Unforgettable Moments

[Unwise]

Here’s mine.

I convinced many of my buddies to buy the game, and we were anxious to try out the MP aspect of it, despite all being relative newbies to the subtleties of the game (a state that continues).

I played in the game as Arco and petty much squandered any opportunities to advance myself. When the player with Pangaea turned his green eyes on my provinces, I was only able to mount a token defense as I had sunk all my cash/resources into a large cabal of mages.

Finally, he besieged my home castle and stormed the gates with a force that outnumbered mine by about five to one.

I had a medium-sized force ready to repulse him, but no real hope of doing so. However, I carefully scripted my five mages, one priest and the pretender (a blessed statue).

First, the pretender was to cast Astral Shield and Fire Shield. This was on the assumption that Pangaea's forces would eventually get to her and start hacking away at her 200+ hit points. Astral Shield causes a lightning strike on every hit, and Fire Shield... well, you know.

Then I wanted her to use the mind-control spells and then finally to cast "Horrific Vapors" in a scorched-earth tactic. My priestess I gave only one order to: cast resist poison to protect those nearby from the horrific vapors spell. The other mages were to cast a variety of summoning spells to stock the battlefield with an array of elementals.

The horrific vapors spell causes poison mist to cover the entire battlefield. My thought was that my forces would be gone by turn five, or at least significantly depleted, and poisoning the entire board would hurt Pangaea's guys much much more than mine. By having the priestess cast resist poison, it would protect the "rear echelon" guys like my mages on the off-chance they were still alive.

What happened however, was that the two (or three) mind-control spells that my pretender cast took over some relatively large beasties like the kith lions while they were in the entryway, and they were able to hold off Pangaea's forces much longer than I had assumed.

In fact, they (and the elementals) took out most of Pangaea's heavy-hitters other than the troll court. The trolls came in and finished them off. My conventional forces all routed, including an elephant that trampled a few of my hoplites and ran straight at the little cluster of mages in the backfield.

Apparently one of the mages was awake to the elephant’s threat and paralyzed it just before it could turn them all to jelly.

Meanwhile the sole military commander, decked out in mediocre magic items including a dragon helm (cast fireballs), an air shield (lightning bolts when hit), a frost-sword, and a pendant of luck (harder to hit) stood alone in the causeway between the two sets of walls. He was able to take out a large amount of Pangaea's troll shock-troops after all the mind-controlled lions were dead. When he finally died and the trolls came through the gate, they were all on fire.

Outside the walls, the massed arrow fire from the towers (along with ballistic spells from my mages) were taking out Pangaea’s archers and fodder. Between that and the poison, most of them retreated along with the few remaining commanders (I took out five of six commanders).

The climax of the battle came when the Last three or four trolls (including the king) came through the gate, burning merrily. I had the priestess and a single mage remaining (where my sessile pretender went, I have no idea – collapsed from exhaustion perhaps?), along with the paralyzed, routing elephant.

Biting my lip, I braced for the end – I knew that my pathetic mage and priestess (now almost at the end of their endurance) would be hard-pressed to repulse the burning trolls. Then, to my wonder, the trolls stopped to finish off the paralyzed elephant. This took a couple rounds, during which time the mage and priestess were able to toss in a few more shots. The trolls apparently decided that beating on a frozen pachyderm while their skins blistered and charred was not the best of ideas, and took to their heels. They never made it out.

So at the end of the battle, Pangaea got away with one commander and a smattering of fodder. I had a mage, my pretender, a priestess and a paralyzed, gimpy elephant now riddled with battle afflictions.

I eventually lost the game, but that one razor-thin victory was worth the game regardless.

[Arryn]

This is an excellent thread! Thanks for sharing!

[Tricon]

In one of my first games I was playing a very expansionistic Arco.(edit: ahem... it was as Pythium, of course... mixed up my early games) Concentrating with my best leaders on a very bothersome Pangea, I failed to give an appearently medium sized abysian army (around turn 25, about 50 units strong) its due respect. One battle later I had a viscious Lava Warrior dominant battlegroup in my very weak backwater provinces. My nearest army was 2 provinces away, and during the next 4 turns the bastards were merilly blitzing my provinces and ruining my economy (back then I didn't know the importance of strong dominion, or strong province defense....).Sometimes the AI has an uncanny ability to avoid my forces ....
Anyway, in the next turn the battlegroup attacked another fairly weak defended province(defence of about 10, and 5-10 additional light infantry units with stndard indi leader). Again, I was helplessly watching the lava warriors butcher the infantry and my - as usual - incompetent slingers. My infantry breaks and flees, the slinger stoicly fire (and miss) away, when the sole abysian leader all of a sudden actually gets hit and killed(!!) by a sling bullet. A rout followed, and the army was destroyed (no province to retreat to)
I was wooting like I madman. Especially since the leader killed was Rago the Ragelord (a national hero) - an almost mathematic imposibility to kill with a slinger.

