Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Well, had calahan still been playing, he seems to have been well in favor of heading in. I don't know what blanketthief was planning, but I read the "dossier" (longer it was than gandalf's beard!) calahan passed on to him, and let's just say that there were strong hints leveraged within that an attack on ulm would be the most prudent course of action.

It seems like the fear of being the first to attack the leader in the YARG series has been a pretty constant curse... everyone knows who the leader is, but is afraid to go in first and get smacked around for their trouble. Of course, that's a pretty natural fear. But it's interesting to see how many times the same scenario plays out. It probably doesn't help that even in diplo games, there's always that one nation that thinks it's a good idea to attack the guy who's trying to bring down the leader.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

The charts put Eriu a close 2nd place to Ulm. So I assumed he will attack Ulm first.
The longer Eriu didn't attack Ulm the more suspicios I became of his intentions towards me.
Talk about making your fears come true.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

I think it, as always, comes down to having some faith in, and knowing, your fellow players. And being able to id them well before this point in the game (which is a big part od RAND format). When I subbed in and checked the unrevealed player list I immediately saw.. (no offence mockingbird and Curious Yellow, I've played less/no games with you guys to be able to predict your actions)

WraithLord
Executor
don_pablo
TwoBits
Slobby

...were all still playing, and since I know all of these players are also multi-game vets of RAND games (besides whatever other playing skill and intelligence they possess), I had strong faith in them following suit if I initiated a leader attack. Didn't know which nations these guys were playing, but odds were high they would be playing the main remaining nations (or at least the majority of them). If those fives names were replaced with five unknowns, then it would certainly cause me some hesitation. I might well attack the leader anyway, and if someone then attacks me then that's the way it goes, and I'll just have another name to add to my idiots list after the game.

But given the names of those remaining, I doubt if any attack on Ulm in this game would have resulted in the attacker being seen as a sudden target. Wish my resolve hadn't been shaken on turn 68 now, but oh well, honestly doubt Ulm could have been stopped by that stage. Delayed probably, but not stopped. (and think it would have been a shame if Ex had not won due to being delayed and quitting with MM overload)

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

I wanted to attack Ulm from very early on, I even gave the attack orders twice and aborted them right before sending the turn. It all came to blind trust issues my thoughts were:
A - why is Ctis turtling? Is he waiting for the right moment to attack?
B - why doesn't Eriu attack Ulm already? Is he planing to "grab" one more nation before that?

Next time I'll jump the leader re. Of consequences as Calahan suggested

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

That cracks me up :D

S5 Oracle? Well, that was probably the end result of my debate as to whether to go with an awake SC or uber-scales, as a way to get decent expansion w/ Indies-9. Probably had some leftover points or something :cold:

Besides, if you're willing to blow 100S gems on Wish, what's 60 more for Empowerment? ;)


Oh, and like others, I wanted to go against Ulm earlier, but I also was hoping someone else would go first :p

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

It's nice to know one inspires fear. :)

I had my fair share of complaining to rdonj around turn 70ish. Sorry about that rdonj btw.
Constantly asking for delays. Complaining about burnout from the massive mm.
At one point, when everyone attacked me, I lost faith. In that instant I though I couldn't possibly win the game as I started slacking off, not paying attention. Told ronj I wouldn't mind for a sub if there was such a masochist out there. But then I came to my senses and figured, hey, everyone's already attacking you, why just not go for the caps and end this? And so I did.

Anyway, I'm wondering at which point did you guys notice I was going for a quick VP grab?

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

@ TwoBits

I would only have been wishing for gems so that I could manipulate the gem stocks. So not blowing them. But I did consider empowering in Astral though due to the reason you gave. "It's only Astral gems" :)

In the end though I decided to check out Const 8 first in the hope of some S-boosters still being there, and upon hitting I found the Forbidden Light hanging around to solve the problem??! (@ All, seriously what the hell was the Forb Light doing being still available?)

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

I had Svarogia for the last two turn.
I suppose it was better than to let them stall those last two turns.

I did use one master enslaver, the other wasnt ready...
I should have teleported every S3 mage into the siege, but I dont really think it would have made an difference.
Maybe if I had concentrated all my forces on one fort.

One thing I need to say:
Holy **** that was an impressive ~18 pages introduction to the game I got.
I wanted to redo my first turn, after reading it, but was to slow/lazy.

Second turn I saw two VP provinces sieged and breached (did I miss that the first turn? Am I that clueless?).
Short participation...

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Interesting post-game analysis all around. One more question: what kind of usage did tarts get (particularly applies to the nation[s] that had the chalice/GoH)?


