Faeruntest (Ctis):
I have to go with Huzurdaddi on the desiciveness of of the Astral Nexus. At this stage of the game its merely a nice bonus rather than a game-winning advantage.
To wit: many turns ago, Panther mentioned he was bringing in over 400 gems/turn. He guessed I had more, but the truth of it was at that time (although I THOUGHT I had the best gem income) I was just hovering around an income of 300 or so. I was actually surprised he was making nearly 100 gems/turn more than me, and when the Nexus was in Man’s hands I was feeling perhaps I was going to lose the war of attrition.
Since then Strands of Arcane power has slowly uncovered a large number of sites, and my gem income has increased to 410 (+5 for stellar focus). The Arcane Nexus averages 150/turn, giving me a total income of @565, on a very good turn as much as 600, on a less good turn, in the low 500s.
As far as raw gems go, I suspect the odds are quite even… Atlantis’ gem income must surely have increased from the 400+ figure he mentioned 15-odd turns ago, and Man and Ermor surely have non-trivial income. Although the anti-ctis alliance is penalized a bit by having their gem income spread between 3 members, it is by no means severely unbalanced one way or another.
Now Blood is a different story. I think my Blood advantage is currently quite large (Atlantis is not exactly an outstanding blood hunting nation), and lets face it, blood has been essentially what has kept me going.
Faeruntest (Ctis): Turn 109!!
My offensive on the central front is about to peter out. Murdering Winters and Flames form the sky eviscerated my armies, and although the remaining sauromancers managed to beat off the ghost riders, and then even more surprisingly defeat a significant Atlantis force killing an AQ and 5 Juggernauts (holy boxcars on the disintegrate rolls, batman!), the force has lost all its punch.
I have a 2nd army in Saradush which is still potent but surely it will receive the same sort of love as the Suldolphor force in the coming turn. Still, replacement armies are always on the way.
In the North, we return once again to Myth Drannor. Like molasses we creep over the Man-ish countryside. Ermors armies melt away as they try to come to Man’s aid. My Angel army releives sieges on Caelum’s forts (awe is a wonderful thing against mortal troops…) The war here goes well!
Still getting emails from the Feeding Frenzy game. How’s that going?
Faeruntest (Atlantis):
After watching these battles on the last turn, I expect that Hazurdadi will have to change his opinion on the Sauromancer vs. King of the Deep. Not only are Sauromancers recruitable everywhere (unlike the Kings) but they are a far more potent offensive mage. They are also essentially immune to Ghost Riders, unlike the Kings with their wimpy water magic.
Because the Sauromancers are woefully underpriced, a good C’tis player can buy plenty of them in the critical early game and do a nice expansion to become a potent force right away. Also, the 1/8 random blood skill means you can kick off the blood summons much earlier than any of the other non-blood nations (except possibly for Caelum with the even more underpriced Arch Seraph).
The only drawback with the Sauromancer is that the low HP means they are killable by remote artillery spells, which can be fixed by artifacts if one had the RL time to invest in the immense micromanagement to make this happen.
Since this game was a test of the balance mods, I would say that the single most unbalanced factor in the late game is the gigantic advantage given to the nations which allow their best mage to be built everywhere. That is a major balance blunder, in my opinion. But this is not fixable by a mod, I believe.
As for the gem income, I achieved that by doing 100% site searching in the first 80 (or so) provinces I took. One of the advantages of Atlantis is that the vioce of Tiamat (8 water gems) plus the proper three mages on a search mission will find all underwater sites. By the time I started taking land provinces, I also had archastic record for searching them. I also had the necessary gem income to pay for the archastic from the underwater gem income. It does allow a nice kickstart to your gem income in the early game.
At this point, I am 98% certain that C’tis has the game won. And it is a well deserved victory indeed.
As long as everybody else wants to, I will pledge to continue to play until I leave for France on June 17. But, after I leave the US, I will be totally unable to do any Dominions turns for nearly 2 weeks.
Not exactly. The skelly spam is very powerful there is no doubt. The point I was making about the kings was that they have the ability to reach out and touch the other side’s units right out of the box with quickness+ice strike.
