AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[Shardphoenix]

5 N + 5 blood slaves in your example.

Come on, blood slaves are dirt-cheap. I don`t even count 5 blood slaves as real investment. I meant the variant i screenshoted - with Lycan amulet and hunter`s knife.

Bane: MR = 15. Minotaur: MR = 11.

Dust to Dust doesn`t care about MR. It just deals 22+ AN damage with AoE 1 and precision +0 to any undead. Can be cast by any D1 mage out there. It still somehow doesn`t prevent Banes from being used effectively.

Andd what size are they, btw?

Small enough to be successfully trampled. And not defensive enough to dodge a trampling enraged minotaur lord.

And jaguar warriors

Only in human form. In jaguar form they are size 3, AFAIK. Also, those are extreme example of elite sacred unit - of course, they need special threatment.

warriors of the 5 elements

Same as jaguars. Also, they are cap-only, so hard to mass.

mechanical men...

High-level summon!=common human. And Pan has answers to them outside of minotaur lords.

The build you describe may have its uses, namely sending it solo against a solo thug who is not a Caelian High King (who would fry it in 1 or 2 of the thunderstrikes he is scripted to cast anyway).

Do you really think that scripting a solo-raiding caelian to thunderstrike is a good idea? Also, Caelum really needs some research done before evo - you know, stuff like alt3 (mistform), for example. And why send those minotaurs solo? Send 3-4 of them and watch enemy SC god cry.

a (4 gems + 1 turn of summoning) bane beats this (5 gems + 5 slaves + 40 gold + upkeep + 2 turns of forging + 1 turn of recruiting + 1 turn blood hunting) minotaur.

Because, as we all know, a bane needs no equipment.

[LDiCesare]

3-4 minotaurs? Instead of 4 mages?
When I've researched everything useful, definitely. Before that, it's a waste of fort time unless I have no money for a lab.

Because, as we all know, a bane needs no equipment.

An unequipped bane beats your sample minotaur. Once again, these have some use, but they are so heavily specialised that they are definitely not worth recruiting unless you have a specific need for them.
And mechanical men require as much construction as the items you put on your thugs. Same for alt3/evo3 vs. cons4 for Caelum with its better research. Plus if you build minotaurs when you still haven't gotten anything better than Cons4, you're not going anywhere in research.

[Roland Jones]

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.

[LDiCesare]

TURN 5:
Very bad news.
Abysia is expanding like crazy, beelining trying to find someone to kill I suppose.


My small army has been slaughtered: those damn satyrs have realy low morale.


I site search and bring a shield to my god. He's going to have to move south and teach a lesson to Abysia if they want to rush me. Not like it will work, I kind of forgot he is weak to fire to begin with. I send a Pan to him who will site search the mountains next. I send another Pan, my commander and a hundred soldiers, mostly maenads, to take out those nasty horsemen in the south. With the Pan casting Panic like crazy, I should get rid of them.
Anyway, I send some diplo to Abysia. He will get out of my place and not go farther east or it's war. Not that I'm likely to win an early war against him outside my dominion, but I simply can't afford to have him 1 or 2 provinces from my capital.
I recruit a dryad and some minotaur warriors because these are about the only troops I have which could hope to get past abysian armor. Berserk centaurs might work, but they are more expensive for less hit points. Against normal sized troops, I hope trample will be enough. If there are burning ones nearby, then I'll need centaurs but I'm really not going to go anywhere if that's the case.After some tests, minotaurs can cut through burning ones, but they die like flies doing so. Centaurs aren't any good against them. Basically, I have no trroop that can stand against burning ones.
I decided to look at the map and starting positions. Abysia is trying to block me in the south, which doesn't matter if I can get the island, and going towards the map center, which will prevent me from going north. We will never be able to be friends. I think he has to rush me, otherwise he forces me to attack him and he'll just have problems. It looks like I'll have to build some revelers to teach him what sneaky bastards mean.
Abysia answers my diplo:
"I have revised the Abysian troop orders accordingly. I see no need for trading for nature gems at this time and will let you know if that changes in the future."
This can mean he attacks me or he retreats. Whatever, it sounds more like a cease-fire. I had proposed a trade of N for F gems. I don't need them now, but it's a friendly offer that can't hurt and may come in handy in the long run. The phrasing of the answer is very interesting by the way. As I said, it's a cease-fire, meaning he's repositioning troops but he's not saying he won't attack.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

You actually get 5 points on the graph for every province with your dominion in it + 1 point per candle.

iirc it is 10 for every province.

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh -- Turn 5

Turn 5 begins with a message -- say, a threat -- from Fomoria:



I don't want to get into a war this early, not while there is all this water to be secured first. A fort for every province! Well, maybe every second. With a lab, so I can gate in mind lords and troops. With a temple, so I can build a bunch of polypal mothers to provide freespawn and to preach my dominion up.



