[Dom3]Newbie EA game

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 4:50 am

TarkisFlux wrote:I appreciate the continued posts Drago. Most of them die out around turn 10-15 around here, and the mid game becomes this thing only heard secondhand. Thanks for keeping this one open to everyone.

I managed three. I think if I do every five turns I can actually find the energy. Maybe I'll do that for my next game.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:47 am

"Whateves. I would hae soloed em both, but I guess some help might let it go a little swifter.").

Posturing

. 1v1, that would have been tough.

It would have been vastly tougher had you raided. Neifelheim has ridiculously bad PD, and you'd proved early that you could have raided every one of my provinces, and I could have done nothing but try to spread my mages, putting one in every province...maybe.

Why didn't you choose to raid? I literally waited every turn for it, and it never came.

You also proved to be far better at guessing moves than I was; until turn 45, all I did was walk into your armies...

Also, you and Pangaea, not rush powers, chose to rush a rush power with another rush power aligning behind me. If you could have gotten Hinnom to eat some of my provinces (which I thought likely in the early game), it would have been a 4 way final amongst 4 equal powers. Hinnom thought he would gain more from going the way he did; and perhaps he did, but it could have gone very differently.

Pangaea I know nothing about; I haven't even created a game with them. But whatever they're supposed to do, it seems pathetic. Even in my other game (DenDom3) fighting in their dominion with a Gift of Health, it's slaughtering chaff with little challenge aside from their actual summons, none of which are Pan specific. Pangaea did nothing to me, and I kept waiting for it...but it never came.

So, yeah...pretty good game. Should have brought Hinnom in, or waited. My end game is not as good, and once everyone has thugs, having recruitable thugs is less special. But I had thugs early.

Re: Getting my replacement in: Admin options, Change a player's e-mail address, select nation, choose new e-mail address.

I'll do turn 50 in the morning, though.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:48 am

DSMatticus wrote: But mostly, I was never as aggressive against you as I should have been because:
1) Niefelheim and I didn't coordinate for shit past my first few attacks. Anytime my army got near you, Niefelheim would beat me there. So I'd pick a new target and then so forth and so on.
2) I lived in perpetual fear of your massed eagle kings, and backed away everytime they came near.

Yea i noticed this. but what got on my nerves a bit was with the order of turn resolution. I remember korwin pointing out that moved happens:
Magic spells (teleport etc.)
Movement to friendly provinces
Movement to enemy provinces.

In the early stages of the first raiding I just wanted to catch up to Nefielheim and you raiding my provinces, because my army could kill you then and there. But you guys apparently act before me in each of those phases described above, so i had to start predicting where you guys would go, sometimes i was right, sometimes i wasn't...

DSMatticus wrote: I'd wait a few turns before coming back with a bigger army that could survive some lightning spam (which, when we finally fought, that is exactly what it did, so that was a good call for me).

DSMatticus wrote: The last few turns were a joke; I marched my army up north to meet you, and wasted 2 turns of movement saying "oh, Niefelheim is about to take that, go back" or "oh, there's his army, need to go somewhere else." Then you started taking my provinces, and, well, let's be honest; your caster-chaff ratio is heavy on the caster side at this point. And you didn't have enough chaff to keep me back. So I upped my PD and put my army there. I honestly thought you were bum-rushing for my capital or something; I expected you to go the other way.

DSMatticus wrote: Self-analysis at this point in time: I tried to solve every problem with thugs and supercombatants. When that didn't work, I retreated to lick my wounds and went with low-risk strategies (throw blood slaves at it). I need to be less afraid of putting casters in combat, and more willing to build up conventional armies. Conventional armies won this, after all.

I saw your army heading to fort 24 first so I went to meet you there, but you backed off, then I thought that you would go for 31 so i went to cut you off so you had no retreat.

