Dominions 4 evangelism, final part, third chapter
So, at the end of the last update Midgard's troops had expanded across a moderate swathe of the map, merrily slaughtering the independent forces which stood in their way and taking relatively light casualties as they did so. That has largely been the order of the day for the vast majority of turns 7-11, and you don't really need to see all of the fights individually, so I'll just show the map as it is now with annotations as to how I got there.
OK, that's kind of confusing. The basic idea is that the numerals are the turn number in which I conquered that province and the arrows show army movements. So as I noted at the end of the last post, on turn 7 I ordered two attacks on the provinces directly to the north of my capital (the province with the picture of a fort in it). Both of these succeeded admirably, and therefore, after a bit of internal debate, I recombined the armies and attacked the province with the throne on it. The reason I did this was that throne provinces have somewhat stronger defences than the average independent, and I doubted either army could take it alone, at least while keeping casualties down to an acceptable level. That made for rather more interesting of a battle than usual, so I'll cover this one in detail. Here's the enemy:
As you can see from the text crawl along the left-hand side, they've got somewhat substantial magical support, and that support is currently occupying itself raising skeletons to supplement the already fairly substantial cavalry force the province has. Skelespam, as seasoned Dominions players tend to call it, is actually a pretty decent tactic, especially by the AI's standards. The reason is that it generally takes rather more fatigue to kill all the skeletons than it does to summon them, so a purely infantry force is in danger of getting hung up on the skeletons and worn down by whatever else is around in defence. I have such a force, but since I used both my armies it's sufficiently large that I don't expect that to be a problem. Speaking of my armies, I've deployed them towards the rear again; this time it's not to avoid incoming arrow fire (though it does this anyway) so much as to let the cavalry get so far ahead of the infantry I don't have to fight them both at once. See, I'm learning from my previous mistakes! (sort of). Here they are (and as you can see, the plan is working):
Oh, by the way, the guy on the horse appears four times because he's got the glamour ability, meaning he projects a series of mirror images. Enemies have to hit the right one in order to damage him, which is somewhat useful against practically everything except spells (for example, quite a lot of arrows head towards him in this battle, and none of them hit). The enemy infantry do manage to arrive while I'm still engaged with the cavalry, but it turns out they have just enough movement to reach my lines and not enough to attack. This turns out predictably badly for them, and they actually rout before the cavalry do:
To the right, you can see the first smattering of skeletons beginning to arrive on the battlefield. My prophet has now exhausted his scripted spells, and, seeing the undead, he switches from Smite to Banishment, an area-of-effect damage spell that only works on undead and demonic creatures. The effects are impressive (banishment is a big weakness of undead and demonic troops, especially if a powerful priest like my prophet is casting it, since the damage scales with holy level):
Under such magical bombardment, the skeleton chaff is unable to substantially delay the advance of the skinshifters, which chew through the light cavalry screen quite rapidly (by "light cavalry" the game really means "cavalry archers") and then finish off the mages, who have by this stage fallen unconscious from the exertions of summoning so many skeletons. So my troops finish off the battle by slaughtering sleeping men and dozens of brainwashed young women (since commanders who have blood slaves are accompanied onto the battlefield by them, and blood slaves are mindless, so they don't rout). Yay for Midgard!
In turn 9 I use my prophet to claim the throne of ascension, thereby scoring one of the 8 victory points I need to win the game, while the other commander (the guy on the horse above) takes the army and moves west with it. My thinking is to try and claim outlying provinces before ones closer to me, since other players will be less likely to attack provinces surrounded on all sides by my territory. As it turns out, it doesn't matter. I also throw up a fort on the throne province (with a spare commander that I acquired via an event - I'd have made more of a fuss about him if he wasn't basically generic, but as he his, no real reason to dwell on it, just mention that you occasionally get "national hero" commanders by events. Some of them are good, this one was not.) partially for defence and partially because, as you'll see if you check the map up top, it's got a ton of neighbours. Forts have an administration bonus which means they collect bonus resources from their neighbours, so having a lot of neighbours for a forted province is a good plan. Also, it's about time I got started on fort sites to increase my recruitment capability, since my income is now getting beyond my capacity to spend in a turn.
Consequently Midgard produces entire expansion parties worth of troops for turns 9 and 11, and so I can use these to grab additional provinces as well as those my primary army is capturing. By turn 11 I can see that other nations are starting to appear on my borders, so I'm also beginning some diplomacy. I'm regularly reaching out to Jomon since he's easy to find on the Dominions IRC channel. His plans are leading him south rather than north, so we're mostly keeping each other informed and staying out of each others' way. Atlantis likewise doesn't seem interested in coming my way right now, but he's definitely marked as a future target since interacting with him is definitely somewhat unpleasant and he's also much more experienced than me, so he'll be more dangerous the longer I take to fight him. On the other hand, I don't have any real way to hit his underwater provinces right now, and I'm worried that the narrow border would turn into a meatgrinder. So my initial target is Pangaea, who appears to be expanding slowly. I start trying to work out who is on the other side of him and recruit allies for the assault, more on which next time.
OK, that's kind of confusing. The basic idea is that the numerals are the turn number in which I conquered that province and the arrows show army movements. So as I noted at the end of the last post, on turn 7 I ordered two attacks on the provinces directly to the north of my capital (the province with the picture of a fort in it). Both of these succeeded admirably, and therefore, after a bit of internal debate, I recombined the armies and attacked the province with the throne on it. The reason I did this was that throne provinces have somewhat stronger defences than the average independent, and I doubted either army could take it alone, at least while keeping casualties down to an acceptable level. That made for rather more interesting of a battle than usual, so I'll cover this one in detail. Here's the enemy:
As you can see from the text crawl along the left-hand side, they've got somewhat substantial magical support, and that support is currently occupying itself raising skeletons to supplement the already fairly substantial cavalry force the province has. Skelespam, as seasoned Dominions players tend to call it, is actually a pretty decent tactic, especially by the AI's standards. The reason is that it generally takes rather more fatigue to kill all the skeletons than it does to summon them, so a purely infantry force is in danger of getting hung up on the skeletons and worn down by whatever else is around in defence. I have such a force, but since I used both my armies it's sufficiently large that I don't expect that to be a problem. Speaking of my armies, I've deployed them towards the rear again; this time it's not to avoid incoming arrow fire (though it does this anyway) so much as to let the cavalry get so far ahead of the infantry I don't have to fight them both at once. See, I'm learning from my previous mistakes! (sort of). Here they are (and as you can see, the plan is working):
Oh, by the way, the guy on the horse appears four times because he's got the glamour ability, meaning he projects a series of mirror images. Enemies have to hit the right one in order to damage him, which is somewhat useful against practically everything except spells (for example, quite a lot of arrows head towards him in this battle, and none of them hit). The enemy infantry do manage to arrive while I'm still engaged with the cavalry, but it turns out they have just enough movement to reach my lines and not enough to attack. This turns out predictably badly for them, and they actually rout before the cavalry do:
To the right, you can see the first smattering of skeletons beginning to arrive on the battlefield. My prophet has now exhausted his scripted spells, and, seeing the undead, he switches from Smite to Banishment, an area-of-effect damage spell that only works on undead and demonic creatures. The effects are impressive (banishment is a big weakness of undead and demonic troops, especially if a powerful priest like my prophet is casting it, since the damage scales with holy level):
Under such magical bombardment, the skeleton chaff is unable to substantially delay the advance of the skinshifters, which chew through the light cavalry screen quite rapidly (by "light cavalry" the game really means "cavalry archers") and then finish off the mages, who have by this stage fallen unconscious from the exertions of summoning so many skeletons. So my troops finish off the battle by slaughtering sleeping men and dozens of brainwashed young women (since commanders who have blood slaves are accompanied onto the battlefield by them, and blood slaves are mindless, so they don't rout). Yay for Midgard!
In turn 9 I use my prophet to claim the throne of ascension, thereby scoring one of the 8 victory points I need to win the game, while the other commander (the guy on the horse above) takes the army and moves west with it. My thinking is to try and claim outlying provinces before ones closer to me, since other players will be less likely to attack provinces surrounded on all sides by my territory. As it turns out, it doesn't matter. I also throw up a fort on the throne province (with a spare commander that I acquired via an event - I'd have made more of a fuss about him if he wasn't basically generic, but as he his, no real reason to dwell on it, just mention that you occasionally get "national hero" commanders by events. Some of them are good, this one was not.) partially for defence and partially because, as you'll see if you check the map up top, it's got a ton of neighbours. Forts have an administration bonus which means they collect bonus resources from their neighbours, so having a lot of neighbours for a forted province is a good plan. Also, it's about time I got started on fort sites to increase my recruitment capability, since my income is now getting beyond my capacity to spend in a turn.
Consequently Midgard produces entire expansion parties worth of troops for turns 9 and 11, and so I can use these to grab additional provinces as well as those my primary army is capturing. By turn 11 I can see that other nations are starting to appear on my borders, so I'm also beginning some diplomacy. I'm regularly reaching out to Jomon since he's easy to find on the Dominions IRC channel. His plans are leading him south rather than north, so we're mostly keeping each other informed and staying out of each others' way. Atlantis likewise doesn't seem interested in coming my way right now, but he's definitely marked as a future target since interacting with him is definitely somewhat unpleasant and he's also much more experienced than me, so he'll be more dangerous the longer I take to fight him. On the other hand, I don't have any real way to hit his underwater provinces right now, and I'm worried that the narrow border would turn into a meatgrinder. So my initial target is Pangaea, who appears to be expanding slowly. I start trying to work out who is on the other side of him and recruit allies for the assault, more on which next time.