I’m fine moving on. I’m just turtling because my economy is for shit. Not much left to do.
The world ends with a whimper.
I vote for putting us out of our misery. Well played by the way. Slow and steady wins the race and all.
Lizzies - congrats pan! Certainly did not expect that this round. I opened up the turn wondering who the horrors killed this round and was surprised to see you had won!
If anyone from the other game wants to see what the cataclysm brings, pm me your email and i’ll send you a turn.
I am good with conceding the victory to you. Congrats! I didn’t realize you were that close with minimal communication with the others and limited scouts due to all my resources going to fighting off the Pan invasion.
I was holding on to two thrones in the hopes that the horrors would destroy yours and somehow my depleted armies could hold them off enough to win, but I know that isn’t realistic and if you have the recommended thrones ready to claim, I certainly can’t stop you.
Well played!
Lizzies - yup, congrats, @BotBaddict on the win. I was hoping to come out ahead, but was unable to defend one of my thrones.
And well played defense to you. Destroying my main force left me too weakened to put up much of a defense against Fomoria. I really should have hit you earlier in the game.
I had a really fast start, but then squandered it with indecisiveness for a while. I didn’t want to attack any of the new players and I didn’t know if I wanted to tackle Fomoria or Xibalba. Dominions demands a good strategy and I rarely have a good enough one.
Wyld Ryde: postponed hosting for 24hrs cause i’m not going to be able to submit my turn in the next 3 hours.
QT3 Lizzies
Thanks guys, but it was more random luck than anything. I did have my forces all set to patrol, hoping to take on some horrors, but unfortunately they didn’t go after one of my two thrones. Would have liked to see a throne defense battle or two!
Anyways, it was a good learning game. I would have liked to see some more apocalyptic action in the end game, but a lot of my scouts were toast by that point…
Ok, I’ll end Furies and Lizzies. Thanks to all who played. This has to be my first ever ‘win’, so I’ll take it. :)
Sorry it was so steady and slow. I was looking at utilising Dominion, but it sure takes a while.
Barghests with a protection bless are awesome
Steve
Congrats, all the same!
I had amassed a huge force and was losing money like crazy, so I kept moving my big army after the nasty horrors on the map, but they all fled(?) so every time I went to a new province nothing was there, and in the last turn I was getting a ton of very angry units picketing and demanding better (or any) pay. So it was kind of a relief when the end game, I suppose.
Thanks for the game, guys, it was fun and educational!
Lizzies and Furies - so, what? We’re not going to talk about these at all? Just sit in darkened closets, whittling away at broken wood and mutter brokenly about giants and snakes and giant snakes? c’mon people, show a little resolve! Talk, it’s the only way to learn, and to resolve those inner conflicts, like the way i die a little inside every time bruce utters that overused “blah blah blah its the way it was back in dominions thing…”
QT3Furies - Formoria:
Well I started with Little Miss Piggy, taking a E6N6 uber protection bless on top of a natural protection giant race (with sailing), and I think this became key over time, as losses were minimal in key battles. Expansion wasn’t particularly fast from memory, certainly not as fast as Pan, but laid a good base. I had Pan to the North, Mictlan to the East, and Ermor to the West. South, across the sea was Xibalba. Ermor was a newb, so struck up an alliance (though never actively intervened in the war of the Newbs between Ermor and Tien Chi), agreed borders with Mictlan, but had no particular understandings with Pan or Xibalba. Obviously as a newb oriented game, and with the particular geography, my focus was north or east. But the 2 local thrones came first, and an expansion into the sea provinces to the south. Research-wise, well I wanted to get to Barghests as they looked (and proved to be) awesome with a protection bless, and Storm for my FAM Mages. Pan’s expansion was always a concern, and my focus on them sharpened with an attempted assassination. I tried to get Mictlan involved in a 2 on 1, but no dice on that. In the end Pan played his own hand, and attacked Mictlan (after Pan and Xibalba had knocked out Machaka? I can’t recall). I waited for Pan to commit, then took the provinces around his capital, then his capital. I paused then, to see if dominion might kick in. It didn’t, so I then took his throne next to the capital. Barghests and FAM proved to be the winning combo. I was constantly worried about what Xibalba might do, so kept my conquests demur, biding my time. I knew I could use sailing to take Chi’s throne as a surpise move (I had voided our NAP when he had attacked Ermor), and it was a matter of taking Pan’s second throne (taken from Machaka?). With enough turns to take and claim five thrones prior to turn 50, I made my play. My first win! Must retire now ;)
Lizzies - I can’t recall a game where i was more frustrated by simple geography. I had a mountain range to my east, a river to my south and a close neighbor(monkeys) to my west. Once Niefel dominion started to encroach on me, i could only rarely cross the mountains to my east because of the cold, and the heat from ctis to my south kept that river unfrozen so i could rarely cross it. Of course discovering this was only done by locking my prophet and my sole army in the single mountain province(east) and it could only escape by breaking treaty with pan, or waiting a year. I waited a year. The game was off to a bad start.
