Part 69: Lanka - Turn 14

Turn 14 - Stocking the Lankan Arsenal




Sauro wisely withdraws to lick his wounds.



Peninsula of Awesomeness is a low-pop province, and as such, my troops are eating 183/177 supplies. This means any units that don't have supplies will be subject to starvation. In this case, it's about 3% of my army.




The first turn a unit is starved, it's subject to -4 morale. The next turn, the units that are starving are chosen random again, but units that were starving last turn remain starving so long as the army isn't in full supply. Each turn a unit that is starving gets an additional -4 morale. Any units that have been starving for more than 1 turn become diseased. The afflictions are simply normal disease afflictions. The morale effect is huge, but only matters if a large portion of your army is starving. Don't fight with a large portion of your army starving. It will rout.

I should note I had to click for 5 minutes to find one unit with Starving for the screenshot. It won't be an issue here.



I'm sending a N3 mage south. Nature mages generate 10 supplies per point of nature magic.



Since Sauro has brought reinforcements to the border, I'm going to keep a border patrol. This province has an Arena gold site. I've decided to overtax it. Since it's low-pop, if I can kill off all the population, I'll be able to tax the gold site at 200% without generating any unrest.

Lanka has a special tool for killing population. Their priests can be ordered to Reanimate. Specifically, they can reanimate Longdead (no requirement), Soulless (requires fresh corpses), or Ghouls (kills population).

You can see how this combines with gold sites. Additionally, once you start blood hunting, provinces you hunt below 5000 population (inefficient for blood hunting) can be turned into undead. You even have special high-hitpoint national ghoul units, the Pisacha.



I'm sending this army west to defend against Hinnom. Markata will eat nets, sacreds will kill.

What's that? A pretender? Scripted mages? New spells?



Meet Peak Theorycrafting. He's an Arch Mage from AwesomeGods, which unlocks the underwater Arch Mage for use by everyone. He's a Lobster with a mind-controlled dude riding on him.

Peak Theorycrafting has Water 9 and Nature 4 for his blessing. In addition, Nature 4 will let him cast the useful nature globals Mother Oak and Gift of Health, and the spell Gift of Reason. If I wanted, I could use him to forge Clam of Pearls, a gem generating item.

He has Earth 3, because Dwarven Hammers require Earth 3 and if you are in a game with hammers you NEED to be able to make them.

He has Fire 1, because it goes well with Earth for forging. And it lets him cast...




ACID RAIN is a W3 F1 +aoe spell, meaning the more of its primary path the caster has the more AoE it has. A W9 F1 mage will cast Acid Rain at AoE 10. It also is unaffected by elemental resistances. And high precision.

That's not the only goodie I've unlocked:



Evocation 4 is where evo starts to get nasty. I've brought out two A3 mages to play, and they are scripted to:



The 50 fatigue cost is prohibitive, but Thunder Strike is absolutely the best lightning spell. The "shockwave" in the description is a large-aoe damage effect that isn't included in the listed aoe, so it is far more damaging than listed.
You can wreck so much shit with t-strike.



To help the fatigue problem, I've equipped air gems. If the spell AI acts like he's supposed to, the mage should use one air gem to up his paths for casting thunder strike, which will reduce its cost to 25. 25 + 25 + 50 (+ blessing & spellcasting fatigue) means this way I'm getting 3 casts rather than 2. Possibly a 4th if he wakes up. I'd give a 3rd gem, but I don't have very many.

If Hinnom attacks, the idea is his guys meet a sticky end in a storm of acid and lightning.

Next turn: Hinnom does not attack