Battles! The first one is the bad one:
Our small expansion force faces off against the pox-ridden undead. MMM LOOK AT ALL THOSE GRAPHICS
Our larger squadron is comprised of Enkidu Soldiers, and came free at the start of the game (it does mention the Avvite slavers!). I won't go into massive detail on unit statistics but know ye this: 10 is the human average (for stats in the first two columns, not encumbrance or fatigue or move). We're playing in the Early Age, where giants and freaks of nature abound, so the human average is not necessarily the actual average, but it's still the sensiblest way to measure a unit's abilities.
Our Enkidu Soldiers are fairly regular, then, but have a notably high strength at 15 as well as a very solid 24 hitpoints. They're big and strong! They have shields, which is nice, but apart from that are mostly naked as befits large hairy wild men. Expect to see enraged Enkidus charging into battle with multiple arrows sticking out of their large hairy chests.
Our sacred elite, the Enki's Chosen, are Better:
Not by a huge amount, but definitely better. Statistics in this game are quite nice; one point of difference doesn't mean much, but neither is it completely meaningless. Our Chosen have Attack and Defence 12, compared to the Enkidu Soldier's 10 and 11, so they'll hit more reliably and defend themselves better in hand-to-hand. More importantly they have 2 extra points of Morale and 4 extra points of Protection, making them braver and more weapon-proof respectively.
The force is led by Carol the Enkidu Commander, who is a basic commander-type guy:
Finally we have the Prophet Sendak, providing artillery support from just behind the infantry:
Any commander can be declared a Prophet, but you only get one! Until they die, and then you can have another one (after waiting a few months). Prophets get a few benefits, the most obvious being Level 3 Holy Magic (or +1 if they had that already). Extra hitpoints in friendly dominion is another one, which explains why Sendak is twice as beefy as the average wildman. Your Prophet helps spread dominion like a mobile temple, so it's generally a good idea to get one as soon as possible; for this reason the starting commander or the starting scout are the most popular choices. There's not much to call between the two, so I made Sendak the scout our Prophet to allow for the possibility of covert preaching in future; his scoutly stealthpower (as symbolised by the little brown cloak-and-dagger) survives the Prophetisation process. I also like the image of a humble semi-naked giant with horns wandering the land, converting people to the worship of a giant eagle named Spike Jonze with the simple eloquence of his words.
In this battle his main role is to blast the shit out of the undead:
BOOM
Banishment is a Holy 1 spell, meaning that any priest can cast it, and it hurts the undead. It is also one of the many spells in Dominions that scales with the caster's magic level, meaning that our Holy 3 Prophet banishes like a champ.
We're facing two types of undead, here: Soulless, who are the Dominions equivalent of zombies, and Ghouls who are just ghouls.
rubbish
They're brave though, and close quickly despite Sendak's bombardment.
Actually Soulless are too stupid to run - their Morale of 50 is purely symbolic - but ghouls are legitimately brave, possibly because of all the human hearts they've eaten.
After holding for a couple of rounds the infantry charge in to meet the enemy:
Those red numbers are dead ghouls. Enkidus are strong! Triple-killin those suckas. The pack of ghouls fights to the last, cleft in twain by bronze hatchets or burned away by beams of light falling from the sky, and the Soulless coming up slowly behind don't fare any better.
One of my elite sacreds is facing the wrong way in that shot. Mooning the enemy?
We steamroll the few remaining undead and the day is won. Hurrah!
We lost an Enkidu Soldier, I think in the initial ghoul charge. The three command ghouls fled the battle, but they die anyway cos independents don't have anywhere to retreat to; most of the rest were legit kills. Sendak took out 27 on his own!
That was a fun opener, now for the main event.
Here is a sample Wolf Tribe Warrior:
Here is Spike Jonze throwing little fireballs with his feet:
Here are some Wolf Tribe Warriors getting hit full in the face:
The Wolf Tribe dagger team closes in while Spike Jonze shoots fire at them.
The Wolf Tribe make it across the battlefield and start to swarm around Spike. I'm not sure how, if he's supposed to be flying; possibly it represents them milling confusedly in the middle of the battlefield and swiping at him as he dives in to bite off / set fire to some heads.
He ruins their shit with fire spells and with his bare talons. They mostly cower in abject terror, although one or two strikes do make it through Spike's steely feathers.
(that's a red 7 and 8 getting stabbed out of Spike's leg, in case it's not clear - he's got 200-odd hitpoints so who cares no-one does)
The kinda highlighted Wolf Tribe Warriors at the top of that last shot are cowering in abject terror - Spike has Awe, which is an ability that forces anyone wanting to attack him to pass a morale check or be AWESTRUCK, which results in aforesaid cowering.
The Wolf Tribe don't put up with this for long; magical fire is one thing, but after seeing a couple of their fellows being eviscerated by a gigantic divine eagle glowing like the sun they decide to call it quits.
Fleeing, conveniently enough, past the group of Wolf Tribe Archers I have intentionally neglected to mention up to this point! Spike's opening spell was Air Shield, which summons magical swirling winds to protect him from arrows, so the archers have been fairly ineffective this battle. Spike responds with fire:
They don't last long.
Victory!
Spike Jonze is a one-bird army. I'm not entirely sure how evocative the battle replays are, in general. They serve to deliver essential information about how the various game mechanics interact in practice, and I think they do a good job of modelling swirling battlelines, magical bombardment and the like, but on the whole I dunno. We've only had a skirmish and an eagling this turn, let's see how the bigger battles we'll hopefully be having in future go.
That's all for this turn! I do some stuff but this post is long so I'll just show you pictures and not talk about it:
Next time: More indies! How will Sendak's force fare against living opponents? Has Spike finally bitten off more than he can chew? I dunno I haven't clicked End Turn yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment