Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

Come on, blood slaves are dirt-cheap. I don`t even count 5 blood slaves as real investment. I meant the variant i screenshoted - with Lycan amulet and hunter`s knife.
Dust to Dust doesn`t care about MR. It just deals 22+ AN damage with AoE 1 and precision +0 to any undead. Can be cast by any D1 mage out there. It still somehow doesn`t prevent Banes from being used effectively.
Small enough to be successfully trampled. And not defensive enough to dodge a trampling enraged minotaur lord. :)
Only in human form. In jaguar form they are size 3, AFAIK. Also, those are extreme example of elite sacred unit - of course, they need special threatment.
Same as jaguars. Also, they are cap-only, so hard to mass.
High-level summon!=common human. And Pan has answers to them outside of minotaur lords.
Do you really think that scripting a solo-raiding caelian to thunderstrike is a good idea? Also, Caelum really needs some research done before evo - you know, stuff like alt3 (mistform), for example. And why send those minotaurs solo? Send 3-4 of them and watch enemy SC god cry.
Because, as we all know, a bane needs no equipment. :)

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

3-4 minotaurs? Instead of 4 mages?
When I've researched everything useful, definitely. Before that, it's a waste of fort time unless I have no money for a lab.
An unequipped bane beats your sample minotaur. Once again, these have some use, but they are so heavily specialised that they are definitely not worth recruiting unless you have a specific need for them.
And mechanical men require as much construction as the items you put on your thugs. Same for alt3/evo3 vs. cons4 for Caelum with its better research. Plus if you build minotaurs when you still haven't gotten anything better than Cons4, you're not going anywhere in research.

Helheim: Turn V
 

http://i.imgur.com/aS0Z8.png

Turn V: Requiem for a Fish-Man

http://i.imgur.com/EuaV2.jpg

Nothing happened this turn except one battle. Those Order scales really cut down on the random events; too bad they didn't do their job on turn two.

http://i.imgur.com/1I5nA.jpg

Wow, I knew I'd win this battle (ichytids are notoriously weak), but not even losing a serf? That's impressively bad on their part.

http://i.imgur.com/RrIMH.jpg

Here are the weak fishmen in question. Some armored, some not; the unarmored ones carry nets, which are useful because they entangle opponents until they can break out, but on these guys they're hardly worth it.

http://i.imgur.com/MlgTD.jpg

And here they are meeting my forces; between the heavily armored ones being in the back and that heavy gear slows units down, only half their army meets mine at first. Meanwhile, the pincer strategy I used before worked again, both of my forces slamming into the unarmored fishies at the same time. Many fishmen fall immediately.

http://i.imgur.com/sxIW2.jpg

The fishmen employ their nets, entangling many of my troops, but they lack the strength to take advantage of this, and their armored troops still haven't reached the battle yet; apart from a few glancing blows, no damage is inflicted.

http://i.imgur.com/Lmys1.jpg

The armored troops arrive just as their allies break ranks and flee. They hardly fare better, and most of my troops have broken out of the nets already, so they're facing my full forces.

http://i.imgur.com/2SrBs.jpg

Most of their army, including their commander, falls, causing them to run after their faster brethren. While many are chased down, a few escape. However, their land is now Helheim's property.

http://i.imgur.com/u8YMO.jpg

So, I gained another province. More importantly, however, the unrest on my capital is finally gone. Now I can tax it again, and start making real money; while I can't recruit anyone this turn, starting next turn I'll be hiring Svartalf and Vanjarls to make up for lost time.

Not all news is good news this turn, though. As you have probably noticed, R'lyeh's kraken has shown its slimy face to the north of my peninsula. This has me a bit worried; while there's no way that thing can leave the sea yet, the strength of its dominion is a threat to my own, which has been rather anemic without my god. While he'll probably just keep moving, if he decides to sit off my shore I'll be in real trouble. To prevent this I send a message to R'lyeh, the contents of which I forgot to screenshot, and also have my prophet start preaching where he is to build up a reserve of dominion where he is.

Topic of my prophet, you can see some Marverni flags down where he is. Turns out I have a neighbor just below where my little offshoot of land ends and the mainland begins. I've been talking with Marverni since the beginning of this game, mainly because he was the only person who was on IRC with regularity at that point, and we basically allied from the start, so I won't be warring with him, but this limits my expansion room quite a bit. Still, I assumed there'd be a lot more space between me and my neighbors. Maybe there will be some open space to the south...

http://i.imgur.com/9WYbk.jpg

Here's a closer look at the province I took this turn. The Misfortune scale there is something of a concern, and the unrest is far too high for a single battle. I drop my taxes on the province to zero; while normally I only drop them one or two notches from what the game tries to set them to when I take them, which ensures that all the unrest is gone the next turn and I can start full taxation, I think that there's a magic site hidden here causing the unrest. And there's only one site in the game that causes both unrest and Misfortune scales: The Vale of Infinite Horror. It, as you may have guessed from that name, is a very bad thing. It's in the running for the worst site in the game, in fact. Now, it may be a different site; there is a random event that causes Misfortune scales to appear, and events can happen to independents at times (sometimes you'll even see independent forts and temples because of this), and there are also unrest-causing events, so there may be a different site here. Still, I'm concerned.

Either way, I order Sir Slicer and his army back to the capital; the province at the tip of the peninsula has fifty-ish units in it, mainly archers, and arrows ignore glamour so they'd tear into my army, while the one to the west has sixty units, mainly heavy infantry, troops that can be hard to kill with meager forces like this, and longdeads, weird zombies that, while not a huge threat on their own, imply mage presence there. Instead he'll meet up with Finn at the capital, and together they'll take the last province adjacent to my capital, which Finn didn't attack this turn due to the elephants there I mentioned in an early post; an army with them should, in theory, keep the more valuable units safe from the glamour-ignoring trample.

http://i.imgur.com/cAmhz.jpg

So, we see that Marverni hit some trouble this turn, apparently, Caelum still hasn't expanded beyond that first province, and that while R'lyeh managed to capture two provinces this turn, Fomoria and Abysia kicked things into high gear and got three, putting them in the lead.

I have no idea where the other nations are, but between information from Marverni and looking at the map, I've been able to figure out where R'lyeh's capital is. (Yes, I had to figure it out; I didn't look at the map file. Didn't seem fair, even though I knew a few other people probably would.)

http://i.imgur.com/M1ThK.jpg

Here's where I've determined it to be. Despite what it may look like, the province to the south-east of it does not connect to the one directly east of it, making this corner province the only way east. Not only that, but that one area below Avalon is connected to the one north of it, and Marverni confirmed that R'lyeh took that province as well. So, we know that R'lyeh's pretender took a province each turn, which would be four at this point. Moving out from the corner, there's exactly four provinces that it could have taken from starting there; counting back from where the pretender is this turn and going through the land we know it took, we likewise can only arrive at that corner province. So I now know where R'lyeh's capital is. This... Will eventually be useful, I guess, but for now it doesn't mean much, since I can't make gear that will let me enter the sea, and even if I could I can't deal with that kraken. Aside from that, R'lyeh is one of the few nations that can effectively counter Helheim at this point; I field small groups of elite troops that can tear through armies, but his mindblasters can paralyze these small teams much more easily than they could an entire army, leaving them helpless. Still, this information will come in handy in the future.

Nest turn: Not a whole lot happens.

-------

Bonus: Dominion explanation

So, last update I explained scales, but scales only spread with your dominion, the representation of how strong your worship is in a province. The more dominion you have in a province, the more easily your scales spread there and the more resistant they are to change from outside sources like the seasons or magic sites. If your dominion runs out, you lose, as no one believes in your god anymore and you lose all your power. Also, troops get a bonus point of morale in friendly dominion and lose a point in enemy dominion. Some spells are also more effective or only affect provinces in your dominion.

So, to begin. When you make your god, in addition to choosing the chassis, magic paths, and scales of its dominion, you assign dominion strength. Dominion is rated from 1 to 10, and each chassis has a base starting point; the more human pretenders have low dominion of one or two, while things like titans and whatnot can have it up to four. The amount it costs to raise dominion is the same no matter where you start, so a chassis that starts at one being raised to three would cost the same number of points as one that starts at four being raised to six. This makes getting good dominion strength on some god types a bit difficult.

Anyway, as stated, it goes from 1 to 10. This number represents two things: How likely dominion is to spread, and what your maximum dominion in a province can be. It's basically a ten percent chance of spreading from each dominion source you have, and the maximum strength you can have in a province is just the number your strength is; dominion strength of six, up to six candles (the representation of dominion, you can see them in the screenshots) per province. Pretty simple.

Dominion spreads from several sources, in what are called "temple checks"; strength of each check is, as mentioned about 10 times your dominion score. So someone with dominion 10 will always spread their dominion from every source, while someone with 5 or below is really going to have trouble.

Temples: As the name implies, temples are the most common way to spread dominion. Each temple makes a temple check a turn. Not only that, but every five temples you make, your dominion strength goes up by one, increasing how likely your dominion is to spread and your maximum dominion per province. It's still capped at 10, of course; you can't get dominion strength 11 for 110% success rates.

Your capital: Your nation's home province functions like a temple, making its own check each turn. Doesn't count as a temple for the purposes of raising your dominion strength, though, although how effective it is goes up with your effective strength. Lose your capital, you don't get these checks anymore, but by that point you have bigger problems, most likely.

Prophet: Prophets automatically make one temple check a turn, which is why people tend to make a prophet their first turn if they don't have some specific unit in mind for it. You can only have one prophet at a time; in addition to the temple check, prophets automatically get Holy 3 (the magic type), unless they already possess Holy magic of 3 or above, in which case they have it increased by one.

Your god: As one would expect, your god is the biggest source of dominion in the game. It automatically spreads one candle of dominion a turn, and then makes two checks at whatever strength you possess. This is why Caelum's dominion has been higher than mine, even though a lot of signs pointed to his dominion strength being lower than mine; his awake god really boosted his dominion.

Victory point provinces: These are a bit odd. Some provinces in the game are marked by a crown; in a certain game mode, controlling some/all of these is a victory condition. Even in games where they aren't, though, they spread dominion with a strength of 5 (a 50% chance a turn), regardless of your dominion strength. They never make a real difference, since they're relatively isolated and spread out, and if you control most of them then you probably control most of the map and are winning anyway.

Preaching: Units with levels of Holy magic can preach in a province to raise your dominion there, as seen in my update earlier. Preaching can be useful, but it has several limitations. For one, the maximum preaching can raise the dominion of a province to, regardless of your normal cap, is twice their Holy level; H1 can raise it up to two candles before they stop having an effect, for example. Also, against enemy dominion your preaching is less effective; really strong enemy dominion is hard to affect through this manner, so you'd better rely on other ways of countering a tide of enemy dominion sweeping over your land.

Blood sacrifice: Now here's an odd one. Some nations can spread dominion by sacrificing captured blood slaves; the ones that can in this game are Abysia and myself. The way it works is pretty simple; at a temple, a priest can sacrifice a number of slaves a turn, equal to their Holy magic level. Only one priest can sacrifice per temple. Each sacrificed slave generates two temple checks; it's supposed to be one, but apparently the game is bugged there and can't be fixed. When done in massive amounts, blood sacrifice is really dangerous; you can snuff out enemy dominion in a few turns, and possibly destroy all your enemies this way. However, it's not easy to do this; first, you need a lot of temples, and to have a good enough blood economy going to provide enough slaves for a continuous effort here. You also need enough priests to actually sacrifice all the slaves you have. So, you need money, troops, and blood slaves to do this to any extent that threatens people, making it a thing that doesn't really happen outside of the endgame in most cases. However, even if you can't kill people with it, it is useful for bolstering your own dominion, a purpose for which I may have to use it considering my rather weak dominion.

So, that's dominion explained. It's a rather important aspect of the game, and one a lot of people don't understand fully, or even know about; many new players miss the dominion level indicator when making their gods for the first time, and even after learning about it not everyone knows just how important it can be. If you're taking a god build that has high scales, for making a lot of money, for example, you also need a high dominion to spread those scales around your land. Another thing is how easily low dominion can get you killed, like, say, if a kraken that spreads three candles a turn shows up on your shore and you only have a dominion strength of five. Whoops.

