Debate and Duel (D&D)

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by Zen:
It's not a bug. It's a game parameter. You can't retreat from an assassination attempt. I believe it's intentional.

I retreated from my assassination attempt. I scripted "Disintegrate, Retreat" so if they were found, they would retreat in the province closest province (which I owned). It DID work that way until I actually tried assassinating. My assassins used the disintegrate and retreat script and died even though you are not supposed to be able to retreat AND even if you did retreat, you could have gotten to a home province.

[ February 09, 2004, 03:44: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Well obviously it's your fault. You can't retreat from an assassination attempt. Next time don't script your mages to Retreat when you plan on assassinations.

[Graeme Dice]

This was definetly a good game. I was sure that Argitoth was going to attack me early on, while I had the territorial advantage, but he had the magic advantage. I had spent my first ten turns building wolfherders to use as patrollers, and it took a very long time to catch up in the research race. My capitol also got hit with the plague event around turn 50, but since I wasn't relying on it for troops I didn't worry too much about it. It finished off with 9000 population.

I was also very worried when he made it to level 9 conjuration, cast well of misery, then proceded to drop a lot of ghost riders and arouse hunger all over my territory. Thankfully, my blood slave income was good enough to cast hordes from hell on every turn to retake the provinces. I also reached level 9 conjuration just shortly thereafter, and was able to also cast ghost riders. I chose to cast in on the same provinces every turn however, to drive unrest up as quickly as possible. Once I had enchantment 9 also researched, I took my entire group of 20 illuminated ones and sent them into Argitoth's home provinces to cause unrest. The plan was originally to have them wait there until my nether bolters arrived and then to use them as communion slaves, but they worked well just by themselves.

I eventually had to cast dispel twice on his Well of Misery, and burnt up over 100 nature gems and 40 death gems to make sure it went away.

Manifestation is a decent assasination spell for BF Ulm, as the vampire counts are often tough enough to deal with the ashen angel.

Anyways, the links below are to some pictures describing various parts of the end game.
My Pretender: Desmerelda the Vampire Queen
The Army Graph
Most of those troops were Wolves

The Home Guard
Vampire Counts: Decent Mages, Great Harassers
This province will be down to 5K population in few turns from now.
Dominion Graph
Forts Graph: How I managed to eventually catch up in research.

Gem Income Graph
My leftover gems
Ghouls: The Ultimate Castle Defense
The Hall of Fame
Bifrons: The ultimate rapid attack unit.
Gaap: Rapid Attack unit Two

Nycator also arrived, but didn't survive a run -in with several skeleton raising Sauromancers as I hadn't yet made him a regen ring.
The Income Graph: Well of Misery's effect is clearly visible here.
Magical Resources Left after Two Dispels
The Overall Research Graph

My Overall Research at the end.

And finally, the strategy that won me the game.
Spies
More Spies
Even More Spies

And an overview of the final strategic situation:
Overview

As a final word, give Argitoth a break people. he plays very well, and runs several hosted games without any major problems.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Any noteworthy disintegrations?

A few. He got some of my vampire counts before I gave them amulets of antimagic.

[mjlaufgr]

great AAR, both of you! I love stuff like this. You'll get him next time, Argitoth

Mark

[Argitoth]

Originally posted by mjlaufgr:
great AAR, both of you! I love stuff like this.

What is AAR?

Originally posted by mjlaufgr:
You'll get him next time, Argitoth

I'm really not up for another 8 hour game

Edit: OMG!!! I THINK I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PRETENDER!!! What if he died because the dominion was too high in the province he was attacking? THAT MIGHT BE IT!

Edit: Thanks, mjlaufgr!

[ February 09, 2004, 04:50: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

After Action Report.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Argitoth:
Edit: OMG!!! I THINK I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PRETENDER!!! What if he died because the dominion was too high in the province he was attacking? THAT MIGHT BE IT!

Did he have a never healing wound? If so, then that could be it.

[Osium]

Zen, I think you misunderstood what Argitoth was saying.

He said, he had his assasins scripted to retreat after the first cast as a precaution to being discovered not as part of the assasination attempt. Thats the reason why he had them scripted to retreat. Im unclear as to his complaint about the retreating on assasinations attempts. Ive never tried to script it, maybe his units attempted to retreat but since they can't they just stood there?

Obviously this is an instance of being "too clever for your own good". So what exactly happened? Did they just stand around and die? Did they rout off the map and auto die like mercs?

I can see where he is coming from. Since units CAN'T actually retreat from a battle, successfully or otherwise in an assasination attempt one would think that such an order would be disregarded. It appears as though they had some other unforseen reaction to retreating on an assasination attempt which I am curious to hear about ;p

On the other hand, im not sure this would have totally defeated his strategy, he could have simply gone into micro mode and adjusted his scripts whenever he attempted to assasinate. If they were active set them to attack. If they are passive set them to attack and retreat.

[Argitoth]

Lost an Eye, Weakened, Crippled, Feeble Minded.

I don't think it would matter if he had a never-healing would because my pretender got it once before, but overtime healed himself.