They’re having some server issues-- this message is posted.
The LlamaServer seems to be having difficulty reaching its mail server at the moment. Fear not. Games won’t host until it is fixed.
I haven’t been sent a turn in Lizzies since Monday. Is that right?
sounds about right: 4 days plus 2 day extension
lizzies: it is sad, but likely inevitable: Giants vs monkeys.
Lizzies:
Perhaps because the Sauro/Pan war has died down, a gaggle of Pannites have attacked Ur. Now, normally this is not a cause for concern. Its a tiny horde of naked women and a couple White Centaurs. So I could easily crush this army.
(Puts on hat of Dominions 5 paranoia). So why did he attack? With his harpy scouts he must have known that my main force is right next door. The reason, of course, is to distract Ur from the large Ctis army that is ALSO close by! So if Ur counterattacks Pan, Ctis moves in! Its brilliant! But wait! What Ctis doesnt know is that his army is huddled in the mountains. And we are going from early to middle winter. And what spell helps increase the cold, thereby shutting off the mountain passes, so Ctis cannot attack? Wolven Winter. Which I have. Which looks like a natural event, and sometimes is a natural event.
Hmm, but if I wait a turn, I unlock the latest in magic research, evocations of a particularly POWERFUL level. Hmm. Decisions, decisions.
Very insightful as always, Akaoni. But, as always in Dominions, there is a counter to Wolven Winter - Breath of the Desert! Which admittedly needs casters with Fire paths - but it’s a good thing I have some Pyromancers hanging around. :D
So - more decisions for you!
Apologies, Niefelheim! Clearly I mis-clicked before submitting my turn. :(
So I know it’s been awhile since I posted about Wyld Ryde 3, but i’ve not been idle and have been testing quite a lot (both my nation and the build settings). I’m thinking of using these settings(below), and if there’s no disagreement/rebuttals I’ll set up the game sometime this weekend for pretenders. We only have 6 players so far, and if no more want to join, i’m happy to start it up with 6. Proposed settings in bold have been adjusted from what was originally proposed. Italicized settings are based on 6 players, but will be adjusted if more join.
Rationale for suggested changes:
One of the ideas behind the WR series was to limit gold in order to encourage the need to make real choices with regards to money. I wanted the player to feel constrained by the lack of funds and to agonize (a bit) over whether to buy a mage or to save the money for a new keep. Whenever I adjusted the gold above 50% i found I was not really having that problem. However, I found that resources and recruitment were also putting caps on being able to make choices and the combination of all 3 were making it difficult (and sometimes impossible) to use troops/commanders that a player might want to use. In my tests so far, the income hit to 50% seems to be enough of a constraint.
Originally i removed random start research because i didn’t want one side to get a leg up because of a fortuitous random research path. In practice, removing it only seemed to slow magic swinging, so i re-enabled it.
Diplomacy rules? ingame or public forum only? any other ideas?
It looks like the Monkey Kingdom is doomed! Big frosty men are invading and there’s little the apes can do about it…
AAR: I don’t like Kailaisa, at all. I chose them because it was something new and they sounded cool but they’re really not my play-style, which is typically heavily armored brutes backed by strong blessings. Seems like everyone in Kailasa prefers to be naked!
Anyhoo, it was fun while it lasted but I’ve discovered that Dom has sort of lost its magic for me. Probably due to lack of time to really sink my teeth in like I used to in the Olden Days. It started out great but after about dozen turns or so I felt like I was merely just going through the motions just to get it over with and get my turn uploaded in a reasonable time frame and not all that interested in the outcome. Oh well… good luck to you all!
I’ve always enjoyed playing Kailasa and their related nations. However, imo they aren’t the easiest to play and they tend to be best in the endgame when their magic breadth has a chance to really shine. I think this map/game in particular doesn’t give them the room they need to be successful.
Yeah I totally miscalculated this map. I’ve only been in one other and it was an epic struggle over a much longer period of time, where we reached the highest magic tiers and had much more territory. Would have liked to see what the monkey-mages could have done later in the game, particularly the resurrection thing…
looks good. i like in-game dip, but am easy
I like the settings as well. Won’t be able to put up a pretender until Monday, though.
QT3Furies:
A message to Xibalba from C’Tis: we caught your spy. We strung him up and pulled out his toenails one by one as he begged for mercy. Then we cut out his tongue to silence his whining. We do not appreciate such encroachment on our sacred land. Consider this a warning.
I don’t like in game diplomacy because it takes a couple turns to get a message completed. Public forum only might be interesting, but it would probably stagnate the game since no one would want to coordinate an attack with the victims knowing.
We could say anything goes for diplomacy, but every five turns or so you have to post a "status of the empire " here.
Monkey madness is tough against Niefel. I presume you have already tried “horde o monkeys with short bows buffed with Wind guide and Flaming arrows”, which, in your heat dominion, should be quite nice.
If you can’t get Flaming arrows, the Curse of Stones (communion powered, so harder to resist), and Destruction, to remove that armor, would help.
I imagine the problem is that the Giants chew through all the meat shields, suffering no damage in return. If you can Sleep Cloud them, or somehow fatigue them more, and then hit them with chaff, that might help.
But it has to be mages. You probably already know this, I just now realize.
The one monkey version that is the epitome of what @pyrhic speaks of is late era Patala. Naga mages, probably the most powerful of the age, but pricey. And your troops are still naked.
When it comes to 100% resources, I’m fine with that. Being gold capped is really the essence of those difficult decisions. A further example would be to build a war chest and have that gold on hand for a large recruitment drive of national units if things go badly with some major battle. Having both gold and resources capped can present end of days for a nation pretty quickly, and it is why I have played so conservatively in this series of games.
Last Wild Ride game, there were still unclaimed thrones. If was some massive collection of spirits or some related 1HP ethereal pain in the arse unit en masse. Otherwise all the other thrones went down in my recollection. I don’t think it would hurt to have level 3 again, but happy to defer to general consensus on that one.
Diplomacy. Good news is I won’t have a mass of paper of combined university work, teaching notes interspersed amongst notes I might take for the game. Now my desk is free of the first two issues, so I can easily deal with keeping track of the third. I do wish there was a better in game system, but if we go back to ingame messaging only, I will hopefully be better organised this time around to manage that. Last time where we had open diplomacy plus in game messaging for covert reasons was fine, but I couldn’t really keep track of the important stuff effectively. My concern with Akaoni’s idea is the ease which propaganda can be disseminated. There’s no real way to prove the status of the empire as being factually correct or loaded with Trump branded false news. False news is an effective tool, I’d hate to be honour bound to not using it however.
Been a busy weekend - can I get a 6 hour extension on Lizzies? Will be able to do my turn this afternoon…
done :)