Part 115: Hinnom - Turn 14
Turn 14
Nothing very exciting happens this turn.
All my giants hang out on the couch. The lingering smell of sweat, cheeto dust and shame attract another pariah.
And he sounds pretty badass. The first little icon means he's ethereal, so 3/4 of non-magic attacks will pass right through him. That's pretty useful for an assassin. Plus, he brought pork rinds. Giants love pork rinds.
Down south you can see I've begun construction on Fort number two. As I explained in my infrastructure post, this fort will churn out mages who will meet up with two other forts worth of mages to research in the middle. I'll save 1,000 gold on labs that way. You can also see a group of archers and an independent commander moving up to get into position to take the home of future fort number three or four.
Turn 15
Another uneventful turn.
I finish construction 2 and head onward and upward toward construction 4. I mentioned what a terrible mistake this research strategy was in my year one mistakes post. Want to guess what's going to be included in my year two mistakes post?
I have clevered up just a touch and figured out that unkitted Melqarts can't fight Palankasha. To counter this I begin forging some of the mightiest defensive armaments known to man. 
I sent the independent commander and his archers to bring glorious civilization to some barbarians.
I put five archers in front of the rest. Sucks to be those guys. If the barbarians make it to the archers, these brave men
I recruit a bunch of dawn guard and a Kohen.
The Kohen is the last of my big sacred giants. He is also the worst. And the cheapest. He is going to head south to that second fort to blood hunt a bit. The mages I recruit will ferry slaves in and this should provide sufficient slaves to do any extra sacrificing.
Turn 16
Another relatively uneventful turn.
My decoy plan works. It's nice to have a plan work.
I send the independent commander and his shooty chaff back to pick up more shooty chaff so they can try again with even more barbarians. And I finally stop moping, get up off my ass and attack TheDemon in Nardago. You can see my prophet also finally made it to the province north of Lanka and took that using a combination of charm, perspicacity and smite spam.
I know you hate suspense so let's so how that went, shall we?
Just kidding, let's take a look at the gear I've forged to help my Melqarts not get chopped into tiny fat kid bits. I forged two of these shields. Palankasha only have a magic resist of 12, so I think these shields should easily blind the Palankasha attacking my Melqarts, turning them into a useless resource drain. They're also the only shields that do anything useful that I can forge at the moment so they have that advantage as well.
TheDemon's raksharaja were spamming lightning bolt. After years of trying to teach Melqarts not to stick their sausage fingers in light sockets, I finally gave up and started equipping them with this armor. It makes them immune to lightning and builds up a fierce static charge as they run across the battlefield, shocking the first person that touches them.
Look at him, dressed to the nines. :3
Turn 17
Did I hit a magnificent defensive movement trap, or has my sloth and apathy fooled tricked TheDemon into thinking I'm not playing anymore? Also note I've begun remote site searching to get more gems to forge more trinkets for my Melqarts.
Victory!
The mighty cavemans army marches on unopposed. Next stop, Lanka! Down at the edge of the screen, the independent commander and his shooty chaff go to bring more civilization to another barbarian tribe. The assassin I got from an event accompanies them, equipped with a
One of the reasons I took luck 3 just popped up. Your chance to get a hero is 3% per turn +/- your luck scales. So with luck 3 I have a 6% chance to get a hero every turn. Finally, on turn 17 one of my heroes shows up.
He is worth the wait. Hinnom has six heroes, one for each of the Grigori. These are the older brothers of the Melqarts and Ba'als and each one gets magic passed down to him from his father. The Son of Ezekiel is a level four air mage, comes with a staff of storms, can forge air boosters and provides access to all the high level air magic in the game. He. Is. Awesome. He also eats a literal ton of people every turn and causes more unrest than a regular giant.
Metagame
There are two things going on in these past few turns. First, it's the holidays and I'm having a hard time coordinating with Dawkish. So one of us is always attacking without the other when what we really want to do is attack together. It's pretty poor on our part. The second is that I'm getting demoralized. TheDemon is really good at this game and he is kicking our teeth in. It sucks and I'm not really sure what I should do about it. I don't think we can back off the fight because if he's kicking our teeth in while we're fighting him two on one and containing him to his island, I can only imagine what would happen if he actually got an empire going. But it certainly wouldn't be good for me long term.
It's a little embarrassing to admit, but, while I feel confident that our plan should work it really is difficult to keep fighting when you're losing so much more than your opponent and he always seems to have the answer to what I'm doing. Of course, in retrospect what I'm doing is pretty god damn bad but I didn't realize it at the time.
That said, I have high hopes for my cavemans. And I'm excited about marching on Lanka and taking the war to TheDemon. At the very least I expect to kill a bunch of Palankasha.