Fire vs. Death heavy bless

[K]

Originally Posted by thejeff

From your original post:

I simply don't see how sending out an army at least every other turn can lead to progress like that. Sure there will be some backtracking and some indies you have to bypass or combine to take, but to do that badly most of those armies won't be attacking most turns. If you're that constrained by geography, skip the bless and just use regular troops. You should be able to do as well.

Yeh, I used a very conservative model to illustrate a point about expansion on different map sizes. In a more reasonable model, or even an ideal model the rates are much higher.

But how am I going to know that I've been placed in a "constrained by geography" part of a map until after I've started?

Originally Posted by KissBlade

Your impression that a bless strat is somehow worse off in a small map versus a big one due to "dogpiling" is ridiculous as any good player using an uber bless are able to fend off 3-4 non blessed nations early game without very specific counters easily while stomping them one nation at a time with strategic use of chokes and general good planning in expansion tactics.

Oh, you can hold off 3-4 players for a while. You can even take down one of your attackers and take his stuff.

But you won't win the game because while you are embroiled in a war with 3-4 players and holding your own or slowly expanding, other people are in wars with one guy at a time and by midgame and lategame they've been expanding their research and hoarding their gems for globals while you've been sending mages into battle and using gems for spells and combat magic.

But sure, in a perfect game you could win despite all that and take all comers.

Originally Posted by KissBlade

Then you posit this with a paragraph claiming that game winning strategies are "Building badass SCs ... Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that..."

You've never scoured provinces with Horrors and taken them with flying demons? Or seen how effective Horrors can be vs armies without heavy mage support, especially when Astral Corruption is occasionally upgrading Horrors? Or shutdown enemy troop production with Rain of Toads?

Its a viable enddgame strategy if you have been turtling for a while and have a stockpile of blood slaves.

Originally Posted by KissBlade

That whole spiel makes it sound as if you're playing against newbies, AI or players stuck in the stone age of research while you're hitting 9's. On top of the fact that your point of Arcane Nexus shows your inexperience since the spell is either banned or good players WILL dogpile you and significantly more so for casting spells like Nexus or Utterdark than playing a bless nation with an out of the gates province rate.

Yeh, I don't play in a lot of the games the vets run because I think its pretty cowardly to play in a game where the Utterdark and Astral Nexus has been banned. Removing spells that bring a conclusion to the game just means you want to set up a game that favors your strategies because you are afraid someone might beat you.

I also don't play CBM games. Does that make me "out of touch"?

I've played a lot of multiplayer and as far as I can tell the only difference between vets and noobs is that vets know how dangerous each other are and they either turtle until endgame or they dogpile one player at a time (unless they are neighbors to an obviously weak empire). They also pool gems to knock down game-ending globals and trade a fair bit.

Your experience has varied. I get it. The reason I don't respect you or your opinion is because my experience has obviously varied from yours and on more than one occasion I have pulled off plans that "accepted opinion" consider impossible or unwise.

I get it. I take risks you won't. I play in games where someone might cast the Utterdark, and you won't. I'll cast a game-ending global and risk a dogpile by other guys with equal research because its endgame and I consider it the only time you can effectively fight a dogpile off. I play on medium maps because turtling and fighting indies for 20 turns bores the crap out of me.

Seriously. I understand where you are coming from.

Now you can get the last word in to sooth your pride and ego by reiterating the same unconvincing points. Or not. Your choice. I'm done either way.