Dark Castle: Turn 6

 

Let's check out out battles.

Silverham:

Our pair of Knights charged forward after being blessed, but they charged too far forward and got surrounded by heavy and light infantry. They lasted a couple of rounds before being brought down.

While they were being destroyed the rest of our forces whittled down the remaining force with our Censor accounting well for himself.

I can't quite call it a disaster since we still won the fight, but losing two Knights is very painful this early into our expansion. I'll need to rebuild this attack force and recall them to my capital. 

The reason this happened is that I told my chaff screen to hold and fire. I need to either push them further towards the enemy if I do this, or tell them just to fire. I think the latter is the way to go, and I change the scripting accordingly.

On the good news front, our censor did gain a tough skin heroic trait. With a my bless and a helmet he be a decent mini-thug. 

Forbidden Fields:

This battle went much better then Silverham and we destroyed a small group of Horse Tribe Cavalry with no losses. I'm wondering if I should still put my chaff screen closer to the front since my Knights charged into a row of cavalry armed with lances, which can hurt.  

Here is our event:

It's slightly annoying to lose some tax revenue, but with less then 2,000 population it wasn't exactly making a lot of money anyway. 

For our recruitment we an summon another Spectator. I'd like to hire another scout and priest, but then I'd have less then 600 gold next turn and would be unable to build a palisade in Morn.

For our attack next turn I attack from Forbidden Fields and Ermor to Plothai.

I'm showing 90 wolf tribe archers and warriors. That's quite a bit, and I feel like I need as much force as I can muster to take them. This is what my formation will look like:

If it's overkill then I'll be good position to take Whiteport next, which looks to be a high income province with lots of Heavy Cavalary.

For our moves we send Qudlik to Forbidden Fields, who I'll order to search next turn. I also order my priest in my capital to begin animating ghouls.

I think ghouls are a wonderful unit and help a lot with siege defense. They are also not mindless units and can absorb certain types of spells that would harm my commanders, e.g., Mind Burn. Whenever I get an opportunity I'll try to animate them and stock them up in my fortresses.

To the North I see Marignon, who we now neighbor. He has a single Madman in Spires of Ascension. It seems odd that there would be a single madman like this, so I'm guessing it was part of some event.

This is a diplomatic opportunity that Bone Daddy excels at and we send a diplomatic message to Marignon.

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, "Greetings Neighbor. Contrary to those vicious rumors you may have heard, Bone Daddy is not evil incarnate and does not eat babies -- at least not very often. Anyway, It's true we're orchestrating an apocalypse to cleanse the world of the living, but it's an enlightened apocalypse where we abide by certain guiding principles and focus on individual freedoms. Yes, one of those freedoms may be from the shackles of life itself, but perhaps we can come to some mutually beneficial relationship and we figure out this whole life and death business in the future. What do you say?"

I'd be surprised if he agreed, and I don't know myself what type of positive relationship we could actually have, but I need to do something, anything, to keep these players off my back. This one will be complicated because Marignon and Ermor are not actually friendly in the Dominions lore.