As always, we begin with expansion.

Turn Two

The second turn sees the sending of the first diplomatic message.

This message looks relatively authentic, but he could be lying to get people’s guards down. As for discussion outside of the game, it has just been related to the pedestrian issues of running the game itself, nothing notable besides that. So then, let’s look at the situation closer to home.

To the south are bakemonoshos, which aren’t too threatening as underground indies go. But it’s dark and that’s scary (as all my units need light to see) so I wouldn’t mind if the next scouting report comes in before I make a decision there. To the north is a lightly defended province that I could take easily, but it has only one other connection, which is a throne province, meaning that it’s at no risk of being taken by someone else early on, and I can’t easily push through to continue my expansion. Of the two remaining, the western one seems weaker, so I go that way.

Turn Three

My expansion was successful, with a few casualties, as expected. 13 pikeneers backed by 16 croassbowmen but not quite so short as to avoid losses entirely. This group can choose to fight militias and archers or longdead and ghouls next. I send them north into the militia, who also lie on one of the paths to the largest island, as they have only my starting level 1 priest, and successive parties will often have grand inquisitors helming them – with an early bless strategy, it’s handy to have several of those around early on.

Turn Four

Unfortunately, I’m apprehensive about the amount of troops I’ve got in my new expansion party this turn, so I’m going to go towards the north after all, as I wait for more recruitment. The extra bit of resources will help; I have relatively little resources in adjacent provinces after considering the favorable terrain types. The existing expansion party had a mice little success, and has three potential expansion targets. One is the undead which were available before, one is barbarians (and won’t be easily accessible from the other side, due to mountain passes, so it’s safe to leave for a bit) and the other is some bear tribe warriors on the big island, so that’s where they’re going. Here’s the updated map:

Turn Five

Not a good turn! The expansion team crossing to the big island was defeated, I underestimated those bear tribe warriors. My crossbowmen killed nearly half of them as they charged, but the pikeneers melted away when the lines met, and only partly because they took a number of poorly aimed crossbow bolts to the back. The other expansion, although it was successful, lost seven of the eight pikeneers, so needs to reinforce. I’ll be gaining no new provinces next turn. In response to this setback, I’m going to make a fort at the furthest place I’ve expanded to (which has 7100 population, and is well situated to control at least half of that small island) rather than waiting to see if I find a better place in that direction. To do that, though, I need to hire an indie because the commander over there also died.

And in more bad news, we had our first stale of the game this turn; Nihuala failed to submit the turn in the allotted 24 hours.

Turn Six

In the diplomatic front, Caelum is hoping to portray himself as amiable, it seems. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth; he’s presented rather a lot of info.

This intel is pretty much the opposite side of the world from me, which hopefully means he won’t be reporting on me too soon. It also means there’s nothing much that I can do with it in the immediate future. Someone poked fun at him for revealing his income, which he cared little about.

Nothing happened in my expansion, except that I’m switching production from infantry to sacred cavalry, and have begun my second fort. No battles, though.

Turn Seven

My nice big expansion army went along nicely and expanded. Now there’s only the cave in my cap ring, and my resources are commensurately increased. The heat of my dominion has melted the ice and will allow me to go to the peak of the mountain here, the one that connects to all the other mountains. I don’t really know if it will benefit me or not to control those, since it coudl make me look threatening. but it’s also a lot closer to my capital than I want half the map to be. I’m going for it now. A fun little diplomatic communique arrived at my doorstep today:

Presumably he made it public to call our attention to this, so let’s take a look.

Phlegra has two mercenary contracts, including an amphibious squad which implies he’s getting into the sea that way. Notably, Nazca also has two squads, one of which is just a mage. Since I’m using gold to get my own stuff recruited and also get infrastructure up quick, I’m not ready to take any mercs. I do want those fishermen, actually, but I don’t need them at this instant anyway.

Turn Eight

Quite a lot happened this turn. Something of little consequence first: Phlegra responded.

Moving on. My expansion succeeded, but all of my (quite few) pikeneers died. It’s hard to say that my crossbows are enough for continued expansion without blockers, so I’ll be redirected them back homeward to get some new troops. It’s typical the way I play, and somewhat expected since I haven’t brought out blessed cavalry yet, but my expansion hasn’t been great so far. So it goes.

By random chance, I also got a hero:

She’s basically just an upgrade of my paladins, minus Combat Caster but plus stealth, so I could make her a thug and mess with somebody’s backlines. If I wind up with a good stealthy troop, she could improve a lot, too. But for the time being, I’m just gonna take advantage of the high leadership and inspirational to lead troops with higher morale.

Now, the biggest and perhaps most significant of things this turn:

That’s Biggus Boyicus, the pretender of Phlegra. The fact that he’s doing awake expansion means that he’s definitely going heavy bless, as previously suspected, and it implies he’s planning to rush someone. Like, potentially, me. Now, with my mages and my knights I have a decent chance of dealing with this, but I have only a few of those so far and it will definitely kill my expansion even further. I’ve sent him a diplomatic missive:

This isn’t a significant message in any way, but it means that now we’re talking, and since we’re talking he may be less likely to attack me if he’s already committed. It’s hardly something to rely on, but every little bit helps. In the meanwhile, I’m sending my newest army, with six knights, down to finally take the caverns. Even if he attacks me straightaway, this will give me the resources to get some pikeneers up without slowing knight production, and that party will be able to return to the capital before the cyclops reaches it.

State of the World

At what might be the start of a great war, let’s look at the world. My starting scout, a troubadour, has found a nation to spy on – native spies are one of the things that makes Marignon good for write-ups, but this guy has only found Tartary, who didn’t turn out to be my most worrying enemy of the moment.

Aside from the troubadour, I don’t really have any notable scouting going on, as I haven’t found indie scouts and although I have recruit anywhere priest scouts, I have yet to build a temple for them. That’s one of the places where I need to pick up the pace, but of course everything costs money. Now then, graphs:

It’s not that meaningful yet, but you can see me and Tartary are pretty close, though they’re ahead or me, probably due to better scales.