MP game - "Pantheons" Started

[The Panther]

alexti said:

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though For now.

Obviously, a single air queen can stop this easy. Several flying pretenders can also. Also a flying bane lord, perhaps. But I built my pretender with my neighbor Pythium in mind, not Caelum.

The crux of the problem is that false horrors is a quick, easy research to level 6 in the preferred path for the fastest researching nation. Air queens are not only light years further away, they are impossible for our team in this game with no air races.

I think for a possible rematch, we will have to ban Caelum to be fair.

[Boron]

Lex said:

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.

Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .

Your fortification hint is not very helpful .... .
First some nations like ulm play usually with a high admin fort so madcastling is not an option .
Second severe madcastling is so expensive that you fall behind in research or other important areas .
Third you don't need to really siege the castles just as you said taxing to 200% is enough .
On other provinces than the capitol you can normally keep anyways a small seiging force to put unrest >100 . Often there are no mages .

The false horror is too powerful but mainly because of the problem with the fear aura as Stormbinder / Arryn suppose .

2 or 3 seraphs with a few archers can't be beaten even by a small garrison + pd .
You would need to have everywhere mages or SCs but thats impossible for a long time .

Level 6 research is earlygame , at about turn 10-12 at least you have it researched and it gives you good SC buff magic as well .

Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .

[Lex]

Boron said:

Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .

Vampires are etheral. False Horrors are etheral. False Horrors can fly in a storm. Therefor Vampires can fly in a storm. It also makes sense that if you're etheral, a little wind won't stop you from flying around.

Boron said:
Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .

for the record, I've had a surplus of gold all game. I've been giving it out whenever its needed. Remember that no one has attacked me, with the exception of a single scout who took one of my undefended provinces TWICE. So I've just been sitting on high income provinces and enjoying the quiet life with Pangaea while an early raiding army of 12 seraphs split up and had some fun down south.

Edit: i actually had more then 12 seraphs to start with.. i lost a whole raiding party to machaka's Black Hunters and I've since been avoiding him

[Lex]

also, consider that Caelum has the absolutly perfect starting position for this team game. Its protected from almost all sides, and is far enough away from the other team that it would take considerable time for non-flying armies to try attacking it. In my opinion, that simple starting position is what made Caelum unstopable, and not the spell False Horror

Imagine how things would have been if Caelum started next to Ulm? Or next to two opponents. So far I think most people missed the point about how to defeat Caelum. Their biggest weakness is their near-inability to seige a castle. A good general would not try to mad-castle. A good opposing general would go straight for Caelum's capital and/or production centres and steal their castle with typically low defence (Watch Tower or Mauseleum). Once you have their production centres, Caelum is helpless, and will most likely never be able to get them back. They might have a few Seraphs left, but they are defeated.

[The Panther]

I admit that I did wonder what was the logic for placing Caelum in such a remote starting location on the map. Switching Jontunheim and Caelum start locations would have made a big difference, I think.

I still believe that Caelum does not really have any big weaknesses, though, except for being kind of weak early on with the wimpy national troops. Other than that, it is a solid race, the best in the mid-game for sure.

[The Panther]

False horrors may be level 6, but it is in the school that Caelum usually researchs first. And Caelum researches faster than any other race, except possibly for GE Arco and Ermor.

It dawned on me that I could have gone GE Arco and gotten the flying elephants. This would have completely eliminated the Caelum raid strategy against me (but not anyone else). But GE would have been far worse against my nearest neighbor Pythium than standard Arco.

Also, with our team having no air races, there was no way to get a staff of storms, which is another possible counter.

As far as the flying SC thing and the army of devils, that takes easily more than 3 times longer to achieve than Caelum merely researching up to level 6 in its preferred path.

Still, the bottom line is that we are getting badly beat, almost primarily due to one single unbalanced spell. Without that, Pickles and I may have eliminated both Mictlan and Pythium by now.

Of course, this does not take anything away from the fact that the Team B playing well and using their inherent advantages to the fullest. They surely are.

I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

[Boron]

The Panther said:
I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

It is still a bit too early but i think in 5-10 turns it is time to call for a rematch . We could play with the same map / nations but with changed nation allocations to teams . This way Team B could show if they can do as well with our nations against us .

[alexti]

The Panther said:
Also, with our team having no air races, there was no way to get a staff of storms, which is another possible counter.

Staff of storms would rather be helpful to seraphs, but air would give you call of winds which is a good counter.

The Panther said:
As far as the flying SC thing and the army of devils, that takes easily more than 3 times longer to achieve than Caelum merely researching up to level 6 in its preferred path.

Not true, you can start fielding Bane lords with Conj-5 and Con-2 which is less research than Alt-6.

The Panther said:
Still, the bottom line is that we are getting badly beat, almost primarily due to one single unbalanced spell. Without that, Pickles and I may have eliminated both Mictlan and Pythium by now.

That's a bit optimistics, considering that you couldn't even harm my walls and probably I was summoning fiends faster than you could bring re-enforcement. Still it was seriously hurting my development, but at the same time Caelum enjoyed
unhindered growth allowing him to quickly get required research and infrastructure.

The Panther said:
Of course, this does not take anything away from the fact that the Team B playing well and using their inherent advantages to the fullest. They surely are.

I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

I think that the race selection for Team B is stronger than for Team A. Basically, we had all stages (early,mid and late) well covered, plus we had races with their own specialities which were complementing each other.

Rematch sounds interesting. I would be for exchanging nations, we play Team A nations, you play Team B nations (which nations to choose from the allocated selection is up to each team).