I definitely think this is the best plan then, be ready for a siege with a perpetual food and wood source inside our defences. Just need to work out a good plan that includes working on this stuff.
I definitely think this is the best plan then, be ready for a siege with a perpetual food and wood source inside our defences. Just need to work out a good plan that includes working on this stuff.
I mean, we could probably do it this winter, but what is there to prevent the orcs from putting Nerissa's grove to the ax? They've been ignoring her so far. I suppose we have defenders...
I definitely want to secure our herbs and potions loli tree.
So, can we dedicate our contruction crews to help Nerissa expand the grove while also making it unassailable?
Because she is one of our best contacts.
Like, one of the simplest ways to capitalise is to hand her perfectly normal seeds of fruit trees and ask her to work on their maturation rate, to the effect of getting magical seeds that would allow us to get trees which bear fruit a year after being planted (Or maybe even faster!). Sure, these seeds would have to be planted within a season of being harvested, but still, that's capability to expand food production in Revaria (And beyond) faster. And just rapidly growing trees would be useful - like, for example, enemy suddenly finding forests because they had outdated maps.
Or this hypnofruit. We can ask Nerissa to grow some more, ask Mina to provide all the reports on them that she has, get Silvia, Florian and Leo together, and produce a hypnofruit-based brew which would allow training more units more easily. And start using that brew to, of course, training more units.
Both these possibilities would require some rolls, but they're plausible and thus achievable.
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
[x] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
I mean, we could probably do it this winter, but what is there to prevent the orcs from putting Nerissa's grove to the ax? They've been ignoring her so far. I suppose we have defenders...
I definitely want to secure our herbs and potions loli tree.
I'd recommend doing it as soon as possible. They have been leaving her alone it's true, but that will stop if they realise how valuable she is, and we can't rely on security through obscurity alone.
First of all, I love this quest; yeah, it's kind of hard, but that's the fun of it.
One reason I usually copy other people's plan is because the sheer amount of options; and they are not easy to manage. And thus, I follow people who I think have a sane idea. But still; Analysis paralysis is probably at work here.
I'm a little uncertain what you're meaning here. If you mean to say you picked up on Julia's subtle flirtations, I'm a little surprised since no one commented.
I mean, yeah, why comment on it if it was obvious? Even your first post re: Julia implied she was sent here as a honeypot; after all, she's the third child, we're the third child... her parents are probably betting on Tristan, but it's a low bet that doesn't really hurt them. I am not convinced, tbh, that it's the worst option. We could, I think, research her family.
But, well. Liv must be able to accept it, that comes first.
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
Well admittedly I find this reply a little depressing. I had thought a quest that was rather difficult would find a decent niche. I mean there's plenty of quests that are endless strings of victories.
Though the idea that you're slowly bleeding out is pretty wrong. Just looking at your income can show how wrong that is. Your forces are far stronger and your base much more productive than it started, and has grown rather steadily. It's just that your enemies have been growing as well, but that was clear from the start of the quest that it would be the case.
Yeah, I probably phased things too harshly. The big thing to take away beyond my opinion portion was that this quest is elitist in style. It's always going to move forward by a small core of active players. Casual players will ebb and flow
If you guys ever sank an action into looking up the regional geopolitics (which has been on the list of default actions) you'd have a better idea about this sort of thing.
It's meant to be a case of bigger players working in the background that you have only small influence on. It's supposed to be a part of working with a small outpost instead of a nation. I've perhaps done it poorly. You're not in a position where losing the duchy entirely is too much of a concern anymore though. The more Tedora's bloodied the more likely they are to get attacked by even more nations or accept a peace at an affordable price to avoid getting weaker.
Maybe it would have been better in a cold logic way to swear fealty, but there were other factors as well.
The war has been an inflation of difficulty in something that was already hard.
Personally, it sours anything we achieve here since it feels like even if we thread the needle, we can still get a game over from events entirely out of our control.
From your posts I'm starting to understand how that isn't exactly the case, but I wasn't able to get that from just the story posts.
