Re: Status report
 

Fantastic report Zenzei!

Just as a note: Dust to dust with 1 mage? Did you check it in SP? Ithas an awfull precision son it is better to have it casted multiple times by small boys than a pretender. Also I do not understand why Jomon leaded a communion for the mind duel. Did you know that the communion bonus is not added to the S level for astral? you only use innate bonus, not even items.

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Regarding the power relations I do not think I am so ahead. Until ths turn I had less research than Midgard and this can change easily taking into consideration the number of forts we all have (we are tied with 4!). You had very bad research and see now where you are!

I have more provinces because you were figthing Jomon in the south and he had his main armies there, now I think that I will be punished by him and it will probably hurt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Nothing is decided yet.

Of my 2 thugs (well at leat I think they are thugs, not SCs, your god is an SC, this are thugs) one died last turn. The wonderful fire bless bug converted my frost brand in a one shot weapon and the poor boy was anihilated by the samurai warriors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif .

So well I really think that this game still has many things to say: I just watched recent Midgard fight and I have to admit that I was impressed. However Jomon will probably take care of his upkeep problem soon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (if he has it).

BTW I knew there should be an explanation to your drop in army size.

Re: Status report
 

@James: Haha. I'm by no means an expert player myself but I do have read some stuff in these boards. Most notably reports like I just wrote and nation guides (I especially recommend those written by Baalz, I find them fundamentally educating). The spell range calculation was pretty extreme for me too, I certainly don't do it normally, but this battle was so important I wanted to have every advantage I could think of.

For upkeep my own rule thumb is as long as your upkeep is less than ~40% of your total income, you're doing great. More than that and you're starting to have increasing trouble getting money for new forts/temples/labs or replacing those that got destroyed. Of course sometimes, most notably during war, you just need those troops and upkeep gets high but that's the time you save gold in other pursuits.

For research/battle I aim to have as low number of mages in the battlefield as humanly possible to minimize the research loss but I usually make those mages count. In battle a single power mage is way stronger than dozen crappy ones imo. Also, use the most cost effective mages for research, that is the one with the lowest cost/upkeep/research value ratio, because it saves money in the long run. For any particular mage I consider this ratio good if it is equal or less than 0.8. For example EA Ermor Augur Elder has cost of 250 gold, upkeep 16.7 gold/turn (250/15) and base research value of 8 iirc. So for him the ratio is ~2.1, not very good. However he is very good battle mage/item forger/ritual caster so you should use him for more those kind of tasks and less on research. EA Ermor also has Flamen 120 gold, upkeep 4 gold, research value 4 sacred mage. His ratio is exactly 1, which is not super but way better than the Elder for research job, no? If you took magic scale 1, the Flamen's ratio improves to the target number of 0.8.

For mage improvement find ways to create magic path boosters(for ritual caster and later on for battle casters) and use booster spells in battle (summon earth/phoenix/storm etc power). They make a huge difference in mage perfomance. I hope some of this was helpful and not some crystal clear rambling. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I 110% agree with you that the better understanding of the game you have, the more enjoyable it becomes.

@Karlem: Glad you found it a good reading.
I ran some simple tests in SP and Dust to Dust worked fine then. My PoD has a pretty good precision and there's no way a master lich can survive 22+ damage, no MR, armor negating punch if it hits. You're right about more death mages being more safe choice but I don't have so many of them to begin with and moving them to front lines would have taken many turns, more time was something I didn't want to give to Jomon. Afterall I got this master idea just previous turn when I was brainstorming ideas for how to bybass the mind duel. The communion Jomon had was for Power of the Spheres to boost the slaves so they could throw Blade Wind, it wasn't important for the duel itself. Now that I think more carefully the master lich's levels were in fact boosted by the spell and not by empowering, so a slight error on my report there. This means my loss in the mind duel is even more bitter but now I do get to erase the props I gave to Wazooking earlier. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
Yep, I know mind duel is only affected by base astral skill, can't speak for Jomon though.