Seeing Pan try to beat on on…whatever akaoni was…i decided to intervene. Largely this was because pan blocked my access to my mountain provinces (that i couldnt access because of the cold blocking the passages). Also, pan was evil. Everyone who knows plants knows this. We basically traded evenly, but when ctis entered the war against akaoni, he was toast, and rather than risk dragging ctis into my war, i reached a peace with pan, where we pretty much didn’t gain anything.
At this point, i kinda checked out of the game. I felt I couldn’t really go on the offensive, and so i turtled waiting for something interesting to happen. Strangely, niefel came at me, and after we danced around each other for a bit, i soundly trounced him. I can only imagine that he thought i was weak cause i wasn’t doing much. Being spiteful, i sent over some poisonous minions to…poison his armies…and seized territory with a kitted out…banelord? or bane…well, kitted thug. Then horrors came and killed every unit of my that was different, and then pan won.
I’m confident spite wouldve served me well, either as an adjunct to the horrorlords, or as the pyrcreator, whichever came firrst had Pan not won.
Yeah, I really wanted to and was ready to go in with you on that war. However, something like 80% of my border with Pan was mountain passes that weren’t open for travel so I couldn’t really strike from where my forces were and would have had to do one narrow snake around the back side and leave myself really vulnerable if I sent many troops that way.
I forgot my bless and strats, but will try to look them up and put a bit more of a recap together later.
Could I get a short extension on Wyld Ryde? Another weekend I won’t be home in time.
Also, wow I’m way behind on the thread.
postponed 24h
I was C’Tis and appreciate @Evil_Steve for running it. I’m not sure I have any analysis or thoughts, as I simply remain pretty clueless about this game beyond the basics. I was hoping I’d learn a bit more from this game, and it is no one’s fault but my own that I didn’t. I think it is the sort of game that just really requires a good deal of study of your nation, and I never put the time into it. I captured about seven provinces but eventually my economy collapsed and I just kind of turtled the rest of the game. I did beat back a few attacks from my neighbor to the north, which was satisfying.
I did learn that I had those borderless, endlessly scrolling maps. I find them very confusing. And I think I need to spend more time with this game in SP before trying MP again. But again – thanks everyone!
Thanks!
I think I was teamed up with pyrhic for a Disciples game, and the whole team discussed strategy a lot. So, it was a great learning opportunity. Unfortunately, it was also kind of stressful, because you felt like you’d let the team down if you screwed anything up. I think we did win though.
QT3Lizzies -
Well, this game confirmed what everyone knows - Pan is a great rush nation, which predictably did well in a shorter game. I decided to try for a combat Pretender out of the gate, something I don’t usually do, so the white bull it was, with suitable earth and nature blesses. I like being able to customize the nature of your blessing to taste, though as always the regeneration bless is always great for monster-sized creatures. Throw in the invulnerability bless from Earth and you’ve got fairly tough sacreds.
I don’t find mid-late game nature spells to be that overwhelming (howl is pretty fantastic, but it only goes so far)…and I had trouble getting up to mass marble warriors to buff those freespawns, so I suspect that if the game had gone on longer I would have crumbled fairly quickly. But I also suspect that’s my inexperience at the mid/late game showing as well.
It was fun engaging Akaoni, who put up a very good fight against both C’tis and myself - that dragon is SCARY. Now that’s a combat pretender, one that put my trampling bull to shame! I think the only reason I managed to take him down is because Howl really messes with spellcaster/unit targeting, so his Dragon was unsupported for quite a while, allowing my centaurs to fill him with arrows. I think?
All in all while the Armageddon is a fluffy way to end the game, I found it a bit underwhelming. Essentially just messages that this throne was destroyed, then that one.
It would have been nice for everyone to see the horrors consuming the thrones…I guess I didn’t have enough scouts around late game!
I had enough spam researchers that the attacking horrors didn’t really knock off anyone special either. I wonder if they should start attacking the most powerful spellcasters first - this might encourage people to get bodyguards and script to fend off horrors more. As it was I didn’t really do that until the last turn or two…