Dragons will rule the world

At this point in the game, I was exploring my options and attacking Abolethive looked like the best thing to do. On one hand, he had better scales than me, and on paper he would be a tougher opponent than Drakonia. On the other hand, Drakonia had a grudge against him (Abolethive had taken Bandar Log capital even though Drakonia had sustained the bulk of the war against them), and Drakonia was grateful of my help when Swarmhive was pushing hard against him.

So, I had a natural ally and a contender to my power, it was all but logical for me to try to cast down that contender. And from the start of the game, I had never fought alone in any war : I always had an ally to divide the enemy forces and open opportunities I could exploit.

Finally, the battle of Swarmhive had taken such a toll to Aboleth that I wanted to take advantage of this.

So in the end there was no decision : to push even more my advantage and become the unconstested leading nation, I had to kill Abolethive.

Scuba diving dragons …

I wanted in my first move to surprise the enemy, and attack him where he wouldn’t be expecting me : under the sea. The big lake in the center of the map, just next to Dragenheim, looked like a juicy target and I wanted to take it for me.

To lead the assault, I had equiped 5 dragons with rings of water breathing. However, this came to a cost : I needed to remove either an amulet of Antimagic or a Flask of holy water to put that ring. Indeed, to protect the dragons against Swarmhive’s mind hunter I had equipped all of them with an amulet of antimagic, rising their MR to a very good 24. So removing either of the items was a risk : removing the amulet dropped their MR to 20, and removing the flask of holy water made them lose regeneration and drop the MR to 22.

So, given I was almost sure he would try to mind hunt them, I chose to remove the flask of holy water. That decision was almost fatal to one of them when I discovered that the dragon’s breath attack didn’t work underwater. Also, their flying ability didn’t work either, forcing them to fight the PD head-on. And so, in one of the provinces I met a decent PD force with poisonous spear. There were only 24 of them, but they dropped Viserion down to only 27 HP …

However, the initial operation was a success and on turn 42 I captured no less than 5 underwater provinces and laid siege to the UW fortress close to the throne of Bureaucracy.

Also, I had prepared a very sneaky trap to make Abolethive think twice before mind hunting me. Indeed, my scouts had spotted in one of the sea provinces a few Merrow Druids. To me, that meant that it was almost certain that the province contained a Lab, given they had been there several turns in a row. Also, my dragons could change shape into a Wizard form, a form into which they regained all their magic paths they had before transforming into a full fledged dragon. And some of them had a S1 path …

So here was the plan : I chose a dragon with an astral path (Ancalagon) and, contrarily to the other scuba diving dragons, removed the Amulet of Antimagic and replaced it with the Flask of Holy water. With his lower MR, he was then a more juicy target than his fellows. Then after taking the province, I turned him into wizard’s shape and gave him a Crystal Coin along with a Starshine skullcap, rising his astral power to S3 … and making him the scourge of mind hunters.

And as it stands, he took the bait and found himself with feebleminded 2 of his mind hunters. He also threw 4 other mind hunt attacks on other places that, thankfully, were resisted.

It is also worth noting that I decided to capture the sea province close to Dragenheim with my undeads. A Mound King with 38 Corpse constructs went in … and to be honest, I was very lucky to capture the province. Even though I could overwhelm the PD with my numbers, the PD leader which is an S1 mage made a bold move. After buffing himself (ethereal + astral shield), he did cast blink and found himself right behind my troops. At that point his troops decided to rout while he was alone behind my lines, routing him even more … my troops surrounded him but were too weak to damage him. To open the way to flee, he successfully killed the Mound King … and it’s only because he fled real fast that I could claim the province : my corpses, without commanders, were rapidly disappearing ! When the enemy commander finally retreated, there was only 1 corpse construct left …

Saving the Throne of Fortune

After my underwater attack, Abolethive retaliated immediatly. On turn 43 he had managed to gather a force of 300 ants above the throne of Fortune … and they had breached it ! I don’t know how I couldn’t see that coming given he had this 200 strong army standing right nearby it …

And so, when I checked the situation, I was really annoyed : I didn’t know what to do to save it. Indeed, I had a good army in Dragenheim but with the throne province now being enemy territory, they didn’t have enough MP to reach it in time. Also, most of my dragons were enjoying a bath and were out of range, only 3 of them could potentially intervene.

