1961

Hah! I love it!

1962

Here we see ermor about 2 years later, turn 54.

Seeing no opposition, i’ve taken the water, up to and including the throne above Ctis capital. Ctis and I have just concluded our agreement, and i’ve taken over the lands east of their capital in exchange for free passage of their troops. Our agreement didn’t mention water rights, and figuring that Ctis wasn’t in a position to take exception, I seized the throne above the Ctis capital. More on thrones later.

The scouts that I have are starting to get in position and, coupled with my water activity, now give me a reasonable view of the world. Arcos is a little larger than me, Kail a little smaller. Fomoria and Ulm are fighting - Not knowing too much about Fomoria’s position, i figure it will likely win, but i’m unconcerned either way. Machaka owns a sizable tract to the north and I don’t know too much of them. Of Yomi, i know even less - they were involved in Neifel’s defeat, but i have no idea the extent of their territories. Pan is a concern - i can only affirm a few territories, but there’s a huge gap between them where i have absolutely no visibility (and never really would) - does Pan own all that?

Unfortunately, solving pan is difficult: I don’t really border it, excepting for the territories across the river to my southwest. 30 turns from now when I started to master amphibious invasions, i would wonder why i didn’t see this opportunity then. At this point, i’d like to engage Pan, but with no direct access, i can’t. This also prevents me from alot of other activity, since, if I cant attack Pan directly, i need to ensure that it has strong neighbors that can - so my diplomacy at this point is to support Kail, Arcos and Machaka so that they have the strength they need to engage Pan.

On thones. Ermor is now sitting on 5 points - the water throne (simple dom spread, 1 pt), the gaia throne(2 pt throne, giving growth and nature gems - gems which ermor had soo many it was struggling to find things to do with them: you can see on the image, 163 , with 11 more every turn), and the misfortune thone (2 pt throne, misfortune and astral gems). Victory condition is 8, so there is an end in sight. The problem is where to get the three. Of the remaining, Kail 2, Machaka 2, Pan/Arcos/Yomi/Fomoria sit 1 and one remains neutral. I don’t see benefit in attacking Kail/machaka or arcos - which leaves Pan/yomi/fomoria and the neutral throne as the only avenues of attack and all of those thrones are pretty buried. Fomoria is perhaps the easiest to gain, but between me and it are two capitals and a sizable investment of resources. That’s a lot of work for a one point throne. I elect at this point to not claim the misfortune throne - my astral income is pretty good, and I really, really, really don’t want misfortune dominion to hit my territories. As an aside, i know i can claim the throne whenever i want - and not claiming it may keep ermor off the radar unless someone has some really good scouting/information and can check who has that throne.

On research, I feel i’m doing fine. I’ve recently hit Cons8(turn 46 or so), and by my estimation only one nation is there before me, and then, only by a turn (i think i only saw one artifact missing). I’ve been taking this opportunity to scoop up artifacts(one of the reasons my astral gems are so low right now), and have so far accumulated a great haul: Barrier, Immaculate shield, armor of virtue, ember, tome of high power, aegis, crown of ivy king, and igor’s tome(which was a f’in misclick!).

So…Ermor is stuck. I don’t want to commit to a large campaign, I don’t want to impact Pan’s rivals, I don’t have a path to win…I’ll just…sit and figure something out for some turns while i collect artifacts and try to think of a strategy. Ermor’s in sitzkrieg mode.

1963

163 Nature gems… didn’t you have any of the common indie nature mages? And 225 fire gems, and you have fire mages with EA Ermor! You were really in sitkrieg mode.

1964

Ermor produces a F1N1 flamen 25% of the time in its non-fort labs(i had a couple), and I had access to a W1N1(+25% WEDN) jade sorceress indy, and of course, my N3 pretender - so i had some nature coverage. At this point, i was happy stockpiling gems until i decided what i needed. I’d rather have excess gems in case i want to do a big global, or some other summoning, than not enough cause I got some fire lions which were totally superfluous. The situation would have been different if i was at war, or had some other pressing need. At this point I’m producing 15F a turn, and 11N, so it stockpiles quickly.

At this point, i’ve focused on battle magics and construction, and so my summoning spells are also not fully available, nor are my globals. I’ve just realized this is something that needs correcting and shifted my research accordingly - in another few turns I’ll start on elemental royalty and a major nature summon so that I can start using those gems.

