Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

move bug has hit me twice in a row. I'm trying to isolate things a little while it's still fresh. I'm also not sure how I'm gonna do my turn, as getting hosed on the move twice in a row rather sucks.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Man I suck at ULM. I am down to my last few prov, and since I seem to be totally inept I am going to set myself to AI.

I just lost a huge battle for my Fort, and don't seem to have any counters for Vanheim. I really need to do some reading up on that.

But lightning just seems to be the bain of my troops. Even my elite troops get decimated by it, of course I did manage to outfit my prophet so he didn't die in the attack, but he didn't do anything either other than rout. :)

It was fun, and I learned a lot. Hope everyone has fun!

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

I would need 12h extension for current turn. Thanks.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Delay granted.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

I'm off to Norway today (Sunday), coming back on Thursday. My current turn is in, QM said he'd either find me a sub or sub himself. It might've been a jest to get me sub a turn in Forge, but if that's the case, shame and blame on him. :p

Cya later!

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

I'll give an extension, if qm wants to sub, he can contact me with his e-mail.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

The children of the Vanir cry out "who will save us?". They stare fearfully into the spreading swamps knowing the dark, fearful things stalk them from the shadows. "Save us!" they cry "For in saving us you save yourselves!".

Bah, where have the proud women of Vanheim gone? Do they cower with the children begging for big strong giants to come save them? Yet another self destructive nation has brought war against the Goddess of the Mountains and Lady of the Hunt. The corpse of Hinnom twitches fresh, yet the Vanir believe the lesson taught here is to attack into the swamp?

Come, little children, we will play a game...for now, the Lady of the Hunt stalks Vanir. As the peoples of Vanheim are flayed, their flesh claimed by warriors and lifesblood offered to the Lady's glory see the divine in this. Other nations forsake your false idols and proclaim for the Lady's ascension, for there is a grain of truth to the mewing from Vanheim. The bodies of Sauromatia's enemies will be piled deep while our friends feast to victory.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Hosting time updated.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Allrighty, I have made myself AI. There isn't anything I can at this point against Sauromatia.

For those intrested, my "build" was:

W9A9D4B4!? Sleeping Blue Dragon with:

Dominion 4
Order 1
Sloth 3
Heat 3
Death 3
Misfortune 1

Even with sloth 3, Hinnom one scary nation (althought I couldn't build Melqarts, I didn't have the resources :D). Expanding with Horites was suprisingly effective and with the farmlands near me, I was able to expand pretty well. My gold income rocketed and I was able to spam forest forts like mad. Mt blessing proved very scary on the few sacreds I was able to build. I was really confident in my start, but I forgot one crucial thing.

Never, ever, neverever, mess with Baalz playing with a nation that has blood and death access

So I attacked Sauromatia and things were going pretty well, but then he managed to kill my god by routing him and taking the single available retreat province. Apparently he had Medusa as his god that was able to fly to that retreat province I thought was 100% secure. This why you use scouts, kids! I was pretty dependant upon my god, and I didn't have the temples or the priests to call him back.

Baalz then continued to spoil my fantastic gold income with well placed Arouse Hungers, which apparently now with CBM boosts can beat giant PD under strenght 5. Didn't see that coming at all. When the Toads started dropping from the skies, my capital was shut down and my sweet sacreds with it.

With my gold income spoiled, so was my research, as I couldn't keep recruiting Ammies. As Baalz kept on pouring new and new toys at me, I was forced to send more and more mages to support my armies in the front-lines, which slowed my research even further.

Really, I'm sort of embarrased. I could have done better, but I'll take this an learning experience. My only saving grace was my Mazzikims, that kicked some serious arse with str boosts and body etheral (being size 1, you can hit five of them with single casting).

