User:Trungle/Cataphracts Idis/Recap

I am Grand Duke Tesanl Akke of Fenpr. I spent four months repeatedly walking thousands of troops between my nation’s capitol and the border of the territory owned by out ancestral enemy, the Uuqitans. Because of this, I am considered one of the winners of this game.

My play was inconsistent, to say the least. I had moments of strategic brilliance that won the day just as often as I made a crushing miscalculation that could have been avoided had I put even slightly more thought into my actions. I have many thoughts on this game and the way that I played it.

I’d like to remark on how I decided to keep track of things in this game. For the first few months, I was rather well-organized. I crafted a map, built with the GM’s provided images and my own interpretations of his descriptions of my territory, which I used throughout the game to strategize and organize myself.

I updated this occasionally with more data as it came as well as some additional notes in the margin. But eventually, I stopped adding these additional markings except for place names. I produced a final map just for the purposes of this recap.

Early days

One of the strongest periods of my play was at the beginning of the game. My three neighbors were Lomowaza, Wischeppia, and Uuqita. My main adversary, as I was quickly told, was the savage peoples to the north who had recently united under a dictator and, assuming they were in an expansionist mood, had no other choice but to target Fenpr, their ancestral enemy.

In response to this, I decided that my first act as commander-in-chief of the Fenpri military would be to march north to oppose them. However, I decided I needed a plan to deal with all three of my neighbors. Fenpr is big, maybe a bit smaller than Wischeppia but still quite a bit more massive than every other country on the map. Lomowaza was close enough to my starting location that I considered any aggression on their part more than possible to react to. I decided that even if I were in the middle of fighting Uuqita, if I kept an ear out for news from my eastern border, I could respond to Lomowazan aggression before too much damage was done. However, I foresaw disaster if Wischeppia were to attack.

Because of the speed at which information travels in this game, I feared that an invasion by the Wischeppians could spell disaster for Fenpr. I figured it might take up to a month to respond to a threat from such a far-flung place, giving my adversary plenty of time to situate themselves in formerly Fenpr-aligned fortresses, ready to lord over me from their more defensible position. And so, despite the fact that the Wischeppians weren’t even really mentioned in my opening goals, I decided to almost immediately split Fenpri command.

And so I brought in one of my longest-standing internet friends, Stone, who was assigned to roleplay my septuagenerian mother (a relationship that was extremely strange but surprisingly enjoyable to roleplay). I commanded her to march west with one of my detachments, raise a more significant army, and post up near the Wischeppian border in case anyone turned up to attack Fenpr This decision was one of my better ones in the entire game as but a few weeks after we both set out, I received a note from my mother confirming that a large Wischeppian army was indeed amassing. I dread to think of what the game may have turned into were my mother not there to sort things out.

The first advance

My campaign against the Uuqitans, in the meantime, had already born fruit. The isthmus connecting Torvaldsen to the Uuqitan border only takes about five days to traverse, as does the path from the Uuqitan capitol to the same border. So it was that not even a week into the game, I engaged in my first battle against the Uuqitans.

This battle, taking place outside the Fenpri fortress of Hounslow, a site which would become well-acquainted with warfare, ended in a landslide victory on my side. I can’t truly claim too much credit for this. I defaulted to well-known military strategy and then got lucky on dice rolls. Hilariously, I did draft up a map describing the form my army would take, something I would never do again because it ultimately helped no one. Either way, I won enough advantage to take the commander prisoner. The captive commander, who told me their name was Umehi-Tso, suggested an alliance which I very well may have accepted with my current playstyle and knowledge of the game, but at the time felt far too risky. I still feel tremendously bad about this situation. It was a fine strategic move for me to leave them to captivity but it feels rather unsporting to remove a player so quickly with slim chance of return. It was no one’s fault but fate and yet I wish I could have found a way to let them keep playing as a commander.

