Part 50: Turn 41
Turn 41We cast Eyes of God! This is one of the best globals in the game and we'll look at its effects later in the turn.
(RECONSTRUCTION OF TRUE EVENT MESSAGES)
Our first battle this turn is, sigh, Karanaac's pretender coming back from the dead. Again. How many times is this going to happen? I really don't have the forces to spare to fight that one province that's stacked wall-to-wall with rocks calling their god over and over. I also don't have the forces to fight this guy right now either. We'll kill him again soon enough.
We re-storm Karanaac's last fort, and this time it goes without a hitch. Our clowns do actually remember to attack rear this time and the jugglers manage to stay out of the fucking way. There's a bit of a scary moment with that fucking Arcane Menhir on the walls and its astral shield but at the end of the day I took MR+3 on the bless specifically for this reason and it pays off.
The other battle this turn, with the UW squad, goes less well. It starts off how we'd want it, with all 2 of the ladies (given 10 water gems each) casting their elementals.
What I had failed to consider, however, is that just 2 elementals aren't going to be great at holding up 40 reasonably speedy troops.
The wraparound swiftly happens.
And it ends exactly as you'd expect. This was like 30 water gems lol, it might even have worked with 4 of 5 of them instead of just 2! Urgh I'm giving up on the lakes the meagre amount of gold just isn't worth it.
The sitesearching luck is incredible this turn! We find, count them, 3 death sites providing a total of 5 death gems taking our income up to 8. Pretty close to our cap too we maybe could have found this province earlier had I spent more effort on death searching.
Of course there is a downside, which is that one of the death sites has some protection!
We don't really care about one skeleton and immediately summon 5 of our own no problem.
Right with all that of the way it's time to see what Eyes of God has revealed to us. It gives us a view of every single province on the map and, even better, every single site that people have found in those provinces! Let's take stock:
(large copy here)
Of the six candle provinces we have 1, kitfox's ants have 2, and then 3 are still unclaimed. This is a bit of a concern because Kitfox is actually shielding other people's access to Anglia there. He doesn't seem to have very many provinces though and hasn't managed to take either throne next to him. Classic kitfox stuff.
Anglia seems very sprawling and has been much more successful than we have at breaking into the lake. Some pretty large forces on our border too and a good number of citadels.
No real sites of note except that their bottom right throne province has a few cool sites and gives a total of 10 gems a turn!
At the top of the map Chasos seems like they have an okay number of provinces but have 2 thrones and access to a third. Something to watch. No interesting sites that I noticed.
U is...larger than I expected. They've eaten most of Iram (who is not AI yet but it doesn't look good) and still have lots of space to expand into the mantis lands once Iram is fully dead. They've also made a start on the west lake too.
In the circled province at the bottom they also have a very special site, a 20% discount on enchantment rituals. Now I asked around and the enchantment one isn't really that big of a deal - the construction one which we have is one of the best, as is the alteration one which is used for cheaper wishes and the blood one which is used for cheaper blood. What I failed to consider though is that this logic only holds in vanilla and I did not check if there were any U-specific enchantment rituals. Oh well I'm sure this won't come up again.
The mantis lands are about what you'd expect. There's not as many left as it might look because the provinces are quite sparse and there's also no thrones over here at all. A pretty unfortunate start honestly, I used the recommended throne settings on the map but the mantises had access to basically only the underwater one and possibly the south cave one - compared to U, Chasos, and Anglia who are within reach of 3 or 4.
The other thing that Eyes of God gives us is access to all of the score graphs. There's a real choice involved about whether or not you post the graphs when you're in the lead - if you refuse then it's taken as confirmation that you're winning and don't want people to see by how much.
First is the graph of provinces. We're on top here, closely followed by Anglia. Somewhat behind are Chasos and U together, followed by the mantis AI, then ants, then Iram, then undead and Karanaac, then of course Fennoscandia. You can also see the ant's perfectly flat graph.
Forts is a bit less interesting imo. Anglia is on top, then us, then U is, then Chasos, then Ants, Iram, Mantis, undead, and then Karanaac and Fenno are on 0.
Now the income graph is a scary one. Anglia have great scales and lots of provinces so are at least 50% again ahead of anybody else. We're next with lots of provinces but much worse scales. Following that is the rest of the pack. It's worth noting that U has an income penalty of 50% so they show a lot lower on here than is representative.
Again gem income reveals a pretty worrying picture - our site searching has not been as good as it could be due to the war with the mantises so we're significantly behind Anglia. Chasos and U once again tied, then ants, then the mantis AI has more than Iram, then rocks and fenno.
As for research, well, not any better here either. Anglia is, once again, significantly ahead. Next is ants who also have lots of money and forts, then Chasos. Rocks being next just shows how critical it was that I did indeed take them out early - imagine if that curve had continued upwards! Then mantis AI, then us, then U and undead, then poor Iram (this just confirms that they are utterly destroyed and have no chance) and then of course Fenno.
Dominion is not that interesting IMO but Anglia is on top here too.
Army size is a pretty funny one with the effect of U's freespawn global clearly showing up. Those aethernomad national globals are pretty good huh. We see our continual growth, Iram's sharp dip from their fight with U, the ants' sharp dip from that throne attempt, and Anglia's high recent growth which I believe is from all the draconians using summon allies to get more and more draconian troops.
Finally ascension points, which is public anyway, shows us on top with 4 points. Interestingly we can see that Anglia has claimed only 1 of 3 of their thrones.
Anyway the end result of all this is that I post them all except the province one in chat and try to agitate against the clearly on top Anglia. I beseech Kitfox to fight Anglia, to which I get positive noises, and immediately start moving my troops back. Chasos and U also privately say they're not going to fight each other and are going to try and contribute to the anti-british coalition.
I'm a lot less confident about the game now I've seen that we're behind on gold and gem income and significantly behind on research.
As for our orders we move forces back to the border with Anglia in the places that we can do so.
And then we're going to ignore Karanaac's god for a while and move forces so that we can wipe out the first of the mantis AI stacks.
