Chinchilla - Running

[Valerius]

Thanks, llamabeast.

[Burnsaber]

Well, I was defeated. World will never know the glorious benefits of a spider culture.

Well played Abyssia. I lost to a better player.

[dmentd]

I propose we all choose to declare Abysia the winner of this game. I have no desire to fight him since he has been a staunch ally against Pythium. Machaka was the most likely nation to kill him because of similar research skills. He played very well.

What does everyone think?

BTW Burnsber, I thought you plated very well. I could never break through your main forces.

[Valerius]

Burnsaber, it was a lot of fun battling it out with you. I actually think you played a better game. When you defeated Pangaea and had three globals in place I was really worried. My advantages were an excellent ally and absurdly good luck (your king of banefires being sent to inferno when he should have destroyed my army is just one example; better examples are having indie enchantresses, crystal mages, illusionists and, of course, trogs and more trogs).

If we do call it a game I'd be interested in everyone's impressions of their nations, since this is a newbie game. Was your nation fun to play? Did you discover anything surprising/interesting about them?

[Salamander8]

If people want to call it that's ok with me. I'm essentially a minor power now although I was able to weather the assault of Tien Chi thanks to my statues and the shields of my main infantry. I have been busy making Iron Dragons and sacred statues at home, but it looks to be too little too late.

Maybe I'm insane, but I actually like MA Agartha. It has some issues (old age problems with it's good casters, short swords as the infantry's only weapon, and no missle troops for examples), but I'm a fan of the nation's concept through the ages.

Good game all.

[sum1lost]

Pythium is extremely powerful if played correctly- I'd say that they should only be stoppable by a bless rush early on, at most. I didn't play their late game well enough, though, so I got clobbered. I also wound up wasting a very, very powerful random I got- S5, by misapplying a spell and causing him to drown- thereby also wasting almost a hundred gems.

Tips: Use gems more wisely.

[Burnsaber]

Valerius said:
Burnsaber, it was a lot of fun battling it out with you. I actually think you played a better game. When you defeated Pangaea and had three globals in place I was really worried. My advantages were an excellent ally and absurdly good luck (your king of banefires being sent to inferno when he should have destroyed my army is just one example; better examples are having indie enchantresses, crystal mages, illusionists and, of course, trogs and more trogs).

If we do call it a game I'd be interested in everyone's impressions of their nations, since this is a newbie game. Was your nation fun to play? Did you discover anything surprising/interesting about them?

Well, yeah, those Trogs and illusionist's helped you a lot. But I kinda nuked myself by taking F9N6 pretender. So he was good in paths I already have, what was I thinking? A bless strat with capitol only sacreds? Sure the bless was cheap, but you really can't expect to win a game on 200+ province map with cap-only sacreds.

Having no astral surely sucked. You just were able to nuke all my provinces with teleporting horrors while my guys were knee-deep in some swamps and forests. Just too damn slow, Johnny, just too damn slow. I also consistedly forgot that you have acceess to mass flight and Army of Lead. I lost lots of troops for naught when I sended them to fights they coudn't win.

It's really a shame that you found those Trogs. My Banefire Archers would have just *nuked* your "I'm 35 and dying to old age"- infantry.

About my nation, I think that Machaka is very solid. Black Sorceres are just awesome and your regular sorceres aren't that bad, hoplites are solid meat shields. The lack of Astral magic is probably the biggest weakness.

[Chicanist]

yeah, I'm ok with calling it as well. I'm pretty sure that both Abyssia and Oceania could wipe the floor with me at this point. Definitely a fun game for my first time playing MP.

[Chicanist]

As for my thoughts on Caelum: I feel like they are a fairly powerful nation. They have elephants early on so they can expand quickly, and the fact that they have access to Seeking Arrow + flying armies makes them very good guerilla fighters.

Issues I found: their PD is completely useless and their normal troops are pretty close to it which means it's going to be hard to fight an enemy head on. You do get very powerful battle magic but there are only so many 270gp mages you can send around, and you can only build them at a fairly slow rate.

I also don't think I took enough advantage of the magic diversity they get, I tended to focus in air/water magic even though I did get randoms with astral and death. I probably should have taken more advantage of that (esp death since they get some good summons).

[Valerius]

Ok, once llamabeast gets the server straightened out I'll end the game. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. Here's my thoughts on Abysia.

I chose Abysia for this game because I figured fire immunity and decent armor would give a chance to stand up to a possible fire bless rush. Though I didn't make much use of fire magic in battle (probably a mistake) I liked having an elemental immunity to protect my mages from remote attacks, etc.

I made a mistake on my pretender as well: I have an utterly useless B4 fountain of blood. I can't even get him out of my capitol to spread dominion in other areas. My idea was just to get excellent scales and I chose a pretender that would achieve that cheaply. But I would have been much better off choosing a sphinx and getting enough astral to cast the high level spells that are out of reach of my warlocks. It also occurs to me that an awake pretender might have been a good idea.

I thought my troops, with help from indie archers, could do a good job with expansion and I was pretty happy with them. But I had no confidence in them when it came to fighting other nations. As things headed towards war with Pythium I was desperate to get enough of a blood economy going to cast ritual of the five gates. I felt that would give me some quality troops as well as ice and lightning attacks. But the trogs were great because I now had tough troops to soak up damage in the middle while my frost/storm demons acted as artillery.

This was my first time playing a nation with astral and a nation in which blood was a focus of the strategy. I really enjoyed the way astral let me move my mages and armies around. And I really liked the remote attacks blood offered as well as the summons. I didn't do much with SCs (only one at the end of the game) but I made a lot of use of ritual of the five gates in the mid-game. Based on its troops Abysia is a slow nation but once I got some research going it didn't feel that way. They actually seemed very flexible and well suited to raiding.

What I really liked about Abysia though was their mages. Demonbreds are very nice but the warlocks are excellent. Aside from the benefits of blood and astral I really liked the astral/earth and blood/earth combined paths. Warlocks with an earth random were able to forge crystal shields, etc, which helped to take advantage of my excellent indie mages, and blood stones (I made enough to get a little more earth income and boost my mages to cast army of gold/lead).

I didn't find the micromanagement of a blood economy to be that bad. Using Shift-Z made the process of pooling blood slaves relatively painless. The only time it was hassle was when Machaka cast the kindly ones and I decided to keep blood slaves on every blood mage so they could cast life for a life if attacked.

Another thought: when I was trying to prevent Machaka's dominion from spreading I tried blood sacrifices. I used jade knives and found this to be a very powerful way to spread dominion. I mistakenly thought H2 demonbreds (because they have blood magic) would need to do this, but actually the H3 anathemant dragons could have done it even more effectively.

One final comment about my luck. I didn't really want to fight Pythium yet but it was good I did. I don't think I would have had a chance against him if the war had started ten turns later. I kept that lesson in mind when Machaka defeated Pangaea and his gem income was going off the charts and so I attacked immediately. With both Pythium and Marignon defeated it put me in the unexpected position of being the most powerful astral nation left and I think that was a definite advantage.

Overall, I think Abysia is a good nation. Unless they have an awake pretender they seem most vulnerable to me early on, before they have a blood economy going. I thought their mid game was very good. Late game they also seem strong (demon summons, infernal prison, life for a life, etc). I do wonder though how well they would deal with really strong astral nation like Arco, nevermind Pythium or R'lyeh. One drawback is that they don't have non-capitol blood mages. Then there's the old age thing... I basically included a pair of boots of youth in my cost for a warlock but it did make me disinclined to purchase many fire mages to help with research and I just used indie mages for that.

I do have one question, though: who had the Chalice? That was one item I really wanted.