[Dom3]Yet another EA game

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 10:34 pm

Abysian poaching activity has dramatically reduced the monkey populations on the slopes of Kailasa. Yaksha environmentalists are appealing to the Environmental Pantokracy for endangered species status on their behalf. All those with an interest in maintaining a balanced ecosystem are urged to impose sanctions against the poaching industry or even to reduce the Abysian population.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:03 am

We regret to inform Kailasa that Sauromatia has no border with Abysia. We also have no real interest in the matter. But good luck in your war efforts, little monkey people.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:56 am

"Eagle King Squadron in flight"

-Squadron Leader

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:05 am

[SBa]
Greetings gentlemen of Sauromatia,

Apologies for taking Sermioc so suddenly, a lack of scouts was unable to identify the name of the province you were talking about.

Sermioc in currently part of the island that i inhabit, and would like to keep hold of it. However I have no intention of expanding further from that locations to other islands, so your claims to Sonria will be respected.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

We would like to offer you Gentlemen an NAP-3, in hopes of a peaceful coexistence.

- Caelum
[/SBa]

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:02 pm

Sermioc is 2 hops from my capital and 6 from your's (discarding the aquatic connection), which is why we claimed it. Our capital really is pretty much on the border of three islands. We were poised to attack it this turn. However, if you have no current plans expanding further to other islands (specifically, the island that contains Sonria, I don't care about any others), we'll make up with a shorterned border in Semrioc's direction with an expanded border in Sonria's direction. I.e., if you want me off your second island, stay off my second.

If those are acceptable terms, we'd like an NAP-3.

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:03 pm

It appears that the Indian demon monkey armies want to help their monkey brothers by invading Hell.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:22 pm

Monkey solidarity! After all, we need to maintain reservoir populations for adequate genetic diversity. I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce the beginning of our counter-attack, now that we have magic to unleash and a goddess to lead us.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:33 pm

Well, that explains the massive and sudden militarization of Lanka.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue May 01, 2012 12:36 am

EA R'lyeh has a substantial learning curve.

K · Post by K » Tue May 01, 2012 12:40 am

Abysia was gifted by Fate with a large island, and they have decided that they want more.

If there is to be Hell on Earth, Lanka will be the architect. If we get to enjoy spicy Abysian flesh as well, then so be it.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Tue May 01, 2012 6:17 am

DSMatticus wrote:Sermioc is 2 hops from my capital and 6 from your's (discarding the aquatic connection), which is why we claimed it. Our capital really is pretty much on the border of three islands. We were poised to attack it this turn. However, if you have no current plans expanding further to other islands (specifically, the island that contains Sonria, I don't care about any others), we'll make up with a shorterned border in Semrioc's direction with an expanded border in Sonria's direction. I.e., if you want me off your second island, stay off my second.

If those are acceptable terms, we'd like an NAP-3.

[SBa]

Her Majesty's Royal Air Force, division Caelum agrees to these terms and accepts the NAP-3. We will stay off your 2nd island completely.

Thank you kind sir, pleasure doing business with you.

-Caelum

[/SBa]

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Tue May 01, 2012 6:26 am

Ancient History wrote:EA R'lyeh has a substantial learning curve.

EA R'lyeh isn't very good is the thing, you have elemental magics and powerful mages in every fort, so you'd think you could do battlemagic well. Then you find out that most of that stuff doesn't work underwater and your mages can't natively go on land. EA R'lyeh should be modded to have amphibious aboleths, and also give them a head slot so they can wear the booster you can actually forge (Mind lords could also get 2 10% randoms and be sacred without causing too many balance issues). All in all, in base game, they are a nation that desperately needs to get a foothold on land and they are exceedingly bad at that.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue May 01, 2012 7:12 am

On the bright side, R'leyh is the only water Nation in this game, right.
He should be able to do, what I did in EduTGD.

K · Post by K » Tue May 01, 2012 6:10 pm

I suspect he'll be accidentally Domkilled. This map is not ideal for water nations.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue May 01, 2012 6:16 pm

He doesnt have an Dom10 Pretender?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue May 01, 2012 8:25 pm

He currently has the highest dominion, and has had for the entire game. I suspect, based on that, he's got a lot of dom. But on the flip side, every water province has a ridiculous huge number of connections because each water provinces is, itself, huge, so the dominion push on each of his provinces will also eventually be huge.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Thu May 03, 2012 6:29 am

IN the latest battle, the monkies of Kailasa lost both our goddess and our mountaintop. A resistance movement will continue for the next few turns, but Kailasa is basically extinct as a world power. My downfall here was compliated. Strategically, I was building for a long game and not early strength. I sunk scales into Magic for fast research and Growth for late-game gold, while taking Sloth and Turmoil crippled my early income. I went without an awake god and trusted my sacreds for expansion, and I used a utility caster with rainbow bless instead of something with more early-game beef.

(For reference, what the hell kind of bless is Kailasa supposed to use. You have naked sacred recuitables who want fire and water, sacred evokers who want earth and death, and sacred SCs who want Nature and Astral. Plus, Air is actually tempting because your naked mans already have Awe to deflect melee attacks and EA has lots of archers in. This time I tried to please everyone by running a minor AESND bless.

