6361

Wow, whats with the enormous amounts of hate? Nowhere in the starting stipulations does it say anything about not doing any research, or informing oneself about game/nation mechanics. Mysterio, I’m curious as how you’ve managed to divine my strategy, as you’re the only player I haven’t fought yet. Just because you’ve read something, don’t project that I have to follow it.

Its also sad that everyone wants to quit just because I have a big scary score graph. Especially Man, who hasn’t even fought me yet. Ask Vanheim how he banished 95% of my army’s undead when my relief army came to break his seige. Ask Abyssia how he fire magic burned my army in front of Ulm. Now he’s poised to take the city I worked so hard to conquer.

There seem to be plenty of counters to my troops. C’Tis has had an army rampaging through my eastern provinces that I haven’t been able to pin down that’s been giving me all sorts of grief. (I played my turn before I saw you were attacking my capital. Even though I’m apparently a big, dirty cheater, I haven’t gone back and changed anything. The defenses I’ve set up will just have to do.) The one battle I’ve managed to fight against C’Tis scared the hellout of me, poison slingers slowly killing off my human infantry while his priests banished away my undead. Potent. The only way I figured I could beat that was to not fight against it until I can bring enough undead spam to flank and try to get to his banishers before they finished off my army.

Since everyone seems to want to quit (except Abyssia with those damn flame throwing Confederate generals), I’ll lay out what my strategy has been. The strength of my army isn’t the huge numbers of undead I can summon that inflate my army score so much. Those can be banished away with just cheap priests that can be bought for 50 gold in any temple. I have heavily armored infantry with shields that just soak up damage and missile fire, and ethereal infantry that can’t be hit with normal weapons. What do nearly all of the independent provinces’ armies consist of? Cheap archers and infantry with normal weapons. My infantry absolutely annihilates independents. I used this advantage to grow as much as I could early. I needed to get as big as possible, as fast as possible, since this cheap strategy won’t work against human armies with varied abilities and spell support. My encounter with C’Tis chewed up my best army at the time and really hammered this home to me. So my plan now, is to take as many territories as possible, to give me time to come up with something to counter attacking armies, while you work your way through all my provinces and their province defense, Mother Russia style. Fortunately, I found a province with a Library that allows me to recruit Sages, who have been busily researching what I hope is the answer.

So quit if you want to, before any real good battles have been fought. I’ve only managed to have two good ones so far, when I bum rushed and trapped Ulm’s army and when I broke Vanheim’s seige. Just don’t quit because I got an early lead and you didn’t want to do anything about it.

6362

I apologize for the long, rambliness of my post, but I’m tired and a bit pissed at the ire directed at me. I also apologize if I don’t respond to any responses, I work 24 hour shifts and QT3 is blocked at work.

6363

It’s not hate. It’s disappointment.

This may surprise you to learn, but I’m the one who’s been providing the majority of Ermor intel to the other nations involved in this war against Ermor. I don’t have to fight you to know what troops you’re using and how you’re deploying them on the battlefield.

Since you province defense values in the provinces previously owned by Ulm are no higher than 25, it’s no surprise that Abyssia was able to take those provinces back without much effort. And you had only a single unit in Ulm’s castle before Abyssia sieged it. Come next turn, you won’t be able to recruit troops from it. (Go ahead and ask me why that is, or what caused it.)

No one’s seriously called you a cheater. You simply chose to use an expert player’s strategy for playing Ermor in MP, while the rest of us chose to come up with our own strategies, because we understood this to be a newbies game. I suspect that if you had formulated your own strategy, Ulm would still be in the game and the four of us would not be at war with you. Can you honestly tell me the game would have played out in the same way (you taking all of Ulm’s provinces and knocking him out of the game) if you hadn’t used IndyPendant’s guide? I’ve seen a lot of stuff detailed in that guide (from troops to use (the “Big Three”: Principe, Shadow Vestal, Longdead Horsemen) to battlefield deployment to battle spell assignments to temple spread) employed by you in the game verbatim. Are you saying that’s purely a coincidence?

