1641

QT3RAND, turn 65

Another one bites the dust. Pythium was played by tenuki.

1642

After almost ten years of trying, I have finally won a Qt3 Dominions game! But I had lots of help.

As the game was starting, both wahoo and Matt Bowyer inquired as to what my plans were. My plans were the usual: lay low, make friends with all of my neighbors, and come in fifth place. They suggested that I grow a pair. Matt, in particular, said I should make a Kraken pretender that could steamroll the surrounding indies, and both wahoo and Matt said I should blitzkreig Atlantis (played by pyhric) and own all of the seas.

So that’s what I did!

Thanks to my pretender, and to all of the land nations leaving us alone, pyhric and I duked it out one-on-one to my advantage, and by turn 20 or so, all of the oceans were belong to us.

As Nate mentioned in his AAR, I also snuck onto land in various spots, and by far the most important find was Rockhaven, the fort smack in the middle of the image above – it’s the little island sticking out south of the archipelago. I found a site that gave a 20% bonus to Construction! When dfs and Mark Weston knocked me off the lands, I bargained with them so that I could keep Rockhaven, but ceded all of my other land holdings.

Much later, I cast Forge of the Ancients, and it lasted for 20-30 turns in the endgame. Forge plus Rockhaven meant that I was making items like the Ring of Sorcery, which usually costs 40 astral gems, for about 15 such gems. I’d say that this combo was the main reason I won.

After dfs cast Burden of Time, I figured that Mark’s armies would die in about 20 turns, so I planned to invade the old Agartha capital (taking it from dfs) and Mark’s capital at around the same time. And that brings us to the final turn, and Part 2.

1643

The last turn gets it’s own part, because it was so action-packed!

Here’s the army I had on Marignon’s former capital (now being played heroically by farfrael). Reinforcements were on the way, but so were almost a thousand longdead horsemen backed by Tartarians (from dfs), and about ten super-powered gods and goddesses (from Nate). I decided to storm the Marignon capital without waiting for the reinforcements.

I had three Tartarian Titan commanders (the tall blue ones) and a few non-leader Tartarian units as well. The three Titans are:

Hypereia - My prophet, wielding the Sword of Aurgelmer (luck for the entire army), Boots of the Planes, and the Ankh.

Mestor - With Jade Armor and Winged Boots, she held the Mage Bane.

Iphiklos - Her Sword of Many Colors boosted her Earth magic to 5, and she was to cast Army of Gold.

This army was attacked many times in the final turn. Four Earth Elemental assassins hit me first (and two attacked Iphiklos, which prompted her to cast Army of Gold on her guards, and Living Earth, thus using up all of her earth gems before any important battles!). An Ashen Angel attacked one of my astral mages, who enslaved it in his first attempt – lucky.

The Bandar Log (Nate) teleported in 12 Rishi, which used up all of the rest of my gem supply.

My reinforcements arrived, then, including a Tartarian Cyclops (lower right) named ‘Global? What Global?’ (He’s the one who cast the Forge.) Also of interest is Shubejc, the Visitor, one of my national heroes. He was 2A/4S and had a move of 10/20. Very useful for shuttling things around. He’s the one in the back who looks like a bag of air with eyes.

My reinforced army was attacked by dfs’s hundred or so longdead horse. Now dfs, you had about a THOUSAND longdead horse coming at me, but most paused to attack a Marignon fort. I wondered why you didn’t send them all at me, because you’d stated publicly that I only needed one more capital to win. I wonder how my reinforced army would have done versus your horde.

And then Bandar Log attacked with a sweet pile of super combatants, including two Air Queens, two Tartarians, and two Kinnara! I didn’t watch this battle because I figured it would go on forever, but 6 of BL’s 8 commanders died, and 1 of mine did.

The final storming of the castle was tame by comparison, and farfrael only had Mark’s pretender to defend it. A scary looking unit, to be sure, but alone, raging in his throne room like Scarface.

I’m really glad that the “sharks” who played in this game were at about the same skill level. The game was dynamic and interesting and I learned as much about the endgame as Nate says he did. Thanks again to farfrael for substituting, and thanks to Scribble for organizing the game. Hats off to dfs and Nate, who could have won (and I think dfs would have won had the game gone on much longer, but Nate might have as well), and to pyhric for the enjoyable opening war.