The first retreat

Now that I have regaled you with an story communicating my brilliance and one where my input had very little to do with the outcome, it is time to reach to the other end and talk about an instance where I failed spectacularly. After my defeat of the Uuqitans at Hounslow, I proceeded a day’s march north to the fortress of Tutugeri, where the bulk of the defeated soldiers had regressed to. It was here that I made perhaps one of the greatest military blunders in all of human history: underestimating how hard it is to pull off a siege. It is worth mentioning that I had not foraged once before arriving to Tutugeri. I was already running low on supplies and the sparse regions surrounding the enemy fortress did little to sustain me.

After about a week, things became problematic and I really needed to do something other than try to continue the clearly abortive attempt at a siege. There was a moment where I considered pulling the trigger on an invasion but I thought I could make the enemy wear themselves down by their constant harrying. They had been sending thousands of troops to kill up to a few hundred of my soldiers every night, but the random element was starting to work in my favor as they were almost as likely to lose soldiers as I was. I decided not to do anything as I felt that they were being whittled down more than I was. But they came to that same conclusion and stopped the harrying campaign. I could have either retreated to prevent any losses or attempted to take the fortress.

Perhaps I should have done anything else; however, in my defense, there was a conflating factor. Rumors of a rebellion against the dictator surfacing in the west. This development seemed promising. The Uuqitan dictator’s rise to power was seemingly less universally acclaimed than he wanted to admit. Operating under the doctrine that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I sent a messenger to the rebellious force which I would soon learn had taken to calling themselves “West Uuqita.” And when my scouts reported a West Uuqitan army just a day away, I sent a messenger requesting that we discuss a cooperation against the loyalist forces. Unfortunately, they were having none of this and engaged my army.

As I drafted battle plans, I made one critical miscalculation that changed the face of the entire conflict. I assumed that the West Uuqitans were trying to steal the siege so that they could capture Tutugeri. Without a nuanced understanding of West Uuqita’s goals, that was the only thing that I could think they were doing. Under that assumption, I ordered my troops to peel away from the city walls to engage West Uuqita head-on. Unfortunately for me, the loyalists were actually in league with the West Uuqitans and my order to attack the approaching force let them spill out to attack my troops. It was disastrous for my army and we retreated several days to the Fenpri fortress of Ghenio, to the south of Hounslow.

The West Uuqitan commander, one Yuqiwuara the 5th, was kind enough to inform me of what had just happened. Despite West Uuqita’s hatred of the despot’s government, the two had reached an uneasy agreement as the despot had painted Fenpr as a far greater evil than East Uuqita. Through a campaign of lies, he claimed that Fenpr had thousands of prisoners of war and were allied with the Pirates (who I had never even heard about).

General Yuqiwuara, despite being well-deceived by the despot’s smooth words, was clearly still stirred by the flame of rebellion and offered to consider further collaboration with Fenpr conditional upon my promise to not harm West Uuqita. He also informed me that the loyalists were sweeping the area in search of the captured general (who I had placed in Ghenio) and advised that I relocate or kill them. I wrote back to dispute some of the incorrect claims about my acts and to establish stronger working relations with the burgeoning nation of West Uuqita but this letter could not be delivered, as would quickly become a running theme, almost to a cartoonish degree, in my relationship with Yuqiwuara.

It was directly after this that I made my second major miscalculation of the game. I made the decision to forage in the area surrounding Ghenio. I failed to account for the fact that I had already partially foraged this area a few days earlier when I had ordered a portion of my troops to retreat a day south, pick the land clean, and return to my army. I was completely unaware at this time of the scale of the map. It would have cost me nothing to actually verify that no part of the area had been foraged yet, but I failed to consider the possibility that I had foraged anywhere near my location and I was punished with my first uprising.

I don’t know how many angry peasants made up this rebellion, but I didn’t need to ask to know that I didn’t want to be there. In a bizarre scene, the West Uuqitan army was besieging Oshenya and the East Uuqitans were besieging Hounslow. I was holed up in Ghenio, and there was an amassing force of rebels whose presence no one had counted on. In a striking setpiece, there were four armies, none of whom could truly be considered to be actually aligned with any of the other three, all crammed onto a rather small isthmus. It was in this precarious situation that I made the tactical decision to run away from the consequences of my actions, foraging on the way back and later around my capitol.