I know. It’s all detailed in IndyPendant’s guide.

Fixed. And the only thing I did about it was to rally the other three nations in a war against Ermor. Bottom line: this newbies game would have been a lot more enjoyable (especially for Ulm, I suspect) if you had come up with your own strategy. I’m dumbfounded that this revelation escapes you.

Since the others would like to continue this game and I could stand to learn more about Dom3, I won’t concede.

6364

I’m with Mysterio here. I entered Pacific Dreams with the intent on learning about the game, not winning. I’m not saying everyone should have done that, but for most of us, it seemed like we were all mostly fumbling around, learning things about how the game worked from our mistakes. Hell, we’ve been trading manual page numbers back and forth to learn how stuff like sieging works. Going online and grabbing someone else’s strategy to follow closely so you can steamroll everyone seems really cheap to me.

6365

How much of a time investment is MP dominions? I’ve got classes starting in a week.

6366

Time investment depends on the timer, which is usually 48 hours. I’d say 10-20 minutes per 48 hours for the first month of playing, and 20-40 from then on. Depending on if you’re DEAD by then.

6367

You make all your moves, and then submit the file to the server via email. Once the server has a turn from each player, it resolves all the orders from each player based on the order of events specified in the manual, generates the next turn, and emails the file to each player. When you play that turn, you’ll see all the events that occurred during the turn resolution detailed for you.

At the start of a game, it doesn’t take very long to take a turn (not much to do). But in our current game, which is on turn 29, it takes me 60-90 minutes to take my turn, less if I don’t want to be as thorough. I’m still learning the game, so I tend to watch battles over and over to see what I can do better.

6368

I would say maybe 20 or 30 minutes a turn once you get past the first ten turns, and maybe an hour for the first time you make your army to set it up properly.

I am doing classes and I find it incredibly easy to keep up with the games- for every night I just check for a new turn, and then maybe spend that half hour before bed looking at what I should do, and the next morning take my turn in 10 or so minutes.

6369

Alright thanks for everyone for the helpful info, I think I’m sold on the next available newbie game. I need to be honest though, that even though I am an MP virgin, I’m well acquainted with the game. Is that acceptable as long as I’m a reasonably charitable player?

I’m not going to be playing to a guide, but I definitely have research targets in mind and have a good idea of what effective tactics are, and don’t want that to mean I ruin the game for others, especially as it may be one of their first games.

If it matters, I’m more than happy to help other players in the game learn it to the extent I can.

Should I just wait for a more advanced game? Are any on the horizon?

6370

I would be happiest with a bunch(any) of diplomatically made teams of newbie and medium players. But I dont think dominions can do that… and random placement would skew it even more.

otherwise, I would be pretty neutral- if we have an even number of good people or something, where you can counter each other, I would be fine with that.

6371

I can’t speak for everyone else but I’d be happy to have you in the game. Others can chime in here, but I think being new at MP is enough, even if you are fairly familiar with the game itself mainly because I think the random nation selection will put us on a level playing field. Abysia is the only nation I’m even remotely familiar with, so I’ll be brought back down to complete noob status this game. Especially since I’ll be going at it without any guides.

My personal preference is to keep the number of players around 6 or 7, that seems like a good balance between having enough players and still getting turns generated.

6372

hehe, just finished my turns on the offense: and my army has done much better than I predicted- in fact I think I could have won had my archers decided to hit your shadow vestals one or two more turns- for I saw around 20 of the 30-40 of them with hp between 1 and 4.

Those horses look intimidating, but also I blame my priests for not casting the right spells… If only I could force them to cast banish after the first 4 turns.

Sure that was all I had- but Ill make you remember the day you attacked C’tis!

