aow pbem game

Sure, but that’s only useful at the start of the game, when you try to boost you economy. Once you get a settlement or dwelling vassalized, the effect wears out. Life stealing, on the other hand, is useful throughout the game.

Also, check Seeds of Distrust spell from the same Shadowborn specialization.

It’s a matter of opinion. I’d love to hear about the benefits of being a good rogue.

I don’t think it’s that cut and dry. Within Keeper of the Peace, you have Spiritual Freedom + Keeper’s Creed, which is a very solid upgrade to all your units and works fine for rogue units. And of course, it’s not just a choice between good and evil – you can do fine with a focus on elemental or other specializations too.

No argument that life stealing is very useful, but I don’t think it synergizes with rogue particularly better than the other classes. If you were trying to get the most value out of it, you’d want it on units with high defense that can stand and fight for several rounds, which rogues aren’t particularly known for.

@legowarrior, what’s with the snow creeping into my domain? I don’t have any cold weather armor for my units! Freakin’ Popsicle kingdom…

What? Snow? I think you mean Winter Wonder Land and forever Snow Days.

By the way, operation Exploding Animals is finally a go! I’m so excited to see it in action.

Or shadow stalkers with 60% physical damage resistance, right?

Oh boy, do I have some bad news (for me). Two of @Thraeg’s armies, led by a hero each, stormed in and occupied one of my cities. They killed two of my stacks and lost a stack of their own. I’m not 100% sure what happened with one of the heroes. I saw her fall on the battlefield, but after the battle she was in the city Thraeg occupied.

before

after

Thraeg sent an assassin to take back one of the settlements I took from him last turn. I sent a frost wyvern and a cherub to retake it, but even though the combat odds were shown as “highly likely”, the assassin easily killed both of my units.

In the underground area where battles are happening, I saw 2 Thraeg’s stacks mostly consisting of lifestealing goblin butchers, but also 3 shadow stalkers (also lifestealing) and a drunk hobbit.

Losing a city and 3 battles in the row imposed a -200 morale penalty on my armies and settlements.

The undead spawning site I mentioned recently spawned a stack of 2 titans and 4 casters.

Luckily, there are also some good news (for me). I was able to assemble a ragtag stack to retake my city. There was another stack, led by a hero, that also participated in the battle. Together, they were able to defeat the invaders. It was a bloodbath and I lost many units trying to get through the stone walls of the city. Luckily for me, most of them were divine justicars. My hero also converted one of the assassins, but I think he’ll desert in the nearest future since he’s dedicated to evil.

I occupied three more Thraeg’s settlements, and though he can easily retake some of them, it should disrupt the flow of producing resources and units. It also removed settlements’ spells. My autospellcasting appears to be dumber than Thraeg’s, but he seems to be short on mana. And, having liberated Rastorm, I can send all the stacks I was gathering around it to the frontline.

It’s your turn, emperor @Thraeg.

Damn, is that AoW is like? I’m mostly just watching other people get achievements.

Pass the popcorn!

It’s empty!?

Your turn to make a run to the concession counter! I have to pee, but I’ll hold it in!

Welp, that all sounded a lot more exciting to read about than it was to live through. I thought I had put together a respectable military and economy for this point in the game, with reinforcements getting pumped out at a fair clip, and three multi-stack armies full of tier 2-3 troops. I was sadly mistaken.

I sent them in different directions, hoping to find a weak point in @Valambrian’s defenses, but everywhere they arrived, he had overwhelming force available.

One was crushed in the first attack of the war. I had seen an army that looked roughly equal to mine in his frontier city, and thought I could circle around to either find a softer target or lure his army to fight in an open field. But it turned out he had an entire extra stack full of tier 3s hiding out of sight, and was able to wipe out my army without significant losses.

The second traveled through the underground to pop up in what I hoped was a less-protected backwater. They managed to give him a bloody nose, taking one city and a decent stack of defenders, but took heavy losses in the process, and were immediately destroyed the following turn.

The third headed east trying to hit some of his underground holdings. They encountered an army that they might be able to beat in a fair fight, but it was parked in a chokepoint such that only one of my stacks could fight at a time against three of his. They withdrew to try and rush back to defend, but it was far too late.

