Part 81: Turn 69
Turn 69Chasos did indeed go AI, and without even having the decency to send us all their gems. Rude. This means we have a really really big problem. Here's the map of the world, with thrones and rough borders marked. U has five thrones as-is now, needing only two more to win. There's: two in the now AI and utterly crushed Chasos lands, one of which is pretty close to U's border. There's the underwater one in the east lake that they're contesting with Anglia. There's the karanaac cave throne which is adjacent to their big candle and the west lake. Finally there's even the furthest east Anglian throne which they could get to via the far-east candle if they really wanted to.
In short U has lots of thrones and quite a few more in reach. They're in imminent danger of winning the game in just a few turns. I contact Anglia and agree that there's no point us fighting any more. We reach a deal where we keep the current provinces and award sieged provinces to the sieger. This means that the two cave sieges go to us including the karanaac cave throne, and Anglia gets Fennoscandia back which I do not care at all about. Once again Kitfox's candle fort is right in the fucking way (chat below is slightly abbreviated). I also inform U that the time has finally come which presumably they've been preparing for over the last 10+ turns or so.
quote:
[22:22] gonadic io: hello I come to you with peace offerings
[22:22] atelier: what up
[22:22] gonadic io: Chaosos just went AI and U currently has 5 thrones and there's 2 nearby in the now AI chaosos
[22:22] gonadic io: cata in 10 turns
[22:23] atelier: hah, fun time
[22:23] gonadic io: so the time has come for you to play kingmaker
[22:23] gonadic io: will you fight U with me, or will you fight me with U?
[22:24] atelier: honestly i might just ai, since there's 0 chance i can do anything to win myself
[22:24] atelier: thrones are just a little bit unbalanced in distribution
[22:26] gonadic io: I'm a bit annoyed chaosos went AI with like a full quarter of the map
[22:26] gonadic io: didn't even try to dispel eyes
[22:28] gonadic io: but basically I'm not going to move into your lands at all
[22:28] gonadic io: whether you AI or not
[22:29] atelier: yeah i have no candle access even with U's advance
[22:30] gonadic io: you'd have to go over kitfox's candle
[22:30] gonadic io: U currently can win without fighting either of us
[22:32] gonadic io: if only you had more queens of elemental air to raid with
[22:32] gonadic io: (sorry)
[22:32] atelier: for pride alone i have to take fenno again
[22:32] gonadic io: okay
[22:33] gonadic io: I will take 2 and 18
[22:33] gonadic io: for obvious reasons
[22:34] atelier: yeah, same reason im taking feno
[22:34] gonadic io: hmm thinking about a clown evacuation plan
Since Anglia can storm Fennoscandia this turn it's time to get everybody out of there. Because of our previous cast of Gateway back to the cap there's no troops, only mages. Luckily all of the armless women have stealth so can just walk out (I mean what are Anglia going to do, lay a hand on them?) and the rest are all either air or astral mages so they can also teleport out. All the rest that is, except one. The one mage we have here that is neither an air nor astral mage.
If this isn't a tragic end for Esteban, on turn 69 at that, I don't know what is.
What else happened this turn? Earth elemental turns up in Fennoscandia again and manages to dodge a clown.
Queen of elemental air dodged 5 mind hunts, but turns out that's actually a good thing since they're now our allies against U.
Wait what? This was Anglian ghouls when we gave the orders to move in. Did the Chasos AI really fire off birds at a random stack half way across the map? God I hate fighting AIs so much.
Oh well, they're going to help take and then fortify this throne. It's much too accessible to U for comfort. I still don't storm this turn because I failed to notice that Eyes of God actually overwrote Dark Skies but I probably should have.
Our forces successfully take some Fennoscandia border provinces.
Only to turn right back around now.
Right in the cave south of Fenno/Anglia we're storming that now mostly empty fort, to free up our god. We've got, as usual, a nicely large stack of clowns (this time mostly small ones) and a fair few mages.
Anglia has the usual wall defenders and then...oh. That's not empty at all. That's quite a few mages in fact.
It starts off in a way we've seen plenty of times before with a the first volley of bullets arriving, then arrow fend and other buffs going up.
The usual mincegrinder happens at the gate but unfortunately the small clowns reach it first and prevent the enormous ones from being able to do anything.
The small clowns are still VERY killy of course especially when backed up with thunderstrikes.
But what's this? The gate defenders are all dead but the clowns are still just standing around in the middle here getting shot. Even worse they then head towards the men on the walls instead of the squishy human mages just standing around!
Anglia also casts Rain of Stones before having their mages buff their own protection. Clowns have blunt resistance sure but they also have vanishingly low prot and I did not adequately script enough slapstick comedy to provide protection with the invulnerability.
Eventually a few too many clowns get bonked on the head and they decide they've had enough. This is quite honestly the worst defeat we've had in a while, and it was so winnable too! At least no clown mages died, and Anglia isn't going to prevent us from trying a second time, but fuck. AND OUR GOD IS STILL FUCKING STUCK THERE!!!
Our retreats go well and all those troops immediately start the march of shame back to actually finish the job.
We've got some more units, previously on their way to Anglia, that are heading over to the large border that we share with U. We're actually pretty close to at least one throne and even their cap on this side.
The other place where we share a border with U is up in mantis lands and there's no thrones over here so I'm not expecting it to be a massive war front but since we have troops and mages on this side it's still worth sending them up.
Time to once again squash Burning Man. This is what the 4th? 5th? time? Sucks to be him.
I don't usually bother showing events with it's just a few gems or whatever but I still love this one so much. Even in the midst of all this chaos (and Chasos) we still find the time to rip off a random merchant.
Even though I knew about this one in advance I still somehow forget to send anybody, incredibly shamefully. I was waffling about sending my prophet but presumably there's going to be conj 9 summons or pretender mages or whatever and I have too much else to deal with to bother with it.
Also since we don't have any dominion in U's lands there's not even much point casting Dark Skies. Chasos are still hogging a bunch of the global slots, for all the good it did them.
