Dominions 4 evangelism, final part, second chapter
When last we left our merry bunch of Vikings and werewolves (caution: may Vike without warning), they were about to go for a relaxing stroll in the countryside which might have incidentally involved some light conquest and annexation. Let's see how that went...
Turn 3
Well, that was uneventful (literally). The only thing that happened was the battle. In order to find out how it went I can either look at the results screen by clicking on the message, or see a replay by hitting "View Battle". The results look like this:
which suggests that the battle went approximately according to plan. And, indeed it did. The volleys of arrows from the archers were aimed at the small group of Huskarls as I expected; they mostly missed and the few that did hit were largely parried by shields. The lines of infantry closed; the militia javelin attack did more damage than I expected, something to think about, and so the heavy infantry were able to inflict some casualties but received rather more; this being the case, the enemy broke and ran. Being independents, they had nowhere to retreat to, so routed units are regarded as surrendered.
I'd show it in screenshots but there's not much to show really (besides, I, um, kind of forgot to take them, and now it's turn 6 and I can't). Next turn's battle will be more interesting (not least because I remembered to screenshot it):
Like I said, I wanted the bridge province because it forms a nice chokepoint. Sadly, that province is composed of heavy cavalry and crossbowmen (there is officially Far Too Much Heavy Cav around my starting place, actually). Heavy Cavalry are bastards. Here's why:
They've got 18 protection, a shield, and they're armed with lances. The first two mean you'll have relatively little luck dealing with them using archers; the third gives them a terrifying alpha strike. You seem, on their first attack lances get a damage bonus equal to the unit's movement. Heavy Cav have movement 20 and can one-hit kill an awful lot of units. They will quite likely fail to kill anyone after the first attack, but even a 1:1 ratio of losses will mission-kill your expansion party, so that's to be avoided. I debated not actually going for the province at all, but in the end decided it was too important strategically not to. So what happened?
Turn 4
Let's see, shall we?
(the other messages here are C'tis choosing a prophet, Agartha claiming one of the thrones that's a victory condition, meaning they must have started adjacent to a weakly-defended one, and a random event in the province I conquered last turn. This one was just a free fire gem - those are very common minor events, and I won't mention them usually).
So, on with the battle.
The enemy cavalry charges. My prophet calls down the fury of STOP RAINING ALREADY (as you can see, it is still raining) upon the horsemen, and the leader of the charge disappears in a pillar of fire. This is the holy spell "Smite" and every prophet gets access to it (it requires three levels of holy magic, which is what prophets have by default). It's not very efficient as magic goes, being only single target and not doing all that much damage, but it also doesn't require any research, generally hits, and these horsemen don't have enough hit points for the low damage to matter. I've placed my troops right at the back of the battlefield and set them on "hold and attack" orders both to make it unlikely for the Crossbowmen to hit at extreme range (they don't) and to let my prophet get more smiting in before the charge hits home.
It only sort of works. Another horseman dies to holy fire before the charge strikes home, but then my decoy group evaporates under their lances (and an unusually accurate round of crossbow fire) and that round's Smite misses. My main group meanwhile has been scripted to attack archers so it's merrily ignoring the cavalry entirely. Which is not to say the cavalry ignores them:
The cavalry has wheeled about and pinned the left flank of my troops in a battle next to the second of the three trees on the left side of the map. This is going poorly for them - without their charge bonus, they can't do enough damage to seriously hurt my troops - especially since they're mostly fighting Skinshifters, which regenerate 2 hitpoints a turn and don't "die" but switch to their wolf form (which also regenerates two hitpoints a turn) when they run out. So they're being picked off by Smites one at a time and the occasional hit from Skinshifter greatswords. Meanwhile the rest of the troops have advanced on the archers, but I've failed to take the speed difference between the Skinshifters and the Huskarls into account and the force has become hopelessly strung out, meaning they arrive piecemeal and get far more crossbow bolts at short range than they should have done. We win, of course - the Crossbowmen are outclassed once melee is joined - but at the cost of eight Huskarls (none of the Skinshifters died, though several were forced into their second shape), and after simulating the combat potential of the seventeen units plus prophet I now have left, I'm forced to abandon further plans for expansion with this force and retreat the next turn.
This is a good battle to demonstrate the importance of scripting. An unscripted army might well have lost this battle; my semi-competent scripting won but with unacceptable casualties; proper scripting would probably have cut down the casualties to four or five rather than eight.
Turn 5
Nothing important happens, like I said; I withdraw the expansion force towards my capital, and have it join up with newly recruited reinforcements to take the province you can see my scout entering (the grey arrow) on Turn 3.
Turn 6
Unlike the last expansion force, this one is mostly skinshifters. This is a similar looking battle to my very first one, but when these two battle lines crash together it's not a slugging match but a massacre; two rounds later the remnants of the enemy infantry rout while I've lost the one skinshifter who managed to get hit with both an arrow and a javelin (he's already in wolf form in the picture above) and nobody else. This is more in line with my definition of "acceptable casualties". Unfortunately it isn't really an acceptable expansion rate so I split this force in half and order them to attack separate provinces, with a commander I picked up through an event bringing some reinforcements to the one of the provinces next to my capital.