I’ve never been in zero Dominions game until today. This is weird.

1644

Ha, i still remember your kraken stumbling off-map with like 30 health, no tentacles and like 4 afflictions…damn lucky for you that thing regenerates :)

1645

Yeah! I remember that, too. Poor thing dragged itself away on stumps.

It never did die during the rest of the game. You got it as close to death as it got.

1646

The Earth Attacks and Ashen Angel were mine as well, Dave. As I said, I threw everything I had at you.

1647

Great AARs by you and Nate and congratulations on your victory! Apologies for not providing more than a small road bump in terms of challenge.

I’m sure you know that but you can speed up battle replays by pressing N (it moves to the next round).

Also, laughing at the Scarface comparison, I think he was rather cowering behind the throne by that point, looking for an exit :)

1648

The big armies could not get there that turn. They were two or three provinces away and all they could do was move next door to your siege and hit you next turn. I simply did not realize how close your were to winning till that last turn. Obviously, I should have moved quicker.

I was still a turn away from master enslave…So, that would have been a fun fight with the large undead army and teleporting in my pretender to master enslave…

That’s pretty much my AAR, I got to everything…just a little too late or I just didn’t think through where I was going a couple of times and then when I got there …oops. That won’t work.

My original thought was that I would avoid tarts and raid the world to death with ghost riders and disease demons, but…my death mages just weren’t high enough pathed to throw it around wily nilly. (Yeah. OOPS)

I thought I could do some really cool astral stuff, but then I didn’t really have enough of an astral income. 3-4 pearls for most of the game.

Thought I would twiceborn all my good mages and that would protect them from burden of time. Did you know wight mages still get afflictions? They do.

I think I’ve already revealed that Burden of Time and Arcane Nexus were supposed to go up together. Arcane Nexus fizzled. Burden of Time gave the world a legitimate excuse to make war on me and then to top it off Burden of Time knocked out my own Well of Misery killing not only the source of half my death gems but…talk about an income hit ! d’oh.

Dave’s plan of waiting for Marignon to fail and then coming after his capitol and the captured Agarthan capitol was really well done. By the time I finally moved against the Marignon seige at Wightwind range with the bulk of my force, I couldn’t (or didn’t) get enough mass to bear on either of the capitols.

The switch from mark to Farfrael and the stales with Burden of Time up didn’t do Marignon any favors. In retrospect, instead of trying to spell master my way in. I should have joined Nate against Marignon with the forces I had.

1649

Well, CoE3 is a complete flop in my opinion. I’m going to need more dominions. I’ve got the RAND game still going, and a couple duels. I’m thinking I could use maybe one more game, say 4-7 on a smallish map.

1650

It’s a different type of game.

I’ve been looking for a lite replayable strategy game that’s interesting and can be finished in an evening for several years. While there are things I don’t admire or like about COE3, it has not disqualified itself yet.

1651

I’ve played a lot of SP Dom 3, but never took the leap to do MP. CoE 3 has got me into this again and I think I’d like to give it a go. Can I get in on the next noob friendly game?

1652

I wouldn’t mind joining. I only have a few games under my belt, myself.

1653

I’d be in…

1654

As you might imagine, I was overjoyed when I got Scribble’s message that I was going to play Pythium in this my 3rd MP game. Pythium! Wellspring of Unadulterated Power, Scourge of Nations, Facestabber of the Gods. Ecstasy.

After wiping tears of laughter and desperation from my eyes, I decided to sit down, do some research and make the best of it. Initial expansion is not a problem on account of hydras. The problem with hydras is that they cost a ton of money. Since you also want some extra castles ASAP, you need cash, cash, cash. I also figured that Pythium’s non-cap mages can be okay-ish if you manage to forge some cross-path boosters like skull of fire, and your national astral could be nice later on if you land some Water income for clamming with your serpent priests.

I settled for a rainbow with good scales. (Enchantress with F1W4E4S3D1, dom 6 and O3P1H1G2L-2M1, if I recall correctly.) In hindsight, I cannot recommend this particular pretender build.

