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Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
Pretty good turn. I'll also be amused if Holy site-searching turns up anything; as rare as they are, there ARE some pretty nice Holy sites.

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ousire
Dec 11, 2013

Now, Red! Seal the deal with a catchy one-liner!
Is it usually worth sending priests around looking for holy sites in a regular game? In a mo money game I imagine it's way easier with the site generation cranked up and a bunch more money to spend on priests.

President Ark
May 16, 2010

:iiam:

ousire posted:

Is it usually worth sending priests around looking for holy sites in a regular game? In a mo money game I imagine it's way easier with the site generation cranked up and a bunch more money to spend on priests.

Not unless

A) You can see the effects of an active-but-hidden holy site, like where there were undead being smote
B) You have priests that also have magic levels so they can search for those at the same time

Preid posted:

Like this?



:eyepop:

President Ark fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Mar 20, 2017

Culka
May 20, 2007
Nothing

ousire posted:

Is it usually worth sending priests around looking for holy sites in a regular game? In a mo money game I imagine it's way easier with the site generation cranked up and a bunch more money to spend on priests.

Absolutely. Indy priests cost almost nothing and they will not even take a fort recruitment slot if you build a temple before your forts finish construction. There really is no reason to search at least for holy 1 sites. Holy sites are also a source of astral pearls for nations with no astral mages.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

I'd generally put holy searching quite far down my priority list for priests. Only if they literally had nothing better to do, including me thinking they might be better off moving somewhere else in my empire, only then would I set a pure priest to site search.

Pearls are the most economical gem to alchemise. If you're desperate enough to priest search you're more than desperate enough to compress any other gem into pearls.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

The really annoying thing is that there are two sites that need H4 to find. Aside from Wishing for Seraphs (which is extremely late-game), the only realistic way ANY nation can get an H4 is by prophetizing an H3 - and many nations don't get those. A very few nations have H4 national heroes too, but that's down to pure luck. In either case you'll basically always have better things to do with H4s than go site searching.

Also, you actually aren't guaranteed to find Holy sites if the province is killing undead/demons, because there are sites under other paths that do it too. While the most powerful undead/demon-killing site that's searchable is Holy (and requires H4 to find), the second-most powerful is actually an Air site. I want to say there are 6 searchable sites total that have that effect, and half of them are non-Holy paths. Hell, mentioned Air site (The Rainbow Shroud) is the most valuable killing site too, as its income is A2N2, whereas the others at most give 1 gem.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

Preid posted:

Like this?



This is great :drac:

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Turn 72



Turn 72 begins with the normal slew of cast spells: goats, vampires, some site searching. We find a +1D site in one of the provinces we took from Man, hooray!

We summoned a Bane Lord this turn. All of the Se’irim we’ve been summoning in Javal Kish require commanders with Undead/Demon leadership to lead them. Our Kohen Gadol, surprisingly, have pretty poor Undead/Demon leadership, so earlier I had turned to the most basic of summonable Undead/Demon commanders: the Mound King. The Mound King is super cheap but also super flimsy, being merely a skeleton riding a dead horse. It occurred to me that the Mound Kings would be very vulnerable to being killed in battle or assassinated, thus we are going to summon a handful of mighty Bane Lords to lead our berserking demonic goat-men:



This guy is wearing a Shroud of the Battle Saint in order to get the benefits of our great bless, and also carrying a Charcoal Shield which gives him a Fire Shield effect, meaning that anybody who tries to attack him by hand takes 7 points of fire damage each time. I’m not equippting our Bane Lord generals as combatants, but rather with an eye towards fending off Pangaea’s Dryad assassins. Pangaea is like -the- assassination nation in every Era of the game. Dryads can Seduce enemy commanders, which rarely results in Pan stealing a free commander or mage from his opponent. When Seduction fails, however, the Seduction target and the seducing Dryad engage in a 1 on 1 assassination battle. The best way to win those battles is to have the Dryad scripted to cast Swarm, which summons a bunch of misc. insects that basically slowly sting the target to death. The Regeneration from our bless and the Fire Shield should foil all of the most basic Dryad assassins.

We also summoned one of National Celestial commanders, the Arel:



We’re the only nation in this game that gets these guys, and they’re pretty cool. They’re robust, with good HP and stats, have some Fire and Lightning resistance, Invulnerability 15 as a bonus, and can Fly. They’re N3H3 mages, which is what I’m summoning them for. We will equip each Arel with two +1N boosting items to get them to N5, which will let them cast all of the best battlefield Nature spells quite easily.

