Aggressive, Racist, Courageous (Expeditions: Conquistador)

[boot]

3

Spoiler

I take the 3 men at arms I've got (Ruiz, Trevino, Quintero) and 3 recruits, a scout, hunter, and soldier.

We're facing off against 7 Spaniards here, including 2 hunters, a doctor, 2 soldiers, a scout and a scholar.

I've placed my scouts behind what looks to me like good cover, as my soldiers advance to the limit of their small movement range. Our hunter can't get a good shot off so we assume their hunters won't hit anything either.

We are very wrong. The entire enemy band unloads on Quintero through a fucking rock and he nearly goes down. An enemy scout has closed into melee with him but wasn't able to attack as he exceeded his base movement range.

We've started off on the wrong foot, and our soldiers aren't close enough to close into melee, I sweat and rage a little.

Ruiz moves directly into the open and locks the scholar in melee combat, while Quintero guts the enemy scout and retreats behind another rock, this one hopefully is more sturdy than the first one.

Decide to go all in this turn rather than risk another unlucky musket salvo. Aragones jumps on their flank and Trevino moves even closer, getting in front of Ruiz.

Trevino is very exposed, but it will draw attention from our scout. He's gonna get hit hard for sure, though.

yeah, Trevino is done. He eats a stun and a flank attack, as well as some bullets, barely making it into our next turn. Did his job though, in drawing out the worst of the enemies fire (and eating that nasty stun) he's allowed us to close safely and secure victory.

Lightly armored scholar gets cut down first

Freeing up Ruiz who's able to drop a stun on one of the enemy soldiers and tangle up 2 of the enemy.

Trevino is finished off on the enemy turn, but as the remainder of the enemy are ranged units who're tied in melee, the battle is ours.

Quintero keeps his bloodlust up and Ruiz tanks the worst of the enemies hits as we mop up.

Rough first turn threw us off but we made out ok.

Injuries are a bit random, but the longer your unit lies unconscious on the battlefield, the worse it'll usually be. Trevino was passed out for a few turns there so I think we got lucky with his injury roll.

We consider showing mercy to the bastards but can't come up with a good reason to spare them. Realistically, they would only rejoin their rebel brothers and attack again, if not us, someone else.

rip. Aragones is unhappy with the decision, but there's a reason we call him the cuckold.

Just one day later we've more trouble. Trevino, who's already back on his feet, wakes up Isabella screamin' about thieves.

Capitan Codexia calls the men to arms.

It's a gimmick fight, the gimmick is that the enemy is weak and will attempt to flee the map before you can kill them all.

One of the enemy is cut down with feint attacks from our scouts, allowing us to block one route of escape. The rest won't make it very far, having to directly cross paths with all our soldiers.

The thieves are more an annoyance than an actual threat.

*spits on ground*

Yeah, I'm not even sure these ambush style fights are linked to failed guard checks.

We're only a few days out from the area the missing women was supposed to have last been. I really wanna get there soon, as we're running low on medicine. Troop has suffered a few more snake bites, stomach parasites from drinking bad water, etc. We'll have to return to Santo Domingo soon for lack of medicine.

sheeit.

Quintero, the titular character of this lp, blows the head clean off a negro's shoulders and saves our life, definitely earned a bonus!

aww, you monkeys have done it now! Two of our men, including our only doctor have been injured in the slave revolt. We're gonna put them down very hard.

we face 7 men, soldiers, a scout and hunters, and one tribal warrior, which can be likened to the Spanish scout.

We advance directly toward their fortifications, forgoing the open ground approach which is surely boobytrapped.

Our scouts clear a path, and two soldiers storm through holding the breach.

Enemy missile fire is ineffective do to the darkness, and we advance with ease. Ruiz stuns a negro scout nullifying his zone of control, and the rest of our force piles in.

The next batch of enemy missile fire is accurate, Ruiz saves himself with some clutch shield blocks. It won't save them though.

Ruiz pulls back, but the other 5 swarm the remaining enemies. Our scouts move along the tent line opposite us, leaving a trail of corpses behind them.

Was their 5 minutes of freedom worth it?

​

 

[Darth Roxor]

Quintero's constipated serial killer glare brings back memories. I remember he used to be one of the coolest and most menly men in my playthrough.

 

[boot]

4

Spoiler

The expedition is forced to return to Santo Domingo. We treat the wounded Pedro Alvarado(our doctor) along the way, taking up the last of our medicine. Albeto Echeverria's condition worsens as we have no one to tend to him, and even if we did we're out of medicine.

We reach the city just before nightfall about 3 days after the slave revolt, and end up trading half of our rations away to restock our supply of medicine.

