AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[Immaculate]

Also: For jotwebe:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6078/141.full

[Excist]

You made sure I wouldn't be able to afford your ransom so I just have to finish Pan as fast as I can and then focus on you.

[Roland Jones]

Prologue

Helheim. Land of the dead. Gate to the underworld. For ages, the Vanir of this land have watched over and guided the dead, under the rule of an old god, whose blessing granted power to his followers. Now, that god is dead, and though its blessing remained, its rule held no power in Helhalla. For a time, Helheim was governed by the Hangadrotts, ancient Helkarlar who hung themselves from an ash tree, learning the secrets of death. The wisdom of the Hanged Kings kept Helheim stable, but they gained little. The old magics and rituals fell to the wayside, and the Valkyries no longer served as messengers of death.

Then, one day, Marceline arrived. With powerful magic and great, wild ideas, she impressed and captivated the Vanir, effectively becoming their leader. She told them of a new future, one where Helheim reigned over not only the dead, but the living as well; one where they could act as they pleased; one where the world had been reshaped to their desires. To this end, she cast open the gates of Hel, and with them open to their fullest, its influence began to spread out into the world. In addition to this audacious act, she bestowed her own blessing upon the Vanir of Helheim, making them stronger, more powerful; combined with the blessing of the dead god, this magic made them demigods among men. The Vanir knelt before her, the Hangadrotts deferred to her judgment, the Valkyries flew once again. Helheim had a god once more.

However, Marceline was a restless, capricious goddess. Even as she told them tales of ruling the world, she was looking to other places as well, with other plans, or simply for her own amusement. She frequently disappeared from the halls of Helhalla, sometimes for months at a time. While her blessing remained when when she was gone, and the Hanged Kings could keep order, it was concerning that their deity was away so often, and seemed so unconcerned with the fate of their nation at times.

During her longest absence yet, something dreadful happened. The false gods of other nations put forth their own attempts to claim true divinity and rule over all. Deciding that they could no longer wait for her return, the Hangadrotts give an order heard by all of Helheim. They would prepare for war. Despite the fickle machinations of an absent goddess and the continuing spread of Hel's draining influence, the nation would not falter. Helheim would conquer all.

[LDiCesare]

[SPOILER]What's in italics is actually After Action. What's not is notes written on the spot. Therefore, italics may disagree with plain text as I've made a lot of mistakes, some of which were immediately clear, some which showed only later.[/SPOILER]

Thorion is my pretender. He is a Lich, ruler of Pangaea.
My idea is to have a strong dominion with bad scales, which is obviously a bad idea.
So... Why?
Well, Pangaea has Pan wizards, who bring forth tons of Maenads around them provided there's enough turmoil. So I want Turmoil 3 to get lots of maenads, and a big enough dominion to actually have turmoil 3 everywhere my Pans will go.
Having Turmoil 3, Luck 3 is a no-brainer. Anything else would be suicide in my opinion.
Now, I want a high dominion in order for it to spread, but what good is a high dominion score?
Well, it accomplishes two things:
1/ Immortal units don't die in friendly dominion. I do mean friendly
2/ Some global enchantments work better (or only) inside your dominion.
So, I so much want Gift of Health to turn skinny maenads into fat-hit-point maenads. And I've found out that immortal pretenders can be fun. Therefore, let's have a look at Thorion.
He's a Lich. Liches are death wizards with immortality inside. They don't have much else to go for them, but an actual test shows that a lich is actually a fairly good SC. He can single-handedly take out indie provinces, with no equipment, and even archer provinces provided he gets a raw-hide shield. With some more death, he's got both Fear and Awe. With some expensive magic diversity, he can even be useful later on, and let me out of E/N/B.
In order to get an awake, Dom 9 pretender, I pick utterly poor scales: sloth 3 and Heat 3. I take Growth because I will have to patrol, and Magic 1 because I so need it. I mean, seriously, look at Pangaean mages. Pans cost more gold than you can have, and dryads are so bad at research that it's pitiful.
the heat scale was an either/or. Heat was bad if I fell against Abysia, cold against Caelum. I actually fear Caelum far more. Their thunderstrike teleporters leading tons of Frankenstein monster armies are scary. Turns out my two neighbours woul be Abysia and Caelum and I picked the wrong scale seeing which of these was most aggressive.

