Faith Reborn (Elven Court Mission 3)
- Location
- Canada
Happy new year everyone. May this one be less memetically terrible than the last.
We're back to the elven court plot in this mission, with the best character taking charge and giving us a look at the grimy underbelly of the Commonwealth and setting everything on fire. Once again, Sundren demonstrates her ability to sneak herself and a few hundred troops across half a continent with ease, as well as actually make progress in the ongoing war, instead of staunching the bleeding and going on treasure hunts.
Nomlik's story:
Nomlik's sad story begins with a priest named Voraditius. This charismatic priest forsook all gods and declared Emperor Leonus to be Divine Ascendant. Naturally, the Emperor appointed him high priest Eternal. Voraditious purged all rival gods from the Imperial Temple, replaced the signs of the Allfather, and demanded all priests bow to Leonus.
Instead of yielding, Nomlik pleaded before the assembly, "Remember the Allfather! Leans only cares about gold and power. Voraditius, stop this!"
Branded a heretic, Nomlik awaited his martyrdom, until a ragged stranger slipped into his cell, telling him his prayers were not in vain. The Allfather wanted him to live. He set Nomlik free, directing him to Ralikesh, where the Allfather would send a sign. Nomlik lit his temple ablaze rather than see it corrupted, and fled to Ralikesh where he fasted and prayed until I appeared.
There's something intoxicating about his story-this reassurance that my actions have consequences, enough to get the attention of gods. When I think of my fallen brother Thannis it's strangely comforting.
Now, if you didn't read Nomlik's story and think "How the hell did they get away with that", you probably weren't paying much attention. How did one priest manage such a sweeping rewriting of the religion of the Commonwealth, even with imperial backing? How did they enforce this? How did they have enough troops believing this new doctrine to crush the inevitable rebellions? Declaring yourself the one true god isn't usually a move that leads to political success, but somehow this has been a done deal for years, since the entire cast of the commonwealth campaign praises Leonus without hesitation.
There is of course, an explanation. Suffice it to say, this is the first sign that there is something rotten in the house of the Commonwealth, more than just rampart greed and arrogance. Right now though, we have a priest to kill, and goblins to liberate.
This mission is basically broken up into three phases. The first one is the "rally the swamp section". We start with only Nomlik, Sundren, and Groshak, and a small amount of troops, since Reskar has a country to run, and unlike some people he actually is going to spend time ruling, EDWARD! To our advantage, this section of the map is covered in wetlands, and has a large number of independent goblin villages, many of which will give you a scripted quest when you encounter them. This means, if you remember, once you complete this quest all of the guards will join your faction, to the tune of three to six units per village or more. If we move quickly and efficiently in a few turns we'll have a veritable sea of cheap goblins to advance to the second stage of the mission with.
Our first task is to take a nearby watchtower from dwarves troops and destroy it. Interesting to note is that the guards of the villages are the normal random guards rather than scripted stacks. You can tell since they give us butchers instead of the since patched out implaers. This does create a small amount of RNG influence of the mission based off of what guards spawn. Since you will need to be using these starting troops to win siege battles as soon as possible, every swarm darter that spawns is worth twice every other unit.
This is our first round with the final class in the base Age of Wonders, the theocrat. Thematically, this class is heavily focused on the power of religion, heavy on the spirit damage, crusaders, and the ability of religion to motivate people. Mechanically the class is most similar to the rouge, being a production focused class with an emphasis on unconventional strategies over pure industrial power.
Nomlik starts out with some class units to give us a taste of power, and the one that shows that last point is the Evangelist unit. They're a support unit, but don't have any ranged attacks. What they do have is the convert ability, a very accurate mind control ability that can be used at range, in addition to healing and buffs. Spamming these units to turn the independents into your own army is one of the key moves the class has, and one that synergies well with the goblin race. Both untouchables and blight doctors have very reliable ways to knock down the magic resistance of the enemy, and make the mind control more effective.
Sadly, I have poor luck with this unit of evangelists. Both from poor luck with conversion attempts, and because I positioned them poorly and kept them from the front lines on the strategic map.
The second class unit we start with is a unit of martyrs. This is an irregular unit with the signature ability to take all the damage another unit would take. Unfortunately, the goblin version has a health penalty, which makes them rather bad at using their key ability. To compensate, they get a chunk of bonus blight damage on their ranged attack, making them actually able to kill things. This is far more important than it may appear. One of the empire upgrades for theocrat gives martyrs the ability to evolve into tier three Exalted, and having martyrs that can actually do work while they grind XP makes this a much more viable strategy.
Nomlik: You! you are the one who rescued me from the emperor's dungeons. I have never forgotten the compassion of the Allfather, nor your kindness. But as for my allies, I must let them choose their own way.
