1661

Bandar is happy to call it as well. It has been a tremendously entertaining and interesting game in a few ways and the post game discussion should be interesting.

Congrats to psyanojim for the win.

Props also to Juan, who demonstrated exemplary early game power building and also to DireAussie, whose masterful stint taking over Asphodel will cause me nightmares for years to come.

1662

Seconded. I’ll bear the mental scars from the undead hordes in this game (both of them) for a very long time!

I don’t think I’ve ever been as relieved in any Dominions game as when my flight of Devils managed to take out that Asphodel Dragon…

1663

Hehe, my poor dragon had already been killed twice by Doom Horrors thanks to Sharaleo’s horror marks (must have been during the battle that got corrupted by the bug). In a 3rd Doom Horror attack he got really lucky with a Hand of Death. That seemed to scare them off!

Short AAR from my side:

When I took over I was already being attacked by Bandar and Oceania. My gold income was already bad and gem income wasn’t fantastic so the game was always going to be a holding out for as long as possible. I achieved several important victories against Bandar - one which wiped out his pretender and many of his mages. Oceania was more cautious and preferred smaller attacks in my south while I was engaged with Bandar. Eventually I lost by attrition since my income dropped to 0 and I needed my priests in my armies so I couldn’t raise more manikins.

To try and divert Oceania’s attention and to gain some allies for my cause I sent 50-odd death gems to Ermor and 100 blood slaves to Abysia. Though by that time it was too late.

In retrospect there’s a few things I could have done in battle to improve my effectiveness. I should have suicided my minotaur prophet (which I had when I took over) and made one of my H3 priests the prophet so he would be H4 for casting mass regrowth. Or use my crystal mages to forge a crystal matrix for a H3 to communion them up to H4. Also, I only realised quite a few turns in that my Carrion Dragon can regen via the Regrowth spell.

Grats psyanojim for the win and well played to Juan - the forum banter also made for some entertaining reading!

1664

Haha, I was cautious because I realised very quickly that my troops were complete rubbish against Asphodels manikins! I also spent the vast majority of the game at war with multiple players at once, so could never focus firepower on a single nation until right at the end.

tbh, I would have been happy to leave Bandar and Asphodel alone to slog it out, since wahoo initially attacked Bandar before DireAussie subbed in… but the ridiculous amount of dominion Asphodel was pumping out (EVERY Asphodel province on that island had a temple on it at one point), meant that the only option I had for keeping my population alive in that area was to start knocking down Asphodel temples as fast as I could.

If wahoo had been more ‘neighbourly’ with his popkilling dominion, I could have stayed off that damned island!

I ended up being at war with Asphodel for longer than any other player, playing whack-a-mole with the manikins popping up everywhere and trying to avoid getting wiped out by that Dragon, all to gain a bunch of zero income wasteland. What a nightmare. :D

1665

QTFour

Congrats to Psyanojim for the win, Juan for taking on all comers, those who stuck it out till the bitter end, and those who subbed in.

I have closed out the game.

QTSnoozers:

Fine Ermor, blame me for your misfortunes. It must be cruel place in Ermor, with the threat of Death in the next age lurks around every corner, not being able to look your God in the face for fear of turning to stone, and the harsh instructions of the Augurs.

Pan, however, just lazes around, cavorting with nekkid ladies and basking in the warm golden sunlight. Its good to be in Pan, where all your wounds are healed ( including Leprosy), you recuperate quickly ( more stamina for the ladies), and the food is good and plentiful.

I can see where the Ermoreans would be envious. Some of the Arcocephaleans have even decided to join us!

1666

QTFour

In honour of Oceanias glorious victory, I hereby declare today - National Fish Boy Day!

Fish Boy sends apologies for his absence, he is still recovering from having his head bitten off by an Ermorian zombie. Our priests are trying to call him back, but Oceania priests are quite expensive and useless, so this may take some time.

We would normally offer naked mermaids to cavort with, but unfortunately they have all been prematurely aged by Ermor and refuse to be seen in public. Our Capricorns have offered to step in, but big shaggy goat-fish-man-things are just not as much fun at parties.

And to all those who think underwater nations are weak or useless, your punishment is to listen to the soundtrack of The Little Mermaid on repeat for the rest of eternity.

ALL HAIL FISH BOY!

1667

A screenshot of the map used? I’m curious to see if there was a lot of water, as Ocenaia won.

1668

Ah, so you do pay attention to this thread, we will entice you into a MP game yet… ;)

Map was this bad boy:

urraparrand

FS4EQ0d.jpg1078×494

Plenty of water and much of it contiguous. Also, Oceania was the only amphibious nation in the game, which gives some breathing room to establish a power base. Add to that the fact that Oceania is actually no slouch on land (psyanojim will sing their praises) and you have yourself a handful.

