Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Yeah, R'lyeh is the cheapest, most unbalanced, overpowered crap of a nation.

Now tell me why R'lyeh is not unbalanced, they better be good reasons too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

[ February 03, 2004, 04:21: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Illithids eat a metric ton.
Can't affect Mindless with their 'specials'.
Rely so heavily on their capital if you drive the taxes up on it they have nearly an impossible time recovering if they survive.
Get owned by Arrows in a bad way.


Those are a few off the top of my head.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They aren't owned by arrows. Not being able to effect mindless beings is NOT a weakness. Depending on their home province is made up with the fact only Atlantis could effectively siege it. Only ermor is safe from the "specials" and Ermor is the only other nation which is uncanny underwater.

None of those reasons I am satisfied with.

NEXT!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

One time long ago, I took a philosophy class. There I learned that if you are to have an useful discussion, you need valid arguments with supports to your claim, otherwise one can say the most silliest things and claim you are right when you cannot be dissaproven. Hence the burden of proof is on the originator of the claim, not the other way around.

I.e. How is R'lyeh the cheapest, most unbalanced, overpowered crap of a nation?

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">All I want are reasons I can be satisfied with. I don't really understand what you just said either. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ever tried "target archers"?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You might want to supply some reasons to support your own case.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Argitoth. I could care less if your satisfied with the answers. But those are them. If I give you a knife and instead of stabbing your enemy you stab yourself, it doesn't make the knife wrong, but your implementation.

Edit: Try using some Barrels of Air or Sea King's Goblets or if you are really desperate some Pills of Water Breathing to siege R'lyeh quickly. Or if you didn't build any way to get into the water and you can't recruit any water or air mages, then you had better resigning yourself to not being able to go underwater and find a way to circumvent that weakness.

[ February 03, 2004, 06:07: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, if his strategy depended on disintegration then I would think it would have problems with any nation that can throw cannon fodder at him easily, and R'Lyeh's lobo guards work quite well at that.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Sure they have mind bLast and stuff but theyre infantry is a tad bit lacking

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Wow Zen, let's not start a flame war.

Those mindbLasters have thick armor, 16 protection. They also have unroutable fodder troops. Their mages are really powerful. What are "Target Archers?"

And no, I wasn't owned by R'lyeh and decided to make this thread. I started it because the first time I was owned by R'lyeh (way before you guys were even born) I've been meaning to start this thread.

Also, fodder troops help, but are just as good as massing archers on my mages. My strategy has a lot more depth than just disintegration. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif


Edit: I would create mindless troops by casting Pale Riders and casting Arouse Hunger for the mindless commanders. (I guess that would work, but I only play C'tis, what about all the other nations?)

[ February 03, 2004, 05:36: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Deleted

[ February 03, 2004, 06:06: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

#1. I did not get owned by R'lyeh anytime lately as I haven't VSed anyone playing R'lyeh.

#2. My strategy has a LOT of depth. Fodder and archers are not a weakness, not even fires from afar.

[ February 03, 2004, 05:46: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is why I use lots and lots of summons (mage and void) as "cannon fodder". Trolls work well on the front lines, and undead make nifty garrison troops.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Arrows cut through 16 protection just fine. So do xbow bolts, so do flaming arrows.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well then, obviously if you were owned by R'lyeh then you may need to look at some of the things implemented below if you feel they are 'so unbalanced' you needed a thread.

If it wasn't for the fact that paralyze cuts through MR so easily, they'd get torn up by Atlantis or anyone with any sort of cheap recruitable troop. All of yours are going to be better than any of R'lyeh's even if a bunch of them are paralyzed.

Mindless units tear up the fodder so that they don't kill your own fodder or other units. Know how many mind bLast attacks each Illithid gets? 10. If they don't have someone to kill the enemy units or paralyze all of yours, they are going to get eaten up.

