Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

I defeated Shin. But Ermor was very powerful at that point. So I formed an alliance against him.

But then Tien Chi broke the alliance and attacked Ulm for some reason. That guaranteed Ermor's victory.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, starting
 

Good for you maybe, you won every one! lol

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

The beginning of the game was a bit hazy for me, but I remember I needed an enemy to send my hordes against. I think that I initially went after Shin, who I underestimated, but I don't remember the circumstances. I did end up fighting Abysia, but I think that was when he was already doomed and when I needed to prevent his territory from falling into the wrong hands, i.e. anybody by me.

This is one of the reasons I'm writing up an AAR in the other game I'm in (noobaphobia) so I can keep track of what happened.

Anyway, I do know that I was very very close to being blown out by the combined might of Arco, Ulm, and a lesser extent T'ien. In one particularly bad turn, I attacked T'ien and foolishy used my pretender to mind-burn his capital (don't ask), which feebleminded my immobile oracle. In that same turn, Arco launched a major attack against me, destroying one of my armies, which was soon followed by an invasion by Ulm.

I was so convinced I was dead that I sent the bulk of my forces against Arco in a punitive expedition. I figured that if I was going to lose that I was going to take him down with me. But then something weird happened: I was able to fight off Ulm's Iron Angels after I discovered the glorious Soul Slay spell, and I was able to destroy a good chunk of Arco's invasion force, which left him nearly defenseless against my hordes.

I'm not sure if T'ien was in position to take me on at this point (he seemed more focused on getting SCs), but he probably could have done me in if he had been able to send a major assault on me.

I think I still would have lost at this point, but we had a new player take over Ulm, which changed the entire dynamic of the game. This allowed me to take out Arco in relative peace, who was a super-tough opponent, but had lost the initiative and had to content with multiple 1,000+ armies running wild through his interior. In one pivotal battle I had screwed up my communions and probably would have lost, but Arco cast a spell that bumped all my mages (and I had a lot of them) from astral 1 to astral 2, which allowed me to mass spam paralysis on his SCs.

And of course, let's not forget that eater of the dead, which managed to eat one of Arcos armies :) That didn't help him very much, either :) It gave me trouble afterward as well, but I managed to kill it with the help of one of my few SCs.

Arco, you were one unlucky dude in this game.

By the way, the only time I used an SC against another player was at that very last turn, and the only one that got within range of an enemy got killed. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but I thought it was kinda neat that you don't necessarily need SCs if you have the right nation.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

Thanks for the game guys.

In the middle of the game Ermor was getting too big and Arco suggested that we focus on Ermor. I had no agreement with Ossa who was playing Ulm, and never received any communication from him. I sent him a NAP proposal early and had received no reply. With combined attacks from Arco, Ulm and me, Ermor looked to be about finished. I had just been beaten up by Ossa playing Ulm in another game where I outnumbered him badly. I decided that instead of finishing off Ermor and letting Ulm grab much of Ermor's territory that I should attack Ulm before he became too strong. I thought that I matched up better against Ermor in a one on one end game than I did against Ulm. I made an agreement with Ermor and then Ossa dropped and we had a new Ulm player. My fight with the new Ulm went embarrassingly poorly and I was done.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

When I took over Ossa had left me a big pile of mages and a commanding lead in artifact Construction. But there was almost no Ulmish army - basically just a hodgepodge of retreat survivors. Ermor had two massive armies on my border and T'ien Chi had a thug army beelining for my capital. I decided to ignore Ermor - because if he attacked there would be nothing I could do - hope he was peaceful, and push back T'ien Chi with my capital mages. First turn I grabbed two provinces while he pulled back. Ermor just sat there. I managed to wipe out T'ien Chi's SC armies with ordinary Ulm troops in front of huge battlemage squads, with the aid of a couple of strong artifacts. T'ien Chi had been negotiating up to the first fight, where I came in to save a fort from attack, but after that he said it was war. I won that war in the second big fight. We both had armies that were melting away with mages and SC's on both sides. His broke first - I think if mine had things would have turned out quite different.

Once he started to lose, T'ien chi holed up mage armies in forts and they were very tough nuts to crack. The last and strongest I never could. In the end I had to fight Ermor and I used my army/mage/special SC strategy, augmented with lots of H2 priests, but it turned out to be useless against his huge communions. The last turn there were something like 8 huge battles, and I lost every one. I even had an SC assassinated by an Ashen Angel and it happens so fast in replay I can't figure out how.

Along with Ermor, I wasn't impressed with SC's in this game. They seem very vulnerable to getting stuck fighting chaff while mages or SC-killers take them down.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

I'll double-check my last battle report, but I distinctly saw you kill that Ashen Angel with your SC. I think there might be something bugged because I actually launched two attempts via manifestation, but the first attempt showed me killing what looked like a zombie unit, which was odd since I didn't think you had any undead, and I thought I saw that same SC in the later battle.

You didn't get a chance to experience this, but I had spent significant resources fielding a bunch of 5D liches and 4A+ astral mages w/ penetration items, who were going to carpet bomb your commanders with mind burn, manifestation, and leprosy spells. This is one of the reasons I wanted The Chalice so badly so that I could recover from feeblemind and why I was willing to burn 100 astral gems to get it. However, I kept needing to convert my gems to pay for all those dispels (I couldn't let you have GOH) as well as to outfit my armies appropriately, so I didn't have enough gems to really unleash this on you.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

I figured it out. My Iron Angel had Ritual of Returning (I'm not sure how, actually - does Armor of Virtue leave that behind?) and teleported out. Another Ashen Angel (the one you're referring to, I think) died attacking a Cyclops. Did you not send the one that returned the Iron Angel?

I had stationed Astral mages with almost all my armies, so the mind burn would have been manageable. Leprosy and Manifestation would have been problems. But I figured you had something planned with all those gems and that's part of why I didn't see any point in continuing. I figured even if I managed to stop your armies somehow (unlikely enough) I'd just get fried with some global effect like another Arcane Nexus.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

I double-checked and the first Ashen Angel took out a shaman. However, the Angel's bane blade turned him into a soulless (what a bad way to go) and caused my initial confusion since I just saw the undead guy. The second angel got the stuffing knocked out of him by that cyclops. I didn't attack any of your angels with manifestation.

Re: Santa in the Chimney - no diplo mp game, 6/6, game ended, revenant - ermor wins!
 

The Ashen angel on my Iron Angel must have been from the Tartarian Chains he was wielding. So the flavor text on *that* item (attacked by monsters from Tartaria) actually means something. Kinda cool. And from the sequencing (the independents are defeated as my angel ported out with the Ashen Angel still there) I think I successfully chained the Ashen Angel. Too bad I returned - would have been cool to keep it!