Typically, a city popped approximately 50-75 shmuckers worth of unit upkeep per turn. Eight pikers was 64, six stabbers was 60, 4 or 5 turns for a 300 upkeep dwagon, one 50 upkeep knight, etcetera. Her 80 upkeep recon knights popping at 1 per turn was considered quite good, production-wise. The biggest exceptions were commanders, which popped in four turns despite having 100 upkeep, although it wasn’t unusual for them to be higher if they had certain specials, and heirs, which popped in 40-120 turns.
Archons had 200 upkeep, and most sides that can pop them need four or even five turns to do so. She knows for a fact that Charlie somehow manages to pop one per turn, she assumes some kind of linkup shenanigans if not a bonus from the Arkendish. She only needs three, which… means something. Was it because of the Arkenshoes?
After some thought, she figured that she should… probably keep going with the Tricksy popping/training plan. The only things every archon had innately was thinkamancy and shockamancy, and they were pretty limited in those, too. They could only attack with their shockamancy, and they only had the ‘thinkamancy’ special instead of an advanced scout special with the Arkendish. Mind you, If led by an appropriate caster, they could lend their juice to augment that caster’s spells, taking half of the juice costs from their own stores.
Granted, the random specials they got every level could upgrade their shockamancy proficiency, gaining broader expertise, and their dollamancy/foolamancy options were less limited, albeit gated by the unlock.
Theoretically, an archon with foolamancy and leadership could lead a stack of tricksies, using the archon’s superior intellect to guide their juice into larger, coordinated effects, her very own Ghost Army. Now that sounded like a plan. But she’d still need a solid core of Tricksies to make it work.
Plan affirmed with this new information, Tanya went to where the new Digger corps were training and started drilling them in anti-gun fortifications. She’s got an important day tomorrow.
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Naturally, the popping of a royal heir was a momentous occasion. Literal armies could be popped with the same number of turns an heir can be, and she could have popped three heirs in the production time allocated to this.
Tanya knew she was just uncomfortable with the idea of being a mother, so had just wanted to put it off as long as possible. Unfortunately, leaving Elya unattended meant that the time was now.
It had been intensely uncomfortable to sleep, she felt ill as she tried to avoid thinking about the implications, and may or may not have felt some psychosomatic symptoms that were unsettlingly similar to some of the things she recalled seeing complaints about on television when they needed to establish that a character was pregnant.
But it was time. While the rulers of the component sides of her empire had arrived to welcome her back, it was this event that everyone was waiting on.
“The turn’s begun.” Elya announced.
Pop.
In front of everyone, a small girl appeared. She was short even by Erf standards; by Earth standards she looked about eight years old. Even taking local standards into account, she looked twelve at the oldest; she would fit in well with Riley, Saltina, and the rest of their little club. She had pink hair in a pair of buns, although she mixed it up and had some hair to the sides in some short pigtails as well, fluffed up with enough volume to resemble tufts of cotton candy. She was dressed in what is very blatantly a Japanese schoolgirl uniform, and had a pistol in her hand.
[Princess Chibi-tan von Degurechaff, Level 1 Warlady]
Attack: 23
Defense: 14
Hits: 11
Move: 8
Specials: Royal, Knight, Archery, Leadership, Dance-fighting, Archon Transformation
Conditions: Proxy
That better be one heck of a special, given that it literally added an Archon’s normal upkeep to her own. But seriously? A unit with natural firearms proficiency? And her individual variance is currently set to +20%, so 360 upkeep is not cheap for a level 1 warlady. It is interesting that she popped with +2 armor, though. Also, what the heck does Proxy do? Analysis is drawing a blank… and it vanished from her board. Hopefully that’s not going to bite Tanya in the keister later.
“Popping in a flash to a royal ball…” Chibi-tan began, speaking dramatically. “The pretty warlord for Love and Justice has arrived! Princess Chibi-tan, the Small Lady, reporting for duty!”
