My dreams of united nobility front shattered beyond recognition.
Anyway - which noble faction is the least worried about potential social reforms?
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The Leaguers, unquestionably. They tend to attract the most open-minded, the most bourgeois-friendly, and the most future-oriented nobles. There’s a limit to how much disruption any noble faction will accept (as @idonotlikeusernames will rightly emphasize) but compared to the party of the status quo and the party of the imagined past, the Leaguers are by far the most ready to accept reform.
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What areas would the Leaguers be willing to compromise with a Homelander MC on since you’ve said they can work together in a way that a cosmopolitan and the Laconniers couldn’t?
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From the POV of a hypothetically cynical MC, I imagine a Cold War CIA-ish, American-esque style of dominance might be appealing for the Leaguers: “post-Hegemony Shayard will get to enjoy democracy/oligarchy in its safe space/restored borders, while all the other former archonties will become banana republics ruled by puppet leaders of Shayard’s choosing.”
Otherwise, as I’ve stated in previous posts, I’d push for a monarchical koinon that’s bound together by a network of marriage alliances centering around the de Syrnon throne/family.
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America’s “safe-space” is established by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Shayard, upon cursory inspection of their geography, is looking very Polandish. That is not even considering 60-70k human F-16s currently in the Hegemony’s employ.
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Then I will make the extra effort to create my own “safe-space.”
@Havenstone, how much blood would it cost to separate Shayard, Wiendrj, and the Seracca (a potentially ideal “isolationist trio” koinon) from the rest of the continent in a Pangaea breakup-like fashion, and then drift southwards into the offscreen obscurity of XoR’s vast ocean? (While using tamed giant animals, Whendish engineering, and/or Theurgy to periodically move the newly created “drifting splinter continent”)
FYI, the main source of inspiration that comes to mind is the Vanishing Isle (from Aladdin and the King of Thieves).
You can’t accurately bombard what you don’t see, right? Havie, how much blood would have to be spent to cast a continent-wide invisibility spell? (And how much effort/blood would have to be spent detecting it?)
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It’s been a few years since I clarified:
The implications for Theurgically powered continental drift should I think be reasonably clear. 
Similarly, there’s no such thing as invisibility spells in Theurgy. You can blind people, but anything subtler than that is beyond even an Ennearch’s grasp of optical teloi.
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Would that be because of the Aristotelian physics the world follows with the eyes actively causing seeing, so you’re having to modify every eye rather than changing something about your own body?
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I’ve tried to be a little coy on the question of whether the world really actually follows Aristotelian physics or whether what you see in telos-vision is profoundly shaped by the paradigm you bring to it (so e.g. kurios Isaac de Newton would see light rays and eyes differently to kurios Aristotle Stagiratou).
So: maybe!
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So, after many run, i managed to make this guide RNG proof and decide to post it here instead discord. This guide will guaranteed you to have 590+ followers and arms at the beginning of chapter 4 while make it possible to defeat 1000+ enemy.
COM 2 INT 1 Ruthless/Skeptic/Homelander High Anarchy Helot Guide
Introduction
This build focus to raid as much as possible while recruiting many followers to make it possible to defeat one thousand enemy later and have 1000+ arms at the end of battle. If there is some decision that not available here, that means it’s not important.
Prologue
Here what we need to do:
- Choose Nationalist Prologue.
- Play as a helot
- Choose option that raise your homelander point
- Save Charles the Jongler, who can give us intel later in chapter 4, so we will not waste money to buy intel later. Choose I keep singing option to save him.
Chapter 1
- Immediately join Breden
- When breden ask what you hate about hegemony, pick skeptical option and then homelander option.
- Join breden sedition, and when Alles appear, choose to stay with her to boost your relationship with Radmar.
- Ofcourse choose combat as your talent and charisma your weakness.
- Stop the harrowing with your combat skill, and then feed your enemy to harrower to gain ruthless point, after that raid the traders, you will get few mules.
