Email Backov and let him know that it hasn’t hosted a turn since 9/24/04. It’s still up and running but it looks like the forced host timer was turned off. Someone went on vacation perhaps.
QT3-Journal (Anonymous):
I’m hoping the elimination of several on-the-brink factions in the next few turns will speed the game up.
Qt3-Backov-Cradle (AE Ermor)
Pythium has some huge conventional armies built up. I’d thought annexing them would be a cakewalk after Pythium went A/I but I’m embarassed by how much I’m struggling against my A/I neighbor.
Also idly trying to crush Ulm. No real urgency about it.
Qt3-LavaLamp (Caelum)
Starting to get the feel for Caelum troops. Too early to say how this game will shape up but I’m hot happy with my initial slow expansion.
Qt3-Hammer (Arco)
Still waiting on Mr Widget to turn in his pretender so we can get the dang game going!
Backov
1784
Robb informed me and I corrected the Lame LE problem Tyrande was having.
As I told him, you guys are NOT going to like it though. ;> He was in a very strong position and staling forever hasn’t really hurt him. I set the AI in the right direction by spending some of his 150 odd Death Gem surplus.
Qt3Lavalamp (Marignon): Nick isn’t spinning, he really is slow on expansion in this game. I expect some deep plot here.
Qt3FeedingFrenzy (Arco): Starting to get my head around playing this pretender and Arco. We’ll see how I do.
Qt3Backov-Cradle (Ctis): Still having trouble caring about this game. Anyone want to take over?
There was a deep plot, and what you are seeing so far is a reasonably poor execution of it. At least the parts that involved conquering indies. That seems to be the hallmark of my play lately, I devote so many resources to jump-starting key research and magical plans that I have little left over for troops to go conquer indies. So I end up with feeble expansion forces that get spanked repeatedly. I did it to some extent in Pampered Moose and it appears I’m doing it again in LavaLamp.
Enidigm
1786
[quote=“Mark_Weston”]
I’ve never been able to work out how to make a Lich into an early-expansion SC, which is what I wanted the VQ for. The BF Ulm troops are survivable, but do lack a bit of punch.
Mark[/quote]
4-Earth, 4-Death (or more), 4-Astral, 4-whatever you like, either Water or Air, if anything, works pretty well on a Lich for an Alt-3 start. I like Liches better than VQ as their slightly cheaper to run and a bit stronger, though without life draining. Taking around 6 or 8 Death will break indies just with fear alone. You’ll need to forge some weapons, so you really need an Alt-3, Const-2 start but thats only a bit slower than a VQ. The problem with this build with Ulm-BF is that your basically giving up any Blood Summons potential, but i think imo BF isn’t that easy to use with Blood anyway, since the Illuminated Ones can’t summon anything worth jack except those black flying demons.
and in other news…
Backov-Cradle (Marignon): 48 turns of being beaten back have finally paid off. After taking ruinously odd scales and a bizare pretender build, and being squeezed between two death dominions, i have finally had a real victory, killing that blasted Carrion Dragon Pretender of Pangaea. You can attack them now Arco. Please :).
I have some special ideas for taking on Ermor as well, so don’t get any Seven Turn Itches Mr. Walter.
Rollory
1787
Yes, I feel very very stupid.
On the other hand, rest assured that you now have my full attention, and I now will do what I should have been doing to you from the start.
The fact that you are still in the game and Rollory is tussling with Arco really makes me wonder what he was thinking. If I think I have an opponent so beaten down that they are virtually eliminated then I devote a few turns to transform that “virtually eliminated” into “totally eliminated” before I start fighting anyone else. Maybe he’s just leaving remnant opponents around because he doesn’t want people asking questions about how he is eliminating factions? Or maybe he’s leaving them around to trouble me. I believe he’s smashed up Ulm and Marignon so far but not eliminated either. And now he’s facing off against Arco.
