Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[endomorphious]

Just finished my turn. Have 4 provinces besides my capital. But, money is SCARCE :{ I've got 3 of the sites searched with 4F/4E/4D/1W/1N/4Priest and only found 1 site so far but its an ok one with 1 air gem and 1 fire gem. I took that single lake by me. Big mistake. It has like zip for income and only one troop to recruit but its a 9000gp modded indy...arggh...maybe I'll find a free fortress in there if I can ever spare a site searcher. Just now seeing signs of Jotunheim nearby looks like he'll be my first conflict down the road. How effective is skellispam against the giants? I dont think my nationals are gonna be up to stomping them in the numbers I can field.

[Hrum]

I gotta build me a fort too. Always so many things to spend the gold on... :P

Thanatus, I checked it's stats on the DB and I think you'll take that Draco Lion, assuming it isn't backed up by a surprise bunch of ?

Mauxe, once you hit evo2, are you thinking of doing the shock wave thing with your Eagle Kings? I've heard that some people like that as an expansion method with EA Caelum.

I don't how well skellispam will work on the giants. I've never tried skellispamming before.

Sounds like my expansion is in the same neighborhood as the rest of you (4 provs so far). Monkey arrow catchers have low morale and like to run off, even during a winning fight. It's par for the course, but it slows down expansion. And then there's me being cautious because of the random crazy stuff in some of these provinces. Of course, I did score some decent magic items off these guys already (earth boots, dusk dagger, shroud).

I'm doing an attack on a province w/ ~20 Ko-Oni this turn, and I'm going in without any blockers/arrow catchers. Just my Yavana flying solo (backed up by my prophet). I wasn't sure about the Yavana vs. Ko-Oni matchup so I ran a test w/ Debug Mod and All Ages Mod, and it turns out my blessed Yavana pretty much destroy Ko-Oni, so this should go fine (*finger crossed*). Of course I didn't do the scout / retreat routine beforehand, so hopefully there isn't some super scary surprise in addition to the Ko-Oni.

In other news, I need more scouts. I don't have a solid idea on how fast the AIs (specifically Niefelheim) are expanding. Lack of graphs can lead to blissful ignorance, or nail-biting depending on your temperament.

[endomorphious]

I agree. I am worried about how fast the AI's are expanding as well. I hope their running up against the tough indie's as well or things could get ugly fast. Deep down I just know the giants near me already have 12 provinces and they all have gold mines and amazons. But, then I'm an optimist.