Turn 8: We have seen the enemy. They are naked!?!
An unusually eventful turn! Our first level of magic research has been completed by the lonely nerd that we left back in the capitol with the quills. To alleviate his loneliness he has invented a method of raising corpses by blasting them with lightning. This discovery does not help anyone.
A magic mound is also found outside the Crystal Amazon settlement. Death is one of the two magic types that we have good access to, so it is highly useful.
And our expansion is going better than ever! Six battles!
But wait! Aren't some of those provinces mine already? Oh yea! Marverni said he was gonna attack me this turn. It very sportsmanlike of him to announce this to me ahead of time, but I still feels like that it is a bad idea to fight this early in the game while so many indie provinces still stands. Especially as neither of us have a real rush build.
I wonder how it went?
He seem to have split his forces in order to take as much of my land as possible. Two losses and one victory for me. Though I seem to have killed about 2/5's of his forces in my defense. Furthermore, the only province that was actually valuable, Nardago, with its strange gold income, remains in my custody.
Two battles were pretty much walkovers due to me putting up only token PD. But what about the third battle?
Overkill! Due to the bad scripting of my Unmarked, they winded up in the back behind the PD and barely got a stab in. The PD however behaved in an excellent fashion. The militia cant hit well but they are strong enough to punch straight through the Bare clad's shields and cause damage that way. They are also tough enough to withstand a few hits. The Fir Bolg warriors filtered through the militia. Because the militia is size 4 and the warriors size 2 they can both fit in the same square. And the Warriors can both hit and oneshot BC's . Finally although slingers are normally not very good and fomorias 11g slingers are outright bad, any ranged weapon works great vs BCs due to them not having any armor.
The outcome of the battle was never in doubt. I might even have beaten all of his armies that attacked me if they had all attacked here. And although the 28 points of PD was expensive the enemies losses cost roughly as much and atleast I get to keep the PD. You never know when some random powerful PD surprise an enemy!
(This investment in PD will turn out to be very useful indeed, in time.)
Eventually I talk with Bluemage and we both agrees that it is stupid to fight when there are so many indy provinces left in close view. He agrees to give back the provinces he took and I promises to not go for any of the indies to the north east. This is fine to me as I was planing to stop there anyhow. Invisible borders and whatnot.
I am fine with peace because, clearly, I expand much faster than him. In peace my power will grow faster than his power and although I am already both more powerful and richer than him, I gain more from attacking easier prey than another player.
To the south I send a third party of Unmarked to join forces with the two already there in order to beat the province with the huge number of barbarians. My scouting reports put them at between 90 and 140. I dont think that number of barbarians can exist naturally so I assume that a barbarian province got invaded by barbarians. As ridiculous as it might sound. My troops fair badly vs barbarians, true. But that is the province with the growth scales in it and maybe I feel like gambling?
Furthermore I can tell that the province to the south of me have sloth scales witch makes me think that it might be Arco that I got down there.
In the capitol I feel like trying something new. I'm at peace now and I dont need further expansion forces. Instead I'm recruiting something that could be useful in upcoming wars.
Nemedians are the Fir Bolgs older, and much more competent cousins. They have better stats in pretty much everything and they have magical golden weapons. More importantly, they have stealth and glamor, meaning that the enemy will not see them before its too late. How they can stealth while clad in shining gold is a mystery, but they can!
Unlike Fir Bolgs, Nemedians are not cheap and they requires surprisingly many resources to construct. But thats why you have a scale build. And even if I do not have any direct use for them now, the glamor means that the enemy will not see them and will not plan for them when contemplating war against me. Even on the statistics screen they dont count as more than a militia.
Originally I bought Nemedian Champions because they were cheap and reliable commanders to use with my Unmarked. But some later assessment shows that they are in fact awesome. More on that later.
There is also a Nemedian sorceress to complete the series. But you will never see her because she is mopey and terrible. Just about anything she can do, a fomorian king can do better.
They will join my garrison, and... What is this?
Suddenly, poorly dressed humans crowds the streets of Fomoria!
How to explain this? Well Immaculate had a good idea earlier.
Let me explain my feelings through song!
Gold in the early game is more important than gold in the late game so I have no reason to not squeeze my capitol for all its worth. This gold will be more than what several of my enemies get combines and will fuel an new Fomorian construction boom to compensate for the old bubble that collapsed. Once winter comes I might even get rid of that pesky heat scale point I took.
(No it wont! Almost everywhere but the capitol will lose the heat point!)
I also put in a new minimum bit for Dantes stingers. I dont think anyone might challenge me for them as they have taken casualties and might lose half their remaining numbers from the upcoming battle.
Turn 9: We get better neighbors.
Five battles. And for once they are five conquests. Only casualties are 2 mercs. Though two of the battles are just me retaking undefended provinces that Marv took from me during the One-Turn-War.