I'll leave turn 7 for next update, I think, since that's where the game currently is (ie, those two battles have happened and I've submitted my orders for the turn, but they've not been processed yet because Agartha is slow).
Turn 3
Well, that was uneventful (literally). The only thing that happened was the battle. In order to find out how it went I can either look at the results screen by clicking on the message, or see a replay by hitting "View Battle". The results look like this:
which suggests that the battle went approximately according to plan. And, indeed it did. The volleys of arrows from the archers were aimed at the small group of Huskarls as I expected; they mostly missed and the few that did hit were largely parried by shields. The lines of infantry closed; the militia javelin attack did more damage than I expected, something to think about, and so the heavy infantry were able to inflict some casualties but received rather more; this being the case, the enemy broke and ran. Being independents, they had nowhere to retreat to, so routed units are regarded as surrendered.
I'd show it in screenshots but there's not much to show really (besides, I, um, kind of forgot to take them, and now it's turn 6 and I can't). Next turn's battle will be more interesting (not least because I remembered to screenshot it):
Like I said, I wanted the bridge province because it forms a nice chokepoint. Sadly, that province is composed of heavy cavalry and crossbowmen (there is officially Far Too Much Heavy Cav around my starting place, actually). Heavy Cavalry are bastards. Here's why:
They've got 18 protection, a shield, and they're armed with lances. The first two mean you'll have relatively little luck dealing with them using archers; the third gives them a terrifying alpha strike. You seem, on their first attack lances get a damage bonus equal to the unit's movement. Heavy Cav have movement 20 and can one-hit kill an awful lot of units. They will quite likely fail to kill anyone after the first attack, but even a 1:1 ratio of losses will mission-kill your expansion party, so that's to be avoided. I debated not actually going for the province at all, but in the end decided it was too important strategically not to. So what happened?
Turn 4
Let's see, shall we?
(the other messages here are C'tis choosing a prophet, Agartha claiming one of the thrones that's a victory condition, meaning they must have started adjacent to a weakly-defended one, and a random event in the province I conquered last turn. This one was just a free fire gem - those are very common minor events, and I won't mention them usually).
So, on with the battle.
The enemy cavalry charges. My prophet calls down the fury of STOP RAINING ALREADY (as you can see, it is still raining) upon the horsemen, and the leader of the charge disappears in a pillar of fire. This is the holy spell "Smite" and every prophet gets access to it (it requires three levels of holy magic, which is what prophets have by default). It's not very efficient as magic goes, being only single target and not doing all that much damage, but it also doesn't require any research, generally hits, and these horsemen don't have enough hit points for the low damage to matter. I've placed my troops right at the back of the battlefield and set them on "hold and attack" orders both to make it unlikely for the Crossbowmen to hit at extreme range (they don't) and to let my prophet get more smiting in before the charge hits home.
It only sort of works. Another horseman dies to holy fire before the charge strikes home, but then my decoy group evaporates under their lances (and an unusually accurate round of crossbow fire) and that round's Smite misses. My main group meanwhile has been scripted to attack archers so it's merrily ignoring the cavalry entirely. Which is not to say the cavalry ignores them:
The cavalry has wheeled about and pinned the left flank of my troops in a battle next to the second of the three trees on the left side of the map. This is going poorly for them - without their charge bonus, they can't do enough damage to seriously hurt my troops - especially since they're mostly fighting Skinshifters, which regenerate 2 hitpoints a turn and don't "die" but switch to their wolf form (which also regenerates two hitpoints a turn) when they run out. So they're being picked off by Smites one at a time and the occasional hit from Skinshifter greatswords. Meanwhile the rest of the troops have advanced on the archers, but I've failed to take the speed difference between the Skinshifters and the Huskarls into account and the force has become hopelessly strung out, meaning they arrive piecemeal and get far more crossbow bolts at short range than they should have done. We win, of course - the Crossbowmen are outclassed once melee is joined - but at the cost of eight Huskarls (none of the Skinshifters died, though several were forced into their second shape), and after simulating the combat potential of the seventeen units plus prophet I now have left, I'm forced to abandon further plans for expansion with this force and retreat the next turn.
This is a good battle to demonstrate the importance of scripting. An unscripted army might well have lost this battle; my semi-competent scripting won but with unacceptable casualties; proper scripting would probably have cut down the casualties to four or five rather than eight.
Turn 5
Nothing important happens, like I said; I withdraw the expansion force towards my capital, and have it join up with newly recruited reinforcements to take the province you can see my scout entering (the grey arrow) on Turn 3.
Turn 6
Unlike the last expansion force, this one is mostly skinshifters. This is a similar looking battle to my very first one, but when these two battle lines crash together it's not a slugging match but a massacre; two rounds later the remnants of the enemy infantry rout while I've lost the one skinshifter who managed to get hit with both an arrow and a javelin (he's already in wolf form in the picture above) and nobody else. This is more in line with my definition of "acceptable casualties". Unfortunately it isn't really an acceptable expansion rate so I split this force in half and order them to attack separate provinces, with a commander I picked up through an event bringing some reinforcements to the one of the provinces next to my capital.
I'll leave turn 7 for next update, I think, since that's where the game currently is (ie, those two battles have happened and I've submitted my orders for the turn, but they've not been processed yet because Agartha is slow).