Part 227: Sauro - Turns 59-60
Thank you for keeping hope alive, Lilli! It's nice to know that somebody still believes in me.
Turn 59
In which another Irrational Objective is achieved.
- Schneeble/SauromatiaA multitude of remote site searches turned up only a Sunken Galley (1 Death gem per turn) in one of my underwater provinces. My return on investment in these searches has dropped off, but I will blindly carry on because I desperately want some kind of discount site that will help give me an edge against my temporary allies in Pangaea and Hinnom.
I received two of these messages:
I was confused at first. Hadn't I carefully gone out of my way not to be direct conflict with anybody? Between alliances, NAPs, and under-the-table friendships I was pretty sure I would not be that target of any--oh, right. Arcoscephale. The only diplomatic activity I'd had with Dexanth was fairly brief and many turns ago. Clearly that was a failing on my part, because Barathrus had only 21 MR and could certainly have been killed by one of those Mind Hunts.
For all I know, Dexanth may have thought that Mictlan controlled that province. I suspected that the many candles of enemy dominion belonged to Arcoscephale, though, which would mean that with his automatic scrying ability he would know perfectly well that I was there and I had a high-value target all by himself. I was really looking forward to when Mictlan finished the kill, and this event kicked off a little bit of friendly conversation between myself and Incy.
Two other things happened. One was that I drowned the Burden of Time caster. People, never do this. Drowning deaths in this game don't follow the same rules as other deaths. If you want to test out a theory about globals and Twiceborn then for crying out loud just script your mage to attack an ally's PD on round 1.
In my defense the wiki was down during this particular period of time and I really did not know (actually, I did not remember and could not check the wiki to be reminded) that Twiceborn is not triggered by drowning. So, I lost my Witch King and I never did find out how Twiceborn interacts with globals. Secretly I felt extremely stupid here, but here's one of the messages that I sent out this turn. I was putting on a brave face!
The last domestic report of course was that my goddess successfully cast Gift of Reason and so now I have this:
Daughter of Typhon is pretty fantastic in AE. She is N9 and she spawns a single sacred hyrda and 5 sacred hydra hatchlings every turn. Freespawn are great, and very important to me. If I'm going to suffer chaff losses then I would very much prefer that those chaff losses not cost me anything. One downside of these particular freespawn is that they do technically have upkeep costs (though half as much as they could cost because they are sacred). Another downside is that they are mapmove 1, and mapmove 1 is a crime.
Otherwise it's all upside, and I'm very ha-- hm, some of you may have noticed that my Daughter of Typhon has wounds. How did this happen? I will tell you! Last turn when she was a troop she suffered badly from Burden of Time. It turns out that the troop version of the Daughter has either a very high starting age or a very low max age or both (NinjaDebugger, you might want to look into that). Burden of Time gave her an old age Disease, which in turn gave her Limp.
One or both of these afflictions will probably go away when she loses a head or three, but just you imagine how excited I would have been if her Old Age disease had given her Feeblemind instead of Limp.
Anyway, I researched Thaumaturgy as soon as I was finished with Conjuration for the express purpose of turning Typhon into a Charm turret. Yes, it's true that I could get amazing coverage out of Storm of Thorns and I will probably do that a few times as well. Also she can cast Relief and several other fun things. It is actually really helpful to have a dedicated high-Nature caster, and the freespawn help as well!
Oh, I should point out that last turn Burden of Time as killed that illusionist that I got from builds character. Now my only Air mage is the King of Mountains. Sigh.
- buildscharacter/Hinnombuilds character already mentioned this but we agreed that I could take better care of the province with Shadow Seers in it and I was getting increasingly demanding regarding the price of my continued loyalty. Everything worked out, and our grand alliance soldiered on. Starting now I will recruit a stealthy S3 mage from this province for 180 gold every single fucking turn. They may not be that fantastic for Arcoscephale or Hinnom but I am extremely excited to have these guys on the team. Don't be surprised when I build a fort on this province because I'm not about to lose Shadow Seers to some stupid raid.
- Dexanth/ArcoscephaleWrath of Rainbow has stopped. I guess the caster died! I'm being coy of course. I had scouts on the province this turn so I saw it happen. Looks like the final net tally was 247 gold... I was so close to breaking even! Also there is no way I'm going to try to fight Mictlan just to get at Arcoscephale's capitol and we all saw that Dexanth expires next turn so I'm just going to mark that objective off now as well.
Actually, you know what? Let's do turn 60 in this post also!
Turn 60
In which Arcoscephale finally kicks it.
- Schneeble/SauromatiaThis turn is big, but only for me. As you saw by the name I chose for my prophet, I have embraced builds character's characterization of me as Keyser Soze. It's pretty apt, really. I'm still pretty close to being found out (destroyed by builds character and/or Irony.or.Death when we run out of enemies) and I'm doing my very best to build my strength and expand my empire without expending any effort or attracting any attention. But what if it all falls apart?
On this turn I went through every single commander under my control and renamed each one. All of my elemental royalty have been renamed after characters from The Usual Suspects (there were not many named female characters so in one or two cases I think I had to use actresses' names). All of my mages that are not Witch Kings have been renamed with unit names from other nations playing in this LP. I went out of my way to pick aliases that were close (in paths) to the mages I renamed.
Therefore all of my Enaries were renamed "Nahualli" and all of my Spirit Guides were renamed "Master of the Dead" for example. Mages that had random paths (like Warrior Sorceresses) had different names based on the specific mage's paths. So an N2 would be renamed "Acha" and a D1N1 would be renamed "Yogini" and an N1B1 would be renamed "Mictlan Priest." Witch Kings live a really long time and are more easily recognized as being Sauromatian, so I gave them names from my opponents' Middle Era incarnations. Thus my Witch Kings were renamed "Rain Priest," "Talmai Elder," "Imperial Alchemist," or "Pandemoniac" depending on whether their random paths focused on Water, Death, Nature, or Blood respectively.
When everything goes to hell my mages will disappear into the population, and the enemy forces will not be able to find them. Sauromatia will fight for victory, but we will not be defeated. If our bid for ultimate power fails then we will simply vanish, as if we had never been.
Remote searching turned up nothing, Hinnom put up that global, and Arcoscephale was defeated. A random event gave me 400 gold which I used to buy that fort in the Shadow Seer province. I finally had the force I needed to take the fort from T'ien Ch'i that Feinne more or less gifted to me. Remember, this group was way down in the southern tip of my empire and all of my siege fodder died off. So one thing that's happening is that I'm initiating that attack.
Another thing that happened is that I used an Adept of Pyrophlegiton and some boosters to summon this guy:
Isn't he dreamy?
EDIT: From left to right, here are the actual values on those icons.
Fire Resist 100, Poison Resist 100, Magic Being, Need Not Eat, Heat 50, Ethereal, Fire Shield 30, Darkvision, Fire Power 2. Basically half the battlefield is on fire whenever this guy is on the scene, and 30 ap fire shield is pretty brutal. It's going to be a pain to get him to play nice with other troops that I have available, but as we're seen before the Elemental Royaly doesn't usually need backup.
Also I think it's awesome that an Adept of Pyrophlegiton summoned Pyriphlogos. That old dude got to summon the very subject of all his dreams and aspirations. He must have been so happy! Anyway, now I have even more fire power and I am excited about it but I don't have as much ability to leverage this power as I would like. Keep searching for Fire sites everybody!
Here's a map (builds character posted graphs from turn 58 so I don't need to add those).
Irrational Objectives:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. Summon 9 Elemental Royalty or cast each of the 6 Royalty summons at least once (current progress: 4/9 or 3/6)