reason, “because it's fun” here is what I was thinking:
The Recruit Plunder: Companions are recruited with the 560 order, movement is 720, so if you are sitting on a PC, want to attack and move to the next, but also need to recruit companions, you would have to move off the PC. Next turn you would recruit while you move to a new PC. Either that, or you would have to recruit from the PC, which some kingdoms can't do, or don't want to. So you can plunder a PC and recruit companions from the open ground right beneath before you move on to the next PC. This saves a turn allowing you to grow your army while eliminating PCs by any means necessary.
The Training Plunder: I have written extensively elsewhere on training troops, suffice it to say it's very important for having an effective force. Attacking a village to capture it will never, as far as I have been able to see, result in a brigade promotion. However, if you plunder a village, you can get a veteran unit. Also, if you suspect that the PC you are attacking will not generate the 5% loss you require to train a unit, you can choose to plunder instead, which raises the defense to 175%, so they say. This additional defense may result in a loss great enough for you to train a brigade.
The Tactical Plunder: There are a couple of reasons why you might want to get rid of a specific PC. One is that it serves as a base for enemy agents or political to enter your territory. I was in the Untamed lands one time and noticed that only a single village existed in such a place where you could move between Nyvaria and Untamed. While the regions seem close, sometimes they can be pretty far apart since Nyvaria is so “tall”. After I plundered that village, moves from Nyvaria into Untamed would require movements through Pellinor. Another is that water PCs are more difficult and dangerous to approach militarily than land PCs, and if you find yourself at a water PC, you might decide that you don't want to be forced to come back to it in the future. Lastly, a players capitol, when plundered, results in the death of his characters 50% of the time, this exceeds the escape rate in some cases. Secret passages, for example, or some kingdoms have special abilities that allow them to escape at greater than normal odds during a capture.
The Strategic Plunder: Sometimes the best way to defeat a foe is not to meet him on the battle field, but to deprive him of that which he needs most. This is my favorite plunder. My very first experiment with the strategic plunder was against our new lord and master himself, Brek. Brek played the gnome in Nyvaria and I could see he was building a very nice, large army. As the Warlock I built four specter armies capable of invisible teleporting and plundered every one of his villages in two turns as he moved to attack the Untamed lands (a happy coincidence, we moved at the same time). As he was otherwise unprepared to produce food, his army quickly withered and he spent the rest of the game sitting at his capitol raising wizards. I think I finished off what was left of his army with four simultaneous summon deaths.
I am currently experimenting further with the strategic plunder. In a game I am about halfway through now, I noticed that military heavy kingdoms dominated the south, as they usually do, Giant and Lycan in this case. Prior to the village purge, I raised the high council issue three times to lower food production for towns, thereby assuring that only villages would reliably produce food, making them an even more effective target. I have been a bit lax in eliminating all the villages in Untamed and Mythgar, as I was also re-testing a 2-troll theory that again did not work out. I was having to use wizards to assist, failed to make a group invisible one turn and got caught by a Giant army. I would invite the Giant kingdom player to comment on the result of this strategy, even as it was only partially completed and still ongoing.
Very quickly, the 2-troll theory: I figured since trolls 1) gain a very nice bonus vs PC 2) have excellent defense and 3) regenerate damage, you could have invisible teleporting brigades of trolls plundering villages without needing to stop for any reason. I tried this years ago and they were just not tough enough to withstand the damage. This time I added forged armor and weapons, and still, they take too much damage to regenerate even with the presence of a power 5 and 4 wizard (minimum level to teleport invisible brigades for most kingdoms). SO, the 2-troll theory is dead. UNLESS you train the trolls to elite first, then I think it could work. Maybe some day I will try it. Anyway, since you can have 5 trolls now instead of 3, I suppose you just raise your wizards one more level each and go with the 5-troll division, which could easily not only plunder villages, but probably capture towns as well. Its just that recruiting 20 brigades instead of 8 takes, well, 2.5 times as longer... and, of course, raising 8 wizards one more level is expensive as well. I was looking for fast and cheap, just like I prefer my women.
My favorite kingdom to use the 4-small-army strategy with was the Warlock, since he gets teleport a level before any other kingdom, but they took trolls away from the Warlock, that was very sad. The druid is actually not bad, with 3 hill giants and 2 mammoths are very tough so you don't really need regeneration. A heal spell now and then, maybe.
In any case, appreciate comments, thank you, and good hunting.
