So, as mentioned previously I feel that the current action sets don't really prepare us well for warfare. Here's one which spends three of our five available actions on directly improving our capabilities. Hopefully, this will result in a significant improvement in Mathilde's performance. To anyone who is voting for the Karak Eight Peaks campaign, I would advise you in particular to consider whether advancing our capabilities like this before going to battle there might be valuable.
[x] Plan Ready For Battle
-[x] Seek and hire a steward to manage and improve the fief in your absence. (100 gold to pay them for the projected duration of your absence)
--[x] Outsource (+50g cost, free action)
-[x] Internalized Lessons: If you've been using a particular trait a fair bit in the last year, you can spend some time on it to internalize what you've learned and increase the trait (choose which trait; can be taken multiple times; will be more effective the more you've used the trait lately).
--[x] Learning
--[x] Piety (Overwork action)
-[x] Your experience with the so-called Fog of War has given you a lot of ideas for new applications of
Ulgu. Investigate them to see what might be possible.
--[x] Ranald's Blessing
-[x] Spells of Grey Magic
-[x] Get a magical healing item from the Colleges (-Favors)
-[x] Sell the produced niter crystals to Zhufbar.
-[x] Farewell: Visit everyone you've gotten to know during your time in Stirland, let them know where you're off to, and say
auf wiedersehen. (does not take an action, incompatible with Free Time)
Learning should have some massive internalization bonuses after the intense exams that we just went through, and is the stat used for spellcasting actions- in war we're going to be casting a
lot of spells. Fog of war is the unique research line most directly applicable to going on campaign, and as it's developing Mathilde's unique capabilities the action merits the Blessing. Finally, we learned
four spells in the last college class on learning shadow magic, and while that was a crit even if an average roll only gives us two spells it's still a fantastically efficient way to increase our spell knowledge compared to past actions. There are a wide variety of spells available to us now with significant combat and/or scouting application so odds are good that we'll pick up at least one and perhaps several.
There is a piety internalization action here as well, because I couldn't convince myself not to take it. Ranald has been a huge influence on Mathilde's life, but watching a literal god war (well, god skirmish) and seeing a divine force tear apart a priest in front of her, then reshaping the idol involved and building a shrine personally is probably the largest religious sequence that we've had all quest. If we don't take piety internalization now we're extremely unlikely to do so before the bonus has completely faded, and I can't countenance that. At the same time, it really isn't as essential as any of the other actions here so I've labeled it overwork and chosen to trust in Ranald that he won't smite us for our foolishness.
With the remaining actions, since we're going to be focusing on the dwarves now, it sells them the niter crystals. This has two significant benefits over selling them as fertilizer- firstly, the dwarves are likely to give us a fair price for their value as a strategic material since they actually know what they are and one of their craftsmen had a personal hand in arranging the production process; secondly, niter
is a strategic material and selling it to the dwarves will keep the existence of the factory largely out of common knowledge. Sure, people who actually look to figure out what the gong farmers are doing and what their factory is producing might find out... but who pays attention to gong farmers when their attention isn't drawn there? Best to keep things subtle.
Finally, it scouts for ulgu sites. There is a substantial risk that the lands will get folded into a barony or similar instead of sold piecemeal while remaining under the aegis of the Elector Countess, making it difficult to get our lands on any locations we find- but even then, we can approach whatever noble ends up in charge of them later and see about getting rights to the land from them.
Edit: I know that scouting for sites isn't directly applicable to battle either and maybe the action would be better devoted to an additional Spells of Grey Magic class. However, the action is very popular in other plans and I don't want to alienate the voters for whom it might be a dealbreaker since it is both time-sensitive and potentially very important in its results upon our return. Open to discussion on this one.
Edit: Plan updated by replacing the site search action with an action seeking a magical healing item, see
here.
