MP: Blood Bowl - LA Marignon - Corinthian Winner !

[Corinthian]

Hello everyone. As most of you have already guessed I am the Marignion player. To those who wonder, I will be getting my eight capitol in 2 turns (Caelum). Weather you want to continue to play for that long is up to you guys. I have a ton of micro to do but it helps that i'm playing sloppy and dont have to plan for every eventuality anymore. Currently I probably got more gem income than the rest of the world combined. I can afford to be inefficient. I get some 75D and 450 slaves a turn to illustrate my point. The remotes I can drop.... Oh and my apologies to EA Agartha. I did not mean to cast Ghost riders on your lake. My finger slipped or something.


Anyway, this game was not one that I thought I would win. I had a horrible start, so this comes as as much of a surprise to me as it does for you guys.

And now that I have a better view over Patalas lands, I see that their start probably was not as good as I though. I initially assumed that TC started to the northeast of were he actually did start. Because that's were he started in my test game. Either way you were probably lucky to only have two land neighbors + R'lyeh to worry about.

My location was pretty bad by comparison. I started in the middle of a desert, close to the middle of the map, near most of the choke points on the southern hemisphere. This meant that not only did I have bad income, I also had a lot of potential neighbors. Also I started within 2 provinces of a neighbor toward the broadest field of provinces so my avenue of expansion was really limited. I realized that I had to do something drastic soon or I'll would get hedged in. Thus I already decided on turn 1 that I would rush whoever was south of me. It turned out to be C'tis.

The reason I though I could rush someone was that I had taken an awake green dragon as a SC expander and I figured that he could take whatever early troops that an enemy might field unless they were crazy blessed sacreds or giants. I was both right and wrong. My first contact with C'tis was when I bumped in to their expansion army with my dragon on turn 2. It was my victory with little problems. Knowing that they had lost a valuable percentage of their forces and that they only had their capitol I smelled weakness and sent my dragon to attack an indy province with my dominion in it in it in order to gather HP. On turn 4 I attacked C'tis unsuspecting capitol with my HP boosted dragon. And this is were things went wrong. Despite what I though would have been an easy battle vs C'tis PD militia, my dragon was killed! A chest wound combined with a lot of crits that took of 50% of its HP in the last round. It was enough to kill it before it could retreat through flight. Had the dragon survived another turn then he would probably have won due to the enemy routing.

Another problem with fighting C'tis as it turns out is that their elite warriors with their two attk12 attacks, were the perfect counters to my high (19) defense Royal Knight

Eventually I managed to outmaneuver him however. He chose to take his prophet and half his army in order to attack deep in to my territories and in the meanwhile I managed to siege his capitol and cut of his source of reinforcements. After that I just blood sacced him to death due to his weak dominion. He still managed to put up a fierce ressistance in the last couple of turns by summoning Behemoths and Longdead horsemen. He almost managed to turn the war around again due to him killing the army sieging his capitol. But in the last couple of turns most of his mages routed and had no were to flee. So in the end it was a pyrrhic victory and he was not able to follow up on it.

I though I was screwed in those days because despite my victory against C'tis I was far behind the other players in almost everything. I only managed to capture 10 provinces in the first year. And I mostly recruited priests in order to fight C'tis undead and to dom kill him. But it helps that two of the ten provinces were capitols and that I could overtax both of them to fuel my recovery. The priests were bad at researching, but they were atleast useful for bringing back my god.

I was also lucky that I started next to LA Ermor. Most people do not feel that it is very lucky to start as their neighbor but most people does not play Marignion. Mari is the perfect nation to handle LA Ermor. Recruit everywhere H3 priests, national anti undead spells and the fact that demons dont need to eat means that everyone of my other neighbors were hesitant to attack me until I had finished of Ermor for them.

Or thats what I tried to convince my much more powerful neighbors in diplo in order to get them to join me against him. As opposed to crushing me while I was still weak and an easy prey. It seem to have worked and I slowly got stronger and stronger as I pitted my neighbors against each other until, um, here we are!

Whelp.

