No_NAPs_Land war ended, earcaraxe won!
 

this game is intended to be a faster paced one, like playing versus 5 very smart AIs.

no experience requirement, vets and newbs all welcomed.

llamaserver
cbm 1.92
sixlands
no diplo
30 hrs hosting
quickhost
early age
hof 15
turning AI is not a sin

no recruiting 0 gold ettins from sites (bogus orders, etc.)

earcaraxe: Sauromatia
vargr: Vanheim
keithz: T'ien C'hi
valerius: Tir Na Nog
Austen: Hinnom
Holey Dooley:Abysia

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 6/6
 

Sounds like a good opportunity to test Lanka :)
Sign me in, please!

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 1/6
 

I'd like to join as Tian-chi, thanks.

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 1/6
 

I was just thinking it might be time to join another game. :) Not completely sure which nation, but for now please sign me up as Pan.

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 1/6
 

I'm also unsure, but for now put me down as Hinnom.

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 1/6
 

Games are seriously starting to slow up. So I am going as my current favourite Abysia.

The nation KeithZ kicked my hairy arse all over the world with.

Cheers.

Re: No_NAPs_Land recruiting 1/6
 

Ya.. I'm going to go with Hinnom.

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

cool, we are full. the game has been set up. please send ur pretenders in asap. good luck for everybody, and enjoy yourselves!

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

im swithching to sauro, i hope u dont mind.

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

I ran some tests with Pan but wasn't enjoying them as much as I'd hoped, so I'll give my old favorite TNN a try under 1.92.

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

sure.

waiting for tnn and lanka pretenders.

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

Sorry for indecisiveness, but I can't seem to be able find a build I like, at least not without a lot of testing. Can I still change to Vanheim? I could upload a familiar build right away.

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

sure u can. unless valerius switches to vanheim first :)

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

OK, the norsemen are ready!

Re: No_NAPs_Land waiting for pretenders
 

Ha! You know me well - I was actually going back and forth between Tir and Van. :)

As earcaraxe knows, I tend to be very predictable with my builds but the changes to scales make me think twice before going with my standard settings.

Anyway, pretender is sent and I'm sending my first turn now.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

I have the current turn (51) in but I'm unable to play until wednesday evening GMT. Could I have an 24 h extension on turn 52, thanks.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

sure, i will extend it next morning.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

I know the goal is for this to be fast paced, but 48 turns would really help me a lot. This is my first MP game and it is taking me forever to play my turns as I have no idea what I'm doing.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Earcaraxe, what do you say to at least temporarily switching to 48 hour hosting? This is a pretty tough situation for Austen, fighting a multifront war in his first late game.

Btw, when you say 30 hour hosting, do you mean for the entire game? At the moment I'm pretty happy just having my two provinces to manage. :p

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

my intention was that 30 hrs hosting until the end of the game. next time i will make it more clear. however every rule is up to change by a consensus, so if vargr and i agree to switch to 48 hrs hosting i will do it.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

but i dint answer valerius's question: so its ok for me personally to change to 48 hrs because of austen's wishing.

However i consider it similar to when in a no-diplo game someone asks to change to diplo instead: in both cases I usually aim to ask all the players about this, and usually consider everyone to have veto power.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

I'm ok with 48 h

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

i would prefer not to make this game last too long. what do u say austen for a 40 hrs hosting instead of 48?

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

i have set the hosting interval to 48 hrs.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

My wife and daughter will be at girl scout camp this weekend, so I should have plenty of time for my turns this weekend. I don't know that poor Hinnom is much longer for this world than that anyway, so it prob won't matter here pretty soon ;)

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Man... it took me forever to find this thread :P

I just wanted to leave a note and say I appreciate you guys tolerating a complete noob in this game. It was really great and I learned a ton! Thanks a lot :)

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

thanks for playing!

