/cyoa/ - Choose your own adventure

>>1620

I remember this.

It spawned soo many cheap knockoffs.

CYOA's that are inspired by other CYOA's are cool, CYOA's that are a re-theme of other CYOA's are cool.

CYOA's that are a re-theme of a previous CYOA where the new theme is basically the same as the inspiration make me scratch my head.

>>1628

>its very possible that my current army would decimate most of my enemies

I'm not feeling it. You plan on fighting off every other lord. I hope the guards we're purchasing off the follower list isn't supposed to be our army, because that's an absolutely paltry amount. But if it is then spending money on troops is a swell idea, except you need to spend even more. You've also got dragons to worry about, and what are you going to give them as tribute? You can't trade your lumber for food and riches, you got Hold Fast.

I mean we all know the classic history of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It didn't work so well. But you ignored the issue of resource management in your own country so I got the feeling you're not going to enjoy the winter yourself either. And if the king's army is massive imagine how big all the lords' armies together are.

>>1632

>I mean we all know the classic history of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Okay, lets ignore that Napoleon was closer to being something like the king's army greatest commander, and that Russia was the cold country that would be my Tundra…

Yes, I can see myself winning against them. I have enough power (and the magic) to do so. If I only had 200 Footmen and 30 Archers, what you said might have been the case. But it truly isn't, I easily have control over more magical power than all the kingdoms surrounding me in "Hold Fast" have, and most of that magical power has direct combat appliances on them. Even if some surrounding kingdoms have a Witch, its unlikely they can even stop me without angering nearby pious kingdoms with demonic sacrifices. And mostly, I do not expect a witch to challenge a Umbral Drake in terms of power.

Since you mentioned the invasion of Russia, I wanted to note that my Tundra gives me giant military advantages, I seriously don't know why you dislike it. I don't think the King's armies will give in to a cold, but I can easily see anyone invading me as mentioned in the domain bonus, and I have good amounts of natural resources too.

And as for the Dragon Pair, I forgot I took that disadvantage in the middle of my build while I was redoing it. I'd say I would capture any enemies knights and sacrifice their souls/blood to demons for gold while gathering power for myself, but elementals and dragons are unlikely to leave defeated enemies alive.

>>1628

I think you're drastically overestimating the power your elemental magic is going to give you. Your own magic is not especially powerful, being that you need two shards just to be on par with the elementals, and the elementals themselves are costed similarly to groups of 50 footmen, 30 archers, or 20 cavalry. They have prerequisites, so it's fair to assume they're slightly more powerful than these, but even so, you're expecting your elemental power to be a difference maker but it actually represents less than half of your total combat power, and it's concentrated into just a handful of creatures (four elementals, your apprentice, your drake, and your witch - you are frozen in ice in a remote location and can only participate in battle at all because of your bond with your drake, so you and your drake cannot split up) which means that your standard infantry/cavalry/archer force is actually the more valuable wing of your army, because it can be split up. You've also chosen an adviser who can't help you in war. Plus, your domain is completely dependent upon trade to survive, let alone thrive, but you've chosen complications that make an enemy out of all neighbors and require you to have a steady supply of hoard-ready wealth or else face the wrath of two powerful dragons. You've spread your magic so thinly that your drake's magical prowess is likewise spread thin, and you've poured everything that drake has into magic, making him useless as heavy cavalry, since his umbral type's weaknesses, exacerbated by his being a drake, make him quite fragile in direct combat. Your other major magical resource is Demonic Magic (and the related witch), which can't always be controlled, which is particularly troublesome when one of the many enemies at your doorstep is a demon lord who can almost certainly seize control of your demons from you and probably isn't going to wait around until you've mastered the art before he attacks.

Plus, your cult is not legitimized in the eyes of your people because you do not have the priestess, which means that the only guaranteed worshipers you have are those four cultists, their twenty groupies, and a "small group" of non-combatant worshipers. Although it is unclear, the priestess' cult-synergy bonus, and the fact that 2,000 or 4,000 people is not the kind of number you think of when you hear "small group," strongly imply that your peasant followers are not automatically part of your religion if you take the Worship or Cult options.

