MP: Morla MA noob game (running)

[Immaculate]

The bards are strangely quiet this turn- perhaps they mourn... as they await the construction of a human-sized violin.

[SpaceViking21]

In their place, unusually large bards will sing the song of the world.

The nation of Ermor seems to be reclaiming its holdings quite well in the wake of the cataclysm. Their faith in whatever tiny human god must be spurring them on. Good for them! On their heels are the mighty Jotnar of Jotunheim, and all of the other tiny humans are somewhere behind them.

The tiny humans of T'ien Ch'i are still leading in income. While some may speculate that this is due to hard work and perserverance, the Jotun know that it is because human coins are much tinier than giant coins, so as a result they have more of them. The Ulmish are right behind them, and the tiny humans of Man bring up 3rd place.

The Ulmish and Man nations are still leading the pack in terms of books. Not too much to say here that hasn't been said by inferior human bards.

Faith is strongest in the lands of Jotunheim, as King Harald's messages of peace, tolerance, and genoci...er...kittens have found much sway in the local populace. Ermor and Ulm are close behind.

In terms of army size, the Machakan nation is the clear winner, though they have been tapering off recently. Ermor, Man, and T'ien Ch'i are neck in neck for second, and Jotunheim follows them.

That is this month's report from the suspiciously large bards, I hope you all enjoyed the show.

[shatner]

The officials of the Imperial Bureaucracy of T'ien Ch'i have one small addition and related speculation they wish to humbly submit. Ermor has a very strong triple bless, having death-9 or death-10 (there is no visible difference between the two), astral-9 and earth-6 or earth-7 on their god. This blessing gives their Shadow Vestals (who are already ethereal and carrying magic spears) the death weapon bonus, +3 magic resistance, twist fate, +250% affliction chance and +3 reinvigoration. This will also give their sacred casters useful reinvigoration and make all of their damaging spells much more likely to cause afflictions (beware the death bless evocation caster).

Given Ermor's high dom spread, they might have an imprisoned or dormant pretender, a high dom and are recruiting a full compliment of shadow vestals a turn. With a priest to unholy bless them (normal blessing does not work on holy undead units) and a handful of towershield troops to distract archers, Ermor could expand very quickly and cheaply at the expense of having what must be truly awful scales (triple blesses are expensive). Very few indies can deal with ethereal troops (and the twist fate would soak the first blow) and with their MR boosted to 18, the Shadow Vestals will be very resistant to priests spamming banishment.

[SpaceViking21]

Originally Posted by shatner

The officials of the Imperial Bureaucracy of T'ien Ch'i have one small addition and related speculation they wish to humbly submit. Ermor has a very strong triple bless, having death-9 or death-10 (there is no visible difference between the two), astral-9 and earth-6 or earth-7 on their god. This blessing gives their Shadow Vestals (who are already ethereal and carrying magic spears) the death weapon bonus, +3 magic resistance, twist fate, +250% affliction chance and +3 reinvigoration. This will also give their sacred casters useful reinvigoration and make all of their damaging spells much more likely to cause afflictions (beware the death bless evocation caster).

Given Ermor's high dom spread, they might have an imprisoned or dormant pretender, a high dom and are recruiting a full compliment of shadow vestals a turn. With a priest to unholy bless them (normal blessing does not work on holy undead units) and a handful of towershield troops to distract archers, Ermor could expand very quickly and cheaply at the expense of having what must be truly awful scales (triple blesses are expensive). Very few indies can deal with ethereal troops (and the twist fate would soak the first blow) and with their MR boosted to 18, the Shadow Vestals will be very resistant to priests spamming banishment.

This seems like kind of a strange choice, considering that Vestals are Cap-only. While he's going to be totally rocking the early game, as the game goes on he'll be forced to rely on them less and less, and his scales will catch up with him as well. I'll talk more about implications of this once we enter the midgame, as i'd rather not cause problems at the moment.

[triqui]

Well, that's true. However, as Tien Chi's buroucrats have said, the bless is useful not only for the Sacred troops. It's good for evocation mages too (gives them 2 lifes, with twist-fate, high MR -good for Bane thugs too- Reinvigoration, and high afliction rate with battlefield evocations.

However, it's my first MP game with Ermor, I'm kinda noob in MP (only 4-5 games) and I've probably messed a couple things, so any debate about my strategy (later on) will be very appreciated :P.

On the economic side: yes, scales are bad. However, the 80% of 1000 is more than the 120% of 500, so it depends on how much you manage to expand as well as the scales. I'm on avereage right now in Income, and that's becouse I lost a battle today (damn lost arrow, hit the priest :/ ). Otherwise, I would had take three provinces this turn, making my Income in the top 3 of the game for now.

