Erfworld 159 - tBfGK 146

[BLANDCorporatio]

..And then; weak units. First, I am seeing the implication that trolling around for poorly-defended, neutral aligned towns will result in a lot of defended poorly-defended towns, rather than just taking what's left of the town and bringing it back with you to add to the sum of your force, and leaving the town itself undefended so those units don't sap your upkeep. ... tasty, tasty XP.

That's a good point, but I have developped a little my "village of the damned" idea.

It appears, as we see in the first strip, that you need units to dig for schmuckers. Probably, you need units as builders etc.

We also know that the typical outcome of winning a siege is to croak/disband any units from that city. So, if you, the conqueror, were to try and restore production in it you'd need to bring your own units and leave them there.

The Pliers will spare you of this effort, and allow you to restore production almost instantly to its prior levels. This can, and in the hands of a capable overlord will, result in a rapid economic growth.

All your strategies require either a suposed fear of the dirtamancy trap, a decent amount of barbarians easily findable or that you can decrypt in a hex that has your enemy in it.

Apart from the last one, those are reasonable assumptions. Many turn-based strategy games (which Erfworld was created to resemble, after all) have plenty of neutral units just sitting on the map waiting to be slaughtered for XP. As for the fear of the dirtamancy trap, c'mon. Stanley essentially unleashed a nuke in Erfworld, that would give everyone pause.

So to take a large hex gobwin knob needs to throw everything it has at it and then decrypt everything and hope killed decrypted can be raised again.

Nitpick: GK, originally, did not have a too shabby force itself. Thousands of goblins, some KISS, golems of all sorts etc. Charlie asked- how many archons it takes to destroy it. 14, as I remember, was not quite enough, but apparently not too far off either. Now, GK has those archons, plus dwagons. Therefore, I'd say that GK is in the position to attack even well-defended cities. Capitals, maybe not yet, but what they will kill at their first city they will raise again.

All the while keeping the golems, gobwins and marbits back to mine the schmuckers.

No, it doesn't need to throw everything.

Right. So you're assuming that Gobwin Knob will win every battle they fight from now on. Your argument basically hinges off this. So if they are unable to win every battle (because, for instance, they're only decrypting bloody marbits) the pliers will be basically useless? ...

Disallowing multiple decrypts of a single unit is one suggestion I and others have put forth, and it doesn't feel like "rushed-balance" to me. It's not something that could be shown yet, is it? There have been other suggestions. You have made no effort to comment on these. You seem to mistake not acting on information we do not yet have with assuming it doesn't exist.
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With that I will agree. But failing to attack Stanley does not mean Stanley can easily conquer all of them. These are powerful sides, their capitals are likely to be heavily defended, especially if they chose not to go back on the offensive.

I'll reply to those more in bulk rather than split the post, if you don't mind.

Right now, Stanley is in the relatively safe position of having a few turns of guaranteed peace. How strong the guarantee is debateable, but we seem to agree nobody is going to attack yet. Therefore, he has time for development.

Now, as to what exactly he will be able to do, I had a couple of suggestions and then some. None of which really hinge on decrypted units being able to be re-decrypted. All that matters is that they are more powerful than simple uncroaked, more threatening targets as a result, very easy to mass-produce if you have the corpses, as the latest strip shows.

None of my suggestions hinges on GK winning every battle either. All it needs to do is croak something of the enemy's which I am sure is a possible goal. Plus, armed with his mathmancy bracer, Parson can calculate which battles are the most important to send Wanda to (again, remember that mention of the Mathmancy/Luckamancy combo; now it's Mathmancy/ArkenPliers). Finally, GK can, by using decryption, obtain an army of workers to restore production quickly in conquered cities- and it is my contention that it is able to take cities now with a fraction of its forces. In so doing, GK can grow very fast economically. At the very least, for a few turns, until the other sides discover the dynamite belt.

What my ideas hinge on is that GK will use its resources RUTHLESSLY. Which is bound not to sit well with a few people on their side.