Elli (Started)

[MartialDoctor]

I guess my main question for Indy would be this. Indy, when you attacked me, you managed to get your entire army over to my side. I understand that your troops can fly but how did you move your Tartarians so far into my territory? Did you give them items that enabled them to do so?

[MartialDoctor]

Ah, did the time get reset to 36 hours? I just received the turn yesterday afternoon and I am getting a 6 hour notification already.

[IndyPendant]

Hmm, I never made any changes to the llamaserver, and I *think* I'm still the mod here (am I?) It's set to 48 hours now...

As to moving that first army to Arco's capital, it was not really any big secret. I just had the Airship artifact, and gave it to a 100-unit leader. Most of Caelum's leaders have Flight-3, and I just gave the Enchantresses and Shamans Boots of Flying so they could come along. Then I started the war with those leaders placed in my wasteland castle, which was three provinces away from Arco's capital, et voila!

I was able to send those hordes of leaders in all directions cuz they could all cast Thunder(strike) and Lightning(Bolt)...and I had completed my research. All of it. Level 9 in all schools, including Blood, before the war began. And I wanted to take advantage of that before (hopefully!) anyone else had managed to do that.

/whine on

I also got *hammered* with that new scale bug that was introduced and then fixed in the recent patches. I dropped over 25% income for dozens of turns! I went from around 60% of my gold being spent on upkeep to nearly 90%. I couldn't even produce leaders in half my castles, let alone units! (Most of my provinces were on those two damned peninsulas, and bordered Atlantis. He was sucking away my Order, Production, and Growth...all *supposed* to be at +3.) That really, really, *really* sucked.

I got screwed over in so many ways this game. --Not by players, just bad luck. I couldn't even complain about the damned scale bug, in fear that it would tempt the others to attack me.

/whine off

One thing surprised me; I handled sitesearching poorly in this game, and I thought I had to be way behind in gem income--another reason why I started the war. Based on Arco's territories I conquered though, it seems I was wrong. I think my gem production outstripped yours...

Anyways. Any other comments/suggestions? Baalz, how about you? Or are you guys still in top-secret wartime mode? ; )

[Baalz]

Oh, I think probably a few more turns before I want to roll all my cards face up.

[Baalz]

Alright, Arco is about to stale for the third time in a row I'm gonna call this game over. GG guys, could the game host mark it as finished on the llamaserver?

[IndyPendant]

Doop, it's over due to staling out? That's unfortunate. Did you pretty much have the win or something, Baalz?

If I don't hear any objections, I'll end the game.

[AlgaeNymph]

Arco's why I was holding out, no reason for me to keep getting whittled down then.

[Baalz]

Oh, I'm 99.99% sure I had the win locked in. I'm more than twice as big as Arco and Atlantis is down to just a handful of provinces left...I think I've got more fortresses than there are enemy provinces. I've got over 20 GOR'ed tartarians and I'm casting Arcane Nexus this round with about 600 pearls. I was just waiting for Arco's concession, but with three stales in a row now I guess I might be waiting for awhile.

[IndyPendant]

Okay then. Elli has been declared finished. Congratulations, Baalz! Well played. (As usual.)

Now! The AAR's! Gimme gimme gimme! (Please. ; ) What advice do any of you offer, if any, and is there anything you would like me to expand upon?

[Baalz]

Baalz said:
GG man, that was an interesting fight, and some rotten luck on your part - I had just moved all those mages in anticipating storming that castle with a bunch of tartarians inside - if you'd attacked my other army you'd have easily won.

I didn't see many big mistakes on your part, other than a somewhat unavoidable over-reliance on lighting spam which was easily counterable once I got my head out my ***. I will say though that there's been no attempt by anybody (other than one halfhearted squad from Atlantas which quickly retreated to the water) to bring the fight back to my lands. As you noted, your provinces have all been fought back and forth for as you bleed troops while I've just been sending a steady stream over and putting castles up in 90% of my provinces. Seeing the speed with which Arco seemed to go down I expected some significant raiding onto my own territories as I had just thrown everything I had into yours and all that lighting is a whole lot harder to counter when I don't know where it's coming next.

Oh, I hope you weren't holding your breath too much as I don't have too much to add to this. One thing that I don't think was obvious was how much of an advantage I gained when I wished for the chalice. Not sure who I snatched it from, but I expected to have it snatched back and wouldn't have been able to re-wish for it for several turns. As it was, with the chalice I was cranking out a solid 2 GOR'ed and non-afflicted tartarians every turn. I was also steadily building castles and temples on every province. Having been on the other side of that I have to say it's immensely daunting trying to plan an attack on somebody with solid fortresses - while you're seiging castles they get the luxury of bending all their magic and picking the fights. If the game had dragged on much longer my overwhelming temple lead would have begun to show as everyone else's dominion crumbled, and I'd shortly be teleporting in to destroy any temples not in a castle - it's very hard to catch up at that point because you have to build temples *and* castles in large numbers. I'd also be summoning juggernaughts as fast as possible...