[mattyburn7]

I have to give thanks to Corinthian/Marignon for encouraging pep talks during my war with Niefel.

[Zywack]

First of all, congratulations on your win! Regarding going on until you get your 8 capitol... Well, I had the mighty moose version 2.0 army setting out from my capital, and I was itching for a fight with your 140 devil army to see how it would go mostly for science and entertainment purposes. That's the only thing I was looking foward though: I had enough units on standby ready to get back pretty much every single lost territory, but that means that nearly none of them would be ready for the following turn, and it would mean that I would be fighting a purely defensive war which is a losing proposition. I expect about 2-3 turns before all my battle capabilities beside my two main armies would be destroyed and that my territories would permenantly switch to you.

I'd be willing to play for 2 turns until it's officially over if you decide to do the devil vs the invincible moose army. It should be possible for both army to meet at province 126 by two turns. Whoever wins that fight doesn't change anything since you reach the winning condition at that time anyway... It's really to see the effect of a pile of spells I never got to play with ever before. No biggy if not.


While I had a ton of fun, man am I glad it's nearly over. I never thought it'd last that long, and while I had a good time, I'm definitively not going to join a new game until October at the earliest. I'm sorry for being so pushy for it to stop lately!

Regarding the game, I really didn't have the best of time early game either. I figured I needed an awake god since it was a crowded game and that Patala has a weak early game so I picked a Deva with 4 Death/ 5 Blood, 8 Dominion with nearly no scales (3 heat, and 3 positive ones but that's it). The awake pretender was really a waste, since she got Limped in the first battle by losing an handful of hp, and she pretty much spent the rest of the game site searching, forging or researching.

I had practiced my opening strat like 8 times until I had a pretty much lossless and quick expansion, but in the real game I lost some elephants really early on which hurt a lot. The only supposed high income town was garded by 80 troops, and it took me a lot of time to be able to grab it, and there was a 15% unrest site on it so I couldn't tax it more than 40%, and the troglodyte pop blew up a large part of what I had. When I saw how hemmed in I was, I figured that fighting T'ien Ch'i was the wisest option even though the odds weren't good, but when I saw R'Yleh's capital I panicked and decided that I had to fight them no matter what... They had Dominion 10, with 3 Cold, 3 Death, 3 everything negative on top of their dreadful aura.

I quickly learned that Poor Amphibian Cold Blooded units in 3 Cold provinces spell disaster... I lost some of my few mages very early (which was devastating completely devastating for research) alongside with most of my fodder. The only effective spell I had was ice elementals, but I needed them desesperately so I turned out having nearly 0 research for a long time... While I'm not sure R'Yleh could have actually beat me on land, the only reason R'Yleh got beat was because Fomoria managed to kill off most of their troops, and me sieging down their capital was a looong process since they had hundred of troops protecting around 20 mages spamming Soul Slay. They broke out once, and after they got contained, they nearly managed to break out a second time and were only barely stopped by a few courageous Gandavara supported by Shark Attack and that friendly current thing: All my fodder were dead or running, and even my nagas were mostly gone... But they held, and R'yleh was finally killed... The gem income was nice, but population had dropped to under 3k due to their scales and aura so my income was still around 500 gold around turn 35.

As soon as R'Yleh was destroyed, T'ien Ch'i declared war on Fomoria. It was my golden opportunity to get some more valuable territory and head toward the safety of the corner. By the time my NAP was up, Fomoria had destroyed a few of T'ien Ch'is army, but was occupied by other enemies. In order to be able to face T'ien Ch'i, I had to rely on Gift from Heaven, so my research was still going extremely slowly... The first castle felt relatively quickly, but the assault on their capital failed but I had enough surviving troops to hold the siege but not to attack (Most of my losses were mooses or spiders to T'ien Ch'i's mages)... So the siege on T'ien Ch'is capital turned out to be around 20 turns long. One of T'ien Ch'i army went rampaging in my homeland, while a newly created army (with mages) tried catching it with little success but it still wittled it down slowly. All four armies merged together at T'ien Ch'is capital, and the war was finally won.