Starting next to a belligerent Abysia was bad luck for me. I was running heat scales, but monkeys are nto actually fire immune, so I just set myself up to be charbroiled. Kailasa's native damage spells are mostly NOT AN or even AP, and most of their national troops effectively cannot hurt the Abysian heavies. Oh, and my own sacred ogres depend on awe to survive in melee, which is rather useless again fireshielded troops who don't need to attack you to kill you. (And have huge morale anyway). Basically the only option I could think of was to mass bandar swordsmen (easily done due the getting 3! early resource events) and slap some strength-buffs on them. That might have worked, except for my biggest tactical mistake: underestimating the power of Smite spam.

In the last couples of battles, Abysia fielded literally 6 children of Ruax, who can sit around doing nothing but smiting from turn 1. This basically completely invalidating my "deploy a small number of elite yavanas and bandar" plan, since I failed to chaff screen appropriately. It also made "sit back and let your superiority at range determine the battle" a bad move. I was also undone by overconfidence. I lost my capitol PD for no benefit because I thought I could afford to take the fight to the enemy, when I could have done way more damage by patrolling my capitol.

K · Post by K » Thu May 03, 2012 7:54 am

Kailasa is a major finesse position and should only be used by expert players. This means that, in most games, rushing Kailasa is the smart move.

Basically, you made the mistake of going low gold. You can't do that in MP with a nation that doesn't get freespawn. Ever.

The proper Kailasa Bless is full Water and at least some Nature, but that only really comes into play later when you start thugging up and using your special summons.

Your Holy units are not really designed to be used pre-Wooden Warriors/Mass Protection/Marble Warriors/Army of Gold or Lead for anything other than clearing indies, but in this case the Burning One's Att of 15 in Heat 3 would have had to beat a Yavna's Blessed Def value of 18 before Awe and you would have been healing some of the fire damage you'd be taking each round. It would have sucked but you'd be smashing them hard every turn and at least taking them out 1 for every 2-3 you lost. You'd be comforted by the fact that he can only recruit a few each turn out of his capital because of Resources while you can get your full Bless limit each turn. Odds are good that you'd be fielding more than him and could overrun them and take even fewer losses.

As a general lesson, remember that four small Bless 4s on a Rainbow god is not equal to one full Bless 9 on a SC god.

That being said, the backbone of the Kailasa army is the Atavi archer. You should have set large numbers of them to Fire Monster and they would have targeted the Children of Ruax once the Burning Ones and Salamanders were dead. They would have also done quite a number on their Salamanders who should basically have never been allowed to close with you.

Oddly enough, the Bandar warrior is also surprisingly good. Their ability to toss two 12 pt rock attacks at STR range (15 before boosting) each round is pretty nice and would have worked the low numbers of Burning Ones being fielded since they can do that from behind Yavanas. They are low resource as well and their only real downside is the low armor (Wooden Warriors and other spells again fixes this), but I'd guess you didn't have a lot of gold to play with.

The ideal spell that you wanted to be casting is Rust Mist (Evo 2) with your Yakshini. You slam it down and then watch as disposable PD or chaff troops die while murdering enemy troops that used to have good armor.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Thu May 03, 2012 7:55 am

Orion wrote:IN the latest battle, the monkies of Kailasa lost both our goddess and our mountaintop. A resistance movement will continue for the next few turns, but Kailasa is basically extinct as a world power. My downfall here was compliated. Strategically, I was building for a long game and not early strength. I sunk scales into Magic for fast research and Growth for late-game gold, while taking Sloth and Turmoil crippled my early income. I went without an awake god and trusted my sacreds for expansion, and I used a utility caster with rainbow bless instead of something with more early-game beef.

Kailasa works much better with order and death if you want to run those kinds of scales. You honestly need order and death and sloth hit you the least hard. With recruit anywhere sacreds, you should be looking at getting gold now not later.

(For reference, what the hell kind of bless is Kailasa supposed to use. You have naked sacred recuitables who want fire and water, sacred evokers who want earth and death, and sacred SCs who want Nature and Astral. Plus, Air is actually tempting because your naked mans already have Awe to deflect melee attacks and EA has lots of archers in. This time I tried to please everyone by running a minor AESND bless.

If you are focusing on troops, the best bless is F9S9, it is cheap and makes your troops monsters in melee. Air is a trap, your other stuff gets no benefit and astral does enough on it's own. Acceptable minors to add are E (Mages and lategame summons), N (For gandharvas mostly), and W (pure troops, not something I would advise). I would probably go with N for a gun to my head minor. The problem is that your priests are weak as fuck and your sacreds are magic beings that make logistics a chore. Solve that by using your monkeys to help expand. Markata are a disposable screen and atavi archers will work against tribal or barbarian indies. Mix your forces right and you ought to be able to expand alright (it has worked in my test games). It will never be great.

S minors are not good for SCs. If other effects would bring MR over 18 they get overwritten and do not stack.