R'lyeh is fun and interesting and has potential to give you a very bad time if you don't know their weaknesses, but are nowhere near close to overpowered or cheap.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, because I've beaten you plenty of times and I've played the game plenty of times to know that there is no strategy without weaknesses.

And yes, fires from afar will work, and so will murdering winter. So will mass harpies, spring hawks, rigor mortis, and any number of things.

If I could stomach constant IMing and complaining how someone was taking a turn over 5 minutes in the game we're playing I might play you again, but I'm just flawed in the fact I can't. Which I admit is just a paitence thing I don't have anymore.

[ February 03, 2004, 06:10: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Even when I massed archers that one time playing R'lyeh, all he did was mindbLast them. It was probably 75 archers against 30 mind bLasters with 16 protection.

Archers just got paralyzed.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

You can't just build 1 unit type and try to win.

That's why we've been saying "Fodder". You have to have more units with minds than your opponent to be able to outLast the illithids. All it takes is 1 volley of missile fire to cut down massive ranks of illithids.

If you have the customary orders of a front line on "Hold and Attack" you will also just be sitting there waiting to be chewed up by the mindbLasts. Or if you have just 1 commander sitting at the back and he happens to get targeted by a "Fire Rearmost" order and gets bLasted to death and all your troops rout.

Another good thing to know about R'lyeh is if you can make them rout, they lose all their mindless units (Shambler Thralls and Lobos). So fear works great on them.

[ February 03, 2004, 06:04: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Obviously you failed to issue orders to the archers such as "target large enemy monsters" (the illithids are size 4) or "target rearmost" (most people and AIs play the illithids at the far back). And if you did do this, then something else about your battlefield positioning, or the type of troops you had on the field, or the magical support (or lack thereof) was faulty.

I have no trouble countering R'lyeh. It also helps that I have played R'lyeh myself several times (it's a favorite of mine) so I am quite well acquainted with the shortcomings of my "own" units. Perhaps if you were more familiar with the units you are using, and those you face, you wouldn't have such a hard time.

Whining about it, and arguing with those that post trying to help you only shows immaturity and ingratitude. There are a lot of other choice adjectives I could use but I'll refrain.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'll tell you now, those aren't my weaknesses. Actually, this thread is kind of over. I see some of R'lyeh potential weaknesses. I'll have to do some player vs player.

Next is a thread for my disintegration strategy since Zen loves it so much. (just kidding http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Then there's the obvious answers. Ryleh has expensive leaders and large, expensive units, and cannot use indy leaders. The large, expensive units are ranged.

Ctis uses nature, astral, death, has one of the best assassins in the game, and has poison-resistant units. So...

1) Give assassins antimagic items, and assassinate Ryleh's leaders with skeletal swarms.

2) Use poison-cloud-ish spells, or foul vapors.

3) Cast swarm, and interrupt the mindbLasters with dragonflies, forcing them into melee. You can even curse them first, so even dragonfly bites will cause problems...

4) Cast antimagic. 1 gem (probably 2 for you), largely negates Ryleh. Or did you play an astral nation without plannning for the ability to reach Astral 2?

These are some pretty simple solutions. The best is probably crossbows, but you seem to have discounted that already.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Damn good idea!


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Crossbows are too expensive and hard to find a high resource province with them, so it's a very rare option.


ok and MAYBE i was arguitive at first, but I definitely wasn't wining.

[ February 03, 2004, 06:02: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

arguitive is not a word...

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was Last year... I'm a lot more mature now. Zen is never going to forgive me for that.

[ February 03, 2004, 06:10: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(obvious and almost irresistable comeback ... and flame ... deleted)

[ February 03, 2004, 06:18: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are? It's so hard to see that ... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Maturity comes with admitting you are immature. ANYWAY ANYWAY, not important. This thread is over, my questions have been answered, everyone got a little flaming done, it's all good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Money. They are expensive beyond belief and I have always had a rough time getting together a decent sized force. Any defeat or losses were particularly hard to recover from as most of your eggs are in one basket. Also, the lower average size of the armies meant that the mind bLasters were more likely to be hit by spells.