I'm pretty sure you're fucked.

>>1620

>Housing

City in the sky. Great defensive capabilities, almost impossible for normal armies to get there without getting shot down by airships.

>Domain

Forest. Easy to grow food and keep subjects happy.

>Advisor

Steward

>Perks

Intimidation

Telepathy

Natural Leader

Gold

Diplomat

>Followers

Knight(4)

Guildmaster

Master Worker

Blacksmith

Apprentice

>Dragon

Didn't pick

>>1620

I'm going to take an Island Undercity. I'm also going to point out here that the only domains that grant extra people are Desert and Tundra, which you would expect to be the least populated regions. Whatever, I'm running an island undercity, undercity because it gives a nice perk and is extremely defensible, island because I get to live on a motherfucking tropical island. Or at least a half-hour walk from one. Basic economic gameplan is to become a trading post, exchanging the abundant natural resources both above and below for stores of fresh water and food, to be kept sealed safely underground in the event of poor rains or famine. Seeing as how I have both abundant mineral resources, plenty of lumber, and exotic food, I rather expect I'll be running a trade surplus in a hurry, which I can use to make my undercity and underpalace generally more decadent and opulent.

Now, for adviser, I really want to be god-king (though I won't be taking the Worship perk for optimization reasons, but that doesn't stop me from running a cult that worships me, it just means I don't get god powers out of the deal), so I'm going to go with the Priestess because she can legitimize my cult. She comes with lots of added bonuses, too: A morale boost to help deal with the cavalcade of complications, healing magic that is otherwise hard to come by when you're an evil bastard, and she can set up a public education system for the parts of the population that aren't mostly cattle for my undead and demonic armies.

I mentioned earlier I wouldn't be taking Worship. That's because Vampirism nets me Diplomat and Blood Magic for free, which means I'm actually up by one shard even before I consider the whole "immortality" thing. I don't even have to kill people, I just need to have my state religion run a vampire Red Cross. Diplomat and Blood Magic are both really useful perks, too. It does require that I take Demonic Magic, which is one of the less useful classes of magic and I'm ambivalent as to whether it's worth a shard on its own (Necromancy nets you a similar set of minion options without the risk of revolt), but since it helps me snag the three-for-one Vampirism perk, I'm willing to call it a profit. Especially since I live in the underdark, so it's not like the sun is going to be a common problem for me. The only major drawback here is that I will never be able to enjoy the beauty of my island backyard under the daylight. Never be able to see how the water is so pure and transparently blue under the sun. How the jungle looks with the light of day shining through the leaves. At least it gives me good fodder for the prerequisite vampire brooding.

>>1637

>cont

With the leftovers I'll take Cult, Necromancy, and Enchanting. For followers, let's start by getting defense squared away. 240 skeletons should be more than enough to turn every entrance to the undercity into an unforgiving wall of pikes five ranks deep with plenty left over to serve as archers to rain down missile fire from the rooftops if we're forced to retreat into the city and make our stand there. Now throw in four death knights, each one leading one company of 60 skeletons. That's 8 coins total, since I have the Gold perk free with Undercity I have 6 left.

Now two merchants for trade and two ship captains to keep the merchants safe. I also need a blacksmith to properly equip my skeleton hordes, which are otherwise lightly armed and armored. He'll want to focus on training lots of blacksmiths early on so that we can rapidly rearm. With the last coin I get a diplomat for sweet trade deals.

This is a good start. I have a powerful economy, a sizable army of undead cannon fodder, equipped to extra power, led by powerful and intelligent death knights, all perfectly loyal. Since the skeletons don't need any training, they can be part of the workforce during peacetime. Since they don't need any food, they are free labor. Their morale penalty to the peasants is counterbalanced by my priestess. I can use my Enchantment on the death knights to bring their already top notch gear up to supernatural levels. At sea, I have two secure trade routes and I can bring the merchants home, empty their ships, and staff them with skeletons instead which, in addition to my existing ship captains, gives me a four-ship navy.

