Part 78: Turn 66
Turn 66First off we see that U has claimed the Throne Of The Moon which is the lake one up by the old mantis territory. Ever since the disaster of our previous attempt to enter the water I've kept out of it and with the huge numbers of Illearths that U has now I don't think we can contest it now.
Our five mindhunts fire off, three misses and then BAM we get one of the Queens Of Air! Nice! Also the Earl Cardigan, a national hero, just a H2 commander and nothing special.
What's this? A prophet proclamation from Kirkostaculis? Now you might be excused for thinking that I'd forgotten, but actually I have just been saving up research and gems until I could make an Imaginary Prophet! One funny thing about imaginary clowns is that while they have teleport move and can get to any location on the map in just one turn, I don't actually get any commanders that can teleport-move. Magical teleporting with rituals doesn't really help here and so the only way to get teleport gank squads are to gift of reason some imaginary clowns. And if I'm doing that, it'll be difficult to actually bless these clowns in a fight since there's still no teleporting clown priests. Except for one now, Physically Painful To Watch.
The rest of the queens though flew off somewhere and didn't stay to raid or fight, leaving us to finish off the last of the troops as we break back into our cap circle. Anglia seem to be in full retreat mode for now, even those Tarresques didn't enter our territory this turn although that situation will probably change shortly.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Good fucking riddance mantises. This game would have been pretty different if I could have just made peace with the player instead of being effectively forced to entirely murder a powerful AI over the course of half the game.
Jellybean continues to wander around Anglian lands. And they continue to clean up after him.
He's got a LOT of xp at this point the highest of anybody in the game actually, his heroic toughness bringing him up to 125 hp from his original 45 (the larger bonus stacking with heroic abilities is great).
Meanwhile look who showed up again! Blowing up the little pie factory in Karanaac while he's at it. Still though I'm not that bothered I got the screenshot I wanted. At this point he's died so many times he's lost quite a few magic paths and if it weren't for the recoup that the Pretenders Enhanced mod added he'd be utterly useless. Okay I suppose he is pretty useless either way.
Anglia cast Melancholia at Fennoscandia and a bearded lady decides that she's had enough and wandered off. This is a great combo with Dark Skies, or would be if I hadn't been carefully preaching away Anglia's dominion here - they're down to just one candle so our morale isn't hit too bad. Map effects that check morale are really fearsome with Dark Skies and the classic example is seduction which can really devastate in the right (wrong) hands.
An arena coming in 3 months, surely I won't forget THIS time!
The walls down here are breached but I don't really want to fight under enemy morale in dark skies so I'm giving it another turn of preaching just in case.
Our forces are just charging east, time to collect a whole load of provinces! Might even be able to go for Anglia's cap.
Anglia still has some pretty large forces building up around Fennoscandia, we'll probably have to kick them off of it.
Just sieging and preaching. Having a little open-air sermon slash standup routine. Next turn we should be able to storm but there's still the issue of Dark Skies.
Oh this is interesting, Chasos had declared war on U. And there's...no units sieging? Love a bit of glamour. I spoke to Chasos a bit, offered them support, and we debated strategies of fighting U. While there's no open hostilities, U is absolutely a massive concern for me they're just not trying to kill me right now. I should probably try to make peace with Anglia after clearing them out of the lands between me and Fenno.
The current throne count is:
4 - Chasos
4 - U
4 - Anglia
1 - Clowns
And uh, this doesn't look great for us but I'm already about to take 1 of them off of Anglia. What's my path to victory? 7 thrones total are needed. I guess I'd have to take a few off of Anglia, and then U have a few near me. We'll see how the Chasos/U war shakes out but I probably don't need to ever fight Chasos. It would be pretty nice to develop a way to fight for the underwater thrones that's for sure.
