Newbiegame3 , evil error

[Huzurdaddi]

2 air only costs Pythium 250 gold. 1 Theurg and 2 communicants gives you more magical power than a single Arch Theurg.

Well yes and no. You have to realize that those communicants are *dead* if the battle goes on for any amount of time. If you have access to releif then they will survive a little longer, perhaps until turn 10. But then they are dead. And there is really nothing that you can do about it.

I have learnt my lesson with them. Make sure that when you use them the battles are short and sweet. This means pull out the biggest guns you have as early as possible. If you have research shimmering fields, bLast away. If you have nifel flames bLast away. You can control the exact endurance useage for the 1st 5 turns. And you probably can get your communicants to survive that time. If the battle goes 10 or god help you 15 rounds they will never survive.

R'lyeh and Atlantis

I would rank R'lgeh quite a big above Atlantis. They are really a 1st rate nation.

The blood nations can also be very powerful given time thanks to things like the devil commanders and soul contracts, along with the very nice blood items.

Indeed. Few nations scare me more than Blood nations that are able to sit for a while by themselves. They scale very well.

Really, the only nation that has a lot of trouble as the game goes on is the two standard themes of Ulm.

I would say Ulm, Atlantis, T'ien Ch'i and Matchaka all suffer as the game goes on.

Oh and probably Pangea, but not on this map. Hellkeep if they can keep it away from Ermor would, I figure, make all of the difference in the world. I know I would base my pangea strategy ( if I had one ) around getting that province and keeping it.

Arco, Atlantis, Pythium, Ulm, Ctis, Marignon, and Machaka

Only C'tis and Arco are really near him from that list. But it would be nice if those two nations are taken. They are both great nations. It's a shame to play without them.

And I *suppose* we need an atlantis if we have a r'lyeh.

Oh and hey, Pythium is taken!

[Tannath]

Hi, I would like to play Pythium, but as it is already chosen I'll try Arcos.

Thank you

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
Well yes and no. You have to realize that those communicants are *dead* if the battle goes on for any amount of time.

Which doesn't change the equation in any noticeable manner. Two communicants gives you the ability to cast more than three times as many spells as many spells as the master could normally cast. They are also cheap enough that you can afford a dozen a turn.

If you have access to releif then they will survive a little longer, perhaps until turn 10. But then they are dead. And there is really nothing that you can do about it.

Sure there is. You buy more in your wizard's tower.

If the battle goes 10 or god help you 15 rounds they will never survive.

As long as you have enough to bring the fatigue cost for any particular spell down to 1 per cast, then they can handle 5 spells per turn indefinitely. It's a matter of how many masters you have.

I would rank R'lgeh quite a big above Atlantis. They are really a 1st rate nation.

R'lyeh loses to Atlantis underwater due to its inferior troops in the early game, and loses in the late game due to its inferior mages.

I would say Ulm, Atlantis, T'ien Ch'i and Matchaka all suffer as the game goes on.

Atlantis has access to the highest astral income in the game more easily than any other nation. They should have little problem keeping up in the end game as they can reach the 100 clam benchmark at turn 51 using only their starting gem income. Shorter if they use the hammers that they'll have fairly soon.

T'ien C'hi is weak only if you don't use their superior forging ability and have to go up against a nation with astral magic.

Machaka has great counters to just about everything, but needs to build large armies to make it work. They also have as much gold income as they need to build these large armies once they get their fever fetish production going. Webs and tangle vines are great for killing SCs, and Machakan hoplites are the best human troop available.

Oh and probably Pangea, but not on this map.

Pangaea should always make use of its blood magic. Earth stones are a great investment for them. They can also swamp SCs with a horde of Lamias.

[DragonFire11]

I see the map file has a *.rar extension. Will this work? I wonder because all my other map files have *.map or *.tga.

[DragonFire11]

Well I downloaded the Faerun_small.rar and, after placing it in the map file, Dom2 did not recognize it. Can anyone help? Thanks.

[Graeme Dice]

.rar files are compressed. You need a program like WinRar to uncompress it.

[DragonFire11]

Dice - Thank you so much! That makes much more sense. And that program seems pretty nifty too.

[Tyrant]

I'll take Machaka if that's ok. I'm gunna upload tonight. I'll check tomarrow and back out if that's not acceptable.

[Lawless]

I met my hubby via an AD&D campaign in this map setting, so! My second big MP game! (I game mostly SP, or with my husband and one friend of his.) It looks like I can be the Dark Lady of either Marignon, Machaka, Ulm, C'tis, or Atlantis?

(Incidentally - their really ought to be more female pretenders. A friend of mine here, a translator, was interested in playing, until she realized almost all of the pretenders were male. Even ones that should be either - druids, lichs. Her friend's husbands are all playing lineage or Starcraft, but a lot of her friends might play if things weren't so predominantly male - her culture makes a big difference out of genders in some ways, but still - Korea is maybe the biggest computer game country in the world, per capita.)

[Huzurdaddi]

Which doesn't change the equation in any noticeable manner.

It sure does. That 100 gold is disposable. Don't get me wrong I generally make thurges + communicants instead of arch thurges, but you have to make sure that your wars are concluded in a few short battles or you are going to lose a lot of gold.

and Machakan hoplites are the best human troop available.

Really? I don't know what metric you are going by. In terms of awesome human troops I would think that the Emerald Guard would be the best human troops in the game. If you think that elves are human than probably vans are the best. If you are saying that they have the best price performance then I don't know what is the best troop. I always figured it was the principes of either Pythium or Ermor ( BE ) but really I have never crunched the numbers.

their fever fetish production going.

Yes this is, IMO their strength.