Turn V: Requiem for a Fish-Man
Nothing happened this turn except one battle. Those Order scales really cut down on the random events; too bad they didn't do their job on turn two.
Wow, I knew I'd win this battle (ichytids are notoriously weak), but not even losing a serf? That's impressively bad on their part.
Here are the weak fishmen in question. Some armored, some not; the unarmored ones carry nets, which are useful because they entangle opponents until they can break out, but on these guys they're hardly worth it.
And here they are meeting my forces; between the heavily armored ones being in the back and that heavy gear slows units down, only half their army meets mine at first. Meanwhile, the pincer strategy I used before worked again, both of my forces slamming into the unarmored fishies at the same time. Many fishmen fall immediately.
The fishmen employ their nets, entangling many of my troops, but they lack the strength to take advantage of this, and their armored troops still haven't reached the battle yet; apart from a few glancing blows, no damage is inflicted.
The armored troops arrive just as their allies break ranks and flee. They hardly fare better, and most of my troops have broken out of the nets already, so they're facing my full forces.
Most of their army, including their commander, falls, causing them to run after their faster brethren. While many are chased down, a few escape. However, their land is now Helheim's property.
So, I gained another province. More importantly, however, the unrest on my capital is finally gone. Now I can tax it again, and start making real money; while I can't recruit anyone this turn, starting next turn I'll be hiring Svartalf and Vanjarls to make up for lost time.
Not all news is good news this turn, though. As you have probably noticed, R'lyeh's kraken has shown its slimy face to the north of my peninsula. This has me a bit worried; while there's no way that thing can leave the sea yet, the strength of its dominion is a threat to my own, which has been rather anemic without my god. While he'll probably just keep moving, if he decides to sit off my shore I'll be in real trouble. To prevent this I send a message to R'lyeh, the contents of which I forgot to screenshot, and also have my prophet start preaching where he is to build up a reserve of dominion where he is.
Topic of my prophet, you can see some Marverni flags down where he is. Turns out I have a neighbor just below where my little offshoot of land ends and the mainland begins. I've been talking with Marverni since the beginning of this game, mainly because he was the only person who was on IRC with regularity at that point, and we basically allied from the start, so I won't be warring with him, but this limits my expansion room quite a bit. Still, I assumed there'd be a lot more space between me and my neighbors. Maybe there will be some open space to the south...
Here's a closer look at the province I took this turn. The Misfortune scale there is something of a concern, and the unrest is far too high for a single battle. I drop my taxes on the province to zero; while normally I only drop them one or two notches from what the game tries to set them to when I take them, which ensures that all the unrest is gone the next turn and I can start full taxation, I think that there's a magic site hidden here causing the unrest. And there's only one site in the game that causes both unrest and Misfortune scales: The Vale of Infinite Horror. It, as you may have guessed from that name, is a very bad thing. It's in the running for the worst site in the game, in fact. Now, it
may be a different site; there is a random event that causes Misfortune scales to appear, and events can happen to independents at times (sometimes you'll even see independent forts and temples because of this), and there are also unrest-causing events, so there may be a different site here. Still, I'm concerned.
Either way, I order Sir Slicer and his army back to the capital; the province at the tip of the peninsula has fifty-ish units in it, mainly archers, and arrows ignore glamour so they'd tear into my army, while the one to the west has sixty units, mainly heavy infantry, troops that can be hard to kill with meager forces like this, and longdeads, weird zombies that, while not a huge threat on their own, imply mage presence there. Instead he'll meet up with Finn at the capital, and together they'll take the last province adjacent to my capital, which Finn didn't attack this turn due to the elephants there I mentioned in an early post; an army with them should, in theory, keep the more valuable units safe from the glamour-ignoring trample.
So, we see that Marverni hit some trouble this turn, apparently, Caelum still hasn't expanded beyond that first province, and that while R'lyeh managed to capture two provinces this turn, Fomoria and Abysia kicked things into high gear and got three, putting them in the lead.
I have no idea where the other nations are, but between information from Marverni and looking at the map, I've been able to figure out where R'lyeh's capital is. (Yes, I had to figure it out; I didn't look at the map file. Didn't seem fair, even though I knew a few other people probably would.)
Here's where I've determined it to be. Despite what it may look like, the province to the south-east of it does not connect to the one directly east of it, making this corner province the only way east. Not only that, but that one area below Avalon
is connected to the one north of it, and Marverni confirmed that R'lyeh took that province as well. So, we know that R'lyeh's pretender took a province each turn, which would be four at this point. Moving out from the corner, there's exactly four provinces that it could have taken from starting there; counting back from where the pretender is this turn and going through the land we know it took, we likewise can only arrive at that corner province. So I now know where R'lyeh's capital is. This... Will eventually be useful, I guess, but for now it doesn't mean much, since I can't make gear that will let me enter the sea, and even if I could I can't deal with that kraken. Aside from that, R'lyeh is one of the few nations that can effectively counter Helheim at this point; I field small groups of elite troops that can tear through armies, but his mindblasters can paralyze these small teams much more easily than they could an entire army, leaving them helpless. Still, this information will come in handy in the future.
