Chinchilla - Running

[Chicanist]

As for my thoughts on Caelum: I feel like they are a fairly powerful nation. They have elephants early on so they can expand quickly, and the fact that they have access to Seeking Arrow + flying armies makes them very good guerilla fighters.

Issues I found: their PD is completely useless and their normal troops are pretty close to it which means it's going to be hard to fight an enemy head on. You do get very powerful battle magic but there are only so many 270gp mages you can send around, and you can only build them at a fairly slow rate.

I also don't think I took enough advantage of the magic diversity they get, I tended to focus in air/water magic even though I did get randoms with astral and death. I probably should have taken more advantage of that (esp death since they get some good summons).

[Valerius]

Ok, once llamabeast gets the server straightened out I'll end the game. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. Here's my thoughts on Abysia.

I chose Abysia for this game because I figured fire immunity and decent armor would give a chance to stand up to a possible fire bless rush. Though I didn't make much use of fire magic in battle (probably a mistake) I liked having an elemental immunity to protect my mages from remote attacks, etc.

I made a mistake on my pretender as well: I have an utterly useless B4 fountain of blood. I can't even get him out of my capitol to spread dominion in other areas. My idea was just to get excellent scales and I chose a pretender that would achieve that cheaply. But I would have been much better off choosing a sphinx and getting enough astral to cast the high level spells that are out of reach of my warlocks. It also occurs to me that an awake pretender might have been a good idea.

I thought my troops, with help from indie archers, could do a good job with expansion and I was pretty happy with them. But I had no confidence in them when it came to fighting other nations. As things headed towards war with Pythium I was desperate to get enough of a blood economy going to cast ritual of the five gates. I felt that would give me some quality troops as well as ice and lightning attacks. But the trogs were great because I now had tough troops to soak up damage in the middle while my frost/storm demons acted as artillery.

This was my first time playing a nation with astral and a nation in which blood was a focus of the strategy. I really enjoyed the way astral let me move my mages and armies around. And I really liked the remote attacks blood offered as well as the summons. I didn't do much with SCs (only one at the end of the game) but I made a lot of use of ritual of the five gates in the mid-game. Based on its troops Abysia is a slow nation but once I got some research going it didn't feel that way. They actually seemed very flexible and well suited to raiding.

What I really liked about Abysia though was their mages. Demonbreds are very nice but the warlocks are excellent. Aside from the benefits of blood and astral I really liked the astral/earth and blood/earth combined paths. Warlocks with an earth random were able to forge crystal shields, etc, which helped to take advantage of my excellent indie mages, and blood stones (I made enough to get a little more earth income and boost my mages to cast army of gold/lead).

I didn't find the micromanagement of a blood economy to be that bad. Using Shift-Z made the process of pooling blood slaves relatively painless. The only time it was hassle was when Machaka cast the kindly ones and I decided to keep blood slaves on every blood mage so they could cast life for a life if attacked.

Another thought: when I was trying to prevent Machaka's dominion from spreading I tried blood sacrifices. I used jade knives and found this to be a very powerful way to spread dominion. I mistakenly thought H2 demonbreds (because they have blood magic) would need to do this, but actually the H3 anathemant dragons could have done it even more effectively.

One final comment about my luck. I didn't really want to fight Pythium yet but it was good I did. I don't think I would have had a chance against him if the war had started ten turns later. I kept that lesson in mind when Machaka defeated Pangaea and his gem income was going off the charts and so I attacked immediately. With both Pythium and Marignon defeated it put me in the unexpected position of being the most powerful astral nation left and I think that was a definite advantage.

Overall, I think Abysia is a good nation. Unless they have an awake pretender they seem most vulnerable to me early on, before they have a blood economy going. I thought their mid game was very good. Late game they also seem strong (demon summons, infernal prison, life for a life, etc). I do wonder though how well they would deal with really strong astral nation like Arco, nevermind Pythium or R'lyeh. One drawback is that they don't have non-capitol blood mages. Then there's the old age thing... I basically included a pair of boots of youth in my cost for a warlock but it did make me disinclined to purchase many fire mages to help with research and I just used indie mages for that.

I do have one question, though: who had the Chalice? That was one item I really wanted.

[dmentd]

A short brief on Oceania is that the nation is weak. The trient knights were quite powerful and provide an easy thug to use. Otherwise, the mages are deplorable because they have very limited paths which mostly disappear when leaving the water. I feel very fortunate that there was no other water nation which helped me be big in the game.

The free access water nations have to invading countries that border the ocean is impressive. I could enter and leave at different points for raiding that is quite useful. This is the only reason I was useful against Pythium. Even though he concentrated on me and made me pay with numerous commander deaths, I had the benefit of fading away from his main armies until they got worn down a bit.

Finally, maelstrom is a good global. It increases all of the gems a little, which actually was quite nice.

THank you all for the game. I enjoyed it.

