MP: The Art of War - EA Vanilla Newbs Game 8/8 (Completed : Hinnom - Nightfall Wins)

[Excist]

Well, considering the original host that made the rule about not quitting until the bitter end, quit, I think going AI in your particular case would be reasonable at this point, rather than finding a sub to put in for a few turns.

We can leave that open to a vote though; thats my 2 cents.

[SpaceViking21]

I just went ahead and made a post. If someone takes it, great. If not, then I'll go AI.

[Nightfall]

I'm happy to play this out as long as you guys want, but in my opinion this game is decided. My stockpile of gems (not including blood slaves) is now over 1000 and my gem income is over 250.

More importantly however I have solid control of a Steel Ovens and lots of hammers, which is how I've been able to mass forge robes of invulnerability. Note this also allows me to forge 3-4 clams a turn from income.

Oh, I can also throw up a forge of the ancients anytime I want, I just haven't seen any need to unless one of you guys tries, in which case I'll overwrite.

[Excist]

I'm happy with calling it as well. I kind of lost interest when all my SC scripts seemed to result in blade winds and summon elemental spells for no reason (targets were self-buffs, so there is no 'no target in range' excuse for the AI).

Game hasn't been fun for a few turns now that AI has become annoying.

The rather unfair advantages Hinnom gets in their current incarnation, and lack of disadvantages other than 1 minor one that hurts enemies as much as yourself if you are raiding constantly is just an extra irritant - I don't mind playing as an underdog or with imbalanced races (heck, I am playing as Agartha currently which is the most handicapped race in the game that I have seen, and having fun losing with them), but this match has taught how much in the way of training wheels Hinnom gets with a) little in the way of upkeep for armies of sacred SCs that have over 60 hp each, b) heavy Astral and Blood magic, c) access to every other magic school as well, d) national healers, e) SCs that are size 6 and have no weaknesses, such as being undead, demonic, magic being, etc. f) province defense that is strong enough to repel thugs and SCs for a couple of hundred gold for a caster that can spam 'blind' and elite units that have rather high stats, especially for militia

Any others?

Compare that to Agartha that has size 4, earth only magic (lvl 1 or 2 in water, fire and death), precision between 5 and 7 and av/dv values between 7 and 10.

Or even Caelum that has air only magic with lvl 1 water and death and if you're lucky 1 level of fire, size 3 and has province defence that routs itself even if it is facing a scout unless you have paid a few hundred in gold to get over 20 PD.

Don't get me wrong, you're not the only one with a big gem income, clam factory, etc.(although Caelum doesn't get access to blood stone forgers) , but this game just hasn't been fun in awhile and I have no interest in doing the gem-micro involved when there is such a radically different Return on Investment between Hinnom's and Caelum's recruits/summons which makes an economic battle rather one-sided and pointless.

Signed by:

Slightly bitter and tired from international flying man.


If everybody's agreed, I am fine with conceding this game to Kristoffer and his cleverly designed Race.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Excist

I'm happy with calling it as well. I kind of lost interest when all my SC scripts seemed to result in blade winds and summon elemental spells for no reason (targets were self-buffs, so there is no 'no target in range' excuse for the AI).

I'm not sure why your having problems if your using good buff scripting, the only time I ever have an issue is when they miss with an AOE buff, which does tend to happen occasionally. Note that using gems in your buff scripting is never good scripting though.

Originally Posted by Excist

The rather unfair advantages Hinnom gets in their current incarnation, and lack of disadvantages other than 1 minor one that hurts enemies as much as yourself if you are raiding constantly is just an extra irritant - I don't mind playing as an underdog or with imbalanced races (heck, I am playing as Agartha currently which is the most handicapped race in the game that I have seen, and having fun losing with them), but this match has taught how much in the way of training wheels Hinnom gets with

I'm perfectly happy to admit Hinnom has some good strengths, however most of what you follow this with is not correct.

Originally Posted by Excist

a) little in the way of upkeep for armies of sacred SCs that have over 60 hp each,

You have got to be kidding, Hinnom is EASILY the most gold intensive and highest upkeep nation I've ever tried either in single player or multiplayer.

