Dark Castle: Turn 24

 

Let's check out our battles:

Silverham

Marignon sent a small force of Friars guarded by Knights of the Chalice to seize back his territory from us. However, we were forming our Northern army in this territory, which easily wiped out most of Marignon's raiding party. 

The speed of our knights is a very good asset in these situations because we hit so fast that his Friar could only do minimal banishment damage before we killed him. 

I'm not sure I understand the strategic value in these types of attacks from Marignon. I would think he should be keeping these forces at home and attacking in tandem with his mages. Trying to use small raids is not going to work well for him I feel like.

Deep Forest

Our raiders seized Bandar Log's province with minimal losses.

This is next to Bandar Log's capitol, and we get to see what he has waiting for us. The force is pretty modest it appears, and he's using an Oracle for a pretender.

Let's check out our events:

The assassination attempt was against my Dusk Elder in Shadowland by a longdead, but Wormlove fought them off. Why do my own undead attack me? I usually do a pretty good job of guarding my battlefield commanders, but now I'm wondering if I should do the same for my other commanders -- especially my expensive ones. The issue with doing that for my Dusk Elders is that they can't sneak with those guards, but it might be worth it. 

Here is the site we found:

Very nice. My income has dropped quite a bit lately and this will help.

I'm not going to show the details but we stopped another one of Eriu's spies in Panuonia. That territory is a pretty good bottleneck into our territory, I'll need to remember to try to patrol here when possible. 

For our attacks this turn we do the following:

• Dubros

We continue our raiding against Dubro. 

• Bright Woods

This is a small raiding force I carved off my big Southern Army, which I think will be enough to take Bandar's lightly defended province. I'm hoping to make Bandar come out of his fortress to engage me and divide up his forces, or else he'll lose most of his territory.

• Peacehaven

If Bandar is going to turtle up in his capitol then I'm going to use that opportunity to seize this throne site. It could really help me if it's the throne of death for the death gems or the silver throne, which has a recruitable mage that would be incredibly helpful. The Throne of Earth would also be nice because it has a recruitable Gnome that would my research (but not as much as the silver throne). If I lose this game one of the reasons will be because my research is awful. 

• Zenthra

We send what feels like a ragtag group of various undead to take what might be a pretty tough province with lots of very tough independent knights. I'll have 62 total units, which will contain 5 knights and Grave Giggler. Grave Giggler alone is going to be a force to be reckoned with so I'm feeling decent about it. 

• Spires of Ascension

We send our main force against Marignon. 

We'll have 217 units, which is comprised of 19 Lictors and 13 Knights. My biggest concern is that Marignon will unload his remaining mages to light me up in this province. It doesn't make sense from an analytical perspective because it's probably easier to kill my troops in his cap, but he's playing pretty aggressively so we'll see.

Here are all the thrones:

T'ien C'hi reached out to me asked for some water and nature gems. He say he has almost nothing left and that the walls of his capitol are breached, but he wants to mount a desperate gambit to retake his capitol with some mages he has in reserve using living mercury and foul vapors. I'm skeptical about this plan, and I have questions. Lots of questions about why he wasn't able to use them before the battle for his capitol, but I'm going to give him all my water gems (I only have 5 of them) and a good chunk of my nature gems (5 out of 11).

I'm not giving him more nature gems because foul vapors doesn't cost very much to cast, and I might need them myself. Still, I think anything I can do to help might benefit me as well. 

Here are our final moves: