Turn 25

Damn my foolishness! My apologies, Abysia. I will make the necessary reparations for the incident in the Mountains of Madness (145). Next time I'll report here before attacking

I'm planning to attack Tapanete (189) this turn. Is Abysia planning the same thing? If yes, then go ahead, I would be attacking only with about 8 soldiers.

don't worry ,it was my mistake, I was convinced that you need help.

You take Tapanete (189) , i take the indipendent Fas Dir (172).

The Report:

I take Blue Water (20) , next turn i take lake of god (4) and finally landing in Faran (6) (Here I hope to be able to consolidate my position and give a hand to the south).

I siged Binophe (182), a TC Fort.

The Deva attack my territory Vinician Forest (180)(if someone wants to cast Mind Hunt against the Deva), but i ignore she because i start the March torward the capital of TC With Agharta.

Under attack by two harbingers, and vanheim cloud trazpezed two thugs into my land, and erui trapezed one thug into my land. I now have 5 thugs/SCs attacking me - I really need that copper plate. :p

OK, the good news first: I'm fairly well ensconced on Ashdod's capital, having cleared out the PD and other defenders (although the two Adon thugs and a Rephaite Sage got away - but I did kill an S3 Talmai Elder in another odd action elsewhere, not sure what namad was thinking with that) with tolerable losses - 20 gladiators (gone either way) and 21 assorted other chaff. I'm going to jack up the taxes while I put him under siege, so if just in case there's a disaster, his capital should still be crippled for a while. In any event, I hope to have his gates breached in another turn or two.

So, Ashdod is down to two provinces (both of which are likely to fall next turn, although he still has at least two nasty, well equipped thugs running around), and Eriu looks like their taking a beating also.

But Vanheim waxes strongly (I see they gained a bunch of new provinces last turn), which brings me to the bad news (in which I join the club with Caelum, Jotunheim, and Arco, of those being pestered by the Vanir): He CTed in two raiders to 318, where he took the province, destroying a temple and killing 5 Hoburg Horticulturist researchers (you killed my Hoburgs, you bastard!). And he CTed another two (including his prophet) into 325, destroying a temple there as well. So now I've got raiding Vanir in my backfield to deal with.

I will immediately switch my research to Mind Hunt, which I will get next turn, and will start burning some/much of my Pearl horde into penetration items, but I'm nowhere near Const-6, so I can't forge my own Astral boosters (and I think I only have 2 natural S4 Arch Theurgs left). Understanding that the situation in the South is much more dire, and they take total precedence in terms of forging, if someone could swing something my way, I'd appreciate it.

Any other suggestions on how to deal with these trouble makers in my lands? Now, unless Vanheim interferes directly, say, with a recalled Father of Winter, it shouldn't distract much from my siege of Ashdod. But my research will drop as I divert multiple mages to forging.

Well, the Vanir are certainly proving to be the pride of the Vets. Lets hope we can kill off Ashdod (and maybe Eriu), and start putting the thumb screws to T'ien Ch'i, before we lose our first Noob nation.

Just saw Melnorjr's post - looks like the Vets are trying to take him out quickly. What can we do about it?

melnorjr wrote:Under attack by two harbingers, and vanheim cloud trazpezed two thugs into my land, and erui trapezed one thug into my land. I now have 5 thugs/SCs attacking me - I really need that copper plate. :p

Sent it this turn Need another one?

Noob Gold Total - 514,775
Noob Gem Total - 3,152
Vet Gold Total - 183,816
Vet Gem Total - 1,495

Gold advantage: 2.8x
Gem advantage: 2.1x

Joelz wrote:

melnorjr wrote:Under attack by two harbingers, and vanheim cloud trazpezed two thugs into my land, and erui trapezed one thug into my land. I now have 5 thugs/SCs attacking me - I really need that copper plate. :p

Sent it this turn Need another one?

Just noticed that in the forge thread, thanks.

I actually just got an extremely good thug chassis - will talk about him in the forge thread.


Twobits - What I need right now is mostly penetration items(which I'm forging) astral boosters(which I should be able to forge coins next turn - if I have the gems, (which I don't quite. havn't the earth for it right now)) the items for my pretender(which are happily on their way.) Stuff for my new thug would be nice as well if possible(will post in forge thread). I could use a little gold, my income is getting a little low with suddenly losing 5 provinces. I think I've got this in hand. I'll suffer for a turn or two, but it should be finally taken care of.

melnorjr wrote:Twobits - What I need right now is mostly penetration items(which I'm forging) astral boosters(which I should be able to forge coins next turn - if I have the gems, (which I don't quite. havn't the earth for it right now)) the items for my pretender(which are happily on their way.) Stuff for my new thug would be nice as well if possible(will post in forge thread). I could use a little gold, my income is getting a little low with suddenly losing 5 provinces. I think I've got this in hand. I'll suffer for a turn or two, but it should be finally taken care of.