In the mean time, there was the Scythe farming which was much more beneficial to Fomoria than it was to us, but Fomoria was pretty much stopping and distracting potential enemies while we were claiming T'ien Ch'i land so it felt like a fair trade. At that point we offered Fomoria to side with them against Marignon, which Fomoria always refused: It did make sense considering I would be fighting on Fomoria's territories mainly, so even if we were to win, I would be the one gaining most of the benefits... And at the time, a Fomoria victory was certainly a possibility, so we instead concentrated on finishing off T'ien Ch'i and mass-researching to finally get our research to par with the rest of the world.

My best chance for victory seemed to be by feeding Fomoria gems and equipment so that the Marignon-Fomoria war kept dragging on with no benefit for either, while I would take on LA Agartha in the mean time. Winning over them might (which was a longshot I admit) would have put Patala closer to the top 2 nations, and maybe even eventually have a shot at winning... But Fomoria went from going well to folding in a few short turns, and everything went out the window. I brokered peace with LA Agartha so that I could fight Marignon before it was too late, but... Yeah, it was too way too late probably even when I kept offering Fomoria to send armies to help.

So I did a poke on Marignon so that I could have a clear shot at their counter-raider with my own elite units kept in reserve, but they just destroyed my poke with pretty much no resources and took 3/4th of my empire in a single turn... Which brings us to now.


So here's the story of the world from the Patalan point of view! My biggest mistakes were a bad early expansion, and nearly inexistant research throughout 2/3rd of the game as I had extremely low gold income (Only got fixed after taking T'ien Ch'i's lands which were quite rich), and that I kept using the majority of my mages in battle from the beginning of the game. Oh, plus a relatively bad pretender (A good bless would have been soooo nice), and the most retarted plan:

I thought I could enter Blood extremely quickly. Blood 3, Thaumaturgy 4, voila! All I needed for super cheap blood hunting... Except that for some reason I thought that my main nagas had 3-4 points in NATURE not Earth. So, my super early blood hunting actually required Conjuration 5 (Naiad), Construction 4 (Nature booster), Blood 3 and thaumaturgy 4. That's suddenly quite a bit less quick...

The thing that did annoy me most though is that during the entire game, I faced armies of 15+ mages protected by hordes of fodder. It's what I kept facing every single battle with R'Yleh, and the same with T'ien Ch'i... And the only counter I had against their mages was using my own plus Animal Horde to take the magic damage while Gandavara and naga did the clearing... But that required me to have mages everywhere to fight, which was annoying and so hurtful to research.

[Corinthian]

OK. This thread got a bit overwhelming for a while. But I will try to answer some questions and post some comments below.

Originally Posted by Zywack

I'd be willing to play for 2 turns until it's officially over if you decide to do the devil vs the invincible moose army. It should be possible for both army to meet at province 126 by two turns. Whoever wins that fight doesn't change anything since you reach the winning condition at that time anyway... It's really to see the effect of a pile of spells I never got to play with ever before. No biggy if not.

This sounds like an excellent idea. I will bring the army to province 126 this turn. There might also be some kind of Ember lord bumming around over there. I have honestly never used one of those things before and I wonder a bit about its capabilities. Its a self buffer though so it might not mater much in the heat of a big battle though.

Originally Posted by Zywack

3) You know the Cleansing Bell item thingy? The 10 gem anti-demon item? I had the chance to see an handful of them in action this turn for the first time ever! Hurray! Time to see what kind of ravage they can do against demons! And they couldn't even get rid of a few imps... Let's just say that I made a not terribly wise large gem investment.

Those cleansing bells are not bad for the price I think. But you need something to hold off the demons while they do their thing. Another problem might be that I'm using the demon type with the most HP. They are more useful vs hell knights and demon thugs that relies on protection though.

Originally Posted by Zywack

4) The largest problem is that even defeating Marignon's main armies in battle would do little to help: Their gem/slave production is through the roof, so killing armies only gives a tiny amount of time before they get replaced. Hitting their production is the only way to go, but that's only accomplishable by raiding, and they are definitively able to counter-raid and grab your own production: Even if you can somehow manage a 1-1 trades, things won't be going in your favor. When an empire gets that large, there's no key point to hit that will damage them a lot.