Though I don’t truly believe those things ensured Oceania the win as you’ll probably see once the AAR’s start coming in. Ermor drew a target on their back early and when the smoke finally began to clear with the undead looming even larger a threat, there were few pillars of strength left to challenge. psyanojim played a very good diplo game (IMO) to wrangle support from the surviving nations and build into a powerhouse to take him on. This was despite Oceania already being involved in three wars through the course of the game. psyanojim and Juan both played excellent games and it was one heck of an entertaining slog, but if there was no support to bring down the 200lbs Ermorian gorilla, Oceania would have been beaten down eventually as well. Burden of Time spamming will kind of get people vested in trying to take you down, such is the nature of Dominions!

1669

Yeah, there was a good amount of water, but more than half of it was completely killed by Ermor and Asphodels dominion, and Ctis/Ermor cut me off from a large chunk of it for most of the game too. I only controlled around 20 water provinces at my peak, and only around 10 of them were good ones.

The biggest advantage of the water was ensuring I had a solid core powerbase which couldnt be threatened, even by poor-amphibious nations like Ermor. But as Sharaleo says, Oceanias ability to compete on land was far more important, thats where the vast majority of the battles happened, and thats where the good provinces were.

The water also had some big disadvantages as well, which I wasn’t expecting since I’d never played a water nation in a big game before (in fact, this was my first big game ever). The physical size of water provinces and their neighbour count means they get domkilled/popkilled very, very easily by land temples (which is why Asphodel caused me so many problems, and why so much of the water on the map was zero-income wasteland)

It also means you end up neighbouring lots of players very quickly, which is why I had to focus on diplo so much - I couldnt build a fort or temple anywhere without someone complaining I was building aggressively on their borders!! :D

The most important thing in this game was Burden of Time, which was very overpowered at the start and was nerfed heavily mid-game (so Illwinter clearly agreed it was overpowered). Everything else pretty much revolved around this, it gave the undead nations a huge advantage and crippled research for a lot of the game as it killed so many mages.

I personally think the map gave Ermor as much of an advantage as Oceania - the proximity of the 200 gold/turn throne meant Ermor could spam forts/temples everywhere, and the land bottlenecks on all sides meant Ermor had a very solid core powerbase too that was nearly impossible to breach.

1670

I also played the EA Oceania version in QTDoom, and was able to overpower both Rlyeh in the water AND Sauro on land… so my opinion on Oceania generally is… I LIKE THEM! :)

1671

You bring up a good point, psyanojim. QTDoom was a lot of fun, even though it was painfully brief.

Is there any interest in another disciple game of some format? Pyrhic did really well coming up with the parameters for QTDoom. I nominate him to come up with another disciple game, in some age, format, and theme. Whos with me in volunteering him? :)

1672

I’ll post my last turn file with the AAR as well, so people can see the deciding battle with Ermor, but also see how much more important my land empire was compared to my water empire.

Again, looking back over the game, the bottlenecked nature of the water caused me a huge amount of diplomatic grief. Most of my aggressive actions were to try and make sure I didn’t get my water empire chopped in half or my water population wiped out, and a large portion of my diplomatic messages were apologies for building water forts and temples on peoples borders, because all my water provinces were on someone elses border!

1673

In fact, while I’m rambling, and before I post a full AAR, if I had to pick the single biggest advantage of Oceania in this game, it wouldnt be the amphibious/water nation aspect at all.

It would be their ability to survive Burden of Time better than most human nations.

The cost-effective researchers (Sirens) start close to old age and got wiped out fast, but Oceania had a long-lifespan (but expensive) option to fall back on - the Capricorns. They are very cost-inefficient researchers, but at least I had some battle mages I could rely on while most other mages in the world were dying.

Most Oceania troops also had a good 50-60 year buffer before they reached old age too. So the initial overpowered Burden of Time wiped them out quite fast, but the later nerfed version barely even scratched them.

Burden of Time defined this game. Short lifespan nations never really had a chance.

1674

QTFour - I was refraining from posting about the end because I kind of wanted to see how long the March of the Geezers could last (or would that be the Walker Brigade?)

My counter-counter attack on Ermor consisted of 50-80 troops, some archers and about 10 Communioned Mystic geezers (multiple Mystics in the Communion with ages over 100). I had kitted out as many scouts and commanders as I could with Herald Lances, and even teleported my immobile Oracle God (a very poor rainbow - 3’s at best in the build - I didn’t understand bless mechanics well as I had skipped over them as I dove into a Disciples game early and never got to that part of the tutorial/manual). I was even gimped with regards to boosters as the damn Oracle has no hands or head! That’s what I get for role-playing the greeks, I guess.

