Crazy&Insane Stories!

[PvK]

Those are great stories!

In my first Dominions game (Dom 1), I had an ongoing war with an enemy who had a mounted horse archer commander who kept surviving battle after battle and coming back with more troops, but he also kept getting more and more injuries, and lost both eyes, but would still fire his bow in combat, randomly sending arrows around the battlefield. That was one of the many things that hooked me on this series, years ago...

[capnq]

I was impressed when my pretender managed to drop one of his Gifts from Heaven on top of Bogus.

[Lingchih]

Speaking of Bogus. Last night I was testing out LA Pythium. Bogus and his band had taken one of my provinces, and in a few turns about 50 barbarians joined him there.

Perfect battle for my sacred Hydras, I thought. I sent in a squad led by an air shielded Serpent Priest (so the Bogus archer could not take him out). The battle went as planned, hydras mowed through the barbarians (but lost a lot of heads), killed a couple of his cronies, and sent Bogus running.

Bogus was one square from exiting the battlefield, when my serpent priest hit him with a mind burn. It turned him berserk, he turned around, killed all my hydras, and then made a run for my serpent priest, chopping his head off in one blow. It was quite funny.

[lch]

LOL @ Lingchih, funny write-up.

[gowb]

I began a game with Bandar Log, planning on setting up a clam factory and then pumping out some Rudra SCs. The only problems were the dwarven hammers and the wraith swords I needed - the hammer to forge the clams and the swords for the Rudras. A severe lack of gems in my starting provinces made me lose a bit of hope. Then on turn ten, one of my subjects finds the tomb of an ancient hero with 100 gold, a dwarven hammer, and a wraith sword. Yoink!

Stuff like that amazes me. Took it as a sign from the Pantokrater that my plan would win me the world.

[HoneyBadger]

I was just about to post the graphics for my latest nation, when my wife accidentally knocks over my laptop. Even though it only fell a foot on to carpet, it smashed something vital-nearest I can figure, the motherboard.

I couldn't even blame it on her because she was just giving me a snuggle, and I'd set the laptop precariously on the coffee-table.

It made me crazy and insane. Does that count???

[MaxWilson]

Threads like this remind me of the time when I was defending my home province capital against an invading army with a bunch of thugs, including one particularly nasty one with Invulnerability and crazy defense from magical gear and Heroic Lightning Reflexes. Fortunately one of my Androphag Archers managed to hit him with a poison arrow, and that plus the vulnerability to poison from Invulnerability took him out. I still lost the castle and the province, though.

Even more ridiculous was the time when I sent a Melqart and some Rephaelites to take out an indy province. One of the enemy slingers hit the Melqart for 74 points of damage and killed him! Some craziness on the open-ended random numbers that day, I tell you. Of course the other Rephaelites routed and the province stayed free another day. It was unbelievable!

Okay, neither of those really happened in my games, I stole them from history and legend. Too bad Dominions doesn't have summonable wooden horses. Seriously, that's one thing I love about Dominions, is relating it to mythology.

-Max

[SelfishGene]

My favorite personal story of all time is an epic comeback in multiplayer. Having lost my capital and being reduced to 2 commanders, a merc company and a handful of indies (my god being killed as well) i managed to crawl back and reach 2nd or 3rd place (depending on who you ask before losing.

Back in Dom2, as what is now, Middle Era Man, i was playing a newbie game with several others players. My large force of Knights of Avalon moved into an indie province the same time as a massive force of Neifel Giants from another player (i had no recruitable scouts in any previous province i captured, a problem the whole game). He crushed my Knights almost to a man, and then moved onward, capturing all my provinces and even eventually my capital. But i still refused to give up, and took my last handful of troops, basically just a Castillion, a priest, some random assortment of barbarians, lizard warriors, a few human troops, and a merc company, and starting capturing whatever province i could hit, just to stay alive.

Fortunately he had taken Turmoil and Misfortune, so his empire was starting to fall apart from within, and his Giants had been utterly crushed, having traved south away from my lands only to die horrible deaths to Marignon flaming-arrow crossbow hordes. My capital was relatively undefended, but i feel certain that i was within one combat round of routing and losing my last chance in the game, when his Giant PD routed instead and lost the battle - giving me back my capital!

Neifelheim fell completely apart (helped a great deal by my Bards) and never seriously threatened anyone again. Although pretty badly behind i managed to get Nature Global up, started massing Vine Ogres, and at one point had become a real power again. I even used my Pretender to Fairy Trod into Marignon's backyard and trashed his economy with a scorched earth-style raid. I began pushing into several old empires and, for a brief moment, appeared to have a small but honest chance at winning the game!

Sadly my Vine Ogre hordes were customized to use against Ctis; for some reason that can only be called the "Prisoner's Delimma" logic of late game Dominions diplomacy, Marignon and I who had patched up relations to fight off Ctis, turned on me and utterly annihilated my Vine Ogres with Arch-Devil SCs. But, unable to capture my forts, he was at a stalemate. This allowed Ctis, whom i was pushing back and had even wiped his main Sage research facility, to crush both of us in the end.

Still, a pretty epic game! Newbie games are/were (imo) a bit more fun anyway, as comebacks like this are possible when players haven't got the system gamed to a T and everyone is still making mistakes.

[moderation]

Lingchih said:
Bogus was one square from exiting the battlefield, when my serpent priest hit him with a mind burn. It turned him berserk, he turned around, killed all my hydras, and then made a run for my serpent priest, chopping his head off in one blow. It was quite funny.

Hmm, I didn't know Mind Burn can berserk the target. What are the odds of this happening?

[JimMorrison]

It's because Bogus has berserking. So, any damage can cause it, it just happened to be the Mind Burn that got him.