I think the big issue for me (and probably others too), is that medieval war isn't what most of us think in terms of. We think in terms of modern war.
In a modern war context it seems the war will be lost outside of good luck on our side's part. Which is normally fine, but I've been trained to expect that our luck is anything but good.
I think Nerissa's grove coverage is limited by her age/skill? She can probably modify some of our fruit trees with magic so they can bear fruit fast in the Overgrowth, but she won't be able to see to their survival (she can only grow so many things) or feel/control them beyond a certain radius.
Or this hypnofruit. We can ask Nerissa to grow some more, ask Mina to provide all the reports on them that she has, get Silvia, Florian and Leo together, and produce a hypnofruit-based brew which would allow training more units more easily. And start using that brew to, of course, training more units.
I'd recommend doing it as soon as possible. They have been leaving her alone it's true, but that will stop if they realise how valuable she is, and we can't rely on security through obscurity alone.
ASAP - as in, right now? I am not married to the idea of breeding rabbits when we finally have a breathing room to reinforce our location, so I can implement them in our plan. I think it will just connect our outpost to her grove, but not actually protect her in any way, though?
If anyone else supports this, and there are no objections, I'll change the plan.
We may want her Nerissa to grow some ironwood around her grove, for her own protection. It might take away some of the slots, but it could be worth it. And the best part is that once done, it doesn't need regrowing, meaning she can switch away to grow fruits and other things that are gathered and need to be constantly regrown.
Hmm, can our construction workers plant ironwood inside the overgrowth? Maybe we can speed it up.
ASAP - as in, right now? I am not married to the idea of breeding rabbits when we finally have a breathing room to reinforce our location, so I can implement them in our plan. I think it will just connect our outpost to her grove, but not actually protect her in any way, though?
From what the QM was saying I get the impression her control over her grove would be good enough to function like fortification, as long as we had guards there it should be okay. Making stronger fortification would be good as things go, but first step is making sure that our guards don't have to guard two separate compounds (three including the docks, but in a siege scenario we only need one of the docks and the grove to provide us with supplies, and it seems like the grove is by far the easier to defend)
Mercenaries I can get, but what do we want to do with settlers?
The workes, the lumberjacks etc. could probably count as settlers, seeing how some of them lived here for years, but why would we want people without a defined profession living here?
And if we are talking someone who could be of use to the outpost, money could attract them even from within Revaria.
Well I have considered a sort of switch in systems allowing you to "start a town" and have some of the lower bits of establishing housing and taverns and such abstracted, leaving you to only focus on the military aspects. Didn't seem particularly valuable.
The thing about losing or seemingly not winning is that stuff is suppose to buildup to a bigger victory.
It does not feel like there have been any clear victories. There is tension, but no payoff. Tension without a release, well, that's why he feels like we're bleeding out. Surviving the winter will feel like a pyrrhic victory at best.
Sure we're in a better position than the starting position of... traitorous pikemen... But now we're understaffed, in winter, without reinforcements, under siege. The situation doesn't feel any better.
Hmm I suppose I understand your point. It's just in my experience with empire quests overcoming all your problems never really happens. You just encounter bigger problems.
I think Nerissa's grove coverage is limited by her age/skill? She can probably modify some of our fruit trees with magic so they can bear fruit fast in the Overgrowth, but she won't be able to see to their survival (she can only grow so many things) or feel/control them beyond a certain radius.
Her grove is defined by the range from her tree that she can exert her control over. That can't be increased by a construction crew. There might be other ways though...
Like, one of the simplest ways to capitalise is to hand her perfectly normal seeds of fruit trees and ask her to work on their maturation rate, to the effect of getting magical seeds that would allow us to get trees which bear fruit a year after being planted (Or maybe even faster!). Sure, these seeds would have to be planted within a season of being harvested, but still, that's capability to expand food production in Revaria (And beyond) faster. And just rapidly growing trees would be useful - like, for example, enemy suddenly finding forests because they had outdated maps.
