So many double posts... oh well, I think that's the only way updates go out to people who are watching the topic. The posts are like 7 hours apart too, so that doesn't count as a double post... right? Here's winter. I'll probably put up a post with the yearly graph summary and the happenings of early spring at some point tonight.
------------------------------------------------------
Early Winter-It seems that Winter is the season of Ulm's successes. I managed to find three sites of power in the Stone Grave Mountains (BoilingBog, RocksideSpring, StoneCircle pics) while Mamor found one in Epernia (Monolith).
Woohoo fire gems.
Druids are Nature 1 casters with no random magic path picks. The Shaman are in the same province and if I train either of them it's going to be the Shaman.
This is the one that Mamor found. It's our first Astral site, which is pretty cool. In addition a mercenary skilled in death magic approached us and asked if we were interested in his services. He was hired so quickly that I'm beginning to be concerned about the identity of the one in charge of hiring. I suppose it is good to understand the methods of the enemy, but I still can not help but feel uneasy around his personal army of skeletons.
Here's the last mage we need for a(n almost) complete coverage of all paths! I'm not worried about blood right now because... well I think that's more of a pain than it's worth right now. If you guys want me to try blood, or want to know what that entails, go ahead and ask and I or someone else will let you know the details. I've been really lucky with mercenaries this game. It's especially nice because apparently I forgot that I need access to magic paths before I can use Ulm's smithing benefits, so I didn't make a pretender who was good at everything.
These guys... well, they're pretty much garbage. Nergash comes with 80 and death magic can summon more. I can boost their armor in battle with the Legions of Steel spell, which is nice.In addition, Epernia was defended yet again, this time against a much more sizeable attack.
This... is a pretty big army that basically came out of nowhere last turn. Ermor can get scary really, really fast if you don't have a way to counter them and don't hit them fairly early. 
Luckily I'm hitting them early and I quite literally have defenses of steel. Magically sparkly steely steel. And a priest from province defense, which has undead killing spells.
Ermor has some interesting priest spells that are actually geared towards boosting their undead troops. This one's Unholy Protection which boosts their magic resist, making it harder for my priest and smith to kill them.
That's banishment. It's a nice priest spell that only does damage to undead, but it's probably the main reason that province defense priests are worth anything at all.
Some of Ermor's troops have a javelin that they can use once per battle for a short range attack. It can hurt a lot and in this case takes out most of Mamor's remaining troops.
Unfortunately my melee troops are badly outnumbered and even 20+ protection can be overwhelmed if you hit it enough.
So my melee troops die or retreat (they're almost entirely province defense so as long as I win it doesn't matter if they die) and Ermor's troops make it to my crossbowmen. Now, what you may notice is that the 80+ undead that Ermor started with? Pretty much gone. That means I just have to break the morale of these living troops, I don't actually HAVE to kill them all. This is another area where Ulm surprised me. Their crossbowmen have 14 protection and when boosted by Legions of Steel that goes up to 17. That's more than twice what the Ermor velites they're going up against have, which is frankly ridiculous. So they survive getting wailed on for a few rounds while my two smiths throw magma at the velites and Mamor chucks lightning at them and my priest actually does something useful and boosts my crossbowmen's morale so I don't have to worry about them routing. Eventually...
The velites have had enough abuse and run away. I probably shouldn't have won that battle, but it's satisfying anyway!And with that battle Eshten enters the Hall of Fame!
I may or may not have mentioned this before, but one really nice thing about the heroic abilities you get from being in the Hall of Fame is that their bonus increases the longer the unit remains in the Hall of Fame. This means that Eshten here could eventually get quite a lot of hit points, which is nice for a mage, but would have been even better on a thug. We can hope, though!We weathered another Ermorian attack this month, this time in Cerne.
This battle has one of Ermor's more powerful priests backing them up, so they get to use Power of the Sepulchre. This boosts the attack and action points of all of their undead on the whole battlefield. It's good for making pretty crappy cannon fodder into still fairly crappy but sharp cannon fodder.
This battle was a lot less... nuanced than the others so far. Basically, everyone glommed up in a big ball in the middle and hit eachother while the smiths threw magma, Mamor threw lightning, and the priests threw banishment (theirs much more effectively than mine).
But in the end we won out again. All of those undead on my side came with Nergash, so I don't particularly care if I lose them. I DO need to get actual troops into these provinces though because my province defense alone isn't going to cut it.Other than that, this has been a quiet month. Kiron has been relieved and is traveling to Epernia where I am finishing my search for magic sites. I am told the Master Smiths have completed enough research that I am needed back in Ulm to assist with the crafting of water and nature-based items. It will be interesting to finally be able to observe the Smiths forging their masterworks.
Late Winter-This month was even more uneventful than the last. It seems the last remnants of Urist's powers have separated from his body and are empowering a newly trained Black Lord named Knave. The Smiths are quickly forging magical equipment for him to use these powers to their fullest potential. In addition, another mercenary approached Ulm for employment. This mercenary, a sage named Dagan, seems an able researcher and asks very low wages, so he was hired. I have been asking around a little about the large number of mercenaries that seem to be hired and it seems that many of the council members are of a similar mind as I. The fortress in Sermioc will be completed next month and these mercenaries may soon be more of a financial burden than they are worth, but for now they seem to be worth their wages.
Author
Topic: Dominions 3 LP - Time to take out some indies! (Read 19719 times)