Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Since everyone is laying down their cards, hehe, I'll show mine too.

I was pulling in about 120 Astral Gems from Clams, and about the same number of Earth Gems from blood stones. Making 4 clams and 4 blood stones per turn. I was wishing for gems every turn, and had started in motion another unit to do 2 wishes per turn. My problem was recruiting enough units to put all the stuff I was forging. Most of them were reserve items that I wasn't expecting to use immediately. I had the Steel Oven Construction bonus, so that even though I had access to the forge as part of the Sinister Six Alliance, I found it more convenient to forge my own.

If pressed I would have been capable of 15 seeking arrows, 10 earth attacks, and 6 ghost riders per turn, while still doing all the forging and "turtling" activities. Plus I had prepared a batch of stealthy assasinating Claws of Kokytos casting Spectres that I was about to seed around to catch raiding SCs hehe. Also lots of Druid led raiding Shadow Vestals, a lot of them with flying carpets. I had only used a few squads against Pythium and they were surprisingly effective, enough to probably win me the war by themselves. I had quite a lot of specialized units in reserve that I planned to use to fight a gem efficient war against SCs. I had also planned to use huge communions with my cheap Astral and Death mages.

I had been holding back in the war against MA C'tis, going for gem efficiency rather than a quick kill, as I did not want LA R'lyeh to conclude that it was over for MA C'tis and reveal himself as an ally of MA C'tis. My theory was that the longer the game run, the bigger my advantage gets, especially since no one seems to think that I was clamming =) Without the Steel Oven, I probably would not have spent the huge resources needed to get clamming started.

The biggest danger for me the entire game was in the beginning in the war against Abysia. My vestals were not very effective against heat auras and the dragon pretender, plus they had control of the steel oven then. Then Vanheim joined Abysia in fighting me. I had to pretend to be a lot stronger than I was at that time to get those two to agree to non simultaneous ceasefires, that allowed me to eventually concentrate on Abysia.

After that I had to forge diplomatic ties to keep out of war while I leverage the Steel Oven advantage.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh, well when we formed the alliance there were ALOT more players. The alliance wasn't forever either - It was designed to fall apart once all the other major powers fell.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh - see I knew you were holding back (I overheard you once in the chatroom) but I didn't know you had such a stockpile. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif.

I discovered a steel oven as well but using the forge was still advantageous for me.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Eh, I would have been happy with the small fry for quite awhile - I wouldn't have turned on you right away (besides it would have taken forever to beat down LA R'lyeh - if even possible). IMHO I'll still stick by my assertion that it was most certainly in your best interest to go after LA R'lyeh - assuming you believe his gem income was significantly higher than mine - simply because I would be a more manageable opponent later than he would be.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh, "alliance falls apart once all the major powers fell". Dunno whether that would have included my fall. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I don't know how far ahead you people were planning, but from what I saw/heard it seemed both Vel and Homer (as well as me) had grown quite tired of managing their empires. My guess was that if a huge R'lyeh/Ermor war was to start, the winners would've noticed they have piddling 40% of the victory condition provinces at maximum and agree end the game then. Just my feeling.

Gem-wise, I was quite a paper tiger. This being the first game that got this far, I hadn't forged any gems or had any blood mages. Oh well, got quite a few from Oceania just recently.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

MA Pangaea might have been a bit slow on the sc front, but we were in the opinion that bigger armies with weapons of sharpness cand take out paralized tartarians, it wen never to test that, but well, if this would not work i have also some flambeau wielding thugs specially to kill tartarians.

Also pangaea has a earth gem income of 250 and we are forging 6 bloodstones turn (and we have started again to raise that limit, as we have increased or blood income). Btw, i casted forge of the ancients with a E14 caster and 999 gems, how heavily entrenched was the original cast?

Also i did some strange things on my pretender, like production 2 (to get cataphracts) what i would not do again. As in CWs with relieve dont get fatigued, while cataphracts tend to faint in battle (especially annoying in sieges when you have some fainted cataphracts blocking the entrance). But all in all my tactics went quite well.

btw. if velusion is thinking to invite EA Pan in his alliance does that mean that EA Pan is not part of it?

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I recounted, I was actually pulling in 175 astrals per turn, 147 from clams and the rest from sites http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif
If the game went on, I would have had to resort to putting clams and stones on scouts cause I wouldn't have enough gold to recruit enough mages.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Your secret 6 alliance was not so secret. I knew 100 percent that the forge was being shared, and that LA Pangaea was a vassal after Velusion saved him from Vanheim. My secret alliance was with new players-not smart but fun.

MA Vanheim, MA Pythium, MA Tien Chi. And they were a far from me, and could not help me in my fights. But I saw them as the 1st line of defense against LA Ermor Alliance.

I was not able to convince LA Ryleh to attack LA Pangaea and take out the forge. MA Pangaea tried to overwrite it with 1000 e gems and failed. In fact, I was unable to convince him the forge was being shared(at least that was Dr. P's opinion). But i knew it was.

I had asked EA Oceania for his clams, since that was the only way i could compete. But he took them with him to Davy Jones Locker.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Up until that last turn, LA R'lyeh had been alternating between 4 and 5 wishes per turn. I dumped a lot of pearls into that teleport attack, obviously.

It was a pain to administer. I *should* have scaled up to 5 tarts per turn, which could have been supported easily.

Those tarts *should* have had boutique equipment. But the game was so large that just moving items around was a major chore.

I recall something like half a million gold banked, but I'd just spent a bunch of it raising province defenses. Upkeep was pretty negligible, in any case.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Would this not be a quite suicidal stunt as now your dominion would begin to purge your own undead, or are the undead of the casting nation immune to the effects?