Also I can take the "Isle of Balor" as the Fomorians call it (we aboleths know it by its ancient, dreaded name: Koromoo) anytime I want. Corinthian does offer me an easily guarded 3-province peninsula (Numecria, Bolfagon and Saeborea) instead. I suspect he wants me to guard his northern flank for him and perhaps hopes that I'll get in trouble with Maverni, although I doubt he already knows that his north eastern neighbour is Maverni.

I check that Maverni has a route to Fomoria further inland, so I'm not going to block him. That's good. And I suppose I can cede Numecria if it gains me an ally against Fomoria.

I send back this message:

Some days after having sent his message, a singular man was brought before Buarainecht. Though well above middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip.

He had been given to strange fits, thrashing his limbs and railing at the "terrible fish with their slithering voices". Though he seldomly spoke with any lucidity, he often mentioned the name of Buarainecht in a desperate tone, and so the people in the Dead Marshes -- for he was a native of that dismal, unwholesome place -- resolved to bring him before that worthy.

After much pleading, they did finally gain an audience, in which a pronounced change came over the afflicted man. "If you take the isle that once was called the Isle of Balor, and now men call Koromoo, a doom shall fall on Saeborea, and Bolfagon, and even proud Ermor-that-will-never-be, which men know as Numecria."

With that strange pronouncement, his eyes rolled back in his head, and a most violent fit overcame him, from which he fell into unconciousness.

It incorporates a passage from one of H.P. Lovecrafts stories. Use your google-fu to find out which one!

If you've looked at the map closely, you'll have seen how the battle in Moon Sea ended. So without further ado, here are the opposing armies:



The grand army of R'lyeh you already know. This is what they're up against:



The tritons of the amber clan are quite heavily armored, perhaps the finest fighters the ocean has to offer. They crash into R'lyehs line of enslaved sea trolls, weathering the paralyzing mind blasts.



Atlantean slave troopers are driven into the gaps between the huge trolls and are sent to bolster the right flank. They are badly equiped, trained and motivated; it does not take long for them to break.

Meanwhile the Amber Clan's attack falters under the relentless barrage of mindblasts. Even worse, here and there one of the brave soldiers turns against his comrades, face frozen in a rictus of despair as he stabs a spear into a friends back...



The turning point arrives when a flanking force of slave tritons and lobo guards falls on the Amber Clan's overextended left flank. Beset from within and without, one group of warriors turns to flee, thereby dooming their brothers in arms.



Yöt-Webbogoth has succeeded in defeating the shark-knights of Baptizer, but a lance remains lodged in the rubbery flesh of its mantle. It pays the wound no heed, and continues eastwards, accompanied by a capering atlantean that whistles a mindless, mad tune on a strange and malformed shell...

Behind it, Nithü the Slave Mage dutifully searches the corpse-strewn ocean floor for sites of power. With some success:



The tale behind that you've already read...

[Roland Jones]

Turn VI: Not Much Happens

So this turn opens up without me seeing that message screen. No random events, no battles, no messages from other nations. Straight to the map screen.



And here we see, not much has changed. Still have four provinces total, still only have two commanders. Both are moving into the last province adjacent to my capital; for those who don't remember, this one has about sixty units total, mostly slingers (weak projectile throwers who nevertheless will be annoying to my men because projectiles ignore glamour and any damage, no matter how weak, breaks glamour), heavy infantry (heavily armored enemy units, can be a bit tough to kill but aren't a huge problem), and two elephants (the real issue; elephants can trample smaller units, and trampling seems to ignore glamour, meaning these guys can trample my armies and be really, really annoying to my bigger guys).



Here's my plan of attack. Modified form of the pincer strategy, with the serfs furthest forward to draw slinger attacks and make the elephants go for them first, while the Huskarlar and, after buffing, Finn and his Helhirdings run in to get them form the side. Sir Slicer, rather than joining the charge, will be spamming Frighten, a spell that lowers enemy morale; elephants have low morale normally, so hopefully he can get them to rout before they hit my army. If this works, they'll run right through their own army, trampling them instead (this is also the main risk in using elephants of your own, since if they are routed they may trample your commanders on the way out). We'll see how it works in a turn. I also am recruiting another Vanjarl and three more Helhirdings, for more expansion.

Since there isn't much else happening this turn, I'm going to spend extra time on graphs. May as well have some content here.



Provinces, Pangaea and Arcoscephale (their line is behind Pan's) are still gaining a single province a turn, while R'lyeh, Abysia, and Fomoria are just rocketing ahead. Abysia "only" gained two provinces this turn, while Fomoria's keeping up the pace with three. There's a real divide forming now.



