Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

My hat is off to Hadrian II as he was a good friend this game. But some of that is what we call "revisionist" history.

First, you did not "save" me from the LA Atlantis Alliance. I kicked their arse severely before you lifted a finger. In fact the same large armies that destroyed Tier Nog you permitted to move through your lands to attack me.

I killed all 400 of LA Atlantis invaders, all of MA Oceania's invaders, and beat LA Man's armies to a pulp all before you entered the fray against LA Man. LA Man was already defeated, but i did appreciate the help mopping him up as my hands were very full with Lanka. But I had large armies also in my Eastern lands fighting LA Man.

My pretender and 70 percent of my forces were in the west fighting Lanka and MA Oceania(who snuck into the water provinces in the nw corner and built a castle).

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Somehow i must have missed that before http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

MA Pythium here.

Im ok with ending the game now. I had a blast playing and I want to thank Tichy=MA T'ien Ch'i who formed an alliance with me ealy on. Without him I would have never made it to the end.

I wish I had not been at war the whole game, all I ever wanted to do was build up my lil area and sit back and watch the rest of you guys fight.

In the end I can say I was at one time or another, the owner of EA Caelum, EA Arcoscephale, EA Mictlan, and EA Abysia(i think it was EA, might have been MA)capitals. Not too bad for a god that got Horrer Marked ealy in the game, and never resummoned.

My strategy with my god this game was to make him a sleeper take all good picks to max my income and the god was realy pointless used only to spread dominion and research. I didnt want to depend on him to do much cuz gods tend to die so easy. My god had like 2 air and I had given him one more air before he died. I was happy I didnt wast points on him as EA Mictlan caught out spreading dominoin and splat he was dead.

Well thanks for the game everyone good luck to you all.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I guess the writing is on the wall. It's been very much fun. I'll go ahead and archive the game - if the new patch fixes things I'll see if there is any interest in starting it back up.

I had a running feud with EvilHomer (LA R'lyeh) pretty much the entire game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif . We only put aside our differences for EA Oceania. I still think he was/is in the best position to win since I couldn't sway Agatha over to help me. Still it really could have gone either way...

It was alot of work bordering so many nations when it came to diplomacy. So many NAPs! I'm glad that my "Sinister Six" coalition basically survived (sans Baalz http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif ) until the end. Early on I had made a secret alliance/pact with 5 other nations and everyone seemed to really benefit from it.

LA Ermor is insane at this turn. In the last thirty or so turns I rarely even bothered to separate my undead cavalry - just lumped them all together to speed things up. I was summoning 7-8 Tartarians a turn and GoR about 2 a turn. With the forge I could outfit 2-3 a turn. I literally had a Tartarian army I could unleash. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was really curious as to how the next 10-15 turns would have played out. I have a feeling some players might have been unpleasantly surprised. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Ahh well. Good game everyone. Definitely the most memorable for me!

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

MA TC heartily enjoyed bringing our slingshots to the nuclear war.

Tea for all!

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

It was not wise to let LA Ermor keep Well of Misery up. I asked all the clammers to dispel but none seemed too concerned by it.

I was thinking of trying to overwrite it with 350 d gems. How many did you have in it Velusion?

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Although the Forge was a pain in the *** to operate, I found it amusing that no one paid any attention to me, or tried to attack me, until I became bored and decided to attack Tien Chi along with MA Ermor. Even then, until the final turn, no one lauched any really concerted attacks on me. I was continually pumping out items for LA Ermor and the rest of the Sinister Six. I had so many units forging, that I fell completely behind on research. That would have been my undoing, if the game had continued.

Great fun though, in retrospect. It was so cool to see the Nukes falling, and all the Tartarians, Seraphs, and other end game badasses in action. I doubt I'll ever play another game like this.

And yes, I think I would have lasted another ten turns, contrary to rumors.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Like 90 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif (thats a reinforcement of 10)
Soulgate had a reinforcement of like 50.

The key is to cast them during the rare times that something was dispelled or removed (due to being killed).