Typically it would pay to be worried about a peasant insurrection angry at me for overtaxing them. But I was beginning for the first time to feel the danger of being an undersupplied army and I assumed the two other hostile forces situated on the same isthmus would be more than enough to scare them back into hiding. Escaping the situation was most likely safe, likely rather disorienting for all other parties, and gave me time and space to resupply, deal with matters at home, and observe the conflict from afar. And, as long as I did not provoke the locals at Ghenio further, I wouldn’t have to actually deal with these annoying consequences.

It is worth mentioning the goal of the Uuqitans. Both parties were searching for the lost East Uuqitan commander, taken weeks ago by my army at Hounslow. The East Uuqitans’ goal was clearly to reunite the commander with their army, while the West Uuqitans were presumably intending to secretly kill the commander themselves. After all, the collaboration between the two halves of the nation was strictly financial. It was clear that no true friendship existed.

The second advance

I spent some time resupplying and observing, expecting to hear back from the leaders of West Uuqita but never receiving any information. I didn’t know how long I would stay in Fenpr for, so I made another blunder and failed to start raising an army. I stayed at Torvaldsen for over a month and definitely could have recruited more troops, but I failed to consider doing so.

At one point the East Uuqitans unsuccessfully attempted to breach Hounslow. After this, capitalizing on the Uuqitans’ poor morale following a military defeat, I rushed to meet them in battle in an attempt to deal justice to the Uuqitans. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in both of my ensuing attempts to repel the East Uuqitan army from the fortress due to the opponent rolling double sixes twice. Sometimes, war is lopsided.

During the second attempt, however, General Yuqiwuara was set to arrive halfway through the assault. I was able to send a messenger and convince them not to intervene. They put significant trust in me especially as they had already promised aid to the East Uuqitan general (this I had learned from an intercepted message).

This ill-fated expedition returned me back to Torvaldsen to regroup (once again, foraging on the way). I was not without hope, however. In fact, there were some things happening in the rest of Fenpr that would prove capable of tipping the scales.

Side stories

It is now that I would like to discuss a number of “side stories” that had been proceeding parallel to my assault on Uuqita.

The Chert affair

The first of the side stories begins almost at the start of the game. A secret mountain pass only known to our two nations, connects Fenpr to Chert. The pass is hard to traverse and it seems that one general from Chert was concerned about things escalating there. Mere days after I set out from Torvaldsen, I was entreated to a letter from one General Phyllite Hornfel of Chert, who suggested a one-year demilitarization of the mountain pass, to which I heartily agreed. Doing continuous battle through this pass would be costly and dangerous and I was as reluctant as he was to let that happen.

At the end of August, around the time that I had retreated to Torvaldsen the first time, I received another letter from this same commander. He requested permission to traverse the pass, performing mercenary work in the north, taking loot for himself and offering me aid against my adversaries in a way that would be difficult to trace back to me.

I had a few options at this phase, were I to accept the offer. I could enlist the help of the army to attack the Uuqitans, but their stated goal was to procure loot and opportunities for such things would likely be few and far between in Uuqita. It would likely take weeks to even get to a place where the Chertan force could loot, and besides, I didn’t feel comfortable letting a foreign power come so close to my capitol. So instead, I directed them towards Lomowaza. My neighbor to the west had not made any moves against Fenpr; the closest they had come to our territory was attacking a small Uuqitan enclave on the mainland nestled between our two borders. But this force did not continue into Fenpr. Our nations’ prior cold relationship, I felt, could not be trusted to remain that way. So I invited General Hornfel to cross the pass and weaken Lomowaza in the likely case that relations soured.

The Lomowazans were not exactly happy with this. By the time that I had returned to Torvaldsen the second time, I received a message from one fortress of Calimai, close to the border with Lomowaza, that reported a force of Lomowazans gathering, seemingly to do war against us. I immediately inquired about their intentions in that quarter of the land to which they responded that no harm was meant and that they only intended to find more information about General Hornfel. I don’t know which direction General Hornfel went after stomping through Lomowaza, but it certainly was not back through Fenpr. Somehow, the Lomowazans had gotten the direction of Hornfel’s assault wrong and assumed he was in my land.