In Chilad, a couple of children finds two earth gems. Their fathers are not very impressed, but the children seem endlessly proud.
And in Fomoria, the militias hunt for filthy people have begun for real.
We finally meat our southern neighbor. And as I had guessed, its Arco. It is being played by my friend Immaculate. I immediately send my newly recruited Nemedian warriors down to Arco to scout out his weaknesses and prepare for a potential attack. Despite the size of my empire I have not found a single scout province.
I said earlier that Arco can be considered one of the weakest nations in the Early Age. This statement needs an explanation. Arco can be really strong or really weak depending on whom it winds up next to. If it starts next to a heavy infantry nation like Abysia, then it is a monster because its were-chariots can trample and their armor piercing attacks can easily bypass heavy armor.
The Were-Chariot is all that Sloth build arco have going for them though, and size 4 chariots are completely worthless against size 4 giants. And due to the sloth, they will not be able to build a lot of other units. And guess what? All my sacred giants are size 4-6! He would normally also be able to counter me with magic and he does have good research. But I'm betting that all that research was made possible through non-magical philosophers. And those guys could not cast Flying Shards to save their lives. It should be a walkover.
I dont attack him right now however, as I have better things to do. I do send him a friendly, and vaguely threatening message that was though to have been lost in the sands of time, but can be read in one of Immaculats posts above.
I though I said that I would be building castles this turn but it turns out I burned all my money on other things. Namely a Fomorian King with retinue! The king alone almost cost half a castle all by his wholesomeness.
These babies are the main reason anyone ever play Fomoria. Few nations have anything comparable in power and almost no other nation have recruitable SC that can also teleport without boosters. (Well, Hinnom and Ashdod on occasion.) I mainly designed my bless to benefit these guys. And with it they regenerates 11 hp/turn and have only enc 3. More about how I get around the rest of the enc problem later.
They come in 3 flavors depending on what randoms they get.
The First flavor is the A4D2 one. These guys are just like eagle kings that cost 100g extra and dont fly and... well I bet they can take an eagle king in a fist fight and thats all that maters. A4 is useful for all manner of things, but in the short term they will probably get pigeon holed in to the roll of thunder-strikers.
The Second flavor is the A3D3 one. It it mainly useful due to being my only D3 access and thats always cool. It is too expensive to do any real skelly spamming, but after a lot of alteration research it can eventually become a SC with the help of the Soul Vortex spell.
The Third flavor is the real SC of the group. The A3W1D2 guy that can cast quicken self. He need very little gear and research, so you will probably see him thugging far sooner than the others.
Out in the hills to the northeast of my capitol, a Crystal Sorceress is finally being recruited. This means that I have broken in to astral magic at last. Yay! This is important when you are living next to R'lyeh.
Many of my expansion parties stops their conquest here, and start site searching instead, as they have ran out of viable enemies to attack. The amazons have been promised to Marverni.
The commanders only got A1D1H1(D) but I suspect that 1 in a path is enough to find 50-60% of all sites in a path. And air and death are the kind of magic that I need the most.
Turn 10: Motherland! Here we come!
The various site searching pays out unexpectedly well for this light level of looking around.
A total of 4 extra gems are pretty nice. I have also previously gotten an extra 3 gems from sites that are automatically reveled when you capture a province. This means that I am now number one in gem income with a total of 14 gems/turn!
Two provinces are also captured. The brave mercenaries fight almost to the last man but eventually prove victorious. These guys have definitely been worth their money. Having singlehandedly captured four provinces for only 337 gold.
Oh wait. Having looked at the battle it turns out that the only reason I won was because 3 crippled mercs did not have time to leave the battlefield before the enemy. Praise redacted!
But there is something wrong with the event list here. Something is not there that really should be.
The combined power of all my 80 hustlers did not manage to find a single victim to sponge money from! Unrest is spiking from this and I am forced to lower my taxes for a while.
And finally, as see above, an expedition to recapture the Isle of Balor is being levied.
I have no idea what kind of barbarians the new tenants might be so I send a comparably large force. One of the many qualities of Fomorian Kings is that they can sail over water provinces. Bringing every troop under their command with them without touching the ocean in between.
The force consist of a line of giant, sacred spearmen that will hold the line. Meanwhile the smaller Fir Bolgs will filter through the legs of the spear-man formation and launch surprise attack against whoever is attacking the giants. Brilliant!
In the speshul province of Nardago, a fort is finally being built. My prophet has been preaching there for a while in order to bring them my excellent scales.
Another army is being recruited in the capitol in order to prepare for the upcoming war against Arco.
On the diplomacy front, Immaculate and I send several messages back and forth in witch I reject the concept of having NAP3s in AARs. I also subtly hints that he should attack Abysia as they would probably be busy fighting Pan right now. We also agrees that he can take the barbarian province to the north as I dont feel like wasting troops on it. After all, I can always take it from him later.
To Be Continued.....