Part 57: Turn 47

Turn 47

Once again there was no climactic battle, with Anglian forces dodging around and us chasing after them. This is honestly what I thought would happen originally which is why I initially reinforced my secondary fort over the capital. As long as I don't fall behind (which I won't due to my much longer legs), then they're not really accomplishing much. I'm recapturing provinces and they can't storm a fort without me catching up and forcing a battle. At best they're delaying until a secondary army can join the first one but I'm also producing new units and mine have a shorter distance to travel.




Meanwhile the flying/ghoul-based raiding continues! I guess I had forgotten to pump PD in these provinces - since water provinces are generally larger than land ones they can almost "extend" the range of rituals like this. The other issue this presents, apart from just the loss of money and gems (lol probably not gems) is that from everybody else's perspective Anglia might have totally conquered me. I make sure to post in discord about how they won't engage in a fight with me, and have the Clown Paramount there running to retake them.




Two clowns raided into enemy lands this turn. Jellybean the Clown Paramount found only one PD in contested lands.


Weirdo had more of a fight on his hands. Even from turn 1 the enemy guns and cannons were firing away but it's pretty difficult to hit a single square from far away and it didn't really do much.


Even an enemy Thunder Strike failed to interrupt his pre-battle buffing routine. You don't generally get lightning from PD though looks like he must have hit some enemy mages moving around - so much the better!


Here's what he looks like after he's done buffing. 8 armour and 15 invulnerability means that he's more heavily armoured than the strongest ulm steel against nonmagical attacks. Ethereality means that only 1 in 4 nonmagical attacks will even hit. Wow so powerful! There is just one small weakness though, however I know for a fact that Anglia didn't take magic weapons in their bless like I did, they don't really have much in the way of good thug chassis and it's only a rare and expensive summon that can give you troops with magic weapons.


This rare and expensive summon in fact. Fuuuuuuck.


Ether Warriors cost NINETY astral pearls for 15 of them with their commander, and you usually just get them for the commander alone - it's a good astral/death mage, there's a 1/4 chance of getting a blood random to break into the cool cool blood/astral spells later on.


This Ether Lord is even kitted up for some massive astral spells! There is NO WAY that Anglia has reached Thau 9 for Master Enslave yet, absolutely no way. This guy has probably been sent over in anticipation of eventually hitting it. I'm suddenly, once again, VERY glad of my +3 MR on the bless. Honestly this game has done nothing but prove to me just how good an imprisoned S8 bless is if you have a lot of sacred troops.


Anyway they cut him to ribbons pretty quickly. Rip Weirdo. The Ether Warriors were really quite effective here but 90 gems is an insanely large number to spend on a handful of troops and a mage that's going to go walk around in battles (presumably) prior to Master Enslave casting. Sure it worked against Weirdo on his own but outside of having magic weapons, any decent sized clown force will cut through all the troops without really noticing.


Our other thugs will most certainly avoid the Ether Warriors now we know that they're there and will continue to beat down some ghouls. The is no change for our cave fort in Shattered Nap, Anglia's forces are slowly breaking down the walls but aren't about to succeed in the next turn or two.



Over in mantis lands we kill what look like the very last dregs of research mages and head towards the mostly empty capital. Since it doesn't look like we need all our troops a small force of very large clowns will start cleaning up any untaken pockets.




Finally for this turn, some light comic relief. Remember back in the good old days when this guy was our biggest concern?


Our skeletons don't really do much, and our unicyclists split up into two groups. One fights the literally 5 imps that are all Karanaac can field as an army, and the other outraces all the disposable skeletons despite my best orders and go to start dying horribly.



Luckily Bongo finished his buffing quickly enough and raced over to apply his comically large boots to the situation.


After the second 40+ damage kick, Karanaac's god has had enough and tried to flee (even though there was nowhere to flee to).


He doesn't make it.