Re: Battle for the Grail
 

Thanks Cor. If I had to give away presents at my birthday, I would stay at home and lurk the forums too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh there was a lich? I didn't notice that...

That would be a cool novel. As it is now, you can't tell who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. The honorable kingdom of Man meddle in necromancy and opening the doors to the Tartarus to get rid of the things that should not be. Do they try to defeat evil by an even bigger evil? How do they get rid of the Tartarians after the war is won?

Yes, Bogus died a swift and messy death. If your Tartarians would die as quick, I would be at ease.

Re: Battle for the Grail
 

My face when I saw the battle between the Succubus and the Tartartian (in chronological order):

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Re: Battle for the Grail
 

LOL sometimes your posts are more amusing than the game.

Here was my reaction to teh same battle:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

She really could fight! Her remains were given a proper burial and a small tombstone. May she rest in peace or whatever devils do.

OMG
 

Oh nose... I do something horribly wrong with those Tartarians... That battle... oh I don't want to remember it. Pathetic! And that was my biggest hope? THAT?! *sob*

oh nose???
 

What doe Oh Nose mean?! I am so confused.

Re: oh nose???
 

Well I don't think it's really english. It just means "Oh no" but sounds in my opinion much nicer. (And no, I don't take drugs.)

So the last dam is broken. Man's monster hordes now rampage freely the former hunting grounds of the Mindlords and the faith of the Starspawn's cattle fades quickly. But from now on Man will only find scorched earth an burnt humans.

Re: oh nose???
 

Uaaaaah, my death-mage died due to laziness and lack of checking his astral-gems.

Re: oh nose???
 

Same reason my lich died, errr kinda died.

Seems you have a rather resourceful raider running around. I wonder how I will ever catch him. Without the astral coruption it would be easy. I am going to have to think on this one.

Your tartarians, You equiped them strangely, more for spell casting than combat. I have found that they are better for combat, though the support of fire elementals was critical in taking out one of my tartarians during that battle severeal turns ago.

Also I think you need more MR on your Tarts cause I could just drop some mages and charm them or rage them no problem. I don't think I will be doing that, just something to think about for the next game.

Re: oh nose???
 

Something I wanted to ask, how come everyone on these forums form Switzerland speaks english so well? Does everyone there speak english? I think its really cool, I wish I was fulent in another language, I know a very little Chinese and German and thats it. You know like 6 languages, right?

Re: oh nose???
 

Yeah, my raider demon is a funny guy. Where will he turn up next? But I'm sure he will be caught sooner or later (if the dominion kill isn't faster. Black candles everywhere... not something you want to see...)

Well, my Tartarians have gotten what my forgers could tinker, which isn't much anymore. But it's true, I left them unscripted and they cast until they're out of stamina. Better script some spells and then let them attack. Well... too late now.

And for the language: I think the reason is, that the swiss who don't speak as good english don't understand what is written here and can't write in the forums. Not to mention that they wouldn't understand the game. Heck, they couldn't even order it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Besides that: We learn 3 languages in school. There are three offical languages in Switzerland (german, french and italian) and we have to learn one of those besides the motherlanguage (if you're interested: in Switzerland we speak swiss-german, a form of the german of the middle age, which is not a written language, it's just spoken). Later in school you have to learn english too (of course, who doesn't learn it... it's omnipresent). But you can learn of course more languages if you like and take the optional courses in school.
And swiss people like to go to language schools abroad. I went some years ago to France in a language school. 90% of the pupils were swiss... lol

If you want to speak a language fluent, all you have to do is learn it. If you have the opportunity, go some month in a foreign country. Oder wir können ja hier gleich mal einen Deutschkurs machen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Omg, no, it's four languages (in higher schools): latin, the national language that you havn't already learned or spanish! One of those too! I completly forgot that.

Re: oh nose???
 

I think you can extend that to most of Europe (minus France http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif). Like Finland, Sweden, Germany etc. (I'm german). You learn english in school. Most of the internet is english. At least half of the software you use is in english. The newest movies on the net (*cough cough*) are in english. So since the language is always around you, you never stop learning. For the english speaking community the situation is reversed, I guess. Hence I learn to articulate myself in the other language and can speak english fluently after some days of getting accustomed to it, being in a foreign country, while you'll struggle to come up with something comprehensible in the language you learned at school, i.e. a long time ago. And the French, well, I don't want to make bad jokes, seem to be preoccupied with French.

Re: oh nose???
 

OH Nose! You killed mr. Harold! You bastard! (your not really, just a southpark joke)

Re: oh nose???
 

I killed someone? Haven't killed a commander of yours for around 10 turns.

Re: oh nose???
 

