The World at War! and more Blog - 005
As long as we are together, it doesn’t matter to me.
– Marty, Madagascar
I am sure everyone can see I started this section with an inspirational quote. I did this on the previous blog section and decided to do it on this one because it feels nice. Let me explain, I read many stories that start with inspirational quotes, and so I was inspired to do the same for my Blog. Unlike those stories, my quotes will not have anything to do with the following content. I simply read a couple of quotes before starting to write. Pick out the one that feels most pleasing and use it. I hope this will inspire someone or at least make their day better. Ok, enough nonsense, let’s jump back into WORLD AT WAR.
As previously mentioned, I have extended the patrol distance for my troops and increased the number of soldiers per patrol unit. This got me lots of money ( gold coins). Well, not really lots; I got 317 gold coins. I expected quite a bit more, but I did not account for the horrid spawn rate. After an entire night’s time and a day’s work, only about 456 of my skirmishers should have spawned. I say about and not exact because there were 13 skirmishes to be generated, so some must have been killed wail patrolling. A quick check showed me that two squires were also in the process of spawning. ( BTW, squires were my original soldiers from the Castle. I kept referring to them as soldiers cause, you know, genius! ) So what this means is that the big patrol unit with 50 skirmishers never left the Castle leaving only the 2 teams with 35 soldiers ( 10 squires and 25 skirmishers ) to do any actual patrolling. That is why so little gold was acquired. The soldiers will only receive gold coins unless the Lord is around. Thus there was no material acquisition.
Enough of that; as I said before, in this section, I will let all my beautiful readers know how my first expedition into the land of fog turned out. First of all, I used my command skill on the 50 skirmisher unit. I ordered them not to leave on patrol. Then I waited for the other two patrol units to return and ordered them to stay. Two hours passed between waiting for the units to return and the dead troops to spawn, 2 hours passed, and another 17 gold coins were added to my coffers. ( I could not just order them to return through the spawn point because that order will only apply to newly spawned units) Finally, with all the troops ready, I prepared for the expedition. Apart from 50 squires and 100 skirmishers left to guard the walls, I took all other soldiers with me. We ( Me and my soldiers ) left the Castle in a giant rectangular formation. Leading the formation were 4 rows of squires with 25 squires in each row, followed by 8 rows of skirmishers also 25 soldiers per row. I placed myself smack dab in the middle of the rectangle without any soldiers by my side, effectively cutting the formation in half. The second half was a reverse image of the first, with the skirmishers first and the squires last. Once the formation was ready, we marched towards the land of fog.
In the beginning, everything went exceptionally well. We marched through the plains that stood between my fortress and the land of fog. Hardly any creatures were encountered in this area; I suppose it did pay off to send the patrol units. The few animals ( mostly critters, oversized rats, and the likes ) we encountered were taken care of relatively quickly. The skirmishers simply peppered them with javelins on sight. To my surprise, all the soldiers did not throw their javelins at first sight of something that moved. Only somewhere in-between 4 and 6 of the nearest skirmisher took action and threw their javis. ( not to my credit, I expected all 400 skirmishers to attack the first available target. I just wanted to see that sight ) Apparently, the AI had been learning from all the patrols. That knowledge was applied to all units from the same spawn point. I did not get to see the expected javelin rein, but at the same time, I was relieved that I would not have to give the troops step-by-step instructions for every little thing.
Soon after clearing the planes between my Castle and the land of fog, my small expedition army took its first casualties. The moment my troops and I stepped into the true and proper land of fog, we became disoriented. The dense fog made it difficult for my forces to adjust in conjunction with the sparse but giant trees found in the area. So tragedy struck; my first rows of squires could not react when a group of three wolves jumped out of the fog. The leading wolf rammed headfirst into my left-most squire, tackling the man down. Followed swiftly by the other two wolves, who quite simply bit down on the fallen squire and dragged him away before anyone could react. The only good thing that came from this engagement was that the first wolf, being dizzy from the impact, took a little longer to make its escape. This gave one of the skirmishers the chance to slam a javelin into the fleeing beast. ( no, folks, I did not see all this, I saw a skirmisher throw a javi followed by the whine of a wolf. Unfortunately, I was only able to get the details after logging out and watching the recording from a gods viewpoint. top to bottom and able to control the movement of the camera.) In response to this first contact, I ordered the marching troops to come to a halt. The squires were then commanded to spread out through the edges of the rectangular formation in a spear brace stance. The skirmishers were also ordered to keep their eyes on the area of the fog closest to them. In effect, this meant having a pair of eyes in every direction.
This situation of tense silence held for approximately ten minutes. At that point, wolf howls started to resound from all around us. My troops and I had become prey, and we were being hunted. First, the beasts began testing our limits; they would get close enough to be barely seen, then jump into the fog, dogging any of the javelins thrown at them. Noticing the situation, I ordered the skirmishers to hold fire until there was a physical engagement or they were told otherwise. I would have liked to keep throwing those javis, but we did not have any supply wagons or crates or anything that could help replenish supplies. Up till this point, my troops had been reusing their javelins. They would throw them, take down the target with relative ease and then pick the javis up again. Sadly in this situation, any soldier that attempted to step out of formation to pick up the javelins would become easy picking for the stalking wolves.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Luckily for us, although the wolves had shown high levels of intellect and cunning, in the end, they were but mere beasts. The moment they noticed javelins were no longer being thrown, they grew confident, started to appear more frequently, and got closer to my troops. On multiple occasions, wolves would run at full speed towers a soldier only to come to a complete stop a few feet away from the tip of a spear. The wolves had become so confident that a portion of them stopped circling my troops, instead choosing to stand and growl at us. That was when I ordered my skirmishers to throw the remaining javelins, to pack them full of wood. (should have been lead, but You use what you have)
The results were excellent; all the wolves who had chosen to stand around were killed. At the same time, those circling us also received heavy casualties. Almost all the circling wolves had received varying degrees of injuries. In conclusion, very few of the beasts managed to escape unfaced. ( there could have been no more than 80 wolves in total ) If not for our numbers advantage, this first contact with the beasts of the fog could have been disastrous. Or so I thought until I heard the monster’s roar coming from the distance. Emotions of rage, hunger, and pure bloodlust could be felt from that roar.
