Viscious Circle 3

[GrudgeBringer]

LOL, and if he is in this long, why wouldn't he make it hard to invade Pan...Truman can be hard headed and won't quit easily is my expieriance with him

[aaminoff]

Thanks for the vote, Lihaassa.

I do think it is premature to declare any "winner". As I said before, everyone who played and had fun is a winner.

I still want to kibbitz around the end game though.

So, the 3 big powers, me, Caelum, and Hinnom, made a pact to band together against Sauro. When Sauro finally is done, fighting might break out among the 3 of us. I was of course hoping not to be the ganged-up on, and had started tentatively negotiating with Hinnom to that effect. I think it is too early to say who would have ended up ganging up on whom; I had long-term productive alliances with Switzerland (er, Arco) and Ulm.

Caelum had a huge gem income. Was this mostly from the Well of Misery? (Does that show up in income? see, we're still noobs here). I was worried about that. So my judgement was that Caelum was more dangerous than Hinnom. Hinnom's SCs are uber, but he only has 7 of them (or is it 9?), and in Dom3 eventually any SC can be taken down with the right SC counter.

Which led to the epic wish tug of war for the Chalice. Ulm was doing the wishing, I was supplying him with astral gems. I am 90% certain that the power at the other end of the tug of war was Caelum. The thing is, after a while I realized that Caelum's gem income was such that they could keep the wish tug of war for The Chalice indefinitely. Yikes.

I got The Chalice very early, around turn 30-40, and produced about a tart per turn for a long time, but I kept losing them in battle, so by the end I think I was down to no more than a dozen fully capable Tarts.

VC3 was played under CBM 1.5, which now gets the dubious distinction of "the last version of CBM with gem gems". I would have to look to be sure, but I think at the end I had about 80 blood stones and about 30 clams. I noobishly did not grasp how important gem gens were until a bit late. Oh, and one fever fetish, just for the heck of it.

Another thing I am curious about is how close is my threat profiles to reality.

Hinnom has the 7 Grigori and some number of Baals/Melquarts. Are those Baal/Melquarts decent raiding SCs? By which I mean, can they all teleport, or only some of them? Did you have enough equipment to kit them all out fully? About how many did you have by the end?

Caelum has Eagle Kings, which are great raiders, but I was figuring that with that huge Death income the main threat from Caelum would actually be Tarts. About how many de-afflicted, GoRd Tarts did you have by the end, and how fast were you producing them? The other thing I wonder about Caelum is how much it matters that all of my thugs can cast resist lightning - by this late stage of the game, how capable is Caelum of using other than lightning attacks.

As for my own threat profile, it is difficult to overstate how cool Vanjarls are. I recruited one a turn from most of my castles most of the game. I put the new recruits to blood hunting, swapping out the ones with an experience star to do the actual fighting. With E9N4 bless, mistform, a golden shield and some brand, they are incredible thugs. What surprised me was how many spells that go against MR they would shrug off: paralyze, soul slay, enslave, etc. I suppose it helped that I had S4W4 in my bless as well. Even against Sauro's (admittedly rather poorly equipped) SCs, the careful plans I set up would not work, but then the Vanjarls would walk up and beat on the SC while being immune to whatever they were trying to do. (I was careful about making them eg fire-immune when I was going after the Fire Royalty, but, thats obvious). I think those experience stars matter a lot.

I'm curious to hear others' postmortems.

- Alex

[Squirrelloid]

We actually calling this? Because I don't want to disclose state secrets unless we are =)

Oh, since its something that's pretty easy to figure out from the gem graphs, gems from global spells are shown in your gem total (you'll note i spiked exactly when Sauro dropped on the turn i put up the Well and took it from him).

[aaminoff]

It looks pretty clear to me that we are calling it, but Grudge being the admin should formally announce it I guess.

[Kietsensei]

Hinnom has potentially 12 "uber" SCs, the 6 grigoris and their 6 children. The children are unique heroes with stats of a titan pretender and nice magic power as well. The most awesome thing is that those sons of Grigori can have heroic ability despite the fact they are unique.

Melquart are powerful thug (or light Scs ). Some of them can teleport. Ba'al could be used as light Scs as well but I prefer to use them as battlemage to cast flame from the sky, earthquake, army of lead and spam petrify on Scs.

Because I played a nation that everyone consider unbalanced, my strategy was to not draw attention on me while keeping close to the leading nation. The longer the game last, the more powerful Hinnom become. I relied on luck scale to get powerful scs at the start and managed to get 2 grigoris' sons before turn 10. With trades agreement (thanks to Hellheim and Arco ), I fully equiped them with magical items

On the SCs issue I had at the end the 6 grigoris (some powered by a wish spell) and 4 sons of grigori as main Scs. I had a dozen of melquarts designed as raiders or tartarian killers and a dozen ba'al as battlemage. Hinnom signed a pact with all demon lords as well as a few devils and for diversification I had a tart factory running (but without the chalice or GoF it wasn't very effective...)
After Sauro's fall my strategy was to either ally with Hellheim against Caelum or declare war on Hellheim while Caelum was busy elsewhere . I wanted to defeat Hellheim with a domkill. I started slowly and as soon as he would have seen the trick, I would have equipped all my sacrificers with a jade dagger and started to wish for more candles on the map. And this was how I plan to win the game as well: by turtling while spreading my dom.

Well thanks everyone for this long game I really enjoyed it and see you on another game.

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, that looks like an official we're done, since Hinnom finally weighed in.

