Conjuration 7 done.
2 Disease demons get killed by James Bond and an equipped SC Eagle King.
A lesser horror is killed by my army.
4 Fires from afar... I lose a lot of chaff.
More raiding and a sieging with just Jarls from Nefielhiem...
Hinnom fight my army for once!
But its too little to late for me. Also those remote attack spells have withered down my army, the small amount of chaff gets ploughed through by a lot of chariots, which in turn just kill all my backline mages. The SCs still live and fight, but the lose of so many Units make them route.
The one thing keeping me alive is gone now. I have no money to rebuild, its gg for me. Even with my national summons coming online in a few turns, they cant solo that army...
So the guerilla tactics from Hinnom and Nefielhiem worked... that's well frustrating that the enemies were running circles round me. But then again a 2v1 is a 2v1.
Orders:
Give everything to Ryleh! clams, hammers, 100+ astral gems and more. Maybe they can do something with that.
Going AI
Thoughts on the game:
If i had to say what I did wrong the most it was the reliance on the crossbows (Foe's Vision) and teaming with Pangea.
The lesson from the Crossbows:
if you have battle magic use that instead, for it is many times better.
The crossbows didnt even kill the sacreds and missed most of the time (even with aim) and the quickness made them fire once every 2 turns, and even that wasnt enough.
another lesson learnt about sacred giants: Kill them with
Fire Lightning! (in my case anyway), but seriously, just kill them with battle magic and not in combat.
Lesson with Pangea:
Don't team up with a nation that can't even handle an enemy nation 1v1.
No offense to Mister Sinster who was play Pangea, but the decision to go to war with Niefelhiem when we were both ill prepared (i made a mistake but i could handle the sacred giants with lightning bolts, as you saw), was stupid.
While I did agree when I was talking with Pangea, that nefielhiem was the scariest nation and the biggest threat to me and Pangea, we rushed things and went to war far to quickly.
Improvements for future games:
This is basically what I plan to do in future when I play Caelum. Please note that this game was the firet time playing them outside of a bit of testing against AI in single player games.
My Pretender:
In the end orion was right about the e9 bless, it wasn't needed. The temple guards are not lightning immune, so when my biggest strength: mass air battle magic, comes out and I roll out with Lightning armies, the temple guards would just get fried with lighting as they have no resisitance. The reinvig is still needed, but as i found against niefelhiem who had both cold and lightning immunity, I need some paths in fire as well, even if it is just for the firebrand, gotta equip those SC Eagle Kings. If i had ready firebrand access, maybe, just maybe an equipped Eagle King could have taken on those lightning immune Jarls 1v1. That would have helped.
So if i was the redesign my predender it would be a dormant great enchantress with e4w4 with some nature+fire+air paths with scales Order3 Cold3 Magic1, Magic one helps the research of all the relatively cheap harab seraphs, from research 4 to research 5.
Changed game plans from this:
Early expansion plans are basically going to be archers + temple guards + mammoths as a single expansion party, then using the mass expansion strat of Eagle Kings soloing provinces to expand at the end of year 1.
Mid game would be the lightning army and SC Eagle Kings
Late game: national summons and global rituals
Thoughts on the other players:
Pangea:
Already said my thoughts.
Ryleh:
While I can understand playing the neutral nation can have its benefits, and i'm not sure how the rest of the game will pan out, but i think if you were as afraid of Niefelheim as you said you were in our PM, you should have acted with me and Pangea sooner, but then again Pangea and my actions were too rushed and ill prepared, so it might be our fault anyway.
Hinnom:
Well your guerilla and raiding tactics worked in griding me down, those fire from afar and disease demons add up when I can't replace the loses. But i felt you could have done a lot more against me. I only saw 1 Ba'al fight an army of mine, never to be seen again. Ba'als are your major SCs and have astral for teleport shenanigans and major raiding. If there was one thing I was mostly cared of from Hinnom it was the Ba'als, much like Nefielhiem's Jarls. to be honest in a 1v1 fight between Jarls and Ba'als i'm not sure who would win.
Nefielheim:
As with Hinnom your guerilla and raiding tactics worked in griding me down, and that was the right choice to make, as the Army i had, when it was at it's peek, could crush your's and Hinnom's. I wanted to kill you first because you has access to the imunnity against the 2 elemental magic paths i have access too, air and water. If Hinnom hadn't joined in on the war with you this would have been a different game, as my battlemagic could take you 1v1, and the raiding and seeking arrows would have been managable from just you. Just saying, because Hinnom deserves credit (this is mainly in reference you you saying earlier: "Whateves. I would hae soloed em both, but I guess some help might let it go a little swifter."). You played well, I made a big mistake with that early attack, not really much else to say.