Pangaea turn 5
 

http://lpix.org/images/Lilli/e119a69.../panbanner.jpg
TURN 5:
Very bad news.
Abysia is expanding like crazy, beelining trying to find someone to kill I suppose.
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/1351/turn5.png

My small army has been slaughtered: those damn satyrs have realy low morale.
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/1701/turn5defeat.png

I site search and bring a shield to my god. He's going to have to move south and teach a lesson to Abysia if they want to rush me. Not like it will work, I kind of forgot he is weak to fire to begin with. I send a Pan to him who will site search the mountains next. I send another Pan, my commander and a hundred soldiers, mostly maenads, to take out those nasty horsemen in the south. With the Pan casting Panic like crazy, I should get rid of them.
Anyway, I send some diplo to Abysia. He will get out of my place and not go farther east or it's war. Not that I'm likely to win an early war against him outside my dominion, but I simply can't afford to have him 1 or 2 provinces from my capital.
I recruit a dryad and some minotaur warriors because these are about the only troops I have which could hope to get past abysian armor. Berserk centaurs might work, but they are more expensive for less hit points. Against normal sized troops, I hope trample will be enough. If there are burning ones nearby, then I'll need centaurs but I'm really not going to go anywhere if that's the case.After some tests, minotaurs can cut through burning ones, but they die like flies doing so. Centaurs aren't any good against them. Basically, I have no trroop that can stand against burning ones.
I decided to look at the map and starting positions. Abysia is trying to block me in the south, which doesn't matter if I can get the island, and going towards the map center, which will prevent me from going north. We will never be able to be friends. I think he has to rush me, otherwise he forces me to attack him and he'll just have problems. It looks like I'll have to build some revelers to teach him what sneaky bastards mean.
Abysia answers my diplo:
"I have revised the Abysian troop orders accordingly. I see no need for trading for nature gems at this time and will let you know if that changes in the future."
This can mean he attacks me or he retreats. Whatever, it sounds more like a cease-fire. I had proposed a trade of N for F gems. I don't need them now, but it's a friendly offer that can't hurt and may come in handy in the long run. The phrasing of the answer is very interesting by the way. As I said, it's a cease-fire, meaning he's repositioning troops but he's not saying he won't attack.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

iirc it is 10 for every province.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

http://i.imgur.com/D5COB.jpg

R'lyeh -- Turn 5

Turn 5 begins with a message -- say, a threat -- from Fomoria:

http://i.imgur.com/l0NFC.png

I don't want to get into a war this early, not while there is all this water to be secured first. A fort for every province! Well, maybe every second. With a lab, so I can gate in mind lords and troops. With a temple, so I can build a bunch of polypal mothers to provide freespawn and to preach my dominion up.

http://i.imgur.com/F6yEY.png

Also I can take the "Isle of Balor" as the Fomorians call it (we aboleths know it by its ancient, dreaded name: Koromoo) anytime I want. Corinthian does offer me an easily guarded 3-province peninsula (Numecria, Bolfagon and Saeborea) instead. I suspect he wants me to guard his northern flank for him and perhaps hopes that I'll get in trouble with Maverni, although I doubt he already knows that his north eastern neighbour is Maverni.

I check that Maverni has a route to Fomoria further inland, so I'm not going to block him. That's good. And I suppose I can cede Numecria if it gains me an ally against Fomoria.

I send back this message:

Some days after having sent his message, a singular man was brought before Buarainecht. Though well above middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip.

He had been given to strange fits, thrashing his limbs and railing at the "terrible fish with their slithering voices". Though he seldomly spoke with any lucidity, he often mentioned the name of Buarainecht in a desperate tone, and so the people in the Dead Marshes -- for he was a native of that dismal, unwholesome place -- resolved to bring him before that worthy.

After much pleading, they did finally gain an audience, in which a pronounced change came over the afflicted man. "If you take the isle that once was called the Isle of Balor, and now men call Koromoo, a doom shall fall on Saeborea, and Bolfagon, and even proud Ermor-that-will-never-be, which men know as Numecria."

With that strange pronouncement, his eyes rolled back in his head, and a most violent fit overcame him, from which he fell into unconciousness.

It incorporates a passage from one of H.P. Lovecrafts stories. Use your google-fu to find out which one!

If you've looked at the map closely, you'll have seen how the battle in Moon Sea ended. So without further ado, here are the opposing armies:

http://i.imgur.com/d8Mqn.png

The grand army of R'lyeh you already know. This is what they're up against:

http://i.imgur.com/viK4i.png

The tritons of the amber clan are quite heavily armored, perhaps the finest fighters the ocean has to offer. They crash into R'lyehs line of enslaved sea trolls, weathering the paralyzing mind blasts.

http://i.imgur.com/5UyzG.png

Atlantean slave troopers are driven into the gaps between the huge trolls and are sent to bolster the right flank. They are badly equiped, trained and motivated; it does not take long for them to break.

Meanwhile the Amber Clan's attack falters under the relentless barrage of mindblasts. Even worse, here and there one of the brave soldiers turns against his comrades, face frozen in a rictus of despair as he stabs a spear into a friends back...

http://i.imgur.com/c7DEE.png

The turning point arrives when a flanking force of slave tritons and lobo guards falls on the Amber Clan's overextended left flank. Beset from within and without, one group of warriors turns to flee, thereby dooming their brothers in arms.

http://i.imgur.com/RGW19.png

Yöt-Webbogoth has succeeded in defeating the shark-knights of Baptizer, but a lance remains lodged in the rubbery flesh of its mantle. It pays the wound no heed, and continues eastwards, accompanied by a capering atlantean that whistles a mindless, mad tune on a strange and malformed shell...

Behind it, Nithü the Slave Mage dutifully searches the corpse-strewn ocean floor for sites of power. With some success:

http://i.imgur.com/Mk2R1.png

The tale behind that you've already read...

Helheim: Turn VI
 

http://i.imgur.com/aS0Z8.png

Turn VI: Not Much Happens

So this turn opens up without me seeing that message screen. No random events, no battles, no messages from other nations. Straight to the map screen.

http://i.imgur.com/05Ejd.jpg

And here we see, not much has changed. Still have four provinces total, still only have two commanders. Both are moving into the last province adjacent to my capital; for those who don't remember, this one has about sixty units total, mostly slingers (weak projectile throwers who nevertheless will be annoying to my men because projectiles ignore glamour and any damage, no matter how weak, breaks glamour), heavy infantry (heavily armored enemy units, can be a bit tough to kill but aren't a huge problem), and two elephants (the real issue; elephants can trample smaller units, and trampling seems to ignore glamour, meaning these guys can trample my armies and be really, really annoying to my bigger guys).

http://i.imgur.com/1Ikws.jpg

Here's my plan of attack. Modified form of the pincer strategy, with the serfs furthest forward to draw slinger attacks and make the elephants go for them first, while the Huskarlar and, after buffing, Finn and his Helhirdings run in to get them form the side. Sir Slicer, rather than joining the charge, will be spamming Frighten, a spell that lowers enemy morale; elephants have low morale normally, so hopefully he can get them to rout before they hit my army. If this works, they'll run right through their own army, trampling them instead (this is also the main risk in using elephants of your own, since if they are routed they may trample your commanders on the way out). We'll see how it works in a turn. I also am recruiting another Vanjarl and three more Helhirdings, for more expansion.

Since there isn't much else happening this turn, I'm going to spend extra time on graphs. May as well have some content here.

http://i.imgur.com/8aYHZ.jpg

Provinces, Pangaea and Arcoscephale (their line is behind Pan's) are still gaining a single province a turn, while R'lyeh, Abysia, and Fomoria are just rocketing ahead. Abysia "only" gained two provinces this turn, while Fomoria's keeping up the pace with three. There's a real divide forming now.

http://i.imgur.com/2mTMz.jpg

Income is about what you'd expect, apart from something bad happening to Marverni. Caelum's still feeling the overtaxing their cap and not gaining much new stuff, I'm actually making money, and everyone else is still going up.

http://i.imgur.com/5rsSQ.jpg

Research, Caelum's just leagues ahead of everyone else. I'm almost entirely sure that he's just recruiting Eagle Kings now, since he's not expanding, his army line is almost static, and he's getting tons of research. Everyone else, going up at a slower rate; Arco's philosophers are going well for him, putting him ahead of everyone who isn't spamming Eagle Kings. Meanwhile I haven't researched at all yet because I haven't been able to recruit my researchers. Bah.

http://i.imgur.com/ew35H.jpg

Army size, not much of interest here, apart from Pangaea flatlining (did they lose a lot of people to counteract their freespawn?) and Fomoria rocketing up. Caelum actually seems to have recruited some people, and then lost most of them, probably in the attempt to grab their new province. Abysia and I have the lowest numbers total, although this is to be expected; Abysia has expensive but effective units, and I, even in a normal game (like my test game, where I was able to claim four provinces a turn in the first year; I got such a bad start here) rely more on commanders with small groups of troops rather than large armies. Don't expect to see either of us at the top of the army charts, at least until we get our blood economies going and start summoning massive amounts of demons. (I don't know if either of us will actually do this. Demons are pretty awesome though.)

Alright, that's enough padding for now. At least for the actual turn. Didn't do much this turn, but hopefully I'll resume my rise to glory when we come back.

Next turn: I hate elephants.

-------

Bonus: Magic site and gem explanation

This one's pretty simple, but there's a lot to it. Nothing hard to understand, but this section's going to still be a bit long.

Magic gems are a vital part of the game. There is a type of gem for every path except Holy, although Blood is a bit different. You use gems in magic, as you might expect, although the ways you do it vary.

First is for ritual spells, or spells a mage casts outside of combat, at a lab. Pretty much every ritual spell requires gems, which are always of the primary path; a spell with two paths, like a Water-Nature spell (like the one for summoning naiads) would use Water gems, for example.

Second is for forging items; unlike ritual spells, an item that requires two paths uses both gems types. Otherwise, it's exactly the same as casting ritual spells.

Third is for battlemagic. Some spells require gems to cast in battle, meaning that, if the mage does not have the proper gems on their person, they cannot cast the spell. Mages can also use a single gem per spell, whether or not the spell requires gems otherwise, to reduce the fatigue the spell costs them; depending on what you have them doing, this can make a huge difference in battle, as mages who are too exhausted to cast spells are useless.

You get gems from three sources: Random events, magic sites, and certain spells. There were items that made gems, too, but they proved to be unbalancing (you had to make them or you'd be at a huge disadvantage) and unfun micromanagement, so CBM and most other balance mods make them into artifacts, so you can only get one of each, not worth it. (Other people can also trade you gems, but since they get their gems from one of these sources, anyone who was going to try to argue that I should have listed it with the above needs to put their hand down and think long and hard about their life.) A lot of gem events require the proper scales; Fire and water gems can be gained in Heat and Cold scales, respectively, for example. Magic sites are covered in more detail below, so I'll skip to the spells.

Several spells are what are known as "gemgen spells", meaning they generate gems. They're a variant of global spells, spells which there are only five slots for (casting one after they're filled will try to overwrite one of the existing ones) and that persist after they're cast. They have a high cost, and can be boosted beyond that to resist being dispelled or overwritten, and after they're cast, they give you a certain amount of gems a turn. They're pretty great, really, and frequently hotly contested; other people will try to overwrite your casting with their own, or just outright dispel it if they're at war with you.

There are a few other spells that make gems, but they're a bit odd and either not worth casting most of the time or part of a much bigger spell that only actually makes a gem profit in a fringe situation. Therefore, we're moving on to magic sites.

Magic sites are, well, just that; special sites of magic (most of the time) in a province that affect it in some ways or provide you with things. Every nation has at least one magic site in their capital, providing them with their starting gem income and their cap-only troops. Here are Helheim's two capital sites.

http://i.imgur.com/1Zph1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/B2XI5.jpg

Something to note, while most magic sites that enable the recruitment of certain units work for whoever owns them, national sites only work for their nation; someone capturing my capital wouldn't be able to recruit Hangadrotts or other units. They still get the gem income, though.

Where magic sites are is determined at the beginning of the game, but most of them are not visible to begin with; you have to reveal them. All sites have two qualities that determine how you can find them. The first is their path type; this aligns with the various magic paths, including Holy magic. The second is their level, which is ranked from zero to four. This is the path level required to find the site; if it's higher than zero, you need to search with at least that level of the right path to find it. A Death 0 site will be revealed the moment you take the province, but a Death 4 one requires a skilled mage searching there. There are two ways to find sites:

Manual searching: This is moving a mage around and having him search the province, which reveals all sites up to the path levels they have. While this is useful in the early phases of the game, most mages have rather low path levels and will thus miss some sites. Also, they have to move to a province, then search, meaning it takes two turns for them per province. Depending on the mages you have (some with a large variety of paths, high paths, or both), you may manually search a lot, or almost not at all; if your pretender is mobile, awake, and has good magic, searching with them may be worth it as well.

Site-searching spells: The other way to find magic sites. This one is faster than manually searching, as it involves a mage just casting a spell, but they have certain limitations as well. For one, you need to research the spells, which aren't all in the same school. Secondly, almost all of them require two levels in the path to be cast, so mages with only one level can't cast them; since I only get F1, I'm going to have to manually search for Fire sites until I can get a booster for a mage, for example. Thirdly, they cost gems, although not many; most are just two gems. Fourthly, they're limited in which sites they can find; Augury, the fire-searching spell, will find all Fire sites in a province, but it will only find fire sites, unlike how a mage with Fire may also have other paths. There are some spells that search for more paths, though; Voice of Tiamat, a Water spell, reveals all elemental sites (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth) in a province, but it only works on underwater ones. Acashic Record, meanwhile, reveals all sites in a province, even Holy ones that are otherwise annoying to find (especially the rare ones that require three or four levels to find), but it's also rather expensive and requires a moderately-skilled mage to cast it. (You can also find magic sites through a certain global, but it's a fringe case not worth covering here.)

So, what do these magic sites do? Well, they can do quite a bit. The most common thing they do is give a small income of magic gems per turn; this is also the main reason people seek them out. Some of them allow you to recruit units, like the two sites I found a couple turns back; the usefulness of these units can vary immensely, from some awesome things to outright detrimental to your cause. Some sites affect the scales in a province, drive the unrest up or reduce it, cause disease to units in the province, or do other weird things, but generally these things just clue you in to a site being there (such as finding a province with three Heat scales in the middle of your land when you have Cold dominion). If a site will disease your units or something, though, you don't want to be there, generally.

There is, however, one other major thing sites can do: Lower the gem cost of spells cast there. These sites, which sometimes have other effects, sometimes not, are game-changers. While a site that offers a discount on Thaumaturgy spells won't make a huge difference, and a Blood discount site is nice but not a big thing, a Conjuration or Construction site is enormous, and if you're fortunate enough to find a site that gives an Alteration bonus then you may as well have found an "I Win" button if you can properly use it. You want to find these sites. They are just the best.

Anyway, that's both magic gems and magic sites covered there. Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of both these things, at least in my updates. Screw those other guys.

