Boot Camp - Finished - Soyweiser/Jotunheim wins!

[Soyweiser]

One thing I always wondered about, Dragonrider, did I ever succeed in shutting down your cap castles with the remote unrest spells?

(Putting up the domes worked btw, lost a summoned mage due to that trick).

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

fyi, ctis staled.

Yeah, I noticed his turn was missing several hours past the deadline. The llamaserver was having problems and the site hadn't been updated so I tried postponing hosting but once the server was running properly it hosted before processing the postponement command.

But C'tis' current turn still isn't in with just a couple of hours to go until hosting. I'll try to postpone hosting but notice the server is having issues again. Also, Pjoo hasn't logged in in over a month but aside from a couple of stales is still completing his turns. I'll try to contact him through the llamaserver.

[Soyweiser]

I expected mind hunts ages ago. Also, allow me to point at Bandar. He could also mind hunt. (The hags also carry spare equipment). They only cost 55 gp, I have magic 3. So I have a lot of hags.

I also seriously hate my old prophet right now. 111 slaves + equipment, all down the drain... Bye bye SC...

[DragonRider]

Oh, it's not like you don't have at least a dozen statistically identical Skratti flying around. I was honestly pretty surprised you were even bothering with Heliophagi when you can recruit similarly-sized thugs for 250 gold a pop and slap Winged Shoes on them with all the air gems I know you have. And they can cast Quickness. It seems like there'd be something more interesting you could be spending those slaves on.

[Soyweiser]

Skrattir don't have high death, fire, or blood 5. Also, Heliophagi fly, so I don't need to spend A gems on them. While I do have a few gems, I did throw away way to many gems by foolishly using skrattir. (And getting them killed for almost no gain...). The demons are actually better in stats than Skrattir in wolf form. And no upkeep! Skrattir are 15+ gold upkeep each turn. And the last bonus, a demon unique could defeat a Kindly One in single combat.

It is also a denial strategy. So other nations cannot get the unique blood summons to use against me.

[Soyweiser]

FUUUUCCKKKKKKK....

Thanks dragonrider... This is one turn full of hurt... Four hammers destroyed, a lot of my magical diversity ruined. Nice one...

[Soyweiser]

And who has the chalice? I know it is forged, but I wonder who got it. It isn't me.

[DragonRider]

Yup, after years of stalemates, our war has finally reached the only possible conclusion: full scale nuclear and biological warfare. Soon the entire eastern continent will be an uninhabitable, smoking, disease-ridden crater and we'll both lose all our troops to upkeep.

The fact that you, as a blood nation, are far better-prepared to weather such a post-apocalyptic scenario than I has not escaped my notice, but I'm running out of ideas over here. (I was a little disappointed that you had a dome up...I was curious about whether two spells would have obliterated approximately 75% or 100% of your mages, based on the description.)

I always assumed you had the Chalice. When I finally poked my nose into Construction 8 (very late; I was waylaid by a lot of other necessities), basically everything was predictably gone and I assumed that you probably had all of it, since at the time you'd shown absolutely no evidence of having done any evocation, conjuration, or blood research but a great deal of evidence of using magically-equipped thugs. Bandar Log can forge it natively and spent most of the game not at war with anybody, so they seem like the most likely culprits.

Also, I think it's totally awesome how entering the arena death match resulted in my awesome and moderately expensive Serpent Kris/Lucky Coin combo being lost to the void forever and replaced with a piece of junk two-handed trident with no special attributes apart from being unremovable. I thought CBM replaced that thing with a helmet or something. EDIT: Actually the equipment just got moved to my lab. But that Ember Lord is still pretty much ruined.

[Soyweiser]

I always assumed shin had it. He was the first to reach con 8. If I'm right. (I saw the winter bringer on one of his commanders).

I was actually rather late at con 8, wanted blood 9 first. (Claws and Blood vengeance, I actually reached that con level just as you were invading me ).

And if the lands are dead and devoid of life even a blood nation is dead . Unrest also kinda sucks.

What makes the suffering even worse. I had loads of fire resist stuff just laying around in the lab. And you hit the prov which had the weakest mages... And no troops to soak up the random attacks.

Ah well . Enough items laying around. But it still hurt a lot.

[DragonRider]

Really? Damn, maybe I should have gone for construction earlier after all. At the time I assumed there was basically no chance you hadn't rushed straight down the construction line, so I didn't bother and went for moderately useful utility spells first. It didn't occur to me that you would go for blood first...I assumed one would typically do blood research later on after you've already built up a ton of slaves researching other stuff. I guess I can't say that it didn't pay off, though.

And I know from experience that blood hunting in lowish-population isn't that bad. I'm playing Helheim in my other game and pairs of sucky B1 Vanjarls with rods still seem to get an average of maybe ten slaves per turn in 2000-3500 population provinces. I've never played a real blood nation though, so maybe that isn't very impressive.

I had been waiting for a good opportunity to nuke that province for a long time. I almost went for a regular Fires from Afar hit a long time ago, but since the base damage was only 10 I was worried that the element of randomness would make it not get enough kills, and I knew it was probably going to be a one-shot deal (obviously you're going to fill the place with wolves or someting now), so I decided to wait for Flames from the Sky. Then again, I could have afforded a lot more Fires from Afar casts in one turn, so maybe it still would have been a better bet. Hard to say, since I've never actually seen either cast before.