[Thufir]

jeffr said:
I (aka Pan) attacked Ulm because Abysia was coming from one side, but also because I had a ton of maneads that were killing my economy. I didn't feel like marching them to the other end of the world, so I thought I'd get them killed off against Ulm.

It is kind of weird to get freespawns that cost maintenance. That's enough to scare me off Pangaea, although I gather there are some players out there that do well with Pan.

I've read about the Staff of Storms, but since i'm new to MP, Ulm was the first one to use it on me. I nailed a Wraith Lord (who'm I'm assuming was supposed to Last long enough so that wrathful skies killed all/most of my army), but I still lost some valuable commanders. Next time, they'll be lightning immune.

Good move! Planning out immunities is certainly key. As I understand it from Boron, your use of foul vapors certainly exploited Boron's lack of any kind of poison immunity (in my limited MP experience, people are more likely to be prepared for fire or lightning than they are for poison).

He attacked my force before I stormed his castle and by killing the right commanders, caused my troops to be left out of the storming of the castle. I ended up storming the castle with 4 commanders and no troops !!!!

I really dislike the "one commander kills any army with wrathful skies/staff of storms" thing. That was actually discouraging.

Well, as you may have read, there are a great many Posts where people argue intensely about whether single heroes/demigods (read SCs) should be able to take on entire armies. IMO, part of what makes Dom II great is that such arguments are so insolveable. There are various ways to tweak the game such that militaristic tactics and national troops take on more importance, and SCs are harder to create/equip. Someone out there started a few "low magic" games, where as I understand it, national troops were pretty much the main thing going for the entire game.

Personally, I like the "high magic" style notion that a single heroic figure can take on entire armies, given the appropriate circumstances. And again, given Dom II's complexity/richness it's not as if SCs exclusively rule the day. I am a huge fan of battlefield magic, and IME, I've been able to wipe out numerically superior (even numerically and quality superior), armies via careful scripting of mages, combined with superior research.

Pythium (Boron) has attacked me, but all of those former ermor provinces int the south aren't worth much, except for a gem site here and there.

But the gem sites can be quite key - so be sure not to ignore them. Typically, as the game goes into the endgame, cash becomes less important, while gems become more important.

Edit: Also, don't forget Acashic Record. This is easier for some nations to cast than others, but it is especially useful for a large nation (such as yours ). It's my guess that Ermor was not in the game long enough to have done a thorough job of site searching (although you should also keep in mind that it can be a bad idea to cast this on provinces near the front).

This game has been a lot of fun (although occasionally discouraging -- i.e. a bunch of mages endlessly casting ethereal false horrors. Ah well, you live and learn.)

I certainly have been having a ton of fun! T'ien Ch'i has been at the short end of the stick in our war (he was out-resourced from day 1, and any man who takes on playing TC has my respect!), but he's taught me more than a few lessons along the way (and delivered quite a bit of damage!).

I would say that discouragement is part of the Dom II learning curve. I know in my first MP game, I had the clear upper hand with me and Jotunheim allied against Abysia, until I started to encounter her Devil hordes, whereupon I discovered I had no clue how to counter Devils.

As for False Horrors, if I had to vote today, I would probably vote for nerfing False Horrors. Zen's spell mod does nerf the False Horror spell, but perhaps not enough. But I have to say that Dom II is a tremendously complicated game, and I do not consider myself a qualified judge of game balance issues in Dom II.