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PurpleXVI posted:I still can't get over the fact that everyone but Mictlan gets a troop upgrade for LA. For T'ien Ch'i it's less of an upgrade (other than the Comp Bow) and more of a discount. MA:  LA:  +2 HP, +1 Combat Speed, a Comp Bow, Pillager and Recruit Anywhere, but 15 less gold, 22 less rec points, and 2 less resources, somehow. They have everything the Imperial guys have, plus the bow on top, what sorcery is this? The Ancestor Vessels are an upgrade, due to better armor and a fun magic bow, trading the annoying Power of the Spring for Spirit Sight having higher strength and map move, for almost the exact same cost, just getting a discount on resources despite having better gear, once again. The foot troops are slightly worse, with the exception of losing the Crossbowmen, which is an actual big loss.
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Feb 6, 2020 03:00
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Technowolf posted:
As a note here, there are definitely different insanity result tables (or else different weighting of the options based on some factor). I don't know if it's as simple as the difference between Insanity and Shattered Soul, but most insane units will almost always do something useless (but harmless) when they trigger the chance, as opposed to a few that will trigger a harmful effect (destroy something, pillage the province, etc.) the majority of the time. Not going to say for certain that normal human insanity can't result in a lab burning, but it's a rather rare chance at best - hell, LA R'yleh would not really function at all if there was a relatively appreciable chance of a destructive event happening.
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Feb 6, 2020 03:10
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Lord Koth posted:As a note here, there are definitely different insanity result tables (or else different weighting of the options based on some factor). I don't know if it's as simple as the difference between Insanity and Shattered Soul, but most insane units will almost always do something useless (but harmless) when they trigger the chance, as opposed to a few that will trigger a harmful effect (destroy something, pillage the province, etc.) the majority of the time. Not going to say for certain that normal human insanity can't result in a lab burning, but it's a rather rare chance at best - hell, LA R'yleh would not really function at all if there was a relatively appreciable chance of a destructive event happening. Personally I was always disappointed that the "build a mausoleum" insanity/shattered mind order didn't actually produce a novel site. 
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Feb 6, 2020 03:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I still can't get over the fact that everyone but Mictlan gets a troop upgrade for LA. Think of it more like you get LA troops in EA.
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Feb 6, 2020 03:17
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Didn't realize how far behind I was. Time for lots of turn posting! Most of them are uneventful though. Utgard Turn 7  Just another couple stomps of indies, nothing worth mentioning in either battle.  My northern army is basically down to a few javelin guys and nothing else at this point, I so move them back down to get some reinforcements. My southern army moves to take the only province around them that wasn't likely to cause a bunch of deaths. Turn 8  Just that single battle this turn, which went as expected(0 casualties, lots of dead indies).  My northern party moves back to the capital to get more friends, while another group of sacreds moves to take the heavy cav province to my west I had been avoiding. My southern expanders move to take that lightly defended crossbow province. Turn 9 I forgot to take a screenshot of the messages screen. But it was the 2 expected battles...and then an unexpected bump against Argatha.   While fighting the indies a bad morale roll causes my army to rout. However, most of my giants have gone berserk so they continue to fight and win, while my commander books it out of there.  So when Argatha gets there my guys have no leadership and auto-rout. This is really annoying.  My coward goes to pick up the giants that fled into the other neighboring province. My large group of sacreds goes up to grab that fish-man province. Turn 10  Single battle this turn against fish people and the  I do see Gath's army of giants to my southwest, which isn't ideal. He will probably be able to take that throne before I will.  In my newly acquired fish-man province I start recruiting some troops to take the ponds around my territory. They are pretty good sources of income and will hopefully bring some additional water gem income.  In my northwest Patala is also pretty close to that throne, so my goal is to try and get the province north of it before he can, as I can't get through those mountains to take the throne and my scouts have shown me it is pretty lightly defended. Turn 11  A couple indie battles that went without problems, an event, and the arena battles I forgot to send someone to.  8 water gems isn't horrible. Bigger this turn is a couple of my new provinces have pre-scouted sites in them.   Yay for 3 free gems I didn't even have to search for, even if 2 of them are of limited use to me, since I have no mages to use air or fire. Don't have a picture of my movement, but the important thing is that my northern party is moving to try and nab that province north of the throne. Turn 12  Another level of thaum researched, 2 indie battles...and a battle with Patala. Well, that isn't great. On the plus side I do have a good size force of giants and he just has stupid monkeys.  Battle with the indies goes just fine...  Ok, slight correction, he has stupid monkeys with bows, and a lot of them. My giant giants are turned into giant pincushions. That is 4 turns of cap recruitment gone from that bump. Well, bugger. That effectively cuts me off from that throne.   First event is just an annoyance that the province will lose dominion unless I patrol out the idiot preaching there. Second is some more nice free water gems. Turn 13  At this point I'm just kind of regrouping after I lost a ton of giants against patala.  Moving to take that province on the Mictlan border while the rest of my groups shuffle around. I'm starting to build a couple forts, one up on the Mictlan border, another down next to that cave province.
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Feb 6, 2020 03:58
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Alex0080 posted:For T'ien Ch'i it's less of an upgrade (other than the Comp Bow) and more of a discount. Wow, that is amazing. Really wanna play a game and just spam these guys. Put flaming arrows on them and watch the fun.
