Turn 72
 

Turn 72 is out.

Deadline is Sunday, Feb. 5.

Re: Turn 73
 

Turn 73 is out.

Deadline is Tuesday, Feb. 7.

Snuffing of Mictlan
 

Mictlan has been squished beyond repair.

Mictlan was played by the ever-so-bold Boron von Deutschland.

Turn 74
 

Turn 74 is out.

Deadline is Thursday.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Hi All:

Marignon has won! Congratulations!

The remaining players are:

Marignon = Jurri
Ulm = Whollaborg
Atlantis = RonD
Pythium = Panther
C'Tis = Sedna
Ermor = Wraithlord

I have a near complete archive of all turns in zip files in case anybody wants to view any particular turns. In fact, with the master password, you could view the game from any perspective.

Let me know if you want any turns. Otherwise, I will be deleting the files at the end of the month.

Good playing all!

Pasha

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Congratulations Jurri! Well done indeed.

I was marching on the Vanheim and Jotunheim VPs, but obviously I was a couple of turns late.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

And

HUGE thanks to Pasha! You did an incredible job keeping the game moving smoothly - since what, late July? Awesome.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Yeah, thanks Pasha. And thanks also to Panther, this was a very interesting, though at times frustrating game. What would be truly insane would be this game without score graphs. That was pretty much the only way to gauge who was fighting whom and thus make any long term strategic decisions...

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

As for strategy at the end, though obviously I can second guess myself now... I figured the only way to have a shot at winning was if Ulm attacked Marignon strongly and they both lost enough that I was able to take a fair chunk of Marignon. I knew it was a gamble though, just didn't expect Jurri to finsih the job so quickly.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Good job, Jurri. I long ago figured you were Marignon, for it was clearly your style. I sure enjoyed fighting you for the past 40 turns, even though I got utterly crushed in the end. At least I killed 4-5 of your power SCs in the process. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I could not for the life of me figure out why Ulm failed to attack you, especially since the rest of us (other than C'tis who had his hands full with Cainehill) were fighting you endlessly.

The lack of diplomacy was frustrating at times, but I would have to say it was quite interesting. You never knew what was going to happen at any time! It was odd how Atlantis and I had a mutual NaP for the ENTIRE game without ever sending even one single message to each other! We just both minded our own borders, though I always was worried that he would break it suddenly at any time. Once we were both at war with you, then I knew the pact was pretty solid. Same for Ermor and Mictlan.

After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend!


And my hat is off to Pahsa Dawg who was a MOST splendid host (despite being a lawyer!). Thanks a TON, Pasha Dawg. When I (maybe) visit Acadia National Park this summer, I will buy you a beer on the way through Portland!

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Wow, this was an exciting game.
Jurri, you did an absolutely amazing job with Marignon. After I have crushed Arco with less resistance than I had expected I was sure I'd be able to stop you. Especially considering that there were other nations fighting you.
I did manage to inflict losses on your armies but it didn't seem to matter as you slowly but surely ground my death empire to dust.

I was surprised that although I was fighting the clearly leading Marignon, Atlantis chose to attack me. They wiped out a fairly large army of mine in Arco's capital. Also, for me, it was very strange that Ulm didn't attack Marignon. The VPs clearly signaled an imminent victory for them and yet Ulm didn't attack.

For my part, my strategy of taking drain scales didn't prove well. For if I had access to the high level spells I would have been more of a match to Marignon.

Panther, I really respect the way you resisted Marignon. In a sense we were like allies and I want you to know that one of the major reasons for my decision to attack Marignon was seeing how fast he was expanding into your lands.

All in all this was one of the most enjoyable games I had played.

I want to give a big thanks to Pasha for his superb hosting of the game.

Pasha, can you please send the game files to me. I have some catching up to do with Jurri's strategy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I have attached here some screenshots of my final battle with Marignon for Ermor's capital.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

A Deamon SC goes down...

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Even lich queens may die.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Fascinating game all around. Too bad it ended just as it was getting really interesting for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I spent most of the mid game nervous. My water empire was a long skinny snake that bordered everyone. With no ability to negotiate alliances and no mobility, any one of the land nations could have easily invaded. It would have taken me 5 to 10 turns just to get there to respond.

I decided to keep the bulk of my force near Ermor, as he would have the easiest time launching an invasion. In fact, he did, but he never brought enough at one time to overcome 20 Atlantian PD + a couple of priests.

As for why I attacked Ermor at Arco - it was a combination of all the above factors plus a couple more.

I had to get an above-water base.
My main force was there, and it would have taken a long time to go elsewhere.
Ermor had previously attacked me and, if I moved my force somewhere else he would be the most likely to take advantage of that vacuum.
I had seen battles at Arco. Emor's force was middling large but not overly powerful, so I figured Marignon was going to take Arco if I did not.
Going off to fight someone like C'Tis would have just been another pointless war between 2 also-rans.
Marignon was eating Ermor, and the VPs he had taken from Ermor were at Marignon's periphery and lightly defended. I figured I could grab back two or three of those VPs and try to hold them against Marignon's overwhelming mobility advantage.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Panther: Yup! A beer is always a good thing.

