[Dragonlord]

Hi Zhao, I really appreciate you posting here on how things went from your point of view. I'll just add some info to some of your comments.

AdmiralZhao said:
Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.

That is right, it was a roll of the dice on whose movement went first, and you got lucky. I had taken the one good province to my west (which was on the coast and had really good income, and was crucial for me), and that turn I could either retreat into my capital again and get new troops, or try to take the crappy province directly north of my province in the hope that you would ignore that one and retreat back north yourself. I had reason to hope for that as you had sent an ingame message that turn professing a desire for peace, and an intention to explore your east rather than gambling everything so early on on taking me out.

But the way things went you even took my nice western province from me, but got weakened in the process. Then I saw your new army of reinforcements show up from the north, which the game reported to me as having 30 troops, mostly archers. By then all I had was my capitol army of about 50 troops, and I had to prevent those reinforcements linking up with your pretenders army. So, I sent my 50 guys vs your 30, while bidding like 250 for some mercs in capital. If your pretender would jump my capital next turn I would gamble on my PD + mercs winning, or weakening you so much that I could return my 50 guys after taking the 30 archers and finish off your pretenders army.

What happened though was your 30 turned out being 40 including like 20 very good sacred infantry, killing my 50 guys while I only killed 5 or so. Those 50 routed back into the capitol which by now was besieged by your pretender (all same turn, luck of movement priorities?) so my 50 all died without a place to run too, and I gave up.

2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears.
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Agreed.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Actually no, In my memory I only won 1 bid, which was crap, I paid like 200 for a troop of infantry that had already been used by another player and only had 8 units left when I received em, so it was a bad deal, but I had the money anyway and needed every drop (I could only recruit like 5 decent units a turn anyway having only my capitol).
(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Yep, I freaked when I saw the big dominion swing your pretender and prophet had caused in just one turn, and then I set all my 4 mages in capitol to preaching rather than researching.

Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?