Part 81: First come, first served
All right. This is it.Take a deep breath (deep breath)
I'll go to Lordlake.
Let's do this shit! (music)
Very well.
Boz, Dinn, deploy to the southeast of Lordlake and engage the Armes Southern Mountain Corps.
You can count on us!
We shall not fail His Royal Highness!
Lordlake is at your service as well, Your Highness!
Understood! Nobody knows General Luger better than me!
We'll help you out, Your Highness! Rest assured!
All right, Your Highness. Just say the word.
THE WORD IS "WAR!"
SHOW THEM THE TRUE MEANING OF PAIN!
Out! Out, all you useless fuckers, out!
They do hand us some set units, but none of them are terrible, so it's simple enough to fill them up with more good units. This looks much better.
We have some new people here, so let me go over that real quick. Galleon grants an extra Charge and +9 DEF, making any war unit he's part of about 1/6 as durable as Galleon himself is during normal gameplay. Miakis grants +1 Speed and a use of Recover. Both of them can act as B-rank commanders. Roog and Rahal are also available now, but without dragon horses, dragon horse cavalry is just cavalry, so they're not that much fun.
The biggest change here is Jeane as unit commander, also B-ranked. We'll see her in action soon.
You don't need me to link to the generic war theme again, so I'll just be providing alternatives this time. For Lordlake, here's something to go with all that scorched earth.
The purpose of this operation is to buy enough time to allow the citizens of the town to evacuate. It's also part of our "defense-in-depth" strategy. Wearing down the enemy is important, but it won't mean a thing if we suffer too many losses.
Don't do anything rash, Your Highness.
Me? Never!
Lordlake has also become a refuge for people from Sable! Until they're all free and clear, we must defend the town at any cost!
I made this joke like 50 updates ago, Boz. Get with the times.
Our assorted Armes assholes are hanging around the SE corner of the map.
Jidan! Don't be so greedy! Our goal is victory, not the spoils of victory!
However, there are also two units in the NE corner, which you'll need to keep your eyes on.
You may recall me saying Lelcar was the second worst battle in the game.
Well, today we're looking at the worst!
This is a defence battle. Just as the game tells you, if an enemy reaches Lordlake, we lose.
As I've already said, enemies will randomly run in any damn direction they want once damaged, including straight through hostile units, because the Lindwurm Cavalry would totally just sit there scratching their asses and let the enemy pass.
Basically, what I'm saying is meet the enemy away from the town, and make sure you have a lot of long range attacks to back you up because the computer will quite happily wallhax its way to victory and there's not a fucking thing you can do about it.
Which is why even though they'll come to us, we're running up and meeting them. With a lightning bolt to the face.
Thunder is the only ranged "generic" magic attack - although in truth it's a bit too rare to be called generic, even if it's not coming out of a super special unique snowflake rune.
It's quite satisfying. Jeane is probably the second best magic unit in the game, after ZerArse.
Thunder deals 30% of MHP. Two charges, 120 damage. Not bad.
Jeane also has a quote if you let her get up close and personal, which we will because ponies do not like arrows.
Well, no one really likes arrows and the enemy has several Barrage assholes with them.
We can do better than that!
A lot better.
"Ye must desire respite from thy empty existence!"
"...it just isn't the same. "
The best time to use Dawn is when you're right in the middle of a big clusterfuck of enemies.
This isn't too terribly threatening. The enemy has been most kind to me on this run, with very few units running into ridiculously bad spots.
There's loot, I guess. No one really cares.
Get your stab on!
The goal is only to halve the enemy force, although we could totally have killed them all. You're likely to meet that goal long before the commanders have to get involved, and even if they do, halving a named unit's HP supposedly wins the battle. You'd have to make an effort to see it, though.
All right, men! Storm Lordlake! Fall behind, and you'll go hungry! First come, first served!
Jidan is the classiest commander.
Wait! Strike quickly, but don't go randomly pillaging!
*sigh*
...This town is ours now, Jidan. See that you don't ruin it.
If it's possible to V+ this, I've never seen it.
The reward is 5000 Potch, which is a pittance, and we lose 900 of it for taking 90 casualties. Oh well.