I informed them that, no, I had not heard of General Hornfel arriving in Fenpr from Lomowaza but it was here that I decided to spill a secret. To the Lomowazan force, I revealed the existence of the mountain pass. I claimed that the Chertan general had slipped through it unnoticed before I could travel to his location and apprehend him. However, for some strange reason, he left Fenpr untouched and headed straight for Lomowaza. I permitted the Lomowazans to search for Chert in my land so long as they remained peaceful, but promised that aggression would be answered in kind.

I still wonder about this choice to reveal the pass. On one hand, it was perhaps a betrayal of Chert’s trust to broadcast the knowledge of our shared secret. On the other hand, it was the only plausible explanation for Chert’s presence. If I were to obscure the truth even more, Lomowaza would suspect me of harboring them and that could certainly end poorly for my nation.

I think it worked out in the end, though. Later on, it became obvious that the Lomowazan force crossed this mountain pass after winter had set in and just barely lived to regret their decision. Survivors from their army were neatly folded into Chert’s, meaning that the nations on both sides of the pass ended up benefitting from me letting the secret slip.

The Wischeppian border non-conflict

The exact particulars of the events at the Wischeppian border still confuse me and I cannot wait to see what was actually going on there. Early in the game, my mother informed me of a large force assembling there, busy quelling a Heretic uprising but dangerous nonetheless. She began raising an army to oppose this force, but it seems that Fenpr and Wischeppia never actually came to blows. My mother informed me, around the time I had been expelled from the conflict at Hounslow, that peace had been made with Wischeppia. In exchange for about 12 miles of poorly-developed Fenpri land (which it would be difficult to say I actually exert much control over in the first place), we were offered 60,000 loot with the limitation that the newly ceded territory could only be occupied by 1,000 infantry troops from both sides. My mother agreed to this offer and started to march back to Torvaldsen. The commander that she had appointed to assist her with the Wischeppian conflict, named Divolm, stayed behind with the 1,000 troops to secure the border while my Mother returned to Torvaldsen with the remainder of the accumulated force.

We both agreed, upon her return, that this was the best deal we could have gotten out of the situation. The Wischeppians at the border outnumbered the Fenpri almost exactly 3-to-1, but they chose not to engage for some strange reason and offered up a quite reasonable agreement which neither side violated during the course of the game.

But a force of 6,000 such as the one that Wischeppia had, is one of the largest I saw during the course of this entire game. I still can only guess at the reason such a large force was assembled, then did nothing but leave peacefully.

The final assault

While I waited in Torvaldsen for my mother to arrive with the full details of the Wischeppian agreement, I was made aware of another army infringing on Fenpri territory, this time of Narithan origin, making their way through the eastern part of my territory from Lomowaza, encroaching on my capitol. When I asked their aim, they responded that they meant no harm to Fenpr and were merely looking for an obscure artifact. I did indeed know its location; it was held in the fortress of Shivan, close to the capitol. An ordinary banner belonging to a long-dead ruler and associated with Narith’s founding myth. Returning the artifact to Narith would simply a point of pride for their nation, as I would learn.

It was here that the plan to truly deal with Uuqita was finally formulated. With the combined force of my army, my mother’s army, and the Narithan army which was, as I learned, headed by one General Telefor, we would dispose of the East Uuqitan forces, join with the West Uuqitan commander, and proceed through Uuqita. We would install the rebel government in place of the despot’s loyalists, ushering in a period of long-standing peace between the Uuqitan populace, now officially under a friendly government, and the Fenpri.

This plan… kind of worked.