I had about 600 fire gems I was saving to overcast purgatory so it couldn't be used against me (once I hit 999 and had a level 10 or 11 fire mage).

I was negotiating with my allies about putting Utterdark up (I always had 600 death gems in the bank). Every water province I got immediately got turned up to 200 taxes (and left there) so I had 15K gold sitting around that last turn.

All that said... I bet LA R'lyeh's gem income was giganto-normous. 2 wishes a turn for more gems from the clams I'm guessing? I bet his gem income was 3x-5x mine. He had to be sittign on 100K Gold in the bank as well.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

You were my hero with that forging!

The moment LA R'lyeh made their alliance with MA C'tis known I flushed every NAP down the mental toilet as I was going to need every little bit of advantage to have things go my way. I was going to attack MA Tien Chi immediately and bury him in undead, along with attacking LA R'lyeh everywhere I could.

I was probably going to officially invite EA Pan into our alliance as well.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Huh, an alliance between half the active nations, what's the fun in that?

Anyway, I wasn't too keen on going against R'lyeh with Ermor for two reasons. First, after R'lyeh would be gone, who is next? The latest recruit, quite probably. Second, R'lyeh had given me some support in time of need earlier (mind hunts here and there, nothing too big but a gesture nevertheless), unlike some other big nations. I'd rather have seen two big giant alliances hack into each other than be on the frontlines in conflict I don't have any part in. :p

And MA Agartha would like to thank Patala, EA C'tis, Jomon and Oceania for their generous contributions towards our war chest. I wasn't allied with any of those, but got hundreds of gems and loads of useful items with the farewell note "avenge me" from those nations when they were crushed. Most of you can rest peacefully now.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Since everyone is laying down their cards, hehe, I'll show mine too.

I was pulling in about 120 Astral Gems from Clams, and about the same number of Earth Gems from blood stones. Making 4 clams and 4 blood stones per turn. I was wishing for gems every turn, and had started in motion another unit to do 2 wishes per turn. My problem was recruiting enough units to put all the stuff I was forging. Most of them were reserve items that I wasn't expecting to use immediately. I had the Steel Oven Construction bonus, so that even though I had access to the forge as part of the Sinister Six Alliance, I found it more convenient to forge my own.

If pressed I would have been capable of 15 seeking arrows, 10 earth attacks, and 6 ghost riders per turn, while still doing all the forging and "turtling" activities. Plus I had prepared a batch of stealthy assasinating Claws of Kokytos casting Spectres that I was about to seed around to catch raiding SCs hehe. Also lots of Druid led raiding Shadow Vestals, a lot of them with flying carpets. I had only used a few squads against Pythium and they were surprisingly effective, enough to probably win me the war by themselves. I had quite a lot of specialized units in reserve that I planned to use to fight a gem efficient war against SCs. I had also planned to use huge communions with my cheap Astral and Death mages.

I had been holding back in the war against MA C'tis, going for gem efficiency rather than a quick kill, as I did not want LA R'lyeh to conclude that it was over for MA C'tis and reveal himself as an ally of MA C'tis. My theory was that the longer the game run, the bigger my advantage gets, especially since no one seems to think that I was clamming =) Without the Steel Oven, I probably would not have spent the huge resources needed to get clamming started.

The biggest danger for me the entire game was in the beginning in the war against Abysia. My vestals were not very effective against heat auras and the dragon pretender, plus they had control of the steel oven then. Then Vanheim joined Abysia in fighting me. I had to pretend to be a lot stronger than I was at that time to get those two to agree to non simultaneous ceasefires, that allowed me to eventually concentrate on Abysia.

After that I had to forge diplomatic ties to keep out of war while I leverage the Steel Oven advantage.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh, well when we formed the alliance there were ALOT more players. The alliance wasn't forever either - It was designed to fall apart once all the other major powers fell.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh - see I knew you were holding back (I overheard you once in the chatroom) but I didn't know you had such a stockpile. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif.

