1821

I gotta say, having to Ghost Rider 4 to 5 times a turn was really about all I could do past a certain point. I figured you were using the water areas to hide your casters so the Riders had to come out.

Arouse Hunger = Paratroopers. Only way to reinforce some portions of the map.

I was on the opposite side of the map from Ermor, it took around 10 to 12 turns to get an army over there. Just I thought about relocating my casters but I figured that it would be too risky to get too close.

That’s too bad about Abysia, he was doing good job inspiring and exhorting us to a point, then he kinda quieted down. I tried to free him as I figured he’d be strong enough to get some pressure on you from the south.

1822

You did an awesome job with those ghost riders. I was moving casters underwater and you deprived me a few of them. I wanted to cast living castle to protect my underwater gains but never could get the right caster in the right place at the right time. Too many battles ongoing to pull a high nature caster away. You caused me to basically abandon the underwater plans in favor a land offensive. You also on two occassions managed to kill a mostly-constructed castle in the middle map area.

1823

I’m sure Hasslmaster knows this by now, but he could have owned your undead just by equipping a bunch of thugs with Demon Whips… ;> I would have done it but I only had one fire caster til late in the war and he was busy fighting. Plus, really not that many fire gems.

Hell, I could have beat that last force you threw at me if I wasn’t so ridiculously overextended.

Qt3Lavalamp (Marignon): Nick is annoying me with his flying weaklings, raiding. Apparently breaking a siege comes AFTER the guy has a chance to move off the sieged castle. Annoying. Why don’t you move that PoD onto my castle so I can kill him Nick?

1824

QT3-Journal:

The Hasslmaster had no problem killing my longdead, albeit with different tactics than you used. I finally broke him with several hundred vine ogres, which shrugged off the all anti-undead measures. He did an awesome job of killing undead though, with his firing squad approach.

What I find quite silly is that he and I are replaying this same scenario right now in QT3-Backov-Cradle where he is Ulm and I’m Ermor. Same kind of face off, though I plan to break him a different way just to avoid being predictable.

QT3-LavaLamp:

You are surprised by this tactic Backov? I call it the Goddamng-Annoying-Backov-Tactic-From-The-Pampered-Moose-Game. You know, the unpredictable fast attack tactic that broke the back of my empire. Sort of the west coast offense of the Dom2 world. For the price of something like 2 archers I put a free ~50 unrest on your capitol. It’s lots of fun when your capitol is paralyzed and can’t recruit, trust me on this.

1825

[quote=“Backov”]I’m sure Hasslmaster knows this by now, but he could have owned your undead just by equipping a bunch of thugs with Demon Whips… ;> I would have done it but I only had one fire caster til late in the war and he was busy fighting. Plus, really not that many fire gems.

How do demon whips help vs undead? The description just reads: this whip will unleash hellish flames when it strikes. So what is the effect?

1826

How do demon whips help vs undead? The description just reads: this whip will unleash hellish flames when it strikes. So what is the effect?[/quote]

It’s a blast of flame that will kill several things if they are weak and tightly packed. Which describes longdeads. He was using them on quickened ice devils to kill whole big chunks of longdeads every turn.

1827

This really, truly sucks. Rywill did it to me in Pamplemousse also.
Can’t raise an army to patrol the capital, no income, etc.
I’d love a spell to spot spies in a given province under your control.

1828

Qt3 Journal - Yes, I was my favorite fiery molten hot magma beings, Abysia. Honestly, I would have attacked much earlier against Ermor, but when I realized just how far away the other members of the Coalition were from attacking as well, I realized that even if I did enact a massively successful blitzkrieg against Ermor, my Abysian empire would be pieced up by the remaining survivors as I’m sure I wouldn’t survive the battle without heavy casualties.

Plus, I needed more time to raise my Vampire Lord army, which was my whole strategy both to cripple Ermor and to create a highly mobile immortal strike force against everyone else eventually. You have to admit, my initial engagements against your Ermorian Hordes, numbering 3-5x larger than my armies, went incredibly well for me. Control the Dead (much weaker than I thought it would be) + Withering Bones (incredibly useful) + strong Abysian Priests = mass destruction of deadites.

The key to my downfall was my failure to anticipate your Ermorian Hordes going UNDERWATER to strike at all my rear provinces. Fucking AI R’lyeh. If we had a human R’lyeh that never would have happened. Once I lost the majority of my Blood Hunters, it was over for me. Ermor kept raiding and sacking my provinces, spreading death and misery everywhere, so even when I retook them I had garbage provinces with no income and massive unrest. I couldn’t root out all the Ermorian forces because they were everywhere, and the key to my survival was the possession of my capital to keep my Vampire Armies immortal; I was forced to devote the bulk of my remaining forces just to keep your armies off my capital.

On top of this, I didn’t have the numbers necessary to crack your Ermorian fortresses, and I couldn’t afford to pull too many troops off my capital, so I couldn’t sustain any sieges or gain the forward momentum to really push hard northwards. And because I was burning through all my gems just alchemizing for army upkeep, I couldn’t forge any items of note to counter any of your SC leaders.

Gah, we should have won this game, especially with my initial assaults and Ulm’s awesome suicide charge on your capital. If only we had more time to prepare, we could have coordinated a simultaneous assault to destroy you. But, R’lyeh going AI coupled with C’tis being so goddamned far away on the map, made the majority of the war Ermor versus Abysia and Ermor versus Ulm. Only when my Empire was collapsing did Mictlan have a corridor through Abysian lands to really wreak havoc against Ermor, but by then it was already too late.

1829

Oh, and why is it, when the description for Abysia notes that they’re lavarock beings that don’t require food, they still suffer the effects of Death dominion?? That description is completely pointless, then.