It's important to point out that I have never played Pangaea in MP, and very rarely in SP either. I also never played a Lich, and picked him just because it looked actually cool and was surprisingly efficient at early expansion in my tests. I fancied using it for Carrion Woods, but I think it's not a good idea trying to go that route with EA Pangaea.
I'll also point out that I picked Pangaea precisely for the reason I rarelly play them. They require patience, which is something I clearly lack, as will be shown in later turns.

--- --- ---

My starting position is in the south east. I should have easy access to Tir na n'Og, which has a nice chokepoint to reach it, so this is huge. Unless there's someone close to the bog in the south, I can't think of a better starting position.
First thing, however, is that renaming id Off So long for good names, I won't be able to rename my prophet, so she'll be Graia the harpy. The good news is we won't see the infamous wizards named S2NA2 and such. Actually it seems to be on, but I must have mistyped R when trying to give a cool name to my prophet. Don't expect much of me if I can't even rename a commander!
Peiroos the minotaur immediately starts patrolling while I raise taxes to 200% on first turn. I buy a batch of harpies for patrol duty, along with a minotaur to lead them. I would have gone for a dryad, but since they'll be patrolling all game long, the 40 gold upkeep is cheaper than the 120 holy upkeep, and I'll need the money to buy Pans next turn. And then dryads, depending on income.
Research starts on construction. Depending on where my dominion spreads, Thorion and the satyrs will attack next turn. Hopefully Citala/Rath Chimbalth and Renthale (north) will not be too heavily protected. Citala would be great for a fort but Tir na n'Og's farmland would be good too, although I prefer forests.

Let's check the other pretenders:
Arcoscephale has 6 titles which look like a high astral goddess.
Marverni has 5 titles, looks like astral/air/death.
Abysia : 2 titles? What dominion score does that mean? I know he can blood sac, but still. It's certainly a good move of him to have attacked me by the way because in a dominion war, I could dom-kill him if I had enough temples, or at least force him to blood sac too with more expensive temples and priests than mine. Lots of wishful thinking here.
Caelum also has only 2 titles, and no blood sac. Dominion dead. Looks like nature, maybe earth. A great mother?
Fomoria has 3 titles, nature and earth. Well, surprising giant bless isn't it?
Helheim has 3 titles, probably astral and death, maybe earth?
R'lyeh has 4 titles, looking like astral.

I forgot there was a stinking fish in this game. I HATE water nations. So long for the good chokepoints of Tir na'n Og. Hopefully his home province is the norhtwestern sea on the other side of the map. Yes, I didn't think of checking the starting provinces before the game by running a test game or jsut looking at the map file.

[Roland Jones]

I'll post my first turn report when turn 21 comes in. We're on turn 20 now, so it won't be too long. Probably tomorrow, really.

On that topic, if anyone wants me to make a banner with their nation name and flag on it, just PM me or something. They'll probably be prettier than mine, too; I know some fancy effects for things like fire, ice, water, vines, and so on, but all the parchment tutorials I found were a bit lacking.

[jotwebe]

I'm playing two different Pangaeas in MarchMadness and aLearningExperience right now. Generally I think in CBM turmoil/luck is the way to go. Death/Nature is also nice. Even if you don't go for Carrion Woods you can summon the various vine priests and have them reanimate stuff.

[Immaculate]

Arcosephalae
Turn One: Sweet Dreams

Click the turn name. Even the Eurythmics love Arcosephalae. And it shouldn’t matter if Annie Lennox looks like that- “I travel the World and the Seven Seas. Everybody’s looking for something.”

Anyway, it’s a little early to post my first turn- we are only on turn 18 in the game but I don’t feel I am giving too much away and I have time to post tonight and less over the next few days so I thought I would get right to it.



