Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

You are both out, so you can probably talk about it in private. But it's probably a bit too much to talk in open - saying what someone had may tell remaining players about those that killed him.

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Trumanator, how about we cont. this interesting conversation when this game's over. That is, if we'd even remember or care to :)

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Very well :)

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Turn 64 is out.

Deadline is Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Several players would like to switch to a 2 turn / week schedule. Some don't care either way. One is against the change.

So, we'll switch to a 2 turn / week schedule as follows: Wednesdays and Sundays.

Given the slower pace, I ask players to make an effort to avoid extension requests except when truly necessary.

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

After a long and fruitless campaign, the tuathas disappear back into the Mists, never to be seen again for another age. Eriu was played by me! Thanks to Pasha for the patient hosting!

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

So few of us left...

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Turn 67 is out.

Deadline is Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Turn 69 is out.

Deadline is Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Turn 69 is out.

Deadline is Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time. (I am adding one day due to the late hosting.)

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Hello:

Turn 73 is out.

Deadline is Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Boston time.

Thanks.

Pasha

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

Where are we concerning declaring a winner or a draw, if anywhere?:confused:

Also is the next turn due Weds?:confused:

Re: Land Rand (pbem)
 

After discussion between me and the various players, with no player asserting any unlimited objections, I hereby call this game for Jotunheim, which was played by Micah.

Congratulations, Micah! You may now choose one cookie from the jar as your prize.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

So it was the infamous Micah I was up against. I suspected as much, but it is still nice to know that I got spanked by someone with such a giant reputation. Congrats Micah, sorry I didn't put up a better fight, but I came away from our war understanding the game a lot better, so I still count it as a plus.

I can only hope QM isn't too mad that I didn't pull a win from his very strong position....

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Who played the other nations? I would like to know who helmed Ermor and killed all my stealthy Sidhe lords with mind hunt! :D

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Well done Jotuns / Micah:)

:clap::party:

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

CongratZ Micah :)

So who played what?- Do we have a full list?

Can we see some late game turns?- I missed that fun after being kicked out by Mictlan.

Oh and BTW a short Machaka AAR.

I based my strat loosely on Baalz guide. So no hvy bless, good scales* and a S/D master lich.
*Took O3Mft2 and I came to realize msft 2 is bad in CBM - My early game expansion was marred by countless indie attacks.

Then Van attacked me and somehow Machaka managed to turn the tide and gain the upper hand in that war.
Alas, at the moment of its glory it got attacked by both Mictlan and Ermor and as a result it became evident that the only thing Machaka could hope for is to die with some manner of dignity

Ermor went another way and Mictlan proceeded to mop up Machaka. Bad luck also gave Mictlan Machaka’s VP much easier than it should have since my lich got an ½ paths affliction and couldn’t put up storm :(

I’m looking forward for another RAND when Pasha would feel up to it :-)
hehe, and I hope to got a solid nation next time ;)

Good game all. I had lots of fun.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Full nation list on 1st page of thread, simples:D

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Squirrelloid made lame move of attacking me, thus making sure Jotun wins. I was waiting for him to attack Jotun, so I could join and help [and C'tis was probably waiting for that too].

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

I thought I might be able to kill Mictlan faster than Jotunheim could kill TC for a couple reasons. (1) Mictlan looked somewhat overextended. (2) TC had been turtling all game, surely they had something awesome up their sleeve that would hold Jotunheim for awhile (ha ha - no). (3) Mictlan had enough VPs to put me within a reasonable distance of winning - figured I'd finish of BL and Pangaea for the final two in all likelihood (BL would probably be the harder of the two). (4) There was no way in hell I was going to attack Jotunheim, therefore, only by attacking Mictlan could I get enough VPs to win.

There were two reasons I wasn't going to attack Jotun:

First, I was pretty sure Jotunheim was ready for me to do attack him, and it would be bad for me. In IRC Micah confirmed my fears that attacking Jotun would've been the death of me - not exactly how I thought, but probably even more brutal than I expected.

Second, Zeldor, you attacked me first (in former Van territory). I had no reason to believe you weren't massing forces to begin a real invasion, so with the likely threat of a war with Mictlan *regardless* of what I did, there certainly wasn't any way I was attacking Jotunheim.

Further, even if I do attack Jotunheim, why do you come in against Jotun and not me? Just like you could give me enough VPs to make victory plausible, I could do the same for you. So I see no reason to suspect people would join in against Jotunheim when I'd make at least as tempting a target.

Of course, when it became apparent that Mictlan was capable of stalemating me (ugg.. Undead Mastery everywhere!), it was pretty clear who the winner was going to be.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

It looks like you need to learn a lot about MP still :D

You took one some Van provs when I was at war with him, including one that was in the middle of my provs then, blocking my movements etc. I just took it with small force, without putting any big armies nearby [like you did]. Your next moves made it quite obvious you lack RAND experience and larger scope.

Your assumption that you can grab VPs from me was a bit naive. Also getting one from BL would be quite hard. I attacked him only to block access for Jotun to his cap.

