Re: what Ctis did wrong
 

Ctis had never planned to invade Vanheim. In fact, he didn't even count on surviving until the end of the war. But he *had* planned to survive a lot longer than he did. If I hadn't made several blunders and thrown away valuable assassins and Poison Slingers, then I might have defeated the first wave of Vanheim (since Vanheim didn't choose to allocate powerful troops to bodyguard duty, except for two Fey Boars, both of which were dead by the end).

My questions for Vanheim are: 1. Were you earning substantial income from the formerly-Ctissian provinces before you banished Bwoony, or did the Miasma successfully suppress your income from those provinces? It was Bwoony's strategy to soak up both your time and your money (where diseasing your magical super cavalry counts as soaking up both). 2. Were you earning substantial income from the formerly-Ctissian provinces after banishing Bwoony? I would guess so. 3. Was this added income, in your opinion, necessary for your successful team attack on Caelum?

Any other general pointers?

Re: what Caelum did wrong
 

Maybe I should have hired flying troops to keep the devils and fiends away from my Seraphs for a few turns, instead of hoping to build Staves of Storms. But by the end-game there, I had little gold income after upkeep. Hm.

Another thing is that perhaps Caelum should have studied Evocation before Conjuration. It was great fun having the Elementals, but the Lightning Bolts could have started flying earlier and helped Caelum expand wider.

In general, both Ctis and Caelum expanded too slowly due to holding back from attacking independents when they should've attacked, and due to attacking independents when they shouldn't have. ;-) (The latter error was more common when I was the military secretary of Caelum.)

Neither of us ever properly scouted Vanheim, so I don't know how many provinces he controlled before invading Ctis.

congratulations
 

Good game, you guys. I really enjoyed playing against you because I felt like I had to do my best if I wanted to have a fighting chance. I enjoyed seeing the two of you cooperate, such as when a Jotun army including his prophet headed for Ctis before turning back when his Vanheimish partner reported that Ctis was already helpless.

Thanks for the game!

I'm sorry for the numerous and extensive delays. If we ever play against one another again, you can be sure that:

1. My primary computer for e-mail, dom2, and most other things won't experience filesystem corruption and go out of service for a month, forcing me to set up a replacement.
2. My server that hosts my e-mail, web site, and mailing lists won't be hacked, forcing me to set up a replacement.
3. My brother won't do all his final exams, write an undergraduate thesis and graduate Magna Cum Laude. Hooray for arc!

So anyway, next time arc and I play dom2, things will probably go a lot smoother.

the two-vs-two format
 

The two-vs-two format is excellent! The games are fast as furious. You get to chat with your partner so that you are socializing with your friend or relative instead of playing a computer game all by yourself. If one player is unable to play his turns his partner can do them for him. Strategies can be more varied since one team member can help the other one out on his weak points.

In general, the two-vs-two format is a superb format. The only drawback that I can think of right now is that there aren't very many maps that are the right size and shape for 2-v-2.

the Chandrea2 map
 

I like the Chandrea2 map. It is okay to look at, although not as pretty as the Cradle of Dominion map. It is also small enough and densely connected enough to be suitable for the 2-v-2 format.

It could stand some improvement, though, on "intuitive province connections".

In particular the various kinds of "lines" -- province boundaries, roads, rivers, shipping lanes prevent me from easily seeing the relations between provinces. And in general it isn't intuitive to me which provinces connect to which other ones, and in fact my biggest blunder of the game was perhaps partially due to my not thinking of the fact that province 81 connected directly to province 71. (Although I was certainly aware of that fact and had in fact moved a scout from 81 to 71 earlier in the same move!)

Another example question is why Altdorf City connects to Wasser Marsh but not to Bruh Rogg or Oxmoor.

For comparison, when I earlier played a game on the Cradle of Dominion map, I played the entire game with the "province connector arrows" turned off, except for the occasional double-check. In Cradle of Dominion, once you have looked at the province connect arrows a couple of times, you can confidently remember most of the connections, because those provinces "look" like they should be connected when looking at the map.

another question for Vanheim
 

Did you think that your prophet Voldemort and your other commanders were in danger of assassination? Did you consider allocating more troops to bodyguard duty but then decide not to do it?

I remind you that when Voldemort conquered Ctis's home castle, he had 3 hit points due to the extreme fervour of the local Ctissian worshippers.

It was really my blunder that I didn't assassinate all three of your commanders, thus breaking the siege, by sending seven assassins. Instead I sent only two assassins (having thrown five under the hoofs of your cavalry and having accidentally left one to guard the fort). Those two assassins killed one of your commanders and the remaining Fey Boar bodyguard of Voldemort.

