Thanks, me too! At 15 water gems a piece I wasn’t sure they would be worth it but the four of them seemed to put out some serious hurting on your army.
Morkilus
2742
I’m completely an R’lyeh noob, but I’m willing to give it a shot so I can see how people might play it. So who’s the host of the game?
That would be me. If Clark gives you the user/pass info I’ll add you to the hosting scripts. Tell him to hurry, because the game isn’t paused for the change of command.
Mike O’Malley already posted that he would sub for R’yleh, but I guess he never got a reply. Doodz, if you’re gonna ask for a sub, you should at least reply when people say they’ll sub! (Maybe there’s more to this story than I know, though, and yes this is just a game. So it’s no big deal.)
Clark isn’t the original Rlyeh player from Bandar. Tom Chick is. So Clark is probably having to secure permission from Tom to share his password out yet again.
But then, Clark hasn’t responded to my offer to take his TC position either, so I’m guessing he just hasn’t had a chance to check this thread.
gruntled
2747
O’Malley offered to sub for Balut (Abysia) - though apparently that offer was not responded to, either.
I’m subbing, I’m subbing! I just don’t get the emails so I may be out of sync.
Wait, which nation are you? Better yet, PM me with your email addy and who you are replacing and I’ll make sure the notification scripts are updated.
Hetzer
2751
hmm squidz is still down?
Whichever one you’re subbing for - the next turn hosts midday tomorrow.
wahoo
2753
Squidz and Andro is up.
Waiting for Andro is tough b/c I need the exterminator to extinquish an ulmish infestation.
I’m afraid you have a case of Cimmerian termites. They’re not much in a stand up fight (just ask Crom, the God of Getting His Ass Beat), but once they get into your nation they’re hell on the infrastructure.
Rollory
2755
So is Lictor dead? Are we getting an Utgard replacement or not?
I’m kinda disappointed with the number of players that have left this game for no good in-game reason, and I wouldn’t really object to just letting it die at this point. In part because I think I’ve won the game, and though playing it out would be interesting, it would’ve been a lot more interesting with consistent opponents, and without that it becomes more work than play.
My reasoning for declaring victory is:
-
I am researching at about 700 points per turn right now, and can easily boost that to 850 or so with a turn or two of preparation. I’ve reached level 8 in multiple schools, level 8 in the rest is just a few turns away. Level 9 in any particular area is only a couple more per school.
-
All those researching mages are astral mages. For the past 15-20 turns, the only thing I’ve been spending money on has been forts and mages. I can put together 50-mage communions on just about any border, and bigger ones with a few turns to prepare. I’ve only begun to think about the sort of havoc I can wreak with that. 20 communion masters spamming Soul Slay with 32 slaves to supercharge them is something I was thinking about, but there are lots of other possibilities.
-
I have just about all the good astral/death/blood artifacts. In particular, the Sword of Aurgelmer, the Armor of Virtue, the Ankh, the Boots of the Planes, and the Sceptre of Dark Regency. Putting the Sword, Ankh, and Armor all on the same commander, along with a huge horde of infantry, makes for a pretty nasty force. Turns out, the Ankh resurrects wolves as well as regular human infantry, and I can get lots and lots of wolves for free - I have to regularly shut down the wolfherd summoning because it’s sucking up my gold in maintenance. Anyway, generating cannon fodder is not a problem. Also I have Ardmon’s Soul Trap on my Sword/Ankh commander, which means he has multiple strong undead bodyguards in any fight. Also I have the black Mirror on a randomly-chosen Illuminati, who is using it to cast a free Soul Slay Mind Hunt every turn.
-
The Well of Misery was cast at a conjuration bonus site, by the vampire queen - so killing off the caster is rather hard. My vampire queen is summoning ghosts every turn (and she wields the Sceptre of Dark Regency as well as some other path boosting items, so she gets a LOT of ghosts), and even after that monthly casting I have a net income of 30+ death gems per turn, all of which will go right back into casting a reinforced Well when/if it becomes necessary. I already have rather more than I did when I originally cast it. At some point the queen will switch to summoning Tartarians (the ghosts right now are to provide tough stealth troops, and also troops that have a chance at slowing down the blessed Jotun Woodsmen).
-
I’m summoning multiple vampire counts per turn, and have been for quite a while. Even with that expense in blood, my blood stockpile is going up by about 100 to 120 per turn. I expect to be able to increase total blood income by about 50% in the next few turns. I already have more vampire counts on the Utgard front than I really need; I’m going to have a lot more shortly. Just to be clear: these are death2/blood2 flying stealthy MR 16 immortal undead with good command ratings for regular, magical, AND undead troops. They can already spam skeletons in large numbers; in another turn or so I’ll have researched Thaum 8 and they’ll be spamming Disintegrate. I’ll be able to put Eyes of the Void on lots of them, too (at 3 astral per, I can afford that easily). Any invasion is going to be fighting ever-increasing numbers of them - having to fight and kill the same ones over and over, as they’ll just fly back to the frontlines immediately every other turn - as long as I have my capital. The capital has one dome already, casters in it for two more types of domes if they look needed, it has a bunch of blessed and stealth troops in it, and surrounding provinces have hordes of light infantry and good PD. I’d kinda like to see a blitz attempt, but I doubt it would succeed.
