MP: Stasis - MA game. Finished.

[JimMorrison]

I kind of just want to be done opening this thread, and/or doing turns for this game.

[AdmiralZhao]

Hi everyone. All 3 options would be fine with me. I have the next week off, so I have no excuse for not completing a turn except a certain dread of spending 4 hours moving around hundreds of magic items. A draw would be acceptable. Ryleh is quite strong in terms of magic (the gem income on the score graph is about a 1/10th of our actual income ), but my opponents have both magic power and many mortal armies, so I'm not sure how such a war would actually play out.

[ano]

Fine, I am very glad to hear it. Draw is the best choice, imho. We realized that your actual gem income and abilities are terrific but we also had a lot of things to show you.
But it is a too heavy weight for me now and, once again, I am very glad. It was a pleasure playing with you and I hope we will meet at the battlefield once when we both have a bit more time to spare. Nevertheless, it was a nice game.
Once we discuss it all with Mictlan, I will close the game. Sorry, everybody, but as draw is acceptable for all, I think it'll be the best choice.

[ano]

So be it. This game has been ended in a draw between mighty nations of R'lyeh, Ulm and Shinuyama. I wish I see you in some further games)

[AdmiralZhao]

Good game everyone! Now that it is over, would you mind telling what your plans were? For my part, I was hoping to continue using Burden of Time + Armageddon to wipe out all the gold, blood slaves, and enemy mages. I figured that if I could survive long enough to do that, then my steadily growing gem income and tartarians would be able to finish off the world. My initial battle plan was to just protect the sites with bonuses (20% of alteration, 20% of conjuration) while the globals wore down the attacking armies. I had some raids planned, and would have counterattacked a bit, but I wasn't planning to risk anything significant while you had dozens of mages with each army, ready to cast Weapons of Sharpness.

My primary worries were 1) someone had enough astral gems to Dispel Gift of Health, which had a lot of gems behind it 2) Shinuyama had masses of undead chaff, which meant somewhere back there were some dozens of undead priests re-animating the chaff, which meant that they would be more or less unaffected by my BoT and Armageddon.

[ano]

Well, I'm impressed. I didn't think that you would continue Armageddonning after GoH was dispelled. I must say that this combo (Armageddon + BoT) is not that impressive against Shinuyama because mages rarely get diseased and even when they do, they die rather long and they are also absolutely expendable. (I think that Shinuyama is one of the strongest MA nations but it has nothing to do with the discussion).
What our plans were... The main reason I didn't want to continue the game is because this turn would be terrific for me. I was planning a massive attack at many directions at once (20-25 provinces at least), preparing anti-tartarian sc's and protecting my artifacts (which I had many) against your potential further armageddons. Yes, I had a ton of reanimating priests who were generating about 400 longdead/turn, I also had full-power blood with average income of 150-200 slaves/turn and many powerful blood mages. Both of these could be heavily affected by armageddons because soulless and longdead never heal and slaves can't be gathered in empty provinces. However, I still had some nasty sites giving a lot of money, a huge fire gem income and about 8000 gold in treasury so I doubt I would suffer the lack of gold badly. My experienced DaiBakemono armies (great unit, btw. Many of them survived from the first turns of the game) backed up by 20-30 mages were also ready to march.
We also decided to cast some cheap globals to fill all slots so that you would have a chance of dispelling your own globals.
Also, this turn I saw that you had only a couple of weak domes and many clam- and artifact-wearing (probably) mages at your capital. We were going to dispel forest dome and cast about 20-30 earth attacks to reduce your clam income. We didn't decide for sure where to cast but everything was well-prepared.
It's all about me.
Karnoza should have done quite opposite thing. He was preparing a one powerful attack at your province with Alt bonus site which you couldn't teleport in due to your own domes. He had about 1400 sieging power and was going to break the walls in a single turn. It was a well-planned attack that he was nurturing for a long time.
But, all in all, I am VERY happy I don't have do all this. Frankly speaking, I am very, very tired of Dominions and especially of late-game) When I showed my empire to a potential sub, he cried "Oh, God! I will never dig it!"

[ano]

As for astral gems, we had a total astral income of about 200 per turn so even if you did cast Nexus for 999 gems, we would dispel it. That was what I supposed you to do after you dispelled my gem-giving globals.