I discovered a steel oven as well but using the forge was still advantageous for me.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Eh, I would have been happy with the small fry for quite awhile - I wouldn't have turned on you right away (besides it would have taken forever to beat down LA R'lyeh - if even possible). IMHO I'll still stick by my assertion that it was most certainly in your best interest to go after LA R'lyeh - assuming you believe his gem income was significantly higher than mine - simply because I would be a more manageable opponent later than he would be.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Heh, "alliance falls apart once all the major powers fell". Dunno whether that would have included my fall. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I don't know how far ahead you people were planning, but from what I saw/heard it seemed both Vel and Homer (as well as me) had grown quite tired of managing their empires. My guess was that if a huge R'lyeh/Ermor war was to start, the winners would've noticed they have piddling 40% of the victory condition provinces at maximum and agree end the game then. Just my feeling.

Gem-wise, I was quite a paper tiger. This being the first game that got this far, I hadn't forged any gems or had any blood mages. Oh well, got quite a few from Oceania just recently.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

MA Pangaea might have been a bit slow on the sc front, but we were in the opinion that bigger armies with weapons of sharpness cand take out paralized tartarians, it wen never to test that, but well, if this would not work i have also some flambeau wielding thugs specially to kill tartarians.

Also pangaea has a earth gem income of 250 and we are forging 6 bloodstones turn (and we have started again to raise that limit, as we have increased or blood income). Btw, i casted forge of the ancients with a E14 caster and 999 gems, how heavily entrenched was the original cast?

Also i did some strange things on my pretender, like production 2 (to get cataphracts) what i would not do again. As in CWs with relieve dont get fatigued, while cataphracts tend to faint in battle (especially annoying in sieges when you have some fainted cataphracts blocking the entrance). But all in all my tactics went quite well.

btw. if velusion is thinking to invite EA Pan in his alliance does that mean that EA Pan is not part of it?

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I recounted, I was actually pulling in 175 astrals per turn, 147 from clams and the rest from sites http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif
If the game went on, I would have had to resort to putting clams and stones on scouts cause I wouldn't have enough gold to recruit enough mages.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Your secret 6 alliance was not so secret. I knew 100 percent that the forge was being shared, and that LA Pangaea was a vassal after Velusion saved him from Vanheim. My secret alliance was with new players-not smart but fun.

MA Vanheim, MA Pythium, MA Tien Chi. And they were a far from me, and could not help me in my fights. But I saw them as the 1st line of defense against LA Ermor Alliance.

I was not able to convince LA Ryleh to attack LA Pangaea and take out the forge. MA Pangaea tried to overwrite it with 1000 e gems and failed. In fact, I was unable to convince him the forge was being shared(at least that was Dr. P's opinion). But i knew it was.

I had asked EA Oceania for his clams, since that was the only way i could compete. But he took them with him to Davy Jones Locker.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Up until that last turn, LA R'lyeh had been alternating between 4 and 5 wishes per turn. I dumped a lot of pearls into that teleport attack, obviously.

It was a pain to administer. I *should* have scaled up to 5 tarts per turn, which could have been supported easily.

Those tarts *should* have had boutique equipment. But the game was so large that just moving items around was a major chore.

I recall something like half a million gold banked, but I'd just spent a bunch of it raising province defenses. Upkeep was pretty negligible, in any case.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Would this not be a quite suicidal stunt as now your dominion would begin to purge your own undead, or are the undead of the casting nation immune to the effects?

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

i guess he would have found out ;p

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

The Forge was cast by a natural 10 Earth mage with 999 earth gems. I'm unsure why it was not overwritten... chance perhaps.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

natural 10 equals E10 or 10 plus boosters?

if it would equal E10 and i casted it with E14 you would have thrown a drm 20 higher than me and the chance for that is less than 1% and that would be really rotten luck.

But if there where some boosters also included, the rotten luck might not have been that rotten.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Boosters have no effect on determining the strength of a global ritual.

I read somewhere that Purgatory does not affect friendly troops. I would have tested it before I cast the spell obviously...