Sure, attacking Jotun would have been hard [and maybe fatal], but for some time it was quite obvious that without him being taken down [or weakened] no one else can win. So you just helped him :)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Here is the full list of players:

Aethyr = Agartha (Dead turn 20)
Atul = Pan
Calahan = Ulm (Dead turn 30)
Jurri = Bandar Log
Lingchih = Arco (gone AI turn 60)
Lolomo = Eriu
Meglobob = C'tis
Micah = Jotunheim
MscFish; Replaced by BandC = Caelum
Namad; Replaced by Folket = Man (Dead turn 32)
Omnirizon = Pythium (Gone AI turn 39)
Quantum Mechani; Replaced by Alpine Joe Turn 41 = Tien Chi
Squirrelloid = Ermor
Trumanator = Vanheim (Gone AI turn 41)
Wokeye = Shinuyama (Gone AI turn 31)
Wraithlord = Machaka (Dead turn 63)
Ygorl = Ashdod (Dead turn 59)
Zeldor = Mictlan

Pasha

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Classic RAND, once a nation gets a decent lead, they are hard to take down because there's no diplomacy, so the the normal method ganging up on them can't be used.

For the record, I was scared of the Jotuns the entire game and thus had massive forces all along the Ctis/Jotun border. I had no intention of attacking Jotun on my own as it would have been suicide. I was hoping Jotun would mess up trying to take another nation out or Mictlan would attack the Jotuns and then I would have tried to take advantage.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

I assumed Ermor and Mictlan would attack Jotun b/c it should have been obvious to them that any other action would lead to them losing the game.

I think the fatal catch in RAND games is assuming you could just make another grab instead of stopping the clear winner.
Reason is simple, with no diplo on why would anyone risk a losing war instead of making easy gains instead or just turtling. This is even true when it's crystal clear that player A is going to win and all the rest are losing!
Petty wars still rage. Grudges are unforgiven. Opportunistic raids cont. etc.

RAND experience makes help better decisions but experience only goes so far to offset the RAND psychology.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

There was some talk about RAND format before, it needs to be adjusted a bit :) And recruitable thug/SC nations seem to have an advantage.

Anyway, my comment from Mictlan perspective [and rant about Ermor's behaviour]:

It was really obvious for some time that Jotun is running away with the game - some easy victories over weak neighbours + his superior nation [at least over Mictlan].

And it was really clear who Jotun player is - even QM knew that when he was subbed out. For everyone else it should have been obvious that it's at least a vet.

Ermor got some easy victories and then was just sitting and making undead. He could have taken BL when I was acquiring MAchaka + Vanheim. Or he could have attacked me then, when I was fighting 2 enemies. But he was sitting and doing nothing.

Meanwhile Jotun was finishing AI Arco off and what Ermor did? Move armies to my border. Sure, I somehow understand his reasoning, but whole idea was wrong from the beginning.

Situation was that:
BL and Pan being 2 lesser powers, fighting each other. And Jotun with massive army, after Arco conquest, just on their border, 2 turns from BL caps... Some people noticed it. I moved armies in, to block Jotun. So did C'tis.

I can say only good things about C'tis here. He did not give up in tough war with Pyth. He won it, paying huge price. And he refused to give up, even knowing that he had no chances to win. He wanted to make sure that no one gets an easy win. HE blocked BL and Pan caps from easy grabbing. He had armies on Jotun border, ready for action.

Anyway, Squirreloid made even more abd assumptions, deciding to go to war with me. He knew I have D9 bless, so Undead Mastery guaranteed. He knew about flambeus thugs. He knew about nasty communions. He knew about Tlaloques. He knew about my indy mages. All that makes it that attack really stupid move.

There was no way that Alpine Joe can stop Jotun, or at least slow him down enough. It was obvious that me and Ermor fighting pretty much give Jotun a victory. So I never planned to attack Ermor - but I could not attack Jotun with Ermor armies constantly on my border [even though they faced only PD - can I send better sign when I have 1k undead on my border?].

So pretty much what Meglobob said. I don't know if Jotun would be stopped [BoT would hurt me a lot], but I consider just helping him this way a bit lame and unnecessery.

I was most of the time against calling the game with result other than a draw. Jotun had no way of winning in reasonable timeframe, unless someone helps him [by playing sub-par]. And Ermor did, so I changed my mind and agreed for calling the game. I am pretty sure I'd win the war, but TC would fall down faster. And Jotun would just grab 2 VPs from weakened Ermor - as they'd be the easiest VPs around [and owned by someone who proved to be making tactical mistakes]. I really hoped that it'd end in soem final battles, where someone has to prove that he deserved a victory. Now it feels like it's victory because other players got bored with the game and Micah refused to accept a draw [it's hard to blame him for that though].

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Some random comments:

"
Ermor got some easy victories and then was just sitting and making undead. He could have taken BL when I was acquiring MAchaka + Vanheim. Or he could have attacked me then, when I was fighting 2 enemies. But he was sitting and doing nothing.
"
I was sure he was going to attack you. That's partly why I bunkered in my castles instead of really fighting.