@rdonj: I'll have to look at the current Itza and see if I still have the OMFG reaction I first did (I refer to it as my Hinnom reaction ;)). But you bring up an interesting point with Pythium - maybe it's not so much that mod nations tend to be off-the-scale OP but that the average level of power is higher than the average level of power for base game nations? I also think they sometimes have too many "specials" (things like magic weapons, recuperation/healing, etc.) - these things are great because they help make nations unique but add too many of them and it gets to be too much. But I make no claim to be a mod nation expert so perhaps I'm wrong in my impressions.


Also, note to self: never have Cal sub for me. I can see the postgame commentary now:

"Supposedly Valerius is something of an idiot savant when it comes to glamour nations. I can now confirm the idiot portion of that description is accurate. Let's start with the W4 bless. This was probably taken because it will be a big help defensively when the thugs get swarmed. Or maybe because it will help the elite sacred troops Eriu doesn't have. After all, why take some S magic or even better scales when you can waste points on a useless bless? But through some fluke you may actually reach Constr. 8 first. Of course forging somewhat useful things like the chalice or gate stone will be out of the question since you've done nothing to diversify from your national magic. And even the things you can forge will have to wait a few turns since why bother forging the requisite boosters ahead of time so you're ready to go when you reach Constr. 8? Speaking of research, why have all your mages that aren't otherwise occupied actually research? Just for fun leave some of them on 'defend' orders. I've seen worse positions in my time - by newbs. Actually, many newbs play better than the incompetence on display here."

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

That reminds me of another thing that was removed from Itza, the magic weapons on all the recruitables that used to have them :P And from most of the sacred spawnings. Before the various nerfs to them Itza was probably the strongest non-Amos nation I've seen. Like, if pythium was a 10, Itza was probably a 12. Now it's probably more like an 8. Still strong, but actually comparable to real nations now. 8 may be overestimating them, even.

As for the power levels of mod nations in general - yes, that seems to be the predominant trend. I think there are a number of reasons this tends to be the case. Some are at least semi-conscious, others are not. For example, when experimenting with new ideas it's easy to come up with things that seem okay on first glance, but turn out to be horribly overpowered in practice. Like when sombre had the skaven commanders able to summon allies of various recruitables. Having recruit everywhere freespawn causes balance issues, but back when they actually had that ability, the community didn't realize how big of a problem they could be. Now we do :P And the skaven have become, IMO, probably the best quality mod nation we have right now. Thematic as hell, maybe even a little on the weak side, and so much fun to play. Well, for me anyway.

It can also be very hard to price things properly before seeing how the nation performs in real games with human opponents. So what usually happens is a mod nation comes out significantly stronger than intended and gets hit with the nerf stick a couple of times before it reaches a reasonable status. Mod nations just don't get as much testing as regular nations do, so it's little wonder if they're just a bit buggier. Don't let old-style Itza and stygia ruin your perception of all mods though. They're not really representative of the currently played mods.

Erm, sorry for going off on a mod-induced tangent. That wasn't a bad Calahan impersonation, but I think there's too much sarcasm. Calahan isn't so subtle... he's all about manifesting that vitriol ;)

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Valerius, now you know why I do all in my power not to need a sub ;)


Executor: I admire how you managed all that MM. Not sure whether I could.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Lol, thanks for that Valerius, and it's duly been copied, pasted and saved for when I do one day sub for you. Yuo know, I could get used to this 'players writing my rants in advance' thing. As it'll save me a load of time if nothing else. Maybe from now on I'll start stipulating that as a requirement for me subbing... "Hi I'll sub for you if you like. Can you please give me a brief run-down on what's happening, oh and of course the obligatory rant that I would write five minutes after checking the position out. Thanks."

Also haven't forgotten about the PM's Val. Not had free Dom time for a while to get back to you properly (recently there seems to be a never ending flow of people who need ranting at :( which gets high priority for my free Dom time :)). Two weeks is the usual turn around though isn't it? so I still have some time to play with :)

:) About 50% of those pages were guilt from YARG1, as I had to sub-out there in a very tricky position and promised rdonj a full write-up for my incoming sub on how to deal with it all. (as otherwise a quick death was certain). But RL took over and I didn't manage to provide even a single word of advice, so thought I'd make up for it this time :D The other 50% was trying to cover every angle of the position and the forthcoming Ulm war, as there was a lot going on when I left that needed mentioning. (plus rdonj told me my sub was a bit green, so thought the more info I could provide the better, which is why there is a lot of obvious stuff mentioned)

Not sure how relevant what I wrote was when you took over though, as it was written for my immediate successor, and I'm probably right in guessing a LOT changed between me leaving and you arriving.

