Part 84: Turn 72: Damn It All To Hell

Christ that's a lot of messages.









Sophia is also already healed. That's one hostile mage killed, and Jomon's army stopped dead.






I've been pretty much ignoring horror marks, I've almost maxed out my research. So, someone got jumped. It happens.



Remember that "vanished in the night" message? This is what caused it.



It's a Succubus - with, uh, a weird name - with a special ability. Even if she fails the "seduction" ability, she'll fight the target, and probably win if the target is one of my rather weak mages. Unless they're rigged up to kill her, which they aren't right now.

One dead Mystic.



Meanwhile, up in Ocean of Despair, our single commander gets steamrolled.

Junal Forest: Man clearing out those Villains from last turn.

Rim Mountains: Ulm versus Man, two rather minimal forces. Ulm wins, after a lot of whiffing at each other.

Imictan: Man's Bane Lord thug going up against some PD.

Latien: Ulm against me. I guess they've decided to attack, as they've sent a moderate number of Rangers against me. Not a particularly deadly force in any way, but enough to nuke my PD.

Sonria: Ulm vs. Mictlan. This is useful because it lets us take a look at Oreigenes's gear.



So, we're not going to be Mind Hunting him with an MR of 28. Very well-geared, probably designed by Ulm's old player.

The Sea Untamed: It looks like Ulm and Mictlan are in a bit of an underwater war. Mictlan wins the fight with low casualties, though they lose one of their Sea Serpents.

Ulm also attacks in Lupia - nice coordinated attack there, guys - again easily destroying my minimal PD with somewhat-less-minimal forces.



Giant's Rest goes quickly in our favor.




Now, the cave, it's gems, yay. The Hall of Ancient Oaks is something a bit special. Enchantment Bonus: 20 means that Enchantment rituals cost 20% fewer gems to cast. That's huge. Or, at least, it would be huge if I could think of any Enchantment rituals that I wanted to cast. It doesn't work on global enchants, note - you can cast it with zero bonus gems for cheap, but if you want to add extra gems, you have to add up to the base cost before it starts actually adding.

So, yeah, that's cool, but I have no idea what to do with it.

Welp.

(Future Me: Can anyone think of something to do with this? I've always wondered if I was missing a huge opportunity.)



Oh, there's the Lord of Corruption. In my territory, killing my dudes. Hmm. This may be a bit problematic.

Belial is easily tough enough to storm province defense. He may prove quite tough to kill, unless I drop a rather overwhelming amount of force on him. Which I may end up doing, if possible, but he's still quite tough until then.

Another option is to hit him with a reasonably large communion. Lord of Corruption or not, he only needs a few Gifts of Heaven on his head or a bunch of Frozen Heart spam to finish him off. Except for one detail: he's got an ability that can cause damage done to him to be reflected back at the caster, and that might cause significant collateral damage.

And there's also Mind Hunt. Magic resistance of 19 is tough to get through, but once I can forge stuff for near-free, I can cram a few Sibyls with spell penetration items and get their base penetration up to 15 at least, which puts me in range of a kill. (Future Me: eyes of the void, dude, and you're starting from two higher than you think you are)



province defense, motherfucker

do you speak it

Ablach: a gigantic army of Mictlan's splatters my province defense. Yeah okay sure.



Mictlan attacks Tiash with a rather small army. That's Polypoites defending. This should be easy!



Poof.

This is Infernal Prison. It's a spell that will instantly send a target unit to what is basically Hell. So now my Tartarian is trapped in Hell. Perfect.

He's not stuck there forever, he's got a 10% chance of escape every turn. He's also got a good chance of being attacked every turn, but since he's a supercombatant with fire immunity, he should be fine.

Once he escapes, he'll pop out somewhere randomly in the world and I'll have to get him to a useful front line. So . . . that could be better. But it could also be worse. He's not dead. He's just missing.



Elsewhere, Philetor fights a bunch of Jaguar Warriors. I'm starting to think I need to regear somewhat - he's not taking much damage, but he's still taking damage. He manages to kill about a dozen jaguars before taking too much damage and fleeing.

Luckily, he's still a Tartarian, and manages to escape with 40 HP, jaguars nipping at his heels.

Our army easily kills off the PD in Midgard, just in time for Philetor to show up and say hi. Hi, Philetor. Want to help us storm a castle?



In Shamballac -

say it with me. Shamballac!

- in Shamballac, Mictlan pushes back towards my assault army.

I can't really blame them, of course - they either have to fight my troops off, or leave that area all to me. But I was sort of hoping they'd stay away for a bit longer.

Well, they didn't. Looks like I get to fight them off.

In Gilged, my communion blows the shit out of some Mictlan PD. Vath goes similarly, leaving me sieging the Vath castle.



slurrrrp






Vath will need more forces. That's why I literally just recruited a slew of Slingers. You'll notice that we cracked Midgard's fort in one turn, and so I think it's time to take it.



First, note the Arco flags showing up deep in Mictlan territory. That can't be making them happy.

So we've got a bunch of different issues. Let's list 'em.

* That Lord of Corruption is going to be a problem.
* Mictlan has a rather large army grinding down south towards my forces. Depending on where they go, this could be an issue. They also may be able to cut off my small group in Gilged and smash them.
* Mictlan also has a reasonably dangerous army bearing down on my southeast group. That needs to be stopped.