So, I had 13 research mages inside that fort and I didn’t want to lose them … At first I imagined breaking out and retreating, but then came another idea. The point was to protect the dragons enough so that they could safely buff themselves, and then send them on attack rear to destroy the enemy mages.

And so I made the count : I had 8 mages with N1 and 1 with B1. So I could script them to cast Swarm 16 times in a row, as well as summon up to 10 imps. That was the cannon fodder I needed to let my plan unfold. Also, I had my Antimagic Crystal Sorceress sitting in Dragenheim. With Winged Shoes, she could easily reach the battle field and support the troops. That looked vital to me as she could raise the MR of my dragons to no less than 28 …

Turn 44 unveiled how smart, or not, had been my tactic.

The 320 insects could easily contain the advancing ants, while my Crystal Sorceress had no problem throwing in her vital spell. Meanwhile, the dragons were buffing themselves (Liquid Body, Quicken self, Breath of Winter) while a benevolent Astral mage made them Ethereal. They could then fall on the enemy rear unhindered.

Thanks to their very high MR, the enemy astral spells bounced on them. However, he had a few Earth mages that tried to Petrify them. Even though they easily resisted the spell, they still got paralyzed a few turns … but that changed nothing. Being Ethereal they were almost impervious to the enemy attacks, and the little damage that got through was quickly regenerated. And so, as soon as they recovered from the sneaky spell, began a massacre.

The freezing breath attacks killed scores and those who survived were eaten alive. They should have known that a dragon needs to eat a lot ! Meanwhile the summoned insect, and amongst them several giant ants, were pushing back the enemy ants and closing on the mage line, or … what was left of it.

Overwhelmed on all sides the survivors quickly retreated and Dragenheim could only celebrate their victory.

This had been an absolute crushing victory. More than 220 ants laid dead on the ground, including 11 mages (half of them), for a total cost of about 7000 gold and in reality even more as I could trap some of the survivors that had fled in a raided province (a troop a 1000 worth of gold). On my side, I had lost only 1 of my 4 dragenheim warriors that had made it to the battle. So for me the total was of 35 gold, 16N gems and 2 blood slaves …

For sure, he would now think twice before facing my armies !

Salty water is not good for dragons

After my first underwater raids, it became obvious that is wasn’t a good strategy. Without their breath attacks and their flying ability, the dragons were underused. So I decided to take them back on land were they could really shine.

However, I wanted to take that underwater fortress close to the Throne of Bureaucracy, and for that sent a force of 75 corpse constructs. Abolethive didn’t want to let that happen and this time his mind hunts were highly successful : not only did they kill my Mound King, but they also took out Raeghal, one of my most recently summoned Dragon. The corpse constructs, now without commanders, were destroyed by a single enemy scout … And so I realized that unless I gathered specialized troops and a decent protection against mind hunters, the underwater invasion had no future and so I mostly gave up.

Instead, I gathered troops in Dragenheim and started to march on Aboleth lands. He had a large fortress, Sofekte (89), just 2 provinces away from my Capital. With 80 warriors + 4 truebloods, a host of 3 dragons and an antimagic sorceress, I felt confident I could take his lands for myself with impunity. My only fear was that he would mind duel the sorceress, and as such I was preparing a golem to replace her. He indeed tried once, but I had scripted her to run away …

The enemy fortress was strong, with a wall integrity of 750. And my army was made for battle, not to breach such a strong place. It took no less than 3 turns of siege to breach it … an eternity ! But by turn 48, things looked good. Sofekte was about to fall and all of his raids to harass my economy had ended in failure.

Also, that very same turn, Drakonia had finally recovered from the Swarmhive campaign and had started to pour troops into the ant lands. Furthermore, he had finally lighted up the Eternal Pyre, a promise of many Red dragons in the near future. Surely, with all the dragons focused for the same task, what could go wrong ?

Ermor finally beats Ochreil

While I was going after Abolethive, Ermor was finally getting the edge over Ochreil. A few battles had occured each undisputable victories of Ochreil, but each time closer and closer to defeat. And, finally, on turn 47, the Grand Army of Ochreil met its fate in the Sinkhole Swamp (98).

On one side, Ermor had gathered 19 death mages, including his immortal pretender (Mother-in-law the Lich Queen). Along them, 400 undeads of various kinds.

