Guys, check Skulkan in the lower left of the surface. He's got two dudes with his wizard right now, and Vitek's zone of control should let us summon crap right on top of him. My pegasus can pitch in some muscle, and we might be able to down his face right now.

On a different front, I'm reconsidering whether my stack of 6 (mostly avengers and priests) can handle the group of 10 (and growing) orc pikes.

So, Arcos (welcome back! I missed you from last game!) gained a level, and I went with spell casting 1. Can he cast spells overland, slowly summoning support or laying buffs?

Irene, Dark Day

Wow. No making fun of Vitek now. I thought I had that battle for sure! My nine against his five units.

After he quick killed my Giant Warrior, I got a little worried. After I lost five units and hadn't done any damage to the All Devourer even though I threw lightning at him four times, I figured it was time to run away... Doubt I'll live the night. Regroup time.

No summons coming from me for a little bit.

TS

That was actually quite amusing to watch. :-)

@Bookwyrm; Could work but I only have mana for single hell hound and that's not much use and I am also spending it on hasting units to get them there faster.

I believe heroes can't channel mana over seevral turns ti cast bigger games. I am not 100% sure on it but I've never seen it.

Heroes can only cast spells in combat.
It was actually quite amusing for me to watch too. At some point you just gotta roll with it. I almost beat a retreat on Turn 1. Probably should have once I saw how things were going to play out. Had to attack though since All D had half his units outside the walls. Idiot AI.

Since I can only summon one unicorn per turn, I guess I'll drop them with my hero stack. 3v1 would work, and we could probably keep the casting pace up by turning down research a little, but I can't summon stuff fast enough by myself to compete with what he is likely able to build.

Oh well. I'll take his water node and move on. Paladins are popping out now, to go roaming and reduce the numbers of wandering orcs.

I'd also like to say that I love a number of the descriptions I've read in this game. Check out Jack's description, the undead hero in the swamps on the east side of the map on the surface, just above the poison plants.

Speaking of poison plants, apparently giant birds that never land are unable to safely fly over them.

Irene, Better Day

Much better day today.

As usual, the AI doesn't recognize a pincer action. Nor does he clean up messes in his own backyard. He should have eliminated my small projection of power (hero and friends) and would have had plenty of forces to take back the tower from me... Even Vitek would have crushed my feeble forces and sent me back to the stone age.

Bookwyrm - Do you see how I have my two neutral and one evil unit specifically not in my pure good stack? If I join my forces together, the contrasting alignments will cause the stack to disband with 90% certainty.

TS

Pft, O'Neron comes, steals our pub dwellers and them uses them to topple All-Devourer.
What a temerity.

Good thing he is our ally.

Bad news: Skulkan paid a visit to O'neron, and sent him off to the void. I assume I'd have seen a message if you've been straight up eliminated.

I had been wondering why that beetle hasn't bailed on you. I figured the two neutrals were keeping him in line, but I wasn't sure why it was working like that.

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-The hell hound that I had somewhat pinned has vanished. Either it disbanded or it took off into the underground (or maybe took off towards the NW, but I can't see it). Not being able to see how enemy units move within my LoS is very frustrating; it severely hampers my ability to chase them down, even if I have the movespeed advantage. Oh well. One pally is going to go take underground watch tower back.

-Looks like Skulkan is sending some hell hounds down a back road to cause me some trouble. Paladins are moving to intercept.

-Oh crap. I hope I remembered to buy my next production item in my capital, and I didn't just leave it on merchandise. Guess I'll know soon enough.

-It is worth summoning some eagles to help my pegasus raze the water node near Skulkan's capital, as requested by the Spirit of Nature?

I really like this wrapper. About the only other thing I'd like is to be able to go back and look at the end of my turn, to check on things I'm wondering about (even if it is only in some sort of view-only mode).

More questions, before I actually have to deal with situations I see coming down the line:

1) To clarify my previous question about the Nature quest: what sort of rewards will the Spirit of Nature offer for an "easy" quest?

2) Is there a way to rebuild a node that has been razed?

3) What effect does the haste spell have?