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Feb 6, 2020 05:02
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Atlantis Turns 12-13 Turn 12 .jpg) Have a lot of battles this turn. I also researched a level of evocation so my mages could do something besides casting skeletal body on themselves during fights. .jpg) .jpg) Two of my expansions go entirely without incidents, only taking casualties with my bone-wearing units. .jpg) But there’s my riskier one that puts me near Bogarus. The first fight goes totally fine. .jpg) As does the bump with Bogarus. This was possibly one of the fastest battles I’ve seen while playing Dominions. .jpg) Because right after blessing the Assartuts, my prophet fries the Bogarusian leader’s brain with a smite, routing the spearmen. I did feel a little bad for the bump, but it wasn’t his cap circle so I don’t feel too bad. .jpg) And my only event gets me another battle, where some wolves get chased off by my PD.  For next turn, I set to move into The Hole. For whatever reason, at the time I was absolutely confident that the river was on the other side of the province so I didn’t need to worry about Gath’s god. As is evident in the screenshot, I was wrong.  Over in the west, I move into the lake with a small party to hit a much weaker province than the Broken Ocean. I also send a scout to ping the throne in Sailor’s Heaven. Since it’s so close to me, it shouldn’t be too hard to stake a claim to it. Turn 13 .jpg) I continue having pretty busy turns. .jpg) First up, I found a site for more water gems. This brings me up to 6 water per turn, which is great because I’ll need lots of them for later battles and keeping the temp down. .jpg) I see Gath’s god fighting, which is a bad sign since I was so sure he couldn’t get there. .jpg) And the fight goes predictably poorly. At least my prophet survived. .jpg) And my Assartuts did steal away a pretty large chunk of his strength which is never coming back. .jpg) .jpg) My other expansions go much better though. .jpg) Thanks to the presence of a Tungalik, my freshly recruited commander gets scared to death by a ghost. No starting a new fort for me this turn. .jpg) And finally, here’s the report from my nearby throne. Mostly militia, so this should be a piece of cake. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) The three boosted wizards don’t look too bad. Likely just extra skeletons and a few water elementals. I can cut through elementals thanks to my magic weapons, so that shouldn’t be too bad, probably just take a few extra casualties.  For moves, I’m retreating my prophet UW in case Gath decides to send those giants down and grab Tirannea. I’m also debating starting another fort there on a future turn, mostly just to have a safe sailing spot on that side of the lake.  I’m combining 2 parties to take down the amber clan in the Broken Ocean. I’m also a little dismayed to see a Marignon fort right next to the throne with a decent sized garrison. I might have to end up fighting them earlier than I’d like to.  And lastly, I’m being really cheeky and pushing my luck by sailing over to Belegor and trying to grab another province that Bogarus could reasonably claim. I could probably beat off any of their expansion parties thanks to the cold, but it’s still a little bit of a risk. OOrochi fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Feb 6, 2020 |
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Feb 6, 2020 05:50
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PurpleXVI posted:I still can't get over the fact that everyone but Mictlan gets a troop upgrade for LA. TC gets the better horsemen but a lot of their vanilla line troops do not change from EA to MA to LA
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Feb 6, 2020 05:50
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Utgard has the exact same troops as Jotun, just has better researchers.
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Feb 6, 2020 06:00
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Ramc posted:TC gets the better horsemen but a lot of their vanilla line troops do not change from EA to MA to LA I'm sorry Ramc I can't hear you over my threadbare excuse for why I suck at this game.
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Feb 6, 2020 12:46
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Hey so I'm playing Pangaea in this game:  I'm extremely new and also bad at this game, and so picked a nation that was stomped on immediately in the previous games and whose name I constantly mispell. They're a nation of satyrs, pans, minotaurs and so on that come from ancient greek myths. Except now they've tooled up and have some armour and crossbows and stuff. They're also less blood based than in previous ages, which means they're not nearly as scary as before. I mainly picked them because I like nations with freaky non human units, let's see what units I found interesting:  Centaur Cataphracts! These guys are who you want for early expansion. They'll crush most indies with ease, they're armored. Like most of Pan's troops they have regeneration so they won't pick up a bunch of injuries during expansion. They're your early game bread and butter.  Dryad Hoplites, these are your cap only sacreds. They've got formation fighter so you can pack a lot into one space, and they make normal humans so horny that they have trouble fighting them. They're also strong and well able to defend themselves. These guys seem great.  Satyr Snipers, they have crossbows which apparently are important in late age games. A few turns into the game it will occur to me to start recruiting them. They've also got cool helmets.  "The Grove Guard are the elite force of the New Era. They are well respected." Pan have two types of minotaur troops to recruit and these guys are the better ones. They're strong and have good protection. I just really like minotaurs so I like these guys. Who would dare to march against their might?  These are the commander versions, they can bless troops and also just completely flip out in battle and start smashing the enemy. Speaking of commanders we have,  Pans, they're strong nature mages, and sometimes they pick up a death path, or maybe more? Unfortunately they no longer cause people to go flocking to the forest to frolic, but they're still very good mages.  Dryads are sneaky mage assassins. Wow certainly seems like they could be used to sow chaos, assassinate or seduce important units etc. Definitely a useful unit in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing and isn't new and bad at this game.  Can't forget the Centaur Sages. They're really good researches, have very long capes, and come with a point of astral magic, plus a point in water, or air or nature. You'll recruit a lot of these for research and they seem quite versatile in general. Finally for now we have my pretender, Tree and Blood Enthusiast  Wow, check it out, a fountain of blood. You can maybe see that my priority here was scales, more resources and money to produce more minotaur-sized armour, crossbows and centaur shoes seem useful. Also I don't know what I'm doing so playing it safe. What's with that bless though? magic weapons let you hit things that usually aren't effected by normal weapons, like ghosts. The others make make you stronger and better at attacking stuff. In retrospect I probably would choose a different bless if I was doing this again. The next update will cover some of the first few turns of the game.
