[Dom3]New MA Game

[koz]

Alrighty, I guess we declare T'ien Ch'i the winner, and I say the game has ended. I'll give 24 hours for someone to disagree, and then the game ends.

I've learned that Man is really not a nation I enjoy playing. Hence, I'm on the lookout for something new to play in MA.

[Korwin]

Since the game is finished, I am surprised C'ties did not rat me out on owning the Steel Ovens (they where in his first the only fort I took).

Or did he tell the others in secret meetings?

[Orion]

I would imagine that a peace treaty involving castles changing hands would involve lots of Call of the Winds and/or indie commanders carrying wall shakers.

[Korwin]

Peace treaty?

[Username17]

Peace treaty?

Earlier in the game, Pythium claimed that he'd only agree to peace if we did a complicated series of province transfers that involved them being allowed to siege and conquer castles on the border (in exchange for provinces I couldn't possibly hold and arguably weren't his to give away in the first place). Since Dominions 3 does not in fact work that way and ceding a castle would have involved me spending much longer than the 3 turn NAP being offered allowing a giant army to build up and take my stuff along the border, I declined.

Orion was suggesting a method by which border castles might change hands without being totally obviously a setup for treachery: bringing in an "army" with a large siege power and little in the way of actual province capturing potential. I mean, it's still pretty silly, because "transfering" castles still takes a long time and results in a large net loss in production for both players, but at least that wouldn't be totally obviously in bad faith.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

I've learned that Man is really not a nation I enjoy playing. Hence, I'm on the lookout for something new to play in MA.

Aside form the utlity of learning how to play a combined-arms army (mostly in SP), MA Man is really on the underpowered side. It can do an early Wind Guide + Longbowman army, but it doesn't have many more options after that aside from lightning spam and various nature suite spells.

Also, I think this is the second game in recent memory wherein people made the mistake of letting Korwin run away with the game by leaving him alone until he gets his endgame stuff ahead of everyone .

[Drago0661]

Since the game is finished, I am surprised C'ties did not rat me out on owning the Steel Ovens (they where in his first the only fort I took).

Or did he tell the others in secret meetings?

To be honest I kind of forgot about that 20% forge bonus site, as I never was able to actually take advantage of it due to the lack of gems i had all game, I was really unlucky with sites.

I had other things to worry about at the time, (both in-game and out-of-game) so that also made it slip from my mind.

I guess it help you out a lot, I assume that the forge bonus stacks with dwarven hammers?

[DSMatticus]

I guess it help you out a lot, I assume that the forge bonus stacks with dwarven hammers?

Yes. With a hammer, it makes 5 gem items cost 2. It makes 10 gem items cost 5. It is amazing.

[Korwin]

Also, I think this is the second game in recent memory wherein people made the mistake of letting Korwin run away with the game by leaving him alone until he gets his endgame stuff ahead of everyone .

I think my luck was:
Frank is an much more obvious (and louder) threat than me.

Hmm, and C'ties did not use its mages at all in the war against me.
It would have been much more costly for me if they would have been used.

[DSMatticus]

Hmm, and C'ties did not use its mages at all in the war against me.

?! C'tis mages are awesome.

Also, I think this is the second game in recent memory wherein people made the mistake of letting Korwin run away with the game by leaving him alone until he gets his endgame stuff ahead of everyone

I'm gonna reiterate that the war on Ashdod was kind of dumb. T'ien Ch'i was the obvious threat from like, turn 12 on, and Ashdod was tied for being the smallest faction. Ashdod and T'ien Ch'i went to war together against C'tis, and Caelum, the #2 player, declared war on Ashdod.

You don't actually have the time to declare war against a petty nation when there is an actual threat in the background. It makes this happen.

[Drago0661]

Well the thing was, due to a lack of gold/gems i couldn't really get enough chaff against you that would screen against wind guided and flaming arrows.

Which made me think sending mages against Tien Chi would be sending them to slaughter.

[Zinegata]

Mages exist to fight and die as needed. Not using them just results in wars being lost quicker. It is better to allow territory to be lost temporarily to mass sufficient chaff, than to fight piecemeal battles without magical support.

You don't actually have the time to declare war against a petty nation when there is an actual threat in the background. It makes this happen.

That's not too dumb. If Ashdod was collapsing then an opportunistic war against them could easily net provinces, gold, and gems. This is usually why one should avoid being a weak and easily conquered power.

[Username17]

I'm gonna reiterate that the war on Ashdod was kind of dumb. T'ien Ch'i was the obvious threat from like, turn 12 on, and Ashdod was tied for being the smallest faction. Ashdod and T'ien Ch'i went to war together against C'tis, and Caelum, the #2 player, declared war on Ashdod.

