New Mod Nations Game: Mods over Europe (finished)

[Jazzepi]

The one thing I wish I would have done this game, I was very happy with everything else besides, was to start building my 2nd fortress about 3 turns earlier.

Also, all the above problems that I mentioned with the game setup seem to be exacerbated by the smallness of the map we're playing on. On larger maps, even if you have graphs to make it retard easy to see who is "in the lead" it's far more difficult to pick on that person due to the geographical distance between nations.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

This is only the second game I've played with you Jazzepi, so I can't make a statement like "you complain too much" but you have groused quite a lot in both of them.

In Neo you are allied with Teutanion against me. You two attacked me simultaneously, attempting to carve me up quickly. It hasn't really worked out yet, but we'll see. I told people at the time I didn't think it was a very sound strategy for Teutanion (perhaps I'm wrong) but I didn't complain about it, it's fair enough. I then allied with Sylvania to fight you - that also seemed fair enough to me. Prior to your campaign against me, I had you pegged as the second most powerful nation in the game.

In this game the graphs told everyone you had a clear lead, which you're right, resulted in people going after you. It also didn't help that you're in the middle of the map. Contrary to what you said, you /were/ running away with provinces before being attacked, considering that you were also putting resources into research. Anyone close to you in provinces had done far less research. I also remember your army graph riding pretty high for a while. I'm not knocking you for doing well in the early game, it's what I'd have done if I were able (I'm a low skill player basically).

The only thing that annoys me is that you're complaining about things you could easily have mentioned before the game started. If you want a game on a bigger map, go for it. If you want the graphs turned off, mention it. If you want to ban diplomacy or make sure you aren't in the middle of the map, you could have suggested that too.

Anyway, don't give up yet, Ulm Reborn hasn't and they're arguably in a worse position.

[Jazzepi]

Neo was more my fault than anything because I was trying something weird with a rainbow mage, and that was before I had my epiphany about site searching which is basically that if you're doing a rainbow mage if you want to find sites of a particular type you only need 3 paths in it to find 95% of those sites.

I would be in an infinitely better position had a built my mage in that game differently and made her dormant instead of imprisoned. But you live and learn, now I only build dormant rainbow mages and never imprisoned. That still doesn't excuse the awful swath of mountains and forests that I was hedged into, just an unfortunate part of the game's random placement.

Also, Jomon's calvary is *awful*. Like appallingly awful. I can't even begin to explain to you how frustrating it is to take Jomon and attempt to fight Sylvania. Jomon's ranks are filled with low morale troops. Not a single person has a shield. So the only thing you can really do is recruit priests, mix in the demons who have high morale with the awful morale calvary, and then spam sermon of courage. I failed to do the third part of that, but I didn't realize how bad the morale problem would be. The fact that Sylvania is an archer nation is bad enough for Jomon, but that they have high protection, high defense, high morale, high magic resistance shock troops with *fear* against morale 9 calvary? It's like a kick in the balls each time that your calvary is literally chewing into the archers, and then routs.

I don't think I complain a lot, I got gang-banged by 4 nations in Perpetuality and tried my best to survive despite it all without complaining almost at all, though I did put up a lot of in character posts. I'm also in about 8 games right now and even though Hako broke an NAP against me twice in Starfall, while at the same time Emor decided to attack, I soldiered it up and just recently broke the back of Abysia's main army.

These two games in particular have been very frustrating (especially since I really like playing with the new races and consider this a unique opportunity), but I haven't given up, I just needed to vent a little. I still think I have game against the attacking nations. I mean, I didn't spend all that research on nothing

My 1st goal right now is to take Hawii out of the running, and to defend myself 2nd.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

Well you did build a lot of the Jomonese cav and it did very well against indies. If you think it's not a worthwhile and buildable unit then could you give me some suggestions about what you'd change. Part of the point of the mod games is to work on balance. It isn't getting better morale though, that's a feature of the race.

Sylvania's sacreds may be overpowered, it's something I'll check out. It might be that fear 0 is just too good for a recruitable massable unit.

[Jazzepi]

It may have just been a combination of the fear + the low morale + archers, some sort of perfect storm.