But I'm just getting started, because a lot of these complications can be pretty easily thwarted if you're clever.

>>1638

>cont

>Dark Riders

Now it's unclear how many of these things there are or how powerful they are, but what is clear is that I have a cohort of pike-wielding skeletons and four death knights blinged out with enchanted weapons. If I can't beat these guys, then they're nigh-unkillable, which seems a bit much for a 2 coin threat. Granted, many of these complications are bizarrely costed. In any case, with these two coins I'm going to snag a master mine worker and a guildmaster of blacksmiths to help multiply my blacksmithing advantage and further improve my economy.

>Orc Bounty Hunter

So first of all, I'm a vampire. The first vampire. This dude knows how to bag blood magic users, but he doesn't know a damn thing about my brides or my immunity to poison and disease. To help patch up any lingering security flaws, however, we'll throw in a troop of fifty infantry guardsmen, mostly to serve as guards who can intelligently raise an alarm, a captain of the guard to coordinate them, and with the spare coin get a bard, for extra economy and more morale. I do have an awful lot of skeletons, so more morale is always helpful.

>Mad Elementalist

The Burning Man is driven by the disembodied voices that speak to him to burn down my kingdom. In the underdark. Made of stone. Good luck, mate. Option B is that he tries to torch the surface, which is why I'm spending the two coins on a ranger and a set of ten hunters to snipe him after he gets started. Up top he'll claim one or two tiny thorps before being hunted down, down below he might kill two dozen people before the guards summon a sleepless patrolling death knight to run him down.

>Sister Sorceress

I'll need a spymaster on defense duty and a pack of 20 cultist groupies to handle this one. A couple of the cultists will infiltrate her group, while the others are dispersed through other organizations. The guild, for example, or infiltrating the crews of merchant vessels.

>>1639

>cont

>The Assassins

I can have a total of five coins out of this one, three stealth clans and the two-coin infiltrator clan. Everything that guarded me from my sister will guard me from the infiltrator clan, and everything that guarded me from the bounty hunter will guard me from the stealth clans. This is five free coins. I'll use them to buy an apprentice, two missionaries, and two clerics. The clerics help entrench the religion at home, the missionaries sail with my merchants to get converts abroad. They're to coordinate with the merchants to optimize the order in which they set up missions and monasteries. They must begin by getting converts from kingdoms which are non-pious but trade-vital, then they can spread into pious trade-vital kingdoms. Since the non-pious kingdoms have already been converted, the pious kingdoms could face serious trade problems if they close borders in response to my missionary efforts. Once all trade-vital kingdoms have a strong presence of my religion, I no longer need to care. Meanwhile clerics increase piety at home, keeping peasants loyal, heal the sick and injured, and set up religious schools.

>Rebellion

My cultists and spymaster find out who's responsible and my skeleton hordes bring the hammer down. Use the coin to buy another unit of skeletons, bringing the total number up to 300.

>Abholoth

Okay, so now we need to address a common misconception: Cthulhu is not a significant military threat. In the Call of Cthulhu, a crew of sailors accidentally release Cthulhu and almost all of them are killed as he emerges from R'lyeh, with only two survivors, the captain and a single shipmate. Then the captain rams his steamboat into Cthulhu's head and he's beaten for at least a year. So I take three of the shards and buy myself a behemoth red dragon with intimidation, hatchling, improved breath weapon, and dragonriding. His being behemoth means that if he rams not!Cthulhu in the face, then canonically speaking not!Cthulhu loses.

Honestly, the hardest thing about this complication is the Army of the Sea, which is of ambiguous size but presumably quite large. On the beaches they'll present easy targets for my behemoth red dragon's orbital artillery, once they reach the jungle they'll be getting picked off by ranger-led hunters, and if they actually reach my undercity then they can go ahead and try to get past my skeleton phalanxes. This all kind of feels like cheating, particularly since they come right out and say "direct confrontation would be unwise," but the problem is that the actual capabilities of the monster are never stated except insofar as it's obviously very similar to Cthulhu, and Cthulhu is canonically extremely vulnerable to direct confrontation.

