Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Aezeal, he just used body ethereal, luck and astral shield. Plus prto 20 (something) and an athame for partial drain life. That is what made him win the battle.

Oh, and of course, an eye shield so that bane lords are now renamed blind lords http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

any nation with elephants should rush with them I think

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Now he tells me!

Anyone going to play in the mega sixty player game starting may 1? Sounds like a lot of fun!

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

No, 60 players... that will probably be a mess, many people ealy leaving, so many rushers towards them and as a side effect different possibilities just based on turn 0 luck (position). I prefer more 'controlled' settings where the important thing is what I made.

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Lol I certainly got beaten in Borale alright. However, I'm more inclined to say it's due to my and/or AI major screw up than Bifron's superiority. Here's my side of the story:

Ulm
- 100+ useless chaff units, mostly thralls, who had no purpose except to die at Bifron's feet and therefore buy some time.
- Bane Lord, who was equipped with fire brand/charcoal shield/fly boots/luck pendant, so he was hardly fully decked out as Karlem said. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
His function was to kill the PD Mictlan might have had in the province. Script was supposed to be hold x4->attack rear but I forgot to actually put those orders on him, which I think proved to be rather disasterous in the end.
- 4 black priest who were there to throw iron darts & iron blizzard in the case of PD.
- 1 vampire lord and 3 vampire counts, all scripted to cast leech, which is quite irresistable death sentence to lonely SCs. I also scripted a few hellbind hearts so I might get lucky and capture Mictlan's SC for myself. I didn't bring all those blood slaves to the battlefield for nothing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
All in all, I thought I had crafted a quite elaborate death trap for Bifrons from which there was to be no escape.

Then the battle started and soon everything would come crashing down, for me at least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
The battle went the way Karlem described but there are few details I wanted to add. My bane lord attacked Bifrons(there was no PD to fight with) immediately, instead of attacking on battle turn five, because of the wrong script I had on him. At this point I immediately knew my bane lord would die as he certainly wasn't same caliber as the ice devil. But this wasn't a big casualty for me because one can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. My mages went next and along with them my plan was ruined as none of them casted the spells, except for Aim, I had scripted on them. So instead of leeches and hellbind hearts my mages throw totally useless stuff( against SCs that is) like raise dead, imps and rush of strenght! The battle goes on with Bifrons stuck in the corner killing my bane lord and soon to be there chaff and needless to say my mages continue act out of script casting Fail Spells(TM). At least they could have chosen to cast Life for a Life instead of raise dead, no? The battle continues like this until my forces finally rout and die because of my second epic failure of the turn: I forgot to send troops to keep the Jomon castle sieged so I would have had a province to retreat into in the case of rout. This rout part of the events isn't so critical though because Mictlan had Magoth attack the Jomon province also and my supposed keep-the-siege-on force wouldn't have stood a chance against him. I have watched the battle several times and the only reason for my mages total failure I could come up with is that the bane lord's too early attack kept Bifrons out of range for my scripted spells and therefore AI ignored my orders and proceeded to cast lame stuff instead of good stuff.

As it stands I'm ready concede to Mictlan and declare Karlem as the winner of VampireBat. How do you guys feel about this? If someone thinks he can still beat Mictlan we should continue the game but otherwise I think we should wrap it up and move on to other games and battles.

Me giving up against Karlem now may seem like surprise(or not) but I've good reason for it and I'll tell it(along som e other stuff) if we decide this game is over. If Karlem for some reason refuses my surrender, I'll do the motions required to postpone the inevitable by a couple of turns.

PS: I find it almost hilarious that such a simple thing as bane lord's orders have this kind of consequences for my play. Even more amusing though is the fact that for the second time in this game all my careful planning goes down the drain on the Fields of Borale. Province #60, I will officially hate you until the end of time and will pillage you in every game I will ever play from now on. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

As my capital lies in smoldering ruins, and Khan'Gar oft-dead having just died for a third time, I'm happy to declare Mictlan the winner.

With my new-found knowledge I'm keen to get started on a new game!