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Feb 6, 2020 13:34
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Turns 1 - 10?11? I screenshot very infrequently if at all so apologies for the lack of detailed information here. Here's a rundown of the first 10 turns or so. Okay, let's see our starting position  Seems nice, we have some forest provinces nearby. I make my starting centaur commander into my prophet and send my bird out to scout around. My prophets full name is "did you know sap is just tree bloo"  Well, our neighbours to the north seem the weakest so I send Did you know there along with some satyr troops. They're just satyrs with spears and are undiscipled so you can't even give them detailed orders, but with Did you know's help they should do okay. I've also recruited my sage to start research.    Our first battle, and it's a glorious victory! Truly tales will be told throughout the ages etc etc. My usual games have horrible expansions that lead to me being quickly defeated so this is nice. I've recruited some real troops so I send them with a dryad to link up with my other forces and keep this train rolling.   Another victory later and Did you know combines the troops and keeps expanding eastward to this chokepoint looking farm province. My scout is also starting to explore to the south.  I've got maximum luck scales and nearly every turn features some lucky event to give me gold, gems or occasionally items. It's probably not anything too special this time but it all adds up over the course of the game. I've also now got multiple expansion parties rolling out, and what's this?!  Did you know's reputation is spreading! Also he has trolls blood which provides some regeneration during battles. Nice.    Expansion continues like this for a while, these cataphracts are really good.  Here's the situation near the end of the first year, I've expanded to the east and south and am getting ready to move north and west. I've been able to recruit human scouts from a few provinces so they're spreading out to see what's going on. ALso I met some neighbours, Pythium to the north, Marignon and Utgard to the south, and Atlantis to the east. I'm excited to work together with my new friends in a spirit of mutual understanding co-operation. You might notice that the mountain province to the south has a pale one commander sitting on it. I was half thinking of using them to take the underwater provinces as they can fight underwater, but ended up focusing on the surface land. At this stage I've also been reaching out to some of my neighbours and setting boundaries etc. Recruiting more sages for research and starting to recruit Pan's for site searching. LA generally doesn't have as many magic sites as the other ages, but my searching goes pretty well and I quickly start gathering gems. Now time to keep building up and expanding westward to maybe secure that throne and see who my other neighbours are.
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Feb 6, 2020 13:39
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Cobra Lionfist posted:Dryad Hoplites, these are your cap only sacreds. They've got formation fighter so you can pack a lot into one space, and they make normal humans so horny that they have trouble fighting them. They're also strong and well able to defend themselves. These guys seem great. They're actually kind of "eh", I've found. With 12 atk 10 str and bronze weapons they really struggle punching through even bog standard humans in medium armour while their own bronze armour is lackluster. The awe is neat against random idiots esp. combined with a backup choir of mages singing "EVERYBODY PANIC NOW" but then there are many things that simply won't care and are quite common in LA - skellingtons, elementals, elephants & other tramplers, eleventy billion crossbows... Bottomline, if they'd been EA or MA units they could have been rock star anvils to combine with mino/centaur hammers. In the LA they don't really cut it however, or at least they don't cut it hard enough to consider any kind of serious bless for them.
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Feb 6, 2020 15:45
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Mictlan A three-turner this time around, not because the game pace has suddenly accelerated, but because someone asked for turns 17 and 18 to be in a combined post, and at this stage of the game single-turn posts tend to be relatively short on content. So y'all get a triple. Turn 14    Turn 14 is a bit quiet, someone claims a throne, it's Bureaucracy. As mentioned it's mostly good for spreading your dominion around, so very nice for nations that rely on specific dominion effects(like the popkill nations and MA C'tis), if you have any dominion-based globals up(Dark Skies, Purgatory, etc.) or if you want to push back those effects. The +1 Order scale to your dominion in general can also amount to considerable economic boost if you've got a less than +3 Order already, and it'll help fend off negative events if you're one of the foooooooooooooools who went for negative Luck scales without also going +3 Order already to avoid drowning in bad things. Oh and we also found a fun site that could be vital to the future of Mictlan if I end up getting to a point where I can really utilize it.  It provides a 10% discount on blood slaves spent any time a blood ritual is cast in the province. Early on it won't amount to much, but later on when rituals start costing 60+ slaves(succubi, onaqui, blood globals, etc.) it easily starts adding up to major savings. Of course this also relies on me surviving and researching for long enough to be able to really leverage that. Considering that people are by default somewhat twitchy about Blood nations, it's probably a good idea not to tell anyone I've got this.   My hope is that I can score that throne before Pangaea can, I feel like it's going to be pretty decisive for my future success. Also that's Utgard's big boys south of me, snagging a province I had dreams of grabbing faster than I could. Let's hope they don't follow north, they probably won't, it'd be pretty early for anyone to start up any hostilities against another nation. Turn 15   The main relevant thing for this turn was bonking those barbarians. Check out those sweet kill counts for my sacreds.  Flush with victory and judging the throne lightly guarded, I decide to send my goons on to smash it. It should go pretty easily, I figure.  Of course there's SOME heavy cavalry but... how badly can it go? The only other thing of note that happens during Turn 15 is that I continue with the vital work of forting, templing and labbing as many provinces as I can, in the Late Age, it's almost harder finding provinces that aren't worth building up than provinces that are. Especially for a nation like Mictlan that doesn't give a drat about Resources due to not wearing armor. Everyone else mostly wants to leave gaps between their forts so they don't choke each other out and they can maximize production, but mostly what I want is to make sure I maximize income off all my provinces, production of sacreds and production of mages since everything I have is cheap, cheap, cheap. Turn 16  Two throne claims this turn, will we be the third?   The Throne of the First Age is a +1 Magic to the owner's dominion and a +1 MR to your bless, the Inner Throne is +1 Order and passive blood slave income. Shame that's not the one I'll be getting here, then. It's very minor blood slave income, but having some is always better than having none.   gently caress, this is literally worse than just getting beat the gently caress out, because I've now cleared the only thing that could keep Pan from snagging the throne. With luck, I might be able to mount a second attack before he notices how vulnerable it is, but there's a good chance he might have parked a scout on the throne and watched that fight. Both because it helps you keep tabs on who has what thrones(in case they don't instantly grab one, to keep their power level hidden for a lunge) and because it helps you vulture weakened-but-not-taken thrones or see if a competitor lost big on trying to take a throne and might be weakened himself as a target. Losing my H3 StR caster on the retreat is kind of just some poo poo icing on the crap cake here. I could tell Pan that I just took a shot at the throne and bounced and want to call dibs on it because I did most of the work, but if Pan is a clever cookie he'll take that as "ah, Mictlan is weak, time to tell him 'lol no' and take all his poo poo." On the other hand most people playing in the newbads, and in new games in general, tend to swing towards being trustworthy and embracing a sense of fair play. Suckers. I decide not to gamble it.  