I’m not in the game, so I have no idea, but my assumption is that a decently-kitted Doom Horror would kill a tricked-out Djinn or a flying all-devil army. A DH, as nearly as I can tell, will kill anything except for a very specifically crafted countermeasure, or a large number of good lifeless mindless troops. Since it’s so hard to pin down a DH, it gives the owner a huge strategic advantage–enemies essentially have to sit bottled up in their forts for the most part, allowing the DH player to dictate the battles for the rest of the game. A player with multiple DHs is just that much more unstoppable. I’ll be interested to see if your game goes differently.[/quote]
I had created a ton of anti-DH SCs in the Pamplemousse game to test this out. Never got the chance though.
Rywill
2002
What are you talking about? Have you even BEEN in any of these games? For my part, I’ll note that I lost primiarily because of Wrathful Skies in JM Hardcore (although props to Rollory for being right on top of his tactical game as well), and I lost entirely due to clam hoarding in Pampelmousse. I was playing an offensive game both times.
SlyFrog
2003
I actually agree that this is a viable point (some people may not want the game to end that way, but it is a reasonable option to intentionally put in “gamebreaker” tech levels to end drawn out games).
What I’m pretty certain is unbalanced is the differing side’s differing abilities to get those gamebreakers, and how painfully tedious it is to get the gamebreakers under the current system (clamhording, for example).
Foom
2004
The game that brought up the discussion (Qt3NoobAran) is currently around turn 50, and Atlantis, the clam hoarder, has been under heavy attack from a coalition of the landlubber nations for the last dozen turns or so. I don’t think the points you make really apply here.
You might argue that we should have attacked him earlier, or defeated him in those twelve turns. But it was a newbie game, when it started most of us didn’t know much about fighting underwater or forging clams.
One of these days, we need to pitch Le Puma against some of you Shrapnel grognards and see who makes it out alive :wink:
The game that brought up the discussion (Qt3NoobAran) is currently around turn 50, and Atlantis, the clam hoarder, has been under heavy attack from a coalition of the landlubber nations for the last dozen turns or so. I don’t think the points you make really apply here.
You might argue that we should have attacked him earlier, or defeated him in those twelve turns. But it was a newbie game, when it started most of us didn’t know much about fighting underwater or forging clams.
One of these days, we need to pitch Le Puma against some of you Shrapnel grognards and see who makes it out alive :wink:[/quote]
Well, I didn’t execute a textbook atlantis clam hoard. That game has been ongoing a long time and in the early phases I made a lot of silly n00b mistakes which is why I only have like 7 underwater provinces left (and ~50 clams!). I’ve been on the defensive the entire game after my brief foolish period of antagonizing everyone in sight thinking that being underwater made me invulnerable. Turns out I was wrong about the water thing. We’ll see if Doom Horrors do a lot to slow up my opponents.
SlyFrog
2006
The game that brought up the discussion (Qt3NoobAran) is currently around turn 50, and Atlantis, the clam hoarder, has been under heavy attack from a coalition of the landlubber nations for the last dozen turns or so. I don’t think the points you make really apply here.
You might argue that we should have attacked him earlier, or defeated him in those twelve turns. But it was a newbie game, when it started most of us didn’t know much about fighting underwater or forging clams.
One of these days, we need to pitch Le Puma against some of you Shrapnel grognards and see who makes it out alive :wink:[/quote]
Well, I didn’t execute a textbook atlantis clam hoard. That game has been ongoing a long time and in the early phases I made a lot of silly n00b mistakes which is why I only have like 7 underwater provinces left (and ~50 clams!). I’ve been on the defensive the entire game after my brief foolish period of antagonizing everyone in sight thinking that being underwater made me invulnerable. Turns out I was wrong about the water thing. We’ll see if Doom Horrors do a lot to slow up my opponents.[/quote]
Yes, and in the interest of full disclosure and fault finding, I screwed up. I’m not sure I could have actually hammered Atlantis proper, but back when Man was still playing, I eased up a bit because I thought I would be bleeding myself white while leaving certain other players (such as Man) quite healthy. Man was also fairly aggressive toward the territories I had taken from Pythium.
Then Man went completely stale, which magnified my error. However, it was clearly an error not to at least try to put the boot down on Atlantis even more heavily than I did.
regarding the wrathful skies thing:
How do you conquer an ermorian capital guarded by ~400 freespawns and a wrathfulskies casting lich queen? I must admit that it was me who brought the staff of storms, but the battle was just silly.
The lich queen and the 25 ghost pd vs my 3 air queens, a water queen and the king of banefires all completely decked out + ~10 high seraphs a couple of seraphims and ~40 troops. The battle lasted ~ 5 turns and I lost half my mages and regular troops.
Now I´m sieging that castle with two gate cleavers and the remaining force and can´t harm the castle walls.
On the other hand I feel pretty invulnerable on the defensive side, I doubt there is an army that could stand against three cloudtrapezing airqueens(with wrathful skies of course) + my magebane/barriershield wielding 35 def ghost king.
Most of these higher end games feature quite a bit of offense and lack of defensive posturing … it’s just that the guys who strike first end up not being around.
It’s really just a matter of:
1 - Who’s able to miss most of the fray and continue to build
2 - Who can “fight” while continuing to to build
3 - Being Ermor
In general, not playing defensive early = early exit. Eventually you’ll meet up with the guy who’s been carefully putting his plan into action.
