Re: Players
 

Pangaea is closest to caelum but vanheim is closer to pangaea than caelum is. Also heavy cav indies blocked the way to caelum which are too much for maneads who get butchered on just heavy inf. So like someone pointed out Caelums starting position secluded like that made it perfect for raiding everybody while nobody can attack back. And someone said a bane lord counter...our only death is from ctis who gets put next to jotumheim to get raged early on.

The placement was extremely bad. The random generator didn't seem too random. I personally felt it was extremely biased and if a rematch was did with the teams swapped I would refuse to play because team B would have all the crap nations that team A is using now. What would be the point of playing an unbalanced team game. Waste of time if you ask me.

The set up of the game was done improperly. We should of had 2 captains where they take turns choosing nations. Also the two captains would choose players. Basically one would get option to choose players first while the other gets to choose their first nation first. Would of been fair. It would of taken probably a week to set up but who cares. I rather it take longer to set up something properly than play something that was half assed rushed out.

Those are just my thoughts.

Aku

Re: Players
 

I think you put that unreasonably strongly. Team A has/had a lot of strong early game options to choose from. The only bias I think that's built into the starting position is the location of Caelum, which is ideal for the role it's taken.

And why not take the rematch with swapped sides? Maybe we'd like a chance to prove to you that good play and strong inter-team communication is important to winning a game. And you'd get a chance to prove to us the False Horror really is broken.

Mark

Re: Players
 

Marignon Diabolical Faith is a very strong blood nations, probably second to Mictlan. And unlike Mictlan Marignon even has a decent national troops. The only drawback is forced turmoil. However in the team game it's less of a problem. Somebody can help with financing.

Marignon's Conquerors of the Sea is a good air nation. Unfortunately, you have to choose between blood and air in this case. If you want to go into blood heavily, you have to take Diabolical Faith Marignon, there's no other really strong blood nation on team A roster. But if you plan to use blood only for items, Pangaea will do it just fine. Everybody can bloodhunt with every random blood they got and send blood slaves to Pangaea. If you decide that you want all kind of devils, it leaves you with Tien Chi to cover the air.

Obviously, with Caelum, Vanheim and Man team B has air dominance. But team A has advantage in death, earth and nature. How to capitalize on this advantages is a good question. But maybe we can learn some answers during the rematch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Players
 

Good analysis Alexti .

Those Tien Chi S&A CM's should be almost as good False horror casters than Caelum .
But Tien Chi is not an option :
Tien Chi is seen as the probably weakest nation .
The CM's are capitol only so they can't be used like caelum can because they are not so easy replaceable .
Pythium furthermore could put a mind duel Theurg in the important provinces and so has good chances to kill of a lot of CM's .

Otherwise Tien Chi is just weak .
The main benefit from being air is getting the Airqueens .
We with Tien Chi only would have had no chance to win the researchrace against caelum .
Then vanheim + man can just give their airgems to caelum and they get all 3 airqueens before we can get them .

Marignon DF would have been probably a good idea .
Iirc the map position of marignon was really bad though . At least panther said so .
Our advantage in death , earth and nature is worth [censored] .

For summons blood is way better . For SCs blood + air is better than death + nature too .
Not to forget that you have SCs from the beginning with your Jotun niefelheim .

Weaponwise a bloodthorn or a hellsword is better than a wraithsword too .
Death + blood serve similiar roles but until Tartarians/ghostriders/demilichs death is clearly inferior to blood . We likely never get these spells .


The biggest advantages of your team nations lie in Flexibility , Mobility and most important the option to pick out where to attack very cheap via stealthy van/man armies + caelum drops .

With Ctis , Tien Chi , Machaka and Ulm we have 4 little liked nations in our team .
Arco is probably a top 5 nation and pangenea + marignon are middlefield .

You have with Caelum the probably a bit overpowered nation which is often Banned .
All your nations are very liked . So for your team the decision which 2 nations not to play was quite hard while for us the decision which nations to play was even harder because most of them were worse than your nations imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Players
 

Tien Chi's mages are too expensive to use them as seraphs. They just give an access to air to search for air sites, forge few magic items and cast calls of winds (which is very important to counter Caelum's raiders). But taking air for this purpose isn't a must, at least someone on the team is likely to find air-capable indy mages.

