Overconfidence

With Ermor defeating the main army of Ochreil, I knew that the balance between the two of them had finally been broken. Nothing could stop the undead now.

I had always been thinking of this moment, and knew that in that event I should move again against Ochreil to prevent Ermor to take all of his territory. So, given he was still beholden of my help in the early game, I could negociate my share of Ochreil’s territory. All the northeastern part of his kingdom would befall on me.

However, even though he was mostly vanquished, he wasn’t entirely dead. I thought that a bunch of dragons would suffice to secure the lands. And that was my first mistake of many …

After breaking my NAP-1 turn 47, I launched my first assault turn 48 that landed turn 49. My plan was to take 4 provinces in that first round and, as hoped, 3 of them fell easily. However … a raid on his northern fort was met with some patrolling sacreds and one dragon (Metaxas) out of two didn’t make it while the other retreated. Also, a bad scripting led to a funny event in the last province worth relating (well, at first it wasn’t funny at all and thought it was a bug, but no, it was a funny mechanic at play !).

Indeed I had sent a lone dragon, Nozdormu, take a province with only weak PD. Due to an error in scripting he changed to human form on arrival … and after self-buffing started to attack the PD all alone with his mage outfit. He could hold his ground against a single heavy cavalry but when the heavy infantry came in, he couldn’t but take hits. One of them struck his head and straight decapitated him. His human form “dead”, he turned back into his dragon form … without his head. And as everybody know, there’s not much to hope from a headless dragon, and so he immediatly died a second time, once and for all … As I said to Ochreil afterwards : “Cut the head of a wizard, no good dragon will get out of it !”.

Losing a dragon like that was quite unfortunate, to say the least … but other bad news came in. What the scouts were seeing was not good : Ochreil still had an army of at least 150 units. If he ever wanted to throw them at me, I was not ready to face them … I thought all of his men were dead in the Sinkhole Swamp and that was not really the case.

I then hoped he would send them to try to save his cap from Ermor … but he knew he was fucked up, and then decided that if anyone deserved his last stand, it was me. I can’t blame him, I had ruined his game with my intervention to save Ermor … and so instead of a small raiding force I had to form a new, strong army and get, again, my crystal ladies on the field.

By turn 52, I still needed time to get ready and Ochreil was understanding that he could, as he did 30 turns ago, have fun raiding and pillaging my lands.

Progress against the ants

Feeling not very confident with Magic Duel, I had decided that my antimagic sorceress was obsolete and retreated her from the siege of Sofekte. However, given I did not have enough gems to build a new golem, I sent the horror harmonica golem to replace the sorceress and support the assault. Not only would he cast Antimagic, but with his harmonica Wailing winds would come in handy.

My scouts and scryers had told me that he had sent reinforcements into the fortress via Gateway, with a scout report of about 292 troops. But when the assault finally came (turn 50), he had finally evacuated most of them and my army faced only a handful of mages and weak troops that were quickly overrun. After this success, I decided to keep on and move to the nearest fortress of The Promised Land (83).

Raiding also continued on Abolethive’s border, keeping him as busy as possible and adding a free wolf raid every turn thanks to the free spell from the Soul Stone of the Wolf (Call of the wild). Also at that point I had started to have a decent UW force with sea king and prepared to move again against his fortress in White Water (63), hoping now to take it.

Drakonia gets kicked

On turn 51, Drakonia had breached Bandar Log (held by Abolethive) and I was expecting him to take it in the following turn. However, when I looked at the map on turn 52, the sight was all but reassuring : the Drakonian army had disappeared and a 300 strong army of ants had replaced it.

Sadly, I had not been able to see the battle and could only guess that Abolethive was strong enough to beat Drakonia’s army. I was now besieging that fortress close to Bandar Log, and as such close to that victorious army, but, still, I didn’t feel threatened. Indeed, in my last battle against them, I had a much weaker forces and had still easily won, so what ? And I now had a new Antimagic golem dedicated to this army, which was in my opinion my insurance against the worst he could throw at me. So I decided to let them come …