But while this was happening all those fires from afar (i was suprised you had that many gems) and those disease demons killing my Harab Seraphs eventually started adding up and next thing I know (especially after the 4 fires from afar at turn 50) I have little to know chaff. I think that is what killed me basically. Without enough chaff my backline mages are toast. If i had a lot more chaff, i.e. you hadn't used fires from afar, I could have probably just killed the army. I think i also made the mistake of setting too many Eagle Kings to Thug mode, I needed more of them spamming thunder strike. I was just worried about the commanders with the lightning immune ring. Speaking of which - i'm assuming you used those 15 air gems to get 3 rings of tamed lightning, but since the dom3 wiki is down, where did you get your air magic from? I didn't think Hinnom had air magic. If you did have air, I assume that you got some air income and it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

DSMatticus wrote: On the matter of Mel'qarts and Ba'als: Melqarts come with decent armor, so it saves some forging time and gems, which I was low on when I started kitting out. Astral mel'qarts also have enough astral to cast the same buffs I would with the ba'als. But yeah, I totally have astral SC ba'als sitting around that I just never got a chance to use because both you and Pangaea could murder my SC's (frostbrands, sleep spam). And teleport raiding is a nice idea I'd considered, but seriously; how many provinces did you have to raid? How long did you hold a province once your army left it, on average?

lol, this is actually true, not very long in fact. Point taken.

DSMatticus wrote: I was close to using my fire ba'als as battle casters, which I thought might be a good last resort way to take out your eagle kings.

While this is a good idea, the fact is that as soon as i see you do this, I would have loaded an eagle king or another water caster with a water gem to cast rain. Rain doubles fatique and lowers precision of fire spells, when combined with storm, it doubles again.

DSMatticus wrote: Edit: P.S., Drago, you probably should have just split up your major army into groups of flying eagle kings. A few SC's in front, a few lightning spammers in back, and then raiding the shit out of everything. I don't really think there is any PD that would survive that. There's no reason to have kept them in one big army like that, and that kept you unresponsive compared to the sheer number of provinces Niefel and I could take per turn through raiding.

Yes i did start thinking about this, and did start trying to do in the the very few last turns, but the thing for me was that i was more worried about was the armies from both you and Nefielheim.

Also what put me off what this tactic was the fact that I actually couldn't actually hurt the Air random Niefel Jarls from Niefelheim (they come with cold immunity and just cast resist lightning). When my army did fight one, they one by ghost wolf spam from the Eagle Kings. As in the Jarl couldn't actually move from where he was and more ghost wolves were being made per turn than he could kill. Eventually they get some lucky shots in and he dies, but that was a very BIG eventually.

I was also scared of teleporting Ba'als ruining my raiding party's day. So i just kept them together mostly.

I also consider not doing this because of the lack of Eagle kings avaible to me, after that initial raiding i was low on money. and I didnt want to answer the question: "how many eagle kings/casters are enough to raid a good amount of PD?" (assuming you didn't start putting insane amounts of PD in the provinces) and end up losing those precious Eagle Kings. But in future this question will be answered through more experience with Caelum.

However thanks for bringing this up, I will probably incorporate some raiding strategies like this in future.

TarkisFlux wrote: I appreciate the continued posts Drago. Most of them die out around turn 10-15 around here, and the mid game becomes this thing only heard secondhand. Thanks for keeping this one open to everyone.

Thanks, although admittedly, they did start eating into my time. Which started to become less and less with recent work that needed doing. I probably won't to another write up for awhile.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:50 am

Hinnom gets an A2 random on their main mass recruiting mages 25% of the time (otherwise S2, E2, F2), and an A4/B3 national hero.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 7:40 am

Drago wrote:But you guys apparently act before me in each of those phases described above, so i had to start predicting where you guys would go, sometimes i was right, sometimes i wasn't...

I just learned this myself, but movement is basically simultaneous; you never move 'before' someone. Both of you move into the provinces you selected, and then it checks those provinces to see if there should be a battle or not. So unless you think they're going to stand still, you should never try to catch them in the province they are currently in. It's impossible. The only exception is if your army goes from A->B and their army goes from B->A. That can cause 1) a fight in province A, 2) a fight in province B, 3) move past eachother, or 4) don't move at all.

