Book 2 – Page 86

[raphfrk]

And that would require a lot of 'splainin'.

With the suggested turn-order abuse, they could enter GK's territory and then leave, all in 1 turn, so not hide. That means that they can cover only 50% as much territory though.

In one of the updates, they did catch an archon spying.

[bladestorm]

Or use a lookamancer to find the Gobwins, then a thinkamancer to coordinate the Marbits to that location. If it's like most games, the Gobwins will try to pop again in that same spot, only to be immediately slaughtered by the Marbits. No need for foolamancy, just use natural enemies.

Or just fund the Marbit side heavily so that they can pop a lot of units, outnumbering the Gobwins who are competing for the same space.

Parson calculated a high percentage chance that Charlie was involved with the Gobwin disappearance somehow. He may be involved, but he might not be the agent. A newly rebuilt Faq has a turnamancer and could make use of tunnel-capable units like Gobwins. Strengthen an ally's defenses while weakening an enemy's defenses sounds like a win-win scenario Charlie would introduce, but conveniently keep his hands clean of.

And with the eight hour delay from when I wrote this until the time I posted it, I managed to sum up most of what was said in that eight hours. Go me.

[onlyme]

So if Marbits are a natural ally of Jetstone, and Gobwin Knob takes over Jetstone, how does that impact the rule that Marbits cannot ally themselves with any side that has gobwins/hobgobwins/witches/demons?

I do not think they are a ally that is natural to Jetstone, but rather they are a ally of Jetstone consisting of naturals.

Especially I think if such a tribal side is allied to some captial side and that capital side vanishes, they will not necessarily ally with the one taking the city, but are free again to choose. (And likely will accept offers from any side not allied with tribes they do not like; except perhaps sides their chieves have bad memories of).
(Not that they are not free to choose otherwise, those naturals just have a naturally high loyality so usually stay with whomever they are with, unless they have a reason not to).

[Nnelg]

But also consider that the GK Archons are not looking inside FAQ territory. The Cc Archons can fly in, check, then retreat to FAQ and never have a chance of being spotted.

Faq Territory is several turns away from GK by Dwagon. I highly doubt that Archons have more than twice as much move as Dwagons.

Be that as it may, GK Archons were scanning only the kinds of hexes wild Dwagons pop in (mountains, I believe). If the insurgents (whatever they may be) hide in a hex wild Dwagons cannot pop in, the chances of being discovered go way down. They'd be practically zero if said hex was not between GK city and the mountains, and an Archon isn't dispatched specifically to hunt them.

And, yeah, killing them might work, too, but you still leave a corpse that could be found. You're still stuck trying to hide that.

Burying them, maybe burning them, even tossing them into the bushes might be enough. The GK scouts weren't looking for dead gobwins, but for live dwagons. And it's pretty hard to spot things through foliage from the air.

Or use a lookamancer to find the Gobwins, then a thinkamancer to coordinate the Marbits to that location. If it's like most games, the Gobwins will try to pop again in that same spot, only to be immediately slaughtered by the Marbits.

The only games I know like that are MMORPGs. Judging from the kind of games Erfworld is based off of, I'd say it would be more likely for randoms to pop purposefully away from existing stacks than at predesignated spawn points.

[Oberon]

Be that as it may, GK Archons were scanning only the kinds of hexes wild Dwagons pop in (mountains, I believe).

No, they were also ensuring that no veiled (or not veiled) force could ambush Stanley. Which requires more than a simple and single-minded focus on finding dwagons, it requires ensuring that all potential dangers are located in advance of Stanley.

The GK archons were looking for gigantic dwagons who weren't trying to hide, not tiny Charlescomm archons who were. Foolamancy can only make them harder to see, no matter how transparent the disguise.

Nope, try again. They were specifically both looking for dwagons and trying to spot veiled enemies. The entire point was to make it safe for Stanley to go on taming trips, since he otherwise couldn't leave GK for fear of a veiled hit squad eliminating the entire side by killing him.

