In this part, we finally deal with those pesky rival wizards of ours. There's no namby-pamby cultural victory in this game; we either kill all our enemies directly or we banish them all to the void with the Spell of Mastery. The Spell of Mastery's a long way off for the Tyrant of Honeypool right now, so it looks like it's time to gear up for a war...
Part 3: Sorting The Victors From The Losers. With Some Sort of Hat.
That Hellhound battle earned us the Disenchant Area spell. If Honeypool gets Cursed or Corrupted, we have a means of undoing it.So we head straight for Tlaloc's home city of Hannover. The guy puts up a respectable fight, with a magic-user Hero and two Shaman units to counter our own in ranged ability. They, uh, left after the first round however. The various remaining swordsmen, spearmen and summoned War Bears (which appear two at a time: good things come in bears, after all) might've kicked our asses, had we let them get anywhere close.Taking over a city is much like taking out a dungeon: We receive fame if the battle was interesting enough, plus we earn some gold too.And, oh yeah, we annihilate Mr Unfortunate Racial Stereotype in the process.Our new city. Yaaay! If I ensure that this one makes us a lot of money and harvest, I can really ramp up Slinger production.Apparently you can't make links in captions. Let's just say Horus has a few things coming to him for his mean words. Eventually. Once we figure out how to cross the sea to where he's set up.Flensburg was an outpost: The proto-towns created by Settlers. They are unfortunately auto-razed if you take them over, because of their small size. Still, computer players tend to settle towns that are too close to their other cities, and this one was close enough to take precious resources away.Since I'm on a roll, I decide to take out Ariel as well. In this battle, she has somehow recruited four (!) different Heroes to protect her capital. They are the Beastmaster (good with creatures), the Bard (has some magic), the Orc Warrior (tough in close-range) and the Thief (fast and deadly). They're also backed with three Swordsmen units and two Spearmen units.I'm not quite sure if I've hammered home how effective Slingers are. Especially those that have been around long enough to become Elite units. It's all to do with how every single bullet finds its mark. Like the ones that found those four aforementioned Heroes. Unfortunately, it seems there was a little collateral damage too.The Thief was a bit tougher to kill than her peers and this piece of equipment is the reason why. Spoils of war go to our Huntress. You can also create your own armor and weapons if you're so inclined - it tends to be cheaper than buying them and more reliable than finding them in combat.Ariel gets something too: A quick trip to the beyond, one-way.
Honeypool's current situation: We have conquered our home continent. However, there's an aggressive rival wizard on the next island over (Horus) and an as yet undiscovered fourth rival somewhere out there, who is probably the sole wizard on the alternate plane of Myrror. Were this to continue, I'd find a way to bring my Slinger army across the seas to conquer what towns are left as well as spelunk a lot of powerful dungeons to emancipate them of their many treasures. That I have the latter option is a big part of why I find this game so awesome, though I've clearly made things a little too easy for myself with these overpowered hobbitses.
Next time, I think I'll monitor what items are up next on GOG's popularity contest and pick something else to champion. For now, I think I've think I've shown off this game sufficiently. I'll leave you with a few other options besides mercilessly raining down stoney oblivion on your enemies: A Death wizard that conquers the world with an unstoppable army of darkness, its numbers boosted incrementally by your fallen foes; a Nature wizard that summons a force of Sprites, Earth Elementals, Behemoths and Great Wyrms while turning their cities into gardens of paradise; a Chaos wizard that summons Armageddon itself, creating a world full of erupting volcanoes and meteor showers as their Great Drakes and Efreeti incinerate anyone still standing; or a Sorcery wizard that uses their various enchantment spells to create a pitiless legion of invisible, flying warriors. It's fun stuff.
I owe it to @ArbitraryWater and @eroticfishcake to check out a couple of this game's rivals/successors too, specifically Age of Wonders and Warlock: Master of the Arcane, so I might be writing about those at some point in the future. Thanks for sticking with this! Look out for more DOSsing around goodness to come.