There are other ways of getting N3 mages. You could summon an Ivy King or a Fairy Queen, but those spells cost a lot of Nature gems and we are really using just about every Nature gem we can get our hands on. The Arel costs 39 Pearls, and we are just drowning in those, plus I think it’s a more useful chassis overall. We’ll never be spamming Arelim like we are Vampire Lords, but we’ll be summoning a handful of them in the future.

None of the Kohen Gadol I had search provinces for Holy sites found anything! :sad: I wasn’t really expecting to find anything to begin with, so we’ll call it a draw and send them back to what they were previously doing.

One of the Issacharite Sages who had been researching using a Lightless Lantern got attacked by a Horror! Horror marks have degrees of strength, though there is no way to tell just what level a horror mark is in the game. Once a Horror Mark gets large enough, however, Horrors will start attacking the commander in an assassination battle. The lowly Issacharite Sage didn’t stand a chance.


Horror Marks mean permanent, unavoidable, and certain death.


The Lesser Horror is a nasty little guy, but Greater Horrors are much stronger.

There were a couple of interesting battles this turn. First of all….Pangaea attacked us!!


Our mighty province defense bravely fends off the invader.

Well, sort of! It looks like Pan decided to rid himself of a decrepit Gnome:


:zombie:

Back in Ragha, AI Ragha tried once more to throw Pan off of his capitol:


AI Ragha seems to have limitless resources to put into lovely chaff armies.

Pan ran out of chaff and pretty much only had his 15 or so Pans to maintain the siege.

The group of Pans stand alone, and start by self-buffing.


A small number of Ragha's troops are Caelan, and they fly across the field to attack the Pans.

The Pans are mighty mages of Earth and Nature, however, and easily scared away Ragha’s bird men with Panic spells.

Then the Pans began hurling poison, sleep clouds, and Panic at the approaching infantry and elephants. Amusingly, they also made use of a high level Alteration spell called Curse of the Frog Prince that, no joke, transforms a single target into a frog:


Now you see it...


:frog:

Pan routed Ragha’s forces and kept the siege, but it could have easily been a loss for the beast-men.

The scout that we sent to storm the Mannish fortress in Thorn Woods did so and brought back his report:


Here's our intel on the defenders in Thorn Woods.

That’s a whole bunch of bears, moose, wolves, and other animals in there. Here’s what the defense looks like:


An amazing menagerie of forest creatures.

The most interesting defender is a unique Conjuration summon, a Treelord:


Treelords are unique summons, there are only 3 in existence. They are well known to be extremely hardy and tenacious defenders.

The other thing I noticed was that just about every troop unit in the fort was Starving. Starvation is a -very- bad condition for troops to be in. Not only do some stats get lowered while troops are Starving, but moral takes a -4(!) penalty. So, the horde of animals that Man has defending the fort all have moral that’s close to the breaking point, and animals in general start with lovely moral to begin with.

We are going to try storming the fort with a small squad of Vampire Lords, an Enchantress to cast Arrow Fend, and an expendable division of crossbows that are just kind of eating up upkeep gold anyway. We’ll cast a Blood spell called Blood Rain that lowers moral for everyone on the battlefield, and then one of our Vampires will spam the spell Terror to lower moral even further within a large AoE.

We’re also going to have a few Vampires chain casting Hellbind Heart, a spell that attempts to dominate a single enemy unit. Usually the AI chooses the biggest, highest HP enemy unit within range to target for the spell, so I’m hoping to dominate that Treelord and take it for our own!

Finally, a little update on diplomacy. Pangaea caught me on IRC and informed me that Bogarus was telling him that he should attack me, and telling him about how many scary Vampires we have and that we are so dangerous etc etc. Two-faced Bogarus! Sad! We just set a Defensive Pact with the guy and he turns around to try and get Pan to invade us? Duplicitous!! Pan’s scouting on our territory must be bad indeed because he didn’t seem to know if we had Vampires or not. That or he does know and wants to see if I would lie about it. Well, I didn’t lie, but I diplomanced hard and put things in perspective, telling Pan that if he was worried about us having Vampires then shouldn’t he be worried about a nation that has more magic diversity, Vampire summoning paths, easy blood access, double our research and is double our size (Bogarus)?? Also, I’ve scouted at least one Vampire in Pan’s territory, so he’s trying to build some as well. Can’t tolerate hypocrisy!