I lost the game anyway, since I made too many NEWB mistakes, but it was the first adrenaline rush that the game gave me....

[ February 14, 2004, 04:00: Message edited by: Tricon ]

[condors]

i built some flying dwarven thugs (i thought they were umber after watching them for a few battles)
next thing i know i go to have them conquer the next place in line and i see the independants won the battle??? i bring up the Messages and there was this group of trolls(carry precious) and they tore up my 6 dwarves and had them for dinner

also i was getting overconfident with my flying thugs again when i went to kill this group of whimpy mages they were the ones that turn into spiders and the pretender was actually a dragon...i didn't need those 23 master smiths all equiped with iteams that much i guess

1 red dragon pretender and 8 sorcerers > 23 master smiths (it was mostly the dragon though)

[Taqwus]

Lazily playing the Ashen Empire in SP, rolling a 1000+ undead into a castle storming battle, and losing them all because the doorway was blocked with Crushers, the leaders eventually auto-routed and the undead dissolved was a harsh lesson: bring something to deal with the tough units.
Playing R'lyeh and watching as my single Vastness (the only one I got in that game, actually; and my summoner eventually reached 60+) was Controlled by an Arco Mystic on the mystic's first cast was also pretty harsh. The Vastness promptly routed the rest of my army.
Once in Dom I, I put together an Iron Dragon Squadron -- 24 Iron Dragons, led by a Gift-of-Reasoned Iron Dragon. Incredibly expensive, highly vulnerable to anti-magical-creature tactics, but rather comical to behold in battle -- 25 high-prot high-hp size-6 flying tramplers.

[Taqwus]

Oh, regarding the infamous Bogus the Troll --
In one recent game, I used Wind Ride and brought Bogus to one of my castles. Irritatingly but not all that surprisingly, he beat the province defense. However, I then realized that since he wasn't going anywhere, and my air mage was still safely inside, I could stage a tournament of my own by wind-riding enemy commanders who would then be forced to fight Bogus in one-on-one duels , and the enemy AI wouldn't necessarily even know who did the Wind Ride since it wasn't my army they'd fight, but an independent. Weird.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Once in Dom I, I put together an Iron Dragon Squadron -- 24 Iron Dragons, led by a Gift-of-Reasoned Iron Dragon. Incredibly expensive, highly vulnerable to anti-magical-creature tactics, but rather comical to behold in battle -- 25 high-prot high-hp size-6 flying tramplers.

One game I put together an entire battalion of the damn things: 155 IDs led by my pretender.

The racket was absolutely horrendous! Every round there was a good several seconds of metallic clanking and rattling. It sounded like a sack pots and pans being kicked down the stairs! It was great! SQUISHY-SQUISHY-SQUISH!

It was also incredibly hamfisted, as a I probably chose the worst target for tramplation: Soul Gate Ermor's hordes, and each of those little ghosties required repeated squishings just to kill.

But when you're willing to go with a level of excessive force that's so ridiculously overwhelming, who cares if it's efficient? It was *COOL*, and that's what really counts.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Dominions 1 memories:

One of my first PBEMs, I was R'lyeh, at war with Ermor (played by Wendigo), and attacked him with 2 Starspawn mages, some fodder and 3 Iron Dragons, while he had only a Dusk Elder leading a weak army. As it turned out, his DE had astral-1 and one of his first moves was to etherealize a nearby ghoul. The enemy force was quickly dispatched, save the DE and this damn ghoul. My IDs hopelessly tried to crush it for eons, while the DE was laughing and sprinkling them with Decay from behind. Eventually my army had to rout and my purple-glowing and affliction-laden Dragons dissolved. Ghoul: 1 - Iron Dragons: 0. At least I learned that etherealness is very effective effective defense vs tramplers.

Another PBEM a bit later, still impersonating R'lyeh. For the first time ever I had a chance to cast Master Enslave, and since the spell description reads 'MR negates easily' I decided to be generous with it - so I had 3 (maybe even 4?) mages cast it in the same battle. As it turned out it was unnecessary, as about half the opposing Ulmish force (300+ strong, 1/2 Guardians and BKs) was subdued after the first casting. So after the 2nd battle round nearly all the enemy army was mine. The fun part is I didn't take these huge reinforcements into account and was hit by huge starvation (I think about half my army was diseased because of it). Even more fun: Ulm was just 1 province away, and was eventually stormed by its own troops.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Oh, regarding the infamous Bogus the Troll --
In one recent game, I used Wind Ride and brought Bogus to one of my castles.