- Always trust Breden.
Chapter 2
Before Week 1
- Be honest about your belief
- Choose Zvad as your deputy, Elery will hate you but you can repair your relationship with her easily later.
- Choose Shayard as your language.
- When Terren ask you about mules, set mules to 0.
- About your followers diet, choose healthy diet to sick and subsistence diet to healthy.
Week 1
- Don’t sell anything and don’t buy any bushels.
- Scout mules first, and then beg mules and choose Breden.
- After that, raid both yeoman and merchant for mules.
- Send all but 20 outlaws to raid yeoman village for foods and mules.
- Raid the owlscap, bring elery and don’t talk to her, with your com 2 you will win the fight easily and gain a point to elery relationship.
- About your diet, choose healthy diet to prevent your sickness. If you sick, you can’t lead and break your run.
Week 2
- Buy 46 bushels
- Send Zvad to raid the caravan
- Scout for tax raid intel, coerce the telone, telone family, bring elery, ambush the alastor, burn alastor barrack, let your outlaws, ride the alastor captain horse to gain point to elery.
- Threathen the telone wife to gain ruthless point
- Send remaining outlaws to recruit with breden as the leader.
Week 3
- Buy 57 bushels
- Raid both alastor and monastery for mules, pick elery plan to gain point, join us.
- Send remaining outlaws to recruit with Radmar as the leader.
Week 4
- Buy 46 bushels
- Send Elery to raid the Caravan
- Send remaining outlaws to recruit with Breden as the leader.
Week 5
- Buy 51 bushels.
- Get mules by raiding the merchant for mules.
- Send remaining outlaws to recruit with Breden as the leader.
- At the end of the week, Alaine will send you message, she want to meet you next week to discuss something
- After Elery coming back from caravan raid, she want some time off. Since we will not raid the caravan anymore just fulfill her wish.
Week 6
- Don’t buy any bushels, you will get them later at the Noble barn raid.
- Meet Alaine, threathen her by picking top option. Now she will send you 40 bushels until winter end.
- Scout for Alastor garrison
- Now raid noble barn with Radmar as the leader, send all your mules, target the cosmopolitan house for homelander point and don’t burn the barn. There is a chance that alastor will attack the raiders and cause 13 casualties, if not there is only five casualties. You will get 200+ bushels from this raid and with 40 bushels you get from Alaine every week, you don’t need to worry about foods anymore.
- Now send remaining outlaws to recruit with Breden as the leader.
Week 7-9
Because of Tax raid RNG that makes tax raid happened in week 7,8 or 9, i can’t give you detailed guide so read carefully if you don’t want to restart because you accidentally choose the wrong choice.
At the beginning of week 7, Zvad will talk to you about elery, choose if you say so. Don’t buy any bushels until the winter end.
At week 7 first scout the noble house, if architelone raid happened right now, raid it and bring Radmar. After defeat them frame ismene de galis, break the guards knees, after that threathen the yeoman you meet later to increase your ruthless point. After tax raid, bleys will come to you, choose how do you escape, or you could join our rebellion, i’ve got enough friends but telone, encourage the band to welcome him so he remain friendly to you. This will cause a massive hit to your homelander and ruthless point but you can still recover them. After the merchants refuse your architelone loots, bleys will help you, make sure to praise him by saying Amazing And make sure to keep the architelone mules, don’t convert it to foods, and don’t buy any bushels when bleys offer you. If there is no tax raid option yet, send remaining outlaws to recruit with Breden as the leader and if there is remaining outlaw higher than 10 left, send remaining outlaws to set trap, if not just send them hunting rabbits.
At the beginning of week 8, Zvad will ask you about the band symbols to raise their morale, you can pick the gryphon to raise your shayardene points, still you can choose whatever you like. If you let your followers to choose the symbol they will pick skull symbol, that will raise your ruthless, this is optional because you can raise them enough to gain bonus for it later. At week 8, you either raid alastor garrison or doing tax raid, if you raid alastor garrison, make sure to send breden with all but 35 outlaws first to recruit so elery will not complain for not bringing Breden. Bring elery and radmar to reduce your casualties to 2. If there is tax raid, do option tax raid above and then send remaining outlaws to recruit with Breden as the leader.