Nameless Wanderer: This is all any of us can do. If this world is to be saved, it will not be done by force or through slavery, but by the deliberate choices of free people.
At the start of turn two, this little scene happens, where a mysterious old man with facial tattoos shows up and chats with Nomlik. You may remember a similar character showing up previously.
Anyway, last turn the troops from the first settlement headed to the next one to west. This village tells us to capture a commonwealth fortress that has culture-bombed their gold mine. Sundren and Groshak are on the case.
Nomlik takes his class troops south to get the quest for a new village, once again to take a fortress, only this one is guarding goblins forced into slavery. On the way he runs into a spy drone. There are a bunch of these thing hanging around this section of the map, to add to the dystopian slum feeling of the goblin settlements. You do want to kill them as you see them to prevent them from walking into one of the goblin settlements, but try to avoid having them explode on top of your swarm darters.
To help deal with the fortress, Groshak breaks out the chain lightning, while Sundren picks off softened units with her bow.
After taking the fortress, Groshak flies to the northeast, bounces off some haste berries, and finds a stack of goblins guarding a neutral settler. They've been kicked out of their village, and would like us to take it back.
And yes, one of our opponents on this map is Gustav Gorsmog, the same leader we just fought in the commonwealth campaign. I am going to assume that he does not have lands in two different provinces which he runs back and forth between, and that this Gustav Gorsmog is a different character. A cousin, perhaps.
To take the burned settlement back, we have to defeat a flame tank, a high end dreadnought unit which is, exactly what it sounds like. A rolling flamethrower covered in armour. Mechanically, it basically gets an unlimited supply of dragon breath attacks and explodes on death, which is bad news for fragile goblins. Thus, I send Groshak to solo it with his shock damage and much more robust health pool.
In the southwest, the stack I gained from the second city runs into a small stack and the domain of Voraditious himself. I decline to engage at this point, because the enemy has some of his own evangelists that could make the engagement go south and bounce off some haste berries to clear the southern fortress.
Nomlik and his evangelists get literally bogged down in the swampy terrain, but I send his outriders to link up with the militia force to clear the fortress on the end of turn three. One pack of warg riders falls, but we clear the fortress, getting a massive stack of untouchables in addition of the alliance of the southern village.
Groshak: Yes, we have to stop them. Weakening the Commonwealth's production here will be beneficial to the Elven Court, and killing that power-hungry priest Voraditious is just a bonus. Making Leonus a God, what nonsense!
Despite this line of dialogue, we haven't actually finished securing the swamp. There are still two more neutral villages, though without scripted quests, and the one Voradtitus owns.
Nomlik: You have been mislead. The Allfather is the only true god! He loves all of his creation equally. You do not need to sacrifice a good life now for a place in the afterlife. Your time on Athla can be a tribute to the Allfather. Voradtitous is lying, he is exploiting you all. The Allfather is at your side wherever you are.
Goblin: That does sound a lot better… Great, we will join your cause.
And with that short scene, another village to the east and it's guards join us for free!
I guess that's a comedic scene? Though the mission does back of the idea that the swamp of Xablor is pacified by force and constant surveillance from watchtowers and drones instead of actual religious conversion to the cult of Holy Leonus, so it would be easy to convert these goblins onto our side.
Now, let's take some time to discuss the economic situation here: we're broke. Not officially, but we're losing money at an alarming rate, and have had to keep almost every city producing gold only. I can afford to make a single extra swarm darter, but that's it. Even with five towns there are just too many units costing upkeep. We don't have much hope of climbing out of this economic pit on our own: we'll have to take Gustav's territory.
On the very edge of our vision, we can see Gustav taking on some independants, and revealing a rather fearsome army that's up and about. Certainly more troops than I though he would have this far forward on turn 5.
To remedy the money situation, I summon some of the theocrat's scout unit, cherubs, to go picking up some of the goodies that my actual armies didn't have time to grab. This will stave off financial ruin, and wipe out the morale penalties we're getting from an empty treasury.
Next on the to-do list is crushing this annoying village to keep it from causing trouble later.
I do find it interesting that despite the quite in-depth character creation abilities of the game, Nomlik and Voraditius's avatars deliberately share some common aspects. The yellow collar, the halo, even the same backdrop.
So, guesses on how well this fight went?
TERRIBLY!
Human evangelists, unlike the goblin ones, get to smite the unbeliever with holy wrath. They can basically kill one unit of untouchables a turn, and I missed a 65% shot at converting their swarm darters, which let me open to get slaughtered. Without much in the way of siege equipment, I didn't have any other options than to slowly wear down the enemy with weak ranged attacks.
On the bright side I'm losing money far less quickly now.
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