Update 1: Rise of the Roach LordsAh yes, I remember now.
I am
Rakar the Terrible, a dragon who's really much nicer than he looks. Or sounds. I lead various
Monsters under a banner of
Purple. We also considered a yellow banner, but purple won the coin toss (it was actually a die roll). I am an accomplished
Archmage and
Trader, as well as being familiar with a weak heal and a weak shadowbolt.
The world is
Cylindrical and
Huge and comprised of several
Islands. There are rumored to be
six portals and
five rival mages. Also turns out max rivals is affected by map
type, not just size; this is the max for an island map.
Now then, about our current situation...
Home sweet home. Oh sure, some people will tell you that it's in a
desert and thus really hard to get delicious food out of, but just think of all the mana we could get! If we had all that many methods of extracting it.
*cough*
Alright so there's no food. Our first order of business is to construct a fishing village (+5 food, -1 gold; unique to monsters) on that hill to the southwest; I'd rather not do any more ranching in the middle of the desert than necessary, but we're low as is. I also begin researching Greater Raise Land. Sure, it'll take twelve turns to get, and sure, we won't have the mana to cast it for a while, but just think of the possibilities! We could create our own island, just raising it out of the sea!
Hopefully there won't be any vengeful dead or angry mermaids on it or something. That might be bad.
Of course, there's no time to dawdle, so I send our two current units, a regiment of ratmen robbers and a company of goblin archers, to the west to explore. We'll need to find someplace a bit better suited to not starving to death, I think.
Initial reports are both promising and grim. On the one hand, yep, that's a lot of desert. The snow on the mountains really doesn't balance it out, either, though I'm examining the feasibility of using it to keep our drinks cool. Of course that requires drinks in the first place, which sort of brings us back to desert.
The
good news is that there's a human settlement nearby! I'm sure they'll be glad to join us in our struggle, right after we've crushed their military forces and sieged their city's defenses into rubble. I order the training of a unit of goblin spearmen to give us some real meat for the siege.
But wait, there's more! That gaggle of rogues moves south to begin assaulting those wolves. The perfect time to strike!
But wait, I haven't gone over what forces we have available, have I? Well, here's our archers! As you can see, they're not particularly imposing, but do gain melee resistance from their thick hides. And as you can also see, His Majesty's Advisor is a a
racist.
And these would be spearmen. Much sturdier, though still a bit on the unimposing side and not really "armored" in the traditional sense.
And finally, the noble ratmen. Flimsier even than archers, but eeeeever so slightly harder-hitting than spearmen. More importantly, the can see and move far and through dense forests easily, making them excellent scouts. Until they actually find something in which case, well, it's good to be conservative when exploring.
With that out of the way, the charge begins. Another unit of archers is trained and en route when we make our first attack, which consists of our archers poking the city from a nearby hill while the spearmen sit around in front of it and wait to be attacked. The ratmen sort of cover the sides, mainly providing moral support and an equidistant target to the city's archers should they feel so inclined.
Meanwhile, the rogues continue to fight. We can't see the entire battle, but they appear to wipe out maybe two packs of wolves before ultimately being eaten. Well, such is the fate of thieves, I suppose.
Back at the city, we encounter mixed success. The ratmen take surprising damage from the city's defenders- arrows are apparently super effective against rats. They move back in response, noticing a next of feral ratmen in the process. The feral ratmen choose to assault their better-equipped, more civilized, more injured cousins, and wipe them out in the process.
This leaves me in a bit of a bind, so I order one unit of archers to wipe out the ratmen while the others rest to recover from the city's shots. The city's warriors, meanwhile, dash themselves apart on my spearmen, just as intended.
--
Back home, I order a settler trained, partially because we need to expand and partially because we've received a quest for it. Apparently somebody's willing to pay me 220 gold to found a new city.
Why? Don't worry about the minor details. Someone else was also willing to pay me 60 gold to build a farm, which I doubt will happen.
Anyway, while this is happening a pack of wolves approaches the city, perhaps hoping for some delicious roguemeat. We provide them with eldritch fire instead, which seems to get them to go away on the second shot. Capitals fire flaming aoe arrows rather than normal ones, you see.
--
The siege then takes a turn for the worse; a unit of hunters appears and wounds another unit of archers, forcing them to pull back and my two remaining units to focus fire on them. Our spearmen crush them completely once the archers have softened them up, but now everyone's injured and we notice a cockroach nest and we need someone to deal with those wolves so I can settle a city nearby without our peasants being eaten alive and screaming.
Fortunately our two archers do level up at some point in this, one well before the other. As you can see, they have the option of a defense bonus (25%, I believe) on forests, +25 resistance to Missiles, or +20% Missile damage. I select Missile damage in each case, as they are sort of archers.
Of course, it might be worth clarifying just how that bonus works. The bonus works regardless of their base type and works off their base damage; in other words, +20% Missile damage means they gain an extra 20% damage of type Missile, not that all Missile damage they perform is multiplied or that it wouldn't work if they didn't do Missile damage already. The elemental equivalent or ratmen and rogue poison works identically, for instance. It also works off, as I've said, base damage, so it's not affected by similar perks (they stack fine, however), but it can be affected by perks that increase "unit power."
--
Whoo. So forced with a difficult choice, I move a unit of archers down to soften up those wolves, allowing my settlers to found a new city nearby. This allows a second unit of wild hunters and a unit of cockroaches to move in, though one of my archers disposes of the hunters soon enough.
Unfortunately, this leaves poor New Garuta at the mercy of the wildlife, and soon the reign of the cockroach lords is at hand. Meanwhile, the massive influx of gold from completing both quests (the city came with a farm) allows me to purchase a carrav, which then explores a bit and fires at a giant fish. I figure it'll be good experience for the crew.
Oh yes, and I complete research on Greater Lands Raising! Wooooo!
Now we just need a ton of mana and a good place to actually do it. I did build a harbor specifically to get off this... cheerful home, though, so now not only can we build ships, but our regular units can spend an entire turn boarding a ship that comes out of nowhere. They're extremely vulnerable while in ship form and require a full turn to get
off the boat also, but it's better than nothing.
So, this is our current situation. We've got dead forests and cockroach lords to the north, wolves and snow to the south, and a giant fish to the south but further east. Our current military sits at two archers, a spearman (who has also leveled and taken +20% melee damage), and a boat (it's not a very impressive boat).
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Topic: Warlock: Master of Bureacracy [Update 2: On The Treachery Of Spiders] (Read 4661 times)