Turn IV: Catching up
Okay, nothing happened (for me) this turn besides these two battles. This is it, let's see if I'm doomed already.
Heck yes, won
both of them. Few casualties in the second one, but it was probably just some cheap human troops. Let's see how it went down.
Finn's rematch first. Starts the same way as the last battle, except this time I had accidentally scripted the Helhirding to "Hold and attack" rather than "Guard Commander", so he rushed ahead before Finn was done casting. Wound up not getting him killed or anything though, so it's fine.
He did take a few hits for his stupidity, but he deserved that. Anyway, Finn and his minion clean up the rest of the jerks who drove them away last time with no real trouble.
Let's check out the other battle now.
Okay, this one's set up a bit more dynamically. Sir Slicer, the *******, is set up in the back, to bless himself and... Well, he has Death magic rather than Air, so he doesn't have much to do, for himself or his soldiers. Meanwhile, the serf warriors are set up in the front, where they will hold for a few turns before moving in, while the huskarlar are set to the side and a ways back, but will move in to attack immediately.
There's actually several reasons for this setup. The serfs are generally weaker, but they have shields at least, so they can block some arrows, and since they're in the front, the enemies will target them first; since the enemy AI doesn't change targets for its shooting unless engaged in melee or the target routs/dies, they will keep shooting at these guys even as the more valuable and huskarlar get closer and ready to murder them. The huskarlar, being set to the side and further back, meanwhile, will hit the enemy in the side, theoretically, and will actually reach the enemy at about the same time as the serfs, who start further ahead but don't move at first, resulting in my entire army hitting them at once without the more valuable units having taken damage yet. Sr Slicer, meanwhile, is on a horse, and therefore moves a lot faster than the little men walking around, so he'll get there at about the same time too.
Here's the enemy, meanwhile. Mounted archers. They can attack in melee, but they won't unless engaged directly, since they're primarily archers. I was expecting a melee portion to this battle, since I wasn't that familiar with the Horse Tribe and didn't know I'd meet an entirely ranged regiment here, but fortunately my plan holds up regardless.
And here we see my plan working. The archers are firing at the serfs even as the huskarlar come in for them. Meanwhile, Sir Slicer cast a low-level Death spell after blessing himself; Frighten lowers the morale of a few enemy troops. Nothing big, but it could help a little, and it's one more turn he's busy instead of rushing forward on his horse; if he were the first person to meet the enemy, he might be in trouble, and the commander dying means the army automatically routs.
Anyway, my positioning and scripting worked out mostly well here; huskarlar and serfs hit the Horse Tribe at almost the same time, and while Sir Slicer wound up behind some other units and unable to attack at first, he also reached the battle at the same time at least. In melee, the Horse Tribe has trouble striking my glamoured troops, while the huskarlar stab at them and their horses with impunity.
Unfortunately for the serfs, they are not protected by glamour, and barely protected by their crappy armor, so they take some casualties and damage from the tribe's weapons.
After several of them take various wounds, they break, leaving Sir Slicer and the huskarlar to fight. By this point, their running makes little difference in this battle, but unfortunately if they retreat they'll move to other provinces, meaning they won't be with this army for the same strategy this turn. My arrow fodder is running away.
As said, their absence makes no difference; the huskarlar and their Helkarl finish off most of the remaining Horse Tribe with ease, and the rest flee. Rather quickly, at that; they get off the battlefield before the serfs do, meaning that, while they ran away, the serfs end up staying with the army anyway. Score.
Aw yeah, look at that. Not one, but two provinces in a turn. I'm now making enough money to... Pay upkeep for my army. Yeah, with my capitol still at zero percent tax to get rid of the unrest, I really am not making much money. Had enough to get two more Helhirdings, at least, which are what Finn is moving back to the capitol for; he only has one minion at the moment, and it got a chest wound from the failed battle. Meanwhile, Sir Slicer and his army are still moving forward; as the serfs didn't flee, I can use the same strategy for the next battle, and the province they're moving to is full of Ichtyids, fishmen who are rather weak; I could have probably taken this province with only the Huskarlar and Sir Slicer, really. Serfs being there to take the focus off of the real units basically dooms the poor fishmen.
Sir Slicer has also made the Hall of Fame, but the ability he got isn't nearly as nice; he merely got Heroic Precision, which makes him more likely to hit things. Not detrimental, but compared to Finn becoming the Energizer Bunny it's kind of a letdown. Oh well.
Something really nice, in addition to getting land, is that both of them had magic sites on them. While most sites that you can see without searching aren't very good, they can be useful.
The Ichtysatyr Village is a site that, despite seeming to do a lot, is rather simple, really. I get a Nature gem from it every turn, which is nice, and it lets me recruit some units I normally couldn't; Merman Captains are amphibious commanders, meaning that they can lead troops under water or above it, while Ichtysatyrs are weird shapeshifting fishmen (as as in, they have mermaid-like lower bodies underwater, not that they're fishlike humanoids like the Ichytids up there) who take the form of satyrs on land, are stealthy underwater, and recuperate from injuries. Kind of neat, but ultimately not that useful for me; as much as I'd like to get into the ocean, R'lyeh can kill these guys without any trouble, although if I claimed an ocean province before his pretender or army arrived, I could possibly demand that he leave it to me or effectively declare war on me, giving me an excuse to punt his scaly butt back into the ocean wherever I find it on land. I'll consider it.
This site also produces a small amount of resources a turn, which isn't too great here since there isn't much I want from this place; however, since it's adjacent to my capitol, and forts draw income and resources from the surrounding provinces, it helps make my capitol more productive. Not bad.
The Shambler Reef is a recruitment province like the village, but it's far less interesting. No gems or resources, just allows me to recruit Shamblers from this province. Shamblers are large Atlantians who wear no armor, and aren't really that great. Could be useful for taking an ocean province, but in the long run I'm not getting much from having them.
Anyway, I know what you all
really want to see: Graphs. Let's look at graphs.
Province graph, heck yes. I am back in the game. Fomoria and Abysia also gained two provinces this turn, tying them with R'lyeh who's gained one since the start, but this puts me equal with Arcoscephale, Marverni, and Pangaea, and ahead of Caelum.
Income is... Less exciting. I'm making money again, but hardly any. I'm still behind even Arcoscephale after whatever the heck crashed their economy there. I really need to get my capitol up and running again.
Army size, meanwhile. I'm at the bottom, but that doesn't matter at all since I rely on a few elite units rather than massed militia. Abysia seems to have suffered a huge loss here, but this is actually them gaining and then losing that mercenary band of sixty militia, i.e. some of the worst units in the game; checking the mercenary screen confirms this, as those guys aren't listed there anymore. For those players who didn't know, mercenaries also show up in your army graph; this is also why Marverni is just behind Pangaea in units despite all the freespawn Pan gets.
Other than that, there isn't much of interest here. R'lyeh got a huge boost but they have access to Lobo Guards, some of the cheapest units in the game, so he probably bought a lot of them. More interesting is Caelum; they've had a steady boost there, one that's increasing by the exact same amount each turn. Since my first turn, I only got three units, and the slope there is greater than that of Caelum's line... He's only recruiting one unit a turn? Maybe; since he also expanded, but kept his research going, either he expanded with his starting army and didn't lose any units (unlikely, Caelian military is some of the worst in the game, which is unfortunate for people like me, who like Caelum), or he switched from researching with his god to researching with whatever he hired first turn while the god took a province and the starting army continued patrolling his capitol so he could afford the singular unit he's recruiting: Eagle Kings. These guys are 400 gold each, which is quite a bit of money. They're definitely worth it, but recruiting them from the start is a painfully expensive strategy, and as we can see, one that limits your ability to expand quite a bit.
Anyway, that's turn four. Catching up to everyone else and horribly abusing the graphs even more; while I love using them, I think anyone who argues against them can, instead of formulating an argument for why they're bad, simply point to my posts here and say, "Because they let you do
that". And I'm just starting here.
Next turn: Stomping on fishmen.
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Bonus: Scales analysis.
So, you may have heard some of us talking about "scales". You may be wondering what the heck the big deal is. Well, scales are the effects your pretender's dominion has on the surrounding environment; they're called scales because, well, that's how they're represented in pretender creation, a set of scales that can be weighed one way or the other.
Here's a sample set of scales, what's on my capitol this turn. You can also see what scales an individual province has by looking in the upper-left corner of the screen while on the map; the more of an individual icon there is, the stronger the effect of that scale there. The side that is weighted down is the dominant scale in this case, with the left side being the good one in all but one case (where both sides are bad and balance is good), and the right one being pretty bad for you. So, as you have probably gathered, my scales are downright toxic. Let's look at them in more detail, top to bottom.
Order versus Turmoil: The first scale, represented on the map screen as a dove and crossed swords, respectively. Order increases the amount of income in a province and decreases the number of random events there, while Turmoil makes the province less profitable and causes more things, good and bad, to occur. Order also unlocks a number of positive events, while Turmoil has a mix of good and bad ones it enables. (The scales of a province determine what events can happen there; you won't have an event where snowfall impedes trade in a province with Heat scales, for example.)
