Turn 2
I only got 2 Messages on this turn. Ulm declaring its commander prophet and Jotunheim declaring its herse as a prophet.
Treasury: 199
Income: 176
Upkeep: 43
Resources: 72
Water gems: 4 (+2)
Astral gems: 6 (+3)
Hmm, interesting, I have not noticed this one before. Is it normal that my actual income is going down without havning unrest between turns 1 and 2 ? On turn 1 I still had 212, now I am down to 176 without any special events that I am aware of.
I dont really like what I see on the map when I get to it. I have received no intel at all about the potential income of the surrounding provinces, but I can see a black candle in one of them.
Concerning the surrounding provinces I have the following informations about potential troop strengths (from west to east):
Devourer (6) 40 Trition Troopers and Triton Guards Sea - Scout report
Tiash (15) 40 Militias and Heavy Infantries Forest/Swamp general intel Heat 2
Dershid (20) 50 Tribal Warriors and Tribal Archers Plains general intel
Dunheim (28) 30 Light and Heavy Infantries Farm Lands general intel
Gol Phalas (26) 50 Militias, Longbowman and Knights Farm Lands general intel
Vepitre (14) 80 Tribal Warriors and Tribal Archers Plains general intel Black Candle1, Order1, Magic1
Kolermegor (5) 50 Crossbowman, Militias and Heavy Infantry Forest general intel
I decide to modify my army a little bit. Since the leadership of my commander is just at 25, but I currently have 30 troops I swamp some of the initial slave troopers for the newly bought Illithid Soldiers and Shambler Thralls.
The 5 slave troopers are going to guard my summoner. With some lucky hits they might even be able to offer him a little bit of protection, but I will not count on it.
The 3 Illithid Soldiers are etting their own squad and are put at the leftmost end of the battlefield, together with the commander.
The 2 Shambler Thralls are set up together with the 20 slave guards for now. I hope they might be able to bolster the guards moral a little bit this way. This squad is put on hold and attack closest. They are set up as a screen in front of the commander and his little mindbLaster squad.
Due to the setup I should be able to get some turns of mindbLasting in vs. Slower opponents before my own troops are getting into melee range.
Due to the low protection (2) of the slave troopers and their long weapons (length 4) they are mainly useful as a kind of one shot troops. If the ememy is not routing after the initial assault I will likely lose a lot of my troopers and might rout myself due to moral.
I need a slow enemy with small troopers and short weapons fairly small numbers in order to maximise the effect of my mindbLasts, tramplers and my own troopers.
The Tritons look like a fairly bad enemy at this stage, their speed being the main concern here, but the length of their weapons is another thing to take into account.
This is forcing me to focus on the land provinces.
Since generating new income is one of my main goals I first consider the 2 farm land provinces. My intel about them is not very reliable, but the 30 light infantry in Dunheim are surely sounding MUCH better than 50 militias, longbowmen (yuck) and knights (yuck, too) in Gol Phalas.
On the other hand Gol Phalas is right next Vepitre, the province with the enemy dominion, so maybe I will see enemy troops around there soon. But since I seriously doubt that I am able to take Gol Phalas and there are some chances that the AI might fail to take it, too, I decide to send my army for Dunheim at the moment. In addition there are 2 more farm lands a little bit north of Dunheim, which would be a nice addition for my empire.
I would have prefered to be able to wait a bit more before attacking, but with a fairly crowded map speed of expansion is looking even more important now than it normally is.
The summoner (having 1 random skill in blood) is send to the Void Gate despite his bodyguards most likely not being strong enough to defend him if he gets attacked, but I have decided that I will try to take my chances here in order to get a fast start in summoing.
My pretender is continuing his research in Rlyeh and I should get Thaum 1 at the beginning of the next turn.
Due to potential routing of my attacking army and wanting to climb the research tree as fast as possible I decide on recruiting a Star Child and 2 more Illithid Soldiers before I run out of gold (14 left, 27 production).
Mercenaries are no option at the moment simple right now, because I am still confinded to the ocean
but I am not sure if I will try to enlist some in the future, due to the AI not bidding aggressively enough for them they seem to be a fairly huge advantage for a human player. I think I will decide on using them by the level of my desperation
CharonJr
To be continued...
Edit: Forgot to mention that I send my scout to Tiash in order to get additional information about the troops there since the oceans are fairly blocked to me at the moment due to the tritons.
[ February 12, 2004, 07:15: Message edited by: CharonJr ]