…She really should have seen this coming. “Welcome into the world, my daughter.” Tanya began, not really sure what to say but acknowledging her as heir sounded like a good start.
What little composure Chibi-tan possessed broke at that, and she launched herself at Tanya for a hug. “Hi Mom!” She shouted, squeezing Tanya’s torso with all of her strength. Tanya embraced her back, letting the smaller girl have a seat in her lap. A few of the audience snickered, but some foolamancy to secretly convey her displeasure to those people shut them up.
After a moment of luxuriating in the contact, Chibi-tan looked excited. “My special’s super-cool, want to see?”
“I would love to see your special.” Tanya replied, flashing an indulgent smile.
Chibi-tan hopped off of Tanya’s lap and the throne, and struck a magical girl pose. “Moon Archon Magic: Make up!” She shouted, and proceeded to have a flashy transformation sequence.
Once finished, she was… pretty much exactly the same, but instead of a Japanese schoolgirl dress, she was wearing a pink, white, and gold magical girl dress with way too short of a skirt in Tanya’s opinion.
Her stats, on the other hand…
[Princess Chibi-tan von Degurechaff, level 1 Royal Archon]
Attack: 22
Defense: 14
Hits: 8
Move: 58
Specials: Royal, Flight, Archery, Leadership, Dance-fighting, Shockamancy, Relay
Conditions: Transformed
Was intriguing. An archon has a list of specials they got random choices from, plus Relay, which is really just an advanced scout special like Recon or Ranger, only instead of adding Lookamancy or Foolamancy to the innate thinkamancy of Scout, it just doubles down on Thinkamancy, allowing them to clearly communicate to any commander within their scouting range, not just send scouting data. Charlie’s Archons just used the Arkendish to stretch that a bit further.
Anyway, the random list was Shockamancy, Foolamancy, Dollamancy, Dance-fighting, and Leadership. Notably, the level 1 Archon special isn’t rolled randomly; it’s always Shockamancy. It looked like Chibi retained her Warlord leadership and dance-fighting, which probably meant that she’ll pick up only the casting disciplines. Neat.
Wait a minute, does this mean that popping knights with her pattern would automatically be riflemen (musketeers? Or maybe something that reflects the pistol and dance parts?) or archons? Or both? She immediately set the capital’s production to pop knights for Chibi-tan.
Oh, she should say something. “I’m very impressed.” She says to start. “Truly there has never been an Archon with greater potential ever popped, not even the thousands of Charlsecomm Archons could hope to match you.” Once she’s leveled up some. She snapped her fingers to assign an honor guard, a reinforced stack of some of her best knights to be Chibi-tan’s personal protectors. She had already readied them for this exact purpose.
With a quick test, it was confirmed that Chibi-tan couldn’t exploit the same caster slot in the command auxiliary of a stack, so… Tanya slotted into it herself. “White, take a stack and escort us. I’m going to spend the day with my daughter, showing her the ropes.”
“I must insist on at least one more, your Majesty.” White insisted.
“I’ll come with!” Visha volunteered, her own honor guard all saluting as well. “Kurig, with me!”
Nero huffed. “I shall contribute a guard of my own to this sojourn! Newsman!” She snapped her fingers. “Go with them.” Tanya didn’t even need the Arkendish to tell that she added ‘and report back with any juicy gossip’ as an addendum to those orders.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“I accept your generous offers.” Tanya said politely, “But let’s leave it at that, shall we?” She was actually a little stoked, these were the same warlords that she first popped and promoted, really, they were more her sons than Chibi-tan was her daughter, as odd as it was to say.
Tanya had been generous in using her date-a-mancy to bolster the elite stacks of knights, so each of the stacks were the full sixteen that she no longer needed a link from Maggie to accomplish. One of the tasks on her docket was to bind together a few more reinforced stacks, as they were really quite effective.
So with that, the five stacks, eighty-five units with a total upkeep in the realm of twenty thousand shmuckers per turn, a strike force that could destroy entire sides with the force multipliers of guns and Tanya’s own spellcasting… flew off to have some fun.
