Immaculate-002: Late Age for Noobs (GAME OVER: ATLANTIS/SHATNER WINS)

[Immaculate]

agreed on your point regarding diplo. Atlantis played well strategically and especially diplomatically and earned the win in my opinion.

[shatner]

I've played and won as LA Atlantis once before so I wanted to try something a little different this time. First, I had a rainbow with lots of little blesses instead of a big W9N4 like last time. Secondly, I wanted to emphasize Atlantis' unique "I can invade far away" schtick, so I made it a point NOT to attack my neighbors (Man and Gath).

Because I was big and scary early on, my neighbors seemed happy enough to agree to peace (though I tried to be generous with gold and gems when needed to help cement the deal). I then went to war with Patala but my research was not to the point where I could remote-invade someone by myself. As such I invited Patala's neighbors (T'ien Ch'i and Marignon) in on the fun. I got bogged down in cracking a particularly tough fort and Marignon was a little late to the fight, leaving T'ien Ch'i to gobble up the largest chunk of Patala.

My neighbor Man was doing poorly and had no where to expand but into me or T'ien Ch'i. To give him something to do and to prevent T'ien Ch'i from gaining too much from our joint war with Patala, I encouraged Man to attack T'ien Ch'i. The majority of T'ien Ch'i's forces were way up north and had a lot of slowing terrain in the way so I figured Man could gain some turf and delay TC's consolidation of it's Patala spoils.

I don't know the particulars of that war but the end result was Man gaining little before TC stalled them out and then TC was able to bring his Patala invasion force south to successfully invade Man. Of course, Man takes a long time to actually lose a defensive war, which kept TC very busy for a long time... as in, busy for the entirety of the Jomon war.

During all this, I was cozying up with Marignon because I was quite worried about Jomon and a little worried about TC (both of whom were Marignon's neighbors). Marignon and I became good trading partners (mainly trading skull mentors for lightless lanterns) and started scheming on who to invade next. I suggested TC but Marignon (for his own calculated reasons, I'm sure) made a compelling case for attacking Jomon. Great! However, that left me with the problem of eventually having TC on my doorstep with me possibly still embroiled in a war on the opposite side of the map. Also, technically TC didn't have a land-border with Marignon (which doesn't matter much to Marignon since they can sail); if TC conquered Man, their only invadable neighbor would be me.

With TC clearly winning the TC-Man war, and with TC clearly occupied by said war, I gave a pretty blunt communication to TC where I spelled it out. I said that he and I were pretty much doomed to fighting in the future and it'd be a fight to the death. With that being the case, I'd normally invade him now rather than wander off and join Marignon in a fight against the distant nation of Jomon. However, if he was willing to sign on as "ally-for-life" then we could share a victory with Atlantis' god reigning supreme and Atlantis ruling the island and the ocean, while TC could have the outer-ring of land and worship whatever they wanted so long as it didn't try to unseat Atlantis' god. He agreed, signed an NAP-12 and suddenly I was free to invade Jomon.

I made sure to get Gath onboard for the Jomon invasion, mainly to make sure Jomon didn't talk him into invading me. People are generally willing to go along with whatever war will get them the most spoils and the deck was stacked against Jomon with me and Marignon already committed against it. The war on Jomon went surprisingly well, with Marignon kicking all sorts of Jomonese butt, while I had something of a repeat of the Patala war and ended up bogged down trying to dig the enemy out of a couple of castles. Fortunately my resources and research was more matured so I was able to simultanesouly besiege 3 of Jomon's castles (including their capital) while the Marignon blitzkrieg raged on.

As soon as the Jomon capital fell (oddly enough, this was the only foreign capital I controlled despite being the biggest nation), I started planning with TC about invading Marignon. I chose Marignon over Gath because he was reachable by my secret ally TC and also because I was very worried about Marignon's angel-devil-blood-blood-astral-fire endgame of doom. When I approached Gath about joining up (again because I sure didn't want to fight a two-front war), he said that invading me would probably be better for him. After all, my capital was closer to his forces and I tended to use convential armies, which he felt he was better equipped to handle than fighting Marignon's crazy blood-raiding-remote-attack armies. However, I had always been a pleasant, cordial neighbor and I had traded pretty favorably with him in the build up to the war with Jomon. In contrast, he had never had any sort of substantial diplomatic exchange with Marignon, so he was honestly open to either of us as targets for expansion. The point which tipped him into agreeing to fight Marignon was that I said fighting them would probably be more interesting and educational than fighting me. Gath agreed and that pretty much brings us to the present.


So this is a shared victory between me and and T'ien Ch'i. Congrats TC, we of Atlantis salute you from our island and ocean strongholds.

[triqui]

Very enterteining read and a very valuable one to learn about.

A great Sun Tzu's The Art of War approach. Being able to manipulate and bribe your neighbours properly is very important, probably more than being able to push an early expansion or create a late game good threat with research or whatever.

For example, I took Jomon over TC as a target for our combined assault becouse I had conversations with TC regarding you, and how he was affraid of your growth. I thought it would be easier for me to convince him to attack you if, after Jomon, you happened to take more provinces than me and your leading of the game was enough to make you a long term winner. I, however, was lenient in my diplo, and you convinced TC in the meanwhile to join you as the best of the losers... er... I mean... to share your victory as second one :P

From all your diplomatic manipulation, the one I think is more brilliant is the last one with Gath. "attack him becouse you will learn more" is simply brilliant, I would never had thought of it myself. I note it for future use, if you don't have it copyrighted ^_^. Sure, it didn't work for Gath, as he won't learn that much, but it worked greatly for you. I find it to be just brilliant. Probably it influence in the game was much lesser than, say, your ability to sign a long term alliance with TC after you pushed Man to fight them. That was probably the winning move.

