3041

Anon (Pan) - I’ll be away this weekend, so is it possible to put the game on a longer timer? I can take my turn tomorrow (Friday) night and again on Monday night.

3042

Heheh you dont know him very well ;)

3043

Anon (Pan) - Hey Guildboss, you have 22 minutes to take your turn !

3044

I missed it. I actually worked a bit on the turn (locally) this weekend and then forget about it till this morning. NOt that it would have made much difference anyway! :P

3045

Faeruntest (Ctis): Turn 118

Victory! Man sortied forth from Myth Drannor only to find a larger force had just arrived to commence (once again) the takedown of the fortress. Unfortunately my battlefield support casters had not yet arrived, and so although my unboosted storm demons were able to do considerable damage, they were eventually slaughtered to the last by area effect spells. Man’s Moloch sprayed hot death in all direction, taking down my fiends almost by himself as they advanced on foot. Then, with all the regular troops on both side gone, the battle settled down to a seesaw struggle between a carpet of skeletons and a stream on water, earth, and fire elementals. So the battle continued for 30 minutes on fast forward and still no clear cut decision when finally Man’s remaining leaders broke and fled. Man lost 16 commanders, although it seemed all his best ones managed to flee, whilst my only commander loss was Belial, who died of boredom somewhere around the 100th turn of combat ;)

Alas the victory was not as complete: for I did not have the presence of mind to block off Man’s only retreat route, and his commanders retired in good order to Elven Court.

Defeat!
Who said these Doom Horrors were hot stuff? No wonder they didn’t come with a warranty… 2 Doom Horrors died in two seperate battles against laughably small Atlantean armies. The first was paralyzed and then killed by life draining ghosts et varia, the second was taken down by a mass of lesser ice elementals (armour piercing icicle fists! ouch…). Not expecting the Doom Horrors to lose so miserably, I hadn’t put much effort into defending the two forts which they were supposed to releive… however at Lapal Jungle I managed to repel him, my 12 angels dispatching the large part of his forces including an Ice Devil.

Victory!
In an effort to give Atlantis a taste of his own medicine, I dropped 4 flames form the sky and two murdering winters on the beseiging army at Saelmur, killing a mere 92 units, and then followed up with 12 castings of ghost riders… sadly the ghost riders did little damage, getting all hung up on the ex-Ctisian Doom Horror (damn them!) and progressively decimated by banishment and various and sundry other nasty spells. However the end result was that the assault on Saelmur was abortive, as the Commander-only Atlantean attacking force fled the moment one of their number went down. Of note, a Coral Queen wearing Monolith Armour (!!) was slain as she tried to stagger off the field… this armour was then picked up by someone for whom it will be utterly useless. Oh well.

In further good news, Army of Gold boosted vampires suffered through flames form the sky, fought off ghost riders, and defeated a countterattacking Man-ish contingent to capture the two fortresses of Procampur and Grey Forest. In former Jotun lands, Icelace river fell to a mopping up crew.

Hey! More victory than defeat! I’ll take it! ;)

3046

Anyone willing to sub for me (C’Tis) in the Shepards game for a couple of weeks? I’ll be gone from about June 10 through 24. Not a huge time sink: no 1-hour turns (not yet anyway); the game was on 48-hour hosting but it’s been on relaxed for a couple of weeks (hopefully back to 48h soon).

Post here or PM if you’re willing.

3047

I’ve asked the People In Charge to set it back to 48-hour forced hosting but nothing’s changed. I’ve asked again today… :roll:

3048

Faeruntest (Atlantis):

Well, glancing at the current turn this morning, I would have to say that it is over. I got utterly crushed everywhere, a sure sign that Soapy is spending a lot of time right now on this game to press his attack. I managed just a feeble, partial turn because of my business trip to California earlier this week, and it showed. Man will be dead in under 20 turns from now as I barely have enough left to protect myself, much less continuing to try and save the nation of Man.

The fact that C’tis has 65% of the provinces, 70% of the gold income, and about 75% of the gem income (counting his wishing and the Nexus) is just too much a hurdle to overcome despite the 3 on 1. I have something like eight level 4 priests (who occasionally die to the devil global despite having guards) preaching in a border province I have with C’tis that has climbed to -5 dominion despite doing that. And this is with approximately 135 temples pushing my dominion!

