[magnate]

Man, this is not going well. I decided to mass for an attack on Ermor, as per Lint's advice, and of course Tien Chi declared war on me and invaded two border provinces.

So I put plans for Ermor on hold (they didn't seem to be expanding, and all the pop in their provinces is dead already) and went after Tien Chi. How the heck do you deal with Living Statues? They're not undead, but they're unbreakable (morale 50) and they have 22 prot! A group of about six went through three provinces of 20 giants each! I have very few earth gems so no Elf Bane. Are there spells that target magic beings? (Is there some sort of index of spell effects anywhere, to save looking through every spell whenever I have a question like this?)

As I suspected, Tien Chi were spread pretty thin (apart from where they attacked me), so I've taken a half dozen of his provinces. In the meantime I found an isolated Ermor province, cut off from the rest of Ermor by a plucky Vanheim. So I decided to mop it up on my way further into Tien territory - by this time I had two fully equipped Bane Lords and two similarly decked out Firbolgs.

Unfortunately Vanheim decided to take that Ermor province the same turn, and I accidentally killed their god! I lost a Firbolg in the process too. On the same turn I had decided that I could encroach on Ermor with one of my Bane Lords, and he got surrounded and killed. It was so close though - 240 undead killed out of 253, meaning it was only the summoned skellies that turned the tide.

As if that all wasn't enough to be going on with, Pythium teleported an army into the middle of my empire, which was fortunately repelled by the PD. Since Pythium have no provinces and their home fortress is under siege by R'lyeh, I'd have thought they'd have had better things to do! To cap it all, it was the one turn I forgot to check the merc roster, and all three of my mages deserted (Dagan, Obscuro and the white wizard guy). That was one bummer of a turn - at least I got to conj 6 and can start calling Lamia queens.

Sorry, this is turning into a bit of an AAR (or rather During) - apols. Just a few summary questions:

1. How to deal with Living Statues? (and other high prot non-undead MBs I guess)

2. Why did my Bane Lord charge into the middle of the undead army and get surrounded, instead of flying to the back and offing leaders like he was ordered to? He only flew halfway down the battlefield.

3. Does the AI assume peace after X turns of no conflict? Caelum just declared war on me again - I didn't notice we'd ever not been at war, but it's true that a few turns had elapsed since we Last fought.

4. If I equip a Bane Lord with a Flambeau or a Fire Brand, and a Burning Pearl, will he be safe from the fire effects?

Stay tuned - this is definitely my most interesting game yet!

CC