There's this healing hut here in the city that lets us immediately get wounded crew members back up to full health at the cost of medicine. I think it's kind of since I cut my teeth on an earlier *ahem* special-edition-if-you-know-what-I'm-saying version of the game, and this hut did not exist there- and I think it was better that way. Still, we use it, and the expedition is p.much back in perfect order.

We head back round to the Cathedral and pick up another side quest. One of the bishops here has gotten very sick and the only man who can help him has disappeared into the jungle. We agree to track him down- for pay, of course.

This quest is time-gated, only unlocks 1 month after the bible shipment quest has been completed.

We debate heading back out right away to get this done. We also never found the missing woman. Talking to the governor and progressing the plot would open us up to a particularly nasty camp ambush, I'd like our crew to be fully prepared before facing that.

eh whatever. It'll work out.

So what the governor really needs help with are these rebel insurgencies popping up across the colony. One seems to be based in the mountains that we have yet to explore, and there's a second one screwing about in the northern part of the island around San Tiago.

And the fat man Umberto wants to see us too. More sidequests. More exp.

There's this new NPC standing around here, he exists to make the first mention of Felipe Guiterrez in the game- who we'll be hearing much more about once we finally get to Mexico. Lot to do before that happens, though!

Umberto teaches us how to construct barricades, and gives us a few for free. This unlocks the Tinkering tab at our campsite. He also invites us to try them out in a mock fight, which we're gonna do.

For a lot of the harder fights, the only chance we have at winning is using items constructed at camp (like barricades) to set the field in our favor. It's important to tinker up some gadgets once in a while, you'll see what I'm talking about one of these updates (not this one though)

I deploy 2 scouts, 1 hunter, and 3 soldiers here. We don't use the barricades, gonna save 'em for a real fight. The enemy is a p. well balanced team with most of it's units behind cover.

The scouts go around the flank and get ready to take out the enemy's doctor while I have Ruiz use flawless defence on our flank, he's gonna get hit by a scout on the enemy's turn. Rest of the team fires on a hunter hanging out of cover.

Quintero gets stunned. It looks like the scouts are gonna need some help down there. I didn't think the soldier would go into melee like that, most of the time the AI prefers to have soldiers stick to using ranged attacks.

We're gonna blow up this enemy scout right now, though, since he's so exposed.

I decide to send Ruiz through an enemy hunter's ZOC so Aragones can do flank attacks on the soldier who stunned Quintero. Our other two soldiers square up with separate enemies.

Very nice. We'll end our turn in p. decent position, should be able to finish the fight without losses.

Trevino's duel with this enemy soldier runs a little close, I probably should've had him withdraw, an unlucky crit would've ended him.

Aside from that we did good.

These men we've been fighting in the mock battles have belonged to Noriega, apparently. He challenges us to a tournament, a series of mock fights. We accept, of course. More EXP. But it takes time to arrange tournaments, so the fights won't take place now.

With nothing else to do in Santo Domingo, we chart a course for San Tiago- where we'll root around for rebels to kill, as the governor ordered.

We take one last look at our supplies before departing. Only 32 medicine elicits a pained grimace but medicine is expensive and I've given as many rations away as I feel comfortable.

 

[boot]

5

Spoiler

We camp just outside the city and I have our doctor make a torch. Tinkering is the job of scholars, but since I refuse to take scholars we're just going to pump up doctor Pedro's tinkering stat and he'll craft and invent stuff when he can. Scholars are really a huge waste of a crew slot, I remember reading on the steam forums a guy who used a scholar every fight and swore by them but he couldn't speak proper English and never stated what difficulty he played on, so I dunno.

Torches are just as useless as scholars, but we want to have one single torch on us just in case a certain camp event plays out.

This is the invention tab, the other part of tinkering. When there's nothing to craft you can always assign your tinkerer to invent stuff, it costs nothing but time. Sadly most inventions are worthless, only one we really want to get done is the Cart, which will allow us to move a bit further each day.

The island of Hispaniola is really not all that large, after only a month we already feel we know it, as the outskirts of San Tiago come within view.

We make contact with Leandra Vizcaino, our lead on the northern rebels.

She points us toward the peninsula north of San Tiago as the likely hideout of the rebels, then bids us good luck.

Leandra turns with the precision of a soldier but the grace of a dancer and walks back toward the town square.

hmm... bet she smells nice ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Just outside of San Tiago we buy a Net Trap off a fisherman here. This unlocks the Net Trap in the tinkering submenu.

Net traps are not very good, in combat their effect is usually minimal, and they cost quite a bit of rope to make- rope being one of those materials that will usually be in short supply- we are better off making other stuff. I buy it only because I'm a completionist.

