Like I said, getting me to play with actual people wouldn't be too likely. I know that I just can't think in a fashion competitive enough to deal with the demands of a real game.
Just as I was finally starting to stick it to Helheim, Yomi figured it would be an awesome time to send a bunch of demons into my territory. Strangely, there are only about 40-60 Oni in my area of the map, and I know he has a couple hundred of them stocked up in all 5 of his provinces.
Anyways, with little to no troops on that side of the map, things didn't go too well. As a result, I got pissed.
Helheim has now been thwomped into extreme submission. After aggressive expansion, they've got a fraction of their old provinces. I also defeated 80% of their military strength in one battle just recently.
I discovered that Helheim had, in fact, preached my own capital out from under me. Five black candles, right in the middle of all my wonderful lightness. This was a shame, because I had decided just the previous turn that I was sick and tired of not being able to produce troops, and had resolved to get those damn kids the hell off of my lawn, so to speak.
Naturally, being Vanir, I couldn't see how many dudes they had at my gates. I could only see the 60 or so human warriors they had brought along. Even so, I roughly set up my troops, filtered out the many, many summons between my commanders, and went for it.
And that's when I got to see the 100 huskarls, mounted hirdmen, helhirdings, and valkyries. Seeing a swarm of sacred Van cavalry charging your flank is not a pleasant sight. Especially when it's lead by a couple hangadrotts, their prophet, and Vanlade.
169 assorted troops... Flanking helhirdings, frontline huskarls and mage-bombing valkyries... All rallied into battle by the greatest heroes and mages that Helheim had to offer.
All dead now.
I lost 45 assorted magic units, meaning magma children and earth elementals. I lost far more earth elementals than I needed to, due to poor placement. I also lost 6 shades, out of the 16 I had absent-mindedly summoned. I only managed to kill 162 of their troops on the battlefield, plus one commander, but they don't have any provinces to retreat to. All dead.
I also learned something... Magma children are freakin' badass. Five of these guys for 2 fire gems is a steal. They're incredibly well-suited for knocking out Helheim's forces, strangely enough. I found this out after the cavalry charge.
First of all, magma children have okay health and protection, so there's a chance they'll survive a lance hit. This makes the swarms of them even more adept at soaking. Furthermore, they have an innate fire shield. That's 8 points of AP damage, which means anyone charging them with insufficient armor (and finding 16+ protection cavalry in EA can be a little tricky at times) will get burned for their trouble (did I mention that this qualifies as landing a hit, and will dispel the mirror image effect all units with glamour automatically have?).
And as if that weren't enough, they also have an area-effect (ignores the beefed-up defense values of mounted troops) armor piercing attack that works directly off of strength. Since they have strength of 12, that means you'd need to find units with 24+ protection to completely resist it. The fatigue and flames from their heat aura (emphasized by how many you can pack into an area) is just burning on the cake.
So I've basically got a huge, mindless force of cavalry booby-traps. And, again, five for two gems... Not a bad deal. I'm just sad that I didn't get to fire-searching early on, so I'm only working off of the +1 from my capital.
Anyways, with Helheim essentially dealt with, I can move on and start giving Yomi the attention they... Uh... Wait. What? Oh dear... I could've sworn that province was Helheim's when I attacked it... Whoops.
Well, now Vanheim hates me. With a couple big armies on my borders, a couple steps from my capital. Uh huh. Yep. Sounds good. We'll see how much damage they manage to do before the turn limit rears its ugly head.
Anyways, it was fun to have a major victory for once... And, I learned a couple new things, which is good. I also re-learned that Agarthan province defense is a complete joke, after watching Yomi pick apart a 30-defense province (plus a couple extra commanders and several flagellants) with 20 demons.
EDIT: Currently mucking around with Arcosephale, and I just figured out a rather interesting build to use with them... Loads of options, but not specialized towards any one of the standard strategies. It's kind of a mix. Whatever it is, it's good fun. And I can't tell you how wonderful it is to actually have some half-decent PD for a change.
Still, pulling Abysia and Vanheim as random opponents ain't exactly my idea of a nice break. Damn I'm starting to hate glamoured armies...
However, I've got lots of fun little tricks I'm just itching to pull on them, and I could post about them here and boast about my potentially half-glorious victories in scientific experimentation... But I wouldn't want to bore any of you with that blather.
