YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]

[Maerlande]

My personal discredit to Tien Chi player for total pacifism, and to player subung Patala after Executor (not the last Patala player, whoever this mysterious person is) for not even trying.

I played Patala.

You have insulted me severely twice in the last week in this thread. First in your comments on my simple request to clarify the victory conditions. Second here. I suppose this one you didn't know it's me. Frankly, I assumed you had it figured after my desperate attempt to get clarification in a hurry.

Luckily, you have made it clear that your personal discredit isn't worth the electrons it's sent with.

I made a severe mistake and did not understand the victory conditions. I only realized two turns ago that Midgard was near victory. I took over the position from Executor on turn 45 and have stayed with it the entire game.

My second mistake was worse. I had built up two huge armies planning to astral travel onto Midgard when required. But I didn't finish Thaumaturgy 9 in time. So sadly, I sent every air drop capable thug and sc onto the final battle without supporting trops. And I lost.

This all comes from playing too many games at once. A noob mistake.

At least I can happily say I sent Ctis down the toilet before I wasted my chance.

It was pretty clear to me early that I might as well let Ctis and Bogarus bash each other senseless which they did with great gusto. I just sat back and made clams and prepped SC's. My terrible mistake was in timing. I waited too long to air drop onto Midgard and was left with the only option to drop onto his huge prepared army.

[WraithLord]

WingedDog I'm thankful to you for providing me a very entertaining war. I knew I can't make a difference on the game but our "cat and mouse" games kept me going

And for the record, as my kid might say: "it was you who started it". You have attacked me first and I had to retaliate. My original plan was to attack midgard, not you, b/c I saw Pan caving in to him. In-fact, when you attacked me I was thinking, "what the hell?", now why on earth would Ctis want to attack me?- doesn't he see my research advantage?

For the record, I also had bad luck all game long. As a result I'm never taking misfortune 2 again. I was visited by the heroes, raided by indies every turn, lost temples and what not. My luck this game just stank so from now on it's neutral luck scales for me

I want to come clean on more mistakes I made out of inexperience with Boagarus or vanity:
1. E4 on pretender turned out to be a waste of design points.
2. I should have focused on blood and not on constr. 8/conj 8. The artifacts I forged weren't really helpful. The unique summons like AQs didn't stand toe to toe with Ctis thugs/SCs.
3. Something happened to golems. I can't put my finger on what but I no longer consider them a trustworthy heavy duty raider SC chasis. I lost equipped golems to mobs of undead all over the place.
4. death focused communions are generally way better than air focused.
5. My biggest mistake - underestimating you. I think it was your poor start that misled me to thing you're inexperienced. So I thought I could win against you with 20% resources dedicated to war and all the rest to build up my infrastructure.
I learned my lesson in humility

[WraithLord]

Updated first post.

Still missing nations of Isokron, Raiel & TwoBits. One of which is our lucky winner.

[TwoBits]

Crap, thought there's be at least one more turn, but Utgard didn't have enough left to keep the walls up. Oh well, not like the relief force I was putting together really had any chance anyway.

Anyhow, I was Pythium. Went with an awake E5 Cyclops (the only effective way to handle Indies-9, I mean, even Order-3 didn't give enough Hydras to expand well), so my scales were pretty spotty.

But I got off to a good start. As Calahan noted, I had somewhat of a break in the border arrangements regarding Man, and had my flanks secure by being in the corner. But then again, I was saddled with lots of Wastelands and other crummy real-estate.

Even without using Hydras, I had the military strength and magical diversity to overpower Jomon. As Mictlan and Gath were busy fighting over more Wastelands, Man seemed like a logical target (no recruitable SCs and such to worry about, a secure flank, ease of patrolling for infiltrators, etc.).

There were some big battles, but things slowly went my way (Flaming Arrows were still fairly effective at that point), perhaps aided by Calahan turning over the rains to another player. And while that was going on, I found a magic site that allowed recruitment of Circle Masters, and another for Sorcerers, so was beginning to get into Blood in a respectable way (although suitable Blood-Hunting provinces were few).

And right when I was besieging the last Man fortress (AI at this point), Midgard hit me hard, taking advantage of Sailing at first to rout me from the southern Man lands, and then sending in the Raiders. Sorry for casting Eyes of God (your scouts probably missed out on watching some interesting action in Pythium lands), but I thought it might help me catch his Vanadrotts - it didn't

All I could do was use flying demons and such (once I found the proper commanders - w/ Astral - and gave them flying gear) to retake lost ground, and try to kill his raiders with Mind Hunt (had some success, but S income was low, and I only had a few capable commanders - and only one after a big defeat). Meanwhile, I was slowly getting ground down.

Rain of Stones was a big killer. Pythium's human mages do not hold up well to those kind of battle spells. Even using Mass Protection was no help, not when Midgard cast Army of Lead on its own troops, and dropped 3-4 RoSes in a row And having to commit many mages to battle meant I slowly started to fall behind in research, so my own Army of Lead (and only my pretender could cast it) was a long way off.