Highlights of the game so far (from my perspective):

1. Aezeal. I play various games from tabletop wargames to computer games to xbox live, and I don't think I've enjoyed playing against someone quite as much as I've enjoyed playing against Aezeal. The self-aggrandising humour in his posts, the (early) back and forth of our combats, his bold galderman, his invention of manticore steak - there have been many Aezeal highlights, and I look forward to locking manticore horns with him again soon.

2. Everyone's posts. Particularly the battle reports, but just the general chit-chat - i've learnt a ton. Next game I'll focus on developing my mages and on constructing items rather than just my haphazard 'huh, i have enough gems for hurricane...sweeeeet' strategy.

3. The sort of glorious tragedy of defeat. Khan'Gar now has three "Aezeal roolz" brand marks on his butt. My prophet managed to not die all game but that was mostly because she got freaked out by the hundreds of dying province defense in front of her. I don't think she really accomplished anything all game. Nor did Khan'Gar, aside from looking cool, and guaranteeing that my priestesses and sibyls were diverted from unimportant tasks like research and instead focused on calling out his name. But seriously, there's a certain pleasure to watching your once promising empire crumbling, scrambling your forces even though you know the odds are against you. I imagine this is something that gets old quick, but in my first game there's been a certain pleasure to it.

4. The gallipoli-like charge against Mictlan. The build-up was wonderful, declaring war and all that. A day at work looking forward to some slow-arse to take their turn so I could find out the result. And then the utter thrashing I received! Really thought that battle would be close, and it had to be because the huge army i'd been planning to weild against Aezeal got diverted. Luckily Khan'Gar had only just been recalled and wasn't close enough to get an "I love Karlem" brand...

5. Khan'Gar's heavy investment in a triton army, unaware of what the little shark icon on the tritons meant...

6. Khan'Gar's heavy investment in PD. Actually I hate to think how much I spent. Early on I did it because the manual suggested keeping a bit and I wasn't sure where my borders were. But I must've spent 10000 at least during the game (gulp).

There must be dozens more. Anyway, it's been fun. I'll play out a few more turns if folks like (I get the feeling that some would like to play this further), but I really think that blood rivers of Mictlan have it...

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

I've been thinking about joining the new mega game, it indeed sounds like fun. I certainly don't expect to survive till the end in it but I'm sure game like that will be an educational experience anyway. Now that I think more about it, getting totally owned in middle game by some brilliant play would be kind of cool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In order to make sure I don't die too soon, I'll probably pick some good EA bless nation or make a tough SC pretender.

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Zenzei, it was a problem of range. If you expect to fight a SC the only solution I have found is to script things like this:

Aim, atackx2, Spell, Spell

This way the mage is nearer and maybe casts them, but of course you need to send some chaff to get arrows and such in case there are any with attack closest.

Regardign the surrender and declaring me winner I personally think that everybody must declare a winner, if just one other thinks that winning is possible then we should continue. I admit that I am in a very good position but Midgard can still do lots of harm and Marignon is there, preparing his movements!. Ulm is not won unless my unrest cap plan has worked better than expected, and you still have those SCs and Pretender.

Zenzei I think that unless you say everything that you have found (perhaps you were rushing to some magic level and found somebody was already there?) it will be hard to convice them.

I will continue playing until there is someone else that sends their turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Bane lords do not need head and chest armour (they come with them and quite good) so with just those 4 things I consider them fully decked, perhaps add an antimagic amulet? But that's the only modification I would do to your thug.

Well, There is another modification, I like etherealness, against PD it's wonderfull, so just puting an S1 mage near him scripted body ethereal makes wonders.

Re: VampireBat - LA game for new players
 

Aye, I said this too in case you didn't notice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I hope other nations will say, Arco already did, if they still want to fight Mictlan so we know whether there's reason to keep playing or not. Personally, I don't think Midgård or Marignon can beat Mictlan by themselves but I wouldn't mind getting proved wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I have two SCs, Buriel and Igarak, plus my pretender against your at least six SCs. I would say you have quite an advantege there. Combine that with the fact I just permanently lost all my vampires and I can't recruit anything due to unrest, I'd say my chances are pretty non-existent. I've some troops left but they are totally irrelevant against super combatants. My remaining mages might be able kill some of Karlem's SCs but catching a flying SC with slow moving mage force is extremely difficult. Simply put I lose more every turn than I'm able to take and that leads to defeat without exception.