Part 45: Turn 40: Faery Queen Minus Three
This is right on the border with Midgard, next to our other forest that also has an Earth Blood Seepage. Man, if I'd only found these things forty turns ago.
Alright we pretty much expected this. I'll put some healers up.
The cursed unit is one of my Sages. If he ends up in battle, and gets hit, and somehow doesn't die, he has a significantly higher chance of getting an affliction, which will make him even less useful in combat. I refuse to worry about this.
Our battles today are short.
Things would go better for Midgard without those Gath mages, or with more skinshifters. Neither one is the case. The Gath military actually does a pretty crummy job of cutting Midgard down, but they easily tank the skinshifters until the fireball and Smite spam finishes Midgard off.
And then we lose a pile of scouts.
Solian:
Oeperi:
Sleepy Wolds, their eastern castle:
T'ien Ch'i is really province-defense-happy. Admittedly, they're down to two forts that they can actually recruit at, both of which have crappy resources, especially with how much Gath is squeezing them. They may literally have nothing else to do with the money (though if I were them, I'd be making another fort, this time in a slightly more defensible position - in Oeperi alone, they have enough money spent on PD to otherwise do so.)
What I'm confused about is where their patrol army went. It doesn't seem to be in T'ien Ch'i - I'm watching T'ien Ch'i right now. It's not in Sleepy Wolds, it's not in Black Alps, and it's not in any of the other provinces because I can see them all. Confused.
In any case, we've got work to do! First off, items. I drop my new clam on a Sibyl and start another Sibyl clamming it up. I want a Priestess to start healing, so I pull the lantern off one and set her to heal - it might take a bit with just one Priestess going, but I'm not in any particular rush. I start a new clam and also forge a Lucky Coin for my Faery Queen - I'm willing to invest a little in survivability for these units.
I shift a new army up to Carnag, that western fort that's still churning out Sages. It's going to theoretically flatten some T'ien Ch'i PD. At least, that's the goal. It will be joined by my first Faery Queen and will start cleaning up their PD-only provinces. We'll see how well that goes.
Recruitment is the standard Sibyl and Sage, a Mystic in Sermioc, and three Priestesses. I'm going to have to cut down on mage recruitment soon - they're expensive - but I'm having trouble finding places to put my lanterns, and I don't really plan to stop producing lanterns. I end up building Hoplites everywhere else just to make good use of my available resources. I really need to get more of T'ien Ch'i's territory, I need money desperately.
Also, I made a pretty dumb mistake quite a few turns ago.
During the battle for Agartha, I conquered a territory where I could recruit these. I somehow didn't recognize them as being as valuable as they actually are. A lot of the effort I'm putting into Faery Queens right now could have been avoided if I'd just noticed this damn Crystal Sorceress - there's Air for Arrow Fend et al, and there's Astral for communions. I'm an idiot. They're not as useful as the Faery Queens are, and I can use Conjuration 8 for other things, so I'm sticking to my current plan - but I'd be in much better shape right now if I'd realized.
In any case, I've got a mage heading there to build a lab. I could use a few of them for crafting of low-level Air equipment, and I may add some to my communions as well - mid- to high-level Air magic can be a powerful force in battle. They're terrible for research, but that's okay because I don't plan to research with them.
A good chunk of Dominions strategy is learning to recognize and exploit every resource you can get your hands on. I've generally been doing a good job of that, but here, I dropped the ball.
919 RP left, 470 per turn.
Next: The war for Black Alps.