Bay 12 Games Forum

We're getting ready to kick off the last game of this cycle. I'll be playing LA Abysia and while my opponents haven't 'locked in' yet it's fairly certain that they'll be Agartha, Man, and Midgard. We probably won't be playing turn one until this weekend but here's a place to consider pretender choices and go ahead and claim any desired names in advance.

Late Age Abysia
Just a brief rundown on how the troops and commanders have changed here. I'll do the more flavorful intro to them after the pretender is locked in.
Did you guys enjoy the assassins from last match? Because let me tell you about assassins.

These are all assassins that we can recruit. Everyone of them is sacred and can be blessed. The first, Slayer Newt, is the Slayer equivalent from the middle age minus the heat aura because this one is human. He's sacred, sneaky, and wield two poison daggers.  The second is the Slayer Worm, they still have strong Abysian blood and therefor a heat aura. These guys are also priests with level 1 Holy magic access.  Both of these assassins can be recruited in any fort we control.

The next two however are capital only.  The Slayer Anathemant  has level 1 Fire magic, level 2 Holy, and even odds of getting another point of fire or gaining 1 level of Death magic. I've never used Death before so I'm interested to see what it opens up.   The final one is the Slayer Sanguine. Instead of Fire and/or Death magic this one comes straight out of the box with level 2 Holy and level 2 Blood abilities.

Our other commanders don't matter because they aren't assassins.  But I suppose they can be of use anyway.  Our warlocks and apprentices return as capital only recruitment options. The apprentice is 2 Blood, 1 Astral but the main Warlock has been improved quite a bit. They now come stock with 2 Astral and 3 Blood as well as a chance to gain up to 2 additional points in either as well as a chance to have 1-2 levels of Fire or Earth magic.

Anathemant Dragons and Salamanders also make a return appearance.  The Anathemant caste seems to have embraced death magic en mass.  The dragons are Fire 2, Death 1 (still Holy 3) mages with a guaranteed chance to have either fire or death increased by one point.  The Salamanders are Fire 2, Death 1, Holy 2 but without the extra random bonus point.

The last thing of note is that we have 2 new units from the 'Sanguine' line. The Sanguine Acolyte and the Sanguine Anathemant.  Both of these can be recruited in any fort. The acolyte is Blood 1, Holy 1 and the Anathemant is Fire 1, Blood 2, Holy 2.  I suspect these guys will be key in our blood hunting.

We also still have commanders though the Abysian Warlords (rip Steve) of the past are no more. Human commanders have taken over the role and wield battleaxes and wear heavy plate armor.

Our sacreds have changed from the Lava Warriors to Guardians of the Pyre. They still look pretty great but have fallen from the outstanding level that they were at in previous ages.  However we now have access to Warbreds, which I think will form a large part of our army. These guys are fire resistant beserkers the size of a horse.
Other than that, our troops are mostly halfbreed human/abysian race and range from light infantry to heavy and we have access to throwing axes.



Initial Pretender Thoughts

There's 3 types of pretenders that we likely could go for. Another supercombatant, a rainbow, or scales. 

The supercombatant would speed up initial expansion (if taken Awake) and provide a defense against early aggression by the other nations like The Veiled One did in our last game. Abysia shouldn't need the help expanding (I haven't run my test games yet so there's some assumptions here) but it would still be beneficial.  Here's a sample pretender that I could run using this type.

That would give us the shock resistance that looked needed for last game and enough earth access to break some of our warlocks into it (Yep, our warlocks can gain earth magic in late age!).  I did a very brief test run with this guy and he clears indy provinces like a madman. Taking out 50-80 strong defenses easily. But being unarmored he gets poked a lot. I think after conquering 7 provinces in 7 turns he had 5 permanent wounds on himself.

I tried to make a usable rainbow for research speed and general magery. If I make one sleeping then I lose out of the significant early game research boost and if I take him awake then I have to tank more than half of my scales to afford him and our units are not cheap!  I'll tinker with it some more but at this point I don't think it's a viable way to go.

For scales I'm looking at an imprisoned Divine Glyph, mostly because Abysia gets a national discount on it. Something along these lines:

I think either air or earth for shock resistance is going to be mandatory. Both Man and Midgard have strong air magic access. We can get the air resistance from the air magic much more cheaply than doing the same from earth (and earth also requires our pretender to be present in the world). This also gives the option, admittedly late game, to construct both air gear and high level astral gear.

At the moment I'm leaning towards the glyph and may tinker with the exact details of it a bit more but it's not locked in as of yet. Again feel free to go ahead and claim some names if you want! I'll name the pretender but everything else is up for grabs!                                   

I've been playing some hearthstone the past couple of weeks and decided to put together a fun deck that was, imho, dwarfy. 
Priest class chosen because it has the most dwarves pictured on its cards. From here I added every card that I own with a dwarf on it. The rest of the deck was filled with golems, magma-related creatures, seige equipment, and random spells.  Here's the deckbuilder link to it. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has some dwarfy cards that I left out.

http://www.hearthpwn.com/deckbuilder/priest#41:2;128:2;207:2;212:2;249:1;301:2;323:2;325:2;362:2;401:2;421:1;425:1;431:2;457:2;503:1;519:2;554:2;

I habitually make new worlds after a fortress survives a few years and I've noticed that my megabeasts nearly all die out within 100 years.  I prefer at least 150-200 year worldgens so its more populated with FUN things. Is there a setting I could change on the pre-made worldgens that would help them to survive?  Worldgen rarely makes it past 110-120 before stopping due to too few megabeasts remaining.

Picked up borderlands 2 a few days ago and its just full of references to other games/culture. Was wondering if anyone's found a dwarf fortress reference in there yet as I'm sure one exists somewhere. At least the gunzerker is basically a dwarf (needs more beard!)

Topic.  Thanks in advance.

Lost a fort due to not realizing I embarked in an evil biome (I was just starting at the metal layers and pretty river) and of course I discover a nest of husks the first time a cloud hits my livestock. Fort dies shortly thereafter so I reclaim. Check the creatures list and I think "good, only living animals now, just have to hurry and finish my wall."

About the time the first tile of my wall is started I get 2 back to back Ambushed! messages. I was ambushed by the husks of my previous forts dwarves :/   Time for reclaim number 2!

Is there a way to encourage more of the megabeasts to be dragons during worldgen other than just continually regenning and checking? I've been wanting to try a fort where I breed the things but I always seem to get various other beasties. Also does embarking in the same region as a beast's lair cause it to arrive at your fort sooner?

Thanks!

How do I use this function of the kennel? The wiki says to select a caged animal but when I move the cursor over a cage the kennels seem to become de-selected even before I hit enter on anything.