She didn’t think she’d end up invading anyone, but the turn was young…
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Sailor Moon reference or not, Tanya found that Chibi-tan was just an adorable little girl that absorbed her lessons like a sponge.
Typically, a side patrolled their territory with scouts, who paid for their upkeep and even turned a profit in both rations and experience by hunting ferals who pop in the territories and, if practical, foraging in the hexes outside the territory of their cities.
Her Empire was still building up defenses and optimizing their economy (as it turns out, the ratio of capital sites to regular city sites was not a neat and tidy 1 to 8, it was closer to 1 to 14 or 15, so it wasn’t quite so simple as just taking all sites and upgrading them to 5), and as such there were still large swathes of untamed territory to accrue additional wealth from. Further, diminishing shmuckers increased the amount of available forage, which allowed one with a good foraging system to reclaim some of the lost revenue.
In particular, there were special farm hexes that needed to be defended and managed like mines did, growing chickens and pigs and cows and what have you. By owning such hexes, additional rations were sent to the cities of your side in the form of meat, dairy, and poultry. Linguistically, there wasn’t really anything distinguishing these farm hexes from the other kind, which was just something that happened to certain kinds of hexes (mostly grassland, but other types as well) that were within the territory of a city or one of those other farm hexes, and represented the ration income that city accrued, and could thus be pillaged as a siege tactic.
So Tanya mentally referred to those as ‘field hexes’ as they were fields of crops or grazing lands, and only called the defensible farming hexes as farms. Nevertheless, they represented other waypoints for the systems of tunnels that Sizemore was creating (well, repairing and expanding) and their new digger corps were maintaining, and some of the new turnamancy-enhanced minecarts ferried a few infantry scout stacks equipped with backpack accessories that foraged in the unworked hexes, padding the budget even more.
Of course, before they could do that, the Recon Knight patrols had to clear the area of any dangerous ferals and enemy units. Both the results from these hunts and the forage teams then moved their bounties to those waypoints, and the resulting food was shipped to wherever it was needed.
“Wow, that’s super smart!” Chibi-tan said after Tanya explained the system, which constituted the majority of the side’s attention during peacetime. “How much does it all earn?”
“Well, our city’s garrisons are mostly full now, so our side’s hungry enough that we consume it all, the extra rations from these tactics adds another eighty thousand shmuckers a turn per side. Approximately.” This was after the upkeep of the units that only live as part of this system, mind you. Seeing as how fifteen level 5 cities, as that was mathematically optimal even if it had negative effects on security density, produced around thrice that amount… “It’s a sizable increase when your side has diminishing shmucker penalties, and the secondary benefits of good scouting and a steady flow of experience points to the knights assigned as hunters are excellent consolation prizes.” Ferals weren’t great sources of experience, but they could get a knight to level three or four easily enough before the gains fell off a cliff. There were experience penalties for repeating the same task over and over.
“I wanna fight a Yoma!” Chibi-tan announced.
“We’re almost there.” Tanya said patiently. They had scouted out a tribe of them and were headed there. “Also, they’re called Yomama..”
Yomamas were natural allies, an all-female tribe of… demons? Tanya wasn’t quite clear how to describe them. They were generally very fancily dressed, with their life drain special they heavily resembled a less human version of Transylvito’s Skanks. They had a special called Incite, a mental shockamancy effect that allowed them to manipulate an enemy’s actions in battle.
This wasn’t particularly useful when they fought alone, but they were a nuisance that, like all natural ally tribes, introduced a potential enemy that Charlie could wield against them, so they had to go. Diplomatic overtures via thinkamancy had… not gone well, Chief Beryl refused to stop insulting Maggie, who handled the diplomacy on her own.
So, they had to croak. Belligerence demoted them to belligerent. “Okay, so, you’ve been receiving the scouting data,” At her orders, “So tell me what we’re up against.”
