Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

I played Patala.

You have insulted me severely twice in the last week in this thread. First in your comments on my simple request to clarify the victory conditions. Second here. I suppose this one you didn't know it's me. Frankly, I assumed you had it figured after my desperate attempt to get clarification in a hurry.

Luckily, you have made it clear that your personal discredit isn't worth the electrons it's sent with.

I made a severe mistake and did not understand the victory conditions. I only realized two turns ago that Midgard was near victory. I took over the position from Executor on turn 45 and have stayed with it the entire game.

My second mistake was worse. I had built up two huge armies planning to astral travel onto Midgard when required. But I didn't finish Thaumaturgy 9 in time. So sadly, I sent every air drop capable thug and sc onto the final battle without supporting trops. And I lost.

This all comes from playing too many games at once. A noob mistake.

At least I can happily say I sent Ctis down the toilet before I wasted my chance.

It was pretty clear to me early that I might as well let Ctis and Bogarus bash each other senseless which they did with great gusto. I just sat back and made clams and prepped SC's. My terrible mistake was in timing. I waited too long to air drop onto Midgard and was left with the only option to drop onto his huge prepared army.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

WingedDog I'm thankful to you for providing me a very entertaining war. I knew I can't make a difference on the game but our "cat and mouse" games kept me going :)

And for the record, as my kid might say: "it was you who started it". You have attacked me first and I had to retaliate. My original plan was to attack midgard, not you, b/c I saw Pan caving in to him. In-fact, when you attacked me I was thinking, "what the hell?", now why on earth would Ctis want to attack me?- doesn't he see my research advantage?

For the record, I also had bad luck all game long. As a result I'm never taking misfortune 2 again. I was visited by the heroes, raided by indies every turn, lost temples and what not. My luck this game just stank so from now on it's neutral luck scales for me :)

I want to come clean on more mistakes I made out of inexperience with Boagarus or vanity:
1. E4 on pretender turned out to be a waste of design points.
2. I should have focused on blood and not on constr. 8/conj 8. The artifacts I forged weren't really helpful. The unique summons like AQs didn't stand toe to toe with Ctis thugs/SCs.
3. Something happened to golems. I can't put my finger on what but I no longer consider them a trustworthy heavy duty raider SC chasis. I lost equipped golems to mobs of undead all over the place.
4. death focused communions are generally way better than air focused.
5. My biggest mistake - underestimating you. I think it was your poor start that misled me to thing you're inexperienced. So I thought I could win against you with 20% resources dedicated to war and all the rest to build up my infrastructure.
I learned my lesson in humility :D

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Updated first post.

Still missing nations of Isokron, Raiel & TwoBits. One of which is our lucky winner.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

Crap, thought there's be at least one more turn, but Utgard didn't have enough left to keep the walls up. Oh well, not like the relief force I was putting together really had any chance anyway.

Anyhow, I was Pythium. Went with an awake E5 Cyclops (the only effective way to handle Indies-9, I mean, even Order-3 didn't give enough Hydras to expand well), so my scales were pretty spotty.

But I got off to a good start. As Calahan noted, I had somewhat of a break in the border arrangements regarding Man, and had my flanks secure by being in the corner. But then again, I was saddled with lots of Wastelands and other crummy real-estate.

Even without using Hydras, I had the military strength and magical diversity to overpower Jomon. As Mictlan and Gath were busy fighting over more Wastelands, Man seemed like a logical target (no recruitable SCs and such to worry about, a secure flank, ease of patrolling for infiltrators, etc.).

There were some big battles, but things slowly went my way (Flaming Arrows were still fairly effective at that point), perhaps aided by Calahan turning over the rains to another player. And while that was going on, I found a magic site that allowed recruitment of Circle Masters, and another for Sorcerers, so was beginning to get into Blood in a respectable way (although suitable Blood-Hunting provinces were few).

And right when I was besieging the last Man fortress (AI at this point), Midgard hit me hard, taking advantage of Sailing at first to rout me from the southern Man lands, and then sending in the Raiders. Sorry for casting Eyes of God (your scouts probably missed out on watching some interesting action in Pythium lands), but I thought it might help me catch his Vanadrotts - it didn't :(

All I could do was use flying demons and such (once I found the proper commanders - w/ Astral - and gave them flying gear) to retake lost ground, and try to kill his raiders with Mind Hunt (had some success, but S income was low, and I only had a few capable commanders - and only one after a big defeat). Meanwhile, I was slowly getting ground down.

Rain of Stones was a big killer. Pythium's human mages do not hold up well to those kind of battle spells. Even using Mass Protection was no help, not when Midgard cast Army of Lead on its own troops, and dropped 3-4 RoSes in a row :hurt: And having to commit many mages to battle meant I slowly started to fall behind in research, so my own Army of Lead (and only my pretender could cast it) was a long way off.

So basically, I was outnumbered, outspent, outreaserched, and outfought. Kudos to Midgard on the masterly take-down!

I'd be interested in a YARG 2 (especially with CBM 1.6 - I think that would really have helped Pythium a lot, with Dragon Master and whatnot). Not having to engage in diplomacy early in the game certainly made things a heck of a lot earlier. But then again, I really wish I could have cried for help when Midgard was administering its beating to me :D

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

Glad to have you aboard :)
As for your points re. map - it's clear you have good maps understanding and I think your points are good. Do you think you could apply fixes to the game map according to your comments?

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Hmmmm... Really I remember it the other way around. And I remember my thought: "Bogarus chose a perfect timing for a strike. I'd do the same thing myself if I was him." But I had no reason to doubt your word, so I needed a proof for myself I'm not going mad, and after a brief search I found a turn when our war began. Take a look, you are the one who started it!:)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Are you sure WingedDog? I also have saved the turns and I was positive it was you who attacked me first.
ok, I did some searching. You attacked me two turns earlier at turn 26 province 99 (pwd is "klavim_tovim" ).

Edit: not much of an attack but I was thinking - Ha, he clearly plans a large invasion so I must retaliate ASAP.
EDIT2: Thus begun the via dolorosa for Bogarus :)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Now it makes sense. Two turns earlier I was in a vacation and my nation was ruled by Burnsaber. He had forgotten to save the turns for me and I never seen them.:)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

LOL! Such small things do great events turn upon! No wonder all were busy when Pythium was getting stomped by Midgard ;)

Oh, and that shall be my lesson, save all turns from any future MP games :D

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Victory!

I was playing midgard which was a first for me. At first glance they didnt seem very impressive but I did some test games and found skinshifters to expand really well and later on in the game I would be really impressed with their mages versatility also. So i decided to skip vans and big blesses and go for a sleeping rainbow with great scales.

Expansion went well but then Marignon attacked and i thought I was in big trouble. Luckily he didnt seem very experienced and I could walk in more or less unopposed into his capital which sent all his armies scrambling back and allowing me to take more or less everything else and then killing him. I guess he had overestimated how effective crossbows would be against skinshifters.

Just as I had finished Margingon Pangea attacked me and I thought I was in trouble again. For some reason he got into a war with Ulm at the same time though (not sure who attacked) which diverted a lot of his forces and allowed me to counter attack. This war was probably decided by a bit of luck when my arena champion single handedly killed his gorgon which might otherwise have devastated my armies (only to get killed by some satyrs and an earth meld some turn later :( ). Pangea also went heavily for crossbows but by this time I had storm and mist up which allowed me to take his castles together with some thunderstrike spam.

Well as was becoming a habit by now Ulm attacked me just as I was finishing off Pangea. The situation again looked grim for a while and there was several tense turns when we manoeuvred 200+ armies around each other but somehow not triggering any large battles. Meanwhile my research finally allowed me to equip effective raiders from my vanjarls and they started doing their work in his backyard. When the big battles finally occurred I had arrowfend up so my skinshifters more or less ignored his huge amount of crossbows as they killed everything.

After this I finally got some peace although I ended it quite quickly by taking some cutoff Utgård provinces including a vp while trying to decide to do next.

