Dark Castle: Turn 31

 

Let's head straight to the battles.

The Caverns (Magic Phase):

This was a magic phase attack by two Sidhe Lords armed with Maces of Eruption, Vine Shields, and Red Dragon Scale Armor. The first one had to cast Blessing, Elemental Fortitude, Mistform, and Gift of Flight, while the second one cast Protection, Elemental Fortitude, Mistform, and Air Shield.

The battle ended quickly when one of the Sidhe Lords flew to my back lines and killed my commander after just a few turns, causing almost everyone on the battlefield to disintegrate. It's hard to be undead sometimes.

I don't like losing my sacred Knights, but it wasn't catastrophic. Interestingly, I moved an army into this territory this turn, so we have another battle in this province during the same turn.

The Caverns (Regular Phase):

This combat went much better, and my Knights managed to kill both Lords after several rounds of combat, though it took several turns to penetrate their defenses.

Eriu did invest a significant amount of gems in those lords (60), and I found 30 gems' worth of gear after the fight, including the very nice Vine Shields, for my trouble.

Namor:

We easily reclaimed Namor from Eriu with no losses.

Terrace Peaks:

Grave Giggler quickly dispatched Eriu's province defense and seized back our province. 

Deep Forest:

We took Deep Forest from Bandar log without a fight.

It's easy to overlook placing PD in provinces, but it's possible that Bandar Log is also experiencing economic issues and couldn't afford to set any up.

Bandar Log (fortress assault):

We assaulted Bandar Log's capitol this turn to gain some intelligence. He has quite a force that's going to be very scary to fight with lots of sacred Tiger Riders and his mages. Here is his pretender:

And this is what a blessed, buffed kitty looks like:

An important bit of info is that I only saw level 2 spells cast on his side besides anti-magic at level 4, which is a bit of a relief. 

Still, I'm not feeling confident at all about assaulting his fortress, but I order it anyway. I can't keep sieging forever and it's now or never before he gets more research online. I'll have ~750 units in my assault force, of which 81 are Lictors and 44 are Knights. 

I don't usually do this, but I ran a quick test of this battle in a single-player game, and I got my ass handed to me. However, in my test game Bandar Log had enslave mind and cleanings waters, which this Bandar log doesn't. It's a risk, and even if I win I'm going to take extremely high causalities, but it has to be done. 

On our site searching front we found the following in Forbidden Fields:

Woohoo. We doubled our nature income.

For our events we had the following:

Back to the Eriu front he's becoming a real problem in Panuonia, where he moved in a lot of additional units and there are now 240 sieging us and our wall integrity is now 26 out of 250.

I don't have anything in the area that can easily fight him off. I suspect I'll lose the throne on turn 33 unless a miracle happens. Definitely not great, but it's not the end of the world. 

It's critical that we keep pressure on Eriu and and let them know that we are not to be fucked with, so this turn attack the following provinces.

• Eriu in Troll Land with 98 units, including 10 sacreds. 
• Eriu in White Peaks with 65 units, including 5 sacreds
• Eriu in Cacevic Highlands with 65 units, including 5 sacreds
• Eriu in Malum with 65 units, including 5 sacreds
• Eriu in Glen of Wisom with Grave Giggler
• Bandar Log in Troll Woods with 63 units, including 5 sacreds

Here are our final moves:

Next turn is going to be pivotal for us.