I was starting to realize a problem at this point…that dom4 had some very subtle changes with regards to path scaling. A lot of key summons got harder by a level or two, and so did some of the key magic items(I’m looking at you Banner of the Northern stars), and were just barely out of reach for my casters. For instance N5 is a key nature summon junction, but without an N4 caster, or a nature booster, it’s harder to reach. So you can summon an N3, give them a thistle, but they’re still only N4…which is still fine if you can craft a moonvine bracelet, but i couldn’t, and the staff of the treelords(n+2) is also an N5…There are ways around this, but it was a bit of a surprise problem at the time…

Also, I just noticed i had two more artifacts, dimensional rod and disease grinder(useless!), so that puts my artifact creation around turn 44…

1965

Snoozers Pan AAR Part one

Pangaea’s build was focused on the strengths of Pan, not trying to compensate for any weaknesses. That had its own issues later in the game. I went with a dormant Imrisul, N5, with order3, production 2, growth 3, and high dominion. A bless was useless with only capital only sacreds. The idea was to research Alteration, get Mother Oak as soon as possible with the Imrisul casting it, and get to Army of Lead/Gold. I was confident with the revelers and centaurs that they would be good candidates for the Army spells. I planned to win the old fashioned way, by crushing all before me and hearing the lamentation of their women, simply for the fact that I had no H3 priests. And until the very end of the game, I thought my pretender was immobile.

I was hoping others would think I would go for the traditional Turmoil 3/Luck 3 and have waves of maneads. And indeed, Abysia, only four provinces away from me, came straight for me, before even turn 10. Revelers could not stand up to his troops, but I had enough gold to churn out a lot of centaurs, which handled that army quickly. A bit of give and take, and soon I was besieging his home. A sub came in for Abysia, and had a lot of fun pushing my troops off by spamming Lesser Fire Elementals, but I came back and took the capital, finishing him for good.

Around this time I talked with Fomoria, establishing a NAP, and Yomi. My northern borders of Ctis Kailasa, and Arco were quiet by mutual consent. Kelan had taken over Yomi, who had a Misfortune 3 dominion, combined with some other bad scales. I have a soft spot for Yomi (see my username), so I told him I would protect his north if he did the same below.

I was quite pleased to find that I could make research hubs for only 700 gold in woods. 200 gold for temples and 500 for gold, got me a ton of sacred centaurs researching in the many forest provinces I started near. I also found a shaman site, but had to move them away each turn because of a disease site in the same province. With my home spamming out Dryads, Dryad Mothers, and the occasional Pan, I felt I was doing well with my research. Through diligent site searching I found two wizard sites, one with a fixed 1F1S1E, and one with variable wizards.

I was also able to capitalize on harpies being recruitable in all forest provinces. I build a ton of them. I used them for scouting, ferrying gems, ferrying troops, and occasionally commanding 10 centaurs as a raiding force vs PD. At the end of the game I had 46 harpies hiding in various places, usually enemy castles, solely acting as scouts. In addition I had at least two with each other army, carrying extra gems, with more in transit or waiting at labs.

1966

And what fun it was, the pleasing aroma of roasted Pan furries

1967

Really? From what I understand Pangea bless strategies are common, even if they only have a cap-only holy unit, the White Centaur is so good that is worth a medium level bless.

1968

Agartha, I can seeee you! Having flying scouts will be fun this game ;).

This is the part of open diplo games that I am not so good at. In a closed diplo game, normally I would lay out a fairly elaborate plan for us to try to secure some caves and borders so we can expand in other directions (or keep quiet and try to cut you off close to your capitol and hopefully have you not realize it right away). Any information I give out trying to work something out now will give information to everyone about our positions and could hurt our expansion. Ugh! This is going to be hard!

1969

Why resist? Just talk!

1970

Really? How…? Oh yeah you have flying scouts, unlike mine, I suppose you can cover bigger distances.

1971

Yeah, I know. That is the idea. Why do I have to go first, though?! :)

Agartha,

This is Balam, acting prophet of Iteva, sending a friendly gesture your way. One of our scouts has reported you have already holed up in an inviting cave near us so we plan to look elsewhere, if possible, to find our own underground home. We currently reside to your SW over the bridge and will take a look at the other caves to your West to see if they are open. The bridge is actually closer to us, but perhaps we can work out some borders in the area later on if you want to expand in your other directions first.

Balam of Xibalba

In other news, I have a horrible start with two 1500 pop provinces bordering my capitol and another with living statues, several Stone Monstras and a Golem. That certainly won’t help my blood hunting ideas! Ugh!

1972

See thats what I love about this game. One guy’s strategy is another guy’s meh. Back in Dom3 I used to use a lot of them, but I wanted to focus more on Revelers. They are very good when massed.

And yes, Psyanojim had quite the fun time making BBQ out of my Pannites! You gotta get back into Dominions, dude!

1973

QTHangman

Hail oh Icebirds of Shazzaleo! The monkeys of Lanka have noticed you flitting about in your beach home. We bid you welcome from the south. Do you want some bananas?

I would also like to talk to you about the wild rumors I have heard about cave dwellers. Some say that they are terrified of ducks, and that their teeth glow in the dark! Others say that they have two sets of knees and their voices can only be heard by cats.

