MP: STACKERS, newbie game, (started)

[freykin]

Sorry about the stale turn, I thought I had the timing right and was off by an hour ><. Finals week is rough!

[otic]

Originally Posted by cwkjc

And you're defintively out ? there's no solution ?

Well, I'm back in town now and I have regular Internet again. I can continue to take turns, as it doesn't look like anyone has taken over shinuyama yet.

Unfortunately, my northern neighbor grew to about twice my size in the time I was gone. I will need a bit of luck to be anything more than a speed bump.

[Greyjoy]

Best of luck to you then, since I'm pretty sure I'm not your northern neighbor and therefore I want you to cause him as much trouble as possible.

(Jotunheim? Man? Yeah, I know, you'd be silly to say, gotta be nervous enough about both your neighbors already. I'm just idly guessing based on the explicably scary and inexplicably scary on the scorechart.)

The squids definitely have a lot of gems. I mean, yeah, okay, we all saw that coming, voice of tiamat + astral probe, but it's still scary to be on the other end of it. Especially with my first sitesearcher being completely incompetent.

I don't think he's found a single site. All the growth you see on my graph? Yeah, that's from the later employees or my pretender. Some dedicated scout HE turned out to be.

Lastly and minorly: I finally got around to mucking with Ashdod in SP, and sweet Jesus I'm glad we're playing CBM. Turns them from hellishly overpowered to... er... hellishly overpowered but with a bit of a gold bottleneck? Mages running from 200g (gotta love guaranteed lv2 in a path, though) to rather a whole lot more.

[13lackGu4rd]

yeah, Ashdod is by far the strongest nation in all 3 eras. well, Ashdod and Hinnom I guess and it will become a monster unless you guys stop it early. I don't envy his southern neighbor, who ever he may be but well, he's got me on his north and without water access for the time being.

and yeah, you're right about my gem income, mainly Voice of Tiamat, no surprise there...

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Greyjoy

Best of luck to you then, since I'm pretty sure I'm not your northern neighbor and therefore I want you to cause him as much trouble as possible.

(Jotunheim? Man? Yeah, I know, you'd be silly to say, gotta be nervous enough about both your neighbors already. I'm just idly guessing based on the explicably scary and inexplicably scary on the scorechart.)

The squids definitely have a lot of gems. I mean, yeah, okay, we all saw that coming, voice of tiamat + astral probe, but it's still scary to be on the other end of it. Especially with my first sitesearcher being completely incompetent.

I don't think he's found a single site. All the growth you see on my graph? Yeah, that's from the later employees or my pretender. Some dedicated scout HE turned out to be.

Lastly and minorly: I finally got around to mucking with Ashdod in SP, and sweet Jesus I'm glad we're playing CBM. Turns them from hellishly overpowered to... er... hellishly overpowered but with a bit of a gold bottleneck? Mages running from 200g (gotta love guaranteed lv2 in a path, though) to rather a whole lot more.

Pythium, Ashdod and their relatives are the nations I never play because, if I win, I always feel like I've cheated somehow....

Ashdod is lovely because it's mages are so powerful, you can easily take an imprisoned Bless pretender build, and your Bless doesn't even have to be top notch, so you can take fabulous scales too (because you need them anyway), the +2 Heat requirement also gives you a lovely extra 80 DPs just because Ashdod really needs that boost. My second favorite power mage being the joined-path King of the Deep from Atlantis. 3W plus a 2-linked that can make 1/5 a 5W mage which is nothing to sneeze at on the land and completely deadly underwater--easily summoning masses of regenerating water elementals... just lovely.

Giants, once they are outfitted with appropriate gear, become, not just thugs, but recruitable SCs. They are incredibly powerful. On top of all the awesome stats they have, they can also wear 3 pieces of jewelry. Also note:

They have hideously cheap slinger slaves (and you know you have to take at minimum production 0 or you'll have crap for an army for a very long time) and 1/3 Talmai Elder can easily cast Flaming arrows, so you have Fire-immune SCs stomping around with swarms of deadly chaff.


I have found Pythium (and especially Sauromatia) to be similar. My brother is fond of using Emerald Lords as thugs in MA, and they are quite tough little units especially when backed up by some lovely buffs like Body Ethereal, Luck and Quickness.

[Greyjoy]

Pythium I'd say dances on the line. It's not as conspicuously overpowered as Hinnom/Ashdod - Gath is somewhat closer to sanity just because there are so many other LA nations with decent conventionals, thugs, or vampires - but there isn't much in the way of obvious weaknesses and they have a lot of decent strengths. They do fall a little short in magic diversity, but with very strong air and astral and okay water, I'm not sure they need it. Extremely decent infantry, an absolutely insane early game, mages that are purpose-built for communions, some pretty good thugs, and the lower levels of angels are GREAT.

So are the Seraphs, obviously, but in endgame anybody with astral's going to wish them up anyway, so them being Pythium "nationals" doesn't really count in my book.

I hadn't really thought of the emerald dudes as a thug chassis. You're right, they're really pretty good. More importantly, they're incredibly cost-effective. A nice thing to segue to if you get carried away with the early-game hydra rush and someone pulls poison immunes out of their bum.

Pythium's really more on the level of Van, Jotun, and so on. Whether that's "overpowered" or just "top tier" depends on your point of view, I suppose.

[krpeters]

So one thing that has me worried about this tower map... if we do decide we need to gang up on someone, it seems like the only thing we can do is funnel gold & gems to the poor guys adjacent to the troublemaker?

Later on I guess teleporting would work also.

So is it safe to assume R'leyh is clamming? Or is that huge gem income from site searching?

[Greyjoy]

Last time I checked, clams were invisible to the graph, so the reality's probably even worse.

R'lyeh's just spamming the hell out of Voice of Tiamat. Between that and his bazillion astral mages, he can sitesearch all 20+ of the map's water provinces for five types of site pretty painlessly. Six if he designed his SC with a dash of nature or death. And it's not actually a BAD idea to convert a lot of those gems you won't be using anyway and drop Akashics on captured land provinces. (It may be a bad idea to do it on sea ones, though, unless you see weird scales and really want to reveal the site causing them. Or have ludicrous amounts of gems and forgot to bring a nature caster to find kelp forts.)

Strictly speaking, it's not IMPOSSIBLE to bring more players to bear, especially if someone's getting hit hard on the other flank; on the other hand, best-case scenario leaves you with a pretty lengthy and of necessity very thin supply line, for a gain that may or may not be worthwhile. Depends whether you feel that stopping, let's say, Ashdod is worth committing some of your armies to a risky task as opposed to eating the buffer state outright and praying you can handle the threat on the other side.

Don't underestimate the power of gem donations, though. A couple (dozen) good thugs can turn quite the tide.

[Gandalf Parker]

That is the idea of the map. To make it so that ganging cannot easily occur in early game. So yes it will probably wait for spells, or bribery.

And you missed one. Some nations have the ability to send entire armies thru other peoples territory. An ability generally overlooked but a possibly useful ally in this game.

[freykin]

True, some sides have stealthy soldiers and commanders, they could easily do some guerilla tactics. I know that if I had that available as Agartha I'd be taking advantage of it heavily.