I am also in the middle of moving my place of abode and my internet access is spotty for a while until I get settled into my new pad. There is also the fact that I will be heading to France on June 17 at which time I will have zero internet access for nearly 2 weeks.

So, I hereby proclaim for all to read:
C’TIS WINS FAERUNTEST GAME!
Good job Huzur & Soapy, it is a well earned victory.

P.S. If someone wants to take over the nation of Atlantis to continue this hopeless war, let me know and I will send the password.

3049

Well to be fair, you did kill quite a bit of materiel, in the form of a super-decked out Tartarian and 4 black servants carrying @65 gems worth of equipment each.

And Man sortied slaughtered my army at Myth Drannor… again… seriously I am wondering if I will ever take Myth Drannor or Elven Court. Also I lost a fairly big battle against Ermor at Zhentil Keep. Apart from the ghost riders, horrors, and haunting nightmares, I had only one significant military victory (at Derlusk), and 160 gems that went into softening that up.

Overall, while I was able to kind of hold the line against Atlantis, I was pretty well routed in the north.

Since we’re winding down I’ll post my ‘stats’:

I have 165 temples and my dominion holds sway over 204 provinces. I beleive I hold something like 176 provinces, 11 of which are beseiged and beseige 5 of the enemies’ in return.

My total gem income:

62F, 60A, 66W, 60E, 79S, 76D, 45N = 448 gems/turn base

Stellar Focus = 5S
Arcane Nexus = 225S
14 blood stones = 14E
8 Sea Kings + The Ruby Eye = 9W
3 Treelords = 15N
Furcas = 1F

Addtionally I have been wishing for gems every turn (since I gave up on doom horrors) and that trades 100S for 150 total gems (25 of each type) net +50 gems.

Total Gem income = 767 gems

I spent all 863 gems this turn, slightly more last turn. My gem “reserve” is down to less than 300, 80% air gems.

Bloodwise I think I still hold a good lead. I generated 863 blood slaves this turn, which is about average for the last 5 turns. I usually spend most of it, though I only spent 535 blood this turn.

Money wise my income is 17647 vs an upkeep of 7218 for a net of 10429. I spend all of my gold every turn, which amounts to @40 mages (95% sauromancers) and about 200 elite and slave warriors.

My blood gets pumped into blood summons at my mount chaining site, usually amounting to @84 fiends, @28 storm demons, and 8-16 demon knights depending on what Belphegor is doing that turn, along with 6-12 vampire lords. I also summon a fair number of vampires per turn, anywhere from 20-50. These troops usually get ground up in the Man meatgrinder, or get artilleried to oblivion by Atlantis ;)

Last turn I started summoning batches of mechanical men (@40/turn), but these have not seen battle yet. MOST of my gems go to forging my maximum 50 items per turn, as well as to casting 4 flames and 2 winters (160 gems!), 2 or 3 Gift of Reasons, 3-5 Tartarian gates, and 10-16 ghost riders, as circumstances permit. Additionally when I can afford it I will sling some angelic hosts hither and yon to act as stiffeners, usually no more than 2 or 3 per turn (although a couple of turns I did drop 7 or 8). Not to mention domes… I spend a small overhead on domes as well.

So far I have yet to find the magic bullet. Every army I field gets destroyed within a couple of turns, even if initially successful. The latest experiment with Huzurdaddi’s skeleton-spamming black servants was initially a nice success but evidently still needs work (and they are oooh so expensive to equip). I have lost more fully equipped tartarians than I can count… I have lost 5 doom horrors… I have lost numerous air queens and fully equipped vampire lords… the list goes on and on.

What a game!

3050

Do you happen to know what your starting dominion was? That’s what’s actually used in the temple checks instead of your current dominion strength. In the very late stages of a game somebody who took a starting dominion strength of 10 has a very good chance to win the dominion war against someone who took a dominion strength of 5. This is true even if they both have the same number of temples.

13 blood stones + 1 Troll King = 14E

Does this mod give troll kings earth income? They don’t in the standard game.

3051

I do not know… Huz would though.

Does this mod give troll kings earth income? They don’t in the standard game.

No it doesnt! I just noticed that the troll king is in fact holding a bloodstone! so it was just me making a bad assumption…

3052

I do not know… Huz would though.
[/quote]

IIRC it was 5. This slowed the spreading of C’tis’ dominion and caused me much consternation and actually ended up with my post on the shrapnel boards that cleared up the long standing misconception that dominion was spread based upon startingdominion+temples/5.

