Part 98: Ermor - Turns 16-18

Turns 16-18



Lots of happenings this turn!







The world sends it regards for the departed Ulmath. Also C’tis continues to urge people to attack me.



Bogarus sent a scout into my forted port province. It’s possible that they accidentally moved him instead of snuck him in, but considering the circumstances, he was probably trying to scout what my army setup was. However, it’s a little silly that he didn’t set the scout to retreat, it would have saved him a scout.



C’tis finally attacked this turn, the walls of my fort have already fallen, so next turn he will likely storm the fort. Unfortunately, I can’t get units up there to try and stop it in time, so I will end up losing it.



Meanwhile, Bogarus’s massed army on my eastern port is likely to move in this turn. To accommodate these competing issues, I move a lot of my armies back to territory where they can reach both places so if Bogarus doesn’t invade I can use everything to kill C’tis, but if he does I have a response force to both.



Next turn I am greeted by this attacking my western flank. While I was playing I missed this entirely because I was so focused on the other half of my island and down south. So this caught me totally by surprise.



This is the army Bogarus decided to attack me with. There are four H2 or H3 priests in that mix, which will be very painful to deal with because he has a lot of good blockers. Meaning he has plenty of time to sit there banishing my armies while I try and kill his troops.



After I saw both C’tis and Bogarus moving in to attack, I started moving my pretender back to my island. The southern Atlantis/Arco port was blocked, so I had to move it through the water. I actually completely forgot that Atlantis could recruit PD underwater, so seeing that was a bit of a surprise. Not that it really mattered as A Closet of Skeletons could easily kill it.



C’tis ends up unsurprisingly storming my fort.



I don’t have any undead leaders on the field so none of my units will attack. Normally units without a commander simply flee the battlefield.



However, since almost all of Ermor’s units are mindless, instead of fleeing they sit there and dissolve until they die. So C’tis gets a few dozen free kills.



As you can see there is plenty of bad news this turn. Bogarus, Mictlan, and C’tis are doing a joint invasion against me. This kind of thing is what I was incredibly concerned about happening about a 6-10 turns ago. Right now it’s at least possible I can fend all of them off now that I have some unit production rolling. Still, it will be tough and probably costly.



Its next turn and I have some battles against C’tis and Bogarus. Because C’tis only had a single priest, while Bogarus had four (and more units), I end up diverting a larger part of my force to Bogarus. However, it is possible that I’ll end up losing both battles this way. Let’s watch and find out!



After seeing C’tis’s army composition last turn, I divided up my units like this. The big blob of horses down south I’m hoping will be enough to plow through the poison slingers and dust warriors, and possible get at his commanders or other units from behind. I have most of my melee present in the south because I expect them to run at C’tis PD and melee units he had up top. I’m hoping that they’ll provide a screen for my horsemen to run past and get to C’tis’s other groups.



And up north, mixed with a small group of horsemen to hopefully provide a charge on the militia to route them, I have my big bags of HP, the soulless.



As I said before, soulless are terrible units. Their combat stats are all around awful, they have no weapon, and they have abysmal magic resistance. The one thing they have going for them is their high HP. This makes them good for pretty much only one thing…



Absorbing mage and priest spells. The spell casting AI loves targeting as much HP as it possibly can. Most longdead have only 5 or 6 HP, these guys have nearly 3 times as much per square. As long as the AI is in range to hit the soulless, they will almost always target them. This means both battle magic and banish spam from priests will be redirected at them. As long as there is some semblance of this group still intact I can keep C’tis’s priest from killing my important units.



The C’tis PD militia did route pretty much instantly which is a plus for me because I’m trying to get his army to HP route, and his militia count for a decent portion.



My horsemen did get by the main melee, but a group of desert rangers broke off to help the dust walkers. I successfully killed all the poison slingers, but my horsemen aren’t likely to be able to kill both the dust walkers and the desert rangers.



Despite all that I come out ahead! C’tis routes before I do, and I can chase down some of his units.



Not exactly a clean victory, but one I’ll take.



MEANWHILE, Bogarus wrecks me. My army basically got caught up on his blockers and kind of stalled out while banish spam killed me. It’s not a pretty sight, so let’s just avoid this battle, shall we?



Mictlan actually didn’t stay on top of my fort to siege it down. He just went onto the next one. Not that it matters, the group he moved up behind his initial force breaks down the walls and I expect him to storm it this turn. I snuck a dusk elder into the fort to provide some leadership, so I can hopefully kill something before dying. Normally I would say that fort walls are the bane of Ermor. They tend to want to use their overwhelming numbers to surround and kill. However, Mictlan has more troops than I do, and I can use the ballista that fire from the tower walls to kill some extra troops. I also have to contend with Patala raiding all of my UW provinces.



Meanwhile, down south I continue my ineffectual raiding of Arco and Atlantis. I begin thinking about pulling the actual army I have left down there back to help aid in my defense. The other group though is something a bit more special.



Most of the actual army part was wiped out or sent back to the island. However, what is left down there is my hero. I mentioned before that my hero has thug-like statistics, and I’ve been blessing him with my priest to help him a little bit more. He has essentially been soloing Atlantis’s province defense. Whatever I can do to cause some more damage is fine by me.