Horrible lizards: or, Meet C'tis.
Year 2 begins! I can hardly believe it's been a whole year since I started this blog but wait I did that one already. Lots of battles this turn, some of them ours and some of them other people's, caught on tape by our scouts (they're all mixed up in the messages because the game resolves ordinary fights in a random order). Let's start with ours:
Yes: Spike Jonze shoots lightning now too. And the people did rejoice.
Another independent province falls, completing our expansion in the east.
And finally, a crushing defeat in the Bog of Beasts.
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That's not good!
We were up against these guys:
Barbarian predator lizards, led by one of these:
He's the reason we've avoided attacking this province with Spike, by the way: Nature 1 and Astral 1 lets a mage cast Curse, which makes us more likely to pick up afflictions and can never ever be removed. Eff that!
Looking at the Lizard Warrior profile, you'll notice that they're unarmoured but have a decent attack skill and two strikes each, one with their tridents and one with their terrible jaws.
Our frontline holds for a while, but even with Adapa sliming a few of them up there are too many to handle.
They wrap around our left flank and the battleline disintegrates. Suddenly only a handful of Chosen remain. Holy warriors that they are, they fight to the end:
Adapa and Rob Brydon flee with the backing horn section, but twenty brave Chosen are cut down by the filthy lizards.
A sad day for Ur. A sad day for us all. Let's have a moment of silence now, to commemorate these hairy, noble warriors.
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They won't be the last, I'm afraid. If I'd had just a few more Enkidus here I'm sure that battle would have gone my way, the lizards routing before they managed to gain a flank and really bring their numbers to bear; still, I lost, and all I can do now is raise another force and try again. This would have been worse if it had happened earlier, when I only had one expansion force and lacked the income to easily replace them. It's annoying now, not catastrophic; the lizards are weakened, and aren't going anywhere, so I can pick them off at my leisure. It's not like their unit text hints at there being a whole nation of them out there or anything
Oh no it's C'tis!
Time to meet a new nation. C'tis, formerly referred to as 'Hideous Flag', are a nation of lizardpersons inspired mostly by Ancient Egyptian culture.
pfft ancient sacral kingdom? LAME. I don't know how to pronounce 'C'tis', but in my head it has a hard C and the stress is on the first syllable - ka-tiss. This could also stand for the comic cymbal sound more commonly represented badum-tish, and in the same way the Badum-Tish could be the name of a nation of fantasy lizardmen, so we've come full circle in the end. There are two main types of lizards fighting for C'tis, one of which is the same as the barbarian lizards who rinsed us is Bog of Beasts.
Or almost the same: these are a weird variant breed. But they're all SLAVES.
These ones aren't slaves. Note that for the C'tissians, 'not using heavy armour' means 'Protection 15'. Some of that's scaly skin, but still. The force we spotted is led by one of these:
Infallible by doctrine, eh? Ours is definitely a more egalitarian ancient sacral kingdom. Frolicking for all! You might think it weird that a big green lizard drives a chariot drawn by another big green lizard, but human charioteers were dragged about by other big hairy mammals so who's to say.
C'tis! We'll find out more about them in due course, when we grind them beneath our gnarléd claw. They're not too close yet, though, so we've got some breathing room. See:
Still capturing provinces around their capital. PAH. C'tis should be a good thematic opponent for us, actually, as they also have some Ancient Mesopotamian influence. Quoting from the manual: "Sacred priest kings celebrating hieros-gamos with hierodules atop temple ziggurats, with high priests chanting and swaying in procession under the glare of sacred serpents depicted on murals on the great walls have to me a more Mesopotamian feel than Egyptian." Cool.
For now, though, Fomoria is still our focus (and we must be theirs - the forest province Spike took this turn is right next to their capital!), so we take steps to consolidate our hold on the isthmus or whatever it's called (this whole map is isthmuses):
Spike continues to mess up anything Fomoria tries to gather on the border, while the shellshocked Rob Brydon heads into The Sodden Mirk to raise a new lizard-hunting force. Also pictured above is an Enkidu Scout named Rim Sin beginning construction on another new fortress! Rim Sin is one of my favourite random Dominions names.
Adapa, having fled across the river from the slaughter in Bog of Beasts, takes a turn to search for magic sites along our south-eastern border:
And in the east, our mostly-intact expansion force moves back through the mountains towards Bright Gate (the farmland province with the bridge):
And both forces use some of their better troops. Fomorian Giants and Nemedian Warriors are especially cool, but this is the Lizard Post so I'll save talking about them for next time. This is better going for Fomoria, but they're still looking somewhat feeble:
PAH. I say again, PAH.
They've got a fair amount of troops wandering about aimlessly, and I'm not confident in my ability to wipe them out cleanly just yet (especially with all those dead Chosen), but with Spike around I'm not too worried. A turn or two to recover from the debacle at Bog of Beasts and we'll get on at them properly!
Our final message for the turn is to let us know that one of our scouts has been murdered by a huge swarm of batpeople.
Next time: Fomorians are ugly (and the rest of them have goat heads!)
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