The first few turns were a breeze. Hydras are limited only by gold income, and I had plenty of that. Hydras eat heavy cavalries for breakfast, so I was able to attack farmlands without even thinking about it, netting me even more gold. Moreover, I nabbed the first bunch of mercs that appeared in the game for cheap. As a result I came out the gate as fast as, uh, whatever comes out gates really fast. Fun.

My problems started when I ran into actual opponents. To be specific, the first thing I ran into was TC, of all things. Archers. Lots of them. Archers on foot, archers on horses, archers on the PD, sacred archers with magic bows, so forget about Body Ethereal. Arrow Fend is Ench-6, and I had no real plan for getting into Air before Fairy Queens at Conj-8. Hello, Reality. I don’t think we’ve met before, but I can tell I don’t like you.

I was thoroughly overextended and did not have a second castle up yet that would allow me to switch to Pythium’s tower shielded heavy infantry, so I tried to deescalate and let TC take some provinces from me without putting up much resistance.

TC was having none of it and kept pressing the attack with a steadily increasing stream of E/D blessed Ancestor Vessels. I tried to decoy his archers with tower shields while continuing to rely on hydras (my other troops can’t even hit those high-defense zero-fatigue AVs properly), but did not manage to script my infantry in a way that allowed them to stay out of my own poison clouds. Then there is “fire large monsters”, of course. Hydras qualify.

The worst battles however were the few that I won: A mass of those excellent, slightly pricey Comitatenses pursuing a routed enemy army through the outgassings of five or six hydras makes for an exquisitely pyrrhic victory experience. I did learn a thing or two about scripting though.

When TC took the province where I was building my second castle, the game was over for me and my defense became more and more desperate. I even tried to stealth-preach in TC’s cap with my scout prophet and dom-rush with my puny rainbow (TC’s dominion was even weaker than mine), but no use. If only somebody coming from the other side had done the same…

It was 100% the old adage about ninth-level Alteration magic, ungulates, and the means of locomotion of the destitute.

TC had me in the bag, but getting attacked several times by others, most notably Caelum, prevented him from finishing the job. This in turn allowed me to retake a province or two here and there and do some defensive recruiting: Limitatenses have a castle defense bonus, and Pythium has a decent national assassin who comes with a Serpent Kryss and is totally worth recruiting if you’ve already lost and mages have become sort of pointless. These guys made themselves paid many times over before invariably falling to Ancestor Vessel bodyguards in the end.

Thanks to Limitatenses and assassins, TC’s siege of my capital took forever. I missed a few turn deadlines due to motivational issues but managed to more or less hang on. To my chagrin I staled my last turn, for which I had planned to cast Doom and land as many horror marks as possible on TC’s siege army as a farewell gift. Oh, well.

Summary

Tooth-and-nails defense can be a lot of fun, but LA Pythium sucks worse than vacuum.

That aside, with so many archer nations in the game I probably should have taken a medium A/low E bless instead of gunning for gems, clams and late-game power with my half-assed rainbow.

Overextension in the early game also made me a more than reasonable target for TC’s rush – if the term can be applied to something that starts on turn 10 and ends on turn 65. Keeping a lower profile early on and getting extra castles up quicker might have helped.

At any rate, thanks all for the fun game!

1655

I’m not able to participate in a new game myself - taking a breather now that I’m down to just one ongoing game (the glacial esposito). I could always take care of hosting a new game though. Looks like there are four people interested so far (Nate, pyrhic and the newcomers Nikolaj and Austen). Five to seven people are ideal I would say.

1656

Re: tenuki’s AAR

An air bless is rarely worth it, but for LA Pythium’s sacred hydras it actually makes a lot of sense. Their main vulnerability (aside from massed undead) is concentrated missile fire.

1657

I am interested, but I want to play a 60 turn game, not a 100 turn game, if we can set parameters to help with that.

1658

I would love to be in on a game. Would be a slow mover though.

1659

YOU AGAIN!!!

Actually, this time can we not fight out ridiculous wars that I end up losing? At least, not till the midgame.

1660

hey hey hey, lest you forget, you attacked me! After that, i had to go on progressive aggressive defense strategy…for the future…of the little apes…