That's strange. I once noticed Bogus and company (the Griffon rider was missing though) in a faraway province, used WR to snatch and charm them, and I got all of them save Bogus. Apparently he was immune to Wind Ride, at least in Dominions 1.

[RedRover]

Ah, the events that make playing worthwhile.

I have had two exceptional moments so far:

Number One
I was playing Arcoscephale, and Marignon had been annoying me so much I decided to go berserk against his capital.

Well, I went for the capital with my second army (of two), even though I knew his pretender (a Golden Naga) was about--it had just wiped out my first army. Marignon's largest army had moved just a few provinces away and, with luck, I could make a risky dash for his capital and (I hoped) mess up his economy until I could build an army that wouldn't get trashed so fast.

As it turned out, his pretender had joined the big stack instead of going to the capital. Without it, the capital's militia fell and the raiding force proved strong enough to besiege and storm the capital very quickly.

The next turn, my jaw dropped.

I had lost control of his capital province (besieged!!?). Marignon's god was in an adjacent province, and the capital was showing Independent white! What happened??

It turned out that the capital had been hit by the Troll Hero and his buddies, and all my guys had run into the castle!

But the trolls weren't strong enough to assault, the very next turn Marignon attacked. The Troll heroes killed the pretender! This weakened the heroes enough to let me wipe them out the next turn, scavenging a lot of their magic. And what was left of Marignon didn't even blame me for the death of their god!

I love this game!


Number Two
I was playing Man on the Aran map and ended up on the south coast of the dragon's jaw. In the first 8-10 turns, I got down to the southernmost peninsula and built a fort in the plains adjacent to the three coastal wooded/mountain provinces (I had just read that resource-heavy rough ground feeds your castles--yum--and that site looked superb). The next turn R'lyeh took all three of those provinces! It seems his capital was only two spaces offshore (I didn't learn this until much later). OK, annoying, but I could deal with it.

Some turns earlier, I had gotten The Fisherman (ichythid mercenaries), had taken a sea province north of the target peninsula, then one sea province more to make a buffer zone. I had a water mage build a lab down there (I thought I could protect it), with the plan to forge Water Bracers and enable the Voice of Tiamat spell. I wanted to try this out, and the first thing I learned about the spell was you have to be underwater to cast it. I was setting up for a slow underwater expansion and gem hunt with the main effort on land. Finding R'lyeh on my doorstep changed all that, fast.

I built underwater as fast as I could. (On my north side, I had been waging a land war against Atlantis, whom I eventually drove back into the sea.) I didn't want a war on two fronts, especially not with both sea kingdoms, so I was being extra careful around R'lyeh.

The plains castle had decent resources even without the coastal provinces, and the home troops there were ichythid, so I started building them as fast as I could, too. As the turns passed, R'lyeh took his time and conquered all the independent water provinces (Atlantis had shrunk to a single province by this time), then sent a probing attack after me underwater. I beat it, but it was a near-run thing--I decided I really hated the squid-heads. The probe was cheap troops backed by a few illithids, so I didn't know what was to come.

Feeling pretty chipper about this (I had been waiting for R'lyeh to declare war on me), I sent my newly formed fish legions to snap up one of his weak water provinces, while launching a frontal attack with my triton masses. I'd picked up the technique of hitting the illithid commanders with fast-moving triton flankers and it was working well.

Success on all counts! I grabbed the coastal provinces, chortling at the huge number of resource points I would soon be putting into fish-warriors. I picked up a few sea provinces and found R'lyeh itself. It it looked a little tough, so I hit the corner sea province instead.

Then, R'lyeh struck back. A Vastness, a Horror, 4 Shamblers, 4-5 illithids, guards, and a horde of cheap troops. They ate my tritons for lunch without half trying. Trample? Envelop? Do these things get stronger when they munch me? All my guys are turning gray! And the AI cut my retreat route, too! Yeouch!

I had read a lot of HP Lovecraft stories, so I was expecting the worst out of these things. They looked unstoppable. My next three turns were filled with panic. They drove everything I owned at sea back to my two starting underwater provinces. They annihalated about 4 large triton and ichythid Groups before I gave up trying to counterattack or oppose them directly with aquatic stuff. I hunkered down and sweated.

Nothing I tried at sea worked against them. At least (I thought) there's no evidence these things can actually hit me on the land. Also, they didn't try to come at my forward underwater holding, which was defended by the Fishermen, my water mage (Avalon bodyguard), and as many tritons as I could muster. I boosted the coastal provinces to 25 defense. Maybe I could stabilize this...

The next turn, I was horrified when the Vastness, Horror, Shamblers, and company rolled into the coastal provinces, munching militia all the way. I have rarely felt a moment in gaming that matched the feeling I got when those things moved ashore. Wow!

You only really meet a new race once, and this one was definitely worth the price of admission.

I love this game!


Any other unforgettable moments out there?