Re: hosting
 

there was some trouble with one of the files, but all's well now: turn hosted.

wow did I see one amazing battle!

Re: hosting
 

The Great Elephant Heist of '06 shall go down in Arco history as its most embarrassing moment.

Re: hosting
 

Yes I witnessed that moment.. But you did sit through the end, did you not? It's not that those elephants were totally useless to your army.
A sight to behold!

Re: hosting
 

2/6 turns in already.. hmm, could this be a fast turn? :-)

turn
 

and the turn is hosted!

Casualness warning
 

A heads-up to you all:

It's time for another chance to make use of the "casual" descriptor on this PBEM. I'm going away this friday 8/10, and coming back wednesday night, 8/15, with no access to the internet in between. Does anyone mind a brief pause?

Re: Casualness warning
 

I'm fine with that.. would be nice of course if we can get a host in before Friday then ;-)

Re: Casualness warning
 

No problems here either. I should be able to submit my turn by wednesday night GMT.

Re: Casualness warning
 

So can anyone tell me what happened: I see two harbingers in my capitol, I port a million astrologers in to take them out, and I find no harbingers but my lab is destroyed. How is that possible? Are they stealthy, too? Can they destroy labs and go into hiding in the same turn?

Re: Casualness warning
 

I moved the harbingers away. I am not about to keep them still. If you teleported in your mages probably ended up inside the castle and did not partake in any battle. In my message list I got a message that said a fire destroyed the arcane library, so that was just an unlucky event.

Re: Casualness warning
 

But that was some good attempts the last turn Morkilus. I am surprised that the golem that you telported in did not do better. The golem that was in the 'great elephant heist' as you put it fared way better. It ended up single handidly holding off for quite a long time a whole army of hydra and stolen elephants.

Re: Casualness warning
 

I definitely don't know wtf I'm doing; I've never played a multiplayer game in this late stage with such complicated mages. I had no idea that a teleport squad wouldn't fight the siegers of a castle you own. What a waste. I'm learning plenty, though.

Re: Casualness warning
 

I only just found out that particular point in a SP test game this week... quite important information indeed!

Re: Casualness warning
 

OK, now I am lost here. What do you mean by this? If you mean:

"Your teleported (gatewayed, whatever) squad will join the defenders already there when the enemy storms (not break siege) the castle."

then hell, yes, it does work. Or, maybe I should say, I've never noticed anything strange -- and I have done it a few times this game with Rlyeh so if did not work I prolly should have noticed by now. Have I been mistaken all along? If you mean something else entirely than disregard my post.

Re: Casualness warning
 

I think he means that when you use a spell to get an army to a province in which a friendly fortress is besieged, there will not be a 'magical' battle occurring before any other. Actually, no batte at all, unless the fortress would be stormed that turn.
But if you would move there normally, you would attack the besieging army.
In a way it makes sense if you use Gate Way: it teleports you to a friendly laboratory, which is inside the fortress (enemy can't destroy it when besieging). I wonder, though, what happens if you use Astral Travel, Teleport or Cloud Trapeze, since it does not need a laboratory.

I'd like it if you could choose:
- teleport and defend, or
- teleport and patrol
or something

Actually I did not quite understand how on earth R'Lyeh suddenly could have so many armies in a fortress I was storming. I thought I could totally isolate a fortress by besieging it, and I found out the hard way that I could not.. A number of times.. Lots of pain.. losses.. agony.. Actually, I only figured it out this week in a SP test game..

Re: Casualness warning
 

The default order after a spell is cast is "defend." (Or siege if it's at an enemy fort). So going to a friendly castle will land you inside, and you can't teleport in and be stealthed either.

Also, getting max-cast rituals overwritten sucks. Guess I rolled a lower random number...

Re: Casualness warning
 

Ah, OK, if it is that, then we're understood.

Let me add that this must be stated somewhere in the manual, since I personally can't remember ever having any confusions or doubts about this issue. Or maybe I have read it somewehere in the forums a loooong ago.

Re: Casualness warning
 

Max number of gems on a ritual sucks, period. One among another number of things that suck in an otherwise wonderful game. This is off-topic so I will refrain from posting my personal pet peeves.

Re: Casualness warning
 

Well, that max number of gems thing.. I guess the world was a bit lucky then! Apart from Abysia..
if that overwrite would have failed, that would have spelled doom in capitals.. I guess we would have had to kill the caster.

Re: Casualness warning
 

Personally I don't like the way the globals work at all. You can spend all game collecting gems, and then lose them in an instant. I would prefer it if you coudln't put extra gems into rituals at all.

And how did Abysia a non-astral nation succeed in getting 999 pearls, considering that Pythium was doing nothing except collect pearls all game, and was very lucky in finiding astral sites, and was only barely able to make the 999.

