Sage_of_Eyes
patreon
V7: Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2024-03-10 02:08:10 +0000 UTCV7: Chapter 3
…
The Forgers were the best heavy infantry that I could ask for.
While the Conquerors were good at holding the line, they truly excelled at being highly-mobile, professional soldiers. Special forces that could each carry the firepower of an armored personnel carrier, making them perfect skirmishing forces or black ops. Nothing like bringing in a squad of six musclebound titans closer to ten feet than five with all of them carrying autocannons and ridiculous amounts of explosives. Currently, most of them were acting as light artillery and anti-air, until they were all crack shots that could put five rounds into a playing card no matter the circumstance.
However, in terms of holding ground and putting people to a siege, the Forgers had them beat.
If you give them a single turn to fortify, you’re going to find trenches deployed all over the battlefield around their starting position. They’ll have simple wood fortifications at the start, but as the game progresses it goes to wood all the way to concrete buildings. With their engineering units, and the Champions that reduce build time, they’ll start building actual bases and fortifications while you’re fighting them on the battlefield that give them bonuses like cover, artillery support, and make you need to bring in some expensive siege units in all the armies you’re sending into their territory.
They’re combat engineers with tons of armor strapped on them who can also crack skulls.
Their average infantry unit, currently, is covered in enough steel to make most guns smaller than the ones I give to Conquerors worthless. A bunch of my rifle companies against their basic infantry would be massacred. They can just stack some healers and some mages at the back of their basic infantry and they can roll over most enemies, though the upkeep costs will eat them alive. In the end, while they were strong basic infantry their initial cost and upkeep costs are high, until certain technologies come into to play that basically made them combat golems with no free will.
But that’s a future I’m hoping to avoid.
For now, focusing on the present, the Forgers filled the temporary piece in my current strategy.
My rifle companies and mages were pretty much the core of my DPS. The rifles kept up steady damage on enemy units as the fight raged on, while the mages worked as artillery and slung around fireballs and the like after they finished dueling with the enemy mages trying to do the same thing. Most of my ground cavalry were not Conquerors, a role which they appreciated, as they were able to run free during the battles and devastate the flanks of the enemy.
The real weak point of my armies were my pikes, because as good as they were, they weren’t cut out for handling all the monsters we were going to face. The frontline infantry was going to be hit the hardest and need replacing every battle. In-game they usually count as ablative that does some damage while preventing ranged units from dying, and you could lose over eighty percent of them before having them retreat to retain their veterancy and upgrades. Eighty percent of an entire unit of men is at least eight hundred deaths, so three units at twenty percent means twenty-four hundred dead in a single fight.
Those were numbers I couldn’t afford.
However, the Forgers had innate resistances against magic, against most of the poisons in the tech trees, and were tough as hell. In-game, if you had Forger frontline, the only recourse of the enemy is to flank and harass your forces and lure you into their territory to weaken them. After that it’s gathering all the Mages and applying all the debuffs, while getting the fasted ranged infantry you’ve got to spend an hour kiting the shit out of them.
Otherwise, auto-resolve will just count the Forgers winning.
So, if I replaced the pikemen I had with Forgers, they’ll lose maybe ten percent every fight and most of them will be casualties with very few deaths. Three hundred casualties with maybe ten percent of them dying was a lot more tolerable… so, with that in mind, I did my best to recruit Erlan.
Is it wrong to try and recruit an entire race, or as many of them as possible, just to act as my main infantry?
Probably.
But I had to still try and do my best, otherwise I’ll need to put the Iterants on the front, and the moment news of that gets out… it’ll make things very complicated.
I’ve already got four Citadels, I’m pumping out Guardians, and I’ve got the largest economy and the most people.
Honestly, it’s a miracle the other factions still talk to me and work with me and haven’t united to fight against me.
If I show them that the Iterants are loyal to my nation, and that I’ll be employing Iterants, as strong as Guardians and with the ability to change shape and infiltrate, to fight on the front outside of my territory?
Yeah, I’m not sure how things aren’t in full-blown war between me and another united faction yet, but that’ll probably break whatever balance is present entirely and send us tumbling off into full-scale war.
