Part 79: Turn 68: Hammer of Pastry

I end up popping open the last turn file just to figure out who was targeting what province. Hippodameia and Arene were targeting Melma, the other three were targeting Dagor. Last turn's battle report for Dagor tells me that there were 2 commanders involved in the fight, so presumably Atlantis recruited another one and is now commanderless. Excellent - his underwater army is done for. That's pretty much the end of our war there. We've got a little cleanup to do, but only cleanup.



We're really finding a surprising number of Air sites. This is just northwest of Arco, one of the very first provinces we conquered so many turns ago.




Not a lot of events, but obviously there is a shitload of fighting.



In Melma, C'tis has been frantically recruiting more units. It's absolutely futile because they're dead - for example, there is almost no way for them to recruit mages or priests anymore - but they're the AI and they never give up. My Hoplites storm them without too much trouble and that's the end of that.






Stone Grave Mountains, east of Robber Home.

I'm worried about these battles in general just because I'm not quite sure whether the fights are going to work. This is the most questionable of all of them - I'm going in with a smaller communion and I'm not sieging a castle.



Nevertheless, the battle starts off roughly as intended. That's Pillar of Fire there. Kaboom.



Our forces meet and clash, with the expected collateral damage from Gifts.





Even with Warriors of Muspelheim up, the blessed Jaguar Warriors prove quite dangerous. They can't compete against the magical firepower, however, and they die with acceptable losses.



Vician Forest, the castle just south of Silver Fangs. I'm actually quite surprised that I'm fighting Jaguar Warriors in Vician Forest. This means that they were explicitly Patrolling, which . . . well, which I wasn't expecting. On the other hand, Polypoites is here, and that kind of outgoing damage should be easily enough to take care of them, even with the smallest communion I have going.



The battle is, shall we say, rather flashy.

Polypoites eats the initial wave of jaguars, but gets torn down from 150 HP to 70 HP in a single round. A single badly-placed Gift of Heaven will instakill him.



Luckily for me, the Jaguar Warriors lose interest in him to attack the infantry, while his Soul Vortex quickly heals him up to full.




Also acceptable.

Keep in mind that I'm losing Hoplites, a unit that costs 11 gold. Mictlan is losing Jaguar Warriors, a unit that costs 25 gold. Gold-wise I came out ahead in that battle by a factor of nine, and Mictlan's got less than half my income to begin with.



Unfortunately, thanks to that heavy amount of damage early on, Polypoites has picked up a second affliction. His Attack and Defense were already low and now they're lower. I think he may need to head back home and heal up. Not this turn though, 'cause he's decided to Pillage.

I admit that I find this more acceptable than usual.





Embaar cheerfully flattens Fenatice.




And a scout manages to snag Binophe. Now that's a nice number of Air gems.

Storm Woods: Ulm beats down Mictlan's province defense, sieges a castle.

Ogh Woods: Ulm beats down Mictlan's province defense, sieges a castle.

I'm actually kind of confused what Ulm is even doing in Storn Woods. It's completely surrounded by Mictlan territory. How did they get there?



Ulm attacks The Mirks, and is rebuffed, but with some Mictlan casualties.



Then Jomon attacks The Mirks, and . . . well actually that's a pretty well-aimed Flame Bolt, good shot.



In Sonria we get to see this sexy beast. His crotch is a face.



He's not scary as such, but he's worrying. This dude could quite easily annoy me via Unrest. Conveniently, he's got no Astral and a somewhat low Magic Resistance. I don't know if I can actually punch through that MR, but it's certainly worth a shot. I invest ten Astral Gems in a series of Mind Hunts.



In Gipha, Barathrus takes on a Jomon force and a bunch of Jomon mages. I'm pretty sure he does so without taking any damage.



He's then immediately attacked by a group of Ronin, presumably from a random event that Jomon got. Needless to say it is not exactly a problem.

Blue Waters: Thalassa clears out some PD.

Ocean of Despair: A bunch of shamblers slay a pair of Forgiving Fathers.

