TURN 13:
Abysia assassinated a commander of mine. My only indy commander in fact. Not a big deal, but it does mean I need to put some bodyguards on those non stealthy commanders of mine. Luckily, I only have one, who is a mercenary, and I don't care much about her.
I conquer Midria with my army of 10 harpies. Quite effective cost-wise
As expected, Abysia besieges Pangaea and wins but can't harm my walls. Also as expected, I take another abysian province that I'll lose next turn. But now he'll have to wonder where I go.
The situation is bad of course, but the problem is I am facing a very **** opponent.
I edited away the insult. I really feel that the whole move was utterly stupid. I believe Excist thought maenads were worthless in terms of defending sieges when they are in fact awesome. So his whole war was doomed to fail from the start but ruined the game for both of us because he made a bad assessment of my fort defense.
He cannot take Pangaea. I have so many maenads inside he'll never be able to breach the walls. Of course, the maenads will eat food, but what do I care? He takes some of my provinces, but I'll cause trouble in his backyard. What benefit does he expect? He'll get attacked in the back when all his forces are near/on my capital. Like I said, it's a lose/lose.
To be fair, Excist is much brighter than what I portrayed here. He would try to preach me out. That's a good idea with H3 priests. Not so bright with a low dominion vs. a dominion of 9 and someone who can blood sacrifice. Also, committing all one's wizards to a rush means you lose about 40 turns of mage-research time plus the time spent besieging. That is suicidal, particularly considering your neighbors will inevitably attack you after a rush, either because you're losing and are an easy target, or because you won and look threatening. So putting all your forces in a short term benefit and neglecting research is really a bad idea.
Meanwhile, Fomoria built a second fort and R'lyeh a third fort!
Which is really what nations should be doing early on. Getting forts for mages to do some research.
I somehow don't see Abysia building a fort anytime soon. He'll have conquered indie provinces that I took, and left other indie provinces to Arcoscephale and Fomoria. He won't have my capital, ever.
Never, I tell you.
I've made a lot of tests to see if my forces in the fort can defeat Abysia besiegers. Surprisingly, they can, but with a low probability. At best 2/3. One chance in three of losing the game now is still too much.
It would still have been better than 1 in 2 a few turns later, though. So I bring back revelers and one more dryad. I need chaff. The tactics is to draw abysian troops to a side, considering he'll likely use the same placement as right now, which is a solid troop placement. Drawing to one side, casting tangle vines, I turn his burning ones into useless junk that minotaurs can turn to shreds. The problems are:
- tangle vines has a small AoE.
- tunes of growth would replace it fine, but it is very hard to place wizards well to use it.
- F** spellcasting ai wants to cast tune of fear on berserk abysians.
- I have too few minotaurs.
- Flares are what really kills my troops, since tangle vines protects them enough (I mean, the minotaurs and my god and casters, I don't care about maenad losses).
TURN 14:
This may be a bad idea, but turtling is boring. Arco should be attacking Abysia next turn. R'lyeh doesn't have any troop nearby. My tests indicate a 2/3 chance of winning for me. I brought some more maenads, some revelers and some dryads. I have better magic, but that's mostly irrelevant. The mercenaries I bought should cause some more trouble inside Pangaea lands.
If I fail, my surviving Pans can sneak back inside and hopefully hold the walls while my pretender will hopefully do suicide come-backs.
I also discover that maenads are generated AFTER an attack, not at the same time. So my mercenary archers attack a 20 PD province, get killed, and only afterwards do a dozen maenads pop up and flee.
Please color me silly for not checking that before playing. I can say all I want about Excist's maenad assessment, but mine is also quite faulty. With a bit of luck, seeing the maenads will make Abysia think my Pan(s) is (are) moving south and will divert some of his troops, but that's unlikely to have any effect. I wonder why none of the maenads fled to a neighboring province. Might be a bug.
TURN 15:
Big battle expected. Abysia played well in preaching there, so my god is no longer immortal. This means game over:
Abysian deployment. Exactly the same as before, but more misbreds and 1 more annointed, as expected.
Pangaea deployment. Minotaurs down, slightly back so as not to draw the first fire. God in front in order to cast resist fire first. The rest up to draw enemies this way. Archers to shoot at fliers.
OOOPS!!! Huge mistake. I didn't order these dudes to hold and attack. Hopefully they'll just get killed so my songs will kick in in range.
That's a small misplacement, but every single soldier mattered and, combined with the +1/-1 morale from unfriendly dominion, it counts a lot.
The result is a rout. My minotaurs didn't attack straight the regular infantry on the right contrary to all my tests, but ran into the burning ones immediately. This ment that I didn't kill those 5 or 6 abysian infantry which would have provided crucial hp loss for the opponent morale check.
I'm bringing my Pans back and the maenads to defend the fort. It's not too damaged, so hopefully maneads can hold it, but that's not certain. Still, it should take Abysia a few turns to dent it as they have a very low troops count there.
I don't usually play Pangaea, and I'm not a patient person. I will have to learn to turtle in this game. I should have done that already, but waiting it out till I get Mother Oak inside my capital sounds so boring...
Not that I'll ever be able to cast Mother Oak, mind you.
TURN 16:
My dominion is sinking in my capital. I got some maenads who spawned, but only a dozen. I have no idea why I sent a Pan in the north. My priests are preaching in their temple, ans are researching and one summons vine men, just to check how many I get. They are mindless, so they don't help much at repairing walls, but 10 of them would be worth 1 burning one in defense. Monkeys are also coming back to help and will be there in 3 turns. My defense is 229 out of 250, so it's rather good as it should hold long enough.
I also try to build a fort in the north, hoping the abysian reinforcements go to my capital rather than try to take the mountains.
this is called wishful or desperate thinking.
Arco took one province, but failed to take another one.
R'lyeh is out there in the south, probably to attack my island, maybe the troll province, but more likely myself or the two indie land provinces.
I grabbed this screenshot, so I guess R'lyeh attacked on turn 16 in fact:
