Warhammerama - Running

[llamabeast]

Wow, another very dramatic battle. The fields of Barra must be soaked in lizard blood and littered with bones and the charred remains of ancient mummies.

Thank goodness, my gambit with the smashers paid off. I had no idea if it would work, but it seemed to go quite smoothly. It's a shame both my sleepers had to die along with their items, but I think it was a very worthwhile sacrifice. I'm glad I noticed that the fountain had the lifeless tag.

Apart from that it was a complete debacle at the lizard end. Your wailing winds and other magic, combined with your endless hordes of Immortals which make any casualties I inflict irrelevant are making things pretty tricky for me. My quality sacreds are effectively just chaff. On the other hand, I expect you _really_ regret casting that Firestorm. Fog Warriors, combined with an accidental Luck on all my mages, really saved me from the worst of it.

[rdonj]

Hmm. Well, that certainly didn't go as well as I had hoped. I was really hoping you'd be considerate enough to throw everything you had at me there, including those wolves sitting in skavenblight. And as a slightly annoying side effect of my wailing winds I failed to kill pretty much any of your skink horde. I also really was not expecting my god to die on the first turn of combat! Blech. If I had not insisted on throwing out that one magic duel before the intended returning the smasher gambit would have failed completely and my god would be ready to go in for another run at your slann next turn. And my god dueled a skink. That hurts, that really hurts.

As to the fire storm, I was really hoping fire fend would help more than it did. I've never had occasion to use it before, but my fear was more along the lines that most of my commanders wouldn't get the fire fend rather than it just completely failing to save them. I figured with immortal sacreds to use as chaff and fire fend on my commanders I would be pretty much safe... not so, it would seem. I certainly wouldn't regret it nearly as much if it had destroyed your enormous skink communion. On the other hand, only one of my tomb kings died, and I have a number of sorcerers that I kept out of the battle, so while losing 17 commanders certainly hurt it isn't nearly the "near death experience" I was contemplating earlier.

I would never have done the fire storm if I was really expecting to win this game... I'm pretty well convinced that I'll never be able to actually kill you, as anything I send at you that isn't immortal is guaranteed to die if it meets your god. Although if you noticed, his intended assassins were in that battle And my immortals are taking up a huge amount of upkeep, so I really don't have a lot of flexibility in what I can do to attack you. Either I can kill my immortals off in your dominion, or I have to somehow get candles in every province I attack. But I am too poor to build much of anything due to immortal upkeep and the cost of recruiting a tomb king each turn. I also have yet to get a single 2 astral tomb king, somehow, to turn into a teleporting thug.

And of course, you're starting to counter my magic now with your endless bag of tricks....

Edit: Something very strange has happened. One of my experienced tomb kings in my capital has entered old age, and for some reason he has gained the #immortal tag. He also is listed as crippled, where my scripting for him implies he used to have air magic, but currently does not. Any idea how this could have happened...?

[llamabeast]

It's not one of your capital Tomb Kings, it's the one you said died. When a Tomb King gets very badly hurt in battle (i.e. reach 0hp and would otherwise die) they become weaker (magicbonus -1), get the old age tag, and change to appear skeletal rather than brown. This represents a big release of magic to save them. However, from then on they are immortal.

I believe that in that battle a couple of other TKs got hurt enough to go skeletal. One apparently then got destroyed again, and so his immortality returned him to the capital. He won't stay crippled for long.

I'm surprised you hadn't come across that before, but it's good news for you, because you've got immortal mage-thugs to go along with your immortal armies.

Oh, by the way, I *did* throw in everything I had. I basically have no other troops, apart from a posse of skinks sieging the Ogre Kingdom. I didn't send in the wolves because I think they'd do more harm than good, since I don't think their cold aura will affect you, and it'll knock out my lizards fast. I get them from a magic site you see, it's not that I'm choosing to summon them.

