Nations - MA, CBM 1.6, max lvl 6, NI, Assimilation - Olm/Man and Louist/Ulm win!

[Olm]

O.K.
Here comes some very very short form of AAR. How the game developed in my eyes, and my questions to it:

My Pretender is a rainbow great enchantress with F3A4E2S3 and good scales for income. I figured my nationals would give me enough nature. My idea was to roughly follow Baalz guide. Expanding rather fast and build lots of fortresses. Additionally I wanted to use my Foresters to overtax all my provinces rto 110%
It worked quite well, as I was leader in money or nearly so most of the game.
I started in Province 79. I started immediately south, to block entrance to my lands at the lake. I met the Ulm PoD and nearly killed him with Longbowmen. I agreed with Ulm on a border at the lake and secured it with fortresses. That gave me a somewhat smaller than medium realm with no access to the center. But my lands were very defensible, and I built lots of forts to strengthen that, and to collect more income.
The problem was my lack of access to the smaller nations, so I tried some diplomacy to prevent Ulm and Pan eat them up. Tried to play those other two against each other. Pan finally ended all my efforts by beating down Arco which resulted in the world war with Man and Ulm against Pan and Eriu, that decided the game. I still had access problems to Pan. I was not able to conquer Giants Rest in reasonable time. And behind it there was Rethia with its Plaguewater stream, diseasing my armies. It really took some time until I mustered enough slingers to tear down the walls. Same goes for Livenmark in my heartland, which Pan conquered with a feary trod. It was costly, but Pan held it for a long time.
I tried some tricks to get past the choke point in Giants Rest, going by sea, or by magic and it worked to some degree.
Pan started to send out scouts with banevenom charms, which I found to be very effective, diseasing lots of my many Mothers of Avalon. I sneaked too with Wardens and Lord Wardens. They were quite effective.
But in my opinion what did the trick were the Bards. They are just very, very effective at crippling an economy. And with very expansive Pans, Pan just needs its money.
So to speak of my war against Pan:
What decided it was the absence of the Gorgon and my Bards.
What could have turned the tide were more Pan Thugs/SC's. The last one (Thenetos?) was even stronger than Ares, as he had more MR (28?). He alone was not enough in the end, but 3 or 4 of them could have driven me back.
If I look at my armies now, there is not so much left. Most died from Disease. Only the Knights of Avalon are nearly immune, which makes them even greater units than they are anyway.

Now some questions from me:
What is an effective counter to Bards spreading unrest?
I would like to know some things about Eriu:
-Why did they fare so badly in the beginning? They had a similar starting position as me, with a nice backyard and a very defensible acces to its realms.
Was there an early war between Eriu and Arco?
What happened later to Eriu? Why did he suddenly beat bqack Ulm on large scale? Eriu even reached my southern border. And Ulm gave Gems to me because he thought he wouldn't stand much longer. What was Erius strategy in that successful campaign?
What ended that campaign, and why in turn couldn't Eriu put a stop to Ulms advance afterwards?

I have to say I learned a lot in this game, and I really learned to love Dom as an MP game. Thats why that Eriu comeback fascinates me. In most of the strategy games power scales almost exclusively with size. And if you have a certain size advantage you almost certainly win, because the smaller one has lesser resources every time. But in Dom this seems not to be so strict a case. The smaller one has his chance with good tactics and strategy. And thats really great.

Thanks to all and I am looking forward to the Gorgon

[buzzsaw]

I can only comment on Eriu from like turn 33 or so, since I took over for Samhain. He still looks at this thread and may comment on the earlier life.

Eriu had several things going for it at my takeover.

Great research
Good income
Good gems
NAP with Pan

A Sidhe Lord and champion every turn along with a Tuatha was being recruited every turn.. A very minimal amount of non commanders was being recruited as well.

I created two distinct undead armies based on heat and cold. These were supported by Sidhe C/L and Tuatha. More or less, the undead armies were damage sponges while the mages did their things. I was going to create a poison army but it never happened.

Going for Arcos cap, All who could buffed mistform. I used a D4 mage to cast darkness, equipped all my non-thunderstrikers mages with bows of war, set them to eagle eyes and fire closest. I had another mage cast wind guide, another cast arrow fend, and my pretender, who was a rainbow crone, to cast fire arrows. All other mages were set to eagle eyes and spam thunderstrike. Since Eriu gets 50% darkvision, this really tore Ulm up, especially the trolls..... all those poor, poor trolls. My army used about 70 mages and 150 or so troops.

After taking over Arcos cap and the surrounding lands I headed on towards 46, 47, 42 enjoying good success until dragons ridge. I had split my army off to grab more land while seiging dragons ridge when Ulm broke seige. With most of my good guys out, he attacked with a very potent army that devastated mine and even killed my pretender. I lost count of the number of master smiths he had that seemed to spam magma eruption.

While the above was going on, I sent a small force of hall of fame, heavily equipped tuatha through the south and into Ulms backyard. I found lots of nice gem sites and was raiding at will, destroying anything that they met, except for troops on forts. I tried to lure Ulm out using glamor and hiding and sniped a few troops but for the most part he stayed put. I cloud trapezed more tuatha in for a total of 10 thugs. This is when i i Had Ulm down to the mat. I think he had 11 provinces left but of course, 9 forts. I could not siege them with what I had and thats where the southern group ran out of steam. I wish I was able to give them some siege weapons, but I couldn`t at the time.

After the defeat at dragons ridge, I sneaked most of the surviving mages out and around Mans area while running a non glamoured suicide force to distract Man. Any troops that went to the West sneaked through and joined my southern army near Ulm which brought them up to 17 thugs. I`m confident at this point that the southern group could stand up to almost anything currently on the map. Over half are in the HoF and the rest were at 3 stars.

Man started doing the raiding in my area and I watched in horror as my unrest started to skyrocket. At one point Arcos was at 350 unrest.

I ended having to set just about everyone on patrol and cast watcher in many provinces, which gives a patrol bonus of 50. That helped at the end, and most of my provinces were back at zero unrest.

I hope I answered some questions you may have had and please ask if you have anymore or need more details. This was like my 3rd MP game in public, had a few private ones at work, so this was a good learning game for me as well.

I really think the success I had was due to the magic cap at level 6. I don`t think Eriu is a powerhouse at end game.


Short Version: Thunder Strike kicks butt.

[buzzsaw]

For me on the mercs, I didn`t have the income to spare, as my commanders were much too important not to recruit.

Assimilation helped some with astral when I took over Arcos, but I was also summoning spectres who gave me some astral as well. Thats when I started mind hunting.

[buzzsaw]

One other note to my AAR, after the dragons ridge battle, I never fought Ulm again on the large scale. He did have dragon ridge swelling with troops/scorpion beasts though. We more or less see-sawed some lands. I think the biggest army I encountered was in the south had 95 troops plus commanders.

I put up a large army in Arcos for when he did strike from dragons ridge.

I would love to hear his account of the battles as I didn`t know I had him that badly off. Even when I had him down to 11 provinces, I figured he was stronger then me.