OK, looking at my turn more closely, I see I can't do as much as I'd hoped next turn (meaning, reach Evo-6 and forge lots of penetration items). So this next turn, I can barely reach Evo-6, while forging 3 Eyes and 3 Foci (which turns out to be how many S4 mages I have), and in the meantime, can't send any mages out into the field to counter future Vanir attacks (only mundane forces, which might just get slaughtered - oh well, sending mages out wandering around hoping to find a fight isn't very efficient anyway).

The turn after this though (once I've reached Evo-6), I can throttle back my research some, and should be able to crank out plenty of Eyes and Foci for you, me, and anyone else who'd like some (more Hammers would be nice to get the discount, but it's not a priority). And I still have plenty of Astral gems left over - do you need any, Melnorjr? I might be able to throw some gold around too (buy infantry instead of cavalry at my capital).

TwoBits wrote:

melnorjr wrote:Twobits - What I need right now is mostly penetration items(which I'm forging) astral boosters(which I should be able to forge coins next turn - if I have the gems, (which I don't quite. havn't the earth for it right now)) the items for my pretender(which are happily on their way.) Stuff for my new thug would be nice as well if possible(will post in forge thread). I could use a little gold, my income is getting a little low with suddenly losing 5 provinces. I think I've got this in hand. I'll suffer for a turn or two, but it should be finally taken care of.

OK, looking at my turn more closely, I see I can't do as much as I'd hoped next turn (meaning, reach Evo-6 and forge lots of penetration items). So this next turn, I can barely reach Evo-6, while forging 3 Eyes and 3 Foci (which turns out to be how many S4 mages I have), and in the meantime, can't send any mages out into the field to counter future Vanir attacks (only mundane forces, which might just get slaughtered - oh well, sending mages out wandering around hoping to find a fight isn't very efficient anyway).

The turn after this though (once I've reached Evo-6), I can throttle back my research some, and should be able to crank out plenty of Eyes and Foci for you, me, and anyone else who'd like some (more Hammers would be nice to get the discount, but it's not a priority). And I still have plenty of Astral gems left over - do you need any, Melnorjr? I might be able to throw some gold around too (buy infantry instead of cavalry at my capital).

I'm actually good on pearls at the moment - 45 after my forging and mind hunting.

O.K... I'm about to go out of town for the weekend, so I'll be able to read more than post over the next 24 to 36 hours. If all goes according to plan, I'll be submitting one more turn tomorrow, then I'll ask for an extension on the next turn.

First, thanks for all the support in getting the gems I needed!

I hit Construction-8. I'm forging The Chalice this turn. None of the artifacts I can forge have been taken by the enemy, so I'm accepting requests and guidance on which ones to forge. I can count on one hand the times I've bothered to research this high in Construction when I had access to only WSDN, so I would deeply appreciate whatever input the team has.

If I stay in 306 (researching in the lab I just built to retrieve unused nature gems from my scouts), I'll be hitting Conjuration-7 next turn, with Conjuration-9 to follow no more than 3 turns later. Tartarians. Faerie Court. Water/Air Queens. I don't have nearly enough gems to carry this off on my own, though. This isn't the only strategic path I can take, but it seems like the one that will most quickly enrich our team with SCs of our own.

Thoughts?

Raiel wrote:O.K... I'm about to go out of town for the weekend, so I'll be able to read more than post over the next 24 to 36 hours. If all goes according to plan, I'll be submitting one more turn tomorrow, then I'll ask for an extension on the next turn.

First, thanks for all the support in getting the gems I needed!

I hit Construction-8. I'm forging The Chalice this turn. None of the artifacts I can forge have been taken by the enemy, so I'm accepting requests and guidance on which ones to forge. I can count on one hand the times I've bothered to research this high in Construction when I had access to only WSDN, so I would deeply appreciate whatever input the team has.

If I stay in 306 (researching in the lab I just built to retrieve unused nature gems from my scouts), I'll be hitting Conjuration-7 next turn, with Conjuration-9 to follow no more than 3 turns later. Tartarians. Faerie Court. Water/Air Queens. I don't have nearly enough gems to carry this off on my own, though. This isn't the only strategic path I can take, but it seems like the one that will most quickly enrich our team with SCs of our own.