As we were negotiating in Torvaldsen, I was informed that Hounslow had fallen to Uuqitan rule, followed by Ghenio. Furthermore, Yuqiwuara had been secretly funneling information to me as mistrust grew between him and the East Uuqitan commander, who I found out at about this time went by the name Lt. Palvis. There were allusions to some mistreatment and potential abuse of the West Uuqitans and desperation seemed to set in as Yuqiwuara began to see my army as a beacon of hope. I learned that after taking Ghenio, Palvis intended to march to Torvaldsen, where he was convinced I was holding Umehi-Tso. In reality, I had relocated the captive commander to a fort off to the west that I never even learned the name of (though Torvaldsen was the correct direction).

The Battle of Ghenio

As we set off, we encountered Palvis marching south exactly as Yuqiwuara had suggested he was intending to. Upon seeing the combined might of our three armies, Palvis retreated, alongside his troops, to Ghenio, where Yuqiwuara already was located. Yuqiwuara’s reaction was more hopeful. He offered to join our assault if we would make promises not to hurt his army. I welcomed the possibility of more help, but did not hear back. Keep in mind that our messages back and forth had had a staggeringly low rate of actually making it to each other. Perhaps two-thirds were correctly received, but not much more. So, worried that Yuqiwuara might not believe he was welcome to contribute to our assault, I sent another copy of the message. Yuqiwuara explained that though he had seen the message, he was hesitant to write back as he was afraid that Palvis would intercept it and learn of his distrustfulness. He promised to lower the gates and let us into the city if we confirmed our commitment to not harming any West Uuqitans.

I debated for hours on whether or not I should respond. Yuqiwuara’s concern about interception was certainly a valid one; however, he had also said that without my explicit confirmation he would not know whether to betray East Uuqita. In the end, I decided to respond, but I made it short and vague to obscure what we intended to do. With that, I gave the order to invade Ghenio on behalf of all three armies.

I don’t know what tipped Palvis off to our plan but he was prepared to contest Yuqiwuara’s opening of the gates. By a small margin, only won due to the West Uuqitan force’s higher morale, the drawbridges were lowered and the slaughter of the East Uuqitans began. The battle was a decisive victory for our coalition. There was almost no chance of failure for the allied forces once the gate was open (although the odds would have been much fairer

All would have gone well except when Yuqiwuara was carried away from the city in an East Uuqitan covert operation. If Yuqiwuara was not killed, we were not able to find him in the ensuing days. The West Uuqitan army disbanded anyway after rumors spread of their commander’s death.

I have to wonder how long Palvis was aware of our cooperation. Was it my final message, the one that I made intentionally vague and only said that we agreed to the West Uuqitans’ terms? If so, did Palvis accurately predict our plan basically to the letter and preemptively order the abduction of Yuqiwuara all based on the fact that I had agreed to some terms that Yuqiwuara had set forth? Incredible tactical knowledge, if so.

Or was Palvis aware of our cooperation before that final letter that I sent? After all, many communications were lost; it is more than possible that Palvis had intercepted an earlier letter and had seen the information that Yuqiwuara was funneling to the coalition. But, if Palvis knew that Yuqiwuara was working with our alliance, why wouldn’t he have attacked the West Uuqitan forces on his own before we arrived? Why wait until their interference could (and did) spell doom for his own army?

This is as much theorizing as I care to write down. A fractal of causes and effects has been unfolding in my head since that day in Ghenio but it would not actually be too interesting to go through them all. I will know the definite answer soon enough anyway.

The disappearance of Yuqiwuara was distressing for another reason: I now had no information on the military structures in Uuqita and no one to place on the throne once the despot was deposed. My hope was to appear to the Uuqitan people not as a dangerous general asserting myself in foreign lands but as a liberator, come to free them from a corrupt regime. After all, it is not like the despot’s rule was all that popular. That West Uuqita exists should be proof of that. But without Yuqiwuara, my options were dwindling.

I eventually decided the best course of action would be to go straight to Reihulo, depose the despot, and allow the power vacuum to sort itself out. Frankly, at this point, discussions were indicating that the game was likely to end soon. While I would have loved to craft an enduring peace to keep our nations content for generations, the gameplay effect of doing so would be basically indistinguishable from simply upsetting the power structure and leaving as soon as I could, which would be significantly easier than finding another candidate or proclaiming myself leader.