Chibi-tan’s face scrunched up cutely as she ran through the data she was receiving. “The Yoma number… one hundred and twenty. Fifteen stacks, spread out over three hexes. About one fifth of them are knights, three stacks and some extra.” Tanya waited patiently. “...Mathamancer, what are their levels?” She asked, proud of herself for remembering what Tanya said earlier: she was acting as a caster, not a warlord. Even if her Leadership bonus was what her stack was using.
“Chief Beryl has weighted their strength with herself, with her highest level knights acting as pseudo-command units, even if they’re incompetent at the role. Our spying has determined that the hex leader of the other two hexes are the only knights in those hexes, named… Jadeite and Nephrite.” Tanya smirked as the signamancy joke finally clicked in her head. “While there are still plenty of their non-promoted variety in the main hex, everything beyond those two who are knights are with the Chief.” After a beat, she prodded her daughter some more. “Now, what of this information I provided you is useful?”
“Hmm…” Chibi-tan couldn’t immediately provide an answer, which was fair: it was a trick question. “...None of it, we overpower them so much that it doesn’t matter what their levels are.”
“Precisely, but while it is important to understand when you’re wasting your time on things that don’t matter,” Tanya gestured to the gathered units, who were stacked up and ready to fight. “-something critical to know when you’re a Chief Warlord or a Ruler, you must also understand how to gather and sort through the information you do have access to so that when you face a dangerous enemy, you know what to do.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Chibi-tan said, “Now, can we croak the Yoma now?”
“At your command, Princess.” Tanya said faux-deferentially.
In hindsight, she probably should have imparted a lesson about respecting one’s enemy and keeping one’s cool, but Beryl really shouldn’t have said that about her mother.
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At level two, wonderfully, Chibi-tan got the foolamancy special in archon form, which meant that she could join in on the Tricksy training turn. More importantly, it gave Tanya an idea on how to have a little more fun in doing so.
Specifically, playing a completely different strategy game with foolamancy units against Chibi-tan, tapping Klein to keep her juice going as she coordinated her half of the tricksies to keep the illusions going.
“Use the hammer against the armored units!” Chibi-tan ordered, before gesturing at another set of units. “Mage girl, hit the cavalry!”
Tanya could remain silent as she issued orders to all twelve of her hero units, adjusting formations and pitting strength to Chibi-tan’s weakness. She still issued some out loud to make things easier, however. “Hector, advance proudly but hold a sword and use an elixir. Fiora, the Lord is open, dive!”
“Roy!” Chibi shouted in pain as her “ruler” unit was killed by the flying unit and she thus lost the contest. This was the fifth match, and she had adapted reasonably well to the foreign ruleset, Tanya was just better. She even rebalanced the units for her… The original set of units gave her much more flexibility, and Tanya gave her a handicap of extra units… Ah well.
Still, the turn ended, and that meant that the music ended, Elya’s spell ended, and the rhyme-o-mancy that stretched their foolamancy juice just a bit more than it would otherwise allow for ran out, making every single illusion vanish. Closing her eyes, Tanya went through the list of units. As she had hoped, not a single tricksy remained level 1. About half were level 3, although none were level 4. More importantly, Chibi-tan leveled to three as well, and got… Dollamancy. Not what she was hoping for, but it did mean she had access to all three archon disciplines, which was potentially useful. She just wasn’t very good at any of them.
“I want to go again!” Chibi-tan whined.
“Calm down.” Tanya said, smiling indulgently. So cute, even when she’s being a brat. “We’ll play again tomorrow.” She turned to Chibi-tan’s new retainer, who was unable to participate in the foolamancy-focused training. “Bunny, make sure Chibi doesn’t get into trouble.” Translation: call her if Chibi-tan gets into trouble. “I have some meetings to attend in the Magic Kingdom, then I need to go back home.”