Wraithlord: I am happy to share turns with you, but they are in about 75 separate zip files and to send all at once would probably not be possible. I will send you 10 turns spread out and then you could ask for more.

Pasha

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Hey, thank you for the game, everyone! (Especially Pasha!) I thoroughly enjoyed both not having to spend time on diplomacy (I find it almost a chore nowadays: you can't succeed without heavy investment in diplomacy in regular games but it's also a totally independent aspect from the game. The game is more... what's a good word... pure an experience without.) as well as the added thrill of not knowing who's who. I did tentatively place Izaqyos as Ermor when he asked a question on the forum about the assassins I'd been utilizing, and Panther as either Pythium or Ulm when he posted those oh so biased graphs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (Since they were the nations that had the most interest in getting a unified front against me.) Other than that I sure was without a clue as to who's who [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Teddy.gif[/img]

Kudos to both Pythium and Ermor for the resistance; had I not had such an overwhelming logistical advantage I wouldn't have stood a chance against your tactics. Where did I get that advantage? There was little in the way of leet skillz involved, I'm afraid: the balance mods totally unbalanced Diabolical Faith (making the forced turmoil and extra heat of little consequence, and strengthening the demon jesters beyond any reason) and I found a 40% blood discount site fairly early on. (Didn't affect the wars with T'ien C'hi and Man, but afterwards...) Thus I switched gears from my initial spam jesters like crazy strategy to fill the world with Hordes from hell and unique devils; I could cast, like, ten hordes from hell each turn so taking large areas of land, castled or otherwise, was easy.

I had some other exit strategies in mind, but when Ron left his capital unprotected it all fell into place http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Otherwise I would probably have flown in to capture Pangaea, which was within flying distance from my hunting grounds.

So, if you have any lingering doubts on whether you could have done something better, take a look at my last turn and see how hopeless a situation you actually were in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif A better player than I would have finished this by turn 60, I'm sure, given the advantages I had. All in all, a supremely pleasant game; to think I hadn't played Marignon even in SP before...

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I have attached the next to last turn (Turn 74) for folks to download if they are interested. The master password is memoimich.

Pasha

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

This was a fun game, congrats to Jurri. I hated going out early at turn 44 (I was Abysia). What sucked was that the nation selection was random, and I don't like playing blood (and had never played it before), and I get Abysia as my random nation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif But I tried, and was doing okay, until Ulm came over and engulfed me. So I don't feel so bad that Ulm was there until the end.

Can't wait to check out the turn file. And great job hosting Pasha, thanks!

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Thank you PashaDawg! You made enormous effort to serve us this wonderful game! It will be remembered!

The game was first email multiplayer ever for me and as such it gave me some confidence as i struggle against fellow countryman Jurri in the game of Invisible Swarm 4 as well.

Congratulations Jurri! (sigh, what a blood economy that is!)

It is splendid that you won this very exciting game! I should have attacked you much earlier but i though i could delay it a turn or two untill it was too late http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But then again i am happy to live with Ulm this far http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
(I gasped in terror when i found out that i got the Ulm which i thought could not do anything from Middle game forwards, but then i found out couple of tricks that include having a rainbow pretender and forging the lightless lantern..)

As some have already (with a good reason) asked why i didn't attack Marignon earlier i think that there is three reasons for it:
Greed,
Fear and
Greed

...I tried to get that army of lead (a spell that i haven't tried ever before) and just a couple of death items more to spam Marignon with the Ghost riders.
Recently found -20 forge site and utilizing that delayed me a bit more.
Too greedy, too greedy...

Thank you all!
Whollaborg

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Heh. Know what you mean about frustrating - after some of my battles with you at my capitol, I wanted so much to be able to discuss it! Heh. Pangaea was a very costly speedbump for you - I bet you wish you had gone for dominion kill earlier, instead of assaulting twice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Good, interesting game - thanks for hosting, Pasha!

And congrats Jurri!

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Yeah, dominion killing was clearly the way to go. To be fair, much of the time I had you under siege I was very busy attacking Caelum after they attacked Machaka and presented too tempting a target. But taking the time to finish you off before getting into that, or not trying to rush the thing immediately afterwards would have been far better choices.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

So... are we trying to play a second rand game?

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Then again, I don't think you anticipated how much I was able to build up before each of your assaults. Normally, someone gets cut down to just one province, that's it - especially after your first attempt at storming, you could reasonably expect I wouldn't be getting reinforcements. But in addition to the capitol income, I had extra earth (thanks to Caspar's cave appearing) and 2 death income a turn from my lich.

Would've been even better / worse if I had played the base theme, with maenads popping up all by themselves.

Edit : This being my third or fourth time hanging on for 20-40 turns after being besieged capitol only with Pangaea didn't hurt either - I had practice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Interesting reasoning Whollaborg! It's definitely a tough question when exactly is the right time to attack, as a premature assault might lead to someone else reaping the rewards while a late one won't do any good either. Scouts should be utilized, at least so that you have second order view (as in, a scout in a bordering province) to every province by late game. I never have the discipline to buy enough of them, which I think would be awesome if Dom3 solved somehow: it isn't fun to buy a hundred scouts just to see what's going on! If that omniscience spell wasn't a unique global and so easily removed it would be a good solution.

