Chickening out 2 turns after attacking me, just when I am about to strike back with vengeance? Tsk, tsk. :)
Try at least to complete your turns in Lictor game while you are looking for sub – next few turns are going to be critical for your nation.
Our Dom3 games often shudder and collapse under their own weight. I can’t remember ever really finishing one. I wonder if small games, say 4 players on a small map, would be more satisfying. The players probably wouldn’t have access to the higher level spells, summons, or items, but they could be in for an intense game of small, meaningful battles and a clear victor in the end.
A moment’s reflection makes me add that in a short, small 4 player game, either everyone had better have the best possible bless effects, or no one should.
Marcin
2703
Speaking for Androphag, sure.
I’m in the same boat re: burnout - I took on way too many games than I should have. Fortunately I am destroyed in most of them, leaving me with only one to manage. Hopefully I’ll make a better showing there, and I apologize for the stales in the others…
No question. But I joined a giant game out of Dom3-release excitement. I’m enjoying it, but all future games will be small ones for me. In Dom2, our small Qt3 games were by far the best.
Clark: don’t drop out of Bandar! OMG!
Rollory
2705
Well crap. That’s why you staled. And here I was planning this and that and the other thing based on how you might react this turn.
FWIW, you were an excellent neighbor. The only reason I attacked is because you had done too good a job of getting powerful fast.
Bandar: turn 58
While I’m sure one’s ego requires one to believe that one could only be eliminated by the game’s superpower…
You never managed to expand beyond 7 provinces. I dare say that any of TC, Pangaea, and Mictlan could have dusted you off quite easily. You obviously have not seen Mictlan’s devil hordes supported by blood unique SCs in action, if you think Agartha is the strongest. Blade wind may as well be “I will fart in your general direction” up against those. Doesn’t work so well under water, either. With so many ocean provinces on this map (too many, I really think), I shudder to think what R’lyeh’s gold and gem income must be now. It’s pretty silly for any one of the 4 land powers to think that winning the land war means winning the game.
Always the gift for exaggeration :) There were some 200 magma children. They’re worth their cost (especially compared to other fire summons), but they die like flies. The 12 earth elementals were there to soak up your pillar of fire spam. As you have to kill each elemental 3 times, they did an outstanding job filling that role. Your Soul Vortexing, Invulnerable, Phoenix Pyre-ed Dai Onis were quite formidable, but they were ill-served by the rest of your army - really only longdead and deer tribe archers.
Same to you, Stormbinder.
It wasn’t the teenagers playing their loud “rock and roll” after decent people have gone to bed?
Have you seen them in action? It hasn’t been that impressive. Jeff has been picking me to pieces by using that damn air magic spell to keep plucking away my commanders from my devil forces leaving them leaderless and vulnerable to any old attack. He’s twice routed my devil hordes by attacking with ONE indie commander. Let me tell you what, that’s dang embarassing.
My wins with Mictlan have from just throwing a ton of sacreds into battle and accepting horrendous losses in order to drive away attackers. Kudos to Jeff, he was one sharp cookie when designing a pretender. That damn immortal heron with F9/A7 just slaughters my armies with evocations. Shimmering fields, falling fires, thunder strikes, and of course storms so my devils have to walk across the battle field while being blasted with lightning. Ugh.
Rlyeh is starting to scare me too in this game, though I think he’s vulnerable to attack in his (ever expanding) land provinces. I shudder to think what it’s going to take to crack that nut underwater though.
Now that I’m out of Dawn of Dominions, I’m open for another game and I’ll take Tien Chi. Though I can’t take much more sacred frustration, so if any of your neighbors have dual-9 blesses or are Vanheim, I’ll pass.
Clark may have some new neighbors since he wiped me out (Mictlan with F9W9B6), but he did quite well with those not-very-well-blessed Tien Chi troops against my sacreds. Had I paid more attention to preserving my dominion, maybe it would have been a longer fight… All I’m saying, is don’t count TC out prematurely, even against sacreds.
It’s Ferox. I’ve asked him to set to AI in a PM, but… nothing. He has made some comment in a P&R thread, so he must log on now and then. Feel free to try to contact him, maybe in an e-mail?
Also, our host doesn’t have the master password, so he can’t do it.
F9W9B6? Good god man, your dominion must have stank. I’ve never understood people who advocate playing Mictlan that way.
Well, it was my first time with Mictlan, and IIRC, that’s the rec in the manual. I could have probably offset it by sacrificing more, and getting some jade knives out, but you’re absolutely right, it made for a very tenuous start. This was also the game that convinced me that Misfortune 3 is never worth it in MP.
Rollory
2714
Not when your national PD is crappy, that’s for sure. Even misfortune-2 is pretty bad. In Lictor I didn’t built temples ANYWHERE in the early game except in provinces that had 20+ PD - and Ulm has pretty decent PD.
That’s in the manual?!?!?! Bad Brooski, that is not good Mictlan advice, especially for someone new enough to Mictlan to need advice.
For anyone contemplating playing Mictlan with no experience in blood magics or sacreds, take a blood fountain with F9/B5, a dominion of 8, and growth-3 and order-3 for scales. This costs a lot of points but those can easily be found by going with an imprisoned pretender and sloth-3/heat-2.
Unlike more extreme Mictlan strategies this gives an overall positive dominion to Mictlan that they can spread with sacrifices. This setup has enough bless power to have punch in the early game with sacred troops and enough blood hunting potential to have scary magic powers and summons in the later game.
A big bronx cheer out to all you wussies who are dropping. WUSSIES! I have SIX games of Dom3 going right now. Ptttttthhhhhhbbbbbt!
I’m actually looking to get into another game… I don’t think Hoplite is going to go so well for me. :) That only leaves me with Apprentices (I have no idea how that’s going for me. Atlantis is evil).
What a bunch of nonsense. Any nation in the game was stronger than me. So any nation could eliminate me just like you did.
And several nations other than me know that you are the most powerful nation at this point, and stated so in this thread. So don’t try to play coy. ;)
I play Misfortuine 3 in 2/3 of my MP games. With good results. With Order 3 (which is almost “must have” scale for most nations) it’s not really that bad.
Enidigm
2720
I enjoy taking luck in MP games, but it’s hard to justify; like growth, it’s an investment in long term stability over short term potential.
Another toughie is Drain dominion. The real problem with the Magic/Drain scale is it can vastly change the economics of some of your lower end mages. A 3 research mage is 5x more effective per gold at Magic 3 than Drain 3; at Drain 3, many mages are all but useless to buy, forcing an enormous investment in high-end mages.
To roleplay Drain and still make it “work” you can make a Sage Pretender with multiple paths, and then justify it by saying the selfish god doesn’t want any competitors; and you can still get some decent research done as least early on.
But Drain is completely “free”, with no immediate drawbacks, if you’re basing everything around a powerful bless strategy.
