Turns 17-23
Refresh: Up to this point I can say I'm happy with where I'm at, which is easy to say when you have very little idea how everyone else is doing, graphs are turned off
No real contact yet made with the enemy, its been an indie bashing extravaganza.
Our pretender Chris the Sheep has awoken and the hero Lugh joined our worthy cause. So had the mercenaries Dagan the Renegade Sage and the Archers in White.
Or they were with us, on turn 18..
and
Losing Dagan is a blow as apart from Chris the Sheep no other Tir na n'Og character has native Astral access. I simply forgot to bid on him.
However on turn 19..
Seems everyone else is forgetting to bid too
In a fit of role-playing frenzy I lock Dagan in the magical workshop to forge items, never to be released again.
Has anyone wondered why he is the "Renegade" sage? I googled him and found he is actually a hip hop artist who
aims to be able to cast Master Enslave. A challenge to any reader, at a base Astral level of 1S, what would Dagan have to do to be able to cast Master Enslave?
Bet you can make me love you? Dagan I already do
On turn 20..
Neither Tien Chi or myself wanted this, we both targeted the same indie province.
The Tien Chi force..
As a benevolent human I sent Tien Chi a message stating that we hoped humans and AI's could live in peace.
Elsewhere scouts report on an indie province..
Their leader..
A little bit of SemiRand magic.
On turn 23 Tien Chi reveals the treachery of the cold electronic heart..
A totally unprovoked attack on the hapless PD..
There are thesis's to be written on the economics of PD, I'll sum it all up by saying that the game has it wrong. Basically that first person to sign up would actually be the most expensive and every other PD recruit would cost less. Why? Because when your god only hires three of you to defend against that you really should have a pension put away for your loved ones, and a 1gp sign-on fee is going to get your widow diddly-squat.
Conversely due to the magic ability of all PD to miraculously resurrect upon victory the wise PD recruit would price themselves to allow their god to recruit as many as possible to ensure victory, especially given that once a critical mass is reached victory is almost a certainty, thus a widows pay-out is not needed and employment is ensured.
I digress..
This is where we are at. Here is my research..
You will notice Alt-3 is almost done, the big spell there is
Mistform.
Switching to Evocation my aim is Evo-5 for
Orb Lightning and
Storm. These spells are for my
Tuatha Sorceress's, Storm allows us to eliminate 50% of non-magical ranged attacks (note our armies have zero ranged units while Tien Chi seems to be largely horse archers), allows our Air mages to cast
Summon Storm Power for a +1 to Air magic and finally Orb Lightning casts one
Lightning Bolt per level of Air magic per turn.
For my
Ri and
Sidhe Lords I've been forging
Pendants of Luck,
Vine Shields,
Rainbow Armors and
Frost Brands. Coupled with Mistform and
Mirror Image my guys are going to be kicking. I may need to add a secondary Reinvigorating item but lets see how they go first, I don't want to be having to invest too much per thug, because as Stalin said "Quantity has a quality of its own". To this end Chris the Sheep is forging the third Dwarven Hammer this turn.
Our Gem income..
Only one extra Air and Astral per turn since last update. This is mainly due to Chris the Sheep having other duties than site searching. I am reminded to invest some more effort into finding more sites.
The map..
Its a bit hard to read, I'm trying to conserve peoples bandwidth by shrinking the image, but if you squint you can see Tien Chi's and our border to the west. That Tien Chi province to my north is cut off from my lands by two rather tough indie provinces, I will need to pay attention to ensure I'm not surprised. To my east I have just found Caelum, I'm sending through scouts to find Abysia, and through diplomacy I know Caelum is also to my north. Caelum is of course human and thus an ally.
Lastly another challenge, keen eyed readers may notice one picture in this post does not belong in the context it is presented in. Which one is it?
Threaded Mode