To get Pan off my back I played a pretty strong hand and revealed a secret that I think should really tempt Pan into going to war with Bogarus. The Eyes of God, if you remember, reveal all discovered magic sites on the map, regardless of province owner and regardless of whose dominion is in the province. In poking around the wider world I discovered that Bogarus is sitting on a very special pair of magic sites indeed, and both of them happen to be in the same province, a province that is very close to the edge of the new Pan-Bogarus border:


The province of Nom. Notice how close Nom is to the Pangaean forces cleaning up Ragha in the West.


:eyepop:


:vince:

Bogarus is sitting on two incredibly valuable and powerful discount sites. The Crypt Underneath gives a 20% discount to Conjuration spells, which is super nice for summoning high level troops and powerful mages. Mount Chaining, with its 30% Blood discount, is often thought of as a Game Winner. Blood magic is ridiculously strong as is, but a 30% discount is straight-up nuts. If I were Bogarus I would have so many Vampires and demons the game would be a forgone conclusion by now.

I don’t think Pan will be able to resist going for those sites, and I don’t think I’m interested in coming to Bogarus’ aid when he does. However, if Pan gets them I have no doubt he’d put them to much better use than Bogarus has, since Pan seems to be a better player. As of this turn Pan told me he is going to cast a scrying spell on Nom (the province where these two sites reside) to confirm my information. I guess we will see where this leads…

Next turn: storming Thorn Woods!

How are u fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Mar 21, 2017

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
That's, uh. That's a pretty nice province there. Be a shame if something happened to it.

President Ark
May 16, 2010

:iiam:
That seems like a good place to fire all your magical WMDs at, yeah.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Is it possible to actually nuke a site, make it repellent to everyone?

I suppose not, otherwise people would just keep hitting the thrones with it.

President Ark
May 16, 2010

:iiam:

Glazius posted:

Is it possible to actually nuke a site, make it repellent to everyone?

I suppose not, otherwise people would just keep hitting the thrones with it.

Not to the degree you're thinking of, but you can definitely annoy the poo poo out of anyone using a province. On a map like this pinpointing where your enemy's mages might be hanging out (besides the obvious of "in their capital") can be tricky, but with two sites like that in one spot there's bound to be a bunch sitting around begging to have 50 casts of Seeking Arrow* fired at them, plus some rains of toads and monster boars to taste.

*a magical assassination spell which is basically the equivalent of firing a fairly strong, highly accurate crossbow at a random commander in the province once. It can seriously ruin a mage's day.

President Ark fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Mar 21, 2017

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Can you still firebird luck economy in this version?

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

I believe the bird economy was discussed earlier in the thread.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

How are u posted:


This guy is wearing a Shroud of the Battle Saint in order to get the benefits of our great bless, and also carrying a Charcoal Shield which gives him a Fire Shield effect, meaning that anybody who tries to attack him by hand takes 7 points of fire damage each time. I’m not equippting our Bane Lord generals as combatants, but rather with an eye towards fending off Pangaea’s Dryad assassins. Pangaea is like -the- assassination nation in every Era of the game. Dryads can Seduce enemy commanders, which rarely results in Pan stealing a free commander or mage from his opponent. When Seduction fails, however, the Seduction target and the seducing Dryad engage in a 1 on 1 assassination battle. The best way to win those battles is to have the Dryad scripted to cast Swarm, which summons a bunch of misc. insects that basically slowly sting the target to death. The Regeneration from our bless and the Fire Shield should foil all of the most basic Dryad assassins.

I'm seeing a potential minor flaw in this plan. Anyone else notice it? :v:

Though it does depend on just how much attention Pan is paying to their dryad scripting and how many gems they're loaded with.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Green Intern posted:

I believe the bird economy was discussed earlier in the thread.

Hoooo boy. 72 turns is a loooong time for bird economy to build and compound.

ousire
Dec 11, 2013

Now, Red! Seal the deal with a catchy one-liner!
Bogarus has cast Backstab.
How are u has cast Diplomacy.

Looking forward to seeing how things might heat up in the next few turns. With a site like that blood discount, I'm almost surprised you're not trying to gun for it yourself. That'd turn the vampire swarm up to 11.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Glazius posted:

Is it possible to actually nuke a site, make it repellent to everyone?