However, I think if you had allocated four or five heavy infantry to each of those commanders then even my seven assassins might have failed to kill all of them.

Re: the Chandrea2 map
 

Oh vanquished foes Bwoony & Ambrosia:

Let's see, where do we begin?

1. I think your first mistake with the lizards was the choice of castle. Playing Miasmi, you want a fort with huge defense. The 50 admin and 500 supply on the Fortified City was not near as important as the too-low 100 defense. Had you taken the Hill Fortress or Dark Citadel, I might still be seiging it. And for sure, every single troop on the seige would have been poisoned before it was all over. I would have been vectoring in troops non-stop to maintain the seige and it would have been a far, far longer time before I sailed onto Caelum's island.

2. Your next mistake was compounded by the castle choice. Because it was 5 turns and 750 gold, you could not build one for a long, long time. This may have influenced your decision to build 3 uprotected temples. That 600 gold could have been far better used for nearly anything else. I know the dominion spread was your goal, but it is abysmally hard to spread dominion (even at the 10 level), into enemy provinces. You did spread your dominion slightly into my territory, but it was only 1 province deep and I concentrated hard on preaching it away since I had found a Devil's Den there. Thus, your dominion never impacted my territory at all and there was practically no income loss, as the Devil's Den requires a tax rate of 50 anyway to maintain order. As for spreading your dominion into Jontunheim, he was just too far away to have much of an impact there.

3. Losing the 5 empoisoners to the vans was nothing but a big fat blunder. Everybody makes blunders in every game. Some big, some minor, but mistakes will always happen over the course of a long game. That happened to be a big one as you already noted.

4. As for the assination strategy, I am not certain it would have worked. My prophet and Einhere both got skull talismans from the first encounters and thus could spam just as many skeletons as were you. Plus the level 4 prophet banishment was a huge factor in my favor as well as was the summoning of the ghost wolves. Even with only 3 HP, I don't think you could have assinated him with 10 or more empoisoners. The hero Einhere with the skull talisman would have been even harder to kill than the prophet. However, had they become diseased and afflicted from the Miasmi, that would have been a totally different story. Again, this goes back to the initial castle choice.

5. Your Caelum design was well-conceived. You used the improved elementals under Zen's mods to very good effect. When I first saw the Caelum pretender with the four elemental paths, I could not understand what the heck was going on with him. But when I saw him in action spamming elementals, I was very impressed. So was Tauren, since he was on the receiving end big time agian and again.

6. Flying your pretender into enemy territory alone was eventually going to catch up to you. But you were desperate by that time and had to take risks. It is hard to fault that plan, even when it crashed and burned.

7. My pretender never did truly die. When you see a pretender with 3 deaths at the top of the HoF on turn 15, that can only mean immortal. And when you see Vans with Fire 9 + Air 5 bless, that must be a Phoenix. In fact, Fawkes is the name of the phoenix in the Harry Potter books, so I thought it was obvious. I lost my bird twice trying to stubbornly take a vine province. The phoenix simply cannot kill Dark Vines, for they have too many HPs. I lost him the third time because he was feeble-minded and I did not notice when I sent him in. I was more careful after that and Fawkes was taking territory unterrupted at the end, solidly at the top of the HoF.

8. You could have had a better searching strategy, but that is kind of minor on such a fast map. Both Tauren and I had a huge stockpile of gems at the end that we could not spend.

9. Vanheim has a huge advantage on this particular map. The sailing ability is almost unstoppable. I can strike practically anywhere with no risk of retaliation. In fact, I just checked the current turn and I had 31 vans, 8 Huskarls, 4 devils, 8 horned serpents, 5 cave drakes, and 4 wyverns which would be arriving on your island over the next several turns. And many more to come after those. All with no worry about losing provinces on my homeland since fliers cannot go over water. My son and I agonized over taking Jontunheim instead of Vanheim with our first chioce but eventually decided you two were far more likely to grab the giants instead of the sailors. It worked out for us in the end. Plus Tauren discovered the Frost Fiend strategy and was highly enamored with it. In Cold 3, Frost Fiends are even superior to devils!

10. The map Chandra still needs some work. The iron mines in every city is probably a mistake, especially sonce you cannot play Mictlan with that. The C'tis starting spot was horribly inferior to the other three nations. Plus, as you said, there are still province connections that are not intuitive. And four players is probably all the map can handle.


