Happy New Year, New Game, New Players (Finished: Dojango/Mictlan Wins!)

[dojango]

Originally Posted by Excist

Well, I would like to see my saints in action before I resign.

Is Helheim and Mictlan at war right now?

we're still on guard against the dangers of a revanchist Agartha. That mega-army is quite ominous.

[Excist]

I still wonder how the game would have gone if the first battle against the zmeys and mages on patrol had my divine bless as I had planned...a good clash with my main northern army will at least give me some closure in that regard

[Excist]

Okay, thanks for sticking around for 1 more climatic battle

It was some nice Eye Candy.

I want to extend a thank you to all who participated. This was the best Dom3 game that I've been part of and fun all the way through until the end.

And thanks to everybody that participated in the flavor text to accompany the game.

And finally, Congratulations to Dojango/Mictlan with his very well deserved victory.

Based on some of the comments I've seen I think he is the only player that made it through the game without any major mistakes.

[Immaculate]

Claws of Kokytos > 3 grendelkin.

Yeah- so... everyone share their pretender builds.

Mine was a rainbow druid that i empowered in blood. I don't know if you all knew this or not but i had really strong research for most of the first 2/3 of the game.

Who took the ruby eye? Mictlan?

[Excist]

Dom 4 (thus the pre-emptive strike against the bloodsaccing Mictlan) Druid Pretender with Magic paths F4 E9 S4 N10 B4

Turmoil: 3
Sloth: 1
Heat: 3
Death: 3
Luck: 3
Drain: 2

My plan was to roll over any high dom neighbors with my blessed sacreds early and live majoritively in any good dominion I could find (Hinnom's did nicely for quite awhile as I was able to out-eco everybody else even with only half of my territory in Hinnom's dominion)

Agarthan sacreds are cheap to purchase and cheap to maintain and with 13 attack value + stars and 28 damage (15 attack and 38 damage for the cap only version) when berserking meant death to most units and thugs even on a shield-hit and with ~20 prot and 10 hp/round regen they were pretty impossible to kill for the majority of the game.

[dojango]

Originally Posted by Immaculate

Claws of Kokytos > 3 grendelkin.

Yeah- so... everyone share their pretender builds.

Mine was a rainbow druid that i empowered in blood. I don't know if you all knew this or not but i had really strong research for most of the first 2/3 of the game.

Who took the ruby eye? Mictlan?

I was using the Mictlanese Stone Head with 9F4N4B. Scales were O3S3H3G1L3M1 Dom 8. In my test games, turmoil 3 wasn't nearly enough gold income to fuel the starting expansions, so I went order with a slightly weaker bless, figuring as long as income > attrition, it wouldn't matter.

But I want to emphasize a few things. One thing, really. I was amazingly, stupidly, unfairly lucky. Mictlan's three weak schools are air, death, and earth, and I found a death mage and an air mage site in Pangaea's territory, which was pretty nice, because they provided a heck of a research boost in addition to forging skull mentors to power up my research (I managed to surpass Helheim by the end) and forge spirit helms and bows of war for my dudes. I also found the crystal amazons, who provided some archery oomph. And of course who could forget the 3000g windfall late year 2 that let me build three forts at once?


Oh yeah, and before I forget, I had the 30% blood discount site near my capital.

[dojango]

Originally Posted by Excist

I still wonder how the game would have gone if the first battle against the zmeys and mages on patrol had my divine bless as I had planned...a good clash with my main northern army will at least give me some closure in that regard

I'm not certain it would have made much of a differnce; given that I had something like 7 zmeys and a some demons and jaguars. You killed most of the jags and demons, but only one of the zmeys. Under GoH and with a lyco amulet, each zmey has something like 400 hp, regen, and fights to the death. Even if you had won the battle, I still had hordes of demons and vampires ready to attack.

I didn't have the eye, I had a bunch of the weirder artifacts, but none of the mega-boosters or hammers.

[Excist]

Well, losing half of your zmeys would have slowed down your raiding pretty considerably, and if I had won that battle with the divine bless + battlefield spells, then I likely would have kept winning at least a couple of more with the combination.

I never was able to rebuild and have the gem resupply for battlefield spells cast with penetration after that point.

My best guess is that it could have gone either way and at the very least it would have turned into a much more tightly contested fight (perhaps contested enough to allow Helheim to get in the mix).

30% blood discount gives you a hefty advantage with the amount of stuff you can summon, but even when being outnumbered 3 to 1 at the end and without the battlefield spells fatiguing your guys my sacreds killed 1/3 of your units and most of your demons on the frontline had close to 100 fatigue even without the fatigue inducing spells (flying is fatiguing), so with the divine bless on there is a good chance your army would have fatigued out before they were able to kill more than half one of my armies.

I was also producing 30 giants/turn and a Grendelkin every other turn and could have kept that production up if I didn't blunder my southern main army.

[dojango]

yeah, I wonder what Helheim would have done. he was obviously waiting for us to destroy each other, but would he have sided with the winner or loser of the war?

[Immaculate]

I was just surprised to still be alive. I played a good part of the first part of the game with about 5-7 provinces. What i am really surprised about is that i actually won against Arcosephale- they didn't mind hunt a single time but if they had i would have lost.