I suppose not, otherwise people would just keep hitting the thrones with it.
I believe the right age of Ermor can, by having is dominion in it long enough, kill all the population, turning it into a desolate wasteland that can't really support any troops hanging out in it.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Zereth posted:

I believe the right age of Ermor can, by having is dominion in it long enough, kill all the population, turning it into a desolate wasteland that can't really support any troops hanging out in it.

Yes, but there are plenty of options to deal with a lack of supply, whether it's troops that don't eat or items that provide food.

The real problem is that there's no reason to actually take that land since it's useless.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

wiegieman posted:

The real problem is that there's no reason to actually take that land since it's useless.
A zero pop province can still have gems. And gems are always a good reason to attack. Enemy territory also impedes your movement on the strategic map, which is huge if you need to rapidly redeploy an army. Low pop provinces also have severely limited pd, so can be taken with an indy commander and a few troops.

So yes, not as good as high income provinces, but still well worth having.

Asehujiko
Apr 6, 2011

Lord Koth posted:

I'm seeing a potential minor flaw in this plan. Anyone else notice it? :v:

Though it does depend on just how much attention Pan is paying to their dryad scripting and how many gems they're loaded with.
Dryads with a pair of N boosters can Charm these expensive thugs if they actually get in a fight and chaff commanders would've been better?

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

ousire posted:


Looking forward to seeing how things might heat up in the next few turns. With a site like that blood discount, I'm almost surprised you're not trying to gun for it yourself. That'd turn the vampire swarm up to 11.

I'll have to make another rough world-map soon, but the reason we're not going straight for Nom is that it is about as deep in Bogarussian territory and as far away from our borders with the nation as is possible. Pangaea is like a 3 province hop from Nom, we're more like 10. In order to take it we'd already have to have crushed Bogarus utterly.

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


Lord Koth posted:

I'm seeing a potential minor flaw in this plan. Anyone else notice it? :v:

Though it does depend on just how much attention Pan is paying to their dryad scripting and how many gems they're loaded with.

That maggot spell that eats undead?

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

Lord Koth posted:

I'm seeing a potential minor flaw in this plan. Anyone else notice it? :v:

Though it does depend on just how much attention Pan is paying to their dryad scripting and how many gems they're loaded with.

It's a pretty good counter-thug to Dryads. By this point you can probably just throw a mass at the problem and hope some of them get through to the juicy targets. Not really ideal though.

The maggot spell is not very good at all, and if you are putting boosters on your dryad assassin you're probably putting too much effort and should find another counter.

habituallyred
Feb 6, 2015
The biggest issue is that the bane blade is two handed, so this commander is stuck trying to punch any assassins.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
My goal in equipping the lightly geared Bane Lord is simply to end up with an Undead/Demon commander who can survive Swarm-casting assassins. The Bane Lord is a tough guy on his own, with good HP and protection. The Shroud of the Battle Saint gives him Regeneration and Blood Vengeance courtesy of our Bless. The Charcoal Shield gives a Fire Shield effect that will ensure that all of the little insects summoned by Swarm will self-immolate, and what little damage they may do will be healed very quickly.

A Dryad on its own isn't a superb hand-to-hand combatant, so the Bane Lord can ignore the insects, walk across the battlefield, ignore the Dryad's Awe (because he's undead), and punch her to death.

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

How are u posted:

My goal in equipping the lightly geared Bane Lord is simply to end up with an Undead/Demon commander who can survive Swarm-casting assassins. The Bane Lord is a tough guy on his own, with good HP and protection. The Shroud of the Battle Saint gives him Regeneration and Blood Vengeance courtesy of our Bless. The Charcoal Shield gives a Fire Shield effect that will ensure that all of the little insects summoned by Swarm will self-immolate, and what little damage they may do will be healed very quickly.

A Dryad on its own isn't a superb hand-to-hand combatant, so the Bane Lord can ignore the insects, walk across the battlefield, ignore the Dryad's Awe (because he's undead), and punch her to death.

Yeah. The Dryad is going to be in deep fatigue after two swarm castings and will be easily dunked.

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

How are u posted:

My goal in equipping the lightly geared Bane Lord is simply to end up with an Undead/Demon commander who can survive Swarm-casting assassins. The Bane Lord is a tough guy on his own, with good HP and protection. The Shroud of the Battle Saint gives him Regeneration and Blood Vengeance courtesy of our Bless. The Charcoal Shield gives a Fire Shield effect that will ensure that all of the little insects summoned by Swarm will self-immolate, and what little damage they may do will be healed very quickly.