At least the soothing touch of Fortune 3 events make me feel good. Mmmmmmm. The gold events can get pretty absurd at times, essentially there are three tiers of +gold events at something like max 500, max 1000 and max 1500 depending on whether you're Luck 1, 2 or 3 but what's non-obvious is that they can apparently happen more than once to the same province, so I've seen mad results of up to +5000 gold at times. In this case I just got handed a free fort and temple, or fort and lab, or a couple of labs/temples and some savings. Very good stuff, it helps lessen the sting of the loss a bit. The random event in Mictlan was some dominion loss WHICH ABSOLUTELY IS NOT WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW, GAME, THANK YOU.  Pulling my goons back to recover and re-arm, while shuffing some Tribal Kings around. Tribal Kings are pretty mediocre commanders, but can be buffed by your bless, can lead okay-sized numbers of mortal troops(80) and can collect slaves. Since you'll need to patrol down unrest from blood hunting anyway, two tribal kings in each blood hunting province is kind of a must, one of them to collect slaves and the other to patrol with slaves. Eventually graduating to both of them patrolling once they're maxed out on slaves. Mictlanian slave soldiers are spectacularly useless for any other purpose, but they're great for that one.
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Feb 8, 2020 08:07
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First gate is a fun site. Quite an eventful one, hehehehe.
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Feb 8, 2020 11:18
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Is this game running with story events? If it is the first gate is the worst site for everyone else that Purple could have found.
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Feb 8, 2020 17:39
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Agartha Turn 14  Not much happening this turn.  Just imagine this message for the rest of the game.  Cave Grubs are a generic summon that can only be summoned in, well, caves. That means that usually only Agartha will be able to cast it unless you happen on a random cave site that the map maker just happened to put in. They're decent summons, tough, strong, and have a corrosion effect on their attacks. They also have a big bonus to sieging, so can be used as cheap battering rams late game.  My lone event this turn gives a little gold and an array of gems.  A closer look at the province my throne is in. That 0 income will never change. Turn 15 Whoops. Forgot to take a message log screenshot.   Another +1D site. Not exiting, but I'll need all the gem income I can muster.  One expansion goes off without a hitch.  And retaking Windsong Forest is easy-peasy. Might have been overkill to bring that many troops, but one can never be too careful. And this makes a great corridor to funnel troops into Patala when war comes!  Or not. Turns out there's a site here that nukes undead in it, which means my strategy of 'a million undead backed up by cheap crossbows' may not be viable.  I move both forces out to a fairly tough-looking indie province. Turn 16  The battle goes well, but I think this turn I lose my prophet. RIP a diet of hamberders. Oh well, let's take a closer look at those thrones.   Marignon's god claims this one. Since his scales probably aren't too great +1 Magic is probably very welcome. +1MR on blessed troops isn't too shabby either.   Gath claims this one. This is a little more troubling, since Gath is a blood nation with very good national blood summons. While a decent blood economy can pull in 100s of slaves a turn, even a trickle like this can help get an early one off the ground.  The two highlighted provinces are where I guess Gath's new throne is.  I begin getting infrastructure up in my throne province.  I've decided my first war will be against Patala. Monkey nations are usually weak early, but can be a giant pain in the rear end to deal with later.  Looks like Erythia's made it into the sea. They're one of the only two nation with decent aquatic troops. My undead troops could go down there as well, but it would be an incredible pain to do so.
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Feb 8, 2020 17:53
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I asked for turns 17 and 18 to be in the same update, but going back over my turns, the important ones are 18 and 19. I would thus like to request another triple update. I can perform an actual sacrifice on an actual pyramid in Mexico right now to pay for it, if needed. I think the tale I wish to spin will work better with a triple update in any case. T'ien Ch'i Turn 14   A throne is claimed somewhere out in the world. I have very little access to thrones, myself, which makes an early victory out of my reach. I also get my first palisade, a bit late but I blame my expensive research mages. I'm also attacking into a province Gath has a lot of giants near, but my horsemen are no slouches, so I'm not worried.  Pythium, the green flag with the yellow border to my east, asks for a non-aggression pact with an in game message, I hop on discord and agree to a 12 turn NAP, we barely touch each other, and I don't want a tiny noodle connection I'd have if I fought him, anyway.   I am impressed by that longdead horseman that was able to kill one of my Ancestor Vessels, I'll have to see if I can summon that same one back when I start getting them for myself.   These events do approximately nothing. T'ien Ch'i Turn 15    Gath did not try to take that waste this turn, so no bump, and we managed to snipe (literally, with Composite Bows) the barbarian leaders almost immediately, causing the enemy to run away without attacking once. We can now see the pre-war size and shape of my empire. I move my troops back to the province of T'ien Ch'i itself to consolidate and plan my next move.     Event wise, we take the good with the bad. The population lost in my capital will lower my income slightly, but at least the barbarians were repelled by my PD. And I got some gold and gems to help make me feel better. T'ien Ch'i Turn 16   Researching Enchantment is what will allow me to summon longdead horsemen myself. Although at this time, I think I forgot I needed more Construction research to make a Skull Staff to have a powerful enough Death mage to actually cast the spell. The battle I spied on was Mictlan failing to take the throne province, just as Purple mentioned, it is important to keep tabs on these things, so I had a scout parked on it.  I get some gold, the old RPG fan in my heart appreciates getting 255, specifically.  Since I have other forts pumping out my Ancestor mages, I switch my capital to recruiting Celestial Masters. While they are worse than in the earlier ages, they still offer useful magic and I'll be happy to have some. Alex0080 fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Feb 9, 2020 |
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Feb 9, 2020 07:03
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So far things have been nice and peaceful, but we're about to get to the exciting parts. Does anyone remember the turn where The Bogarus Event happened? I forgot to note it down myself and neither Bogarus or Pythium, whom I remember as the two "participants" in that fun escapade are in the thread.
