Elvenar Orcs – Day 34 [91%]

So, we’re in day 34 of Elvenar Orcs chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Orcs – Day 33). OK, so only final AW research stands between me and Advanced Scouts research for the Woodelves chapter. Now I have all the remaining research goods lined up, but now the question is, between map negotiation and still recovering from the last tournament, will I have enough goods to cover all of this?

City changes

As discussed yesterday, I jump started two workshops upgrades to L20. To do so, I have to drop a couple of temporary L1 residences, as well as Gothic Unicorn from the last event. These are really slow upgrades that are also pretty expensive – primarily in orcs (resource).

I definitely think that skipping those upgrades was the right idea, and not because of pop requirements or coin costs. I believe that orcs requirements for those upgrades may indeed hamper progress with only 2 armories the way I run it. Without those upgrades I was never low on orcs, finishing with ~14K at the end. All this is running both armories non-stop on the most efficient 12 hours cycles. It was much more than enough of guest goods, but It won’t be sufficient to also upgrade 6 workshops from L19 to L21. I will do it in the next chapter, where orcs is not such a critical resource.

Marble Tournament – preparation for next week

Recovery mode is on from the tournament perspective. Interestingly enough the primary fighting unit for marble tournament is also a mage – just like for the gems. Now, I was contemplating going with Blossom Mage, but for now decided against that.

Blossom Mage has better attack range, but lower movement range. The damage output is actually quite comparable even though BM is level 1, and Bud Sorceress is level 3. BM also has nice ability already – 30% opponent defense reduction for 3 turns. However, BS at L3 has similar one (20% reduction for 2 turns), but on top of that has 50% reduction to opponent attack for 2 rounds. Damage dealt / taken from the heavies seems comparable (but I will need to take a closer look at that).

Which brings us to a really important difference: BS has more than 50% higher health vs BM (38K vs 24K). That’s a big difference, especially against ranged attacks where you can’t really avoid taking damage. Also, my barracks production is noticeably faster (due to Needles of the Tempest) .

So I will focus on Bud Sorceress for now, even though the next level of the Blossom Mage might be getting an advantage. One thing for sure, I am not skipping Unleashed Unit Upgrade like I did the last time… 😉

Elvenar Orcs research goods

Back on track from the snafu yesterday. Now all the remaining shrooms of wisdom are already running in the farms, with tomorrow’s collection covering up to the necessary 2,000 SoWs for the Orcs AWs – the last research before Advanced Scouts. This will leave 1,000 SoWs for Expansion 35, but this research is not on a critical patch. As such, I will be picking those up in the next couple of days.

All 5 rally points run overnight producing loot (so 1,000 pieces). After that, I will still need about 600 loot to close AW research requirements, and I would also do that tomorrow.

What that means that by tomorrow I should have all the requirements for Orcs & Goblins AW tech. As such, I will finally go back to negotiating scouted provinces to force KPs in. I already have 15 provinces available, which is extra 120 KPs. Not to mention almost 2 extra expansions 😉 We’ll see if I have enough goods for negotiation, stay tuned…