[Dom3]Yet another EA game

[DSMatticus]

And this is the reason to go into blood, to diversify with the unique blood summons. (you might need help from your pretender).

Blood on the pretender is useless. Always. One guy bloodhunting won't produce any slaves, and if you are successfully bloodhunting enough to cast blood spells you already have enough blood slaves to empower and boost to cast the higher level blood spells. Blood on a pretender solves exactly zero of the problems a potential blood nation might face. If your nation is totally bloodless, you might put b1 on a pretender so he can forge sanguine rods for you and you can start a blood economy from nothing a little faster, but that seems like a big way to waste pretender time and points.

As for the research/gold comparison, you're forgetting: warlock apprentices, warlocks, and anointed are all cap-only. Every single one of them. That means every turn recruiting a warlock apprentice (B1) is a turn you did not recruit an anointed (F4E1H3). Gold/research comparisons are what you do when you look at recruit everywhere mages, because the number of mages you can get is a function of gold and forts, and forts are also a function of gold, so gold is the driving factor for recruit everywheres. But when you look at cap-only units, it's just a function of time. If you have a genuinely awesome cap-only dude, every turn not recruiting them makes you die a little inside.

EA Abysia should probably recruit a handful of warlocks or warlock apprentices to get their blood economy going, but mostly use indies with sanguine rods to do the rest of the work, and empower up as needed. From their non-caps, they recruit F3H2 battlemages. Not a lot of diversity, but enough to spam fire spells; fireball, fire cloud, falling fires.

[K]

My nation started on an island that was half the size of everyone else's, was boxed in by three other nations with no place to expand, and also happens to not produce several of the gem types that my nation uses.

My first Ashdod game, fully searched territory, zero death sites. So much bullshit. But your home island is actually 1 larger than mine, and 2 larger than the one south of me. Now as for being boxed in, I totally see that; you expanded a liiittle slow relative to Abysia (who was doing a bless/h3 rush), and it looks like he managed to grab the endpoints of all your ports. Which totally screwed you. And @Mister_Sinister, it's also probably why he declared war on you compared to, say, me or Caelum.

It didn't matter that he grabbed the end ports. My island didn't have an island next to it without a starting nation in it.

So everyone else had the option of expanding into an extra island and I got boxed up between everyone.

Of course, Abysia failed to even expand into their own island. When I attacked, their home island had five unconquered indies and Kailasa's island had two unconquered indies.

As for Abysia, I knew they were doomed the instant I saw that they didn't have Production 3 and weren't making archers. Add that to the fact that they weren't even using Fire magic, it was pretty clear that they were not leveraging any of their nation's strengths.

[DSMatticus]

It didn't matter that he grabbed the end ports. My island didn't have an island next to it without a starting nation in it.

That's not quite true; your port 43 connects to port 51. The island containing 51 has no starting nation. But Abysia and Caelum were both pretty aggressive about snatching it up.

That said, it's a little hard to count the islands because of this wraparound business, but... I think there are 8 islands that are between 8-11 provinces each.

North Sauromatia (contains my capital): 10
South Sauromatia (my other island): 9
Kailasa (contains Kailasa's): 13* including 3-province band
Lanka (contains Lanka's capital): 11
Abysia (contains Abysia's capital: 13*
Caelum Proper (contains Caelum's capital): 8
South Caelum (connects to Caelum's capital southward): 9
Caelum/Abysia (that island with 51 we're talking about): 15*

*I guess three of them are huge, comparatively. One being super-mega-huge.

You needed a piece of Caelum/Abysia to be the right size. But like I said, Abysia shut you out because you share the same entry port. And they were fairly obviously player-hunting for an easy rush, so they went far and wide before securing things around their own territory. Which is a great way to get large, but also a great way to piss off your neighbors and get war declarations.

[K]

So I should have gone to war immediately with two other nations over a hotly contested island because I wasn't lucky enough to be next to an uncontested island?

Instead, it's pretty clear that Caelum and Sauromatia started this game with a huge advantage because of the map.

[Korwin]

And this is the reason to go into blood, to diversify with the unique blood summons. (you might need help from your pretender).

Blood on the pretender is useless.

I was more thinking along the lines of death to start Vampire Lords.

