So this is the most important conflict of the game for me, as it brought me a lot of important ressources and paved the way for the next conflicts. It was also the toughest.

In the south-west of my kingdom, there were a few provinces that connected to Nemeton by a small 1 province corridor. They went there, and when they got all they wanted they got greedy. One of my province got raided by barbs the same turn I had a bad bump with him Turn 23. I warned him not to take on those barbs, as it was mine and I would retake it. He didn’t listen feeling probably confident about our recent bump.

So he had a big army (200+ troops) beyond that small corridor and some more ready to move in too. I figured all I had to do was close the corridor and destroy that army, and then I’d have a good start for a war of conquest.

At that point, I was at least 50% bigger than him if I took those provinces beyond the corridor, so I was pretty sure that by playing good enough, I had all the means to beat him.

The original player didn’t like the situation after my first strike cutting the corridor. He subbed out. [First strike turn 25]

I didn’t expect the new player to handle this and underestimated him wildly, and for too many turns.

Also, I didn’t account for the fact that all of his troops had animal awe … and I used Cynocephalians for most of the conflict … a bad mistake.

So here is the story of the war :

Even though my initial plan was to destroy his trapped army, in the end it endlessly marched through my lands and escaped my attempts to destroy it. Often I had the means, with a heavy thug and a fluffer waiting for it, but the combination of routing PD and retreating fluffer made the thug retreat. It happened at least twice … so I gave up and left his army go around and get attrition for each move, till finally I trapped and killed the survivors, but waaaayyyy after than I had initially thought.

All army vs army battles went wrong (except for the final one). I lost a lot of troops, and something like 20 mages in the process. Each time I took my toll of ennemies, but his mage core was left unscathed.

My pretender saved the situation several times, taking head-on his army and killing scores, but still, again, leaving his mage core intact.

So the major battles against Nemeton : 2 battles turn 29, battle turn 32, turn 33, turn 36, turn 39.

At some point Anthikythera thought I was losing, and tried to get in again. A first battle saw my pretender destroy a good party [Turn 35], and a second battle [Turn 37] saw an army of earth mages spamming shatter & maws of the earth destroy a SC killer (shattered to pieces) and a large squad of sacreds (I was lucky to destroy the main commander with maws of the earth before the troops did too much damage, otherwise I’d probably have lost more). We made peace again, with me giving up 2 provinces – strategically chosen so as to close my border with Edranor and prevent any future conflict with them.

After several defeats, I started to analyze my options and started to build a lot of archers. Elphame’s archers are pretty good, decent armor, very good composite bows, good base precision. And his troops had overrall low protection, so good targets for archers. I also gathered many earth mages to spam earth elementals, and a Flaming arrow caster, as he was using wildly Swarm and Howl.

So thanks to my pretender I had pushed him beyond the corridor and started to mass the new army to invade Nemeton’s core lands. My pretender took the neutral throne that was there [turn 40], and stayed there. Nemeton then made a big mistake and tried to take it [Turn 42]. She destroyed half of the army, and, most importantly, made them retreat in 2 different provinces. Given the geography, if he wanted to reunite them, he could only do it in 1 single place.

So I decided to meet him here, with all the units that could get there. Sadly, the archers couldn’t, only a bunch of mages, some autumn queens and some PD. I spammed a lot of Earth elementals, buffed with Iron warriors, and those won the day, destroying not only the army, but also almost all of the mages and a Sylvan [Turn 43].

At this point, it was over, he had no army left, all I had to do was to clean things up.

During the Nemeton’s clean-up I had reached Const 6 and I had started to build the charm-spamming mirrors national item. I equipped 2 of them in my army that stormed Nemeton and there I got my first Sylvan (the one that would later become a Hero with Heroic toughness, so a SC sacred chassis with 300 HP, E/N paths, built-in vine shield, and complete affliction resistance and recuperation) [Turn 48].

In the very last province of Nemeton, I found there were 2 Sylvans hiding. So I did set up my army to ensure they would not die and would succumb to Charm. It worked and I got both of them [Turn 50]. And with them, the unexpected Prize : a Nemeton’s national site tied to the presence of a Sylvan (meaning if there’s no sylvan in the province by the end of the turn, it disappears). And what this site does was huge : it allowed me to recruit Nemeton’s national troops AND mages !! So I started spamming Healers to heal my pretender (she had been blind for most of the war) and their infantry that was better than mine.

At that point I was a 44 provinces nation, with 1st Gem income (which would be the case till the end of the game) meaning 90 gems per turn. However, I was quite late in RP due to the number of mages I lost in the war and the high number I used embedded in my armies.