-
Speaking of domes, I have Forest Domes on various important cities, at least one of which also has an Astral Dome, and casters capable of Astral Domes in just about all the cities. My gem income (astral in particular) is good enough to be able to cover everything on short notice. Most of the casters are stealthy, so impossible to assassinate.
-
My bloodstone manufacturing effort got started late but is coming along nicely. I suspect better than R’lyeh’s clam-of-pearls hoarding. In a dozen turns or so I should be able to start really spending the earth gems, whether on things like Mechanical Men or Earth Blood Deep Well or just alchemizing the earth gems to astral, or to yet other purposes … anything could work. Wish spam becomes a possibility some time after that.
-
In another turn I will have my second caster who’ll be able to cast “Flaming Arrows”. Couple that with Rangers of Ulm, which I already have a lot of, and can build a lot more of, very quickly … should be fun.
-
I expect to be able to pick up quite a number of the higher-level summons. King of Banefires, Father Illearth, the two other Kings of Earth, the high-level blood summons … any particular one could be grabbed by someone else before me, but not all of them. The King of Banefires I could have grabbed already but I’m saving the gems for now in case I need to re-cast a reinforced Well.
-
If and when Ermor makes a move, my Vampire Queen can and will be on that border very quickly, casting Undead Mastery, along with either Illuminati or vampires for a blood sabbath to boost her caster level. I’m kinda curious to see how much of an army Nick can give me this way. (The queen would probably be wearing the Armor of Virtue if fighting out of dominion, so no, you wouldn’t have a chance to knock off the Well that way.) The 50-odd priests I have on his border (with supply items and lots of heavy infantry) are just a bonus. Burden of Time I shrug at; the vampires won’t care, it’ll take a while to really put a crimp in my blood income, and the cannon fodder is replaceable. Alternatively, I can also put death-boosting items on vampire counts, which then lets me spam Wither Bones and vaporize his entire army pretty quick. Either way he’s left with only with non-death summons, which I daresay I can handle.
-
R’lyeh is not much of a threat to me and will not be for quite a while. He has three main weapons: hordes of crap infantry, smaller hordes of void monsters, and the Dreams of R’lyeh assassination spell. My commanders are all vampire counts, thus undead and immune to bad dreams. The crap infantry can be dealt with by the counts spamming skeletons, or by my own hordes of light infantry. The void monsters can be dealt with by high-quality troops in numbers, plus plenty of magical support, which I have.
-
Jotunheim was the real threat, but based on what battles there have been on my front, plus the further internal developments I’ve managed in the past 5-6 turns, I am confident I can at the very least cause any Jotun invasion to get severely bogged down while I further strengthen my position. I’m already in a position to take one city, and another will then be nearly cut off from any reinforcements. His main army and his ice devils will be a concern, but as soon as they enter my dominion, they will meet a LOT of skeleton-spamming vampires, plus the rangers and ghosts in my stealth armies.
-
Marignon might have been an interesting threat but is too far away and probably too far behind in research.
In short, right now, I think everyone could attack me at once and I’d be able to stabilize the situation after losing a few border provinces. After that my magic income and hordes of immortal commanders would end up carrying the day.
Black Forest Ulm starts off slow, but definitely grows in power exponentially. Vampire counts and blood magic FTW.
Unk. Is that post really supposed to keep me playing? :)
Just joking, I’m ready to march into doom anytime this game takes off again.
Hetzer
2757
Squidz is up? and why am i not able to play?
What makes you think undead are immune to the Rlyeh dominion? I have plenty of insane Ermor commanders to attest otherwise.
Enidigm
2759
Is Ryleh the new king of freespawn in Dominions? With the relative decrease in cost of Priests, as well as the increase in Banish effectiveness, it seems like the mindless magical freespawn of Ryleh are less effective in combat but perhaps less vulnerable to easy destruction. If they don’t all starve to death before the reach the frontlines, anyway.
Rollory
2760
Not dominion. Assassination spell. Specifically says in the description that it doesn’t affect creatures that don’t sleep. I read that as excluding all undead.
Insanity would be an issue once I invade, but I’ve seen how it progresses in my scouts. It isn’t too big a deal. I’d have a few counts become unreliable, but scouring provinces clean of madmen, tossing up Wizard’s Towers or 3-red-second fortresses, and putting temples down, wouldn’t be too hard.
