Mana Burn: Accelerated EA [ LoloMo WINS!!! ]

[Kydorias]

Ack! Well darn. Very well done LoloMo, congratulations!

I had no idea that Pangea had laid seige to his final VP. Wish I had known.

Regardless, very well played game. I certainly had a lot of fun!

[LoloMo]

Thanks Arcos and Kailasa =)

I actually used Faery Trod to arrive at the Abyssian Capital last turn only. I ferried in like 1000 troops so the walls were breached on the same turn.

I had the Mictlan Capital under my thumb for something like 10 turns, I just didn't storm the castle for fear of everyone suddenly attacking me. When Kailasa sieged the Niefelheim capital, I decided to finally storm Mictlan castle. This had the effect of both of us grabbing the third victory point on the same turn, and of shifting some attention away from me. At the same time all my VPs suddenly got hit with bombs, so I figured it was now or never. I guessed Agartha actually had 3 VPs practically already, and was just delaying taking over his third just like me. So I tried to scare him a little bit by declaring war on him and hoping that he delays any action on the Abysian Capital for a turn or so. Agartha had a legion two steps away last turn, and I'm guessing some teleport or map summons too. I did several suicide attacks on his invading army to hopefully delay his march =)

My concurrent plan was to take the Niefel Capital, which was three steps away from the Mictlan capital where half of all my troops were. I simultaneously attacked those provinces giving me a border with the Niefel Capital. Since most of my troops have map move of 2 and 3, I could have it all sieging the giants in 2 turns. Kailasa beat me to it, but it had the effect of turning off Astral Corruption and allowing as many Pans as I want to faery trod to Abysian Capital.

Sorry, I thought it was quite a neat plan so I'm blowing a little bit of hot air. BTW this is my first MP win =)

[Ironhawk]

Congrats on your victory LoloMo!! And again on your first MP victory - it sounds like you earned it. Well played! Perhaps you can find a place in your pantheon for Tree-Hugger, who was also a friend to nature. He could be a messanger or perhaps a steward of some kind

Good game to everyone else, as well! I had a lot of fun trying out my special strategy - which worked surprisingly well I have to say. And it was incredibly fun seeing and using all these crazy high level spells!! Even Astral Corruption was great! I'd never seen that spell cast prior to this game and it was lots of fun trying to find ways to survive under it.

The only thing that saddens me is that I didnt have one more turn for the climatic final battle that had been brewing b/w me and Sauromatia for the length of our war. We were so close to Armageddon!

[Malthus]

Wow - thanks to everyone for a great game.

This was a fascinating chance for me to try out blood magic by being hardwired into a vicious blood strategy. My big disappointment was that there was very little feedback on the success (or failure) of many of the blood magic spells.

Now that the game is over, I'd like to ask for feedback on some of the spells. No one was a fan of Astral Corruption, but it didn't seem to be as much of a threat as I expected. Instead of everyone rushing to crush Neifelheim, everyone got around to attacking when they finished everything else they were doing. So, how bad was Astral Corruption, what did it do, and was it really more than an annoyance?

Did anyone even care about Illwinter? Other than some minor province attacks, was it meaningful?

My biggest question is, did anyone even notice the Horror Seeds? From the spell description, it seems like dozens of your armies should have been crawling with Horrors and Parasitic Horrors. Anyone ever notice anything at all?

I'd appreciate any feedback, as I don't usually mess around much with blood magic at this level.

[Sensori]

Well, I only noticed the existence of the Astral Corruption when it ate up some of my mages and forced me to change my summon strategy into one where I reanimated assloads of stuff. The Illwinter kept making stuff colder and colder and causing a little unrest, but Yomi isn't awfully weak in cold and I was using lots of death magic anyway, so it wasn't a problem in that sense either, and even for the last effect I had that call of the wild item so I had people patrolling everywhere.

But as for the game itself, for me it ended up being horribly anticlimatic and a good reminder for me why substituting isn't such a hot idea. All I had time to do was gear up for war... And then it was over. I was thinking of going after Agartha because, well. He was there, he was fighting lots of people and I can't remember having any kind of relations with 'im.

[Ironhawk]

Sensori said:
But as for the game itself, for me it ended up being horribly anticlimatic and a good reminder for me why substituting isn't such a hot idea. All I had time to do was gear up for war... And then it was over.

Tsk tsk, sensori!

I warned you that you needed to get into a war quickly because the game was coming to an end. Once those big nations took thier third VPs I knew it was only a matter of turns.

But in general, I tend to disagree. I think that in subbing you are actually more likely to have a fast paced game because other nations are usually preparing to attack any player that is staling. You seemed to luck out in that everyone who was planning to attack you instead moved on to other targets in points beyond your nation.

[Ironhawk]

The general results of Astral Corruption was that it would attack any mage who was forging or casting a ritual spell with what seemed about a 20-30% chance. You would always get your spell or item off (i believe?) but sometimes the mage would be attacked.

As for my experience with AC personally: it was a big problem for me. It hit right at the end of the CTis war and prevented me from summoning, which was the only way I had of producing elite troops! Unsurprisingly that war ran reallly reallllllly long as a result. After that I pretty much just had to put a hold on summoning and concentrated on battlefield-only spell strategies which did not rely on month rituals.

Later tho, I learned from Sensori that Astral mages have a fool-proof loop hole in Astral Corruption. They can just cast Returning at the start of the horror attack and escape immediately. After I learned this, all my magical skills instantly came back online without any real problems (except needing to move mages out of my cap after Returning, now and then). This is in fact the real reason I stopped the 2nd attempt to Dispel AC that I started I probably could have dispelled it as I had a large cache of pearls and recieved 60 or so more from other nations. But with my loophole in place, AC was hurting all other nations more than my own!

[edit]
P.S.
I didnt notice anything about these horror seeds you mention? All I saw was horror attacks on mages doing rituals/forging. Additionally, I noticed no effects from Illwinter - but I think I was too far away for your dominion to effect me.

[Sensori]

Ironhawk said:
Tsk tsk, sensori!

I warned you that you needed to get into a war quickly because the game was coming to an end. Once those big nations took thier third VPs I knew it was only a matter of turns.

Yeah, that's why I was actually having my eyes on Agartha rather than Sauromatia after Kydorias said that he'd wanna continue the game for a bit longer so he wasn't aiming to get a fourth VP just yet. ;p Just that considering that the winner was the northern-est guy, there was very little you could do to stop that.

And even if I had helped you out, I still would've managed to fight for, what, a turn? Possibly not even that since I had that NAP with Pasha which he suggested we'd make.

You seemed to luck out in that everyone who was planning to attack you instead moved on to other targets in points beyond your nation.

Haha, well... They were really intending to attack Yomi (as I found out like a turn after I had taken over 'em, not exactly the most fun thing to find out the hard way as I had to go in blind), but Pasha figured it'd be nicer of him to leave me alone for now since I was subbing someone who hadn't told me ANYTHING about the situation in the game. Well... AFTER I had made my displeasure known and had told him that I'd do everything in my power to help Niefelheim survive if he'd continue the attack. I had lots and lots of unique items lying around, and still had them at the end of the game, and would've sent them to Niefelheim quick-like if he had continued attacking me cuz I would've died in record time. Don't know how much of a difference they could've made in the wars Niefelheim was having, but at least I had enough stuff to equip an SC or two.

So Pasha ended up attacking you because he had made up his mind that he had to attack *someone*, and since he didn't wanna attack me anymore and Kailasa was his ally... ;p