After buying Godzilla, I have a spare shard, which I'll spend on Earth elementalism.

>>1640

>cont

>Monster Invasion

There's two ways into my city. Across the ocean where Godzilla can roast you and through the tunnels manned by my skeleton hordes which, by the way, are growing: the four coins from this are being used to buy up two more death knights and an extra skeleton unit. Remember back in the rebellion when I bought a skeleton unit without a death knight commander? We're solving that problem. With the spare coin we're getting an earth elemental, we'll see why in a bit. Anyways, we're up to 360 skeletons led by 6 death knights plus my hunters and guards. Any attempt to invade by sea will be lucky to even reach the shores and any attempt to invade through tunnels has numerical advantages nullified. There's only one problem: Enemy warlocks. The orcs seem to have quite a few, and buying up enough to resist them is undoable. Permanently, anyway, but since I've got rather a powerful economy, have the Diplomat perk plus a diplomat follower plus two merchants giving me trade partners who wouldn't want to see a link in the route disrupted, I can go ahead and rent some wizards for the duration of the fight. Provided they come at me through the tunnels. If they come oversea, I can just rely on sinking most of the invading force with Godzilla and sniping the remaining warlocks as they pass through the island.

>Demon Lord/Lich Council

Alright, so demon Ghenghis Khan is off in the far East somewhere, but he's chewing through all the kingdoms between him and me with thousands of riders at his back. What's a guy to do? Well, I have two decisive advantages. Number one, I have lots of friends. Economics, diplomacy, and Godzilla have been the cornerstones of my reign. Number two, he's a cavalry force. Tunnels and beaches are the only ways into my domain. I'll spend two of my eight coins from this guy on another two earth elementals, the real use for them is still coming but the general utility of masters of earthbending in tunnel fighting should be obvious. Four more coins will be dropped into two more merchants and two more captains to guard them, making my navy more powerful, giving me more trade partners, which means both more people who'd rather I not die and more money to hire mercenaries. The last two coins go into diplomats, who further increase my diplomatic sphere of influence.

Now, the question here is whether these complications happen simultaneously or sequentially. Each has benefits and disadvantages. Skeletons can be regenerated using other people's boneyards and I'm sure "corpses" as a trade good run pretty cheap. Plenty of thieves and the like, and plenty of poor or cheapskate families who'd be happy to be paid for the "burial" of their loved one rather than the other way around. So if these complications are sequential, it means that I can fling my skeletons into combat and replace losses afterwards no problem. Particularly against the Demon Lord here, I can deploy about 240 of my 360 skeleton force (and we're not done yet!) in every single battle he fights on the way here, and rely on the remaining 120 to hold the island against raiders in the meantime. If it's simultaneous, then I need those skeletons at home to deal with invading orcs (and etc.), but on the other hand the Demon Lord is going to have to fight the Army of the Sea if he ever makes it as far as my island.

Either way, the Demon Lord is going to be undone either by tunnel-fighting or naval combat, if my skeleton armies deployed to allied kingdoms and subsequently assisted by Godzilla don't do the trick first. He's a behemoth, we can stick our war camp on his back. In fact, the earth elementals can build permanent fortifications on his back (this isn't why we got them, but it is another nice side effect).

>>1641

>cont

The Lich Council goes basically the same way. Like the Demon Lord, they're everybody's problem. Unlike the Demon Lord, they're starting on my doorstep, however they again face the problem where either they tangle with Godzilla or they fight through my tunnels. If they fight through my tunnels, I can hold them until my allies arrive for reinforcements. If they tangle with Godzilla, they're going to lose a lot of troops to that, they'll lose important troops to hunter assassins, and then they'll have to fight through my tunnels anyway. The sheer numbers brought by the Lich Council, and the fact that they start by attacking you rather than chewing through Poland first, make them at least as dangerous as the Demon Lord despite being costed much less, but I think I can beat them anyway.

