Its quite funny to hear so many players congratulating me on diplo, because this was my first big game. My background is mainly Dom3 head-to-heads… no diplo, just fighting! I didn’t even know what a NAP was when this game started!
I think the nature of the water nation and BoT pretty much forced me to play that way. The large, weird-shaped water provinces led to a crazy amount of border tension, and I’d discovered most players very early in the game, so I was getting constant complaints about temples/troops on peoples borders… but every water province I had at that stage was on someones borders, so I couldn’t build troops or buildings anywhere in the water without tension! Most of my diplo was just a panicking attempt to stay out of too many fights at one time!!
Add BoT, which forced players to join up against Ermor (and Asphodel, who also benefited), and it was a very diplo-intensive game, especially for a player like me that mainly enjoys the battles, and not so much the diplo or the long-term strategy :)
Akaoni
1682
Ctis AAR for QTFour
A middle aged game, and Ashphodel and Ermor were already chosen. I decided that those two would be plenty irritable to other players, so the Miasma of Ctis would be down right neighborly. I went with a manticore with high astral as my pretender, in part to cast Solar brilliance and get those high level astral globals going.
I started ( and ended) clinging to the western coast, with no plains, one swamp, and the rest of it mountains. I was able to get into the water early, but quickly bumped up against Ermor just across the water from me - and his home pumping out black candles like no tomorrow.
My expansion to the east quickly found Asphodel coming down from the island. He quickly made an NAP with him. I build a castle on the bridge off the island and started spamming priests from it. Further east I hit Abysia, and to my south I found Bandar. Abysia was quick to arrange friendly terms, and Bandar and I were separated by a strongly held Throne, so I was pretty set to research and build up and attack someone of my choosing. I had no access to scouts either, and empoisoners, while good at scouting, tend to alarm those neighbors who you want to keep friendly. So my map vision was woefully bad. Still, I was hopeful to carve out something.
Then the BoT hit. While my mages all had enough death and nature to keep them alive, lizard infantry aren’t as long lived. My troop numbers dropped like crazy, even though I had growth to go with the Miasma. My diabolical plans for invading someone other than Ermor dropped, and I looked to go across the water to fight the undead.
Well, that would require researching construction. And I didnt have much in the way of water income. BoT hit really early, and was a surprise. Oceania then started talking to me, trying to get a diplomatic push to attack Ermor. I didn’t fully believe him, because I had snuck an empoisoner through ermor territory ( the undead suck at patrolling). I could see a lonely Oceania province adjacent to ermorian provinces. I wasnt to sure about Ulm either… that border looked mighty weak. But eventually I gave into Oceania’s entreaties and tried to coordinate my one army with the rest. I had hoped that ermor would cross onto the Ctis home so i could face him with all my mages, but no such luck.
The rest of the game for me was research, buying a mage and two priests per turn, converting gems to astrals to dispel, and cursing Ermor. By the end I could curse Ermor fluently in three languages for five minutes without repeating myself.
Rewind the game 10 turns, and those 400 D9-blessed sacred heavy cavalry with their MR buff against banishment would have been unstoppable. Especially against Oceanias overpriced and useless priests.
By the end though, I’m pretty sure I had the firepower to deal with them. Evo 6 had suddenly converted all my W mages into unresistable banishment spammers… in fact my Sirens were now flying, stealthy, amphibious unresistable banishment spammers! Revenge of the Sirens after BoT killed so many! :D
Add that to my earthquake spammers (not easy to get with Oceania, but managed to gather a few), my large numbers of revenant researchers who were also dust-to-dust spammers, and my nice selection of troop buffs, and the hordes of undead suddenly seemed a lot less scary.
