Request for strategy: Late game tips

[BigDisAwesome]

I always wondered that myself. In my first game one of the first globals to go up was Gift of Health, and I was so surprised that it stayed up until I cast over it as I was getting taken out of the game.

[johnarryn]

Astral corruption is something of a special case because it is a blood global enchantment... because it is easy to get a large number of blood slaves in a short time, blood enchantments may not be worth spending a large number of astral gems to dispel if the blood caster can just put the same spell back up in the next turn.

[Meglobob]

Generally speaking the gem producing globals, gift of health and any other non-offensive globals will stay up. At least until someone wants that particular global for themselves.

Dare to cast forge of ancients, burden of time, utterdark and astral corruption will put you on no.1 most hated list. This will usually result in alot of people ganging up on you to dispel the global and generally slaughter your nation.

Of course in a 62 player game the chances of keeping a global up are alot lower, so globals might not be a good strategy until over half have been knocked out.

[jutetrea]

Interesting.

If the situation is that my old folks are getting crippled and I just want GoH up to slow that process down... would it help to say that out loud? For example "want GoH up for my old folks home, it was cast with 51 gems at lvl 5, dispel as needed?"

Just in the sense of reducing perceived threat? Cuz it seems a good portion of diplomacy deals with perceived threat vs. realistic threat Which is a whole other topic, both defensively and offensively.

[RamsHead]

It depends where we are in the game. If it is late game, I will be thinking to myself "he is summoning Tartarians."

Generally speaking, in a game so large, I think it would be wise to not focus your strategy around anything unique, such as globals, artifacts, and unique summons. Globals can be dispelled and artifacts can be wished for. Uniques summons are a bit harder to get rid of, but with 61 other people out there, certainly some them will be clamoring for the exact same stuff as you.

[Shovah32]

Jutetrea, saying that you cast it with 51 gems is just begging for some-one else to cast it.

[Gandalf Parker]

In most games your big concern is finding out who your neighbor is. In a game this large, you want to work very hard at finding out who your NEIGHBORS neighbor is. Who is on the other side of your worst enemy? Keep in mind the adage "my enemies enemy is my friend". Even if you dont do full alliance it can be important intel to know when someone is attacking him on the far side drawing his big armies away from you.

Also do alot of research into who has what gems, and what commanders. Especially what mages they have. Not with the focus of meeting them in battle, but with the focus of meeting them in the trading market. It might be a factor on whether or not you attack them when you meet them if you feel that they will be powerful trading nations later. Trading mages can be especially powerful for late game.

Consider before you put lots of PD into a province that you plan to build a castle or lab in. You cant remove PD. PD can count against you when you work with allies. It can work against you in lab provinces that you will use for trading mages, or in castles province that you might want to setup to allow an allies army to move safely thru your area and help you out.

[jutetrea]

Good points, in the ones I have played I've made it a point to get as much intel as possible as to what is going on in the world. Who borders who, who's attacking who, etc Trading information. In a huge game that would be a lot harder to handle, and will probably come down to the 5-10 nations in the surrounding area. So I definitely agree.

That would be the point Shovah, only reason I would ever say exact gem cast would be to reduce percieved threat. They KNOW exactly what it would take to dispel it and it would then just be a matter of whether they wished to or not. Less of a threat than an enchant that may cost you 80 astral to dispel and then fail or not knowing if you wasted 30 gems. If I was actually putting it up for the reason I said, then I'd be fine with it getting dispelled if I felt it paid for itself. I would be annoyed if it was next turn, but that would be the risk weighed vs. the benefit of reduced threat.

is it common to trade mages? Charm and hellbind? or vacating a mage producing site province?

[Gandalf Parker]

jutetrea said:
is it common to trade mages? Charm and hellbind? or vacating a mage producing site province?

Its been common in my larger MP games. And not because I initiated it. I find that many of the veterans do some trading along that line. Of course there is eq trading also which I meant to mention but everyone thinks of that. They dont often think of straight gem marketing or commander trading. I also saw one game where a person created quite a market selling SC's. Summoned, altered, then sold or traded.
Yes it usually involves some sort of conversion spell.

@Baalz (and others)
Most of the predictions about the game really need to wait and see. But from what Ive seen in big games, defensive agreements are much easier to arrange than offensive ones. In other words, a destructive global cast with XX gems is fairly easy to arrange to get broken with a pool of XXX gems. By the time someone can cast a destructive global with XXX gems, or enough that a shared effort cant afford to break it, its usually so far into the game that its not some sort of unusual event. That nation is powerful enough to deserve to keep the spell up. IMHO opinion there doesnt need to be enforced balancing of such things with mods and such since I feel the game would have balanced it on its own by being large and many nationed.

But.. come to think of it.. a game using all of the nations with all human players is new territory (even for me). Having multiple beneficiaries does bring up an interesting point. Whether or not the beneficiaries of a global can pool more than the ones hurt by it is something I hadnt considered.

[Baalz]

Meglobob said:
Dare to cast forge of ancients, burden of time, utterdark and astral corruption will put you on no.1 most hated list. This will usually result in alot of people ganging up on you to dispel the global and generally slaughter your nation.

Of course in a 62 player game the chances of keeping a global up are alot lower, so globals might not be a good strategy until over half have been knocked out.

Yeah, I'm kinda curious with this mega game to see if there will be a level of gem pooling to get certain globals up. Nobody in this game is going to cast Burden of Time without using a ridiculous amount of death gems...but it'll benefit a certain set of nations regardless of who casts it so it'd make sense to poll for donations just like is usually done for a dispel. Same goes for Utterdark, Astral Corruption, and many others. My guess is the non-threatening spells won't stay up long, not because they're dispelled, but because the five global slots are going to be fought over by large power blocks for globals that benefit more than one nation.