I really like this 2v2 format a lot. It radically changes your thinking knowing that you are totally at war on the very first move. You MUST build armies as soon as you can or you will get overrun. Level 1 and 2 summons are important to supplement your army! Magic is not the dominating force like it is in the big FFAs. And having a partner talk over things makes for a better overall strategy. My son and I discussed this game endlessly over many a lunch in the past few months. It was too bad that your brother was so busy with school that he did not play much. I think that he would have throughly enjoyed this game too had he the time to do so.

And if you guys want a rematch, we are game. Different map, though, for this map is still not quite right.


Finally, I want to really thank Alneyan for hosting this game. As always, he was a superb host. I do hope to meet up with him when I am in France in June so I can buy a lunch for him! In a very interesting coincidence, my daughter happens to be an exchange student at the very same school in France which Alneyan attends!!! Odd, but true.


Fawkes of Vanheim (aka, The Panther)

Re: the Chandrea2 map
 

*Takes notes* Lovely! I so love being besieged that I should go with Miasma and a big fortress; getting the Iron Walls/Arcane Masonry spells to work would only make it twice as fun. Thanks for the tip Panther; now I merely need to grow fond of everything else in C'tis.

AAR
 

Thanks a lot for the tips! I hadn't really noticed that the Fortified City had significantly weaker walls than the others.

I would love to play you guys again, and I'll bet arc would too. But what map would we use?

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

The fortified city completely fails. The 5 turns and huge cost to build is hardly worth the little extra admin you get. The 500 supply is not really worth much, either. Nobody needs that much supply... I think taking the fortified city was my single biggest blunder in KotH. (Well, maybe not. I had some pretty big blunders. Like not even knowing what a dome was and how important they are.http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif)

I agree with Panther that the temples were a bad idea. With 10 base dominion, as long as you keep your God and prophet alive (and your God was immoble so that wasnt a problem), your dominion will spread well enough. Alternatively, I would have taken a watch tower and built one for every temple. For 2.5 times the cost, you can make your temple *much* harder to destroy, not to mention having another location to build troops and mages, and the extra pretender points so you wouldnt have had to take that drain. Also then, with your nice order and productivity scales, you could have built those troops with the castle defense bonus (whatever theyre called) and stuck about 10 them in every tower. Vans are not very good at seiging, so that would have made your territory take forever to capture, meaning more deseased Vans.

I had some serious expanding issues this game as well. My god died early on to a lucky sleep-casting indy druid, and I had no priests to recall him. I didnt get him back untill like 2 turns before you resigned... Also, I sacked my prophet, a couple niefel giants, and a few HoF herses to about 40 heavy cavalry... certainly was NOT expecting that many... and so between losing my god and losing my army, my expansion came to a complete halt. I had better luck in test games; I was able to take 1 province/turn starting on turn 1 (yes, my god and starting troops could actually win 90% attacking blind against level 9 indys) and continuing indefinitely. No such luck here, though.

I was also doing a poor job of spending gems. I was using all my mage-time to blood hunt and summon frost fiends, so I had no research. IIRC, at the end, I had about 100 death and water gems piled up, and had just sent about 50 nature gems to Panther so he could start making horned serpents.

The elemental strategy was pretty painfull; I found that even my niefel giants had no hope of getting anywhere near the mages. So I just went all-out frost fiends, figuring flight was what I really needed. I really fell in love with frost fiends in my test games. Not only do they look really cool, in cold 3 they become stronger than devils for less the cost. They get +1 protection, strength, attack, and defense for every cold level, and in a Jotunheim vs. Caelum war, there will be cold everywhere. However, If you would have gotten staffs of storms out, I would have had no answer. But I guess its kind of hard to get that research when your mages are all busy fighting...

Looking at how well Panther was doing, I think he may have been able to win all by himself. His gem income was going through the roof from all the dark knowledge and gnome lore, he had huge Gold income after capturing Ctis's capitol (it had like 350 income!), and the sailing was a major advantage on this map. Not to mention Vans cost about half of what theyre worth. I think with a fire 9 bless theyre worth more like 150 gold. Also, Panther had the best starting spot out of all of us by quite a long shot. I dont think that map is too well balanced. I actually liked the older version better, where you started outside of the cities, and they didnt have the mines. But that version had a couple terrain and neighbor problems.

Anyway, Im game for a rematch. Hopefully Arc could actually get a chance to play it.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

One other thing about the assasination strategy. I did make a big mistake by not assigning adequate bodyguards to my 3 HP prophet. The fey boars were on bodyguard duty just to keep them out of harms way and prevent them from dying during a battle. I had them along solely for the 20 supply bonus, as vans do eat a lot at size 3.