Thoughts?

priority indicated by stars. higher number of stars=higher priority(in my opinion)

*** Can you make the boots of the planes? they are S5
**** The boots of calius the druid are extremely good.
** The sceptre of dark regency is very good for summoning tartarians.
** The armor of virtue would be great for an important mage that want to attack an army but not stay long
enough to die.
* You could use the jade mask as well, but its low priority, since the vets aren't gonna forge it.
*** The sun slayer is a very nice weapon for a tartarian.
* The trident from beyond would be good for anti-thug/SC. low chance of teh soul slay hitting a high MR sc, but
it could.
* The sharpest tooth is good for anti-thug/sc
*****The sword of aurgelmer is a big one. its extremely powerful.
** The tartarian chains would make erui very afraid of you - his MR isn't high enough to not worry about getting
his thugs enslaved.
**** The orb of atlantis makes for a pretty good tool with boots of quickness(being an item spell, quickness helps you summon water elementals faster. so you put it on a non-caster and tell him to cast spells.) for taking PD. Might even get some thugs this way if they don't have reinvig. Vanheim especially. His thugs have quickness from their blessing, but not enough reinvig to deal with that.

Sounds like I might want to give up my Conjuration 50 site soon to C'tis. Of course... it's behind a castle and tons of mages at this point, but yeah.

LumenPlacidum wrote:Sounds like I might want to give up my Conjuration 50 site soon to C'tis. Of course... it's behind a castle and tons of mages at this point, but yeah.

Yeah, that's a tricky proposition, and we'd have to consider such a transfer carefully (you'd probably have to demolish your own fortress first, and then someone would need to Teleport/CT/ect. in with enough power to defeat your PD - doable, but only with some effort).

In the meantime, I think you said you were close to Royalty. Best to have you recruit the Fire and Earth guys at least, at a big discount, before we start thinking of transferring hands. Pythium at least is many turns away from recruiting its first Angels. But even before that, if we decide to co-opt your uber-magic site, we need to decide who should go there - Bandar has a lot of wicked summons too, and C'tis, if they can get the Chalice, and then work up to Tartarians, well, with their high Death magic, they could chunder out a lot of nasty shit at half price.

For now, don't worry about it yet, I think - keep spewing out half priced drakes and whatever else you can summon (Machaka's got pretty good magic diversity, there's a lot of things you could be summoning).

Those Adon are tough, hard to get close to them without flying units. Witnessed the battle in Ashdod and my own in another provice, Adon's seem to have escaped unharmed. No matter though.

Shin (Iainuki), do you want to move on Ashdod in 277 or TC's fort in 231? I will do whichever one you don't.

I see a large TC force in 239 (290 strong) threatening my fort construction in 255 (where I have a large but smaller force 200 strong or so).

I see a huge Argarthan force in nearby 224. Agartha, I am assuming your going for the cap via 215. I can either abandon my fort construction and move to 245 to come within striking distance of the TC cap or stay put. Either way I will likely encounter that large force. So I think I will stay put. If you want you can move into 239, though it may be best to continue into 215. This will leave a route open for both me and C'tis to bring forces to bear on TC's Cap eventually.

C'tis thanks for the skull mentors, wondering where those reinvig items are though?

Pythium, shall I stay put in 290 for now until the fort is stormed?

Looks like the last Ashdod held province other than 277 is in 291.

Would like the glory of the first attack on TC's cap, but I will yield if Agartha/Abyssia get there first.

@ Septimius Severus: All my nature gems were in the field, so I forged them last turn after receiving your gems. I'm sending an ammy and boots this turn.

RE ARTIFACTS:

I'll be able to snag the Scepter of Dark Regency next turn if the team can provide enough death gems.

I can forge the astral stuff in a couple of turns, if I can get enough nature gems (40) to summon a Cuatl (S3).

Orb of Atlantis would be great, but I don't have any earth mages or gems.

I need to decide this turn if I should use nature gems to get the Astral items (by summoning an S3 mage) or if I should just forge Nature Artifacts.


Thoughts?

The dynamic duo of Twobits and Rael are doing a bang up job. Yes Van is pestering Pythium a bit, but likely can't prevent the demise of Ashdod.

The other dynamic duo of Joelz and Viccio are squeezing the life out of TC and have pretty much dominated the center, even running into each other.

