Thank you! Sorry, 4 day weekend and wife has some projects for me! I have my turn almost ready and will finish in morning.
I can’t believe it! I was attacked! I mean, I know we can do that, but I was viciously attacked by T’ien C’hi! It was a tough battle, with remarkable opponents, but in the end, my troops prevailed! Not this time @belouski! Not this time!.
Heh. Two priests get lost on their way to a prayer meeting and accidentally start a interplanetary conflict.
That’s what I get for being lazy with my pathfinding.
Lies! You dare mock a disciple of the great and power Akaoni_4, or whatever his name is.
Now I will rain down on you like a thousand angry hamsters! You will feel my wrath. Tremble, tremble before my might.
Sadly, I stalled this last turn. No spoilers, but I guess everyone check out the turn.
Probably scared I was going to send more priests at you.
That was a worry. I had moved a lot of troops into that territory, ready for all the priests you could send at me!
Welp, that’s that.
It was rather anticlimatic. I found it interesting to look at all the troops in the various locations, and the history link that shows how each nation expanded.
One question I have for @Kelan is the number of Caelum Seraphs in the Hall of Fame. Seraphs as thugs are generally kitted out with gear and do mistform/mirror image/etc attack, or they do shockwave spam, or you burn a ton of air gems with air elementals. What did you do with all those guys?
Phelgra was an interesting nation, but was handicapped when going after the underwater nations. I almost played my Tyrants like they were Dai Oni from EA Yomi (fireshield, ironskin/stoneskin, soul vortex, gear), but early on they were just Flaming Arrow casters.
Their communion is interesting, but the oppressors with their level 1 in each path made me reluctant to go beyond magma eruption. I was interested to see how the Air queens and tyrants I had with the communion gear, scripted for turn 1 Fog warriors, Army of Gold, Ground Army, Fire storm, would do against the 2300 undead and whatever else Nazca had up their sleeve.
Thanks for the game, @legowarrior !
I learned a lot. I really appreciate getting to the end game for once.
Although the concept was interesting, in hindsight, both the rules and the map could have been better. Maybe a limited time treaty, as opposed to an AI one.
Oh, and man did I feel handicapped by Asphodel at times. Very primitive castles were the worst.
Thanks for the game! I certainly learned a few things, but the location I was in left me sort of trapped for the mid game onwards.Oh well!
So, new game in a few weeks? Maybe something a little more straightforward.
I am open to it after June 15th.
Some of the suggestions
Game with everyone starting with 10 provinces
Disciple game but only 2 players per team.
Something like that
I am intrigued, but I wont be available till August. Dont let that hold you up at all, though.
There is no rush. We’ll get it sorted in time.
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
It was mostly Thunder Strike spam, lol. I was at war most of the game so they were just blasting lots of guys with it. I was probably in a bit of trouble late game as Caelum is stronger mid game, I believe, but I tried to embrace their strengths and focus on Storm/Fog Warriors/Thunder Fend and blast with lots of lightning.
I will add more later once I have a chance to look at the turn. It sounds like there were enough thrones left that you guys got to and won. Well done! I wasn’t sure how to stop you as my scouts kept getting killed and I couldn’t find where the other thrones were to see if I could teleport over, like you guys did. I jumped on the last one in Marignon this last turn, but I guess denying you that one wasn’t enough to prolong the game.
You guys had quite a jump on us with research, uniques, and artifacts, I believe. I had some decent commanders, all of my greater Daeva, 2 arch devils, all the normal Daeva (Yata), and maybe 3-4 Spenta (I never had enough Astral and not enough surplus of others to alchemy to them). Those could have offered some nice spells and thug chassis, but I didn’t have any big summoned armies to complement my national troops.
I was going to message the devs and point out that I ran into a bug, but it appears I may not have after all!
I kept summoning the lesser Daeva commanders using the spell Call Yata and to try to get each type and I realized I had 3 of the same one, the Daeva of Frost and Snow. I had assumed that these and the Yazad were unique like the Greater Daeva and Spenta, but looking them up again in the Mod Inspector I realzed they are not tagged as unique after all. I had no idea I could keep summoning those guys!
Kelan’s team had a tough staring position as we figured out we could cut Man off pretty quickly and easily. Game would have ended sooner as I would have cut of Man’s access to the western throne he claimed but I got an early barbarian raid on my capitol that forced me to double back to retake it.
