5261

so it continues! I’ll gear up for a big fight against your big army.

Also, giants have terrible pd…one of the worst to make up for having kickass soldiers…i do think bandar log has the worst pd though.

5262

Kudos to wahoo, too, for helping me with strategies during Crom. Rollory and LeSquide have been helpful to my learning curve in the Inquisitor game, and GreatAtlantic in Morningstar. Thanks, all!

5263

GG Wahoo! Our alliance vs Fomoria was worth it at the time but I think I waited too long to declare war once Fomoria was gone. Of course I was still battling Sauro and my armies were all busy up there… But my downfall was not sufficiently defending my capital and surrounding areas. Once you took that, it was a simple matter to sweep over my backyard with ease.

Anyway, good game guys. Sorry I wasn’t as attentive as I could have been near the end. Things just got a little nutty 'round here with baseball/softball/coaching/business/et al. From now on, I’m only joining one DOM game at a time.

5264

I like how I had alliances at one time or another with all three of you who were left at the end: LSB, wahoo, and GuildBoss. I love that about Dominions!

Don’t worry about the attentiveness, GB. You were up s. creek without a p. anyhow, from the looks of it, and I don’t think you could have done anything to help us beat wahoo in the last 20 turns. I could have played better at the end, myself, but I’ve learned. I’m ready for a new Dom game! A little birdy tells me that there may be one starting soon; keep your eyes here.

5265

p.s. I’ve said this before.

gg

5266

The writing was on the wall when wahoo took my capital and swept through my southern realm. But yeah, I like the Diplomacy in this game. I made a deal early with Arco to remove Fomoria and that worked out well. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to really get settled in Fomoria’s ruined empire before my war with Arco started.

Again, sorry for the staling. I don’t like to make people wait. Next time, when it’s totally bleak, I’ll just go AI (which i’d forgotten about!)

5267

Pythium is about to make a last stand by charging out of the gates to break the Jomon siege! News at 11…

5268

Crom: Aftermath/strategy (I’ll take a few more turns to give the giants their great big fight. get my main artificacts for that fight!)

this was on a Jason Lutes map and Jason got to play for a bit…although he started out on an island with no way off and he wasn’t a water nation. So he pretty much got knocked out early.

TC and Arco formed an alliance very early and turned on Mictlan, who attacked me for no reason. TC got most of the spoils including the capitol but Arco now had a border in the north surrounded by just 1 country: TC.

On the east was Formoria and Agartha. Agartha and Arco teamed up to take down Formoria, with Arco getting their capitol but Agartha getting most of the land. (nothing personal but Agartha came to me with an offer I couldn’t refuse to take out Formoria) Arco finished off Lute’s crippled Tir N island folks, which gave me 2 capitols and I had the research lead. I had been running a strong third till I took out Lutes, which made the strongest.

The other key factor was that i was now surrounded only by TC/Agartha and was at peace with both. I was able to start planning my attack against Agartha who had an entire continent to himself as he finished off Sauromatia. Agartha and TC teamed up to hammer the Giants between them.
At this pt, I’d be interested to hear about the diplomacy between Agartha/TC. I was trying to convince TC that Agartha should be attacked I shared info with TC but through a lot of gold and goodies to the Giants. The longer the giants could hold out, the tougher it would be for TC/Agartha to gather strength. The TC/Giant clash was very bloody and effective and kept them too busy to oppose me or Agartha for the most part.

I prepared for my war with Agartha infiltrating philosphers to lower his dominion and spread mine through his lands. Got a bunch of troops…gave him the 3 turn notice our NAP was over and then hammered him pretty good. I was a lot more mobile than Agartha though being able to move a few hundred troops several provinces with the lovely airship. I won the key early important battles, took his capitol and it took him too long to get his troops from the northern front vs the giants back to attack me (he did rampage across my interior lands for a long time but eventually I wore them down and killed them)

I felt extremely confident in victory about 20 turns ago when I beat Agartha’s small southern forces. The giants would have been tough but they couldn’t get to me w/o rampaging through TC lands. So even if, as it happened, all 3 gained up on me, there was limited ability for the strongest fighting force to hit me.

