2801

No seriously. You might think that these are the ramblings of a cornered mad-man standing on the edge of destruction. But I assure you, Caelum has cunning plans that will return us to our deserved place of world domination. If you agree to pull back to our pre-war borders immediately, I promise not to hurt you too much :P[/quote]

Uh, might be too late for that. :? but I haven’t seen the replay yet so there’s still hope for ya!

2802

Feeding Frenzy (Vanheim) - I got the chance to observe a Doom Horror in action this turn, with the heroic ability of “Battle Bellow”. Fear +21. Its eldritch shrieks caused the opposiing forces to flee the field with hardly a blow struck.

I wish I had a Doom Horror.

Actually, I wish I could wish I had a Doom Horror. I guess I’ll have to be content with my undead deity legion. They smack things around good enough, I guess. But even the badassest of them only have Fear +5 or +6.

2803

FeedingFrenzy (Pan) - Is that the undead legion that is besieging my Mithril Hall right now, or are those guys just the waterboys?

Did you both have to attack? Man, where is the sense of fairness in this world :D

Perhaps the mighty Mictlan will take advantage of the situation and annihilate both scurvey Vanheim and the even scurvier Caelum. Or perhaps this disgusting duo only attacked me with their leftovers and have saved their main strength for Mictlan? Vanheim has thrown Old One Eye at me, though, so he must be at least half serious.

Anyway, Mictlan has a full blown alliance against it now in Vanheim and Caelum, so of course if I were them (hint, hint), I’d smack both Vanheim and Caelum right in the ass :)

2804

We got the idea from Mictlan’s handling of C’tis, actually. Except for the “agreements arrived at openly” part, that seemed unnecessary. And of course Mictlan is welcome to join the party in its own neighborhood - Vanheim at least has not spent the past 30-odd turns of peace just doing nothing. In fact I’m rather proud of the preparations I’ve made, it’ll be interesting to see how they actually perform in practice.

BTW. What happened to the Mithril Hall? I thought this was a great dwarven fortress, but all I see here is a watchtower. Even undead cyclopes aren’t that shortsighted.

2805

Where’s this going on? I want to play too.
Give me a couple turns to finish up Jotunheim and I’m there.

2806

WorldWar - Machaka

I can only see one Caelum province this turn. Can I get some intel from the anti-Caelum alliance? How did the battle of the big armies go?

2807

I would not trust anything comming from that alliance :shock:

I’ve been unfortunate enough to recieve all sorts of things from them, and I can tell you, that without exception - they were all bad!

2808

Heh! Well, I’m a member of that alliance. And I think I speak for all three of us when I say that the things that came from us to you were meant to be bad. :twisted:

2809

Right. And in connection with that, I think it’s only fair to give you the same offer that Rollory got. If you immediately withdraw your troops to the pre-war borders, we might look favorably on the peace conditions when you surrender to us… 8)

2810

Rollory?

If Caelum can’t afford a fact-checking secretary, then I think Caelum can’t afford to threaten anyone! :wink: On the other hand, you did cast a global spell last turn, which is mighty impressive, in my eyes. I’ve never seen that global spell before either.

2811

I’m in Feeding Frenzy, not WorldWar or whatever game it is you two are talking about.

2812

Worldwar!

ugh, can somebody please see if I uploaded my turn? I played it at work yesterday and thought I’d copied the files to my flash drive to finish the turn today at home but I guess I didn’t. :( Thanks!

2813

And Jason Lutes’ Cradle game ends with a whimper as most players decide not to play anymore.
It’s a shame because I wanted to see how my personal war with Loke/Ulm was going to end.
Thanks to Jason for hosting the game and to the others who participated.
Pity that the drop-outs couldn’t just go over to AI.

2814

I wouldn’t mind some kind of AAR exchange about Lutes’ Cradle game.
I had a lot of fun playing Vanheim, but I had no idea WTF was happening outside of Tien Chi, Machaka/Ulm, and watching Pythium’s White Bull wander aimlessly.

How did the rest of the geopolitical landscape look?

