Wierdest battle i ever saw.

[Cheezeninja]

I was playing Abysia in SP and at war with Vanheim, they had a small army of 1 herse (HoF quickness ability) 2 skinshifters, 3 Valkeryies, and 9 assorted infantry that attacked a bloodhunting province with 5 PD and 2 warlock apprentices. I had anticipated this and scripted my apprentices to retreat immediately, but when I opened the battle view I found them surrounded by ~46 bloodslaves instead of the 7 I had been told they both had collected that turn.

In the fist couple turns, Dag the herse (vanheim quickened commander) sped past his own troops and my PD towards my apprentices that were trying mightily and unsuccessfully to wade through a bog of slaves to make it offscreen. On turn 3 the valkeryies attacked my apprentices and ran into the bloodslave screen, and my PD made contact with the Vanheim infantry. The next turn 1 of my apprentices was able to find an opening and make it offscreen, my PD broke and as all troops were now retreating my Abysian Warlord started retreating as well. Then either a bloodslave or the heat aura of my Last remaining apprentice killed a Valkeryie causing the rest to flee, evidently seeing his opening the Last apprentice slipped through the bloodslaves and offscreen. Now it gets wierd. As soon as the Last apprentice got offscreen the bloodslaves suddenly started behaving like an offensive unit! They turned, and ran straight for the Vanheim commander (who had completely bypassed the PD/infantry battle with his heroic quickness) Then my Abysian Warlord turned around and started fighting again! Evidenly the AI decided there were troops again and he was no longer forced to retreat. On the next turn my heroic bloodslaves pummeled Dag the herse to death with their fists! Which caused all Vanheim forces to retreat since they had no other commander! But suddenly my Warlord started retreating as well! But the slaves kept advancing, and the warlord whipped around and did another 180 the moment he was behind the slaves! (evidently he wasn't a lead from the front type of commander) The end result was me with ~32 victorious bloodslaves holding the field, along with 1 Abysian Warlord. To make matters even wierder, I now have 3 blood slaves sitting in the garrison of the province in question!

Very, very strange.
I was using v2.13 btw

[Stormbinder]

LOL.

That's very wierd. You mean that as the result of this battle your bloodslaves become actual soldier type units instead of gem-type comodity that they normally are??

If this is the case, and if I would be you, I would grant the most heroic of your Bloodslaves the Gift Of Reason, as the reward for his deeds in that battle, for the sake of Roleplaying. Than you can try to get him into HOF by giving him good items and/or empowering him. This way you would become the only owner of Hero Bloodslave in existance.

Perhaps you could even write a nice AAR story around it, someting like "From Rugs to Riches"...

[Graeme Dice]

Stormbinder said:
That's very wierd. You mean that as the result of this battle your bloodslaves become actual soldier type units instead of gem-type comodity that they normally are??

That's what happens if a blood slave is injured but not killed during a battle, or if there are no blood mages left over at the end to convert them back into usable blood slaves.

If this is the case, and if I would be you, I would grant the most heroic of your Bloodslaves the Gift Of Reason, as the reward for his deeds in that battle, for the sake of Roleplaying.

Just make sure not to empower them in blood magic, or you might have problems when the blood slave sacrifices itself.

[Graeme Dice]

Cheezeninja said:
But suddenly my Warlord started retreating as well! But the slaves kept advancing, and the warlord whipped around and did another 180 the moment he was behind the slaves!

Melee commanders default to "Stay behind troops", so that's probably what happened here.

[Arryn]

Stormy, bloodslaves are virgin females. You're using the wrong pronoun. "Her", not "him/his".

BTW, IIRC, isn't there a bug with Gifting a blood slave?

[Frosted Flake]

The weirdest fight I have seen was as Jotun. I took the pangean capital and was able to recruit a lizard shaman there- thought that was odd to begin with. First fight against heavy infantry and 50 au piece indie priests, he spams curse on all my own commanders! Next fight he curses himself? This is an ongoing game and something else weird happened. After taking the Ulm capital I could recruit ghoul guardians (unsure of name) and fortune tellers . that cant be right

forsted flake

[Graeme Dice]

Arryn said:
Stormy, bloodslaves are virgin females. You're using the wrong pronoun. "Her", not "him/his".

There's nothing in the manual or in-game text to support this claim, other than that the description of a blood slave says "The blood slave is typically a female virgin."

[Arryn]

Graeme Dice said:
There's nothing in the manual or in-game text to support this claim, other than that the description of a blood slave says "The blood slave is typically a female virgin."

The image is of a female, and the sound is of a female. Plus, when I brought the subject of male bloodslaves up several months ago, the devs categorically stated they were female.

[Alneyan]

Frosted Flake said:
After taking the Ulm capital I could recruit ghoul guardians (unsure of name) and fortune tellers . that cant be right

That part is quite normal actually. Ulm Dark Forest gets Ghoul Guardians, Fortune Tellers and Wolfherds as its capital only units, and you should be able to recruit them when you take over Ulm's capital.

[Arryn]

Alneyan said:
That part is quite normal actually. Ulm Dark Forest gets Ghoul Guardians, Fortune Tellers and Wolfherds as its capital only units, and you should be able to recruit them when you take over Ulm's capital.

I've not played Ulm BF, but in general, you cannot recruit the national troops of other nations even after you've taken their capital (unlike in Warlords).