Then we make for this peninsula in search of rebels.

We find ourselves alone with Quintero. We know him as a bloodthirsty killer, but here he is somber as we patrol along the shore.

F

Can't blame Quintero for not wanting to go home.

Seems Leandra's lead was worthless. Our journal advises us to return to San Tiago and speak with her, so that's what we'll do- after we click on this glowing rock

There are glowing rocks scattered all throughout Hispaniola and Mexico, and we get EXP for clicking on them. It's supposed to simulate charting or something.

I know. Anyway, from here we can see something going down on at the very northernmost tip of the peninsula, and so we go there. We'll return to San Tiago after.

I mean what other outcome was possible here? A fat chest of loot, presented before a band of brave men hungry for EXP?

Possibly because we passed a Tactics check before the start of the fight, we're able to place our men in extremely advantageous positions.

We'll get a ton of flank attacks off on our first turn, should be able to drop two at least, maybe get a stun off on the nearby scout and force the nearest hunter into melee.

This soldier ruins our plans by blocking both flank attacks, he survives the 3rd attack on him with about 1hp and so we're forced to use 4 of our men to take him out. Very bad luck, but the enemy is doomed already, having only 4 men to our 6 and bad positioning.

This is the first time we eat an attack of opportunity in the LP due to the absolutely fucking terrible shitty pathfinding algorithm. There has been no greater source of frustration while playing this game than from clicking on a hex, and seeing one of my units make a retarded detour through an enemies ZOC so he can get whacked for 40hp or so.

Much raging and cursing from this. It's not gonna change the outcome of the fight, but if you're not carefully babying your units along their desired route, moving them hex by hex, this is sure to occur and it could easily change the outcome of a more challenging encounter.

Happens again here.
Picture an unkempt man wildly raging at a computer monitor, surrounded by ceramic cups and general filth in a dark room.

We've stunned the soldier we couldn't kill and the battle is under control. The rest is just cleaning up. Only the hunter in the far corner is still able to move freely, and we'll pin him on the next turn.

The pathfinding will be a source of great rage and butthurt for all men who play this game, you have been warned.

 

[Reinhardt]

Argaones is the token cuck (breaking our no cuck rule only by necessity) that makes the rest of the crew look even more badass in comparison. Trevino is soft in the head but also brave in heart. And there's no way I'm letting womyn or womyn larpers on my crew.

But having even one cuck is exactly what opens door for wommynz and trannies later.

 

[Reinhardt]

we did say no womyn allowed, but could really use an extra hand...

See?

 

[boot]

 

[boot]

6

Spoiler

*ahem*

That's a lotta loot. Not to spoil too much, but in the Mexico campaign we will not even receive half of that amount for doing far greater things.

I promote Juan Ortega, a Sword and shield soldier.

We're making our way back to San Tiago.

In case anyone forgot. Leandra, the qt3.14 without any historical precedent (womyn didn't command anything in Spain during these times I am quite certain) gave us a lead that rebels were situated on this peninsula, and that lead turned out to be wrong. So we're returning to sniff her or something.

That's the story so far.

We're intercepted by a patrol (one of those freakishly fast oversized sprites jumps out of the jungle on top of us)

Turns out Leandra was the leader of the northern rebels all along. The game was rigged from the start. She was a double agent!

the warrior and the cuckold weigh in

We will fight, of course.

I select 4 soldiers and our 2 scouts and we go to fight off an ambush

The enemy force is mostly inexperienced, aside from this one veteran soldier. How ever, our starting position is quite horrible, as the enemy can fire on us with impunity from that hill.

Our first priority is getting some cover. We're gonna make for that forested area on our left. From there we'll also be able to control a one-hex-wide foot path that leads up to the hill, and we'll be able to either flank or kill enemies funneled down toward us.

One of our scouts trips a net trap but aside from that the area is safe.

All a net trap does is end a unit's turn early, he'll be able to move freely next turn.

The enemy's doctor blocks the entrance to the foot path and the rest of the enemy takes the long way around the hill. Were the AI not brain dead it would fire on us constantly from behind a meat shield, holding the spot the doctor occupies at all cost, forcing us to make a bloody assault for any chance at victory.

But, the AI is braindead, and this is one of those maps where it stands out a bit.

Our scouts clear the way, I begin sending my whole force up the foot path, thinking to take the hill for ourselves.

The enemy wheels around and begins shooting at us now. You can see Aragones get shot from behind a tree here.

This game needed to clearly delineate cover, just add a little symbol to say you're in cover from a certain direction jeez.

We run back down the footpath :D

Enemy scouts are approaching from our starting position, I have Ruiz use flawless defence expecting an attack.