"
I can say only good things about C'tis here. He did not give up in tough war with Pyth. He won it, paying huge price. And he refused to give up, even knowing that he had no chances to win. He wanted to make sure that no one gets an easy win. HE blocked BL and Pan caps from easy grabbing. He had armies on Jotun border, ready for action.
"
I played quite a few games with MB and I can definitely say he's as tough as they get. Too bad it didn't get to a real fight with Jotun :)

"
Anyway, Squirreloid made even more abd assumptions, deciding to go to war with me. He knew I have D9 bless, so Undead Mastery guaranteed. He knew about flambeus thugs. He knew about nasty communions. He knew about Tlaloques. He knew about my indy mages. All that makes it that attack really stupid move.
"
In retrospect all looks clear but at the time he may have had valid reasons (to his prespective). Mis-perceptions and consequent wrong strategic moves often decide games (and real wars) fates.

"Now it feels like it's victory because other players got bored with the game and Micah refused to accept a draw [it's hard to blame him for that though]. "
Want to fix RAND format?- forbid him giant nations and while at it all top 20 HoF nations ;)
If all agreed to concede to him then victory is rightfully his.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Haha, I had no intention of going after Bandar...way too much astral spam to deal with for one lousy VP that was totally surrounded by the biggest powers in the game.

Zeldor - Going after squirrel for not attacking me is a bit self-serving. Him attacking you/Mictlan won me the game, but him attacking me would have lost him the game, so he pretty much ends up in the same spot. All he could have done is played kingmaker for Mictlan by throwing himself under the Jotun bus, since I certainly wasn't about to let whoever started the ganging on me win the game, and I was very much powerful enough to have easily made sure I could pick the winner between Ermor and Mictlan. Anyone who knows how I play should know how I conduct my grudges. =)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

We shouldn't under estimate Micah here, he's a seriously good player, indeed if there was a vote for best Dom3 player he would probably get my vote. So Micah plus Jotun (possibly strongest nation in MA?) was always going to be fav to win this game, especially with no diplomacy. I am not so sure me/Ctis and Mictlan could have beaten Jotuns even together and even if Ermor had not made a strategic error of attacking Mictlan. So the Micah/Jotuns was a very worthy winner in my opinion and fully deserved.

Suggestions to improve RAND :-

Get rid of random nations, getting stuck with nation you did not want to play like I was, just sucks. My reason for not wanting to play Ma Ctis was simply I had just finished playing a 80+ turn game with them and the last nation I wanted to play again straight away was Ma Ctis. A good system is if each player puts upto five nations they are willing to play and then assigned randomly.

VP's are constantly being put too high, if 1 player had really wanted to be stubborn we would have had to play this game for another upteen turns until finally the Jotuns won anyway.

Perhaps consider playing RAND/no diplomacy up until a random turn between 30-50, that turn remains secret until its announced. Then all nation ownership is revealed and normal diplomacy is allowed. This will spice the game up alot and make the endgame more exciting.

Oh and a big thanks to Pasha for hosting this game!:up::)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Well, I'm not underestimating Micah at all. I don't want to be too harsh on Squirrel either, sorry if my tome sounds like that. I just want to point out that attacking me was a strategic mistake. He did not even give me chance to attack Jotun first or even do anything else.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Meglo: certain vets prefer rand games precisely because they cut down on the horrid ganging problems late game, so I think opening up diplo really changes the nature of the format. The whole sentiment of "x was winning, and then he won, so there should have been more ganging/someone messed up" is a bit telling of people's attitudes toward the game leader. There's something broken with the game when winning the game when you are in the top position midgame is considered a fluke or blamed on play errors. =)

I'd be all for pulling nations out of the mix for balance reasons or having a little bit of influence over who you get (though I'd prefer a small black list as opposed to getting one of your top 5, that's not random, that's just making the host's life livable in terms of nation assignment)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Yeah, but probably more than 3 nations on blacklist [we had 3 in Warcry and Micah got Eriu :P].

Main argument [that probably everyone agreed on] was that it's best to make it 8-12 players max, so we can pick players and nations of similar level. Having Jotun next to Ulm is a bit silly.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Here's an AAR for Ulm's short lived lifespan.

- Pre-Game Thoughts

When Pasha told me I was playing MA Ulm my first thoughts were "hhhhmmmmm MA Ulm, I know they used to be really awful, but I haven't looked at them for a year or two, wonder if they've improved". Five minutes later "Nope, still utter shiit". Seems to me MA Ulm is as MA Ulm always were, and their only chance in an MP game is to be a big nations forge bitcch until they can get a few dozen Iron Angels on-line, when they can break out of servitude for a few turns of freedom until they are squashed.

My main decision build wise was do I take the standard Awake SC and production, have a good 20 turns with mass troop armies, then die horribly to the first nation to attack me that either has mid level Evo researched, or can stand up to Ulm's troops for more than 10 rounds (at which point they self-die of fatigue). Or do I throw in an incredibly risky hand with a build that might give me some remote chance of doing something mid-late game, and rely on mostly luck and friendly neighbours to get me through the early game. I decided on the latter, mainly because I hate production scales with a passion (although have softened to them slightly since), and because I never intend playing in a game with a plan that means I know beforehand I will have no mid/late game options without huge fortune from site mages.

