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

[ses]

[X] Plan: A Song of Light, Optimized
-[X] [DETECTIVES] The dangers in the dark come from outside of Ponykind as well. Listen to the rumors. Study the myths. Look for the threats from without. (Search for Expedition Sites for your later consideration. Additionally, keep an ear on the ground for other "foreign" threats)
-[X] [CONSTABLES] Plan and execute a raid. Within Equestria, or anywhere else that is needed. (Quarry)
-[X] [COMMISSIONER] Get your hoofs dirty. (Participate in the "Investigators" and "Constables" actions.)
-[X] [DIRECTOR] Introduce another Lore to the Lunar Bureau. (Heart)
-[X] [RARITY] Take a commission. (Gain at least 100 bits immediately, will "fail" her career roll)
-[X] [JADE] Research an artifact (Moth 3)
-[X] [BALDOMARE] Ask for a lesson on the Lores. (Lantern)
-[X] [MAREINETTE] Honored Guest: Mayor Mare
-[X] [AXE] Consult to the Lunar Bureau
-[X] [CHERENKOLT] "Recalibrating." (Grail)
-[X] [CHERENKOLT] Consult to the Lunar Bureau
-[X] [SMILES] (TROUBLEMAKER) Tell him you need something broken. (Is It Free Real Estate?) (FREE ACTION)
-[X] [SELENE] Soothe the night. (Her Winter realization. Unknown effects, if any.)
-[X] Needs must. Ask somepony to procure you a dead body from the local cemetery.
-[X] You need somepony to perform this ritual… (Summon a Mare-in-the-Light)
--[X] To be performed... somewhere, where you hope nopony will catch wind of it.
-[X] You need somepony to perform this ritual… (Summon a Mare-in-the-Light, sacrificing a Wrong Key)
--[X] To be performed... somewhere, where you hope nopony will catch wind of it.
-[X] (NEW OPTION) Smiles needs help with something, please go do what he asks... within reason of course. (Aid Smiles' Progression Bar. QM will decide who is optimal, unless you write-in the characters)
-[X] (NEW OPTION) Smiles needs help with something, please go do what he asks... within reason of course. (Aid Smiles' Progression Bar. QM will decide who is optimal, unless you write-in the characters)
-[X] Cover your bases (-5 Follower AP, +2 Velvet AP)
-[X] If summoning rituals or graverob fails, lose Smiles actions to compensate

This is @Greymere 's plan, but it gets 2 summonings off and doesnt have no plan in place for the summon's AP this turn, and it gets a Commission because of it alongside the extra risen and MITL. It doesn't do anything with cover your bases we haven't done for the last 2 turns in a row.

It ends with 2 Risen and 2 MITLs plus the Servants doing CYB, while Comet graverobs, and +6 Smiles progress from Selene. If one of the summonings fails(89% chance each of success) then Selene loses a Smiles action to compensate for the failure. This is exactly the same as we've done with graverobs the past several turns and it's very straightforward.

 

[Greymere]

This is @Greymere 's plan, but it gets 2 summonings off and doesnt have no plan in place for the summon's AP this turn, and it gets a Commission because of it alongside the extra risen and MITL. It doesn't do anything with cover your bases we haven't done for the last 2 turns in a row.

It ends with 2 Risen and 2 MITLs plus the Servants doing CYB, while Comet graverobs, and +6 Smiles progress from Selene. If one of the summonings fails(89% chance each of success) then Selene loses a Smiles action to compensate for the failure. This is exactly the same as we've done with graverobs the past several turns and it's very straightforward.

Click to shrink...

Why bother having Rarity on commission? We don't need the bits this turn. Like, at all. It would be better to have her doing Smiles progress if you aren't going to have her Covering Our Bases and, even better, it should be Rarity's AP getting dropped in case of failure, not Selene's.

Edit: Also, at least in the past with Name summonings, we only got to pick their actions once we saw their full character sheet and what they are and aren't capable of. I see no reason why that wouldn't be the case here too, we have no idea what the MitLs actually do beyond "can eat a Fascination".

 

[ses]

Why bother having Rarity on commission? We don't need the bits this turn. Like, at all. It would be better to have her doing Smiles progress if you aren't going to have her Covering Our Bases and, even better, it should be Rarity's AP getting dropped in case of failure, not Selene's.

Click to shrink...

I wasnt sure QM would let us drop Rarity's action if a summon failed, since it's an exclusive action and not generic.

Also, we dont need the bits right this moment but you know what would be really nice? Not getting accidentally painted into a corner later because we didn't take the preparation now when it was very cheap. If we have to rush Smiles next turn we can. And 2 Smiles progress just isn't worth 100+ bits outside of an emergency. Even if we dont need those bits right this moment. Rarity can do smiles progress next turn instead if she really really needs to.

There's every chance that we find out that Long expedition hurdles have completely reasonable CDs and we were being silly over-investing as much as we have and want to do a bunch of Expeditions next turn! There's every chance we get yet another opportunity to spend a boat of bits to make a problem go away! Having bits in the bank now when it's basically no cost means fewer hard choices in the future if something goes wrong!

Edit: Also, at least in the past with Name summonings, we only got to pick their actions once we saw their full character sheet and what they are and aren't capable of. I see no reason why that wouldn't be the case here too, we have no idea what the MitLs actually do beyond "can eat a Fascination".

Click to shrink...

Risen can do cover your bases. There is no chance that MITLs cant.

 

[Greymere]

I wasnt sure QM would let us drop Rarity's action if a summon failed, since it's an exclusive action and not generic.

