Part 105: Hinnom - Turn 4

Turn 4

Not expecting much this turn. Just gonna take three provin.... shit.


So, taking a look here let's talk about what happened. I fought three battles and lost two.

You can see that the fat shetland pony chariots did their job and expanded successfully to the southwest. Although fat shetland ponies pulling chariots full of giants is hilarious, I'm not going to show any battles unless they're particularly notable.

Experienced folks will see the mistake I made last turn with Victor's Villains. For those that didn't see it, I was attacking barbarians and I set the guys with bows to guard commander. I thought that they would hang out with the commander and pepper the barbarians with arrows. It turns out that troops with the guard commander command do not shoot missile weapons. So they just hung out for three turns while fifty conans charged at them and then chopped them to pieces. Oops?

The most interesting battle took place in the North East. My starting army attacked an indie province and easily dispatched the crappy dudes there. Then they got sliced and diced by a bunch of warriors of the five elements from TC. WoT5E are some of my favorite sacreds. If they were recruit everywhere they would be just silly. As it is they're pretty great as a cap-only sacred.

I was not expecting to see anyone here. I'm already quite close to two other players and I was not expecting to find a third here. If you look at turn 3 you'll note that I didn't see any of TC's dominion so this was a surprise. A bad surprise. Like the opposite of birthday cake or being woken up with birthday cake. TC's WoT5E have an S9 bless which I will be concerned with if I make it to late game. Anyway, the WoT5E make short work of my starting army which is really too bad because unopposed that starting army is good for a province a turn for at least fifteen turns. Oh well, there goes my expansion to the North.

I started recruiting dawn guard last turn and will continue to recruit them basically forever. It's just not fair to use fat ponies when nobody else has anything even remotely as awesome.


Dawn guard are nothing to sneeze at. Good stats and they come with a magic sword which helps hit things that are ethereal (not an issue yet).


One of my commanders is in the hall of fame.


He has the best heroic ability (it's actually pretty good for a non-mage because it raises his magic resistance).


Diplomacy
I'll try to include a section on Diplomacy in most turns as I think it's one of the most important parts of the game. I did a lot of talking to other players this turn. I'd been chatting with TheDemon last turn and continued reaching out to him this turn. I also started talking to Feinne and Dawkish. I wasn't overly concerned with Feinne rushing me as TC because Dawn Guard are a lot tougher than the troops in my starting army and I'd worked with him in Tex's LP.

I was, however, quite concerned with TheDemon. In this game I think TheDemon, Lilli and Dexanth have to be the favorites to win and I'm not excited about starting right next door to TheDemon. At this point, I know he's stuck on that tiny island with no way off but through me, Sauro or TC. So I reached out to him to see if he was thinking of invading someone. Frankly I think TheDemon got a bit screwed with his start, but he's really good even relative to the folks playing in this game so I'm worried about him. Ordinarily, if I start next to the strongest player in the game I will immediately rush them because I think skill differences are minimized early because options are limited early and I generally like playing strong bless nations that tend to be quite powerful early. In this game I can't do that because Lilli and Dexanth are just as good (although in different ways) and irony.or.death, Dawkish and Feinne are no slouches themselves. Oh yeah, and TheDemon is Lanka with what I think is a pretty decent bless so he's one of the strongest nations in the whole game early.

I wasn't able talk to Dawkish before the turn rolled over but I've been friendly with him in other games and I don't think he wants to get into an early war with me. If he moves north I'll rely on the argument that the province is in my cap circle so he should give it to me. I'll also try to cut him off to his North West so that I can have that peninsula to myself. If I can't do that I am going to be seriously pressed for room to develop.

Unrelated to any of that, this is what one of the big giant troops looks like. The Rephaim are pretty badass, but they raise unrest and eat my gold producing citizens so fuck that.