If everything goes as planned we should have control of 2/3rds of the map with the downfall of Ashdod, Eriu, and hopefully TC.

Skinu, are you still actively interested in holding down Caelum? Stales generally are either a sign of loss of interest or Internet/real life issues.

Arco, Caelum, Machaka, and Jottun, are in real danger in the southern 1/3 of the map but can Marginon and Vanheim, even with a magic advantage really take on so many noobs and win?

Melnorj, if there is no response from Caelum and he appears about to stale again can you take over this turn?

How are we doing in the water, is Shin moving behind Agartha taking up provinces from Agartha, whilst Agartha moves behind Abyssia doing the same, whilst Abyssia snatches up independents?

I apologize for missing the turn, I did my turn but sent it in incorrectly, this is my first game and although that isn't an excuse for letting the team down, I very much enjoy the experience and wish to continue.

Now for my turn report, Vanhiem is gobbling up my land, dancing around my forts, I wouldnt risk leaving them to try and catch him on open ground so my plan is to research Enchantment until lv.6 and use storm warriors and quagmire to give myself some breathing room to spam cast lightning spells. Ive tried to build up an amount of storm warriors as well, ill set them to hold and attack and wait until he has taken some damage before sending them in.

Don't count on lightning attacks too much if you face Vanheim. They are easily countered by having lots of thugs casting Resist Lightning. Remember that his thugs can also cast flight. Once I got my manufacturing base up against Caelum in NvV2, I was giving Caelum a really hard time and killed something like 17 eagle kings before the noob team conceded.

Strategically placed mammoths can do some damage and scare him, though. Keep the pressure up, maybe try a bunch of small groups of mammoths so that he can't just spam them. Maybe air elementals or ghost wolves too? Your seeking arrows won't hit him because his units are stealthed, unfortunately.

Gift of Flight + mammoths and maybe some ghost wolves could get a few surprise kills for you. Mass Flight + massive amounts of mammoths, or just a lot of chaff attacking him right at the beginning could be nice. Phantasmal army might be helpful if he's going with thugs vs. national troops.

If he ever gets a lot of national troops together then just have 4 or 5 eagle kings spam thunderstrike under a storm. I doubt he will though... too easy to kill.

Joelz, how did the siege of Eriu go?!

Ok, I've been busy with non-Dom3 stuff and there's a ton of things that happened this last turn, so forgive me while I work through stuff slowly.

Military situation: I took Laerian Swamps (267) without any trouble--there were no commanders in the fort, so the defenders fled but had no retreat provinces left, because I also captured off Ralothia (284) and Giant's Rest (251) this turn. Laerian Swamps did indeed have a lab, so I'm putting up a temple now for more mages. Now I have a choice: I have four banefire-capable bakemono sorcerers in Giant's Rest who would benefit from going to Laerian Swamps to pick up eyes of aiming, and some others using magma eruption who I could similarly equip. I can also use the army in Giant's Rest to attack T'ien Chi in Carnag (231) or Ashdod in Lomark (277). Of these options, I'm most inclined to hold the Giant's Rest army there this turn while I switch out mages with those in Laerian Swamps (who I just equipped with eyes). My army in Ralothia can attack High Woods (291): how do you feel about that, TwoBits? There is an Adon there and the Ralothia army doesn't have much mage support, but on the other hand, I want to cut off Ashdod's remaining income ASAP. I have an army in Batimor that I would also like to use to invade Hubbarton (229), but I don't want to disrupt anyone--Hoplosternum, Joelz, how do you feel about that attack? It looks like my next target will probably be T'ien Chi--what should I be expecting from them, so I can start choosing units and such now?

I've heard bad news about the situation in the south, especially Vanheim versus Caelum, if I'm remembering correctly. What's going on? Is there anything I can do to help? Unfortunately I won't be able to send troops there for a long time, if ever, but are there any positions I can offer to take up so that people further south can have more freedom? Any items I can send or spells I can cast?

In other news, I got Bogused. Does anyone have any suggestions for running that jerk off at minimal expense?

Research: I've been spending lots of mage-turns on site-searching rather than research, and as a consequence I'm at construction 4 with 43 points to go to 5. At the current rate, it will probably take me three or four more turns to reach construction 6. I have conjuration 4, alteration 1, evocation 6 (about 1/3 completed to 7), enchantment 3, and thaumaturgy 2.