But then can't see how anyone can expect much playing MA Ulm in their current form anyway. They really need love. Either in the form of Sombre's armour revamp mod to make their troops useable, or move Iron Angels to Const, and/or down to Level <4. Maybe even level 0!


- The Design

In the end I settled on a Dormant Lich, A3S3D5 Dom9 (for obvious fear/awe). O1S2H2G3L3D3. Testing gave me surprisingly good returns of gems and gold with O1/L3 combo (far better for early events than O3/L3), plus Luck 3 in testing mostly gave me a turn 11 God wake up. Or turn 12 at the latest. But I stupidly failed to factor in the "Pasha's computer hates the Luck scale" theory, which was to prove costly. Also hoped that Luck would bring in much needed gem diversity. Growth 3 was a mistake in hindsight. Mainly triggered by me having taken Death 3 in the last three MP games I played, and really wanted a change from seeing my population and income dying everywhere.

My early game plan involved me relying heavily on Mercs for expansion (since I wouldn't be able to spend much money on troops with a Sloth scale) and switching to clockwork horror spam by around turn 10. Not the greatest summon, but dirt cheap for Ulm, and better than anything they can recruit I thought. I also planned to site search very early, although realised at the time (and in hindsight probably just an aid to what happened) that early gem finds would only serve to increase the first kill bulleyes on my head.

Then if all went to plan, I could maybe switch to thugs by mid-game via death, troll kings, Golums, GOR'ed Gargoyles (with rings), combined with heavy mage armies.(supplied from lots of forts) Before rushing to Iron Angels by turn 40. While my SC immortal God would hopefully be able to hold off the bigger dangers until then.(with fortune and fair winds of course) Think I got as far a turn 6 before things went wrong, although it was already looking very bad before then!


- The Game

Starting location (71) was a right sod even before finding out my neighbours. Lots of water everywhere really limited my expansion badly. Mainly because it made converging troops impossible, so my armies often had to stop and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Nice for choke points, but those are useless if you have nothing to defend choke points with. First few turns went well. Grabbed the first mercs, and had good fortune to land the A/N hero early to give me diversity and later Rainbow Armour for my God. But that hero arriving was just about the highlight of the campaign :(


On turn 4 I discovered who my south neighbour was. Jotunheim. "Oh nice that" I thought. Then on turn 8 I lost my entire first army for no loses to half a dozen of my northern neighbour's troops. Ashdod. "Oh wonderful, that's even better" I thought. Not only do I have one of the strongest rush nations to my south, I also have to the north the nation that's on a completely different uber power level to everyone else. It was around this time that I knew my campaign in this game was going to be incredibly short-lived.

So by turn 8 my position was already terminal, although probably fair to say it was terminal from the start given neighbours and starting location, regardless of my build. My only hope was that Ashdod wouldn't attack early for fear of being ganged (since a lot of players seem to deal with Ashdod by everyone attacking them the moment they rush anyone), and that Jotunheim wouldn't yet have scouted my location since we didn't have a border. I actually avoided capturing the province south of my capital just out of fear of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the frosty giants. But by turn 10 it all became irrelevant as I had a 100 strong Jotunheim army sitting on my cap.

After this it all became about how long I could hold out, and how costly I could make it for my attacker. I often see people complaining about late game strategic mistakes in RAND games, but for me the biggest strategic mistakes always come early on in the game. As the moment you see an uber nation chowing on a weakling, you should be looking to attack the uber nation without delay. Can't imagine any nation/player combo being able to survive a 2-1 or 3-1 attack before turn 15. So for me it was probably Jotunheim's starting neighbours who handed Jotunheim the game by not attacking Jotunheim when Jotunheim attacked Ulm (or those who attacked Jotunheim's neighbours thereby preventing them from attacking Jotunheim). As without distractions, Jotunheim could throw everything at Ulm with impunity.


- Some Reflections

Think I did a reasonable job at keeping Micah out of my cap for 14 turns. I survived two storm attempts, and managed to prevent/regain control of my cap province a few times. Think I could even have launched a good counter-attack if Micah had had another enemy to deal with. But one on one I stood no chance, as even without the gulf in nation / player level, Micah could always throw all his troops at me, and easily rebuild from his casualties which I couldn't do (although that's the standard price of being on the backfoot). Main turning point of my defence came when the Quickened Shroud wearing Skratti's turned up. As with Gladiator Gloves they had 14 attacks per round, which made absolute mincemeat out of my Lich.

It's odd that I actually lost my capital by mistakenly trying to kill things. Since the battles involving my Lich often came down to him being immune to regular Jotunheim troops, but going straight down the moment a Skratti got to him. So if I had duel shielded my Lich, there's a fair chance he would have held out in the fort until the auto-route kicked in for the attacker (as fair chance the Skratti's would've been stuck all battle in the attack queue outside the gate). Although that's a pretty lame way to win fights, so actually glad I didn't do it in the end (not that I thought about it at the time).

This game also probably signalled the last time I take Luck 3, as I had more early unrest events in this game than I've ever had with Misfortune 2. I had unrest events on turn 5, 6 (at my capital, which was a killer), 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, and 23. I even had to laugh that at one point I was down to just 2 provinces, but still had an unrest event! :) Of course this could be just down to Pasha's anti-Luck scale computer. I did get a few good events this time as well, but nothing like 200 design points worth.

I did have hopes at the end of running into the water and taking pot shots at Jotunheim (until Davy Jones the Skratti turned up to put a stop to it), but real life abruptly intervened around this point when work went from taking up 90% of my time, to taking up 1000% of my time, which brought all my Dom activity to an instant halt. (not that it mattered much in this game by that stage).


- Turn by Turn Account

Here's a random turn by turn account of the Ulm campaign.

Turn 1 - Starting at 71. Arse.
Turn 4 - Found Jotunheim to my south. Oh feck.
Turn 5 - A/N hero turned up. Hurray!
Turn 6 - Lost control of Xbow mercs. Damn TC.
Turn 7 - Splashed into the water using Mercs. The oceans are mine!
Turn 8 - Lost entire army to Ashdod. Oh feckety feck. And just when I had stepped up to taking 2 provinces per turn. Switched to recruiting Ghouls to fight sacreds.
Turn 9 - Jotun appeared on south border.with 100 strong army. Well, that's the end of this game then.

Turn 10 - Jotun attack capital. 25 PD killed nothing. Jotun sitting on capital with 100 troops. Walls just about hold. No sign of God. Send all Scouts home and start mass forging items for them to prepare for the attack on the capital. Lost footmen mercs to TC. Will you feck off with the bloody merc pinching TC!

Turn 11 - Walls breached. Gods start waking. No sign of my bastard God though. Suspect Jotunheim will attempt to cut off my cap retreat provinces when they storm, so attack Indy's to secure new one.

Turn 12 - Survived first fort storm, Losses are light for both sides (Jotunheim lose barb mercs in the storm). Good old narrow entranced Fortified Cities :) Jotunheim grab all retreat provinces as predicted. Lost my last army to Indy's who had a load more HCav than I wanted to see. Still no sign of God. Does God exist? Fecking Pasha's Luck scale hatred.

Turn 13 - Nation rejoices. About fecking time you showed up. Did you have a good kip you lazy bastard God. Jotunheim forces return. Walls broken again. Decide to keep God as surprise for Jotunheim instead of trying to break out.

Turn 14 - Survived second fort storm. Lucky to hold, as good enemy scripting with delayed attack orders meant my troops left the fort to engage the enemy. God saves the day though. Severe loses for Ulm though. Turn is re-hosted to deal with Caelum going AI. Hold again, still bad loses though.

Turn 15 - Broke out with God to token siege force. Jotunheim regroup.

Turn 16 - Re-took a province. Finally hit Const 3. Start pumping out Clocky Horrors. Send mage underwater to build temple to try and increase God attack options, and start UW infrastructure for when capital falls.

Turn 17 - God prevents Jotunheim from retaking capital province.
Turn 18 - Grabbed back two provinces with God and Clocky Horrors.

Turn 19 - Stale turn. Real Life was being a complete pain, and I had already told Pasha to stale me in advance if I missed the deadline. Which he duly did.(as I was seriously taking the piss with delay requests to deal with all the crap happening in my RL) Stale wasn't fatal as Jotunheim didn't attack my capital, but certainly a turn I could have made good use of for forgings and counter attacking had RL not been interfering so badly :(

Turn 20 - Still no Jotunheim attack. Start to accept end is near as guess Jotunheim is not attacking due to waiting for some key research that will kill my God. Plus nobody shows even the slightest interest in distracting Jotuheim by attacking them. Caelum decide to grab one of my provinces though, which is obviously a great help to my dying cause (to go along with Ermor 'help' a few turns early by grabbing a province). All of which ensures I have less money to buy cap mages each turn. Thanks for helping Jotunheim guys! Annoyingly, I lose to a single Caelum Thunderstriker because the Clocky Horrors can't be targeted, so only target available is my army magic troop leading mage :(

Turn 21 - My underwater temple has given me stronger dominion to my south, so decide to counter attack towards Jotunheim in that direction. (didn't attack south earlier as with only 1 dom there, I didn't fancy risking a Jotunheim preacher taking that away before the fight, hence cancelling out my Lich's immortality). Knew attacking could be a trap, especially as Jotun had just moved all his troops away from there. But thought it worth the risk, as if I did lose, at least I might find out what it is that Jotun had been delaying his attack for. (and so give me a turn to find an reply). Hit Const 4 which gives me better items for my God. Also laugh that it took me ages to win a tough UW province, succeeding last turn, and the moment I did a Kraken King turned up this turn and took it from me :)

Turn 22 - God gets slaughtered by Quickened Skratti's wearing shrouds. Plus Clocky Horrors turn out to be less effective than I thought as my army of them is also slaughtered by a Quickened Skratti. End is in sight as I come up with no answer to the Skratti.

