Part 125: Hinnom - Turn 30
Turn 30
This turn I try to recover Hinnom's historical lands. I traded Mictlan for a ring of water breathing because I'm dumb and totally forgot about pills of water breathing, which I can forge.
I traded Pan 20 earth gems for 20 nature gems. I have extra earth and desperately need nature for eye shields and rings of regen.
Mictlan continues to "test" Lanka. I wonder when he gets his companion cube?
TACO FLAVORED KISSES heads north and takes Vician Forest. I need to keep him away from any serious resistance but he can raid Lanka's provinces defended by PD with impunity (assuming I can keep him out of any defensive movement traps).
PIMP ROBES drives off the Palankasha in Lama, but only manages to kill one.
KING HIPPO JR finishes off the job. This is the first time I've killed Palankasha without any losses. I am pretty happy about it even though it's only five. The commander dies because he does not have a friendly province nearby to retreat to.
The barbarians continue their debauched wanderings, reclaiming Laerian Swamps.
Here you can see I'm overtaxing Vician Forest. Even if TheDemon takes it back, I don't want him to get anything out of it for a few turns because right now the plan is to slowly whittle down his force of Palankasha until he's left with nothing to block for his mages and I can kill them. If he's recruiting new Palankasha every turn that doesn't really work. I send a scout to attack Lanka, just in case he forgets to buy PD.
The scout is set to retreat so I don't lose him. Scouts don't grow on trees.
UNFROZEN CAVEMAN LAWYER's site searching paid off this turn in The Marsh of Ethereal Frogs. You can see that even though I have growth 3 scales the scales in this province are death 3. Scales that are different from your scales or from neutral scales in a province without any dominion are a good clue that there is a magic site in the province.
That's because someone built a Well of Pestilence. That's what you get for hiring the cheapest contractor when building your wells.
I thought folks might be interested in seeing what my gem income looks like. I'm pulling in 29 gems a turn which isn't bad at all.
Gemgen Counter
Blood Stones: 3
Cost: 15E, 24slaves
Total Gems Generated: 4
Diplomacy
So, uh, dude, I heard you're headed out. Thanks for fighting TheDemon with me dude. I wish you could have stuck around.
I ask for no forgiveness for I have not sinned, I have only done what I needed to do to survive. A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man, if I could answer him now I would tell him, that when I was a young boy I killed a man to save my brothers life. I am not sorry for this, I am proud of this. I did not ask for the life that I was given but it was given none the less, and with it I did my best.
Turn 31
Last turn we raided Lanka, retook Hinnom's traditional lands and bid adieu to Xanrick. This turn I site search. I only ended up finding two sites out of all of that.
Some good news this turn: I get another hero! Like my prior hero, he has ?4/B3. In Savnok's case, he's S4B3. He can forge Rings of Wizardry with a starshine skullcap and a crystal coin which is pretty great for me.
The event this turn was very good. I desperately need this gold and I will put it to good use
Oh look, a message from Dexanth. Eh? What's this?
I... have never seen this global before. And for good reason. It is a big waste of, at minimum, 70 astral gems. I assume Dexanth is trying to use this to snipe Lilli's commanders because it's not going to kill her jags. At most it will do enough damage to kill their human form and make them turn into werejaguars at which point they will promptly turn back into jaguar warriors again as soon as the magic damage phase is over. I'm not at all concerned about it as all my giants have far too many hit points to be killed by it, but this is going to be a pain in the ass for T'ien Ch'i and Sauromatia.
The one thing this global gets right is the first line. There is no fury like that of a Dexanth scorned.
In Nardago, the barbarians continue their bar crawl onto Lanka's island in search of the perfect banana daiquiri.
You can also see in this picture that there are two Melqarts in the provinces south and southwest of my cap. They're going to start hunting for slaves. I haven't been able to build any blood stones for a couple turns now because I don't have the slaves.
My return on site searching was terrible this turn, but this Ammi did find something.
Something very good.
This is a lore master. He gets three randoms.
Chosen from every single path. Unfortunately he is incredibly expensive at 300gold.
These guys are the real prize here. 100 gold for 7 research on a sage or 160 gold for 4 research on one of my national mages. Hmmmmm.
On the research front, I have what I need to teleport and buff my Melqarts, now I'm headed to construction 6 for lightless lanterns which provide +6 research a turn. Hopefully, lightless lanterns combined with sages will allow me to catch up with everyone else in research.
Under the sea, Sheriff Bart tries to convince the local tritons to kowtow to King Hippomnomnomnom.
He has a ring of water breathing and a ring of regen.
And he's scripted to cast bless and then fire shield. The plan is that the ring of regen will let him survive any hits from tiny triton spears and they will burn themselves to death trying to attack him. Good plan, right?
Graphs
It's been a while since we've seen the graphs, so let's take a look. You can see the war between Mictlan and Arco continues to grind on without any real hope of a winner. The other two things of note here are: (1) my site searching is paying off, (2) I am so fucking bad at research.
Gemgen Counter
Blood Stones: 3
Cost: 15E, 24slaves
Total Gems Generated: 7
Diplomacy
Uh, hi dude. How's it going?
You know, when I was picking beans in Guatemala, we used to make fresh coffee, right off the trees. That was good. This is shit, but hey, I'm in Sauromatia.
Do you want to come fight the physical embodiment of evil with me? He's uh, a pretty bad dude.
That guy is tense. Tension is a killer. I used to be in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois. The baritone was this guy named Kip Diskin, big fat guy, I mean, like, orca fat. He was so stressed in the morning...
So, uh, that's a yes, right dude?