Vath: Mictlan claims Midgard's castle effortlessly.

Midgard's down to two "provinces" now - the castle that I'm sieging, and a small group of birds sieging a Gath castle. I'm actually curious whether they'll die when I take my castle, or if Gath will have to clear the birds out first.

I lose three scouts to province defense.



I get another of these weird messages, but he's still there, so . . . go figure?





Nice variety pack.



Barathrus has cleared out Jomon entirely - the only Jomon provinces left are that fort in the little culdesac, and a single uninteresting province next to Mictlan. Barathrus heads south to a lab. I may outfit him as a caster and try to Earthquake Mictlan's Jaguar Warriors to death.

Or just have him stomp in and try to kill them all. Compared to Polypoites, he's got substantially higher . . . well . . . everything.

I'd love to siege Silver Fangs, but I'm not willing to risk my Slinger armada. I would siege with Philetor, who just arrived, but Philetor is busy.



Yeah, that's . . . that's nice, Philetor. You just keep on doing that. I can wait.

Polypoites is busy pillaging Vician Forest and there's not a lot I can do about that. However, I can - and do - move the Vician Forest squad east to capture more Mictlan territory. I'll leave a scout to siege their castle. Maybe they'll break out, maybe they won't, but I want to cripple his gold and gem income right the fuck now. Along with Polypoites, I leave a single scout to maintain the siege.

I also move Daidalos south to help with sieging, but set him to auto-retreat.

The squad from Stone Grave Mountains goes south to siege Midgard's capital (from Mictlan, remember.)

The armada in Vlecz gets geared up and ordered up. Then I realize I somehow forgot to bring astral gems.



That's actually crucial for that army, so . . . I guess we're waiting another turn! Argh.

(Future Me: I figure out what happened next turn. I built a Lab here because, hey, why not. At the beginning of each turn I use the global gem controls to collect all Astral gems. That pulled all the gems out of this army. I could just put them back, except I entirely forgot I built that lab. Again: not all that smart.)

For sheer comedy's sake, though, this means I can join another forty mages or so in. We do so. We'll definitely be bifurcating this group very soon.

It also means we can bring a pile of Earth Gems in. Now, that's actually useful - judging from the reports in the fights I had, I'm still taking significant damage from those jaguar warriors. Earth Gems will let me cast this handy spell:



which, along with Warriors of Muspelheim, will leave my entire army flame-immune and far, far more durable than before.

(Future Me: It's been pointed out in the thread that Warriors of Muspelheim and Army of Gold don't stack, at least in terms of flame resistance. That explains why the flame resistance didn't stack. Sigh. Good ol' Dom3. On the other hand, we do get the rather excellent protection of Army of Gold, and against all the light hits of those werejaguars, that will still come in handy. I don't think Mictlan has any Air to speak of, so at least I'm not vulnerable to Army of Gold's big weakness.)

I'm trying a cute little strategy to force Mictlan to fight a multi-front war. Phyleides jumps down to the southeast corner of the map with Cloud Trapeze, ready to set up a fort behind Mictlan's front lines. She'll be met there by a single Sibyl, via Teleport, to build a lab. Then I'll start Gate Stone'ing armies in.

Melma Liberation Squad returns to Agartha.

mage road mage road mage road

I'm also doing a bit of a Priest Road up into C'tis and Jomon territory. Now that I have an excess of money, I'd like to get my Productivity dominion up there to increase my Hoplite production.

The Shamblers in Ocean of Plenty swap location with Thalassa. Thalassa is preparing to finish off Atlantis's army, and the Shamblers can start sieging Atlantis's castle. North in the ocean, I'm moving everything east to grab that last northeastern province.

I'm pretty sure that Man has cracked Atlantis this turn. In theory, they'll be storming the castle next turn.

Finally, we've got enough gems to summon a Queen of Elemental Air. To be quite honest I've looked over their stats and I'm not sure I have any use for them. Nevertheless, we're summoning one, just because getting access to stronger air magic seems like not a bad use of some gems.

Next: In which I try to move reinforcements up yet again.