Turn 23 - Live in hope that the Const 4 items will provide a defence to the Skratti's as my God attempts to hold my cap province. No chance. God is eaten alive by the Skratti's. Walls instantly breached and no reason not to expect a storm attempt. Hitting Alt 3 this turn though, so leave my God scripted with two free casts of his choice and prey he chooses the due-to-be-researched Mistform and Body Ethereal.

Turn 24 - Jotun take the Ulm capital. God does cast the correct buff spells, and for a while is holding the fort easily after parking himself in the gateway. But the result of him killing off a load of Woodsmen is a Skratti in the face, who once again smashes my Lich's to pieces. Some consolation is that I ordered an attack from the water the previous turn with some Ichtyid's, which was successful, and meant that the few that did survive the fort attack had somewhere to retreat to (since Micah's ruthless MO had made sure to cut off my other retreats). My A/N Hero survives and correctly retreats to the water (which I gave him amulet for especially). Hope he finds a kelp fortress before a Skratti submerges. As predict Jotun might struggle to do UW siege without putting in an annoying amount of troop/gem investment.

Turn 25 - My surviving army starts it run for the hills (or the lands Ermor took off me as I called them). A/N Hero finds no Kelp Fortress :(

And here RL called a halt to proceedings. OP says Ulm died on turn 30, which I'm guessing means a Skratti or two put some diving gear on to round up the remains of Ulm.

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I could probably make a few suggestions for improving RAND games if I thought about the issue. (eg. Like I've said many times in the past, please please stop aiding rush nations by VP marking capitals) One thing I would say, from chatting with Micah on the IRC, Ermor's attack on Mictlan certainly sounded like a classic insta-win for Jotunheim. Especially as Jotun were already fighting TC, hence a sure sign that it's a good time to attack them, and surely better than attacking a nation that wasn't at war (since I gather neither Mictlan or Ermor were fighting a major nation at the time, unlike Jotun)

There's never an obvious right or wrong move in a RAND game, and I think that is one of the things that attracts the vets to them so much. There's also no obvious solution as to how to deal with an obvious leader. From experience though, I'd say my mistake in the Dawn RAND game was waiting far too long on Ermor to attack Atlantis (the leader), and indeed in the end Ermor ended up attacking the wrong nation entirely (just like Mictlan in this game).

So I've come to the conclusion that sometimes a leap of faith is needed by someone. I see several people saying they weren't going to attack Jotunheim first/alone, but in a RAND game someone has to be the one to attack the leader first/alone, so just do it and trust in the other players to view it as their cue to strike as well. It might be more costly to you than to the others (if the leader takes his revenge on you), but the alternative is just do nothing and hand the leader the win. Hell if you are going to do nothing you may as well save everyone the time and effort by just calling the game then and there. "Pasha, I'm not going to attack the leader at all, so you may as well declare that player the winner now".

Of course having some experience of the MO's of the actual players left in the game helps loads at this stage, along with experience of RAND games themselves. But even if someone does stupidly attack the player who showed faith by attacking the leader (ie. instead of joining the attack on the leader), at least you'll know that you did do the right thing in trying to stop the nation running away with the game from actually winning it, instead of what seemed to happen here which is everyone waiting for everyone else to make the first move. (which nobody did, and was, so it sounds, a situation then made impossible by Ermor attacking Mictlan).


I know I for one hope the RAND games and format continue (albeit I guess with a few tweaks), since I'd still rather RAND games than the hassle of spending hours and hours doing diplomacy.


I'll end with saying another big thank you to Pasha for selflessly hosting yet another one of his fine RAND games. And of course many congratulations to Micah for winning the game :bow: ....and on a personal note, for being the first player ever in my MP career to actually defeat me in a war. Well aware it wasn't the greatest record though, as I hadn't exactly mingled with real players too often by that stage, but still a milestone for me. Knew I had to lose a war in an MP game eventually though, and good to know I lost to the best in the business :) (Although I'll try my best to have a better nation next time Micah so that I can at least try to fight back ;))

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

To my knowledge, Rand games have always been dominated by nations with recruitable SCs / strong bless. Those are the nations that usually require lesser nations to band together to fight. That said, they have also been won by really good players.

What might be interesting would be to try and balance the perceived skill of the Rand player with the power of the nation. Not to say the Hall of Fame leaders have to play dogs, but just don’t give them Ashdod for example. Maybe vote on the perceived player ranking before the game starts. Each player then submits a list of nations and the player that was ranked last gets first priority for his nation. And so on. Even the rankings don’t have to be public if that hurts someone’s feelings, although personally I wouldn’t care.

It would be Semi-Rand. A bit of up-front work but might provide a bit more balance.