And if the infiltrators, whoever they were, hid in the tunnels instead of outside, they wouldn't have to worry about the dwagon-seekers at all.

This has too many assumptions to be workable. You're assuming that Charlie's archons always have the move to enter the GK airspace, locate gobwins, kill or otherwise remove them, and then hide. You're also assuming that no gobwin popped within range of the dwagon seekers will ever step outside a tunnel. It's just assumption stacked on assumption, and just seems to impractical and improbable to ever be workable.

[bladestorm]

Maybe the Marbits eat the Gobwins. No corpses to hide. They become Marbit Chow. (badump ching)

Or Gobwins just won't pop in tunnels already claimed by Marbits. Induce Marbits to take up residence in the tunnels typically where the Gobwin tribes pop, and no more popping Gobwins. That involves a mechanic that we haven't already seen, though.

The Gobwins changing their alliance has already been seen, though. They could still be aligned with whatever side they joined when Saline IV was croaked. When Stanley retook GK, he may have forced the Gobwins inside the city to turn to his side,and continued popping those due to a temporary alliance, but never bothered to determine whom the Gobwins outside the city were aligned with. So it may not be a new thing that Gobwins are not being found outside the city. It could just be held over from earlier, and never noticed since the city was able to build Gobwins on demand up until now.

[effataigus]

Anyone know for certain whether non-cities have zones? I feel like I used to know that.

Relatedly, would it cost move for a unit to move from tunnels outside of a city to the surface? Could they do so off-turn?

I'm thinking they could (i.e. there are no zone boundaries outside of cities) since Vinny seemed to have done it at the battle between Stanley and TV (with airspace to ground rather than tunnels).

[MarbitChow]

They become Marbit Chow. (badump ching)

MarbitChow(tm) is crafted from only the finest ground gobwins, hobgobwins, and key lime pie. Accept no substitutes.

[drachefly]

Be that as it may, GK Archons were scanning only the kinds of hexes wild Dwagons pop in (mountains, I believe).

No, they were also ensuring that no veiled (or not veiled) force could ambush Stanley. Which requires more than a simple and single-minded focus on finding dwagons, it requires ensuring that all potential dangers are located in advance of Stanley.

Only in the hexes Stanley would actually visit. They scan many many more hexes than that - and that's where the bulk of the risk of detection comes from.

[bladestorm]

I wonder what it would take to get double the number of updates per week. There's plenty enough material to go around, whether it's the main story and a text update at twice the schedule, or a main story update, text update, secondary story update (like book 0 in comic form), and a klog.

[raphfrk]

I wonder what it would take to get double the number of updates per week. There's plenty enough material to go around, whether it's the main story and a text update at twice the schedule, or a main story update, text update, secondary story update (like book 0 in comic form), and a klog.

Jumping into a fire with that comment.

Sounds like you would have to clone Rob and Xin to get twice the output. There is a thread about their "workflow" somewhere, basically, this is the max output, and other speed up methods they tried haven't worked for them.

[effataigus]

Sounds like you would have to clone Rob and Xin to get twice the output.

Cloning never really helps anything, but one clone is the worst. Then one of them is bound to be evil... and I wouldn't want to read Erfworld if it was written by a good version of Rob.

[cheeseaholic]

I just don't see Charlie sending his archons to kill the gobwins or making deals with the marbits to kill the gobwins. There's too much of a chance of detection there. One marbit gets decryped and there goes the secrecy. He's got to be using a caster or two to be messing with the gobwins somehow. I'd guess he's messing with the spawning system somehow, but who knows maybe he's making the gems in the area easier to find for marbits and the areas with gobwins look like they're full of loots for the marbits who then destroy the gobwin corpses because they hate them so much/find them so tasty.

I just don't see Charlie taking the direct and dangerous approach when the indirect approach has little to no risk.

[Nnelg]

No, [the GK archons] were also ensuring that no veiled (or not veiled) force could ambush Stanley. Which requires more than a simple and single-minded focus on finding dwagons, it requires ensuring that all potential dangers are located in advance of Stanley.

