Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Llama should surely be in a position to contest?

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Well i would think llama should be able to do something with all those awesome globals, but he hasn't gained any provinces lately and oceania keeps going up and up.

I'll keep trowing whatever I have left at oceiania for as long as the game continues, but I am wondering if tir is still really trying?

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Llama's strategy is quite easy to understand: the longer Oceania is busy against Lanka and Tien Chi, the closer he will be to win the game. Why should he take any risk when all he has to do is to gather gems and summon nice SCs? Once he feels ready, he will launch one massiv assault to take all my unprotected provinces. Just be patient, it may happen sooner than you expect ;)

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Don't worry, I'm still trying! My strategy is essentially as Kiet describes, although I'm not as far along as you might think (and I am ashamed to be using such a shockingly turtly strategy, but all my earlier wars were so feeble and I was so close to being crushed by a Lanka-Oceania alliance that I had little choice).

I have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. I think I only have one surviving scout. Is everyone fighting Oceania? Perhaps I could start supplying gems or items to the beleaguered defenders?

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

okay sounds good. I will keep on fighting until my last unit. I wouldn't worry about sending me anything - you can probably make better use of it yourself.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Oh my, I still cannot believe what I saw last turn...
The two most powerful globals going "poof". :angel

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

looks like i may be going "poof" myself soon. Good game, everyone.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Dear fellow players,

First I would like to thank SciencePro And AlgaeNymph for staying that long even if the game wasn't interesting or entertaining for them anymore.

We have played more than 100 turn now and I would like to know (especially from Llama and Dragar) if they would like to keep playing because they have a good strategy that could reverse the situation or should we stop the game here because the micromanagement (at least for me) is becoming too tedious.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

I am willing to vote Kietsensei the winner if everyone else is.

This game has been going on suprisingly long and it seems from the posts that it is nearing the end.

Sooo.., once again I'd like to state how awesome it would be for the remaining players to give some feedback on CPCS and Holy War. It's likely that those mods have been in use for more turns in this game than other games combined! I'm certain that you have the valuable data I need to make those mods stronger, faster and better.

Are the spells in CPCS usable? Are they too usable (as in broken)? Were the Holy War sites useless, too useful? Did someone win just because of units/spells supported by those mods?

See my signature for links to the appropiate mod threads.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

I will send you a review and commentary on all the new spells/units/site I used during this game. I just need to find the time to write a good report :) But I can already tell you that the holy mod changed a lot the way I used priests. The cheap holy 3 priests replaced most of my battlefield mages.

Spells like divine armement and especially Holy warrior makes some spells like mistform and body etheral completely useless. As a result, nations relying heavily on light thugs to raid have some difficulty and must find a new strategy.

Divine wrath is an awesome spell and can replace easily the standard desintegrate spam.

A single thuged sidhe lord have a very good chance of dying against an oceanian pd of 10 if it is backed by a lvl 3 priest.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

I'm very happy to stop, only hanging in to keep it interesting for oceania and tir if they want to

I did enjoy reclaiming my globals the past few turns though :)

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Llama has been stalling for the last two or three turns. So the only one left who should voice his opinion is Algaenymph. It would be great to know before the next turn if we keep going on or we stop here.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

I think stopping would be a good idea.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Okay then it seems like its unanimous.

Congrats to the winner: Kietsensei of Oceania

Good game, everyone.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Thanks. I'm looking forward to reading your report.

You seemed to get a lot of mileage out of the holy spells, that's pretty good (Considering that you are Oceania and you wouldn't have had much battle magic the classic way). One thing I'm worried about is the Divine Wrath vs Disintegrate comment, I'll likely done it down a bit. Most likely by replacing the nextspell so that it doesn't force that many mr checks.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Started!]
 

Thanks everyone for the game. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed it :D
Crusader was my first MP experience and I learned a lot with this game.

Re: Crusaders - Mod Heavy Ea game [Game Over - Kietsensei wins!]
 

Hello! Many apologies for my silence, I meant to respond here straight away but have had a hectic few days with little time near my computer.

Kietsensei - you have indeed clearly won. Congratulations, and very well played. I hope you enjoyed the game.

Everyone - this was by far the longest game of Dom3 I have ever played, and I have played a lot of games. So if you found that it dragged, don't be put off! It was quite an extraordinary long stalemate at the end there, in which I believe several of us were simply sitting there biding our time.

Apologies to have put up no resistance at the end. Believe it or not, I had essentially nothing to throw at you. Really. Actually, I have never ever played so catastrophically poorly in a game before. At almost every stage after the beginning I was appalling. I shall elaborate.

The beginning went well enough. I expanded quite fast, using parties of double blessed S9A9 Tuatha sacreds. I met and made an NAP with Abysia to the north, and then encountered Arcoscephale to the east. I planned to attack Arco, but before I could do so he was overwhelmed by Yomi. I decided to attack Yomi, and I think did quite a good job of crippling his economy without a single fair fight. I had little parties of Tuatha all through his land, constantly taking provinces and then moving on. I would very probably have lost in a fair fight, but soon enough Yomi was reduced to a few scattered troops and a handful of provinces, while still fighting Arco who was also down to a couple of provinces.