--------------------------------------

RE: Mod nations often being a bit OP.

I've found that one regular problem with mod nations ending up OP is that the creators pick bad choices for comparisons. ie. "This unit/summon was priced on nation X's unit/summon". As the tendency then is to pick 'one of the best' unit/summon to copy. Which ends up with the mod nation having the best value archers, best value HI, best value mages, best value summon etc etc, cherry picked from all the standard nations. With the obvious result being the nation becomes OP and with far too many good 'things' at their disposal. But maybe it's only me that's noticed that trend.

Yep, I no do subtle. I was forced to for a few years of my life. Never again. Hated every moment of it and it certainly wasn't 'me' at all. Vitriol is a type of cake isn't it? Hhhhhmmmmmm, cake :cake:

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Rdonj, I took a quick look at the current Itza (just recruitables, didn't have time to check out the summons) and I agree it's much better. In addition to the magic weapon changes (which are very significant) I see the cold-blooded tag has been extended to the Kroxigor as well (and I'm not sure that I realized just how severe the cold-blooded penalties were when we played Tourmaline). At a glance I'd agree they certainly have plenty of strengths but are much more reasonable.

Interesting observations regarding mod nation power. I think Cal's comment re: picking the best units from various nations as comparisons without necessarily considering the cumulative effect of this (and not necessarily having offsetting weaknesses) is also a good point. And it occurs to me that probably most nation modders are looking to create a strong nation rather than an average, let alone weak, nation. For one thing, they'd like their nation to be played and more people will shy away from playing an underpowered nation than a strong one. ;)

I also wonder if other mod nations are used as a baseline and if those nations are strong you want yours to be competitive with them? I guess this would apply more to the Warhammer nations since they have shared theme but could apply to historical-themed nations as well.

Btw, aside from wariness about power level I'm not at all against mod nations and am actually quite impressed with many of them from the sprite work, to the imaginative themes, to the technical approaches to accomplish things (retinues, etc.).

All this is a bit off-topic but not horribly so since YARG 3 did include mod nations. And I've actually been meaning to ask about this for a while so I'm glad it came up.


Good point regarding sarcasm vs. vitriol. I probably put too much of my own personality in that post rather than staying in character. ;)


Glad you enjoyed it. :) Though it occurred to me afterwards that I might have had better material to work with if I'd gone with my FoB "Blood Elves" build. What? You don't think it's practical to turn Eriu into a blood powerhouse? Just think, during the endgame you might up to a half dozen empowered Claws-casting Bean Sidhe!

Also, I wonder how many people's self-assessment would match your verdict. :p


No problem; given my rather relaxed responses to PMs I'm quite patient in return. And rants do need to be posted promptly - just doesn't have the same effect if you only post a few days later. ;)

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. 7/18 players remain.
 

Some tangents concerning CBM Ulm:
1 Gem items are totally sick. How much use did you make of Crystal Matrizes and Crystal shields? I am constantly forging 5 or so crystal shields per turn, this gives simply soo many options to further support large armies (Any Smith with a Crystal Shield can cast flaming arrows, warriors of Muspelheim, Heat from Hell etc. A random smiths can cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend etc, S randoms add Antimagic...) especially if you lucked into some indies. Got an A2 from somwhere? Mass flight ftw! N2-N3ss with a crystal shields can also cast intersting things too.

Iron Angels are cool, but have the misfortune to cost E.

Did you preplan for the dreaded "magic is fading" event?
I lost an insane amount of gems to it in a goongame, it happened about 3 times and wiped about 50-100 gems per happening.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

I used matrixes but I didn't use too many since you need a mage to carry them and mages weren't major parts of my army. Besides, I also had the problem of the 50 item per turn limit and only 15 or so astral smiths, so other stuff took priority.
Things I mostly used astral for were astral caps, coins, eyes of void, spell focus, lucky pendant, crystal ords, AMA, and herald lances.
Had 11 fully equipped mind hunters when AC broke out. Shiny had the pleasure of meeting most of them. Each one of those costs 50-60 gems without hammers now days.

As for crystal shields, I forged those like crazy.
An S1 smith with a crystal shield + astral cap + crystal coin (11 gems total I think) and you can cast WotF.
An A1 mage with helmet + wind bag + crystal shield + matrix (around 25 gems total I think) and you can cast for warriors, mass flight, etc.
A F2 smith with it for flaming arrows.
Earth 3 smith for army of lead, earthquakes and such.
You could pretty much cast any spell A/S/F/E with little to no trouble.

