Request for strategy: Late game tips

[jutetrea]

Preface: MP newbie, never made it to the late game yet.

So, in the 62 person megagame and just imagine I accidentally survive the first set of territorial rushes, establishment of borders, diplomatic russian roulette and make it to the mid-game.

I've got my borders set, good income over a moderate upkeep (holding a good sized stick just in case), good gem income compared to the rest of the board, and good research relative to the rest of the board, site searching is complete and I'm allied or NAP'd with all my neighbors. What to do?

I read somewhere that you should have a late game strat pretty much thought up before you start the game, and continue working towards that. Well, with little MP experience and zero late game experience thats tough as the little MP experience shows that SP tactics don't survive long.

At peace, so obviously research as much as possible. But to what? Rush to const 8 to start nabbing uniques? Rush to high Conj for uniques? Rush to high ench to try to get early gem producers up/GoH? Research evenly across the board? Curtail research to prevent "threat"?

Bulk up militarily to the point where monthly net is way down and then fabricate a reason to attack someone? Try to keep upkeep low and just maintain a defensive force to maximize monthly net income? Since at peace, try to actually kill off troops to reduce upkeep?

SCs/Gems - try to start summoning/equipping SCs for future combat? Save up gems to keep options open items/summons/enchants?

Primarily what to do when currently surrounded by friendlies, but knowing you'll need to expand at some point.

eek! fun though, very fun

[tibbs]

I think you need a very good gem income by the time you reach late age. Ideally you would want one or two of the gem globals going, but I think that is going to be hard because you have 61 other nations trying to do the same thing.

If you are surrounded by friendlies, you will need to make one of them "unfriendly" and take em out! Or I guess you could teleport to an enemy province, build a castle and establish a beachhead and wage a war from there.

[johnarryn]

In very general terms, it has been my experience that having high-level construction is very important for the end game. Building equipment for SC's, forging unique magical items... these are important. Certain specific items, such as The Chalice, Sceptre of Dark Regency and others contribute to late-game tactics like Tartarian Summoning. Other, such as The Sword of Auregelmer, are generally just good items to have.

A healthy gem income is useful... in such a large game, I wouldn't focus on trying to get the gem globals... too much competition... focus on site-searching and diversifying your magic.

[jutetrea]

In the greater available experience:

with an open enchantment board, is it better to cast a gem producer as early as possible (use almost all your gems) hoping that it will take long enough to dispel that you make your investment back. Or save up to 100+ and try to make it difficult to dispel?

Later castings you'll start playing with trying to make it stay up, but for the first is the risk worth the possible return?

And on the other side, once an enchant goes up - should it be first priority to figure a way to knock it down? Just so the benefit doesn't snowball for the caster into beefed up future castings? In a larger game, do you find that people will generally let an enchant stay up because:
They don't want to be the ones to waste the gems dispelling
they want to save their gems for other things
they may not have the paths to dispel/recast

There was a game a bit ago where Jot put up Astral Corruption... and it seemed the rest of the board couldn't group to dispel it, does this happen often?

I guess it comes down to, is it best to just take what early slots you can afford and hope for the best? Or save up for a hopefully difficult to dispel cast.

Especially in larger games

[BigDisAwesome]

I always wondered that myself. In my first game one of the first globals to go up was Gift of Health, and I was so surprised that it stayed up until I cast over it as I was getting taken out of the game.

[johnarryn]

Astral corruption is something of a special case because it is a blood global enchantment... because it is easy to get a large number of blood slaves in a short time, blood enchantments may not be worth spending a large number of astral gems to dispel if the blood caster can just put the same spell back up in the next turn.

[Meglobob]

Generally speaking the gem producing globals, gift of health and any other non-offensive globals will stay up. At least until someone wants that particular global for themselves.

Dare to cast forge of ancients, burden of time, utterdark and astral corruption will put you on no.1 most hated list. This will usually result in alot of people ganging up on you to dispel the global and generally slaughter your nation.

Of course in a 62 player game the chances of keeping a global up are alot lower, so globals might not be a good strategy until over half have been knocked out.

[jutetrea]

Interesting.

If the situation is that my old folks are getting crippled and I just want GoH up to slow that process down... would it help to say that out loud? For example "want GoH up for my old folks home, it was cast with 51 gems at lvl 5, dispel as needed?"

Just in the sense of reducing perceived threat? Cuz it seems a good portion of diplomacy deals with perceived threat vs. realistic threat Which is a whole other topic, both defensively and offensively.

[RamsHead]

It depends where we are in the game. If it is late game, I will be thinking to myself "he is summoning Tartarians."

Generally speaking, in a game so large, I think it would be wise to not focus your strategy around anything unique, such as globals, artifacts, and unique summons. Globals can be dispelled and artifacts can be wished for. Uniques summons are a bit harder to get rid of, but with 61 other people out there, certainly some them will be clamoring for the exact same stuff as you.

[Shovah32]

Jutetrea, saying that you cast it with 51 gems is just begging for some-one else to cast it.