Dark Castle: Turn 8

I don't wan to paste exactly what players respond with in this blog without their explicit consent, but the gist of it was that he told me to stay the hell away from him. Looks like he isn't a fan of Bone Daddy.

This doesn't bode well for yours truly, but I'm not surprised. In fact, I would have been much more surprised if he did entertain the notion of cooperation.

I respond with the following

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, "Rotting is such an ugly word. Bone Daddy views it as shedding the physical vestiges of this world over time. The Flesh is like chains, which you should free yourself from. Anyway, Bone Daddy has no designs on your lands. As a gesture of goodwill we will refrain from advancing into your domain."

That's a lie of course. I want him dead, but I'm not ready to fight anyone quite yet.

Let's check out our battles.

 Kingdom of Dhara:

This was a well executed ass kicking by yours truly where the Knights arrived at the front lines at the same time as my chaff wall. The enemy infantry stood and fought a few rounds before running for their lives. 

Whiteport part I

It looks like my fears about bumping into someone at Whiteport was well founded because Man also attacked Whiteport this turn. He went first so let's see how he did against the cavalry.

Not well is the right answer. Man brought a modest force of Knights and Longbowmen along with his prophet, but the heavy cavalry -- of which there were a lot -- charged straight at him and annihilated his force. Compounding his misery he lost his prophet in the battle.

I don't know if I would call this a disaster for man, but losing your prophet and an expansion army at this stage of the game is pretty rough.

Fortunately for team undead, he did manage to whittle down the independents a bit (Thanks Man), which will help us in our own battle. We also learned what his bless is:

This looks like a fairly defensive rainbow bless and not something that I think is going to be problematic for us, although I guess he could have some incarnates that haven't manifested itself.

Let's see how my own forces did.

Whiteport part II:

Yikes. This was way closer then I was expecting. Everything actually went according to plan with my chaff and Knights hitting the heavy cavalry at the same time, but the high protection from the Heavy Cavalry made it difficult for my troops to take them down quickly. Eventually, we wore them down but not before almost my full force and two of my Knights were destroyed.

What's was interesting is that the cavalry was experienced with 1 star, so Man might have buffed them with their loss, so maybe he didn't actually whittle them down at all. 

In retrospect I should have told some of my knights to attack rear. I've done this in other battles, and that usually does a good job of killing the squishier commanders and forcing an early rout rather then trying to tank those cavalry head-on.

Whiteport is a good province with 128 income:

Hopefully, it stays clear of my dominion for awhile so I can take advantage of that gold income.

I was hoping I could use my force in Whiteport to seize Shade Forest, but my army is too depleted. I recall them to Plotahi and send reinforcements from my capital. Next turn it will have 3 Knights and 37 chaff.

Our remaining attack is from Kingdom of Dhara to Nifel in my South with 2 Knights and 30 chaff.

Here is was our event:

Not bad

I agonized on whether I should build a temple in Morn, or if I should wait another turn to build a Palisade in Karne. I decided to hold off on the Palisade because I figure I can build temples quickly if I need to, and I don't like leaving temples exposed (although having an extra death gem production from the temple would be nice).

Since I have some gold I'm going to recruit another scout and priest. I also spend some extra gold to increase my province defense to 6 in Whiteport and Morn. I likely won't say when I increase PD in my provinces in the future unless there is something interesting about it.

I'm sending Qudlik from Forbidden Fields to Whiteport to search. I expect a low chance of success since it's farmland, but maybe I'll get lucky. Moving forward I'm going to hold off talking about who I order to site search unless I find something interesting or something notable happens. 

I sent the following diplomatic message to man:

Bone Daddy grins evilly and says, 'We saw what happened to your forces in Whiteport. Childslay, one of my acolytes, giggled at your misfortune, but Bone Daddy didn't laugh because Heavy Cavalry can be deceptively strong, and we approve of your efforts to subjugate and hopefully murder the innocent peasants in Whiteport.

Bone Daddy, of course, foresaw these events (his mind is vast and always calculating) and seized Whiteport. You'll be happy to know that he turned the cavalry into delicious horse burgers, which are one of Bone Daddy's favorite foods.

Perhaps we can have a mutually beneficial relationship where we avoid any unpleasantness. True, we're orchestrating an apocalypse, but that doesn't mean we have to kill every living being. If you stay away from our lands, there will be no trouble, and we won't advance East.

We're planning to seize Shade Forest soon, so please refrain from moving there to avoid any unpleasantness. If you desire it, let us know, and we can talk.

I'm not holding my breath that anything positive will come from this, and he'd be a fool to go along with me anyway. I do legitimately feel for him because Heavy Cavalry can be pretty rough, but this is a good opportunity to perhaps make some diplomatic in-roads with one of my neighbors. 

After I submitted this turn the Man played reached out to me on Discord and asked if he could take Shade Forest. I responded that I would let him have it if he agreed not to rush me. He said he didn't have any current plans, which makes sense since he just had a significant setback.

Honestly, I don't care that much about Shade Forest-- just the fact that there is communication is enough for me to agree since I don't want to be overtly greedy at this phase, and I feel like I can always seize it if I want.