Middle Age Crisis ,CBM1.94+Assimilation mod 1.1 6/8 Players Remaining

[Tiavals]

Originally Posted by krpeters

Did I miss something? I thought this was a newbie game...

???

[krpeters]

Well, after watching one of my major forces getting squished like a bug, I'm feeling a bit outclassed.

I have one or two tricks still up my sleeve, but if they don't work, I think I'll be giving up on Dominions.

[Hereward]

One thing I noticed peters is that you didn't have any mage support in our main battle, and i'm guessing you didn't have many mages in the battle against tiavals due to the sea element. Army strength could be considered 1/3rd troops, 1/3rd thugs and SCs and 1/3rd mages, roughly, and if you are lacking this 3rd element then it's pretty likely you will lose...

[Hereward]

Also one of bandar's main strengths is the mobility of its top tier mages, who can teleport around and so join a battle all the way across the map in 1 or 2 turns from the capital.

As for the newbie element of this game, players who haven't played many mp games could still be way higher in ability than other 'new' players because of the strange learning curve of this game and the almost infinite different strategies you can employ. Although many of the players, especially agartha and ermor and me, and ulm before he left, are very competent in decisions and compositions, they still seem to me to be many levels below the upper tier of players - I have been playing one other game, my second, where there were some upper-tier players, and I was facing many SCs in the 30-40 turn period, and facing such strategies as small stealthy forces attacking many of my provinces each turn which I could hardly defend against. This game in comparison is much easier and 'standard' in that it consists of large areas which are very defendable through a few choke points, which encourages more standard large army vs large army play.

[krpeters]

Yes, I recognize that my offense was extremely suboptimal. I was expecting to lose the battle. I just also expected to do some damage along the way, or learn something useful in the process.

For example, earlier in the game, I was sending my troops to their doom against Marignon's fire mages. Initially I had them staged up front to attack immediately, and so his mages easily incinerated them. I could tell from this that positioning was the issue, and that I should stage them at the back of the field instead to keep them out of range for the first few turns.

In this battle, I cannot conceive of *anything* my troops could have done differently... except simply not be there altogether.

I don't mind losing. I do mind being steamrolled. And apparantly there are greater differences in skill amongst beginners than amongst experts.