Income is about what you'd expect, apart from something bad happening to Marverni. Caelum's still feeling the overtaxing their cap and not gaining much new stuff, I'm actually making money, and everyone else is still going up.



Research, Caelum's just leagues ahead of everyone else. I'm almost entirely sure that he's just recruiting Eagle Kings now, since he's not expanding, his army line is almost static, and he's getting tons of research. Everyone else, going up at a slower rate; Arco's philosophers are going well for him, putting him ahead of everyone who isn't spamming Eagle Kings. Meanwhile I haven't researched at all yet because I haven't been able to recruit my researchers. Bah.



Army size, not much of interest here, apart from Pangaea flatlining (did they lose a lot of people to counteract their freespawn?) and Fomoria rocketing up. Caelum actually seems to have recruited some people, and then lost most of them, probably in the attempt to grab their new province. Abysia and I have the lowest numbers total, although this is to be expected; Abysia has expensive but effective units, and I, even in a normal game (like my test game, where I was able to claim four provinces a turn in the first year; I got such a bad start here) rely more on commanders with small groups of troops rather than large armies. Don't expect to see either of us at the top of the army charts, at least until we get our blood economies going and start summoning massive amounts of demons. (I don't know if either of us will actually do this. Demons are pretty awesome though.)

Alright, that's enough padding for now. At least for the actual turn. Didn't do much this turn, but hopefully I'll resume my rise to glory when we come back.

Next turn: I hate elephants.

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Bonus: Magic site and gem explanation

This one's pretty simple, but there's a lot to it. Nothing hard to understand, but this section's going to still be a bit long.

Magic gems are a vital part of the game. There is a type of gem for every path except Holy, although Blood is a bit different. You use gems in magic, as you might expect, although the ways you do it vary.

First is for ritual spells, or spells a mage casts outside of combat, at a lab. Pretty much every ritual spell requires gems, which are always of the primary path; a spell with two paths, like a Water-Nature spell (like the one for summoning naiads) would use Water gems, for example.

Second is for forging items; unlike ritual spells, an item that requires two paths uses both gems types. Otherwise, it's exactly the same as casting ritual spells.

Third is for battlemagic. Some spells require gems to cast in battle, meaning that, if the mage does not have the proper gems on their person, they cannot cast the spell. Mages can also use a single gem per spell, whether or not the spell requires gems otherwise, to reduce the fatigue the spell costs them; depending on what you have them doing, this can make a huge difference in battle, as mages who are too exhausted to cast spells are useless.

You get gems from three sources: Random events, magic sites, and certain spells. There were items that made gems, too, but they proved to be unbalancing (you had to make them or you'd be at a huge disadvantage) and unfun micromanagement, so CBM and most other balance mods make them into artifacts, so you can only get one of each, not worth it. (Other people can also trade you gems, but since they get their gems from one of these sources, anyone who was going to try to argue that I should have listed it with the above needs to put their hand down and think long and hard about their life.) A lot of gem events require the proper scales; Fire and water gems can be gained in Heat and Cold scales, respectively, for example. Magic sites are covered in more detail below, so I'll skip to the spells.

Several spells are what are known as "gemgen spells", meaning they generate gems. They're a variant of global spells, spells which there are only five slots for (casting one after they're filled will try to overwrite one of the existing ones) and that persist after they're cast. They have a high cost, and can be boosted beyond that to resist being dispelled or overwritten, and after they're cast, they give you a certain amount of gems a turn. They're pretty great, really, and frequently hotly contested; other people will try to overwrite your casting with their own, or just outright dispel it if they're at war with you.

There are a few other spells that make gems, but they're a bit odd and either not worth casting most of the time or part of a much bigger spell that only actually makes a gem profit in a fringe situation. Therefore, we're moving on to magic sites.

Magic sites are, well, just that; special sites of magic (most of the time) in a province that affect it in some ways or provide you with things. Every nation has at least one magic site in their capital, providing them with their starting gem income and their cap-only troops. Here are Helheim's two capital sites.




Something to note, while most magic sites that enable the recruitment of certain units work for whoever owns them, national sites only work for their nation; someone capturing my capital wouldn't be able to recruit Hangadrotts or other units. They still get the gem income, though.

Where magic sites are is determined at the beginning of the game, but most of them are not visible to begin with; you have to reveal them. All sites have two qualities that determine how you can find them. The first is their path type; this aligns with the various magic paths, including Holy magic. The second is their level, which is ranked from zero to four. This is the path level required to find the site; if it's higher than zero, you need to search with at least that level of the right path to find it. A Death 0 site will be revealed the moment you take the province, but a Death 4 one requires a skilled mage searching there. There are two ways to find sites:

Manual searching: This is moving a mage around and having him search the province, which reveals all sites up to the path levels they have. While this is useful in the early phases of the game, most mages have rather low path levels and will thus miss some sites. Also, they have to move to a province, then search, meaning it takes two turns for them per province. Depending on the mages you have (some with a large variety of paths, high paths, or both), you may manually search a lot, or almost not at all; if your pretender is mobile, awake, and has good magic, searching with them may be worth it as well.