1830

Yep, A/I Rlyeh was the turning point as far as I can tell, plus I had some truly insane lucky breaks. I found a bunch of fire gem sites really early on that turbo charged my undead economy. If I had to pick my foes as Ermor, I would pick . . . Ulm and Mictlan. Devils really aren’t the optimized combatants against longdead hordes and Ulm has weak priests and expensive units. Both nations don’t hold up well vs mass swarming undead. I suspect if I’d been fighting Abysia, Marignon and Pythium then I would be writing a post right now explaining how I was out of the game on turn 25.

What I’m really going to be eager to see out of everyones AARs was how the expansion went. I was shocked when I wandered into the middle of the map late in the game and found it all indies. I dispatched one unholy priest and some mound kings with minimal longdeads and built up a reserve of castles+temples easily in the middle map while still maintaining my wars to the south and west. It was that second route of attack on Ulm that really let me overwhelm him.

Oh, and is Armor of Virtue a unique item? I’d never seen it before one of my wraith lords picked one up from a dead Ulmish commander. All by itself it turned him into a mega wraith lord. It blessed him, which is a lot of bonuses considering my pretender had at least 4 in every magic except blood.

1831

Yeah, R’yleh going AI really did the non-Undead in. I usually checked in every couple of turns or so; some of the things that stood out to me:

-C’tis had probably the luckiest starting position I’ve ever seen (income wise).
-Ermor got not one, but 2 free castles from randoms
-Abysia probably did as well as could be expected given their starting positon. Not much to work with (gold wise), but made every turn count.
-Ulm damn near took the Ermorian captial in one of his final assaults. Pretty epic battle, but the Black Knights got routed a turn or so before they would have slaughtered the Ermorian commanders and mages.
-Mictlan, if they hadn’t been kinda pinned down by R’yleh in the first part of the game (and that invasion was coming), could have bested Ermor. Maybe.

1832

Finally I understand why you were so damn fast in building castles and temples. Those fire gems sites you found early really hurled me into a paranoid frenzy. Right to the end I suspected that another nation was building you up with money. I finally decided it was C’tis, who were far off and a little inscrutable, with some doubts remaining as to R’lyeh’s involvement. Gah.

Yeah, and in two out of three of my Ulm games, I’m totally out of luck, as I kicked off right beside NickWalterErmor™. Ulm is really the worst possible nation to battle Ermor, especially after the latter have begun using their non-death gems to summon. What’s also bad is, Ulm has lots of trouble producing thugs. It’s hard to come up with a blood economy, for example.

Nick, as to your second route to overwhelm me, I felt quite overwhelmed even before you crossed my southern border. At that time, even Utterdark was already up, which made the game a closed matter on its own. You could have mopped my nation up much faster, and I always wondered why you were so cautious in attacking Ulm itself after my army was broken.

Armor of Virtue is a unique item, but I didn’t know it also blesses the user. I built it because its light and strong, and it teleports the user right back home the first time he loses hp. Too bad one hit sufficed to kill my would-be thug.

I’m really glad this game is over. The last ten turns or so were just a post-apocalypse scenario for me.

1833

I’m going to sound silly asking this, but what exactly did my utterdark do? As the caster, all it did to me was slash my income dramatically. It also seemed to have some effect on enemy morale in battle but I couldn’t really quantify it. The description implied that there would be random undead attacks but I didn’t see any.

1834

Utterdark causes widespread independent undead attacks. Someone cast in in QT3Pro and I got hit in probably 20% of my provinces if I remember right. Clark (who owned most of the map at the time) got hit by so many attacks that he lost his scouting reports because the 255 message buffer was exceeded. The attacks are small enough that a reasonable PD will usually hold them off, though.

1835

That was me who cast it in QT3Pro. You might be able to find the reports of what happened in a search on this thread.

In that game I cast it as a Wrath of Khan, I strike at thee from the fiery pits of hell type thing. I was already heading out, so I figured I would leave a little taste of bitter ashes for the rest of the world.

In Journal at it did we sap what was left of my economy. I wasn’t able to send the few gold of support to Abysia. I didn’t realize he was alchemizing all the gems I sent him btw. Boo …

1836

I have been on record as saying that Ulm is a little weak in the game (could use a small buff). This shows another reason. Ulm’s only real two bonuses are high protection (which you pay for in insane resource cost troops) and forging. Unlike other sides’ bonuses, however, forged items often benefit the other side after a battle loss by the forging side, thus compounding the effect of the loss.

When other sides’ advantages do not win a battle, they at least do not then become a strength for the winning side. For example, nations that can do blood well do not give devils to the other side when they lose a battle like Ulm does with its magic items.

1837

On Utterdark: The attacks are just the side effect. Most non undead or demons will get lowered stats in combat, on account of not being able to see. And provinces will get severely reduced income. It is very beneficial to he killer dominion themes, not so much to other nations.

1838

Aha! I knew I was winning battles I would have lost before the Utterdark. The reduced stats for my opponents living troops explains it. If I’d have known that, I would have been more offensive once I had Utterdark up but I didn’t realize I had a combat advantage.

1839

Yep, Utterdark is the meanest spell Ermor could possibly come up with. Province income reduction of ~ 90%, greatly reduced attack/defense/precision for all non-undead/non-blind units, and don’t forget the attacks of independent shades/dark fiends (name?) and magic-less arch theurgs (!!! bug).

I can only recommend you this spell in Backov Cradle, Nick. (No, Foom, stop strangling me! Nooo!)

1840

I’m not doing nearly as well in Backov Cradle as I did in QT3-Journal. Backov Cradle was my first attempt at Ermor, Journal was the refinements. I don’t have as good as of a pretender, research apparatus, or gem income in Backov Cradle so I’m a far less threatening Ermor over there.