QTFour AAR
There wasn’t much left of Vanheim when I took over. I did have a few things going for me though, a large number of priests who were unaffected by old age and a large stockpile of air and earth gems. On the turn I took over, Ermor tried to storm my capital. That combined with the constant casting of BoT meant that Ermor would have to be my primary opponent. I tried to secure other borders through diplomacy, and also tried to stall Ermor while I gathered strength. My research wasn’t great, either in terms of points per turn or spells already researched. I was a decent way up evocation and construction, but no available evo spells could match banishment as a weapon against the hordes of undead. It took me a few turns to realize that my rapidly shrinking human army was not sustainable so I turned to the clockwork horrors. I was able to maintain a rapid construction of them with my stockpile of earth gems and by trading my relatively useless air gems to Oceania. It was about this time that I began working much more closely with Oceania, trying to coordinate our attacks and keep Ermor off of the 2-point throne near me. This is really what kept my interest in the game. I knew I couldn’t win, but I felt I might be able to make a difference and help Oceania to the win. The rest everyone knows. I was only a minor power and probably made the biggest difference in that weird battle where Ermor’s pretender died. In the process though I lost 1/3 of my priests and from then on out all I could do was disrupt Ermor’s flow of reinforcements to the front.
Edit: Oh and I was worried for a while that as the game wore on Ermor would be able to start supporting his armies with thugs and mages. I’m not sure I would’ve stood much of a chance against something like skelly spam or geared up banes since I had no real counters available.
Yeah Vanheim and Oceania had a good synergy going on. I had weak priests, a shortage of A gems, and loads of spare E gems… Vanheim had powerful priests, spare A gems, and needed E gems.
By the end I was pretty much giving my entire E gem income to Vanheim to make clockwork horrors, with a few saved up for my earthquake casters.
The combination of Oceanias amphibious troops and Vanheims sailing troops also meant that we could keep Ermor guessing about where the next coastal attack was coming from.
The one problem I had with Vanheim was, I was terrified of building too many temples nearby, just in case I domkilled him by mistake! My dominion was pretty overwhelming to Vanheims northeast, thats why I wasnt too bothered about Ermor building temples to Vanheims east, or knocking down a couple of my temples in the area… that actually helped to stop me from domkilling Vanheim myself by accident! :D
A link to Oceanias final turn file, before I write a full AAR
The battle at Ravenna was key, since thats where the deciding throne was.
Earthquake/Cleansing Water was the combo that did the damage, I’d tried Earthquake by itself earlier but Ermor had enough tough troops in amongst the chaff to survive, and the MR bonuses from the priest support made Ermors troops very hard to banish with Oceanias rubbish priests.
Earthquake/Cleansing Water worked brilliantly as a combo though, especially using Sirens with Water Bracelets. EQ cleared the chaff, CW with its unresistable damage cleared everything else, and Sirens as casters were brilliant since they could fly, self-buff with aim, and were immune to EQ.
Buffs such as Mass Prot made Oceanias own troops pretty much immune to EQ, Antimagic helped against that annoying D bless damage/disease effect (Oceanias recuperating troops laughed off disease anyway, but it all helps).
Oceanias thugs were in all the right places to cut off Ermors reinforcements - 1 of them killed about 100 zombies single-handed this turn, and underwater they were nearly invincible against zombie hordes. That lonely thug underwater next to the crystal throne about to be overwhelmed by about 1000 zombies was in fact my best thug, and backed up with a some water elemental spam would be an easy match for a mere 1000 zombies :)
In addition, Oceanias Crystal Mages could use gateway to protect the last unfortified throne next turn… its so nice when a plan comes together.
Akaoni
1687
QTAnon
I don’t know about you guys, but I just recently summoned my second elemental royalty member. I have also started in on building the artifacts, so I apologize in advance for taking that Pocket Lich you had your eyes on.
All before turn 10! That must be some kind of record!
I’m guessing you meant Snoozers ;)
Nikolaj
1689
I think the elemental royalty was all spoken for a long time ago in Snoozers.