2815

My Cradle report…
I have no idea about the shenanigans that were occuring in the north east. I’d overrun Ermor in the south east and touched Pangaea’s border at the eastern map edge before I decided it would be better to use Ermor as a buffer state. (His domain had reduced much of the area into useless desert anyway). Pangaea, as you remember, had the Mother Oak global going on for ages, along with that Vine Ogre summoning booster hat. I thought it would be better to see the undead hordes fight the woody green hordes before they reached my border. I’m still wondering how many ogres he had ready for the invasion.
I was also under pressure from Loke’s rejuvenated Ulm. Man, I had a nice non-aggression pact with the prior Ulm player which allowed me to develop and spread. Loke jumped in, grabbed the steering wheel and promptly aimed it at Abysia, my stable southern neighbour. It was only inevitable that I would be dragged into the conflict, as much as I urged Ulm and Abysia to go on a jihad against the northern empires.
In the centre east, I had another non-aggression pact with Jotunheim, when they bailed, Pythium moved into the area and a similar non-aggression treaty was formed.
My only regret when the game ended was that my Iron Dragon commander and his Iron Dragon army never got a chance to land on Ulm’s reaver army that was ripping through my middle provinces.

2816

My unconditional appologies. I meant Guildboss, of course. My mind was on another game, I think. I would definately not compare you with the treacherous, backstabbing, imperialistic and soon to be defeated Anti-Caelum alliance in WorldWar. :)

@Peter Frazier: I was sad about seeing the Cradle game close like that too. I think that I was loosing though. I was really surprised at how hard it was to jump in as a replacement player. That’s something I’ll think twice about before doing again. I am fully capable of loosing the games I play from the start :wink:

2817

I was Tien Chi in Lutes’ Cradle.

I voted against playing, partially because i was about to lose, and partly because at this point i really wasn’t paying attention to what i was doing. It had been months before i had actually played a Dom2 game outside of the Qt3 email games, and i had forgotten most of what little i knew about the game; is an Abomination any good? What about Angelic Hosts? ect.

I took an immobile statue, Astral 9-Pretender with decent scales, and pretty much spent the whole game camping out.
I clam horded, put Fortified Cities on most choke points, and left it at that. To my South was Pangaea; to the East, across the sea, Pythium.

My most memorable and enjoyable moments were my email conversations, which i roleplayed with a certain silly vigorousness; but my desire to continue died as the months passed.

Pangaea and i decided to carve up Atlantis when they went AI, but this we did only half successfully. Eventually i forged a water book and parked an army on Atlantis’ capital, but never had enough troops to break through the walls. We had a generous alliance, and were planning on attacking the Jotuns across the sea, but i guess just never got around to it. I skirmished with Pythium and in a lapse of incredible stupidity lost both my immortal heros.

Eventually i invaded Pythium again, about 30 turns later, and started Wishing for Doom Horrors. To my /cough horror, Pythium’s Theurg communion killed my Horrors (decked w/ anti-magic and luck amulets) without any trouble at all. Twice. Than i noticed Abysia rampaging through my friend Pangaea; but only too late. His flying Demon led Devil armies wiped most of Pangaea out in a few turns. I sent a Horror to stop them; it died against the Devils in about 4 turns of combat, to my great suprise (i think it fatigued out from the heat, something i didn’t expect). I had just summoned the Ark (which i’ve never seen or used before, even to this day), and was going to make a bunch of Angels, a Staff of Storms, and other crap, but honestly all those probably would have come too late. Pythium was on the move and though i had lots of Masters of the Way, unless i got lucky with frozen heart, i was probably going to lose that battle as well. In fact though it was turn 67, and though i had two Astral globals up, i hadn’t a single summoned unit outside of the Doom Horrors.

Anyway, i had fun. Thanks for playing everyone, and thanks to Jason Lutes for hosting. I did enjoy it, sorry it didn’t quite turn out.

Sadly, the only game i was doing well in, the Anax Cradle game, died without a trace months ago - and Anax seems to have dissapeared as well. I was keeping careful notes, had screenshots and colored maps of that game. When my MB died on my old computer, in yet another fit of stupidity, i formated my HD, flushing that document and all my notes. Ce la vie.

2818

FeedingFrenzy -

Hey, Mictlan - We all wait to see what sort of infernal armageddon you are going to unleash on Vaheim and Caelum!

I have baited their armies and they have fallen into our trap. Let’s rock :D

[queue Quadrophenia in the backround] Hey bartender, jimme another gin.