So, you pretty much always have to go where your enemy will be, not where they are.

Drago wrote: I saw your army heading to fort 24 first so I went to meet you there, but you backed off, then I thought that you would go for 31 so i went to cut you off so you had no retreat.

I was looking for a fort to siege, but I didn't want to hit one your army was near (didn't want to be attacker against your army) and I didn't want to run into Niefelheim doing the same thing. I wanted to be the defender against your forces. PD? Even better. And you let me have that by chasing me, which was nice and gave me more stuff to soak lightning with.

Drago wrote:But while this was happening all those fires from afar (i was suprised you had that many gems) and those disease demons killing my Harab Seraphs eventually started adding up and next thing I know (especially after the 4 fires from afar at turn 50) I have little to know chaff. I think that is what killed me basically. Without enough chaff my backline mages are toast.

My fire gem income is actually fairly low, but I have a huge gem income in gems I can't actually use (water) or gems I had massive excesses of (death, nature, air, some earth). I alchemized them into fire just so I could burn through chaff and maybe get lucky and kill some weak mages; like I said, your caster/chaff ratio gave me good odds of hitting them with fire bolts.

Drago wrote:i'm assuming you used those 15 air gems to get 3 rings of tamed lightning, but since the dom3 wiki is down, where did you get your air magic from?

Like Ikeren said, my recruit everywhere mages get a random 2-pick of A/E/F/S. I have 3-4 airs sitting around. Give them dwarven hammers, a ring of tamed lightning is 3 gems; I built 2-3 rings, and the rest went into site-searching, which gave me a fairly impressive air gem income, which gave me more rings and other air goodies. There are way more rings than I am currently using; I actually offered some to Niefelheim, but I think that kind of got forgotten. I figured he gave up on the unbeatable SC strategy, then my scout saw the jarl battle with resist lightning. I guess he could have used them after all; oh well.

Drago wrote:I was also scared of teleporting Ba'als ruining my raiding party's day. So i just kept them together mostly.

This is fair. If you started splitting your units apart, I would have hit you hard with blood magic and teleport strikes. But at the start of the war, I wasn't ready for that. If you had done this earlier, it probably would have been devastating.

P.S. if you had stayed in the game, this turn is basically the same as the last: another barrage of fires from afar, even more assassination attempts, and massive horror spam which probably won't do anything but it's more than one this time, so maybe sheer numbers...

So, now that you've refined your Caelum and you're playing them again in the 'Yet Another EA Game,' no offense but I hope you stay the hell away from me.

It was hard enough this time, damnit.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 12:26 pm

DSMatticus wrote: I just learned this myself, but movement is basically simultaneous; you never move 'before' someone. Both of you move into the provinces you selected, and then it checks those provinces to see if there should be a battle or not. So unless you think they're going to stand still, you should never try to catch them in the province they are currently in. It's impossible. The only exception is if your army goes from A->B and their army goes from B->A. That can cause 1) a fight in province A, 2) a fight in province B, 3) move past eachother, or 4) don't move at all.

So, you pretty much always have to go where your enemy will be, not where they are.

Ah right, so that's how it worked. I remember someone telling me it was in order of Nation ID or something...

I'll note that for next time.

DSMatticus wrote: I was looking for a fort to siege, but I didn't want to hit one your army was near (didn't want to be attacker against your army) and I didn't want to run into Niefelheim doing the same thing. I wanted to be the defender against your forces. PD? Even better. And you let me have that by chasing me, which was nice and gave me more stuff to soak lightning with.

Ah yes turn order of attacking/defending, something a forgot a bit about, but I thought i had enough chaff anyway... you know the rest.

DSMatticus wrote: Like Ikeren said, my recruit everywhere mages get a random 2-pick of A/E/F/S.