4) I gather that movement in the Shadow World works a little different than elsewhere (faster to move around). How is this implemented, mechanically speaking?

5) If a unit has Fire Strike and Strike, and I have a unit with Fire Protection, do I get any damage reduction?

6) If a unit has Fire Strike, Death Strike, and Strike, and I have a unit with Fire Protection, do I get any damage reduction?

7) If a unit has Fire Strike and Death Strike (doesn't have standard Strike), and I have a unit with Fire Protection and Death Protection, do I get any damage reduction?

8) If I cast Bless (gives Death Protection) on my paladins (innate Death Weakness), how does the Protection and Weakness resolve? Will the paladin just take normal damage from Death attacks?

With respect to damage taken, the lowest relevant damage resistance is used.

Unit with Fire Strike has both physical and fire damage on its melee attacks, so if against a unit with Fire Protection but no phys protection, full damage is dealt. you would need physical protection as well to get a reduction. Similarly, if you want to fight a unit like the Shade that has Physical Protection, casting Enchant Weapon effectively makes Phys Prot irrelevant in melee, by giving your troops' attacks a magical aspect against which the Shade doesn't have Protection. However, there is sadly no way to add to the damage types of ranged/special attacks (even though enchant weapon *does* boost ATK/DAM), only melee attacks can be buffed with death/lightning/fire from the Dark Gift/Static Shield/Fire Halo spells.

Therefore, Protection is only useful if you have it for every damage type in a given attack. If you only have fire protection, then that will only reduce damage from sources which are exclusively fire - fire bolts, fire breath, and some spells.

Immunity grants immunity to the special effects like frozen, burning, and is therefore more reliably useful.

'If a unit has Fire Strike and Death Strike (doesn't have standard Strike)' - said unit cannot make melee attacks, but would definitely have fire and death on them if it could at all. I wonder if a unit could have Round Attack but not Strike....... I could test that using a mod editor.

If a unit has both Protection and Weakness, they combine for a net 75% damage taken.

Pathetic Irene, Day 17

Well, that was a second day of bad shit in my world. I managed to lose a tower yesterday, a tower today, and get sent to the void along with half of my troops.

Luckily, hope springs eternal. I'm killing a lot of rabbits and carrying their damn feet everywhere with me now.

No more giving Bookwyrm and Vitek a hard time about anything for awhile.

TS

Scratch this. I had some doubts when I though about it already and now I checked in game and it says in description what it does. It reduces the movement cost by 1 per tile to minimum of 2.

-I adore unicorns. They are okay combat units, but phasing is absol-freaking-lutely amazing. 13 v 10, and I come out of that battle virtually unscathed (granted, I did use the 3 healing spells to patch up the unicorns before I finished the last guy off).

Hero + 2 avengers + 3 priests in one stack, 4 unicorns in an adjacent stack. Start the battle.
Round 1
-9 of the pikes start charging at the unicorns. 4 pikes charge at the shooter brigade.
-3 unicorns are like "Peace, Imma go help those other dudes", while The Last Unicorn backs up JUST out of reach. Shooter brigade + unicorn reinforcements does the predictable thing to the 4 orc pikes. Shooters don't have particularly great accuracy, and I spread the shots out (vertigo for everyone!), so the hero and the unicorns mop up.
Round 2:
-2 pikes peel off to go visit the firing squad. The remaining 7 charge the unicorn in a line.
-The Last Unicorn backs up again. So close, and yet so far.
-Shooter brigade goes to town on the new arrivals. Results are predictable.
Round 3:
-The pikes are all "HE'S OUT OF ROOM! LETS GET HIM!"
-The Last Unicorn is all "Phase out, trolololol".
-The firing squad gets lined up for the orcs to come in a trickle of orcy death.
Round 4:
-"You only live once! Charge!"
-*pew pew pew pew pew pew*
Round 5:
-Finally close enough that one of them gets a swing.
-*pew pew pew slash cut*

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So, decision time.
-I can start summoning unicorns to try Mimo knock out the All-Devourer.
-My main stack can either push against Skulkan or the undead. Either one leaves my main forces way out of position to assault the other. Which way should I go?