Site-searching: Site-searching continues to pay off, I now have a healthy income in almost every type of gem: 26 + 10 fire, 10 + 4 air, 17 + 9 water, 26 + 11 earth, 20 + 4 astral, 28 + 9 death, 17 + 5 nature. (The totals are rough, I haven't cast all my site-searching spells for the turn.) I also found a site in The Depth (274) with sea-fathers, which may be worth labbing/templing to get underwater mages without needing rings of waterbreathing, though I won't be able to do that for awhile because it's way out in the middle of nowhere. I put up a lab/temple in a lizard shaman province so next turn I will start site-searching for astral. I still have had no luck with kelp fortresses, though I'm getting nature gems from kelp groves I'm discovering with haruspex.

Forging: It looks like things are getting tricky. Here's a brief run-through of what I'm thinking about:

• Dwarven hammers: Since I can forge these myself (though admittedly that means some E3 sorcerers won't be on the front lines nuking stuff with magma eruption), there's not much point in having people ship them to me and waste the turn in transit. I'm going to make at least 1/turn for the indefinite future, and two a turn when I can . I only have three hammers at the moment, so I'm trying to restrict myself to three forges this turn, one or two of which will be hammers, but I can envision exceptions. (It's not like my mages don't have plenty of *other* things they can be doing besides forging, they're very busy at the moment.)
  
• Skull staff: I promised Hoplosternum one of these next turn. If Hoplo doesn't mind, I might delay to forge another hammer, depending on what else I make this turn.
  
• Thistle maces: I can forge these myself, but I'm still short on nature mages and have a huge set of unsearched provinces, so I'd prefer not to. If I don't get a guarantee of one or two arriving next turn, I think I have to forge one myself. Nature gems, for forging these and site-searching, remain very desirable.
  
• Rune smashers: I'm hearing requests for these and Shinuyama is by far the best-positioned for making them (I can make them without any boosters at all). How urgent are they? I can easily cover the fire gems for their cost, but I'd appreciate assistance with the water gems.
  
• Eyes of aiming: I'm in a much better position here, thanks all. I'd still like to get 1/turn into the indefinite future, but I don't need more than that unless I manage to recruit a lot more sorcerers all of a sudden. Is there anyone who could commit to forging and shipping 1/turn?
  
• Skull mentors: I heard requests for these awhile back, but not so much right now. They're still amazingly useful, I'm not just sure I can afford to spend the resources on them just right now without a more urgent need.
  
• Supply items are still useful, though I can look at forging some endless wineskins myself, if I have the nature gems.
  
• Anything in FWED that someone wants forged, I can probably handle.
  

Gems: I have enough astral income to cover a lot of arcane probing, so I can give most of my pearl stash to anyone who needs them. I have air income now to cover my 1/auspex per turn until I can manage to bootstrap into better air magic, so I can send most of those out to people who can use them immediately. I'm going to be forging fire/death items, but not so much that I can't afford to pass out most of those, too. A lot of earth gems are going to go to hammers, but I can spare some. I'm backing off to only voice of Tiamat per turn (for lack of provinces), but with that and the amount of voice of Apsu I'm using, I'm still looking at spending 12-16 water gems per turn; I don't need anyone to send me any in the near future, but neither can I really afford to spend much beyond what I'm already spending. Nature gems I am in definite need of, since I'm at 3 haruspices/turn and want to go higher, not to mention I'm looking at nature forging on top of that if it's easier to send gems than forge e.g. thistle maces.

Septimius Severus wrote:The dynamic duo of Twobits and Rael are doing a bang up job. Yes Van is pestering Pythium a bit, but likely can't prevent the demise of Ashdod.

The other dynamic duo of Joelz and Viccio are squeezing the life out of TC and have pretty much dominated the center, even running into each other.

If everything goes as planned we should have control of 2/3rds of the map with the downfall of Ashdod, Eriu, and hopefully TC.

Skinu, are you still actively interested in holding down Caelum? Stales generally are either a sign of loss of interest or Internet/real life issues.

Arco, Caelum, Machaka, and Jottun, are in real danger in the southern 1/3 of the map but can Marginon and Vanheim, even with a magic advantage really take on so many noobs and win?

The situation looks really bad for me, but I don't think its quite as bad as it looks. Once I get the items being sent to me this turn, I think I can remove these infidels from my lands

The rune smashers are pretty important for me. I'd be using them for mind hunt, and it would allow me to far more easily kill eriu/vanheim thugs in that manner. Their MR is at about 15-17 or so, and with a rune smasher, spell foci, and eye of the void equipped on my mind hunters, they're MR would not be sufficient to protect them, and eriu would have a big problem, in addition to allowing me to throw these thugs out of my land with ease.