You don't actually have the time to declare war against a petty nation when there is an actual threat in the background. It makes this happen.

Ashdod was allied with the biggest player. If I had been allowed to curb stomp Ashdod, it would have made Tien Chi a lot less of a threat. Instead what happened is that a bunch of dumbasses decided to triple team me, and so Caelum spent the rest of the game in a roughly zero-sum war of attrition against three factions while Tien Chi sat around gianing power.

The thinking on that made absolutely no sense. Abysia seriously announced that they were intervening because they couldn't allow the second place position to destroy an ally of the first place position. They might as well have said "We can't allow Tien Chi to not win the game!"

Hell, I offered an alliance to Pythium, and even gave them fairly generous terms of taking Ashdod territory at the beginning. But instead of going for the easy provinces and reducing the power of the biggest faction in the game, they decided for the option where they got their ass kicked and spent the rest of the game hammering on the number two power.

The #2 position went after the coalition of the #1 position. What kind of fucking idiot do you have to be to decide that balance of power means that you have to support the coalition against the #2? That's the opposite of balance of power. That's the thing where you grotesquely tilt balance of power in favor of the guy who is obviously winning until the rest of the players abandon the game in disgust.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

That's not too dumb. If Ashdod was collapsing then an opportunistic war against them could easily net provinces, gold, and gems. This is usually why one should avoid being a weak and easily conquered power.

Ashdod was never collapsing. We were doing just fine until Caelum declared war on us.

Ashdod was allied with the biggest player. If I had been allowed to curb stomp Ashdod, it would have made Tien Chi a lot less of a threat

People in this game go to war together all the time. That is not a perpetual alliance of buddyhood and friendship. It's two players teaming up on some task to minimize individual risk.

Your actions did not make T'ien Ch'i less of a threat. He won the war against C'tis, easily, himself. What you actually guaranteed is that:
1) T'ien Ch'i got whatever he wanted out of C'tis's territories, and
2) The second most powerful player's armies were busy, and
3) You gave people a war (and faction) to worry about that had nothing to do with T'ien Ch'i.

You picked Ashdod because they were a softer target and they would put you in a better position, and you flat out said you hoped someone else would deal with T'ien Ch'i while you sat in the background eating Ashdod provinces like candy. But who else is going to take up the mantle of single-handedly dealing with the most powerful faction on the map while #2 is saying "nope, busy replacing him; do it for me?"

[Korwin]

Ashdod was allied with the biggest player.
-Username17

Actually, when you declared war on Ashdod we where pretty even in provinces.
I think, at the time the others declared war against you, you where leading in provinces.
Around that time I was'nt even leading in research (I think). It took a while to take the lead. C'ties was pretty long the leading nation in research.

An like DSMatticus said, it was never an alliance. Only an agreement to divide C'ties.

Fake edit:
Looked at the graphs, you where the whole game near T'ien Chi sometimes second place, sometimes first. While fighting three nations. (Until the end [looked at an turn 47 save])

I noticed in myself, once a war is started, its very hard to (emotionally) disengage from the current enemy to focus on another player who is winning the game. Especially if you allready think you cant win the game any more. My goal at this point is mostly to fuck the guy over who I'm allready at war with.

Hell now the game is over, we can talk about it.
Ashdod and Pythium came to me for help against Caelum, after Caelum failed to win them over to an Anti-T'ien Chi alliance.

Btw. was my sponsoring of Ashdod noticeable for Caelum? (Items + Gems mostly)

[Username17]

Btw. was my sponsoring of Ashdod noticeable for Caelum? (Items + Gems mostly)

Yes it was. I was under no illusions that I wasn't at war with Tien Chi in all but name from the very start, and DSM's claims to the contrary were insulting to my intelligence at the time. Ashdod was running around with shit they couldn't even build.

Edit: not that it wasn't totally obvious that Ashdod had teamed up with Team Tien Chi well before I even declared war. I mean, they were openly collaborating on troop movements for dividing Ctis with Tien Chi and had Caelum under trade embargo.

Yeah, if three players throw in behind the world's research leader in a seven player game, the game is a slow walk to victory for that player. No fucking shit.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Yes it was. I was under no illusions that I wasn't at war with Tien Chi in all but name from the very start, and DSM's claims to the contrary were insulting to my intelligence at the time. Ashdod was running around with shit they couldn't even build.