The four coins are spent bringing total troop count up to 480 skeletons with 8 death knights. Ghostly enemies are fought off with silver weaponry, supplied kindly by the blacksmith's guild and my trade empire, and pikes are fitted with zombie guards, metal plates about three feet out that prevent impaled zombies from shambling any closer. If there's time, I'll completely re-outfit my skeleton legions with tower shields and gladii to account for the fact that pike walls don't work as well against enemies who impolitely refuse to die when impaled and may have to be stabbed repeatedly before they stop moving.

>Dragon Pair

You remember all those earth elementals I've been investing in? They're going to wait until these dragons are asleep in their cavern lair, then drop the mountain on them. All my death knights will be on hand to mop up. Sure, each dragon is more powerful than any warrior, but they're outnumbered 4:1 counting both the three earth elementals and the six death knights (and counting!) and the dragons just had a mountain dropped on them. Once the dragons are dealt with, the earth elementals will sift out the gold from the rubble and directly into my treasury. I'll use my shiny new shard for form changing. Because hey, why not?

>Merchant Inheritor/the King

Everything from the Demon Lord applies double here, particularly since I'm using the 8 coins this brings to bump myself up to 720 skeletons and 12 death knights. Unfortunately, I can't take Hold Fast. Many of my anti-invasion strategies rely on having lots of allies to help me out and most of my economy is trade-based. Now if I could count on sequential complications, I could just use Godzilla and a skeleton strike team to make the king say uncle before the lack of trade become critical, but if Hold Fast were to trigger along side Lich Council, or Demon Lord, it'd be the end of me. So I can't risk that.

The Merchant Inheritor specifically may be able to prevent my allies from bailing me out, but he has a relatively small number of troops and is very likely to approach by sea, which means he'll have to face off with Godzilla and my allies will be unnecessary.

>>1642

>cont

>Force of Nature

Okay, so they've got about 2000 doods and a spirit of nature whose perks are similar to my own first five picks. Which were Demon Magic, which is not very useful and mainly acquired as a prerequisite for Vampirism, which is mostly helpful as a way to snag both Diplomat and Blood Magic simultaneously. I have not only the Diplomat skill but also three diplomat followers, am part of a trade network that will doubtless be disrupted if Gaia wins this battle, and have been diligently working at spreading my religion to anyone open to conversion, so I think I win on the diplomacy front. Most, if not all, of my allies are on hand to help me out. The answer to Gaia's Blood Magic is twelve fucking death knights. I also started with Necromancy, which is the same skillset the Lich Council had so I'm already prepared for it. Cult is countered by my spymaster and my own Cult, and Enchanting is countered by my own Enchanting, and also by twelve fucking death knights. We haven't even gotten into the extra perks provided by my complications, namely Earth Elementalism (with three minions), Form Shaping, and Godzilla, which Gaia does not benefit from - she only gets five.

With the six coins I will first buy a thirteenth death knight and, satisfied with my grotesque round table, I will pour all the rest into skeletons. For those counting at home, that's 1,020 skeletons led by thirteen death knights. The difference-maker here is going to be Godzilla and Enchanting. Specifically, I will give my hunters enchanted arrows which, when they strike a target (including the ground or a tree), cause a bright flash of brilliant blue light. The blue light being easily differentiated from natural light, this will be the targeting system for Godzilla. If the battle lasts long enough that Godzilla needs rest, he'll rest on one of the nearby desert islands. My navy will take shelter in friendly ports and used stored gold to buy and deliver food to Godzilla for as long as they can until battle's end.

>The Underdark

So, after I spend these two coins on additional skeletons, my forces are bulked up to a solid 1,140. Plus thirteen death knights, three earth elementals, my four brides, and my apprentice. The Drow have a force that might number as much as a thousand. They lose.

>>1643

>cont

>Crusade

Holy War is the most bullshit complication in the entire CYOA. Well, maybe Abholoth in the opposite direction qualifies for how much it gives you in exchange for what appears to be a fairly easy complication. It does require you to have a three shard dragon to ram into Abholoth himself, but that pays for itself and then some. Holy War has the opposite problem. The gods sling the equivalent of four fucking thousand coins of troops at you, two orders of magnitude higher than you could possibly afford. The only possible defense is to drown the problem in shards, which you get none of whatsoever for taking the complication.