They are an “archer” nation if you focus on the mind bLasters. If your opponent gets tritons, which are cheap, they can easily swarm your archers. While they are keeping the bLasters busy, the rest of the army walks up to striking range.

Numbers of cannon fodder will swarm them, even if they are not flying. While powerful, the mind bLast only hits one unit a turn. If I faced large numbers of enemy, they would often swarm me. If they had high moral or could go bezerk, it was worse, they would hardly rout. Man proved particularly troublesome. Some of their big units needed more than one mind bLast to take them down, allowing them to get closer to me.

Tied to this is the food situation. You need to concentrate your forces to counter the risk of being over run by cannon fodder, which then concentrates your food needs. I found a lot of my guys would get ailments at some point, as “Starving” Messages were common.

The Gate is a big lottery ticket, you can not count on it. You might get some great stuff or you might get eaten or you might get some immobile units.

Finally, I have to agree with chiset. Argioth, you need to explain why you think this nation is unbalanced. Right now this is a one sided argument, which will not work. You are making a claim, stating things are imbalanced, but you offer no proof. You demand that we supply proof that you are wrong, but do not offer proof you are right.

You have created a situation which is very friendly to you, but not to others. It makes it impossible for you to “lose” and excludes competing points of view. It is probable that you will find that if you create a more balanced situation, you will get friendlier replies to it. It is also probable that if you continue offering arguments on these terms, you will also continue receiving less than warm replies. Just as balance is important in Dominions, it is in human interaction.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

yep yep, i see what you are saying. can't disagree with you.

but actually I did provide some info on why I thought the nation was unbalanced, but that was after I got suggestions.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Lets calculate by a simple way: Gold Cost.
75 indy archers, no matter which type you bought,worth 75*8=600 gold.
30 mind bLasters, lets say the basic illithid, worth 1500 gold.
now,ignore everything else, how can you compare this with that,600g with 1500g?
you should try 1500/8=187 archers vs. 30 illithids and you'll found that squidfaces cannot destroy your troops before they overloaded.
It's a addlepated way to calculate. but it's enough to explain a question stupid more.


Against Squidface?
Take your time in the "Atlantis strategy" thread,you'll found that they are friable beings.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Arg,
Squid-heads die quickly to all undead forces, large numbers of ranged units, flying units, and mindless constructs.
Defending against them is easy if you have a prov def that has more than one unit per point (Anything other than the Giants I believe). Just add 1 commander and 10 ranged units of any kind and they will get hurt badly even if they do win.

Sammual

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Everyone always Posts at some time that xxxx is unbalanced. Its usually when they have gotten good enough with that nation to always beat the AI. Such as Ermor being unbalanced until they play against a good human marignon player. Or Ulm being unbalanced until they play against a good human Arcos player.

In the case of Rlyeh Id say try playing against Rlyeh AI using Pangaea Carrion Woods theme.

Arent you the one who tried to challenge everyone to beat your perfect strategy. Is this a troll to get challengers?

[ February 03, 2004, 13:11: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">no more comments on my strategy in this thread please...

Oh. and that Last 1v1 I did I won by a hair.

[ February 03, 2004, 13:34: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Damn good idea!

Quote:

Originally posted by Saber Cherry: These are some pretty simple solutions. The best is probably crossbows, but you seem to have discounted that already.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Crossbows are too expensive and hard to find a high resource province with them, so it's a very rare option.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unless you are Ulm, or Marignon, or T'ien Ch'i, or any other nation that has a national crossbowman. Longbows (Man) work too.

I also agree with the dragonfly idea; Harpies or Eagle Warriors can do this too, as can any Caelum melee. More expensive flyers like Valkyries aren't as good at it because they will probably only engage part of the illithid force and then some of them will get mindbLasted.

