Here is our new hamlet of... "Deathford" ugh.
Worse than "Fellwood" in everything but its name. You should remember to investigate a newly captured city as soon as you get it, otherwise the city will produce, by default, "trade goods". Not a bad thing to produce usually. Certainly better than treehouses. But when you acquire a new town it's usually in need of either serious development or pillaging. You can also sell off built structures for a pittance, but anyplace that can supply us with an extra gold and food is a good place.
Even more exciting, Deathford has a road attached to it. Roads in the tactical map and on Arcanus make movement over its terrain cost .5 movement allowing travel twice as quickly. Roads in Myrror however, function as though they have been enchanted (by the Enchant Roads spell). Movement over them costs 0, except in combat where they behave like normal roads.. Roads are also usually connected to another city!
Gold ore has its merits, but compared to extra magic power it's kind of disappointing. Still, armies cost money. You'll also notice that there's lots of deserts here. If we had a lot of nature magic we could terraform this area into something more hospitable, but it's not to be.
EUREKA!
Unfortunately, this town is built on tundra, the worst land type. Its production bonuses are weak, and its maximum population, while boostable, is always going to be a fair bit lower than any city we might care about.
Wait... Craagut? What the hell kind of name is that for a dar-
Huh. I didn't know I could get excited again so quickly. A prosperous hamlet of trolls defended by what I suspect are two swordstrolls. Unfortunately...
Either we cannot, or I've forgotten how to check out the stats of units inside city walls. Well, there's two of them, and there's two of us, and we're all hardond warriors here. I'm sure we can handle these guys.
Defense gets the first move, so let's see what we're up against exactly...
Huh. OK. They've got 20 attack dice, 8 defense, 16 hits, and a functionally infinite amount of magic resistance. To make matters worse, they have regeneration.
What this implies is that units without regeneration can heal outside of combat. Indeed, they do, and heal faster inside of cities.
What this doesn't imply is that if an individual in a unit falls its hits can still be restored by healing or regeneration. So in short, although our valiant warriors manage to chip off a troll from this unit.
That swordsman is back up and swinging the next round.
I'm also convinced by this battle that large shield adds a +2 to a roll, not to the dice, even against magical ranged attacks.
Don't cheer you lousy shitheads. We lost!
Anyway, here's the gist of how combat works. During an attack action, each attack symbol is a ten sided die which succeeds on a roll of six or higher. In short, a 50% chance of scoring damage. With a +1 bonus representing an additional 10%. Defense is then rolled either by armor or by resistance (in the case of magic) and successes on these rolls negate damage. After damage is calculated, retaliation may occur, and barring effects like Breath weapon, thrown weapon, or first strike all damage is applied simultaneously.
Oh well, time to rebuild the army and start exploring.
Here's Frocto's spellbook, and because he's an artificer he can create artifacts.
Unfortunately, because he doesn't have any other spell choices his artifact options are kind of lame. But these are relatively high ranked spells and can be used to butter up rivals if you're desperate or as trades to bolster your starting spell pool.
Frocto is going to cast Magic Spirit.
You need magic spirits to tap into the power of nodes, but more important to Frocto now that his starting units have been crushed
Incorporeal means that the magic spirit can fly, and treats all land as though it's a road. Ideal for scouting, and relatively cheap in terms of upkeep.
Unfortunately, it's shit for fighting, barely able to serve as cannon fodder.
Exploring to the left of angst capital, Frocto's loyal magic spirit catches some Iron ore. Which is pretty useful to Frocto as he's basically magical beast-less. Note also the tower to the up-left of the spirit. Those towers exist on both planes simultaneously and are the default mode of transfer between the two.
Hydra are pretty potent on their own, enjoying, amongst other things, regeneration and a breath weapon. To make matters worse, scouting only shows off the single strongest
visible enemy. That hydra could be backed up by a legion of sprites and we'd be none the wiser until we sent our poor magic spirit off to get slaughtered.
Progressing a little further to the left-down we find this:
An old temple! The surveyor is also kind enough to keep track of which areas are explored and what we've found there. Once we loot this abandoned temple (occasionally guarded by Life creatures) it will disappear and a city can be built on the spot. Though there's not really a compelling reason to do so just yet.
Next update: I search in earnest so I can stop typing Fellwood all the time. The temple gets explored and, most likely, I chicken out from capturing it.
Author
Topic: Master of Persistence (Read 5014 times)