3821

KillScribble

Something rather strange happened this turn. wahoo had asked for an 8 hour extension on this turn. I went in and did it from my cell phone and got the confirmation - with a correct new hosting time. But it didn’t go through, it hosted at the original time and wahoo staled because of this.

What should we do about this, if anything? The stale was not wahoo’s fault, so in a way that justifies a rollback. But those can result in breaking the game. Given that wahoo is not at war and the stale shouldn’t hurt him too much I say play on. Another problem with a rollback is that everyone probably looked at their turns by now. What do you guys think?

PS: The rumours of my imminent ascendancy are greatly exaggerated.

3822

KillScribble

Something rather strange happened this turn. wahoo had asked for an 8 hour extension on this turn. I went in and did it from my cell phone and got the confirmation - with a correct new hosting time. But it didn’t go through, it hosted at the original time and wahoo staled because of this.

What should we do about this, if anything? The stale was not wahoo’s fault, so in a way that justifies a rollback. But those can result in breaking the game. Given that wahoo is not at war and the stale shouldn’t hurt him too much I say play on. Another problem with a rollback is that everyone probably looked at their turns by now. What do you guys think?

PS: The rumours of my imminent ascendancy are greatly exaggerated.

3823

I say play on. B/c I’m not at war it just further cements the fact that I’m not going to win. It hurts b/c it slows down a bunch of stuff by a turn but so be it.

I was a bit surprised b/c when I went to email the turn I saw it had already hosted…so boo! I was more surprised than anything so I went back to check time stamps and saw that yes, the turn shoudln’t have hosted.

Anyway, I vote no rollback (and my vote should count the most since I’m most hurt).

Thanks for following up on this scribble and letting me know what happened…

3824

Hi friend! We have a newsletter for you to read…

3825

I’m at war and I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the path to victory either.

3826

Unfortunately not all admin requests get successfully processed by the llamaserver. I’m not 100% sure what causes this, and neither is llamabeast, but from my experience, whether or not the server is processing the hosting of a game (ie. any game is hosting, not just the game with the admin request) plays a big part in it. For example last night I had to twice request a 240 hour delay in this game.

http://www.llamaserver.net/doAdminAction.cgi?game=AssAsians&action=showadminlog

The llamaserver updated at 21:07, and then didn’t update again until 21:15. (ie. It was hosting a turn in one of the games. Probably a big game given it took 8 minutes). My request was at 21:09, and it didn’t get processed. Hence the reason for my re-request at 21:16. (which got processed just fine). I know those times accurately as I was hitting refresh every minute or two waiting for confirmation of my original request.

Failed admin requests are still logged in the admin log, and when you make the request you still get presented with a falsely reassuring “hosting has been successfully postponed until XXX” on-screen message from the llamaserver. Unfortunately though these are both just misleading messages, and unless you get confirmation of the delay, in the form of the deadline on the status page changing to reflect your request, then it means your requested dela/admin command was not successfully processed.

As the deadline time that is displayed on the status page is the ONLY thing that matters regarding hosting. Any messages or log entires to the contrary mean nothing. So tip #14 in the “Good Admin Book” says that whenever you request a delay, you need to wait for the llamaserver to update (ie. the “Last updated at XX:XX GMT” stamp changes), and then refresh the game status page to make sure your requested delay is successfully processed, and you see the deadline time ON THE STATUS PAGE change accordingly.

So ends todays community information broadcast.

3827

I typed all this up a couple weeks ago, but just haven’t found time to format/post it all… Had some time today, so here’s some more. You can find Part 1a here and Part1b here.

Turn 1

So here we are in turn 1. I feel very small and lonely. But onward with the conquest.

Nothing very interesting to do, just showing the map really. One thing I don’t usually do a very good job at is reasearching starting spots, so I have no idea where everyone else might be (I think this game had randome starts, so maybe doesn’t matter).

Starting location is mildly interesting in that I have that lake just North of me. One of my favorite things about playing Vanheim is sailing. I think it is very much undervalued in general and as Van has become my favorite MA nation to play, I have gotten pretty used to having it. On a map with lots of smaller bodies of water, it is pretty abusable. As it turns out, in this game, it wasn’t that great for me, but nonetheless, on Turn 1, I’m pretty happy about it.

