[rdonj]

Alright, I'm closing the game. I'm sending myself the turn file for itza first though, so I can see what my empire looked like at the end.

It seems that earth gems were scarce pretty much the world over. I had a max of 10 earth gem income at the height of my empire, and I got something like half of it from killing the skavens. So it took me a long time to build up my bloodstones also. It also did not help that executor got extremely lucky very early into my bloodstone forging when I only had 3 or 4 of them, and assassinated my empowered skink who was forging them (and was carrying my only RoS). It took me a few turns to recover from that loss, and at the end of the game I had something like 20 of them. I was never able to forge more than one per turn. And hammers, hah. I had maybe 5 hammers, since I didn't really get into thugging and only had 4 or 5 golems at the end there. Two of which were supplied mostly with items I'd pulled off of bogus and crew. So I mostly tried not to need hammers, and did most of my forging while arcane nexus was up :P.

It seems nehekara got just about all the earth gems on the map, since he apparently had enough to give stygia bunches of them early in the game, and create a grand bloodstone horde.

I did much better on clams, though I still wasn't really pressing those very hard due to other goals. However, after haida gwaii knew they were dead, they gave me all their clams... 45 of them, under the condition that I had to keep giving him the gems until he died, which I did. Itza had probably forged about 70 clams when I left.

I'd also saved up hundreds of gems and 20,000 gold that ossa immediately began putting to good use, summoning saurus and buying shedloads of troops so that the losses he took fighting alugra didn't phase him. Looking at the turn, he's down to 6,000, so you did accomplish something burnsaber. Not sure how he got all those slann feebleminded... mind hunts? It's frustrating that, for a nation so excellent at mind hunting, almost every single nation in the game was immune to them :P. Anyway, that gift of nature's bounty was a ridiculously key global for me... moreso than arcane nexus, which never got me more than 60 extra pearls a turn. Without it I was losing money, so I really had to get it back up or lose (4k in upkeep each turn). So I did... with 300 nature gems. Until then I hadn't cast a single global for price, as I had two enchantment bonus sites. I had to convert a lot of pearls to cast that so high though.


The whole war with stygia was pretty dumb. I should have just rushed him and lived with the losses I took killing his stupid undead things. I could probably have replaced them, and I might have gotten somewhere. That war had me so uninterested in playing my turns, because we hardly did anything. I kept trying to preach dominion in his land, and his stupid h4 priests mostly kept me out. It was only when septimius attacked into my dominion and lost a bunch of them that I was actually able to make any progress on that front... and then the war ended when I finally had positive dominion under one of his armies. Meh. At least that war allowed me to stockpile gems, summons and equipment that would later be put to use against alugra. Oh, and skink priests. Hordes of them. Although you did see most of them burn.

I'm really surprised alugra was so weak gemwise, but I suppose it maeks sense. It can be pretty hard relying on randoms to get the paths you want. Last time I played alugra I didn't have much luck getting a good librarian for clamming either. But I managed to find enchantresses to do it for me.

Why were you using so many gifted as soldiers, and almost none as thugs? When I play alugra I tend to mass watchmen and smith thugs. And hardly use the gifted as soldiers at all. I should actually try using them that way at some point. Anyway, I'm glad that alugra finally got its chance in mp. I don't think you did so bad, considering.