Tauren: At least I would be definitely in for another round!

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I'd be excited to get in on a new RAND game too. Not that I was in this one for more than a few turns, but I really like the format.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Hmmmm... maybe I will PLAY in the next RAND game!

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Is is possible for you to zip all the turn dirs and upload the whole hosting to a server so others can download it? I would like to be able to walk through the turns and see how it developed, if the players don't object. Do you have a server with some storage, or should I look for a place?

Sill

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I am happy to send the turns somewhere, unless players object.

I do not have a server at this time, but I could send it somewhere. Or, I might be able to arrange for a download from my Mac. I know there is a way to do that, but I have never tried.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I think Gmail accounts can handle huge emails. Whomever has such an account can receive all of the turns as one huge compressed file.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Though the game was fun i won't participate in the next game. I will follow my policy of only playing blitzes now till dom3 arrives http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
Have fun with the new random game guys.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Hey, in that case you could host it, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Pasha, it's pretty easy to set up your machine as an FTP server. Very easy, in fact. Let me know if you're interested, and I can walk you through it.

Everyone, I could probably host a new RAND game. I still want to play in it too, but as long as everyone is willing to trust me to make a little script that automatically assigns nations and emails those assignments to the players, that shouldn't be a problem. Jurri can tell you that I'm rather busy right now, but very soon things should clear up and I'll be able to set this up. The game would be TCP, since managing and playing in a PBEMRAND game would require probably more scripts than I'm willing to write.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I am very eager to join another RAND-game.
(Dont want to end up dead from the second position on the charts anymore http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Be Warned! I shall aim for the win next time without sitting back for too long http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I find it spooky that the 1st and 2nd places in the RAND game were held by players from Finland. Have the Fins been spending their long winter nights honing some secret mental martial art turning them into supernatural Dominions Ubermenchen?

Ygorl: I would gladly accept your instruction! I'll send you an email.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Pasha, the people around the Baltic Sea *are* born strategists. On SEIV, we had the Lithuanian connection, several players that were quite good at the game (besides simply beyond numerous). This area will be the first I take over once I'm ready to become the King of the World.

If you are interested, I may be able to host a RAND game (PBEM way), while not taking part in the game. There are two potential problems, though:
- My ISP has been fairly instable recently, and it seems like a structural problem (too many people, not enough bandwidth). For now, I do just fine by making heavy use of proxies, but it could degenerate.
- I've lost the fatherland file in the last game I hosted (my backup system didn't *exactly* work as intended). Of course, I would do my best to have a backup of all files, but that fact still sticks.
- I've had problems with my computer crashing (when playing Dominions too) for a few weeks, but those have been solved since then (inadequate CPU cooling), so that won't be a problem anymore.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

So, Alneyan could do a PBEM game, or I could do a TCP game. I'm happy either way. Alneyan, do you have a preference?

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Besides these, were any of the other players Finnish? If not, then this does make for good statistics indeed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_Finland.gif[/img]

As to the hosting, I'm happy either way: thank you guys! I would surmise a server based solution being less work in the long run to the host, though. Especially given the factors Alneyan listed.

Maybe it's time to start a new thread?

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Let's see, what is there to do in Finland during the dark of winter?

1. Sleep.
2. Have sex.
3. Play Dominions.

And not necessarily in that order! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I greatly prefer PBEM games

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I prefer PBEM games, too.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Well, there's no reason why I would have a preference, since I will not play in the game either way (I think, anyway... I shouldn't give in the temptation).

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

I could go for a TCP game IF there is no quickhost option. By this, I mean that the hosting times are permanently time-fixed to something like 48 hours or 3 turns per week. I find that 24 hour turns are too frequent for me to keep up with these days. I do prefer PBEM, though.

If he decides to not play, Alneyan could set up the game and do the first turn for us. We could then migrate to a server if that is what most people want to do.

Alternatively, if Alneyan wants to play and takes Boron's spot, we could ask Boron to set up the first turn.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Count me in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

WOW... that's kool... just have to add Eat and Bathroom..... unless of course you're playing ERMOR. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

With Ygorl's advice, I have set up a web sharing site on my Mac for people to download the game files if they wish. Please PM or email me for the web address.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

So, can we get RAND 2 started?
We need either Alneyan or Ygorl to host it.
Someone needs to start a thread for it as well.
I can make the thread if I know who is hosting it and how.

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Well, looks like nobody wants to make the decision. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I'll withdraw my offer then (my ISP is still unreliable, after more than two weeks, and I'm concerned about service getting even worse).

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Then I will get a game set up hopefully this week.
It will be TCP/IP, but I will probably set it up so that everyone who wants can get an email when it hosts (for those, like me, not using God's Eye). I'll also make backups of things.
Hopefully this will take care of all the complaints that people have about TCP games?

Re: Turn 75 - Marignon Wins!
 

Yay!