The main thing you have to remember is that illithids cost 50 gold. Each. That's more than Jotuns. Nearly 50% more than Jotuns in fact. You should be able to outnumber them at least three or four to one with infantry, and you'll need to. (Cavalry don't work as well, because their higher cost means you can't have as many, and sheer numbers count for a lot against mind bLasts.)

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

My main concern with R'lyeh would be scalability. Most of their troops (just about everything but hybrids and star children) can only be recruited either underwater or at certain magical sites (and while there's at least one land-based site that provides Void Summoning, it is/they are rather rare), plus the better ones are magical and require magical leadership.
Protecting territory of decent size on land thus depends on independent units, which may have trouble dealing with the better nationals from other nations e.g. hoplites, Emerald Guard, massed xbows + Flaming Arrows et al. The magical nature of their units also makes them highly vulnerable to non-astral leader-killing tactics, because without mages most of their units will rout or even dissolve, and many indy provinces can't produce mages even with a lab. Risky.
Another bit would be that on high-indy settings, sea expansion is _painful_. It takes a lot of chaff to absorb the initial assault of 100+ tritons long enough for mindbLasting. Getting a second water fortress might take some time.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Actually, I think Rl'yeh's biggest weakness is more subtle. Illithids have a huge upkeep cost. This is far more devastating than their initial purchase cost. You just can't maintain a very large army of them, and the more you buy, the less you're able to buy in the future. They're a gigantic money-sink.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

I have nothing left to say except these are good points. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">High indy settings force the squids onto land much sooner than they otherwise prefer to. And the best way for the squids to take on large masses of tritons is to use summonable sea trolls. Masses of ichthytids, if you can find them, work passably well too.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very true. Which is why a major squid strategy is to aim for rapid conquest of river provinces with their high-income farmlands.

Their least-subtle weaknesses are versus flyers (illithids die quickly when engaged in melee) and arrows (as Zen pointed out long ago in this thread).

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

One can also use high MR troops, especially since the the penetration of Mind BLast will probably drop into line once the spell Paralyze is fixed.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Actually I like R'yleh more with a high indy. They do have very good assasains. However, in general I don't think they are generally overpowered. MindbLast is MUCH weaker than the Dom 1 mindbLast was, IMO, now that it's not area. Arrows will kill the unarmored illithids, and if your opponent is building armored illithids he wont have the resources to build too much fodder in front. As long as your not Ermor or something, just give him lots of pointless targets to mindbLast. Keep in mind each illithid costs almost as much as a vaetti hag, and an army of vaetti hags or any other lvl 1 mage is much more dangerous.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Another problem with the armored illithids is that they move much slower than the cheaper, unarmored variety. They're not terribly useful because as the lands under your control expand, they cannot keep up with the pace of that expansion. It's by far more efficient to build more of the "cheap" illithids and deal with the fact that you'll lose some to archers.

I handle this by setting my illithids to "fire archers". Tit for tat. I can kill the archers far faster than they can do me serious harm. And if you happen to have a Vastness (and have not given it Gift of Reason yet to make it a SC), it can rip up the archers in no time ...

AIs never seem to build archers in enough quantity to become a major threat. Human players are another matter ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Actually I usually note too much shortbow archer use by the AI. It's his tendancy to aim at the front troops and have militia and other useless units in his army that usually defeats him.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Good points on R'yleh. Let's talk counter-counter strategies for a sec. Strikes me that using staff of storms becomes uniquely valuable vs human players to disable distance attacks. I think there is also a water based spell to prevent fire based magic use, something the illithids rarely use (unless you set your pretender up this way).

Are there other storm creating options besides the SOS? What good (and generally accessible) options are there for shutting down arrows? I like mass protection, but r'yleh seems unlikely to get nature 3 with appropriate numbers of casters to support anything more than a single army or two.

Also, what strategies do people have for the void? I have played multiple games with the R'yleh - most in early stages - and even with luck turned on have only managed to get some lower level stuff. I also have had several attacks on the starspawn (some victories, some deaths). One of my units got up to lvl6 summoning, but had nothing to show for the effort (got killed). Does swapping new starspawn priests in occasionally help? Also, what about starspawn mages? Are they better at summoning?