Anyway, what an impressive game. I’m sure I will never see a game like this ever again. Freaking nutty. At the end of the game when I was “helping” ( I put it in quotes since I usually did more harm that good ) Soapy I realized that I had no feel what so every for what worked and what did not work anymore. The only real thing that worked was “more” but even that did not work due to flames from the sky, murdering winter and Man’s insanely good defence.

Oh and I owe TurinTuramba that explination of how I saw him winning the game. The sceanrio on turn 59 was that I had taken all of Acrosphale, Mictlan, T’ien Ch’i, Abysia and Jotunhiem. I thought ( wrongly ) that I was cruising for a victory unless I got tangeled up with the other major powers. As I stated in my messages to TurinTuramba I really did not want to get into a war with him. Anyway, given that I was not going to be very agressive with him ( since I thought that I had the game sewn up ) he could have taken the forces that he threw against me ( which were considerable for this stage of the game ) and crushed Pangaea and Ulm almost instantly, perhaps even Caelum. In these nations he would then setup blood hunting as fast as he could ( which is quite quick for Marignon ). But they would only be a stepping stone to the true prize: province 380 Hellkeep. Hellkeep has a summoning circle. This would increase his effective blood income by x2.5. With the blood from his new holdings of Ulm, Pangaea and Caelum and the insane multiplier in HellKeep it would have been very hard to stop his hordes. 1000 effective blood was well within TurinTuramba’s reach by turn 70 (maybe even a little earlier ) and that is a lot of blood for that stage of the game.

He probably would have been ready for an assualt on Pythium by turn 74 or so ( massive VL summoning ) and then he could unleash hordes from hell unlike any ever seen before on poor uncastled Pythium. This would be followed by very large flying devil armies more than likely.

Anyway it’s a lot of theorycraft but in the end it all revolved around getting hellkeep and expanding your blood income as fast as possible by taking the very weak targets which surrounded you.

Oh and Panther I have to say I was impressed with Atlantis. I really like how they are setup for this stage of the game. Atlanis has nice beefy mages, commanders, and troops which is a real bonus against the never ending flames from the sky and murdering winters. It’s not all good in that these troops have to be recruited in water, but the ability to recruit such beefy stuff is a nice perk. Anyway impressive stuff putting in the long ( and I mean long ) hours to get through the turns. I really thought that you guys had pushed C’tis to the limit in this game.

And Mercutio jeeze what defence. Holy cow.

3053

That’s one reason I like Abysia, although they’d be even better if they weren’t solely fire mages, and capital only bloodhunters doesn’t help them at all for this scale of a game.

3054

ahh thanks for that explanation. I figured I should have gone for caelum earlier instead of you. But I rightly saw you running away with the game and kinda panicked when I finally figured out that all three nations in the north had been staling and you had already killed them. I guess if pythium had joined the fight directly atlantis probably would have won the game. But I don´t think he had access to death or blood in significant quantities at that point, so maybe it would have worked.

I didn´t know that there was a summoning circle in hellkeep. That would have been badass. 30 hordes from hell and 10 ghostriders per turn means death to anyone not fully castled up. And 10-11 vampire lords per turn are pretty nasty too.
Still there would have been the problem of doming the province up, but I could have easily forged fire resistance rings and set a fairy queen there to counter leprosy and flames from the sky.

3055

That game can’t end. Wtf am I going to read about if I don’t have an epic Dominions2 update around.

3056

A couple of random things.

I thought C’tis has a bigger lead over me than he does. I am not at home right now and can’t view the game, but I recall that I have 135 temples and perhaps another 10 provinces that do not yet have temples. These are mostly in the water where R’lyeh used to be, where I am having a hard time keeping my priests alive in the harsh enemy dominion despite using 5 body guards. I think my dominion sway was about 140 provinces, and most of the extra ones are in Ermor territories (which certainly does not help our team). At least 20 of my territories are under C’tis dominion. Unfortunately, this number is growing every turn.

My gold income is about 22K per turn, which is totally insane. Unfortunately, I recruit only about 20 Kings or Queens per turn since I am not recruiting in the back of my water due to the problem of funnelling them to the front lines. I am making about 450 gems per turn, which includes my Maelstorm, maybe 15 clams, and about 10 sea kings. My blood income is only 200 or so per turn, which is why my gold income is higher than Soapy as I am blood hunting in far fewer provinces. I was trying to use all my blood random King’s for this purpose, but it just got to be too much time to mess with. I have noticed that several blood Kings have been involved in the recent wars. I also build artifacts sparadocially at best, again due to the time crunch. Looking for my hammers each turn is unbelievably annoying in the extreme.

