### War... war ~~never changes~~ changes a little.
We begin today in the city of Ortysia, exactly where we left off last time... and it's time to smash some ~~Western Empire~~ Battanian faces.
(Yeah, see what I did there? Reduce Reuse Recycle baby.)
For real though, we move from our war with the Western Empire and dive straight into a war with the Battanians, who have already lost a lot of territory to us.
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Our first target is Llanoc Hen castle - which is nearly directly north of our city. We manage to take it before I get there, and the Battanians turn around and siege it as I march, so when I make it up there we're facing an army of 394 Battanians, and a few random skirmishing parties in the area.
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While we wait for a few more of our Kingdom's forces to pop up and defend against the siege, we take a moment to hunt down some of the minor parties in the area.
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Hot out of this battle, we move directly to helping an ally party. With our army and one other, we completely unbalance the battle. 250 vs 37, so we skip map loads and instead simulate the battle by simply sending our troops.
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Six minutes into the session and we've already snagged two high-value prisoners! Heck yeah! Fantastic results!
With those few parties dealt with, we turn our attention back to the ongoing siege of our recently-won castle. With my 130 units and a few other nearby parties, we're at a place to finally assault the siege camp.
But, just before we do that, we should deal with the companion level we gained in our prior engagements. Vara the Shieldmaiden has a new One-Handed perk for us to choose from Arrow Catcher or Shieldwall.
Now, I almost never have my folks in a Shieldwall formation, so we opt for Arrow Catcher.
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Which gives our companion herself a larger protection area against projectiles, and also adds a small bonus to shield protection area for any party she captains. That's super useful, and isn't bound to a singular formation.
Of course, if I ever find that this isn't working out... I'll just reset her skills at the Arena Master.
Now, back to our original purpose: smashing Battanians.
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We walk away from the engagement with four wounded soldiers, 100 new prisoners, and a boatload of sweet loot.
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As we move the campaign North, I take a moment to point out something I have recently learned. You can get increased loot from battles by pumping up your Roguery stats. I feel like this is a recent change with Version 1.0, as I don't recall this being the mechanic when I was playing the 'beta' version of the game... but it's possible my memory is faulty here. Either way, this is the stat you want to put some points into, if you're looking to really get the most loot possible for your party.
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Now, it's important to note that this IS a Party Leader skill. While some things can be abstracted down to your Companions and still work fine (Scouting, as an easy example)... Roguery is one that I feel like you're going to have to take yourself... and there are only so many points you'll reasonably get before your leveling is effectively soft-capped. So, builds can be important. When you dump Focus points into these skills, there's no way to reset them without mods.
We take out a number of enemy parties after this - most of whom are simulated so there's no big on-map battles to show you in the blog here yet. We do take over another castle though, and now that we're Vassals, we get a new UI open to us - the Kingdom tab!
Here, we get to vote for (and propose) various things such as who we should go to war with or make peace with, which clan within our kingdom should get fiefs, laws that we should pass, and even expulsion of clans from our Kingdom. It's got a lot going on - but today, we're just looking at voting for ownership of the new fief - Pendraic Castle.
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We always get three pre-chosen Clans to pick from, as well as the ability to Abstain from any voting. We can see who else supports a clan by looking at the number of other Clan Leader thumbnails beside the chosen option. In the above screenshot, we can see that Sevric has the entire support of all other voting clans.
If we click on Servic, we get an option to choose how much of our Influence we spend voting for them. The amount we spend is weighted, and spending more of course influences the decision more. It also provides a bonus to that clan's opinion of us. On the flip side, we also get disapproval by anyone we *don't* support.
This rarely is a problem, but if you find yourself hated by a member of your own clan, you may find that you cannot enter cities or castles that are owned by that clan leader - which can be a problem.
Okay, so, with all that said - I think I'm going to wrap up this post. We do fight several battles on-map, and take a good chunk of territory from the Battanians - so if you want to see that action I encourage you to view the video below!
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Until next time friends, Happy Gaming!
Check out the video! The link is below.
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https://youtu.be/97iiSb7WIIc
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