One thing that’s tricky to me about this map is the small number of provinces per player (I think there were only 12-13). That plus the unusual win conditions make me think about it a little diffferently. Normally I would try to land grab to SE and also secure my sides of these bridges through negotiations or grabbing them. This game seems likely to be more violent and with less negotiations, so I prob better be able to grab what I want.

As such, early expansion goals will be to secure my sides of those bridges as I think that’s a bigger priority. So I am hoping that no one is right on one of them and I can secure the lands on my side. Ideally I would be able to get all 4 (5?) bridges secured, get that lake to my north and maybe a couple other water provinces a little later (I also really like taking water provinces). Some expansion to Southeast would be good, but realisticlly that’s probably a little too optimistic.

Only other thing I note is that there aren’t any wastelands nearby which is a bummer for reasons I will go into later.

So with all that in mind, a do the very normal first turn stuff - make the scout my prophet, set starting army to patrol, tax to 140%, and end turn.

Turn 5

The first few turns are pretty uneventful. I make some Skingshifters with a few Huskarls to handle decoy duty and expand pretty normally. Here’s a sample stack that I am using:

I have a Vanadrott leading this stack and give him a Van escort to help keep him safe. I often do this for a couple reasons:

  1. I frequently fail to get an indy commander in position to lead a stack when they’re ready to go, so I often end up having to use a Cap-recruited mage to do it. I do this regardless of what nation I’m playing. In this case, it’s mostly ok though because…
  2. Vanheim’s mounted commanders are pretty awesome at dealing with Indys at this stage. I like to pair them with a Van (the unit) so they don’t take all the hits and they can provide serious help to an expansion effort. This also usually gets them in the Hall of Fame which might be awesome later when it’s time to start raiding.

So I don’t love having him out there, but I don’t really hate it either.

I’ve done some basic expansion and have captured my side of first bridge at Dunster (30). Dendra Nigra (17) has about 50 Pisachas and Ganas which are shitty, hard to deal with demons. They’ll get saved for (much) later. My next goal is to get up to (52) as it has two bridges.

Looking around a little, I see Dunster (30) has a black candle in it, so someone is clearly nearby there. But I already got my side of the bridge, so I think I’m ok. (26) Has two death scales with no candles, so there’s almost certainly a death site there.

Overall, I feel pretty good… I haven’t had much in the way of losses in expansion and I’ve already sealed off the Western side taking one side of the first bridge and having fierce demons covering the other side. If someone really wants to plow through that just to have to deal with me, then more power to them… I’ll deal with that if/when it happens.

I won’t show charts here, as at this stage, they don’t tell a whole lot. looks like no awake researchers and no ones expansion has been amazing or awful. My army size is just about the smallest, but I am really trying to use smaller numbers of high quality units (Skinshifters), so that’s sort of what I would expect.

Turn 11

A lot can happen in 6 months!

First, here’s the charts. I’m pretty happy overall.

Doing well in provinces but not enough to worry anyone.

Income is going really well which is important because my guys are expensive and I need to construct forts, labs and temples too.

Research I’m out in front thanks to Magic-3 scales.

Not real happy about gem income, but that should be about to improve. Just getting site searching started and my pretender will wake up soon and that will help a lot.

Dominion is fine - I can blood sac later if needed.

My army size is odd because I have two bands of mercs right now and had one just left. That’s why that one is so up and down - Army Size chart shows mercs and it tends to make your graph spike when they join or leave, especially in the early game.

Basic expansion is done. I still have that province over there with the demons in it, and I was able to get to the bridges at (52), but I didn’t get as far SE as I wanted after I ran into Pythium. I also wasn’t able to poach any provinces on the far side of any bridges which isn’t really surprising. I did use mercenaries a fair bit to help, either using them on their own to attack weak provinces, or as chaff to eat cavalry charges for my Skinshifters. I was also happy to snag The Shipwreckers and use the to move into the water at Lake Fortune (8).

