Ermor MP Battlefield Game - FFA /CLOSED/

[Norfleet]

What I would like to hear are the answers to several specific questions regarding Ermor nation in that game, which is controlled by Norfleet. These are not questions that originate only from me, because each of the other 4 players who are in this game, and who have been cooperating against Ermor all along, would like to know the answers to them as well.

In just this single battle, the Ermor have used 470 gems worth of equipment and summons

You exaggerate: Let me run the breakdown for you.

3 Wraith Consuls: 35D apiece x 3 = 105D
2 Bane Lords: 10D apiece x 2 = 20D
5 Wraith Swords: 7D apiece x 5 = 35D
3 Dusk Elders: 20D apiece x 3 = 60D
3 Banners: 15D apiece x 3 = 45D

Total: 320 D

4 Starshines(one Banelord is hatless due to lack of funding): 7S * 4 = 28S
5 AMA and 5 Pendants: 6S * 5 = 30S OR 10S * 5 = 50S
(real cost somewhere in between - item is cheap, astral abundant, lack of hammers, not always hammerforged)

Total: 58 to 78 S

Jade Armor: (3E + 3W) * 5 = 15E + 15W OR (5E + 5W) * 5 = 25E + 25W
Wing Shoes: 3A * 5 OR 5A * 5 = 15 to 25 A

Total: 15-25E, 15-25W, 15-25A

Total: 423-473 Gems

As you can see, it hits 470 gems only by the pessimistic outcome. Death gems represent the bulk of the expense, and that's the real issue to focus on, as the other gems represent chump change, and the second largest expenditure, unsurprisingly, is astral. Gee, where do you think THAT comes from?

Now, according to the graphs, my current gem income until tha Last turn was about 50+% of Ermor's. As those of us familiar with mathematics may remember from college years , the total gem income for each nation in the game is equal to the area under the Gems Income Graphs. ( in other words it is integral of the graph function).

You are ignoring the following:

1. Explicit gem income represents the minority of my gem income: I tend to dislike reliance on explicit income due to the fact that it reveals one's hand in a scoregraphed game. Therefore, I deliberately conceal income through the use of the tactic you so despise, clamming, and fetishing.

2. Luck bonus: Ermor is Turmoil and Luck. I am hit with 2-3 randoms a turn, every turn, the entire game. Having half of your (zero) population die in a "get free death gems" event is pretty cool. Finding fistloads of gems is sweet, especially when they start the clamforge. $1500 free = 3 free castles.

3. Geography: I started in the east-central flatlands of Karan. Many plains. Good population, at least a dozen 10K+ provinces to burninate.

4. Raven Feast: My second research target pursued alongside construction was Conjuration. An average feasting yields 40D, and I'm creating both corpses to feast, and revenue, through burninating the countryside.

5. Natural income: My average income has fluctuated between $200-350 a turn. This represents a castle or temple every turn or two, as I do not pay noticeable upkeep nor recruit.

6. Alchemy: Surprisingly, luck has been with me this game. I have not had to alchemize many gems.

The graphs in our game are very clear. If we take the total amount of gems collected by our two nations than it is very clear that I have collected about 60% of total Ermor's gems for the duration of the game (I am only talking about regular gem income from the sites, since nothing else is reflected in the gem graphs). Add to this the fact that Arco, Pythium and Jotunheim have been sending *all* their gems to me, since I was spearheading and coordinating our anti-Ermor efforts, than I had in my possession about 70% of the gems that Ermor had.

If they sent you everything, they are very clueless. Furthermore, being newbies, they are not really familiar with gem generators, and they have not searched much. The contributions they send you are negligible. Their military efforts have been similarly humorous, as they've lost entire armies to construction teams and fly-by shootings. I have mostly ignored them.

Now keep in mind, it is just turn 22, standard MP magic 50 frequency. But the thing is, my nation could not afford half of the 470 gems used By Ermor for summons and equipments that they used in just this single battle

This single battle. Not just any ordinary battle, but the Big One. I committed everything I had on the tap at the time. That was the entire elite guard.