[DSMatticus]

I was more thinking along the lines of death to start Vampire Lords.

Ahh, yeah. Abysia is lacking the good blood combinations. Abysia is really just lacking everything except fire, though.

@K, whoa, don't get me wrong: I didn't say you made mistakes. I'm discussing the source of your misfortunes, which is mostly no fault of your own. I'm a noob talking to an expert here, but I think you played this basically perfectly, declared war at the right time, and got screwed by bad luck, diplomacy, and Caelum.

Now Caelum has a huge advantage because of this map, because they fucking fly and the map's bottlenecks mean nothing to them and I'm really sad that I wasn't able to get Semrioc or even further because it would have minimized their raiding potential into Sauromatia. I don't know what inherent advantage I have; my start position is actually fairly bland. Swamps and forests everywhere, just moving for the first half of the game was a nightmare. It got me two easy islands, but they're small ones and I only got the rest of one because Caelum only expanded half as aggressively as he could have in, presumably, the interest of peace. How nice of him. (God damn that eagle king blitz. ) Most of my luck has been that no one wants to fight me. I'm super-loving that, by the way, I can't lie. Everytime I think I want to join the war, I realize, "or I could not do that and enjoy another turn of peace!"

P.S. I'm beginning to think my habit of openly discussing strategy midgame breeds hostility and animosity. It's not meant to, just meant to make for interesting retrospective conversation, but perhaps I should save the discussions for after the fact. This game gets a little heated.

[Drago0661]

P.S. I'm beginning to think my habit of openly discussing strategy midgame breeds hostility and animosity. It's not meant to, just meant to make for interesting retrospective conversation, but perhaps I should save the discussions for after the fact. This game gets a little heated.

lol, this is the reason I'm being quiet on my side . I'll be more open to conversation later into the game.

[koz]

K, it would be nice if you actually checked your facts before you post. I did take Production 3, and I would hardly consider 'using Burning Ones and taking a bless to do so' not playing to the strengths of my faction. The lack of archers is a mistake though, I admit.

[K]

K, it would be nice if you actually checked your facts before you post. I did take Production 3, and I would hardly consider 'using Burning Ones and taking a bless to do so' not playing to the strengths of my faction. The lack of archers is a mistake though, I admit.

Weird. I would have sworn that you didn't have Production 3. Did you get hit by Sloth events?

That being said, Burning Ones with a heavy Bless sucks ballz past the very early game. The trick is to put a light Bless and then phase them out by Turn 20 since they don't survive contact with enemy mages.

[koz]

That much is something I have discovered. I guess I need to play a different bless faction. Might try someone else next.

[Ancient History]

K, it would be nice if you actually checked your facts before you post. I did take Production 3, and I would hardly consider 'using Burning Ones and taking a bless to do so' not playing to the strengths of my faction. The lack of archers is a mistake though, I admit.

Weird. I would have sworn that you didn't have Production 3. Did you get hit by Sloth events?

I think my dominion might be interefering a bit.

[Username17]

Blood on the pretender is useless. Always.

Blood 4 on the pretender can be justified under the following circumstances:

• You have sacreds who are numerous and get a lot of attacks - like Flagellants or Jaguar Warriors. +2 Strength is serious business when you have 40 sacreds with a water bless and they get 2 or 3 attacks a piece.
• You have national blood hunter summons that your native mages cannot summon - like Black Forest Ulm or Bandar Log. If your god can summon blood hunters that can search for their own blood and then summon more blood hunters, then you have a serious pyramid scheme.

So if you're looking at Marignon, Mictlan, Ulm, Gath, or Bandar Log, you can make a pretty reasoned case for Blood 4 on your god.

-Username17

[koz]

Sauromantia: I guess you missed my question above. You've isolated a pocket of my army. I need safe passage through your lands north of Kailasa's former capital. All I ask is to move through it to my own lands - you can have them back later.

[DSMatticus]

To Sauromantia: You've left my troops stranded in one province. I want safe passage back to my lands through the province north of Kailasa's capital. All I ask is that you put no PD in there, and then my troops will leave to head home. In return, feel free to take Kailasa's last province - I won't oppose you.

I did totally miss that. I thought it was part of a routed army that had just been ignored (it looked much smaller the first scouting turn I saw it). It currently has 10 PD, from the first turn I grabbed it, so even if you'd waited for that turn I couldn't have lowered it.