Crusade, on the other hand, is pretty damn simple. Just like every other army, their routes in are the beaches or the tunnels, which means they get to dance with a giant army of pike-wielding skeletons in narrow spaces where they're impossible to outmaneuver or else they get to dodge Godzilla and my hunters before descending to the Earth and fighting through some tunnels anyway.

With the three coins, I'm going to get another set of skeletons, just so I have a nice even 1200 of them, then the Lawful Neutral flavor of the scholar angel to hang out in the library in my Godzilla castle mostly so that her calming aura will prevent Godzilla from going insane from his close encounter with Abholoth, and then I'll get a witch. The lack of one has been bugging me for a while.

>Sundries

So, Rogue Telepath can be taken care of by my alert town guard and my small army of death knights. Thieves Guild is zonked by my Spymaster and my Cultist infiltrators. Enemy Wizard shouldn't be much a match for the combined might of my witch, my apprentice, and myself. With one of the coins I'll buy a ghost, just so I can have an invisible alarm system in my castle, with another I'll buy a living armour bodyguard, and with the other three I finally have some spare coins to buy fun stuff, having dumped all the rest into making a completely impregnable and unstoppable domain. I'll snag a pirate captain, who apparently does not cause trouble with the neighbors the way bandits might, and point her at any kingdoms who refuse to trade with me for a steady income of gold and slaves. Then I'll grab 30 slaves and a succubus. With the pirate captain bringing in steady genetic diversity, I should be able to create a breeding population of blood dolls for myself and my brides. Plus, I have a succubus. Rather than bother with keeping her satisfied I'll probably just chain her to a wall. She can hardly complain about my being evil.

>>1644

>cont

Final build:

-Necromancy

-Demonic Magic

-Enchanting

-Cult

-Vampirism

-Blood Magic (free with Vampirism)

-Diplomat (free with Vampirism)

-Gold (free with Undercity) (14 coins)

-Earth Elementalism (from Abholoth)

-Form Shaping (from Dragon Pair)

-2 clerics (12 coins)

-2 missionaries (10 coins)

-1 scholar angel (9 coins)

-1 guild master (8 coins)

-1 guard unit (50 men) (7 coins)

-1 captain of the guard (6 coins)

-1 hunter unit (10 men) (5 coins)

-1 ranger (4 coins)

-4 merchants (0 coins)

-4 ship captains (-4 coins)

-3 diplomats (-7 coins)

-1 spymaster (-8 coins)

-1 master worker (-9 coins)

-1 blacksmith (-10 coins)

-1 Godzilla (from Abholoth)

-1 witch (-11 coins)

-1 bard (-12 coins)

-1 living armour (-13 coins)

-1 pirate captain (-14 coins)

-2 slave units (60 slaves) (-16 coins)

-1 cultist unit (10 cultists) (-17 coins)

-20 skeleton units (1200 skeletons) (-37 coins)

-13 death knights (-50 coins)

-1 ghost (-51 coins)

-Monster Invasion (-47 coins)

-Crusade (-44 coins)

-Demon Lord (-36 coins)

-Rebellion (-35 coins)

-The King (-29 coins)

-Assassins*3 (-26 coins)

-Disguised Assassins (-24 coins)

-Dark Riders (-22 coins)

-The Underdark (-20 coins)

-Force of Nature (-14 coins)

-Orc Bounty Hunter (-11 coins)

-Sister Sorceress (-9 coins)

-Lich Council (-5 coins)

-Enemy Wizard (-3 coins)

-Rogue Telepath (-1 coins)

-Mad Elementalist (1 coin)

-Thieves' Guild (2 coins)

-Merchant Inheritor (4 coins)

Seems I did some math wrong. Sounds like an excellent excuse to buy even more skeletons.