So basically, I was outnumbered, outspent, outreaserched, and outfought. Kudos to Midgard on the masterly take-down!

I'd be interested in a YARG 2 (especially with CBM 1.6 - I think that would really have helped Pythium a lot, with Dragon Master and whatnot). Not having to engage in diplomacy early in the game certainly made things a heck of a lot earlier. But then again, I really wish I could have cried for help when Midgard was administering its beating to me

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Calahan

...

I'll try to write a AAR when I find time to cover the uneventful campaign that was Man. Not much to mention, but a few scolds to hand out to those who gave away nation id's, and a mention about the OP starting location Pythium had. (A ridiculous 7 provinces automatically safeguarded at the start due to the connection between 200+219 being cut. Bad map editing someone, as Pythium cap should have been a lot further East than it was, or the connection kept open)


...


Edit: @ Wraith - I'd potentially be up for a CBM sequal. will try to gather some ideas for it (can't think of any right now though tbh, apart from my usual requsts of a wrap-around map and not having caps marked with bullseyes)

Glad to have you aboard
As for your points re. map - it's clear you have good maps understanding and I think your points are good. Do you think you could apply fixes to the game map according to your comments?

[WingedDog]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

And for the record, as my kid might say: "it was you who started it". You have attacked me first and I had to retaliate. My original plan was to attack midgard, not you, b/c I saw Pan caving in to him. In-fact, when you attacked me I was thinking, "what the hell?", now why on earth would Ctis want to attack me?- doesn't he see my research advantage?

Hmmmm... Really I remember it the other way around. And I remember my thought: "Bogarus chose a perfect timing for a strike. I'd do the same thing myself if I was him." But I had no reason to doubt your word, so I needed a proof for myself I'm not going mad, and after a brief search I found a turn when our war began. Take a look, you are the one who started it!

[WraithLord]

Are you sure WingedDog? I also have saved the turns and I was positive it was you who attacked me first.
ok, I did some searching. You attacked me two turns earlier at turn 26 province 99 (pwd is "klavim_tovim" ).

Edit: not much of an attack but I was thinking - Ha, he clearly plans a large invasion so I must retaliate ASAP.
EDIT2: Thus begun the via dolorosa for Bogarus

[WingedDog]

Now it makes sense. Two turns earlier I was in a vacation and my nation was ruled by Burnsaber. He had forgotten to save the turns for me and I never seen them.

[TwoBits]

LOL! Such small things do great events turn upon! No wonder all were busy when Pythium was getting stomped by Midgard

Oh, and that shall be my lesson, save all turns from any future MP games

[Isokron]

Victory!

I was playing midgard which was a first for me. At first glance they didnt seem very impressive but I did some test games and found skinshifters to expand really well and later on in the game I would be really impressed with their mages versatility also. So i decided to skip vans and big blesses and go for a sleeping rainbow with great scales.

Expansion went well but then Marignon attacked and i thought I was in big trouble. Luckily he didnt seem very experienced and I could walk in more or less unopposed into his capital which sent all his armies scrambling back and allowing me to take more or less everything else and then killing him. I guess he had overestimated how effective crossbows would be against skinshifters.

Just as I had finished Margingon Pangea attacked me and I thought I was in trouble again. For some reason he got into a war with Ulm at the same time though (not sure who attacked) which diverted a lot of his forces and allowed me to counter attack. This war was probably decided by a bit of luck when my arena champion single handedly killed his gorgon which might otherwise have devastated my armies (only to get killed by some satyrs and an earth meld some turn later ). Pangea also went heavily for crossbows but by this time I had storm and mist up which allowed me to take his castles together with some thunderstrike spam.

Well as was becoming a habit by now Ulm attacked me just as I was finishing off Pangea. The situation again looked grim for a while and there was several tense turns when we manoeuvred 200+ armies around each other but somehow not triggering any large battles. Meanwhile my research finally allowed me to equip effective raiders from my vanjarls and they started doing their work in his backyard. When the big battles finally occurred I had arrowfend up so my skinshifters more or less ignored his huge amount of crossbows as they killed everything.

After this I finally got some peace although I ended it quite quickly by taking some cutoff Utgård provinces including a vp while trying to decide to do next.

I decided that Pythium would strike me next after finishing Man whatever I did so I could as well strike first. This went very well and I didnt run into any real heavy resistance until the old Man capital. Here I again got lucky when he didnt get his fogwarriors up until turn 3 which allowed me to kill a lot of his mages (ending several of his BEs) with a rain of stones. If he had gotten fogwarriors on turn2 he would probably have won this battle which in turn would have prolonged the war with at least 5-10 turns giving Gath and Patala plenty of time to strike me.

So the same turn as I took the Man capital I also had a second piece of luck when Gath decided to just scout the Utgård capital showing that it was nearly undefended and the walls where breached. So instead of starting a long slog up to the Pythium capital I opportunistically jumped the Utgård one with everything I had.

My first act as Pantokrator will probably be to build a statue of the dragon of a thousand wounds that involuntarily kept my western border safe from first Bogarus and then Patala. Or maybe I will just summon and petrify it, hm yes that sounds easier.