Also, we dont need the bits right this moment but you know what would be really nice? Not getting accidentally painted into a corner later because we didn't take the preparation now when it was very cheap. If we have to rush Smiles next turn we can. And 2 Smiles progress just isn't worth 100+ bits outside of an emergency. Even if we dont need those bits right this moment. Rarity can do smiles progress next turn instead if she really really needs to.

There's every chance that we find out that Long expedition hurdles have completely reasonable CDs and we were being silly over-investing as much as we have and want to do a bunch of Expeditions next turn! There's every chance we get yet another opportunity to spend a boat of bits to make a problem go away! Having bits in the bank now when it's basically no cost means fewer hard choices in the future if something goes wrong!

Click to shrink...

I already said this before, but I suppose it bears saying again. Unless we have something that we know we're going to spend it on before the end of Turn 24, there is no reason to take extra bits this turn (or at all really, if we can get away with it). Expeditions only matter if Selene extends our deadline at the end of this turn, which means that Rarity's AP would be free to do a commission regardless next turn, so again, no reason to take the commission action this turn.

Even if something comes up next turn that could use bits, so what? We get Rarity's commission bits at the start of the turn, not the end of it, so there's still no issue with doing it next turn and not this one, when we have a better judge of just how much we need to lock in. And if for some Hours forsaken reason something comes up this turn that costs more than 200 bits, then unless the alternative is "Daybreaker explosion", we shouldn't be spending that many bits on anything this close to All In, commission or no commission.

 

[DelightedOne]

[X] Plan: A Song of Light


[X] Plan: A Song of Light, Revised

 

[Greymere]

Anyway, I guess since we're assuming that MitLs can backfill...

[X] Plan: A Song of Light

[X] Plan: A Song of Light, Revised
-[X] (Detectives) Search for foreign threats
-[X] (Constables) Expedition: The Quarry of Yuxtabai
-[X] (Commissioner) Get your hooves dirty
-[X] (Director) Heart
-[X] (Mareinette) Honored Guest: Mayor Mare
-[X] (Baldomare) Lantern lesson
-[X] (DoA) Consult
-[X] (Smiles-Free) Lead an expedition: Is It Free Real Estate?
-[X] (Cherenkolt) Consult
--[X] Recalibrate: Grail
-[X] (Selene) Soothe the night
-[X] (Selene) Help Smiles (x2)
-[X] (Jade) Study Moth 3 artifact
-[X] Summon a Mare-in-the-Light (x2)
--[X] Sacrifice a Wrong Key if Smiles
--[X] In a barn on our estate
-[X] Cover your bases (-5 Follower AP, +2 Velvet AP)

Cover Your Bases: Servants, Fluttercomet, Rarity, Risen, ??? (depends on summoning outcomes)

Considering the chance of both summonings failing is 1%, I feel like it's fine to kick the decision of what would happen if both do fail off into the likely-never future.

Assumes that one of the MitLs backfills Cover Your Bases one way or another (directly or dig up corpse + make Risen). The AP of the other MitL is not assumed, because all precedent regarding summoning spirits with unknown character sheets is that we summon them, see the full sheet, and only then get to decide what's happening to the AP. So our 2nd MitL, if both are successful, is not accounted for here deliberately.

 

[ses]

The idea that I'm out of line for wanting to make sure we press the very special exclusive button we used a Wedding pick for as often as possible before something comes up, but it's not crazy to commit our Mortal followers to CYB before summoning perfectly good minions that wont be able to CYB if the follower's phase is already over? What exactly do you plan on doing with the MITL when their status sheet comes out to be a fairly bland and vanilla Lantern generic summon? The only thing that would be left to do for them at that point is taxi Names to Manehattan expeditions! There's nothing else useful they could do besides +1 Smiles progress each while our mortal followers that could have given +2 are already committed to CYB!

 

[Greymere]

The idea that I'm out of line for wanting to make sure we press the very special exclusive button we used a Wedding pick for as often as possible before something comes up, but it's not crazy to commit our Mortal followers to CYB before summoning perfectly good minions that wont be able to CYB if the follower's phase is already over? What exactly do you plan on doing with the MITL when their status sheet comes out to be a fairly bland and vanilla Lantern generic summon? The only thing that would be left to do for them at that point is taxi Names to Manehattan expeditions! There's nothing else useful they could do besides +1 Smiles progress each while our mortal followers that could have given +2 are already committed to CYB!

Click to shrink...

Then it can dig up another corpse, and we're then only 1 spare follower AP away next turn from another -5/+2 Cover Your Bases between the two MitLs and two Risen (it would be Smiles. Sorry Smiles). I am not willing to drop any of Selene's +6 for bits we do not need this turn except in baseless hypothetical "but what if!" situations, and that if we need next turn are still perfectly accessible.

Edit: We can't plan this turn under the assumption that Selene will extend or defuse the timer. We have to plan under the worst case assumption, which is EoT24 All In, and a T24 spent doing nothing but preparing for it. And quite frankly, even if Selene delays by another turn on T24... well we're already going to have spent the whole turn prepping for All In anyway. The only situations I can see where we don't go for All In at the end of T24 are A) Selene successfully delays or defuses on T23 Soothe the Night, or B) Selene defuses (not delays) on T24.

Edit 2: Which, in case it bears pointing out, even if all we do with that extra AP is Smiles progress, MitL + T24 Risen + Smiles on top of the "default" MitL + T23 Risen exchanges an effective +2 for a +5. Unintelligent creatures like Risen can't contribute to the progress bar, and neither can Smiles beyond his passive +1/turn.