[Immaculate]

A Brief AAR:

So i started playing this game with the goblin warriors as expansion parties. It worked sort of alright but i had to rely on the freespawn from my celestial general to have shielded forces to defend against archers. Anyway, that worked sort of well and i soon ended up abutting Pangea, Man, and Pythium. I think i bought a province from Pythium or traded them and we seemed to have a stable border. I didn't know but i think he used that opportunity to turtle and build like six forts or something. Anyway, I though that since i had strong archers, Pangea should be my first target so i started to focus on going for flaming arrows and building up the goblin archers.

Meanwhile i got a barbarian event on a province where i was building my second fort one turn before it was done. that was "very bad". On the same turn my site-searching general (who has air in case you somehow don't know) found the illusionist site and soon i had broken solidly into air.

The war with pangea was first fought between Pangea and Ermor than i jumped in a bit late. I was waiting on my archers making it to the front because he had armored minotaurs and size three (or is it four?) minotaurs trample all the squishy little gobbies like it ain't no thing... so yeah... i tried to buy a little time. When i did strike the flaming arrows did about as well as i hoped they would. The counter was mostly poison evocations and bladewinds if i remember. And those were pretty bad. I did a bit of skelliespam if i remember correctly and that helped soak the bladewinds a bit.

Anyway, soon pangea was reduced between ermor and myself. I didn't realize it but jotunheim was eating up man really quickly. I was actually sort of worried about Man since i hadn't reinforced my borders with him too well and i didn't know much about man except that in my other game (morla MA) they were kicking serious butt- so i was a bit scared. Anyway, suddenly the Man province that neighbored mine was conquered by Jotunheim and when i next looked at the scoreboard Man was folding and Jotunheim was really taking off.

At the same time Pythium was starting to get REALLY scary (as you all know) so i started to feed intel to anyone who wanted to fight him- i had lots of scouts in his lands and i shared that mostly with the fishies.

Man bribed me (i think) and soon enough Ermor and myself were at war with Jotunheim. I did something i thought was pretty smart in that i build some chalices of the sea and used the north-eastern lake to shuffle between the ancient pangean territories and the once man, now jotunheim ones while also striking at his main army in the south. I don't remember exactly what i used in terms of battle magic (wind guide/flaming arrow i never left home without) but i know i used a lot of ghost generals at this time (and sort of wished i had gone for them first when i realized how awesome they were). I have to say that i really got the best of jotuheim in those first few rounds and i was about to take about 8 provinces in about 3 turns (which i thought was awesome until later in the game when i looked bolluck and mocking's graphs). Anyway, after that he firmed up considerably and counterraided with a few ice devils which i never seemed to be able to land a petrify upon despite some penetration items. Eventually i brought up my main army and was able to defeat him in a few decisive battles while he fought Ermor with a nice 'the huntress' SC.

WHile this was going on i realized i had to jump in against pythium or he was going to run away with the game. he was rolling up abyssia so fast and at that time bolluck hadn't seemed to yet find a way to really effectively counter him- though maybe i am wrong. So i started to fight pythium at the same time but i got my A$$ handed to me two times, losing huge multi-mage armies worth thousands of gold and dozens of gems each time. He started to send the habringer and his frineds into my lands a few times and i knew that if it wasn't for abyssia and r'leyh i would have folded.

Finally i was able to contain Jotunheim and Ermor took over fighting the last of their forces. Which meant i could move my forces and treasure south. that was end-game for me. I pulled out lots of big evocation magic and started to add lots of summons including treants which i had never used before and poison golems which i absolutely love.

Finally i learned a lesson from watching abyssia turn back pythium in one major battle and started pulling out battlefield evocations (firestorm, etc) but so too did pythium apparently 'cause i got hit by some of his too.


All in all, it was a great game and i made TONS of errors but i also learned a lot along the way.

I am eager to hear all your AARs too- especially acrosephalae, caelum, marrignon, and others in distant lands i was not part of.


oh yeah: favorite spells: early game: flame arrows, mid-game: petrify, late game: animal horde, disintegrate. Favorite sc: poison golem (especially against pythium with their soul-slay spam)