Part 21: Arco - Turns 3-5
Turn 3
Here we see my first army victorious - as well as plans for next turn, in particular sending Rainbow Dash out to speed up my expansion. Compared to basically every other nation in the game, my national troops suck - so expanding hard and fast via pretender is a way to ensure I remain competitive!
Things are zoomed out to give both what I'm up against - a bunch of archers and weak infantry - and my army array. The Cardaces are up front to soak arrows, the ranged guys behind them. The battle then goes as expected - a few of my units die, then the enemy is slaughtered wholesale.
So, this turn I will finish Alteration 1, most notable for giving Personal Luck - which makes half of all incoming successful attacks miss. My pretender is scripted to cast Air Shield - which deflects a massive portion of incoming projectiles; Twist Fate, which negates the first successful attack period; and then any spell the AI chooses - I can't specifically script luck as I technically don't have it yet, but this way she ought to choose to cast it, and then wade into the enemy.
Turn 4
Both expansion attempts successful! Let's look further!
Okay, this is a bit painful - but I know why. It is because of those cavalry jerks in the next screenshot.
This is why lance charges hurt, as has been discussed before - they charge in and slaughter a bunch of units, and then are soon overwhelmed by my superior firepower, routing and granting me the province.
Here we get some elephants. Normally, elephants are horrible engines of destruction early game - standard infantry will get trampled, you will lose heaps of minions, and it will suck.
Rainbow Dash gives no fucks - because Elephants have low morale. You still have to make a morale check against Awe to attack with a trampling unit. The short version : The elephants don't, and she cuts them down.
Here we see her buffed up. She has a considerable HP boost due to friendly Dominion, while on the bottom we see, in order : Awe, Lightning Resistance, Fire Resistance, Magic Being, Pretender, Flying, Luck, Air Shield, and Twist Fate.
All but the last three are innate to her. The remaining three are due to her self-buffing.
And this is the result : her Awe is extremely high, so the vast bulk of the independents don't ever pass it to attack her. She cuts them down one by one till they route and flee.
Turn 5
This time my primary army succeeds much better - negligible losses, independents die, I get more gold. My pretender repeats last turn - buff, slaughter independents, don't take damage. My expansion army also...
Find this site. A shambler reef would be good, if it let me recruit aquatic commanders - unfortunately, it only allows you to recruit Shamblers, which means that I can't really use it to go taking those water provinces. Sad, because nobody else can really take the water provinces either. So it's mostly useless.
We now see Rainbow Dash scripted using the full bag of goodies Alt 1 offers - the last two spells being new. Resist Lightning bumps her innate Lightning Resistance to full immunity, and then Charge Body means that the first time her defenses are breached, a giant heap of lightning comes crashing down. It's simply extra insurance to make sure she doesn't lose.
And this is next on my research goal - because of her high air magic, she'll gain something like 10 illusions, which will make it extremely unlikely any independents hit her in the first place. It will be available next turn, at which point I'll probably drop either Twist Fate or the Lightning Combo from my scripting; I believe it ends up being the latter, as images break if you get hit once, and Twist Fate should safeguard against that.
I have a second expansion party slowly cooking in my capital, while I am saving up gold for a fast second fort - I want forts and labs up asap so I can start using what Arco is really good at : Research. My mid and lategame are all about magical superiority. My troops may be the worst, but the only other nation that can rival my mages is Tien Chi.