the Gold Lion (running)

[Nix]

I can see how he did it. Expansion with mercenaries (you can see Lanka hired a lot of them) while the pretender sticks around building up troops; then he stumbled upon a red candle, gathered his men and followed the trail straight to your fortress. He's got a lot of sacred troops because his dominion is totally beefed up, resulting in a high holy rating for his home province. You know he has high dominion because his pretender has so many names.

[Dragonlord]

Nix said:
I can see how he did it. Expansion with mercenaries (you can see Lanka hired a lot of them) while the pretender sticks around building up troops; then he stumbled upon a red candle, gathered his men and followed the trail straight to your fortress.

Red candle ?! This was frigging turn 5 ! I had just given my first order to capture my first province on turn 4 ! (Mostly cause I was scared of getting beat by indies and kept failing to buy mercs, even though I offered em twice their asking price.... and I staled for a turn). Point is there *was* no trail to follow back, I found his home province just before dying and it was 3 hops due north of me. Way too close. Its not like he ran into my dominion candles either cause I noticed that the turn he showed up I was even down to zero dominion in my home town, and 1 candle in 2 neighboring provinces.

A map setup like that (in terms of player density) pretty much forces everyone to be ultra agressive from turn 1 onwards and spend 300-400 on mercs, otherwise you get run over by the others who do that. Boring...

Anyways, I am considering starting (hosting) a new MP game that hopefully addresses this by having 12-15 provinces allocated to each player (so no more than 10 players on a 130 province map). That should allow for more refined strategies to also get a shot...
Perhaps the Cradle of Dominion map, I like a well designed map which also graphically looks nicer than the stuff the random generator makes.

[Hellboy]

Dragonlord said:
Red candle ?! This was frigging turn 5 !

He's talking about your domain going positive, which will show up as red candle on Lanka's map. This is certainly possible by turn 5. (and actually it's a black candle w/ a red tip)

I had just given my first order to capture my first province on turn 4 ! (Mostly cause I was scared of getting beat by indies and kept failing to buy mercs, even though I offered em twice their asking price.... and I staled for a turn).

For your next game you should figure out how to take your first indy no later than turn 2. (I know some people do it on turn 1 - not sure if that's a good idea or not)

Point is there *was* no trail to follow back, ...

Again, a single candle could screw you.

... it was 3 hops due north of me. Way too close.

agreed (see below)

Its not like he ran into my dominion candles either cause I noticed that the turn he showed up I was even down to zero dominion in my home town, and 1 candle in 2 neighboring provinces.

I think it's more complicated than that. For one thing dominion candles come and go pretty frequently in the first few turns.

Anyways, I am considering starting (hosting) a new MP game that hopefully addresses this by having 12-15 provinces allocated to each player (so no more than 10 players on a 130 province map). That should allow for more refined strategies to also get a shot...
Perhaps the Cradle of Dominion map, I like a well designed map which also graphically looks nicer than the stuff the random generator makes.

Sounds good (let me know, I'll likely want to join in!). However, you're actually describing a very dense map - the map for this game had 17.6 provinces per player, at the outset (230 provinces w/ 13 players). So, you might want to consider upping the provinces per player a good bit more.

I suspect that it is actually rather difficult to write the code for a good map setup, that is maximally fair to all players. I noticed that DrPraetorious has hosted a couple of games where he used a script to generate fair starting positions. I don't know if he's considered making that publicly available, or not.

[johnarryn]

Well, Lanka also risked quite a bit going right for you... lets say he hadnt found you, or couldnt beat you and ran into another nation with a SC, hed have wasted all his time and troops, and not have cleared all the provs around his capital.

I am a bit curious how Lanka was able to pay for all these sacred troops plus mercenaries... regardless, he got lucky, and you got unlucky. I dont know if it completely erases the validity of random map set-ups. I also dont think you have to buy mercs... in fact, on a map with so many players, bidding for mercs is often a very bad idea in my opinion.

