4421

Ah, sweet relief. That would have been me.

Got off to a slow expansion and then Bogarus (Nate) decided he wanted half my territory and sucked me into an early unwanted war. We went back and forth for a bit till Ulm decided he wanted Nate’s lands.

Hopefully it isn’t giving too much away at this point, but I got stuck with InkPot End in the center of my kingdom and that cramped mobility on my end. Towards the end, I rushed through a turn and moved a large army thought there. Oops. I’m sure somebody with a scout was wondering why all my troops were diseased.

This was my first Rand game and I found the experience to be less satisfying than an open game.

4422

Love spending those gems for a summons and the turn it arrives having a witch curse 10 random units in that province…including your shiny new summons.

Almost as much fun as Inkpot End.

4423

This being the active Dominions 3 thread here, for those interested in experiencing a blast from the past or even delving into the very antiquity of Dominions, you can now preorder Dominions - Priests Prophets and Pretenders as well as Dominions 2: The Ascension Wars from Desura. The games will become available on May 21st (Dom2) and May 23rd (DomPPP).

4424

Well, for some definition of active.

The Tour seems to be heating up.

Ashdod-Eriu got interesting. Eriu just can’t seem to keep any semblance of an army alive, but he’s not going away anytime soon.

Man managed to push back against Pythia. The border may not be exactly the pre-war border, but it’s pretty close.

The birds have staled in 1/4 of their turns. Agartha seems…rockbound.

Eriu has been opportunistic and inscrutable. From turn to turn it isn’t always easy to figure out who he is at war with…

4425

If Agartha doesn’t win with his turtling advantage, I’ll be extremely stunned and disappointed. Man is too weak to beat Pythium but I’ve about got back to status quo and we’ve both burned a ton of gems on the fight, prevernting him from spamming harbingers. Erieu has cleverly chosen a path to non-victory fighting me leaving Agartha free and clear and himself weaker.

4426

FWIW I’ve been at war far longer in this game than you have been.

And I’ve demonstrated how bad I am at this game several times.

While I for one would welcome our new Atarthian overlords, I’m not looking for that to happen any time soon.

I very much respect the game Eriu has played. He fought me off successfully and is the only nation that has been actively at war all game long. Nobody wants to be at war with him, but nobody wants him put down either. It’s an odd situation.

4427

Your information is not entirely correct

4428

Middletown

I win on turn 59. Took Jomon’s capital this turn with a big pile of demons supported by several flames from the sky casters to whittle down his mage corps.

AAR to follow, but the game was probably decided a while ago. With Atlantis and Agartha fighting like cats and dogs for most of the game, and Jomon unable to expand his power base, I was left to turtle, growing my blood economy and putting up some globals.

4429

well done Scribble: you slapped me down pretty good with those flames :)

oh, and i was c’tis, of course

4430

Grats Scribble! Well played… I will post soon too… that was a really fun game… I learned a ton about playing LA… I want to some more :)

4431

Well played as always, Scribble. Congratulations!

4432

The Tour

Agartha officially starts dissolving all of our Nap’s this turn.

If there is a turn attachment to your nap, then it will be remembered and observed.

Notice that this does not mean we are declaring hostilities with any culture. As always, we intend to continue our peaceful ways.

4433

I guess that means that you’ll be NAP free by turn 60 or so, eh?

4434

As the winner of this game I feel I should post an AAR and get some thoughts from the others players in the game. When I write these things I tend to focus on what happens before the game starts and this report will be no exception.
The random roll gave me LA Ulm, and I was not a happy camper. In fact it was the only nation on the roster I really did not want to play. Part of the reason is having recently played it, subbing into a losing position in YARG4 over on the Shrapnel boards. Mainly though I hate playing nations with weak mages. I know there is some power in the nation lineup and that it can win games, it’s just not my style at all.