Then came a ghastly, ghastly land-war-in-Russia period of twenty turns or more(!!), in which I tried to stamp out the last remnants of Yomi and Arcoscephale. In the hands of any competent player it would have been trivial, but I kept on bungling attacks, failing to storm forts despite having greatly superior forces (leading to the troops inside bursting out to capture land once again) and so on. Catastrophic. By the time that was over my development was a mess.

However I had developed very effective Sidhe thugs (that I had never tried before) and I was a world power in terms of income. Arrogantly I decided I could take down T'ien Ch'i, so I set about doing so. I poured huge amounts of resources into kitting and cloud trapezing thugs onto T'ien Chi's land - maybe as many as twenty in the end, with eight taking part in the initial surprise attack. The initial attack went very well indeed, with most provinces captured, and I was sure T'ien Ch'i was doomed. At this point a new player took over and I felt sorry for him. However he quickly took decisive action and hunted down my "invincible" thugs, killing them off one by one. I had failed to provide any effective backup for them, and soon my attack was a mess. However I finally managed to research Gateway and brought in a huge army to the very north of the map. Seeing the failure of my war on T'ien Ch'i I diverted the army to Helheim's unguarded capital (his last remaining province) and laid siege to it. A couple of turns later I tried to storm the castle. I forget exactly what went wrong now, but it was a catastrophe of epic proportions and horribly frustrating (also completely my own fault). My entire northern army was lost to a man, including tens of irreplaceable Tuatha Sorceresses.

Then, back in the south, bad things happened. I forget exactly how it went, but it was something along the lines of Oceania and Lanka teaming up to stomp me. Lanka invaded me with a huge army of many hundreds of undead, while Oceania managed to nick Arcoscephale's capital literally a turn before I was about to _finally_ capture it, reducing me nearly to tears. Somehow I managed some rather pleasing diplomatic turnaround (I think logic was on my side to be fair) and Oceania changed sides. With Oceania attacking his homeland Lanka was unable to properly support his invading army, which I gradually killed off, while my Sidhe Lord thugs proved easily able to kill his (Devala?) thugs with Cleansing Bells. The Lankan attack was repelled, Arcoscephale was transferred from Oceanian hands, and all the land claimed by Tir na n'Og since about turn 20 was finally restored.

It was clear now that I couldn't win in any fair way. My wars had been a series of shambles, and I had nothing like the strength expected for that stage of the game. My only remaining option was to be a complete weasel. So, I decided to go for Arcane Nexus (which, for future reference, I now think should be banned). A ridiculously overpowered spell, once I had it up I had ~100 pearls coming in from it a turn. Via wishes for gems, this translated to an extra turnly income of 25 of each gem type.

I could see it would still take me a long time to convert my gems into power, so I set about creating an invincible fortress. Choosing a random castle in what used to be Arcoscephale, where my pretender had ended up during the war against Lanka, I dug in. I put up all the domes apart from the blood one, brought in literally all my mages, and trained about 1000 troops to occupy it. I also had ~20-30 engineers from a nearby site, adding 30 more siege resistance each. As far as I was concerned I was invincible there.

I then set about systematically putting up all the most powerful globals I could. Gift of Health, Well of Misery, Forge of the Ancients, and finally Burden of Time. This last one I was hoping would cause huge problems for everyone but me, but in fact it seems to have been a bit disappointing.

I funnelled all my new gems into building up a decent magical setup. I summoned three Ether Lords and empowered two of them to be able to cast Wish. I also got five Demiliches summoned, and began equipping them to cast Tartarian Gate. I Wished for the Chalice, so as to have a monopoly on Tartarian healing. I used the Forge to start mass-producing clams. I got to about 20 when the final disaster happened.

Abysia must have had a LOT of gems. When he put two of his globals up (which I think I had been responsible for dispelling before) he knocked out both Arcane Nexus and the Forge. On the same turn I had had a huge spending spree, and used up my entire stock of pearls, mainly on empowerments. So in order to try to put it back up, I alchemisted literally all my remaining gems, recasting the Nexus with 400 gems. It failed.

I was now in the position of having a colossal horde of mages stuck in a fort, with a load of mundane troops, but no late game power to speak of. A had a single Tartarian, a manticore, and a load of Ether soldiers. I could cast Mass Protection and Fog Warriors, but little else, as I still hadn't finished research. In the meantime Oceania had started pouring into my lands (having conquered most of the rest of the world). So I guess when a few busy days happened, the motivation to take my turns wasn't quite there...

Well played again everyone, especially Kietsensei, and many props to everyone for sticking out the long late game. Hope to meet you again in-game sometime.