Things are heading there, but I’d rather kill one more of them off and take their stuff, before it starts.
It never hurts to stack as many advantages as possible, after all.
…
Interlude: Rita
…
An army in the millions with their soldiery tireless Undead and the most feared monsters across the entire continent. It was an apocalyptic force, one that united friends and foes alike, behind the common cause of survival. Much like the famine that had occurred, this warranted a Council of Kings, and unified effort to defeat the Death Lord and its assembled forces.
The Forgers were the frontline, and against them the hordes of the undead and their monstrous allies found themselves unable to find purchase. The stout frontline wielded heavy shields nearly the same size as each of them with one arm and with their spare arms they wielded hammers. Even grazing blows from the heavy implements wielded by the strong limbs broke bone and tore flesh. Lesser zombies broke apart into piles of flesh and bone to be crushed underfoot by their advance, and it only took a few dead monsters to convince the rest to flee from the front.
A front which was controlled by our own soldiery.
In every battle the pikes that we had hemmed in the enemy towards the strong center. Marching in rhythm with their pikes held forward, they closed like jaws that encircled the enemy and kept them in the center. Rifles fired at the heart of the enemy’s formation and their retreat was filled with flame or roaring magical projectile. The guns wielded by main force were smaller and lighter than the guns used by the Conquerors, but there were plenty of them and we had bullets to spare, and against the monsters and undead they punched through flesh and bone with ease.
The fate of our enemy’s main armies, the common foot soldier, was death by the felling of hammers, the thrusting of pikes, the raining of lead, and the merciless bombardment of artillery in their only path of retreat.
Their cavalry and specialized forces were hunted by Conquerors aided by our aerial cavalry. As if the lethality of the vaunted warriors of the Conquerors was not enough, they were armed with light cannon forged within the Citadel. Oncoming goblins mounted on the backs of their tamed wolves were destroyed by volleys of high explosive shells, then charged by the Conquerors in melee. They hunted down the enemy’s shamans and mages, freeing our own users of magic to attack instead of defend against their fellows. If they were hunted, if they were set upon by the enemy, the aerial cavalry came to their aid and devastated the enemy with explosives delivered in steep dives.
We faced nearly half a dozen battles since we arrived in the Death Lord’s territory, but the same strategy worked again and again with every army we faced.
We marched, and they died.
“It may look simple, Rita, but there’s more behind this moment than just what we see.” Morgan’s voice made me turn my attention her way. We were atop a small hill looking over the battle playing out over the many, many miles. Bereft of her coat and wearing a top that kept her arms free and hugged her figure, it was easier to see that it wasn’t talent alone that carried her. She couldn’t compare to Ilych or Conquest, but that wasn’t the point. She saw her body as a weapon, and that included being able to seduce and tantalize. “Everything here is the mouth of a great and massive beast born of industry, of diplomacy, and of our leader’s mind. Decades in the making.”
“Decades?” I questioned, and Morgan smiled and pushed up her glasses. I had to wonder if she even needed those thick lenses. If she told me that she used them to keep herself blind, given their thickness and size being so strange, I would’ve believed her. They seemed to constantly just fill with light and blur vision. Besides that, however, Morgan admired my ability to admit when I did not understand. In her own words, I did not subscribe to unseemly pride. “What do you mean?”
Morgan stretched her hands out towards the battlefield before us, the field where hundreds of lives were ending every minute, where the roar of guns drowned out all other noise.
The wind swept her hair back and a smile split across her face, as if she was truly and completely content.
When she lowered her arms after a moment, she turned to me with a small version of that smile.
“It is poetry in motion, Rita. Everything that our vaunted king does is for the sake of survival and the destruction of our enemies. From the farmer tilling soil and paying his taxes, to the general learning at our university, and all the way here into our king’s hands… everything is by his design.” Morgan spoke and I listened. A shiver went down my spine, as I grasped an inkling of what she was speaking about. She took note and her smile widened while her eyes narrowed in sharp glee. “Ah, there it is. A glimmer of insight. I always knew you were smart.”