I understand that, later in the middle game, I'll suffer from it. Let's see if I manage it fine

[shatner]

The Celestial Bureaucracy, the Center of All, the Orderly Realm, T'ien Ch'i will humbly present a reading into the portents and significance of the all knowing but oft-inscrutable charts. However, we are a nation of scribes and scholars, not bards or tall-tale-telling giants, so our reading is a drier, more info-ladden affair.

Provinces: Ermor rises ever faster, outpacing all. Ulm launches ahead to a distant second, though the army graph hints that this was at some cost, militarily. Marignon and Jotenheim have fallen below the "N-1 provinces in N turns" baseline.

Forts (in Haiku):
Walls are expensive
The masons labor too long
No forts have been built

Income: Again, Ulm launches ahead, this time to first place. A sharp jump like that means some combination of very rich provinces being conquered, money making sites were uncovered by luck events and/or site searching or Ulm has begun to squeeze its citizenry for ever more wealth. As with provinces, a close race is being ran for 2nd place. The four wealthiest nations are also the 4 largest nations, as is often the case. The faithful must be skimping on their tithes, to look at Marignon's plight. Note that wealth from lucky events can not be divined from the charts so Marignon and Machaka could secretly have received unfathomable wealth from on high and we'd never be the wiser.

Gem Income: Ermor sprung to the lead with 9 gems a turn either from one massive find while site searching, or they have found lots of little sites all at once. Man has had recent but steady gains, most likely as their awake pretender goes site searching (see research section). Pythium was in the lead until recently but not because of sites they had found; their capital provides 8 gems a turn instead of the standard 5... for some reason. Fully half the nations have yet to find a single site outside their capital. Note that gems from lucky events and gem generators don't show up on the charts. CBM doesn't have any non-artifact gem generators but some pretenders produce 1-2 gems a turn so these numbers might be lower than the reality of the situation.

Research: Ulm and Man, who both must have awake pretenders (likely rainbow ones at that) were neck-and-neck for research but Man's recent decline indicates their pretender has left the library. Their recent gem income increase backs up this theory. As a result, Ulm has established themselves the most learned of people at this time. Pythium and T'ien Ch'i have a gently upward sloping growth curve, hinting that they are hiring a mage a turn and stuffing them in the library. We wouldn't be able to make that assumption if people had more than one castle, but with just capitals available we can hazard such a guess. Ermor likely has it's mages leading armies, site searching or raising undead (as all Ermor mages are also priests and all Ermor priests can animate additional troops as a special action). Marignon seems to think books are for burning, rather than reading.

Dominion: Jotunheim has a strong lead here, either from an awake pretender (pretenders generate domain like three temples each turn they are alive), a high dominion spread rate or both. Ermor, Ulm and Man have an almost synchronized ascent in 2nd, 3rd and 4th place respectively. Everyone save T'ien Ch'i and Marignon have had their rate of dom-spread slow down, possibly because they are now bumping into their neighbors' dominions. This will not likely slow Marignon or Ulm as the game progresses, given that they both have inquisitors within their clergy who are very skilled in converting heretics to the faith.

Army Size: Marchaka has had a series of leaps and plateaus, leaving them in second place. This implies a buy-save cycle on their part. T'ien Ch'i has risen rapidly, in part because of their recent mercenary contract, but it looks like their line ricocheted off of Ulm's. Ulm must have suffered heavy casualties or lost mercenary contracts to Man this turn. Still, seeing a spike in Ulm's troop numbers is unusual regardless, because high resource troops are hard to mass quickly and ALL of Ulm's troops are high resource. They may have received a bunch of militia from a random event; if so they might have decided to suicide them into some indies rather than pay the upkeep on largely worthless troops. Pythium and Ermor have suffered identical dips. A casual observer might assume the two had warred with one another, but this seems unlikely this early in the game on so large a map. Instead, they must have run afoul of some particularly stubborn indies. Note that this graph shows the literal amalgamated size of all the armies (so the size of each unit added together), meaning that Jotunheim undoubtedly has fewer troops by number than, say, Ermor but each of their gigantic soldiers count for 2 or more of their human-sized counterparts.


Of 153 provinces, 62 are claimed and 91 remain independent of the 8 great powers. The combined armies of all the world's independents mass more than 4.5 times the size of all the 8 empires' armies combined. The world is still mostly unclaimed so a great many things can change before it means war. How do I know these numbers, rather than just the relative values shown on a chart with no numbered axes? Why, from here of course (http://www.llamaserver.net/showScore...me=MorlaMAnoob). You can get there from the game's llamaserver page, and then clicking on the "Show score tables" link in the bottom left.

[Anaconda]

Originally Posted by shatner

Army Size: Marchaka has had a series of leaps and plateaus, leaving them in second place. This implies a buy-save cycle on their part..

I would rather say it implies a cycle of losing a lot troops every second turn and either resting or not losing every second, if the amount of levy is fixed. On the other hand, it also might mean using money on something else than on fresh levies every second turn, and not losing either at all, or suffering only minor losses which wont be seen on the chart.