I built a lot of the calvary because it's the only thing that can play the "catching arrows" game against indies early on, and it doesn't do that terribly well, but they survive well enough to put the hurt on.

If you really wanted to keep the lower morale, that's fine. Maybe the priests could be made a little better like MA C'Tis's selection, or you could give them flight and mapmove 3 so that they'd be easier to keep on the front lines. Since I'm pretty much convinced that you must have the priests to spam sermon of courage on your calvary if you intend to use them, giving them flight and mapmove 3 would make them a lot easier to keep on the front lines, instead of constantly dragging your army down to mapmove 2.

Honestly, I felt like the calvary would have been okay if I had handled them better, but in the situation I was in they felt extremely useless. I think calling them awful is a bit of an overstatement.

Another suggestion I would give is simply to have the very low resource samurai's be mindless. As it stands, I don't think I'd ever build them.

Jazzepi

[DrPraetorious]

Well, I don't think you handled the diplomacy deftly.

- If you cut people off, they'll declare war on you. This is a bigger problem in the middle than on the edges, I agree, but there you go. If this had been a wrap around map you'd be in the same situation in that regard, but maybe-so-would-I.

- If you don't want to fight early wars (like, right now), then even if you're in a corner you have to accept being somewhat small, which you didn't do. Even without graphs, people can generally figure out how big you are.

- If, when someone tries to negotiate with you, you threaten to throw the game to the other player, people will tend simply not to negotiate with you at all.

[Morkilus]

How's it going for the rest of you guys? I'm especially curious about Avernum; I had a pretty humiliating loss against the AI with them. I couldn't get their sacreds to do much of anything; they died too quickly. E9 bless maybe? I really like the kitty archers, however, and can imagine a nasty lategame astral powerhouse.

[Sombre]

They don't have armour, so an E9 bless wouldn't work. I think a water astral bless would keep them alive best,... but really the trick is to keep the missile fire off them.

[Jazzepi]

- If you cut people off, they'll declare war on you. This is a bigger problem in the middle than on the edges, I agree, but there you go. If this had been a wrap around map you'd be in the same situation in that regard, but maybe-so-would-I.

The only reason it's so easy for you to declare war on me this game is because you AND your ally are both in corners.

- If you don't want to fight early wars (like, right now), then even if you're in a corner you have to accept being somewhat small, which you didn't do. Even without graphs, people can generally figure out how big you are.

I disagree with this heavily, not only do graphs tell the exact size of your nation, but they basically explain the composition of your army. For instance, I could tell you were massing a large group of low protection units backed up by your sacred tramplers just by looking at the size of your army on the graphs and understanding the units you have available to you.

Also, my insane amount of magic research was put out for display, something people would NEVER normally have access to unless they're in a fight and see a particular spell cast, but even that doesn't tell exactly how much research someone has.

By the combination of having a small army, a large group of provinces, and my huge amount of research all put on display on the graphs it's easy to tell that I would be a vulnerable target. Something that would be much harder to discern, or even impossible, without them.

- If, when someone tries to negotiate with you, you threaten to throw the game to the other player, people will tend simply not to negotiate with you at all. -

I wonder if you're curious why I simply didn't respond to your message over the forums? You constantly threatened immediate war if I didn't give you certain territories (two out of three which I conceded to you), so I find it hypocritical that you think it's bad negotiating to threaten scorched earth tactics.

Do you really think I have anything to lose by promising to attack you solely if you don't leave me alone? If I think I can heavily swing the game in my opponent's opponent's favor, and cripple the original opponent at the same time, obviously I'm going to threaten to do that. It's a big club to beat someone with diplomatically though some people won't respond to it, which is fine.

I didn't threaten to throw the game to the vampires, only to give them an incentive to finish you off and take you out of the running. If them having three capitals means they win the game, that's not my problem.

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

Sombre said:
They don't have armour, so an E9 bless wouldn't work. I think a water astral bless would keep them alive best,... but really the trick is to keep the missile fire off them.

I tested this extensively, I found a high Air bless coupled with a water bless for quickness was best, but in the end it didn't feel like it was worth it to go that route when the only H3 (mobile) priest you have is your prophet. They do enough damage as is with the blades. I wanted to play a research heavy nation anyways, so I decided against playing bless rush in this game.

Jazzepi