Part 55: Turn 48: A Shitload Of Battles

The Water Bracelet costs a grand total of five water gems. It's literally not worth the effort to bargain for. I suppose a nation that has trouble getting Water 2 might want it, but I am not that nation.

(Future Me: Hey, President Ark, did anyone take you up on this offer? I'm curious. You can wait until next turn to reply if it's somehow a major spoiler.)



Man, Atlantis is going crazy with the global spells.

This is one of the global gem generation spells. Every month Atlantis will get more gems than it would otherwise. The flavor text is right on one crucial point, however: this is not one of the more potent magic rituals. It gives a grand total of five astral gems per turn. I'm just not terribly concerned by it.




That witch is still bumming around my capital, apparently, and they've hit another province full of PD and no units.

And a hell of a lot of battles. Let's go over them quickly.



Vlecz: My army against a tiny amount of Midgard province defense. The only notable thing here is my Faeries with Elf Shot. These are the Faeries that came along with the Faery Queen - I may as well get some use out of them. Their shots, while noisy and sparkly, are quite effective - each shot will do 100 Fatigue damage, neatly putting a unit to sleep. With 30 of them all barraging constantly, there's a hell of a lot of fatigue damage being output.



To the point of almost killing some units. Fatigue over 200 gets converted into actual damage at a 10 to 1 ratio. This Huskarl is sleeping so hard that he's lost an eye.

I'm . . . not quite sure how that works.




I claim some gem income.



Oooh. Pretty.

Blue Water is, obviously, the underwater province that we're attacking. Elephants prove useful even underwater, stampeding the weakly-armed Triton force rapidly. I lose an elephant thanks to Poison damage, but that's OK.



Forest of Gun involves a bunch of C'tis Trolls smashing near-nonexistent Midgard PD. Trolls are reasonably beefy units, but it's sort of questionable if they're worth the cost. He's got a Troll Leader - the image pictured - with a pair of crappy weapons. Ah, AI.

Midgard has three basic human units - they're not even Skinshifters - and they get flattened effortlessly by the trolls.




In Feral Woods, the AI clashes undead against undead.



The AI delights in friendly fire, happily tossing lightning bolts and Banishments into the undead-heavy melee - I actually don't know who was casting the spells, but I think it was a bad idea all around. C'tis's inferior forces lose eventually, but not before taking a large number of the flimsy Shades with them.

Cythia is a small battle of C'tis versus Midgard, and there is nothing interesting to say about it. C'tis wins.



In Azimar, T'ien Ch'i tries to suicidally break out of their sieged fort. I say "suicidally" because there was almost no reason to believe that my troops would continue on, and a breakout of this size is absolute death. Unfortunately, I did continue on, and my lone scout flees before getting in combat. I'll have to recapture later.



Here's that hero I mentioned earlier, by the way. He's got Immortal and Plague Carrier, meaning that I effectively cannot permanently kill him, and he'll Disease anything in melee range. Still, with a strike of this size, he would have died long before reaching melee (and returned elsewhere.)

Saeborea is an even less interesting Midgard->C'tis attack. Midgard wins this, largely by virtue of having slightly less crappy troops.



Dun Vale goes down easily. One more province for us.




Over in Ogh Woods, Jomon is counterattacking Ulm, in style. Ulm's forces are almost pure Rangers, their cheap Crossbow unit.

Jomon's forces are . . . well, big. Five Cave Drakes, many Samurai archers, a small flock of Tengu, ten Mages.

Ulm's initial barrage takes out half a dozen people in the front line. Jomon's counterattack is stronger.



The vertical beams are Lightning Strikes from the Tengu, coupled with a huge volley of arrows from the Archers. Together, they pretty much wreck Ulm's forces.

Ulm runs the fuck away.



In Boddern Weald, we crush T'ien Ch'i's province defense at their next Fort. You know how this one goes. It involves Gifts.



Midgard slaughters some Gath PD.



And Man actually kills Pythium's fort this turn.

It's closer than you might expect. The fort towers fire a small number of arrow shots every turn. Usually the effect of these is negligable, but in this case Man's forces are small enough that they're significant. Between the towers and Pythium's single mage, they've lost about half their troops before the squad manages to kill that mage. A bad Morale roll could have routed the whole army at that point, and they probably wouldn't have escaped.



And we catch, and kill, a single T'ien Ch'i scout in Arco.



Our moving wall of destruction in the west is moving along pretty nicely. The independent province next door is Longdead and Ghouls. I could probably take it easily, as neither of those are very tough, but I need my forces moving ever Northward towards T'ien Ch'i.

My new small siege army, set to take Azimar, moves westward. I actually don't have very many units in this army, so I start shifting all those Peltasts and Militia in that direction as well. Should've done it last turn - I don't think T'ien Ch'i is likely to attack my fort while Gath is sieging theirs.

My eastern attackers are set to converge on Linshire, the Midgard fortress. I drop province defense in Vlecz in order to discourage Midgard attacks, but there's nothing I can do about Blue Water - like most nations, Arco doesn't have underwater PD. It'll just be left defenseless.

Now, I've mentioned that I'll be cutting down on sitesearching. But Blue Water and Dun Vale were both independent before this. Them, I do need to sitesearch. I slam Dun Vale with everything I have - six different site-search spells - and Blue Water with Arcane, Death, and Nature sitesearching.

There's a special sitesearching spell for underwater called Voice of Tiamat. It does Fire, Air, Water, and Earth all simultaneously. It costs eight Water gems, so you're technically not saving any gems, but I've got huge amounts of Water. The downside is that you have to actually be underwater to cast it. I start forging a Shambler Skin Suit, a cheap body armor piece that allows a single commander to travel underwater.

Next turn Conjuration 9 will be complete. There's another amazing endgame spell, Wish, at Alteration 9. I'm debating between going for that and getting artifact construction at Construction 8. However, Alteration is all the way down at 3, and there's a pile of useful spells that I'll get quickly, so I'm going to put at least a level or two into Alteration right now.

We're recruiting mages everywhere and Hoplites everywhere. It won't entirely surprise me if I end up with a war front at Jome, but I've got a significant number of Hoplites ready and mages ready, and more being produced. Conjuration 9 will also give me some very powerful units shortly.



Lots of Scout traffic, again. Besides that, the biggest thing is our new fourth army converging on Solian. We should have no trouble occupying Azimar with it, at least once we knock down the walls.

That part, admittedly, may take some time.

Next: God, it feels good to capture stuff.