Some people may remember me saying that Blood is a bit different from the other paths, gem-wise. Curious as to what I meant? Well, you'll have to wait for my explanation of that. Blood magic is a whole other thing, and deserves its own one of these updates. Something to look forward to, I guess.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by Depeche Mode (click the turn name- I hope you are all doing this- its VERY important)

The arcoesephalan expansion party fights a tougher opponent this turn and losses are incurred. The light, javelin-throwing infantry on the flanks met the enemy a few squares ahead of the heavy central infantry and got decimated pretty quickly. I’m not very good at scripting yet but hopefully I will get better. As a result of the bad scripting the barbs overrun my left flank and get to the squishy slingers and kill a few before they finally rout.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2bwbco" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2bwbco.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

To make up for the losses incurred, I am sending reinforcement from the capital to help with the next battle. These reinforcements are led by a philosopher since that’s all I had available.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=17zog0" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/17zog0.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

On the overhead map you can see that the barbarian leader I hired is heading out to the capital so the next set of reinforcements don’t have to be led by a philosopher. That’s 18rp lost just by sending him out to fix up our numbers. Oh well…

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=abtvnb" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/abtvnb.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

otherwise a quiet turn. I’ll maybe try and post turn 5 right away too. Maybe.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by Duran Duran (damnit I cannot overstate how important it is that you hit that turn title link)

This attack goes better. I fixed the scripting a little bit and the chariots do a great job to trample the light infantry and chase the fleeing heavy cavalry.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2ez1pig" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2ez1pig.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Normally I would continue expanding around the capital to secure some resources but the heavy cavalry to the north seem too tough so I am sending my expansion party (plus chariots) eastwards to fight some wolf-tribe warriors and claim a low-income wasteland province. Meanwhile my philosopher is heading back to the capital to hit the books.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=11rxdag" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/11rxdag.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Not shown here I am also recruiting another barbarian commander to help shuttle forces around.

Things are pretty quiet for arco for now so there is not too much to write about. At this point I can see from the graphs that I am not doing too well relative to nations like formoria, r’leyh and others… that doesn’t bother me too much yet though (that will happen later).

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Belated Turn 2 Caelum
 

Been really busy here with stuff going on, realize I am late. Will fill in pictures when I get a chance.

Turn 2
What lies beyond our lands? Who will be the first to be converted? A province devoid of independent troops, this is an excellent development!

Our first target is the province of Halbathria. This is an undefended province which is ideal for us at this stage of the game. The income is not great, but the resources are good, which will be a benefit if we get enough cash to make some additional troops over and above our Eagle Kings.

Now would probably be a good time to discuss my pretender.



This is my pretender. In addition to the above, I have taken scales of O-S3C3G1L3D2. I have taken sloth since we’re not building a ton of troops. I have taken Cold 3 for obvious reasons, we prefer it. Growth and Luck are for additional income, and drain was to gain additional points. Plus, any combat in my dominion I would like additional MR for my Eagle Kings since they are Magic Beings and subject to some nasty spells.

Regarding magic paths, I have decided to take an E9S4N4 bless. Why? First, we are relying on the Eagle Kings which are sacred units, the E9N4 is great for them. The E9 for additional protection and regeneration and the N4 for regeneration and to keep afflictions from piling up on them. The S4 helps their magic resistance, plus I knew I needed some S on the pretender.

Why do I need S, and why did I focus on Conjuration first? Well, there is this nice unit called a Yazad.



These guys are better than any of our standard units. They are summoned at a 1:1 astral pearl to unit rate. They are 100% lightning resistant and they have a cold resistance of 50%. They are sacred and have awe. All the blessings that are bestowed upon my Eagle Kings are also bestowed here. These guys are the ideal escorts for my Eagle Kings. My expansion strategy will be to save up enough pearls generated by my pretender, and then on turn 5 or 6, summon the Yazatas. I can send out 3 Eagle Kings with 2 Yazatas as escorts. By then, shock wave should be researched and I can rain down lightning on independent troops. There are two unit types I fear, barbarians due to their higher than average morale, and archers. Anything else, I should be able to handle with little to fear.

Added Bonus, turns 3 and 4!

Turn 3
One item I noticed in the Hall of Fame. Abysia has received their hero Malphas. That is not a good sign. He is a very strong commander. Also, it appears that my neighbor to the north is Helheim. This is not great, but not terrible. His glamour troops will not do well against my archers, and my troops will not do well against his ground pounders. We’re best finding other avenues of advance.

Turn 4
Not much has happened this turn.

Essentially we are continuing our build towards a quick strike force of Eagle Kings backed by Yazatas. We move our research to alteration in these turns to get Mirror Image and Stoneskin.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Personally, I only go to Dominion scores of 5 if I am either the only blood sac nation in the game, or if there is no blood sac nation and I have an awake pretender with perhaps inquisitors.
I am not a fan of death scales either, and would not really go with rainbows unless I happen to be MA Ulm. But then, I am largely playing goonmods now, who have excellent divesrity available from Nature, Death and Water, which clearly is not the case in CBM.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Personally, I only go to Dominion scores of 5 if I am either the only blood sac nation in the game, or if there is no blood sac nation and I have an awake pretender with perhaps inquisitors.
I am not a fan of death scales either, and would not really go with rainbows unless I happen to be MA Ulm. But then, I am largely playing goonmods now, who have excellent divesrity available from Nature, Death and Water, which clearly is not the case in CBM.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

WHAT IS THAT HERO DOING AT THE FRONT LINES? DO YOU WANT HIM TO DIE A HORRIBLE PAINFUL AND EMBARRASSING DEATH?

Sure it has a ****load of HP, some good attacks etc. But only one hit could mean feeblemind or mute. Which robs you of a great mage. (Who sitesearches for 2 paths at once, can do research, lead troops etc. It is a great thing to get in the first few turns, do not waste it).

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

He's not much better than one of my mind lords path-wise, though. One in four has S4, one in sixteen W4, and although they can't have both at once, there's nothing where I need both at once for. So he's nice, but I won't loose anything irreplaceable if he dies.

What he does do better is enslaving minds; he has double the attacks of a normal mind lord. That won't do me any good if he sits in a lab though.

I will make some stupid mistakes in the AAR, but sending Auluudh out to work for his living isn't one of them ;)

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

I think Soyweiser's point is that Mr. Auuludh shouldn't be in the front of the battleline, not that he should be back at the lab. He can enslave minds just as well from a little further back... no?

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

It doesnt really matter if the orders of the other armies are to attack. Opponents creatures won't reach his front in one turn and the armies will move forward essentially protecting the aboleth for normal non-magic battles.

Oh and some creative criticism: I really like the way Marverni forms his posts. I prefer having all the pictures in one post rather then having to click on some link to see what happened:) it makes it easier to read.(otherwise it has been nice AAR and really good for new players(Helheim's descriptions of the basics)). So keep up the good work.

P.s As I support Fomoria GoGo Giants GoGo! :P I'd love to see some more posts from Corinthian:)

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Oh, something to note, you may need to adjust your forum settings in order to see my images in the posts instead of as links. If my images show up as links for you, go check out your settings and look for something like "Display images", and check it. I don't know why displaying images are off by default, but they are apparently.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Auluudh is also free, as in no upkeep. My main problem was indeed, putting the dude in the front.

And still, this is rather close:
http://i.imgur.com/c7DEE.png

Also, There are always the possible suprise attack chances. Having a a random event attack your expansion party might just do enough damage to the trolls to let them or a the normal indies to hit and mute your free mage. And as mages win games this is a way to risky move. (And all for what? 2 additional attacks and a little bit of fear? Your troops where probably enough to kill them).

Sure you might not loose something irreplacable if he dies. But you should put him in more trouble than needed. Having his paths halved might cause you do do less research later, or not find that one s3/w3 site. It is simply a stupid risk to take.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

(And yeah, mages are there to be used, not sending out mages to support armies, site search etc is a waste, but not scripting your mages to retreat if you have misf dominion, or putting them in the front of battles is just to dangerous. Esp in the early game. (Where losing one mage is actually 30+ mage turns lost, which translates to at least 90 rp lost).

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Sadly, not really: the enslave mind attack only has a range of 25, very much different from ye olde mindblaste. I think after the first battle I did put him a little bit further back, but at this point I'm not sure about that.

Usually when playing R'lyeh I actually do what you propose, but for an AAR I thought I'd do something more interesting with him. I do need a mage leader anyway, although a slave mage would have sufficed. Still and all, the whole point of the southern army is not needing reinforcements, and an enslaving mage helps with that.

Anyway, let's see how he will fare, shall we? And I will say something horrible and stupid related to just this issue of exposed mages will happen, and it will be such an utterly pointless stupid thing that I struggle to express the stupid pointlessness of it.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 1-3)
 

Small point of critique, setting one of your guys to guard commander to draw fire might actually lure the enemy archers towards your commander. (The archers lock on, and run after him).

With some bad luck this will get your commander killed. Or your prophet. As the guard commander dude runs past him.

Personally I would have just used one of the javelin dudes set to run away. And put your commander in the top or bottom row.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Do you really need the turn 1 enslave mind attack? The battlefield is normally 60 wide (30 for each side). The enemy will reach range 25 in 1 or 2 turns. Putting him behind some troops is more than enough. (Bonus, cast twist fate, so random spells/ranged attacks cannot hurt him, at least not as soon).

Just put a few dudes in front of him, he really doesn't need to be the closest to the enemy. His huge size already draws a lot of attention.

(Ps, hoping you win, love me some lovecraft ;) ).

Pangaea turns 6,7
 

http://lpix.org/images/Lilli/e119a69.../panbanner.jpg

TURN 6:
Abysia was indeed friendly enough not to attack this turn.
I conquered the southern province, losing 30 chaff on the way. http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/9153/turn6citala.png
I found a S1F1 site with my pretender and got a lucky 300 gold event with increased faith.
Helheim's income comes back to a decent level (about mine, which means it still sucks) while Marverni plummets.
There are f*** elephants in Tir na n'Og. They can be panicked easily but if they don't rout they'll just slaughter anything I can put in their path. I'll have to send my pretender, with awe and fear it should be a piece of cake, but meanwhile my army will be rather useless.
I stop recruiting Pans for now, they cost too much. Dryads suck at research but they're still my best option for now upkeep-wise (110 sacred for 4 pts vs 320 for 10 pts).
I recruit some minotaurs and centaur archers to expand north later. The commander moves to my capital to fetch them, then northwards. There's one mountain province which is bothering, with longdead and archers, maybe a mage inside that I'll have to check, maybe send a dryad to banish?

TURN 7:
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/791/turn7.png
I take the province which remains with little losses (14 maenads). The kraken comes say hello. Nasty being. I also get the visit of a short-lived Caelum scout, Caelum being to my north far away. That's good for me, they have the worst expansion so far.
Abysia is being obnoxious. I mean, I tell him 30 is a war declaration and he sends his troops 1 province to the south, where it has nowhere to go, while he still has room around his capital. The guy is a pain. I'll be ranting againt Abysia a lot from now on, sorry about it, but from this point on it's quite clear he's been planning a rush and I'm his target. It's also a very bad strategy for Abysia, as he hasn't even taken the provinces by his capital, has pitiful strategic move, no research, and leaves himself open for his other neighbour to slaughter him. And noone can take down Pangaean forts early in the game, except maybe R'lyeh with their chaff, so rushing EA Pangaea is always a very bad move.
I just hope R'lyeh won't try to get out of the pond just near me. I hate the fact they have amphibious units everywhere. Never understood why people thought fish had to get out of the water. I should stop ranting against water nations one day. Now, I'll try to single handedly tame elephants with my pretender. That's probably a recipe for failure, but it should make a nice story.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

thanks soyweiser - that is indeed good advice. I am horrible at scripting...

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

One minor thing, while doing some tests, I lost a little bit to many units by making them constantly run away. (Or using the jav dude with 6 protection). So you need to plan ahead a little bit (ferry in new troops). You cannot always lose units in your expansion armies by having them run away.

The scripting is reasonably good actually. A lot better than my default expansion scripting (which works vs indies, but gets slaughtered by bumping into other players armies, like yours :D).

To all the other players, I'm very impressed by all the work you are all putting in. Keep it up!

We should have a sticked post listing these kinds of AAR's if we don't have already.

Re: Pangaea turns 6,7
 

Longdead and archers? That can mean only one thing, invasion! No wait... wrong movie.

Usually that contains some sort of death/blood caster. And 25% of the time (in my experience at least) those *******s have the devil a turn summoning item. A lone banishment priest isn't going to cut it.

I could be wrong of course, but I expect devils and imps, with some skelly spam for good measure in there.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://i.imgur.com/D5COB.jpg

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 6

Half a year has passed, and R'lyeh's grasp is ever expanding. Our battles are victorious, and our knowledge of the mysteries of what the uninitiated call "fate" provides richt bounty.

http://i.imgur.com/JZCDP.png

The pictures in this update are a little messed up, either because I set my formating script to first transform them to indexed colors and then scale them or because some unknown force messed with them. Take your pick.

The two events in Baptizer?

http://i.imgur.com/gpWgG.png

One. Thousand. Pounds of. Gold. That's R'lyeh pounds, notoriously difficult to translate into other systems of measurement. But it's a lot, more than regular our monthly income.

So what's the item then? Some boots of long strides?

http://i.imgur.com/OKpOk.png

Not quite. This is awesome, never mind that none of my mages can use it, and that the aboleths don't even have heads.

It is immediately spirited away to R'yeh, where it now lies on a pedestal of dark stone, its unquenchable flames fitfully flickering in the darkness of the deep guarded by lumbering shambler thralls incapable of even conceiving the concept of treason.

Meanwhile, Helheim has noticed Yöt-Webbogoth's progress and sends the following message below the waves:

http://i.imgur.com/YyLa1.png

To such bluster, a memorable reply is needed.


~~~
A fisher boat returns days late. Of the crew, only a young man is left, but his once red-blonde hair has turned white. He refuses to look upon the sea, and continually mumbles to himself. After some time, it was determined that the phrase he repeated incessantly was this: "That is not dead which can eternal lie. Yet with strange aeons even death may die."

Only when brought before the local herse does the fisherman snap out of his daze. "Under the waves, R'lyeh will go where it will. Over the waves, the death-gulls may fly."
~~~


Same reasoning as with Fomoria, except while Fomoria as a nation with underwater capabilities is right on top of my hit list, Helheim is not. I doubt they'd actually commit to an underwater war this early, and it would be one if they attacked. Conversely, I have little to gain by feuding with a land power before it is clear who the big dangers will be.

Also, Fomoria is a scales build while Helheim tanked his scales. That means Fomoria will get more dangerous over time, while Helheim's bless (presumably) is most powerful in the early game.

Meanwhile, in the Hungry Sea, off the fog-shrouded Fomorian coast, the Grand Army of R'lyeh, having crushed the second of the Amber Clan Kingdoms, now expands into and area dominated by barbarian triton tribes. The champions of these tribes ride huge sharks, and the tribes have suspended their usual internecine warfare to confront the invaders from the north.

http://i.imgur.com/kdKfr.png

There have been strange voices in the astral currents, incorporeal spirits seperated from the Shadow Shore by incomprehensible gulf of space and time. Lately their mad gibberings has grown more urgent, perhaps stirred up by the Pantokrator's disappearance.

One especially, So-Y'wsyrr, has even achieved a semblance of coherence, warning Auluudh of some dire fate should he continue to lead the army from the front. But the strange power that has come with Yöt-Webbogoth is stronger, compels him to risk himself in the clash of battle, even in the face of the terrible shark knights of the Hungry Sea.

http://i.imgur.com/PqAxa.png

Auluudh bends his mind-force on the sharks' streamlined predator souls, even as the gibodai gathered behind him follow his example.

In the midst of their charge, the sharks are stunned and drift aimlessly, one even turning against the triton infantry following in its wake. It is to weak to fight effectively. The tritons stab it to death, but they have been distracted.

http://i.imgur.com/Y57Rs.png

From their left flank, a fast-moving force of tritons, some of them freshly enslaved Amber Clan warriors, falls upon them, even as the line of troll warriors meets their van.

http://i.imgur.com/IWWD3.png

It is too much.

In R'lyeh, meanwhile, the first of the mind lords apart from dread Auluudh swears unconditional obedience to the Kraken Cult:

http://i.imgur.com/o7jYa.png

He's kind of sucky. His picks are earth and astral, I'm hoping for double earth, double death, or double astral, as those will give me path diversity. He cost 420 gold, and as a non-holy unit, that's 28 gold per month as upkeep.

Strategically, the next moves are simple. Yöt-Webbogoth continues south along the east coast

http://i.imgur.com/bQQEd.png

while in the west, Auluudh and his army advance into Underhome.

http://i.imgur.com/Ss0E6.png

Re: Pangaea turns 6,7
 

Actually, Rushing EA Pan can work for some nations, but the most likely unusual rusher would be MA Ulm, which would need an all ages game. Bottomline, Sappers (siege Bonus 5 yadda yadda) can actually siege down Maenad Spam on occassion, and Black Plates laugh at unbuffed Maenads, and Ulm has quite a motive for kicking out earth powers early on, which may perhaps be what Abyssia is trying to achieve.
Although I would propably rush someone else with MA Ulm if I had the choice.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

haha - good writing again jotwebe- i liked your reference to soyweiser's advice... and again, generally, the writing is just plain good.

Re: Pangaea turns 6,7
 

I rushed EA Pan as EA Mictlan in New Years New Game. Basically, I hit him about turn 10, popped his forts under construction, then sat on his capitol with 40 jags or so. My plan was to domkill him with blood sac rather than siege him down, but he got impatient and tried to see if 300 maeneds can kill 40 jags backed up by imps (they can't) so the s iege was able to conclude before the domkill.

But basically, if aby can park on your cap he can blood sac you to death rather than tear down your walls. Obviously it's a pain to have so many resources tied up in a siege, but it's oft times the only way. Keep in mind, Pan's in a really desirable corner position, so taking him down should be Aby's first goal. hopefully (for Aby) R'yleh won't poach the island while he does.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://i.imgur.com/D5COB.jpg

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 7



SOUNDTRACK

Andrey Avkhimovich: The Sound Theory: 01. Pulsar (Deep Space Theme)

~~~

An uneventful month. Auluudh survives yet another battle at the head of his army, again crushing a province of brave shark riders under his slimy abdomen. The battle goes more or less exactly like the last one.

http://i.imgur.com/6cp0k.jpg

On the other side of the world, Yöt-Webbogoth falls upon yet another triton province, by the name of Blue Water. Here he fights neither the noble amber clan tritons nor the barbarian shark knight tritons: This is a triton republic of coral-towered city states. The forces they muster as they put aside traditional enmities are large, but not large enough.

http://i.imgur.com/BF3ay.png

They die to clouds of poisonous ink and crushing tentacles.

Above the waves, Yöt-Webbogoth's eldritch senses detect a great place of supernatural power: a forest in which time and place are... strange, and where great numbers of strange beings live, somehow without crowding it.

Pangaea.

http://i.imgur.com/bU1RU.jpg

In the west, Auluudh notes from scouts sent above the waves (imaginary scouts, there are no independent scouts underwater, and fort turns are dear. My scouting is abysmally bad) that the coast is held by a centralized empire. A few mind-probed fishermen identify it as the greater dominion of Arcoscephale.

Messages are dispatched to the beastmen and the philosophers, yet no proof remains... Time and the Dominions 3 messaging interface conquer all.

In the tumbled ruins of Moon Sea, diligent slave mages find the strongest current of them all.

http://i.imgur.com/KlVJq.png

A temple is built, for it is expected to have a beneficial effect on the aboleths' procreative efforts. No more shall be said.

http://i.imgur.com/1Zt22.jpg

In the uttermost north, a different sort of construction begins:

http://i.imgur.com/WPSnX.jpg

Deep under the eternal ice, enslaved tritons labour to erect a fortress. The foundation is formed by cyclopean stone blocks, but soon it will be overgrown by the twisted polypal forms of the aboleth mothers.

http://i.imgur.com/yvMKj.png

In R'lyeh, under the two mind lords Eshu Saath and Vkt'Ebph, another army has assembled. Yet the sea is almost completely subjugated. Originally earmarked to attack Koromoo (which the barbarian goatfaced Fomorians insist on calling "the Isle of Balor"), they have a new target that avoids political... complications.

Of course, a different rationale is given...

("We have always been at war with Eastasia")

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Ok. By popular demand. Here we go.

http://i.imgur.com/iK5UR.png

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Not everyone was feeling down in Fomoria however. In the hearts of goat-headed children hope was blooming. They had never known anything else and in their childish hearts they knew that tomorrow would be a new and better day. They did not understand their parents problems and like children oft to do, they rebelled by being happy and positive.

http://i.imgur.com/GwB1j.png
No one knows were the symbol came from. Only that children kept scribbling it up on every flat surface. A stylized S made from sharp lines. The children called it Snakey. It was their secret friend and their source of strength and unity. Snakey, they said, would protect them from afflictions and sad faces. Snakey himself had a goat head, and in his world that was as natural as could be.

For his sake, the children would show the world that goat heads were the best heads. And who knows? If the children pray hard, fight gallantly and simply believe enough who is to say that this is not so?
http://i.imgur.com/v6f3e.gif
Some children kept drawing another S instead. Most people considered those children to be a little touched in the head however. Such a silly mark.


Turn 1:Surveying the situation.

Unlike most other people in this game I *DID* look at the map in advance and noticed several of the starting positions. There were only 3 possible starts for Fomoria however, because Fomoria must always start next to water.
http://i.imgur.com/XHY0z.jpg
Of those three positions this one was probably the worst because it means starting one province away from R'lyeh. But thats probably less bad than it could be, as among the nations in this game, Fomoria would probably be the best nation to fight R'lyeh if he should show his ugly tentacles above water. All my troops have between 12-15 MR. 12-13 for the PD. And Fomoria can actually venture under water without gear. Witch saves on gems and research.

As you can see above I spent the first turn patrolling my capitol with my starting army in order to squeeze a few extra gold out of it in the first critical turn of the game. I raise the taxes all the way up to 160%. I know from tests that this is a viable tax level because my 30 starting soldiers are better patrolers than the average guy.

I also prophetize my starting scout but forgot to give him a fancy name. He is the littlest giant and everyone is always adored by his cuteness every time he steps on the battlefield.

As for recruitment I get this:
http://i.imgur.com/OwpJk.jpg
A smattering of recruits including a Fomorian druid. (The fomorian prefix is necessary, otherwise the Marverni Druids would sue them for trademark infringement.), two unmarked, and ten Fir Bolgs with various weapons.

So what are those then? Well the Fomorian druid is the Fomorian standard mage. It is the only mage I got that can be recruited outside of the capitol so I better learn to love it. In this case I recruit it in the capitol because it cost little resources as I need those for my troops.

The Unmarked is one of the two cap only sacreds that Fomoria can recruit. The other being the fomorian giant.
http://i.imgur.com/P3N0V.jpg
He is smaller than his parents but much more useful. You know how I call Fomoria the budget giants in the banner? Its because the Fomorian giant troops are much cheaper than equivalent type of giants that other nations get. For example the fomorian warrior cost only 30g. And if I wanted to prevent someone from entering one of my castles I would just recruit some 15g 18 str Fomorian militia to hold the walls forever.

This guy is an Unmarked. He is like a warrior that got slightly higher stats in attack, defense, MR and HP and he lacks the warriors 20% risk of starting with a random affliction. Thus the name. He cost twice as much but its worth it. Because he is also sacred he will cost the same upkeep.

There is nothing about him that jumps out at you and scream “Awesome!”. But he got good stats all around and only cost 60 gold, witch is a bargain for a sacred giant. I could get 5 of these for the same cost as 2 niefel giants. And if the repel mechanic was not broken he could repel people with his length 5 spear. Uhh yea.

I built two of them this turn to use in a future expansion party.
http://i.imgur.com/FZrJy.jpg
This is the Unmarkeds father, the Fomorian Giant. They have worse prot, atk and def. But more HP, strength and magic resistance. They also comes with big *** javelins witch they can fire like they were a ballista, but cant actually aim with due to having only one eye. Making them kind of dangerous. What is worse, beyond costing an extra 50% gold, is the fact that they have no helmet. I mean what were they thinking! They only ever got one eye! Expensive giant light infantry. Only recruitable size 6 giant troop in the game for what its worth. Might be good for blocking elephants. Or mammoths if I wind up next to Caelum. They can also, in a pinch, get down in the drink. Though they are not strictly speaking good at that either.

Anyway, you people wont see a lot of these guys in my updates. The bicycle association of Fomoria hate them because of the bad examples they set.
http://i.imgur.com/wAOsx.jpg
This is the (not) Druid. He is actually a teenaged larper that runs around in the forest and pretends to be a druid. But lets not get technical. Atleast he is sacred and dont cost a ton. I will be forced to recruit them so I'm sure I will find a way to squeeze some kind of use out of them. The question mark represent the fact that they can randomly get either Air, Water, Death or Nature as their final magic pick.

What else is relevant for this turn? Oh yea the Fir Bolgs!
http://i.imgur.com/OGlmp.jpg
These guys are like Uber-Mexicans! They have here to take all the ****ty jobs and not only will they work for pennies. They will also do a better job than you could!

They are economic immigrants that came to Fomoria in the hope that the Fomorian economic wonder was still roaring. Instead they found themselves outside the Fomorians summer homes together with the other unwashed masses. They are a bargain for the stats, if not very good all by themselves. I build 10 of them this turn. 4 with javelins and spears and 6 with slings in order to fill out my starting army. I could have built one more, but my starting commander can only command 40 troops and its not like most indies need more power to overcome. They should work fine.

I will not buy more for a while. Not because they are not good but because they have kind of low protection and I prefer expanders that do not take attrition. That way they can keep expanding without needing reinforcements.

And thats all for turn 1. Well, there was also some amazon mercs that I did not need. Though I doubt they would have been happy with just 20 gold anyhow. So whatever.

Till next time.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Ok. By popular demand. Here we go.

http://i.imgur.com/iK5UR.png

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

Not everyone was feeling down in Fomoria however. In the hearts of goat-headed children hope was blooming. They had never known anything else and in their childish hearts they knew that tomorrow would be a new and better day. They did not understand their parents problems and like children oft to do, they rebelled by being happy and positive.

http://i.imgur.com/GwB1j.png
No one knows were the symbol came from. Only that children kept scribbling it up on every flat surface. A stylized S made from sharp lines. The children called it Snakey. It was their secret friend and their source of strength and unity. Snakey, they said, would protect them from afflictions and sad faces. Snakey himself had a goat head, and in his world that was as natural as could be.

For his sake, the children would show the world that goat heads were the best heads. And who knows? If the children pray hard, fight gallantly and simply believe enough who is to say that this is not so?
http://i.imgur.com/v6f3e.gif
Some children kept drawing another S instead. Most people considered those children to be a little touched in the head however. Such a silly mark.


Turn 1:Surveying the situation.

Unlike most other people in this game I *DID* look at the map in advance and noticed several of the starting positions. There were only 3 possible starts for Fomoria however, because Fomoria must always start next to water.
http://i.imgur.com/XHY0z.jpg
Of those three positions this one was probably the worst because it means starting one province away from R'lyeh. But thats probably less bad than it could be, as among the nations in this game, Fomoria would probably be the best nation to fight R'lyeh if he should show his ugly tentacles above water. All my troops have between 12-15 MR. 12-13 for the PD. And Fomoria can actually venture under water without gear. Witch saves on gems and research.

As you can see above I spent the first turn patrolling my capitol with my starting army in order to squeeze a few extra gold out of it in the first critical turn of the game. I raise the taxes all the way up to 160%. I know from tests that this is a viable tax level because my 30 starting soldiers are better patrolers than the average guy.

I also prophetize my starting scout but forgot to give him a fancy name. He is the littlest giant and everyone is always adored by his cuteness every time he steps on the battlefield.

As for recruitment I get this:
http://i.imgur.com/OwpJk.jpg
A smattering of recruits including a Fomorian druid. (The fomorian prefix is necessary, otherwise the Marverni Druids would sue them for trademark infringement.), two unmarked, and ten Fir Bolgs with various weapons.

So what are those then? Well the Fomorian druid is the Fomorian standard mage. It is the only mage I got that can be recruited outside of the capitol so I better learn to love it. In this case I recruit it in the capitol because it cost little resources as I need those for my troops.

The Unmarked is one of the two cap only sacreds that Fomoria can recruit. The other being the fomorian giant.
http://i.imgur.com/P3N0V.jpg
He is smaller than his parents but much more useful. You know how I call Fomoria the budget giants in the banner? Its because the Fomorian giant troops are much cheaper than equivalent type of giants that other nations get. For example the fomorian warrior cost only 30g. And if I wanted to prevent someone from entering one of my castles I would just recruit some 15g 18 str Fomorian militia to hold the walls forever.

This guy is an Unmarked. He is like a warrior that got slightly higher stats in attack, defense, MR and HP and he lacks the warriors 20% risk of starting with a random affliction. Thus the name. He cost twice as much but its worth it. Because he is also sacred he will cost the same upkeep.

There is nothing about him that jumps out at you and scream “Awesome!”. But he got good stats all around and only cost 60 gold, witch is a bargain for a sacred giant. I could get 5 of these for the same cost as 2 niefel giants. And if the repel mechanic was not broken he could repel people with his length 5 spear. Uhh yea.

I built two of them this turn to use in a future expansion party.
http://i.imgur.com/FZrJy.jpg
This is the Unmarkeds father, the Fomorian Giant. They have worse prot, atk and def. But more HP, strength and magic resistance. They also comes with big *** javelins witch they can fire like they were a ballista, but cant actually aim with due to having only one eye. Making them kind of dangerous. What is worse, beyond costing an extra 50% gold, is the fact that they have no helmet. I mean what were they thinking! They only ever got one eye! Expensive giant light infantry. Only recruitable size 6 giant troop in the game for what its worth. Might be good for blocking elephants. Or mammoths if I wind up next to Caelum. They can also, in a pinch, get down in the drink. Though they are not strictly speaking good at that either.

Anyway, you people wont see a lot of these guys in my updates. The bicycle association of Fomoria hate them because of the bad examples they set.
http://i.imgur.com/wAOsx.jpg
This is the (not) Druid. He is actually a teenaged larper that runs around in the forest and pretends to be a druid. But lets not get technical. Atleast he is sacred and dont cost a ton. I will be forced to recruit them so I'm sure I will find a way to squeeze some kind of use out of them. The question mark represent the fact that they can randomly get either Air, Water, Death or Nature as their final magic pick.

What else is relevant for this turn? Oh yea the Fir Bolgs!
http://i.imgur.com/OGlmp.jpg
These guys are like Uber-Mexicans! They have here to take all the ****ty jobs and not only will they work for pennies. They will also do a better job than you could!

They are economic immigrants that came to Fomoria in the hope that the Fomorian economic wonder was still roaring. Instead they found themselves outside the Fomorians summer homes together with the other unwashed masses. They are a bargain for the stats, if not very good all by themselves. I build 10 of them this turn. 4 with javelins and spears and 6 with slings in order to fill out my starting army. I could have built one more, but my starting commander can only command 40 troops and its not like most indies need more power to overcome. They should work fine.

I will not buy more for a while. Not because they are not good but because they have kind of low protection and I prefer expanders that do not take attrition. That way they can keep expanding without needing reinforcements.

And thats all for turn 1. Well, there was also some amazon mercs that I did not need. Though I doubt they would have been happy with just 20 gold anyhow. So whatever.

Till next time.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

In order to make up for the lack of updates I will post my update twice!:cool:

Re: Pangaea turns 6,7
 

EA Mictlan can rush anybody. They even have freespawn troops (slaves) so they could counter whatever maenads one could get.
Blood sac is a viable strategy provided there's no other blood nation in the game. I mean, if Aby tried to blood-sac, I would ask for blood slaves to counter-blood sac. This would result in a stalemate during which their expensive wizard priests wouldn't be researching, and thus it would be a distinct advantage for whoever lent/gave me blood slaves, unless they were allies with Mictlan.
Also, Abysia has a very low dominion score, while I have a very high one. At this stage, it should be clear that his dominion is so low he would require a lot of energy in order to domkill me (plus building a temple, preferably protecting it with a fort). Mictlan usually has a very high dominion in order to produce ****loads of its cheap sacred units, and they also have to blood sac, so it better be effective. The situation is very different here. Abysia has a low dominion score, so is unlikely to domkill me without a lot of investment and time. Such a blood sac would inevitably piss off its other neighbours. One-on-one, the strategy would definitely work. In a game with several opponents, I predict that it may be far too expensive, as it would mark Abysia as a target for all its other neighbours.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://lpix.org/images/Lilli/e119a69.../panbanner.jpg
TURN 8:
R'lyeh sends me a silly greetings. That's ok as long as he doesn't attack me.Sorry, I didn't copy the fluff and don't care at all about messages which are not clear, and since this just ment "Hello".
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9900/turn8.png
My pretender proves that a lich is superior to 4 elephants: http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/4...8elephants.png
Tir na n'Og province 12 allows the recruitment of toad shamans (amphibious, W magic, sacred). That's nice.
Looking at the dark candle in 13, I bet that Abysia's demonbred prophet is there. I move to take 30. Not that it's useful, but just to make sure Abysia doesn't try to get there for some reason. I also try to take the archers/infantry/undead province in the north. I hope longbows + minotaurs + maenad decoys + one dryad will be enough, but I'm likely short on numbers.
I recruit only 1 Pan this turn, and a scout. I hope to start building a fort next turn. I'll never be able to by the way. So far noone has a second fort but that will not last long and I'd like to lock the entry of the island.
In other news, Abysia, Helheim and Caelum didn't expand this turn. Which kind of proves Abysia is moving all its troops towards me but I wanted that not to happen so I remained blind.

Helheim: Turn VII
 

http://i.imgur.com/aS0Z8.png

Turn VII: Man, **** Elephants

http://i.imgur.com/3WqHN.jpg

Let's see, a response from R'lyeh and me taking on the elephants. We'll read what the sea-dwellers had to say first.

http://i.imgur.com/c78SG.jpg

Hm. Purple prose. Translated into basic English, he's saying he'll stay under the water and I can stay above it. Besides that, as we'll see on the map screen, his kraken has moved on, which was my real concern.

Time to go off on a tangent here, at this point I've only made diplomatic contact with three nations.

Marverni: I wanted to make early negotiations with another player right off the bat, and since at the time he was the only person who used our IRC channel regularly (Immac got on now and then but for some reason wasn't on for the first few days of the game), he was my only option. Between that we were starting near each other and that he was the only guy I had to talk to, we agreed to not murder each other just yet, even though we were also open to that we would eventually try to plant knives in each other's backs. However, I thought his starting position was in the northwest part of the map; instead, it turned out that he was more or less right outside of my peninsula, cutting off one of two ways to expand.

R'lyeh: No real talk with them beyond "you stay below the sea, I'll stay above it". Works for me; the less I have to deal with his mindblasters for now, the better.

Caelum: We talked a bit into the game, he revealed that he was south of me and also knew where I was. We decided not to fight each other; while he said in his update that his archers would mess up my glamour troops, I honestly cared more about his mammoths, since I can cast Air Shield on my Vanir to stop arrows, but trampling would break the glamour. Either way, we agreed to not kill each other as well, although we didn't talk much after that.

So, I have someone to my west I'm not fighting, and someone to my south I'm not fighting, and the only ways to go are to the south and the west. I decided that I would expand southwest, between them, and go from there. Can you guess the problem with this plan? It took me a couple of turns to realize it.

Answer: Southwest leads right into an impassable mountain range. After claiming my territory I have nowhere to expand to, since I don't want to kill either of my neighbors just yet. Whoops.

Anyway, let's take a look at that battle. There's no way it could have gone bad, right? I mean, we got past the horrible failure phase of this game for me-

http://i.imgur.com/ylaCJ.jpg

...Dammit. Okay, let's see exactly how this utter failure occurred.

http://i.imgur.com/Kp16F.jpg

Here's what I'm fighting. Two elephants and a lot of jerks with slingshots. The battle starts normally, with Finn buffing himself and the huskarlar moving in. Something of note is that, despite his Hall of Fame ability being Heroic Precision, absolutely none of Sir Slicer's castings of Frighten hit either elephant.

http://i.imgur.com/pNeXO.jpg

In addition to that, despite their shields the serfs wind up getting really messed up by the slingers, eventually breaking ranks. This leaves the elephant free to go right for my huskarlar, and, as I've stated numerous times, trample breaks glamour even if it misses. They get stomped into the dirt.

http://i.imgur.com/VRvio.jpg

The death of multiple huskarlar and most of the serfs causes a HP rout, and my army flees before Finn and the Helhirdings have even entered the fray. All in all, this is an utterly terrible battle for me.

http://i.imgur.com/ZeOLD.jpg

Okay, you know what? Screw the elephants. I don't care. I'm not going to deal with them. Sir Slicer, Finn (who is in the southern province with two of the Helhirdings), and the new Vanjarl I hired are all going to ignore them entirely.

See how the movement arrows are gray rather than orange, like my prophet's movement has been? That's because they're sneaking past; I hadn't had to make use of it before this, but as I showed in my first post, the Vanjarls and Helkarls and, well, basically everything I have besides the serfs and dwarfs, are stealthy, meaning they can just move right past this province and conquer whatever is past it instead (that's why my prophet is moving back, so I can see exactly what is in that province again; I forgot and didn't feel like bringing out my old turn file already). I will deal with the elephants later.

Graphs don't show anything particularly interesting this turn. Fomoria's keeping up its three provinces a turn, Abysia and R'lyeh both get too again, and everyone else but Caelum and I got one. Wonderful. I've fallen behind again.

Next turn: Nothing happens, again.

-------

Bonus: Research, magic schools, and Blood magic explained