>fin

>>1648

>You certainly have the power of the First Vampire

Not what the CYOA says. CYOA says I am the first vampire. Now, this CYOA is generally pretty sloppily constructed, but did the OP forget that the player is the first vampire when statting hunters, or did he mean "progenitor vampire" when he said "first vampire?" Well, unless he shows up to clarify, what he said was first vampire. How do hunters find out how to kill something that doesn't exist yet? Who the fuck knows, but the bounty hunter doesn't, because he's only described as being prepared for magic users.

Even ignoring that, he's an orc in a non-orc city incredibly densely packed with skeletons under orders to kill any orcs they see, because there was an orc invasion. The skeletons probably can't kill him, but they are damn well going to alert things that can kill him to his presence, including my ghost, which can follow him around without making any noise until he's in my citadel, then give away his position to my living armour, my brides, plus any death knights or my apprentice who might happen to be around.

>They could entrap a important guest in the ship so you were forced to use your skeletons on them.

I have a few flaws to point out in the orcs' "trap someone on a boat" plan. The first flaw is Godzilla. The next couple of flaws are also Godzilla. Even if their fleet manages to actually get close enough to the docks to actually capture anyone, and even if they happen to be around when an important guest is at shore rather than in my city, and even if this guest happens to be so important that I can't torch the entire ship and tell his homeland that the orcs killed him, then I can just fry all their support ships with Godzilla and then have my navy storm the ship with the guest.

>You're in a City in the Sky.

You're confused. I'm on an island, not in the sky, and my undercity borders the underdark. Islands big enough to sustain large populations almost always have mountains, because they are mountains, partially submerged. This is especially true because my island contains gold mines and a network of tunnels underneath. If it were a pure sand island, neither of these would be possible. A sufficiently large city could spread from a mountain to underneath, but my city is 2000 people, which is actually really small, so it's fairly safe to say the entire thing is under the mountain. Even if it isn't, I can just move my people (again, only 2000 of them) into the tunnels beneath the dragons' lair (which is likely near the top of the mountain anyway) before collapsing the mountain on top of them.

If my island somehow has gold mines and an undercity but doesn't have a mountain big enough to pulverize dragons, which is theoretically possible, so sure, then I can just seal them into their cavern while they sleep and keep my earth elementals on rotating shifts keeping them trapped inside until my scholar angel informs me that the dragons must have reached the point of starvation. If I'm not confident in that, I can open up a small gap in their prison just big enough for Godzilla to fill the entire chamber with a never-ending stream of improved behemoth-grade fire. He might not be agile enough to fight them directly, but if they're trapped in their lair and he's just filling it with fire, he doesn't need to be. I could also just use a skeleton bucket brigade to fill the cavern with water and wait for them to drown. Or I can build up enough enchanted ballistae bolts until my skeleton soldiers can darken the skies with them and spam them at the dragons. Or I can just swarm them with thirteen fucking death knights. Or I can just not take the complication at all, because I don't actually need the spare shard, I'm just killing these fuckers pretty much because I can.

>>1625

>>1644

There are valid points here and there, but does anyone even HAVE the font this CYOA uses? If so, that would be nice.

>>1661

It's darn close to arial.

>>1667

If someone's going to revise the CYOA, in addition to what's already been mentioned, please change the complications so that the size of their army is #1 explicit (there's no indication whatsoever how big the monster invasion or king's army actually is, which makes it hard to plan for) and #2 not dependent on the size of your own army or population. The way desert and tundra are the only ones who get bigger populations is weird to begin with, but the way they get double-fucked over by nasty invasion is bullshit. Likewise, the way the lich's army size is tied to your own. It's basically telling anyone who bought the swarms of weak soldiers instead of small cohorts of strong ones to fuck off because the enemy's army is arbitrarily as large as yours.

Also, the population is ridiculous small and seems to have been set under the impression that most or all of a population can be mobilized for war. The actual number of people who can be mobilized for war is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-20%, depending on various factors, which means that the 400 rebelling peasants in the tier two revolt option is literally your entire available militia under the very best circumstances.