"A Song of Ice and Fire", veterans-only game, MA. In progress, midgame...

[Aethyr]

I appreciate the compliment Executor, but I'm beginning to suspect that you're just "playing with your food".

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Executor

Well heck, now I feel ashamed! I'll have to put up a better show up for you Corwin! I am always glad to entertain.)

No worries, you did well. Most of your and Ulm battles that I've seen were quite brutal for Ulm. The few unsuccessefull attempts to storm one of his castles and losing an SC to his army this turn were the only significant setbacks in your military campaign that I've seen so far. Other then that you clearly have an upper hand on battlefields.

Still Ulm, to his credit, has not been a pushover, he is fighing back with resolve and determination.

And that's 60 gold you owe me for just this turn btw, don't make me demand a percentage of the gems from raven feast. (that spell totally sucks btw, I waste more gems that I gain with it)

You are right, Raven Feast did suck in vanilla, rolyally. But I've found it to be very cost efficient with CBM mod we are using. It costs only 1 air gem to cast, and it comes back with 1-5 death gems. It should fetch even more with these recent plague spells casted on my high-pop provinces. (so was it you or Van? ) And by this point in the game battles between armies tend to be large and leave a lot of corpses in its wake. All and all that makes Raven Feast a great bargain, especially for an air nation such as myself.

[Dimaz]

Just a bit of warning: in Sharivar game finished recently I fought with Ermor and Pangea and they both patroled heavily in every province, so scouts were killed immediately on the border. So I had to switch to stone spheres completely to see what happens. Ermor had to do the same when he was fighting Pan. So after a while we had tens of spheres used each turn. And at some point battlefield enchantments (storm, firestorm, others with the icon in the corner) just stopped working with debug message "out of ench". I strongly suspect it's due to heavy SS usage (I used 23 spheres that turn) as it stopped the next turn when I used only half of them and they show during battle with the same icon as enchantments.

[Lingchih]

I would agree with Dimaz. I have seen such things break the game before. I would suggest limiting the usage of stone spheres, so we can keep the game legit. We all know how easy it is to "break" the late game in Dominions.

[Lingchih]

And oh, I formally request a switch to 72 hour host. I'm about to start a new job, and my time will be limited. I know 72 hour tends to kill games, but I don't think it will kill this one. We regularly go even longer, on frequent delays.

[Executor]

Well we've been on 72 hours for quite some time, almost every turn seems to be delayed anyway so might as well change it to 72 hours.

Well those mechanical man are bad asses! 5 of them stopped like 50 undead horseman.
Didn't want to risk any SC's going in with that ridiculous teleporting Pretender and Prophet Ulm has, so I just keep sending waves of chaff to take it.

Maybe it was both me And Van . I take offense to that you know, there are more players in the game I suspect they all have death.

I like to use black death when storming remote forts, you get quite a few hundred soulless to break down the gates.

Stone spheres can only give you so much information about me Corwin...

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Executor

Well we've been on 72 hours for quite some time, almost every turn seems to be delayed anyway so might as well change it to 72 hours.

I am ok with switching our game to 72 hours, unless some players have strong obejctions to it. For now I have added 24 hours to the current hosting interval. I can switch it to regular 72h once it will host, if this is the way we will decide to go.

Well those mechanical man are bad asses! 5 of them stopped like 50 undead horseman.
Didn't want to risk any SC's going in with that ridiculous teleporting Pretender and Prophet Ulm has, so I just keep sending waves of chaff to take it.

Maybe it was both me And Van . I take offense to that you know, there are more players in the game I suspect they all have

Aha, so it was you. I've suspected that much. Van tends to use their death gems to cast undead raiders on my armies rather than plague spells on my provinces. And other then you and Van, I only have TC as a neighbor. Who is also fighting Van, and I am sure they would rather use their deathgems to summon more tartarian then cast hostile spells on me.

I like to use black death when storming remote forts, you get quite a few hundred soulless to break down the gates.

Unless of course my little ravens would bring me all these corpses as air gems first.

Stone spheres can only give you so much information about me Corwin...

True.
Well, I do have scouts over your territory, despite your patrols. But atm stonespheres are my primary tool when it comes to your war with Ulm since it is too far away from me and until recently TC has been patrolling like there is no tomorrow, in addition to BL and Jotuns patrols that I also had to avoid in order to get to your front with Ulm.

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Dimaz

Corwin, you lost another tart (somehow he again was lacking LR) and took the cap. My Sea King performance surprised me too as I said.
Other than that, in general, perhaps the better strategy for me was to take more defensive approach and try to deal with your raiders first without raiding as much myself. With Vans invisible for your scouts all over the place, it might've been harder for you to take all my lands so fast. And with Van thugs support I had better chances in big battles.

Yap, I agree with you, the strategy you've described would work better against me. I had long time to prepare my nation for your raiders, building castle network covering my entire realm that would allow me to take back the provinces you've raided.In the beginning of the war I was able to keep up with your much more numerous raiders because I was counting on you mostly using your raiders in offensive in my territory, rather then ambushing my own mostly non-stealthy raiders. Also in the beginning of the war many of your raiders didn't have high enough MR to withstand continuous Mindhunting attempts.

Other then raiders I think your large mistake was not committing enough mages to your initial attack. In that great battle in the beginning of the war, that has decided the direction of the entire military campaign that followed it, I was able to win only because of stronger battlefield magic. Your army had *much* better troops then mine (regenerating and mistformed sea trolls and storm demons against mostly archers and principles), and few SCs I had there were not enough to make a difference with such large armies as ours. On the other hand I had many more mages in the field and was able to take advantage of your Army of Gold spell. Still as we both have seen that battle was a close call, and should you pull more mages from your research and thrown them into the battle, you would carry the field on that day, destroying my main and only large army, capturing my key border castle, throwing me back and forcing me into defensive.

That being said I think overall you have fought very well, considering that the odds were against you from the beginning, and the whole war has turned out to be much more costly to me then I have expected.

[Aethyr]

Originally Posted by Executor

Didn't want to risk any SC's going in with that ridiculous teleporting Pretender and Prophet Ulm has

Excellent turn Executor. I knew that I had gone to well once to often with that pretender.

[Executor]

I wanted to kill him the last time, but those Tartaian bastards have a tendency of getting crazy when they are most needed.
Good thinking on changing the battle orders.
And I hoped Id kill the Asynja too, but that was a long shot, I'll have to deal with that thing another time.

So, it looks like you are ready to make your last stand at your capital?