This hunter again shoots Aragones, who's only got 1/3rd of his HP now. Not good. And something truly surprising happens here.

The enemy soldiers and scouts who have been approaching from the long way around the hill, suddenly retreat! I am truly befuddled, I've never seen this and begin to worry.

Aragones gets shot some more, one more hit and he's surely done.

We send our soldiers to force these enemies into melee. With co-ordinated stuns we'll be able to break through here without taking too much damage.

The scouts kill this hunter who is way out of position.

The AI without clear routes of attack run back and forth sort of aimlessly, though the scouts who retreated from us before have run back.

I send Quintero up the hill to aid in forcing a breakthrough there.

Ruiz is tanking hits from these scouts. Him and Trevino -with some cheap shots from Aragones -will be able to handle them.

We finally breakthrough here, the battle is clearly moving in our favor.

With flank exposed, this hunter goes down easily.

I have Trevino stun one scout, then run through the next scout's ZOC and take an attack of opportunity in order to force the nearby hunter into melee.

This is one of the reasons the AI is so easy to defeat. It doesn't understand that sometimes it's worth it to take an attack of opportunity to achieve some greater objective (we need the hunter in melee so it doesn't kill Aragones). The AI never takes attacks of opportunity willingly- with one exception (Veteran trappers have an AOE special ability they will spam no matter what) making them predictable, and thus controllable.

One of the scouts gets taken out with a flank attack. Most of our units are in good health and the enemy is scattered. The rest is clean-up, with them posing no real threat.

*spits on ground*

Back at San Tiago, Leandra is nowhere to be found.

I use the EXP we've received to promote Isabella to Man-At-Arms. All our soldiers are Man-at-Arms rank now.

Pedro Alvarado(doctor) is also promoted to Man-at-Arms, giving him the ability to heal poison, which is important. Doctors are very useful in combat. The only reason we haven't taken him along was because doctors are sort of useless until you promote them at least once. He'll be seeing a lot of combat now, though. For his perk, we give him the ability to wield sword and shield. The shield will help with damage mitigation, and if we throw some equipment on him he can function as a half decent melee unit.

Our next priority will be selecting sergeants. Sergeants increase the upper morale limit of troops, we want to pick ours out asap as crew member's crit chance is morale/2 and morale increasing events are limited.

We rearrange our equipment assignments, filling up Pedro Alvarado's weapon and armor slots, before charting course for this non-descript fishing village, the last known location of a certain missing doctor.

 

[Endemic]

Heh, I never saw the slave revolt event, since I didn't take them along in the first place

Leandra, the qt3.14 without any historical precedent (womyn didn't command anything in Spain during these times I am quite certain)

Depends what you mean by "commanding". Queen Isabella's backing was certainly relevant to exploration of the New World, and her reign was significant for domestic reforms as well.

My understanding is that a small number of female conquistadors did exist, but usually they were taking over expeditions led by their late husbands, so it was not a common occurrence. More likely would be family members coming along to settle, or servants\maids in non-combat roles.

Unfortunately I can't find the original thread where Logic Artists discussed this, but one of the devs did acknowledge the rosters as an anachronism. For what it's worth, there are some amusing events that can happen with female party members. It seems more jarring when contrasted with the research that went into portraying the natives in Mexico, though.

Anyway, carry on.

 

[baud]

So those thiefs were stealing from the Spanish and instead of bringing back the gold, you just kept it yourself

 

[boot]

 

[boot]

7

Spoiler

The fishing village is not too far from San Tiago.

Our search for the missing doctor leads us to dis guy.

Summary is that the man we're looking for is dead. The only hope for a cure to the bishop's illness lies with a mad shaman who has been exiled from the village.

The sassy shaman here gives us the lunatic's rough location. It's not far at all.

The mad shaman isn't making any sense. We immediately think about killing him, but for now let's keep talking and see if we can resolve this without violence.

The urge to have him killed flares up once more, Capitan Codexia calms himself.

Killing this guy seems excessive to me, but there's no 3rd option.

I take Quintero, Pedro Alvarado, and 4 soldiers.

If we had agreed to take the drugs we would face a mirror version of our force, rather than a dozen shaman.

We're gonna stick together and quickly cut through the lightly armored shaman. Their attacks inflict the poison status effect on crew members, so it's very important to keep our doctor out of harms way (He can heal others, but not himself).

The enemy spends their turn cursing our units- curse being a debuff that decreases our chance to hit with ranged attacks. It's completely pointless and a waste of the enemy's turn since we'll be using nothing but melee this fight.

Shaman are very squishy, their base defense is the same as a doctor.