Some of these additional gems could have come from random events (Ermor is playing Luck 2 turmoil 3, so he would quite a few events). Some of these gems could have come from Raven Feasts, which Ermor could used on some of his high population provinces while he was actively murdering the population. And finally some could come from Clams, since we all know that Norfleet loves to clam hoard. However clamhoarding is not easy to do for the Soul Gate Ermor, since they don't have any water or even astral income, and lack any water 2 mages.

You're forgetting that I wrote the BOOK on Ermorian Clam Hoarding. Alas, it was rejected by the publisher, so it's not available for public consumption. But who was it who brought the clam-hoarding matter to prominence on the chat? What was I playing at the time? That's what I thought.

That was several months ago. The undead never rest. Do you think I haven't refined my crude newbie methods of yore in the course of SEVERAL MONTHS? This inquisition is absurd. Can't you just accept your loss?

[Zapmeister]

As you can see, it hits 470 gems only by the pessimistic outcome.

You should probably add in the cost of the hammers (plural since I don't think one hammer would have supported that many discounted items).

[Norfleet]

Yes, but the hammer cost is unimportant to the accounting of what was used at the battle. Vanheim should have hammers also.

[Zapmeister]

Yes, but the hammer cost is unimportant to the accounting of what was used at the battle.

No, Stormbinder was calculating how many gems you must have spent to put that battle together, and that cost includes the cost of the hammers.

[Norfleet]

However, the hammers were not brought to the battle. They are also used for other purposes, and are only borrowed to forge armaments. If you want to confuse the matter some more, at least one of those items was stolen from an indy, and another one was an inheritance from a recently deceased prince. I can't remember which one was which, though, but they weren't very expensive items anyway.

[Graeme Dice]

So how do you make any fetishes or clams without using your pretender for nothing other than searching and forging?

[Zapmeister]

However, the hammers were not brought to the battle.

Not the point. Stormbinder was calculating the cost of fielding that force, not the total value of items actually on the battlefield. His problem being that he could not see how you could have accumulated the total number of gems required.

[Norfleet]

Yes, but since the hammers are already part of an auxiliary machine, namely, the clam and fetish forge, which in turn is actually supplying the ability to afford this crap, borrowing them does not carry a calculable added cost, and I'm not prepared to laboriously bean-count my entire empire. That's just way too much work to appease some sour grapes.

[Cohen]

Raven Feast gives 40 D gems?

Quite strange really.
For what I know, the meximum amout of gems I got from it is 12 Death.
12 Death with 1200 corpses about, obtained into a 12000 pop province, pillaged and under Ermor domain.
This bring down the population to 5000 about, to have such many corpses.

Even more it's an A4 spell, costing 5 A Gems.
Apart from Pretender, how many mages belonging to Ermor could cast it?

In fact I believe it's a spell for air nations that need to boost their death income. However this Last phrase is only a my opinion.

[Stormbinder]

First, thanks to everybody for keeping this thread polite. The purpose of it is purely informative, and I don't want to see any flames anywhere around it. So please keep strictly to the numbers and informative discussions.

Now let's talk about some numbers:

Norfleet wrote:


You exaggerate: Let me run the breakdown for you.
...

Total: 423-473 Gems

No, I do not exaggerate. I said that " 470 gems is the total cost of summons and items without using the Dwarven Hammer ", and I have said that "using the hammers on some items will lower the total cost, by not by too much".
Your numbers show that this is correct. Based upon your description on what you have used your hammers upon, the total cost of gems and summons used by your empire would be about 440 gems total. Thank you for confirming it.

As you can see, it hits 470 gems only by the pessimistic outcome. Death gems represent the bulk of the expense, and that's the real issue to focus on, as the other gems represent chump change, and the second largest expenditure, unsurprisingly, is astral. Gee, where do you think THAT comes from?

