MA Mod Nation Combined Game - Testing Grounds - Finished

[GFSnl]

No,

the only one at fault here is Attack Drone who ruined a fine game by upsetting the balance one way or the other.

I'm just a little disappointed that I kept warning Attack Drone you were strongest and had to be attack but instead he attacked me. Then when I'm beating him he cowers away to be replaced with a much stronger player. (who doesn't read it's mail to often ). Otherwise he would have seen the peace offer.

Anyway, It's clear you have far more resources. Probably more money than you can spend with Nature's Bounty up for so long. And it's 2 against one.
My offer for resignation stands and it will be a deserved win for you.

[Valerius]

GFSnl, I think those are fair points. When I offered to make a last stand rather than just set AI I thought I'd have a few provinces to work with and I'd just script some final battles, but that turned out not to be the case.

Looking at the turn, it does seem like Executor and I are working together - but I've actually had no contact with him and I'm basically just fighting whoever attacks Al-Nadim. If I were playing this to win (rather than with a last stand mentality) I might well decide that Haida Gwaii was too strong and be open to a deal with Svarogia (graphs off and basically no scout network make it hard to judge strength unless I burn all my S gems on astral windows). However, that means I'd have to deal with late game micro on a big map and I'm afraid that's too much for me.

It is of course up to you two to decide, but I will say that this is a big map and you've both put in a lot of work to be the finalists so it seems appropriate to end it with a good fight between the two of you. Perhaps it would be best if I should just set Al-Nadim AI as was originally requested.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by GFSnl

Then when I'm beating him he cowers away to be replaced with a much stronger player. (who doesn't read it's mail to often ). Otherwise he would have seen the peace offer.

Sorry about that! I'm particularly bad about checking PMs over the weekend. I almost staled this turn and didn't even wait a few minutes until the game hosted to view the turn.

Originally Posted by GFSnl

Anyway, It's clear you have far more resources. Probably more money than you can spend with Nature's Bounty up for so long. And it's 2 against one.
My offer for resignation stands and it will be a deserved win for you.

I feel bad about the way this has turned out. If I were playing to win I would make a deal with Svarogia against Haida Gwaii but I just can't deal with the kind of turns that would involve... So if I stay in the game I will work out a deal with GFSnl and then just sit in fortress Al-Nadim and let you two fight it out, only attacking one of you if you attack me.

Or I'm happy to set Al-Nadim AI or just stale if you think that would be better. But I really do think you two were heading towards a good final confrontation and wouldn't want to see it ruined.

[GFSnl]

Have to make excuses for my ad hoc accusations of cooperation. It looks like you both attacked the provinces with pin point precisions but on closer inspection Haida just attacked the coastal provinces with it's flying/sailing and just by chance didn't intersect with Al-Nadim.

Anyway, I can never dent Haida unless Al-Nadim would also go on the offense against him and even then it's not clear we'd had a chance.

I can live with the result of Executor winning and I'll write him a nice review on the peculiars of Svarogia.

I'm not finished with Dom 3 yet and I'll probably have ample chance to get my revenge .

[Executor]

It is a shame attackdrone left, I completely agree with you GFSnl, he upset the end game quite a bit. I was quite looking forward to playing out this end game. I planned to make that northern province of your my stronghold in your territory and launch further attacks from there. Forted it with a wizards tower and started gateway-ing troops in while I simultaneously attacked all those coastal provinces and pushed with two big armies over the ports north and south.

Yes, I did just attacked every province I could reach with sailing and with those flying mages.

Attacking you instead of me wasn't a particularly good choice for Al Nadim. I jumped at the opportunity to cast GONB at that point. Even then I though you'd join up against me but instead I got some 15 turns under GONB which just gets better the longer you have it naturally, since you'll just keep increasing your dominion. So I did, I forted and templed every province I could and kept recruiting Kachynas to spam summon those immortal thunderbirds (which are crap but still immortal in a powerful dominion )

At this point I think I have somewhere around 60 forts and an gold income of about 18 000. My gem income is up to 280-290 I think and I hold 4 globals and have most of the uniques, which includes the chalice as of recently fortunately, which opened a pretty damn good tart factory (tho they're not nearly as good as one might think with EDM)

This was a very good game for me, shame it's ending so abruptly.

[GFSnl]

Yeah,

it was a really good game. I enjoyed it very much.
I really like Svarogia and will try to give some feedback on the things I used.

- The Osenja is great. She is especially good in the beginning when no one has researched anti magic. I used her for expansion and to crush my first adversary without a sweat. I took magic 3 scale specifically for her. It lowers magic resistance when someone tries to invade my dominion and she becomes the most cost effective researcher. She needs to be nerfed however. I didn't really use her for stealth communions with the Navi and the White Vila though as you probably intended.
- Troops. I thought the best troop was the Svarogian rider. fast and cheap. With the enslave mind from the Osenja that was enough for the early game. Had I encountered heavily armored guys with not a lot of ranged I would have bought some Haiduk Beserkers but with the adversaries I encountered they died to much. I didn't take a nice bless so I can't comment on the Ancestral warriors.
- I didn't use a lot of summons. They didn't seem worth it, or I must have missed some uses for them except for one. The Ala. Like I said on the threat at Dom3Mods she is great. A portable staff of storm on a great chassis.
- The Moria and other stealth units are not worth their price I think. I did have a lot of problems finding good scouts and the one you get to recruit as a nation sucks with only stealth 5. Even then the Moria with stealth 0 would only be worth it if she would actually disease enemy units in a province and not only kill population.
- The Vampir is a very nice bloodhunter. immortal and auto summons nice undead units. It should have been my spamming goal from the start. You want dozens of them. Would I play again with Svarogia I would go for them with an endgame goal of Utterdark.
- The Navi has something. But I'm not sure how to use them effective. I'm really interested in how you viewed their roll when you created them.

That's all that's coming to my mind now. I probably have more comments when certain subject are brought up.

[Executor]

I figured as much she was the reason you took magic 3 scale, very good choice it seems. She will definitely be nerfed however, turned out to be too strong a unit. I will probably lower the range of her enslave mind to 10, that way she can still be used for enslaving and assassinations but it will be a risk to do so in any open battle where she would just run in front of the troops to enslave the enemy.
The Haiduk Berserker will probably get some sort of bonus.

The Vampir is intended to be a two sided unit, each of which has a specific role. The Vampir is naturally supposed to domsummon chaff while the werewolf (which of course doesn't have the domsummon ability) is supposed to be very good at bloodhunting, blood magic generally and also even be used as a light raider due to his stealth.

Regarding Navi, I figured they could be used to support armies as mini thugs.
Some sort of reverse communion would be perfect for them as they could get mistform, blood vengance, luck and body ethereal rather easy.

Anyway, this was my last turn, including my battle orders, in case anyone was interested in seeing what I was doing.