Part 62: Fire Season

Hopefully Eurmal appreciates this awesome gift he's getting.


Our magic has gone up even further now, to an insane 17. (it was 10 last update) We're some lucky bastards, both metaphorically and literally(remember, clan magic acts as a sort of clan luck stat).




Ooo, our first proper raid! Of course, it's us getting raided...

As you can see, our allies, the Wolves, warned us of the attack. It's normally a bit of a gamble whether or not the patrols catch raiders in time to raise the full force of weaponthanes and the fyrd, so having forewarning is always nice.

The horse nomads, as you may have noticed, haven't been brought up in any of the mythology and culture stuff provided by the game, nor are they identified as being part of one of the other clans here. If you don't know who they are yet, don't worry, the game will explain it soon.

We have several options for how to fight. I'm going to be deciding most of these for us - the exceptions being if there's a particular demand to vote on a particular raid we've planned(most raids only have one or two strategies that have a good chance of working, so said votes would get very repetitive, but it's your guys' choice), or unless an interesting circumstance pops up that would make such a vote worthwhile. Our options here, from top to bottom, are:
Magic - The point of magic we put into War at the start of this year counts as a point of magic spent here. We can also use some of our hilariously large magic stores in individual battles such as this one. As with all the options here, having an advantage in magic doesn't automatically mean you'll win, but it sure helps. I spend a point of magic here, because the stuff's coming out our ears anyway. (Having double digit Magic is impressive; having Magic near 20 is ludicrous!)

Use Treasure - We don't have any applicable treasures right now, but there are some that can be used in combat.

Sacrifice - We can spend a cow sacrificing to Orlanth and/or Humakt. Each will strengthen us in a different phase of combat, but there's the risk of being interrupted if the enemy doesn't sacrifice as well and does decide to charge us. I generally don't bother with these, although the AI sacrifices often enough that it's probably not that risky.

Objective - Most of these are fairly obvious. The default is simply to drive the invaders off our tula. We can also kill as many as possible if we're feeling bloodthirsty, take captives that we can then random off or take as thralls(though we won't always actually get captives if we go for this), or aim for survival(which cuts our losses drastically; helpful if we're suddenly pressed into a losing battle). For now, I'm just going to have us drive off the horse spawn.

Tactics - Charge is the default tactic, and does exactly what it says on the tin. It can also interrupt enemy sacrifices, as mentioned earlier. Evade is running away. Skirmish does less damage than charge but minimizes our casualties, and is more effective with the more hunters we have. Maneuver relies on the combat skill of our warleader, and will be more effective here since we're on our home turf. Despite what the image shows, I decide to Maneuver.


Ouch. There's a bit of a rock-paper-scissors system with Charge/Maneuver/Skirmish, as you can see by what happened here. I also should have used more of our magic stores. But truth be told, these guys are pretty nasty early on; they become considerably less so once you've solidified your war god blessings and have built a Stake Perimeter.



But enough about that. It's fire season! And...we're running pretty low on food again. It should be enough to last us until the harvest, but I'm keeping an eye on it.


We're also running low on weaponthanes, but can't do much to fix it - the game sets a hard limit on the number of weaponthanes you can have. There are ways around this, but you don't want to go too overboard since the game sets this limit for a reason.


Since we're still smarting from the horse nomad raid, I decide to fulfill one of the goals you guys set for the year and explore the tula some more. Gordangar may be old and ugly now, but he can still lead an exploration party!


Useless old man!




AAAAAAAAA. We were supposed to have good luck, dammit!

Okay, since my strategizing didn't work so well last time, and since I think this counts as an "interesting" circumstance, I'm going to leave it up to you guys how we handle this raid. Options are the same as listed above, with the caveat that we're outnumbered this time. (even after taking into consideration that the 7 weaponthanes fight with the strength of 35 men!)