Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

Earth-Destroyer said:

We should be preparing to win, not trying to not lose.

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Celestia is a timebomb that we don't want to go boom, we can't prepare to win if we are dead, or about to be.

Turn 24 is really the minimum viable All In, as we don't befriend Forge Name and Smiles until then. We can't bring Name Influences into All In unless the Name is befriended (Name influences expire at end of turn, and All In is "between turns" we can only get +40 influences by having the Name actually join the expedition)

Not being forced into All In is an excellent use of our AP, as we really can't accelerate Smiles/Forge befriendings any further than we already are.

There's really no better All In preparation we can possibly be doing than buying ourselves Turn 24 to get an extra two Names (and an extra two Sacraments).

Next turn we need 4 combined mareinette/velvet AP, 2 selene AP, and 3 mortal ponies, which shouldn't be too hard. We can Lantern/SH sacrament, befriend Forge Name, and still have 2 Velvet/Mareinette AP left over. If we're lucky enough to find exactly a level 5 Heart book we could even hit Heart 4 via Influence+Book study. Otherwise we probably study whatever stuff we get from the Quarry, plus maybe a Heart lesson or something.

dcoconeo said:

Influences expire at the end of the turn, so they don't matter.

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Nah, an influence we call ourselves lasts 2 turns — ie would apply to All In.

It's totally valid to say we've bet on not needing to go All In at the end of this turn. But I agree that's probably a bet worth making.

spiderhellian said:

Nah, an influence we call ourselves lasts 2 turns — ie would apply to All In.

It's totally valid to say we've bet on not needing to go All In at the end of this turn. But I agree that's probably a bet worth making.

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Because of how the timing works out, Called Influences will only apply to All In if we call them the same turn we commit to All In. Namely because All In actually happens between turns.

So if we Called an Influence this turn, it would expire at the end of T24... right before the "between turns" phase where All In actually happens.

Unless things go massively, irrecoverably pear-shaped, Calling an Influence this turn wouldn't really do much, in terms of getting to Glory.

spiderhellian said:

But I agree that's probably a bet worth making.

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Well, rolling a top tier influence is probably about the same difficulty (or harder!) than outright defusing the meltdown, or at least delaying the meltdown, so yes it is a bet worth making?

I do notice that if we roll "No lore progress" this turn and can plan for a turn 25 All In, we don't actually need to burn Mareinette/Velvet AP and instead can befriend Smiles via Mortal followers.

Turn 23: Smiles 1, Selene 6, total 7
Turn 24: Smiles 1, Selene 6, Fluttershy 2, Servants 2, Filthy 2, Cheerilee 2 total 22
Turn 25: Smiles 1, Selene 6, Fluttershy 2, Filthy 2, Cheerilee 2, Velvet 1, total 40

Considering how use-impaired non-Lore'd up mortal ponies are, this would be a much cheaper version that would let us get a lot of Lore advancement and sacrament progress or expedition progress if we don't need to worry about getting Smiles befriended on turn 24 for All In.

It would be nice to be able to have Velvet focus on investigating Stalking and working on Sacraments along with Mareinette grail lessons.