I've learned a lot in this game. Interesting one indeed. So long live to Aqualibrium, the new God in the Pantocrator. I concede the game to Atlantis.

[shatner]

As far as wartime assets, Atlantis has always been about having (webbed) feet on the ground. I've been recruiting an Angakok and 10 Arssartuts plus probably 25 or so Ice Guard every turn forever (and I could turn that 25 into 50+ if I needed to). Given 2, maybe 3 mages casting buffs, these troops will result in even or favorable battlefield attrition... and I can win a war of attrition. In other words, if your baseline troops are just plain better, more numerous and as-or-more mobile than your opponent's, you don't really have to do anything fancy to win; cleverness is for people who are fighting uphill... the other guy just has to not trip while he charges downhill.

I've got a fully tricked out Bane Lord and Wraith Lord just sort of hanging out waiting to stomp on any raiders that wander over. I have one Elemental King of Earth and I could easily have all three Water Queens but I haven't bothered since I don't have any water-born threats. I've got a fairy queen and as many S2E2s, A2s and N2 neutral mages as you can shake a stick at. I also have a few pimped out ancient kraken, but those are mostly relics from my war with Jomon. I have an ever growing pile of naiad warriors, ghosts, catoblepas, and LOTS of wights. I also have dozens of thugged out banes (frostbrand + lycanthrope amulet or demon slaying sword + jade armor or dual axes of hate + lycanthrope amulet) and dozens of winged boots lying around ready to send my counter-raiders out in force.

The theme behind all this is flexible defense; until now I've always been fighting the other guy on his turf way away from my home provinces. So far my opponent's ability to project force on my homeland has been effectively nil. That means my need for a garrison, domes over key provinces or any other sort of defensive counter-measure has been minimal to non-existant. Even if Jomon or Patala had crushed my forces, my power base would still be untouched. With Marignon, I was having to gear up for all sorts of flying, raiding, teleporting, remote crap that I previously hadn't had to worry about.

My plan has been to pick a few outlying areas of Marignon's (island holdings mainly) and invade the crap out of them with excessive force while staying out of my allies' way. Meanwhile, I have such an insane stockpile of gems, a truly awesome gem income, and almost 100% research (8s or 9s in everything except thaumaturgy), I can pretty much cripple Marignon's economy without having to set foot on their homeland. The opening turn of the war was going to involve Marignon eating at least a dozen tidal waves that'd wash about half of his population out to sea which, combined with the massive unrest that spell causes, would heavily drop his gold and blood slave income. In other words, I'd attack Marignon's mainland with Tidal Wave, Locust Swarm, Blight, Volcano, Wolven Winter, etc. while conquering his peripheral holdings. Any sufficiently large armies that wandered out into the open would probably eat a Murdering Winter or two. All major battles would include Demon Cleansing and Neifel Flames.

I intentionally didn't bother with artifacts or super-high end summons because I played with that stuff last time I was LA Atlantis and this time I wanted to try going for lots of mid-range stuff economically equipped or buffed. I have two provinces that let me scry on stuff so I had very thorough accounts of Marignon's assets. For example, Gath was planning on casting Wish and asked me whether there was something he could steal from Marignon. I told him to wish for a Seriph and then have it forge the lamp to steal Marignon's genie (the archdevil wasn't worth stealing and I didn't know which Heliophagus he had because the scrying kept reporting his forgelord's name instead). I also had 1-2 scouts in every province of his because while the land routes into his mainland were heavily patrolled, the water routes weren't. I have an UW 20% conjuration discount, which is nice but still kinda limited because there's a lot of stuff you want to summon and most of it can't be summoned underwater. I have a crystal mage site, an illusionist site and an animist site, all of which really helped my magic diversity.

It's surprising the mileage you can get out of high-level water and mid-level death. Atlantis really is a very efficient nation whose handful of strengths seem very limited at first glance but are surprisingly versitile once you get used to them. But mainly this was a game about diplomacy.

Good times.


Edit: As for the "attacking him will be more interesting and instructive", or any of the other advice I gave any of my allies, it was all true. Gath had a pretty good idea of what I was capable of throwing at him, it was more a question of what volumes I could call upon, as well as how artful I was scripting it all. Late game LA Marignon however... that's a hard foe to anticipate. Hence my somewhat conservative strategy for the opening of the war.

[triqui]

Didn't say or tried to imply that your advice was false. I said it was genius. Gath told you that your armies were troop-based and mine were more about remote-crap and blood/astral stuff, and you used that very same argument to convince him to attack me instead of you.

"Well, it's true that I have "regular" armies with troops, but hey, if you attack me, you'll face only regular armies with troops, you'll learn more if you attack him". It's kind of genious, and I'm being sincere at that, not ironic.

In this case, it happen that it didn't work for Gath, becouse I don't see the point to continue a game that is decided, but that's not something that you, or Gath, could had known beforehand. The diplomatic trick was a good manipulation regardless of it.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Congratulations to Atlantis! I myself would have liked to play a few more turns, since I was looking forward to fighting Marignon, but I also felt like the game was getting a bit tedious. I think I learned a lot, but I would have liked to actually fight a real war (AI Ulm and Jomon's outlying provinces dont count).

Diplomacy was definitely a strong influence on my decision not to fight Atlantis. But in my defense, I was not "tricked". As the weakest remaining player, I didn't have a shot at victory, so I just wanted to have some good combat experiences, and I thought Marignon's summons would have been more interesting to fight than Atlantis' infantry hordes.

Anyway, it was fun just lasting until the late game and seeing what it is like. Next game, I think I'll try to be more aggressive, and start wars rather than waiting for them to come to me.