That fort in the swamps just went up this turn, so I have mostly been recruiting in Capitol so far. I have started a little stack of Ichtyid warriors as I really want to get that lake. My mages are mostly researching, but I do have one casting Auspex and one casting Gnome Lore. I’ll be increasing these searches quite a bit soon. I’ve researched Conj. 2 so I can remote search for death, but I have no income yet, so I have a couple mages out manually searching too. I am pretty sure I will find a death site with my search in The Weald (41) this turn as there are high Death scales there. Then in three turns I will have enough gems to remote search the other province with death scales which should really get things rolling. My pretender isn’t awake yet, but she can do some manual searching to help also.

You can see the neighbors… bordering Caelum, Bandar, Pythium and Pangaea. I made contact with everyone about this time. From memory, it seems like everyone was comfortable agreeing to borders, though I don’t think any NAPs formally got into place. Pythium and I also agree to split water provinces where we border.

The other interesting diplo stuff that’s happening right now is that Pan and Pythium want to fight each other and both want me to join. I’m totally down with that. Either way. My gameplan is to be aggressive early which is sort of playing against form for me, but I now have a decent number of troops sitting idle in my Cap and another stack of 15 'shifters out dorking around not doing much.

Skinshifters are expensive (25g) and I don’t want to be paying upkeep on them to sit around. I’m actually not even recruiting anything but mages right now as I am more interested in constructing buildings. I have enough troops to defend myself and 'shifters only cost 7 resources so I can spit out a lot of them at once if I find myself under attack unexpectedly.

So. My pregame strategy is that I really want to go fight, but as I said, that goes against my normal, comfortable way to play. Since I have a couple neighbors wanting to fight each other, I can be a coward and just jump in on one side or the other (really, whoever is ready to go first… I don’t care) and that will help me with being out of my comfort zone.

So I’ll just grab some water provinces, do some construction, research and site search while Pythium and Pangaeea get ready to go. It’s also prob about time to start Blood Hunting. I have a couple provinces that will be good for it, so I will get that going soon. Not exactly what I want, but I don’t hate it and I’ll be fighting soon enough, right?

I’m close to character limit, so will do Part 3 next. Hopefully soon :P

3828

My available time is funny… had a few more minutes and all these screenshots were ready, so here’s the next bit I was planning to combine it with the next could turns also, but I don’t think I have time for that right this second so I figured I would do this bit now and the rest later.

Part 1a here
Part 1b here
Part 2 is here

Turn 18
Pretty happy with the charts in general.

Provinces - You can see that Machaka and Eriu have begun their excitement and Eriu has come out on the wrong end. My count was level for a long time until this turn. That’s just because I took some water provinces, then had to build up a while. I finally took last of “my” provinces in South.

I don’t usually build a ton of forts, but I clearly need at least one more. The good news is that there will be one complete this turn.

My income is still good.

Site searching has gone well. I don’t really have any great sites yet, I’ve just been really aggressive at searching and am finding a few.

Research is still good thanks to Magic-3. It could be better but i have been doing a lot of site searching as was previously mentioned. It would also be better if I had more forts and thus more mages.

Everything else is fine… Army size is mostly interesting as you can see when the Eriu/Machaka armies met and how that went. Not sure exactly when Eriu itself fell, if it’s already happened it’s not clear from the charts.

Also… as a general note, LOL @ Perkins. His Bandar Log still only has one fort and he seems to have found a 1 gem magic site. That guy clearly has zero chance in this game.

On to the game itself… I still don’t have the damn lake North off my Cap. I attacked once and got wrecked by Indys (Triton Troopers are tough). I am building up another army of Ictyids that I will back up with some mage and 'Shifter support. Those demons are still over there too.

More importantly, notice how I’m still not fighting anyone?! This isn’t cool. I really want to fight, and Pan and Pytium both say they want to kill each other, but neither is ready to move yet. Dammit, Jim! I’m too cowardly to just jump in as I don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of a 2v1 (and I really am waaaay too pacifistic by default.) Curse my yellow blood!

About this time I think I made a formal Nap with Bandar. I think it’s probably also about this time that I got a message from Pan that was reminiscent of high school:
“Right now’s not a good time… there’s going to be a party at Pender’s place… you should come with us!”
Only this time it was more actually more like:
“Can’t fight right now… there’s going to be a dogpile on Machaka… you should join in!”

