AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[Soyweiser]

Auluudh is also free, as in no upkeep. My main problem was indeed, putting the dude in the front.

And still, this is rather close:


Also, There are always the possible suprise attack chances. Having a a random event attack your expansion party might just do enough damage to the trolls to let them or a the normal indies to hit and mute your free mage. And as mages win games this is a way to risky move. (And all for what? 2 additional attacks and a little bit of fear? Your troops where probably enough to kill them).

Sure you might not loose something irreplacable if he dies. But you should put him in more trouble than needed. Having his paths halved might cause you do do less research later, or not find that one s3/w3 site. It is simply a stupid risk to take.

[jotwebe]

Originally Posted by Adam J

I think Soyweiser's point is that Mr. Auuludh shouldn't be in the front of the battleline, not that he should be back at the lab. He can enslave minds just as well from a little further back... no?
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Sadly, not really: the enslave mind attack only has a range of 25, very much different from ye olde mindblaste. I think after the first battle I did put him a little bit further back, but at this point I'm not sure about that.

Usually when playing R'lyeh I actually do what you propose, but for an AAR I thought I'd do something more interesting with him. I do need a mage leader anyway, although a slave mage would have sufficed. Still and all, the whole point of the southern army is not needing reinforcements, and an enslaving mage helps with that.

Anyway, let's see how he will fare, shall we? And I will say something horrible and stupid related to just this issue of exposed mages will happen, and it will be such an utterly pointless stupid thing that I struggle to express the stupid pointlessness of it.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by jotwebe

Sadly, not really: the enslave mind attack only has a range of 25, very much different from ye olde mindblaste. I think after the first battle I did put him a little bit further back, but at this point I'm not sure about that.

Do you really need the turn 1 enslave mind attack? The battlefield is normally 60 wide (30 for each side). The enemy will reach range 25 in 1 or 2 turns. Putting him behind some troops is more than enough. (Bonus, cast twist fate, so random spells/ranged attacks cannot hurt him, at least not as soon).

Just put a few dudes in front of him, he really doesn't need to be the closest to the enemy. His huge size already draws a lot of attention.

(Ps, hoping you win, love me some lovecraft ).

[LDiCesare]

TURN 6:
Abysia was indeed friendly enough not to attack this turn.
I conquered the southern province, losing 30 chaff on the way.
I found a S1F1 site with my pretender and got a lucky 300 gold event with increased faith.
Helheim's income comes back to a decent level (about mine, which means it still sucks) while Marverni plummets.
There are f*** elephants in Tir na n'Og. They can be panicked easily but if they don't rout they'll just slaughter anything I can put in their path. I'll have to send my pretender, with awe and fear it should be a piece of cake, but meanwhile my army will be rather useless.
I stop recruiting Pans for now, they cost too much. Dryads suck at research but they're still my best option for now upkeep-wise (110 sacred for 4 pts vs 320 for 10 pts).
I recruit some minotaurs and centaur archers to expand north later. The commander moves to my capital to fetch them, then northwards. There's one mountain province which is bothering, with longdead and archers, maybe a mage inside that I'll have to check, maybe send a dryad to banish?

TURN 7:

I take the province which remains with little losses (14 maenads). The kraken comes say hello. Nasty being. I also get the visit of a short-lived Caelum scout, Caelum being to my north far away. That's good for me, they have the worst expansion so far.
Abysia is being obnoxious. I mean, I tell him 30 is a war declaration and he sends his troops 1 province to the south, where it has nowhere to go, while he still has room around his capital. The guy is a pain. I'll be ranting againt Abysia a lot from now on, sorry about it, but from this point on it's quite clear he's been planning a rush and I'm his target. It's also a very bad strategy for Abysia, as he hasn't even taken the provinces by his capital, has pitiful strategic move, no research, and leaves himself open for his other neighbour to slaughter him. And noone can take down Pangaean forts early in the game, except maybe R'lyeh with their chaff, so rushing EA Pangaea is always a very bad move.
I just hope R'lyeh won't try to get out of the pond just near me. I hate the fact they have amphibious units everywhere. Never understood why people thought fish had to get out of the water. I should stop ranting against water nations one day. Now, I'll try to single handedly tame elephants with my pretender. That's probably a recipe for failure, but it should make a nice story.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

There's one mountain province which is bothering, with longdead and archers, maybe a mage inside that I'll have to check, maybe send a dryad to banish?

