Tempest - Random Nations, Early Era (Micah Wins!)

[Velusion]

Yep. I'll go ahead and put myself to AI then this turn.

DrPraetorious - Sorry about getting you to take over the replacement! I was thinking there would at least be a climatic struggle to topple Helheim....

[Velusion]

So... to sum up...

If anyone wants to keep playing now that Mictlan and Ulm are going to AI please speak up! Otherwise we will crown Micah the winner and the game will be archived.

If anyone wants to still contest Micah's/Helheim's victory Micah will need to keep playing (to secure the win) until the challengers give up or he wins outright.

PS I want to thank Sensori and DrP who both filled in for players that left. Our plan came too little too late Sensori!

Also thanks to Ermor (cupido2) and Tien Chi (shovah32) who - even though they were in horrible shape in the end - still manged to play their turn regularly!

[Sensori]

Bah, none of my plans worked in the first place thanks to Blaahzhahlzlaalöaldjaksf's Astral Corruption. Bastard. ;p

[Micah]

My worst loss to AC was probably forging the gatestone, I lost a thrice-empowered svartalf with a robe of the magi, ring of wizardry, hammer of the forge lord, earth boots, skullcap and crystal coin. He got attacked by one horror, popped returning and then another one showed up back at the cap, the AI decided to cast invulnerability in place of the now-impossible Returning that was scripted and promptly gets killed by the AN attack of the horror.

Way to not summon up some skeletons, jackass.

I'd make a crack about him deserving to die, but DAMN that was a lot of gems down the tubes. I was fully expecting the eater of gods to show up and kill my gatestone dude the next turn too, but I guess the game isn't that mean.

I think the funniest looking thing I did was probably when my Vortex of Returning caster got picked off by a horror teleporting in to an attempted raid, so my other mages all ported in, failed to follow their scripts (not sure why about that part, Life for a life should be possible at B2 with an extra blood slave, no?) and then sat around waiting to die instead of being whisked to safety. I probably looked like a complete retard on that one since Baalz had no way of knowing about the missing mage.

I'd like to dedicate my win to some of the amazing sites I found that game...Mount Chaining, Steel Ovens next to my cap, and Sorceresses being the top 3, with enchantresses and a Crypt Underneath rounding things out nicely. Discount sites are kind of retardedly powerful, especially for construction, blood and conjuration.

I'm sad to see the svartalfs go, I don't like playing nations with exremely limited magic, and Helheim's research ability is now the worst there is. Plus the non-cap mages are effective thunder-strikers with a storm going, but can't do much outside of evocation. They needed a nerf, but I would have preferred to see the Helhirdings take a hit instead of their magic...they're still a nearly-unstoppable rush position (which understandably frustrates people, it's not much fun being killed through no fault of your own whether it be trample-rush, sacred rush, or getting ganged beyond any hope of pulling off a victory) and it takes a lot of the fun and options out of their late game by restricting their path access and KILLING their research. Oh well, such is life.

[Reay]

I have gone AI too.

Burden of Time and Astral Corruption really hurt me as I lost a lot of eagle kings, seraphs and my pretender to old age and horrors.

A well deserved win to Micah who has given me plenty of ideas for future games .

Thanks to Velusion for being my ally and conquering Pangaea with me .

[Sensori]

What's the point in going AI if the game's ended anyway? I'm too lazy to go back into it. ;p

And unlike for you guys, my turns were quick and tidy. Like 20 mins and it was done. Thanks to the AC and the double Horror attacks on non-Horror Marked guys who were doing stuff... Bleh. Fail on global scale. I could've fought like hell for the SEAS, but [censored], I had nothing to go with to the ground except an insane amount of lobo guards. In other words, I couldn't really get anything useful done. Except Mind Hunts. And related crap. I hope I at least hurt Helheim a little. ;p

It really shows that the R'lyeh players before me really focused a lot on beating everything in the sea, though. Problem is, I couldn't see any logical path for the over-ground. In fact, the lil corner I had was something I took, and hell, I found Enchantresses and some other guys there, which would've helped a lot... From an earlier point. Now? Too late, even with Swarm, if you get a Doom Horror, you tend to die.

[Baalz]

Gah, Mount Chaining *and* the Steel Ovens? Despite searching every single one of my 100 or so provinces I couldn't find any blood magic bonus sites...which obviously would have made quite a difference (I was pulling in well over 300 blood slaves per turn at my peak).

Good to know AC had some teeth, but honestly by the end of it I was just as fed up with it as everybody else. I lost *several* really good dudes to doom horrors. I think it hurt me more than Helheim...

Oh, also, boots of youth absolutely do *not* protect you from burden of time as I assumed they would. That was by far the biggest clusterf*ck I've done in a Dom game yet...not only did all my mages die, they took a hundred pairs of forged boots with them...then all my blood hunters started dying. I probably would have lost to Micah anyway, but damned if I didn't outright cripple myself and piss off every single potential ally immediately after dissolving my NAP with a much stronger nation. FWIW, when I cast it I was concerned about Helhiem and Mictlan tearing each other down so that somebody else (Ulm) jumped up into first place and figured between the GoH and the youth boots it wouldn't effect me. Oh well, definitely a (painful) learning experience...

Heh, funny story about the BoT, once I realized how bad I was screwing myself over I tried to get rid of it ASAP. Problem was I had spent an assload of gems casting it for obvious reasons and I had cast it with a vampire count. I had been pushing my dominion aggressively so it took me several turns to sneak him deep enough to be out of my dominion, then I gave him an attack order, but Micah attacked that territory that turn, killing the count inside my dominion. Gah! When I snuck him back the *next* time he managed to scare off the light PD with his fear before I finally found somebody willing to drive a stake through his heart. That dude was really determined not to die!