EL Community Scenario #4: Standing Strong Together

"... as soon as possible" means we're racing to minimize the number of game turns?  Then I think I'm already doing it wrong, finishing Museum and Megapole and capturing Keeper-of-Eggs's city Forany instead of focusing on the faction quest.  (A village quest made me do it!)  Maybe we should turbo-research instead to get to Era IV ASAP and make the alliance?

This is my first-ever game with Drakken, and with Fast game speed (and going for Diplomatic victory). I quite enjoy the metronomic pace of building things. For those of us accustomed to the pace of ELCP Endless (egad), the base game on Hard is ... oddly relaxing. I was first into Era III, even with only 3 cities and 0 pop in science.

I am (ahem) enjoying the clever map set-up, up against Necrophages with no access to healer minor factions, and no Hurnas for longbows. Also, there's no Palladian anywhere in the player's corner. I now realize that Drakken have a particularly enjoyable early game (through Era I), since all Drakken heroes heal. In a different game, Drakken might actually outrace an AI to the Destroy 10 version of Visionary Leader. In this game, it was Pacify 8, and it took me ~35 turns to finally win it. I suspect that the small map size (and only Hard difficulty) means that AIs can't even find 8 villages to kill. Actually, they haven't killed any villages, anywhere (that I can see).

Funny: As Cultist, I hire a Drakken governor for Narrative Master 3. So as Drakken ... I hired Andom the Seer as governor. I actually have vast surplus of +influence, so I don't need Narrative Master, and Drakken governors are blah without that.

Sad: I spent 3 precious turns researching Diplomat's Manse, to offer Peace Treaty to Reyap (the Drakken AI). 1 turn before completion, Reyap offers me peace first. Necrophages can't peace, so now it's a completely wasted tech slot. (So don't do that.)

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Turn 49 so far, just into Era III, seeking ... a focus. Winning two huge showdown battles with Keeper-of-Eggs vaulted me to #1 in every metric, except ... Quest and Diplomatic :) I trail Reyap by -2 DP, probably for the 2 turns I wasn't at Cold War with Keeper-of-Eggs. I'm dead last in the faction quest (by -1 full chapter), having never seen Drakken's quest before.

That fight: Inga Haunts gave me "Mortal Enemies" to destroy Forany, with (II) Meritocratic Promotion as loot -- confounding because now I can't research it before that fight :) My Nacham+4 and Boakye+4 siege Forany, Keeper-of-Eggs attacks with 3+3+3 but holds Feeds on Bones +5 in reserve. I defend and win (which does not consume my Action Points). Forany stands empty, but I know that a defensive reinforcement negates capture. I split off 1 lone Daemon as mop-up (to keep its AP), counterattack Forany with 4+3 (this eats my APs), Feeds on Bones +5 reinforce (and gets to set up inside the city, not appearing through its flags -- huh), I win that. Now there's nobody else in range, and the lone Daemon captures Forany. Next turn, Keeper-of-Eggs truces. I realized that there's no point in playing defensively vs. Necrophages when I have only 1 healer, so I played it exactly like any other fight: fast Drakkenlings pinned two Necrodrones on their flags, I quickly win board control and play whack-a-flag. Two fights in a row left most of my guys at 20% HP, but zero casualties. And I promptly merge into groups of 6, so I could probably repeat this and win via force. Except I'm pretty sure I should not be doing that, because it's probably too slow. Sigh.

Drakken are fun, Fast is fun. Wow, I already have 266 of "only" 1,125 DP needed to win. (vs. 8 Endless, it's 7,770 or so.) Confound: Reyap and I seem to gain DP exactly in lockstep, except he's +2 DP ahead. Obviously, any symmetric relationship with him (including Alliance) doesn't close that gap. I see only a few possible solutions:

a) goad 1+ Necrophages to declare War on Reyap
b) ally with Reyap, start a joint war vs. a Necrophages, and kill more enemy units than Reyap does?
c) win by Quest first :(

