[RedRover]

TURN 46
Be careful what you wish for! In the northwest, Man showed up adjacent to the blocking province I just took, with 120 mixed infantry! Since the Devils took no losses, I think it’s safe to leave them there.

I build up the province defense, bring in my infernal reserves from the west continent fort (5 Devils + 1 Demonbred and gems) and dig in. This might be an important province, because it’s a source of Ichtyids, which I will need in order to go aquatic, plus there’s an Arena site here. It also would make my fort placement awkward, because if I built a base here to maximize Fish Man production, I would overlap the first northwestern base in two provinces. On the other hand, a base here would secure the large coastal town. Looking back, I think I might have been better served not to try the west continent at all, but to have concentrated on the east continent. Consider:

I am badly overextended now and exposed to Man and Caelum both instead of just Caelum. I am suffering in my blood hunting because I don’t have the populous coastal plains of the east continent. If Man and C’tis both attack me, and Caelum joins a general dogpile, it will be very bad for me. I empower my Amazon Sorceress so she can find Earth sites.

It occurs to me that I might be able to use the map names to target magic sites: Godsgrave Mountains might be a Death site, Aeros River might have Air gems, and so forth. I will test the theory this turn. This wouldn’t work in a standard game, because most of the names are randomized, but I haven’t played this map much, or recently, so I don’t know how much of it is designed (yes, I could look at the map text file, but that’s cheating, so I won’t).

On the coast, the large city is played out. Apparently, it can’t support two Apprentices with Sanguine Rods hunting monthly. I need to thin out the hunters, only hunt even turns, or maybe transfer one of the Rods to another blood hunter. Unfortunately, this city and my capital are my only provinces with over 10,000 population, and I haven’t had much luck hunting in provinces under 6,000. Provinces in the 6-10K range are scattered widely and few have Labs, so I would need some Scouts as porters or more money for Labs. It would take some time to reorganize along these lines. My blood hunting strategy is still a work in progress.

In the northeast, I move some cheap Priests into position to build Temples, get the Wind Lord busy scrying for sites, put the Manticore back on research, and add a few units to fort defense. And hope the balloon doesn’t go up this turn.

By the east bridge, the outlying Priests are recalled, and I ramp up research. The blood sacrifices to restore dominion seem to be working, and the new Temples should help hold the dominion line. Also, I suspect the reason I started losing dominion was that the C’tis Prophet had moved next to my province. But now the C'tis garrison has shrunk to 20 Militia and no commander is radiating power, so things ought to be back to normal soon on this front.

I rush slightly to get Blood 4 next turn, must rebalance research then. I also need to let my Death gems build up a little. I could use a few Mentor Skulls for research and Horror Helms for the commanders.