1801

Machaka of course.

1802

Yeah, that’s me (as Man), although I think Mictlan has “Heywhatthehellisthat” as a Dark Lord. Also a very good name.

Just wait until I bring out The Gimp (despite the terror infusing names of my commanders, I am all for peace. Peace and Pork)

1803

JM Hardcore (Penguinmen) - Rollory has a pretty good ally in the Boston Red Sox. I’ve been so caught up in the games that I’ve stale turned a few times in the last 2 weeks, and when I get to play my turns I feel like the map is changing faster than I can keep up with. Hopefully a BoSox sweep will get my head back in the game in time to defeat whatever devious plan he’s cooking up.

1804

I cannot connect to the Journal game. Does that mean that finally every last member of the resistance capitulated and the game is over?
Could the nightmare be over at last? (I mean the part of the nightmare that precedes eternal enslavement as undead minions of the cruel Le Puma.)

1805

The email went out yesterday from our coordinator Brandon giving people a last chance to object to the surrender. I haven’t heard anything from him about objections so I assumed the game was over and shut down the Journal game to free some memory on my server for the other games. If it turns out someone did sneak in an objection I’ll go ahead and restart the Journal instance. The game isn’t deleted, just offline for the moment.

Just glancing at the server logs, it looks like you and I were the only ones to even bother playing last turn Mr Danubian Fox. Everyone else went stale turn.

1806

Mmmmm… Wrap-up time!

1807

I’m going to wait for the official word from Brandon before I start spewing a whole games worth of accumulated trash talk :D

1808

I am really looking forward to hearing how this game went.

1809

I’ve already discussed AAR editing with Brandon. He says we have a huge mess o material so don’t expect anything soon but I’m hoping for a full AAR laid out timeline style in 5 turn increments with the ability to click on a map view and the written AAR of each nation. So for turn 30 you could see the 5-turn journal entry for Mictlan and the map as Mictlan saw it. Ditto for Ermor or Ctis or Ulm or Abysia. If time permits I plan to compile stats showing the growth of each nation. I know for my nation I was including in my 5-turn journal entries a summary section showing my gem income, research levels, number of temples/fortresses, gold income, and upkeep costs.

1810

Qt3-JM-Hardcore (Vanheim) - Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

More stuff I dare not talk about until afterwards.

Oh, and I killed one of the Heliophagi, but at the cost of one of my better Vanadrotts - all tricked out with the best equipment I could give him too. Note to self: Blood Vengeance doesn’t do squat about poison.

Regardless of whether I win or lose, writing up the AAR for this one is going to be great fun. And once again I have learned a hell of a lot and see all kinds of ways in which I could have done practically everything better.

1811

The problem is remembering it all. With a game like Dominions, I seem to remember only the most recent trick I have seen (which I inevitably cannot use with the nation I’m currently playing), and forget what mauled me 3 games ago.

That is not good.

1812

QT3Journal: The game is officially over, with everyone conceding to Ermor.

And yes, AAR editing is going to be a cast-iron bitch, but I’ll try to get it done as soon as I can. If I don’t have an AAR from you for the last set of turns, please get them to me.

1813

Whoo hoo! Now let me play guess my oponents!

I was Ashen Empire Ermor

Lord Ebonstone was Rlyeh, and then AI was Rlyeh.

I’m sure Ch Hasslbauer was Ulm.

I’m 99% sure Backov was Mictlan…

That leaves Balut and VegasRobb for Abysia and Ctis. I’m not sure which of you which, but I’ll guess balut for Abysia just cause I know he likes Abysia :D

P.S. I have no idea how I won a 4v1 war, I’m going to be eager to read the AARs.

P.P.S. You don’t have to do all the editing Brandon. Just get them readable and give em all to me. I plan to do some fancy things to HTMLify them and I’m working on some nice scripts to automate the drudgery.

1814

Yep, I was Mictlan, and I would have been a lot larger thorn in your side if I hadn’t felt so much time pressure from the collapsing allies. ;>

You’ll read it all in the AAR, I was surprised I did as well as I did, and I even managed to figure out a great Anti-dead SC build on the first try. Then of course, I ran out of resources. Should be an interesting read.

1815

Those SC’s were scary. I’d written them off as a parlor trick, neat but not able to really hurt me. Until you gave one of them that gate cleaver thingy and suddenly your little horde of thugs could crack castles as well as killing 500 longdead without breaking a sweat. I just about screamed when you got clever and started tearing down castles after you conquered them from me. That’s a really good way to hurt Ermor.

I learned about a lot about Ermor in this game, and I still think they are the single most powerful faction. Especially if you let them create a dead zone on the map where they can generate piles of longdead chaff and use the lack of supplies/starvation to soften up enemies free of charge.

I think Ermor is weaker in scenarios where people start closer together and Ermor can get dogpiled early on. With 6 of us on Karan I had a plenty big buffer to build up a nice dead zone on the map and I used it (+ my immortal pretender) to eat every enemy army that came at me.

1816

Why? My experience with AE Ermor (and I’ve only played them myself against the AI, although I’ve fought them several times in MP) is that they don’t lack for money or spare commanders.