I think everyone had fun except for maybe Jason Lutes, who was stuck on the island and maybe mictlan who died early. I think the Giant/TC war was the longest war w/o a decisive winner I’ve ever seen. Must have lasted about 50 turns with that central fort changing hands several times.

First time I played Arco and I really like them. Cheap labs, dominion scouts for you, priestesses to heal afflictions, good magic, solid research…troops are pretty good as well. I put them in the upper half of the countries in the power scale.

5269

I like your idea of sharing info with me (Tien Chi) but resources with LSB (the Giants). Smart!

I was originally allied with Matt Perkins (Sauromatia) because our last names are the same. (Or something like that!) When LSB (the Giants) attacked Sauromatia, I thought it would be wise to attack the Giants from the south before they became too strong. I feared them more than I feared wahoo (Arco) to my south.

The 50-turn war with the Giants was awesome fun and I was sure I would win (which may not be true, of course), but then Arco started whomping on Agartha and I didn’t like my chances of beating the Giants before Arco beat Agartha. I saw Arco had Air and Water Queens, so I asked LSB for a truce. We signed the truce with weary hands and he headed east to fight Agartha.

I asked Agartha and the Giants to stop fighting soon thereafter because my fight against Arco was not going very well. I don’t know how to play the end game very well still, going up against elemental royalty with unique artifacts. But at this point, it was too late for us.

Unless the Giants can still win…

5270

Are there any DD retailers that sell this? I went to Shrapnel’s site to buy it, but it looks like they are still on the late 90’s business model. I’m not waiting for a box if I don’t need to.

5271

There is no box, but you’re going to want the massive, spiral-bound manual.

5272

People still do that? What a waste. PDF please.

I played the demo a while back and it’s really not that complicated.

5273

Since we’re to the game recaps for Crom, and Arco probably controls enough of the world that it would be physically impossible for me to win:

Near the start of the game I ran into Dave and we agreed to a NAP. Later on the opposite side of my territory I ran into Sauromatia.

Around the time I was just finishing picking up independent provinces Sauro (Matt) politely asked for the ones next to his just finished fort at the chokepoint water crossing up north. I of course realized what that meant and trudged my existing army over there after politely declining. I got up there just in time to run into his massive army and with some later Jarl reinforcements I killed literally thousands of Sauromatians and took over their fort.

Of course Tien Chi invaded me around this time, starting our hundred year war. My defenses were inherently terrible (20 pd gets you 10 militia and 5 basic troops? WTF?) so Dave’s raiders constantly taking my territory as I reclaimed it shut down my force buildup. Wahoo helped some here, footing the bill for some more researchers/backfield forces. He actually offered a truce at one point, but I declined since GuildBoss was wrecking Sauro and I was just walking through his territory.

Right here I was pretty sure that I could eventually win the war with Tien Chi. The key was that my army destroyed any of his that I encountered and they were entirely priests, along with my god and prophet. Basically I noticed that even though he controlled half my territory at any time, my dominion was actually still dominant. Not only that, but by this point my god and prophet were actually SPREADING it in his territory.

Of course then we realized Agartha controlled half the world and was massing an army on my old border with Sauromatia. So Dave and I quietly agreed to a truce and started the lengthy process of returning to our old borders while I blew up Agartha’s invading force with my army of half-bred mutants and undead I was counter-raiding TC with.

This was about the point where wahoo managed to invade Agartha. By the time I had gotten my territory back and a plan of moving through Dave’s lands agreed to, Arco was basically the winner.

Congratulations, wahoo! The game was great fun even though it was pretty much constant warfare in my own borders most of the game. I though I was a goner back at the begining, so I was pleasantly surprised when my giants managed to defeat all my invader’s armies. Raiders are the bane of Niefelheim, though, which Dave has impressed on me rather significantly. Good work, you harrying bastard. ;)

5274

Are you sure you’re … well, never mind. Let’s see you get your ass handed to you a few times first, then you may recognize the utility of the information and of the presentation.

My Dom3 manual lives on top of my monitor.