Are all you guys allied against him leaving no choice to but to fight all of you at once? If he’s over there winning 3-front wars then I’m going to get a little nervous.
Rollory
1789
Uh, it’s not like that.
I fought Marignon early on because he was inciting unrest in my territory. Then we stopped fighting. Then I invaded Ulm, and took his capital, and left the remnants alone because I didn’t have enough surviving troops at the time to do anything about them. Now I’m trying to keep Arco on his side of the ocean while simultaneously trying to finish Marignon, but that second job is made extremely difficult by the fact that I never know for sure if he’s going to stale on any given turn. If he does stale, then obviously blitzing everything I can is the smart thing to do. But when he doesn’t, things happen, like my pretender dying.
So it’s a one-and-a-half front war that sometimes is a two-front war.
Foom: nice trick with the militia and Doom. But you do realize that all my carrion beasts have recuperation, and heal afflictions on their own?
Foom
1790
Yeah. Marignon had a bad start, and I’m a n00b. And Pangaea eats kittens. You should attack him right away.
I was trying to do something completely different with that little raid, but I guess the tactical AI decided it had a better plan. Back to the drawing board.
Rollory
1791
Thinking about it, I want to comment on this. I actually think it is more cost-effective not to put in the effort to finish off those last few provinces if you have pressing concerns elsewhere. Power in Dom2 seems to be somewhat exponential with province count; lots of small powers can’t do much, but a few big ones can. So if you can knock someone down to the point where they’re a token annoyance (as Ulm is right now), you gain very little by finishing them off (particularly if you already hold their capital), and leaving them around can cause nuisance value for others - either from having to conquer them, in which case they’re the ones spending the troops on it, or by going around. Dom2 is not alliance-friendly, so forcing your opponents into an alliance situation inherently means they have more difficulties to overcome than you do.
Enidigm
1792
Thinking about it, I want to comment on this. I actually think it is more cost-effective not to put in the effort to finish off those last few provinces if you have pressing concerns elsewhere. Power in Dom2 seems to be somewhat exponential with province count; lots of small powers can’t do much, but a few big ones can. So if you can knock someone down to the point where they’re a token annoyance (as Ulm is right now), you gain very little by finishing them off (particularly if you already hold their capital), and leaving them around can cause nuisance value for others - either from having to conquer them, in which case they’re the ones spending the troops on it, or by going around. Dom2 is not alliance-friendly, so forcing your opponents into an alliance situation inherently means they have more difficulties to overcome than you do.[/quote]
This is true, but capital provinces are always the most productive in the game, unless you’ve captured the capital of a death nation.
I do stale alot in that game, i’m just unable to play anything anymore regularly. Sometimes i’m gone for a couple days, sometimes im busy all day and can’t find the time. I’m also mentally torn between selfishly buying a new computer for myself and buying nice presents for everyone for Christmas this year, and i’m wasting tons of game time surfing the net for hot deals on computer parts. You know, here’s a thousand dollar computer for me, here’s some 20$ gift certificate for you. Merry Hollidays and all - now stfu and let me play meh games! … Bah!!
Anyway i forgot to report some events in another game…
Lutes Cradle (Tien Chi): My first real battle in what has been an astonishingly peaceful game was rather close to a rout. His army appeared out of nowhere, out of some strange gap in my scouting. However, his army was more conventional than i had feared, and his troops far more costly than my own, so it wasn’t a Cannae, though what becomes of it remains to be seen. I did lose both of my unique heroes, a loss i’ll regret for the rest of the game.
Rollory
1793
Qt3-JM-Hardcore (Vanheim) - You ever have that feeling where you suddenly see this huge possibility in a game - like a big weakness in your defenses that nobody noticed, or a big weakness in your opponent’s that they don’t seem to be aware of - and you really want to talk about how cool it is and you can’t wait to do something about it, but talking about it would ruin everything? That’s where I’m at in this game. There are some huge possibilities that probably won’t work out but if they do, oh boy, it’ll be something to see.