6373

Aren’t you giving your priests specific orders to cast nothing but Banishment after the initial Blessing (if only level 1 priest and no level 3 or 4 priests) or Divine Blessing (if level 3 or 4 priest)? If you have a level 3 or 4 priest, you just need one to cast Divine Blessing; all the other priests can be ordered to cast nothing but Banishment:

One level 3 or 4 priest:
(Divine Blessing) (Banishment) (Banishment) (Banishment) (Banishment) Spells

All other priests:
(Banishment) (Banishment) (Banishment) (Banishment) (Banishment) Spells

6374

Once our heavy infantry engage, its like a couple of fat heavyweight boxers leaning on each other, the battles go on for a lot longer than 4-5 rounds. It seems once the initial rounds of scripted orders are finished, the spell casters go into auto-mode and cast whatever they feel like. Same thing has been happening to me (I don’t need another round of Protection of the Sepulcher, thank you very much).

As for the rest of it, we apparently approached this game in very different ways. I prefer to study and inform myself before going into things, rather than fumbling around blindly. I spent a fair amount of time on the Shrapnel forums reading, and even started a couple of SP versions of our scenario to practice (I am sure I’m not the only one to do this). I believe in preparation and preplanning, that’s been my life experience and it works for me in gaming, too. I’m sorry you feel that isn’t appropriate for this level of play, but we’ll just have to disagree. If you wish to PM me about this, feel free to, but I’m done with this in an open forum.

As for the game itself, I guess its 4 on 1. C’Tis’s attack on my capital has been thwarted and I’ve taken his city on our border. Do I turn my armies west to stop the invasion columns of Man, Abysia and Vanheim? Or is it counterattack time through the lightly defended back doors? And what about all the malicious Machiavellian magical machination that Man is manifesting? Arcane probings and unrest generation and general naughty spy things, need to put a stop to that. Find out what happens next in Pacific Dreams : Ermor Strikes Back!

6375

One thing I don’t like about the game is how it handles the discovery of hidden units in an enemy province. When my units discovered an Ermor assassin in one province and an Ermor scout in another, it generated a battle report. I was able to view these battles, so I’m assuming Ermor was able to view them, as well, based on his comments above. If so, that’s a horrible game mechanic if his stealthed unit just entered the province hoping to learn what units I had in the province. By viewing the battle, he’s able to see the units I have in the province, even though he was found via active searching.

If a stealthed unit enters a province, is discovered on that same turn by patrolling units, and loses the battle, the owner of the stealthed unit should receive only a message that the unit was discovered and killed; he should not be allowed to view the battle.

Agree? Disagree?

EDIT: ddtibbs, were you able to view those battles in which I discovered your assassin and scout? BTW, I totally flubbed that attack on your province in the Ulm region. I didn’t realize those hydras leave behind a toxic cloud that doesn’t dissipate after they advance. So, even though all my other units were issued “hold and attack” orders, they still ended up walking through the cloud and dying to poison. I lost, what, 50 troops or so to the hydras’ poison clouds? That hurt.

6376

I don’t recall seeing battles for those lost units, pretty sure it was just a report.
I also some men to a unit getting stuck behind the front line, AoEing away at the wrong side. The army setup screen doesn’t do a very good job of showing a squad’s footprint, so its difficult to separate troop types and prevent that sort of fratricide.

6377

If we’re talking about scouts getting caught and fighting the whole province defense, it shows the battle.

6378

Attention Newer Players:
Is there enough interest to start a new game? I’ll take the plunge and try to administer a game on the llamaservers. Are there at least 6 players that would be interested? If there are, I’ll start the sign-up process. If you’re new and would like to play, but aren’t set up with the game let me know when you could start. Just know, that I’ll be learning how to Admin a game too. So it’s a learning process for everyone!

September Rain: New to Almost New, only slightly Used.
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6379

Couple questions for you:

  1. Are those currently playing in Pacific Dreams allowed to join this game? If so, I’m in!
  2. Will this be an EA, MA, or LA game?
  3. Which map?
  4. Are any nations excluded?
  5. Will nations be assigned randomly from a pool created by each player choosing a nation?
  6. “September Rain: New to Almost New, only slightly Used.” Huh?
6380

My joy for this game is only tempered by the fact that I have to wait for turns.

Count me in if you can.

edit: same questions as mysterio, along with

  1. any pregame diplomacy if we can get starting positions ironed out?