Not necessarily. The trick is to not get in fights that aren’t profitable. A long grinding war doesn’t benefit either party and they would have done better at peace.
That guy who is carefully putting his long-term plan into action is often vulnerable early on. In QT3-LavaLamp I started next to Backov’s Marignon and my scouts told me early on that he was playing the blood version of Marignon. That plus some others things my scout told me indicated that he was investing heavily in some long term plans and would be vulnerable to being blitzed early. Which is what I did and it worked out great, I’m about to have a second capitol fairly early on in the game.
Backov
2010
Yep, at a the expense of any future diplomatic relations with me, the player. You know, the one who could have taken you out early, but chose not to because that would have been dickish?
Rather than quoting each post I’m replying to, I’ll do this in one fell swoop:
[ul]
- Ryan was definitely aggressive in Pamplemousse, I can vouch for that :)
- Lavalamp has to be the most diplomatically polite game I’ve played yet. Is it the 2-player victory condition? Everyone’s willing to make it work.
- Is FeedingFrenzy governed by the Rule of Labs? I’m not in any position to violate it, I’m just wondering if I should be worrying about clam-hoarded DHs down the road.
- FeedingFrenzy- isn’t. The slow pace is killing me. Can we rename it to School of Krill?
[/ul]
edit: Finally searched on ‘Qt3FeedingFrenzy’ rather than ‘FeedingFrenzy’ and found out the answer to #3: the Rule of Labs is never mentioned and hence I have to assume it is not in effect.
Backov
2012
We had one, maybe two players staling… I’ve heard from Ben (he went AI but it didn’t stick) but not JM yet… If he doesn’t get back to me soon I will just set him AI myself.
Also, the rule of labs didn’t exist when I started this game, so no, not in effect.
Whoa, don’t take it personally man. Slaughter-thy-neighbor is the name of the game! If you could have taken me down early you should have! I totally don’t mind being eliminated early. I chalk it up as a good lesson and go start a new game :D
Rollory
2014
No no no, not yet! Not Marignon! Not when I’ve been counting on his staling and am about to, uh, well, that is to say … listen, the peaceful inhabitants of Faerun feel that “That government is best which governs least”, and therefore Marignon is tops with all of them. You can’t argue with the will of the people, right???
Vanheim stands ready to defend the people of Marignon against an unjust and tyrannical AI ruler, and will intervene forcefully to re-establish the - or, rather, a rightful leadership if any regime change is attempted.
I think the 2-player victory condition has added quite an interesting twist to the game. When I invented it, it was mostly to streamline the endgame phase. I was assuming the 2 dominant late-game powers could unite to stamp out the smaller surviving nations and that would speed things up towards the end. I hadn’t anticipated the frenzy of early game coaltion building and ally shopping.
It’s making me a little nervous about attacking someone, because I’m almost sure to bring their ally down on my head as well and I’m still a solo operator.
Backov
2016
No no no, not yet! Not Marignon! Not when I’ve been counting on his staling and am about to, uh, well, that is to say … listen, the peaceful inhabitants of Faerun feel that “That government is best which governs least”, and therefore Marignon is tops with all of them. You can’t argue with the will of the people, right???
Vanheim stands ready to defend the people of Marignon against an unjust and tyrannical AI ruler, and will intervene forcefully to re-establish the - or, rather, a rightful leadership if any regime change is attempted.[/quote]
I just looked in on Marignon, and they’ve been stale for quite some time. So, set to AI, sorry Jamie.
Q23Tyrande - A turn of events has two former allies fighting each other. How unfortunate.
Q23AranWars - Pythium continues to make it’s move on the Jotuns. It looks like Panagea and Man are pushing by Abysia.
qt3aranwars(pythium): jotunheims pretender is hopping around in my provinces, but it doesn´t seem as if he has much else left.
qt3rainbow(ermor) : How frustrating must it be to play against soul gate ermor. Tien´chi was wandering around in two of my provinces with a 25 heavy infantry merc band. So I ordered 4 wraith centurions to attack the province(1) with the mercs in them and 1 to attack the undefended province(2). Turns out tien´chi moved the mercs back to prov(2). Didn´t matter, the lone wraith centurion won easily ;).
aeroscophaele was so nice to give me all my provinces back, so I have reestablished contact with machaka. Greetings spiderlings.
Rainbow (Machaka) - There goes the neighborhood.
AranWars (Machaka) - “Everybody was kung-fu fight-iing!” The streets run with the blood of many nations. I’m just trying to get back on my feet. Oh, look! Ulm is swimming off my coast. wave How’s the water? I’d join you but we don’t know how to swim yet.
NewbEuropa (Man) - Africa’s f*%$ing hot–but it’s a dry heat.
:roll:
Worldwar (Pangaea) - My first MP game still seems to be going better than all the others. But I don’t really have any longterm strategies so it’s probably just an illusion that will soon come crumbling down when the Munchkins start coming to visit. Fortunately, I have many friends in high places. 8)
BenNoob (Pangaea) - The titans are clashing! I’m a-scared.
balut
2020
Qt3 Tyrande (Pangaea) - I’m out - just turned AI. Can’t beat the Vanheim Air Magic. EVAR. Fucking Air Magic.