They're not putting up much of a fight. Rather then swarm us there's two shaman spamming Curse you can see at the bottom of the screenshot. All the damage coming in is manageable. We set up flank attacks unhindered and melt through all these guys.

In our madness we slew the shaman but we're still able to progress the quest. We also loot quite a lot of medicine out of his hut. We now have to return to the fishing village, to give these mushrooms to the sassy shaman we spoke to earlier, so he can make a proper cure for the bishop out of it.

We're ambushed as we camp between the mad shaman's hut and the fishing village. This is that ambush I said I was worried about earlier. The one I was willing to delay progressing the plot for.

I take the same crew into this fight. Couldn't get good screenshots of the enemy force, but we're surrounded by 10 enemies, all decently equipped and a few veterans among them.

In order to not die spectacularly in the first few turns, we're gonna use all the items we've stockpiled on this fight.

I barricade the East/South-East approach to the camp. We'll use the time it gives us to rush into the enemies coming at us from the north. Hopefully, by the time the southern group of enemy reaches us we'll have dispatched the northern ones and can route them too. That's the plan anyway.

I also set those net traps I said were kinda useless before. We have two of them. Better than nothing, those hexes with a trip wire set over them are our net traps.

We can't trigger our own traps btw.

The enemy is given first turn on this map, we're supposed to feel under heavy pressure.

Ranged units go after our doctor- as he's got the weakest armor.

No one takes any hits. Enemy doesn't attempt to destroy our barricades but instead runs around them to attack from the West. We have a few turns before they reach us.

We take out this trapper. Our whole crew will gather up on top of his corpse, waiting for the next round of missile fire. I try to keep Pedro behind our soldiers.

One of the tribal warriors that spawned in the North has circled around the tents and closed with one of our soldiers- I think it's Ruiz.

The enemy begins attacking one of our barricades, because for a brief period of time all the hexes leading to the western approach to our camp was blocked- the only time they'll attack your barricades is when they've no other hexes to attack.

And you can see one of our net traps gets used here.

Pedro gets shot, not good. Too early in the fight to be taking these hits on our doctor.

I send our two pole arm soldiers, Trevino and Ecchiverie (can't spell this guys name) to slug it out with northern enemies. We'll reinforce them when we can.

The rest of my troops spend their turn killing this warrior. It was a messy kill, he survived 3 attacks, and I had to finish him off with our doctor, who's now more exposed then we would like him to be.

Ruiz gets poisoned and Pedro is shot again. Pedro was illuminated by the torch light making it an easier shot for the soldier. One more shot and he's down, we'll have to play very carefully.

One of the enemy to the north refuses to close into melee and instead circles around, doesn't even fire on us with his musket, kinda weird.

Pedro cures Ruiz and runs north into the dark. Ruiz and Ortega fire on the nearest enemy to no effect and stick close to Pedro, trying to bodyguard him.

We've got this soldier here stunned and Quintero takes large chunks out him. Ecchiveria stays in melee with the hunter he caught.

The enemy fires on us through the tents. Thought we had cover

Eccheveria rotates out so our doctor can heal him from behind cover (or what we believe to be cover), Quintero finishes off the wounded soldier.

I think of having these two soldiers rush the ranged units in the open, but decide not to press my luck.

The enemies we're facing now are from the southern group. Our crew -aside from Pedro- is in good health we're in good position to finish the rest of the encounter without trouble. Just gonna keep Pedro behind that cart for the remainder of the fight.

Our crew stays behind the tent line, waiting for the enemy to come to them.

We catch an enemy hunter in a net trap, this one was used to decent effect, it prevented the hunter from getting a shot off.

Ruiz stuns a soldier, then runs through his broken ZOC to engage a trapper in melee. The soldier we wounded on the previous turn is killed.

The worst of it is over.

With clever use of stuns and flanks attacks, as well some healing from our doctor, we fight the remaining rebels off without losses.

We don't manage to kill that last hunter but we still fulfill the requirements for victory.

Glad it's out of the way.

At the fishing village we meet back up with the funny shaman. And, uh...

I recruit him into our expedition.

being that half our crew are hardcore racists who are cheered up by the sight of mutilated indians and negros, it doesn't go over so well.

 

[Reinhardt]

First wommynz, now injuns. So much for Codexia...

 

[boot]

trust the plan

 

[boot]

8

Spoiler

Morale of our racist crew members drops through the floor, but Atl, filthy heathen injun he may be, is vital!- yes vital!!- to the success of the expedition. We need two doctors to keep the expedition running smoothly through rough spots (where, say, we have multiple casualties- possibly including one of the doctors).