Anyway, sorry you got knocked out so early, it sucks.
Let me know about the new game you plan to start =)

[Micah]

yeah, he also spent 250 points on having an awake pretender, plus another chunk getting his dominion high enough for awe. If he couldn't have a good shot at taking a lot more provinces than other players early on in the game (or even taking them out entirely) he'd be pretty screwed down the line once his horrible scales and/or limited magic selection start to be felt.

Sure it sucks to get taken out early, but if you'd met him on turn 50 instead of turn 5 you'd have just as much of an unfair advantage as he did now, it's all part of the choices you have to make. I also saw one battle you had with him with a scout, and I believe I remember you sinking a few javelins into his ghost king, though not enough to kill him. Pretenders aren't invincible, and he did have to wade through a bunch of indies, plus you get the advantage of having more turns of recruitment and the benefit of PD.

Oh, and whoever said that you need to expand on turn 2 is 100% correct...having to recruit with only the 80 resources in your capital is a really good way to lose.

[AdmiralZhao]

Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.
2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears.
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Notes for next game:
This is my first game using a SC pretender; the main reason I picked one is because in my previous 1 on 1 against seej, he did to me what I did to Marveni. Dragonlord, I would encourage you to try a SC pretender in your next game. It makes an amazing difference in the early game in terms of your rate of expansion and your strategic options. Of course, as Micah points out, the SC becomes much less impressive as the game rolls on. Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

[Micah]

Well, given that you just took a 2nd capital over on turn 7 or whatever I'd say you're in pretty good shape, since that's a huge chunk of extra income and gems. The trick now is to leverage that and continue to expand, since if you stop it's an invitation to get passed up by someone with better scales.

[AdmiralZhao]

No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

[AdmiralZhao]

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

I only had cheap monkeys (not sure how many), mercenaries, and ~10 holy troops with the starting group. I was able to reinforce it each turn, since it was always within 1 move of my capital.

(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

I agree with you about the Marveni troops. They seem underpowered when compared to some of the early beasts like Jotunheim or Ryleh.

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?

Heh, sorry, I did not know that you were Dutch. I picked the Netherlands because I think of it as a nation that had amazing early successes relative to its size, and then had a relatively peaceful retreat from a global empire to well governed nation with (I assume) universal health care. Another reason for the Netherlands it that it is incongruous with Lanka, like the Shire is. Hopefully I've avoided an international incident.

[Dragonlord]

Hi Zhao, I really appreciate you posting here on how things went from your point of view. I'll just add some info to some of your comments.

AdmiralZhao said:
Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.

That is right, it was a roll of the dice on whose movement went first, and you got lucky. I had taken the one good province to my west (which was on the coast and had really good income, and was crucial for me), and that turn I could either retreat into my capital again and get new troops, or try to take the crappy province directly north of my province in the hope that you would ignore that one and retreat back north yourself. I had reason to hope for that as you had sent an ingame message that turn professing a desire for peace, and an intention to explore your east rather than gambling everything so early on on taking me out.

But the way things went you even took my nice western province from me, but got weakened in the process. Then I saw your new army of reinforcements show up from the north, which the game reported to me as having 30 troops, mostly archers. By then all I had was my capitol army of about 50 troops, and I had to prevent those reinforcements linking up with your pretenders army. So, I sent my 50 guys vs your 30, while bidding like 250 for some mercs in capital. If your pretender would jump my capital next turn I would gamble on my PD + mercs winning, or weakening you so much that I could return my 50 guys after taking the 30 archers and finish off your pretenders army.

What happened though was your 30 turned out being 40 including like 20 very good sacred infantry, killing my 50 guys while I only killed 5 or so. Those 50 routed back into the capitol which by now was besieged by your pretender (all same turn, luck of movement priorities?) so my 50 all died without a place to run too, and I gave up.

2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears.
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Agreed.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Actually no, In my memory I only won 1 bid, which was crap, I paid like 200 for a troop of infantry that had already been used by another player and only had 8 units left when I received em, so it was a bad deal, but I had the money anyway and needed every drop (I could only recruit like 5 decent units a turn anyway having only my capitol).
(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Yep, I freaked when I saw the big dominion swing your pretender and prophet had caused in just one turn, and then I set all my 4 mages in capitol to preaching rather than researching.

Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?