At week 9, set 50 traps, you either doing alastor garrison raid or tax raid. Just make sure you send all but 35 outlaws to recruit before doing alastor garrison raid.
Week 10
- Raid noble house raid with you as the leader, let Radmar come with you, Climb first and watch the badass mc fighting more experience fighter and win and watch your rebels obliterate the house guards. When you meet the nobles pick the very bottom option to increase your ruthless. Burn the horse for food and let the helots join you.
- Now set 50 traps.
- And sabotage the harrower with you as the leader, pick feed the to harrower to increase your ruthless point. Make sure you burn the harrower.
- Now send remaining outlaws to recruit with Radmar as the leader.
- If you have leftover outlaws ten or above, you can send them to recruit with elery, don’t recruit with Breden, Breden leadership already high enough.
After Winter
- Before doing anything else, train your rebels first
- After that sell all your mules that can be sold.
- Buy enough weapons to arm all your rebels, and then buy 144 weapons again. This is important if you want your rebels vote for battle later.
- And then donate 1200 drachems to yeoman and 400 to helots.
- Make sure to celebrate.
- When Kalt/Kala appears, choose kill them… to raise your ruthless points.
Chapter 3. Part 1, Two Strangers.
- When your scout inform about strangers, choose to continue your hiking. This important to kill one plektoi later.
- Send Zvad to bring them to you.
- When strangers arrive, choose ignore them, this will be important to get some intel later.
- Your father will come to you, choose Yes… restrain my grin…
- After that bleys will tell you about the strangers. This is why it’s important to get friendly with him.
- After that, don’t give any foods to two strangers.
- When you interrogate them, choose menacing option.
- Pick horion first to interrogate
- Pick all options, make sure to intimidate him and make him dislike you.
- When he ask you why you rebels, choose to stop the harrowing, pick all option and then you’ll get achievement and some info.
- When he told you about a philosopher, choose to insult the nyr.
- When he ask you how big your realms, choose shayard option.
- Pick all option, and the intimidate him by picking killing option, he will give you some important info.
- After that you’ll interrogate Linos, make sure to intimidate him, make him dislike you and choose all options.
- When Linos ask you about your rebellion, pick until rebellion succeed, and then pick ruthless option.
- When you ask him about horion trips, he will deny he doesn’t know anything, pick i ask you option and you’ll gain some info.
- When Linos offer you to make you an eclect, choose to laugh.
- After that kill them and dump their body, you can use poison to kill them to raise your skeptic point but it will be more satisfying by killing them yourself.
- Don’t meddle with religion.
Part 2 Hector Ambush.
- You will get info that your supply food attacked and you lose 7 mules and 10-20 outlaws.
- Now we must get our revenge by ambushing hector.
- Choose ambush hector option
- Elery will ask you about your opinion, pick Exhilarating option
- After that pick you lead the ambush option and choose Kalt/Kala to be the bait.
- When hector about to shower your rebels with arrows, choose to hold, it will increase your ruthless point and make sure to annihilate all veneurs but hector.
- Praise Kalt/Kala by picking well done option. This will raise their leadership.
- After that, you’ll get the reward because you increase your bar point to 75 ( Ruthless need 76 to gain bonus) Etthena and Betthune will join you.
- When someone from xaos land appear, pick skeptic option
- When you interrogate your father, choose to punch your father to increase your ruthless point.
Chapter 4
- Let all your lieutnants speak, you will win this vote anyway, if you somehow don’t win, you must messed up somewhere in this guide.
- After this Zvad will quit your rebellion, choose Kalt/Kala as your deputy.
