Which leads me into the last 15 turns. In order to understand The Plan, you first need to know about my Mercenaries. I overpaid massively for every mage that came up to compensate for my relatively low mage production because of fort count. First there was Dagan, who I got fairly early and kept for 12 or 15 turns before I missed his renewal and he left forever. Then there was Ferrus, the Iron Wizard, who I kept until nearly the end of the game where Berytos paid more than 350 gold to take him away from me. I don't know if this happens every time, but Ferrus came with a Soul Contract, so I started amassing Devils starting from 3 turns before I took that fort from Ermor. I also got a Soul Contract from a random event about 10 turns before the end of the game, so I was getting 2 Devils a month for awhile as well. I ended the game with 30 Devils as part of my main force. That would be absolutely devastating on defense, and they were the main reason I took the Titan throne and only lost 60 troops in the process.
Ferrus happens to be 2S2E, and after spending most of my free Astral gems finding nothing with Arcane Probing, I transmuted some Fire gems to Astral and made a Crystal Coin. I thought I could use it to add 1S to a Site-Searcher, but obviously that doesn't work so it sat in my stash.
I knew that Tir had a massive number of provinces, and thus a massive amount of income, for much of the game. Once I saw that Machaka had the Cave fort, I figured he had an equally high income at this point. It stands to reason that if I got 3 Ascension points, I'd be squashed like a bug by superior forces. So if I was going to win at all, it would have to be through trickery. The Plan was originally to get to Construction-8 and Conjuration-5 to cast Contact Dai Tengu and equip him with the Sword of Injustice. That would give me a second H3 commander so I could take 2 thrones at once. I knew that would take a whole bunch of turns but figured there was really no other option. Right around the time I took the cave Throne, I remembered that Pretenders can also take Thrones. The Plan then took definite form with a clear timetable. At this point, I had a much more stable income because my two Shura had taken over a huge swath of provinces to my West and my main army had taken 4 provinces to my North. I turned my Shura around and sent over a bunch of Oni and all of my diseased troops to support them in taking the Amazon throne.
The Plan would start after I claimed that throne and moved the Hannaya to the adjacent fort. At that point, my Hannaya would equip Winged Shoes and move to the Cave throne while my Pretender would Teleport to the nearby Level 2 Throne. Then I'd claim both for the win.
Few snags, though. For one thing, Hannaya can't equip boots. Thankfully, I'd learned how to set up maps to run tests and discovered this myself. I also forgot where my Prophet was and moved her 2 turns later than I should have, delaying the execution. Oh, and there's that thing where Teleport is cast first, so my God would warp in before my troops and die horribly if I didn't have the province already. And oh look, Tir took that Level 2 Throne with his Pretender (claiming brought him to 4 points), and it's Order-3 with a ton of Tir troops. Tir of course has both Air and Water access, so he probably has Fun spells like Cleansing Waters, Storm, and Arrow Fend. So I despaired for a couple of turns, and sent my army back to ensure that Tir didn't just take it with a bunch of stealthy Thugs. And then I remembered the nearby Titan throne that Tir had lost a bunch of guys to.
The Final Plan: Empower my Pretender to Air-3 and Astral-2. Forge Flying Carpet and equip him with the Crystal Coin. Fly the Hannaya to one throne and Teleport to the other for the claim and eventual win. Since I had so few provinces for so long, this was only possible because Turmoil-3, Luck-3, and Magic-1 leads to a hell of a lot of free gems. I began massively reinforcing my existing Thrones and I moved all of my Hannaya to my Capitol and then to the Swamp province adjoining the main one, with a lot of gems in tow.
I also forged a Shademail Haubergeon for my Prophet because Tir made a habit of assassinating them. This let me move my timetable up one turn because the Hannaya could Sneak into the Titan province at the same time that I attacked it. I set up 3 Dai Oni in the Cave province with very little in the way of support, but all three had Earth Boots and were set to cast Earthquake. I figured out the Cave Collapse formula (12 + DRN vs. Defense + DRN, if hit then 8 + DRN vs. Prot/2 + DRN, plus an additional hit on a random % of troops already hit) and knew that two Earthquakes would kill almost every mage and almost all of his non-Rhino troops, while the 3rd would pretty much finish the job.
Unfortunately, the turn I took the Titan province was the same turn that Tir took Machaka's underwater throne province. My two main Shura - who both got the Winged Shoes I couldn't give to the Hannaya - were more than 3 hops away from every overland Tir throne, and the same with the rest of my army. I didn't really have any good Rituals either. The only thing I could do was Teleport my Pretender to one of the two UW thrones and pray that he could beat whatever Tir had there. I ran a bunch of tests and found that my best bet was to equip him with a Storm Spool, then cast Body Ethereal - Astral Shield - Shock Wave x 3. It worked, and then I immediately added 37 PD and recruited a bunch of Tritons with the gold I had saved up for just that purpose.
My Amazon throne was defended by 6 Mages, a Shura, some Oni, a rag-tag group of summons, 12 Amazons and 30 PD. My lake throne had 26 PD, two Triton Commanders, and something like 40 Triton Guards. Nothing was attacked on the winning turn, although R'lyeh could have hit me with a Shambler Thrall army that would've failed horribly against ~400 troops backed by nearly 20 mages, all scripted specifically to wreck that particular army.
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Topic: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins! (Read 20153 times)