Dr. P - Was that 4 to 5 wishes for GEMS per turn? Insane. I would highly suggest that if anyone ever forms another mega-game they mod the gem producing items and double their cost.

EA Pan was never an official part of the alliance - though I seemed to get along with him quite well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

See not if you were on our team it wouldn't have... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I figured everyone knew there was some sort of alliance and the forge was getting shared. I assumed (though I didn't really care that much) that not everyone knew all the members though.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

My turn then:

My intention at the start of the game was to use EA Oceania's water power and blessed Triton knights to dominate the seas, and then use that position to pump out a clam economy and wish my way to power. Unfortunately two issues interfered with that plan.

First, there was Evilhomer's Rlyeh. I met him quite early, and seriously considered launching an early war against him (a war I still believe I might have won, though at great cost - don't know if Evilhomer thinks the same though) However Homer's early expansion was quite awesome, and in the end I decided to go for easier pickings, not wanting to weaken myself in a costly war so early in the game. From that point on he was a constant threat looming on my border, getting ever stronger...

Second problem was my water income. Despite many attempts to trade for them it was horribly insufficient for my needs. It took me quite some time to even fully Voice of Tiamat all my provinces. Add to that the large number of amulets of the fish I had to forge to gain even a small foothold on land, and water boosters, and clamming wasn't very impressing. By the time R'lyeh and Ermor (and some others) combined to eliminate me I had roughly 75 clams. Sure, a nice boost to my gem income, but hardly game-breaking - and never enough to stockpile any amount of gems. (Apparently medium-sized MA Ermor had substantially more, enough said)

Add to that Oceania's quite appalling magic ability, and horrible landgoing capacity (I had underestimated this before playing) forcing me to spend lots of gems to conquer even a (by then) minor nation like Jomon, and I'm afraid I wasn't nearly as strong as the graphs made everyone suspect.

Still, I did my best to defend against a multiple-front assault, with some local successes, and generally had a blast playing this game. Thanks a lot Velusion, for making this possible, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

P.S. Evilhomer (if you read this by the time you come back from holliday): How come you never used darkness against me? It was actually the spell I feared most during the whole game (yes, even more than master enslave) and would have basically rendered all my underwater armies quite useless, with no possible counter. And from your Excellent R'lyeh guide I knew you're perfectly aware of it's possibilities. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

P.P.S. Hah, but I hold the first two spots in the hall of fame. Obviously that amounts to a moral victory!

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

It doesn't. My purgatory left my own undead untouched. And was quite usefull in my war against you as you're obviously aware of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Not that your Tartarians and Ghost riders weren't enough to conquer half my lands, but still...

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

EH is away, so I might try to answer. If you were referring to sea battles, I believe Darkness can not be cast underwater, which would be a pretty good reason.

I also agree this game was tremendous fun though I goofed by cornering myself from most of the action with friendly nations and NAP's for most of it!

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Woops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif And here I go dreading it the entire game... Guess I'm still a noob. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I'm still trying to come to grips with 4-5 wishes PER TURN.

By my estimation thats a gem income of anywhere between 950-1150 PER TURN (assuming you are wishing for gems).

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Yea everyone guessed you had 2-3x more clams than you did have...

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

The most frustrating part of the game was knowing that LA R'lyeh was winning and not being able to convince other big powers to do something about it.

IF Dr P.s description of his wishing power was correct it proves my public assumption from early on in the game about LA R'lyeh. There was no way I (or any other single power) could win against THAT. Props to EH and to all those that mocked my dire warnings...

I told you so!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I think I spent one wish on gems blood slaves instead, but otherwise, yeah, 4-5 wishes for gems (EDITED) per turn. I was planning to make a bunch of Armor of Souls, also figured that the communions could benefit from Rejuvenation, sending people to hell, etc.

The position was very unwieldy there are the end, I'm afraid I was not doing a terribly good job as a sub.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

My turn : (I know nobody care of abysia, but i was in the game ^^^^^)

With such a huge number of player, i was expected to be rushed or attacked very soon, so my main design of my nation was defensive.
I did not plan at the start a plan to win the game. Only to survive. I survived ^^ But nothing else.