You're actually totally wrong. Pythium was the one feeding me a little bit of gold here and there (and lots of death gems, because I had none), and I was sending him earth and fire items (like firebrands) in exchange. When you started actually kicking Pythium's ass, he told me he wasn't interested in throwing me his scrap gold anymore, and I went "oh shit," and ran to T'ien Ch'i for help because I was screwed anyway. Who in the last few turns of the game sent me a little bit of gold and dumped more death gems on me than I knew what to do with oh-my-god. He also sent me some rings of tamed lightning and other elemental resistance items I asked for that I don't think I ever actually got to use. This was, again, a few turns before the end of the game.

I have literally no idea what items you are talking about that I could not build, because the only items I ever deployed were ones I built myself or (in the case of a lot of bottles of living water) ones I took off the corpses of caelian commanders. I can't remember a single item anyone sent me until the mid-40's. All my items were fire, earth, death, and astral; those are Ashdod paths!

So, uhh, no; I was not running around with shit I could not possibly build. You are stoned.

had Caelum under trade embargo.

I totally did that myself. I made my trade terms very open: I was looking for death and... earth gems, was it? And you offered me bottles of living water (I am Ashdod! I have big scary recruitables. I do not need items that make big scary monsters) and cold immunity items/frostbrands (I never saw a single C'tis mage in action, and even if I had their cold was the least of my concern).

You offered nothing that caught my eye. And you expected me to hand you dwarven hammers in exchange. Trading you dwarven hammers for shit I don't care about is a stupid move, because dwarven hammers are crazy awesome and you are a very scary player playing a very scary faction and I would have had to deal with you eventually. Now, Man actually PM'd me and flat out offered to pay me to cockblock you on dwarven hammers, but that barely mattered because you didn't have a lot to offer anyway.

T'ien Ch'i and I did not have a single communication between something like turn 20 and 40. You are paranoid-wrong. Really; you are just totally wrong. You saw T'ien Ch'i and I go to war against a mutual neighbor, and somehow assumed we had formed some game-long vassalage or some shit. No. That is a super-unreasonable assumption. I stopped talking to T'ien Ch'i as soon as Caelum armies started stomping all over my plate, because I had nothing to talk about; the war with C'tis stopped on my part.

Btw. was my sponsoring of Ashdod noticeable for Caelum? (Items + Gems mostly)

As I've said, Frank is mistaken. What I really needed was gold (which you sent little of; I spent a lot of the game on the razor's edge of bankruptcy), and the items and gems you sent me never saw battle once. The game ended first. Though, you did allow me to roughly double my number of giant thugs.

[Zinegata]

That's not too dumb. If Ashdod was collapsing then an opportunistic war against them could easily net provinces, gold, and gems. This is usually why one should avoid being a weak and easily conquered power.

Ashdod was never collapsing. We were doing just fine until Caelum declared war on us.

My impression though is that you were still the weakest power, which is still a pretty good justification for an opportunistic land grab.

Moreover, I think ganging up three on one against Caelum in this game did strike me as pretty excessive.

I'm not saying that Frank wasn't opportunistic; but I am saying that deciding to go 3:1 while the #1 power ran away with the game is not entirely wise.

[DSMatticus]

My impression though is that you were still the weakest power, which is still a pretty good justification for an opportunistic land grab.

I was tied for smallest in provinces, I believe, but am actually Ashdod so am not the weakest and was doing relatively okay. Caelum would have won the war if others hadn't joined in, of course, and it was smart of him to attack me from the perspective of an opportunistic land grab. But that is all it was: it was a straight-up opportunistic land grab. And in the background of Caelum's land grab, T'ien Ch'i was off winning the game. Exactly like he is complaining about.

Caelum is actually upset that other people didn't break themself on T'ien Ch'i while he fought a war of aggressive expansion against someone else entirely, thereby helping win the game for him. Remember: Caelum was not a distant second. He was a very close second. And he was fighting a fresh opponent instead of a battered one, so theoretically the easier of two threats to deal with, and only slightly less urgent.

Now, he apparently thinks he was taking out T'ien Chi's lackey, which is both wrong and actually insulting (as much as Frank likes to throw that word around), because I was playing to win and will always play to win and alliances are stupid if you have any chance at winning at all. There can be only one! Now, once Caelum had thoroughly destroyed my shot at winning, I was hoping to put Pythium on the throne for being such war-buddy. Then Pythium got whooped and T'ien Ch'i dropped a seraph, and I decided T'ien Ch'i would have to do. So I promised to fight Caelum ad infinitum in exchange for whatever he wanted to send me, and then nothing he sent me ever got used because the game ended.