I decided that Pythium would strike me next after finishing Man whatever I did so I could as well strike first. This went very well and I didnt run into any real heavy resistance until the old Man capital. Here I again got lucky when he didnt get his fogwarriors up until turn 3 which allowed me to kill a lot of his mages (ending several of his BEs) with a rain of stones. If he had gotten fogwarriors on turn2 he would probably have won this battle which in turn would have prolonged the war with at least 5-10 turns giving Gath and Patala plenty of time to strike me.

So the same turn as I took the Man capital I also had a second piece of luck when Gath decided to just scout the Utgård capital showing that it was nearly undefended and the walls where breached. So instead of starting a long slog up to the Pythium capital I opportunistically jumped the Utgård one with everything I had.

My first act as Pantokrator will probably be to build a statue of the dragon of a thousand wounds that involuntarily kept my western border safe from first Bogarus and then Patala. Or maybe I will just summon and petrify it, hm yes that sounds easier.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

*do a homer imitation* Why Burnsaber you... *and proceeds to strangle him* ;)

Yes, a chilling demonstration of the butterfly effect. All started with an innocent vacation :)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Heh, thanks everyone. Being admin for this game wasn't too much work, so yeah, I can handle admin duty for the next YARG as well. And calahan, while you were almost certainly the most active player in PMing me, it was not really annoying :P WingedDog was the other player who sent me lots of PMs about people who were staling, by the way.

Oh, and here is the master list of players:

WraithLord - Bogarus
ano, Danbo, psycho - Pangaea
Calahan, Herode - Man
Ossa, JR77 - Agartha
Dimaz - Gath
Gandalf Parker - Jomon
TwoBits - Pythium
Natpy - Marignon
Frozen Lama - Caelum
Dragar - Abysia
Strabo - Atlantis
Executor, Maerlande - Patala
Isokron - Midgard
Raiel - TC
WingedDog - C'tis
Slobby - Utgard
LumenPlacidum - Ulm
Alpine Joe - Mictlan
StrictlyRockers - Arcoscephale

If there was another sub, then I must have forgotten to take their name down at the time. So if you were a permanent sub for this game and aren't listed here, feel free to speak up.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Crap. My new policy is to save all MP turns. If I'd done that before, I could at least go back and see why I hadn't cast Fog Warriors until the third round at the Battle of Man's Capital, and thus doomed us all to bowing down before The Dragon of a Thousand Wounds (that's a good moniker for a Pantakrator though!) ;)

Yeah, I would have had Mass Regeneration, Relief, and Quagmire up at that battle (and maybe some more, but like I said, I didn't save my turns, and now I've forgotten) at Man's capital. But Mass Protection didn't stop you from slaying my mages with RoSes, and after that, it was a foregone conclusion.

BTW, I had no intention of attacking Midgard, at least not until someone else started a fight with you first. But that kind of, "he's gonna attack me soon, so I might as well kill him now", paranoia payed off for you, just as it did for the Roman Republic :D Nice job, Isokron!

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

Believe me when I tell you that there is no toungue, mortal or divine, that can adequately express how thoroughly distraught I am to read this. Indeed, I suspect that the culmination of my entire existence has passed me by in complete ignorance.

----

When I joined, I did so as a n00b with a solid understanding of tactics, a decent understanding of strategic movement, but little
to no appreciation of just how important a good long-term strategy is in this game.

I knew nation selection in this game was random, but I figured that with only three nation in the late era that I definitely didn't want to play as, I was safe. Unfortunately, late age TC was my least favorite nation. I've since discovered some things I like about them, but long after designing a rather poor build for this game.

On our first start, I had a great start position that I could have made work even with my poor design. The restart, however, left me starting in a pass (almost dead center of the map) and surrounded by terrain that completely neutralized one of the few TC advantages I was prepared to exploit: strategic mobility.

I eventually attacked Gath to the north and was rebuffed with only a minimal effort... I then ventured east against Utgard, taking the vast majority of his territory and enslaving much of his armies, but could never be sure I was set to take his cap without exposing myself to the other nations around me. Just a newbie's jitters perhaps, but there ya go. :)

Gath invade just a couple of turns before I was ready to cast AN and start an invasion of my own, but the game was pretty much decided before this.

