Dark Castle: Turn 16

 

Let's check out our battles.

Nifel

Grave Giggler buffs up with Unholy Blessing, Unholy Protection, and then Unholy Power before he charges straight at the villains and quickly dispatches 8 of them before they flee for their lives. I love this guy.

His stats are ridiculous when fully buffed:

Shade Forest

Our chaff charges at the dirty Woodsmen while hurling their javelins. We take arrow fire, but it bounces off our shields. Our Knights then charge through the gaps in our lines to inflict an unholy smackdown on the forest hippies, who flee. I think 3 actually escaped from the battlefield, not that it matters with independents. 

These guys would probably be tougher if we were not immune to their poison. 

What's interesting is that Marignon didn't attack us in Panuonia. This is super surprising since he could have easily won and seized the province. I have to assume that he thought he wasn't strong enough to take it, which smells like weakness to me. I'd like to attack Marignon, but I think he would be very hard to deal with partly because of his capitol, which has the following effect on my troops.

I do move in a small reinforcement force to Panuonia from Shade Forest to act as a deterrent force, although it only has 36 chaff and 4 knights. 

Ulm moved his Priest Smith to The Cloudbreakers on turn 15. If he's building a fortress it will complete on turn 19.

I need to find someone to attack soon, but who will I victimize first? It's important to have a good early war, but with no relations with my neighbors and being universally despised it's hard to figure out who that should be. I still have a few turns left to decide until I get my Lictors, but I definitely cannot sit idly by for too long.

I sent Ulm the following message:

"Greetings. I can't help but noticed that you're building a fortress in #27 in Dark Castle that's just a mere two squares from my capitol, which will complete on turn 19. We don't have any type of formal agreement on hostilities, so I'm sure you can understand why I might find this a little concerning. Perhaps we should come to some type of arrangement for our mutual security?"

I do move Grave Giggler to my capitol, who will be in striking range of Ulm. I also move a small 40-undead army with 4 knights to Obocte next to Ulm's territory where he is building the fortress. The show of force and my message should, hopefully, persuade him to be responsive on the diplomatic front. Based on his response I might decide to go after him first.

We had a lot of events this turn:

Come on, where's my gold?!

On the infrastructure side we built a temple in Plothai. I thought about upgrading one of my fortresses, but if I have 5 temples my max dominion increases by 1 and so does my death gem generation, which will help my freespawn and summons. 

On the recruitment side I summon 9 Lictors using my laurels and summon a Dusk Elder, which leaves me just a single death gem. I also recruit a priest and 2 scouts. I'm realizing that I need more eyes out on the world to figure out what's going on since I can't rely on any friends or allies. 

I'm not going to show the battle but we caught one of Eriu's scouts in my capitol. 

I think it's time I made another diplomatic push and and sent the following in-game messages to the players. It's probably more efficient to use Discord, but I felt like  staying in character and it's hard to do that in Discord without breaking immersion and people might think I'm a little nuts.

We send the following diplomatic message to Eriu:

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, "Greetings. It looks like we're going to be neighbors now. Thanks for sending us that scout -- he was delicious. What news do you bring from the rest of the world?"

And sent the following to R'lyeh:

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, "Bone Daddy is sorry if he called you ugly and not fit to eat early. That's not a good way to start a mutually beneficial relationship. Perhaps with the right seasoning? Anyway, any interesting news from your side of the world? Things are pretty slow here, although Eriu is currently raiding Man. 

Bone Daddy thinks that since we're not neighbors and we're...misunderstood. Yeah, let's use that word.   Since we're so misunderstood from everyone we might be able to help each other. Open the lines of dialogue so to speak. Join skeletal hand and strange tentacle against the world. Too soon? Let me know. 

Finally we sent this to T'ien Ch'i

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, "Greetings friends. Just because Bone Daddy is undead and maybe trying to kill all living things doesn't mean we can't be friends. There are certain benefits with being friends of Bone Daddy. 

What news from your end of the world? Things are pretty quiet here, and that's not just because everything is dying around us. The only thing interesting happening is that Eriu is raiding Man but no other conflicts I can detect.

We're natural friends since we're not neighbors, and maybe we can work out something mutually beneficial. Let Bone Daddy know what you think. 

On the diplomatic front I did get some information from another player via discord that that other players were gearing to attack me and that I was asked to join. Lovely. 

I'm not going to give away who told me that information, but it makes sense from a certain perspective but it's also strange because I feel like they should have attacked me awhile ago. Anything more then a 2:1 dog pile is pretty tough in Dominions because everyone back stabs each other, but I am looking forward to see what happens and if they follow through.

Note: I did hear back from Ulm over discord who said that the priest wasn't building a fortress and that he was just preaching to keep my dominion at bay. That actually sounds somewhat reasonable, and I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and not invade him -- although I've got my baleful eye on him. 

I am very glad that I'm jumpstarting my lictor production using Laurels. I can't imagine attempting to summon Lictors via Arch Bishops. Maybe with an awake pretender and using a prophet to jumpstart the initial production? That might be worth further testing.

We're at 21 provinces now