Well, this update is a little disappointing. Can't find my mic just yet, but I wanted to put a beta of this up before I do a series of dangerous and unhealthy things over the next two days.
Well, here goes. Time to explore... for
Mastery.
Oh, that's a nice surprise. Occasionally you find empty lairs. A cache of treasure without monsters to get in the way.
The downside of course, is that they're (usually) small caches. Well, it's enough to purchase another unit of swordsmen. So let's check up on Craagut and see how we're feeling going in with three units.
As you may notice, they've gotten a new unit of Spearmen. They're still regenerating trollish monsters, but only about as good relative to troll swordsmen as our spearmen are to our swordsmen. Obviously, this isn't a battle we're going to be able to handle short of bringing in serious numbers. Before they can bolster themselves to dangerous levels.
Time for more exploring then.
Southold? South-Hold? What kind of retarded subhuman-
DOOOOOOOORFS!!!!
Huh, but they're dug in reasonably tight. If I recall correctly dwarves aren't quite as terrifying as trolls, but they will happily wreck the shit of my elven swordsmen.
They've also got access to some mythril, and Nightshade.
Mythril, I think, needs an alchemist's guild to provide mythril weapons to units built in the city.
Nightshade's effects only occur if the owning city has a shrine.
So for now it's time to pass some turns while we have armies large enough to crush the trolls and then the dwarves.
This is the cities screen. It's a nice heads up showing what we've got going on, with a single glaring flaw.
It doesn't have a renaming option in it. Terrible.
At about this time, I decided to look at what my cities could be building after I finished making six units of swordsmen.
First, I checked out the Shipwright's guild, because thanks to Frocto's wandering Magic Spirit, we've discovered...
We're more of an island than a continent. But that's OK, because we start out with ship building and solid navigation. It's just a matter of building up a port town.
Militarily we have two options.
The first is the stables to build cavalry. Dark Elven cavalry are equipped with a minor magic ranged attack, and like all cavalry enjoy a first strike and additional movement. First strike lets the unit's damage get applied first. I don't know if it activates during all melee clashes, or only if the unit is instigating the sortie.
The animists' guild ramps up unit healing within the city and gives every farmer the ability to produce one additional food.
The other option is...
Which is a prerequisite for halberdiers, warriors who sacrifice the movement of cavalry and the large shields of swordsmen to negate the first-strike capability of any unit. They're also about as expensive as cavalry. I have a bad habit of thinking of them as more situational than they are.
The fighter's guild gives every unit we produce a bonus 20 xp to start. Boosting them up a rank! This is usually good for an extra attack die. The fighter's guild is also a prerequisite for the apex units of most races.
Production wise, there's two building that will ramp up production by a fair amount.
I don't remember if the miner's guild can improve the benefits from mythril or adamantium, but it's an exciting little building because it also allows the production of the engineering guild. Which allows the training of engineers. Engineers are the only units that can build roads. Like in civilization, roads produce a trade tax bonus, with an additional bonus if the connected cities are of a different race.
Also, every road on Myrror is enchanted.
There's also the sawmill, which is admittedly much less sexy. The shipyard isn't really necessary for our expansion to other continents and the forester's guild only adds a pittance of food and production bonuses. The only reason I'm anxious about getting it is because I think it might be a prerequisite for the animists' guild, and is likely a prerequisite for fantastic stables.
We could consider producing a library here, but I want to have a slightly more melee oriented solution for trolls before I try to deal with the huge magical resistance of the creatures we're encountering on Myrror. Dark Elf Warlocks are, with little question, the single most powerful trainable spell caster unit. The path to getting warlocks is also going to get us the alchemist's guild, which would ordinarily gift us with magic weapons and add adamantium or mythril as a small bonus.
But if we're going to do civic stuff like that, we should either worry about a farmer's market foran extra +2 food and a few extra people a turn or this...
Priests, temples, and a pittance of extra magical power from worship is nice, but mostly...
We have rebels. The honeymoon is over.
Races rebel at different rates depending on their own character and the starting race of your wizard. Generally, there's a small decrease in unrest for your starting race. However, Dark Elves are amongst the whiniest, most rebellious races.
We can quell one unrest by stationing two units in the town garrison. We can also build holy buildings to decrease unrest. There is also a spell "Stream of Life" that eliminates unrest in a city.
For now, we'll probably have to rely on more mundane means. But we can hobble along like this for a few months. I finally have my sixth unit, now just to send him down to Craagut and claim it in the name of Frocto!
Oh. Oh wait. Oh shit.
So the reason I've had my forces camp out directly outside of the troll city was twofold. First, to cut off some of their production, and slow their ability to create new troll spearmen. Second, I was keeping an eye out for them sending raiders. Once neutral towns have enough spare units, a few of the garrisoned units will go out as a party of raiders. If they sent out raiders they could easily go straight for Deathford by the magic road. Or they could sweep around sneakily and make a break for Fellwood.
This pattern of growth and dispersal is also true of monster lairs and elemental nodes. However the wandering monsters have different repercussions for players. If raiders sack a city, you lose control of it. Which is arguably not as bad as wandering monsters destroying several prerequisite buildings and destroying a city's infrastructure, even though fighting over the city is likely to break a few high level buildings anyway. Let me assure you though, in this case raiders are
very bad.
Immediately prior to the dwarves being at our doorstep,
I went to the magic menu and converted all of our mana crystals to cash. Getting just enough to get a unit of elven swordsmen to deal with the dwarves. The grudge match of the century was on.
Sound and video trial 1
magic_002.avi
Well shit.
That's bad.
You see this screen when a wizard is banished. A banished wizard uses all of his or her spellpower to start fueling the spell of return. Banished wizards aren't able to do research, but (I haven't checked) still build spell power and mana crystals. However, since we're only a few turns in, this prompt appears.
Initially, I thought I'd tough it out. Be a man and shit. Whatever, I've still got more than enough soldiers to retake Fellwood! I'll just have to be defensive for a while.
But then I remembered something else.
If you don't have the food production at any turn-over boundary to support all of your units, the game chooses which units will disband because you cannot pay their upkeep. Because Deathford only produces one food for export, I only have one swordsman.
So logically, in a fit of rage and poor decision making, I've obliterated the game. Consigning Frocto to eternal limbo and/or abuse at the mercy of the dwarven raiders. At least until he comes back with a less retarded spell selection.
Drinking now.
EDIT:
There is a lot of drinking going on in the near future, but I want you to know I've edited out a discrepancy in what I remember from the game. Apparently it is the shrine,
not the animists guild that gets nightshade working.
Author
Topic: Master of Persistence (Read 5016 times)