While I was seiging your castle, all I had to do was put ALL my vans on bodyguard duty until the walls fell. Then there would have been exactly zero chance of ever losing my prophet to any number of assasinations.

And so, I just learned yet another key bit of information from this very game!

As for the map choice, I think that there are a lot of good maps about 100 size or less that are not wraparound. And I also think wraparound is much less important in a 2v2 than in an FFA, especially if we go with preplaced starting spots.


Panther

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Beware! Armies with only bodyguard units rout as soon as *one* unit/commander is killed. I do not know if you are aware of this fact, but it cannot hurt to point it out. It would hurt a lot to lose half your army because of that, in case the besieged try to attack you with more conventional means.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Ah, I did not know that. So the best strat would have been to put 5 vans on bodyguard duty and leave the rest on attack closest. With the fire 9 bless, 5 vans could have won dozens of assasination battles anyway.

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

Yeah. Those blessed Vans could clean up my assassins even if there were only one Van per leader.

Too bad I fumbled all my assassins and didn't teach you this lesson the HARD way. ;-)

Re: wanted: a team of two players and a new map
 

I'm getting all excited about designing a new nation/pretender strategy... ;-)

mods?
 

As per the "micromanagent and balance issues are due to Free-For-All" concept, I'm not so hot on Zen's Balance Mods anymore.

For example, his mods eliminate Wish. Is too much Wishing going to be a problem in any 2-vs-2 game? I think not. If anybody takes a strategy where they are able to cast Wish, then more power to them.

The Pretender Balance Mod might be okay, though, as that is intended to balance things right at opening and early game.

regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

Yes, I really like that strategy of Niefelheim, Green Dragon, 9 Nature. That is, in fact, the strategy I used in the previous game, which was the first 2-v-2 game that arc and I ever played. Our team won that time, in large part to due the early and powerful attack of the berserking regenerating Niefel giants.

I agree that you got unlucky.

I'm surprised that it took you so long to recall your god -- didn't you hire lots of Jotun Jarls and Jotun Godes? I recall seeing a few.

I noticed you didn't have any Niefel Jarls. If I were playing that strategy I might have begged my partner for a loan of gold in order to hire a Niefel Jarl right away. :-)

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

To tell the truth, Im not a big fan of the Niefel Jarls. I prefer getting 2 Skratti (meaning a bunch of frost fiends http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) rather than 1 Niefel Jarl...

I didnt stress to much on trying to recall my God. He needed a time out for bad behavior http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

:-)

So what is another map that is a reasonable size for a two-vs-two game? I've looked around and haven't seen any.

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

Tauren and I discussed this at length yesterday and came up with...

Desert Eye (125/17).

It is smaller than Inland (154/5) and larger than Chandrea (103/18). It also has the HUGE advantage of being wrap-around, which means we can have random starting spots. It also allows a water race if someone was so inclined to select one. There are other options, like Aran (107/11) or Tyrande (103/21) or Northwest Middle Earth (119/6) or even a random map, but we might have to use fixed starting spots because none of those are wrap-around.


You guys get the first and fourth pick this time.

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

Shall we use Zen's Pretender Mods and Zen's Scales Mods but not Zen's Spell Mods ?

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

I really like Zen's spell mods. It makes the T'ien Ch'i national spells castable, thus giving that nation a fighting chance. It also fixes a lot of the weaker summons, making them definitely worth casting. Additionally, it rightfully nerfs Flames from the Sky and Wrathful Skies (the single most unbalanced spell in the game), plus some other of the excesses.

Of course, the Wish thing is totally unimportant in a 2v2 on a small map, so that is a non-issue. It only matters late game due to clam hoarding.

Did you look at some of those map choices and see a map that you two like?

Re: regenerating berserking Niefel giants
 

I'm happy with Desert Eye. It is bigger, so this game will be different in pace. I think it will not turn into a hot war as early.

I'm happy with all Zen's mods, then.

Speaking of Tien Chi, I want to play Tien Chi.

That's our team's first pick.

(Unless you really really wanted to play Tien Chi, then I can happily find something else...)