So, you may have noticed that a lot of the updates so far have mentioned research. You may be wondering what that is; while I commented on how research levels are determined for mages in my unit explanation post (for those who don't remember, it's total magic path levels (not counting priest levels), plus two, plus or minus any inherent bonuses and exp), but you may not know what it's for. Well, wonder no longer, for I shall tell you: Research is what lets you use more and better magic.

http://i.imgur.com/Exdoi.jpg

This is the magic research screen. It shows all seven magic schools here, how you're currently allocating your research points (I have none yet, since I have no mages researching, but that green bar and the numbers beside it show what you're putting your research in and how much in each school), your progress to the next level for each school, and your total progress. There are ten levels or magic in each path, starting at zero and ending at nine. The amount of research points it takes to get to the next level is the amount of the previous two levels combined; under normal research settings (at the start of the game the host can change it to less or more), this is forty, then sixty, then one hundred, one hundred sixty, and so on.

http://i.imgur.com/b31BI.jpg

This is a look at one of the schools. When you reach a new research level, you unlock all the spells in it. Of course, you still need the appropriate paths to actually cast them. For example, I won't be summoning many sea dogs, since I have no water access. Also sea dogs are kind of useless. Whatever.

What each school does is as follows; while there are a few oddities in each one, this is more or less how they generally are:

Conjuration: Summons things. Almost every spell that creates units is in this school. From mundane animals to weird monsters to units that are stronger than most pretender gods, if you're summoning something, you're getting it here.

Alteration: Changes things. Most of the buff and debuff spells are here. Making your units ethereal, immune to various elements, all that. It's also where the super-powerful Wish spell is, something we may see later in the game.

Evocation: Uh, evokes things? Basically, this is the "blow stuff up" school; almost all of the really damaging battlemagic is in this one. This is the school for hurting things.

Construction: Builds things. Unlike most schools, every even level of Construction doesn't unlock any new spells. Instead, it unlocks a new group of items for you to make, with the level eight ones all being the unique artifacts; only one of each artifact can exist at any given time. Odd-numbered levels here are for the most part summons, but with the theme of things that can be made, like clockwork soldiers and Frankenstein-like monsters.

Enchantment: Enchants things, obviously. The buffs that aren't in Alteration are mostly here, with things like flight and whatnot. A few summons are in here as well, mostly necromantic ones, with the idea being that, instead of calling things, you're enchanting them. EDM (a mod that was combined with CBM, mostly modifies endgame spells and summons) put the Great Kraken spell here, for some reason, though. I dunno, its description even describes it as calling the thing, not enchanting an octopus and making it into a supercaster version of the pretender R'lyeh has.

Thaumaturgy: ...Yeah, I dunno. This is sort of a weird school, seemingly a catch-all for anything that didn't fit into the other ones. Lot of useful stuff in here, though.

Blood Magic: This one is a bit different from all the others. Best way to show it off would be to let you see the list of spells in this school.

http://i.imgur.com/wGoKc.jpg

Yep, that's right. Every single spell that requires Blood magic is in here. Blood summons, blood battlemagic, blood anything. If you don't have Blood access, you can ignore this school entirely. But having its own school isn't the only thing that sets Blood magic apart from the rest.

Remember our talk about magic gems, and how I mentioned Blood magic being different? Blood magic doesn't use gems, it uses slaves. Blood slaves. Virgins that you sacrifice for power, basically. While a few sites generate blood slaves, you will never find enough of these to satisfy your casting needs. The real way to get them is through blood hunting. To blood hunt, you have a commander (usually one with levels in Blood magic; those without it can find slaves, but are really, really bad at it) hunt in a province, taking from the local population. This raises unrest in the region and kills off some of the population; normally people focusing on Blood magic counteract this with Growth scales to balance out the population they lose, while setting the province's tax rate to zero to control unrest and prevent it from making it harder to hunt. If a province doesn't have enough population, there is a penalty to hunting there, too. However, once you get your "blood economy" going, you will have far more slaves than you have gems. Good blood economies regularly bring in over a hundred blood slaves a turn. This allows for some really nasty things, as you may or may not see later in the game.

(Blood slaves also show up in battle, unlike gems, as units around the commander whose inventory they're in. While they won't do anything themselves, they can be hit and killed by enemy attacks. Can be kind of inconvenient.)

In case you haven't caught on to Blood magic being kind of evil, it's also the school used for summoning demons and stuff, and all but two spells in it require you to kill at least one slave to cast it (and the ones that don't basically need you to use one to cut down the fatigue cost anyway). It's not exactly a nice school of magic.

So, that's that. Look forward to me using at least a little of all these schools, and marvel at me trying to deal with making a blood economy while my dominion hastens everyone getting killed instead of balancing it. It'll be hilarious. For people who aren't me, at least.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://i.imgur.com/Zo8Ws.png

Turn 5:

<a href="http://imgur.com/5Ev0x"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/5Ev0xl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

No messages this turn, since I went back to get reinforcements. The fact that I still have my Amazons is slightly surprising, and very welcome.

<a href="http://imgur.com/UxM8g"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/UxM8gl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Here's what my army looks like now. Four times the melee units, and another pile of ranged units.

<a href="http://imgur.com/JlGNt"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/JlGNtl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

My new commanders are ready, so I start making them men to command. That's 42 BCs in one turn, if you're curious.

<a href="http://imgur.com/eiCzG"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/eiCzGl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/MEOBP"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/MEOBPl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Finally, another useful merc band. Dante's Stingers are a group of 30 heavy infantry; not as good as my Amazons, but good enough to take me some provinces. I overbid massively on them, of course- more expansion is more important than more gold right now.

(Sliiiiiiiiiiight problem with this.)

<a href="http://imgur.com/1JSIQ"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/1JSIQl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Orders are to move the scout onward, send the main army to fight bakemono, and bring in the new commanders. If I get the Stingers, they'll be assaulting that province I skipped next turn, otherwise, I'll send one of the new guys over there.

I'm not showing graphs this turn- the only interesting bits were that Abysia and Fomoria are pulling ahead in provinces, my army is now the biggest out there, and Pan's dominion and Caelum's research are insane. Not too worried about the dominion part of things, but I need more mages (and better mages) soon.

Research is still going apace. Two turns to Thaum1, four to Thaum2. Let's see how next turn goes.

Turn 6:

<a href="http://imgur.com/v3tmD"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/v3tmDl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

As expected- a random event (no turn feels right without one of those), and a battle. Let's see what I've got.

<a href="http://imgur.com/Nxm2y"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Nxm2yl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/m6IZ2"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/m6IZ2l.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

The event is something I couldn't care less about. Brigands increase unrest, which I can just let the game cure by automatically lowering taxes. I'm in the mountains, so none of my provinces are really worth anything. 80% of almost nothing is still almost nothing, so this is worthless.

Now, the battle is MUCH nicer. 144 Marv infantry is hard to beat, and seeing a fight with no casualties just warms my shriveled black heart.

(Two things here. First, this event is a LOT worse for me than you might think I'll realize this later. Second, 100+ Marverni troops is a fairly decent critical mass. Not enough to handle a real army (of a similar size), but enough to wipe the floor with indeps without huge casualties.)

<a href="http://imgur.com/oKa9g"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/oKa9gl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Isn't it pretty?

<a href="http://imgur.com/7VjBS"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/7VjBSl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Uh-oh. That purple banner is Fomoria, one of the races of giants in this game. Big, strong guys with good armor. I'm not enjoying the thought of fighting him, and he's partially in what I've decided should be my territory. Let's hope I can isolate him quickly enough to get my share of the map.

( *snort*)

<a href="http://imgur.com/sXbcC"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/sXbcCl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

No new mercs yet, and Fomoria stole Dante's Stingers. Drat.

Recruiting another mage and the last men for my next expansion group. 60 BCs and 20 Slingers. I'm also getting an independent commander, who will be sent over to where my primary army is. His purpose is to reach Faran, sit there, and build a fort. It should pay for itself right quick, both in recruitment and in the funds you get out of it.

(For those who didn't know, forts increase the taxes you get from surrounding provinces by their Administration value. I'm strapped for cash, so that's REALLY important.)

<a href="http://imgur.com/KnUXz"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/KnUXzl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

It looks like Helheim is recovering, and what's this? Why's my income dropped so far?

<a href="http://imgur.com/Zsttw"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Zsttwl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

OH. Those bandits are in my capital- the source of ~90% of my gold. The AI automatically dropped my taxes to 50% to deal with that.

<a href="http://imgur.com/3t20p"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/3t20pl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

That takes care of that. The taxes are back where they belong, and my patrolling troops will deal with the unrest. Glad I caught that before I lost ~100 gold.

(See? I'd set the game aside in the middle of this, so I was rather surprised to come back and find the treasury so bare.)

<a href="http://imgur.com/DHmdg"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/DHmdgl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Pan's army size has leveled off. He must be losing fights, or not have any Pans. Otherwise, he'd be gaining Maenads.

Let's all say it again. Maenads.

Turn 7:
(AKA "Why was I worried again?")

<a href="http://imgur.com/KLK62"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/KLK62l.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Well, now THIS is interesting! I've got Thaum1 as predicted, but let's see about the rest.

<a href="http://imgur.com/OPTkV"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/OPTkVl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Magic item. Huh. It could be useful, or it could be utterly pointless. Gold would've been better.

(It ended up being Black Steel Armor, which is basically useless for me. Might be used on a Boar Lord, if that.)

<a href="http://imgur.com/ytHjd"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/ytHjdl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

This is what was so interesting. I only had one scheduled battle, so a second one meant either that a bad random event fired, or Fomoria hit me. No bad random event, and I got the province as planned. Let's see how badly I lost.

<a href="http://imgur.com/XZVPe"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/XZVPel.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

O_o

I... won? Against 30 giants!? Wow. Even managed to inflict more losses than I took! Let's see who got mauled in my army.

<a href="http://imgur.com/HGAtm"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/HGAtml.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Okay, so it was BCs. Good to see nobody important was lost. Now, let's watch that battle.

<a href="http://imgur.com/UgQra"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/UgQral.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

So this is what I'm fighting. 21 Fir Bolg Slingers, a FB Champion, what looks like his starting commander prophetized, and 15 FB Warriors.

<a href="http://imgur.com/jvHc0"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/jvHc0l.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/eLCzS"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/eLCzSl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Lessons learned:

1. FB Warriors are hard for normal BCs to hurt.
2. Berserk is my friend- it was really hurting the FB.
3. Slingers die FAST.
4. He didn't throw any real giants at me.

<a href="http://imgur.com/gkQLC"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/gkQLCl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

<a href="http://imgur.com/1PDdL"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/1PDdLl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

<a href="http://imgur.com/maqpJ"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/maqpJl.jpg" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a>

Looking at the area, he's spread rather thin. I think I got his major expansion army. He doesn't get glamour, so I should see any units he's still got, and I see nothing. I've split my armies into three parts, and am going to try and push him back quickly. Also sending my new army down to conquer the next province.

(Anybody who knows Fomoria should see the problem with this. Anybody who plays Dom3 should be able to see the other huge flaw here.)

I figure that Corinthian has a few different options here. Either he tries for that indep province with his four Unmarked in the forest, in which case I'll have 80 men (and, after a bit of thought, a mage) there to block him; he heads up and take my province (in which case, I'll dogpile him from three directions); he retreats (running straight into my assault), or he stays right there (and get attacked next turn anyway). I like those odds!

(Again, not factoring a few things into my analysis.)

No new mercs, recruiting some more BCs and vectoring in a commander for them, set my tax down to let unrest drop (since patrolling did little last turn), got another Gut ordered for Thaum2, and am otherwise finished. Let's see how things go.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by Cindi Lauper

Our expansion party, now that it has been reinforced with some chariots, is doing rather well.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2vlktb9" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2vlktb9.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Here you can see some wolf tribesmen moments before my flanking chariots overrun their archers. The battle is over quickly.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=14j9l7b" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/14j9l7b.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

In terms of troop movements, we send more chariots to the south-east to reinforce our expansion party- our second barbarian commander is useful for that.

Meanwhile the army that just slaughtered wolf barbarians is set to attack some undead; with our prophet amongst our numbers and his H3 banishment, we should have little difficulty with these.

Here you can see the scripting we’ll use. Again with the guy out front taunting and running away – except this time our chariots are set to strike at the enemy’s rear while most of their forces are chasing that one guy… we’ll see if it works.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=34y9uuw" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/34y9uuw.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

You may have noticed that most of our research is being done by philosophers. So lets see how that’s working out for us…

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2ly0oib" target="_blank"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/2ly0oib.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Looks like we are second place behind caelum who has an awake god doing their research.

Anyway, relatively quiet turn. I’m expanding pretty slowly and not really doing anything impressive.

EDIT: I am actually really excited to see the next maverni turn.... what will happen?

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by “The Bravery” - click the turn names for awesome 80s music. CLICK IT NOW. Open multiple windows and play it two or three times at once out of sync. You’ll be so happy.

Ooops…

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=zk2109" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/zk2109.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Not what I was expecting at all.

So what happens?

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=egbwcy" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/egbwcy.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Their undead cavalry hit my infantry line, and manage to kill many of them as well as our slingers while our chariot archers swing around and destroy their zombies (soulless) and finally their mound kings. We force a rout.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=16blvya" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/16blvya.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

But we lose much of our infantry and slingers.

Here you can see our barbarian commander and his chariots converging with the forces that just lost so many men to try and take another province. All the forces that routed in that last battle have run to the province ‘Stark’ is attacking from but unfortunately barb commander leadership sucks so he can’t pick them up to reform our forces.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=rua7w7" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/rua7w7.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

What do we have ready for those lizardmen?

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2zrj7gz" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/2zrj7gz.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

I’m hoping this is a functional pincer movement. We’ll see what happens. You can see that attrition has basically wittled down my initial expansion party and forced me to keep feeding forces to this command instead of starting a second expansion party. Its sort of pathetic but its turn 7 and I am still only taking one province per turn. This is a horrible initial expansion rate.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://i.imgur.com/D5COB.jpg

Soundtrack: A. Avkhimovich: The Sound Theory: 02. Something Random


The turn before last turn I recruited a triton priest in Moon Sea.
Last turn I ordered him to search for sites, and he immediately
demonstrates why you should always search underwater provinces with
holy magic (H1 is enough).

http://i.imgur.com/5qN8F.png

The land temples don't give water, but are still nice.

The army led by Eshu Saath and Vkt'Ebph has also arrived from R'lyeh.

http://i.imgur.com/YLK8J.png

They prepare themselves for landfall, and their target is the
unsuspecting province of Numecria. The map has Ermor there,
yet Ermor is not a power in the game. And never will be ~~ the
story at the end will explain.

Meanwhile the sages of Arcoscephale have noticed the strange
going-ons beneath the sea.

http://i.imgur.com/RB0a5.png

For once someone sends us a friendly message! Why do the little
mans hate us so?

As you may have noticed on the screen above, Auluudh's guys are
just chillin'. How come? If you look at the south-eastern corner,
you'll see a certain octopoid monstrosity attacking the province
next from them ~~ from the other side. He doesn't need any help
with that, so Auluudh might as well make himself useful in his
capacity as a mage.

http://i.imgur.com/A8Piu.png

Yöt-Webbogoth also spots Pangaea's pretender, a vile undead husk
of a man that clings to its miserable existance at any price. Seems
a strange fit for a nation that's centered on growth and nature
magic, but nature/death is a very potent combination for Pangaea.
It gives access to carrion centaurs/lords/ladies that can reanimate
manikins (corpses reanimated by plants, undead with a nifty fatigue-
causing attack) for free, and a lich needs a strong dominion to make
the most of his immortality. Pangaea with it's cheap temples and
blood-sacrifice capability an provide, and those are even better
with a high dominion from the pretender.

Looks like he took really high dom. This means that I'll have a
nice old time preaching his filthy dominion out of my underwater
provinces. I also wave a tentacled goodbye to any plans I had to
snatch Tir na n'Og for Greater R'lyeh. Well, any *immediate* plans.
It'd be nice to have, since the only non-water access is via the
province his lich dude is standing in. But it also is on the
opposite end of the world from my, and I want to avoid the
impression of being excessively greedy. For now. Who knows, maybe
something will come up?

Anyway, with Yöt-Webbogoth attacking the last independant underwater
province this turn, Phase I of my cunning plan for world conquest
will be complete next turn. Have an inspirational picture:

http://i.imgur.com/2t6rt.jpg

Phase II will be:

A lab, a temple and a kelp fortress in. Every. Province.

Well, every second province maybe. And I'm talking underwater
provinces; on land I don't get any national units at all, so I won't
be building all that many forts there.

The labs will allow me to port mages troops with water-based spells
in addition to the standard astral ones (teleport & gateway). As
spread out as my empire is, that'll be very important.

The temples, together with a fort, will allow me to recruit my
wimmen. The R'lyeh ladies are very... traditional, and never leave
the house. They do provide a constant stream of free polypal spawn
(basically the hoburg militia of the seas) and a less constant
trickle of upkeep-costing but holy gibodai (the classier type of
mindblaster fish).

They also can kickstart my dominion with H2 preaching. Hopefully
that will be enough to let the temples spread it to the fortless
provinces in between: If I get provinces under my dominion, good
things will happen. If not, there will be problems ~~ my PD ain't
that great. But at least I'll have the option to recruit a ton of
R'lyeh tradmark chaff in a neighbouring fort and retake a province
if necessary.

The sea shall be an impregnable fortress, an iron clamp around the
land, a necklace of horrible spawn-factories constantly pumping out
their vile, wriggling offspring in an ever-rising tide of ickyness.
Mage fish shall gambol from the labs, spontaneously twirling their
tentacles together in invincible communions of doom.

I will be pursue this plan with stunning efficiency and without giving
in to any distractions whatsoever.

Nothing can go wrong.