A Dryad on its own isn't a superb hand-to-hand combatant, so the Bane Lord can ignore the insects, walk across the battlefield, ignore the Dryad's Awe (because he's undead), and punch her to death.

That sounds so loving metal :black101:

Voyager I
Jun 29, 2012

This is how your posting feels.
🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥
At this point you could probably also afford to spend 3 gems or whatever after the hammer discount to give the Bane something other than a fist to punch her with.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Voyager I posted:

At this point you could probably also afford to spend 3 gems or whatever after the hammer discount to give the Bane something other than a fist to punch her with.

Why bother? It's not like the Bane is going to see combat in an actual fight.

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009
In some ways it's sort of a shame that you can't give Commanders alternative weapon choices out of a basic allotment. It's not like a nation won't have a few spare one-handed nonmagical swords lying around to give to their commanders, and anything's an upgrade on literal punching.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Y'all may not have noticed but that Bane Lord punches for 21 damage, which is hard enough to kill a man in one blow. He'll be fine.

The_Final_Stand
Nov 2, 2013

So cute and cuddly
It's more that Fist is a weapon that reduces your attack and defence as well as your damage. Even a basic Enchanted Sword, for instance, would increase them rather more, and it's not like you don't have the Pearls.

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer
OK but the point is that the dryad is going to set themselves on fire. It literally doesn't matter if the bane lord ever hits her, that isn't the intended source of damage.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

Gearing thugs is such an insidious gem sink, you just keep wanting to add a liitle more...

Forcing yourself to stick to the minimum viable gear (and knowing how little you can get away with), is really important for the long term.

Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Mar 22, 2017

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Bug Squash posted:

Gearing thugs is such an insidious gem sink, you just keep wanting to add a liitle more...

Forcing yourself to stick to the minimum viable gear (and knowing how little you can get away with), is really important for the long term.

This. About the only exception is if you're at the point where you can build 5 gem items for 1 gem each, at which point it starts to become stupidly cost effective. Even then, you're still more interested in pumping out lightless lanterns, air quills, death mentors, etc. to boost up the research curve or to build more boosters to make mages stronger than to get some more inconsequential gear for thugs that won't ever see combat.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Skull mentors singlehandedly (well, the archers help) make Sauromatia a viable power.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Turn 73



Turn 73 begins with hitting Alteration 6. Alt 6 gives us the spell Darkness, a battle spell that causes the sun to disappear from the battlefield and gives severe penalties to combat stats to all units without Darkvision. It probably isn’t a spell we’ll be casting every battle, but it could be situationally useful.

We cast all the normal spells of the turn, but include a new one. We summoned another one of our special National summons, the Hashmal:


Strange praying men within fiery clouds.

These guys are pretty interesting. They have -very- strong Awe, Invulnerability 20, Flying, Ethereal, an inborn Fire Shield, and some fire and lightning resistance. On top of that, they are H2 priests with Inquisitor, which makes their Holy level effectively 4 when preaching against enemy dominion. We may summon some of them to use as light raiding thugs. They’re mobile, very strong against PD, and could be extremely hard to kill given a few items. Honestly, though, we may skip straight to Golems instead. I send this Hashmal off to Man to help preach up our dominion on that province.

We get a report from Ragha’s remaining Throne province of Jihra, a report that comes before our blood slave income for the turn so that means that it was a battle that took place during the Magic Phase of the turn. It looks like Pangaea cast one of the Death remote-attack spells that summons a bunch of longdeads and soulless to attack a province. They all died, a complete waste. In Mo Money games there is usually enough PD around that the remote-attack spells are generally not worth casting.



We capture hundreds of slaves, and the Nexus brings us 103 Pearls. We are now summoning three Vampire Lords a turn and could do more, but I want to save up some slaves just in case we get the opportunity to cast a global next turn. Next turn we are hitting Blood 9, and I notice this turn that Vengeful Waters is finally gone. Pangaea successfully stormed that Mannish swamp fort he failed at a couple turns ago, and I guess Man’s global caster was inside. If nobody else notices that Vengeful Waters went down we may get the chance to put up a fun, moderately strong defensive global next turn. Fingers crossed!