It doesn't really matter, because none of that ever happened! We are far from finished with this, and you all know I won't be satisfied until I can bloody Childerich's nose a little. (music)
All right, here's the situation. Luger's fleet is currently north of Lelcar. Raftfleet is hindering their advance. This means your task is to deploy your troops to the west of Lelcar and engage General Novum's forces.
Lelcar is by far the tougher of the two, a battle fought on two fronts.
We'll help you out, Your Highness! Rest assured!
Boz, Dinn, the defense of Lordlake is in your hands.
You can count on us!
We shall not fail His Royal Highness!
Some of the lines are recycled. I don't think they expected anyone to be crazy enough to reload.
Your Highness, the defense of Lordlake is in good hands with our fighters.
Yeah, defending Lordlake is easy. You guys shouldn't have any problems, even with me hogging all the good units in Lelcar.
All right, Your Highness. Just say the word.
THE WORD IS COPY-PASTED!
I SHOULD HAVE GONE TO LORDLAKE AGAIN.
We get a bunch of half-finished units. What?
Five uses of Barrage
And we'll be needing them.
As you no doubt noticed, our forces are split in two.
The purpose of this operation is to buy enough time to allow the citizens of the town to evacuate. It's also part of our "defense-in-depth" strategy. Wearing down the enemy is important, but it won't mean a thing if we suffer too many losses.
Don't do anything rash, Your Highness.
As with Lordlake, we have Lucretia telling me all the wrong things.
But this time, there's more to it. We're gonna need some more tense music to go with this.
There are more named units here.
(Well, part of it is because I recruited Wilhelm. Otherwise Godwin would have hired him at this point and he'd have fought against us at Lordlake.)
Childerich starts near the back, so again it's unlikely we'll be able to get to him...
Show them what happens to towns that betray Her Majesty the Queen! Kill all rebels you see! Kill! Kill!
...no matter how much we might like to.
He's out of control!
...Damn, are we really better off having someone like him on our side?
Even the faction resent having to put up with Budget Luca Blight. This is actually another of S5's glaring weak spots - someone basically went "Kids love Luca Blight! Let's have another!" without realizing what it was that made Luca such a great character.
Well, we must make do with the hand we've been dealt. We must send in all our soldiers at once!
Plus, it's been so long since he did anything useful, if anyone actually cared about him in the beginning, they've probably stopped by now.
Push forward, men! We must take Lelcar!
Childerich could have been okay if he just remained some dude who fights dirty. Now he's not even that. He's just some psycho we're going to have to put down.
The Lelcar defence campaign is much the same as the Lordlake one, with the addition of the Dahak which, as always, shares the "lose it and you die" flag with Frey's unit.
Much like the battle in Lelcar, this one will see you yanked back and forth between your ground and naval forces, and it's a total pain to control. Plus, we still have the same problem as in the last battle, in that we also have to prevent enemies from reaching the town, while having no means to actually stop them from moving wherever they like.
They also start quite close to your own starting position, and they're going to charge you. Shit is going to go down fast.
It doesn't help matters that they have a bunch of Barrage assholes.
The horsemen will charge down near the river, so it's important to get some archers in position to block them off.
Bernadette should be able to kill them all by herself, given class and rank advantage and two Flowing usages.
Meanwhile, we'll keep the archers off our own cavs with the ballista. Decent damage!
Barrage counts as an arrow attack, so it's only moderately useful against other archers, and not useful at all against infantry/rams.
The ComShp, however, is easy prey. I was hoping to get my mages down to that ram, but...
wait what
So while my back was turned, the cavalry unit ran circles around Bernadette so they could one-shot Babbage.
I'm very sorry! You'll forgive us if we run away, won't you?!
Absolutely not, you piece of shit! How can you take 150 damage from one hit from a C-rank unit?!
I've seen a lot in all my years... I know when it's time to run.
I'll forgive Sairoh, though. He was only there to bring you more ammo. Which you didn't use. Douchebags.
And while they were doing that, the ram snuck in on one of my non caster ships.
Note the damage it took. That was... not a very good show on our part.
So we Barrage it a bit, but, of course, it gets stuck on the level and barely moves.
So we try again.
That's the wrong fucking direction!
