qfwfq
3321
Ah, indeed, the Monkey Nation made us cower with their furious hordes of water-blessed celestial beings and automatons, but our clever mages’ defense managed to repel them. Tonight we feast on Monkey Flesh, and ethereal God-kabobs.
Peltast - Sauromatia Turn 106
A desicive turn… the war has been steadily deteriorating for Niefelhelm until finally his capital came under siege, his pretender trapped in another fortress simultaneously. This turn he attempted to remove both threats only to be bloodily repulsed, his pretender killed, his capital taken.
With Abysia cleaning up AI Vanheim, there only remains Nifel’s underwater holdings, his terrestrial empire is all but gone, just a few dirt poor provinces remain, defended by normal troops.
Lanka - Pangea Turn 15
Our first encounter with the Marverni was a loss. Though significant damage was done to the enemy, his army remianed intact while mine fled the field in disarray. This was mitigated by a stroke of unbeleivable fortune… a random event gave me a hillfort right at the chokepoint between our empires!
This war will be tough. Marverni holds very rich lands, and so will likely win any war of attrition. This will require perhaps more clever tactics than I am capable of :D
Lanka
Heading out right now. I’ll try really really hard to get on a wifi connection, but i’ve got to get the game installed, ect, patched. If i dissapear and don’t respond, that’s why. Please be gentle:).
Oh, yea, can someone in Lanka PM me the server settings? I forgot to write them down.
wahoo
3324
Lanka: “Our first encounter with the Marverni was a loss. This was mitigated by a stroke of unbeleivable fortune… a random event gave me a hillfort right at the chokepoint between our empires!”
Are you f-ing kidding? A random event gave you that hillfort at the most strategic pt? Unbelievable. I thought maybe a search had stumbled upon the firbolg fortress but couldn’t understand why a mage wouldn’t have gone to battle.
Was a huge battle that I barely won. It was a battle of beserkers and went on a long, long, long, long time. Pan Centaurs are supertough and seem to be just a bit behind the 'heims. My poor boar warriors took quite a beating despite having every advantage I could want.
Maverni has the cash, but Pan has the superior positioning and far, far superior troops. Soapy is also a much better player and trounce me quickly. Especially since I think Lanka/Pan have settled their differences without telling anyone!
This myth that I am good player… where did this come from :D
It was a very long battle! I was quite surprised I did not win, but it’s clear to me now I should have knuckled under to my instincts and dark secret desires and gone for the W9F9 bless ;)
wahoo
3326
“It was a very long battle! I was quite surprised I did not win, but it’s clear to me now I should have knuckled under to my instincts and dark secret desires and gone for the W9F9 bless ;)”
If you had won, my faith in this game would have been shaken. We were fighting in my dominion, I had a big PD, my prophet and blessed troops and much, much better mages. I think I did a lot of things right that I could have playing the nation I chose. You would have crushed me with a F9/W9 blessing, which seems to be a problem. If you had won, I’m not sure how Maverni could ever prevail against Pan in the early game. I’m not going to get a more optimal battle with so many things on my side that early in the game.
BTW: Hopefully it will take a little while before you can mass that many centaurs again. They are flat out nasty, especially against a nation with poor ranged attakcs.
Yeah, he went for peace once you hit him, so thanks for that!
Hehe this game is not balanced ;) So your faith needs to be shaken… high bless nations are very powerful early on, however they will often burn out later on due to worse scales, poor research etc.
I’ve never actually won a game on a mid to large size map with a high bless. The only victories I can truly claim in large games have been with rainbow pretenders and good scales.
However you did the right thing to stack the odds as much in your favour as possible. The more expensive you make it for the bless nation to make progress, the more you slow its expansion, the more likely you are contributing to its eventual demise even if you go down as well.
I’ve seen what you are describing but I don’t think it necessarily follows that high bless == poor late game. I mostly attribute it to players getting cocky about how easily they trample opponents in the beginning and not investing properly for the end game.
You can get a dual 9 bless and not have totally crippling scales. I can list several example of nations (especially heat/cold loving ones) that can keep their order scale positive and their magic scale at least even. For a bless nation to be a powerhouse in the late game as well as the early the bless player just needs to have discipline to divert a portion of funds to mages for research and site searching.
I’ve come to terms with the high bless nonsense after my initial serious frustration with it but overall I have to say that in my opinion it’s made dom3 an inferior game to dom2.
Yes but this requires an imprisoned pretender which means research gets off to a very poor start. Although I admit I usually go imprisoned anyway to get better scales, with a rainbow pretender you can usually get vastly better sclaes which translate to much better research and better income as well.
As long as you don’t encounter the bless nation early you should be in good shape to beat up high bless sacreds by mid game (falling fires/frost, flaming arrows, quagmire, etc etc).
What could be interesting is to setup a game where imprisoned and dormant pretenders are not allowed. I think this would seriously hurt a bless startegy.
Oh absolutely, but if the bless nation is played well they’ll be slinging that stuff right back at you.
Quite frankly imprisoned pretender doesn’t make much of a research difference. A good pretender is worth something like 25ish RP. That’s a trivial amount compared to the hundreds of RP that a decent sized empire will eventually generate per turn. It’s easily enough made up later by buying a a an extra handful of researchers. In my experience, early expansion to push income up so that hordes of researchers becomes affordable is the biggest determiner of who gets ahead on research.
Banefire
If any of you are bordering Pangaea, attack him NOW. See how dominant he is in the graphs (even this early)? Well, unless you do something quickly, he’s going to roll right over me (Jomon) and add my capital to his empire.
Marcin
3333
Squidz
I see people are doing their turns, for the most part. I’m assuming we want to continue? :) I shall take a renewed interest in my watery domain, then. :P
I’ll vote to stop if that’s what everyone wants. I’m kind of running on autopilot at this point. I just don’t want to be the one holding up the game.
And this is why playing with graphs is a bad thing ;-)
Don’t blame this one entirely on graphs. He’d probably be saying the same thing no matter what the relative strengths would be.
qfwfq
3337
Ah, poor poor Pangaea! We are only trying to defend the squirrels and oliphants’ habitats from being put to the plow, or worse: already the wastes spread around our lands in almost every direction–we must prevent the Jomononians from destroying what little remains!
Boooooo graphs!
:)
Diego Maradona
True, true. But graphs make that sort of argument all the more persuasive.
Is a “Tartarian Monstra” scary? Agartha is fielding a few of them. He’s got SCs wandering the map looking ornery. On the bright side, I have three of the five globals now, and I’m hoping Agartha will waste a bunch of gems attempting to dispel them.
I don’t like fighting him. He’s been my friend for 85+ turns. But it seems like it’s now or never if I’m going to make a play for first place.