We can do a couple things:
Turn 37: I move onto 76, you move onto 81.
Turn 38: You move wherever into your territory, I move onto 81.
We play musical chairs with their capital. They have basically nothing in there, and guaranteed to be zero PD because they won't own the province at any point.

OR

Turn 37: You attack 76. It has almost zero army. Unsure of PD.
You should be fine, really.

OR

Turn 37: I attack 76.
Turn 38: I leave 76, you move onto 76.
Guaranteed to be safe and empty, but takes an extra turn.

Alternatively, you can take your luck on 92, there won't be anything but 10 pd in it that turn. But I think even the Kailasian province would be easier, unless it has scary god huge PD.

[DSMatticus]

I don't know which you chose, so I guess I'll just stay on my capital and hope I don't interfere with you.

[K]

Caelum has the Arcane Nexus.

So, do we want to admit that Caelum has won the game because Sauromatia and Ry'leh decided to let them? Or do we want to dick around for 20 turns pretending to play the game and wait for the squads of Seraphs?

[DSMatticus]

I hope you won't mind the lack of a 3-turn warning, Caelum, but arcane nexus is kind of one of those spells that breaks them. Guess we'll actually have to do this now. See what we can pull off.

Edit: Actually, this has past two weeks has been ridiculously busy and I really don't have time for the ridiculous amount of scripting it'd take to get involved in all out war. I've got a ton of tartarians and vampires and unique high-level blood summons and plenty of gems to churn out more, but I probably can't compete with nexus-fueled seraphs. I'm fairly ambivalent, is what I'm saying.

[Ancient History]

I don't know what you expect R'lyeh to do at this point (or really, any point, we've been sucking wind the whole game).

[DSMatticus]

I perhaps should have declared war sooner. I spent a little too much time figuring out my own end game. I'm beginning to realize, though, there is no end-game like an astral end-game and if you don't have an astral end-game you just need to be straight-up murdering everyone as soon as you can.

[koz]

I agree with K here. Concession seems like the smart plan.

[Orion]

I've never seen it actually cast, but I don't understand why Arcane Nexus is so feared. You can still fight battles with the mages and armies you have, do blood and astral summoning and forging. It's not that big a deal to just hold off on your earth forging and your nature summons for a turn or two. And the opposition forces shouldn't have a hard time getting the pearls together for a Dispel, since the Nexus' base cost is so crazygonuts high. I seems like it would stay up for one or two turns, allowing you to basically alchemize a pile of your other gems into pearls while also getting to forge with them. But that's probably ust about enough to justify the hundreds of pearls you invested.

[Drago0661]

Well i was aware of Sauromatia's Tartarians some turns ago, hence my rush to my astral late game.

tbh, I can see why people would want to concede, but I would rather play this out, as it would be a great learning experience to actually PLAY the late game. I can still mess up if I'm not careful, because Sauromantia is still in a strong position.

I think people associate, Arcane Nexus with having shit tonnes of astral at your disposal, which basically means doing whatever the hell you want. however arcane nexus scales with the game size, as there is now only 4 players, its not going to pump out as much as you would have thought (is it wise for me to say how many astral pearls i got from it this turn?)

Dispel wise, a nation first needs to actually have s3 on a guy to dispel, then dispel is actually chance based depending on the amount of gems used on the global wanted to be dispelled, (I actually tried dispelling one of lanka's globals and ended up wasting 48pearls), so its not guaranteed to dispel. Am I wrong? Can anyone confirm on how dispel works?

Also I'm currently leading in gem income, so if as Orion says, that a nation saves up gems to dispel Arcane Nexus, It wouldn't be too long before I can get it up again.

[Orion]

I thought Dispel worked off the number of Additional gems used after the base cost was paid, thus making Nexus really easy to take down.

And if it's turn 50 and your opponents can't scrape up an S3, they have bigger problems.

[DSMatticus]

Can I get the hosting time set to 48 hours for this one?

[koz]

And done.

And as an aside, I think I'm gonna go AI. I can't really fight anymore, and I don't stand much of a chance against Tartarians or Seraphs. Teaches me not to play a bless rush Abysia next time.