On the other side, Ochreil had a quite heterogeneous troop. When we look at the battle report, there are almost 70 mages, which is huge. This included about 30 priests, including about 10 lvl 1, 10 lvl 2 and 10 lvl 3. The 40 others were mostly level 1 elemental mages without any communion, so their magic power was limited to the most basic spells. With them, 260 troops, including about 50 karakan sacred warriors and a patchwork of Ochreil’s national units, militias, claymen, amazons, terracotta soldiers, and more … anything he could find.

During the previous battles, he had always managed to destroy the skeleton horde before rigor mortis could show its effects. However, this time, Ermor was ready for a long battle. With both Rigor Mortis and Heat from Hell up, he had also the Wailing winds screaming their terror while his pretender threw in the Wind of Death several times in a row.

Also, the 18 Dusk Elders of the Ermorian army were in a powerful communion to raise hordes of skeletons and pound the enemy under a heavy fire of Nether Darts and Blade wind. And so, as a significant part of Ochreil’s army was decaying to the Wind of Death, the Ermorian horde was holding a strong line, replacing its losses quickly with freshly summoned skeletons.

Ochreil’s power was not enough to break through and, despite huge efforts from his priests, slowly lost momentum. After a time of trying to break the undead line, the army started to falter and the mages, exhausted from the Hellish Heat and Rigor Mortis could not do much more that what they had already done.

And then, with most of its survivors exhausted and unable to catch their breath, they couldn’t but watch their evil enemy slay them one after the other.

The battle was lost, and with it, the war. Ochreil had almost no army left and could only enjoy the survival of his pretender …

King of Crafts

While fighting Swarmhive, and thanks to my scouts, I could see how the ants mental shock attack worked. When you have 100 of them pounding your leaders, they easily interrupt your spell casting and puts in danger all of your spellcasting scripts.

So, it was quite obvious for me that Antimagic was mandatory in every battle against them. For that, I had first taken a rare S2 crystal sorceress with a Starshine Skullcap, along with a Clam of Pearls. I also gave her some additional MR (amulet of antimagic, shroud of the battle saint, shield of lead) to ensure she would cast it no matter what.

However, I knew there was a flaw in that plan : a cunning enemy could sacrifice some of his weakest S mages into a magic duel to take her out. And that was not something I wanted, I felt it vital to ensure that Antimagic would go off 100% of the time in all of my important battles.

And so, taking informations there and there, I learnt that mindless beings were immune to Mind Duel. So if I wanted to achieve my goal, I needed golems. Thankfully I had already hit Const 6 by turn 38, and I immediatly started to search Const 7.

On turn 41, as I was about to unlock it, I had a bit of a brainstorm : what to research next ? I had several options, my Conj was super low (level 3 …) and it was almost mandatory if I wanted to unlock new paths. But my gem income in foreign paths were pretty bad and I wanted immediate results.

So … I remembered the Horror Harmonica that I had faced when subbing for someone in a game. And I really wanted to test it for myself … and so, after some time thinking, I finally to decided to go for it. It would be fun, and I wanted to have fun in this game ! Also, there were probably several other powerful artifacts yet to discover and put into action.

And Metahedron was King of Crafts, so why not honour this title ?

So, as soon as turn 46, I started to craft 1 artifact per turn …

It’s worth relating how I crafted the Harmonica. Indeed, it requires a high S/D crosspath, specifically 5S/4D. I didn’t have any mage in my nation that could do that, and the only reachable summon was Ether Lord, which, not only was very expensive in astral gems (90S), but required to empower my pretender in death (meaning I needed to use an additional 50D).

And then I remembered I had captured the Lost Kingdom of Eludia that allows the recruitment of Eludian Moon Mages. These are 2S/1D + a random path that can give S or D or E or B. And so I made a bit of calculation. I could reach 5S from a 2S with a Starshine Skullcap, a Crystal Coin and a not yet crafted Ring of Sorcery. Metahedron could craft it and quickly made it.

However, to reach the 4D is was another story. With the ring of Sorcery I could bring my 1D to 2D, and with a Skull staff up to 3D. One booster was missing … and there was no easy way to get around. So there were 2 options : either I was very lucky and managed to recruit immediatly a Moon Mage with the right magic path (2S/2D). That had 25% chances to happen given its randoms. Or, in the other case, I would need to empower him for 30D … I was ready for that, but I would have prefered not to.

And, guess what ? The first recruited Eludian Moon Mage was 2S/2D ! 🙂