Invisible Swarm III: over

[CUnknown]

Jurri is attacking me all over with SCs, one in each province he's taking. Anything that's unforted is his, basically. Also, he is summoning massive numbers of angels, at least 1 group a turn, and they're slaughtering my tartarians, devils, etc.

At the moment, Jurri has easily twice my number of provinces (half the world, roughly), he has an obscene gem income, he's not hampered by the Astral Corruption like I thought he would be (whereas I am getting killed by it), he can't beat my armies, although he simply doesn't have to--he just avoids them and takes everything else in the world.

Going underwater isn't that difficult, I'm making progress there. But it's just the sheer # of provinces and commanders I'm losing every turn that has me down. If I have a chance, I have to be -gaining- ground at this stage of the game, not losing it. It's only going to get worse as my gem income (and gold income) decreases while his increases.

Basically, I can see that I have no chance, and I don't want to play out the 30 turns of pain just to watch my empire fall apart.

Now, if the world was united against Jurri, that's a different story, and we might indeed have a chance. I'm putting in my vote to quit, I just want to see how the others (Boron and Pasha) are feeling about our chances against Jurri (if we work together).

[Boron]

Well my empire is weak. I also vote for ending the game.
From what i can see i would also say Jurri has won.

[Jurri]

Hmm, I'm starting to believe that I may have overestimated Chris's strength, seeing how down he is. And indeed, the reason I stopped beating Boron down was because Astral Corruption is actually beneficial for me, since it should be a huge pain for Ulm and a non-issue for me.

I'm cool with continuing or ending this now; I do enjoy the logistical level of crushing Chris, but the largish amount of micro is annoying. I think I have counters figured out for the Ulm armies that I have seen, but I can't be certain if they work or not. (I'll tell you once we stop - or show you if we don't ) I'm guessing you're overestimating my gem income (as you have done for the last 50 turns ), but I do have something of a stockpile prepared in case you got my Nexus down somehow.

[CUnknown]

Well, I am strong, there's no question. But I'm pretty sure I didn't overestimate your gem income, Jurri--if you've got a 50-100 pearl income a turn, that's way more than I'm making. I bet you're making over 100 pearls a turn, but even 75 would be massive compared to what I'm pulling in these days.

You see, you took down my Deep Blood Well, first of all (I put over 200 gems in that thing! I'm not sure if I even broke even on it.) And you (and the horrors) are killing my commanders who have my clams and bloodstones--so, my gem income has gone down sharply since I started war with Jurri. I bet I'm not even at a 1/4 of what Jurri is making, probably more like an 1/8th.

My SC production is down to about 0 right now, maybe 1 every 3-4 turns, and I lose more than that. My armies are powerful, but will be whittled down over time, and are basically useless anyway, since Jurri can just go behind them with SCs and take the provinces left in their wake. I can't stop his SCs with anything I have besides my armies, and he'll just never attack them.

I'm making a Soul Contract a turn, and that's great and all, but the devils it produces are worthless at this stage in the game--any one of Jurri's golem SCs can beat an infinite number of them with 0 chance of dying. And the golems teleport, meaning I can't ever get away from them. So that means if I want to use my devils, they'd have to be part of an army, making them worthless, since armies are worthless.

I've got a great Abomination SC with 2 levels of earth magic. It would be a terror until it gets soul slayed, which will happen fairly soon after its first battle, I'd imagine.

I thought that Boron's Astral Corruption would greatly help me out, since I already had the armies I needed, and Jurri only had the gem income at that point, and would have to summon his army. But, with the 'Returning' spell, Jurri is basically immune to Astral Corruption. It's killed my god, I lose items, I lose commanders, I lost a ring of sorcery, etc. One of my biggest strengths--Earth Attack--is not worth much at all because of Astral Corruption, but mostly Returning.

Anyway, enough whining! I'll get you next time, Jurri!

That is, unless Pasha wants to change his mind and attack Jurri full force? Pasha gets to decide if the game continues or not. If he wishes to give the game to Jurri, he has that right also.

[Jurri]

Why don't you have your gem-producers on scouts? That way the horrors won't get 'em, and neither will assassins.

Your estimation of my gem income is pretty close. Much better than what Boron figured some time ago I do make a lot of clams each turn, so it's on the rise.

So does the abomination have any magics when you GOR it? Or do you need to empower it to get any magic at all for one? I never did GOR one... Come to think of it, I've never even made one.

Returning is a great spell; one of the reasons why high-astral nations are so great in the endgame. I hate putting the gems on the mages every fricken turn, though. Hadn't you seen enough of my mages escape from the elementals or what made you make Boron put the Corruption up? (Or did he just wing it? )

I need to think up something real special for the next game, seeing how many players there are gunning for me!

[YellowCactus]

Cunknown,
You have very bad parenting skills. Don't pressure poor defenseless Pasha with harsh consequences by saying that 'He's giving the game to Jurri'. That's like saying Canada should have attacked the U.S.A. in World War 2. The People of Pash are probably happier beside the benevolent over-rule of Jurri.
-yc

[jeffr]

"My armies are powerful, but will be whittled down over time, and are basically useless anyway, since Jurri can just go behind them with SCs and take the provinces left in their wake."

I just found out (rather late in the game, I think) that Quantum has taken over Zen's mod and has packaged all of them together. I think Quantum undid the big nerf to the Life Draining weapons and just made them No Strength. But the Blood Thorn is no longer as potent, so if that's what the made the Golems strong, that solves that problem. Gem producing items also have higher requirements, which I think is a big plus.

Anyway, take a look at the packaged mod available in the mod forum. I think there might still be a few minor bugs, but I'm up for something new.

Does anyone have any experience with it?

Oh, and Chris wipes the floor with me but is in turn beaten by Jurri? Man, I have a long way to go