At the end of the day, Capitan Mutt de la America Codexia is the big monkey, and he has all the coconuts, and what he says goes. So we welcome the witch doctor onto the crew. We'll have to feed most of our guys double rations for a while, but it's worth it.

We chart a course for the mines the governor told us about, there we will develop leads to help track down the rebels plaguing that region.

As we travel, I've been trying to decide on who our first sergeant will be, and I finally decide on one of the hunters, Rafael Lopez. He is immediately promoted to man-at-arms, and we'll be feeding him all the exp we get in the coming days to get him up to sergeant. I give him the Fortune's Favored perk (increases crit chance by half).

Wasn't sure if I wanted a hunter or Quintero as my first sergeant, decided on a hunter because they need the promotions to be half decent. At recruit/man-at-arms level they are only a shadow of what they could be.

We arrive at the mines too late. The rebels have already sacked the place.

We've nothing to gain from speaking to this man.

I select Pedro Alvarado(doctor), Quintero(scout), Lopez(hunter), and 3 soldiers. Ruiz is no longer our chosen S&S soldier (as his morale is in the toilet) instead we take Ortega, and have Ruiz give all his equipment over to him.

The enemy is well equipped and experienced. We'll need to make our first turn count. I put my soldiers on one side, the less armored troops on the other.

Manage to take out this enemy warrior but it was a close one, depended on making a 40% chance to hit shot at the end.

Our position at the end of the first turn is good. Two ranged units are stuck in melee and our most exposed unit is also our best armored.

Ortega gets beat up but he's still alive.

Our soldiers use stuns on the enemy soldiers, so they don't keep Ortega chain stunned. Quintero feints through one hunter, then sneaks into another hunters' ZOC to force a melee. Pedro heals Ortega, our soldiers shuffle around before we end turn.

Enemy is barely able to do any damage on their turn. When ours comes around we inflict casualties. We clean up the rest easily.

Esteban is defeated, but we are unable to capture him.

He jumps off a cliff and escapes. Oh well. With that, we can say that we've dealt with the rebels. We'll report all of this to the governor.

From the fight we gain some valuables and equipment, 200xp, as well as Caltrop traps (and the ability to craft them)

Lopez is promoted up to Veteran rank and we give him Point Blank shot, one of the most fun and powerful perks in the game. Lopez will now deal crits when attacking units adjacent to him with his musket. It's one of the few game changing perks. Being able to reliably do 50-100dmg per turn (depending on enemy armor) with no setup is a big deal.

We're going to chart this mountain region and find the still missing woman before we return to Santo Domingo.

Only a day after we defeated Esteban, we get this event.

Esteban and Leandra's rebel forces are killing each other, and we've the oppurtunity to intervene. Now, we have the option of fighting both at once, but that option has no real payoff for us (it allows us to skip a fight near the end of the game, which we don't want to do this playthrough).

Also, when fighting both at once, both groups of rebels attempt only to kill you. It's sort of jarring. There are no fights with 3 factions up against each other, might have been nice if there was.

And, maybe it's my uh- how do you say- uh special edition copy, but, in many fights- like the one where you take on both rebel bands at once- you'll kill a few in dialogue, if you pass a Tactics check, and it makes the following fight much more easy to win. At least that's how it was in earlier special edition copies I've played. On this special edition copy, even if you kill dudes in dialogue during a tactics check they'll still be there. This is also jarring to me.

Finally, last time I killed both bands at once it was a skin of your teeth victory where I used up all my items and only 3 of my 6 men made it out uninjured. There's just not enough payoff for us to do it, though it is a properly challenging fight. We want to save our items and avoid injuries.

So we will play the jackal and kill just the survivors.

Take the same crew into this fight. I'll probably be using them for the rest of the Hispaniola campaign.

I have my force advance and use the Interrupt command. Any enemy that comes within 6 hexes is fired on, and we weaken an incoming scout to near death with it.

The scout is killed, and I have Ortega stun a nearby warrior to set-up a pointblank shot.

Pointblank shots will incur an attack of opportunity unless the target is stunned (or if they get killed by the shot of course).

I realize about now that Fortune's Favored was an awful skill choice for Lopez. He'd of been much better off with Relentless or Keen Eye. I don't know what I was thinking. There's a certain item that kind of justifies the perk choice in Mexico, but the metagamer in me has to fight the temptation to restart the campaign. I'm looking for character editors now.

I mean, it's not a horrible choice. When our hunter is not doing point-blank shots, we want him softening up incoming enemies...

Spoiler

Definitely should've taken Keen Eye. Take Keen Eye on your hunters, men. Keen Eye or Relentless. Hunters with pointblank shot will be dealing out guaranteed crits half of the time ffs.

I hate suboptimal character builds.