We felt more than saw the monster. As it approached us, it emanated a savage vibe. It came towards us with all the confidence an alfa predator should have. Unfortunately, World At War did not have a convenient identification method that could determine the species of a beast. Not that it mattered in this case, the moment I laid my eyes on that monster, I knew it was, A Dire wolf! Sadly unlike historical dire wolves, who were at best oversized regular wolves, this monster had been enhanced. The dire wolf was the size of an Amur Tiger ( Look it up, people; it’s the largest tiger out there ), but unlike tigers, this monster did not hunt alone. All of the wolves that remained alive followed behind the dire wolf, around 40 of them.
After the dire wolf came into full view, it launched itself at us. This dire wolf gave the impression of wanting to show off to its victims. It waited till we had a full and clear view of itself before attacking. ( Let me tell you, peeps, some of the monsters out there have learned and evolved to the point it has become scary. Soon, PETA will have to start a movement to protect the lives of individual monsters whose AIs have acquired the ability to think, maybe even feel .... or wait. Would that be more of a police thing? ) Anyway, at the spearhead of the charge was the dire wolf. It literally bulldozed its way through my soldiers with its massive weight of over 600 pounds. (I say spearhead because the remaining wolves followed right behind the dire wolf’s charge.) The wooden spears of my squires snapped in half, having barely penetrated the monster’s hide. At that point, I panicked. Using my command skill, I ordered the 5 nearest squires and 10 closest skirmishers to follow and protect me. Everyone else was to attack the wolves ( including the dire wolf ) to buy me time to escape. Not long after having escaped the chaos, I was able to calm down enough to notice how stupid it was for me to run like that. I had over 500 men and was being attacked by a mere 40-something creature; if I had told my man to spit at those wolves, we would have drowned them with saliva alone. ( I really felt stupid at that point ) Thus I promptly turned around and ran back toward the fight. At least I ran towards the noise of the fighting. Even though I had not run far, the fog had already blocked my vision, so nothing was visible. ( that was my second and last stupid mistake ) In my rush to get back to try and avoid needless deaths among my troops, I ran too far ahead of my guards. ( Remember the 15 ordered to protect me) The consequences of that were coming face-to-face with the dire wolf itself.
As one can expect, the moment it spotted me, the beast pounced. I was instantly taken down. I was almost immediately killed, which was to be expected, having no weapons, armor, or skills. Before dying, I noticed that no other wolf seemed to be a life, at least not that I could tell. I also had an excellent view of the dire wolf since it was mauling me. The dire wolf was heavily injured. It had lacerations all over the body and a javelin sticking out of its right eye. ( as previously mentioned running away was the stupidest thing I could’ve done, had we fought head-on, it would have been a landslide victory for us) It is a very anti-climatic way to end my first expedition, but it is what it is.
World at War does not have a wait time for a respawn when it comes to a playable character, namely me, so I respawned about 5 seconds later inside my Castle. Immediately after responding, I went to check my gold coins. No, I’m not a greedy person ( Or am I? ). I checked because the game mechanics make it so that creatures killed by his troops will only drop gold coins. Said coins are sent directly to the Castle’s coffers if the Lord is not around. Boy, was it a shock to see the amount of gold stored in those coffers! There were 1,537 coins; I have no idea how many coins I got per wolf since I was not there and can’t make up the difference between one wolf and the other. When you add the few creatures we killed before engaging the wolves. There’s no way to do the math effectively, making it impossible to guess how many wolves were killed. I also can’t tell whether the dire wolf escaped or not. I would assume it was slain from watching the recording because it was already partially surrounding before I died. The only escape route the dire wolf had was in the direction I had come from. Considering that 15 soldiers had been following me, they should have been able to finish the encirclement and killed it off.
That concludes my first expedition into the land of fog. It was exhilarating; I had quite the thrill. It might not have been a victory considering I died as soon as I stepped foot into the land of fogs proper. But I did get plenty of gold as compensation for it. I’m also sure my soldier’s AI updated quite a bit. I got a few ideas for my next expedition into the fog, but it will take a while, so let’s not jump into that jet. (my most significant gain is a newfound understanding of my soldier strengths. Maybe in the future, I won’t make so many stupid mistakes) That’s going to be all for this section, folk. Nothing much happened afterward. I waited for my troops to return, at least those still alive. If I remember correctly, less than 270 soldiers were left standing. ( as a consolation, I found out that the dire wolf had been killed, wail waiting for my soldiers to get back, I noticed a sudden increase of 148 gold coins which could only have been from the dire wolf.) I ordered the injured soldiers to heal at their spawn points.
Then repeated the exact instructions I had before the expedition, same patrols, same defenders on the wall, the same number of soldiers on standby, and then I logged off. I want to sleep off the hype and fear. World at War is a very realistic game, and being mauled by a beast is scary. Fear not, though, because this is a momentary thing, and my fears will go away by tomorrow morning, so there will be a section of the Blog tomorrow. ( PS. Thanks for reading. I might do it for fun, but I do Appreciate having readers. Remember to leave comments, and if you have questions, write a comment. I will try to answer them next time )