[...]They were specifically both looking for dwagons and trying to spot veiled enemies. The entire point was to make it safe for Stanley to go on taming trips, since he otherwise couldn't leave GK for fear of a veiled hit squad eliminating the entire side by killing him.

Point taken. How about instead I say "the GK archons were on the lookout for a large force that would pose a threat to their ruler, not one or two individual archons."

After all, Stanly's a mid-high level warlord mounted on the best dwagon in all of GK.

And if the infiltrators, whoever they were, hid in the tunnels instead of outside, they wouldn't have to worry about the dwagon-seekers at all.

This has too many assumptions to be workable. You're assuming that Charlie's archons always have the move to enter the GK airspace, locate gobwins, kill or otherwise remove them, and then hide. You're also assuming that no gobwin popped within range of the dwagon seekers will ever step outside a tunnel. It's just assumption stacked on assumption, and just seems to impractical and improbable to ever be workable.

Now I just don't understand what you're going on about. All I was saying is that it only takes one tunnel that GK doesn't know about or doesn't search for a hypothetical insurgent force to have a safe haven where there's practically 0% chance of being discovered.

I just don't see Charlie taking the direct and dangerous approach when the indirect approach has little to no risk.

Of course, I have absolutely no doubt that Charlie would take the option with the least risk and greatest reward. But we have no idea which options are available to him (or even which ones work in practice, not just theory).

And Charlie's a smart guy. He knows that sometimes it's better to take greater risks to get a shot at the greater reward.

[Fcannon]

Is this the first mention we've seen of red dwagons being resistant/immune to fire damage?

[cheeseaholic]

And Charlie's a smart guy. He knows that sometimes it's better to take greater risks to get a shot at the greater reward.

True, and killing the gobwins may seem like a good gamble to him if it's the only way. But my point was that it's likely he can use casters to have the same affect and do without the vast majority of the risk. If there's multiple ways to get the same reward taking the one with the least cost/risk seems like the smart decision.

[Nnelg]

True, and killing the gobwins may seem like a good gamble to him if it's the only way. But my point was that it's likely he can use casters to have the same affect and do without the vast majority of the risk. If there's multiple ways to get the same reward taking the one with the least cost/risk seems like the smart decision.

There's more than one type of risk. There's the risk of losing your investment of forces by having them found and croaked, and then there's the risk of losing your investment of time (and shmuckers for hired casters) by failing to keep GK from getting their gobwins back.

But it could be either way, or both ways even (good to have a little redundancy in places). We don't really have enough information at the moment.

Is this the first mention we've seen of red dwagons being resistant/immune to fire damage?

Possibly, but it makes sense. I'd have been more surprised if they weren't.

[Lamech]

I wonder what it would take to get double the number of updates per week. There's plenty enough material to go around, whether it's the main story and a text update at twice the schedule, or a main story update, text update, secondary story update (like book 0 in comic form), and a klog.

A timeturner.

[Lamech]

I just don't see Charlie sending his archons to kill the gobwins or making deals with the marbits to kill the gobwins. There's too much of a chance of detection there. One marbit gets decryped and there goes the secrecy. He's got to be using a caster or two to be messing with the gobwins somehow. I'd guess he's messing with the spawning system somehow, but who knows maybe he's making the gems in the area easier to find for marbits and the areas with gobwins look like they're full of loots for the marbits who then destroy the gobwin corpses because they hate them so much/find them so tasty.

I just don't see Charlie taking the direct and dangerous approach when the indirect approach has little to no risk.

Well one he already risked detection pretty bad. Jillian could have easily ended up zapped by Wanda and decrypted. He could also be laundering the money through another side.

[bladestorm]

Or Charlie could have had a Carnymancer rig the rules of the gobwins popping. Is it possible that the gobwins started disappearing right about time a stabber had the rules adjusted in her favour to keep her from croaking?