By this time, his army that had kicked off the war had conquered my few surface holdings and was rampaging around in my homeland and wiping out my reinforcements before I could gather them all together. My assassins managed a couple pinpricks, but everything I had left in the area was severely outclassed. I threw my remaining reserves into a last-ditch effort to retake my throne city while there was only one enemy stack in position to defend it, but it wasn’t close to enough. With that gambit failed, and my last intact military force 6+ turns march away from being able to help, I threw in the towel.

Hats off to @Valambrian for clearly being on another level in mastery of this game’s mechanics. I felt like my empire was developing pretty well, but by the time he declared war on me he had about 2.5X my military score, and was pretty close to equaling the rest of us put together.

In retrospect, I should have expected this sort of bloodbath after seeing him get the achievements for 100 units when I had 52, a level 15 hero when my best was 8, a tier 4 unit before I had tier 3, and researching every skill (!) when I was still 30+ turns away.

Good game all, and congrats to @Valambrian.

Ok, so we’re awarding the win to Val? I’m good with that!

Now, who’s up for another game with Settlers disabled?

Alternatively or in addition to, any interest in a Civ VI: Gathering Storm and/or Planetfall MP game?

Clearly, I don’t play enough concurrent 4X MP games (AoW3 was the only one I was playing). But I definitely prefer playing against humans than the AI. And don’t even think about coming at me with MP co-op versus the AI BS, ‘cause I ain’t listenin’!

Actually, I might be out. I am looking into starting up a second game of Dominions 5, and that will probably eat up a chunk of my free time. It depends on whether it goes off the ground soon.

Congratulations @Valambrian !

I’d be up for some Planetfall. :)

Absolutely! Well done.

Expansion drops on Tuesday, right? So we’d start a MP Planetfall game including it, no?

Does Qt3 have a 4X MP or TBS MP thread, yet? I recall one for RTS (didn’t @legowarrior start it?) and general MP, but not one specifically for 4X/TBS.

I would subscribe to a TBS MP thread. That would be great.

By the way, its generally unused, but if you would like, you can use our Gaming Group Gamma Discord if you think that would be helpful. There is a thread for TBS games.

Anyway, I was fortunate to be gifted a copy of Planetfall, but I don’t have any Expansion packs for it.

Oh wow, I hadn’t looked at the charts. That’s… that’s pretty much what I expected based on all the overarching quests going to @Valambrian and almost everywhere I went on the map bumping into one of his watchtowers! I’m happy I wasn’t even lower given I’ve not played the game a great deal overall, let alone recently!

I’ll be passing on anymore MP for the time being. Could do with playing more solo to get a better feel for things in the long run. Made so many mistakes here but learnt a lot from them.

Well, I’m out, but don’t let that stop the rest of you from continuing if you want.

I’d be up for another AoW3 game or for Planetfall (I tried a few times to get that off the ground but never managed it).

So, @Mysterio, are you going to put together a tbs MP thread? I would be keen on that. Just a place to advertise for games would be cool.

@Thraeg, if it makes you feel better, my nose still hurts.

I learned to build the first city ASAP from you. My class was inspired by yours and @Mysterio’s in the last game. The wild magic adept came from @BloodyBattleBrain’s specialization.

In order to learn the new class / race / splecialization combo, I played 8 single-player games, tweaking the starting conditions as I was learning more about out MP game. Never in these SP games was I as lucky with my starting position as I was in this game. @Thraeg had one of his settlements taken over by raiders, @legowarrior lost his capital to them, and they also destroyed a settler belonging to @geggis. The only time (before @Thraeg occupied Rastorm) when something like this happened to me was when the Frostling Archdruid spawned near one of my outposts and promptly occupied it. But even in the case he parked his army there and decided to go for a swim in the lake in the middle of the map.

I was developing at about the same pace as @Thraeg was (@legowarrior started to build more cities somewhat later and @Mysterio and @geggis gave us an unfair advantage by not building cities at all), and then my expander specialization proved its strength on a large map.

What I did right was focusing on high level treasure sites. I was the fist to open all 5 seals (sorry, @legowarrior, if this cheated you out of the reward for occupying one of them). Some of the rewards were meh, but taking money was still an option.

The war with @Thraeg didn’t go as smoothly as I’d like to, but he had more fronts to protect and I had more resources. It felt weird that we decided to “cordially start a war” after being allies the last time. Still, thank you, @Thraeg, you were a worthy opponent.

Maybe this weekend.

Wait, what? Open all 5 seals? Sounds like I’m missing something.

It’s just one of those things I inexplicably continue to overlook in this game.

I defeated their guardians, but I didn’t leave troops on any of the seals.