Where The Wild Things Are Year 1: Late Summer

Turn 5 - Spike vs. Wolf Tribe Round 2

More independents and intro to resources and recruitment (plus we accidentally slide into an alternate universe).

It's Late Summer, or Turn 5 if you wanna be like that. More battles! First up:

Spike Jonze vs. Wolf Tribe Punks ROUND 2. There are about 20 more of them than last time but it doesn't make much difference.

Death by fire. The Wolf Tribe Warriors are broken before they even reach Spike, but the Barbarian Chieftain leading them makes a fair go of it:

 

Alas, to no avail:

You can make the replay screen give you more information on what's happening, mechanically, in battle, and so I know that in this particular exchange the Barbarian managed to brush aside Spike's talons with his greatsword but was subsequently hit in the head by a beak.

head lost

Hooray!

Our next fight is against Regular Humans in a place called Old Forest.

The humans are on a small hill, which I do not believe has any effect on gameplay. Here's what we're dealing with:

pretty baaaaad

Militia are almost worthless and will run away with only slight provocation. Heavy Infantry are ok in large numbers but they've only got about 10. Archers arch. These are very common independents and everyone who plays Dominions quickly becomes proficient in judging the minimum amount of force necessary to make them run screaming; in this instance, even our fairly modest expansion force proves to be overkill.

We charge in and break some heads:

They turn and run:

We catch them up and break more heads:

  

No tougher than their heads, their flimsy independent spirits break soon after and they quit the field:

Easy win. My favourite thing about this battle is noticing how badass the Chosen of Enki's attack animation is when going through these screenshots:

never underestimate the importance of a solid stance

Zooming in on that Enki's Chosen was apparently more than my laptop could handle, because immediately after saving this post my hard drive tore itself in half. Shaaaaaame.
Although I am stupid and failed to back anything up we're in luck! It turns out that time is indeed cyclical and so we are able to leap smoothly into an alternate timeline identical to our own in practically every detail.

So to recap, our expansion force easily defeated the tribe of intelligent apemen:

 

 

YOU MANIACS

YOU BLEW IT UP

And here is our burgeoning empire:

Not bad! Most importantly we've captured all the provinces around our capital (except for the one that's underwater), and so can now recruit more forces with which to crush our enemies. 

Forts draw resources from adjacent provinces. The more equipment and armour a unit uses the more resources it costs, and as resources cannot be stockpiled but instead come as a fixed value available every turn they act as a limiting factor on troop recruitment. You can't just buy as many soldiers as you have gold for - a crappy palisade all alone in a wasteland somewhere might only have enough resources to train up one or two heavily-armed troops (in which case having the option to hire resource-cheap naked cavemen instead, for example, could prove useful).

We now have control of the territory surrounding Ur, and so our recruitment has grown from a paltry three Chosen a turn to six of our sacred elites (which along with the Gala is as many holy troops as we can hire per turn - sacred unit recruitment is capped at your maximum Dominion strength, which for Spike Jonze is 7), as well as a couple of Enkidu Soldiers and some Horn Blowers for the soundtrack.

Love these guys. 

Our second expansion force will be ready to leave the capital next turn, and will be considerably tougher than the first. Our first expansion force is starting to look a little ragged already, but they should be able to defeat some of the weaker independents without being completely slaughtered. I send them south to attack some cavalry, and hopefully secure this mountain pass against any rival nations that may be sniffing about:

Meanwhile Spike Jonze also has a hankering for horse, and flies across the river on our western border to do a little hunting:

   

Here's a shot of all my orders this turn:

There're one or two things I'm doing that I haven't explained yet, but Spike Jonze willing my computer will survive long enough for me to talk about them next time. 

Next time: mystery arrows!