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Feb 9, 2020 07:19
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PurpleXVI posted:So far things have been nice and peaceful, but we're about to get to the exciting parts. That was turn 19, a very important turn in newbad3, to be sure.
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Feb 9, 2020 07:32
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Alex0080 posted:That was turn 19, a very important turn in newbad3, to be sure. 
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Feb 10, 2020 06:42
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I mean, I requested that Purple cover it next update. I wanna get there as soon as possible, too.
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Feb 10, 2020 07:16
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Atlantis Turns 14-16 Turn 14 .jpg) A slow turn overall, though my UW fort did finish its upgrade. .jpg) I took the amber clan province with a decent number of casualties. The province would let me recruit their units, but as an amphibious nation I have no real need for purely aquatic troops. .jpg) And my 2nd expedition into Bogarus's area is successful as well. .jpg) And the big event of the turn is a free lab in that isolated eastern province!  I'm not passing up a free lab and I was thinking of building a fort anyway, so I decide to risk Gath's attacking me and start building an ice fort with the remaining commander.  I move my underwater forces to keep taking the lake near Marignon. The 2 Angakoks stay where they are to search their provinces so I can get some more gem income.  And my mountainous fort starts getting a temple and fortress upgrade so I can start pumping out more Tungaliks for research and more troops in general. Turn 15 .jpg) Another slow turn. I did find a basic death site in Jome, which is nice. .jpg) The lake clearing continues to go well.  Taking another gamble by going for a heavy cav and crossbowman province in the heat.  And in the lake I move my Angakok to keep searching as I gather forces to go take that throne next turn. Turn 16 .jpg) Continue being slow. I see 2 throne claims including one from Mari, which I'll take as a good sign. If they took that recently, then they probably don't have an army nearby to threaten the throne between us. .jpg) I take some decent casualties, but get the knight province without too much damage. .jpg) The fort near me is mostly militia, so I'm betting that this army + some water elementals should be able to take it without too much trouble. Counting on my magic weapons to let me cut through whatever they summon without taking too many losses. Otherwise, I generally pull back a little to start deciding on my first war target.
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Feb 12, 2020 01:44
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Mictlan Turn 17    It's a good thing some events are gated by turn(I think all dom loss events require it to be turn 10 at the least), getting a dom loss event on turn 3 or 4 as non-MA Mictlan could kill you stone loving dead. Also not a bad event with a free lab, though it would have been better if it was in a fort province, it's likely that the nature gems will end up more valuable.  The only remaining neutral territory is the throne, any other expansion is going to require fighting someone, and I am not in a good shape for fighting anyone I border. I can't reach Patala, due to the drat river. TC has his horsemen. Utgard's boys are big. Pangaea has had some big-ish stacks along the borders... frankly Pythium may end up being the best of a series of bad choices, but I hold out hope of being able to resolve this by betraying someone. I just need one of my neighbours to get into a fight, and either I can backstab them or I can support them if their target is another neighbour and they appear to be winning. The only fighting I'm aware of is that round this point or a few turns in the future Patala and Agartha are embroiled. I become briefly excited until I remember that drat fun-ruining river, but keep my eyes and ears open to take advantage if at all possible.  Pan is probably going for the throne, but I cobble together a quick strike team against the throne just in case he's not. Or in case he's actually planning to invade me, that's also a worry. Turn 18   I'm starting to realize that I've made a research mistake, my first target should have been Const 4 and everything else should have been secondary, as it's becoming rapidly obvious how much of my blood economy is going to depend on getting Sanguine Dowsing Rods online. Still, Conjuration will be important eventually, for sacred Jaguars, Jade Serpents and eventually Howl as a vital battle spell.   Pan hasn't yet moved for the throne, so I take another turn to make sure I can take it this time, feeling relatively assured that I've got another turn or two, just to make sure I don't waste my troops. Turn 19   The Crystal Throne is a nice one, since it provides Earth/Astral mages that are both good for busting out Gifts and for forging Crystal Coins, an Astral +1 booster. Earth/Astral crosspaths are relatively rare among most nations, so it's a nice thing to be available to make, and a lot of nations that have Astral will be happy to add Earth to their repetoire and vice versa. This turn we also get some fun news, apparently Bogarus had an Irminsul(big immobile tree) PG that they launched into hostile territory with a Teleport spell to gently caress up the enemy and... completely lost it. This was apparently their main strat so now they're looking real vulnerable. Teleporting an immobile CAN be very powerful, but also very risky if they're highly dependant on their bless, but this early in the game I don't think I'd have risked it myself, and especially not an Irminsul. Firstly, at this stage you probably don't have any of the big kickass spells online they can abuse with their Innate Caster, and secondly Irminsuls are Nature mages. In my experience Nature mages once off-script LOVE to cast Panic rather than anything that actually physically harms the enemy. I had an immobile PG pull this on me once and render herself completely useless until a swarm of EA Ermorian Equites whittled her down to pebbles.  This then presents the first big clear upset since Bogarus' player, Biggsmore or less instantly throws up his hands and goes "welp, that was my big gamble, I'm hosed." If I'm not mistaken, his target was Pythium, which makes me sad. I would have loved to border a Pythium getting beaten up by a big tree, even though expansion in that direction would have turned me into a long, slinky nation that would be real hard to defend and real easy to partition.  Stealthy troops also aren't big friends of blood nations, since more or less every prov with a fort is eventually going to have hundreds of something or another patrolling away to keep blood hunting unrest down. I forgot to grab a look at the map at the end, but this turn Pangaea snagged the throne. On the one hand, shame I didn't attack, on the other hand, good thing I didn't attack, since unless he attacked first and only barely handled the indies, I would've just lost more troops when he bonked me off the throne, and right now I'm more or less just free forts for the taking and need to keep a low profile.
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Feb 14, 2020 09:25
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When will they get to the
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Feb 14, 2020 13:57
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Agartha Turn 17  For some reason I didn't get a shot of my message log. But have a nice picture of the nation select screen.  Late Age Site Searching dot txt  I pretty handily crush the last indies within my borders.  Getting more infrastructure up in my throne province.  I now notice that one of Patala's provinces has been hit by a barbarian attack. If I can grab it it could be a second vector into the nearby fortress. Turn 18  No messages again, but this was a pretty quiet turn for me.  I begin moving my forces towards Patala.  I also put in bids on some mercenaries. The heavy cav one will be especially useful. Turn 19  A message box? In my LP? Perish the thought. Also you can see I successfully bought both merc bands.  Crystal Mages are base 2E2S and have a chance to be either 3E or 3S. This means that they can forge some pretty good gear, including the basic earth and astral boosters.  I manage to win both battles in the marsh. I manage to kill over half the monkeys but lose about a third of my own peeps, including a lot of crossbowmen. Not the worst trade, but could have been a whole lot better.  War were declared.  I begin moving a generic commander to Desert of the Cliff Dwellers. It's a pretty decent province, and it's isolated enough that I can make it a mage factory without too much fear of it being struck first.  Reinforcements are queued up in Agartha.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:51
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seems like a lot of crossbows. Also, Crystal Mages are always E2S2. They don't have a chance to random higher (but, of course, can easily make the hat and coin astral boosters, and the earth boots booster)
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Feb 14, 2020 19:33
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Ramc posted:seems like a lot of crossbows. Right ? Granted I suck at dom, but those wouldn't be my first choice for a monkeywar. They're butt naked and their longbowapes can take a bolt or two while agarthan crossbowmen are likely to die from one arrow, so it's a losing 1vs1. I'd have bet on moar cave drakes or heavy armor & shields instead.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:45
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If I could only recruit a single mage ever again it would be an E2S2, I love those paths.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:53
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I am here today to tell you a tale. This T'ien Ch'i Turn 17   Fairly normal turn, a minor bad event, and... wait, what's this?     And Illwinter, despite changing their name, could not resist putting this character, and the rest of the party from that game, into Dominions.  Meet Bogus the Troll Raider, Mascot of Bogus Game Design, and friends:     These guys, having negative respect for authority, are willing to "liberate" your province from your "tyrannical" rule, and occupy it themselves. Naturally, I send a large squad of Heavy Horsemen to "negotiate" with the "heroes" T'ien Ch'i Turn 18    A bunch of random Pikemen join up, they can siege forts, patrol provinces or stand in a square and die so more important people get to live.  Another minor income drop. My growth scales increase income over time, but these events are separate from that and can add up to a decent chunk of missing gold over time.  Pangaea loses a province to some water doggos (Life underneath the waves corresponds in many ways to that on dry land, doncha know? so many aquatic being's description starts with that exact same sentence, so, so many.) But on to the important part, our battle with Bogus.  Both sides square off, I had my commanders sit in the middle of my Ancestor Vessels, with some Barbarian Heavy Horsemen on the flanks, and a couple of diseased troops who's job is to get killed to slow down Bogus.  Fadmargast the Dark Knight flies into my front line before anyone else can get there, where he is killed unceremoniously by my troops. If you aren't prepared for him, and he flies onto an unprotected commander or group of mages, he can cost you dearly.  Bogus is stunned by a Holy Word from my Prophet, while my Heavy Horsemen run around behind him.  There they kill the summoned critters and get to the juicy mages and archer in the back. Fang the Troll Archer has the unique ability to target commanders, specifically, with his bow. In older versions of the game, it was possible to copy this order from him and give it to your own units. Here he dies with his mage friends, no trouble.  Bogus, alone and stunned, stands in the shade of my arrows for a while, but does get his act together and manage to kill those Ancestor Vessels standing alone in front of him before we surround and murder him.  All in all, we get a nice haul from these guys, but they are dead now and we will never see them agai T'ien Ch'i Turn 19    And the troll came back, the very next turn. These guys are even still rocking the injuries we gave them.  I have no idea how these guys got resurrected, got their gear back, including second copies of the truly unique Greenstone Armor and Precious ring (even wishing for one of these just takes the existing one from someone else if they have it), and then traveled to the exact opposite side of my empire in one month, but they just did. If I had started that palisade in Holburg one turn later than I did, I would have lost it when Bogus took over the province. In the words of JonJoe, the creator of the newbad series "That would have been... Bogus".   I also lose some income, from a swamp, though, so not much, and need to go kill someone, by patrolling the province he's in, before he summons some demons and loses control of them, forcing me to kill demons instead of regular humans in robes.  The second coming of Bogus here made me very glad I had publicly shown everyone that I killed his whole party in discord, even if it did get overshadowed by the teleporting tree getting killed by hydras. Someone should go into details there.
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Feb 15, 2020 01:47
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Uhhhh. Do they not have a "this already happened" flag and just count on very low probability to have this happen no more than once per game?
