thank Zywack for the input! that dom score of 2 is hilarious
and congrats for the achievement from ur starting position!
I understand it was a game mostly for inexperienced players, but it was my first MP game with oceania, which is perceived a weak nation. I certainly could do much better, for instance putting just a little earth and water on my pretender would have made difference. An other factor is i planned to amass lamia queens (baalz's guide), but chose cold3 (cold blooded
), so eventually i gave that direction up and put the water gems into unfrozen warriors and mages. which proved to be absolutely powerful/economical/synergical. I chose a rainbowish master lich.
This is the story from my perspective: I aimed to grab some land provinces fast thinking that i get get the water ones later, even at the cost of war and mother oak couldnt be cast from under the water. Pangaea was the only one who didnt answer my messages, and also had pathetic early expansion, so i teamed up with ctis and attacked. the war was nearing its end when i agreed with TC to attack ctis, so i ended up with all of pangaea and half of ctis's territories. in the northwestern corner i have found an 20% enchantment site wich gave a nice boost to my unrozen-factory later in the game. In the south abysia defeated vanheim, and thanks to caelums ineptitude for expanding, owned the bulk of the southern continent, however i thought he didnt have the forces to defend that, he massively overextended. And by that expansion he put a crosshairs on his back. while the last of my northern wars were chiming down, i have sent some troops to the southern continent to grab some provinces there too. abysia also didnt respond to my messages, so i just attacked him here and there. he managed to defeat my first weak tries, but at the very beginning he teleported his pretender to the battle to help out with astral fires, where my cavalry broke thru and killed him before routing, costing him his global enchantment. caelum didnt do anything not then, not later. in the meantime ulm defeated ashdod, then messaged me that he wants vanheims capitol while i defeat abysia alone. saying if i disagree he will just attack me too. so i ceded every province to ulm he wanted to leave me alone for a while and began my full-scale war versus abysia. It was my first war where my full army participated (actually not my full army, since i had so many territories even then that some of them were too far up north). I reached abysias capitol without resistance, i was surprised to learn how weak the abysian amred forces were. there was a HUGE battle at the capitol however, but storm/fog warriors and numerical superiority was enough to win. then TC attacked ulm, and parone retreated almost all of his forces north, so i spent the next 3 turns getting my armies into position. I have also found a 20% conjuration site next to former abysian capitol, there i summoned about 300 animals, and 4 elemental royalties, and marched eastward (ulm has conquered caelum in that 3 turns).
I also managed to be on good terms with almost everybody, and even before the start of the game i knew it was more optimal strategy to be expansionist, since no graphs will be seen, so one can grow unnoticed with a little luck, that i managed perfectly.
My long-term plan was (had parone not given up) - after defeating ulm, when i already own half of the map - to shoot up burden of time for which i have been amassing the D gems. capricorns, and all my summoned mages are basicly immune to BoT, but it would have killed most of TC's, shinu's and bandar's.
I have found ma oceania a very capable nation, the sirens (which i used for search and combat too) and the new selkie summons gives a quite strong and very maneuverable air-dimension to it.
this is the map of the world as i see now:
http://www.math.bme.hu/~simon/giants.bmp
thanks all for this great game, i really did enjoy it too, i hope we meet soon in another one.
im very curious about ur aspects!