[Burnsaber]

One note about abyssia I wan't to share from another game. Burden of Time with huge amount of gems = game over. I was playing Abyssia in another game (Allegiances) and Burden of Time got up. 7 turns later, my I lost blood economy, research and combat magic as I had ~5 mages left -> this is a huge weakness. Even if the BoT is up for 1-2 turns, most of your ages would still have got disease and die anyway.

I unfortunately had already burned up all my death gems when I heard about this strat and you had managed to take the Well of Misery for yourself.

Oh, and I had the chalice. Pythium gave me it to me before his demise.

[IndyPendant]

I played MA Tien-Chi in this game.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the...snarkiness in my earlier posts (in this thread)--particularly to Caelum. I was annoyed with myself much more than anything else, and that annoyance bled through into my writing. It should not have.

This was my first MP game (note: not my first MP Dominions game; this was my first computer game ever played against other players, period!) I made an embarrassingly large number of mistakes, almost too many to count, although a lot of them were mentioned in my earlier posts. Still, I also learned a *lot* in the short time I was in the game.

Agartha did very well to defend against my 'surprise' attacks. Caelum defeated me fairly--if, uh, frustratingly handily. ; ) And I learned that although MA Tien-Chi remains one of my favourite nations to play in SP, I probably will never play them again in MP. I did not play well this game, but here's what I think of the nation itself:

MA Tien-Chi is a one-trick pony. They shoot, they shoot, they shoot, and oh, by the way...they shoot. Their archers are awesome, arguably the best in the age--but their other forces are sub-par. All of them. Their mages were also pretty weak--particularly in midgame, which is where I drowned under hordes of winged mages and seeking arrows. They have low levels in all their magic, and need the late-game magic boosters/communions to truly shine. They suffer from low hit points and/or old age, so are easily assassinated with spells and creatures. They don't have a good recruitable thug chassis to take advantage of their multiple magic paths with crafting. Mid-game, MA Tien-Chi is easily neutered via Arrow Fend and/or Staff of Storms. One single spell or item reduces their effectiveness dramatically.

I was playing in in version 3.9, and 3.10 has helped MA Tien-Chi's mages significantly, so that I like playing them even more in SP--but the patch has done absolutely nothing for their armies, leaving Tien-Chi with largely the same old problems. Agartha stopped my offensive dead with high-prot summoned statues, which Tien-Chi really could not deal with adequately at all, without high-level magic. Caelum defeated me with Seeking Arrow, Storm, Summon Air Power, and their (much much MUCH) better mages.

Basically, shooting is pretty much all MA Tien-Chi is good for.

I would recommend MA Tien-Chi to anyone for SP games. I would recommend it to absolutely no one for MP games.

[Chicanist]

^ I was actually VERY surprised that you were able to raise so many horsemen so quickly. I'm not sure if my understanding of scouting was correct. One of the reasons I was so quick to attack you is that all your armies I could see just had hundreds of crossbowmen, which I thought I could deal pretty easily with between Storm + Arrow Fend. Seeing lots of cavalry tearing through my flying guys was not fun
Fortunately I think my mobility + lightning bolts still saved me in the end.

[Warhammer]

I am not a huge fan of MA Marignon. They look good on paper but they are vulnerable in a number of ways.

First, their crossbowmen are great, but their rate of fire is slow. The problem is that you need to set them back from the front lines a bit, so they can get more than one shot on the approaching enemy.

Second, you almost have to take some magic scales with them. If you take any drain, their witch hunters are terrible at research. Their big mages are nice, but their old age really sets them back quite a bit. They also do not have a lot of precision, so unless you get a lucky step in air magic, you're going to be whiffing quite a bit.

Third, their scales are hard to balance. You need good magic, good production (to produce plenty of troops) and you need pretty good order to make sure you have the money for your mages. Where are you going to pay for those scales? Don't even think of taking misfortune. It's one thing to have barbarians plunder a province, its another when it is a bunch of knights!

Fourth, their magic diversity is absolutely brutal. Yes, astral magic is powerful. However, you need a lot of boosters to do that. If you want to pursue a mind hunt strategy you really need some penetration boosters to help you out, and for those you need more paths than just astral and fire.

Fifth, I think their best bet is to take a Water or Fire bless. This makes their knights a very good unit, and one that can absolutely put fear into your opponent. The problem is that is very expensive, and you need your pretender to have some decent magic paths for site searching as well as scales. I'm not sure what is the best pretender to have, but there are too many weaknesses that need to be shored up by him that you don't see with other nations.

Sixth, they really need to have a good starting location with plenty of resources. To really be able to send out good armies early, you don't need cash, you need resources. This nation is very vulnerable to a bad starting spot. One more thing, if you start next to Abyssia, good night. Unless you have an ally, you are hosed because their units are immune to fire, and rage, paralyze, and other early astral and fire (non-damage) spells you need to have a ton of mages present to win.

Again, they look good on paper, but in practice they are a hard nation to play. Coincidentally, I think LA Marignon is a very powerful nation the more I dabble with it, even though it doesn't look as good on paper.