Just as a quick comparison of quick killing powers Kings of the Sea can cast: Falling Frost, ice strike, frozen heart, sailors death, and 1 out of 8 can cast nifel flames ( with boosters all of them can! ). Sauramancers can cast disintegrate, 1/8 can cast nether darts, 1/2 can cast banefire, 1/8 can cast drain life or cloud of death. Given that all of the kings can cast quickness I gave the edge in quick killing to the Kings of the Sea ( at least with the types of armies that were being thrown around, in an anti-sc role the sauramancers are head and shoulders better ). In terms of slow killing the sauramancers are much better.
I do have to say that the sauramancers did very well this turn. Soapy messaged me with a “horray for sauramancers” as soon as he saw the turn file.
I think by formula the Sauramancer should cost ~210 gold as opposed to 180 it is costed. The king of the deep by formula should be in the area of 250 ( that is with 40 gold for the chassis, it is arguably worth more at this stage of the game it makes a big difference but earier in the game it is not big at all ).
And yep, Sauramancers were critical to my early expansion. The Sauramacner skelly spam was very useful. The releif/skelly spam was even more useful.
As for jump starting a blood economy. Sauramancers are not really the prefered method of getting a blood economy started. I would much rather get the sages working on it they are much less costly. Sauramancers are made for killing.
Well since I am out of the game I would be really interested in that easy path to victory I had. I basically threw everything offensive I had plus my entire blood/gem income against you and couldn´t even dent you.
So please tell me what the easy path to victory was. I should have made more use of hellbind heart, but the micromanagement was killing me already.
Another problem was that I had no competent earth mages to buff my armies with weapons of sharpness/army of lead/gold.
I only had a handful of high level mages in areas other than blood/death/fire and no good indie mages at all. (except for sages)
So do I win the 100 page post with this superboring post? =)
FaerunTest - Caelum
I wish I could have focused more on this game, but I haven’t played ever since (maybe 3 pages ago in this thread) we all came THIS close to stopping. Real life intervened thereafter in the form of a dissertation defense. I passed it yesterday, which is nice, but my nation has received far too little attention in FaerunTest to survive. Saddened by the loss of my best buddy Ermor, I sent all of my resources to my other ally, C’tis. Perhaps a few Caelum citizens may serve in the palaces of C’tis as butlers and barmaids, and tell tales of Nonnac Kroj, pretender of Caelum, whose demise is imminent.
Don’t give up yet! I have an army of Angels attempting to protect your few remaining forts ;)
Thanks! I’m struggling to complete the edits given me by my committee in the next 3 days before I fly home, but I will do my best to play my turns.
Congratulations, Dr. Perkins! (er, not on the game - on that other bit)
Did they show you the secret handshake yet, or are they waiting on your final revisions?
Thanks, Ron!
They didn’t mention a handshake, although there was mention of bare-bottomed spankings in a secret ceremony after graduation.
I’d be happy to talk about it after the game. This avenue, to a much lesser extent, is still open to Atlantis so I’m hesitant to talk about it. Although the amount of micro it would take for him to complete it is far greater than the amount of micro it would have taken Marignon.
Soapy thinks that had you taken the path I am talking about that you may not have won due to the diplomatic landscape changing. It’s possible. But it surely would have made things far more difficult for the rest of the world!
As for the lack of earth casters well it’s not like that is a difficult path to get powerful in. Random earth -> blood stones, blood stones == expensive earth production but stable also is a path booster -> boots which enables you to cast troll court which is a E3 caster which you can give items to get to E5 which easily allows the best battle enchantments ( army of gold, army of lead, and weapons of sharpness ).
Ditto congrats!
Congrats, Dave!
Please, for the love of God- tell me that women flock to you and fill your pockets with money. I’m mired in my dissertation at the moment and greatly looking forward to the huge payoff in money and sex appeal that the department promised oh so long ago…
In between posts, I am standing out on the quad wearing only my abstract and title page. So far, no takers.
Well could you pm me the plan then?
Going for boosted troll kings would have been good, although they are pretty expensive with all the necessary equipment.
Congrats to Mr Perkins.
Yeah, so, I have nothing in particular to say (other than to add my congrats to the chorus) but this thread needs to get to 100.
And it’s going to make it.
RSN. I am too lazy to count how many posts per page.
