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Our spy drone sees that Brenn's settlers and their guards are separated from the Theocrat herself and her retinue, meaning that she has only ten rather than fifteen units defending the outpost.


We seize the initiative and storm the settlement.

Our cannons are able to make short work of their gate while damaging the light flying units perched behind it. Given the lack of area of effect damage in the enemy army, our units group up tightly, forcing their ranged units to do the same if they want to damage our forces. They make the fatal mistake of clustering behind a wooden wall.

With two flame tanks unleashing burning death in a massive area in front of them, we are able to torch the walls and those behind them over a series of two rounds, wiping out almost the entirety of their defensive force.

Our siege cannons pummel the far wall, and Warbob Sexlizard personally finishes the Theocrat with a bullet to the face. She will be reborn in her Throne City after a few turns and at a cost to their mana, but the warlord she had with her is lost forever.

The rest of their army is primarily melee ranged, and is annihilated by fire when they finally stream out from their shattered fortress.

Brenn's army is crushed beneath the steel tide of Progress, and we have not lost a single unit in doing so.

However, we have received troubling reports - Cerrin Treefolk, the mad archdruid, has completed two Empire Quests of her own. 'Sage,' the quest for completing a T6 research project (which the Juggernaut is for us) is one that we were only two turns away from completing, and means that she will have access to two bonus spells from the 'secret' list (which includes the invaluable 'Summon Dire Penguin' spell). While we don't know exactly what she discovered, it is likely to be Summon Horned God, which is a powerful melee unit capable of calling down lightning, to which our machines are vulnerable. In the same turn, she has also completed the Monoculture Empire Quest, meaning that she now has six settlements of one race. Clearly she is a genocidal maniac, and must be stopped.


Fortunately, Imane is still in the area. She is able to find the newly created outpost and capture it.

Now we have some decisions to make -

1) What shall we name our three-four newly attained settlements?
2) Where shall Warbob Sexlizard move Warbob Sexlizard's glorious army? Further to the southeast to battle the severely weakened theocracy and potentially the armies of Wazuhl, to the west to tame the land firmly under our control, or across the world to fight the army of the archdruid (most likely the strongest of our opponents)?
3) Shall we absorb, migrate, or raze the two settlements which we have captured from our rivals? Presumably we should retain the halfling settlement (even if we replace its current inhabitants), but the outpost in the northwestern edge of our territory may be difficult to hold.
4) We are running into constraints with our mana use. Constantly resummoning our fleet of spy drones and maintaining mana fuel cells over our core cities is expensive, and leaves us with little to spend on building our advanced buildings and units, to say nothing of combat spells. What should our priorities be with regards to spending our mana? Empire development, combat spells, spy drones, or constructing advanced units?