MP: Blood Bowl - LA Marignon - Corinthian Winner !

[bbz]

a message to all the free people on this earth. We must unite and fight against the common enemy - Marignon, He is headed for the victory, lets make him pay if he wants to get there!

[Admiral_Aorta]

well you can take your pick of marignon or fomoria really

[bbz]

Good point although I feel (from my limited spies network) that Fomoria is loosing out.

[Corinthian]

Currently I think the power balance in the game is quite even. Although I agree that Marignion is most likely the strongest.

I see a lot of things with my scouts and diplomacy and I think there are five nations with a good shot at victory.

1) Marignion: It is the biggest nation. But it is also caught up fighting two of the other power nations. And both of those nations have tartarians. Also fights Atlantis still, but I dont know how much forces atlantis have left in its forts. Is also a blood nation. Purgatory global probably keeps Fomorias Morrigans at bay though. Used to have the Gale Gate global.

2) Fomoria: Was the scares nation for a while due to crazy blessed morrigans and Tartarians with artifacts. But they have lost land to Mari so I guess they are not invincible. Probably have most of the artifacts. They have the really high priority stuff like the sword of Auglemer and the Chalice so I'm guessing they also have the hammers. They seem to have an agreement with Patala were patala sends markatas and and Fomoria kills them with the Sickle Whose Crop is Pain for 30 D gems per turn. Also have the Well of Misery, bought with gems from the Sickle no doubt. If he pays Patala half of the D gems from the markatas then he'll get 35D per turn from non-site income. Morrigans cost 2 D per unit for reference. Also have the Chalice witch grants him tart access.

Fomoria is less scary than he looks though because he got screwed on the starting location. He is big, but also in the middle of the map witch means that he borders(d)a lot of people. If patala wants to stop turtling and start invading people then they will probably have to go through Fomoria if they want to do anything more than raiding.

Could become strong again if EA Agartha attacks his old nemesis LA Agartha though. Or if he can beat Mari with Caelums help.

3)Caelum: Not as big as Fomoria or Mari but he got a lot of tarts and he also holds Ermors 15d capitol. He attacked Mari recently, but its too early to tell if he is winning. Though he have taken a fort. GoH global.

4)Patala: Patala seem to be sitting on its arse most days and does not make a lot of waves. But I know from experience that Patala is one of the scariest late game nations and he seem to be building up a blood economy. Also gets (?) 15d gems a turn from Fomoria. Have also not spent many resources on wars so he probably have a big war-chest.

5)EA Agartha: If you read my previous comments then you know that I feel that EA Agartha is the single most overpowered nation in the game right now. Worse than Ermor and R'lyeh even. Granted, he has been stalling for, what? 12 turns? But in that time his enemy Sauromatica have not been able ti kill him or caused him very much damage. Lets take that again: Not even with 12 turns of EA Agartha not doing anything can Sauromatica kill them. Thats how powerful they are.

They also have the earth blood global now.

Sure, they probably lost a lot of initiative from all those stalls, but they also do not have any scary neighbors that could oppose them. Sauro is weak and should be an easy kill, LA Agartha is locked in a life or death struggle with Fomoria and would be ill suited for a second war. Bogarus was badly mauled by a Niefelheim rush back in the days and would probably also have a hard time fighting Agartha.



Honorable mention: LA Agartha. LA Agartha have a scale build and a decently large empire, so he will probably get stronger with time. But it did not seem like he was winning against Fomoria last time I checked. If he can turn the war around and kill Fomoria with Mari and grab more of the lands then mari, then he might have a chance.

With Caelum attacking Mari it just might be possible for him if Fomoria have been weakened enough. Mari will not have enough forces to take the lands for himself and Agartha can reap the rewards.

A long shot though.

[Zywack]

That's the thing that annoys me most, personally. This is my 2nd multiplayer game and I had joined thinking that it'd be really short. With a small-ish map overcrowded with players (and potentially experienced players too), I figured that I'd be out really early but that it'd give me some experience for the early game and that I'd join a new game after the summer is over. Especially since I had bad luck combined with some really, really stupid decisions and mistakes early on. I thought I'd have the summer off without having to check Dominion turns.

Yet here we are 63 turns in (I thought the average game length was around 60 turns), with still 10 players out of 15 alive and no end in sight... I personally wouldn't be upset if someone ran away with the victory (It's possible especially since the winning condition is having 8 capitals) but it seems pretty unlikely for at least one more month. I'd be more convenient for me to just drop the game, but...

I'm not going to ruin the game for anyone and I'll just keep on trucking to the best of my abilities until the end. So all I'll do is complain that this game is taking way too long in this one post and shut up about it afterward

I'm also planning to write a "retrospective" after the game or my nation is over to explain my thought process as to why and how my nation ended up the way it did, the way it is going and so that you guys can point out just how stupid I've been... Although I realized by myself a pretty hefty pile of stupidity already.

[Admiral_Aorta]

Patala: Patala seem to be sitting on its arse most days and does not make a lot of waves. But I know from experience that Patala is one of the scariest late game nations and he seem to be building up a blood economy. Also gets (?) 15d gems a turn from Fomoria. Have also not spent many resources on wars so he probably have a big war-chest.

It's worth noting that patala has eaten most of EA tien chi, including their capital.

[Bullock]

I have extended the timer to 50h/ turn since it has been requested by few players.

[Zywack]

That's not what I meant by "This game is taking too long" Ah well. Now I at least have some flexibility of choosing when to check the turn so I guess it's not all that bad.

Regarding people being unlucky being stuck into the middle of the map... I'm curious why wrap-around maps aren't played more often? I play the game with some friends alongside the AI (Yeah, I know), and we always play wraparounds for that reason. They make for a more enjoyable game, in my opinion.

[Corinthian]

Dont worry Zywack, if the game would turn out to be a total grind people will eventually just surrender to whoever. I dont think I have personally seen a game last longer than 85 turns or so. Though normally I have a rule to not play on maps larger than 200 provinces that I broke for this game.

As for wraparounds, they have both pros and cons. You get more even starting positions, but you also get a lot more fronts and neighbors witch means a lot more planning and diplo. It is kind of micro heavy.

Though there are wraparounds, like galaldia, that gets around this problem by making the map a bunch of interconnected islands to limit the amount of neighbors you can have.

Personally I prefer normal maps with fixed starting positions. Its the best of both worlds.


On this map I think C'tis was the one who got shafted the hardest by his start. He started only 1 province away from crazy-bless Atlantis and two provinces away from Marignion. His end came quickly.

Best starting positions were had by Patala, Caelum and Atlantis I think. Atlantis started one province away from a neighbor, But it was also his only close neighbor.

[Zywack]

Whelp, that's officially the last time I play an anonymous game. The communication delay is just too much of a frustration... By the time the other people can answer to your message (or that you can answer to them), the situation has time to be completely different than what it originally was and it can make you feel like a gigantic ******* when that happens.

Ah well, onward and upward!