~~~

For fellow aficionados of Lovecraftianesquish, here as a little something inspired by The Doom That Came To Sarnath.

TXT |

MP3 | OGG

http://i.imgur.com/wxuXW.jpg

The Doom That Came To Ermor ~~ Part I

There is in the land of Numecria an silent bay where no wind blows
and no wave dares to enter. Not long ago there stood by the shore the
mighty city of Ermor, but Ermor stands no more.

It is told that when the city of Ermor was just about to rise to
prominence, another city stood by that shore. This was the city of
Nume, and it was not a city of men.

http://i.imgur.com/xB5Os.jpg

The beings that walked the streets of Nume were fish-like in shape,
and it was said they had come from beneath the waves, long ago on a
night when the moon leered gibbous and the North Star winked evily
upon the mist-shrouded sea.

The things of Nume were no friends to the proud tritons or the mermen
or even others of their kind, for it was said they had sworn fealty
to the City of the Deep Seas, the name of which the wise do not speak.

The things of Nume also were no friend to man, for men did not think
that beings of such aspect should walk the world above. Moreover, they
did not like the brooding sculptures of Nume, and the squat and heavy
palaces of dark gray stone the things of Nume built. Strange and
repellent were the rites and customs of the city, and the men of
Numecria, and fair Saeborea, and distant Ograthon spat on the ground
when they spoke the name of Nume.

Yet despite the hatred of man, and the people of the sea, Nume
prospered, for her traders sailed farther then all others, to Komoroo
and even mist-shrouded, accursed Fomoria, and they brought furs from
the forests of Maverni, whose priests disdained writing, and strange
mechanisms from golden Arcoscephale on the slopes of Mount Cephalos.

http://i.imgur.com/pLQOT.jpg

Thus it was that the men of Ermor, who had raised their city to the
foremost of the many towns in the hills of Numecria looked upon Nume
and felt envy, and even hate. Still, they feared Nume's strange powers
and allies, and did not dare to strike.

Instead they sent their broad-shielded armies marching into the hills,
and made all other towns of Numecria send them tribute, and swear
fealty to mighty Ermor.

It was not enough.

So the augurs of Ermor sent to the Oracle at Cephalos, above golden
Arcoscephale, and the oracle told them this:

"If Ermor defeats Nume, Ermor shall never be defeated by man nor
woman."

And the augurs of Ermor rejoiced to hear this, but prophecy was
notoriously fickle, and apt to turn on those who trusted it to
quickly.

So the augurs of Ermor sent to the tribes of Maverni, and sent again
when the first delegation came to a bad end. And the second delegation
brought gifts before the druids, and returned with the following
counsel:

"If Ermor conquers Nume, the conquest of the world shall begin at
Ermor."

Finally the augurs of Ermor sent to the Sauromancers of C'tis, for
they were neither man nor women and the augurs were a cautious lot.
On the way there the delegation was stopped by the Fiery Ones of
Abysia, and taken before the Smouldercone for judgement, for they had
trespassed on the Abysians' land. But the delegation's leader spoke
passionately of friendship and alliance, and the Anointed of Rhuax
let them go, in return for the promise of a share in Ermor's great
destiny.

So the men of Ermor came to swamp-girded C'tis, most ancient of all
cities above the sea. There they saw lizard serpent-dancers whirling
and twisting in their holy trance, and splendid lizard princes ride
in gilded chariots, and the sauromancers conjure the spirits of the
dead with the smoke of certain herbs.

It was difficult for warm-blooded men to gain an audience with the
lizard sorcerors, but the delegation's leader persisted, and spoke
with great eloquence of Ermors splendour and riches, and the wisdom
of its augurs.

And the lizard-kings were swayed, and granted the men of Ermor leave
to speak with the Sauromancers, who than performed many strange and
unsettling rites. At last the Sauromancers spoke with a fell spirit,
imprisoned under the Root of the Earth, and asked about the fate of
mighty Ermor.

"If Ermor destroys Nume, Ermor shall learn the secrets of life and
death."

This the spirit spoke, and laughed so mightily that the earth shook
and a great temple to one of the many snake-godlets of C'tis fell
down.

The men of Ermor were divided what to make of this, but they were
agreed that the time had come for them to return. But the swamps of
C'tis are full of unhealthy airs for those not of lizard-kind, and
all of them fell ill not long after they had embarked on their
journey.