Overall, it was a learning experience that was almost fun. Thanks guys!

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Isokron, you did a find job getting to victory in this game. And there were those who thought bless nations would rule the day given the game's settings...

Thank you rdonj for agreeing to steer the next YARG. So far we have on board from this games player's:
- Dimaz
- Clahan
- WL

Anyone else interested in securing a spot?- I'll probably start enlisting openly tomorrow so speak up now if you're interested.

Edit, an observation re. bless nations in this game. They evidently didn't fare that well. From the finishing nations and in good state were at least three non bless builds: Pythium, Bogarus and Midgard. At indie 9, low income, no diplo and hard research that's quite interesting.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Ummm... me. I thought I wrote about it. :)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Patala was a non-bless build. Executor used a VERY light bless all but insignificant.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

I would be interested in joining a new YARG also.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

WingedDog: sorry, must have missed that.
Maerlande: Wow, make that 4 none bless builds that made it to the end!

So far we have on board from this game's players:
- Dimaz
- Clahan
- WL
- WingedDog
- Isokron

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Midgard wins!]
 

Heh, yeah, we had some pretty damn big armies jumping at one another for a while. I had thought I had finally gained the upper hand when I moved around a major army and finally laid siege to a big fortress of yours with a VP in it. Then I realized that the magic sites were all wrong, and it ended up being someone else's capital that you took earlier.

I went with an awake dom 10 ghost king with a bit of nature, blood, and death, hoping to really leverage my immortal vampire counts with a lot of dominion push. The ghost king did wonderfully in helping me expand and I had a great early game, right up until the point where the first fort I was building was destroyed by an ancient power awakening and eating the population and the commander building it...

This was made up by me ganking Atlantis pretty early, including storming their second fort pretty fast (replacing the one that was interrupted) and ruining a Man army at Atlantis' capital, following that by taking said capital. The Ulmish rangers blotted out the sky with their crossbows.

Pangaea had some truly terrifying armies and was sitting right on my border, so I decided that I needed to stem that tide, so I attacked and won through some major casualties. When I saw Pangaea attacking Midgard, I thought it might be my only chance to get a leg up over the vans, so I attacked them with pretty much everything I had. Unfortunately, he turned and *CRUSHED ME MERCILESSLY*. I only hope that all the slave collars I put on wolfherd commanders when he stormed my capital managed to get on some key mages of his.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [7/19 players alive]
 

Lol, think I just sound convincing sometimes, since can't claim my understanding of maps is any better than most peoples. Although do know the type of maps I like and the types I don't.

But I suppose I could add my name to the growing list of people who have tried valiantly to balance the start locations on "Glory of the Gods". Only had one bash at map editing before though, but seem to remember it not being too difficult (to use the tools that is).

That one attempt I had, and because of how much I loath marked or fixed capitals, I split the starting locations up into 'zones', so that each nation had a chance of starting anywhere within a small area, or 'zone', but with no actual fixed starting province. And I arranged the start locations in such a way that no two nations could start next to each other ('next' as in one or two provinces apart). I've attached a picture of the map for that game to show more clearly what I'm on about :)

The map never got used in the end (as a map with more water was needed) so no idea if this 'zone' start idea works in practice. The test games I ran though always had nations starting in separate zones as planned (and not two accidentally in the same 'zone'), but not sure how effective it was at stopping the 'beeline to nearest capital' tactic for rushers. Think it helps a bit, but certainly not as much as pure random starts would.

No idea if a similar 'zone' idea is possible for the Glory of the Gods map though, yet alone if it's a wanted idea in the first place. I know elmokki has done some really nice maps over the past year or so. Maybe worth checking some of them out.

But before all that we probably need to decided which era, as that will influence how many nations are in the game, and how many water provinces are needed (that's if we're having water nations at all that is).

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Congrats Isokron!

I played Utgard.

It was my first time playing them (or any of the niefels for that matter) and the first time that I've gone with a large double bless (E9N9B4). My early plan was to cream someone quick and get a leg up (why buy a 2nd fort when you can take it?). Abysia was the target and after some stumbles I took them out (Pan was harrassing me at the same time).

