Textbook conquest

The first turn of the war I met no resistance. 4 provinces were taken at once and the Throne of Bureaucracy on our border was sieged and breached in the same turn. As it stands, this throne had another good bless to help me mitigate my Misfortune 3 (now 2 with the throne of Fortune). Indeed, it gave a +1 order on my dominion, raising it to Order 3. That was perfect and I couldn’t have asked for more !

And while I was storming his fort I sent my remaining dragons to take one juicy province that had unveiled my new scouting. Indeed, I had spotted there a “Stalker”, an assassin that I knew to be only recruitable in a province with a very specific magic site : “The Lost Kingdom of Elludia”. A very good site that gives 3S + 1D, and allows the recruitment of both Stalkers and Elludian Moon mages. And, as it stands, the Elludian Moon mages had a very interesting crosspath S/D and could even develop a random E1 or B1. The E was something interesting for me given my only access to E was Metahedron …

3 dragons took the province that was even better than expected with an additional site providing 2S per turn. And so, now that I had taken the throne I could push further, especially given I was not seeing a single enemy army coming to defend these lands.

On turn 35 I took 3 additional provinces and prepared to siege an enemy fort on the coast. Here, the Sailing ability of the sea raiders proved very useful, allowing me to ferry a lot of troops on the battlefield. And the enemy looked rather on the defensive, probably hoping to take down Drakonia before he could turn on me.

And so turn 37 I captured 5 provinces and besieged 2 fortresses all at once. And that very same turn, Swarmhive’s main army was beaten by Drakonia (more below) and Abolethive laid siege to his capital … I believe this must have been quite a blow to him as any hope to do anything more in this game suddenly vanished.

However, he still had a large force in one of the fortresses I was coveting (Delca prov 32), as well as a large defense force inside Swarmhive itself. And, as soon as turn 38, I had that Delca fortress besieged and breached.

Drakonia finds his own way

At that point, my scouting was still a bit limited and so I didn’t know much of the war between Swarmhive and Drakonia. But with a steady scout recruitment I was on the verge to have a full map scouting and it’s from that effort that I was able to catch the decisive battle between the ants and the dragons.

I don’t know exactly how this happened, but Drakonia had managed to corner his army in one of his former fortress. On turn 36, a 400 strong Drakonia force had breached that fortress that was defended by 420 ants, every single one of them sacred. However, most of them were rather weak and only 100 could be considered dangerous. Swarmhive had a decent combat bless with +2 Att, +2 Def, +4 Str and +5 elemental resistances (fire, cold, poison), enough to make his best troops quite good, but not enough to make his weakest troops decent.

Also, Swarmhive only had 2 mages while Drakonia had sent a full force of 24 mages, along with his pretender Supercombattant (Tiamat the Drakon). Without Drakonia’s battle magic, I believe Swarmhive would have won, though with a number of losses. Also he had chosen to fight into the fortress, which I believe was a mistake : he would probably have overwhelmed Drakonia otherwise (most of drakonia troops were trash too, and Swarmhive elite were the best units on the battlefield).

And so began the battle on turn 37. Swarmhive started with a barrage of Mental shock attacks that disorganized the dragon line, making them enter the breach in confusion. The first to enter were the first to die and quickly the Elite ants closed the breach and raised a shield wall to prevent anyone else to enter.

Drakonia sacreds entered the battle but despite their strength couldn’t resist the might of the enemy best warriors. And so, at this point, it looked rather grim for Drakonia. But on the other hand, the mages had been raining fire on the rears of Swarmhive … especially on his weaker troops, that were quite fragile. And they had been dying like flies …

And even though for the ants the battle looked on about to be won, the elite Homo Godborns discovered that all their supporting units had been slained. And even though they had started to surround the enemy pretender, and were probably on the verge to kill him, the death of their fellow and the sight of that scary beast were the nail in the coffin.

They could have won, they chose to run for their lives … and as such they settled the death of Swarmhive. Despite 200 deads, Drakonia now had free hands to reconquer his territory. Despite my help, they had found their own way, they had cast down the beast by themselves.

Apocalypse in Delca (turn 39)

After besieging the last army of Swarmhive, I had no intent to linger and launched the assault immediately. Indeed, I had gathered there 6 dragons (out of 9), supported by 40 warriors and 8 mages.

Against them stood 120 weak troops along with no less than 40 battle mages … And those were not any mages as all of them were E1/S1. And if A1/S1 is the path for a powerful thunderstrike communion, the E1/S1 is perhaps worst, as it opens the ability to spam Gift of Heaven.