“Okie-Dokie!” Bunny said loudly, saluting sloppily. She was an archon, looking exactly like Sailor Moon. Tanya found herself disappointed that she couldn’t pop knights who already had rifle proficiency, thus allowing for non-carnymancy usage of the powerful weapons, but figuring out how Charlie managed to get 1-turn archons was a decent enough consolation prize: He must use carnymancy to make his own personal knight an archon, because that’s what Chibi-tan has. They refrained from popping more than a non-reinforced stack for Chibi-tan to lead, as they were, bluntly, too expensive to field in large numbers. Tanya was completely unsurprised to find the full cast of Sailor Moon as that stack, even if the names were off and Tanya wasn’t entirely sure on some of them: Bunny, Amy, Reina, Lita, Vee, Amara, Michelle, and Puu. Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be nine?
“Are you gonna come back?” Chibi-tan asked, tears in her eyes. Tanya wasn’t fooled, though: her daughter had proven to be a rather manipulative little minx.
“Eventually.” Tanya said, giving her daughter a hug. “But I’m going to delegate most of the ruler stuff to you when I’m gone, and Maggie will help you out. If I set things up right with the other universe, we’ll have more income than anyone else in the world, even Charlie. Just be careful with the treasury.” Given that they drained all the mines so they didn’t need to seriously defend them, it was a truly immense sum, but it still didn’t beat Charlie’s treasury, so it clearly wasn’t enough.
“You will?” Chibi-tan asked, excited. “I’ll make you proud, Mom!”
“I know you will.” Tanya replied, patting the smaller girl on the head.
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On her return to Tokyo, Tanya was much better prepared. She arrived in her room, for one, exactly where she left, so that explained a bit.
First thing’s first: “I’m home!” She announced, before pulling out her phone and entering the living room. “Want to see pictures of your actual granddaughter?” She asked.
Mother practically teleported to the couch next to Tanya. It did take a while to get Mother to actually understand what she was seeing, but eventually she was excited to see all of the pictures Tanya had taken of Erf, how weird it really was.
Eventually, she sent off an e-mail to Hiraga that she had returned, and to schedule a meeting with whichever parts of the government were interested in magic items; part of the agreement that got her Japanese citizenship and recognition of her previous academic records was that she gave them preferential treatment. She also scheduled a stream start.
Once she returned to her room, she noted that her new hat was trembling, so she activated it. “Silver Milennium.” She spent quite a bit of time making items with the Great Minds that could more consistently breach the dimensional barrier; this wasn’t something they particularly liked, but the Great Minds did have the best interests of the Magic Kingdom as a whole right below their nebulous safeguarding of all magic on their priority list, so more customers for the Magic Kingdom was not something they’d dismiss out of hand.
A letter came out, more of a test than anything else. In addition, one of her wands that she had left behind to be transported, as well as a carnied pistol and the test accessories of a one-use barrier and one that should be a once per turn one. She took the letter and wrote on the backside with her wand. “All items received, same turn as departure, sending back test item, it should be 10,000 shmuckers worth of gold.” She tapped the specially made hat. “Crystal Tokyo.” The items vanished.
Shortly after sending them, the treasury increased by ten thousand, as expected. Fantastic. “Now that everything important has been done…” Tanya said to herself. “Time to game!”
She had some shooters to play, and she started the stream. “Hello everyone! It’s Empress Mahou-chan, and I’m back from the other world! I’d be happy to regale you of my tales of meetings, parties, drilling, and a bit of hunting, but for now? I’m thinking of playing Edgy McShotgun today. I’m out of juice, spent it all before I left, so no magic demonstrations.” This was a slight lie; she did actually have a single caster level left for her own convenience, but all of her wands were empty. “Matchmaker, match me a team!”
Was her streaming persona a little silly? Yeah, but she was supposed to be a magical girl from another world, so being eccentric and moe was just to be expected. Besides, it was surprisingly freeing to say whatever odd thing came to mind, giving the characters in the shooter unflattering nicknames and issuing exceptionally creative threats to people who annoyed her.
Besides, it was difficult to resist the lure of the stage when you could see the heartstrings of your audience grow in both number and strength.