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Feb 15, 2020 02:42
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Akratic Method posted:Uhhhh. Correct. Alex0080 posted:This
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Feb 15, 2020 03:09
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They still aren't gone, although I'm not sure we every found out where they popped back up, but later on blood hunting nation's started to get "a group of heroes has raided your dungeon" events that are Bogus and crew liberating your fairly caught virgins and happen when they are on the map.
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Feb 15, 2020 03:21
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Atlantis Turns 17-19 For whatever reason, I only have screenshots of turn 18. Turn 17 In and of itself, not too much happened. I took the throne province with only a few losses, but noticed 2 bad things. A: It was too hot for me to start building a fort, because it’s summer and Atlantis builds stupid ice forts on coasts. B: Marignon had a quite sizable army in the province right below it, including their god, and the fort was in their dominion. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decide to pull my units off of the throne and back into safety. I do leave a single captain behind for if and/or when the temperature falls. On the off chance that Marignon doesn't attack me. Turn 18 .jpg) I was right! Perfidious Marignon did attack my peaceful captain! .jpg) With a sizable force too. I don't think my group could've taken them even in cold 3, just too many enemies to fight, including the god. .jpg) But then Marignon was even more aggressive and sailed another party across the lake to hit Jome! It's annoying to fight someone else with sailing too. Especially when it's on the lake their cap borders, so they can easily pop out reinforcements. At least the force itself is small enough to probably kill without too much trouble.  As you can see, they're sitting on the throne. I doubt they'll move off of it this turn, since they probably want to claim it and then start a fort.  To that end, I'm going to move my main army to retake Jome with some extra reinforcements. From there, I can either chase the raiding party or potentially sail over to Marignese territory and start taking their things in retaliation.  And lastly, I'm building a lab and a fort in Hippocampus' Fortune to secure my hold on the lake. Also, diplo-wise, Erytheia and I had decided on a defensive pact against Marignon a few turns ago. This attack means that they'll join the fight against Mari too. My hope is that they'll harass Mari enough to draw more forces down there, enough for me to retake the throne (eventually) or at least make some headway without having to fight big masses of troops in the heat. Turn 19 Another turn without too much going on. Marignon pulled their raiding party back and didn't advance, so I retake Jome without any trouble. However, the real event of the turn is this:  Yes, that is Bogarus's god getting attacked and killed by Pythium's Hydras. Apparently, Bogarus added 3 levels of astral magic to his Irminsul, which allows the normally totally immobile tree to teleport with a pretty cheap and low research spell. The Irminsul is one of the units renowned for being a huge pain the rear end to kill due to its HP and regen, so it could've been an nasty surprise. Unluckily for Bogarus however, the province they teleported into was then attacked by Pythium's hydras with an absolute hellbless. Instead of maybe doing things to do damage, the tree sat there and unsuccessfully tried to panic the hydras and an ever growing pool of skeletons as they slowly killed it. RIP Bogarus's dream of the Irminsul that walks. Now, other than it being a notable for just being a god death in general, meaning the nation is probably weak and without a bless, it's also notable because both me and Marignon border Bogarus. And seeing a weak target instead of one with an army nearby, Marignon offers peace, they keep the throne, and we both go beat up Bogarus instead. Because that was almost certainly a war I would either lose or at least have a ton of trouble with, I agree instantly. In the interest of not totally screwing over a diplo partner (and also teammate in a different dominions game) I let Erytheia know the change of plans, and they say they'll probably take a piece or 2 out of Bogarus as well. Thankfully, due to my sailing I can very easily reposition my forces over to hit them in a few turns, and, due to Bogarus's cold 3 dominion, my guys should be about to have a field day vs the generally underpowered Bogarusian basic units.
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Feb 15, 2020 04:30
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I legitimately feel sorry for Biggs, he may be the unluckiest player in the SA Dom 5 community.
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Feb 15, 2020 05:09
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I am extremely rooting for the gimmick hydra hellbless squad for being willing to go 100% Snake Cult.
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Feb 15, 2020 05:15
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Mictlan Turn 20   And so begins my diplomatic assault on the other nations. They'll LEARN to love me.    At least I'm partially winning over the RNG!  It's also time to crank out a few of these, they're one of Mictlan's unique items and basically required to avoid wasting actually competent mages on blood sacrificing, they'll allow my pittance of territories with temples to project dominion like I had 15 temples, by boosting their blood sacrifice ability to H-rank + 2 rather than just H-rank.  While I look for an opening or weakness among my neighbours to exploit, or an alliance to glom onto and/or betray, I send some mages out to get serious about site searching. With this being the Late Age, though, I don't have much hope for finding anything worth a drat. Turn 21   Well, that's off to a better start than I expected, i.e. finding anything at all.  Luck 3, baybee! The scouts getting mulched is why it's hard to scout blood nations, especially Mictlan. In any given province I'm blood hunting I'm liable to have between 100 and 200 slaves doing nothing but patrolling, and even though they're lame units, they'll eventually find just about any scout and crunch them up good.  Around this point, word is that Agartha and Patala are scrapping, and the mercenary buy-ins support that. If not for that goddamn river I could snipe a chunk out of Patala, but no such luck, and I don't border Agartha. Turn 22  My lovely B1 blood hunters are also starting to have the numbers required to occasionally rake in a decent number of blood slaves despite how much they suck at their jobs. This is pleasing. Obviously I am going to want far more blood slaves than this, but it's a start. I also hit Conjuration 3 in research, which is an "eh" level for most other nations but great for Mictlan because it's where you get to summon Jaguars, 25 Nature Gems gets you 17 sacreds with 1.5x the health of a normal human, two attacks and decent strength, with only the weakness of near-zero protection. If you have a decent bless, especially if it, say, involves Barkskin, Jaguars can be a very worthwhile summon especially since your generic H2N2B2 casters can cast it, so it's very feasible to whip up a force on the fly.  Aside from that, I expand my fortified provinces and upgrade some of my existing forts, for the economic benefits.  Then the actually interesting part of this set of turns crops up. The war with Patala takes a bad turn for Agartha, and Utgard, my southern neighbour, who borders him, starts preparing to take advantage of it. I promptly start preparing to backstab Utgard once he commits to the fight. He politely informs me when he's going to attack, too. Utgard also lets me know that TC is plotting to attack me, which I recognize as possibly being true because of all the barbarian horsemen he has on my border. Fighting a fair one-on-one war has never really been my style, though.  I politely convince TC that it's in his benefit to help me backstab Utgard. Diplomacy! Then I start wondering how I'm going to manage to pack backstabbing TC into this.
