GA had an interesting idea with the “doughnut” map – minimize any chance for an early 4-on-1 type coalition. Everyone ought to have one neighbor on each side. Too bad the map we actually used was not even close to balanced. It had a skinny side and a fat side. Bandar Log drew the short straw on the fat side, being in between Pythium and Ermor, but that is like not getting your favorite flavor of ice cream. Bandar Log was still definitely on the ice cream side of the map. Shin, Ulm, and Abysia had to make do with gruel while we feasted in the ice cream. And then there’s R’lyeh. The doughnut gave the water nation really easy access to everywhere.
Anyway, Ermor started with a whole lot of room for early expansion. Eventually found Bandar Log to my north and the skinny little strip that belonged to Shin to my West. The first action was actually from R’lyeh, who tried to gain a land foothold right near my (and his) capitol. That didn’t last long, though, as my Shadow ladies had more than enough MR to survive the mind blasts – they ripped right through the Illithids. No way was I going to attack underwater at that stage, so R’lyeh and I basically just ignored each other from then on.
The border with Bandar was a long diagonal across the southeastern part of the world. It was a mess, and I could not even think about starting a war with Shin unless I had at least a solid truce with the poo-flingers. I presume Bandar didn’t think he was ready yet to tackle Ermor, so the truce was signed and Shin and Ermor declared war on each other simultaneously. From my perspective, Bandar should have attacked me at the same time that Shin did, rather than waiting for the Ermor/Shin war to hit a stalemate. Shin should have never attacked me at all (and certainly not without a simultaneous push from Bandar). I still think that only one of the “unfortunate three” could possibly prosper – but apparently Shin and Ulm had some sort of long-term pact, leaving poor Shin to try to push through Ermor unaided. He scored one big victory with an acid rain attack. In fact, it was so cool that I jumped into another game as Shin just so I could use that spell, too. Sadly, I ran into Ashdod in that one (now there is an overpowered nation, but that is another story). Anyway, I just played a holding action on the Shin front from then on. I did not want to lose another army to the acid, but I could easily keep him from making any headway into my territory. In truth, I never wanted to go any farther up the skinny coast than Shin. Everyone seemed to assume I would just sweep up the side of the map, but it would have been totally indefensible once I had conquered it (see the R’lyeh comment in the 1st paragraph).
So, conveniently enough for me, Bandar declared war just as the Shin thing had wound down. Here is what you’ve been waiting for, wahoo. I hit Thaum 9 on turn 48, and I used Master Enslave on turn 49 (no point in waiting, eh?). My biggest regret of that war was that I decided to try two approaches, one on each of his main armies. The one was the Master enslave bit. Worked like a charm (so to speak). But the other army I decided to blanket with leprosy and let it run around until it was crippled by disease. I should have just gone ahead and hit the second army with my pretender on the very next turn. The war would have been over much sooner.
By the way - master enslave does affect undead. It does not affect mindless units. Which makes perfect sense. In fact, an amazing amount of the intially obscure rule details in this game make perfect sense for similar reasons. So - I made sure that your pretender never saw my shadow vestals, because even enslaving 1/4 of them would have turned any battle in your favor.
As for the endgame, I was totally flabbergasted at how little fight Pythium had in him. I really was counting on Pythium putting a dent into R’lyeh, considering how long he’d had to prepare for the endgame. I had had zero time to prepare for the endgame, having been at war from turn 20 onward. I never had any especially large gem income, and I had not been able to stockpile late-game toys. I finally had a few tartarians, but without the chalice or GoH I only had 3 or 4 really useful ones. And with the insanity nerf, I don’t completely trust tartarians anymore anyway. It would have been interesting. I had magical surveillance on all of the VPs. Indeed, my last bit of compulsive planning was to design and outfit a teleporting force to take out the R’lyeh army that was laying siege to the old Abysia VP. But after being away for 6 weeks due to house selling/buying/moving plus work and work travel, I just could never make myself sit down and finish the turn’s orders. So I’ll never know if I had it right or not :)
The AQs would also have been interesting. I had been stockpiling mechanical men and lightning-resist rings for quite some while, with the intent of Astral Traveling them into any AQ fight.
I feel bad about having put the final nail in Pax Ermor’s coffin, but that poor game had had such a difficult time. I had played every single turn through nearly a year’s worth of delays and stopping-starting and disappearing players. When it was finally me that caused the delay, I just couldn’t find the time to get it restarted. I apologize for that.
