Dark Castle: Turn 22

 

Let's see how we did in our battles:

Spires of Ascension

Marignon attacked us, but we only had 1 PD. However, it is interesting to see how he's deploying the remnant of his former army. His force is definitely diminished in size, and without his prophet he is unable to bless all of his cavalry now.

Bitra

Marignon attacked us again with a very modest force, but it's more then enough to seize our minimal PD.

Let's check out the scout battle reports:

Hamane

Eriu attacked Man in Hamane with a small force of Fir Bolgs.

Initially, this looked like an easy victory for Eriu, but his lone commander got killed  by one of Man's knights who impaled him on his lance and forced the rest of his force to run away.

This was likely a rare victory for Man because he said he had almost nothing left and was going AI this turn. 

Hexwoods

Our intelligence also showed us another battle between Ulm and T'ien C'hi:

This battle happened right next to Ulm's capitol:

This is not a good sign for T'ien C'hi.

Ecnaphale

Finally, we had a very interesting scout report from Echaphale where Phaeacia attacked Marignon's fortress. This was only against PD, so I'm just going to show Phaeacia's formation:

He destroyed the PD with minimal losses and made heavy use of a communion that unleashed a barrage of evocations. It's good to see some combat from Phaeacia, who although slow, is engaging Marignon.

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Here is where that fortress is located:

I'm very curious what Marignon is planning. Is he going to defend himself or do a suicidal type rush against me and give up the fortress to Phaeacia? Unfortunately, I have to assume the latter and begin forming a Northern army to defend myself. More on this later below.

We found the following site in Morn:

We had the following events:

Yes! That 1,905 gold event is amazing and the reason why I went with luck 3 sales to begin with. This will allow me to go on a fortress building spree. I immediately order a palisades to be build in Panuonia and Kingdom of Dhara, and I build a lab and temple in Shade forest. I really didn't like building a lab here, but I need more researchers -- even if they are slow and ridiculously expensive.

One small benefit of building a lab using Grave Giggler (formerly known as Etimmu) is that I can transfer the Kite Shield we found to him. I'm not great at at building SCs and Thugs, but I think a shield will help him a lot with protection, and it is basically free. 

We forge our first item, which is a Skull Staff. Next turn I'll have one of my Spectator's summon a Dusk Elder. I'm so desperate for research that I don't want to take Bone Daddy off research duty even though it will cost me 10 death gems. I'll need that booster at some point anyway so it's not wasted -- at least that's what I tell myself. The reason I need more Dusk Elders is that I want to try to get air and earth magic and do more searches.

On the recruitment front we hire 3 more priests and 2 scouts.

I realized I'm messing up how I animate my ghouls. Each independent priest can animate 6-7 ghouls, and each ghoul takes 10 population, so on average we will lost about 65 population per priest. I thought it was consuming corpses, but those are long-dead and you actually need live population. I think I use to know this, but that was 8 years ago and I forgot. Anyway, as a result, I'm reshuffling my independent priests (currently I have 20 of them) to areas that have population. If I had realized this earlier I'd have more ghouls by now.

On the political front I don't see Bandar's army anymore. He must have relocated  it to his capitol. This is very interesting, and I wonder if he realized that he would pretty much fighting me solo and lost his appetite to tangle with me. I wrote him the following message:

Bone Daddy can't help but noticed that you moved your delicious looking monkeys from 135 --> 126 --> 113. He's assuming you took one look at the sea of fortresses packed with ghouls, and the massive doom stack forming and wisely decided to hide in your fortress (you didn't have enough siege strength to take out my fortresses BTW). I'm just his humble messenger though, and if you have 2nd thoughts about engaging us we might be willing to overlook this incident -- although we'd of course take back that province you tried to seize from us.  We're not actually at war with anyone besides Marignon, who's force folded like a wet newspaper against us, and he's fighting Phae anyway. Let me know -- we're happy to throw down with you if you want to tangle with my hordes, but I guarantee you there are softer targets out there.

I don't know if I mean what I actually say, or I'm just having fun writing from Bone Daddy's perspective. I do think he was trying to be opportunistic and he might agree. (although I'd probably seize more of his territory for reparations).  At least I hope so, I hope he truly wasn't doing this out of a sense of self-sacrifice and desire to help the other nations, which I think would be unfortunate since I think everyone who plays Dominions should be playing to win. 

Anyway, I am going to attack him with my army from Karene and reclaim my territory in Nifel. We'll have 370 chaff, 30 knights, and 45 Lictors.

I actually don't plan to go for his capitol -- at least not initially -- since I know I don't have enough forces, but I think it would be able to defeat the army I saw earlier -- but maybe not enough to defeat whatever reinforcements he's bringing. I know he can' t reach Nifel from his capitol so this should be safe.

One of the reason I won't have enough forces is because I need to beef up my northern army, which I've begun to form in Morn. I need this to push back on Marignon. Between Morn and some small defensive forces I have in The Caverns and Panuonia I'll have 12 Knights, 10 Lictors, and 231 chaff. This doesn't include any freespawn or 9 additional Lictors I'm summoning a turn. This would be a little smaller then the force that already beat Marignon's 130-man combined army on turn 20, but it would probably be enough to stop Marignon if he makes a push against me. 

I dislike fighting a two front war.