Raiel wrote:I hit Construction-8. I'm forging The Chalice this turn. None of the artifacts I can forge have been taken by the enemy, so I'm accepting requests and guidance on which ones to forge. I can count on one hand the times I've bothered to research this high in Construction when I had access to only WSDN, so I would deeply appreciate whatever input the team has.

The big artifacts in my mind, given those paths:

• The Chalice (duh)
  
• Jade Mask: +2 Death for C'tis, huge for summoning Tartarians.
  
• Scepter of Dark Regency: +3 death, see above.
  
• The Sword of Aurgelmer: it's free Will of The Fates, it arrives sooner, and it costs no actions to cast in battle.
  
• Boots of the Planes: The horror-marking and chance to get lost in time and space make them unsuitable for some purposes, but they're still highly useful to move mages to awkward locations without teleport or cloud trapeze or for thugs who won't mind some horror-marking.
  
• The Ankh: Not as good as Aurgelmer, IMO, but still rather useful.
  
• The Sickle Whose Crop is Pain: On a thug with some careful deployment, this can generate lots and lots of death gems, though it might not work against the vets.
  
• The Sword of Injustice: +1 holy, to let prophets cast fanaticism if you don't have a native H3 priest.
  
• The Green Eye: +2 penetration without the downside of cutting your MR, is cheap.
  
• The Boots of Calius the Druid: Best reinvig item in the game.
  
• The Flailing Hands: Boosts penetration and death, is cheap.
  
• The Horror Harmonica: Can be good for certain nations, I don't know if we have anyone who can put it to use.
  

Raiel wrote:I'll be able to snag the Scepter of Dark Regency next turn if the team can provide enough death gems.

I can forge the astral stuff in a couple of turns, if I can get enough nature gems (40) to summon a Cuatl (S3).

I need to decide this turn if I should use nature gems to get the Astral items (by summoning an S3 mage) or if I should just forge Nature Artifacts.

Thoughts?

The astral artifacts are in my opinion unquestionably more important. But can anyone else forge a ring of sorcery/wizardry? We should have crystal coins and starshine skullcaps available, especially for this most critical purpose. How much astral do you need? Do you have any S2 mages? If you can afford to toss an astral mage, forging the dimensional rod for the cheap boost might not be a bad idea--it's probably more efficient than the summon.

I can cover death gems. I'll try to send like 20 or so. Need any astral pearls? Unfortunately, nature gems are the one gem type I seriously lack.

I would definitely like to see the last two Ashdod provinces fall next turn. Yes, there's Adon thugs in both 291 and 277, but they'll rout once enough casualties are inflicted on other units, and once they've nowhere to retreat to...

So Shinu can take 291 most likely - Shinu and Pangaea, can you two coordinate on taking 277 down? Pangaea, with a big C'tissian army in the vicinity of Ashdod's capital, you can probably move south from 290 if you'd like. I'd still like that C'tis army (and maybe one from Shinu?) to stick around until Ashdod is gone though, just in case. Maybe folks might consider building temples around there too, as Dom kill might be another possibility (my besieging Theurgs and Arch Theurgs are busy preaching)?

I can make rings of wizardry/sorcery easily once I get the construction(S6 pretender), but that's a turn or three off.

Stretch wrote:Don't count on lightning attacks too much if you face Vanheim. They are easily countered by having lots of thugs casting Resist Lightning. Remember that his thugs can also cast flight. Once I got my manufacturing base up against Caelum in NvV2, I was giving Caelum a really hard time and killed something like 17 eagle kings before the noob team conceded.

Strategically placed mammoths can do some damage and scare him, though. Keep the pressure up, maybe try a bunch of small groups of mammoths so that he can't just spam them. Maybe air elementals or ghost wolves too? Your seeking arrows won't hit him because his units are stealthed, unfortunately.

Gift of Flight + mammoths and maybe some ghost wolves could get a few surprise kills for you. Mass Flight + massive amounts of mammoths, or just a lot of chaff attacking him right at the beginning could be nice. Phantasmal army might be helpful if he's going with thugs vs. national troops.

If he ever gets a lot of national troops together then just have 4 or 5 eagle kings spam thunderstrike under a storm. I doubt he will though... too easy to kill.

Joelz, how did the siege of Eriu go?!

Thanks for the tips, ill try flying my elephants.