After the fall of Abysia I then looked at my neighbors. Large Pan to the south, Tien and Gath to the west, Pythium to the north east and Man to the east. The next logical progression was to take out Man because they're known to be weak and then head north to take out Pythium so that I would control the NE portion of the map.

The result? Man put up much more of fight than anticipated and actually took the offensive against me (well done Calahan!). After that Tien came in on the west and I was forced to fight on two fronts, losing territory as the turns went on. All the while my network of spies watched Midgards decimation of Pan.

The final kick was Midgard coming up from the south after ravaging Pan and besieging the old Abysian capital. At the end I had my capital and 1 province, and the Abysian capital was undersiege. Needless to say I was bleeding and done.

I'd definately be interested in another Yarg with CBM, perhaps the next one should be EA or singleage? EA would be fun thematically if you kept the indies at 9, truly a struggle at the beginning of time!

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

I was Mictlan. This was one of my first games, and my first non-cbm one. I went with a pretty traditional bless and expansion went decently but then Gath attacked. My troops did well against Gath line troops, but he started deploying Gadol SCs that were very hard to kill. I tried to blitz blood research to get some Anti-SC spells but by the time I researched enough Gath already had me on the ropes. My slave income never really got started so I was low on slaves and B3 mages to make use of Life for Life and other blood combat spells. Then Patala invaded and my jag armies were gone and my Anti-SC counters were useless against him. The end was quite predictable.

I started this game very green and feel like I learned a lot, particularly a high respect for SCs with an earth bless. I would be interested in YARG 2, where I can hopefully avoid 25 turns of sitting in my cap....

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Yeah, you can sign me up too for the next YARG :)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Calahan: Thank you! how about we go EA for YARG2?
I don't want single age b/c rdonj will randomly assign nations and I want to keep it simple so that the nation pool equals the number of players.
EA has 24 nations so we can enlist up to 24 players. I want to keep the indie 9 and hard research settings. I think they gave a refreshing tempo to this game.

So far we have on board from this game's players:
- Dimaz
- Clahan
- WL
- WingedDog
- Isokron
- Slobby
- Alpine Joe
- TwoBits
- Frozen Lama

9/24

YARG2 thread coming up today.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

My vote is also against single age. Indies 9 and difficult research sure sound fun.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

I also back the calls for not having single age, and keeping high Indy's and tougher research.


@ WraithL - If we go EA on the Glory map and 24 nations, then for the water nations, you'll probably have to make sure we either get the full 24 players, or ensure whoever rolls the nations that all three water nations are assigned. As there's an awful lot of water on offer. Plus on Glory I'd assign (or I will assign with your approval) all the Eastern waters as no start, since the Western sea is too big for just two water nations IMO (especially if the land nations are only having a map average of around 10-11 provinces each).

I'll try and find some time today to browse the map section to see if there are any alternative maps to consider.


@ Isokron - Congrats on a fine win. You're certainly proving yourself to be one tough ombre from the three games I've played with you so far. Looking forward to another tangle here :) And maybe RL will allow me to fight you as well this time instead of annoyingly intervening to spoil the fun :mad:

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Calahan: We will get full 24 players.
Your idea re. water nations makes sense.
Thanks for following your suggestions with a fix.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

YARG2 thread is up :)

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

So what's the rational behind 'no renaming'? Is it just too much of a risk of identification? I guess I can understand that, but it would be nice to at least be able to rename your commanders to the unit type and magic paths. Oh well, I can live without it. Otherwise, I don't mind the other parameters.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Where possible it's better to remove the temptation.
So with renaming one could name his scout "NAP +3?" and attack a neighbor. No renaming = one less diplo. channel. It ain't perfect and at the end it really boils down to the player's willingness to play by the rules. The rule system is mostly supportive of the "spirit" of no diplo.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

I know I didnt last long but this was an interesting game. Thank you.
It doesnt look like I will be in the next one though.

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

AAR for Man. Part 1.

