Another Newbie Slugfest - Restarted

[Boron]

Apology accepted and also my apologies because my post was also a bit harsh i think .

Just a few answers to your viewpoints from my 180 degree turned viewpoints : Ultimate horder vs. Ultimate warmonger + rusher :

I think for taking all the hoarding micro pain i would have deserved a win also . I probably invested about the same time in my hoarding + "ultimate" lategame armies planning then you in your SC equpipping + warmongering .

That you like the earlygame so much and that i like the lategame so much is probably a bit biased also by our nation selections + god designs . While i normally design everything according to good hoarding you seem to rather design for rushing . Both are legitime strats and alexti often said on the board that if you rush quick enough you can win vs. hoarders also .
Greame and other veterans agreed to those statements .

I have probably a rather high micromanagement pain tolerance also . Long trained by playing Euopa universalis 2 , master of orion 2 , Victoria and Hoi

One additional thing with clams : Aku's clams where overpowered , mine weren't ( as much ) .

The reasons for this are that no artillery spells work underwater and he as a water nation has incredible advantages to defend underwater .

I had everything stationed in my capitol and 1 astral dome and 3-4 air domes .
So each artillery spell would have 10% chance to break through .
Flames from the sky are not very expensive , 20 fire gems . And you can cast them as abysia really easy .
So if you would have saved fire gems and attacked my capitol with 20 flames from the sky in 1 turn a few would have gotten through and probably eliminated lots of my clam stockpiles . At least if you had dispelled my GoH before .

At least with a joint effort with the other nations you could have probably rather easily achieved the 20 flames on my capitol in one turn even without much hoarding from your side .


If i instead spread my hoarders doming all those provinces is very expensive .
Since i massively hoard i normally aim for at least 500 clams . If i spread them then to 10 provinces there are in each 50 clams then , still good flame targets .
Since for firegems there is not much need expect for a few special items and the flames even without hoarding you can save your firegems for a few turns and then do a clam destruction artillery .

Once the nation can hoard in the water + well defend it like Aku this problem has gone and he can stock all his clams in his capitol and guard them well .

So hoarding water nations are unfair , but as long as the clams are hoarded on the continent they are not such a big problem at all especially since most horders aren't that big in territory .

[Aku]

You also forget the fact that Boron for some reason NEVER gets into a war until late game...he must be doing some hefty bribes to his neighbors to not attack him lmfao. If Boron in any of his games are attacked before turn 50 he would die extremely easy but NOBODY ever attacks him for some weird reason lol.

I believe hoarding is fine its Boron's neighbors that always give Boron the perfect hoarding environment in every game. So to fix this is not to nerf hoarding but to make Boron's neighbors to be less timid to attack him.

[Boron]

Well it is my Aura .
I haven't chosen without reason the name of the god of the dead , Boron as nickname

[Steerpike]

I thought Boron was an element?

[The Panther]

Of course, much of this could be fixed by eliminating clams (and fetishes) entirely or attaching a proper price to them, like W4 or W3S1. Apparently the devs are aware of the problem because the price will be increased in Dom3 (or so I have heard). I would definitely favor complete elimination, forcing everyone to find their gem and gold income the proper way through province ownership and site-searching. Cheap artifacts to replace this just ruins the game.

And yeah, I do suppose that I don't like the micro at all, for I just do not have the time available for it. Making a long turn every day or 2 is just too much in my life. I could never have the patience to hoard myself to a win. Never! There are many, many more things I would rather be doing then spending a couple of hours each day on long dominions turns.

I suppose you just annoyed the heck out of me by saying I did not deserve to win this game. That's all there is to it really, and there are certainly no hard feelings.

To each his own.

[PashaDawg]

I thought Boron was a brand of detergent.

[Zapmeister]

The Panther said:
... or attaching a proper price to them, like W4 or W3S1.

That's overkill, IMHO, and few nations would be able (or want) to make any clams at all. I hope they make it W2N1, increasing the cost by 50% and making 2 paths required.

[Boron]

Boron is the god of the dead in DSA , a german pen&paper RPG .

@ Panther : Of course no hard feelings here either , i instead like to play games where you are in also .
My wording was a bit poor . I meant you wouldn't have deserved to win by the 145 province rule but only by the way it is meant to be , by complete elimination or surrendering of everybody .
If you had e.g. just saved a bit blood and done then in 2-3 turns every turn 10-15 hordes from hell/ghost riders blindly on provinces i am almost certain that this way you would have gotten your 145 needed provinces without having to fight at all .
This way you would have won while without the 145 province victory condition Aku , you and me would have had a good chance to get the final win . Very important would have also been if you would have attacked Aku or me first because if one of us would have been able to avoid the fighting and further hoard this would have stretched the chances for him .

One additional thing about hoarding : I believe you spent more time on your turns then me . I needed about 10 minutes for a turn until turn 50 and only the last 20 turns were a bit longer because i had sometimes forge up etc. but they didn't last longer then 20-40 minutes also .
Hoarding is not very time consuming , just montly summon x black servants , name your clamforgers to clam and then you only need to forge the clams and put them with fever fetishes on black servants which you rename to something like cf .
For forging + stocking 10 clams each turn you only need like 2-3 minutes .

Zapmeister said:

That's overkill, IMHO, and few nations would be able (or want) to make any clams at all. I hope they make it W2N1, increasing the cost by 50% and making 2 paths required.

It would be very interesting if they would go completely new ways , e.g. keep the price of 10 water and make a hoard items library . There your hoard items are stocked but now comes the new thing :
A clam has every turn a 10% increasing chance to get destroyed after e.g. the first 10 turns . While they are then still a bargain you only get averagely about 15 pearls per clam before it gets destructed .

As it is now hardcore hoarding is all in all really better then fighting + expanding . The 3 reasons are :
-Water gems have few other uses , only quickness items + water queens are worth being considered .
-High RoI of clams , most nations can forge them quite easy
-Wish

[deccan]

Good to see everyone patching up on their differences!

I'm still on holiday and not checking the forum regularly, but I'm still sorry to see this game die.

I'm not completely burnt out on Dom2 yet either, but I would definitely stay away from epic sized maps for the forseeable future. The good thing about a massive, chokepoint-filled map like Cradle is that it lets you design massive, super-poweful armies to pit against each other, but in this case, everyone goes for the maximum efficient stuff and it gets tiresome, but still good to play with at least once.

With an open, smaller map like Inland on the other paw, you feel more like rushing whatever is on hand and available to fill the gaps in your defence, so it feels more dynamic and fluid.

I'd still be interested in getting into a Slugfest 3, but only in like 3 weeks from now.

[The Panther]

I just now added it up: I had 83 provinces. That is far too many to be reasonable. The 145 required provinces to win for this game is just plain crazy. If I was having that much trouble with 83 provinces, I simply cannot imangine having to manage a empire 50% bigger. Totally nuts.

I was wondering what the interest in a slug fest 3 game would be. However, because of my current RL situation causing a time situation, I will not be playing unless the following conditions are sort of met:
1. A smaller map like 120 province size or so.
2. The game is played with a resonable victory condition, like half the VPs or 40% of the provinces (or capitols), or something along those lines.
3. Clams, fever fetishes, and blood stones are either outlawed or nerfed to W5 for clams, N3F3 for fetishes, and B4E2 for blood stones. No more getting massive gem and money income without having to fight for territory.
4. Research is hard or very hard.
5. 10 players max.
6. PBEM instead of hosted.

Anybody else have any opinions on any of this?

Cheers to all, and this was a very enjoyable game. I sure loved fighting all those wars, up until the point where the 150 tomb worms and 10 bane lords of C'tis died uncessarily.