At the same time, that annoying horse unit runs away from Bernadette and charges Frey.
The fuck?! Well he has Dawn and Recover, so...
FUCKING FUCK BAHRAM FUCK
...actually this isn't all bad because it makes Jeane run towards the ram and that puts her in range to Thunder it again-
AaaaaaaaaaaaAaaAAAAAAA!
Now my only hope is if Wasil's archer unit can Barrage this thing to death before it conquers the city...
...nah, just kidding, Frey barely moved after his last battle, so the cavalry unit catches up and murders him.
I'm a bit torn between appreciating this level for actually demanding you pay attention, and hating it because most of the challenge comes from the fact that S5's major battles are ass, what with units getting stuck on things and it being impossible to issue commands when your cursor is bouncing back and forth between 43 generic combat animations that you can't skip.
I'm leaning towards the latter!
Anyway, let's retry this. And I need some properly hot-blooded music this time!
I'm going to make damn sure these scumbags stay away from the catapult this time. Babbage is going to fire everything he's got, then run away.
The ram does... pretty much exactly the same thing it did last time: get stuck on shit, then ruin Kisara's day.
At least this time, my caster ships do manage to make it far enough to engage the enemy!
I could have just used a regular attack since we're strong against this one, but I set them on fire anyway because I'm mad.
Have some space rocks, too!
...wrong fucking direction, asshole!
Sink! Why won't you fucking sink?!
Aaaaaa!
THANK YOU SO VERY FUCKING MUCH GAME
ARROWS
I got lucky this time.
Lucky.
One cavalry unit down, one to go, and Bernadette is as good as new. We're making progress.
And there goes the other one! Now Babbage is useless, so I tell him to get out of the way.
One more barrage from Wasil and the ram fucking finally sinks.
And there goes another one.
Frey is a lot better suited to handling archers than cavalry.
He smacks them some more, and they heal up like the cheating cheaters that they are.
Here it is! The last barrage!
Childerich incoming!
We should clean up the small fry before he gets here.
WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING
Wilhelm may be weak against archers, but their HP is low enough that he can take them out with a Charge (20% of MHP).
And Jeane has her sights on the biggest, juiciest target on the river.
120 damage in one shot! That's not bad at all. But that's what happens when you deal percentage-based damage against enemies with high HP.
And... that was all we needed. The Godwin forces start with 2400 men; we just have to reduce them below 1200.
The rebels flee?! Bah! Take Lelcar, now! Seize all valuables! Kill any who remain! Kill, kill, kill! Kill them all! Show no mercy to traitorous scum! Kill, kill, kill! Kill them all!
Sadly, it means I don't even get a single shot in at this lovely human being.
Just a plain victory for this one, too, and I must say we've done really fucking well against that attack! I should probably promote the in-Lelcar battle to "third worst" because defending Lordlake may be bad, but this definitely takes the cake.
Now for the next fun bit! (actual music)
The occupiers should be realizing their mistake right about now. We didn't leave anything behind, after all.
Jidan and Childerich must be pretty peeved. Maybe they'll turn on each other next. I'm still allowed to dream, shut up.
But haven't we just dug our own graves? It won't be long before Godwin and Armes bear down on this castle...
He's right! We seem to be in a desperate situation! What's your plan of action, Lucretia?
Hmm...
I suppose we should take all the castle's goods and provisions, and leave.
LEAVE?!
Lucretia, you've gotta be joking!
A joke, eh? I truly don't get the human sense of humor.
No, this is no joke. Does my plan really sound that crazy?
YES.
Think about it. What is our goal? Protecting this castle?
Hmm...
Losing this castle doesn't mean we've been defeated. As long as the Prince and the rest of us live and have the will to fight, we can continue the battle elsewhere.
That's true... And the enemy's naval capacity is limited to Luger's Fleet. We hold the advantage on the rivers!
We still have a chance if we can get back to Raftfleet!
The enemy is probably convinced that they'll win once this castle falls. They're in for a big surprise. I'd love to see the looks on their faces when they realize what we've done to them.
What do you think, Your Highness?
UH
FFFUUUUUUUCK
You're right, Your Highness. This is a most difficult decision. Please give it some thought.
Oh boy! Join us next time!