Part 1a here
Part 1b here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
I mention province numbers a few times, but the only screenshot showing the numbers is at the bottom of the post, so scroll down as needed.
Turn 22 - War at last!
I finally badgered Pythium into getting ready to go after Pangaea. The first volley was scripted turn 22 and carried out on turn 23.
It was pretty mild I think by most standards. As I am a coward, I want to ease into the war. See what his defenses/response is like before I commit more. To be actual war and fighting, it’s surprisingly uninteresting. I am moving two stacks against trivial defense and doing some lightweight raiding. I should also point out that this is one of the few times where the little lake in the middle is interesting as I am able to use sailing to hit the province 67 this turn also where I would not be able to otherwise. Its fairly significant as it puts a manned fort under a real siege.
Speaking of raiding, this is my typical fully kitted raiding Van (tho this one doesn’t have any experience yet):
Sometimes I will add a Horror Helmet for fun or swap a ring or add a Dragon Helmet if I need particular resistances.
I should also point out that these guys are really overkitted for most duties. Just the shield and sword will beat even heavy PD or lots of unsupported troops. I often leave off the two items in the misc slots. If I have good scouting and know there is little resistance, I will often send them in with no gear at all and it’s seldom a problem.
Still, I always like to have the full gear sets when I can. Early on most games, it’s not a problem doing this forging with dwarves doing it at a discount (18 gems total). That way I have it if I need it and it results in fewer failed raids early when there is often more PD and you don’t always know what you’re going to be fighting.
Orders are usually to sit in back corner then Mistform, Blessing, Holdx3, Attack Rear. They certainly have vulnerabilities, and are not SCs, but they are very capable against most PD and national troops without proper support. Occasionally, someone will just be trying to move some guys around without support and you can catch them with one of these guy and kill 100 troops.
There a couple other things to note I suppose.
I finally started Blood Hunting, but not really very much… just one province right now. I’m really sort of surprised that it took this long to get going. I think it prob had something to do with the lack of forts. Since I only want to recruit Cap only mages in my cap, I never really recruit Vans there. Consequently, until I can get up a 2nd (and by now 3rd) fort and accompanying temple/lab, I don’t really have any way to recruit them. Then when I do, only half will be B2 and I can get some bad luck there I can also end up lacking B1s for raiding and being forced to use my B2s that way instead.
In any case, I’m clearly getting a late start on the Blood Hunting.
In research, I just knocked out Evo 3 and this turn will knock out Evo 4. Most of the Evo stuff I want is Evo 4 (Thunderstrike) or Evo 5 (Storm, Orb Lightning, Earthquake) I’ll be glad to have T-Strike on line next turn. I’ve also taken over all the water provinces I was planning on and the demons are still in the province between Bandar and me.
On to results!
Turn 23 - Meh…
These are also pretty uninteresting. My two stacks and two raiders won their provinces with no losses, but also not really killing anything but PD. I also cast a Call of the Winds on one of the provinces just to see if they could route Pangaea’s minimal PD and learned that they cannot. I know a lot of folks like to use these birds like this, but they are often only useful against really bad PD or a province with no PD. Air gems are really precious to me and as such, I hate spending them on birds like this for raiding. I would rather spend fewer gems and Cloud Trapeze a Van in with a much higher likeliness of success. The Van can then stealth and move on whereas the birds just die. Still… sometimes it’s worth taking a shot.
This put me first on the Provinces chart.
I’m not attaching the others because it’s a pain to do every time :P I’m still doing well in most things. First in Gem Income and now Second in research to a surging Shinuyama.
Pythium also moved up according to plan and took 65 and should move on 74 next. I guess since there’s not a lot else to say about this turn I should mention that there was a post about Pythium being “opportunistic” in grabbing some provinces in the “Van-Pan war”. I didn’t say anything to counter that notion on the forums, but the plan was always that this was a joint venture. I just ended up looking like the chief protagonist here because I attacked much more broadly quickly. The plan was for him to move up the coast while I took the Western provinces. That’s mostly how it worked out. There was never a lot of friction between Pythium and me. I did get nervous a couple times when I felt like Pythium was dragging his feet. It made me look much more dangerous on the graphs and if he wasn’t attacking Pan with those big armies. what exactly was he going to be doing with them? It worried me, but we were able to work things out.
I’m really at a loss for anything much else to say about this. What a letdown.
Turn 24 - Turn 27
These turns are also pretty damn uninteresting for an AAR, though there was a lot going on while playing them.
The quick overview is that I continue to just raid Pangaea (losing a couple raiders in the process) while sitting on the fort in Black Alps(67). I captured it on Turn 26 and then spent Turn 27 patrolling it and consolidating my troops and planning what comes next.
There were some interesting details though:
It takes forever to crack the fort in 67 without any magic support. I thought this was due to just the number of units inside, but when I did finally, I saw that Iron Walls was up. I am a little surprised by this as Iron Walls does nothing for you once you’re under siege. So either is was cast pre-emptively (remember i put this under siege first turn of the attack) or it was a misunderstanding of the mechanics.
On Turn 26, I stormed it with just a commander to get a look at what I was facing and Pan had all his troops set to retreat out. This nearly ended in disaster as Pan just took a province the same turn to retreat into. If that attack had failed (it was only a dozen units) then his pretender and entire army would have routed into oblivion. It didn’t fail however - that army was then pointed at the fort in Lliledhor(74) that Pythium had under siege.
This was very surprising to me at the time on a variety of levels. I was surprised in the risk of retreating the troops, but also of not fighting. Looking at it more closely now, I see that I prob would have won the fight, but I didn’t know that at the time. It also makes sense looking at it now that maybe Pan decided to focus on the fight against Pythium in 74. Instead of two half-strength armies both likely to lose, combine them and make one, more powerful stand.
I think that’s about all I have time for today. I really hate quitting right here, because I think the next turn is the most pivotal in the game from my perspective (Machaka and Eriu have different perspectives I’m sure). As such I want to make sure I give it proper attention and I don’t think I can do that right now.