To get Air Queen you don't really need air nation, just pool all air gems to air-capable pretender. Conjuration is need for many nations anyway. I guess this strategy will get one out of 3 air queens.

Concerning summons, blood and air gives you better (and more expensive SC). Bane Lords are not as powerful, but they're much cheaper, need little equipment and for the raiding purposes they work just as well as stronger SC. Air doesn't have much summons besides Air Queens, while death (bane lords, wraiths, ghosts, wights and more) and nature (lamia queens, lamia, ivy kings+vine ogres, faerie queens) have a lot of good summons. Plus nature have very nice sort of summoning called charm which allows you to get various SCs (air queens, Ice/Arch-Devils) which you wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

Blood doesn't even have anything comparable to Ghost riders. And tartarian mages are real monsters, and they come in unlimited quantity. The only problem here is to survive until you get death industry running.

Mobility, yes, mostly due to Caelum. Taking Van, Man and Caelum wouldn't be practical (too much concentration) and stealth-wise, Pangaea is very good too.

But flexibility comes from the choice of the strategy.

I don't know how you making this conclusion. C'tis is a perfect nation for team game, possibly the best one. You can buy D3N mage for 180, plus a random pick. And they have one of the cheapest national researchers (due to sacred), which is also useful on the battlefield. And if it wasn't enough they can just rollover the indies with 0 losses. Opponents are better expect roaming Bane Lords by turn 10. And in a team game they're likely to come properly equipped.

Ulm is not particularly strong by itself, but if he is used as a forger for other 5 nations, it's a huge gem saving.

Machaka is strong nation on its own, both mages and national troops. Part of their strength comes from flexibility of their mages, which is somewhat lost in the team game though.

Marignon, as another specialist nations suddenly gains value in a team game.

Standard theme of Tien Chi is pretty good, but their main strength in their magic versatility, which makes them much less attractive in the team game. Given the set of nations on team A, they still probably need Tien Chi for the air and water, unless they want to take a risk and rely on indies.

I think it's wrong to evaluate nations for the team on the basis of the regular MP. TC has a weakness in the early game and is likely to fall a victim of a rush. But the same applies to Mictlan. In a team game, nations that come into force early can help and protect other nations which can contribute to the team later. That doesn't work well for TC though, because their strength is in flexibility and for the team game specialization is more valuable. For the same reason Arco, which is one of the best nations, may not necessarily be very good pick for the team.

Re: Players
 

Well you have jotunheim niefelheim which can make the first SC on turn 2 .
D3N gives you not sooo good battlemagic a bit drain life a bit animate skeletons and that's it basically .
A niefelgigant should normally kill a banelord easy .

Basically the only weapon we have is charm . But thats high research and since ulm is dead now he can't forge Lanterns for pangenea speeding up research .

Hopefully you will show us in the rematch what ctis etc. can do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I fail to see how they fit better for a teamgame then e.g. caelum http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Players
 

2 Ctis just defeated 4 of my Seraphs in battle. went a little something like this:

Seraph 1: *yawn* well, he we go again. you guys ready with your False Horrors?

Seraph 2: Yup. Lets scare the [censored] outta the poor Ctis army.

Seraph 3: Did you guys notice something different about these dudes?

Seraph 4: Yeah, they kinda look "undead" a bit.

Seraph 1: Just start pumping out the False Horrors, everything should go as usual.

... many many many turns go by

Seraph 3: Hey guys, why are we still here?

Seraph 4: Because those [censored] Sauromancers are producing more Skeletons per turn then our False Horrors can handle.

Seraph 2: Doesn't that mean that we'll eventually lose this battle?

Seraph 3: Yup! Actually one of us will probably get killed, and then the rest of yous will run like little girls.

Seraph 1: Hmmm, yeah, sounds about right.

Seraph 4: *AHHHH* I'm being torn apart by a stupid skeleton! This wasn't in my job description!!! *AHHHH*

Seraph 1: Ewww. Time to run boys!

Re: Players
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Players
 

Well for poor Ctis it was not that funny http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif
I guess those horrors would even give a banelord trouble http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

Re: Players
 

oh. you know, playing Caelum really desensitizes you to the massive death toll other races face. i didn't even notice the big army Ctis had except for the two Sauromancers that gave me trouble!