And that was the only strategy he put in place. As soon as the battle started, tens of meteors began to fall from the sky on my troops. One of my dragons, the young Thessera immediatly succumbed to the strike of 2 direct hits while a number of warriors died crushed under the rocks.

Soon after, the 5 surviving monsters took off while a huge number of stone missiles were falling on both Dragenheim and Swarmhive troops, killing both of them in scores. And then started a massacre.

The Blue dragons began to cut to pieces the enemy wizards one after the other. The wizards knew that their only chance was in killing the beasts before they would reach them … but the very boulders falling from the sky were very imprecise and their numbers was quickly thining. However, in a last display of heroism they managed to hit the young Akatlax twice, crushing his skull and leaving him dead on the field … But, despite injuring another dragon, this was their last action.

Frozen to death, dismembered, crushed to puddle, there was not much left of the Swarmhive army and they soon gave up and routed.

Dragenheim had won, but for the first time Dragons had been killed. They were not the gods they thought they were, after all …

It is interesting to note that Liquid Body helped them to survive a direct hit from a meteor. Even though the battle log shows full damage, I could notice they only took half damage. I suppose the gifts strikes are considered blunt damage in that regard.

Abolethive deals the fatal blow … in blood

After the destruction of the last Swarmhive army in Delca, it was not long before Abolethive would finish them and take their capital. However, he took his time, probing the enemy defense and reinforcing his assault party. And it’s only on turn 41 that he finally went in.

Swarmhive had 24 mages and about 260 troops to defend his capital. I believe the initial Aboleth attack was unexpected and so he had sent his best battle mages to try to stop me. However, he still had the means to throw a number of Gifts from Heaven and other funny things. He also had the Vafur flames burning in front of the gates.

On its part, Abolethive was obviously concerned and had sent no less than 45 battle mages supported by 71 communion slaves (one of Aboleth very good national unit). For the fight itself he could count on 200 warriors, including 130 rather good sacreds.

The start of the battle saw a number of battle enchantments. On the side of Abolethive several nature spells : Howl, Relief and Foul vapors. Indeed, ants have native poison resistance, so why not ? On Swarmhive’s side, only Heat from Hell, to burn even more the enemy if they managed to get past the Vafur flames …

Abolethive relied on some skelespamming, ethereal bodies and soul slay. Swarmhive on its part tried again to send many Gifts to his enemy. And during the first part of the battle, Swarmhive was doing quite well : his units held the gate while a LOT of enemies were burnt by the Vafur flames. Also, at first, the gifts were well aimed and killed some of the Aboleth slave ants.

However, the battle started to turn tide when the meteors got more and more off target, killing more friends than enemies, and this even though he had cast Wind Guide to reduce that side effect. As such, the line holding the gate broke and the surviving elites of Aboleth entered the fort. Also, the wolves from Howl were quite a pain to the Swarm and contributed to limit the effect of their mages.

In the end, 2 mages supported by a few ants kept on fighting for a few turns, showing that less Gifts and more “mundane” spells could have, possibly, won the battle.

The battle report shows that losses were very high. All of Aboleth supplicants (the communion masters) were killed, most probably out of being overused by their masters. I calculated that his losses were worth 10.000 gold … more than what had lost swarmhive (8400). However, I I know they both have freespawns, so these costs are probably a bit lower.

Anyway, with this victory Swarmhive was no more. He still held 1 small fortress up the coast into Drakonia’s territory, but he had nothing else left … nothing … apart the most famous hero of this game. “Antilochos”, the Myrmec Prince was still alive and even though his people had been crushed, he would fight to death. As it stands, he would keep on raiding there and there until his very death on turn 57, no less than 16 months after the loss of his capital !

Mother Oak betrayal

In my diplomacy with Drakonia he told me once that he intended to cast Mother Oak. On my part I was also thinking about it but was waiting to get 100N gems to do so. However, I was a bit annoyed to put this between us and I didn’t tell him anything.

On turn 40, the first global of the game went up : Abolethive had cast Stellar Focus pushing his Astral income to probably 25/30 astral pearls per turn. That very same turn, I had finally reached 101N gems … and I saw that as an excuse to cast it without warning my ally.

And, indeed, that was quite a dirty betrayal given he had tried to cast it the very same turn … but with less gems … I don’t how much he lost but his message the following turn was of a deep disapointment. I answered that I did that only because of Stellar Focus, that it had to be done and so … a vague excuse when I knew perfectly well I was going against his plans.

Thankfully, he didn’t hate me for that and we could keep on our alliance for most of the remaining game.