A daunting enemy

Ochreil had announced his intention to destroy Ermor as soon as turn 9. At that time, I was far from ready to help him and I could only guess the war from the movements on my border.

On turn 14, Ochreil was besieging a fortress adjacent to Ermor’s capital, and all of my scouts were giving alarming reports on the size of its empire. So I sent ambassadors to every other player to see what they knew about him. The answer on turn 16 was what I had feared : he had had a huge expansion and was as big as 25 provinces, and probably close to 30. Given I had only 15 on my part, that was quite scary.

Also, on turn 15 he took that fortress and looked poised to besiege Ermor and kill him once and for all. Given Ermor gives 9D gems per turn, and given how powerful he already was, I felt him a contender for early victory. Also, I started to study his nation and I understood that he was one of my worst possible enemy along with Ermor.

Indeed, all of Ochreil’s troops have native Cold Resistance, and most of them have many attacks that hit quite hard. His sacreds in particular with a 29 dmg magic piercing attack were particularly scary. What it meant for me was that my dragons would be weak against them : Ochreil’s units could easily kill them and were almost impervious to their breath attack, the most powerful tool in their arsenal. Also his bless included +4 attack, meaning his sacreds would hit 100% of the time.

A reckless plan

So I took some time to think about it. If I chose to expand on my part, using my dragons to crush one or another nation, I would grow, true, but Ochreil would still be bigger than me : they had taken too much advance in terms of expansion and there was no way I could cope with them.

And I saw what was my other choice : stop them before they would be unstoppable. But … given they were already so strong, and given their advantages against me, how would I do that ?

The thing is that I had my crystal sorceresses. Without them I would never have thought about that plan, but they had some qualities that changed everything ! Indeed, Ochreil’s troops have native shock vulnerability, and with a large enough communion, I was pretty sure I could wreck them. However his sacreds had +10 shock resistance … but given their vulnerability that would be only +5. So sure they wouldn’t be vulnerable to the side effect of the spell, but a direct hit would still hurt them bad.

So, given I knew I could win battles, it occured to me that with Ermor and Ochreil at war, it was my two worst enemies using their ressources to kill one each other. So if I could save Ermor, given how Ochreil had beaten him up, I had hope he would continue the conflict until he could have his vengeance.

Thus, I watched closely how the conflict evolved while preparing for the war. My hope was that he wouldn’t take ermor until I was ready, meaning until I had researched my dragon spell as well as Communion (Thau 1) and Thunderstrike (Evo 4).

So on turn 19 he finally started his move to take Ermor’s capital (the only province left to Ermor) and I gave the order to my first Dragon, Vortigern, to attack.

The first objective was to force him to divert ressources from the siege of Ermor : I wasn’t fully ready for my communion (3 more turns were needed) and I hoped Ermor could hold the siege at least 1 or 2 turns.

My attack surprised him and started to upset him as, turn after turn, his plans started to crumble. I quickly had my first 3 dragons active and my raiding began to be a real problem. At first, he decided to forget about Ermor and go after me, but he was confused and the turn after (probaly after seeing my sorceresses waiting for him), he went back for Ermor while another strong-enough party started to counter-attack further north.

So on turn 23 he was besieging Ermor and, to my delight didn’t breach it immediatly. On my part, everything was ready, I moved my army to save Ermor.