Of course, it is worth noting that Pan is doing quite the fightback. I expect plagues to spread through my troops quite effectively. A disease demon already knocked one expensive mage around, and a druid has since died to an earth elemental that basically made him go splat. Add an extra 1000 points of defense to the Bandar fortress makes it longer to crack.
Akaoni, my Pretender has since disappeared. The dominion effect shifted his hp down to make him more like a kitten than an ethereal shadow working in the background.
This really is do or die for me. If this siege fails, I’m basically just gonna be on the defensive until the end.
Caelum, Eiru is much weaker than Pan’s capital. Pan has been preparing for an Eiru sneak attack, so 2 Air queens and 300 odd birds and devils are not going to be that rough.
I do wonder where all the other summoned royalty went…
I see now Caelum’s plan. Move in on Pan, Shin, and Bandar capitals. Shrug off Ys’s holding of Shin, take advantage of Ys 's besieging of Bandar, and if Eiru makes a move, brush him off with other available forces.
The interesting thing is that it will take a couple turns for him to get to Shin and Bandar, at least with his main forces. Unless he has some neat artifacts, or decides to fairey trod like Ys did (I think). He will probably be on Pan this coming turn, given that everything can fly, and follow up forces can take the intervening provinces.
I looked at all the messages today on the new turn and went meh. Interest has well and truly waned. Sorry guys, I’m just really tired. Also, now I know what it means when Faery Trod won’t end up exactly as planned. I guess that surprised you as much as me Akaoni.
Not as half surprised as I am. I figured the Hidden One would be back with friends - didnt expect Mr Worm though.
I guess I hit end turn or something without saving a second time, since only the orders that I issued in the first half of my game session stuck. Consequently, my master plan to prevent you from taking Bear Grove, and even sending more than one commander, were foiled. Plus, I had an army go north, when I was mulling over some moves, instead of south, to join the others.
I really hope in Dom 5 Illwinter put in a prompt to close the game if a person hits the close button on the game window. I’ve been in that position before.
No, will see it out until the end. I’m just tired is all. Balancing work and university study is one thing I’ve managed for the last two years, but then switching to a temporary teaching role the last 2 months wore me out thanks to all the extra work I had to prepare at home. That has since finished as of Wednesday and I’m trying to get my shit together again. There’s no way this game can end without a winner. So pyrhic, you better get your Vengeful Water global up soon :)
Well, it was either going to be Ys or Caelum, since I had exhausted myself slugging it out with you and earlier with Caelum. And I didn’t want to award Caelum with 'turtle for 85 turns, and then emerge and stomp everyone.; Granted, I know that @kelan probably had a lot of real life issues - that is not how kelan usually plays.
For instance, once my sneak attack on the Caelum capital failed, I thought that he would start rolling all over Pan. But he didnt, so I was able to reorient and focus on Eiru. And that might have worked, if Ys hadn’t started to attack as well.
The real kicker was the lack of gems in the end game. I had 1600+ gold income minimum, even with the bards in, what, 10+ provinces? But I was going through all of the gems each turn, and that was what convinced me (besides the fact that I lost most of the big battles I got in) that I didnt have a chance to win, but I could choose who took Bandar.
Thanks everyone. Agreed @pyrhic, it was anti-climatic. I need a break from the game. I’ll get Dom 5 on release, but need the next few months away from the diplomacy angle. One message a few turns back got to me more than it should have, the high stress load I was under in real life blew it right out. @psyanojim hit the nail on the head earlier about the demands of late game Dominions. I am not happy with how I played the last 30 or so turns, it was sloppy and far from the best way to play the game.
I’ll talk a little bit about Ys later, the whole reason I played them is because I hadn’t ever had them in a game before being such a new nation and I’ll share my experiences.
The game can be so alluring, and I love the MP aspect of the game, but the length and commitment do tend to wear down even the most dedicated player.
I love the comment that Jasper made recently over at BF where he called the game a “Trial by Endurance”. That is how I feel some MP games go, and those willing to put forth the extra effort normally get rewarded with it.
I admit that I didn’t do that as much as I could have this game, but I did always make moves each turn to better my nation, and prepare for that time where I had an opportunity to make a move. I actually felt like that happened in the past few turns, and I was going to slowly start making a move to try to wear down Pan, while at the same time hoping that Pan and/or Eriu could hold off Ys winning the game. Early game, I was way behind on power, so did all I could to avoid the early wars. I was able to pull this off and establish a powerful core group of globals while, I believe, remaining near the lead in research. With the reduced income, I cranked out a crazy amount of Owl Quills and had probably at least 50 of them by the mid game. My main mistake was not leveraging my gem income maybe 20-30 turns ago and moving out with some of my powerful uniques to try to make a stronger move on winning the game. I will post some later, but I had just about all of the Caelum uniques summoned and they were quite powerful.
I probably should have done quite a bit earlier in the game. Here are some screenshots of my income at the end of the last turn, my magic treasury, and pics of the commanders in my capitol. I had quite a few tools I was prepared to use.
