Part 26: A Prophet at a Loss

GoodShipNostalgia posted:

What does morale do in King's Bounty? Does high morale give you extra turns like in the Heroes games or is it something different?

Nah, nothing like that. It just seems to provide an effective bonus to fighting skill, so units with high morale do more damage and die less easily. The difference between low and high morale is pretty dramatic, though.

A Prophet at a Loss

We're taking on Magus Deathspell next, but not with our current army. First, we'll need to recruit some more Dragons. Ignatia, let's see what Raise Control can do.



"Okay, I'll just cast one to see how much effect it has..."





Raise Control raises leadership by 100 for every point of Spell Power. For Ignatia, that means a whopping 2100 leadership per casting. The catch, of course, is that it only lasts a week; the even bigger catch is that you still have to pay for all those troops one way or another.



Of course, that's what Clone is for. We got into a random battle while Ignatia was loaded with, oh, 75 or so Clone spells.



We only get one spell per round. This is going to be a long fight.

After killing the Druids and Dragons and playing an extremely protracted game of keep-away with the Barbarians, we manage to clone... well, see for yourself.



This is how many troops Ignatia managed to churn out before running out of spells. It's too bad Dragons can't be cloned.



"I'm back, and this time I've got a contract and a proper army!"

"Fool! You are but a child compared to me. My army of archmages is unrivalled in all the Four Continents!"



"I stand corrected."

Five thousand peasants. Five thousand fucking peasants. That's just precious, that is. The demons, archmages and vampires are going to need our attention, though.



"I love this amulet."




"I also love dragons."



This is what it looks like when our Demons hit Magus' Peasants... most of the time.



The fun thing about Demons and Dragons is that it's outright impossible for a Skill Level 1 unit (Peasants or Sprites) to damage a Skill Level 6 unit (Demons or Dragons). We could let those Peasants poke at our Demons until kingdom come and they wouldn't inflict a single kill.



Our Vampires, meanwhile, can safely be parked beside those Gnomes. As long as they deal out at least as much damage as they take, their numbers will remain stable, so they're in no danger either. A sufficiently enormous army of Vampires is effectively invincible.

Of course, there's still one threat to us: the Demons. Fortunately, our Archmages are yet to move.

"Say, do you hear that?"



"It's the sound of fiery death."



Behold the devastation Ignatia's army has inflicted in a single round. We lost a few Vampires, but we'll get those back next time they attack. All we have to do now is keep our Archmages out of the way of the enemy.

Those Dragons would kill 2000 Peasants in a single attack if we let them, but instead we're going to let the Demons do all the work. Remember how I've kept mentioning that there's something special Demons can do?



Here it is. In addition to their normal attack damage, demons have a chance to kill half an enemy unit every time they attack. Even if it's 1 Demon attacking 100 Dragons, the chance of halving the enemy unit remains unchanged. See why I was so paranoid about them now?



Saharia's villains give truly absurd amounts of money. 200,000 gold is enough to recoup the cost of all those Clone spells we just used, and then some.

"Why all the peasants, anyway? I mean, I could have killed them all with one demon if I had the patience."

"To tell you the truth, I always wanted to be a peasant. A simple life spent out in the fields seemed so peaceful and fulfilling. But there's no future in peasantry, they said. No opportunity to climb the corporate ladder, no such thing as Executive Vice-President in Charge of Peasantry. Necromancy is the big growth industry of tomorrow, they said. You know you've really made it when you can summon beings whose very existence causes the fabric of reality to scream out in protest, they said. Well, look where that's got me. Stupid guidance counsellors."



See those weekly upkeep costs for our troops? They're not really as low as they look. The last digit on all of them is cut off. One thing's for sure: none of these units is suitable for use as a garrison bitch.



One Town Gate and one Castle Gate later, the problem is solved. Technically, this means we spent 1500 gold worth of spells on a garrison bitch, but we have money to burn right now, and burn it we shall.

"Did somebody say 'burn'?"

I was speaking metaphorically. Sorry to get your hopes up.



The good news is that we have an unreasonably effective army. The bad news is that their total weekly upkeep is over 110,000 gold. Time Stop is an absolute necessity for an army like this.



That leadership score is the result of four Raise Control spells, costing a total of 2000 gold. Sheer madness.



We also received yet another map piece, not that we needed it.

My plan was to go after Urthrax next update and save Arech for last, but I'll leave the final decision up to you. Keep in mind that there's a huge gap in difficulty between Arech and everyone else: the army we'd need to beat Arech would crush Urthrax even more decisively than our usual thrashings.

"... or if not a peasant, why not a fisherman? I've always liked fish. Or a carpenter? I'm good with my hands. Or maybe a sailor..."