Honestly I don't know. That's why I am asking you. But it is clear that you are hinting to massive use of Clams. I have no doubt that you have some clams at this point. However it is clear that it could not be easy for you to clamhoard as Soul Gate Ermor.

First - your only stable water income or astral income in this game (exculding astral income from clams later on) did not come until 7 turns ago, because you didn't search for *any* sites until 7 turns ago, for the first 15 turns of this game. The graphs show it very clear.

Second - the only mage capable of clamhoarding that you had in the begining was your own pretender. And I am sure your GK pretender with 6 schools of magic at level 4-5 would have better thing to do than to forge clams every turn.

Based upon reports of your neigbors scouts, as wel as my own scouts, your GK spend most of his time conquering indep provinces, as should be expected.


You only other realistic option to make clams would be to wait until your reach Con6 and than make water braclet for those Dusk Elders who have water 1 as their single random pick. Going to the extremes like forging Water Robe(20 water gems, 15 with Hammer) or empowering your Dusk elder to water 2 (30 water gems) would not be economicaly feasable by turn 22.

This, and the fact that you had zero astral or water income from the sites (just because you didn't search for any sites until 7 turns ago), means that you could not possibly produce a lot of clams by now, and therefore could not have a lot of astral income from them yet.

Do you agree with these observations?

Now, according to the graphs, my current gem income until tha Last turn was about 50+% of Ermor's. As those of us familiar with mathematics may remember from college years , the total gem income for each nation in the game is equal to the area under the Gems Income Graphs. ( in other words it is integral of the graph function).

You are ignoring the following:

1. Explicit gem income represents the minority of my gem income: I tend to dislike reliance on explicit income due to the fact that it reveals one's hand in a scoregraphed game. Therefore, I deliberately conceal income through the use of the tactic you so despise, clamming, and fetishing.

Norfleet, it has nothing to do with me. I am just interested in some specific in-game questions, that's all.

You mentioned Claming and Fetishing. Do you mean that by now, the current turn 23, you have a lot of both Clams and Fetishes? If so, that please give us some numbers, since otherwise these are just general statements that doesn't tell much.

And don't worry, I am not asking you to count each and every clam and fetish in the game (although you are most likey to keep them in just one or two places, since there is no point of spreading them around, at least at this stage of the game). Instead all you need to do is to do a "pool" command on Fire and Astral, that just distract two numbers from each other. Very simple, isn't it? If you already did "pooling" in this turn and pooled all your gems in your treasury - it is not a problem either. You can use "unmake changes made this turn" command (that you can just use "quit without saving" so your original turn would be preserved) and do "pool" again. Or you can just give us aproximate number.

So - how many Clams and how many Fetishes do you have in your Empire by now, turn 23? Aproximate number is ok, if you can't calculate the exact number.

2. Luck bonus: Ermor is Turmoil and Luck. I am hit with 2-3 randoms a turn, every turn, the entire game. Having half of your (zero) population die in a "get free death gems" event is pretty cool. Finding fistloads of gems is sweet, especially when they start the clamforge. $1500 free = 3 free castles. ).

How many 1500$ events did you have in this game? And are you saying that all money to fund your 20 or more castles (450GP each), with the aproximately the same amount of temples and laboratories (200+200 GP each), came from the random events?

Also do I understand you correctly, that you are saying that you didn't use alchemy to fund these constructions? I though you have said yesterday that:
"When I alchemized to fund the construction of my buildings, I mostly used firegems from my fetishes". Is it correct?

I am just trying to make sure that I understand you correctly.

4. Raven Feast: My second research target pursued alongside construction was Conjuration. An average feasting yields 40D, and I'm creating both corpses to feast, and revenue, through burninating the countryside.

Puting "average 40 Death gems yield" claim aside - how many Air 4 Casters capable of casting Raven Feast spell do you have? Air 4 is very hard to get for Soul Gate Ermor early on in the game. Or are you using your pretender to cast these Raven Feasts?