Have you heard anything about them?

1974

Of course we have teeth that glow in the dark! What do you think it means Darkvision (100)?

@Kelan

Dear batties, haven’t you started in a cave? I thought you would live in one, if caves are available. That has to suck for you. (suck, heheheh bat joke).
Try to take the caves West and North of you and I will take the one to my North.

1975

Abysia were my favourite nation, before I discovered the joys of Oceania in QTFour/QTDoom :)

Yeah, I need to get back into it. Real life is so time consuming though!

1976

QTSnoozers Pan AAR part two
With these harpies I watched Agartha attack Kailasa, to my west and north west. Kailasa came back with a nicely buffed army, and was slugging it out with him when Machaka came up from the southwest. I believe that Machaka, with his earth 9, Nature 4 Lion warriors also attacked Agartha, but I might be mistaken. Niefelheim was just to the south of me, and I also watched a few of his battles as he and Machaka crushed Agarthan troops and marched north.
Neifel’s lack of significant spells being cast during his battles, not having many mages at home, and not having much in the way of Provincial defense, made me plan my next attack against him. I spent several turns carefully sneaking armies of armored centaurs led by dryads or centaur leaders into his provinces, followed by a few armies of revelers led by Pans. The idea was to take multiple provinces in a single turn, and the move onto his castles. But you had to be very careful with how many troops you put under each commander, and the path they took between the lax PD provinces and the provinces with standing armies.

There was another reason I wanted to go after Neifel. I wondered about the throne he had. My forest provinces kept getting hit by vinemen, mannikins, and even troglytes, independents, every turn. I though that maybe if I took the throne, it might force a change to some other random event. As it happens, that Nature event was just bugged. But I was still finding Monster Boars all over the place; with my use of revelers, it was sometimes hard to see what was causing the unrest, the revelers or something else.

I was worried about Yomi, as well. Nothing to do except research and build up a huge army, so I offered him Niefel’s home if he joined in on the attack. He accepted. This had the further effect of lengthening my border with him, in effect taking all the beach provinces to my south. This helped immeasurably in protecting my south and east while I focused west and north.

While the initial attack went well, Niefel stubbornly defended all the way to the bitter end. Lloyd did a great delaying job, and took the full commitment of mine and Yomi’s forces.
Emboldened by this success, I started looking at Kailasa. He had staled a couple times, and I wondered just how engaged he was in the game. I tried the same type of attack on him as I did on Neifel. And that’s where everything became unraveled.

Kailasa’s response was immediate, and I could not handle his army of equipped Yavaras and sea trolls. In addition, Arcocephale came in on Kailasa’s side, claiming a defensive alliance. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Machaka, perhaps smelling blood after finally killing off Agartha, decided to mass along my borders.

It is here that my good scales came into play. I churned out so many raiding reveler armies, and hit all Kailasa castles with Monster Boars. I focused on Kailasa, while trying to keep Arco at bay. Arco leapt in with a bunch of Wind Riders, but I was able to paralyze the bulk of the army by seducing/assassinating his commanders with dryads. The dryads for me were virtually expendable - 155 gold, casting Swarm/ Frozen Heart /Frozen Heart, they usually killed their victims by the Swarm.

Arco for some reason resisted giving all the mages in border provinces bodyguards, so I was able to get a fair number of kills. I only really seduced a couple, namely one guy who went on to futilely mind hunt Fomorian thugs for the rest of his life.
With the seizure of most of Kailasa’s provinces except for three castles, I was able to shift to fight Arco and Machaka, who had finally attacked me.

Machaka quickly found out that he was behind on the research curve when he encountered my Army of Lead/Mass Regeneration/Relief/Growing Fury/Howl/Creeping Doom armies (Its a lot of fun watching 50+ dragonflies with a protection of 20 whittle down enemies one point at a time). For some reason I kept forgetting Strength of Giants, ( more likely I didn’t have the boots and blood stones to spare) and I never got in Construction to Weapons of Sharpness- I stayed at Construction 4 for an embarrassing long time. However, Machaka had immense armies. I once again asked for help from Yomi against Machaka, and my harpies watched as Yomi steamrolled through the center island. At the end of the game, Machaka still holds two castles, with a huge host of starving troops behind each one.

1977

QT3Snoozers Pan AAR part 3

Pythium then entered the fight over the remains of Kailasa. Careful, measured movements of his legionnaires crushed some small armies of revelers out and about in Kailasa territory, which still had some kitted out thugs resisting Dryads and being a nuisance. A huge set of battles erupted over a Throne castle adjacent to Arco territory. It was here that Pan would win one, then Pythium, with careful scripts and huge stashes of gems largely negating each side out. While my Army of Lead/Mass Regeneration/Relief/ was good, it was not good enough to withstand Fog Warriors/Arrow Fend/Will of Fates cast by the Gorgon and assorted Therugs. Very well, then, I will cast my own Fog Warriors.

