Uakari - MA game (upload pretenders)

Amhazair · #1 June 7th, 2008, 07:20 PM

Janlm got in one more turn than I thought. (or I postponed a turn too soon, depending on your point of view.

) In either case, his turn is in, so we're now only waiting for Ermor's turn. Not that there's any particular rush or anything. If you're using the delay to catch a much needed breather, be my guest.

johnarryn · #2 June 8th, 2008, 12:38 AM

I am indeed. After a rather nasty demonstration of the late-game power of blood magic, the delay is quite good for me to think about what I want to do.

Amhazair · #3 June 8th, 2008, 06:11 AM

Demonstration? What demonstration? *whistles innocently*

I was afraid of the late-game power of astral magic (communions, master enslave) myself, so I decided the best way to deal with you was to avoid large army vs army battles, except those on my terms. Massive raiding of your territory seemed to be a good way to accomplish this. Your PD raising campaign from the last few turns required me to use more resources/province than I hoped to have to use, but on the other hand it obviously did cost you a lot of gold, so I'm not sure if it was in your advantage or not. I have to say I'm curious to see what your responce will be.

Not that providing my enemy an insight into my strategic thinking necessarily is the smartest thing to do or anything... but making a bit of conversation spices up the thread, right?

johnarryn · #4 June 8th, 2008, 11:38 PM

Heh, my "response" is fairly lukewarm. Although i've managed to get good enough at Dom3 that I generally can survive to the late game, I find that i'm not terribly great at this aspect of the game... Tarts are all well and good, but there's only so much one can do with them. And i do not have the meticulous preparation that you do (how many MR 29 demons can one person have????).

I would also say that Arga Dis is a bit gross - although you have also played them very well. Earth and blood is a nasty combo - blood stones, easy hammers, the late power of blood... and you seem to have found a loremaster site, which I imagine is rather helpful. Im rather amused by the fact that you can spam ghost riders more than I can.

Anyhow, my hat goes off to you... I shall continue to fight, but it looks rather bad for me.

Could we move to 72 hours, by any chance? Im in several games, and it takes me a bit on my turns in Uakari. Dying gracefully is difficult =)

Amhazair · #5 June 9th, 2008, 06:27 PM

Aye, I did have some time to prepare, and I tried to make most of it. I started building high-MR SC's from the moment I witnessed Pythium master enslaving Van's army early in the game. At that point I knew putting conventional armies in the field was most likely to just gift my opponent with free troops.

Of course, after the defeat of Pythium you were strongest nation left, with quite a bit of astral magic of your own, so I just continued down the same road.

I agree that Arga Dis is a strong nation, for the reasons you mentioned and a few others (if we're talking in the context of late game they also have the ability to develop a really good magical diversity from their national mages and summons, without pretender help for example) Do you have the impression that they are too strong, as a nation? I myself don't, they have a number of weaknesses to balance their strengths, but I'm happy to hear other opinions. I'm sure Sombre would also like any feedback you might have on the nation. (though to quote from the guide I wrote on the Arga Dis nation: "In my game I managed to recruit about 40 mages without getting a single 2E one, meaning no site searching, and, maybe worse, no earth boots -> dwarven hammers. I ended up having to empower one mage to 2E. " so getting to hammers wasn't exactly easy for me this time around.

)

I have to say I also have had outrageous luck with my magic sites. Loremasters help, but to be honest they're the least of it. I won't give away everything while we're still playing, (I can tell you the specifics when we're done) but let's just say (the) god(s) is/are entitled to at least a votive candle or two.

Oh, and I love ghost raiders. Must be my favorite spell in the game. I got reamed by Calmon using them in my first ever MP game, and never forgot.

I've set the timer to 72h. I just started working again today after being in-between jobs for the last couple of weeks, so I'm not entirely opposed to the idea myself either.

Janlm · #6 June 10th, 2008, 04:31 AM

i'm back, thanks for delaying the turn. I should be able to get my turn in, in a few hours.

johnarryn · #7 June 10th, 2008, 10:07 AM

I'll certainly try to give some commentary on Arga Dis when I can do so from a more objective viewpoint - i.e., when i'm not getting stomped by them.

Amhazair · #8 July 11th, 2008, 04:46 AM

Quote:

Amhazair said:I have to say I also have had outrageous luck with my magic sites. Loremasters help, but to be honest they're the least of it. I won't give away everything while we're still playing, (I can tell you the specifics when we're done) but let's just say (the) god(s) is/are entitled to at least a votive candle or two.

Right, I suppose it won't hurt anymore to reveal the big secret.

My outrageous luck with sites:

* I found loremasters and enchantresses quite early on. A W/B loremaster gave me the ability to summon the Ice devils without having to empower for it. (which I probably wouldn't haven't bothered to do)

* I found a 20% enchantment site. Not that impressive - a simple 2-gem site would probably have given me more gems over the course of the game (except that this site also gave me 3 gems of his own, so it was still quite nice

) but it still saved me a couple of gems for summonning my liches (that I needed to spam ghostriders and tartarians) and my casting of earth blood deep well.

* The ultimate gateway (50%! off conjuration spells. Massive, massive site. Second time I find it, and it's absolutely ridiculous. Not quite so good early on since I went for blood first, but from mid game on... Troll king court for 28 gems, fearie court for 20. I had massively more W gems than I could use, so I started to spam Streams from Hades, giving me 3D/3W mages for a measely 20 gems... Earth attacks were cheaper too. And then of course the clinchers. Tartarians for 5 gems, and ghost riders for 3. Johnarryn was impressed by my ghost rider spam ability: this explains one half of it.

Around the same time I found the ultimate gateway I also found a 40% blood site. Cheap, cheap augurs for my magical diversity, all those greater devils were a big chunk cheaper, and the little demons were dirt cheap. (One casting of infernal forces gave me 7 devils and 20 imps for 30 slaves. Infernal crusade with boosters was 13 demon knights for 30. ) And finally the remote summoned imps only costed me 27 slaves for 25 imps + the commander devil. Without this site my ability to spam this spell would have been halved. To sweeten things up even more it was adjacent to the gateway, and both were within 2 provinces of my capital, and within 2 provinces of my enchantress site, so I had no trouble moving my mages around.

And then finally, I conquered a 20% construction site from Pythium, shaving quite a bit off my forging costs. Additionally I managed to grab the hammer of the forge lord, which gives a 50% reduction. Together that made for one ridiculously cheap item/turn, like rings of sorcery for 14 pearls. The cheap rings is the second half of why I could spam ghost riders so easily (I didn't even need 4D liches for it, my Kokyathids could get in on the business too. ) Then towards the end when I got the forge up...

All of that together...

I think I'll go luck scales again in my next game.

johnarryn · #9 July 11th, 2008, 11:27 AM

Good lord that's a great haul of sites. Granted, you have plenty of territory, but nevertheless some nice luck there. I wondered how you could possibly spam ghost riders three times a turn!

This game was extremely enjoyable, though I got a bit slaughtered at the end due to Amhazair's good planning and some mistakes of my own. Very good job on your part, Amhazair. You certainly used the late-game power of Blood to your advantage. I expected imp-spam, but not to the extent that you were able to employ it - that really was hard to fight against. Plus the MR 29 guys you had were well-prepared to fight against me - hard to spam disintegrate or soul slay with that, I didn't even bother.

I also have quite a bit to learn about SC's... when I hit Construction 8 early on, I thought I was sitting pretty, but even having access to many of the artifacts didn't help much. Ah well.

I would love to start a game with you guys again sometime, although i'll be traveling for about 2 weeks starting August 7th, so won't be able to participate if a new game starts before I get back.