AAR-Neophyte with Caelum

[Wyatt Hebert]

Alright, here's my first attempt at an AAR... more of an IMR (in media res), but anyways...

This is not really designed for me to instruct anyone... it's for feedback on how I play Caelum according to the game definition, and for explanation of why strategies work or don't. I will, of course, be giving my input, but I'd appreciate if the more experienced players give me feedback on what I'm doing wrong (which I suspect will be almost everything).

Oh, and another note: Careful with the flames... Caelum can't handle them!

Alright, first things first, the Pretender:

Virtue
Magic: Air 8
Dominion stats: Order 3, Cold 3, Growth 1, Luck 0, Magic 3 D. Strength 7
Fortification type: Castle

Well, this is a pretty vanilla start. I know that Caelum are some of the best air mages, and, being inexperienced, I don't want to have a Pretender at radical odds to the theme's Magic. I've read the Caelum Posts, and it seems to me (also after playing Caelum for about 45 turns before I read the post) that Mammoths will be a must, so I have Order 3 for the Gold Income, and no Productivity because the majority of my units don't have a high Resource cost. The Castle is my default fortification, so I just went with it for this game. Also, Luck is even for a specific reason. I'm going to keep a track of all events that happen to me, the scales where they happened (as best as I can determine), and stuff like that.

Lack of Water on the Pretender precludes Quickness being cast by him, I understand, but once I have access to Boots of Quickness, it'll be another issue entirely.

Game Setup:
All enemies except Ermor, Atlantis, and R'lyeh enabled (on Normal AI).
Again, being my first attempt at this, didn't want to deal with the problem of Ermor, nor the tactical flexibility of the marine races. Also, my map selection would have made the marines pretty sickly, so that's another issue.

Map: Inland Map (154 provs, 5 Underwater)
(Lots of Forests, supposedly)
This map looked interesting, I don't know it too well, and the lack of Water means that my pretender sans Water isn't making a difference in the flexibility to attack the water.

Starting Prov: 1
Independent Strength: 4
Magic Site Freq: 50
Renaming Allowed

This is all set up basically by my normal setup. I'm used to Magic Sites all the way up at 75, but I'm trying to be more normal in my playstyle, so I put it at 50. The independent strength is actually average to a little high for me, but that's probably due to my poor skills as a tactician.

Anyways, that's the setup, and feel free to comment (as I know you people will). I'll respond when I can, and try to keep this up and running at a good pace.

Wyatt

[ March 27, 2004, 07:40: Message edited by: Wyatt Hebert ]