5) They are blood sacrificing for dominion. They are the only nation left that can blood sacrifice (Maybe Bogarus too? I'm not sure...), and even a very strong dominion score isn't going to stop that for long once they get going full-swing.

Attacking a blood hunting operation is a ***** but can be done if you plan ahead. I think your Rocs could have won that battle with only a single F resist ring each and orders to hold in the back.

As for my blood sacrificing I am surprised at how useless it is. I have probably sacrificed about 2000 slaves over the course of the game and although I have domkilled a few people who would otherwise have died anyway, I have not managed to use it against anyone with the means to still fight back. I thought it would be more powerful than this. I mean I could have gotten some 520 devils and 800 imps for those slaves. Still useful in combination with the purgatory to keep Fomoria of my back. I'm surprised that he did not try to dispel it seeing how much it limited his strategic options. It was a minimum cast.

Originally Posted by Zywack

Actually, I got a question about that for a future game! I've seen in a few guides things like "Just use an independent Astral mage to forge amulet of magic resistance", or "Use independent astral mages as a shield from enemy Mind Hunt".

But I fail to see how that's a viable strategy plan. While it's only my 2nd competitive multiplayer game, I've played about 8 cooperative or solo games vs the AI. In those games, I've came across independent Astral mages a grand total of 4 times (And one of those was a 1/4 pick). That number is sliiightly higher if I include those that come from site findable only with astral, but not by much.

So in my experience, you get 1 astral independent mage per about 50 provinces. Am I simply "unlucky", and if not, how can one build their initial strategy upon getting an Astral mage when odds are they'll never get one?

The amount of astral mages that you can get without site searching depends greatly on the age you play in. The earlier the age, the more indy mage poptypes. I personally think it is fine to rely on idies for astral sometimes in the Early era. Crystal amazons and lizard tribes are common there. For a middle age nation like Shinu this is not an option. But you can still get astral, -stealthy astral even- from conj 6, Specters. I actually have two specters with astral running about in Fomorias lands in the hopes that he would try to mindhunt their provinces. But it is very hard to predict what fomoria feels like mindunting. I like mindhunting powerful, expensive creatures. Fomoria seem to mainly mindhunt my demon commanders and Ghouls? And those are not worth enough that I will bother protecting them.

The real problem with Mind hunt comes from nations with recruitable S3 mages that can also be healed. Like Arco. Or any astral with the Chalice or GoH. Even astral mages strategically placed will only offer temporary reprieve in that scenario.

Originally Posted by Zywack

Regarding the game, I really didn't have the best of time early game either. I figured I needed an awake god since it was a crowded game and that Patala has a weak early game so I picked a Deva with 4 Death/ 5 Blood, 8 Dominion with nearly no scales (3 heat, and 3 positive ones but that's it). The awake pretender was really a waste, since she got Limped in the first battle by losing an handful of hp, and she pretty much spent the rest of the game site searching, forging or researching.

Patala is one of few nations who can actually get some use out of the deva pretender. For most nations she is overpriced. When I were supposed to play patala in a game, I used the deva in one of my tests with great success, but with a vastly different build.

Taking death on it is too expensive for what it gives you. Taking Air 1 is much more economical and allows you to summon Dakinis who themselves comes with death magic. It also helps that Dakinis are some of the most unfair commanders in the game. Just ask mattyburn7.

Another thing to remember is that you always want at least dom 9 on an awake expander unless it is a dragon. This is because they get Awe (+0) from dom 9. Fear and awe means the deva is very hard to injure in melee and Airshield from the A1 magic protects it from arrows. Very hard to stop. And later you can give it equipment and have a monkey cast body ethereal and Luck on it.

[mattyburn7]

Yes. I can attest to the Dakini. They put a hurting on me.

[Zywack]

So... game's officially over now that you hit the winning condition? Congratulations on your victory Corinthian! Should we contact Bullock so that it's officially done?

