Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Yep, the bait-then-attack was a nice ploy. Remind me when the war is over, and I will pass on some tips about how to have been more successful with it.

I figured the leprosy campaign would eventually force you to attack. From the looks on what is left of :sick: the faces of the besieging troops, all those leprosy casting have done their job well.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Hehe, if you recall that we were at war when you just subbed in, Shinuyamas incredible late game was the actual reason why I tried to kill them first, even if it would result in an ugly map.
At that time, I knew my northern neighbour to be Mictlan, who is not really an immidiate threat for Rose Ulm (oohhhh, sacreds! Cute!) threat, MA Ctis, who isnt what I would call heavy threat to Rose Ulm (Well, I can get poison resistance and even darkness counters with comparable ease) either, and Tien Chi + Acro who are imho "meh". MA Acro has mindhunt (not great against Rose Ulm), and Tien Chi does not have anything that would scare me as much as massive Earth and Acid access with easy access to a large variety of powerfull elemental/death magics.
I must confess that I had a policy of trying to kill Shinuyama really early , if encountered in games, and this game certainly did nothing to change this notion.
Incedently, my success rate of rushing Shinuyama (3 times with MA Ulm, once with MA Man) is 50/50.
I also failed to stress the point of Shinuyama being the main threat to Caelum, although its hard to sandbag to someone whom you sold a bunch of stone spheres.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Ahh. I was actually talking about the specific task of killing the wendigo. But I'm sure we will also talk about the war in general once it is over.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

As you now know, the real purpose of the acid storm was to set your troops (and, hopefully, mages) up for the following turn's weather extremes. That all worked out quite well (from my point of view, that is).

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Not a whole lot I can do about it though.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

True. We have reached the stage of the game where you cannot expect to get away with having a big mid-game army out in the open. On the other hand, Ulm normally just laughs off Flames From the Sky and Murdering Winter, because of their super-duper armor. You have the misfortune of being up against a nation with easy access to acid storm. Even then, I have to have the right caster in the right place. Its not like I can teleport in an acid storm caster. But it does mean that you need to come up with a different late-game invasion strategy vs. Shin, compared to what you might use against most other nations.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I have a lack of late game experiences, by virtue of usually being either dead or already dominant before lategame happens.
My root causes of defeat are economical and diplomaticall though.
Perhaps I should have went after Tien Chi and not Pythium, but I saw that awesome opportunity to eliminate Pythiums standing army and could not let that pass.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

That confusing, I definitly issued a move patrol order, which would have resulted in my army remains killing that wendigo without a lot of trouble.
I also believe that I remade the army in a way that had units as followers of "tough" commanders to cut down stragglers, did I fail to submit that turn properly?

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I am willing to concede to Shinuyama.
I am a bit suprised, I teleported a Golem into the province your army came from, shouldnt that have interfered with your movement (or at least caused a battle that may have triggered gem use? I was expecting earth quakes actually).
Nevertheless, the better player won, congratulations!

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I do not have time right now to write up anything about the Ulm/Shin war - I'll do that later.

I just want to take a quick second and offer a :bow: and a :cheers: to Ossa, whose Mictlan was finally defeated for good this turn. Despite spending well over half the game as a 3-province power, Ossa showed up and submitted every damn turn, every time. Thank you!

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Indeed, Mad props to Ossa!
Actually Ossa is still alive!
There is a sheltered province within Ulm, one can say a lot about Ulm, but the peoples Republic tried to protect its allies!
:)

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I am heading out of town for a couple of weeks. I will upload the current turn before I leave, and I think I will be able to play 2 or 3 turns at various times while on the road (but no promises).

I didn't see an obvious way to turn off the clock, so I set the host interval to some very large value. Quickhost is still on, so if turns get submitted they will also get processed.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Caelum and Shin's turns are both in. I currently have fairly predictable internet access, so I will wait (at least) 48 hours in case Ulm wishes to submit a turn, and then I will force host.

Time is the major issue during my trip, so I will still leave the game on a very long clock. It appears that Ulm's intent is to stale out their remaining turns, so I will try to continue to give notice and process a turn every once in a while, depending on when I have time to prepare my own turns.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Lets see what I was doing in that game :)

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I'm back. I will reset the timer for 72-hour turns.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Holy cow - did I ever screw that up! In the process of trying to set the game so it would host a few days from now, I apparently moved the hosting time into the past, and it hosted (twice!!!) before I realized what I had done.

I can try to roll it back, or I can stale while y'all take free shots at me, either way is fine with me.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I would prefer a rollback. Also, I am afraid I won't be able to do more than one turn a week. Apologies, I am so busy these days :sick:

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

OK - the game is rolled back to turn 72. I have submitted my turn. I will just leave the clock on its very long timer, so let me know when your turn is ready and uploaded, and I will then force-host.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

I am currently writing my thesis, expect no frequent turns from me either.
I will totally attempt to troll Shinuyama a bit though.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Gurthang messaged that he will not have the time to fight on, so I went ahead and closed the game out. Many thanks to Llama for running the server for us, and many thanks to the players. I think it was November - and a turn somewhere in the late teens - when I subbed in. I had a great time.

I hope to have time soon to write up a bit about how the game looked from my perspective.

Re: Pointy Sticks MA started
 

Congrats to your win RonD! You see, there was a reason why I attacked Shinuyama early. From SP testing, I am fairly certain that Rose Ulm can Trollface/Rush anybody without something like an awake SC immortal Pretender early on (spies to lock down the cap, early summonable troops to get monomentum, Mages that dont need much research to kill things), so I tried took out the nation I saw as the largest threat asap. I may have did it without Acro interfering.
It was propably a bad move to attack Pythium without having the means to finish it quickly, but I saw a great opportunity to eliminate Pythiums standing army with some cooperation from Mictlan, which didnt quite work out as it should have (wasted an army I needed not to have lost).
The next mistake was no longer being diplomatically active, as well as not bringing Anti Thugs to bear earlier against Pythiums harbingers.