Regarding QTAnon Akaoni is of course lying. How do I know? I summoned all the royalty a couple of turns ago. ;)
Yikes - clearly we’re playing at another level of expertise entirely! How did you guys do that so quickly? How are we supposed to keep up? I might as well give up now, as I’ve only summoned a single Grigori, just this past turn. :(
QTAnon
Shout when you want to switch to 72 hour hosting, although it sounds like the game is nearly over anyway :D
Nikolaj
1692
Wait a second! Hinnom isn’t in the game! Or even in LA. I think you’re having a laugh. :)
Akaoni
1693
Its kind of difficult to talk about QTAnon without talking about it, so I end up reverting to bad jokes. :)
Speaking of bad jokes, my sea trolls were pathetic in my Snoozers battle with Ermor. I thought Ermor would reinforce, but I was not expecting so many. Pliny the Marbilizer, ‘She who looks like a truck’, cast Fog Warriors first turn, tied up my sea trolls with some chaff, and then the rest of the Ermorian mages just unloaded kitchen sinks on them. It was not pretty- but at least my upkeep is lower!
The Snoozers map is getting interesting now. Machaka is rapidly getting eaten up by Fomoria and Yomi, which just happened in the last couple turns or so? My harpy scouts die so quickly. Ctis STILL HANGS ON much to Arco’s regret, with like 2 commanders left. The sea belongs to Ermor, mostly. Arco and Pan are slugging it out, but now more on Arco’s territory. I am particularly proud of my Wraith King and his two pet Terrasques, who keep getting mind hunted and surviving.
What will be interesting is when the Fire King of Ermor meets up with Pan’s Fire King. If Pliny allows that type of consorting.
pyrhic
1694
Who the fire lord chooses to consort with is entirely up to the fire lord. However, I will say he does seem to have some discriminating tastes and he doesn’t take kindly to those he doesn’t fancy…and while he’s probably not the scariest SC i’ve ever seen, i’d say he’s bloody formidable, so i might recommend you choose to respect his wishes in the matter…
I’ll be interested in the AARs in this for sure…
We should rename the game FightClub.
pyrhic
1696
In light of the current world status and in order to safeguard the world for future generations, effective immediately, Ermor hereby declares all diplomatic agreements between itself and all other nations to be suspended.
Ermor feels it needs to have the capacity to act unilaterally and immediately to any crisis without consideration of the violation of possible diplomatic agreements and so this announcement is necessary. Effected nations however, should take comfort in knowing that Ermorian troops are not conducting any offensive operations and will act only in defense…of the world. Consulate offices are still available for any nations wishing to discuss this announcement.
Ermor: the world’s army, the world’s last hope.
Fomoria issues the same decree, though to be honest I can’t remember if I even made NAP’s with anyone.
Akaoni
1698
Well, I am feeling comforted already! Who needs a hug!
Nikolaj
1699
Sorry everybody, but my plans are coming to a head, and I really need some extra time for this turn, so I’m adding 24 hours.
Did you guys notice how I totally steamrolled C’tis? (sorry for taking so long, Tylertoo. I know it sucks to be down to just one fortress for so long).
Kelan
1700
No problem. I run into that a lot where I spend lots of turns researching, forging, and recruiting to be ready for a war and once the war starts, it can take me 2-3 hours to figure out what the heck I have and how I want to specifically use them.
In other news, I finally got my website up (first time ever for me) and installed Word Press on it and made my first blog entry. I am having fun messing around with it and am going to go back to Turn 1 in our QTAnon game and make a blog entry for each turn that people can review later on. Right now I am hoping to spend a good bit of time explaining my train of thought as I make decisions during the game, but time will tell if I can stick with it :). I am pretty excited to have my own website, though, and need stuff to blog about! This seems as good a choice as any, but until I can figure out how to hide or protect this area, I can’t release anything as people will know what I am doing! It will be hard to wait until the game is done to release anything, but it should at least be entertaining on some level and won’t take near as long to write now as it does at the end of the game when you can’t remember what the heck you were thinking back on turn 10.
