Gonna do some section-by-section analysis of our turn options.
Preaching Actions
[ ] Expanding Further (DC 40+)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Connection)
Oh my, you're actually a statistically noticeable percentage of the planet's populace! You should keep pushing and see who else you can entice in--the more the merrier after all!
[ ] Murmurs of Dissent (DC 60)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Connection)
Governor Magistrix has deployed the 'Forlorn Contingency', a scenario that will at best result in the careful screening of most of the surviving populace, and more likely will result in some Inquisitor rolling in and purging the survivors out of an abundance of caution. The people don't know about it yet--make sure they do, if you can even secure their non-involvement in the final Siege, you'll be golden.
Expanding Further's DC has doubled again, which makes sense for the fiction as we scale up. However, it means that yoloing with a single Manpower is growing riskier, and that our expected gains from taking this are lower. I don't think it's worth doing more of these until after the Crisis is over; it would take a serious investment of resources to expect to succeed in a meaningful way, and, uh, we need those resources. Murmurs of Dissent, on the other hand, seems really good.
Infiltration Actions
[ ] Anything else we miss? (Unknown DC)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Connection, Harvest)
The Flayers are gone, but that doesn't mean that every possible threat is off the table except internal ones, maybe see if you can get some of the woodsmen in your cult to take a look around past the settled regions of the planet and make sure there's no surprises waiting?
[ ] Sapping the Walls (DC 80)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Connection)
Taking the walls of Lambent is going to be a monstrously difficult task conventionally, if you can somehow introduce a few weaknesses though... It'll get a lot easier! This is risky for your agents though and might not have good gains.
Anything else we miss is a mystery box, but one I think we'll need to poke at some point
soon. If there's a wildcard on this planet, it's
really important to know about it. Sapping the Walls, on the other hand, is a high-DC option with only one Domain slot, and it's explicitly flagged in the text of the option itself as "
This is risky for your agents though and might not have good gains", so I don't think it's a priority.
Charity Actions
[ ] Planting the Seed (DC 60)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Weaving, Harvest)
There's only a small handful of farms and ranches that you could say are completely held by your cultists, but that number's more than zero now! You've got plenty of people really eager to see what your teachings can pull out of the ground with a little work. You're going to need a lot of stuff to feed any possible refugees or other crises!
[ ] Explore the Flayer Vessel (DC ???)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Death, Harvest)
It's probably too late to get it to work, but there might be something you can learn by poking the big scary alien death chariot you've been sitting on for a while. Beggars can't be choosers and you'll admit to being pretty much a beggar right now!
[ ] Prepare for War (DC 50)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Weaving, Connection, Harvest)
You will soon find yourself invaded by a foe beyond the strength of just about any living being. The collateral damage will be enormous even if everything goes right--and if anything goes wrong, it'll be catastrophic. Make sure that the noncombatants have someplace safe to take cover when the sky rains iron.
Planting the Seed is a peacetime option that maybe we don't have the time for right now: the crisis is
here, and at least it isn't a food crisis yet, so let's not worry about it. Explore the Flayer Vessel is another mystery box, but any big dick tech we can steal from the Necrons would be great, especially since now we have the Harvest domain to help us out. Prepare for War is important to do
eventually, but not
urgent: building up our forces has to take priority over building evac shelters for civilians.
Kinetic Actions
[ ] Split Your Lungs With Blood and Thunder! (DC 70)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Weaving, Death, Harvest)
Layla had a great idea, a capital one! "We've got some real whoppers out in the seas, flipping our ships and generally making a mess of things. Is there anything we can do about these? It'll be a real good show of force and help clean up the seas a bit!" You're more interested in securing some new assets--and the husk of a great beast brought down by your followers could have a lot of potential for you to reshape into something interesting
[ ] Building on what works (DC 75)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Weaving, Death)
The Belladonnas are great, and your Flower Knights are doing surprisingly well at this whole 'Being a knightly order' thing. Still, just a lance and the Reapers doesn't seem like it'd be the best choice in the long run, especially when people start bringing guns with more firepower than old lasguns and hunting rifles. Maybe see if you can figure out some more tricks for them so they can play to their specialties?
[ ] Training the Troops: Vanguard Doctrine (Requires 1 Manpower + Horatio Mills) (DC 60)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Endurance, Weaving, Death)
The second option that Marshal Mills suggests is a 'Vanguard' Doctrine. Humans don't normally like getting stuck in for all that we've made a big point of doing it he says, mostly because everyone else in the galaxy is better at it mostly. Your blessings and what are derived from them change that calculus--with performance augmenting armor and some form of heavy duty ranged weapon, your soldiers can execute a slow, grinding advance while hosing down the targets with fire. This strategy will be vulnerable to supply shock, but extremely effective against anything that can't stand indefinitely under heavy pressure, like most human formations.
[ ] Training the Troops: Rifle Doctrine (Requires 1 Manpower + Horatio Mills) (DC 60)
-[ ] (Attached Cult Tokens)
-[ ] (Available Domains: Weaving, Endurance, Harvest)
The final option Marshal Mills thinks could work would be a variation on the typical strategy employed by the Imperial Guard--an advancing gunline that doesn't do anything fancy, but just projects power steadily and reliably, with enough agility to pivot to changes if need be. Not exciting and does tend to fall apart if the enemy is too resistant to your weapons--but it's a well tested, reliable tactic that works against most enemies. The only thing you need to bring to the table is gear and blessings to augment this.
Ah, the good stuff. Split Your Lungs and Building On What Works both deepen our military tech tree, which is a project that has, uh,
recently ramped quite up in importance. Building On What Works in particular is going to take focus from the turn plan: it's DC 75 with only two domain slots, so we're going to need to stack bonuses reasonably high to have a good chance of success. The two doctrinal options make a return: Ranger Doctrine was explicitly called out at being garbo against Space Marines. Obviously nothing is
good against Space Marines, but maybe Vanguard or Rifle would be worth picking up later for the goal of "being less shit"? I don't think we should do it right now, though.
So, all in all, the things I think are absolutely vital to do this turn are Murmurs of Dissent, Split Your Lungs With Blood and Thunder!, and Building On What Works, and I would also like to take a stab at one of our two mystery boxes if we have enough resources for that.
I'm kinda rubbish at that a lot of the time.
