MP: Valhalla's heroes - LA Patala - Immaculate WINNER !!!

[Bullock]

Well i guess this "is the cherry on the cake", im not sure everybody will get that

I think if Dojango is ok to concede the victory to Imma we can end this slaughter !

[Immaculate]

Finally! These turns are like 4-5 hours each.

I am really interested in some informal and brief AARs.

Especially what Dojango's response was to seeing a few more reinforcements in that town with the adepts of the silver order last turn. I lost that battle but i think it was probably a bit of a surprise... right?

Also, why so many slaves Bullock? Is that just to soak arrows?

[dojango]

Originally Posted by Immaculate

Finally! These turns are like 4-5 hours each.

I am really interested in some informal and brief AARs.

Especially what Dojango's response was to seeing a few more reinforcements in that town with the adepts of the silver order last turn. I lost that battle but i think it was probably a bit of a surprise... right?

Also, why so many slaves Bullock? Is that just to soak arrows?

If Bullock doesn't think he can take on Immaculate, then yeah, I'm willing to concede. My pretender can set aside her mantle and power and go back to loan-sharking.

My only regret is that I didn't cut off that province's retreat... bagging two Zmeys, a rudra, and an elemental queen would have been quite a coup. And well worth the losses.

But yeah, if the game is finished, I'm always up for some post-game commentary.

[Bullock]

They might become useful as screen with good buff.

Also good to put around low B mages who are going to cast life for life or claw of koxitos (something like that). Btw it s free chaff or barely, so why not having a lot.

[Bullock]

I think with agartha helping, and so reducing our thin chances to win to none, and considering the time it takes for each turns its not worth it, and even if we win this it will take 50 more turns to take over dojango or maybe ossa... and i'm not having that fun with Mictlan.

Btw you did, Imma, a very good game i think you deserve the victory if everybody is fine with that.

[Immaculate]

Originally Posted by dojango

If Bullock doesn't think he can take on Immaculate, then yeah, I'm willing to concede. My pretender can set aside her mantle and power and go back to loan-sharking.

My only regret is that I didn't cut off that province's retreat... bagging two Zmeys, a rudra, and an elemental queen would have been quite a coup. And well worth the losses.

But yeah, if the game is finished, I'm always up for some post-game commentary.

Yeah, thats why i sent my golem to go estabish a retreat for the team- just in case....

It was three zmeys :P

I was so worried about the rudra and its low hitpoints that i didn't use it much- but after i saw it in action there, i really should have deployed it more. with three shields its defense was something really stupid in the high 30s or something.

[Immaculate]

My pretender was a lord of snakes or something like that… the rainbow that can turn into a big black snake. I took f4, w3, e4, n4 and turmoil 1, production 3, heat 3, luck 3, and magic 1.

I started out in the south-eastern corner near to the lake. I liked that because the lake would let me establish a nice backyard to collect some income from.

My first research goal was thaum 3 for panic which in play-testing complemented the awe of the naga warriors really well. In the early game I leaned on the naga warriors a lot, using the nagini to lead them, bless them and to drop panics.

I established borders with C’tis quickly who had grown very quickly using his lord of gates pretender and terror spam (C’tis get this very early – I hadn’t known that). He seemed really tough and I let him claim some provinces that otherwise I would have fought him for. He built a temple and later a fort on my border and he must have been preaching or have really high dominion (he did I think have awe on his pretender) ‘cause I had to send like 4 priests just to hold the line with my own dominion and keep my luck scales.

I then made contact with Pythium and soon learned they were winning an early war with Agartha. I talked to both and Pythium was really demanding and I thought hostile whereas Agartha was much more approachable and outright nice and since I am a human and susceptible to influence by ‘niceness’, I decided to ally with Agartha against Pythium (it could have gone the other way too and I would have used my amphibiousness to project power without endangering my own backyard but… well… diplomacy and all that). Pythium made some mistakes with unit placement and his hydras so I attacked his patrolling forces on his capital every turn with a scout set to hold and retreat. He ended up poisoning a lot of his infantry that way. He never really did learn to avoid this so I kept doing it. Then I attaked with lots of nagas and panic spam and took his capital. Meanwhile I had been skirmishing with him in the field and managed to secure the coast of my lake to prevent any potential attacks upon that source of income from a potentially hostile agartha later on. I needn’t have worried.