I have a mere 5-6 kitted tarts I think. Plus some random spellcasting tarts and a couple monstrum that came as commanders. However, I'm summoning between 2-4 tarts per turn - my limiting factor is definitely nature gems. I wasn't planning on relying as tarts for SCs in general (although raiding is definitely a possibility, but EKs also do that well).

I have ~12 un-GoRed Monstrums, which make a pretty convincing hit squad when Weapons of Sharpness is dropped on them and Army of Gold is cast (both trivial to accomplish)

I have a several dozen EKs fully kitted (I think the actual number is over 50), plus another dozen or so anti-demon/undead kitted EKs equipped to quickly eliminate tarts and uber-demon threats. (pretty minimal gear: Boots of Quickness + appropriate weapon + a useful armor to reduce fatigue accrual) These are all easily cloud trapezed at a moment's notice with my 500+ air gems that I've been stockpiling.

Full kit includes a flamebrand, shield of gleaming gold, silver hauberk, horror helm, boots of quickness, AMA and luck pendant. (They're also sacred and i have an E9N4S4 bless)

I have somewhere in the ballpark of 70-90 clams and am producing 2/trn every turn. I also have some number of bloodstones and am producing a little less than 1/trn.

I can drop about a dozen penetration +5 mindhunts at a moment's notice, in case anyone tries to raid me with non-astral combatants. Producing more is trivial - i could easily scale up to around 20 in a turn.

I have all 6 of my national summon uniques + a QoA.

I have quite a few Yazatas, and can summon vast numbers at a moment's notice. (Easily a couple hundred if i needed them).

I only use thunderstrike when I know my opponent is not prepared against it. It is hardly the most effective weapon in my arsenal.

I have around a dozen liches, most with staves and boots of flying. (4 of them are my tart summoners)

I have a Conj 20 site, and an Ench 30 site.

I have pretty easy access to E5, W5, A6+, S5+, and D7. I have limited access to F5 and N5. Almost all of this is teleportable or cloud trapezeable.

I have about a dozen stone spheres (mostly produced recently) with which i've been scanning the globe over the last 5-10 turns to see what the situation looks like.

If it wasn't for the chalice tug of war I was thinking about overcasting AN with a 999 gem investment, but I kept having to blow S on wishing for the chalice =p

So my endgame strategy was to (1) figure out who I'm at war with next, (2) figure out where they're vulnerable, (3) Use my capability to rapidly redeploy in order to sequentially eliminate all relevant assets with overwhelming force.

If both Hinnom and Helheim came after me, I was planning on killing Helheim first while dispatching whatever raiders Hinnom fielded. I was sort of hoping one of Helheim and Hinnom would go after the other, and I could hop in on the side of the losing participant (and this looks like it had a 50% shot of happening, based on Hinnom's comments). The Grigori sort of worry me, but I'd have to see them in action (something I have thus far managed to fail at doing).

But really, i didn't want to have to actually micro all that. I'm not joking when I say that I was seriously considering 1-turn 80-province air drops wherein the occasional fully geared EK was an acceptable loss.

[GrudgeBringer]

Wow...and my only strategy was to cast Burden of time a(as I have been hoarding boots of youth and a couple of other spells.

Is 999 the top amount you can put in a global because I thought I put more than that into AN.

It has been a learning exp and if everybody is done with the Micro-management and cringing at another 50 turns, I will call the game....But PLEASE can I hear 3 definite YES answers as I feel I owe that to you guys for letting me be the buffer and hanging around long enough to try stuff I have never done before,

I must say I have enjoyed this game as much as any I have played, I have played with new and old friends and watched them weave their magic. I am not near the same level as you guys but be careful...you guys have raised me several levels and you might...just might, find me in your backyard one of these days when you least expect it.

Let me know a definitive yes or no answer...I don't see a CLEAR winner and I know it is like kissing your sister, so i will leave it in your hands.

There will not be another turn hosted until we have a consensus.

Thanks for making my first real attempt at hosting a game a success!!!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by GrudgeBringer

Is 999 the top amount you can put in a global because I thought I put more than that into AN.

Base cost of global +999 is max. When I said 999 I actually meant 999 extra. (so 1149?)

[aaminoff]

call the game: definite YES from me.

Interesting. I think I was right in guessing that Caelum was the bigger threat between H and C. I also think I was right in guessing that I was actually the weakest power of the 3 of us. I just took too many casualties in my wars with Tir na Nog and Sauro. Likewise, I used up too much of my gem supply in those wars - I ended with only about 60 air gems stockpiled, which is not enough for a serious late game cloud trapeze airdrop.

And I was right in suspecting that it was late enough that Caelum had diversified what they can do and lightning resistance alone was no longer important.

Domkill: that is a good idea, though I think by itself I could have countered it with my own blood saccing once I saw what was happening. Combined with raiding to destroy my blood hunting however it could well work; but in a full on war we would presumably have mutually destroyed each others blood economy with raiders. I had an income of around 50 blood slaves per turn at the end.

It is really impossible to say what would have happened. I think Hinnom and I were clever enough to figure out that Caelum was the biggest threat and ally against them. Would the two of us + Ulm have been enough to take them down? Who knows. Would fighting among the big 3 have weakened all of us to the point where Ulm had a chance? Maybe.

Very interesting game, indeed.

[GrudgeBringer]

(Sigh) NOBODY gives Switzerland any respect...Don't we protect the Pope for Heavens Sake (pun intended)!!!