Starting next to a belligerent Abysia was bad luck for me. I was running heat scales, but monkeys are nto actually fire immune, so I just set myself up to be charbroiled. Kailasa's native damage spells are mostly NOT AN or even AP, and most of their national troops effectively cannot hurt the Abysian heavies. Oh, and my own sacred ogres depend on awe to survive in melee, which is rather useless again fireshielded troops who don't need to attack you to kill you. (And have huge morale anyway). Basically the only option I could think of was to mass bandar swordsmen (easily done due the getting 3! early resource events) and slap some strength-buffs on them. That might have worked, except for my biggest tactical mistake: underestimating the power of Smite spam.

Destruction is your friend. Combine with fire large orders. Probably would work better than what you did. Alternately, fast second fort and a bunch of mind burn. Being next to abby does suck though.

Builds that work:Dormant Mother of Rivers F1 W9 N4 dom 8 O3 S3 H3 M1 (Fire one is because water 9 acid rain is amazing)

Imprisoned Oracle F9 S9 Dom 7 or 8 O3 S3 H3 M1 points remaining. You can get N4 with dom 7 and one more negative scale.

koz · Post by **koz** » Thu May 03, 2012 9:27 am

I was surprised Orion never offered me any terms for a ceasefire or something. When K attacked me (and I assume plans to do so again), I figured that I couldn't fight a war on two fronts, but I doubted any peace treaty negotiations could start with me. Given how hard I was hitting Kailasa on the field, I assumed that I was about to die at any minute due to some crazy-ass tech or something, which... never came. Why no peace request?

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Thu May 03, 2012 9:34 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:I was surprised Orion never offered me any terms for a ceasefire or something. When K attacked me (and I assume plans to do so again), I figured that I couldn't fight a war on two fronts, but I doubted any peace treaty negotiations could start with me. Given how hard I was hitting Kailasa on the field, I assumed that I was about to die at any minute due to some crazy-ass tech or something, which... never came. Why no peace request?

Get crippled hard enough and there is not much point in making peace. Have a suboptimal strategy on a hard nation and you can get crippled easily. I expect that he figured he could learn more from playing the war out and losing than from trying to continue as a shattered remnant.

koz · Post by **koz** » Thu May 03, 2012 11:29 am

Akula wrote:
Mister_Sinister wrote:I was surprised Orion never offered me any terms for a ceasefire or something. When K attacked me (and I assume plans to do so again), I figured that I couldn't fight a war on two fronts, but I doubted any peace treaty negotiations could start with me. Given how hard I was hitting Kailasa on the field, I assumed that I was about to die at any minute due to some crazy-ass tech or something, which... never came. Why no peace request?
Get crippled hard enough and there is not much point in making peace. Have a suboptimal strategy on a hard nation and you can get crippled easily. I expect that he figured he could learn more from playing the war out and losing than from trying to continue as a shattered remnant.

Fair enough.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu May 03, 2012 2:56 pm

Kailasa was down to 4-5 provinces and basically entirely out of room to expand; any peace request would have involved shutting them down to <10 provinces total when final borders were drawn. They would have been a non-faction in the end.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu May 03, 2012 3:08 pm

Akula wrote:With recruit anywhere sacreds, you should be looking at getting gold now not later.

I disagree with this completely. Build anywhere sacreds favor Growth. The number of very expensive troops you can build increases dramatically as you build more temples and castles. Every castle with a temple in it increases the number you can recruit by the base number, and every five temples increases the number you can recruit by your number of castles.

If at the beginning of the game you could build 6 Guhyaka a turn, your appetite for gold at the start of the game is 210 plus whatever you want to spend on leaders and archers and such. Certainly a considerable gold demand, but nothing you can't handle with or without an Order dominion. But four temples down the line, you now have five locations that can recruit Guhyaka and the number you can recruit is now 7 per castle - for a total gold demand of 1225 gold.

The factions that lend themselves to Death are the factions with Capital Only badass sacreds. In the above example, a starting output of 6 Valkyries would cost 360 gold a turn, and four temples down the road the cost would have jumped to a whopping 420. As you gain provinces, recruiting your maximum number of capital-sacreds gets easier and easier whether you have death or not.

However, Kailasa is made out of Nature Mages and small groups of elite ageless Yaksha. And they don't have a blood suit. Meaning that they seriously don't get anything from Growth except the money. They don't give a rat's ass about the supplies and they don't have any old people.

Kailasa is simply not terribly synergistic internally. Their economic profile suggests Growth, but they feel like idiots for having Growth, because they aren't set up to use any of the tertiary features of Growth. They have a sacred archer, who virtually demands a big death bless, but that's capital-only and the rest of their sacreds are melee-only. Their army is built on build-everywhere sacreds, but their priests are weak and capital-only.

It's a bad faction. Incredibly good clamming profile, but every part of their army is simply not that good and fails to synergize with the other parts of their army. For fuck's sake, the crowning achievement of the faction is when you get to start using your clams to summon Gandharvas - and then you remember that you didn't take an Earth Bless because all the sacreds you can build are completely naked.

-Username17

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Fri May 04, 2012 2:33 am

[SBa]

Greetings to the people in the sea, Ryleh.

Out of courtesy, I would like to inform you that we are taking province 1 this turn, as it is next to our Capital.

[/SBa]