5275

No, seriously. When you cycle through the demo a dozen times, you get the hang of it. I appreciate the complexity, but not having a digital distribution model essentially means I won’t be buying it. Which is really sad, because it sounds like you guys are having a lot of fun.

5276

Mist Spell

Tien Chi, please take your turn. I’ll then ask Marcin to put the game back on the 48 hour timer.

5277

Crom recap, from Agartha’s PoV.

I had a relatively good starting spot in that I was stuck in the SE corner of the world so didn’t have to worry about invaders from the S or E. So after taking all of the indies to the S and E “invisible walls”, I turned my attentions north: land of the Fomorians and Sauro!

Sauro was actually pretty darn far and we had a good chunk of indies between us but Fomoria was threatening to cut me off from these, and that’s when I contacted Wahoo of Arco to form an alliance and take Fomoria out. I offered him all of Fom’s provinces to the west of the river that (conveniently) split the continent, inculding their capital, while I would take everything on the eastern side. Wahoo agreed and we attacked poor Fomoria (evil steve), who put up quite a good fight despite getting hit hard on two fronts. In the end, our combined strength was too much for the giants of Fomoria and Arco and I completed our deal and went on our merry ways.

I ended up moving northeast to capture the few remaning indies between Sauro and I, but ultimately I had my eyes on Sauro’s juicy rear provinces and a nice fort in a mountain pass.

So while fighting Sauro I started to get worried about Arco, as my scouts reported he was running out of Mictlan-owned provinces to conquer. Sure enough, I got a message from Wahoo that was something like “Looks like it’s time to get it on”, to which I replied, “Let’s do it”… and it was done.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t anywhere near ready for what Arco sent over. He swept across the river onto my mainland like a massive hurricane and hit me in some severely weakly defended areas and I was unable to stop him.

I did counter here and there, penetrated a bit past a border or two, and caused some problems in his backyard with a stealth army of Umbrals but it wasn’t enough to do any lasting damage. Nor was I able to deal with his high level summons like AQ’s running around in my empire.

Like Dave Perkins, the end game really escapes me. I’m never able to get the nasty SCs or use globals very effectively. I’m pretty good with combat scripting and making useful thugs and my diplomacy usually keeps me in the game till later rounds but once the big SCs show up at my doorstep, I’m like a drooling idiot.

Anyway, fun stuff! Looking forward to the next game.

5278

I’m with roboczar on this one, it’s only you old fogeys that insist on getting your game manual info via deadtreenet. For everyone else it’s a suboptimal solution.

I appreciate that the information was provided, a lot of games don’t even bother to give the details to anyone but a strategy guide author anymore, but I would have preferred some electronic format.

5279

While I like having the printed manual, I see your point. But the tradeoff would likely be some form of copy protection. As I understand it, Shrapnel views the manual itself as sufficient copy protection.

As for whether one can understand Dominions from a few plays through the demo, that’s possible - if all you want to do is recruit normal armies and push them around the map in single-player. If you have the itch to try it out against humans, the answer was right on this page:

Guildboss and Dave have been playing for years.

5280

Hopefully Marcin or Nick Walter (who I think changed his name to Kraaze) will host if I organize, though I haven’t asked either yet. Anyways, my schedule loosened up a few weeks ago and I’ve decided its time to get back in. I hope to have a start date of three weeks.

Settings (not taking votes yet):

Era: Middle (really is most balanced era)
Players: 12
Map: Large Random map generated and pruned beforehand by myself.
Theme: Non-newb “tournament” (though newbs are welcome to sign up)

Players:

  1. Greatatlantic - Pythium
  2. Dave Perkins - Eriu
  3. Mercutio - Ashdod
  4. baruk - Shinuyama
  5. Hetzer - R’lyeh
  6. dfs - Machaka
  7. Ron Derby - Ermor
  8. wahoo - Atlantis
  9. Matt Perkins - Abyssia
  10. GuildBoss - Ulm
  11. Idar Thorvaldsen - Vanheim
  12. Evil Steve - Man

Standby: Lazy Shifty Bastard