“Much of what our King does is for the people and for peace and prosperity.” I found myself protesting and trying to drive away Morgan’s words, but she simply kept smiling at me. Soon enough, she stood in front of me, but I could barely meet her gaze. Her eyes seemed like twin abysses into which I could fall endlessly. Her presence alone was somehow suffocating. “Even if it all indeed serves us for war, even if every ounce of prosperity and moment of peace given to us is to make us fight, they remain moments of peace and prosperity we’d never seen before.”
Morgan implied that everything our King has done is for war. That every moment of kindness and compassion he has given us, to his people, is to this singular end of conflict and destruction. Her assertion was that he did all of this not to protect what he gave us, but to ensure that he had the tools and the resources to wield against his foes.
I refused that idea and raised my gaze from my feet to match Morgan’s gaze.
My hands curled into fists as I strengthened my resolve against Morgan’s intellectual might.
“It is true that all he has composed for us makes us all more willing to fight and die for him, but there is no reason at all for it all to just be for war. What we see, how we feel, and the joys we experience… they all have meaning themselves.” I understood what Morgan had implied. She saw what our King wanted her to see. Something like herself but on a massive scale. Morgan would be unsatisfied under anyone lesser than her, anyone unwilling to do what is needed to survive, thus our King crafted something for her to believe in. He did this for everyone. For every person he met, he had a different mask to speak to that person and sway them to his side. “Even if it all meant to keep us fighting fervently for him, then I must attest that all the good has given to us remains good.”
People are enjoying peace and prosperity.
Children are being born with prospects and free of fear of raiders.
Thousands migrate towards us with hope in their hearts and their dreams will be fulfilled.
So, what if it all serves to wage war against the enemies that would take it away?
That our leader has created it all to make sure that we are obedient and would fight for him against the monsters at the gate?
We would’ve fought for him regardless.
Morgan crossed her arms at my words with her countenance stern and her true thoughts a mystery.
Then, she spoke.
“I see. You’re a zealot through and through. He’s more your god than your king… you can’t even conceive of the thought of him being wrong.” Morgan spoke directly and bluntly. Cold and cool statements. There was a hint of disappointment in her voice, but I felt nothing at it. She sighed and pushed back her hair in slight frustration. “And, here I’d thought I’d teach him a little lesson about loyalty, but he’s already covered that angle, too.”
It took me a moment to realize what she was implying.
“This was another test.”
“Less a test, more me trying to manipulate you, so that I could raise my stock with our lord by showing him some paths lead to poor outcomes. But he foresaw what could be done to turn you and protected you already. I can’t even worm my way into your head.” Morgan admitted to her actions with ease. Content with knowing that she could not be replaced. It was a simple truth. With crossed arms, she turned to the battle beyond us and a faint smile formed on her face. “I suppose that I’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way and gain merit on the battlefield. He’s cut off every shortcut on the way up.”
Morgan, as always, was a driven and powerful being who knew exactly her place in the world and what she needed to do to get what she desired. Without a doubt, if Jack was not present, she’d be ruling the Citadel in his stead and so many would be dead who would otherwise not be. Her nation will be one born of the corpses of millions and she would use everything at her disposal to fight against what came to kill her.
“You would make for a poor leader, Morgan.” I told her simply, and she nodded.
“Give me a break. Compared to Jack, everyone is… which is why I’m just going to go ahead and just be his finest, best general.” Morgan smiled. A small smile that reached her eyes. It was a sincere smile filled with happiness. “Now, how about we go ahead and get some merits and achievements today, huh? We’ve been lying around enough, don’t you think?”
She gestured for me to follow, despite admitting she had tried to use me to improve her own position.
She knew that I would follow, because my king had need of her talents.
It irked me a bit, but truth was that a person such as Morgan was exactly what our leader needed.
People like her will help us save this world entire.
Comments
Wilhart Aying
Man I just need to point out Rita knowing Jack puts on mask to manipulate people makes him one of the people who understand him the most. She deserve to be part of the harem for that atleast ;v
Jeremy Humphrey
"Most of my ground cavalry were not Conquerors" should be 'now Conquerors'
Jordan Arnold
Morgan: "I don't 'want' peace, I want violence always"
Hunter Rhoades
I think Morgan is pretty thirsty right now