@ Calahan: Nice write-up and I agree that Pasha’s PC inverts the lucks scales some how. :cold:

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

This is the kind of meta gaming RAND format is supposed to prevent. Evidently not bullet proof.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Wraith: Any top player would behave the same way, it's clearly the right play.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Oh, and if we're talking about "things rand is supposed to prevent" I'd say that the chronic gang-the-leader phenomenon is up there as well. Everyone's insistence that people messed up for not doing so is a little silly in my eyes, since it shouldn't be a bad thing when the nation that is doing the best actually wins the game.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Oh, and I agree about Pasha's anti luck scales. It's hard wired into his computer alright :)

Just to be safe I ain't taking luck anymore in a MP game.

Calahan, I also agree re. leap of faith.

Sometimes it's not possible though.
In YARG I really really wanted to throw everything aside and just try to stop the leader (Van). I even let my enemy (Ctis) 1-2 free turns to attack me w/o retaliation (when it was clear that Van is gonna win). But Ctis interpreted that as a sign of weakness instead of "I offer you peace so I could at least try to stop Van, and you should consider doing the same your self".
He came at me all the harder and I couldn't until the last turn of the game disengage and try to stop the winner.
In same game Patala had a good sized empire but just sat tight and let Van get away with the game.

I think the tweaks should also focus on striving to have a more homogeneous competency lvl for the players.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Excellent AAR. One tiny reminder though: I Dom killed your LA Mictlin as Patala in Achean game a few years back. I know it was a long time ago so you probably forgot it. Just a bit of stealth preaching by my markata prophet and you stuck between a Dom 10 Wyrm and a Dom 9 Cyclops. Still, we were at war, I had no one helping me (Overtly just Bogarus Dom pushing you from other side) and you were defeated by my little markata prophet of doom.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...rchaean&page=7

link

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

I agree it's the right way. I'd do the same.
So long as the meta gaming is generic (i.e. you expect a certain reaction from a vet vs. noob) that's ok (and can't be prevented).

"shouldn't be a bad thing when the nation that is doing the best actually wins the game."
But is it always true?- How about a top notch nation starting near weak nations/players and expanding easily vs. mediocre nation led by a good player that has a hard life but doing a great job and still manages to expand (albeit at a slower rate). Who then "deserves" to win?- And is it even worth answering the question?

In that respect a lot depends on what qualities are considered more prominent for wining: tactical vs. strategical skill, subtlety and subterfuge vs. brute force, diplomacy or lack of.

For RAND game the answer is clear: brute force and aggressiveness are the qualities that win games.
You won b/c you had a good nation and are a great player and were the meanest dog in the pack. I see nothing wrong with that but still would have preferred to see Ermor+Mictlan try to stop you :)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Well, I don't think I've raised any objections to restricting some nations from the game. Clearly there are balance issues, but there's also a lot of randomness at all levels of dom, most notably in site searching and neighbor selection. At some level you just gotta live with it and roll with the punches, and maybe hope CBM continues to update and balance stuff. I've had my share of crappy nations as well as the good ones, and them's the breaks. Heck, I almost put together a win with EA Atlantis until their horrid research combined with being incessantly attacked caused me to collapse under the size of my empire since I had almost zero mobility. I've put my time in with Eriu and MA Agartha as well.

I guess I'd just prefer to see an early ganging of a power nation that's gobbling up someone and needs to be stopped before they start snowballing, instead of the inevitable top-guy-vs-everyone late game scenario, especially since late in the game teleporting and remote spells are so prevalent, so it becomes possible to truly world-gang someone. Early kills also mean that the strong nation doesn't have the power to throw the game to someone, which in my mind is another good thing.

Artifacts was an excellent example of a game won purely on diplomacy and tenacity...the nations that were ganged up on had literally no chance to survive, and it just seems perverse to me when you're punished so heavily for doing the best. (And LA Atlantis, while underrated, isn't really a power nation and was the first to get ganged on.)

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

I agree upon thinking about it, a black list of nations you do not want to play is better than a list of nations you do. For this game I would have had 2 nations on it, Ctis (just because I had finished a 80+ turn game playing them) and Machaka. Would have been happy to play MA Ulm, largely because I have never played that nation in MP and its been a long time since I played Ma Agartha or Ma Man so would have been ok giving them another go too. Although I wouldn't have high expectations.

I also like the idea of giving the least experienced players 1st choice of the power nations like Ashdod, Jotun, Ermor and Mictlan. better than banning them from the game in my opinion.

I had luck 3 this game and it was great, had the full 3 lucky events most turns, unlucky events were so rare I hardly noticed them. I did have dom 9 thou.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

The Game From Ctis Point Of View

I was really fed up with getting Ctis as a nation pick, it just totally put me off this game straight from the start and really I totally lacked any interest which I did not shake off until Pythium attacked me.

My pretender design was crap, I should have gone with the exact same pretender in the game that just finished but wanted to try and spark some interest for playing Ctis so went for a vampire queen. I had some vague idea of getting into blood, for mass vampire spawn and making sure I had earth access for hammers and even a drop of air for gargoyles. I normally put alot my thought in to my pretender, design but this time I wasn't interested and knocked up my vampire queen in under a minute ( you can catch horrible diseases doing this:)). I was really sulking and hoping someone killed me quick.

