TURN 110-112
Owlseye, the fourth special site, my obsession: OK, I built the Dragon, and he found nothing. I built a Mound Fiend to check for Unholy sites…
nothing. I finally divert enough Astral gems to cast the @#$%&! Acashic Record…
NOTHING!
(The Cone is not the only thing smouldering in my capital now!)
Furious, I attack Man.
First priority is to clear the forces of Man from the ocean provinces off my coast, which will greatly simplify my homeland defense.
Second priority is to take Man’s border provinces, most of which have by now changed to my dominion.
I have used my gem supply for items prepping for war; the only global I really want to see at this time is Strands of Arcane Power (after all, the Pretender is strong in Astral magic), although it may be more efficient play to go for Gaia’s Bounty and expand the blood hunts. I might just punt the Wild Hunt once GB becomes available.
Total Income end of turn 110: 2,819 gold, gem income: 37F/6A/11W/18E/19S/24D/23N + 51B this turn. I can see I must be careful to build a Lab in every province I hunt. I had two hunters this turn that released slaves because they were full. Focus, idiot!
Turns out, Caelum has been driven totally into the sea. He holds three Sea provinces and maybe a lake. He has to have a priest or Prophet also, because apparently he can still call his god.
Scores:
For provinces, I dominate. Man and Ulm at 45%, Man is on steep decline, Ulm spiking up; Pythium 15%; Caelum 5%.
For income, I lead; Man 90%; Ulm about 50%, sharp spike up; Pythium and Caelum 10%, with Pythium strongly down.
For gem income, I dominate. Man and Ulm tie at 35%; Pythium 5%, Caelum flatlined.
For research, Man leads; I'm at 90% and losing ground; Caelum flatlined at 45%; Pythium 25%; Ulm 20% and accelerating.
For dominion, I tie Ulm. Caelum is auguring in* at 25%. Man is at 20%; Pythium is approaching dominion snuff at 5%.
(*You've heard of "crash and burn"? "Augur in" is the next level of intensity.)
For armies, Man leads by a wide margin, but is starting to spike down. Ulm 50%; I’m 35%; Pythium and Caelum 10%.
The graphs urge me to hurry and grab as much of Man as I can, before Pythium goes under…
…but I miscalculate badly…again. While I was building infrastructure, gem hunting, Arch Devil buffing, and so on, I let my mage- and troop-building lapse. In the meantime, it looks like Man has put every halfpence into cheap troops for the last 50 turns!
Man has materialized an army of 580, and another of 390 right on my border! These are all junk troops, plus a few summons (disproportionately many Cold Drakes), but seemingly impervious to waves of Lesser Horrors and intense concentrations of Fires from Afar.
They overrun a large army of mine led by the Spectral Mage merc with no difficulty at all, destroying him utterly. This distracts me so much I forget to renew the mercs again (Perceville is gone for good, but I manage to rehire *smudge*—Couatl? without incident).
I am still two levels out from Greater Horrors, and find I don’t have a lot of army-killing magic to hand at this point. I hold the oceans for now, but if I can’t keep my troop-building sites on the west continent, he’ll force his way into my east continent core.
And I thought C'tis was trouble!