Right, where to begin this thing. I seem to remember my Pretender design for this game being literally a five minute affair due to a lot of RL crappy-ness at the time. And quite rightly, it was this slap-dash designing that was the cause of most of my limitations during the game. Plus the switch from playing entirely CBM games to suddenly playing a vanilla game did a real number on my senses with regards what Pretenders were cost effective. Probably should've just played a no-brainer card and gone with one of the Pretenders QM has nerfed the hell out of in CBM. Like Cyclops or especially PoD :)

In the end I went for a big multi-path Master Lich with 2's in all paths except for 3 in Earth, Astral and Death for obvious Rings and Hammers access. Part of my hastily put together plan was to take my Pretender awake to get a lot of gem income very quickly. That idea ended up a huge fail.

Scales wise I went for O3S3H2G3M2D2 and Dominion 7.

Order 3 needs no comment. Sloth 3 was fine as well IMO, since even though LA Man has some useful mid-level resource troops, I was planning to use mass Longbows to expand which are resource cheap. Plus once the first dozen or so turns are done, I find resource problems largely vanish with all nations by building forts in select locations (if you have a need for a lot of resources that is). Some nations do need to avoid Sloth though in order to get a decent expansion rate. Heat 2 was just a points grab for extra magic paths. Growth 3 was to keep those damn Arcane's alive. Since without Death or Nature paths their old age were sure to hit them hard come winter. Misfortune 2 is another no comment job given Order 3.

Drain 2 was the main decision scale wise. LA Man's mages can ignore the research effect of Drain scales, so it seemed a logical call. And I avoided Drain 3 due to the magic fading event it allows, which I've been hit with before, and remember it costing me literally hundreds of gems. But my research really did suffer all game as a result, and I'd certainly think about taking a magic scale with LA Man next time. Possibly even Magic 3, under which Magister's become research kings. But then along with this change, I'd also change practically everything else about my build as well, since it was generally very poor all round.

Onto the game itself.......


My start location was pretty dire (200) for LA Man's needs. Dire as in Forests and Mountains everywhere. Since the last type of forts LA Man wants to build are 1000gp Forest Castles, or the God awful 1200gp Hill Castle. So I forecast slim prospects of building any nice money boosting Citadels or Fortified Cities :( Plus all the Forests meant a high likelihood of finding more Nature gems which I wouldn't be able to use for ages.


[Intermission] Some Dominions 3 trivia for you all. Did you know that LA Man are the only nation in the entire game that have a starting gem income but no corresponding national mages with the matching path to use them. In the entire game! No idea if this is WAD or just a pure oversight. But either way it makes no sense IMO, and it can be damn annoying to have only half the useable starting gem income compared to every other nation in the game. Plus it feels completely at odds with how every other nation in the game is setup. Maybe something for CBM to look into?! [/Intermission]


My expansion rate was reasonable enough, as just a few Defenders placed just back from centre are fine line holders for the Longbows to do their job from the back. The biggest problem I had during expansion was the sheer lack of options. With the connection between (200)+(219) getting cut during map balance for no logical reason I can see, I was left to either fight for a handful of provinces to my South, where I'd quickly run into whoever started at (138) (Caelum as it turned out), or take my chances into traffic by heading West. I really wanted to avoid the latter as I envisioned whoever started in (248) (Pythium as it turned out) was going to expand hard in a South-West direction, as they had the luxury of being able to ignore all East expansion until a much later date. Since all those provinces were gloriously safeguarded in the early game by the modified map connections. So this, along with a starter at (184) (Utgard as it turned out), left me pretty doubtful of securing any real provinces towards my West.


Not too much to report about the first dozen or so turns. Main disappointment came from the first three province searches with my Pretender all striking out site wise. Although I did get lucky with finding an Enchantment 30 site a bit later. But as the game unfolded, this province was to prove to be in a real hot-zone, which meant I never got a chance to fort it to take advantage of it. I also found all my neighbours, and witnessed Utgard doing a rush job on Abysia. Indeed, had Utgard come straight for me instead of Abysia, I doubt I would have stood much chance in holding them off. So guess I had a lucky break here when Utgard did their usual eeny-meeny-miny-moe on turn 2 with regards which VP marked capital to bee-line towards.