- If you romance Breden, propose to Breden, you’ll fail and then sleep with Breden. You’ll gain some info about kryptast. Make sure to trust Breden.
- At shopping option, you can donate 700 to yeoman to raise your rep to max.
- (Optional) If you want to know how many enemy you’ll face you can buy 15 informant. It’s about 1050+, 1072 iirc, if you have enough money
- When the battle begin, send all your lieutnants to fight against flank force.
- After that choose to attack supply train only.
- After that choose to harry them
- When the poisoning event trigger, choose to trust breden, try to disarm radmar if you don’t choose questioning breden.
- After first plektos defeated by your com skill, choose Father! you will discover you father fate, choose to run away.
- After second plektos defeated by bees, choose signal option.
- After that continue your battle
- Choose to lead the fight to push the phalangite down.
- You will win only in 2 rounds.
- You will gain 1000+ arms after you win.
- After that chase the rebel theurge and pick Kalt/Kala as the leader while you and Breden go to vacation in Xaos land. The reason why we bring Breden is to cover MC weakness (Cha) and to not make Breden leadership higher anymore.
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Welcome, Ladd, and thanks so much for sharing here! Am I right that you’re the Discordian who’s been taking on challenges with @HughMyronBrough over the years to find optimal ways to achieve high-difficulty outcomes? If so, thanks – your work has echoed over here, even before you came round in person, and will be really helpful as I keep writing.
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Yep, he’s the Discordian!
I would add that my Minmaxed 2INT “Red Bars” and Pacifist all-lieutenants-alive runs would not exist without his help.
I was very interested to see the 2COM Strat in the post above, I actually use a very different winter strat (conservative early raiding, ignore merchant runs till week 10), though the result is the same (flawless victory, all lieutenants alive, all attributed maxed).
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Today I finished my first game of choice of rebels
Helot
2 combat
1 intelligence
0 charisma
Ruthless
Skeptical
Cosmopolitan
Out of 500~ rebels that joined my revolution
14 survived the battle against the phalangites.
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That’s rough, but you know what they say:
“Perhaps next time you’ll know better than to stir conflict with your betters, or those more cruel than yourself.”
Fortunately, for some, defeat can be a powerful teacher.
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Alright, I’m trying a new playthrough, this time I wasn’t an idiot and properly threatened the tax guy’s family to raid the taxes. Now the problem is that I suspect the code got fucked up along the way because I’m sure it didn’t load some text it should have.
"The tax procession clearly had no expectation whatsoever of being attacked in force this far from the wilderness. A third of the thirty Keriatou guardsmen and Alastors fall at once to your arrows; the panicking survivors manage to get their shields up and ring the Architelone’s caravan. You personally lead the charge that breaks them, barking orders to your outlaws as you fell one Keriatou hireling after another. The
When you finally shout, “Surrender!”
Any idea what could have caused this? Still trying to do this thing with 2 combat, 1 int and 0 charisma.
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Nice catch! My limited code reading ability indicates that this has something to do with the leaders you can bring on the raid with you.
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No one, I wanted my leadership to be what brings us the tax of Shayard.
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Yeah, that extra the is referencing either Radmar’s or Zvad’s actions I think, but they’re elsewhere so game leaves it at that. Essentially a small coding typo.
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Alright, I don’t know if I should call this a bug or a suggestion, but I find it’s really bothering me that Alaine’s protection agreement doesn’t count towards the amount of Bushes of Barley we’ll have at the end of the week, and therefore it doesn’t let me just send my followers to recruit more Helots because they think they’ll be hungry, despite lacking less than 40 bushels between the reserves and the barley run.
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It’s probably because your followers thought there is no guarantee that Alaine wil send your foods every weeks so they feel anxious and will prioritize having enough foods first than other matters. It’s probably what MC thought as well. If you want to gaming your way, you can change your followers diet to only a half then do whatever you want to your followers but don’t use one of your followers so the week doesn’t end immediately and you can change the followers diet to subsistence or healthy.
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