Here’s the nation description. I think generally they are not usually thought of as an early game power. Their mystics allow for excellent communion evocations however and so, in my opinion, they begin to come into their own once you can field communions and you get some command over evocation magic. Their militaries are not generally considered very good or anything. The myrmidons are really slow and require a ton of resources. I won’t be using many- mostly because they are slow. Another unit they mention are the Pegasus riders and these aren’t bad at all- with both 16+ defense and 16+ protection. I was in a game recently where the arcospehalae player took an earth 9, astral 9 bless and his Pegasus riders were totally bad-a$$. I won’t be doing that however.

The philosophers are interesting (see screenshot below). They cost 50 gold and generate 5 base research plus 1 point per point of sloth. That translates to very efficient research. They are, however, old. The oreids are awesome and I will get to them when I start fielding them.

The last and perhaps most important thing to mention is that we are led by an awesome song from the 80s, “White Wedding” by Billy Idol. If you haven’t applied yourself to rediscovering the beauty that is Billy Idol, than you are missing out. You can’t listen to it seriously- you have to adopt a sort of facetious good-naturednes but if you do that, you will surely enjoy them.

Click the link.

“White Wedding” has a number of titles, each more grandiose than the last. Beyond that, I will share no more at this juncture. So for now, lets move on.



For those of you who are familiar with the map “Shadowshore”, I am starting in the bottom left hand corner. Which means no real resource-heavy provinces around me None of the neighboring provinces are mountains or forest. At this point I am really praying for iron mines or something near to my capital.

You can see that I had my starting commander do some patrolling while I jack up taxes a bit. Additionally I set my scout to be a Prophet of “White Wedding”. His will be the job of sharing the ‘good news’ of 80s rock with everyone.

What else can you see in this screenshot? Right. The scales. As you can see I took lots of order (money, less events), sloth (less money, much less resources), misfortune (offset hopefully by the order scales) and magic (faster research).



I recruit a bunch of slingers to augment my starting army. Slingers suck but they are cheap and don’t cost much resources so its pretty much the only thing I can hire.



More interestingly, here is the commander I hired this turn. With sloth scales and magic 1, he produces 9 research point per turn for only 50 gold. Many will get diseased and die in the first winter but it will give me a strong early research. I have to be sure to capitalize on it though because other researchers (mystics) would last longer and be able to forge and cast spells.



Lastly, I had some money left over (because philosophers are so cheap) so I put a bid down for some mercenaries.

At this point i don't have any strong strategic plans. Its a pretty standard opening i think.

Anyway, that’s the first turn. Cheer for Arco!

[jotwebe]

Welcome, friends of the squamous and tentacular, to R'lyeh turn 1.



I'm starting with an awake kraken, it should be able to solo a province on turn one. It has a massive amount of hitpoints, but low dominion could be a problem. For that reason the prophet will follow it and hopefully catch up when the kraken goes on a small detour. It goes east.

I prophetize the starting scout while I set taxes to 140% and patrol with the starting army. And the prophet-to-be gets renamed to Nyarlathotep, sine he obviously is one of his avatars.

This is the map zoomed fully out:



As you see, except in a few places, the sea is a narrow one province wide ring. Since reinforcing it will be tricky, I will take my time assembling my expansion army. This turn I'm recruiting slave trolls and a polypal mother. I want one in R'lyeh anyway, and this way I'll get a turn of preaching out of it before my dominion is too high for it to make a difference. Mages will come later.

The army, once completed, will set off southwards, in the the opposite direction of Yöt-Webbogoth.

When the stars are right, they will meet again.

[Shardphoenix]

D+N is the way to go for Pan, IMHO. Not because of Carrion Woods, but because of Lamia Queens - they bring much needed diversity to the table. Mannikin factories help too.
Oh, and don`t underestimate dryads - they are cost-effective resesearchers in magic-1, being cheap and sacred. Also, Pan doesn`t need awake pretender - they have revellers and centaur archers for expansion, after all.
If you want maenad hordes - go for Mass Protection. You will pick Mother Oak on the way (which is huge for Pan) and it gives your pans some early spells to cast (earthmeld and destruction come to mind). And even if someone gets Gift up - you can steal it later with your superior N income (from capital, Mother Oak and N4 sitesearchers).

[Immaculate]

EDIT: ignore this.