Or this hypnofruit. We can ask Nerissa to grow some more, ask Mina to provide all the reports on them that she has, get Silvia, Florian and Leo together, and produce a hypnofruit-based brew which would allow training more units more easily. And start using that brew to, of course, training more units.
She could produce a rapid growing fruit tree, but it would be magic based and fail outside the Overgrowth where magic is lower.
Some sort of brew to enhance training might be possible. I can see where you're going with that. Something to make them more disciplined, more focused, and work harder to accelerate training. It would be a bit of a difficult research project though to get just those effects while keeping the mind fog at a tolerable level for combat though. There'd likely need to be some human testing, and there might be issues with getting your soldiers to accept it. It is possible to manage those issues though.
First of all, I love this quest; yeah, it's kind of hard, but that's the fun of it.
One reason I usually copy other people's plan is because the sheer amount of options; and they are not easy to manage. And thus, I follow people who I think have a sane idea. But still; Analysis paralysis is probably at work here.
I mean, yeah, why comment on it if it was obvious? Even your first post re: Julia implied she was sent here as a honeypot; after all, she's the third child, we're the third child... her parents are probably betting on Tristan, but it's a low bet that doesn't really hurt them. I am not convinced, tbh, that it's the worst option. We could, I think, research her family.
But, well. Liv must be able to accept it, that comes first.
Well I'm glad to hear it came across. What's obvious to the writer isn't always obvious to the reader, since they have different perspectives. So I wasn't sure if I got it right.
Their buildup was plotted (and it would have been worse without the relief force you called in). It's part of why you were told at the start of the quest that they'd probably invade in around 5-10 years. It's been 8. The outpost has been built up in a fairly defensive fashion. You could have reached a point of still being able to fight them off fairly evenly in the field, but that's not the direction that was taken.
The war has been an inflation of difficulty in something that was already hard.
Personally, it sours anything we achieve here since it feels like even if we thread the needle, we can still get a game over from events entirely out of our control.
From your posts I'm starting to understand how that isn't exactly the case, but I wasn't able to get that from just the story posts.
I think the big issue for me (and probably others too), is that medieval war isn't what most of us think in terms of. We think in terms of modern war.
In a modern war context it seems the war will be lost outside of good luck on our side's part. Which is normally fine, but I've been trained to expect that our luck is anything but good.
There are anti-failure mechanisms in place. I've alluded to them before, and you've seen them a couple times. Where first Mina and then Leo bailed you out of bad situations. Those are not the only ones in place. There are in fact national scale anti-failure mechanisms. (Quite honestly given the current direction things are heading, when the orc invasion happens, the national scale anti-failure mechanism will trip, and you'll just have to survive siege for a while.)
This is actually completely different from what I thought Dwergar was going for. Making something like that is probably easier than what I thought he was going for. Getting them to take it is probably harder though.
Semi-correct. You aren't directly protecting her, just ensuring that you maintain access during a siege. Indirectly though this means you can shift troops to defend her without having to leave the protection of your walls, which does mean your troops can defend her better.
We may want her Nerissa to grow some ironwood around her grove, for her own protection. It might take away some of the slots, but it could be worth it. And the best part is that once done, it doesn't need regrowing, meaning she can switch away to grow fruits and other things that are gathered and need to be constantly regrown.
Hmm, can our construction workers plant ironwood inside the overgrowth? Maybe we can speed it up.
Theoretically you could have workers help, but you don't have enough samples for that. So she's going to have to grow it herself from the one sample you have. Practically I've failed to mention this, but I'm going to give it as basically in the time since you left the branch there for her she's used it to rebuild the wall around her sanctum out of those instead. (Much like the Overgrowth itself, her territory is two concentric circles, the outer territory she largely allots to growing things for you, and the inner circle sanctum that's basically her "house" (so much as a dryad has a house, maybe bedroom? living room?), where you tend to meet with her.)