Thanks for the tips. This point-couter-point discussion highlights the depth of this game.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Even more is the fact that no one ever gets a clear win. Ive dropped multiplayer games in the past because certain strategys became recognized killer-strategys and it boiled down to who could get there faster.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

As Void Monsters are among my favorite elements in the game, I will fill you in on them.

Priests summon much better than mages. They both seem to summon more stuff, and they are vastly less likely to get feebleminded. By the time one of them GETS feebleminded, you may well have the chalice or gift of health, and be able to heal him. Thus, the sky is the limit for their summoning ability, although eventually it 'maxes out' and all you get are greater othernesses. Which should not be knocked.

Cthugul the Stargazer apparently has a slightly smaller chance of getting feebleminded than a regular priest. Whether you want to devote him to summoning is up to you.

Two strategies to deal with the occasional (well, frequent) monster attacks. Give your priest a squad of tough units set to 'guard commander' (and give him a ring of warning, too, so you can have 10 bodyguards!). Or you can have him set to cast that recall spell first turn of combat. I haven't tried it, but I'm told it will get him away scot free, even from horrors (which attack fantastically rarely, but do attack). I think there's a ritual spell he has to cast outside of combat to 'prime' the recall spell, though.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Returning (Thaug 1) and Ritual of Returning (Ench 5) will help save your Starspawn. In one ridiculously long SP game where by the end I was mostly romping around with Master Enslave, I had only one Starspawn priest summoner for the entire game -- he had over 60 summoning skill (GoH and Chalice were used to facilitate feeblemind recovery).
Greater Othernesses are definitely helpful; they're an unbreakable, very robust front line that doesn't care whether the opposition is mindless or not.
Re: archers, in addition to storms (which will not shut down archery, only hurt base PREC -- bonuses due to levels or magic are not affected IIRC), you could also use decoy units to throw off targeting, and perhaps try to find a Raptor province or other supply of fliers. If you can find a good air mage, Arrow Fend would also be a useful spell to cast.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

How often do vastnesses come along? ie ever gotten one? Also, at what summoning skill do you get access to tougher monsters?

My only encounters with void critters have been battles to the death. In both cases, I could have mindbLasted the guys, but one of them got the drop on me first. I have yet to be feebleminded (or at least I think so).

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

Vastnesses are pretty rare (I usually get 1 per game), and truthfully, while they're good units, they're not quite as amazing as they tend to be made out to be. Greater Othernesses are much more common, and are pretty much as good.

I suggest starting out buying crab hybrids and shamblers as bodyguards, then replacing them when you start getting decent void monsters, or when you research those spells. That should keep your boy alive long enough to plump your army out with some mighty otherworldly backup.

[ February 05, 2004, 18:13: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have gotten a Vastness with summoning 9. The most vastnesses I have had in a single game is 3.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry to disagree, but the GO isn't even close to as good. The Vastness flies, has strategic move of 10 -- which makes for one hell of a SC that can zip around the map as a fire brigade if needed, or to single-handedly chomp on enemy rear-area provinces -- and much better attacks (and more of them, too). Anyone who thinks the GO is even in the same league as the Vastness hasn't been using a Vastness to its full potential, even as a non-SC.

There's a very good reason why the Vastness is a rare summon, and limited in how many you can get.

Re: Give me good reasons why R\'lyeh is a balanced nation.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would say that a network of well placed labs helps R'lyeh quite a bit here. It might take the Spawns a couple turns to react, but when done, it's done in force.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not so much of a problem as you make it sound. Spending just 1 gold in province defense gives R'lyeh an Illithid Lord with magical leadership that can sustain an horde of mindless magical critters, even if all recruited commanders were to die (which is also unlikely IMO, the Starspawns are extremely resistant to both physical & magical assasination).

[ February 09, 2004, 10:01: Message edited by: Wendigo ]