Part 17: Turn 12

Turn 12

A fairly quiet one this time.

Some giant clowns slaughter some indies again with zero losses, and their reinforcements are 1 turn away so the two forces join up. Eljudnir is still building up a force of wraiths but it's not actually adjacent to the horse-tribe province so they can't steal it from us. Since they didn't attack last turn I start to relax a bit and assume they're going to take the throne - I'll just take it off of them eventually I'm sure. This is absolutely the last indie province to take before I look to get involved in a war but I'm still waffling between fighting Fennoscandia or Karanaac.


U beat Karanaac's cap defenders and is now comfortably sitting there with no sign of Karanaac's god so far. Given the fire/air/earth path and the lack of an upgraded fort I'm assuming it's a Tirwaz of War and we know it's awake due to the incarnate blesses. Probably off expanding somewhere. It's worth noting that if Karanaac had taken one of the rock pretenders they'd be in an incredibly bad situation now with literally no way to kick a force off their cap but the Tirwaz can lead a decent force of boar warriors so it's much better when this happens. You can see that I very intelligently move my scout off the cap instead of staying there to watch but I wanted to see where the god was hiding.


If you want to see what fighting Karanaac is like, this is a good example. This is a rock, it routed long ago and is being slowly chipped down. It isn't ethereal yet but alteration 4 is an early research goal for Karanaac so they're even harder to hit.


Why so slowly? Because everything near it is paralysed due to astral shield and despite being routed it spams poison touch over and over and over again. Any non-immobile mage would have fled and died long ago it seriously feels like half of the strength of Karanaac is that immobile innate casters don't give a shit about morale and don't flee ever. It sucks when mages run away from fights they could have easily won (not foreshadowing anything here).


Anyway U took an okay amount of losses mostly due to the shitty fairies with spears and the heat aura (you can see the black particles above). There must be nothing inside since they broke the fort's walls in 1 turn and I encouraged them to storm before the god turns up to kick them off.



We also discuss the possibility of Karanaac taking the island in the middle of the lake where they'd be untouchable so I have Diana summon up a little undead Black Servant scout who can travel over water. It'll take him a few turns to get there though and this also means we're back at 0 research again this turn! At least I'm only 3 points from evocation 1 and then my next goal is construction level 2 so I can start making items to boost my research. Additionally my first Armless Woman turns up next turn (although they will be immediately sent off site searching so won't research anyway).

I know I don't talk much about events but that's just because I'm getting really fewer than I was expecting with turmoil 3 and luck 3. I absolutely bring up every gold event I get but this turn was just typical little crappy ones, just these two:



My elite amphibious strike force turns around to pick up more guys since I chicken out of actually sending them into the water. I really don't think 30 Atlantean militia would beat 20 Kulullus despite how shitty that kind of UW indie is also. This lake thing really isn't working out how I thought it would.


Since this was a quick turn let's look at another unit, the Strongman! I like these guys and if you didn't have a bless they're okay at bashing up rocks. Not spectacular due to their low MR but still okay. A few dozen of them in a fort makes it pretty hard to crack and they probably punch through knight's heavy armour well while surviving lance charges with their high HP.