Site-searching spells: The other way to find magic sites. This one is faster than manually searching, as it involves a mage just casting a spell, but they have certain limitations as well. For one, you need to research the spells, which aren't all in the same school. Secondly, almost all of them require two levels in the path to be cast, so mages with only one level can't cast them; since I only get F1, I'm going to have to manually search for Fire sites until I can get a booster for a mage, for example. Thirdly, they cost gems, although not many; most are just two gems. Fourthly, they're limited in which sites they can find; Augury, the fire-searching spell, will find all Fire sites in a province, but it will only find fire sites, unlike how a mage with Fire may also have other paths. There are some spells that search for more paths, though; Voice of Tiamat, a Water spell, reveals all elemental sites (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth) in a province, but it only works on underwater ones. Acashic Record, meanwhile, reveals all sites in a province, even Holy ones that are otherwise annoying to find (especially the rare ones that require three or four levels to find), but it's also rather expensive and requires a moderately-skilled mage to cast it. (You can also find magic sites through a certain global, but it's a fringe case not worth covering here.)

So, what do these magic sites do? Well, they can do quite a bit. The most common thing they do is give a small income of magic gems per turn; this is also the main reason people seek them out. Some of them allow you to recruit units, like the two sites I found a couple turns back; the usefulness of these units can vary immensely, from some awesome things to outright detrimental to your cause. Some sites affect the scales in a province, drive the unrest up or reduce it, cause disease to units in the province, or do other weird things, but generally these things just clue you in to a site being there (such as finding a province with three Heat scales in the middle of your land when you have Cold dominion). If a site will disease your units or something, though, you don't want to be there, generally.

There is, however, one other major thing sites can do: Lower the gem cost of spells cast there. These sites, which sometimes have other effects, sometimes not, are game-changers. While a site that offers a discount on Thaumaturgy spells won't make a huge difference, and a Blood discount site is nice but not a big thing, a Conjuration or Construction site is enormous, and if you're fortunate enough to find a site that gives an Alteration bonus then you may as well have found an "I Win" button if you can properly use it. You want to find these sites. They are just the best.

Anyway, that's both magic gems and magic sites covered there. Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of both these things, at least in my updates. Screw those other guys.

Some people may remember me saying that Blood is a bit different from the other paths, gem-wise. Curious as to what I meant? Well, you'll have to wait for my explanation of that. Blood magic is a whole other thing, and deserves its own one of these updates. Something to look forward to, I guess.

[Immaculate]

Arcosephalae
Turn Four: Enjoy the Silence

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by Depeche Mode (click the turn name- I hope you are all doing this- its VERY important)

The arcoesephalan expansion party fights a tougher opponent this turn and losses are incurred. The light, javelin-throwing infantry on the flanks met the enemy a few squares ahead of the heavy central infantry and got decimated pretty quickly. I’m not very good at scripting yet but hopefully I will get better. As a result of the bad scripting the barbs overrun my left flank and get to the squishy slingers and kill a few before they finally rout.



To make up for the losses incurred, I am sending reinforcement from the capital to help with the next battle. These reinforcements are led by a philosopher since that’s all I had available.



On the overhead map you can see that the barbarian leader I hired is heading out to the capital so the next set of reinforcements don’t have to be led by a philosopher. That’s 18rp lost just by sending him out to fix up our numbers. Oh well…



otherwise a quiet turn. I’ll maybe try and post turn 5 right away too. Maybe.

[Immaculate]

Arcosephalae
Turn Five: Girls on Film

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by Duran Duran (damnit I cannot overstate how important it is that you hit that turn title link)

This attack goes better. I fixed the scripting a little bit and the chariots do a great job to trample the light infantry and chase the fleeing heavy cavalry.



Normally I would continue expanding around the capital to secure some resources but the heavy cavalry to the north seem too tough so I am sending my expansion party (plus chariots) eastwards to fight some wolf-tribe warriors and claim a low-income wasteland province. Meanwhile my philosopher is heading back to the capital to hit the books.



Not shown here I am also recruiting another barbarian commander to help shuttle forces around.

Things are pretty quiet for arco for now so there is not too much to write about. At this point I can see from the graphs that I am not doing too well relative to nations like formoria, r’leyh and others… that doesn’t bother me too much yet though (that will happen later).

[Immaculate]

Seriously, if you are lurking this thread- have at 'err... who do you think is looking strong/weak, doing well/bad, making good/bad decisions?