Supply chain issues

I went to great lengths here to attempt to describe the isthmus in this story. I have also mentioned all the many times I foraged in this area. If you put this together, you may be realizing by now that this isthmus is, by this point, entirely picked through. Every army who had spent substantial time on this isthmus was critically undersupplied and had been a contributor in the of conjuring of a resource desert separating Fenpr from Uuqita by five or so days of travel during which stops to resupply would be extremely dangerous (and not even that fruitful, frankly, given that the territory is sparse in the first place). In short, it was a terrible place for thousands of troops to spend four months walking up and down.

A few days before setting out from Torvaldsen, Telefor had requested an opportunity to forage for food and come back. I granted this, and even pointed the Narithans to a patch of unforaged ground. On the first day Telefor was out, I thought “perhaps I should do this as well,” and then promptly forgot. On the second day, I had the same thought. When Telefor eventually came back, I had not foraged at all. This came to a head on the day that we were set to invade Ghenio, when I was informed I could not feed my army.

This was easily the least defensible decision I made in the course of the entire game. I still kind of have nightmares about it. I guess I always assumed I would just “get around” to actually giving the order but of course that is flawed logic if you don’t do it at some point.

But there was no use dwelling on the past if I was in danger of losing all of my soldiers to hunger. I insisted that the coalition make our play as soon as possible so that I could get somewhere and find food. There was some chance of finding a few scraps in the ransacked city but I found it unlikely given the conditions. I decided my best choice would be to forage around the city of Hjaltein, which had already been taxed, but only once. It was also not directly on the isthmus but a couple days’ travel away.

I made a decision to keep this excursion a secret from Telefor. At the time, there was not a great deal of trust between us and I was afraid that showing my embarassing lack of preparation would dissuade him from continuing our partnership which I did not want to risk. So I explained it away as an expedition to search for General Yuqiwuara. This was made quite awkward when Telefor made the decision to follow me after I made the baffling decision to tread through poor roads to a remote city. When Telefor caught up to me in the middle of some scrubland, I spoke only in vagueries about what I was doing in Hjaltein. My thinking was that, should Telefor betray me, I may have planted a seed that something important – maybe even the captured general – was stored there. Should an attacker follow this lead, they could be easily surrounded and killed.

I think that my lie ended up not mattering much. As you will see, Telefor did not betray me and even himself gave an order to forage that patch of Scrubland, which turned out to be rather fruitful. We also eventually had to start sharing resources including supplies. In the end, this lie may have just sown confusion and halted us for a bit longer. Still, I’m not convinced that it was exclusively a bad idea. I actually think that I looked marginally better for having marched off in search of some undisclosed resource than I would have looked if I admitted to not foraging at all in the time that I had been allotted for specifically that purpose. However, any competency that I may have seemed to display would have been offset by something even more embarassing.

The Ghensurrection

Remember how I said that things would be fine for me if I could just manage to not provoke the Ghenians again? Both I and my mother reined our soldiers in after taking the city so as not to provoke the locals further. Telefor, on the other hand, thought nothing of it and let his soldiers loot. This was something I absolutely should have discussed beforehand but honestly it just slipped my mind. The locals of Ghenio, who has been foraged twice by my own soldiers (which we had run away from) and at least one more time by my enemies, became very violent over the looting. Nine thousand soldiers gathered outside Ghenio. And in the face of this? I, the commander with the largest force of us three, ran away to a remote village, leaving Telefor to deal with all of the rebels by himself.

Once again, I implore you to remember that I absolutely needed to procure supplies. No waiting could be tolerated. If I had waited any longer I would have been risking an uprising of my own troops. So despite the abysmal optics I left to pursue other goals.

Fortunately, Telefor was able to placate the peasants with some bribes and some words and no Narithan blood was spilt. I was embarassed about the whole ordeal but had no other choice once I had dug myself this far into my own grave. Either way, it seemed to work out fine.