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

I think I would need a 24 h extension for the current turn, thanks.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

postponed. the game will host on wednesday 10 am.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Although this was intended as a fast paced game, I'm afraid 48 h is bit too fast for me at the moment. My turns are hopelessly rushed. Could we continue with 72 h? I would need extra 36 h for the current turn anyway, I can't do much Dom3 this week.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

72 hours is fine with me - you guys take whatever time you need.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

sure, no problem. postponed by 36 hrs. i didnt raise the hosting interval yet, so please tell if u would like more postponements for the next turn anytime.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Thanks, I'll let you know if there's problems but I think I'll be fine with 72 h intervals after this turn.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Vanheim surrenders.

I don't have time for proper turns in the near future and even if I had I don't think I can change the end result. It would likely be a long and tediuos grind. High access to death is just that much better than air in the end game and I suspect you have me in the blood department as well.

Thanks for the game!

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

thanks Vargr for the game, u proved to be a cunning opponent!

and ur pesky raiders were my achilles heel as Valerius showed me enough of their capability already in an other game.

and thanks valerius for the amazing feat of ur resurrection, i havent seen a province-graph like that ever.

would u care to sum up the history of the game? were u two in war in the early game? or ever?

from my perspective:

i started with an awake serpent lord pretender with 2 in every path, to get me a lot of gems early and by saving on sitesearching. taking luck and drain, and building skkull mentors. I waited a little to build up my kingdom, do the critical research, then planned to not turtle, so attack someone as early as possible. i saw the 4 of u get in a war early, and i saw a very strong abysia in the early game. so i attacked my only neighbor who wasnt in war: tien Chi. After a long war my skellyspam+darkness prevailed. just as i finished off TC basicly 3 of us remained: vanheim, hinnom, sauro. and a very small eriu (but with valerius at the helm, i knew he was capable of pulling off some suprises). hinnom immediately attacked me, but proved to be weaker, and finally i won (perhas it was kinda 1 vs 2,5). what happened in the meantime? as i remember vanheim was also in war with hinnom. who had erius cap under siege and how didnt he finished it off?

i have learnt a lot about fighting zmeys, first of all that they are superefficient, and easily worths their cost. at the end i had the income to summon 3 every two turns.

it was funny that valerius beat me by a second to both mother oak and earth well (wasting 130 gems). first i was reluctant to try to summon the earth and air royalties, but then i decided to take my chances. i got both erath kings, and nephele too, who (after about 2 hours of testing) i could equip to be an efficient zmey-killer.

i was also helped by the wolven gate west to my capitol, which gave a nice help to my bane summoning and ghost rider spam.

i dont have much experience playing with air nations, u might be right about the usefulness comparison. what are air gems can be used for in the endgame? i mostly use them for flying boots and booster and one or two big summons, but than again, i rarely play air nations.

those fire and water evocation rituals really stopped my main army at the gates of vanheim's cap, then it took me until now to gather up a new 700-ish (or something like that) army again.

thanks for the game again!

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

A recap:

Abysia had their burning ones two provinces from my cap at turn 6 or something, this really messed my game plans. I had to commit everything I had to survive which cost me a lot in terms of midgame developement. But I think I managed to use stealth to my advantage and buy time to get my evocations online. By the time I had storm, I had the upper hand but then Hinnom started to raid the former Abysian lands from me. I was somewhat surprised at this because they still had their forces bound by the TNN garrison (which was never beaten in this game) Frankly, I think Hinnom overextended which lead to their demise. Otherwise, I would rate Austen's play much better than he gave himself credit.

The heads up was with Sauromatia. I took some border forts but otherwise was unable to advance, Sauro however pushed relentlessy for my cap. Sauro could match my raiding with ghost riders and the pyre fueled zmeys, and their troop output was better than my ability to inflict losses. So in the long run so I couldn't really hope to gain ground, just try to keep it with constant raiding and counter raiding.