Most of the items forged were used for thugs and SCs though.

I mostly used mages for support and buff spells. Items were used for spells and bows/crossbows for troop support. And of course every army had at least some SCs and thugs. Each army was well rounded and prepared to deal with just about anything.

A typical army which took over Shiny consisted of;

Lighting bows and spirit helms for lightning damage, rods of incineration for fire (I was a BIG fan of those for only 5F gems!), staff of numbness for cold (stun, fatigue) damage.
Herald lances for undead, massed bows of war under flaming arrows, boosted mages for first round flaming arrows, WotF, antimagic, blessings of iron and army of lead. When need arose there was a mage for fog warriors and mass flight as well.
Armies consisted of heavy flail infantry under weapons of sharpness and strength of giants along with the regular battle wide buffs.
Along side those there were always some Treants, Grendels and banes.

The craziest thing for me were probably the 8-15 gem banes which had some pretty insane stats and uses. Banes with 40 defense, anti SC banes, raiding banes, etc. They came in pretty much every variety.

Never had the magic is fading event happen to me in all my Dominions games.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

About mods some more :P

I think it is definitely true that in the case of new modders, they have a tendency to do exactly that. A number of mods were originally made by people with little experience with the game, particularly in multiplayer. And these people do often get sucked into comparing vs iconic units. Some of these nations eventually were taken over by more... sane modders who had a better idea of what sensible balance was and were willing to make changes to them. One of those is Chaos, which started off in crazy town and has been getting slowly pulled back ever since. I'm still not sure if they're balanced yet, but I've not played the most recent version :P They've come a long way though.

With more experienced modders, they do sometimes make mistakes, but I don't think this is really one of them. I know for example that sombre uses a unit balance point that strives for consistency with the rest of the game. However, he likes to experiment with unusual mechanics and abilities that may not exist in vanilla nations. And warhammer nations need to be thematic for the source material, which sometimes makes for a tricky crossover into dominions. Let's look at Warhammer Empire for a moment. In the warhammer universe, they have access to all generic magic paths, but not to race-specific magic paths. If they didn't have access to basically every path in dominions, then it would be highly contrary to the source material. This in itself is a major difficulty for balance as complete diversity is a huge strength in itself. In order to try and lessen the strength of their diversity and prevent the recruitment screen from being excessively cluttered, he made all of the empire's mages into summons, and gave them only incredibly useless 1 path mages for recruits. Initially, people were thinking that if anything being forced to summon their mages using gems would make the empire weaker due to not having many gems for other things. However when people actually got the empire into MP games it was realized that it in fact was a unique and powerful strength for the empire. Despite the fact that they had reasonable upkeep prices, it mostly allowed the empire to divorce itself from having a real gold economy and traditional for time concerns, and their ability to mass mages was eventually deemed too strong. The empire still has amazing magic diversity (all paths but blood), but they now buy their basic mages normally and their military strength has been weakened significantly from its former levels.

There are a number of similar examples in mods where the effect of a unique national ability was decided to be unexpectedly powerful, only to be put in its place later :P Most mod nations start with at least one thing that turns out to fit in this category, but when they are discovered they are usually changed pretty quickly.

Now, with Amos mods, he was open about his lack of worry over balance, and was only concerned with the internal balance between his different nations, ignoring vanilla nations altogether :P


Executor - Ugh, it's ridiculous when it's cheaper to turn a level 1 mage into a level 4 caster than it is to get EDM summons. It sounds like your nation got extremely silly by the end there. That was sounding pretty similar to play under a clamming environment. Except you're the only guy who has them.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

Thanks for the feedback! This conversation actually has me wanting to start a mod nations game. The Warhammer nations are of course excellent but I tend to be drawn to the Dominions-style nations based on real world cultures. I very briefly subbed as Al-Nadim in one of Exec's games and I really like their theme so maybe I'll organize an ENP2 game once my current game advances a bit more.

Re: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76
 

I actually use Smiths in battle, but often, only 50 Smiths can forge items per turn, and if you ahve that number (it may be less if you have some cursed artificats in storage), you will propably still have an excess number of smiths capable of playing battle assist. Strength of Giants, Eart Meld, Destruction and ofc Magma eruption are all usefull spells.
I also like weapons of sharpness a lot, there is not a lot of things that are immune to weapons of sharpness Strength of gianted Flail troops.