All or nothing

While writing this AAR, I see that this struggle for survival only lasted 3 turns … ! It felt like ages for me !

Indeed, with Ochreil’s armies roaming north and his huge force besieging Ermor, the future looked grim. If I lost that battle, I was pretty sure it would mean losing the game, it was an all or nothing. That’s why every troop I could gather was there, leaving the rest of my territory at his mercy …

In the North he was attacking with a 40 strong army and I needed either to commit all my dragons or send in a real army. But … everything was needed to save Ermor.

On top of Ermor, the scouts were announcing 250 troops when I only had about 120. Also, there were reports of another force of 80 units that was forming close to the frontline.

Things looked desperate, I could only hope my battle plan would work as expected.

On turn 25, even though he had breached Ermor, he knew I would attack him and thus catch him with a script made for the siege. So he decided to fight that battle against me first. And so was the battle of Ivermark.

The battle of Ivermark (turn 25)

In my army, 115 units, including 3 blue dragons (Vortigern, Viserion and Ancalagon), 84 Dragenheim warriors, 6 Trueblood sacreds and, last but not least, 14 Crystal sorceresses + 4 sea raiders with astral magic. That meant a 18 strong air communion to spam thunderstrike.

So the plan was simple : 10 communion master + 8 communion slaves. The dragenheim warriors were mixed with the mages on Hold and Attack Closest to prevent flyers to kill my mages. Indeed, a number of black hawks had been spotted and despite their weakness they could have killed some of my most precious assets.

The dragons were scripted in a conservative way : I was pretty sure that if I threw them on attack rear, they would have been slaughtered by the enemy troops and done no significant damage. So they were to buff themselves, spam quickness on a few warriors, and then only attack closest. Indeed, if they mixed into my troops their vulnerability to the enemy troops would be nullified and they would be able to bring in their power.

Facing them, 199 enemies, including 47 Karakan sacred warriors, 39 black hawks and a number of his regular troops along a few mercenaries. All in all, when I now compare the armies, we were evenly matched in terms of elite troops : my 90 regulars + sacreds were facing only 100 of his ones. Sure his sacreds did hit like trucks, but they could die too. He also had a few mercenary elephants but in theory, against a few Dragenheim warriors, they would be cut to pieces.

His mage core was numerous but of low quality. Most of them had only level 1 paths, and so would not make a big difference, especially given we were still early game …

The first event of the battle was the attack of the Black hawks. As feared, they fell on my massive blob of troops and mages. Thankfully, my blob tactic was efficient and the poor birds were massacred. However … I lost sorceresses to friendly fire. Some dragons and truebloods threw they freezing breath right into the middle of my troops and that proved fatal to 2 of them (but for my main troops with native cold resistance, it was at worst but a scratch).

While the birds were fleeing, my communion was up and started to pound the enemy, starting with the mercenaries and elephants that were powerless to these strikes. As such the 8-strong elephant force was hardly struck and killed on the spot as soon as they reached my frontline.

Then, both armies started to move while some Karakan warriors that had been given the Gift of Flight fell on my rear. There were standing my dragons along with my 3 frail human commanders … the 3 of them died either of Karakan strikes or thunder aoe damage. However, the 7 outflankers where quickly destroyed, struck by thunder or just dismembered by the dragons.

And then the bulk of the 2 armies met in the center. As a side effect of the attack of the flying karakans, some of my troops in the center had delayed their advance. That made my troops form a V in which the enemies started to run : that made them a thin column flanked on their sides by my troops. That was something I had hoped for, and it was happening (but I had not planned at all that the karakan flyers would help me to achieve that !).

In that situation, I had a tactical advantage in numbers, even though he still outnumbered me overrall. That situation was even made easier thanks to the thunderstrikes that were stunning some enemies, delaying them to reach the front and then leaving more time to my troops to kill the outnumbered ones that reached them.

A number of enemies were killed that way until the bulk of his already weakened Karakans reached the frontline. But the inverted wedge was still there to welcome them and in spite of their inherent strength, they couldn’t but be surrounded and die.

On the flanks my dragons could take care of some troops trying to get around. Along with some warriors, they easily contained them and push them to retreat (fear probably helped, as well as the fact that some of them were starving due to wandering into undead territory).

And soon, the enemy army was routed. Thanks to my “Attack closest” directive, most of the mages survived, but that’s that order that allowed my troops to surround the enemy : indeed with that tactic I knew it would help me to win, to the cost of leaving the mages alive.

—

So I had won. But to a cost. Even though the battle report shows only 31 warriors dead, the true cost was a bit less favorable. Indeed, I too had to wander into Ermor’s territory where supply was scarce, and that turn of battle was also a turn of disease. As many as 21 warriors, 3 truebloods and 1 crystal sorceress had been diseased, meaning they would die at one point or another.

The overrall gold cost was of 3664 gold for Ochreil (including the mercenaries), but not including the ones potentially lost to retreat. On my part the raw loss amounted to 1415 gold, but with the disease it went up as high as 2795.

So, on paper a large victory, but in the end not so good in terms of attrition. Anyway, even though my losses were higher than expected, the objective had been achieved : Ermor was safe, for now, and I still had a rather strong army. The diseased ones would not die soon and that still gave me something to scare him with.

Survive …

Despite that victory, I only had one army when he could gather 2 to 3 rather small armies to raid me. My objective was to hold at all cost the Crystal sorceress factory, and as such I couldn’t but leave him advance in the north.

However, I tried to intercept his main party with my 3 dragons and on turn 26 they met a 37 strong enemy force in Obocte (99), with the enemy pretender. My tactic was to make my dragons wait as long as possible in the rear and then only attack rear. My hope was that most his troops would be upfront when I would fall on the mage core and disrupt it. And, as hoped, that tactic worked … but 2 things went wrong. First, 1 of my dragons quickly retreated, and second, his SC pretender was a bit lingering behind the troops and soon intervened … and so even though the initial attack was an initial success, they were soon surrounded by troops and struck hard by his very strong Myrmecoleon.

All in all I was very lucky : my dragons feeling the danger left the field and none of them died, they only 2 got afflictions and not the worst ones (1 limp and 1 battle fright). And they could still kill 16 out of 37 units, including 1 leader.

However, even though I now see this as a success, given it scared him enough to retreat, at that moment I was mostly aware of these facts :
– I had only 10 provinces left when he had 34 (and ermor 1 or 2 …)
– He still had a stronger army
– My repeated begs for help to other nations were mostly unanswered. Sure Abolethive had said he would help but every passing turn he said he had to check this, or that, … and on turn 27, when I had only 9 provinces he was still unsure whether he would intervene or not.

However, me and Ermor had now very strong ties. That struggle had been for both of us a strain, and we had managed to both survive. On turn 27, it was clear that Ochreil had mostly retreated. And I had now 5 dragons. And I started to counter attack.