Part 63: Turn 55: The Power Of Fire

The two major Fire boosters. One real advantage of having these is that I can now forge my own, if necessary. Also, I can now summon the Kings of Elemental Fire, although I'm too low on fire gems to do so.

Right now my supercombatant chassis production vastly outstrips my supercombatant gear production. There's not a lot I can do about that, besides conquering more territory and getting more gem income.



Unfortunately, the rock-bottom gem incomes of pretty much everyone besides me means that I won't even get a lot of gems if I do so. I'm just sorta stuck with crappy gem income, until I decide to spend a huge pile of gems on searching other nations' territories.





I guess that sort of makes up for the 1000 gold windfalls.

The temple loss isn't major. I'll just have to build another one. Everything else, well, it's just a bit of money. I'll live.

A sage gets jumped by a Horror and dies instantly.

Runia is a Mictlan province. I should say "was" a Mictlan province, as the attacking barbarians easily win.



Barathrus punches the shit out of a bunch of werewolves.




He's rewarded by resources and gems. This is the best game ever.



Midgard attacks Vlecz again, but is defeated handily, although I do lose an elephant.

In Chilad, another group of Barbarians take a territory from Midgard. Everyone hates barbarians today.

Banded Hills, that western fort of C'tis's. A tiny C'tis force drives off Gath's province defense again. Gath is really having no luck keeping that territory.

In Behemoth's Rest, north of Sermioc, we're attacked by T'ien Ch'i and they actually conquer our territory. Sigh. We'll have to take it back soon.

Troll Peaks, the empty province our scout found, goes down without a fight.




Now that looks like a nice war brewing.



Ulm's even got one of their Bane Lord thugs involved.

The battle starts with a huge barrage of crossbow bolts from Ulm's Rangers, doing heavy damage to Jomon's Ashigaru spearmen. Jomon retaliates with a barrage from their Archers, peppering Jomon's rangers and killing several.



Ulm's Black Templar cavalry attempts to flank Jomon. The northern cavalry is swiftly rebuffed, but the southern cavalry runs right past Jomon's Cave Drake wall and heads for the soft underbelly of their archers.



Jomon's wall of cave drakes turns to assist with the Black Templar cavalry, but they do so just as the Bane Lord reaches them.



Between the Bane Lord's Shadow Brand, Ulm's relentless crossbow barrage, and the Black Templars themselves, Jomon's archers start taking heavy losses. The Cave Drakes are eating Paralyze spells from Jomon, their extremely low Magic Resistance not doing anything to help. (Paralyzed creatures are, of course, shown in grayscale.)



The Black Templars are finally cut down and the troops return to their tasks, but at great cost. The Bane Lord is deep inside the Archer forces by now. A mere three Cave Drakes are still able to fight, with five paralyzed Cave Lords scattering the battlefield, easy prey for any fighter with a sharp sword - many of which are arriving.

One of the Jomon mages casts Bonds of Fire to try stopping the Bane Lord, but the undead commander breaks out easily. The Jomon archers attempt to slash him with their katanas, but between the Bane Lord's luck and ethereality, few hit - and his Vine Shield penalizes all who try, tying them up in cords of living wood.



The few surviving non-paralyzed non-entangled Jomon forces flee. Ulm's troops annihilate those who remain, taking several turns to tear through the Cave Drake's thick armor.

This could have gone a lot better for Ulm.



MEANWHILE, UNDERWATER

Atlantis's PD is no match for my curiously aquatic infantry.



We get gems out of the new province.

Deep Forest is a small, thoroughly uninteresting AI skirmish.





Not surprising that Boddern Weald is repairing - we only have a scout there.



Clockwise, again.

I'm surprised at getting Troll Peaks, but I toss some money into province defense. This actually leaves me adjacent to Jomon - I'm now dividing Midgard and C'tis - but I'm just going to assume they're not interested in fighting me, as they're having enough trouble with Ulm.

South, I keep assaulting Yldmyre. I'm still surprised they haven't driven me off.

I have a tough decision to make with Barathrus. Part of me wants him to head east, but Mictlan just captured their castle and may be heading north. I don't feel a pressing need to go to war with Mictlan - I'm already fighting wars on four fronts against four different AI nations, I don't need to add a human nation into there.

Instead, I send Barathrus to Robber Home, in an attempt to start the siege of that castle. He meets up with the infantry in the process. He'll go north and attempt to clean out more of Midgard's provinces.



Kumlakh moves to enter combat.

Most of this equipment should look familiar. I've also given him that expensive Sickle we got from C'tis. Kumlakh will use death magic as part of his standard combat magic, and he'll be able to refill his own death gems in the field. And probably generate quite a nice excess that I can ship back home. He's quite beefy and durable and should have no trouble surviving, even with the somewhat reduced offensive power that he'll have with that Sickle.

Right now, he's moving to the north pond, as that's actually easier than moving through trees. From there, I can decide which province to move into.

Also in Arco, we're finally casting Gift of Reason on our Tartarian Cyclops. We should have the gear to equip him and send him out next turn. Additionally, Mrs. Butterworth is casting another Tartarian Gate with some spare Death gems.

All the way down near Agartha, I move to recapture that Barbarian province.

North of Agartha, my army is moving to finally claim Kishia. I could head north and reclaim Behemoth's Rest, but I'd really rather take care of the Kishia annoyance first. I'll push back up north with this army to consolidate my territory.

Azimar is stormed by most of my army. My siege-fodder moves north to Boddern Weald. They'll be joined next turn by my actual military forces.

My troops moving back from the peninsula keep going south, ready to capture the remnants of T'ien Ch'i. I meet them with a single Mystic waiting in T'ien Ch'i, loaded up with Astral gems and Air gems. My underwater squad stays underwater. I brought a Mystic and a Priest solely so I could build a Temple and Lab, and I do so. Next turn the Mystic will summon a Queen of Elemental Water, and the turn after she'll start blowing the shit out of things.

We're forging pretty much an entire set of supercombatant gear.

I recruit a huge number of slingers in Linshire and Arco. It's clear I'm about to do a shitload of sieging and I need siege fodder. Daidalos is moved up further to the front lines. I pull out my otherwise-standard pile of mystics and hypaspists.



Again, a lot of those inexplicable arrows are priests. I'm still pulling in a huge amount of money, although I burned a ton on slingers.

Next: Consolidation and leverage.