Part 19: Turn 14
Turn 14First off we finally hit our first level of research! Evocation 1 gives our 1st and 13th clowns the ability to actually do something in combat once everybody is buffed, with Fire Darts, Geyser, Water Strike, or Star Fires. None of them are too impactful right now but they do help. Next up as I've said before is construction 2 for the research boosting items.
U cast a global enchantment! In traditional Aethernomad fashion it requires zero research and instead 60 gems which is really a very large amount this early in the game (even if U does get 5/turn). They must have alchemised every other kind of gem they had at a pretty inefficient rate. The aptly named Song Of The Palm And The Foot makes a whole bunch of feet and arms constantly appear in their dominion, and summons a cool dude immediately and then again occasionally thereafter but I'm not sure about the exact rate.
This is an Autoktonios and is a great big immortal innate caster E1 thug. These are really powerful especially once they cast ironskin and have five attacks! All are magic and two cast shatter on hit for anti-rock duties, two are 2x vs magic beings and fatigue enemy sacreds on hit, and the last one is your standard kick (it's not as good as clown kicks). Plus they'll be casting fists of earth every round probably. Incredible thugs with just a little research and never dying means you can throw them at enemies to whittle them down. It really sucks when they get Soul Slayed though so you just have to avoid fighting astral nations like, e.g., rocks or clowns.
We took the horse tribe province with no problems although the unicyclists keep running (wheeling) on ahead and we're getting pretty short on them now.
Eljudnir decided to attack the throne next to them this turn, the one with 200 barbarians on, and they did it with just 66 wraiths.
Looks scary right? I'm not sure how many clowns I would need and it'd be pretty much impossible for the rocks but between the really high defense (17 in the cold), the lifedrain attacks, and the reanimate on kill, the undead won very handily.
The extra kills the barbs got are from having to put down the skeletons of their friends and there really was a sizeable amount of them by the end. I'm just glad they don't stick around after the battle.
Other events are a plague spreading and finding a bird beautiful feathers that we immediately turn into a couple of gems. Also a special clown event! This was in the province next to the lake that all our atlantean militia had just walked into.
The locals are apparently not too happy about it though or maybe somebody just took it a bit too far because the same province was then immediately attacked by a rogue band of Chasos bandits. Imagine my delight when I found that including LA Chasos in the game unlocked these cool fun events for everybody! Some of them are really really bad but this one is still annoying and doesn't care about your luck scales.
Those commanders are actually pretty nasty. They have Halt Heretic which is basically awe against sacreds only but that's not too bad, the real kicker is their sword.
Just look at this thing! This will absolutely fuck up mages if they're unlucky enough to get near this guy, I'm staying well away until I have an overwhelming force. Just imagine if your elite thug walking to enemy lands got jumped by three Frenzied Champions with their 15 attack and 19 defense and feeblemind on hit. Not that that'll ever happen to me of course you'd have to be really unlucky.
So much for that underwater squad. The commander died retreating too so I guess we have to start from scratch.
In happier news we got another hero this turn! Esteban is the last tragic clown and for good reasons. He does make a nice boost to our research and can site search slightly better than the Armless Women however since I'm playing Kirkostaculis with a clown build I feel obliged to exclude him. Perhaps I'll see if I can find him a suitably tragic end.
Our scout that we sent north east actually had left Anglian lands without me noticing and met Myrmecos the ant nation! I'll do a post about them but they're a very solid nation with good troops as well as a large number of earth and astral mages. A very cool nation, I strongly considered them for the mod game after this one. Myrmecos is being played by Kitfox, a long time player who is legendary for being passive and maxing out on province defense.
Sadly our scout got to experience this in action because as well as the typical 25 PD you get for free in your cap, there was a whole bunch of patrolling troops. Why were these troops patrolling on the cap instead of being out expanding? Kitfox!
You can also see our first glaring mod bug! The nation's PD leader was given an invalid ID and so becomes the "default" dominions unit. It looks like a pretender chassis but it's actually pretty weak and I am very glad that Kitfox did not get bugged god PD. FWIW I did check and this is a bug in the underlying mod and not in the process I used to mingle all the different mods together.
Now that we know that U isn't going to be beating Karanaac any time soon it's time to move forces south and take it for them. Karanaac really are an incredible pain to deal with if they get going so I'm keen to make sure that doesn't happen. It's a bit worrying that Fennoscandia probably has enchantment 4 and Foul Vapours online now but we'll just have to bury them in enormous clowns when we eventually fight them. On the way we head into that province I was worried about before with 60 dog people in. I might lose a few clowns here but I'm pretty much guaranteed to take it now. I probably should try for this throne too honestly it doesn't look too bad.