Longdead and archers? That can mean only one thing, invasion! No wait... wrong movie.

Usually that contains some sort of death/blood caster. And 25% of the time (in my experience at least) those *******s have the devil a turn summoning item. A lone banishment priest isn't going to cut it.

I could be wrong of course, but I expect devils and imps, with some skelly spam for good measure in there.

[Mightypeon]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

TURN 6:
Abysia was indeed friendly enough not to attack this turn.
I conquered the southern province, losing 30 chaff on the way.
I found a S1F1 site with my pretender and got a lucky 300 gold event with increased faith.
Helheim's income comes back to a decent level (about mine, which means it still sucks) while Marverni plummets.
There are f*** elephants in Tir na n'Og. They can be panicked easily but if they don't rout they'll just slaughter anything I can put in their path. I'll have to send my pretender, with awe and fear it should be a piece of cake, but meanwhile my army will be rather useless.
I stop recruiting Pans for now, they cost too much. Dryads suck at research but they're still my best option for now upkeep-wise (110 sacred for 4 pts vs 320 for 10 pts).
I recruit some minotaurs and centaur archers to expand north later. The commander moves to my capital to fetch them, then northwards. There's one mountain province which is bothering, with longdead and archers, maybe a mage inside that I'll have to check, maybe send a dryad to banish?

TURN 7:

I take the province which remains with little losses (14 maenads). The kraken comes say hello. Nasty being. I also get the visit of a short-lived Caelum scout, Caelum being to my north far away. That's good for me, they have the worst expansion so far.
Abysia is being obnoxious. I mean, I tell him 30 is a war declaration and he sends his troops 1 province to the south, where it has nowhere to go, while he still has room around his capital. The guy is a pain. I'll be ranting againt Abysia a lot from now on, sorry about it, but from this point on it's quite clear he's been planning a rush and I'm his target. It's also a very bad strategy for Abysia, as he hasn't even taken the provinces by his capital, has pitiful strategic move, no research, and leaves himself open for his other neighbour to slaughter him. And noone can take down Pangaean forts early in the game, except maybe R'lyeh with their chaff, so rushing EA Pangaea is always a very bad move.
I just hope R'lyeh won't try to get out of the pond just near me. I hate the fact they have amphibious units everywhere. Never understood why people thought fish had to get out of the water. I should stop ranting against water nations one day. Now, I'll try to single handedly tame elephants with my pretender. That's probably a recipe for failure, but it should make a nice story.

Actually, Rushing EA Pan can work for some nations, but the most likely unusual rusher would be MA Ulm, which would need an all ages game. Bottomline, Sappers (siege Bonus 5 yadda yadda) can actually siege down Maenad Spam on occassion, and Black Plates laugh at unbuffed Maenads, and Ulm has quite a motive for kicking out earth powers early on, which may perhaps be what Abyssia is trying to achieve.
Although I would propably rush someone else with MA Ulm if I had the choice.

[Soyweiser]

(And yeah, mages are there to be used, not sending out mages to support armies, site search etc is a waste, but not scripting your mages to retreat if you have misf dominion, or putting them in the front of battles is just to dangerous. Esp in the early game. (Where losing one mage is actually 30+ mage turns lost, which translates to at least 90 rp lost).

[Immaculate]

thanks soyweiser - that is indeed good advice. I am horrible at scripting...

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Immaculate

thanks soyweiser - that is indeed good advice. I am horrible at scripting...

One minor thing, while doing some tests, I lost a little bit to many units by making them constantly run away. (Or using the jav dude with 6 protection). So you need to plan ahead a little bit (ferry in new troops). You cannot always lose units in your expansion armies by having them run away.

The scripting is reasonably good actually. A lot better than my default expansion scripting (which works vs indies, but gets slaughtered by bumping into other players armies, like yours ).

To all the other players, I'm very impressed by all the work you are all putting in. Keep it up!

We should have a sticked post listing these kinds of AAR's if we don't have already.

[Immaculate]

haha - good writing again jotwebe- i liked your reference to soyweiser's advice... and again, generally, the writing is just plain good.