Well, the first goblin warchief showed up, and his third request was for a bunch of clay and 3 sugarbell. Being in the desert and playing Rayya’s Children, I had lots of clay… but there were only 2 sugarbell plants on the map, and my Hearthlings had not gathered them as I’d asked largely because they had no path. Meanwhile my town inventory insisted that I had four, two undeployed.
I managed to get the two planted and harvested, which gave me the seed for a third, which I planted… but before any grew back, the goblin returned. That resulted in the goblins going hostile, and he eliminated my level 3 Footman easily. The cleric wasn’t much help, and while she alternated between smacking him with a book and running away, the rest of the town was dealing with a random goblin.
I switched one fellow (Mooi) back to a level 2 Footman, despite having no gear, and he dealt with the goblin, then tried to rescue the level 3 Footman (Tilla). That led to having them both incapacitated. The townsfolk staged a daring rescue attempt… but by that point two goblin raiders had finished killing the cleric who’d run away to a remote spot. The goblin raiders headed for town, the warchief’s pathing led him back into town, and at the same time that both arrived, we had goblins attack and a group of undead invaders showed up.
Meanwhile the sugarbells blossomed.
With the cleric fading out in the desert, and both Footmen convalescing in beds, the rest of the town tried quite hard- and even managed to eliminate the undead while giving the warchief a few thwacks on his way by, but then the raiders started incapacitating people, very quickly, and well…
It’s the third time I’ve had a failure on attempting to peacefully deal with the goblins, with the first time being Northern Alliance on the glacier and having one too few raccoon pelts with no raccoons spawning in the allotted timespan. It’s making me feel like I’m missing something important with regards to how to handle the quest line…