Part 75: Turn 63
Turn 63Okay I know last time the tarresque ate 5 mind hunts no problem but this time I'll get it for sure, after all what are the odds that it'll shrug off another 5!
I'll spare you the 4 other identical screen shots.
Nudge's raiding hits a bit of a snag this turn when he walks into a tree.
Whitewood here is a pretty hefty nature summon and a really powerful nature mage. While they have a pretty big downside of being limited in number (there's only 3 treelords) and immobile, the fact that they're living beings means that they can easily cast Transformation (or in JBBM, Become Worm Mage) which handily removes both downsides. I've had games before where I had several ex-treelord worm mages hanging around being like "no I'm the real Whiteleaf"
Anyway this one autocasts swarm and then also cast howl and creeping doom leading to a LOT of bugs heading Nudge's way! Nudge does have fire magic but I forgot to script fire shield anyway. However it doesn't matter because Nudge does have enough gear to mostly shrug off the bug bites and Anglia helpfully included a bug clearing squad for me. They couldn't hurt our clown but did kill an awful lot of insects.
Ultimately though Nudge decides he's had enough and retreats onto the province of Fennoscandia joining our forces there just in time for the storm!
Meanwhile our other raider, Jellybean, manages to dodge any cloud trapezing elemental queens this turn and so takes another irrelevant province in the middle of nowhere.
Anglia has 2 forces taking back raided provinces now but we don't really care, look at that Faery Queen that could have instead spent their turn doing something important and instead spent it sweeping up the litter left behind after a clowning.
Sadly looks like Anglia has had enough of messing around and has gone for the throat though. Their main army with a staggering number of guns, cap-only mages, and high level summons are knocking at our gates! Thanks to the large numbers of enormous clowns, who are very large and strong, they didn't manage to break the walls down in one turn so we have a final turn of respite before the big battle.
We're going to use that turn of preperations well, by firstly summoning a few more clowns and eagles in our cap. I even put the EXTREMELY expensive ring of Wizardry on the Ancient Clown to get them. I need to remember to take that off him before he goes into battle, if we lose it it'll be really quite bad.
We're also teleporting mages from all over the map back home. All our mind hunters are going to be especially useful with their magic pen gear and besides it's not like they've done much trying to butt their heads against the tarresque. Speaking of I don't actually know where it got to this turn.
I would love to say that our god is going to teleport back to defend the homeland too but, uh, nope. Sitting here unable to move. Whose idea was it to have him jump onto an enemy fort again? We're not even that close to breaking the walls I have no idea what they've got in there to cause this. A few more clowns who couldn't reach the cap are coming here instead.
While Anglia's main army is distracted taking my most critical province, we're going to take advantage by capturing Fennoscandia, a fort that is not very critical. I'm regretting this decision a bit but I'm pretty committed now. Plus once we take it we'll have access to the lab and can teleport the clowns back home so we should be able to do both things.
Wait what's that in the lake? U has sent a mighty raiding force of...20 earth elementals. They still haven't even taken the main candle yet! I'm starting to think that they don't want to help me at all.
Although they do have a medium sized force of, no joke, about 420 feet that are presumably about to move onto it next turn and not, instead, to charge into my now undefended lands. I don't think that U knows about the Steel Ovens thankfully. You can see some both literal and figurative villains took a nearby province, I'll clear them up next turn probably.
We finally, on turn 63, get to see what it looks like to have the Karanaac recruitment sites and the clown recruitment sites in the same province. I think I've been trying to get this for about 40 turns at this point and of course immediately send a screenshot to Mu in the discord.
Luckily our research has lined up that we're going to get alt 6 next turn for some more nice magic. Getting that one extra turn in before the fight on our cap has been absolutely incredible, I love enormous clowns so much. We also are teleporting an Ancient Clown onto the Karanaac throne that Anglia took from us, to prevent their recruitment of valuable Crystal Mages. There's not many troops present there so he should be able to sit there for a few turns no problem our troops on this side of the map continue south towards it. Finally we're still saving up our nature gems for prophet related reasons since our income is a pathetic 2 per turn. I really wish this game had included JBBM's spell changes!