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

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by 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.

*do a homer imitation* Why Burnsaber you... *and proceeds to strangle him*

Yes, a chilling demonstration of the butterfly effect. All started with an innocent vacation

[rdonj]

Heh, thanks everyone. Being admin for this game wasn't too much work, so yeah, I can handle admin duty for the next YARG as well. And calahan, while you were almost certainly the most active player in PMing me, it was not really annoying :P WingedDog was the other player who sent me lots of PMs about people who were staling, by the way.

Oh, and here is the master list of players:

WraithLord - Bogarus
ano, Danbo, psycho - Pangaea
Calahan, Herode - Man
Ossa, JR77 - Agartha
Dimaz - Gath
Gandalf Parker - Jomon
TwoBits - Pythium
Natpy - Marignon
Frozen Lama - Caelum
Dragar - Abysia
Strabo - Atlantis
Executor, Maerlande - Patala
Isokron - Midgard
Raiel - TC
WingedDog - C'tis
Slobby - Utgard
LumenPlacidum - Ulm
Alpine Joe - Mictlan
StrictlyRockers - Arcoscephale

If there was another sub, then I must have forgotten to take their name down at the time. So if you were a permanent sub for this game and aren't listed here, feel free to speak up.

[TwoBits]

Crap. My new policy is to save all MP turns. If I'd done that before, I could at least go back and see why I hadn't cast Fog Warriors until the third round at the Battle of Man's Capital, and thus doomed us all to bowing down before The Dragon of a Thousand Wounds (that's a good moniker for a Pantakrator though!)

Yeah, I would have had Mass Regeneration, Relief, and Quagmire up at that battle (and maybe some more, but like I said, I didn't save my turns, and now I've forgotten) at Man's capital. But Mass Protection didn't stop you from slaying my mages with RoSes, and after that, it was a foregone conclusion.

BTW, I had no intention of attacking Midgard, at least not until someone else started a fight with you first. But that kind of, "he's gonna attack me soon, so I might as well kill him now", paranoia payed off for you, just as it did for the Roman Republic Nice job, Isokron!

[Raiel]

Originally Posted by WingedDog

...
My personal discredit to Tien Chi player for total pacifism...

Believe me when I tell you that there is no toungue, mortal or divine, that can adequately express how thoroughly distraught I am to read this. Indeed, I suspect that the culmination of my entire existence has passed me by in complete ignorance.

----

When I joined, I did so as a n00b with a solid understanding of tactics, a decent understanding of strategic movement, but little
to no appreciation of just how important a good long-term strategy is in this game.

I knew nation selection in this game was random, but I figured that with only three nation in the late era that I definitely didn't want to play as, I was safe. Unfortunately, late age TC was my least favorite nation. I've since discovered some things I like about them, but long after designing a rather poor build for this game.

On our first start, I had a great start position that I could have made work even with my poor design. The restart, however, left me starting in a pass (almost dead center of the map) and surrounded by terrain that completely neutralized one of the few TC advantages I was prepared to exploit: strategic mobility.

I eventually attacked Gath to the north and was rebuffed with only a minimal effort... I then ventured east against Utgard, taking the vast majority of his territory and enslaving much of his armies, but could never be sure I was set to take his cap without exposing myself to the other nations around me. Just a newbie's jitters perhaps, but there ya go.

Gath invade just a couple of turns before I was ready to cast AN and start an invasion of my own, but the game was pretty much decided before this.

Overall, it was a learning experience that was almost fun. Thanks guys!

[WraithLord]

Isokron, you did a find job getting to victory in this game. And there were those who thought bless nations would rule the day given the game's settings...

Thank you rdonj for agreeing to steer the next YARG. So far we have on board from this games player's:
- Dimaz
- Clahan
- WL

Anyone else interested in securing a spot?- I'll probably start enlisting openly tomorrow so speak up now if you're interested.

Edit, an observation re. bless nations in this game. They evidently didn't fare that well. From the finishing nations and in good state were at least three non bless builds: Pythium, Bogarus and Midgard. At indie 9, low income, no diplo and hard research that's quite interesting.

[WingedDog]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Anyone else interested in securing a spot?-

Ummm... me. I thought I wrote about it.

[Maerlande]

Patala was a non-bless build. Executor used a VERY light bless all but insignificant.

[Isokron]

I would be interested in joining a new YARG also.

[WraithLord]

WingedDog: sorry, must have missed that.
Maerlande: Wow, make that 4 none bless builds that made it to the end!

So far we have on board from this game's players:
- Dimaz
- Clahan
- WL
- WingedDog
- Isokron

[LumenPlacidum]

Originally Posted by Isokron

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.

Heh, yeah, we had some pretty damn big armies jumping at one another for a while. I had thought I had finally gained the upper hand when I moved around a major army and finally laid siege to a big fortress of yours with a VP in it. Then I realized that the magic sites were all wrong, and it ended up being someone else's capital that you took earlier.

I went with an awake dom 10 ghost king with a bit of nature, blood, and death, hoping to really leverage my immortal vampire counts with a lot of dominion push. The ghost king did wonderfully in helping me expand and I had a great early game, right up until the point where the first fort I was building was destroyed by an ancient power awakening and eating the population and the commander building it...

This was made up by me ganking Atlantis pretty early, including storming their second fort pretty fast (replacing the one that was interrupted) and ruining a Man army at Atlantis' capital, following that by taking said capital. The Ulmish rangers blotted out the sky with their crossbows.

Pangaea had some truly terrifying armies and was sitting right on my border, so I decided that I needed to stem that tide, so I attacked and won through some major casualties. When I saw Pangaea attacking Midgard, I thought it might be my only chance to get a leg up over the vans, so I attacked them with pretty much everything I had. Unfortunately, he turned and *CRUSHED ME MERCILESSLY*. I only hope that all the slave collars I put on wolfherd commanders when he stormed my capital managed to get on some key mages of his.