Part 43: Turn 38: I'm Pretty Sure I've Used The Phrase "Coming Storm" Already, So I'm Not Going To Use It Again

so much sitesearching





Hey, Air gems! I don't need those in bulk, but once I get my Faery Queens up I'll be using a steady supply of them. No complaints there.



We're not done with the C'tis gifts. In many ways, this is even more valuable than the lanterns.



The Sceptre is a valuable item that requires Construction 8 to forge. Note the Death Magic Bonus 3. Yeah. That is a lot of Death Magic. Construction 8 items are known as Artifacts. There can only be one of each in existence at a time, and their effects tend to be ridiculously strong.

We can't make this Sceptre, and we won't be able to for a while - but we can certainly use it. Oh, can we use it.

. . . Okay, at the moment, we can't use it. But we will be able to - I have serious long-term plans for it.




Most of the time, Mind Hunt is dangerous enough to use that you stop using it after the enemy starts defending. Losing powerful mages is a hell of a cost. Arco doesn't do that. Hey let's check up on our Sibyls.



Mellia and Hippodameia up there used to be feebleminded. One turn of Priestess healing and they're not. Back into the fray! (From range, with weird mind-shattering magic attacks.)




Nothing terribly notable. More gems is always appreciated, of course.

War reports. We'll keep this brief, because nothing of real interest happened.

Tenvir: Half of Midgard's army attacks a commanderless squad of C'tis.

Urd: More of Midgard's army flattens C'tis PD.

Behemoth's Rest: My scout manages to flee from T'ien Ch'i PD. No units, it looks like.

Mapito Cliffs: The only vaguely interesting fight, Midgard attacks C'tis with a somewhat underpowered group, and loses. But mostly it's just watching a few units surrounded by lots of ineffective lizards with pokey sticks. Oh, here, have a screenshot anyway.



There's some Orb Lightning spam too, but it's not enough to fight off C'tis's PD and militia. Seriously, dude, you just lost to PD and Militia. What the fuck.

A scout gets unearthed in Behemoth's Rest and flees. We find a T'ien Ch'i scout in Terrym and kill him.



And Abysia's out of the game.



Midgard is hitting C'tis and Gath pretty damn hard. They're about to end up adjacent to me, so I reinforce my border with more PD. Yeah, PD is useless, but the AI pays a surprising amount of attention to it and you can often funnel AI troops in a desired direction by careful placement of PD. I'd love to keep Midgard out of my hair here, and I can pay a little money to do it.

Also, I have to build it this turn for it to matter. All data transfer in this game takes an extra turn, so if I expect Midgard to be adjacent to me next turn - and they very well might end up so - I need to deal with it now.



I look through all my mages to see who's picked up horror marks. Once they do, a Horror isn't far behind, and they'll just get splattered. I'd really rather not lose one of my Lanterns in the process, so I'm going to be pulling Lanterns off everyone who's got a Horror Mark, and then either having those troops research or sending them up to the front lines to die.

This is the Worst Mystic Ever that I pointed out a while back, and now he's horror marked. I actually feel slightly guilty about this. I've also got a marked Priestess. She'll just die eventually. I send them both up the front line, since it'll take them a bit to get eaten by Horrors and I may as well do something useful with them. This leaves me with an absolute shitload of Lightless Lanterns. They get dumped on my no-longer-healing capital Priestesses, as well as Mystics across my entire empire. I can eventually expect to lose a mage or two per turn to Horrors, but it's worth it for the incredible RP boost.

(Future Me: Yeah, "a mage or two per turn" just doesn't happen. It's like . . . a mage every ten turns. Maybe.)

We're actually only doing one Mind Hunt this turn - we need the other Crystal Coin to forge the Ring of Sorcery. 30 Astral Gems, and that's after our Hammer discount. Ouch. We're doing that on a Sibyl, and we have a second Sibyl doing Clams, leaving Mrs. Butterworth to Research. (We have the gems for the second Clam, but I refuse to do Clams without a Hammer, and as mentioned, both Hammers are occupied.)

And we're attacking.

Our Mystic armada is no longer needed to forge and site-search. Well, I'd like to keep them site-searching, but I can't really justify it - we've burned through most of our gem reserve and we don't have much crafting that we need to do. Instead, we're moving our army from Sermioc up to Black Alps, where their army is. Now, they do have a pretty hefty army, but I think we'll beat in the same way that we've been beating it so far. There's a chance it's Patrolling (probably to catch that Monster Boar) and if so, we'll just fight them. If not, we'll occupy the castle. Either way: good enough.

I'll admit I'm a bit worried about this fight, as they do have about 120 units there and are building up magical power. But we've still got that same deadly communion, and there's no reason to believe it will work any worse than it did before.



My diseased scout somehow survived, so I suicide him again on a different province. I'm trying to pick that province back up from Barbarians. Most of the rest is just logistics, aside from, obviously, the Big Attack.

I'm researching at 399 RP. Of course, that will continue to go up as I recruit more, and once my Fire sitesearching is done, I'll be mass-producing Lanterns. 1800 RP left.

Next: Inexorable push.