Part 56: Turn 46

Turn 46

This is the battle for Kirkostaculis, our one chance to protect our homeland from the perfidious English!

Oh. I guess they dipped. Well that's fine we have assembled the army now anyway so we can chase after them.

Let's see what actually happened then. First off a few more ghoul attacks on the Clown/Anglia border.


Atlantean militia continue to be total dog shit while normal PD wipes away a weakened ghoul force without much issue.

We, in turn, continue to use our clown mages to take back our provinces. It's at this stage of the game that our mages are really showing us how good having air/astral/water paths are. Almost every clown is a potential minor thug (even with no gear) that could take out a few dozen militia/ghouls and it lets us be pretty flexible.


As for what Anglia's force actually did, it split into 2 parts. The flyers jumped 2 provinces north while the main army went 1 province north onto the lizard province. There's still 11 cap-only mages there, probably about a quarter of Anglia's total I'd assume, and the actual number of screening troops are starting to look a little thin on the ground.



We're just going to chase after them straight away. This turns our research back into total garbage since the ONLY mage staying on hand (as it were) in the cap is Diana but I think it's critical that we kill this main army so that we can commit most of our forces into Anglia's lands. Of course, losing this force would be catastrophic and probably spell our doom just as much as losing the cap itself would.


In fact so many of our mages are marching to war that the owl quills that we've been making since the beginning of the game have nobody to go onto, we have nearly 20 sitting useless.


It also turns out that past Gonadic IO decided to resubmit the previous turn at the last minute and didn't save any record of what they changed it to. What a dick. One thing that changed was that Weirdo here didn't run home in defence of Kirkostaculis at all and instead, uh, I'm not really sure. Preached? They didn't move, they didn't search, I'm not sure what they did. Why would you have changed this, past me? Maybe it was a misclick. Anyway it worked out for the better because it means that Weirdo can actually keep heading into enemy lands while Nudge the Clown Paramount there can continue to take back ghouled provinces. Weirdo is, as I've said before, really quite powerful and costly and should be more than a match for anything except a main battle army or a counter-thug from Anglia.


The other thing that apparently I changed was that our besieged force in the Fennoscandian cave throne decided to break out instead of just staying put. The sieging force wasn't that big and I must have noticed that there were actually a decent number of clowns and minor mages there. Plus I have low-light vision on my bless and Anglia doesn't.

It starts off looking good, everybody communions together and then Lemondrop the First Clown uses that power boost to first bless everybody on the battle and then cast Arrow Fend and Thunder Ward while the armless women spammed Horde of Skeletons to try and soak up shots.


Unfortunately there were more mages here than I was expecting. They, from turn 1, were spamming Blade Wind, Falling Fires, and Orb Lightning depending on their random paths.


The delay that the communion caused in our buffs, the fact that the skeletons were slower and trailing behind the clowns, and the mass evocation/bullet spam meant that only about 10 of our 30 clowns actually managed to make it into contact with the enemy. They fought bravely but it just wasn't enough.


Losing 30 clown troops is one thing, but losing even just 8 minor mages was a pretty bad setback when we're struggling so much for research. Lesson learned to take even small forces seriously if they have enough mage support! I'm not going to try breaking out of here again until I actually have some decent mages and some troops to back them up with. Anglia are breaking our walls down but not especially fast. Unless they cast Crumble again anyway.



Over on the other side of the world, Bongo springs into action! It's just some aquatic pests for now to warm up the crowd but next month will be the god of Karanaac himself! The duck dives right in of course, but doesn't seem to fare too well. I'm sure it'll be back.


The unicyclists charge forward and do the real work.


And Bongo amuses himself with magic for a few turns and then only once there's nothing left to do starts to move towards the now retreating enemy.


Let's just hope his future battles continue to go this well! He'll move onto Karanaac's old cap this turn.



Our fights with the mantises continue as normal with us crushing a pretty large army as we head towards their cap. They have a small force counterattacking in Karanaac's old lands north of the caves but honestly, who cares. More Owl Quills for the pile! Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar will use the Steel Ovens to forge the other top-tier magic booster this turn, a Ring of Sorcery. These are really expensive, even with the ovens, and if I ever lose either one I'm going to be very upset. Nobody is allowed to take them into battle!



We're going to ignore their attempt at causing problems and just keep heading east. I'm really keen to end this war!


Now you may remember that our previous prophet had an unfortunate rock-related accident while at his workplace.

Well the time has come up to look for his replacement! It's worth noting that I'm in the nice position of already having two different recruitable holy 3 mages, Clowns Paramount and Ancient Clowns, so I don't actually have any pressing need to appoint one. The less nice reason is that there's no way I'm going to be able to claim a throne any time soon either. I get slightly more passive faith spread from it which is nice but I'm fine with missing out on it a few turns while I agonise over my choice. Probably the most effective option would be to prophetise one of my H3 mages to get the rare H4 but even then it honestly does not really do much for me. It'd be far better for me to wait a few turns and make a funny choice instead. Here's what Mu, the creator of the mod, had to say about it (stitched together from a slightly longer conversation):


I'm taking suggestions! Although do bear in mind that this all happened months ago and I can't actually implement any of them.