So Pan wanted to go pile on Machaka and Pythium just wasn’t quite ready to go. I think at this point I had sort of started deciding that attacking Pan was the way to go, mainly because he was leading in provinces, was about to be gaining more and also being distracted by attacking Machaka. After I arrived at this conclusion, I started trying to get Pythium ready to go. In hindsight, I prob could have gone on my own, but as I keep saying, it just gets outside my comfort zone. If my timeline is correct, then it was prob also about this time that I got into a formal NAP with Pythium.

Since I didn’t see a fight coming real soon ,this led me to make sort of a change in strategy. While I made a build to be ready to fight around turn 10 or so, that clearly didn’t happen. Consequently, I decide to try and take advantage of my scales with the strategy that I am typically more comfortable. This will play out over the next turns, but the short version is:

  • Good but prob not great research
  • Top end gem income
  • High quality, low quantity troops emphasizing low upkeep to enable…
  • Blood hunting - more on this later
  • A combat strategy that I’ll go into later.

I typically lag in forts with this strategy. I have a hard time getting excited about building more than I can realistically afford to use recruiting mages.

At the end of the last turn I wrote about, I said it was time to start Blood Hunting, but this is 7 turns later and I notice I still haven’t. Not really sure why… I clearly should have in any case.

There’s really not much else to report at this time as I haven’t really done much since turn 11 I think the biggest change has been all the gem income I now have from my site searching. When my pretender showed up, she immediately went searching and that’s been a big focus. I’m a little surprised, but when reviewing the turn, my tech is almost to my normal “Ready for War” spot and I haven’t even forged a thing. This tells me that at the time, I didn’t think I was going to be fighting anytime soon.

Since not much is going on, here’s a shot of my research and then I’ll give my “Ready for War” layout when I play Van or something similar. Other nations obv. have completely different approaches.

So basically if I am not getting pressed I always do Thaum 2 first for the remote site searching spells there. I then usually follow with Conj 2 (or 3 if I want to do remote searching for water which I seldom do at this point) to do Death searches or Evo 2 for Astral searches. Most commonly I will do Conj 2 first because I have National mages (Dwarves) that can cast the searches and I’ve prob used them to manually find a source of Death gems to prime the searching.

This game I skipped evo because I didn’t find any Indys that can cast Astral 1 which is really rare EA but maybe more common MA. (A fact I have a bad habit of forgetting). In fact, I was pretty disappointed with the complete lack of decent Indy mages. I got some N1 animal Tribe guys, but that was it. I was really sort of counting on getting something… anything… else to help out so my pretender doesn’t have to do so much of the work. If there is one thing I was unhappy about at this point, that’s probably it. I have done a ton of searching and while I’ve found a decent supply of gems, the lack of an sites with useful mages sucks.

Anyway… back to research… so… Thaum 2, Conj. 2, skip Evo and Conj 3 since I don’t have mages.

Once I have those researched, I make a runtime decision where to go next.
If I think I may be at war soon, I go Alt 3 for Mistform. It’s not great without Construction, but it’s still awfully good. If I am getting it here. it’s for defense and as a deterrent. I can also get it fast and it doesn’t require any gems or anything else to be useful.

If I feel safe, I prob. go Cons. 4. This gets me the things I need to forge for war (will delve into later) as well as Some site searching help (Thistle Mace, Earth Boots, Skull Staff). It also has a lot of nice utility with Skull Mentors and a few other goodies.

Whichever of those two I take now, I will prob take the other one next.

After that, it’s off to Enchantment. Not much at 1 or 2, but at 3 I get Skelly Spam and Seeking Arrow. (I seldom cast seeking arrow because Air gems are so precious, but I always want it available because sometimes it can be ridiculously good). The last thing I really want/need to be ready for war at this stage of the game is Cloud Trapeze at Enchantment 4.

After that, things get much more situational. Maybe I will be able to go into that more later.