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Feb 22, 2020 19:45
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Agartha Turn 20  This is when I start getting more of my summons out.  I also hit Conjuration 5, which gets me by base death summons.  The Throne of the Moon gets you +1W+1S, +1 Growth, and +3 Precision for blessed units. Not exactly the most useful throne for Pan.   I take a lot of casualties on my crossbowmen taking Konburg. Now to just siege the fort there. Turn 21  The first level of Construction is nothing useful.  Patala busts some lovely PD.  Sometimes you'll just find provinces patrolled by three indie commanders. They're usually wastelands and not very valuable, but can sometimes have a lot of sites.    Some nice events (and one that's meh). Turn 22  No battles here. 'Severely damaged' usually means that the fort is one turn away from falling.  Woo!  Returning is not usually an effect I use. Could be useful on a site-searcher or rainbow pretender.  I move an army to retake Death Marshes and get reinforcements started towards Konburg.  This is probably Pan's new throne, as well as the Pan/Mictlan border.
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Feb 22, 2020 20:55
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I'm curious to have eyes on the Agartha/Patala war, mostly what we got was rumours about who was getting their rear end kicked.
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Feb 22, 2020 22:56
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Atlantis Turns 20-22 Turn 20 .jpg) And we're back. Last time, Marignon and I agreed to a temporary ceasefire so we could both go beat up the now-godless Bogarus. .jpg) But the perfidious Marignese immediately attacked me anyway! According to the player, that was just a misclick, but it still makes me a bit wary about leaving absolutely no troops in the area. .jpg) I also get hit by an attack from Erytheia. Just a mystic, suiciding into my PD for some reason.  But if we look closer, we can see that they have a very accusatory name. They'd said they were going to scry the throne Mari took before the ceasefire, and it turned out that Marignon had moved an astral mage onto the fort in the meantime, who proceeded to feeblemind this poor mystic. Ah well, after some reassurances about what I saw, Erytheia doesn't seem too peeved about it. .jpg) For the only notable event, I get a W3 mage and some pills to bring down small groups of troops UW. Too bad I have tons of W3 mages and all of my troops are already amphibious.  Thanks to my sailing, I'm able to pretty easily collapse a big stack of troops by Bogarus. I'm also moving to ping the throne and take the Cursed Land with a smaller force as well. I also get Marignon's word that they'll be moving their troops out of Jome and leaving no PD, so I'm sending a small group of guys to go take it back. Turn 21 .jpg) First turn of the offensive against Bogarus. Good to see that Mari didn't leave anything behind too. .jpg) My merman pinged the throne, doesn't look too bad. A lot of jaguar tribes and a good number of random wizards. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) But only one has the paths for anything other than lesser elemental spam, which my guys should be able to take out without too much problem. The one guy will either spam big elementals or probably flaming arrows for the slingers. Neither should be too bad, but the flaming arrows could do a number on my glaive-troops.  For moves, I'm sending an Angakok and Tupilak, with a few guys to block for them as they summon water elementals, to start taking the rest of the lake.  Erytheia said that they'd be moving to where Bogarus's big army is now, so instead of going there or getting stuck on the cap, I'm going to head south and grab the throne.  My formation's a bit of a mess, and I really should've put the shield guys in front of the glaives, but here's what I'm going in with.  Lastly, I had one of my heroes pop up this turn. He's neat, since it's a guy riding an undead bear. But pathwise, he really doesn't get me anything new or do much besides be a good leader for footslogging armies. Still, I'll start sending him north to search some sites out and gather up troops from my forts. Turn 22 .jpg) No counter attacks from Bogarus, and a lot of battles this turn. .jpg) But what's this? There's an event in one of my provinces, and it just so happened to be the one my new hero had moved into. .jpg) RIP Sialuk T21-T22. .jpg) And then to continue the bad things, there were a lot more ichtyids than I expected, and summoning elementals doesn't really matter if a bunch of enemies just go around them. What's even worse is that was an air randomed Angakok, who will be both very important and in very short supply in the future. So good job me. .jpg) At least in good news, I took the throne without too much trouble. Lost a few ice guards to elementals, but the majority of my deaths were just due to leaving shield-less troops in the front. .jpg) I also get an event on the new throne, giving me a free lab too! love to save both money and time thanks to the luck lottery. .jpg) .jpg) .jpg) Compunding Bogarus's worries, we can see that all of the other players are closing in as well. Pythium's hell-blessed hydras especially blending through the PD, even if it is cold. After the turn ticked, Erytheia summarized Bogarus's situation like this:  I'm also told that Erytheia doesn't want to go any further, which I'm cool with, and that Marignon simply wants the one fort they're sieging so they'll leave the cap to me. I pretty rudely accused Marignon of just wanting me to get my army stuck on it while they attacked me back down by the throne, despite our ceasefire being supposed to hold until Bogarus was dead. But after a bit of rightful indignation on his part and some apologies on mine, I agree that I might as well go for it.  For moves, I go to kill the hero-killing woves, and also move my big army up to link up with a secondary force in Ragdan, and then to Bogarus which I'll hopefully be besieging by turn 24.
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Feb 22, 2020 23:49
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