As for the A + B vs D + B, well that's just my (nonexpert) opinion. I consider the A nations more midgame powers. However, the heims do have good blood potential now with the 50% random. I've played EA Caelum to a large undecided endgame once and as you can easily have all your flying armies fully immune to lightning and go crazy with wrathful skies and shimmering fields in every fight, then maybe A can still be a winner in late game, but with Van, I think less so. At least I would have needed to start the heads up with a stronger position here but maybe with a better Van player, who knows.

Couple observations:

-As pointed out several times before, zmeys are ridiculous. When I'm able I always put my midgame F gems to these. I wouldn't want to, but is there really better use for them barring some very specific and situational needs?

-0.9% growth allows amazing amount of blood from just couple of large provinces, as opposed to the usual 3 hunters / prov. You just need enough patrollers. I was able to maintain essentially even population with over 50 slaves pulled from a province / turn. I don't know if it was meant to be this powerful. Learned this too late in this game to matter.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

wow, i didnt know that 50 slaves per turn was possible with that little pop loss. i have experienced in one of my previous MP game (when i was fighting a 2 vs 1 versus valerius and (i think) legowarrior) with abysia that growth 3 was unneeded when bloddhunting without patrollers: my provinces kept gaining population which i considered unnecessary, so nowadays im just using G1.

u did have the chalice, right?

did u have any blood discount sites southwest from ur cap? they seemed like some blood summoning nodes.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

You need to sacrifice income from a very large province for that but its still cheaper, easier more efficient than spreading out.

A didn't have blood discount sites but had one with devil summoning. As for the artifacts, I had the teleport items, aegis a score of the 'junk' uniques + flailing hands and some other booster. Captured barrier, the ivy king hat and the bracers from you. But I didn't have the chalice, I think TNN had that :)

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

oh, i didnt expect that. thats valerius's new tendency to put astral on his eriu pretender :P

i planned for a tart factory, but without the chalice or GoH its kinda "different feeling".

btw, i got one of ur zmeys with my army with the two demonlords 2 trns ago, and Pazuzu picked up the lycantrophos amulet, yay! So much for lightning protection... i wonder if its possible to mod its cursedness out. or its pickupability.

that move of urs to take out my ember lord "Kemence" was nice!

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Thanks! Certainly better executed hitman mission than (I think) the two lost airboosted dwarwes who attempted RoS on your armies only to find out that their great leader had forgot to bring proper decoys with them :D

I think Valerius has mentioned this already, but the lycantrophos amulet relly add to the insult, even if you kill the damn zmey it still curses you afterwards :)

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

My initial expansion went well. I grabbed my share of territories and then set to building some forts and researching. But TC had other ideas and attacked me with his D9 sacreds backed by archers. The initial attack surprised me and he quickly took an almost empty fort I had just built. The D9 bless was a real problem since it was capable of killing my thugs. On top of that if he researched Ench. 5 he'd have full lightning resistance on his sacreds, taking thunderstrike off the table as well (actually all my elemental attacks would be shut down). I could try archers against him but I'd have to win an archer battle against his superior archers (and bows of war were too far away in research to be useful). He even had several mages and indie commanders leading the force so I couldn't even try using seeking arrows to leave him without someone to bless his troops. So definitely a problem. I did notice he didn't have an E bless and I thought it might be possible to tire him out with chaff and then follow up with my own quickened E9N6 sacreds.

But then Hinnom took advantage of TC's attack to launch one of his own and shortly afterwards Aby joined the party. At this point my prospects of winning the game didn't look promising but this wasn't discouraging to me as the only thing that saps my will to fight is excessive micromanagement.

In short order all three nations were two provinces from my cap. I had a couple of problems at this point. First, who to prepare for? TC in particular needed different preparations than the other two. Second, the multiple threats to my cap limited my ability to launch a counter strike since I'd be leaving my cap vulnerable to one of the others.