In any case, I’m about 2 turns away from being fully ready to fight as far as research goes. The fact that I haven’t forged anything and don’t have much of an army up tells me I didn’t think I was about to be fighting. As I am typing this now, I really don’t remember how long until I did start to fight, so I’m kind of interested to see!

Are folks still interested in this? It’s been a while since the game and I need to do some more screenshots to continue. I don’t mind, but if this is no longer interesting, I can do an abbreviated version of rest of the game. Won’t hurt my feelings ;)

3829

cool! keep up the AAR, pretty please

3830

Note to self. When copying the Dominions install folder to my Dropbox to make accessing my games easier from the variety of devices I use, make sure that when I submit my 2h file, I don’t send the one from the friggin’ old location that contains my incomplete turn.

/facepalm

3831

Any nation sitting out a war will have time to build up into a powerhouse while the rest lose strength in battle after battle. That I cannot allow to happen.

That being said, if Scribble moves on another capital, he’ll be my mortal enemy.

3832

I like reading the AAR, Austen.

3833

This is comical on a variety of levels. Rather than list them all off here, I put them all on the Wheel of Comedy, gave it a spin and this one came up (this one’s not really even specific to this game as it turns out… it’s just sort of a basics of Dominions):

  1. If you are engaging the top power in the game you will either be winning or losing.
  • If you are losing, then you have lost the game and the strength of the other remaining players doesn’t matter.
  • If you are winning then you are gaining provinces. Those provinces provide things like Income, Gem Income and sometimes valuable Recruits.

This means that while you are investing resources in the war and the other player is not, you are also either making gains in your overall power base (you are winning) or the other players position relative to yours doesn’t matter (you are losing).

Your post is just silly. It’s really fine if you just say:

Ya… I don’t think we can stop Scribble and I’m pretty sure he was going to smash me. So instead, I made peace and he can go win the game elsewhere. This frees me up to go invade someone else since the others agreed to stand down militarily while the Scribble situation was managed.

I think we would all understand that (Though it sounds less virtuous than “That I cannot allow to happen.”).

3834

Austen, your post is comical as well! It can be replaced with “Scribble is in the game. You all lose.”

3835

Austen is in that tough spot where he knows Scribble needs to be contained, but he doesn’t have a border with him.

IIRC Nate shares borders only with Austen and Scribble, so Nate’s post is pretty much a declaration of war on Austen.

3836

I’m in that exact same spot myself!

3837

Actually it was more Nate’s attacking my fort that was a declaration of war ;)

Seems like it! :P There was a chain of PMs from the remaining non-Scribble players about trying to do something about it… Those of us with without borders (me and Sharaleo) even promised not to attack the three with borders so they could attack Scribble without fear of getting backstabbed. Nate posted a reply that he was into the plan.

So I pulled my troops away from my borders with those guys so they wouldn’t worry anyone. Which is needless to say when Nate decided to attack. I made a PM earlier…

You know what… I’ll just post it… Scribble deserves some public props for what he has pulled off and there’s really nothing secretive in it.

Nate’s quote is a response to a PM I made to the group where I said “Nate sold us out” which might have been better stated as “Nate betrayed our plans”. Although now that I am pasting, I see he says he “passed on nothing of the specifics”… so… LOL… I guess he just told them that we were planning a joint attack… maybe that was part of how the deal got done… dunno :P

Here it is:

I didn’t mean to imply that you told him about our “secret plans”. I’m pretty confident he could piece together the idea that the only way to beat him would be for multiple people to attack him.

Rather I meant that your actions make it extraordinarily difficult to prevent Scribble from winning this game at his leisure. Based on your post about how he will be your “mortal enemy” if he attacks someone else’s Cap, maybe part of your agreement with him is some sort of pinky swear that he won’t try to win the game (now? ever?).

He might even hold off for a bit. It would prob. be more fun that way than just to win now. Take a look at the graphs.

See how about the only thing he isn’t way out in front on is Research? He hates that… he even mentioned it on the forums. You might notice though that it seems like it took a pretty big spike this turn.

Let’s move on to that enormous lead in income and forts? That means he can recruit lots of mages every turn to get his research cranked up. That’s not the real story though.