There were two real battles this turn. One was a scouted battle of Bogarus storming a fort and slaughtering the defenders. Bogarus’ Air and Astral communions are really strong and extremely deadly. They are just men, however, and if Bogarus is still relying primarily upon them when we face him then we’ll have ways to shut that whole thing down.

The real battle of the turn is our storming of Man’s fort in Thorn Woods. Here’s our small squad of Vampires and sacrificial crossbows at the gates:


Vampire Lords unite!

And here, again, are the defenders:


And in the other corner...Leafsong the Treelord and his wild animal menagerie!

The defenders start with the 40+ Magisters buffing themselves and the troops around them, mostly with the spell Body Ethereal. The Treelord gives himself Personal Regeneration and a Magister buffs him with Ethereal as well. This is important.

Our Enchantress casts Arrow Fend, so all the Vampires can effectively ignore the arrows the fort towers fire every turn. Rigor Mortis is cast to slowly fatigue all of Man’s units, and one Vampire casts Blood Rain to put the hurt on Man’s morale. Many skeletons begin to be summoned, and several of the Vampires nearest the gates cast Hellbind Heart. I mentioned earlier that the AI likes to target the closest enemies with the highest HP, so instead using infernal demonic power to dominate the Treelord our wise Vampires dominate a Bear and a Forest Giant:



Not the minions we were looking for.

:sad:

The defending animal horde comes pouring out of the gates just in time to meet the advancing wave of undead skeletons.


Like Noah's Ark in reverse, the animals surge out of the fortress.

One of Man's defending commanders is an Ivy King, which for some reason is wearing Flying Shoes, and flies out over the wall to engage a Vampire Lord in melee. The next round the Ivy King is hit by Hellbind Heart and dominated:


The over-zealous Ivy King leaps into single-combat with this Vampire Lord.

We can tell it worked because on Man’s next round some Magisters Immediately Paralyze our newly dominated Ivy King for the rest of the battle:


Our Ivy King (paralyzed, in grey) stands frozen amidst the chaos of battle.

The battle turns into a slow slog as skeletons wittle away fatiguing and routing defenders. Skeletons are like a force of nature, inexorable and unyielding, but they work very slowly against tough targets. Six or seven Trolls were made Ethereal by Magisters and take many, many rounds for the skeletons to eventually bring down.

The skeletons do break through the gate and into Man’s fort, where most of Man’s army has routed.


Man's forces begin to rout, piecemeal.


The remaining woodland critters hold the line for a moment...


But there isn't much that can hold against a skeleton tide forever. We have a -lot- of skeletons.


Finally our bone-tide reaches Man's vulnerable mages.

Left are just a handful of Ethereal, sleeping Magisters and one Ethereal, Regenerating Tree. Many more battle rounds pass as the skeleton tide leisurely kills the last Magisters, but they cannot make a dent in the goddamn tree. Ethereal means that only 25% of the attacks by the skeletons’ mundane weapons are able to hit the Tree, and then it regenerates 25hp per turn so the damage that does get through is negated almost immediately.


The Treelord stands alone!


It mocks our inability to harm it. Remember how I said Treelords are amazing defenders?

Suddenly the blood red skies clear! The army of Gath has routed! All of our Vampires flee the field, and without undead leadership the hundreds and hundreds of skeletons fall to pieces where they stand.


Failure.

We just encountered one of the more frustrating game mechanics of Dominions 4: the battle turn limit. To keep battles from getting stuck in an infinite loop there is a 50 turn limit hard-baked into the code. After 50 battle turns the Attacking army automatically routs. So, we killed 99% of Man’s forces and wholly routed his army but because the Treelord cannot actually -move- it sat there and just stayed Alive until we hit the limit and lost.



This is kind of hilarious and I can’t find it in myself to be upset. We got a free Ivy King out of the battle, which is a 30 Nature gem N3 mage that we will definitely put to use.


I stormed a fort full of deer and all I got was this lousy Ivy King.

The cowardly Vampires are flying back to Thorn Woods next turn, and the turn after that they will storm the fort once again. This time, however, they’ll do nothing but spam Hellbind Heart at the only target left: the Treelord. We will get our Treelord, I guarantee it.

Next turn: we see if that global slot gets filled.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

I hope you get your treelord.

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Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


I guess I never realized just how many skeletons you can spam out. How the hell would someone else fight a screen-filling ocean of them? AoE's and spells that nuke Undead specifically?

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