I choose a F9 Phoenix immortal pretender, i began to mass produced abysian mages and gardian of the pire.

Then i made three mystakes.

First, F9 was not enough for a bless strategy with gardian of the pire. These troops are horribly expansive and need double bless.

Second, i was chocked by the horrible Age-mecanism of LA abysian mages. All very expansive mage die very quickly by ages effect and i did not plan to have grow scale to counter it.

Third, i did not plan at the beginning to use blood magic, which was in fact my unique way to prevent my mages from age effect. (boots of youth). By the time i began to used blood magic and produce these boots, i already lost many many mages.

During the game, i was sometimes attacked by neighbourgs, and always managed to repel them, but each time any other power took the provinces of my foe for himself ^^^^

LA abysia is not an easy nation !!

Stelteck ^^

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Me, too! I was getting close to 2 wishes per turn with some help from alchemy, my blood stones and fever fetishes, which I thought was fairly decent. I was also forging a soul contract and summoning 4 Tartarians/turn, but this seems like small potatoes, now. My earlier attempt to overwrite The Forge of the Ancients also failed and I was surprised to find out that Vel's globals held up for so long. I had assumed many more gems used to cast each.

Amhazair,

I remember it was possible to cast Darkness underwater in previous versions. If I recall correctly, this was changed in a recent patch.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I was pleasantly surprised as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The gem producing globals simply aren't worth investing a lot of gems into... the return isn't that great unless you get lucky like I did.

Soul Gate was handy, but not really that big of a deal. The ethereal troops didn't get used much and were ineffective against SCs. I found having the tons of Lvl 1 priests pop up was better then the troops - as I could then reanimate even more.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Reading the numbers you guys are throwing around in this thread is just jaw-dropping. You mention 999 gems like it is an everyday occurence! Crazy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In response to an earlier comment - I've found that a good victory condition is around 40% (territory or VP). And the number goes down the larger the game gets so you might go to 30 or 35%. I know that, on the face of it, that number sounds too low... but it really does work out pretty well.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

I'm an absolute believer in victory point *accumulation*.

It's somewhat hard to sell people on it because no-one understands how it works - but if you set the right value, the game goes into the end game, and then there is a climactic series of battle to decide the actual victor.

It also has the advantage that, unlike "regular" victory points, it's hard to get an ambush win relatively early (as often happens, especially if you play with Frank.)

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Game-wise i agree with DrPret. Accumulated VP's are the best winning condition if set right. It might be difficult to guess where VP limit should be on a 62 player game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Acc. VP's will encourage war and make long lasting treaties with weak neighbors less interesting. Something that is probably needed in a game of this scope.
Or you will have to be clear about who's servant and who's master by giving your Lord your VP lands.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

See I've never liked accumulated victory points. It allows one player to get a sizable empire quickly and just sit on it for the win.

Also is disenfranchises smaller players from the game quickly. Once you fall behind it becomes very hard to catch up.

It also causes more "Teleport-to-win" games IMHO. I'd much rather have a "front" to deal with than have to constantly babysit VP provinces.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Yeah I agree with Velusion. The most dominant player does not need to make a real stretch to win. Only get a moderate advantage in VPs and then turtle until thier advantage accumulates to a win.

In my experience, capital-only VPs are probably the most effective victory condition involving victory points. You know that the VP will be protected by a fort. And you know that ever player will defend that fort to the last man.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Checking in on this thread to see what is going on now. I will have my computer back in a week now it seems, though it seems the game was abandoned ? A shame really http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif I belive with my huge gold/gem income it would have been tough to stop me...but anyway, good game to all of you.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

EH - I agree with you. I think the only thing that might have stopped you is if everyone joined up against LA R'lyeh, but that didn't seem too likely.

Re: LA R\'lyeh
 

Yeah, after bordering LA R'lyeh for most of the game and seeing his work I would have to say he probably would have won this game eventually. It would have taken a while though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Unless we all grouped up on him which was not happening.