Enemy fires on Lopez quite a few times on their turn, I have Pedro patch him back up, only one of the shots landed.

Make an error in positioning here. Should have had Ortega one hex over to the right, in order to keep the trapper in melee.

Trying to fix our mistake, I have Quintero feint through to keep the trapper in melee range.

This gets him knocked out though. Pretty stupid of me.

Aside from that, battle is uneventful.

Pointblank shots really make our hunter's presence felt.

Quintero gets a good injury roll here.

Good loot.

We'll stop here, next update should see us chart out the mountains and return to Santo Domingo. The Lopez thing has demoralized me

 

[Darth Roxor]

This is the first time we eat an attack of opportunity in the LP due to the absolutely fucking terrible shitty pathfinding algorithm. There has been no greater source of frustration while playing this game than from clicking on a hex, and seeing one of my units make a retarded detour through an enemies ZOC so he can get whacked for 40hp or so.

ah, the memories

 

[boot]

9

Spoiler

We set off charting the mountain terrain, clicking shiny stones. It isn't long before we find something.

This would be the location of the missing womyn. We secure the area before searching for the amulet

Of course there's combat

The map is long and the enemy is mostly made up of Recruits. Their one well armed Veteran is totally cut off from his allies.

The Veteran has the Relentless perk, and we find out here- cause I've never seen this before- that Relentless can proc off itself over and over and over, maybe without any limit.

Still he eventually stops attacking and dies.

The encounter was built to be won with a force comprised wholly of recruits.

We run into a patrol of Carib raiders not long after. This is another encounter designed for a party of recruits on a very long map.

AI doesn't do too well on large maps cause their scouts will run well ahead of the rest of the enemies and after they're dead, winning with numerical superiority is trivial.

We also get ROBBED of our valuables for the first time in the LP.

about 2200 valuables gone. We've lost rations, medicine, and crafting materials, but getting robbed of your valuables is always a kick in the balls. Nothing I can do about it, though, we're already camping with a maxed security detail.

We've gotten a lot done in our time away from the city, time to turn in quests.

Our work for the governor is over- but not really. He has no new assignment for us, yet we cannot leave the island. Leandra's rebels are expected to attack the city at some point and we're to wait for it to come.

If you remember, we agreed to fight in a tournament against Noriega's troops about a month ago, tournament is taking place now.

It's a series of 3 on 3 fights, all of them are easy to win. The last fight has spike traps you're forced to avoid, but aside from that it's basically free loot and exp.

I get Lopez promoted to SGT, raising our Morale cap to 13. He takes the Walk Your Shots perk (each shot at an enemy, even if you miss, makes it easier to land subsequent shots) and gains the Smoke Bomb ability. Smoke bombs are used to provide cover to units in the open, very useful on some maps but usually we won't need 'em.

I know it's a barebones update, but I want to move on and get to the interesting stuff. Mexico is just around the corner.

 

[boot]

i'm gonna go to the next page, loading times for these imgs is getting long (at least on my pc)

 

[boot]

reea

 

[boot]

qwerqqw

 

[boot]

fdd

 

[boot]

dafddsd

 

[boot]

adfs

 

[boot]

dadf

 

[boot]

10

Spoiler

It's only been a few days apart, men, but it feels much longer. Let us continue

We've no more business in Santo Domingo for the moment, but also no sidequests to pursue. We leave the city and make camp not far from the walls. Aimlessly camping is the only way to progress here.

Our dear wench Isabela is stolen right from out of Codexia's tent, and Ortega has been left to die

It is the work of none other than this bastardo! I call our usual fighters to battle, and we go to push the animals from the camp.

We move our force around a large rock formation at the edge of the camp, it will help us close without getting shot too much.

Enemies attempt to close in behind us but we're able to continue without slowing, the power of Point Blank shot proves very useful.

The enemy derps around with Smoke Bombs and attempts improbable shots. They refuse to move very far from their starting positions so we don't have any trouble advancing.

Except this scout, who attempts to flank unsuccessfully. But the rest refuse to budge.

We get the last melee unit standing between us and their hunter and doctor, who we will jump on and quickly destroy.

The Soldier-SGT withstands a lot of abuse before dying. Our units finish the battle barely scratched.

Isabela is most likely to be at the ritual site we discovered around the north-western limits of the colony, so that's where we will go.

I promote Quintero to Veteran rank, he takes the Sneak Attack perk (15%-25% increase to flank attack damage). Also gains the ability to use Throwing Knives, which can be useful to finish off hard to reach enemies.

Quintero will be our 2nd Sergeant, once we pool 600 more xp.