Things are very, very, very iffy. Abysia isn’t doing the polite thing and accepting that its capital is GONE, it’s not coming back, it’s an ex-capital - no five stages for these fiery fellas, no, they want their capital back and they’re going to keep knocking until they get it. I’ve had the Eater of the Dead killed out from under me twice in a row now, both times because I used it wrong. I was hoping to have my main forces largely disengaged from the Abysian front by this point, fighting a holding action on a narrow front in the north; instead I have to keep mopping up devil/imp guerilla movements. This leaves Caelum entirely free to just move on into my territory. They’re laying seige to the Amazon fortress in the Achaku desert, which is the keystone of my defenses - take that out, and all of old central Arco territory lies open. Between the earlier plague attacks and the fact that all my good troops got sent into Abysia, the garrison force is very makeshift. I’m having to supply them with supply items; the beseiging Storm Guards must be having similar problems, this province also has a well of pestilence and one of the lowest supply ratings around. There’s another wraith lord coming in and looking like he’s going to just go around sweeping up provinces, and I don’t know that I can do much about it right now. I’m also getting a lot of summoned raiders in the backcountry - ghost riders wiping out province defense in good provinces, madmen being summoned into low-defense provinces - I foresee a time when nothing outside a fortress is really safe. A few turns ago I went around systematically demolishing all labs outside of forts throughout the southern continent. That is looking like a very wise move now.
Somebody keeps trying to assassinate the ice devils Nycafor and Gaap. So far the only net effect has been to bump them up an experience level each - and Gaap is at 100-odd hit points of 82 base. That intrinsic hellsword of his is damn useful.
Man is doing the smart thing, sitting back and summoning all sorts of Tartarian Monstrums and Cyclopses and Titans. Whoever comes out on top in the west is going to be facing a legion of undead gods. The one bright spot about that is that right now, it’s not at all certain it’ll be me who has to take them down.
Logos
1794
Qt3NewbEuropa -
Damn, but the eastern border is crowded. 4 of us starting in on that side top to bottom. Might explain why Jotunheim just kinda dropped outa site, to crowded, Either fight all out early on or make peace and expand a bit first.
As a newb i’m trying to make peace and expand so I can get some learning experience out of this whole thing but that might not be to likely. 'specially if Van jumps for Jotuns home province. :twisted:
Qt3 WorldWar - I killed two Queens of Elemental Air, one of which cast Wrathful Skies while a storm raged thanks to a Staff of Storms. I am so glad that my first encounter with a Supercombatant didn’t result in my army getting donged. I can’t really use the Staff, so I plan to take it to a volcano in southern Africa and throw it into the magma unless someone wants to make an offer.
Those staffs are invaluable, hold on to it. If someone throws a devil army or some sort of all-flying army at you, you’ll need that staff to ground them.
How did you murder the queens btw? Those queens are real tough if scripted with the right combo of spells. Did they have insufficient bodyguards?
I can only say that my first encounter with the Queens involved some kind of magician holding the staff; he cast Rain or Storm, and then the Queen cast Wrathful Skies. My archers nailed the magician fairly soon, and the Queen retreated, but had nowhere to retreat to so (I assume) died.
The other Queen didn’t have a staff of storms, and she teleported into a pack of my lamias. The player who owned the Queens was in a desperate situation, being attacked from 3 sides at the time.
I lost track of who’s playing whom in Lavalamp, but I have to confess my sheer terror at the arrival of Jules, our man in Inglewood, prophet of Marcellous Wallace.
GREAT name! I assume you have a Vincent, our man in Amsterdam?
Heh, those are good names. Which faction is that?
Also, LavaLamp just caused me to sharply revise my opinion of Caelum upward. I love being able to transition from peace with a neighbor all the way to sieging their capitol in two turns! Flying blitz squads rock!
Backov
1800
You won’t be so impressed with them next turn, Nick. ;>