Around this time I learned about how the world’s politics were shaping up and saw that dojango and Mockingbird were at war. I felt bad for Dojango and assumed Mocking would make quick work of him (based on a previous game were Mocking proved himself a world-class player (in my opinion)) but I was wrong. Meanwhile I also learned that Bullock who I had played with before and who had usually treated me well, was at war with big bad c’tis who was quickly running away with the game, especially on the army graph from his tomb chariot summoning. I figured he had to be stopped or would win the game and so when Mictlan offered me some fire gems (I do believe), I went for it.

Around this time I also got a couple heroes, the first was a big ape with n1b1 that I set to blood hunt and who effectively blood-hunted the entire game and the second was a really nice big naga with f3s3 and one more path that I don’t remember- nature? She ended up being really useful until she got blinded much later and made me start loving immolation (the short range fire spell- I think that’s its name).

Anyway, my early offensive against C’tis went very badly indeed and I lost about 3000g worth of gurus to trample. So I had to learn to counter his trampling chariots. This took me awhile and I tried several things. Banish DOES NOT work (for patala). Bladewind does ☺. So I massed archers and bladewind casters and went to town and in several really really epic battles that I really enjoyed was able to push him back. I also learned to deploy elephants against chariots… and later ethereal elephants… that was very enjoyable as well. Finally Mictlan and I managed to wrestle the momentum form C’tis and force him back.

Then I talked to Bullock and asked him what he wanted to do. And I asked him straight up if he was going to attack me. He said no. I asked if he wanted to ally. He said yes. So I felt it was safe to attack Marrignon with my good buddy Agartha. The Agartha/Marrignon war was an interesting one. With the old Marrignon player, Agartha was steem-rolling- Marrignon just not having an answer to the question, “How much skelly-spam can you take?” Somehow the new Marrignon player did develop an answer (was it vampires?) and they sort of stalemated.

So I decided to break that stalemate because Marrignon was starting to scare me considerably. Especially the amount of blood they were using. I decided to respond in kind and using a trick I learned from Corinthian, summoned Asparas and Gift of Reasoned them. So they got B1. And started to hunt. I had also empowered a A2S2 summon (forget the name- donkey head with wings) to B2 and used him to summon Dakini. Dakini also did some blood hunting. So I slowly started to develop a bit of a blood economy- never as big as Mictlan or Marrignon… but useful none-the-less.

I hit Marrignon who proceeded to shut me down completely with vampires, fog warriors and darkness. It was emasculating in the entirety of its dominance. I learned that you can turn gift of heavens with fog warriors… which surprised me and basically cost me that battle. If I had known I would have used… well… well… something else anyway. I fought one more battle against the fog warriored, darkness vampires and used flaming arrows and tons of archers and windguide and that worked okay, even in the dark. OH yeah, and I used lots and lots and lots of communion solar rays… and that worked really well too... i think its got precision 100? His devil raiders did a pretty good job and I countered with my windigos (the whole reason I took water instead of blood on my pretender- I was actually fielding windigos against c’tis but they hadn’t fully matured back then yet). Windigos usually had boots of flying so they were my raiders and counter raiders.

Then Marrignon staled the turn before I took his capital province which really was lucky for me and then next turn I took his capital province. That attack on the province next to his capital was really what I considered an ‘all in’ move. If I lost I would have had nothing to fall back on- and I would have lost so many of my gurus just like I did against C’tis… but I rolled the dice and tried it out. Turns out he staled. But that was a very nerve-wracking turn submission.

