Autumn Equinox
The equinoxes allow powerful, empire affecting magic to be cast. They are the one time that magic gets involved in the strategic game. Each empire that has a banner of at least 500 points in its capital gets to cast one spell — you don't get to choose, you have to roll and get one reroll if you do not like the first one. You also have to roll to cast — it gets harder to cast a spell the further away the target is.
White Fang Tribe: Initially they roll Prosper, which rebuilds a razed settlement. That would be useful for the ruined city that they found — but they go for a reroll, hoping to get something better. They get Break Siege, which is not very useful, and try to cast it against one of the unoccupied Duergar fortresses, but fail to cast the spell.
Hammerhead Clan: Initially they also roll Prosper, which is no use to them at all as they own no razed settlements. So they reroll and get Shrouding Mists, which they use to get their banner number 2 home safely — it was stuck on the wrong side of the river and would have had to make a winter retreat otherwise.
Winter Quarters
Every army is recalled to its home realm. If any army does not have an unobstructed path back, it has to make a roll to see if everyone makes it back — but only duergar banner 2 was blocked, and magic just fixed that.
Winter Events
Storm Lords: Plague. Plague strikes one of the villages where an army is stationed for the winter. Banner 4 is lost — ~1000 points of troops gone.
White Fang Clan: Special Tribute. D6 extra revenue: the orcs collect +2 gold in taxes this year.
Hammerhead Clan: Peasant Revolt. Revenue reduced by D6; -1 revenue this year.
Sulatar: Raids. Every border settlement has to roll a D6, and on a 4+ the settlement is too affected by border raids to provide taxes this year. The Sulatar have a lot bordering the Storm Lords; the result is -4 revenue this year.
Diplomacy
Normally, this would be the official moment for players to negotiate and decide alliances for the year ahead. Since this is a solo game, I rolled some dice instead. I will do a separate post at some point about rule additions that I am using — I am still working out how to handle some of the stuff in the game that either does not work well solo, or does not work well with wargaming the battles. For now, suffice to say that I banned any empires allying if they would in total have more than half of the armies and more than half of the revenue — it would be entirely legit in an ME game with players to gang up and crush if you wanted, but pointless for what I am doing.
The dice decreed that the White Fang and Storm Lords should ally. This should be interesting — they have slightly more than half of the revenue, but definitely less than half of the armies, and they should still have less than half after spending their revenue. I think the Storm Lords are going to have to help out the White Fang — if they just leave them to face the dwarves alone, the orcs are going to be gone fast.
The second part of diplomacy is trying to gain favour with independents. An empire can spend one gold for a chance to convert an independent into a part of their empire. Usually this is only worthwhile for fortresses and cities. The independent city on the west coast would normally be a tempting target, but the orcs would have trouble defending it so I think they are better off leaving it independent for now.
Construction, Recovery, Recruitment, Baggage
1 gold spent = 100 points of armies.
Storm Lords: They spend 17 gold on troops, 6 on baggage — they need a decent amount of baggage as I think their cities in the middle need a viable garrison, as does the capital; and there may be an opportunity to besiege the Sulatar capital this year. I am leaving 5 gold for espionage too, mainly to defend the fleet.
White Fang Tribe: Only 3 baggage needed, and 3 for espionage should be sufficient — the dwarves are starting a long way from the orc capital, so there is no need to plan for a long siege, and I think with the alliance in place that the orcs are able to fight the dwarves rather than just play defensive. And I rolled a 5 to recover that ruined city, so they only have to spend one gold to rebuild it — that seems worth it. That leaves 15 gold for armies.
Hammerhead Clan: 7 baggage (they need to hold a fortress in the centre, and probably need baggage for attacking Threnal). 5 espionage, as it seems worth trying to sabotage the Storm Lords' fleet. And 17 on armies.
Sulatar: The closeness of the enemy to the capital means they have to spend at least 3 on baggage — they might be in for a long siege in the second half of the year. Even spending as little as 3 means that I will have to seek a field battle to wear down the Storm Lords first. And 2 on espionage is really the minimum, I want to defend my capital and have some other play. That leaves just 7 for armies.
Winter Summary
Before we go back to the map for deployment, here is the summary of spending & armies with most of the winter action done.
| Storm Lords | White Fang Tribe | Hammerhead Clan | Sulatar | ||
| Human | Orcs & Goblins | Duergar | Drow | ||
| Start | Revenue | 10 | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Summer start | Troops | 4000 | 2000 | 3700 | 2700 |
| Summer | Campaigning losses | 530 | -20 | 30 | 530 |
| Winter Start | Troops | 3470 | 2020 | 3670 | 2170 |
| Potential Revenue | 29 | 20 | 30 | 16 | |
| Winter | Actual Revenue | 28 | 22 | 29 | 12 |
| Spending | Diplomacy | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Troops | 17 | 15 | 17 | 7 | |
| Construction & Recovery | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | |
| Baggage | 6 | 3 | 7 | 3 | |
| Espionage | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 | |
| Deployed | Troops | 4187 | 3520 | 5370 | 2870 |
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