Just curious, what’s cheesy about it? I fought the first 90% of the game with national troops, but by the time you attacked I figured you had seen enough of what I was doing to have prepared some counters (which I guess you had since my Staff of Storms was made redundant by the one you brought along to counter my fire arrows) so I had better try something else. I kept reading in this thread about heavily equipped wraiths and doom horrors and stuff, and the air elemental just seemed like the obvious choice for an air magic nation like Man. If it’s just sour grapes then no big deal, but this was just my second mp game so if I violated some unwritten house rule I apologize.
In any case, here’s my AAR (Qt3-JM-Noob): I started in the SE corner with Vanheim to my north, Tien Chi north of him, Marignon to my west, Jotunheim in the middle of the map, and Pythium on the nw peninsula. I expanded pretty quickly north along the eastern edge of the map, so by the time I ran into Vanheim, there was only 1 province between me and his capital. From my point of view, the game really turned on 2 events right around then.
First, Vanheim told me that he was going to attack Tien Chi in the north and that TC’s southern provinces would be vulnerable. Well, TC’s southern provinces consisted of a couple mountain provinces that were already under threat from Jotunheim. On the other hand, Vanheim’s capital was in the middle of 3 or 4 rich provinces nestled against the eastern map edge. I figured that this early in the game Vanheim would have to be committing a large portion of his military in the north to have a chance at taking out TC, so I told TC about the imminent attack on him and attacked Vanheim’s capital. Vanheim just had a Wizard Tower and my elves were quick and dodgy, so that went well.
Around the same time Jotunheim attacked Marignon and his scary giants were also making TC pretty nervous. So I told Marignon that I’d help him out and also proposed an alliance to TC whereby we would split Vanheim’s provinces, then turn west toward Jotunheim and pretty much split the map with him in the north vs. Jotunheim first and then Pythium and me in the south vs. Jotunheim and Marignon. The theory was that we would try to be the last two in the game with the map split pretty evenly, then take our chances with each other from there. For my part, I figured that if we could take care of the giants, I’d have the advantage since I’d have an easier time with a weakened Marignon than TC would against Pythium, who had yet to fight anybody.
This alliance is what prompted SlyFrog’s thread about the futility of the #3 player allying with #1 against #2. For the most part I think he’s right, but I also think it was a reasonable strategy for TC in this case. He had been bloodied by Vanheim and had an aggressive Jotunheim on one side and the bulk of my army (which had just beaten Vanheim pretty handily, though I don’t know if TC watched the battles) on the other. An alliance with me would give him his best chance of reaching the endgame in a relatively viable position, which is really all you can ask for as far as the diplomatic game. It also made sense for him geographically since a peaceful border with me meant he could concentrate his forces on the 1 or 2 provinces that connected him to the western half of the map.
As it turned out, things never got that far. TC had trouble against the Jotes in the north and got bogged down near their capital while I made pretty good progress in the south. As a side note, after racing to “save” Marignon from the Jotun attack on his capital, I found that I couldn’t bring myself to take him out so I just negotiated for a province of his and left him alone. That was probably pretty stupid of me, but I figured he wasn’t much of a threat and he had been fun to negotiate with. After a while he went AI which solved that dilemma for me.
I was a bit concerned that TC’s lack of progress would allow Pythium to get dangerously strong, but by the time he and I ran into each other I had ~50% of the map, a bunch of good troops, and a Cheese Elemental, so that war lasted just a few turns before he went AI. At that point it was just me and TC and he didn’t seem to be making any moves so I asked JM to email him and see if he was still playing. Evidently he’s not, so I guess that’s it.
Thanks for the game guys, especially JM for hosting. I wish it had gone longer so I could have seen some of the high level spells and units you guys seem to be slinging around, but I still learned a lot: a bunch of longbows with Fire Arrows and Wind Guide can be a devastating and cheap combination early on, that werewolf summoning spell is really good for plugging holes and patrolling, storming castles is a lot more fun with Mass Flight, and a commander with heroic strength, Eagle Eyes, and a Thunder Bow makes for a pretty deadly sniper.
