A few turns have been played since last update. The biggest events were Shinuyama sallying twice from their capital to attack me in the bordering province which I was attacking from. Both times the battle took place in my province rather than his which may have been fortunate for me as then they didn't have the benefit of their 25 capital provincial defense.

The second battle they threw their pretender, a fairly high-magic Manticore with 8S and two other high paths (I don't remember which). He didn't have many personal buff spells researched so he was whittled down and killed fairly easily.

We took heavy losses in both fights, although many of them were just those low-resource wolf tribe archer units that we can amass literally by the hundreds. They still cost 10 gold apiece though. I kind of miss the popular Dom 2 mod (Unit Rebalance Mod?) where I felt that the gold cost of some units was more in line with their utility. (Just my current opinion.) Chariots for example cost 40 gold each and while they do inflict a pretty good amount of damage they die real quick! (Also to note for Arco players - it seems that Chariot units as well as Elephants will trample your own troops when fleeing the battlefield. Makes them a LOT less appealing!!!)

If you take a look at the current map you can see I've spent ALL my gold this turn. Buying 6 mages a turn does that although we are now first in research by a decent margin and our research rate climbs each turn while the other nations' research rates are levelling off. Now currently stocking our armies with the less pricey Hoplites (11 gold and more resources) instead of the Hypaspists (15 gold). The Hoplites have a bit more armor and less defense, morale, and move speed, but are fine frontline troops.

Back to the map. Northwest Valenwood (red dot) is where the battles with Shinuyama have been taking place. His army is now much less formidable, but we still have to regroup (again) and pick up all the guys that fled the last battle. Also worth noting is that we've captured our first sea province (lighter blue dot) by amassing a bunch of Ichytids. Gained a bit of income there. Also our new fort has gone up in another Ichytid province so we will be expanding further into the sea to gain more income and hopefully magic sites.

The dark blue dots on top and bottom of this wraparound map are on the SAME province showing Ulm's northern border province. He JUST captured that province this turn which held some dark vines and those Bloodhenge Druids who would be VERY USEFUL mages to hire.


CURRENT PLANS:

• To expand further into independently held provinces, both sea and land.
• Think about attacking Ulm after Shinuyama is finished OR when we can get mass a large enough army on Ulm's southern border

MAGIC RESEARCH: I'm a bit lost here to be honest. Had the plan of Acashic (Conj 5) which was our first target and now what? We'll never be able to Acashic everything because we don't have the Astral income. Hm maybe Evo for the Arcane Probing spell. A good long-term research target might be Alteration 8 as that has 'Fata Morgana' which grants all troops Luck for the whole battle which seems pretty potent. (We already have a 5S astrologer which is pretty lucky.) Enchantment has the +5 astral gems global somewhere (maybe Ench 6?). Thaum has the Mind Burn line but with armies this large it doesn't seem very potent. Right now we're researching Construction by default as wineskins at least are at Const 4, and at Const 6 are Starshine Skullcaps (+1S) and other path boosters. (Yeah we really don't have a clue what to research - Suggestions?)

Our gem income is something like +4S, +6W, +2E, +2N with two provinces Acashic'ed. Lots of Water gems which we might just convert (for now) into astral to be able to Acashic more provinces.

Comments Welcome!