We continue on the most direct path to the ritual site as rescuing Isabela is a timed quest- we've only got 2 weeks to get to her. It causes me some conflict as I wanted to take a more indirect path so we could explore the western edge of the colony (I think we missed a patrol there) but wasn't sure we'd get to her in time. So that part of the map will go unexplored this LP.

Also, due to what I think is a quirk of the engine, Ortega is on the verge of death. He was Critically Injured last night, but because the injuries done during scripted ambushes technically occur before we camp for the night, the game treated the injury as though it had gone untreated. So now he's at Fatal injury status, untreated he will probably die. Not that we'll allow him to go untreated, but this is the first time this LP any of our men have been this fugged up.

We are just outside the ritual site now, I check our stuff and realize we gained the ability to use and create lanterns our last fight. Forgot to mention this.

Lanterns can be useful but I don't like them. Unlike most items you can use them as the battle progresses. They require no setup. You just click on an enemy and something awesome happens!- a lantern falls on the enemy's head and they are set on fire, taking some damage immediately and for some turns afterwards. A fire will soon spread from the tile you dropped the lantern on and can become quite large.

The problem is you can't control the fire at all. Often I'd use lanterns and find myself wishing I hadn't as it cut off flanking routes, etc. We'll probably only use lanterns when we're desperate.

Anyway

Ride forth with the fury of God.

gosh I wanna click it, you know I wanna click it, I know you want me to click it, but we cannot choose this option men. We can't, no matter how cool it sounds. This choice is a trap! If we pick it our qt 3.14 will die gruesomely. I repeat, it's a trap! I did it my very first playthrough. Nevar again.

Nah, Isabel is just some wench, should let her go.

You know Esteban can be recruited as a crew member if you backed the developers heavily during their kickstarter campaign. They never opened him up as a follower to anyone else- you had to be a backer during that time when they really needed the money. Game barely got made with what funds they had and I guess out of gratitude they have steadfastly refused to patch Esteban in for everyone else. I think it's pretty cool of them, they have a spine.

And Esteban just slashed our qt 3.14 through the chest so he's dead anyway. Nevar forgive, Nevar forget.

The men are deployed without any items to aid them.

Oncoming enemies are shot a few times.

And we get two down and stun another in the first clash. Very good. Pedro Alvarado got a lucky crit that allowed us to finish one off we otherwise wouldn't have.

He's poisoned and shot up on the enemy's turn, putting pressure on us to end the fight fast. I should've left him in cover near the starting position, enemy always focuses him as his armor is pathetic (only 10% damage reduction- our sword and shield soldier has 60% for comparison).

Lopez fails to kill this guy by a hair, wish I'd taken Keen Eye on him

Our soldiers on the left trigger net traps, and my other units don't have enough movement to trap the last ranged unit in melee, Pedro will be exposed to more ranged attacks on the enemy turn.

He gets Quickshotted (quickshot allows a unit to fire twice but has a much lower chance to hit) and both hits land. Poison will take him out once our turn comes around. Oh well.

We took out their melee units already, their lightly armored ranged units are cut down quickly while Esteban is kept stunned. We kill him last.

An unfortunate injury, but that's what we get for being such a hot-head and sending our Doctor in with the regular troops.

Before killing this bastardo he begs a favor of us. He asks us to save the village of Higuey. Leandra's rebels have turned on the Taino people, and we are the only force left that can stop them. (if we had killed both groups of rebels during a certain encounter we had some time ago, this quest would not come up, he'd just be executed. All the EXP and loot you would receive during this quest would instead be received at the end of that battle)

We're going to complete this quest, not for Esteban's sake, not for the Higuey villager's sake, but because it gives us a fine excuse to explore the eastern half of the island which we have left unexplored to this point. (Higuey is located allll the way at the very eastern point of the island- I know this only because I've beaten the game before, Esteban does not mark it on our map.)

First we'll check on Isabela though.

Isabela gains the Traumatized character trait. As far as I can tell it does nothing at all. She's heavily injured but she'll live with treatment.

We're very glad to have recruited Atl onto the expedition here.

I charted a course to the nearby fishing village to buy more medicine, as we'll run out soon from treating all these heavily injured people. Remember, I'm playing with a medical skill of 1. The bare minimum. 100 Medicine doesn't last long at all, we're going through about 20 medicine a night treating Pedro and Isabela.

They only have 20 medicine and we trade our rations for all of it. I also buy some more equipment off them.

Stop again at the San Tiago market, as we continue eastward along the northern coast of the island. Pedro and Isabella have healed by now, but we're running very very low on medicine so I trade away a few more of our rations.

Isabela is ruined for life, just the way Codexia likes 'em ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

we also gain 50xp for having her survive the entire series of events