As usual I couldn't be bothered asking everyone what they wanted to play, so I just shunted everyone along one place from the previous game.

Thereunto plays the Highmen
Jyri plays the Elves
Cyberrod plays the Azracs
Southern plays the Dark Elves
Bookwyrm plays Undead

Rules; the basic ones, plus freemove/windwalk cannot be cast on armed warships; transports are fine.

Highmen day 1

This strange place holds many secrets. We must act quickly before our gold runs out

TS

Oh, and be advised, everyone - the prison in our starting areas is now more heavily guarded, and with much more important prisoners. I feel obligated to reveal it, since I know it and am a player.

TS

Don't know if intended or not but when I tried to pribe a small village with 2 defenders (a ballista and an axeman) only the axeman joined and the village remains independent.

Interesting; the Ballista was set to 'Guard', which means it won't negotiate; I'd assumed the autogenerated garrison would conform to the preplaced ballista in that regard, but I was mistaken.
Did the bribe you paid the axeman has a price for the whole town too, or was it a small bribe for just the unit?
ANyway I've changed those ballista-villages to be set to Auto instead, thanks for letting me know.

Should be just for the unit. In the Third Edition, I bribed a bomber out of the ballista/bomber town and then sent spiders over the wall to remove the ballista. While cleaning up the surface, I routinely bribed part of the (formerly undead controlled) guards of various towns and slaughtered the rest. Also, thanks for the heads up. That's rather important to know.

Maybe put a sign beside each dungeon, indicating it is important?

Only paid for the axeman.

TS

Dark Elves, Day 1

We arrive at last in the caves beneath Xelm itself. The relics of those gone before lie thick here.

Undead, Day 1

Hm. We once conquered this area centuries ago, and now we return to again conquer these fallow lands. However, we recall the lands being much less unfriendly last time.

TS

OOC: Southern, how many of these neutrals are hand picked? I recognize at least one of the guard stacks from when I conquered a mine in the last iteration, but seeing all the high men and priests and other anti-undead everywhere, I'm suddenly less surprised that Thereunto ditched this place and headed right for the middle. I seem to recall a lot more units that could be converted and kept when I was playing Dark Elves.

Highmen Day 2

Gold is nearly exhausted. We send troops to their deaths in order to keep enough gold for the next turn

TS

TS

They were hand-placed by random selection from a pool of 8 races. Maybe I could edit the map so that there's a consistent alignment spread for each player.

So I got lucky with Dark Elves, getting lots of goblins and stuff, and I just got unlucky here, getting mostly good aligned dudes.

That's not a problem; if everyone has a similar random, then play the cards one is dealt. I was just going to suggest maybe change some things up if these were all hand placed.

I mean, I used an irl dice roll to determine what I then hand-placed on the map. But from then on it's the same every game of course, so I should probably shake things up between games.