My prediction about Midgård upkeep is based on the fact Aezeal advertised having found a sage guild some time ago in this thread. Midgård has pretty horrible national mages for research but sages have high research. If he has bought a lot of sages, it would explain his great research accumulation but sages are pretty high upkeep mages (and therefore not very cost effective), which would translate into money issues. Especially so because Midgård has had its share of conflicts and province losses, which have reduced Midgård's income. It would actually be pretty interesting to know if Aezeal could confirm whether or not my theory is correct.

Re: Status report
 

Did Jomon use Reverse comunions? That must be nasty http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I was on the received end of 5 bladewinds so 4-8 mages casting it will be... ufff.... I cannot think a word bad enough http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Status report
 

Thanks so much for the tips - much appeciated. This is a beginner game so half the point is to teach and learn. So please, any tips welcome!

Re: Status report
 

Personally I wonder why I keep loosing so much troops every time.. I'm loosing much more troops each battle than I expected. But soon my mages will be even better (Jomon beware http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif) since I just researched storm power and I think I will just have to keep on buying troops to replace losses.

PS Arco how much PD was that.. it killed 40 of my troops because I didn't expect it to be there but there where LOADS of troops, must have cost you a fortune???

Bladewind is nasty I lost my bladewinder and haven't gotten a new one yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

My research is indeed due to sages and I have upkeep problems as you mention Zenzei HTF do you know the upkeep of troops? currently I can't train much troops if I train 2 mages and a sage.. then again.. 2 mages a turn are reasonably powerfull atm and can each kill dozens of troops with only little protection http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif and I don't think my upkeep is more than 40% of total income btw

Re: Status report
 

I thought that communion might help the mind duel, so I had it scripted first. Either way, it would help after I won the mind duel. I was pretty much thinking the same thing for power of the spheres. If I lost the mind duel, I would totally lose anyways.

As for the dust to dust question, when I look back at the replay, it looks like you are on the order of 35 squares away depending on how it calculates diagonals.

I am not sure what a reverse communion was, but without the PoD, my troops were good enough to mop up.

Mictlan is the front runner. After having faces major armies from 3 nations, I know what the current situation is. Disease Demons are a very good deal on a low gem map.

Re: Status report
 

Too many early fights, and a few mistakes have made my game go downwards from the start, I was also a bit cornered in , not so much indies before encountering the rest of you.

Arco and Jomon could send large parts of their armies against me, not to mention pythium who's starting fight with me (for no good reason, just like arco) cost me a lot of army early on... hydra's are just not easy to kill

Re: Status report
 

Hmm... 50 province defense? Cost me about 1000 but figured it might hold the province. It saved me when you attacked previously. And the manual says you can't have enough of it. So my pretender came back... Minus a magic level in each school. Are there items or something that can boost it back up? And doesn't the loss of levels argue against rainbow pretenders? A pretender highly skilled in one path suffers less than a rainbow right?

Re: Status report
 

hmm lol that makes me happy.. it would have sucked to loose 1000 gold of skinshifters to 25 PD which would have cost only 250 or something. That much PD is hardly ever worth it, though your PD IS rather nice.

Your Pretender is back... I'd keep him away from me right now though,manticore steak is now legendary amongst the skinshifters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Indeed rainbow pretenders suffer more from dying.. but generally you shouldn't let your pretender die at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
you can empower him back or you could use boosters just like normal.

My suggestion though would be to give me that castle you have (it was MY province originally remember) and then NAP me and focus on Marignon. Fighting 2 wars is never good.

Re: Status report
 

Hmm... Manticore steak... Actually my whole pretender design was simply what they suggested in the manual. Next time around I'd do my own thing. And sorry but I can't give you that province. And strictly speaking it belonged to some poor independent in the first place. And it has a huge pd so even if I have it to you you'd suffer a lot. But as I'm sure you can see I just don't have the resources to attack you for quite a while. Happy to kick back for a bit right now...