Nest turn: Not a whole lot happens.
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Bonus: Dominion explanation
So, last update I explained scales, but scales only spread with your dominion, the representation of how strong your worship is in a province. The more dominion you have in a province, the more easily your scales spread there and the more resistant they are to change from outside sources like the seasons or magic sites. If your dominion runs out, you lose, as no one believes in your god anymore and you lose all your power. Also, troops get a bonus point of morale in friendly dominion and lose a point in enemy dominion. Some spells are also more effective or only affect provinces in your dominion.
So, to begin. When you make your god, in addition to choosing the chassis, magic paths, and scales of its dominion, you assign dominion strength. Dominion is rated from 1 to 10, and each chassis has a base starting point; the more human pretenders have low dominion of one or two, while things like titans and whatnot can have it up to four. The amount it costs to raise dominion is the same no matter where you start, so a chassis that starts at one being raised to three would cost the same number of points as one that starts at four being raised to six. This makes getting good dominion strength on some god types a bit difficult.
Anyway, as stated, it goes from 1 to 10. This number represents two things: How likely dominion is to spread, and what your maximum dominion in a province can be. It's basically a ten percent chance of spreading from each dominion source you have, and the maximum strength you can have in a province is just the number your strength is; dominion strength of six, up to six candles (the representation of dominion, you can see them in the screenshots) per province. Pretty simple.
Dominion spreads from several sources, in what are called "temple checks"; strength of each check is, as mentioned about 10 times your dominion score. So someone with dominion 10 will always spread their dominion from every source, while someone with 5 or below is really going to have trouble.
Temples: As the name implies, temples are the most common way to spread dominion. Each temple makes a temple check a turn. Not only that, but every five temples you make, your dominion strength goes up by one, increasing how likely your dominion is to spread and your maximum dominion per province. It's still capped at 10, of course; you can't get dominion strength 11 for 110% success rates.
Your capital: Your nation's home province functions like a temple, making its own check each turn. Doesn't count as a temple for the purposes of raising your dominion strength, though, although how effective it is goes up with your effective strength. Lose your capital, you don't get these checks anymore, but by that point you have bigger problems, most likely.
Prophet: Prophets automatically make one temple check a turn, which is why people tend to make a prophet their first turn if they don't have some specific unit in mind for it. You can only have one prophet at a time; in addition to the temple check, prophets automatically get Holy 3 (the magic type), unless they already possess Holy magic of 3 or above, in which case they have it increased by one.
Your god: As one would expect, your god is the biggest source of dominion in the game. It automatically spreads one candle of dominion a turn, and then makes two checks at whatever strength you possess. This is why Caelum's dominion has been higher than mine, even though a lot of signs pointed to his dominion strength being lower than mine; his awake god really boosted his dominion.
Victory point provinces: These are a bit odd. Some provinces in the game are marked by a crown; in a certain game mode, controlling some/all of these is a victory condition. Even in games where they aren't, though, they spread dominion with a strength of 5 (a 50% chance a turn), regardless of your dominion strength. They never make a real difference, since they're relatively isolated and spread out, and if you control most of them then you probably control most of the map and are winning anyway.
Preaching: Units with levels of Holy magic can preach in a province to raise your dominion there, as seen in my update earlier. Preaching can be useful, but it has several limitations. For one, the maximum preaching can raise the dominion of a province to, regardless of your normal cap, is twice their Holy level; H1 can raise it up to two candles before they stop having an effect, for example. Also, against enemy dominion your preaching is less effective; really strong enemy dominion is hard to affect through this manner, so you'd better rely on other ways of countering a tide of enemy dominion sweeping over your land.
Blood sacrifice: Now here's an odd one. Some nations can spread dominion by sacrificing captured blood slaves; the ones that can in this game are Abysia and myself. The way it works is pretty simple; at a temple, a priest can sacrifice a number of slaves a turn, equal to their Holy magic level. Only one priest can sacrifice per temple. Each sacrificed slave generates two temple checks; it's supposed to be one, but apparently the game is bugged there and can't be fixed. When done in massive amounts, blood sacrifice is really dangerous; you can snuff out enemy dominion in a few turns, and possibly destroy all your enemies this way. However, it's not easy to do this; first, you need a lot of temples, and to have a good enough blood economy going to provide enough slaves for a continuous effort here. You also need enough priests to actually sacrifice all the slaves you have. So, you need money, troops, and blood slaves to do this to any extent that threatens people, making it a thing that doesn't really happen outside of the endgame in most cases. However, even if you can't kill people with it, it is useful for bolstering your own dominion, a purpose for which I may have to use it considering my rather weak dominion.
So, that's dominion explained. It's a rather important aspect of the game, and one a lot of people don't understand fully, or even know about; many new players miss the dominion level indicator when making their gods for the first time, and even after learning about it not everyone knows just how important it can be. If you're taking a god build that has high scales, for making a lot of money, for example, you also need a high dominion to spread those scales around your land. Another thing is how easily low dominion can get you killed, like, say, if a kraken that spreads three candles a turn shows up on your shore and you only have a dominion strength of five. Whoops.