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

GG Burnsaber! You put up quite a fight under a brutal barrage, and your roving bands of mages & summons continued to rampage around for an impressively long time after I got you in a sleeper hold. I was pushing for a dominion kill as I wasn't entirely confident I could kill your last forces without great losses, but in the end I saw the opportunity. That rain of toads capital lockdown is pretty brutal on nations reliant on capital troops/mages, but also works well if you can bring it to bear in the early game when people have just a couple forts - can you imagine if you hadn't been able to spam up those forest forts? :)

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

i need an extension (or may need, better safe than sorry).
I downloaded my turn file today, and got a message from dom that the turn was corrupt. I tried redownloading, and I tried having the turn resent by llamaserver with no success, it's still saying the turn is corrupt. So i'm gonna try to figure out what's causing this, but it's quite unclear if a solution will be found today; and the war with sauro is quite sensitive, and a stale would be quite bad for it.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

I gave 48h extension, if **** really has happened, we might need llamas help. Unfortunately he is unable to access llamaserver at the moment, so... *shrug*

Game delayed by 48 hours

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

asking around in channel, the answer i got was that the only way to fix this kind of thing is to rehost the turn. given the number of major battles and such i dont' want to rush into such a drastic measure.
though i have tried everything plausible otherwise, so i'm not sure what else could be done to fix this, other than simply staling my next turn (not fun during a war).
could we have some discussion/opinion by the other players in the game? i was hoping some of y'all would be on irc, but i ain't seen much.
Zlefin, Vanheim

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

llama's own advice when this has happened before is to rehost the turn. You can just re-use the already received 2h files; however, if that does not work, and it very well might not, then everyone needs to resend in the files... I guess it would be preferable if they were new ones, just to avoid the possibility that the source of the corruption is from one of the player's sent 2h's.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

success! with the rehost, this new turn is not corrupt. play can proceed now.
burn isn't sure whether it's necessary to delete the old 2h files before taking your turn, but it may be safer.
if anyone has advice on avoiding problems caused by the rollback, feel free to speak up.
Zlefin, Vanheim

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

i'm ready to concede the game to baalz's sauro. The war was valiant, but he was bigger, and not enough other people joined in. I'll last awhile yet, but i think in about 12-15 turns sauro's dom will kill everyone, so unless niefelheim starts dropping some major scs to clear out the army of temples.
Zlefin, vanheim :)

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can't end soon enough for utgard!

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

So, I'm happy to keep playing if anybody thinks they've got something they can pull out, but I'd be very surprised if I hit so much as a big speedbump on my way to victory at this point. Anybody challenge my claim that I've won?

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

well, i dont' hear any challenges, and i've conceded, so i'm gonna stop doing turns, since it looks like an uncontested win claim.
People shoulda piled on when i first told 'em what you were up to, then maybe :P

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Well I was happily storming Fomoria's castle and then planning on attacking Sauro "for the common good" on like turn 25 or so, but those giants of Jotunwhatsoever came and piled on my troops...

Not that Order-0 Cold-3 Misf-2 Drain-2 dominion would be in any way good for long-term survival. Fun concept in this game, but AI design seriously leaves some holes into play. :)

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My cannons are too small.
Congrats Baalz.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

As the one who rolled the Pretenders for this game, it wasn't hard to know who to put my money on as the most likely winner.

Some really weird creations came out of the AI-designer, but compared to a lot of the others, Baalz pretty much hit the jackpot with his Gorgon and magic 3 scale. Not perfect by a long way, but IIRC Baalz's scales in particular were pretty nice compared to everyone else, with no nasty maxed out Death / Drain / Misfortune to have to deal with.

I'll have a dig about to see if I still have the master and reject lists of Pretenders for this game.


And of course congrats to Baalz :)

Did anyone actually manage to Magic Duel that Gorgon or not?

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Alright, it's official. Baalz is the winner.

Congrats to Baalz. You really knew how to push that Gorgon-vantage (still, I sometimes wake up at night, crying for my beautiful W9A9D4B4 Blue Dragon) and bloodsaccing was a very nice choice of stragedy.

In hindsight, the game could have used a smaller map (to make the game flow quicker and to make death scales less crippling). Minimum dom of 5 in all designs could also have been a great idea.

So yeah, if anyone wants to start a another game with this concept, I can generate the AI gods for that.

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

i know i informed allies a couple times when gorgon was vulnerable, but noone teleported apparently. I still think baalz mighta been beaten if people piled on him, but from what i saw on the graphs, despite my desperate warnings, noone else really seriously attacked sauro as we neared the point of no return. If niefel had really charged in during that point maybe it coulda been broken up some. oh well, i came in 3rd ish, or maybe tied for 3rd. Which is a fine result by my book :)

Re: Sentient Machines - [Game on]
 

Congrats Baalz and thanks for the game everyone!