Harold, rest his soul, was an indy commander who was attacked by a succubus after having the fortitude of will to resist her temptations. He had a summer sword and a wine bag. Normally that wouldn't be such a loss but with the Astral corruption magic items are much harder to forge. so it was quite a loss for our nation. very sad.

I just thought it was funny , I mean his name is Harold. What a stupid name.

Re: oh nose???
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif Hey my real name is Harold! (no, it isn't)

It's time to say good bye. In 2 turns Huakar the Horrormarked will have lost his last worshippers.

Faithful departing
 

Truely? I just checked the live graph again I didn't think your dominion was so low. Those 200 gp temples pay off. Kind of anticlimatic though.

new link because its so far away now
http://valhalla.techno-mage.com/scor...p?game=Newbies

LOL
 

Look at them. And you thought my dominion wasn't so low? Do you have any stealthy priests? In the last couple of turns your dominion spread at an alarming pace and from the beginning, when you conquered a province it turned almost immidetaly to your faith. Horrible.

Yeah, but I couldn't afford an epic end-battle at my homecastle anyway. It would be an anticlimax too.

Let me be the first to congratulate you for your victory in the Tartarian wars. Well fought. I had no chance. But I think you could have had this victory in October. I never was able to fight those Tartarian (not to talk of your air queen... why didn't you send here after me?) and was behind 10 to 20 turns since you entered the game. But it was big fun. The first game I made it in the finals. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

wished for nastiness
 

Ouch, you cast wish for armageddon I assume.


I have stealthy preists but I was not using them to preach covertly. I just make sure I have a temple in every one of my provinces. Even if it was razed I could afford it because i was not investing in troops. I couldn't put together normal armies because they would just get mass enslaved so I have tons of gold.

The Elemental Queens of Air were my emergency strike force. I would only use them if I could think of no other way out of a situation. If i had used them frequently and predictably you would have been able to counter them with anti- lightning or kill them (I already lost one to enslavement). If you had scripted a defensive force with lots of oppositions (or enslavements) and some penetration items it would have worked. But that never came up.

I didn't feel like I could have won in October. Maybe I overestimated your strength, but I think you over estimated mine. I had about 20 badass tartarians but you had the Arcane Nexus and had stolen my chalice which is key to any tartarian factory. You had me locked down. I could not produce magical troops without giving you gems and I could not feild normal armies because they would be enslaved. To make matters worse my highest astral caster was a level 3. The turn after you cast arcane nexus I tried to dispel it with all my astral gems, over 300 and failed. I assumed you were using those gems to crank out your own super combatants or at least counters to mine.

So went on the defensive for many rounds as you took my lands. I was slowly accumulating the gems I needed to empower someone high enough to cast arcane nexus, then i alchemized many of my gems to cast it and hoped. If you had cast it with 999 gems I was screwed. When I got the Nexus, that was the turning point from my point of view.

Re: wished for nastiness
 

Cthugul, the Marshall of Huakar, the Monolith Lord, went to the forbidden chambers of the Void Gate in the deepest bowels of the sunken city with their cyclopic basalt pillars and the blashempic angles, knowing that all hope is lost for the Mindlords. There he stood and cast the most powerful spell to seal the gate for no human beeing shall lay hand on it. The biggest earthquake this world has known and will ever know let the sunken city crumble and meteors hailed in the water. Hundredthousands died as Cthugul did. No one heard the last words Cthugul said: "Oh nose! Ftaghn"

One month later, Waldi is the one and only god. Little to rejoice have the people of the world as it is easier to open the doors to the Tartarus than to lock it shut. A new dark age will fall over the world terrorized by the fiends Waldi called tohis aid.

Game over
 

The graphs look pretty boring now... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Congratulations on winning the game to Horst F. JENS and Cor and thanks all for playing.

Re: Game over
 

Thanks Ich for hosting! It was a pleasure!

Re: Game over
 

Thanks Ich. Much fun was had by me.

So post game questions.

1: how powerful was your Arcane Nexus, how many gems did you put in it?

2: what were all these anti-tart experiments that failed?



One of my experiments that had promise but became obsolete before it could work: I had tons of air and water gems and nothing to do with them so I started recruiting my scouts who are cheap and have a precision 12 and giving them war bows and boots of quickness. I feilded about 10 of them in one battle and the amount of arrows they produced was impressive (260 per round) but they were mass enslaved after thier first salvo. I then stripped the remaining ones of thier boots and gave them to tartarians.
I thought this could be a very good tactic if they were given bottles of living water, they could use thier stealth to raid in groups of a dozen.


A tactic that i figured out toward the end of the game was to hire merc to forge items for me. Since item forgeing had become dangerous.