The push to Uuqita

After quickly taking back Hounslow, we began our march to Reihulo. The details of this march are less interesting moment-to-moment than most other parts of my story. The Uuqitan winter was harsh and we walked at a reduuced pace. We at one point became trapped between two forts, each of which would send harriers every night. Telefor concocted a fascinating plan to deceive the harriers and attempt to kill them, which I simply signed off. Telefor’s playstyle, as I would learn, was quite different from mine. I felt foolish many times when I saw the way he played. I had never considered suggesting my army do something to the harriers. I hhve to wonder the ways that other people got creative with the rules while I boringly kept my mind firmly inside the box.

I am not the one who has the right to brag about the specifics of this plan. It would have been successful regardless of my involvement. I am simply grateful for the lessions I learned from it.

During this march, I also received a message from the Uuqitan dictator, Urtu, who had heard of my recapture of both Ghenio and Hounslow. In this message, Urtu essentially admitted defeat, but also warned me of some potential treachery on the part of Narith. He claimed that a Narithan force had arrived by sea to Reihulo, despoiled the capitol, taken him prisoner, and demanded to know the location of Shivan. As promptly as they had come, they left, seemingly to besiege Shivan. and offered to rule Uuqita as a Fenpri protectorate under my authority, conditional upon me removing the Narithan forces from my retinue and signing a deal with him.

If this message was to be believed, did that mean that Telefor’s alliance with me was just meant to draw me away from Shivan? If so, was I playing into Narith’s hand?

If it was fake, how did Commander Urtu know about Shivan? If it was real, why didn’t Telefor do anything to block my mother from going back to Torvaldsen to collect a recently-raised army during the time this operation was presumably meant to be carried out? The Narithans’ plan in this story is also weirdly convoluted. Surely it is more economical to march their force into Shivan unimpeded after helping me capture some cities than to sail, at great expense, an even larger force around the entire continent? They would risk all the lives of the army that was traveling with me as well as those of the larger naval force and a sizeable fortune in loot. In the first scenario, the only risk was that they might lose some of their men traveling with Telefor. Not to mention what I might do to the contingent traveling with me when I learned of their treachery. Isn’t having a nation’s gratitude much more useful than having its ire?

In the end I decided not to trust a word of it. There were too many inaccuracies. My initial theory was that Urtu had heard the name “Shivan and thought he could trick me into self-sabotaging out of fear of the Narithans. I decided not to show the letter to Telefor as we would receive confirmation in just a few short days. Days during which I received even more confirmation that Telefor had no intention of stalling us in Uuqita. He imparted portions of his supplies to me when he could have simply denied to do so, letting me starve long enough to convincingly overpower my larger force. So much wasn’t adding up, however.

When Reihulo rose over the horizon, however, we were confronted with the horrifying truth, confirmed by our own eyewitness accounts, that Reihulo had indeed been attacked. I considered that perhaps the city had been attacked but by a different force. Maybe the Pirate faction who I had heard were encamped in the bay or the Lomowazans. Maybe West Uuqitans, althought there was scant proof that West Uuqita existed as an organization at that point.

However, further evidence was found that Urtu was telling the truth: the locals were abuzz with rumors that the attackers were indeed Narithan. Cautiously this time, I posited that this could be a rumor started by the dictator himself. I wouldn’t put it past him to pin an attack like this, were the perpetrator’s alignment was not known on the party that I traveled with just to make me doubt myself.

Apparently, however, I didn’t need to hypothesize so much. Telefor, upon hearing the news, claimed innocence but offered up a different possibility: that the other force of Narithans, behind even his back, had gotten impatient, assumed Telefor had died or abandoned them, and gone after the artifact themselves. I had been thinking in absolutes, assuming that if Narith had attacked, that meant that Telefor was in Fenpr to distract me; but this proved not to be the case. We jointly signed letters addressed to the various leaders located at Shivan, imploring them to come to a peace.

As we waited for those responses, we basically just walked into the already badly-beaten city, captured the dictator, and, after he refused to offer up any information, executed him. Then, it was time to return to Torvaldsen. We considered leaving by boat but assumed that the walk back would not take too long.

