As with most Dominions games, Bandar was won largely on the basis of a decent starting position, followed by continuous diplomatic efforts. Starting position alone will rarely win the game, but a poor starting position can make a win virtually impossible.
As you can see, the worst starting positions belonged to Niefleheim, Sauromatia and Yomi. Niefleheim started in a real box, but with the early game advantage of highly blessed giants. I never found out exactly where Helheim and Vanheim started, but it was probably crowded, too. I actually can’t think of a better way to get a fair start, than to have most of the early-game bless powerhouses crowded into crappy starting positions – but maybe I’m just biased :)
Most everyone else had at least a decent chance. Abysia was on the edge of the N/S/Y nastiness, but no more so than I was, and he had a lot of room to expand toward TC. Mictlan was famously isolated and shrouded in mystery and Nick FUD. R’lyeh had it made in the shade, and was guaranteed a spot in the final wars.
Before the game, Agartha was a mystery to me (this game being part of the initial Dom3 rush). I tried a bunch of builds, and learned one important thing – if I got into an early war against a strong bless nation, I was toast. Nothing I tried could make the Ancient Ones stand up to blessed giants, or white centaurs, or helhirdlings, or so on. I settled on a pretender that would give the AOs enough of a boost to make expansion easy, plus be a real pain for any non-bless nation. Rama was a sleepy rainbow Master Druid, F4/A4/W1/E4/S3/D2/N8/B1. Scales were fairly lousy – I took 3 heat, just in case I wound up next to cold-loving sacreds, and death 2. I wanted to take advantage of the fact that Agarthans don’t eat, by reducing supplies within my dominion, but it turned out that the dom3 general increase in supply rendered that strategy useless. The magic diversity I gained from the F4/A4/S3/N8 parts more than made up for the crappy scales, in the long run. I just built very few temples.
My diplomatic efforts were designed to avoid war as long as possible, and to promote wars pitting my neighbors/competitors against each other. First contact was what I feared most – Niefleheim. I would have done almost anything to secure a peace treaty, but it turned out all I had to do was ask –Niefle was already butting heads with Yomi and Sauromatia, and Yomi in particular was talking a very aggressive game. So Jasper was quite happy to have an ally. I gotta admit that I really did not want to see Niefle prosper, so I maintained a talking relationship with Yomi and never provided anything more than token material help to either side.
Naturally, both sides were losing the war, and badly :) Eventually some coherent picture emerged, and it did look as though Y/S were getting the upper hand. I told Niefle that I would cross the bay north of me, and surprise Y/S by attacking them from behind. The biggest surprised proved to be that the southern coast of Y/S land was still independent when I arrived on turn 18. Yet another stroke of luck and a huge advantage for me – I was able to establish a beachhead without actually entering the war. Poor Niefle had to wait another 5-6 turns while I grabbed the remaining indies and built a fort+lab+temple. I finally mounted an assault on Sauromatia’s capital. But when I got there nearly 50 Niefle giants plus the 300hp giant wolf were sitting right next door. Paranoia took over. I would make perfect sense for Sauromatia to try and cut a deal with Niefle, and even without that it would make perfect sense for Niefle to attack me while I was besieging Sauro’s fort. There was still no way I could defeat 40 blessed giants. So I backed off, and sent my army to park just outside Yomi’s capital while I built up more forces and did more research. It turned out that my backing away from Sauro coincided with both Niefle and Sauromatia disappearing – Niefle for good and Sauro for a long while. I include that rather long-winded explanation because I suspect Rob and Stormbinder have always wondered what the heck I was doing with that dance up to Sauro and back. It was all because I knew Niefle could squash me.
I was in a sort of cold war with Abysia (for some reason he had decided to buy tons of assassins, even though the only fort he ever had was his capital). I made a deal with TC that we would fight Abysia together, but I ensured that TC would do most of the work by promising to let him have the capital (which, by the way, he never managed to capture). Sauro wasn’t playing (but I refuse to attack a staling player until it is way past obvious that he is not planning to return to the game), and I knew that Yomi was small, so I could way out-produce and out-research him. Why attack now and take substantial losses, when I could just sit there until I could win the war with minimal casualties? By this time, my focus on research and my rainbow pretender were really starting to pay off. I had 4 research centers, and bought 1 Ancient Oracle and 2-4 Earth Readers every turn. I reached Conj 8 on turn 50, and Constr 8 just a couple of turns later. I was pretty sure I’d get the Air Queens, as there weren’t any major air nations by then (and I guessed that no one would expect Agartha to be able to easily summon Air Queens). I was more surprised to also get all 3 Water Queens. I began to realize just how big a research lead I had when I hit Const 8. I was able to forge every unique I wanted – it was many, many turns before anyone else apparently could forge uniques.
The unique that had the most impact on my game was the Sickle Whose Crop is Pain. I gave it (plus the teleport boots) to a golem, and it repaid the 30 gem cost many, many times over. I do want to thank Abysia for buying so much PD – I turned them all into death gems :) As the topper, Wericar the golem got heroic toughness, and finished the game with 227 hitpoints!
By that this time, Stormbinder was probably right – I was running away with the game, even if I was too paranoid to realize it yet. The thought of Mictlan overrunning Pan was truly scary. If he could do that, I was sure he could also squash TC, and then he’d have a huge blood economy. TC had declared war on me just as Mictlan began to get the upper hand, and I seriously considered fighting him, with the plan being to have a showdown with Mictlan at the old TC-Pan border. But I finally decided that taking out Mictlan first was a better approach, and talked TC and Pan into the grand alliance. I figured the best thing to do was to hit Mictlan’s economy. I had a 20% Enchantment site, so I conjured up some 7 or 8 demilichs there. I also had a 40% Thaumaturgy site, so I transported all the demilichs down there, where I could cast Black Death on the cheap. Meanwhile, TC and I both forged a boatload of boats so I could make a surprise landing on Mictlan’s island. Once Nick went AI, I pulled all my forces back and let R’lyeh spend resources trying to capture the island from the AI, while I forged bunches of underwater breathing equipment. R’lyeh’s capital fell quite easily. Its funny how myopic you can get when you only play multiplayer games. Despite having had the game for months, I had absolutely no clue how weak EA R’lyeh really is. I expected much more of a challenge.
The ending was anticlimactic – proving mostly that in Dom3 late-game magic and summons >>> national troops, even if Dom3 national troops >>> Dom2 national troops.
Thanks again to Nick for hosting. And a big thanks to all the players who actually kept the game going to a real conclusion.