Now i remember why I wanted to play Hinnom at one point...

DSMatticus wrote: This is fair. If you started splitting your units apart, I would have hit you hard with blood magic and teleport strikes. But at the start of the war, I wasn't ready for that. If you had done this earlier, it probably would have been devastating.

and @Ikeren

Most of the early parts of that war was trying to kill numerous raiding armies, so i thought that you would already be ahead by the time i sorted the first wave. So i tried to play defensively and rush for my late game.

That and: being raided -> no gold -> can't recruit more Eagle Kings...

So yea... i was kind of on a bit of a shortage.

DSMatticus wrote: So, now that you've refined your Caelum and you're playing them again in the 'Yet Another EA Game,' no offense but I hope you stay the hell away from me. It was hard enough this time, damnit.

lol, thanks, but that was me playing Caelum while I was crippled, so...

Well if you don't bother me I don't bother you, that's how i normally play, but... *looks at NewDom3Game*

But I don't carry grudges, so

@Ikeren

Yea, as I've said before, big mistake at rushing a rush faction

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:18 pm

Drago wrote:Well if you don't bother me I don't bother you, that's how i normally play, but... *looks at NewDom3Game*

But I don't carry grudges, so Smile

I didn't mean to create that particular habit, you just always manage to be threat #1.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:52 pm

Really? After this game, DSM, I'd watch you in future games very closely

@Mister Sinister: .anderson@gmail.com is Orion's email, done via: Admin options, Change a player's e-mail address, select nation, choose new e-mail address.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:10 pm

Done and done.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:20 pm

orion
plus
.anderson@gmail.com

is Orion's email. Might want to make that clear. I don't even know if you can start a gmail with a period.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 8:45 pm

Oh, whoops, screwed that up.

Anyways, Orion, let me know if you don't get to submit a turn 51, or have any questions.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:15 pm

It's alright, Ikeren and DSM, I knew that.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 7:33 am

Can I please get Orion to confirm that he received turn 51

?

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:23 pm

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm at work. I can take a look when I get home in about an hour, and try to get a turn in tonight. When is it due?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:23 pm

It was already due, and Niefelheim stalled. The good news is absolutely nothing changed on the score graphs, as far as I can tell. No provinces exchanged hands, no non-AI armies got destroyed. It doesn't look like a rollback will be necessary. Turn 52 is out now.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 12:44 am

I have turn 52.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 1:57 am

I need the Map file. EDIT: Solved

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:40 am

Sorry about this. Messy few days, as you might imagine.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:44 am

Despite having put in no orders, I still killed 9 eagle kings and 250 rlyeh freespawn, with no losses, so I think it's cool.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:54 am

Lol. Seriously? The AI managed to lose the eagle kings that fast? Impressive.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:01 am

10 Eagle Kings ambushed 3 of my Niefel Jarls. I think they were scripted to spam lightning spells, which would have been supereffective if my jarls weren't immune to lightning. Instead they did literally nothing but spawn illusionary wolves while my jarls ever so slowly advanced on them.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:21 am

Ahh. That actually worked for Drago at one point. I'm not sure why it didn't this time; I guess Ikeren had taken plans to prevent them winning that way twice in a row. Oh wait, you mean 3 niefel jarls together? That would definitely explain it. Yeah.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:53 pm

The first time I did not have re-invig. Wolfspam eventually fatigued my giant out even with the bless.

Then I pulled back guys and got them re-invigged.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:33 pm

Anyone selling hammers?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 6:52 pm

Mister_Sinister, can you throw in a, let's say, 24-hour extension for this turn? The deadline's coming up, and Orion hasn't submitted yet. I suspect he'd also appreciate the extra time to get acquainted with the game he just took over. He submitted, I was worrying over nothing. Sorry about that.

@Orion, at this late in the game, Hinnom traders have closed their doors. Good news: Caelum probably has some from Pangaea and you're sitting on a lot of their forts. Those mages will drop lots of loots.