The return journey was plagued by familiar problems, primarily food insecurity. We weathered these conditions, but not without losing a wizard and a detachment due to the poor conditions.

We also heard back from Shivan. The confused mayor explained that no force had ever arrived at Shivan, perplexing us further. Where had the Narithans actually gone? As it turned out, the Narithans had simply lost their way and gone to the wrong fortress. They were at Calimai, to the east, as we were informed by the frantic commander at Calimai, understandibly worried about the large force now gathering outside the walls.

It was at this point that Telefor sent a letter which I also signed, commanding the other army to cease their hostility and meet us to talk things out.

The final scene of my adventure was at the remote fishing village of Bayside, where all of our armies met to discuss. We made peace and returned the banner to the Narithans, which they would take home not only as a symbol of their authority to govern but also as a reminder of their wholehearted cooperation with Fenpr, an alliance which its founders hoped would last generations.

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing Cataphracts: Idis. Inconsistent although my play was, I learned a lot that I want to share. I decided to subdivide my conclusions into a few sections: gameplay notes, advice about actually playing the game; strategic notes, advice for setting yourself up for success; and fun notes, ideas for how to enjoy your time playing Cataphract.

Gameplay notes

The first thing I learned about this game is that results will often be lopsided. My first battle was an overwhelming victory that knocked out a commander within the first week of the game. Later, I was beaten back twice even though I held several notable advantages due to the other commander’s exceptionally good luck on the dice rolls.

I think the best advice I have for this game is what I learned from my first brush with food insecurity: give the orders when you think about them. You may miss your window to act, and it truly only takes a few minutes to put in the order. It doesn’t matter if the GM isn’t on or if you’re planning to put orders in later in the day.

There were several mechanics that I was not able to interact with basically at all. I started off without loot and almost never acquired any. I spent the vast majority of my time playing in my own territory – the one place on the map that I absolutely do not want to loot in. Any mechanics involving loot including operations and naval transportation, were off-limits to me. Wischeppia offered 60,000 loot as part of our agreement. I don’t know where they got that money and, come to think of it, I don’t think I got any of it. Finally, close to the end of the game, I got some loot from Reihulo, but I had to sacrifice it to a mob of peasants when I was forced to forage in an already-foraged area because my morale could not suffer going any lower.

I also had very limited interactions with magic. I never came across a wizard’s tower so I was never able to recruit one for myself. My mother did transfer me two wizard detachments at one point, but I was not informed that one was not preparing any spells. I cashed in one Nature’s Bounty and sent one Wizard’s Whisper.

Strategic notes

This game is much heavier in the resource management side of things than I first expected. When I first started playing, I didn’t have a clear vision of how all the mechanics of the game would work together and so I neglected to forage at all for the first few weeks, all the way until I tried to do a siege.

Having a large army can turn you into a nearly unstoppable force but it is also absolutely miserable to try to supply. You will have to halt constantly to forage. I only moved as fast as I did because I consistently neglected to procure enough supplies to feed my army.

Be mindful of overconsuming a specific area. I don’t think my victory over the Uuqitans can be entirely credited to me. Lt Palvis keeping his large army in the exact same spot on a narrow neck of land which was sparsely populated in the first place led to his troops becoming demoralized. This allowed my coalition to essentially burst in and crush the soldiers’ will. For this reason, I think it is fair to say I owe quite a bit of my victory to Palvis himself.

I think we can learn something else from Palvis’ example and that is the danger of obsession. Someone, be it Palvis or another member of the Uuqitan military hierarchy, was so focused on reclaiming Umehi-Tso, the captured general. Because of this, they spent far too long besieging Hounslow and then Ghenio. This obsession proved fatal for the militaries of both Uuqitan nations.

Fun notes

The most fun I had in this game was when I was riding alongside other commanders. Seek out an ally and I guarantee you will both learn a lot from each other. Get into the roleplay of it. My dynamic with Stone, as I said, was a bit weird but it was better when I was fully invested. Finally, don’t stress too much about perfect strategy. Battles are won in large part due to luck. It’s best to accept that you’ll lose some battles.