Production versus Sloth: Represented on the map screen by a hammer and a sawing log (ooh, a visual joke). Production increases the income of a province slightly and really increases the resources there (resources are a non-monetary aspect to unit creation, generally used in units that need heavy armor and weapons; resources aren't saved from turn to turn and are specific to their province, instead of shared across your kingdom like gold, so a low-resource province will never be able to make a ton of heavily-armored knights), while Sloth decreases both. Interestingly, this is the only scale that doesn't affect events at all; it only changes income and resources.
Tangent, CBM (the mod we're using) adjusts the Order and Production scales a bit, decreasing the income from the former and increasing it on the latter, making them more equal since, in the vanilla game, Sloth 3 was taken by almost every nation that didn't have really heavy units. This is, in my opinion, a really terrible change, as it ends up making Order barely more profitable than Production when it's supposed to be the scale about money, and enables a formerly-risky strategy of combining Turmoil and Luck scales, hoping to get a lot of good events to make up for the income loss, because now you're not losing that much income, especially if you take Production as well. Some people have said "well Order also brings good events", which is true, but it also makes events less likely, and it doesn't affect whether the events that happen are positive or negative, just that there are more positive ones if you're lucky in the 50:50 chance the event will be good. Personally, I like how a mod from SA handles it: The income from both scales is the same as vanilla Dom3, but Production and Sloth affect how many resources you get a
lot more; Sloth 2 in it decreases your available resources by more than vanilla Sloth 3. If you take full Sloth scales in this mod, then unless all your units have a resource cost of 1 you will have trouble massing
anything for an army. Instead of devaluing Order, it increases the value of Production and makes Sloth 3, the strategy CBM is trying to battle and that I took anyway, a lot harsher to do.
Anyway, tangent over. Back to scales analysis.
Heat versus Cold: Represented by a sun and a snowflake, this scale is actually negative both ways; a balanced temperature is best for most nations, although some prefer more extreme climates. The further you are from your preferred temperature, in either direction, the less income and supplies you get; a nation that prefers Heat 2 and is in a Cold 1 province would get the same penalty as a nation that prefers neutral temperatures in Heat or Cold 3. This scale can also fluctuate based on the season, so many people take it at one past their preferred scale for extra points without a huge impact on their income. Helheim prefers Cold 1, by the way. Another interesting thing about this scale is that, when a province has three levels of it either way, all units in it take more fatigue in battle unless they're resistant to the appropriate element (so fire for Heat and frost for Cold).
Growth versus Death: Represented by a shaft of wheat and a skull. The former slightly increases income, greatly increases supplies (basically what keeps units in that province fed; if they don't have enough they will starve, then get diseased, which is bad), and slowly increases the population of that province over time, which makes it more profitable. Death, meanwhile, it a very dangerous scale that decreases all those things, slowly killing your population and unlocking a lot of bad events (and one good one, strangely enough; Growth meanwhile is mostly good but has a few bad events, including one that is almost game-endingly nasty depending on where it happens). So, of course, I took Death 3.
Luck versus Misfortune: Represented by a four-leaf clover and a wilted clover. Both of these scales make events more likely, in the same way Turmoil does. However, Luck increases the base chance of the event that happens being good, while Misfortune makes bad events more likely; normally it's an even chance either way when an event happens. They also, predictably, open up a lot of new events, with all the Luck ones being good, and the Misfortune ones being some of the worst events in the game, especially when combined with Death or Drain. After taking Misfortune 2 in my first multiplayer game, I vowed to never touch it again; my Luck scales are neutral here.
Magic versus Drain: Represented by a purple sphere and a gray one. Magic increases the effectiveness of researching, while Drain decreases it; notably, since it affects it by .5 per scale, which is then rounded up, people who want the research bonus can just take Magic 1, while those in need of points may as well take Drain 2 since it doesn't affect your research more than 1 does. They also affect the difficulty of casting battlemagic in their province; in Magic scales, casting uses less fatigue and affects targets more easily, while in Drain it's harder to cast and people are more resistant to its effects.
The scales I took, by the way, are Order 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Death 3, and Drain 2. These are
very bad scales. My dominion is a place where the life and energy is drained out of everything and almost nothing happens. Sounds like a land of the dead, alright. Why would I take such bad scales? Well, as I said, when creating your god, you have a certain number of points, which can be spent on increasing the strength of its dominion, its magical ability, and your scales, with good scales costing points (except in the case of temperature, where, again, moving either way counts as "bad", even if it takes you to your preferred temperature; this is pretty cool for nations like Abysia and Caelum, who like extreme temperatures) and bad scales getting you points. As you may have guessed, I got a
lot of points from taking these scales. This allowed me to make a pretty powerful god, although at a big cost. Of course, Helheim's a pretty powerful nation, so I can overcome these (mostly self-imposed) difficulties. Hopefully.