* My Tartarians are clearly incorrectly geared and need to be tweaked.
* I'm about to ramp up tartarian production heavily and need a shitload of gear for that.

* Ulm is attacking. A few Mind Hunts in the right spots should slow this way, way down.
* Jomon is trying to crack my territory, and probably needs a Mind Hunt or two as well.

* Gath tells me that Man is calling for everyone to attack me. Gath obviously isn't going to (if he was, he wouldn't be telling me about it) and Mictlan obviously already is. Still, I should prepare for an assault from Man.

So, one at a time.

* That Lord of Corruption is going to be a problem.

My Queens of Elemental Air will work real nice as fast attack squads. Dominions 3 is a game of counters, and if I can equip them for specific battles, they can take out supercombatants quite easily. I plan out some gear to deal with Belial and get it forging. We'll have it ready by next turn.

* Mictlan has a rather large army grinding down south towards my forces. Depending on where they go, this could be an issue. They also may be able to cut off my small group in Gilged and smash them.

To be honest, I'm ignoring the army right now. Yeah, the army's a problem. But I think they'll lose if they attack right now, and my actual response will depend strongly on their actions next turn.

* Mictlan also has a reasonably dangerous army bearing down on my southeast group. That needs to be stopped.

I'm not entirely sure I can stop it.

Those troops are actually quite dangerous. I test a few things out in a demo game, but basically I just don't have the right composition set up to stop them reliably. And if I lose, I could potentially lose the entire army.

And note that I'm testing with a Queen of Elemental Air ported in as well, but even that just isn't strong enough.

We're bugging out. (And possibly bugging in again elsewhere.) The western squad that stopped me last turn isn't strong enough to kill my entire army, so my eastern group is heading west - abandoning the half-finished castle, unfortunately - while Phyleides builds a lab. I can use that lab to Cloud Trapeze Phyleides out, Teleport the Sibyl out, and Gate my troops to a safe location.

It was a nice experiment, well worth the time, and if I try it again, I'll try it with a stronger force.

* My Tartarians are clearly incorrectly geared and need to be tweaked.
* I'm about to ramp up tartarian production heavily and need a shitload of gear for that.

And, you know, a properly geared force.

This turn I'm putting up a very powerful spell. Along with Arcane Nexus, Arcane Corruption, Burden of Time, and Utterdark, it's one of the game-ender enchants, where whoever casts it gets ganged up on instantly because it's so dangerous.



As such, I'm going to be putting off some of my construction until next turn. But even the stuff I need for next turn is nine items, some of which are a bit pricey. We forge them. I'll list them next turn. See, that's how I keep you coming back to this. Promises of future cataclysmic magical power.

I also end up alchemizing twenty Astral Gems into Nature gems. God I wish I had more nature. And I've ended up with only enough Air gems for a single Seeking Arrow.

* Ulm is attacking. A few Mind Hunts in the right spots should slow this way, way down.
* Jomon is trying to crack my territory, and probably needs a Mind Hunt or two as well.

I've got six Mind Hunts available, so I lob off two at each target. Easy math.

* Gath tells me that Man is calling for everyone to attack me. Gath obviously isn't going to (if he was, he wouldn't be telling me about it) and Mictlan obviously already is. Still, I should prepare for an assault from Man.

To be honest, there's very little I want to do about this. The things I do want to do require more Earth gems than I have to spare. Next turn, perhaps. The mages and priests in my fort wall build the labs and temples that they need, and that will let me focus fire at Man at surprisingly short notice.

So let's deal with orders.

Mostly I'm hunkering down and dealing with the fights that I need to deal with. Barathrus heads up north to start fighting Ulm and Jomon - he'll just leave Mictlan alone, I suppose. The squad in Stone Grave Mountains stays there. One Mystic builds a lab, everyone else just stands around and waits. The main squad of Mictlan is still too far away to reach this group, and if both the adjacent groups attack, I think I'll win thanks to my superior magic power.

The Midgard group storms the castle, of course. Philetor sieges and holy shit look at this



45,340 population!

That's what happens when you have Growth 3 scales, which apparently Midgard did - the ears of corn there. This will be a goddamn money factory once it's mine.

I package up the siege troops from Silvania and move them south to Vath. Siege time. We love sieges, right? We all love sieges. I hire more siege troops.

The Irritation Squad continues east to siege the Midria castle. Midria doesn't have many troops and I'd actually be able to siege it down somewhat shortly if Mictlan didn't divert troops to fight me. If they do that, I win the west. If they don't, I take a castle. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!

Mage road mage road, with a little hiccup from a few mystics that I stopped to forge stuff.

My priestess up by the ocean puts on a Shambler Skin suit and troops oceanwards. Time for some aquatic temples.

I'm going to need Thalassa at the lab next turn - next turn is literally the entire reason I built that lab. Thalassa heads west. Shamblers move around to recapture provinces and attempt to squash those last units.

Now that Ulm is attacking me, I move to scoutcapture a few completely undefended territories. Seriously, dude! PD! (alright yes it's an AI, shut up)



And that's it for this turn. Note the gems and treasury: we are burning through everything we can.

Next: Magical artifacts like water.