MP: ThreeFort - Experimental game - Squirrelloid/Bandar Log wins!

[Valerius]

Indeed, what foe does not despair when they see black hawks manning a castle's walls and realize that they cannot hope to take it? It could have been worse, though. If I had gone with the Lord of the Forest pretender I would have had armies of meese as well!

[LDiCesare]

What were all those Eriu horsemen doing sneaking down there?
As a side question, does anyone think the monkeys can lose? I think the game is effectively over since Caelum is folding, Mictlan will follow, and Eriu will probably never be able to compete with an ampire four times its size.

[Valerius]

A few turns ago I saw your dominion dropping and thought I'd try for a dom kill. But then it seemed like you noticed it and your dominion started rising so I figured I'd withdraw them. That didn't work out too well.

I think you are right about the game situation. I've attacked Bandar but don't pose much of a threat to him. Unless LoloMo has something up his sleeve I'd say the game is decided.

[LoloMo]

I concur, Bandar has won this game. I have a plan to retake my provinces, but it will be at the cost of most the yazatas I've been summoning. Without any significant attack on Bandar log in the north to slow down his reinforcements, any battles I win in the south will just be a minor inconvenience for the monkeys.

I made a huge tactical error when I lost my main army a while back, and it has taken me too long to resummon that army.

[Valerius]

Well, I think my attacking Bandar has slowed down his reinforcements in the sense that he's got around 500 units and his pretender up in the north. My forces are ... more limited. But hey, I've got still got the Eater of the Dead and I know that terrifies Squirrelloid.

This game didn't go too well for me. In a first while playing Eriu, I didn't go for an E9nx bless (in retrospect I think it would have worked well since the necessary Constr. and Alt. to equip thugs were already researched on turn 1). My flawed plan was to put my cap in 32 and with that, my prophet and my VQ pretender, push my dominion into whomever neighbored me to the south and attack. When the game began and I saw my neighbor was Mictlan (dom 10, maybe 9?) I realized I had a problem. Then I made a really dumb mistake and suicided my pretender and of course Mictlan attacked me.

I chain cast Call of the Winds in order to keep my cap and hold out until I saw what Caelum would do. I was kind of surprised Mictlan didn't take my other provinces and for a long time I was still able to recruit at my other forts. Once Caelum attacked Mictlan I figured he'd withdraw his forces and I'd get a breather to try to get back into the game. Only ... he didn't. In fact, he eventually started attacking my other provinces.

BTW, good job LDiCesare. Even with just one fort left you were still a factor and it meant Caelum and I couldn't just focus on Bandar.

Thanks everyone for playing this experimental game. Comments, negative and positive, are welcome.

[Squirrelloid]

Wait, is that meant to be a concession?

[LoloMo]

Yes, you've won

Mind hunts were just too powerful. I couldn't raid without a sneaking astral mage and those were in short supply. And for this small a map, we really need all players to fight to the death! Kudos to Mictlan for never giving up!

Shall we have another go at this type of game?

[Squirrelloid]

I'd play again.

I wouldn't say Agartha didn't fight to the death. It was hard fought and he was totally out of material when he set AI - as in, not a single unit left or province left to his name. I just had to finish breaking fort walls.

And I don't know about mindhunts being too powerful. I think I lost more mindhunters to becoming feebleminded than I actually killed units. Now, admittedly, it did have a plausibly big effect on your tactics, but if you had raided you would have decreased the number of pearls I had available for other uses even without the astral mage to feeblemind my hunters. I wasn't exactly overrunning with pearls, and your (Calian) seraphs weren't exactly easy low MR targets to whack.

I think the really big thing was I was the only nation that took order scales whereas everyone else took turmoil scales. This let me support a larger force of mages and rely on recruitables for chaffe more regularly. And while I'm sure I saw fewer total events because of it, O1 opens up a lot of cash events, so I may have seen relatively more cash events than the T3L3 nations.

Enslave mind also got me into death via an Agarthan Oracle. Because yeah, I didn't take any D on my pretender (and stupidly enough, was pulling in 2d/trn from my home territories - death income I had absolutely no use for except the possibility of turning it into pearls until i managed to enslave an Oracle).

I am entertained that 3 of the 4 pretenders I saw generated gems. =)

[Valerius]

Yup, you've won. Congratulations, Squirrelloid!

As far as another game like this goes, I think the rules would have to be simpler in order to attract more players (I'm not into large games so even 8 players would be good).

The core idea was to change the end-game by limiting magic to level 6. Since that excludes most globals it makes sense to ban all of them, even those lower than level 7.

Then there were the anti-turtling measures: most spells researched at the game's beginning, no need for site searching, limiting the number of forts, even pre-assigning provinces/forts to eliminate the expansion/building phase.

I'm inclined to keep most spells at level 0 and leaning towards leaving all magic sites at 0. But I do think the fort and province rules need to be simplified. Recently I've been thinking setting rules such as no fort can border another or perhaps each fort can only border one other fort would be a simple way to keep the game moving in the later stages. As far as starting provinces, I'd probably just go with starting everyone with 3-5 provinces and having a short expansion/fort building phase (maybe a map with approx. 12 provinces/player?).

We also had some rules that had nothing to do late game/turtling (no indies/mercs, no diplo) and these could of course be changed for a second game.

As regards mind hunts, I'm increasingly of the opinion they should cost 3 gems in a normal game. But I'm not sure about with these settings. Without the Chalice, GoH or even faerie queens Bandar had to take a risk with his mind hunts. But this wouldn't be the case if someone chose Arco, or to a lesser extent TC, next game. Nations with healers and strong S worry me. But it's worth noting that if we allow indies and I include mage recruiting magic sites non-S nations would have more opportunities to protect against mind hunts.

[Valerius]

I just took a closer look at Bandar and realized the recruit everywhere gurus have S2. Squirrelloid, I assume you were using those when you had a cap and coin available instead of risking your rishis?

Some ideas I've considered to balance astral (especially mind hunt) in normal games are: increase mind hunt cost to 3 gems, give spectres a better chance of getting an S random, add a reasonably priced summonable astral mage (something along the lines of an Adept of x Order).