Next time I will know to be on the safe side and dispel instead.

Re: Casualness warning
 

I didn't know this either until you made your comment.

Re: Casualness warning
 

He traded part with me, 100 or so(?), but mainly, I think he has humongous gem income from all his lands, and he has been alchemizing fire gems or something..

Re: Casualness warning
 

He doesn't have that many more provinces then either me or you. He was likely using fever fetish, a technique which I have never tried yet. Abysia with its high hit point commanders would be good at using that technique.

Re: Casualness warning
 

Well, I just did a little counting (counting, not guessing), and Abysia has more provinces than Pythium and Machaka together. And I mean that literally... He has good reason to say he thought he'd already won the game ;-)

Re: Casualness warning
 

I'm just thinking... Would Arcane Nexus for 999 pearls really be better than 40 abominations or 33 golems? If you keep the global, you'll have those gems back in no time, yes, but the armies would have been available much earlier in the game, making you expand much faster... Of course you do need the research & casting paths first..

Re: Casualness warning
 

You're right Rico, the summons would have been a better use of funds for me, but I didn't think that you'd be able to drop 1000 pearls into an overwrite and then get a lucky roll on top of it to get rid of the nexus (I think I would have won a tied roll as the defender, so I had better than a 50% chance of keeping the spell up even if you did match the cost). As I said, I was trying to get the game concluded by casting it...I've no doubt that I would have easily won if I'd used the gems for summons instead, but I didn't want to deal with the micro to do so. So I'm in a bit of a predicament at the moment with a 200 gem/turn swing hitting me in the face. It'll be fun to lose the game to a blind die roll that I had odds on, but I guess it'll teach me to take risks in the future.

You're also all crazy for letting Pythium keep the nexus up instead of dispelling it, it'll give him the game easily, especially with the success he's been having against Arco from what I've seen and his good national angel summons.

status
 

3/6 turns in, waiting for Abysia, Man and Pythium

status
 

almost there, waiting for Abysia's turn

Re: status
 

If you all hadn't made me actually MANAGE my turn by overwriting my global I'd have it in by now...

I'll try to get to it ASAP but I was out of town this weekend so I'm trying to get caught up with RL work.

Re: status
 

At this stage there is so much micromanagement that needs to be done. It is hard for me to get in two turns a week.

Re: status
 

indeed.. so I don't think Man being delayed a bit will cause much of an extra delay.
especially since a certain NAP is ending soon, so I'll have to do loads of order micro management on the next turn..

we'll see how much time we'll need.. would be great though if we could at least do one turn a week...

Re: status
 

Is Abysia really that big? No-graphs games are so weird. I don't see a single province of his.

Re: status
 

Abysia has almost 90 provinces :-S

Re: status
 

Turn hosted!

Time for war! For me at least..

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

3/6 turns in, waiting for Abysia, Man and R'Lyeh

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

almost there, waiting for Man

Re: Casualness warning
 

Back from my vacation today- I'll try and send in a turn tonight!

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

turn hosted!

ouch...

Re: Casualness warning
 

Our bards would like to exchange some brief messages with whichever nation owns the Boots of the Planes.

-Man

Re: Casualness warning
 

Report from the eastern parts of the world:

While having taken 8 of Abysia's provinces, they have taken 14 of mine. He seems to be using every devil that can possily be summoned, sweeping through my province defenses like a knife through butter.

It's bloody.

Machaka

status
 

2/6 turns in.
waiting for Abysia, Man, Pythium and myself ;-)

status
 

5/6 turns in, waiting for Abysia

Re: status
 

Hmm, wonder where Rico went, I got my turn in a couple of hours after his last post, and he's usually extremely prompt with the turn processing.

Re: status
 

Sorry guys, I'm somewhat delayed and busy and won't be able to host the turn today or tomorrow.. Probably Sunday evening then!
That might give you some time to rethink your turns of course.. Like, do that group attack on Abysia after all, or something ;-)

Re: status
 

I was hoping for something more like a group concession to Abysia, but that's just me. =)

status
 

turn hosted!

Sorry again for the delay..

status
 

Only Arcoscephale has sent his turn at the moment. I have not finished my turn either, this war complicates things!

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

4/6 turns in. Waiting for Pythium and myself!

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

I have a lot happeneing right now. I will try to do my turn tommorrow.

Re: Casual PBEM (looking for players)
 

early notice:
I'll be out of the country from Tuesday 11 Sept to Wednesday 19th and won't be able to play then..
We are slowing down a bit lately, I hope everyone's ok with that. Staling in this phase would seem a bit of a waste of investment in the game now...

Waiting for Pythium