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UI/rendering oddity: During the 1st fight with Keeper-of-Eggs' 3+3+3, Feeds on Bones('s army) was rendered on the battle board as a non-participating unit. Normally, such a group becomes an impassable hex, exactly like cliffs, or is quietly erased (hidden) for the duration of the battle, and then its empty hex is a normal tile. But -- that hex happened to be one of Keeper-of-Eggs's two reinforcement flags! And so it had to remain a passable hex, but Feeds on Bones was still rendered there. So the game engine simply rendered two groups in that hex, for each round of the fight: Feeds on Bones as ephemeral non-participant, and the next available reinforcement. They simply coexisted in the same hex, exactly like a district and a watchtower.   I conjecture that a non-participating army that is locked into a different combat that hasn't been resolved yet will appear on your battle board as a non-passable tile, while an army that is non-participating through elective choice is usually just erased -- unless it's on a flag? I think this is the first time I've ever seen that case, so I can't generalize to deduce the rule.

Onward. I guess I can guarantee an inevitable Quest win, and so the challenge is to do something with the alliance faster than that.

Haha, my Nacham+6 group walked north into Caquag (a peninsula, still neutral).  Then Keeper-of-Eggs settled Masweyr behind me, and promptly closed borders.  So now my borders are:

- Davanor and Masweyr (Keeper-of-Eggs), closed

- Zoperusk (Only-Fresh's capital), closed

and ... I'm trapped.  Until I declare war.  Haha.

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Oddly, I think all of the AIs have been set to not kill minor faction villages.  Since Necrophages never parley, they cannot pacify their villages.  So all of their regions are full of angry villages with 3-4 inhabitants each, and these villages frequently spawn groups of 4 Minotaurs or similar, which then beeline to the AI city in that region, and besiege it.

So that's what all of the Necrophage AIs have been doing all game: fighting off sieges :D

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It's ... a trap!  It's so easy to utterly dominate this map through military strength that you might (cough) do it accidentally. I foresee the plot twist: that being much stronger than Reyap lessens her(?) willingness to ally with you.  Maybe the secret is to be deliberately weak, so as to make Reyap think that the alliance is a good idea.  We shall see :)

You can freely capture and keep all four Necrophages capital cities (with Palace), and it doesn't hurt your expansion disapproval at all.  Your empire plan costs would go up, but each capital should more than pay for itself.  Booster costs go up, and that's unavoidable, but I'm already not relying on having luxuries.  (Oh yes, on Hard the AIs have next-to-zero production bonuses, and so they sell basically nothing to the marketplace. I wasted a tech slot on that, and the max I see is 12 Glassteel, 12 each of 2 luxuries, and everything else are at single-digits.  This either makes the marketplace completely useless if you want 30+ of something for a fun build, or indispensible if you need exactly 10 Adamantian or similar to build a faction quest item.  I still rue that tech slot.)

I can build Boarding Vessels now.  AIs on Hard are passive as heck, so I think all the neutral seas will default to me.

This was a fun and challenging scenario. Six empires crammed on a resource poor map, that's designed for four. Two Drakken pitted against four of their mortal enemies, the Necrophage. Something like this would make for a fun co-op.

Necrophage are a hard counter to Drakken, because: 1) Drakken can't force peace/alliance, thus shutting down their most powerful ability. 2) Drakken have high HP units that like to fight in tight formations, so disease just wrecks them.

While Drakken are the best faction for achieving the Diplomatic Victory, don't try for it, it's a trap! The Diplomatic Victory is the hardest victory type in "Endless Legend". Even when you can make alliances with everyone, it still takes a long time to get. And in this scenario, you can only ally with one. So if you're going for a speed run, your best bet is the Quest Victory.

The Drakken quest line is one of the more difficult faction quests in the game. But if you're an experienced Drakken player, most of the quest line is within your control and can be quickly done. There are only two random factors that can hang you up.

Factor #1) You have to capture a randomly assigned city. Sometimes the city is close and easy to capture. Sometimes it's on the other side of the world and hard to capture.

Factor #2) Getting 15 Mithrite. This scenario will have no Mithrite in the marketplace. So you'll have to pillage villages and explore ruins in hope of randomly finding some Mithrite.

Being an experienced Drakken player, I know their faction quest line very well. I was able to get a turn 86 Quest Victory.

Save File: Game Finished - Turn 86.sav