[rdonj]

Ahh, so that's why. I've never used tomb kings as thugs in battles before and I almost never lose them when they're mages. And I've never actually lost any inside of my own dominion before. So I was thinking the description of immortality they had meant they had phoenix fire, basically, and I just never actually saw any of them die when they were below 100 fatigue. That's pretty cool actually, I never realized they did that. So I guess I do have a fairly major advantage, again, as long as I can stay in my own dominion. And looking at my tomb kings, it would appear the fire storm caster is the other king that went skeletal. So you can appreciate that :P Too bad I don't really have the gems to thug out many kings.

Actually my units are only 50% cold resistant, so they would fatigue me, just not very much. Plus they're ethereal, and I don't have a magic weapon bless, so they wouldn't make bad army blockers. Of course all my evocations would still work. You would just have to use them away from your temple guards somehow.

Anyway, unless things change soon this is going to be a very long struggle between the two of us, between my undying armies and your endless skinks. You must be sieging sombre with a LOT of skinks. Skinks killing ogres... what're the odds.

P.S. - This is one of those turns I'm glad you two are taking longer than me with, I did my turn a bit hastily earlier and nearly left the assassins with very bad orders

[llamabeast]

Muwahaha. The tired inhabitants of Barra have found hope in a newfound belief in The Old One.

[rdonj]

Blast your excessive gold income :P It's okay, I turned them once, I can do it again... maybe.

[rdonj]

I just had a great idea for a way I could try to kill you! Unfortunately, I don't have anything remotely resembling the research, and by the time I did you'd have three or four paths at 9. Bleh.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, intriguing!

Also, I really have to apologise to you rdonj, you've been the most patient opponent in the world while I have been freakishly erratic in my turn-taking. I'm just beginning to come towards the end of my PhD and I'm generally getting more erratic in life - lots of unanswered e-mails, piles of laundry, I'm sure you know the thing. Anyway, I'm really enjoying this game, but I'm sorry you've had to put up with such a frustrating opponent! Thanks for being a good sport.

In other news, reports from the lands of Nehekhara indicate that the locals are being led astray by idols carried by the agents of Itza. By the time patrols arrive, nothing can be found but the occasional hint of a blur of motion in the corner of a soldier's eye.

[rdonj]

I'm just going to tell you now, since you're definitely going to kill me before I gain 6 levels in a path with 80 research a turn. I got the idea to use tomb king communions to make lucky, phoenix pyred, soul vortexing, invulnerable communicants to attack into your territory. Hmm, if I used two masters I could get even more buffs. Anyway they'd be pretty tough like that, I think you'd have to work a bit to kill them But I spent too much time researching other paths and marching armies of mages around the map. And then incinerating them.

Well, getting into a second game that was more active helped a lot. That game just got put on hold for half a month though, so I'm going to have a lot of waiting to do now I guess. It's okay llama, this has been a good experience for me. I've learned a bit, validated some of my ideas and got to play around with some things I don't normally get to. You're more of a frustrating opponent in the way you seem to infallibly target my armies with that colossus god of yours! I still haven't gotten over those two turns of death.

Oh, so that's how you managed to keep Dommen down at 2 candles with all my preaching. It really is too bad I killed off every single high priest I had with that fire storm... oh well. It's not as if you have a whole lot to worry about from my patrols anyway... my long, closely matched war for dominance with the ogres left me with somewhat income-plagued lands as he had a penchant for taxing me into oblivion. Plus he managed to take at one point or another just about every province I had. Then came the lizards. Our front is rather more defined than the one I had against sombre was, but I'm still poor and haven't had time to restore the pd to its former levels. Some of my provinces still haven't recovered from the ogre invasion, actually. In any case, for the most part my pd is minimal at best. There are all of three provinces that are even capable of patrolling.

I can see the game quickly drawing toward a close... sombre seems to have gone AI, so the ogres are probably going to be gone soon. And with them gone the lizards will be free to swarm all over my nice clean desert and make a big mess of things. Until then, I dare you to come into my dominion

[rdonj]

Well, hmm! That turn seems to have gone exceptionally poorly for me. Not only did I lose an assassin, but I failed to kill the rather frustrating god, as well. Further annoyingly, it was outside of my dominion so no resurrection I didn't even get a decent affliction on it. Sigh.

And then I had to go and lose 4 provinces in 1 turn. It's about desperation time here in nehekara.