2819

Lutes Cradle One:
I was playing Abysia in the SE corner. I foolishly got my pretender killed in the first 6 turns and it went down hill from there. Machaka was a nice neighbor to the north but Ulm to the West proved to be my undoing. I won several battles against the first Ulm player but it was a strategic loss as I kept getting my lava warrior phalanxs worn away and my Anthemat Dragons were too few. With the losing war against Ulm I was never able to set up a blood economy and get my devil factories going. I held out until turn 77 or so but eventually went AI when I had to go out of town and I only had a province or so left

Lutes Cradle Two
This game was my best ever. Even better than coming in 2nd to Clark’s Pytium in the great Orania multiplayer game. I was Abysia in the SE with almost the same starting position. My pretender was a Vampire Queen before the nerf and quite a stunner. I expanded quickly getting to the river crossings quickly and staking out a huge territory. I stuck to my basic strategy which has always worked well as Abysia. Only build lava warrriors and group them in phalanxs of 30. Support them with Anthemat Dragons casting Falling Fire. Get a bunch of blood hunters out and get the soul contracts going at least 10 to 12. Machaka was again to my north and we clashed by turn 15 or so. I was able to smash him up but at some cost. I hurried my research to get Falling Fires and after a short lull beat his main army and then pushed on to his capital. Jotun was engaged with C’tis to the north in what seemed to be a bunch of seesaw battles so I made a nonaggression pact with Jotun and prepared to move West. My army accidently moved into the same province as Vanheims stealh Van army and my Lava Warriors, Anthemats and crossbowmen with flaming arrows had a good day. Thinking that I had neutralized Vanheims main force I just decided to risk it and push straight to the SW and go for broke. About 10 turns latter I had the whole southern continent to myself with a rump Pangean outpost on the north shore.
In the mean time Atlantis had gone AI and was raiding my coastal provinces. I decided to vanquish Earthworm Jim the Atlantean Pretender. By this time I had founded a sage factory and my research was about 400 by turn 40. I also had researched Construction 9 and Conjuration 9 and was busy creating every artifact that I could. I built a underwater strike force consisting of 50 Lava Warriors, the orb of atlantis, Augelmirs Sword (sp?) and the ark. It was backed up by Demonkin and Water Fathers. I steadily drove Atlantis back killing old earthworm Jim twice and taking his two kelp fortresses. In the meantime Pangea launched an attack on my northern provinces and then thought better of it and agreed to a peace but kept my territory. I played nice but was determined to extinguish the treehuggers as soon as possible. My armies were far flung so I consolidated. By this time my devil factories were going full bore and pumping out 12 a turn. I finished Blood 9 and summoned a Demon Prince to lead my armies. He was the wind one so I started building up a storm demon force to protect him and to be able to counter any Elemental Queens I might meet in the future. By turn 60 the invasion force was ready and I steamrolled through Pangea and also drove north towards tha Atlantis capital which I didn’t realize was still there. Atlantis only had two provinces left but I mistakenly thought I had taken his capital. I arrived at the real capital only to find Tien besieging it. It was at this point that I was going to regroup. I had conquered about half of the map, when Tien launched a Doom Horror behing my lines. I quickly readied for a march north. The last turn one of my devil armies led by an arch devil with the unquenched sword killed the doom horror. My Anthemats also laid into it with falling fires. I started laying down a hail of Ghost Riders and Earth Attacks but with Tien’s Arcane Nexus up I didn’t want to feed him too many gems. It’s ashame this one had to end because I was just starting to get my new armies into position. I had an army of 5 Abominations led by decked out Adepts of the Golden Order. The each had astral fire scripted and would teleport in to where the Abominations were. I really wanted to try that out as I had about 15 of them ready to parachute in…each with starshine caps and a Banner of the North Star waving in the wind. Ah well. Finally my best super combatant was my good old Father Illearth. I had his regeneration up to 37 and with blood vengeance and a hellsword he destroyed entire armies of mortals.

Thanks for the game everybody. Hopefully the release of Dominions III will see a resurgence of QT3 play.

Thanks to Jason as well. The Cradle Map is my favorite and I know he put a lot of work into it.

Edit: Got Tien mixed up with Pythium

2820

You haven’t uploaded your turn, GuildBoss. There are 9 hours left!