I am certain that there is a lot of fight left in this game. A couple of weeks ago, I was spending 3-4 hours per turn and doing a good 80% of everything that needed doing. I was strongly fighing back the lizards in the south and doing a fine job of helping Man with his stalwart defense. I utterly crushed several powerful C’tis armies. I was even dreaming (incorrectly) that I had a chance to win the game. But then the time got too much and I had to drop back my time investment for various reasons. The last few turns were whipped together in an hour or less and were very poor moves in general. As a result, I have lost so much of the progress I had achieved the previous weeks. Just the simple task of assigning 5 bodyguards to every newly recruited commander takes more time than I care to think about. And 5 shambler bodyguards don’t always beat the devil because they tend to rout too easily. I was trying to switch to vine ogres/mech men bodyguards for this reason, as they never lose. But shamblers are aquatic, always available, and much easier to use.

About the temple checks. I had heard that your starting dominion counts only when trying to reduce enemy dominion. I heard that your temples operate at the full 10 strength when increasing your own dominion. I could be wrong, of course. I think my starting dominion was 5, but that was so long ago I am not sure about this.

The scout bug is very annoying. I can’t even see what is seiging Man’s capitol. Some provinces that I think empty are not. Although, I am truly amazed that the game engine can handle a war of this immense size as well as it does.

Again, if anybody wants to take over Atlantis and continue this game, just let me know.

On a final note, I think that the Mount Chaining/summoning circle has no business being in the game. I think it is a game winner all by itself for most nations.

3057

I stopped hosting on Faeruntest, assuming it’s essentially done. If someone wants to step up to the plate as Atlantis and Mercutio is still interested we can play on a few more turns.

Otherwise I have saved nearly every turn. Problem is, thats 400MB zipped, so its going to be impossible for me to host the saves. Maybe if people want specific turns? Or every 10th turn? If there is even any interest in the replay at all?

3058

<hint>Maybe if there was an AAR to go along with it?</hint>

3059

Faeruntest (Man)

Well, what a game. It’s been great fun, even though I’ve been slowly falling back to C’tis for what must have been more than half of it. Was sometimes a little dispiriting, winning lots of battles and still losing the war, but there was always a new challenge to face or a new spell to try out. Congratulations to Soapyfrog/Huzurdaddi for winning such an enormous game. I’m just happy to have survived into the last four, given the vast superiority that C’tis, Atlantis, Pythium and Marignon had.

Here are my end of game stats:

Gem Income:
7F 15A 5W 8E (+3 from bloodstones) 9S 8D 9N

Plus I’ve been getting on average maybe 30 or 40 gems a turn from Atlantis, and Ermor has sent me a few as well. I also rake in maybe 40 blood slaves a turn, and my income is just over 1000 gold, which has been supplemented by Atlantis over the past few turns.

It’s not much, but I always just about managed to scrape up an army to fight each new wave of C’tisian attackers. It was my first time playing Man, and except for the capital only mages they seem pretty solid. Longbowmen with flaming arrows and wind guide hit pretty damn hard, and it’s nice to have air and nature. I was lucky to find four or five provinces giving me independent mages who formed the backbone of my forces.

I’ve definitely learned a lot about the late game and the importance of combined arms. You need a decent number of troops, earth and air mages to buff them, some direct damage and astral both to deal with enemy SC’s and kill enemy troops, and nature mages to cast relief. It’s also quite nice how each nation fielded different kinds of armies right up to the end. Ermor had hordes of undead, Atlantis shamblers mixed in with vine ogres and mechanical men, with lots of kings of the deep and coral queens to do damage, C’tis had the vast legions of fiends, storm demons and vampires with tartarian mages, and also armies of sauromancers or black servants spamming undead with elite warriors to protect them, while I had a mishmash of spearmen, longbowmen, vine ogres and mechanical men backed up with independent mages.

3060

QT3-ANON will be offline today and perhaps part of tomorrow for server maintenance. When I bring it back up, it will still be on the current turn and the timer will be reset to 48 hours.

I’m not sure how many people this applies to since I’m an eliminated party from that game so I haven’t been following it.