Of course the early game went well, I got my designated area of provinces plus 1 or 2 more, typical when you want to die quickly!:mad: The bad news however, was my neighbours were, Jotuns, Mictlan and Pythium. Still with my high dominion everywhere I doubted wether any of them would attack me, what with my miasma dominion. I crossed Jotuns / Mictlan off my expansion list, I could not hope to match there blessed troops this early in the game. Pythium offered my best hope for conquest but they weren't exactly weak and I would probably get crippled, so opted to build up and see what developed.

Would you believe it Pythium invaded me! I perked up abit for the 1st time this game, did they not know about miasma dominion? I let them wonder around my kingdom for a few months getting diseased, killing PD, I just took the occassional province back. They had a fatal flaw which Ctis was probably one of the best nations to exploit, they had no nature magic and thus no defense vs posion. It was easy for me with posion slingers, posion vapours and mass skele spam to completely destroy Pythiums invading armies. With Pythium fatally weakened, I marched in and took his entire kingdom, adding it to my own and doubling Ctis in size.:) The only negative was putting up with swarms of seeking arrows, Pythium must have launched hundreds at me during our war, killing dozens of my mages. Thunder strike and later astral fires took hundreds of lizards lives but the Ctis war machine was unstoppable, as far as Pythium was concerned.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

We were now in the mid game and having seeded scouts all over the place, I was seriously concerned about the Jotuns, they knew exactly what they were doing, very clearly being played by a experienced vet, my guess being Micah, Wraithlord or Zeldor. I dicounted Quantum because I know he is generally a defensive player, I did not think it was Micah really either because he is a ultra, ultra aggressive and Ulm's excellent defense did slow the Jotuns. I really needed free troops so put up the global Enchanted Forest. I formed my Jotun policy at this point, which was, I was not going to attack the Jotuns on my own but I was going to keep well above 50% of my entire forces in 3 castles along the Jotun / Ctis border. If the Jotuns got in trouble trying to conquer another nation or Mictlan attacked the Jotuns I was going to attack them as well. There was no chance of me attacking Mictlan / Ermor and Tien Chi at this point as well because I needed 1 or 2 of them, plus myself to try to stop the Jotuns.

However, there was no need for me to sit around, by conquering Pythium I had opened up access to some weak nations who had been fighting each another namely, Arco, Ashdod, Pan and Bander Log. I would try and carefully grab what I could. I put up the Forge of Ancients to help equip my growing number of thugs / SCs. I started with Arco who were fighting Ashdod and took a couple of provinces but Ashdod were swift and took the rest. So I started looking Bander / Pan way. However, the Jotuns then swept in crushing Ashodod with breathtaking speed. I tried to take a province or two for myself but Jotuns Mage Bane weilding Arch Devil, supported by ALL the other Arch Devils, Ice Devils and Heliophagus destroyed my meagre forces. Once again the Jotuns scared me silly, I could see the Jotuns summoning all the blood 9 demon lords and tartarians. It was at this point I knew it was hopeless and the Jotuns were unstoppable.

I played about with Bander Log / Pan, slowly weakening them in order to devour them, well the Jotuns went after Tien Chi. In the very last turn of the game I had a very pleasing battle with Pan, with Pan having 28 mages 1000 strong army on one side and Ctis having 46 mages and 500 strong army on the other. Ctis won, killing 14 enemy mages and destroying vitually the entire 1000 strong army, I lost 0 mages but 80% of my army. In the same turn I also got lucky and killed the Pan with a Earth Attack who had cast the global Mother Oak thus dispelling it. But it was all for nothing the Jotuns had won, they were our masters now.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

I think a short nation black list per player is a good idea.

I was playing a bit with the idea of introducing very rudimentary diplo to RAND. For example: each player starts the game with three "Peace offer" tokens. The way the token is used is by nation A contacting the admin and asking him to pass the "peace offer" to nation B. The host then returns "yes"/"no" answer from nation B and nation A's tokens are subtracted by 1.
This is very far from full blown diplo and will not explicitly allow dog piling. It would help stop silly wars that both parties don't want and may allow for a more interesting end game.
Perhaps I'll even introduce these two concepts to next installment of YARG.

Pasha, thank you for hosting this RAND game. Though I lost early and had a sub-par nation I did enjoy the game. In-fact I'm looking forward for another game whenever you'll feel ready.
Could you also kindly send some of the turn files?- I'd like to watch the drama of the end game.

Re: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!
 

Ermor bashin again? First me, complaining about him attacking me, then other people complainiong that he did not invade Jotun when he was at war with Ulm [well, he was the only one that could do it, as C'tis got attacked by Pyth].

I am against all complicated stuff that WraithLord is suggesting. Whole idea is to make the game simpler, without diplo, etc. And as it has no NAPs it's about signals, army movements etc. Ermor was giving me clear signal that I should not attack Jotun, because he will attack me [1k troops on my border].