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Dear Alneyan:

Thank you so much for hosting! That was really nice.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Heh, it was nothing. I used this opportunity to do some spying on the two teams; my own scheme shall soon come to fruition.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Hm, I've been playing test games on Desert Eye, and I realized that Desert Eye is the map that Arc and I used in our first two-vs-two game:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...art=1&vc=1

We thought after that game that it was unfair to one of our enemies, who was close enough to each of us that we teamed up on him, but his partner was too far away to help. Of course, this was partially because we scouted him out early on, and deliberately conquered independents between him and us so that we could gang up on him.

So, I think we should go ahead and use this map, but be aware that random placement on this map can have important strategic consequences...

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Ah, wheres the fun in life without a little randomness?

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

;-)

You guys are deciding on your nation choices, right?

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Mictlan
R'lyeh

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

So, are we going to use the same settings?
indy 9
sites 40
HoF 10
research difficult

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Okay! Those are good settings.

How shall we host it?

I can run it on a TCP-reachable server, but I've decided that I really prefer e-mail, especially since we can mail the trn files to both members of the team.

I could probably script up an automatic e-mail bot to do that job for us.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Oh good! Quantum Mechani has posted a README for the Conceptual Spells mod. Hooray!

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

On another note, please let me know if you would like to get the archive of all the turns in the 2vs2 (it should be rather small, so I should be able to upload it in this thread).

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

The problem with you hosting it is that you will have to load either my turn or Tauren's turn into your own game to validate the move with your own CD key. Which means you will have to involuntarily view the turn every time. This is true whether TC/ICP or email.

Probably not a good idea.

I was wondering if we could ask Alneyan yet again to host for us. Of course, he is already doing so much hosting that he may not want to do so.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

I am not sure how this would work. By having the turn files, can anybody view the whole game from all 4 sides even without the fatherland file? If so, than that would be a great idea.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Well, hosting a 2vs2 game doesn't take a lot of time (two minutes per turn, if that much), so I can host the next game.

Yes, everybody can view all the turns without having the fatherland file (and view the orders given as well). The fatherland file only allows to host a turn, recreating the turn files if needed.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Ugh. I *might* be able to set it up so that my scripted bot automatically validates your trn files with my cd key, or something, but I'm not sure what that would entail.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Alneyan: Thanks a lot!

Okay, I guess I'm ready to send my Pretender file to Alneyan then. :-)

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Um, I am not ready to upload anything! These squids are a very strange race. I have never really looked at them before yesterday. And how the heck do I kill those nasty tritons? They just instantly fly over (almost before the screen comes up) and WHAM - Fried Squid! And facing 80+ of them nasty tritons is not unusual at all. It seems the only way I can reliably keep my pretender alive is to take an immobile...

Now, why did I pick R'lyeh anyway???

Has Arc decided on a race yet? I suppose if I was serious about this, his choice of race ought to influence my pretender design. Which it will, but only if he chooses Atlantis, I think. Otherwise, I dunno what to do!

Tauren is out of town until late Tuesday night anyway.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

You will probably want some fodder for those tritons, and hope said fodder lasts long enough for the squids to deal some punishment. The same goes true for Atlantis, so at least you will not be the only one having trouble with the Tritons.

If regular tritons aren't bad enough for you, there are always the Amber Clan Tritons, with a better armour and mage support. They are very uncommon fortunately, but that doesn't help when you do face them.

Otherwise... Well, I am no fond of atlantic nations. Does it show?

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Didn't Bruce Geryk in his Tom vs Bruce Dominions article say that anything with the girlish name of "Amber" must be very easy to kill??? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

I think maybe that's what the slave races are for -- Triton bait.

Arc has chosen, but we haven't announced his choice, so you can always go back and unchoose R'lyeh if you like. :-)

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

All the 26 turns from the 2vs2 games are attached to this post (along with order files).

That is, if my second upload works.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

The file works fine now, after an upload that didn't quite make it.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

And, drum roll, the chosen nation is???

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim -- After Acti
 

Arc chooses Marignon. He's already uploaded his file to Alneyan.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim
 

Pretenders for Mictlan, Marignon and T'ien Ch'i have been received. I haven't checked them though, but the files should be working fine (and they indeed work fine).

I gather all three Zen mods will be enabled this time as well? Oh, and will you play under 2.15 or 2.16?

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim
 

I guess we should upgrade to 2.16. I'll upgrade my app now.

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim
 

Oops -- I made my pretender with conceptp 2.00 instead of 2.01. Will this result in any harm?

Re: starts with C vs. ends with heim
 

It shouldn't, as those two mods are very, very close; actually, I think 2.01 is the same as 2.00, but with a readme file and a better organisation of the file.

However, the first game was played with 2.00 and not 2.01, if memory serves, so it was I who made the mistake.