It’s always my strategy to have the best or among the best expansions. Ulm can get there with good production scales due to their high quality troops. So a dormant pretender should be fine, but midgame can be a struggle due to slow research (expensive researchers!) and troops that, while tough, have weak MR and quickly become obsolete. Therefore an imprisoned pretender isn’t really in the cards, you need your pretender to give you some oomph in years 2 and 3. No bless chassis at all either. Magic 1 or 3 is mandatory, and I like order/misfortune better than turmoil/luck. The heroes aren’t that great, and when you have a nation with fortune tellers it always feels like leaving money on the table not going with misfortune.

The main question you need to ask yourself when designing for LA Ulm is whether you want to enable vampire counts (need D3B3) through your pretender or if you try to get there the hard way. You will want them in any case, as they are the key to getting blood slave production up and power your lategame. I spent a lot of time pondering this question. My first design was a freak lord rainbow that didn’t have the best scales and dominion 6. He gave sorely needed magic diversity and enabled vampire counts. But I was concerned about my ability to fend off a determined midgame attack. That pretender needed time to give me power, and I worried that I wouldn’t have that time. I actually submitted this pretender, but had a change of heart and replaced him with…

An O3P3G1Misf1M1 dormant titan with dom 7 and E4A5. Going with this pretender meant my blood economy wouldn’t be great until the late game. But he’s ready to kick some ass when he wakes up, and gets you good air access. Plus the scales were better. I’m not sure it was the right call, as I never really needed him as an SC. Getting vampire counts was quite hard. First you need construction 6. Then you need to roll an S3B1 (1 in 40 chance) Member of the Second Tier. That guy gets a starshine skullcap and a crystal coin forged by one of your smiths and forges a ring of sorcery. Then you need to also have to roll an S2B1D1 (again 1 in 40) Member who empowers blood once, then wears the ring and a skull staff to get the vampires going. Of course you could always empower death, so you’re not entirely reliant on the right randoms, but that is just terribly expensive. I hate empowering anything but blood. 

The game itself in a future post…

4435

I will write something up hopefully later this weekend. I had lots of plans around the house, but some of them don’t work well with it getting down to 36 deg F at night so I may have a bit of free time.

I was Jomon, as most of you know by now I am sure.

I must admit, though, that while you didn’t really use your Titan as an SC, seeing what he could do even with its base lightning attack and that one battle with C’tis where you Wrathful Skied him to oblivion were the main reason I backed off my one invasion. Well, that and your well timed mass use of Magic Duel in that other battle, lol. What a way to blow up my Communion in one turn. That was embarassing. That and this was the first game I figured out that Mind Hunt could attack non-Astral mages, which allowed you to cherry-pick two of my thugs quite easily and crippled that army and invasion quite a bit I believe.

4436

The Tour
Here in Agartha we are welcoming our new Pythian overlords with open arms. Let’s Dance!

Looks like Man-Ashdod vs Eriu is going about as well as Agartha-Ashdod did. Congrats to Austen who subbed into what looked like a losing cause and has moved into the lead.

C’mon out and play birdies…Feathers make such festive decorations!

4437

I’ve been meaning to post about this game a couple times… what an odd game! 50 turns in and no one is even close to eliminated.

You are correct that my current war situation is about as much of a slog as the last. I appreciate the love on getting out of an ugly position when I took the game, but I don’t think there is any realistic measure that would have me in the lead.

If we were to stop the game right now and do a draft of nations form the current position, I would not take mine in the top 3 I don’t think. There is of course all the usual tendencies to understate ones own position while perhaps over-estimating that of others. I honestly don’t think Eriu’s position is in the top half of this games though at the moment.

Still… very cool game… to be this far into a 6-player game and have positions 1-5 still this debatable with nation 6 even having more than enough power still to influence the game.

4438

If you’re meaning me, I’ll tear anyone up who comes at me and wear them as a scarf :)

4439

Dominions 3 is now available at a 50% discount at Gamersgate: http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/DD-DOM3A/dominions-3-the-awakening

4440

The tour update: I will be out of pocket from Wed till next Monday. So a hold after whatever turn hosts for wed would be awesome.

Ashdod is on the verge of succumbing to Erieu. On the other hand, Man has showed that we can raid with stealth bards etc. I had 200+ unrest on the erieu capitol which made me happy. Erieu has to finish off Ashdod before he loses to me.