[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Olm

What could have turned the tide were more Pan Thugs/SC's. The last one (Thenetos?) was even stronger than Ares, as he had more MR (28?). He alone was not enough in the end, but 3 or 4 of them could have driven me back.

My experience has been that Pan's aren't great thugs. Those prophets worked because they had so many more HP than a normal Pan. And keep in mind that you could easily cast gift of flight on one of your thugs and hit the Pan before he even finished buffing. But the Iron Will heroic ability on my second prophet was a nice bonus given how the first fell to stream of life.

Originally Posted by Olm

If I look at my armies now, there is not so much left. Most died from Disease. Only the Knights of Avalon are nearly immune, which makes them even greater units than they are anyway.

Yes, the Knights were definitely a problem. But in a strange way I was glad you had them because without GoH or the chalice or faery queens it felt kind of cheesy to just be poisoning everything. So at least you a troop option that could deal with it.

Originally Posted by Olm

I would like to know some things about Eriu:
-Why did they fare so badly in the beginning? They had a similar starting position as me, with a nice backyard and a very defensible acces to its realms.
Was there an early war between Eriu and Arco?

Eriu tends to be a slow starting nation and he also had a bad cap location in terms of surrounding provinces. And yes, the first war that broke out was between Eriu and Arco.

Originally Posted by Olm

In most of the strategy games power scales almost exclusively with size. And if you have a certain size advantage you almost certainly win, because the smaller one has lesser resources every time. But in Dom this seems not to be so strict a case. The smaller one has his chance with good tactics and strategy. And thats really great.

Well, size is important in that it will translate into more gold (more mages = better research) and gems and so all things being equal the smaller nation will fall behind - however a small nation can definitely have a chance. If the larger nation has been exhausted by other wars or if the smaller nation has chosen a build that emphasizes strong research they can apply that advantage the larger nation can leverage their superior resources. And of course tactics and strategy (including diplomacy) matter hugely. Being the front runner can really work against you if it just means you get dogpiled. Better IMO to be in 2nd-3rd place and then make a move when you think you can avoid it backfiring on you.

Originally Posted by Olm

The assimilation part played no role for me. I conquered Pan rather late, and it gave me nothing I didn't have.
I guess that works better with much more nations in the game, preferably really tightly packed. So that half of the nations are gone by turn 30 or so.

I agree that it wasn't a big factor and that it would work better in a game with more players. I think everyone would have liked Arco's cap but that was the only one that really turned over for most of the game.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

Going for Arcos cap, All who could buffed mistform. I used a D4 mage to cast darkness, equipped all my non-thunderstrikers mages with bows of war, set them to eagle eyes and fire closest. I had another mage cast wind guide, another cast arrow fend, and my pretender, who was a rainbow crone, to cast fire arrows. All other mages were set to eagle eyes and spam thunderstrike. Since Eriu gets 50% darkvision, this really tore Ulm up, especially the trolls..... all those poor, poor trolls. My army used about 70 mages and 150 or so troops.

After taking over Arcos cap and the surrounding lands I headed on towards 46, 47, 42 enjoying good success until dragons ridge. I had split my army off to grab more land while seiging dragons ridge when Ulm broke seige. With most of my good guys out, he attacked with a very potent army that devastated mine and even killed my pretender. I lost count of the number of master smiths he had that seemed to spam magma eruption.

Those types of battle were to me the highlight of the game. Lots of mages, lots of troops.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

I found lots of nice gem sites and was raiding at will, destroying anything that they met, except for
troops on forts. I tried to lure Ulm out using glamor and hiding and sniped a few troops but for the most part he stayed put.

I cloud trapezed more tuatha in for a total of 10 thugs. This is when i i Had Ulm down to the mat. I think he had 11 provinces left but of course, 9 forts. I could not siege them with what I had and thats where the southern group ran out of steam. I wish I was able to give them some siege weapons, but I couldn`t at the time.

This is actually a very typical pattern for TNN/Eriu - you grab a huge number of provinces with raiding but can't take the forts and gradually the defender starts taking back his provinces. Ideally you want to back up the raiding with an army coming in to take control of the forts and you did just that but when Ulm stopped that army you were left with the raiders. IMO raiding is a nice supplement (and very fun to do ) but you need an army to back it up and really make gains.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

Man started doing the raiding in my area and I watched in horror as my unrest started to skyrocket. At one point Arcos was at 350 unrest.

I ended having to set just about everyone on patrol and cast watcher in many provinces, which gives a patrol bonus of 50.

That helped at the end, and most of my provinces were back at zero unrest.

The bards certainly did a good job. Heavy patrolling is the best bet, especially if you start it before unrest has gotten too high. But the tricky thing is, at least in my teritory, he also had forces of wardens so I needed something tough patrolling to deal with them when they were uncovered (for instance if I used harpies they might discover the hidden units but they wouldn't beat the sacreds).

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

I really think the success I had was due to the magic cap at level 6. I don`t think Eriu is a powerhouse at end game.

I would definitely agree with that. They are at their best in the midgame and since this game only went up to the midgame it was a good fit for them. The same could be said for Man, which while less thug focused and more troop focused, shares the same paths.