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

[Roland Jones]

Turn I: The Beginning





Standard starting message stuff. Everyone who's played the game sees this, but since no one else put this in I figure I may as well. For those not familiar with it, the first screen is the message screen you see before every turn (unless nothing happens, which is rare); apart from the first turn, when you get this narration, it's mainly random events and battle summaries, plus some other things we'll eventually see.



Here is my capital. I'm in the north-east, on a peninsula. Rather penned-in. While I can cordon it off easily, I can't make the explosive expansion and claim everything like Helheim normally can. Not great, but at least I am relatively safe from being attacked when I inevitably piss off everyone and make them all want to murder me.

So, let's take a look. I start with a Helkarl, who is decent but not as good as Vanherses for the purpose of raiding, despite slightly higher stats. He gets to patrol with my starting army, because he's an *******, and I need money (note that these pictures are from after all my orders have been given; I started with the same 400 everyone else did). Also have a Van Scout, who is currently becoming Marceline's prophet. You can also see my dominion, which is horrible. I took a hilariously inefficient pretender; I could have easily gotten one that could have done the same, mostly, for a lot less, but I wanted to do this instead. Because it's funny. Helheim doesn't need the help, anyway.

Topic of that starting army, let's take a look.



Twenty-five units, which is less than some nations, but the troops are slightly above-average, so that makes up for it slightly.



These are Huskarls. They're Vanir, so they have above-average stats, and more importantly, glamour. There's only a fifty percent chance of melee attacks hitting them, which, while not as good as what my Vanir commanders get, is pretty awesome. I could also stealthily lead them into enemy territory, but, well, an army of these guys isn't as good as a blessed Vanjarl thug, so I won't.



And these are the other troop I start with. Serf Warriors, utterly ordinary and boring humans. They are completely uninteresting, so I will waste no more words on them.



Here is what I'm recruiting this turn, a Vanjarl and two Helhirdings. A Vanherse would cost half as much and do just as well for the beginning, but I want my first hero (I mean that literally; the early commanders easily make the Hall of Fame, and thus get special abilities, really easily) to be awesome. Besides, it's not like I'm going to be short on money or anything on turn two. Nothing can go wrong that early, right?

Next turn: Something goes wrong.

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Bonus: Pretender guesses.

As LDiCesare went over in his post, pretender titles hint at what paths they have and what their dominion is; certain titles only come with certain circumstances, like nation, chassis, and paths, and generally more titles means greater dominion strength. So, for the entertainment of everyone here, let's take a look at what everyone has:

Arcoscephale worships "White Wedding" by Billy Idol, Mother of Gods, She Who Holds the Fate of All, Patron of Arbitrators, the Afterthought, Princess of the Hierarchs.

That's five titles, so somewhere between eight and ten dominion, I'd bet. Sadly I can't guess the paths from this; I've seen "the Afterthought" before but I was never able to connect it with anything. The one about "Fate" implies Astral maybe, though? Also, the titles are all female, something that only happens with chassis that are such; by default titles are male. So he has one of the few female chassis, like a female titan, or maybe a Virtue (angel thing).

Marverni worships King Roland, King of Many Names, Prince of Clouds, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory, the Stealer of Corpses, the Unforgiving King.

Again, five titles, so high dominion. Also probably has Air and Death magic. Maybe other paths too, but those aren't showing up here.

Abysia worships Dwayne Johnson, the Everburning One, the Fortifier.

Two titles, so really, really low dominion. Ouch. Also, first title implies Fire magic, and the second implies Earth. Not much else to say here, as there really isn't much here.

Caelum worships Metatron, Goddess of Strength, the Creator of Wine.

Another god with two titles, jeez. Another female chassis, probably a Virtue, with... Hm. I dunno. The first title is generic, and the latter... Nature? I really don't know here. Also if it is a Virtue he didn't increase her dominion at all, which seems insane to me, considering how easy it is to get hers up to awesome levels. I dunno, guess we'll see.

Pangaea worships Thorion, the Terror of the Tomb, the Beast, Guide of Souls, Gatherer of the Dead.

Four titles, which can be middling to near-max dominion. Also, Death. Death death deathy death death. Seriously.

Fomoria worships Snakey, Prince of Animals, Prince of Metals, Prince of the Wildlife.

Okay, so it's a prince. Also has Nature magic and okay-ish dominion, I bet.

Helheim worships Marceline, the Terror of the Tomb, the Hidden One, the Fortifier.

And here's my god, obviously the best. Three titles, so my dominion is presumably middling (spoilers: It's five, actually rather low), and she seems to have Death and Earth, possibly something else. See if you can figure it out; there is no way you will ever guess what it is based on its name and all the names I'm gonna be using for my units. Nope. Not a one.

R'lyeh worships Yot-Webbogoth, the Beginning and the End, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory, God of Near and Close, Patron of Soldiers.

So, four titles, meaning high dominion, and his titles imply no paths. Considering that a pathless kraken is awesome for expansion, this makes sense. And, as his earlier post shows, this was right.

So, wasn't that fun? I predicted the paths and dominion levels of everyone's gods based on public information, and guessed or at least narrowed down what chassis they were using in a few cases too. If I wanted to, I could open up the pretender creation screen for their nations and look at the options to narrow it down further, especially in the case of the female pretenders. Metagamey? Yes. Fun and useful? Totally. And if you think this is bad, just wait until you see what I do with the score graphs. But that'll be in a later post. Look forward to it.

[LDiCesare]

TURN 2:

Looks like renaming is on after all...
Only 6 prophets. All scouts except a Marverni chieftain.
I get a 200 gold lucky event.
Score graphs are on. Damn. That sucks. I don't like graphs on because it makes it easy to gang up on the fool who expanded like crazy early-game. On the other hand, it makes it easier to get people to strike those who attack you, as the graphs show clearly what's happening. Knowing that graphs are on, rushes are a bad idea unless you're really sure of killing your opponent by turn 15 or 20 at most.
So what do the graphs say?
R'lyeh started expanding. Helheim has a money problem. I have a money problem too, but that's just my scales.
Caelum and I are the only ones to do research. I guess everyone else is asleep or imprisoned, except likely R'lyeh.
The dominion scores are somewhat like expected: R'lyeh strong( awake, likely 10 since it's underwater and needs it to survive). I come second, then Arco and Caelum, then Fomoria and Abysia. Helheim is at the bottom and didn't increase. Wtf happened to them?
I got the biggest army! Yes, like it's going to be that way all game if I can get maenads. Not that it matters much.

So here's a maenad. She's beautiful. A naked madwoman who wants to kill you with her nails. She appears wherever Pans go. After the battle, most of the time. This makes the Pans' natural stealth rather awkward. They try to remain unseen but naked women pop out of the woods wherever they go, so Pans suck at scouting others provinces as they are easily spotted.
Looks like Abysia tried an attack with someone and failed (HoF). Marverni also has a lots of experience.
I use my gold to recruit a Pan, and get some longbow-cenraurs to get along with since I have some archer neighbours.
I send my starting army north. There are some deer tribe there, who are usually weak, but they have some archers so I can lose the battle. But my dominion is positive there. Unfortunately, it's not in the southern province.
My pretender goes in the marsh northwest, instructed to cast some frighten and then close to melee. He doesn't face archers, and should be able to find some D site in the marsh with a bit of luck. Plus he's immortal.
The map is rather uninteresting at this point so I don't think it's worth posting it with just indies all around. I'll post nicer maps later with intelligence about everybody's provinces and a complete map (which is off by 1 province at worst) by turn 22.