Part 42: Pangaea - Turns 6-10
My loyal fan has been clamoring for an update and I am nothing if not inclined to refer to myself as magnanimous despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, so let's do this thing. But first a quick recap of previous action since it's been so long: I killed some indies and nothing happened.
Turn 6:
Mr. Madoff leads my noble goatmen to a flawless victory, I get an extra 400 gold due to a mysterious tax surplus that nobody is inclined to investigate, and my Pan finds a magic site! Let's see what kind it is.
Fuck. Well, okay, this is far from the worst thing he could have turned up, but I am really hoping to secure a supply of earth gems for reasons. Nature gems are good, but being Pangaea I already have several tons of them. The piles are starting to spill out into my palace hallways here. But earth? Not a trace.
I'm torn on where to send Mr. Madoff; on the one hand I would really like to secure my side of that bridge to the north, but the province you see him moving into above has about double the income of my other known options and as Pangaea (with troops that raise unrest on me and absurdly expensive high-upkeep mages), I am expecting to have eternal liquidity issues. The sooner I can secure my high-ish income provinces, the better. There's also a second party heading north from my cap, with a fresh round of revelers and all of the maenads who have latched onto the cause so far.
Turn 7:
Two victories, both with acceptable (mostly maenad) losses. I don't think I've really talked about maenads yet, so I will show them off now.
They suck and they eat all my food, but they're free and they can catch arrows/lances/fireballs with their faces.
Mr. Madoff continues subjugating the
up north, expansion party number two and the newly assembled expansion party number three make it a solid wall of westward expansion that will almost finish securing my cap circle.
Turn 8:
Three victories, no unexpected losses. The event is some brigands showing up, which is a one-time increase in the province's unrest. I tend to ignore these and let the autotax settings sort them out, because I am a very lazy administrator.
This is the hero who showed up, Taurotyrannos. There's really nothing special about him and his sprite is boring, but he's a free mage.
Whoa what the people everywhere and why is there 108 unrest in this province what the hell did my goatmen do to these people oh god it's all falling apart. Okay, okay, one thing at a time. My revelers cause unrest and fighting causes unrest, but neither of these things cause over 100 unrest in a single turn; there is almost certainly a site in this province. Most sites that cause unrest are blood magic, and most of those are villain's dens which, in addition to causing unrest, let you recruit worthless units with bad bows. But there's some remote chance something worthwhile is here, so I'll have to search it soon. The priority is still earth gems, though, so I'm searching the wastelands and mountains first.
Now, on my new neighbours: seeing Arcos to the south is not a surprise, since as mentioned previously Dexanth talked to me after his scout found me. Mictlan in the north is Lilli; Lilli is friendly unless she is killing you, and consequently as good as neighbours get in this game. Mictlan, on the other hand, is an awful neighbour and I really don't want to try to fight jaguar warriors with revelers. Sauromatia in the west is probably even worse; I don't have any recruits who can stand up to Androphag archers. He's also the one I'm at serious risk of an accidental collision with even if he's not planning to invade me immediately, because our armies have significant overlap in terms of potential destinations and Dawkish keeps absurd hours so I can't reach him on IRC. I decide that he will probably either move north to secure the entrance to his territory, or directly south to eliminate any possibility of collision until we can talk.
Turn 9:
Goddammit, Dawkish, you totally did that on purpose. I am the worst mind reader. On the bright side both of my non-Oak Halls battles were victories and I scored another 200 gold from mysterious tax surpluses. You'll also notice Taurotyrannos beginning my remote site searching (he fails to find anything) and some progress in my new research project: alteration. This has a few choice prizes for me; lots of buffs for the revelers; some offensive battle magic of varying utility, and a global enchantment that produces nature gems. Because what better to spend a surplus on than increased income?
Fortunately Mr. Madoff was wise enough to abandon his comrades at the first sign of trouble. The only surprise here is that one of my revelers got close enough to stab an archer before the poison finished him. Let's not watch it. I will now commence being paranoid about a possible Sauromatian invasion.
I still give orders on the assumption that he is not going to invade me, however, on the grounds that I couldn't really stop his army with any of my troops and it's important to keep securing territory either way.
Turn 10:
More indie stomping and no invasion from Sauro. Hooray. At this point I am going to stop commenting on mysterious revenue; it's going to keep happening. I also got some free gems. That will also sometimes happen. The one site searching success is yet another nature site.
I am moving to salvage some of the situation in the northeast, continuing west, and holding steady in the south. The province adjacent to both me and Arcos contains bloodhenge druids and dark vines; Dexanth has told me he intends to move on it immediately and I don't think my revelers can beat them, so I'm content to let him take a shot at it. If he fails, I'll move in and clean it out after the druids use up all their blood slaves on his troops. If he wins, oh well.
Next time: More stuff doesn't happen but with some talking on IRC.