I also had a large force of priests making the pilgrimage to fight the zombie horde with reinforcements which were reclaiming (by consent) land from Oceania.

I was going to have fun with those geezers though… Ermor didn’t look very Astral-capable, and I was going mind-duel to crush any mages with my 5 (or 6) astral Astrologer leading the communion and casting power of the spheres. I had the Astrals to make the banner of northern light as well, but hadn’t crafted it yet. I also wanted to see if my Pretender could do some damage against Ermor with a bit of the Control Dead spell - I thought it would be fun to see if I could turn some of those zombies against him.

From an AAR perspective, I made a bunch of mistakes. It started with the poor Pretender build, I compounded it by missing the PM’s from Oceania re: Ermor and the impending BoT, and then I had too much confidence in my large, light infantry army in the North. If I had come to an early NAP with Oceania, I probably could have held my Throne of Winter and grown quite well. As it was, Oceania mowed through that light infantry army and all the way to my home citadel. I was able to break his seige, but just barely - and I learned a lot from being under fire in this game about getting creative with armies and army positioning, etc. Of course, I did most of my learning in defeats but was able to apply lessons later, and in other games.

However, Oceania crushed my income, and I was never able to go with the communion matrix strategy I had planned on as I had 0 earth gem income for 95% of the game. I only found one site with them all game, and it was one of the early ones I too and then lost to Oceania.

The worst effects that BoT had on me was killing all of my scouts. Arco’s preistesses did a pretty good job of healing the old age afflictions in my armies, and I had a high enough dominion that my small border with Ermor wasn’t too much of a problem, though I couldn’t go on a good offensive against Ermor until I had built some Supply boosters, due to the deleterious effects of his dominion, and by the time I had built them, Ermor had been able to build a counter-attack on me.

It was a fun game though. I wish I could have seen the score graphs at the end though. Well Played Juan and Psyanojim!

1675

I don’t think this is unusual. Most of my more enjoyable dominions games were defeats where I learned something. (Of course…that’s also most of my dominions games.)

FWIW the games that I won, I generally did not enjoy because I spent so much time anxious about if my plans would work or not. That’s my issue, not the game’s.

1676

Yeah, war between Arco and Oceania was definitely something I never wanted, and I was willing to make peace even after you attacked me, until the point where you raided one of my water provinces with Ichtyids… now that was just plain rude, and I had to get revenge for that! :D

Those northern lands I took, especially the Throne of Winter, but also the area around Pans capital, became the absolute epicentre of my power. Loads of income, loads of gems, and the Mages of Winter got me into Death magic, which allowed me to summon loads of Revenant researchers which were near-immune to Burden of Time. This was crucial for getting my research back on track after my Sirens got slaughtered by BoT, and got me the late-game magic that eventually defeated Ermor.

1677

I really want to join this conversation! However, real life is rough this week…

Needeless to say, I think pysanojim played an excellent game, specially the diplo, IMHO.

This was my second Dominions game (the second started, the third ending) and I don’t have too much time to devote to the game, so I came in conscious I would have no mid to end game strategy. That was the idea of choosing MA Ermor. An easy to play nation that ( I thought) was going to be fun at the beginning and then lead to a fast demise.

I was reaaaaaally surprised at how powerful I got.

What hurt me most those final turns was actually my lack of confidence (on top of the lack of plans). I only thought I had a real chance after that battle at the two-pointer that sparked all that forum banter.

The problem is that I had not positioned myself to fight (I had given up), so the next turns featured me trying to move 400 sacred into position through hilly terrain. They never got where they needed to the castle they needed to occupy to making sieging it unwise.

I’ll write more later, but Ermor is an interesting nation that becomes weaker as the game progresses. I think BoT was a little overpowered at the beggining, and definitely gave me an unfair advantage that I failed to capitalize, but I don’t think Ermor is a viable nation without a powerful BoT, given how hard to get good troops is mid game. I think the nerf was needed, but without trying it for a longish period of time I can’t say wether it’s been too big a nerf or not.

It was definitely a great and fun game to me, but I’m afraid that wasn’t so for many other players caught in the initial BoT.

1678

What was the nerf to BoT? It isn’t in the official changelog, and that covers changes form all the year.

1679

Pysanojim explained it a while ago (I knew because he found about it, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed). I don’t remember, but the aging is slower, because it’s not for sure now, but a random chance (that can be resisted? I don’t know). Basically he did some tests and found out it’s effectivity was more or less halved (half the aging)

1680

I discovered the BoT nerf buried in the desura forums somewhere, a short post by one of the devs. And yeah, it isn’t in the patch notes or changelog, but its power definitely decreased a LOT after the 4.10 patch. It went from devastating to barely even noticeable for Oceania (although it is still quite unpleasant for short lifespan nations)