One by one they died, and only a single man returned at last to mighty
Ermor, ranting and raving. Still, it was enough for the augurs with
their magic to sift sense from feverish frenzy. And the augurs of
Ermor greatly wished to divine the secrets of life and death, which
they reckoned to be the greatest among the secrets that still eluded
them. For the augurs of Ermor were arrogant, and reckoned themselves
wise beyond all other men, and believed that there was little they did
not know, and that of even smaller consequence, save for the secrets
of life and death.

~~~ to be continued ~~~

Pangaea turn 9
 

http://lpix.org/images/Lilli/e119a69.../panbanner.jpg


TURN 9:

First, a view of the map this turn:
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1584/turn9.png

I conquer a province full of Circle Masters with my minotaurs. Maenads are good at catching arrows, as expected. As expected, they are bad at surviving the arrows.
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2958/turn9minotaurs.png

I lose even more in the north, where the maenads were only supported by centaur archers, but still win the battle.
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/5...rn9archers.png

Thorion, after defeating elephants, now defeats much more dangerous enemies... Markatas!
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9...rn9markata.png
Yes, seriously, Markatas deserve some love. They are probably one of the worst units in the game, but they are so fun.

Meanwhile, Fomoria is very high on the province graphs, with R'lyeh not so far. Abysia has been stagnating for a while, I'm just behind them BUT. What is he doing with his army of Burning Ones just south of me, with nowhere to go but in my lands? Seriously? So I bring back my god as I foresee an attack. Why otherwise would he be bringing his troops? I also buy some minotaurs. They should be able to deal some damage to abysians once berserked. And some revelers. These will have to go spread unrest in the fiery one's lands if he's the *** I think he is. Wtf is he thinking? That I'll fold and he can take out my lands easily? He's got lots of indies to expand into north and west. Bringing his armies here is simply asking for war, and it'll cost him as his pitiful dominion won't let him kill my pretender. Unless I am silly enough to attack outside my dominion, that is. I even blood hunt a little in my capital this turn in order to get some slaves and push my dominion if needs be.Blood-hunting is quite random unfortunately I send him an in-game message. It doesn't matter that he'll get it after attacking me, it seems so obvious, I'm just calling him names. He has to hope he can rush me, but if he fails, well, a failed rush means death for both parties. Why does he think my pretender is second in the HoF? He's either just ruining the game for both of us or being totally silly wasting troops near me on a peaceful visit.
Well, as expected, he is indeed attacking and my predicitons were right. He never managed to take me out, opened himself wide to be slaughtered by his other neighbours and is very likely to die before me. Although Marverni, who was bold enough to actually ATTACK (!!!) Fomoria without having any decent troops or research, may die first.
I also get sightings of both Helheim and Fomoria.
The good news is the Markata province can produce, well, Markatas, but also Atavai chieftains. Stealthy, 40 leadership. Awesome for revelers and centaurs.
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7472/turn9atavi.png
Do NOT underestimate this guy. He's very precious, being a stealthy commander for very cheap.

And I buy my atavi chieftain a few warriors and ONE Markata. My enemies will shiver in fear at this awesome sight for sure.Yes, I know, Markatas suck. So what?
I'll also get Construction 2 by the end of the turn, so I can also start forging stuff if needed, although keeping research up to cons 4 would be my preferred option.
Overall, this is unhappy. I could expand greatly now if only Abysia left me alone. He won't gain anything by attacking me, so what does he believe he can do? I'll spam his backyard with revelers and his economy will tank if he doesn't waste money on lots of PD...Because obviously, every province he forgets to put 20PD in will eventually fall and he'll have to take it back and spend 210 gold to fortify it and never will he be able to use the commanders and money wasted this way to buy himself a second fort.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns 4-7)
 

http://i.imgur.com/iK5UR.png

Turn 2 – Lets take a look at the world.


There were no important events this turn other than that various nations declared their pretenders. Everyone prophetized their starting scout except for Marverni, who prophetized his starting commander instead. I did not think much of this at this time but later this knowledge gave me vital clues as to Bluemage's personality and playing style.

One event that was easily overlooked was that there was the proclamation that my patrolers reduced unrest by 2. To bad my overtaxing caused 12 points of unrest. Despite my praise of them last turn! How could they! Anyway these things happen. Overtaxing will always give 2 points of unrest for every 10% above 100%. Patrolers on the other hand are quite random in how effective they are and can fail even with great numbers given some bad luck. 2 points of unrest seem to have disappear by itself due to friendly dominion though.
http://i.imgur.com/eZVxt.jpg
Having a look at the world at the start of turn tells me one important thing. Crystal Amazons to my north east! Jackpot! I was wondering what I would have to do to get astral. With R'lyeh ever close by, astral magic is a must. I worried that I would have to wait until conj 6 and specters until I would get astral. Instead I find astral indies right outside of my door. Lucky!

Actually I was expecting to find astral from indies so it was part of my plan. Crystal amazons and lizard tribes are common in the Early Age. But its nice to find one so soon so I no longer have to feel any any pressure about it.
http://i.imgur.com/hwwPq.jpg
I was planning to recruit another Druid and four Unmarked, but as I lost some resources due to unrest I had to settle for three and a Nemedian Champion.

The first druid spend the turn building an Owl Quill. Some people consider these things to be a waste of Air gems. And they have a point. 5 Air gems for 3 points of research is not a good exchange. But it is also true that the power of a research booster depends on when you build it. At turn 2 that quill will produce research for a long time. Also in CBM Owl Quills have the additional effect of giving its wearer – 2 to enc. Witch to a spellcaster, or a quickened thug, is slightly better than having reinvigoration 4, due to the enc bonus counting double for spells and count once for each action. I will use them like this later, so really, they are actually just thug items that produce research while they sit in storage.

Nevertheless, the keen eyed among you might have noticed a red arrow going north. That arrow represent an ambassadorial group of Fir Bolgs that will visit the province of Vath to the north and my prophet to reveal to them the joyous words of Snakey. The army is my starting army plus the ten additional Fir Bolgs that I produced last turn. The opposition consist of 20 troops. Mainly of shieldless militia and light cavalry. There might possibly be a few heavy cavalry also that is not shown, but I am confident that my prophet could just smite them if they exist. Light and heavy cavalry often comes together.
http://i.imgur.com/IbXcT.jpg
I could also have attacked the barbarians to the south as barbarians are dangerous to giants. But I wanted my prophet to move north to strengthen my dominion up there. Already I can see the dominion of R'lyeh in the waters to the north west of my capitol and I would like it if the lands stayed under my my faith at the very least. Although I took dom strength 7 on my pretender, he is imprisoned and cant help inspire people on his own just yet. R'lyeh's pretender on the other hand is awake according to the graphs and could pose a significant threat to my dominion if he would chose to expand to the south. He is either a Wyrm or an Ancient Kraken. Both are viable though I suspect that he is a Ancient Kraken due to thematic reasons.

Oh right, lets take a look at this picture again.
http://i.imgur.com/eZVxt.jpg
No, I dont know why some of the pictures have a white border beneath them.

Anyway, lets talk about my build. Other players that look at my pretender would be excused if they though that I took the standard earth+nature bless. Because I did!
http://i.imgur.com/twMJi.jpg
This is a E4N8 bless that, as the picture shows, allows my sacreds to regenerate and makes them last longer in battle without tiring. What the casual observer would have missed however is the fact that this bless only compromises a small part of my overall build. Most of my points were spent on my scales. As you can see above I took Order 3 for money, production 3 for versatility and because fomoria is one of the few heavy armor nations in EA. And for money of course. This is CBM after all. I also took Growth 2. Not because Fomoria in anyway need growth, but because growth is really powerful in CBM. Magic 1 is something that everyone takes so nothing strange there.

Only negative scale I took was heat 1 because I wanted to experiment a little. I have tested it a bit and it have given me the theory that temperature scales might not be as bad as it say on the tin. Yes, even with multipliers multiplying multipliers or whatever. The thing I have noticed is this: even with a base heat of 1 the heat will never get above 1 in the summer despite the fact that temperatures will go up then. This means that heat is free points in the summer. It will also often go down to heat 0 in winter making it the same in winter. Had I known Abysia would be in this game I would have chosen cold, but I designed my pretender before Excist even announced his choice of nation and I could not be arsed to change it.


There were mercs available but none of them were very appealing to me. I did not have the funds to bid on the Amazons when they were available and they are neither able to expand on their own, nor did they compliment the rest of my forces. Not worth it.

There were also city guards up for bid, but they are something of a joke that mainly new players recruit by mistake. They consist 60 militia and in a fight, militia can actually be worse than nothing due to them routing easily and taking the rest of the army with them in the rout. It is true like Mightypeon say, that they makes for adequate patrollers for overtaxing your capitol. But even there they'll just barely do. Remember that buying 60 militia for permanent patrolling would cost just 300g. Or 9 months for the mercs at minimum bid. Well, +40 for a commander. Whatever.

Turn 3: The <del>300</del> five warriors go forth to take the mountain pass.
http://i.imgur.com/Z0mI7.jpg
I rarely get random events because of Order 3 and the lack of both luck and misfortune scales. Thus, only two events happened this turn. A battle and the fact that Abysia declared a demonbreed assassin to be his prophet. Such an odd choice. But I did not pay any more attention to this. I should have.

The other event was a battle.
http://i.imgur.com/bliHD.jpg
An excellent and highly improbable outcome what with Fir Bolgs having only prot 7. Turns out that there really *were* four heavy cavalry in the province. But despite that, my Fir Bolgs did not take any casualties. One of them received a never healing wound, but he was immediately put on the famous fomorian health regime of “suck it up you prancy princess!”

Other interesting thing happening is that my second expansion force is ready.
http://i.imgur.com/P51Zs.jpg

Normally I like to have at least 6 giants in an expansion force, but you use what you get, and today I stand here with only five giants. They will have to do.

So whats up with these guys? Well with my blessing and the power of bad math they becomes an unbreakable wall of spears that will also stab people pretty well with its atk12, dam24 weapons. The bless will let them regenerate 6 HP every round. How exactly 15% of 35 turns in to 6 HP is a mystery but it has probably something to do with how awesome Snakey is. Or maybe dominions always round regeneration numbers upwards. Whatever.

I almost skipped over the earth bless part of the bless in favor of more scales, but it turns out I need it in order to make my quickened kings fatigue neutral. For the Unmarked it has the power to make them last 67% longer in battle without fatiguing out. Witch is good enough I guess.

Anyway, the bless also has another purpose and that is to prevent afflictions. No one knows to what extent regeneration protects against afflictions, but two things are known: One: The tool tip that it prevents 7/8 or all afflictions is wrong, and Two: more is probably better. 5% gives rather little protection, 15% gives rather a lot. This is also thematic as fomorians put great importance in avoiding afflictions as social status is depending on being healthy.

Soon these fearsome soldiers will be adorned with experience stars from expanding and unlike other elite troops they wont gain the complimentary afflictions.

Moving out!
http://i.imgur.com/Hk8ka.jpg
Although I only brings 5 giants with me this time I have no doubt that their heavy armor and shields will be able to overcome almost any amount of archers and mindburns and take neither afflictions or casualties.

Next turn spoilers:
http://i.imgur.com/FFkFq.jpg
Got drat it!

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by ‘The Promise’. A reminder that the song titles in the above heading is a link to the music you want to be listening to while you read this.


If you can remember the last installment, we were attempting to take an indie lizardman province with an expansion party newly reinforced from the capital with some chariot archers. What happened there?

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2uei97s" target="_blank"><img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/2uei97s.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

So this is all that is left in that province.

Oh poop!

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=if9a9f" target="_blank"><img src="http://i50.tinypic.com/if9a9f.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

The lizards are simply numerous and armed with their tridents and a bit of strength, simply hit hard. Our morale isn’t great and when we lose a few troops, we run…

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=1g40m9" target="_blank"><img src="http://i47.tinypic.com/1g40m9.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Pictured here is our commanders spreading out to gather up all the forces that ran away.

Luckily, in other parts of the map we are finally ready to launch a second expansion party.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=1pz30z" target="_blank"><img src="http://i48.tinypic.com/1pz30z.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

This one is made up entirely of chariot archers. We’ll see how they do against horse archers.

Turns are still a little boring as we go through pretty standard expansion- don’t worry things will get more exciting.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

Today’s turn AAR is brought to you by ‘Simple Minds’.


So diplomacy is finally starting to take place as we meet our neighbors. I had sent a message to R’leyh basically confirming that he got the waters and I got local lands. Its not like I could go into the waters to dispute this even if I wanted to so it doesn’t really change anything. His answer was,
I also get this from Pangea,
So things are starting to take form on the world stage. Told you things would get more exciting soon…

Well, this turn we finally managed to bid successfully on some mercs; I had been trying for awhile but most low-balling (Stupid me!).

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2enajwx" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/2enajwx.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

Just as we hear of the dangers of big, bad formoria, we find out that he’s our northern neighbor. Oh Gently Caress!

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=9gc0f9" target="_blank"><img src="http://i49.tinypic.com/9gc0f9.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>
Our battle with the horse archers went splendidly however. (I won’t bother showing you a screenshot- its pretty much just another indie battle- I’ll take a picture of more interesting battles as they take place).

What perhaps is of slightly more interest is a coordinate attack from three different provinces on a province with crystal amazons. I think these can be tough so I decided to throw everything I had at them.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=6sdm5g" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.tinypic.com/6sdm5g.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

You can see from the forces lined up that I hired a few wolf tribe archers. We have no archers (slingers DO NOT count) so they will have to do.

Next turn we’ll probably take those crystal amazons… probably…

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

Sorry for the lack of updates on my end; I haven't been feeling well this past week. I'll try to catch up soon, though.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

hope you feel better soon roland.

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

http://i.imgur.com/D5COB.jpg

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 9

SOUNDTRACK: Avkhimovich, The Sound Theory, 03: Noiser Offset

Story first, gameplay below:

http://i.imgur.com/wxuXW.jpg

The Doom That Came to Ermor ~~ Part II


Three delegations the augurs of Ermor sent out to learn the destiny of their city,
and three prophecies they received:

The Oracle of Mount Cephalos, above golden Arcoscephale, told them this:

"If Ermor defeats Nume, Ermor shall never be defeated by man nor woman."

The druids of Maverni, wise in the ways of the stars, prophecied:

"If Ermor conquers Nume, the conquest of the world shall begin at Ermor."

And the last foretelling came from a spirit, chained under the Root of the Earth and
questioned by the Sauromancers of ancient C'tis.

"If Ermor destroys Nume, Ermor shall learn the secrets of life and death."

This pleased the augurs greatly, and so they counseled the senate of Ermor to make war
on Nume. The senate needed little encouragement, for they were greedy and envious of
the fish-men's great wealth.

Out then marched the armies of mighty Ermor, with their tall shields and sharp swords
and cunning javelins. The dust raised from their sandaled feet blew in billowing clouds,
and their brazen horns brayed like hammers smashing the sun's disk.

The fish-men of Nume pulled shut their great gates of gray iron on which were certain
detestable bas-reliefs that sapped the will and courage of those who looked upon them, and
readied their spiked nets and barbed harpoons and three-tined tridents. And the horns of
Nume moaned and gurgled like dying whales.

But Ermor called upon the other cities of Numeria, and fair Saeborica, and even distant
Ograthon, and they enclosed Nume in a half-ring of soldiers, and made gifts to the sea-people
so that they would close the harbour. Even to wild Maverni they sent, for their fearless
warriors, and to golden Arcoscephale, for their cunning builders and number-men. They even
sent to the cursed giants of Fomoria, but of the fog-people none would come.

And the sages of Arcoscephale built great towers of wood to reach the walls, and the warriors
of Maverni leaped first unto the walls, where they made a great slaughter. And it is said
the jarls of Helheim rejoiced that day, but they were not present, for in those years the
Gates of Death were still firmly closed.

For many years Ermor would replay this battle on the blood-soaked sand of it's arenas, where
one of the gladiators would fight with trident and net, and wear a repellent fish-like helmet.

So the armies of men took the walls of Nume, and descended into the city, where they pillaged
and burned. And at last they came to the temples, and broke open the doors in search of riches,
but of what they found there no one would speak. But a grim hatred came then over them, and
they spurned loot and turned to killing, and some spoke at length with the tritons below the
waves, who would let none of the fish-folk escape.

Finally Nume was put to the torch, and the men of Ermor brought salt at great expense and
poisoned the earth, and the tritons warded the harbour so that no water would enter and no
water would leave.

http://i.imgur.com/3BWXS.jpg

With Nume broken and shattered, Ermor rose up, now first of all cities in the north-west. Yet
dreams plagued all that had marched against Nume, and their descendants, and none could find
sleep on the night that Nume fell, no matter how many years had passed.

This was why the celebration of Nume's death and Ermor's victory, at first a solemn affair,
began to become more and more debauched, as the people of Ermor sought to flee their dreams.

Every year the festivities grew more raucous, the excesses louder and more insistent, as every
year more people had come under the curse of Nume, and where desperate not to sleep.

So it was that one hundred years after Nume's fall, there were few guards on duty at the
harbour, even though news from under the sea had been worrying of late.

And so, when under the gibbous, green, leering moon and the madly twinkling north star the huge,
slimy sea-trolls lurched out of the mist-shrouded sea, and the misshapen, hunchbacked, mindless
toad-men followed, hopping and shuffling, few stood to snatch up their spears and shields,
fewer still stood and received the monstrous charge.

The people of Ermor were used to strange noises on this night; no-one heeded their screams.

Those that escaped the first battle would accost random party-goers, but to no avail: all
believed them to be in the throes of some strange delirium brought on by one of the many exotic
drugs that the people of Ermor had come to favour on this night.

Behind the vanguard, the vast bulks of the Abzu-lesh hurled themselves out of the water,
accompanied by more of their stunted atlantean slaves. They would begin to turn the people of
Ermor on one another, and cloud their minds further to keep them from realizing their doom,
save for their last moments when the veil would be ripped from them, and the terrible
realization of their death would be prolonged into eternities by the cruel magic of their
killers.

http://i.imgur.com/9UvCD.jpg

Thus Nume was avenged.

Thus Ermor was defeated, by neither man nor woman.

Thus, at Ermor, began the conquest of the world.

Thus Ermor learned the secrets of life and death.

~~~

inspired by *The Doom That Came to Sarnath*

mp3 low quality (9M)

mp3 high quality (18M)

ogg vorbis (9M)

txt

~~~

GAMEPLAY GAMEPLAY GAMEPLAY

This is a memorable turn. This month the last independent underwater province has fallen to Yöt-Webbogoth's
might.

http://i.imgur.com/bLV0K.png

Resistance is feeble. Futile, too. There was a moving sandbank in the province, a nice earth site that will
automatically be found. Yöt-Webbogoth heads north: he can't yet leave the water, and the nation most likely
to come visit underwater is Fomoria. It follows that the kraken an do the most good discouraging this by
lounging about off Fomoria's coast.

http://i.imgur.com/dXN5b.png

At the same time, Eshu Saath and Vkt'Ebph make landfall in Numecria.

http://i.imgur.com/bLV0K.png

Resistance is... beyond feeble. Did the goatfaces try to invade before? About two thirds of the enemy units
end up on R'lyeh's side. And this is where Ermor is supposed to be? Clearly everybody was distracted by
debauched celebrations of some sort.

http://i.imgur.com/EsDlx.png

Not everything goes well: Madness descends on Lake Fortune in the utter north-east.

http://i.imgur.com/obLbY.png

I didn't know this could happen with cold scales? Or was this sabotage? Deliberate, malevolent, evil, evil
sabotage? Did someone cast Raging Hearts on my provinec? Will someone own up? No? Then I will just have to
presume all of you guilty. ALL OF YOU.

On a happier note, let us welcome our newest overpaid mind lord recruit, Dxu'daku. As you may have deduced
from his name, he is actually less overpriced than his fellows.

http://i.imgur.com/XwRBI.png

Double death picks! Can't hold a skull staff or skull face, but with rings of sorcery and wizardry D4 is
doable. Or better, he could make a skull staff and skull face for a revenant to hold/wear (enchantment 3,
death 2, summons a D1 mage with HANDS and a HEAD). That'd give us D5. Which in turn is enough for lichcraft,
and with that Bob's your uncle. Or B'obph.

Since we have water and death we could also go the conjuration route via Streams from Hades (W4D1) to get
a Kokythiad, which is a W3D3 mage. With hands. And a head. Also there are wendigos. Wendigoes? Hopefully
we'll see some of those at one point.

Anyway, Dxu'daku. Fine young mind lord. All right, maybe young is not quite the right word for a 1500 year
old fish monster. Still, I foresee a GREAT future for him.

For now he's going out sitesearching (placed at the back, set to retreat) and hopefully in a few turns
we'll have the death gems pouring in.

Nithü ~~ remember Nithü? ~~ has been looking for nature sites all this time, no success so far. He's building
a lab in Baptizer this turn (that's the north pole fortress).

Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
 

turn was extended so caelum, r'leyh and helheim didn't stale.