Also how many Raven Faests total have you casted by now? Again, you may give aprox. number if you have to.

5. Natural income: My average income has fluctuated between $200-350 a turn. This represents a castle or temple every turn or two, as I do not pay noticeable upkeep nor recruit.

The information about your income is correct. Although you average money income per turn for the duration of the game (your total money income devided by the number of the turns) is in 200-250GP range, as it can be clearly seen from the graphs.


So please tell how many castles you have by now, turn 23? And I assume you have both temples and labs in almost all of your castles, correct? Again, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, I am just trying to make sure that I understand your explanations correctly.

The graphs in our game are very clear. If we take the total amount of gems collected by our two nations than it is very clear that I have collected about 60% of total Ermor's gems for the duration of the game (I am only talking about regular gem income from the sites, since nothing else is reflected in the gem graphs). Add to this the fact that Arco, Pythium and Jotunheim have been sending *all* their gems to me, since I was spearheading and coordinating our anti-Ermor efforts, than I had in my possession about 70% of the gems that Ermor had.

If they sent you everything, they are very clueless. Furthermore, being newbies, they are not really familiar with gem generators, and they have not searched much. The contributions they send you are negligible. Their military efforts have been similarly humorous, as they've lost entire armies to construction teams and fly-by shootings. I have mostly ignored them.

This is correct Norfleet. In fact it was the first MP game for all of them except Cohen. The gem income that they have been sending me was mostly from their capitals. I've choosed to spend a huge ammount of time explaining a lot of things about Dom2 to them in emails ang guiding them, instead of "crushing them under my feet", as you said you would did in my place, and they all are very grateful.

Nevertheless, they all (except Abysia, which was controlled by Cohen who knows how to search) have been sending me all their gems for the durations of the game. That's why, as I said earlier, without their contributions my total gem income from the magic sites was about 60% of yours, and with their 3 nations sending me all their gems it was about 70% of yours.

Speaking of which - please tell me what is your current regular gem income from the magic sites, without clams/fetishes?

And how much of this is Death gems income?

Now keep in mind, it is just turn 22, standard MP magic 50 frequency. But the thing is, my nation could not afford half of the 470 gems used By Ermor for summons and equipments that they used in just this single battle

This single battle. Not just any ordinary battle, but the Big One. I committed everything I had on the tap at the time. That was the entire elite guard.

I agree, this was an important battle. You have eliminted the only force who came even close of treatining you, and with wining this battle you have won the game. My congratulations.

However my point was that you have used 470 gems worth of summons and equimpent in this battle, or 440 gems asuming use of Dwarven Hammer to forge expensive parts, as you said you did.

My entire gem income from magic sites for the duration of the game, which is based upon graphs, including all gems send me by 4 other nations ) could barely cover half of these gems.


However, what is much more important, that if my guess is correct, you may have as much as 1500 gems worth of summons and equipment elsewhere in your Empire, in addition to the 440 gems you have demostrated with just 8 of your commanders, that you used in this battle.


Is this correct?

Some of these additional gems could have come from random events (Ermor is playing Luck 2 turmoil 3, so he would quite a few events). Some of these gems could have come from Raven Feasts, which Ermor could used on some of his high population provinces while he was actively murdering the population. And finally some could come from Clams, since we all know that Norfleet loves to clam hoard. However clamhoarding is not easy to do for the Soul Gate Ermor, since they don't have any water or even astral income, and lack any water 2 mages.

You're forgetting that I wrote the BOOK on Ermorian Clam Hoarding. Alas, it was rejected by the publisher, so it's not available for public consumption. But who was it who brought the clam-hoarding matter to prominence on the chat? What was I playing at the time? That's what I thought.

That was several months ago. The undead never rest. Do you think I haven't refined my crude newbie methods of yore in the course of SEVERAL MONTHS?

Excellent. I am glad to hear it. Than I am sure you'll have no problems answering these simple, polite and specific questions that I wrote above. I am looking forward to hearing your responses.

With best regards,
Stormbinder