I learned a lot about fighting underwater and poison. Poison spines > Tiger riders so I switched to my normal units with reach weapons to fight Atlantis.
I was fairly confident at end game since we had most of the royalty and I had several rudras that I was gearing up to fight devils. Ulm also had the ovens so we had pretty ridiculous amp of magic items and gems. I made a few mistakes like losing a ring of magic somehow (be great if there was a search function to find where your magic times are.
Thanks for people who joined in and set it up. Was a good time. In hindsight, if doing the type again I think you need a more open map and maybe do a general war starts at turn X + random number to be decided at X-1.
Completely agreed. It was nice getting up those globals though. Gift of Health really helped when I finally got my Tarts.
My own general comments with the game:
I subbed in for @tylertoo as Ulm at around the halfway mark in the game. The expansion phase for Ulm was over, so I needed to be useful in other ways. I spent my time in the earlier turns trying to get things organised the way I want, and setting up a gameplan based on PvP becoming a close eventuality. What I inherited was a solid chunk of land, plenty of infrastructure (namely forts) and a really good earth gem income. What I saw short terrm as needing some work was developing more research, shifting the scattered units into a cohesive army and a more comphrehensive gem search.
My initial expenses if I recall were recruiting black knights. They formed a sort of mobile force that I would use to patrol my borders with man. The dominion there was troublesome, and I was wondering if Man had a stealthed preacher. Towards the PvP stage, Black Knights are a formiddable unit in their own right and could slot into my armies. Furthermore, I ended up pooling all my units as close together as possible to try and establish a Man Army and a Nazca Army to defend my two fronts. Monthly recruitment was always the sacred smith that Ulm get from the capital - they’d be casting iron blizzard for the first couple of turns before switching to other spells in order to minimise friendly fire. Also burned a lot of gems site searching. I think it is fair to say I had a comprehensive site search through my lands with nearly every province remotely done via water, nature, fire, earth, astral and death. Air was always a problem, and gems were only trickling in, so I had to rely on the disciple for moving around and manual searching. Gem income at the end was 11 fire, 3 air, 12 water, 17 earth, 8 astral, 8 death and 7 nature.
My research focus was to progress to construction 8 and get the artefacts that I could. I was pretty annoyed that someone managed to forget the Armor of Dawn before me, please, I was trying to get the whole set! Construction 8 also tied in nicely with Mechanical Men, and all the more importantly, with the Steel Ovens that I had access to in the North. I think we had the lions share of artefacts by the end of the game. There was some solid teamwork involved when it came to boosters to get some of my smiths up a few levels to make items that would benefit the team.
I made a comment a while back in this thread about my WMD. One artefact I made was Boots of the Planes. I had a Golem geared up, and I was going to have some fun in Marignon lands to deny the other team some easy lands. What I didn’t count on was my Golem dying pretty quickly to Marignon’s sacreds who had magic weapons. I did not know the bless before I jumped in, and that cost me a lot, for nothing. Painful even.
Not sure if there is much I can add with Ulm. End game was Iron Angels kitted out to accompany my armies composed of national troops and spellcasters protected by mechanical men bodyguards. I was hopeful the fliers would do the hold attack rear tactic, and find themselves in a world of hurt facing off against my stronger units. Front line was shielded units with flails. Cavalry on the flanks. I had plans to but my sages into communions, but never got there. My interest in the game was definitely diminishing by the end. Victory was all but assured I guess, and I didn’t really care much for a contrived PvP.
The map is one I wouldn’t want to play on again. I simply don’t like it. My part of the world was forest/mountain/swamp. It’s a pain in the arse to move around in. The pathing between provinces was nonsensical.
Definitely have a timer with respect to the game. I’m finding more and more that games going longer than 70-80 turns typically need to end sooner rather than later based on what I’ve looked at with all my previous games. I love the idea of long campaign styled games that take time and patience to complete. In a more pragmatic sense though, I find games after 60-70 turns feel more like a slog, and I start to look forward to a new game.
In terms of new game, I think I’ll take a bit of a break. I’ve play 4 Dom5 games now since it came out, 3 of which lasted a long time. Need to give the brain a break I guess!