In addition to standard giant upkeep problems you are forced to regularly run key provinces as less than 100% tax. In this game I beelined my expansion to every city province nearby at the cost of expansion effeciency and I manually site searched 2 hidden gold mines, 2 gem deposits and a fountain of rubies before turn 20. These are the reason I quickly established a strong cash flow despite being upkeep heavy.

Originally Posted by Excist

b) heavy Astral and Blood magic,

Yep, this is one of the nations key strengths, although I should point out that Hinnom blood hunting is the least efficient of any blood nation I've played, you have to be really frugal with spending your blood slaves. In my case I used them almost exclusively to sacrifice and remote attack. Oh, and I also used three red seconds to drop an instant fortress on the steel ovens, a spell lots of people consider a waste of slaves. I did also build a few blood stones because I needed them for the booster, but I never had enough slaves to build them just as gem gens.

Originally Posted by Excist

c) access to every other magic school as well,

Wrong, no water at all, and only D1, which is useless for anything except site searching. Also they have almost zero usefull cross path access, which is a huge issue for battlefield magic and forging. I solved the forging problem by finding 2 seperate enchantress sites both two provinces away from my capital.

Originally Posted by Excist

d) national healers,

I think you can make a reasonable arguement that they shouldn't have the healers, although to be honest I found the supply(20) trait on the Acha's more usefull than the Healer(50) trait. It's a moot point in this case since I had complete control of Gift of Health due to my Pretender.

Originally Posted by Excist

e) SCs that are size 6 and have no weaknesses, such as being undead, demonic, magic being, etc.

I'll tell you now that Baal's and Malquart's are nowhere near as good as you think, in fact it's impossible to build them with no weaknesses, I was constantly cycling the gear on them so that they had the right immunity/MR/reinvig build for the fight they were going into.

I was losing them regularly early game despite the fact that most of the points I got from using an imprisoned pretender were fed into a decent bless for them. But I can understand how you may feel that way, since you started fighting them after I was able to give them all robes of invulnerbility. I can't stress enough the HUGE difference that, as well as having gift of health, made to their survivability.

Originally Posted by Excist

f) province defense that is strong enough to repel thugs and SCs for a couple of hundred gold for a caster that can spam 'blind' and elite units that have rather high stats, especially for militia

The province defence is decent but it's not top tier, and it's not as good as you think. A lot of those losses you had to 'a couple of hundred gold' were actually to provinces with 30 or 40 PD.

Originally Posted by Excist

Any others?

I could point out a couple of weaknesses that not one of the four people, well five technically, I was at war with during this game even attempted to exploit.

The biggest one - Hugely Capital Dependant, I spent pretty much the entire game at war without a single dome and my capital was not shut down for A SINGLE TURN.

Blood hunters - Not a single opponent made a concerted effort to raid my blood hunters; which were all set to retreat by the way.

Using the right tool against the right target - All three Baal/Melquart types (depending on the random path) have completely different strengths and weaknesses and should be fought using completely different tactics.

Most of your post didn't annoy me because I understand that a lot of this isn't obvious from the other side of the fence, which is why I've tried to keep this post informative and instructive; and I hope it reads that way.

But I must say I kind of resent the fact that your complaining about feeling like your inability to match my economy is entirely due to an unfair realm advantage when your running -7 scales compared to my +4.

[SpaceViking21]

I'm not really in a position to keep this going, so I'm for throwing in the towel as well.

[Excist]

I'll direct this solely at Nightfall:

Like I said, I wrote that post when overtired from international travel, so it had an extra bit of unwarranted bitterness injected in to some IMO warranted complaints about how Hinnom is balanced. I think we have only been at war for 3 turns that I put turn orders in, since I think it is end of turn 62 now and turn 58 was when I think you attacked me, so I haven't been going after your capital since I was going to try to take Niefelheim's forts and hope that TC could keep the pressure on you so I didn't have a determined foe at my backside when I turned my full focus on you. I did have every intention of RA your capital and then siege/taxing it once I was ready to fully engage with you, but a stale turn when my flight out of the country didn't get me to an internet connection as fast as I thought it would disrupted my chance to siege your capital while you would be responding to my raiders on your northern coast.

As for not properly scripting the EKs, I didn't script them to cast any gem-spells.