Soon enough Sauro attacked TC, reducing me to two active opponents. Unfortunately I had been expecting to fight TC so there was some wasted research as I shifted to Evo. for thunderstrike. Eventually Aby laid siege to my cap while Hinnom swept through my lightly defended eastern territories. At this point the game was about defending my cap. Aby attempted to storm it first but fortunately I had managed to research thunderstrike and he lost almost all of his sacreds in the attempt. At that point I think Van was putting the pressure on him so he never sent another army to try again (btw I did think Aby had launched an attack on Van but I thought it was shortly before he attempted to storm my cap - I didn't realize it had actually been earlier than he attacked me). Hinnom then grabbed some of my territories from Aby and began a lengthy siege of my cap with repeated attempts to take it. Austen and I spoke after Hinnom was eliminated and I think the main problem was that he didn't send his A-listers to finish the job. His first attempt had a lot mages and I think I was lucky there but after that he mainly had mediocre troops that I was capable of killing and that then would just end up routing his forces. I think if he had sent a force of demons he would have been able to finish the job. I agree with vargr that Austen played well - the main problem is that playing Hinnom and having the enormous gem income lead he had it was inevitable that he'd have to fight everyone sooner or later. I think he should have put up AN since he was already at war with everyone.

So, once Hinnom was at war with Van and Sauro I figured that would be my chance to actually break the siege of my cap and get a few provinces back. Once that happened I figured the best I could do was play spoiler (and maybe not even that) - but I have to admit I wasn't too motivated to do that since neither Van or Sauro had attacked me. But then, oddly enough, I actually got mother oak and earth blood deep well. I figured the chances were still incredibly against me but maybe, just maybe, if I waited until one of you decisively got the upper hand over the other I could step in to swing the tide the other way and somehow play it so that I'd come out of it competitive with the nation I'd helped. But this was all very unlikely since in order to have much impact I'd basically have to use all my three dozen mages, which would put a stop to my research, which was already horribly behind.


I had the chalice - not forged, since I didn't even have Constr. 8 researched, but from Hinnom. I actually think he deliberately left it on one of his mages when I took back a fort from him, figuring he'd rather I have it then have it go to the nations that brought him down. So I was actually crawling towards Conj. 9 so I could summons some tarts.


:trophy: Also, TNN would like to give employee of year(s) award to my force of Tuatha warrriors who worked without pay for years and never abandoned the cause. At the end I had 19 of them left, all with three stars of experience.


PS - Yes, I hate lychantropos' amulet. I actually go berserk every time I think about it. :p I think it should cost 10N - it would still be useful for zmeys since in addition to regen it prevents them from routing but at least it would cost as much as a ring of regen.

Re: No_NAPs_Land happy warring under way
 

Thanks to all you guys, it's the third or fourth MP game I played, and the first time I played TC in MP. I was defeated by Sauro in a One on One war in medium of the game. Saruo did give me a lesson with his annoying spells like "Rain of Toads", "Darkness"... and the endless skellyspam. But the battles against him really brought me much fun and let me learned a lot.

To Valerius: Actually, I didn't really plan to attack you until I saw a totally undefended castle suddenly appeared in front of my army.:) And how can you always resurrect from so worse situation? I have witnessed twice (this game and Nation2) you fought back (and even finally kill your enemy in Nation2) with only your capital, increable!

Re: No_NAPs_Land war ended, earcaraxe won!
 

thanks for the feedback Keithz! i wanted to ask two questions (u might have answered the first already): did rain of toads limit ur options (lower ur income) significantly? first time i used it that heavily.

and why did u swithed ur production from ur sacreds to other troops? (did u at all or just seemed to me?) in our first big battle, which i considered a draw, those martial fighters of u slaughtered my otherwise formiddable savage cavalry, then cut thru the skellyspam very effectively.

Re: No_NAPs_Land war ended, earcaraxe won!
 

The Toads Rain hurted me so bad:hurt:, I think it's the main reason I lose because I had no idea how to deal with it at that time.
It's also the answer of your second question, there was nearly 20 truns I couldn't recuit any units from my cap because of the unrest. Even patroling doesn't work well when the unrest was over 200. It was too late when I realized I should summon some Celestial Hound, which turned out to really good patrolers.