1817

Why? My experience with AE Ermor (and I’ve only played them myself against the AI, although I’ve fought them several times in MP) is that they don’t lack for money or spare commanders.[/quote]

Err, I was hurting for money. Of course, I was carpet castling because it was the only way to withstand the 4 castings of ghost riders I got hit with every turn. I did have a nice income (for Ermor) but not enough to keep up with all the castling/templing I wanted to do.

Ermor doesn’t lack for spare commanders because mound kings grow on trees. They do hurt for mages and priests. Their national mage costs 20 death gems. That’s a huge amount. In the endgame other factions are churning out multiple mages a turn and Ermor is still sticking to one every few in order to have enough gems left over for the oh-so-necessary premium undead summons.

1818

C’tis.

Ermor, you die a horrible death if R’lyeh doesn’t go AI.

I became annoyed with the game after losing over 100 Vine Ogres to a single unit … AFTER the single unit routed.

Aside from that, I spent the last part of the game rooting out Ermor with 4 to 5 Ghost Riders a turn.

I’m curious to see the AARs for Ulm and Abysia as I’d like to know where my support went. Yes yes I know it wasn’t great gobs of cash and gems, but it was about all I could do and still maintain a reasonable front. Seemed like 20 to 25 Just Man’s Crosses, 20 Bags of Endless Wine and another 10 misc items. Not to mention individual gems and coin.

I was glad to see Abysia finally get out and make a break north at the end. Only the Father of Serpents knows how many gems I invested rooting out all the undead around him.

Ulm accuses me of backing Ermor and then turtles for the rest of the game.

After the game is over and done with, Mictlan comes out and questions everyone’s manhood for not staying in longer. So we stay in longer, not wanting to look bad … and finally everyone concedes.

I did find the coolest magic site at the end tho, some place where you could have a death mage enter and he’d pop out with a bane. I was relocating the bulk of my mages to that spot when the end finally came (again).

1819

About the Journal game:

Of course I played Ulm. I had a suspicion I was in trouble when I entered for the first time and saw Ermor, Mictlan (late game devil apocalypse) and R’lyeh. Had I known this game would be full of freak nations I’d have chosen something a little less straightforward than Ulm.

I knew for sure I was in trouble when the first neighbor I hit upon was Ermor. I felt not prepared one bit to tackle them, so as kind of delaying tactics I agreed to early non-aggression. In the meantime I built a huge amount of priests and master smiths. When Abysia went for Ermor I cancelled the treaty, and after the laid down delay I went straight for the Ermor province itself. Needless to say, my efforts weren’t enough. (Nice battle, though.)
Afterwards I was able to build another large anti-Ermor force, but at this time Nick was prepared for me and struck it down with a gigantic army of longdead, vine ogres, wights and, worst of all, the dreaded wraith lord.

Being poor straightforward Ulm, I was a helpless victim to the Ermorian advance ever since. What VegasRobb called turtling was nothing more than my utter inability to deal with Ermor’s hordes coming at me.

My greatest mistake was a wrong research strategy (my signature mark), neglecting Conjuration in favor of Construction.

The main problem of Ulm is, you can only counter Ermor with extremely large forces of priests and mages. Once you lose a battle, you basically lose everything.

I couldn’t put C’tis’ magic items to good use because I couldn’t muster a big enough force to keep the item users alive long enough. And a few crossbows and ice swords (what for?!) don’t make a real difference anyway.

1820

C’tis.

Ermor, you die a horrible death if R’lyeh doesn’t go AI.

I became annoyed with the game after losing over 100 Vine Ogres to a single unit … AFTER the single unit routed.

Aside from that, I spent the last part of the game rooting out Ermor with 4 to 5 Ghost Riders a turn.

I’m curious to see the AARs for Ulm and Abysia as I’d like to know where my support went. Yes yes I know it wasn’t great gobs of cash and gems, but it was about all I could do and still maintain a reasonable front. Seemed like 20 to 25 Just Man’s Crosses, 20 Bags of Endless Wine and another 10 misc items. Not to mention individual gems and coin.

I was glad to see Abysia finally get out and make a break north at the end. Only the Father of Serpents knows how many gems I invested rooting out all the undead around him.

Ulm accuses me of backing Ermor and then turtles for the rest of the game.

After the game is over and done with, Mictlan comes out and questions everyone’s manhood for not staying in longer. So we stay in longer, not wanting to look bad … and finally everyone concedes.

I did find the coolest magic site at the end tho, some place where you could have a death mage enter and he’d pop out with a bane. I was relocating the bulk of my mages to that spot when the end finally came (again).[/quote]

Abysia never really broke anywhere. The poor suckers started really close to me and were curiously passive neighbors at first. I presume in retrospect this was due to the delay of organized a simultaneously timed strike on me with the rest of you. The delay meant that when the war began Abysia had to deal with an Ermorian castle and temple directly adjacent to his capitol. He’d given me that long to entrench. I never lost that castle. Well I did later to Mictlan (who tore it down) but I retook the province and replaced it.

And yes, Rlyeh going A/I probably saved me. His first attack at me was pretty feeble (maybe he was rushing?) but I’m sure another front of sustained attacks would have been more than I could handle.

I was kind of surprised that I won without a strong underwater presence. It was actually my goal to expand underwater as much as possible since I figured I’d be hard to root out of the oceans, but ghost riders proved me wrong wrong wrong.