My checking account after the expansion phase left my balance looking reasonably ok, apart from the major drawback of having a really strung out empire. As besides a clump of provinces to the South of my capital, all the other provinces I grabbed were in a flat line leading West. Which I had no doubt would be impossible to defend logistic wise if anyone apart from my Southern neighbours attacked me. Heck, I would even struggle to reclaim them if the multi-coloured sock wearing Baa-Baas paid me a visit. So while my province count was looking healthy on the surface, in reality it was suffering from a lot of deep rooted afflictions.


So with expansion over, and with having built forts on the only two secure provinces I had that allowed 'good' forts, it was time to look for opportunities at the expense of others.

My scouts had brought home a lot of info by this time, and had learnt of wars between Utgard-Pangaea. Mictlan-Gath. Jomon-Pythium. Atlantis-Everyone. I really wanted to attack Utgard at this stage, but knew it could be a bit of a struggle given their typical giant nation bless without the necessary spells (Destruction mainly). But a huge collection of pathless Magister's was really slowing my research down badly. Although they would give me good unrest causing options once a war did kick off.

In the end I settled on attacking Caelum to my South, since they were occupying themselves to their South by sticking their nose into the Ulm-Atlantis war. Also thought it'd be a good idea to get rid of Caelum sooner rather than later, since they could prove to be the nemesis to my Flaming Arrow's mid-game once they had Storm and/or Arrow Fend researched. With hindsight I should have attacked Utgard, but everyone knows hindsight wins every game, so no point dwelling on this.

In the turns leading up to my war with Caelum, I had started stockpiling a load of gold. Think I had about 3k by the time the fighting started. This was not so much because I had nothing to spend gold on, and more because I was refusing to build those crappy forts I mentioned earlier, and I was eyeing some of Caelum's provinces as nice future Fort sites. So thought it'd be good to have the gold to fort them instantly at hand the moment I secured them. The first two turns of the Caelum war went precisely as planned, as I found little resistance against my mass Communion + Defender/Longbow armies, due entirely to Caelum's main force being on war duties far from home. But a dark cloud was looming on the immediate horizon in the form of a giant-shaped twister.


Now, for the first time in my RAND game experience, I actually witnessed a war between two nations coming to a complete halt. And as anyone who has played in a few RAND games will know, this is a pretty rare occurrence, since with no diplomacy to ask for peace, you usually have to keep fighting your enemy(s) until you win or lose. And it was the sudden stop to the Utgard-Pangaea war that caused all my plans to be turned on their heads when Utgard attacked me the very turn after I attacked Caelum. Found this a real curve-ball to deal with, as Utgard-Pangaea had been squabbling over the Abysia capital for a good dozen turns beforehand, and I didn't expect a winner to be found between them anytime soon. And the prospect of them suddenly embracing for kisses in a loving peace hug didn't enter my head for even a moment.


But this sudden turn of events left me facing the stark reality that my plans of being the minnow hunter getting turned against me, as with blessed giants now knocking on my door, the odds were looking good that it would be Man and not Caelum who would be the little fish heading for the catfood factory.

So from having no wars two turns ago, I suddenly found myself in two of them. With the main problem, besides the usual ones associated with fighting on two fronts, being a huge logistical one given my map-move 1 armies, and the large distance between the Caelum and Utgard battle zones. Plus the temporary problem of having absolutely all my forces sitting on the Caelum capital. Not because I needed all my forces to win the battles against Caelum, but because I wanted to get Caelum's huge 700 defence capital breached before they got any key anti-Man research done. Which would be a tall order given Caelum flying advantage during sieges.

So with this sudden emergence of a new war against a powerful enemy, I needed to come up with a plan quick, else find myself on the losing backfoot on both fronts........


This is probably a good as time as any to end Part 1 of this AAR. Part 2 at some point soon I hope....

Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
 

Nice job. I look forward to more since all your action occured in a part of the map I paid little attention to beyond scouts.