This was my spell list: Invul - Summon Earth Power - Earth Might - Iron Will - Legions of Steel - Attack Closest

And some how they ended up casting summon earth elemental and blade wind. I had one of my nationals casting blade wind unscripted too, although that one I was able to puzzle out since Strength of Gaia has some effects that overlap with some of the other spells they can cast like personal regeneration and summon earth power.

The EK scripts didn't make any sense to me at all and still don't. And I removed all gems from them so I think any gems they have is because one of them gets 1 gem per turn.

Anyways, I'm not saying that the game isn't winnable, even at this point, just that it's not fun to do all the micro involved and to be set back so much in a few turns due to RL and poor programming code and know that any setbacks you suffer are more easily recouped - my 1 capital mage can get thwarted by 20-30 of your PD and cost as much as your capital mages who can take 50-60 Caelum PD no problem.

My strategy once I could focus on you was going to be take your capital directly so that your guys wouldn't be able to teleport back and would be more vulnerable to anti-SC tactics and mostly have random magic duelers wandering around patrolling my land to catch the kits that they could from you until I could.

Going after the blood hunters requires knowing which citadel had them, and like I said, I was only at war with you for 3 actual turns before you claimed victory, so no chance to probe and prod yet.

And, for the record I know that Melqs and Baals are killable (I killed one with robe of invuln and gift of health afterall). Hinnom is just insanely better than any other race. If you don't believe me you can do 10 ai vs ai games and a random assortment of map sizes and watch Hinnom's score graph compared to other nations with the exact same strategic and tactical AI. Guess who wins every single time?

[Excist]

Regarding your final points:

- The biggest one - Hugely Capital Dependant, I spent pretty much the entire game at war without a single dome and my capital was not shut down for A SINGLE TURN.

I was only just starting to fight with you when poor scripting and a stale turn set me back, but I had been advising TC to go for your capital for 20 odd turns ever since you 2 started fighting. That would have been one of my main goals to cut off the teleporting SC strategy along with churning out crossbows that cause blindness to take out the SCs that have nowhere to return to.

-- Blood hunters - Not a single opponent made a concerted effort to raid my blood hunters; which were all set to retreat by the way.

Have to know where the blood hunters are to raid them. I suppose in hind sight I should have looked for a small-med province and taken my chances there, and I probably would have if we had fought each other more than a few turns. This is only my 2nd game and my first that I made it to the end-game, so that may be a noob area that I'm just learning.

-- Using the right tool against the right target - All three Baal/Melquart types (depending on the random path) have completely different strengths and weaknesses and should be fought using completely different tactics.

Well, teleporting in and out is a good way to nullify that. I could only chance into your Astral Melqs and Baals with random patrollers, who would have to be randomly effective against your random weakness

-- Most of your post didn't annoy me because I understand that a lot of this isn't obvious from the other side of the fence, which is why I've tried to keep this post informative and instructive; and I hope it reads that way.
But I must say I kind of resent the fact that your complaining about feeling like your inability to match my economy is entirely due to an unfair realm advantage when your running -7 scales compared to my +4

I wasn't complaining about inability to match economy. I felt that our economies were actually fairly similar (or more accurately, were similar before you started raiding me and would have been similar again after I had a chance to gear up to fight you and counter-raid more effectively), but what I was complaining about was that once I have the gold/gems, I have less useful things to spend them on, which makes it frustrating to spend 10 turns making up what a crappy spell-casting AI and 1 stale turn had cost me, especially knowing that your SCs were comparatively much more easy to script (script ctrl-1 to teleport in and script ctrl-2 to teleport out) and creating anti-SC armies and thugs that could work against a random assortment of weaknesses was much harder and expensive.

I wouldn't have conceded and would have played this out to the end if you hadn't offered to claim victory, but seeing as how after the way things have gone I wasn't having fun doing my turns, I'm just as happy to let you claim victory.

[Nightfall]

Hylobius, could you please confirm what you would like to do?

A big part of the reason I spoke up is that I think that TC was a pretty terrible position to sub into, and can't be very fun to play from your point of view.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Excist

Well, teleporting in and out is a good way to nullify that. I could only chance into your Astral Melqs and Baals with random patrollers, who would have to be randomly effective against your random weakness

Yeah that tactic is horrendously difficult for Caelum to counter, but if you want to be become a good Caelum player you need to work on finding ways to do so. It works even better, and, in some ways, is cheaper, when using golems to do it.