From what the QM was saying I get the impression her control over her grove would be good enough to function like fortification, as long as we had guards there it should be okay. Making stronger fortification would be good as things go, but first step is making sure that our guards don't have to guard two separate compounds (three including the docks, but in a siege scenario we only need one of the docks and the grove to provide us with supplies, and it seems like the grove is by far the easier to defend)
Well I have considered a sort of switch in systems allowing you to "start a town" and have some of the lower bits of establishing housing and taverns and such abstracted, leaving you to only focus on the military aspects. Didn't seem particularly valuable.
Starting a town would be more post-invasion project, I think. Tristan is unlikely to inherit the duchy, so setting up a new branch of the dynasty sounds good to me. We even have a potential wife on-site already.
Making stronger fortification would be good as things go, but first step is making sure that our guards don't have to guard two separate compounds (three including the docks, but in a siege scenario we only need one of the docks and the grove to provide us with supplies, and it seems like the grove is by far the easier to defend)
Alright, so... I have like 4 votes; does anyone object to replacing this:
-[ ][Construction] Rebuild your treehouse watchtowers in the Overgrowth (50 Denier)
-[ [Construction] You don't need a steady supply of bricks for your current operation. But you do have a number of things you could use them for. Produce a unit of bricks.
-[ ][Construction] To keep your rabbits trapped will require bricks it seems. A brick lined rabbit pit could improve your output though. Maybe enough to sell furs as well. (Requires 1 unit of bricks, +50 denier in food, opens tanner, uses 1 space.)
with this?
-[ ][Construction] Rebuild your treehouse watchtowers in the Overgrowth (50 Denier)
-[ [Construction] Create a fortified causeway connecting your base to Nerissa's grove x2
If no one minds, I'll swap the construction actions out for more defences.
Starting a town would be more post-invasion project, I think. Tristan is unlikely to inherit the duchy, so setting up a new branch of the dynasty sounds good to me. We even have a potential wife on-site already.
Inheriting the duchy? Do you think succession is clean-cut?
Late-game would probably be about succession crisis, quite probably with added rebellions and civil war.
Alright, so... I have like 4 votes; does anyone object to replacing this:
with this?
-[ ][Construction] Rebuild your treehouse watchtowers in the Overgrowth (50 Denier)
-[ [Construction] Create a fortified causeway connecting your base to Nerissa's grove x2
If no one minds, I'll swap the construction actions out for more defences.
Alright, changed it. Sooo... next turn plans? As much as I am sceptical about the plan surviving contact with reality, I also want some kind of long-term strategy in place.
Assuming we aren't hit by the orcs in the winter (here's hoping!), what are we going to do in the spring?
My thinking is 'fotrify the hell out of our base', and try not to stray too far.
Try upgrading the levy, maybe enchant a few things to improve our defences.
Start investing in supplies? We have the money, and it's best to do it while our docks are operational. Having supplies allows us to wait the enemy out until winter (when they will be the ones having supply problems), or train the units inside the base and repel the assault with sheer numbers.
If we manage to get 4 footmen units under our belt by the next year (not an impossible goal), patrols are going to be smoother. Assuming there would be anything to guard by then, that is.
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
[x] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
[X] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
[x] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them
[X][OJ] Have Olivia let Julia examine her, it's for her own good really, and it's not like there's any point in hiding her nature. She shouldn't be so insecure.
[X] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
[X][Dockworkers] Commit to defending them and give them a raise.
[x][OJ] Olivia doesn't need to be examined if she doesn't want to be.
[x] Plan Horse Whisperer and Reserves
Dockworkers should be payed more, and be protected both if it's feasible. I don't know if it is. But voting like that anyways.
-[X][Hunters] Scout to reduce chance of enemies slipping by. .85*(20+5+2-5+10) = 27
-[X][Skirmishers] Shadow Footmen 1, try to get a drop on anyone who attacks them .80*(87+35) = 98
-[X][Footmen 1] Patrol, reduce chance of enemies slipping by. combat .90*(35+62 +10 -5) = 92
-[X][Olivia] Assist Footmen 1 16
-[X][Footmen 2] Shadow Footmen 1, try to get a drop on anyone who attacks them .9*(25 + 30 +10 +10) = 68
-[X][Captain] Command ambush troops, raising morale and effectiveness