The real issue is his gem income. It’s enormous which would be a decent problem on it’s own. However, as MA Agartha, he can use it to spam Wisdom of the Ancients which means that spike is about to get bigger and he will run away with research.

Additionally, if he stays out of war right now, he can still continue to expand by taking water provinces that are still Indies.

Heh… I stopped typing this to go get some water and while I was afk, it occurred to me that you’ve had this plan in place for a long time. That’s why you were able to so effortlessly bottom-feed on the leftover scraps from Pythium. You knew you didn’t have to worry about Agartha coming after you next.

That’s brilliant on Scribble’s part because it makes his charts less threatening at the same time it ensures a coalition to beat him is difficult/impossible to form.

So… heh… I had more to type, but it’s all pointless anyway… you’ve had this plan in mind since before these PMs started.

We can fight our little war and wait for Scribble to decide if he wants to win now or get wildly ahead in every category, then crush everyone later.

Oh… I suppose I should congratulate Nate for once again faking me out. Just like in Crooked Trunk, he convinced me to move my troops away from our shared border and then immediately attacked me. Shame on me.

Lastly, I was def. in favor of a 3v1 war against Scribble as I think it’s the best (only?) chance there is of stoppling him from winning. I’m not sure what I should have done differently? Maybe acted like it’s an awful idea and we should just fight each other so Scribble can win at his leisure? Then you would want to do the opposite of that and attack him maybe? I don’t think the others would have gone for it… :([/QUOTE]

So Scribble played an amphib nation on a map with water (and no one else gets in well), quickly beats his highly skilled neighbor who could be a real threat. He then convinces the player he has the biggest border with to go fight someone else allowing him to choose how he wants to win at his leisure.

That was a pretty dominant performance. There’s prob. still ways for him to not win, but they seem very far-fetched for a variety of reasons.

3838

What’s hilarious is that I proposed the idea to Scribble on Monday. Or was it Tuesday? Any way not long ago, and after all of the PMing about killing Scribble took place.

I was all ready to go to war with Scribble; I even had my armies poised on his border from my cherry-picking of Pythium’s remaining provinces.

Looking back at my PMs, it -was- you, Austen, that started this whole Kill Scribble dogpile frenzy. If anyone is a diabolical planner, sir, it’s you. I merely realized what you intended to do, which is sit back, research, and build up your armies unmolested while the rest of us struggled against an expert player. And with that many people going up against Scribble, you knew he’d have no chance of pulling off a win. And then when the threat was gone, you’d march your armies at the weakest two remaining and win. Or the weakest one with two capitals from the spoils of Agartha.

I wish I was smart enough to have realized it earlier, because I hate going back on my word. I did say that I’d join the dogpile on Scribble; I just realized what you were doing a short time ago. I’m glad we didn’t have an NAP in place; I wouldn’t have broken that no matter what the advantage would have been.

Should be a nice little war no matter what happens, though, and hopefully a little less one-sided than the last one we had.

3839

I also border Arga Dis (across a chokepoint) and Pangaea (on a little island). I have no intention of attacking either of them in the near future.

3840

I don’t agree with this principle. The reality isn’t quite so dichotomous. Success is all about increasing your power level at a faster rate than everyone else. If Mictlan attacks me and we fight to a standstill and throw resources against each other, our power growth rates will plateau as we need to throw gems into summons, use mages in battle etc. You on the other hand, shielded from conflict, can jump straight to the lategame, focus everything on site searching and research while building a large blood economy - your power will grow much faster than ours. What you say only holds true if there’s a short decisive war, which is unlikely in this case given the strong static defenses MA Agartha can put into place.

So it’s not necessarily a winning play for wahoo, pyrhic and Nate to throw everything they have at me. It seems unlikely to me that any of them will win the game if they go down that road. The one who holds back the most (while getting their share of the spoils) has the best chance. Noone wants to take the brunt of the leader’s attacks. This is one of the reasons trying to organize a joint attack on a leader can feel herding cats.

My diplomacy this game has been pretty ineffective actually. I’ve tried to get peace a couple of times, but so far all have spurned my olive branch. Nate’s plan of breaking off from the dogpile alliance was his own, I certainly didn’t plant it in his head!