2801

Large battle happened between main army of man lead by their god and my host, also lead by my pretender. Man has finally attacked my army that was besieging last Giants castle.

The results were mixed. The good news is that men have fallen into my carefully prepared trap, and the sky, filled with the wrath of Midgard, has fallen on the heads of the best army of Man. The bad news is that my pretender was 1 round too late in retreating from the battlefield (the idea was to weaken Man army in this first battle and retreat, not to destroy them). So he got paralyzed in the last moment by the lucky enemy astral mage. About 6 turns later he was killed by the kamikaze Orion’s mercenary.

He took a lot of enemies with him into the grave, since wrathful skies were playing havoc on Man’s army much longer than I anticipated. But at the end I would certainly prefer that he survived, even it would mean that more enemies would survive as well.

Oh well, now many dozens of priests who are guarding my border with Ermor have something better to do, other than getting fat and lazy.

The battle results: on Man’s side about 2/3 of their army has been wiped put, including 17 out of 30 commanders. Of the enemy’s mage cadre only 3 mages have survived.

On my side 100-200 black hawks were killed, 2 units of diseased vans used as decoy have perished. And, alas, the Oberon has left its children, at least for now. He was also wounded before being struck down by Orion’s mercenary.

My congratulations to Man for killing Oberon, I’ve underestimated you. The Man are now in charge of the siege. However I suggest you enjoy it while it lasts. I intend to make sure that the last city of Giants will become the grave of the remainders of your main army. And your reinforcements that are coming from the west will be destroyed before they could reach the main host.

In addition to the main battle about dozens of raids and counterraids happened in different parts of Man’s empire, with my Vans, infantry and imps clashing with enemy mages, Defenders and Draconians, with various results.

All and all the war is definitely heating up.

2802

Better look out Stormbinder… Ermor is going to be pretty bored again in 5 or 6 turns…

2803

Yes, it’s a fair warning, thank you. It certianly looks like Ermor player did a good job of quickly recovering and building up formidable force after our initial skirmishes.

I’ve been steadly reinforcing my borders with Ermor for the entire game (despite the fact that it significantly reduced the amount of troops I could field in the west against Giants and Man). But now I am going to start adding bunch of death mages to my southern borders to cast wither bones, in case Ermor would decide to look at the north later on. Just van armies with a lot of priests that I currently have there are not going to be enough anymore.

2804

What??? Why am i not able to connect? How many turns are forced since i gave my last???

2805

I do not know!!! I don’t keep track of everyone’s turns!!!

However, I do only force-host it when McGriddle’s the only one left, so unless that’s you under another name I wouldn’t worry.

2806

Ok! i wont worry! BUT im still not able to reach squidz server!

2807

Looks like Hoplite is down.

2808

I’m putting Bommerlunder back to 48 hour hosting… be warned!

2809

Cool. It looks like after the long pause the game is now bristling with activity. 3 wars are going on at the same time. In fact everybody is in war with somebody except the Abyssia. (despite the fact that they are in the center of everything, or maybe because of it :) ).

Anyway, it’s going to be an interesting time for the Bommerlunder.

2810

Back up.

Annoyingly, when we get power brownouts here my internal network reconfigs itself, which is fine but I have to reconfigure the holes through my firewall manually when that happens.

2811

Hoplite missed a turn?

2812

So is there a volunteer to take over Giants in Lictor game? The game is currently on hold, since we need human player to take control of the largest nation in the game. (although one should mention that Giants are also in war with 2 other nations)

Any takers?

2813

Note to the Bandar players. A server failure (OK, I unplugged it by mistake) has caused the Bandar game timer to be reset. It was originally scheduled to host this morning by the 48 hour timer, so I will be force hosting it some time today. If you log in this morning and see 40+ hours to the next hosting, don’t believe it!

2814

So, I’m about to play a Dawn of Dominions game as (EA) Arcoscephale. C’tis and Ermor don’t worry me - I can sign a treaty with one, and chariot rush the infantry hordes of the other- but does anyone have any tips for fighting Agartha?

As I see it, Troglodytes > Myrmidons, and the fact that their other guys can’t hit the broad side of a barn won’t matter given that Myrmidons are relatively easier to hit (defence 12), expensive and thus scarce, and the big Agarthans are strong enough to pierce that armour anyway. Instead, I’m thinking of lots and lots of peltasts and cardaces, with a few chariots to block his troglodytes. Artillery will also be my friend - given that Agartha’s good units are quite expensive, massed Orb Lightning or Thunder Strikes should be effective against them.

Any thoughts?

2815

Troglodytes have trample, and will massacre your infantry (I found this out the hard way). My plans for dealing with the Agarthans before they were persuaded to spare me were to try a combination of massed archers and air mages for damage, with a suicide flyer squad attacking their rear, hopefully pulling their main force back and delaying it for some combat rounds. Probably wouldn’t have worked, though

I can see chariots maybe holding their own against troglodytes, but blessed Seal Guards will demolish them.

2816

Be warned EA Ctis has some nasty effective Chariots of their own.

2817

In the early game, archers + whatever high def units you can get. I’ve never found indy horse archers particularly useful, but with def 15 they are an ok buy if you are specifically after Agartha w/o a fire bless and don’t have any native high def troops. Agartha’s next obvious step is flame children/legions of steel/blade wind, which works well against the archers + high def troops combo. If you are playing Agartha, you really need fire bless so your units can hit anything. I made the mistake of taking water – 2 powerful attacks that miss constantly.

If you’re fighting Agartha on that map, they’ll surround you in the water and constantly border all of your home regions. Unless you can knock them right out of the game, it might turn into a mess since you’ll need to keep troops spread out everywhere to keep them coming out of the water and nabbing undefended regions for a turn.

On the Dawn that we played, cave regions didn’t have any special properties. I haven’t tried the released version of the map. Does fighting in the caves mean fighting in the dark now? If so, that makes fighting Agartha in their zone much, much harder.

2818

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. It’s a pity Wind Riders are so expensive; I’d like to see the Agarthans try to hit them, with their def of 19. I guess I should pray for indy archers near my position. How would you counter Flame Children, bladewinding, and Fire blessed seal guards?

2819

With your random magic you should have a decent chance of pulling up a Mystic that can cast anti-fire spells, or fire resisting spells, like Rain or whatever it’s called. Your Myrmiddons should be able to shrug off Blade Winds. You might be able to cast arrow fend with a Oreiad or whatever their name is, to help stop Blade Winds. Also, Wind Guide will make your casters more accurate at launching fireballs ect at the enemy.

Agarthans are neither brave nor skilled. Even a fire-blessed Seal Guard has “just” above average attack.

Swarm / Call of the Wild if you happen to be in a forest, and he doesn’t have any Flame Children, would help as well. Seeking arrow to kill his expensive mages, ect.

2820

I’ve got a fun immortality question I’m hoping someone knows the answer to.

If my opponent has an immortal pretender set to patrol province in his capital province and I attack and kill the pretender, thus putting the capital castle under siege, is the immortal pretender gone or is it just going to be back inside the castle next turn?