Part 55: Turn 45
Turn 45Welcome to turn 45 of this dominions let's play and we're going to start by reviewing the scripting of every one of our 50 mages. First, sitting in mantis lands, we have--wait what's that? Who's back?
That's right it's the oldest clown of all, Bongo the Great! He's back! He's finally back! Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar, hard at work in Fallen of Coax, successfully created a new type of joke!
Bongo is going to lead the nation of Kirkostaculis to greatness. We will refrain from making use of Evil Clowning for now since our powerful summon sitting around blood hunting would not be very funny at all. The first thing that Bongo is going to do is to kill Karanaac's pretender again, via this province that suffered an indie attack. His clown-forged equipment won't be ready for a few turns yet, which he'll then use to fight off the Brits.
Only one ritual attack this turn, in which I learn that 6 PD is generally NOT enough if they're the shit variety. Fine we'll up it to 10 then.
The other unfortunate thing for me here is that this is not a one-shot attack spell. The ghoul troops and their ghoulish commander stick around and can then move to attack other provinces too. This is getting out of hand! Jaguar warriors of course don't suffice to fend off the attack but the
There's another ritual attack this turn however and it's Weirdo The Unthinkable who swoops over the front lines into Anglian lands! As predicted (and I would really hope so given the amount of gems he has on him) Weirdo effortlessly dispatches a smallish force even driving off the mages too!
Unlike ghouls, it's going to take significantly more effort for Anglia to drive off Weirdo here. He is going to triumphantly move forward into Anglian lands, or we would have except--
Ah, it seems he's needed back home after all. Anglia did not delay any longer and instead went straight for the throat by charging onto my capital. They even followed it up with a cast of Crumble to damage the walls of Kirkostaculis. The falling debris, often lethal to humans, couldn't kill any enlarged clowns (or lizards) of course but it does mean that Anglia will be able to storm next turn.
This is it, this is the battle for Kirkostaculis. If we lose this then I wouldn't say that we've immediately lost the game but we effectively would have. A lost cap is usually time for a player to go AI unless they would be able to take it back very shortly, and if we lose this fight we would not be able to (although of course I would continue to fight until the end for the LP's sake). Accordingly, everybody who can make it is coming home for this one. Even Weirdo is going to abort his raid and return home. It's worth noting that since most of our forces were caught outside of the capital we are going to have to break this siege in order to fight together, we can't let Anglia actually storm. This means that anybody using magical movement to arrive in Kirkostaculis would not actually participate in the fight. If Anglia had not cast Crumble then the walls would have lasted another turn and at least Bongo would have been able to teleport then fight. Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar, being a statue, can't break siege (or storm forts for that matter) and so would only be able to defend Kirkostaculis in the keep storming battle.
Anyway we have about 50 enormous clowns and a smattering of other troops, and then all our researchers are breaking the siege too. Even Esteban (urgh) and Diana, who I didn't think would be able to leave the castle but I suppose somebody is giving her a hand (as it were). Our script is to cast Storm (just in case Anglia doesn't bring their storm staff) and Arrow Fend, then a LOT of Thunder Strikes, skeletons, astral evocations, clown buffs, nature buffs (battlefield-wide reinvigoration with Relief), resistance buffs, and then a lot of casts of ethereality too. Even Heat From Hell which will fatigue anybody not hit by the fire resistance buffs. Esteban is not allowed to join the communion and so will be spamming Shadow Blast, a death evocation. I just hope he doesn't do too much friendly fire because that will lead to protests from the affected clown and then a bunch of whining from Esteban about how it was just a joke and everybody is so sensitive these days and he didn't mean to murder a colleague. "I'm sorry you couldn't handle it" he might say. Nobody wants that.
Anglian forces do also cut off another source of potential reinforcements by sieging our cave throne that used to be Fennoscandia's, many turns ago. It's not a huge force and should we win in Kirkostaculis then we'll probably be able to clean it up without massive amounts of difficulty. Should we lose in Kirkostaculis, well, we'd have bigger problems anyway.
In other, less pressing, news we do indeed kill all the mantises sitting on our other cave throne over on the boring side of the world.
Just look at all these clowns that could be instead defending their capital!
These battles are always over incredibly quickly with the mantis frontline getting stunned by several thunder strikes and then getting just mulched by the power of clowns in turmoil. Even the small ones have 26 strength and 3 attacks!
Now triumphant, the clown force here mostly moves towards the mantis capital to end the bug threat once and for all, while a few mages go to clear up some ghouls. Unfortunately they would not be able to get to Kirkostaculis in time and the sooner the bugs are cleaned up the sooner we can really start taking land from Anglia.
The jousting tournament finished, since we were just testing it the first time and didn't sink any extra resources into it. We got a jousting champion, who is sadly no Emerald Empaler, and he'll join Bongo.
We hit construction 6 this turn which is a massive milestone. Our mages (and god) gathered in the Steel Ovens immediately start making use of this by forging astral boosting hats, more research boosting items, water boosting bracers, and even the extremely expensive all-magic-boosting Ring of Wizardry! All in all the Steel Ovens probably "generated" us 20-30 gems this turn which demonstrates why it's one of the best sites in the game.
Finally we get to see U take a throne. Due to the way that U works there's a few big spells cast at the start of the battle including Solar Eclipse (causing the battle to take place in the dark), and Echoes of Mu.
The darkness, fine, it's good vs humans but our bless has low light vision so I'm not too worried about that. Echoes of Mu though, autocast by U's pretender, is something else. It blesses all units on the battlefield, so the Dancers of the Foot get a significant power boost and are almost as strong as clowns!
When I said all units though, I mean ALL units. Even nonsacreds. It turns a worthless freespawn foot into a troop that's probably better than most generic human infantry. It's unarmoured, but will never rout and has 6 attacks a square.
Additionally there's also 14 Sophatos here too. We know that at least one is the solar eclipse caster but most of the rest spam Farstrike. This spell has a good range and deals 17 damage, plus strength.
How much strength do these mages have? They have 30. These 15+ mages will be slamming 50ish damage hits into enemies across the battlefield from the very first turn. Fuck. I'm just glad U doesn't have access to any flyers, and that they can only do this when their one pretender is present.
Anyway U are most certainly not our problem right now because we've got a show to put on in the centre of Kirkostaculis! One night only, special guest performers from Anglia. It'll be the performance of our lives!