Agartha was fighting Marrignon too but I am not sure what he faced exactly. I think he had to wait to break a NAP so for one or two turns I faced him alone (please confirm/deny?). Afterwards though we split up his territory a bit.

Turns out Marry had a blood summon site. So… then patala had a blood summoning site and I summoned mandala, vampires and dakini and even one cast of davala with it.

The rest you know I think but basically the battle with Midgard was responding to his initial shishi drop on turn 1 of the war…. Very bad for me until I recovered using a combination of enslave mind communions and mindhunts. For the whole war (and right up to the present) some of my forces were tied up sieging marrignon so I was dependent on new reinforcements and on raiders. A LOT (over 200+) of my forces were also blind from using a firebird against Marrignon undead (it didn’t seem to do much to them to be honest). I summoned a fairie queen but she wasn’t much help- even with healing every turn by the present I think I still have over 100 blind archers and infantrymen (and my naga hero).

Anyway, so raids and counterraids. The shishis gave me a lot of trouble and so too did a priest he got from the ‘beneath something sands’ spell (can’t remember the name) that he had outfitted nicely. The point I most enjoyed with the battle between our two big armies where I was able to use fog warriors and I do believe mists of deception (or was it massflight?) to gain an advantage. The other one was were I think he thought he was going to take one province with a huge veteran army returning from campaign in Bogarus lands to take a province with one zmey and a few adepts of silver order… But reinforcements called called in from every corner and I was able to defend with a rudra, a queen of elemental air, two more zmeys… yah…. I cost him lots and lots before I lost a zmey, an unscripted new adept and finally ran… that was one of my favorite uses of defensive movement trap ever. OH, I almost forgot. The third thing I did was teleport a naga, blind, to his water province most south-eastern on the map. Then next turn I reinforced with three giant kraken and built a laboratory. Then summoned more kraken while the ones I had ‘teleported’ over begun to take first his water provinces then micltans. That was scary though teleporting blind- I had forgotten about arcane window (but would remember about it lots later).


Against mictlan I left my border provinces mostly undefended until the turn he was supposed to attack me, expecting multiple attacks on a wide front against what he would have to suppose would be some defended and some undefended areas. Most of my forces were blind, fighting Midgard or still being hired and on their way to the front so I had to do with what I could. I let him take most of the far western provinces north of my fort, knowing there was nothing I could do, for now, to stop him. For one I left a little trap that involved lots of PD, fog warriors and earthquake spam. It had the desired effect. He lost all his slaves and ran. For the other I took a page from Marrignon’s play and posted my vampires, my mandala and a queen of elemental air (man was that lots of alchemy to get the air gems for that) and combined darkness, fog warriors and mists of deception (not sure about that last one) with a sudden surge in PD and vampires to win a very important battle.

I also learned that Mictlan loves its some send horror spam so I returned the favor but generally thought it a waste of astral boosters and blood slaves.


So yeah, that’s Valhala’s heroes from my point of view.

[Immaculate]

Double post sorry.

[dojango]

I went with a great enchantress. I hadn't fully internalized that Zmeys are kind of like hammers used to be; you either have them or you will be at a disadvantage throughout the game. So I only had F2 on her. Anyrate, I used skinshifters and ponymans to expand, ran into Marignon and Bogarus as my neighbors. Decided to attack Bogarus first because I was jealous of his lormasters and Adepts of the X Orders. Never got my economy rolling, though, so I was always lacking troops and mages. Maybe shoulda attacked Marignon first. Almost had Bogarus down, but his Rusalka knocked out some crucial commanders when I was storming the capital, and so he survived... was gonna try and domkill him, but the greater war intervened.

Shishis might be good zmey-counters, but they're no substitute for raiding... they got trapped behind your lines and killed before I could evac them. There was never really any contest; I killed a few of your SCs through their logical counters, but I was drowning under them by then.

[Bullock]

Alright then, the victory goes to Immaculate then !

Congratz Imma! And thanks to the others for this nice game.