Part 25: Turn 18

Turn 18

Anglia's invasion of Fennoscandia started this turn, they have a large force sitting on a fort in the cap circle. 40 units might not seem like a lot but 40 units in which the gun teams outnumber the infantry certainly is. Apparently they're also launching an invasion through the east side of the caves. Fennoscandia informs me also that they're tussling with the mantises in the west side of the caves (south of Karanaac) and re-affirms that they'll give me all their stuff if they die.


As I promised to Fennoscandia, my force on their borders moves off to take the large candle so we can reach Fennoscandia. You'll notice, however, a second large force moving up to Fennoscandia borders and those guys I did not make any promises about. I'm worried that Fenno is going to instantly fold to Anglia and mantises and I'm keen to snap up a few provinces.


This is the candle province that we're moving into. 40 cave trolls would be pretty scary to a human sized force but I'm confident that my clowns will walk all over them. This province has a lot of connections to Karanaac, the cave system, and the other candles so it's a very important crossroads.


Our forces are 33 enormous clowns, 29 regular clowns, 3 first clowns, 1 thirteenth clown, and 1 armless woman. I don't really have too much magic at this point so the scripting is almost all buffing the troops who will wait a few turns and then charge in. After that the mages will go off script and spam the evocation 1 spells and the armless woman might make a few skeletons. In particular I made sure to take some of the astral 2 mages so I could potentially magic duel the rocks but I don't have the research or the pearls so that's probably not going to happen unless we get in some kind of long siege situation. This is almost all of the mages and troops I've been recruiting to date - I'm not taking any chances with Karanaac.



In the north west, U took the throne that I passed over. I guess they have probably stopped sending troops to Karanaac now? That doesn't bode well, and nor do the absolute hellscales that U apparently has. They must have had an incarnate portion to the bless in addition to just 10 strength, I wonder what it was? Quickness would be pretty funny, blood vengeance would be hilarious. U's pretender is awake and it's worth noting that this is the pretender (and late game summon also) whose gimmick is that he blesses every friendly unit in a fight, even non sacreds. I don't know of any other such effect in the game that does this, and it turns the feet from comical jokes to pretty painful ones.


Finally let's go to the next of the circus animals that I never recruit, the noble elephant. Elephant strategy is actually pretty complicated and several dominions youtubers, including our own Monkee, have done videos on the topic. In short they can walk all over (literally) most indies and are great expanders but they have terrible morale and you have to plan their inevitable retreat such that they don't walk all over your troops too. However I have hellblessed giant clowns and so don't need them to expand.