Massive amounts of nature gems (Mother Oak was overriden when I cast Gift of Nature’s Bounty) were turned into Fairey Queens - her retinue was of little consequence, since I wasn’t dealing with Fomorian giants (yet). Crystal Matrixes and armor were supplied, and my careful horde of S1 mages went along with them when i was able to ferry them across. Usually they are map move 1, which meant my Pan armies easily outstripped their communioned support. By the end of the game I had six or so fairey queens in various parts of the world.

Pyhric’s Gorgon, however, was the main focus in the battle to my north. Finally, in another titanic struggle, I was able to claim the throne. This involved Mass Flight, then Fog warriors, along with the usual nature and earth buffs. Communion Matrixes are highly worth it, but ironically it made me value my S1 mages more than my centaur and dryad mages. I didnt have the gems to make the communion slave matrixes, and I didnt have the number of Pans to act as slaves in the communion/sabbath (although Reinvigoration is awesome in a communion/sabbath, of course).

Around this time, Arco had gone strictly defensive, which was good, since I didnt have the troops to deal with him. Throughout the game I tried to sneak my troops as much as possible to keep people guessing. I think it worked fairly well. I tried to move south from Neifel against an Arco held throne, but was wiped out. I started making in roads against Pythium, focusing on trashing his gold economy.

I was helped in this by the impact of the global Gift of Nature’s Bounty. With my Growth 3 dominion, I easily doubled my gold income, which, since my armies were still 95% revelers and centaurs, I was able to churn out tons more. At the end of the game, I was pulling in 20,000 gold a turn, building nothing but Pans and Centaurs from all castles, and still had enough left over to have a reserve of gold to cover my upkeep for two turns, and give Yomi 4000. It gave me so many more Pans, that I started blood hunting enough to summon Father Illearth in addition to my numerous Blood Stones. Oh, Disease Demons don’t do much against Fomorian giant thugs, either.

Fomoria, played by DireAussie, alerted us to the fact that Pythium was close to taking the win with a throne grab. I tried to fairy trod in a quick army, which was crushed the same turn Pythium got the castle up. My plodding forces also came up later to take the throne, but the throne win was adverted by Fomoria and Yomi.

I was next the unexpected winner of Fomorian giant visits. Each turn, three giants flew around, casually wiped out my provincial defense and any hapless troops that didn’t flee for their lives. One of them was blind the entire time he was romping around Pan areas - didn’t seem to have any impact on his abilities. DireAussie was careful that they did not repeat where they went; while I wasn’t able to kill them with Mind Hunts or Vengance of the Dead, I did have something in store for them, if I ever bumped into them. I had several parties of Centaur Leaders with Precision 16+ armed with Botuf Bows and Bows of War. They never got a chance, though.

The battles with Fomorian armies, ironically, followed the same as Pythium. Fog Warriors usually did a better job than Army of Lead + buffs, but having more armies allowed Pan to slowly whittle down the Fomorian defenses. At this time, Arco was totally defensive, hopefully not attacking due to the constant movement of a couple armies sneaking and unsneaking. Pythium had largely kicked out my raiders, but did not counter attack. During this time, I wanted to attack Pythium, but dealing with Fomoria took all my gems. For instance, during the entire game, I only had a trickle of death gems. I only ever built two Skull staffs for my two Lamia Queens. Air gems were used to ensure Fog Warriors went off, same with earth for Army of Lead/Iron bane/Curse of Stones.

1978

QT3Snoozers

Things I learned:

  1. Good scales for gold help jumpstart the mage factories.

  2. I do not make enough thugs. The one thug I had was a bane lord with gear and 2 Terraesques as bodyguards. Another air oriented thug decided to take on an entire Fomorian army, and actually lived, ran away, and was still recovering under my Gift of Health when we ended.

  3. Mistform/Fog Warriors rocks. I can see a use for Flaming arrows/weapons to mitigate it.

  4. Dryads seducing Harvester of Sorrows only makes the Dryads sorry.

1979

Did the Terrasques kill anything? Or are they too little for how late do you obtain them? I never used them. You would think the Bane Lord was the bodyguard of the Terrasque, and not the other way around…

1980

I got them fairly early, as I went Alteration 9 and then Conjuration 9. I had dabbled a bit with Construction to 4 in the middle of the Alteration push. I literally did not do any other schools until those were done.

The Terrasques really helped rout the PD, since the poison gas impacts a wide area. It works well with a horror helmet equipped thug. The bane is good because both him and the Terrasques are both really slow on the battlefield.