Re: Game over
 

iirc, I put 800 in it. Don't know if it was in addition to the casting cost or with the casting cost. That was all the gems I had at that time. As I've said in the thread, I got 4 to 40 gems per turn (I think mostly nature and death gems (Gift of reason and Tartarian gate?). I think all in all I got the casting cost back.

First I thought the Tarrasques and my Golem-"SC" could match up, but that was futile.

Then I tried to mind burn them and that spell were those they had killed attacked them (revenge of the dead our how it is called). This left 6 of my mages feeble-minded with no noticable effect.

Then there was the Undead Mastery-Ilithid. That failed of course due to the MR. Unfortunatly that mage was killed and I was death-mage-less for around 20 turns.

I amassed sleepers, about 9 or 10, with eye of aiming, some with boots of quickness, ethereal or Just Man's crossbows. But most of them were killed in a battle against your regular forces. The survivors (3 or so) took part in battle against Tartarians but didn't do any good. Don't know due to lack of number or equipement.

Then I outfitted about 5 or 6 precious E2S2 mages to E5S5 to cast petrify. They were so expensive! Aaargh. Earth magic increasing is a chore. With staffs of elemental mastery, earth boots, those astral caps, the medaillons for astral boost and rings of wizardry. 1 or 2 fell victim to an earth attack. (I was getting angry, always when my seatroll-guards were about to win, they routed. Huarg). The rest were killed by your air queen in my silly attack in the north.

Then I amassed Ilithids to paralyze them (that I tried in the south). Wasn't effective.

Then there was the assassin demon with the Infernal sword. Failed. Was a disappointment.

Then I stole the Chalice. That worked!

Next plan was Tartarians themselves. Weird scripting and strange outfitting (I had no more earth mages to the end)... oh well you know it yourself.

Then the astral corruption to stall the Tartarian output, but it was too late anyways. I havn't had too much problem with it, because almost all my mages had at least S2 so "returning" was no problem, but you have to look up the gemstock of them and a monolith cannot cast it. Oh btw, entering the void gate lures horrors.

Then the home-castle commanders went out to soul slay, astral geysir and so on, but with little succsess.

The succubi were surprisingly vicious. What a fight! But the two were not strong enough in the end.

Re: Game over
 

Wow, that is alot of diffrent tries.

For me the casting "rage" is the scariest. I lost one SC to that in another game where the opponet had a bunch of paralyzed troops on the feild. My SC a fire elemenal king ran around like mad hitting himself until he died.

You did hit one of my tarts with rage, unfortunatly for you she was killed shortly after that and pheonix pyred into the middle of your troops and ran around whacking.

IIRC, quickness does not effect crossbows, so your Sleepers may have been more effective with black bows of bultuf especially since you cannot resisit with MR.

Something else i would have tried is gifts from heaven, probobly would not have worked due to low accuracy, but boy do they pack a punch.

And last tactic I would have tried is Claws of Cocytus or infernal prison, they have no MR check. They have low ranges (30) so you would have to get dangerously close however.

The astral corruption was brilliant. It really stoped my tartarian production because you combined it with stealing the chalice i had to use all my gems every turn to get it back so I couldn't afford to empower a death 7 mage and a nature 4 mage with astral to cast returning. most of the time i cast and forged nothing.

the horromarks I sustained from the astral geysers lead to several horror attacks. I think spamming horror mark would have eventually been effective, it just would have taken several rounds. Rounds that you didn't have.

All in All well played! It seems you had a disadvantage since the end of the war with TeinChi. Because I started earlier than you I ended up with more provinces, I also had an up and running tartarian factory which really won the game. I think I inherited the strongest position of the 4 players in the game when i took over for Horst, he just didn't know it and was still playing as if he were weak and focusing on diplomacy.

I still feel bad for Tein Chi. They got destroyed. They had no chance against the stuff I was throwing at them then you entered and fininshed them off.

Oh and BTW, the hundreds of gems from the arcane nexus were propaganda. I harvested about 100 the first turn then it decreased every turn until it was about 40-50. Of course the astral corruption meant i was getting between 3-9 gems a round. It probobly paid for itself (I put 999 into it)but not much more. It was worth it to me just to make sure you were not getting those gems.

Re: Game over
 

Until you entered the game, I never had much lands or any gold and therefore only a little army. The upkeep for R'lyeh is quite stiff. My scales didn't help there much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif That changed when I attacked Marignon (there you took over from Horst). My cheap masterenslavetactic worked pretty good against him. I was still busy defeating, building temples and regular armies, when you attacked Tien Chi. Those 10-15 turns I was never able to compensate. And I have not much experience with and against SC. That was obvious I think.
At least the master theft of the Chalice in combination with the astral corruption caused some trouble for you. Alas your higher gem income allowed you to always steal him back and hitting me more than you.