Highlander - LA limited diplomacy (started)

[Falkor]

Congratulations Ano.
Thanks everyone for a good game.

[ano]

A brief AAR)
I had a rather poor starting loc with only 2 bordering sea provinces (one of them had around 100 amber tritons) so I decided to expand on land and to build castles there. So I expanded in two directions, found good moments to capture things that cried for being captured (that was the way a got Midgard capital while Arco was fighting its AI Armies). I aimed for the endgame and tried to get as little wars with human players (the only nations I was in war with were Mictlan, Ermor and Pangaea) as possible and captured, captured and captured what was controlled by AI.
Yes, I was lucky to find garnet amazons early on, to hide them from karnoza's eyes (Arco and Ulm, however, said nothing about them) and to develop a decent blood stone economy. However, I was very unlucky with magic sites. All seas (there're quite many of them in Alexander, you know) contained 0 astral sites in total. I searched heavily with mages and spells but results were poor. My first land astral site was found near turn 20 (1 pearl) so my astral income was VERY small and it was based mainly on other schools sites. I could not even cast teleports and counted each pearl. FoTA helped a lot))
In the end I had about 80 temples, 12000 income/6000 upkeep, all magic combos available, 120-130 astral and earth income, 30-40 gem income per other schools and about 140 slaves/turn. I could to virtually anything and Arcane Nexus was near.

Thanks, everybody, for the game

[ano]

And a few more words on the nation.
Yes, LA R'lyeh is a powerhouse, but it will be doomed in the hand of careless player unless he is lucky. They need lots of micromanagement and absolutely poor land troops (I realized it rather late, btw, having lost almost all chaff I had to mictlan 40 PD and 50 non-double blessed jaguars). Their chaff is nothing without heavy mage support (Astral geyser is wonderful and so are Nether Darts) or powerful end-game buffs. That's the time they start to shine...
So, R'lyeh can be played against if it is treated correctly. It has rather many weak points and can be "held in a cage".

Probably, I'll write what I think about them in the discussion forum some time later

[Revolution]

Congratulations Ano, you have bested me once again!

This was a very enjoyable game for me. It was a great learning experience to fight LA Ermor for so long, trying to come up with ways to counter his undead legions. I found that my conventional armies would generally begin to starve even with supply producing items (Horses are hungry)...Any army big enough to take a castle generally got smoked by Falkor's Lich Queen who would drop Earthquake and other fun spells in her dominion heavy environment. So...I ended up making a dozen bane lords, kitting them out and raiding to keep Falkor on the defensive. Every province I took over I would generally bring up to 20PD to make taking it back a chore to take back for Falkor. Eventually I upgraded to Golem SC's but Falkor got 2 of those with destruction and one went down to Utgard when we both went for a arco castle. At the end I was starting to make Tartarians but I don't know how effective that would have been with no chalice and no gift of health.

It seemed like a neat idea at first...but I ended up hating the limited diplomacy. It took away one of my favorite things about the game...it made communication absolutely painful. But still, it was a neat idea to try out.

Thanks for the game everyone!

[ano]

It was rather strange to see you attacking Ermor with Banelords as they are countered really easy with death magic. Even spectator casting Dust to dust with the Eye of Aiming is almost a certain death for a banelord.
Or maybe I misunderstand something...

Btw, I still don't understand why my scripted Undead Mastery + Vortex of Returning did not work twice in a row when it worked fine in tests...

[Revolution]

ano said:
It was rather strange to see you attacking Ermor with Banelords as they are countered really easy with death magic. Even spectator casting Dust to dust with the Eye of Aiming is almost a certain death for a banelord.
Or maybe I misunderstand something...

I was using them because they are cheap and would not fatigue against all his chaff. the idea was that they would mostly be for taking his provinces that were just defended with PD and chaff, not scripted mages. ...and they are so very very cheap.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I tried something a bit different and mass producing soul contracts. Unfortunately I got off to a pretty slow start and got boxed in by my neighbors so I stalled a bit until I could get critical mass of devils. My hoards of devils were obnoxiously effective in taking out Pythium and Pangea, they were just too late to the game with R'yleh's power curve. Absent those unbeatably buffed armies I think there's a good chance I would have rapidly swept the board at that point as my blood economy had just been supercharged by my rapid gains in territory, so I figure that's a doable strategy with a better start and faster devils brought to the table.

[ano]

Yes, that is an interesting and maybe viable strategy. In the midgame I was surprised when I noticed you being so non-aggressive. I even thought that someone else controls Marignon and you gave it up long ago
Later I understood what was going on and tried to harm you with mind hunts, feebleminding and distant attacks. I even made you equip your angels with antimagic items))
Also it seems to me that soul contract is too valuable to be worn on a vulnerable commander. He is too much susceptible to horror marks as well as distant spells. Maybe it is a better idea to wear contracts on astral mages with returning. IIRC, Marignon can get S2 mages?

[Baalz]

Yeah, your mind hunts were annoying,to be sure. Are you to thank for the earth attacks as well, or was that Pangea? It did stall me a couple turns when I had to send a second wave of angels equipped with MR items to collect my leaderless devils, but mostly it just significantly increased my micro as I had to keep shuffling around blood hunters (after I figured out where the hell they died! grrrr). By that point I was summoning roughly one angel per turn with my blood economy and sending him out with the freely spawning devils. Seemed more annoying really, than effective, but who knows....I never did have a surplus of angels.

Marignon can get S2 mages with randoms, but nothing regular and I was SOOOO pinched for gold. Sitting in the mountains, boxed in by both the topography and my neighbors plus axing my income further to blood hunt, the reason I was being so non-aggressive is because I had just enough income to recruit my cheapest mage out of each of my castles (no troops!) and just enough blood income to forge about one soul contract every other turn with my pretender. My one army sat glaring at Man's big army across the border (who kicked me out of the one farmland territory near me), I couldn't move it for fear of Man invading and I couldn't attack without taking huge losses even if I won.

In all honesty I think the insanity from your dominion hurt me more than the feebleminding. My blood hunters would decide they were insane and start preaching, then the next turn when they were fine...they kept preaching rather than blood hunting until I noticed and set them back. The micro from that and replacing the ones you mind hunt was driving me nuts and I kept missing some!

[Baalz]

BTW, did Astral Corruption hurt much? I saw the forge went down in the last turn which is what I was really hoping for (as if it mattered much by then)....