Or do something surprising?

Ah yes. Parson's "trap" is that he has discovered a branch of weird-o-mancy that allows you to shrink units to miniature size. Upon engaging Jetstone's units in the tower, he will whip out his fierce yellow dragon buddy and restore him to normal size -- thus answering the un-posed question of whether Parson has a Banana in his pocket, or is just happy to see you.

The dwagon will plummet from the sky, roaring in a surprisingly coherent voice: "SUN-DIEEEEE!"

It will be followed by chocolate and strawberries.

Yes?
If anyone thinks that units shrinking doesn't have a natural analogue in our own world, similar to a sedentary or desk-bound unit losing muscle tone and/or getting fat, just ask my grandmother. Slately never said how much he shrank, and we've never seen a before/after of any unit at all, except for the rather mild examples of Jillian losing muscle tone and growing her hair and Parson losing weight. The references to shrinking could easily be the couple of inches seniors lose as their spinal disks also shrink, or the apparent shrinking which occurs due to stooping shoulders and curved posture.
Hot fudge would be more effective.

_________________
How using capslock wins arguments:

Slately wouldn't be like Don and have to worry about "uppity heirs", right?
I.e. he wouldn't have to arrange "accidents" or "impossible odds battles" for particular warlords of his?

(hrm, then again, if he could disband with a thought. On yet the other hand - maybe it would be hard to "explain", and Slately seems to be the type to need "justifications"?).

I believe that was because Chief Warlords are a special case. If you disband/change their rank, your other units will lose loyalty.

After all, in Erfworld it seems you change who your Chief Warlord is as a free action at any time. If there was no penalty, then the logical thing to do was to be always changing your Chief Warlord depending on what and where your units are fighting.

Caesar was Chief Warlord. If Don just stripped him of his rank or disbanded him just like that, his other warlords would be more prone to betray him. This is, if that's how you treat your top warlord, then the other warlords will start thinking if it wouldn't be best to find another ruler to work for.

We could also see that Maggie was pretty pissed off when Stanley stripped Hamster of his rank, to the point that she even casted the sugestion on Stanley at the first oportunity to change that. Heck, even Stanley tried to come up with some half-assed excuse for his actions, like needing to teach Hamster some tricks, wich is exceptional of him!

Death on the battlefield is another story. "Ah, what a shame, the enemy had a secret ambush waiting for him, but he went down gloriously! We'll never forget him."

Good point, especially considering how the update specified that the dwagon accepted and understood that this was now its name.

I guess you can name units that don't get popped with one. And probably order units that do to respond to another one. Still don't know if this changed the dwagon's stat block name, though.

I see I see... I missed that.



if Stanley did it over 30 times without anyone getting suspicious of him, though, then we're definitely underestimating his ability at manipulation and obfuscation...

Well, yes. For a player this would be the logical thing to do. Or for a king acting as a player, ie making the decisions and using the CW only for bonus. But as we have seen the normal order of things is that the CW is the head of the army and has the right to enter alliances, so constant changes risks having constant changes in overall war-planning. This could very well loose you more then you gain from the bonuses.

Though I do agree that it would probably lower morale to. Constant re-organizations tends to do that and it fits with what we have seen.

The best way to tell a lie is to surround it with truth. If you cry wolf and there's actually a wolf 9 times out of 10, people will come on the tenth time anyways.

well this is nice. a very convenient way to get around the whole is ossamar still an heir (which im sure he is not) and a storyline way to kill slatley regardless if tram lives. because we don't know how many of his children are still alive and how many were created as heirs good odds at least theirs a few surviving children attending other affairs and one is most likely still an heir very clever rob i like it.

_________________
NO its not my fault the plan fell apart YOUR the idiot who put ME in charge!

Actually, before Ansom gathered RCCI and marched on GK, we know Jetstone had 4 princess. That was mentioned in a text update, when Sylvia talked to Ossomer about Arkenpliers. We don't know who the fourth brother is, though. We only know 3 so far.

_________________

I just re-read the text update, and I dunno, he sounds genuinely fond of some of them ("Lustrius, his third. That one ought to have been a king. Titas, laconic and grim."). (and, heh, somehow I thought there were over 30 princes when it was 23).

So I guess I was too suspicious the first time round

Agreed, specially because:
-Erfworld is still primarly focused on war and raw resources, not politics and intrigue. Altough treason it's possible I don't believe you need to always be watching your back in fear one of your own units will backstab you if you even blink. You need to be doing something really wrong for your units to turn against you, or else some other faction is pulling their strings (and even then it's an hard thing to do, as we've seen Jillian break out from mind control from Wanda with just a little archon help).
-High level warlords and heirs aren't exactly five smuckers the dozen, so you can't just sacrifice them for nothing. Don mentioned he had inherited several advisors/courtiers from his father, and since he didn't like them he simply sent them to dangerous but possibly profitable missions and didn't bother to replace them as they died. This way he still profited something from their deaths and still got rid of them.

I equate Erfworld to Medieval Total War. Easier for me.

If I have a lot of generals, I have to make certain the generals are loyal, because a general that rebels often takes an army with it or, worse, a city. Should I strip a General of his titles and give them to another, then he loses loyalty. thus, I keep the heir the same person, unless he'd be terrible.

If this were Medieval, there would be non-combat units like diplomats, priests, merchants, yadda yadda that would be important, but useless in a fight.

I liked this update. Good look into Singamancy. Definitely thinks Parson is a sighnamancer. I don't think him name things will change them, but it will give us a hint into who they are.

_________________
Build a man a fire and he shall be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire and he shall be warm for the rest of his life.

So kings can have a ton of other "children" that aren't all warlords, awesome.

_________________
I would be a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.

What evidence do we have that Parson is a luckamancer? I remember only the "all my luck to you" that Parson "casted" on Bogroll.
But those lucky 20's Bogroll did could be due to his evocation of Lord Hamstaaar and the Hamster symbol on his armor.
Or maybe just luck.

The "courtiers" Don King mentioned appear to be something like that (units that specialize in city-management type functions rather than combat).

_________________
Is this a real holy war, or just a bunch of deluded boopholes croaking each other?

I would interpret it differently ... I think the children of Slately (=royals he ordered popped) were all Warlords, just some of them had not such high bonuses as other ones (I think Tramennis has a quite lower bonus than Ossomer, for example). And most of them are dead now (two uncroaked).

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I reread this and realize I probably didn't note just how well-written and effective this update was.
http://www.erfworld.com/book-2-archive/ ... -10-27.png

Worth a second read, I'd say.

_________________
They could not possibly win. Every man knew this with certainty, and lo it was glorious.