Thanks a lot for all the information in your last post. It's very helpful! I'm very surprised to hear about the blood sacrificing though: From what I had read it's a near unstoppable nightmarish (except blow the nation militarily before hand) thing that ends game quickly once someone gets the engine rolling, which I would have assumed that 2000 slaves would fit under that.

What do you use for your Mind Hunters? I was shocked at how succesful they were against 18 MR units, with like 75% success against them. I know you can put a Rune Smasher for additional magic penetration, and the super expensive Ring of Wizardry and Sorcery (which are probably better used elsewhere), and I think that additional points in astral boost the penetration (does it), but what else did you use to have them be that succesful? I did have few shape-changed Astral Nagini sneaking around but they didn't turn out to help any in the end.


The invincible moose army wins again! Hurray! At least I can say I learned how to make effective reverse communions this game. Well, it's not the original moose army since that one is still walking in circles doing nothing useful up north, but same basic concept but improved (Minus the Gandavara that I couldn't afford anymore)... As far as I'm concerned, Animal Horde is the best spell in game for blockers when cast in a forest: You instantly get 100+ units with high strength (instant castle-wall destroying), a lot have extremely high HP, a lot have Berzerk and the spiders are awesome as flyier-catchers with their web when split in small squads set with attack flyers. The one cast I did in a mountain was certainly less satisfactory, though...

Since it's been a battle with a ton of spells I had never seen in action before, I got some questions and observations regarding that battle though:

1) Does Fire Arrow actually affects the throw lightning ability of your Storm Demons? That sounds completely not logical, but...

2) That hellfire thingy that does fire damage to everyone on the battlefield... That pretty much ensure that no blood magic is usable at all since it hits all the slaves, right? I had an Apsara master that was set to cast Reinvigoration each round but she only did it once.

3) Does Solar Brilliance helps a lot or not? It was awfully hard to tell it's effect (or lack of it) by looking at the battle.

4) Cleansing Bell fires every round... I thought it only fired one time per battle, so yes I agree that it's worth the cost now.

5) While there were "only" 5 global effects during the battle, did the others have an effect and were simply "unrecorded" on top of the screen, or did they have no effect?

6) I have a Nagini in my capital this turn that has 12 afflictions, including losing both eyes and her head, but she's somehow still alive and not an undead. I have no idea how that possibly happened since I had no Nagini with afflictions the turn before...

[Corinthian]

Originally Posted by Zywack

What do you use for your Mind Hunters? I was shocked at how succesful they were against 18 MR units, with like 75% success against them. I know you can put a Rune Smasher for additional magic penetration, and the super expensive Ring of Wizardry and Sorcery (which are probably better used elsewhere), and I think that additional points in astral boost the penetration (does it), but what else did you use to have them be that succesful? I did have few shape-changed Astral Nagini sneaking around but they didn't turn out to help any in the end.

Well Shishis only have MR 16 though. And my mages probably get penetration 17 after wearing a rune smasher, an amulet of penetration(?) and an eye of the void. Also the game random number generator does not work like people think it does and tend to produce a lot more extreme results than expected. Add to this the fact that soulslay ignores effects like luck and twist fate and you can see how it can be considered powerful.

It is quite expensive to equip a mind hunter without hammers though. When using a mage with S3 base it costs 40 gems to equip them. With a S2 base it takes 55-75 gems depending on weather you'd like a crystal coin or a sorc ring.

Also, does the stealthy nagas really get astral on them?

Originally Posted by Zywack

Since it's been a battle with a ton of spells I had never seen in action before, I got some questions and observations regarding that battle though:

1) Does Fire Arrow actually affects the throw lightning ability of your Storm Demons? That sounds completely not logical, but...

2) That hellfire thingy that does fire damage to everyone on the battlefield... That pretty much ensure that no blood magic is usable at all since it hits all the slaves, right? I had an Apsara master that was set to cast Reinvigoration each round but she only did it once.

3) Does Solar Brilliance helps a lot or not? It was awfully hard to tell it's effect (or lack of it) by looking at the battle.

4) Cleansing Bell fires every round... I thought it only fired one time per battle, so yes I agree that it's worth the cost now.

5) While there were "only" 5 global effects during the battle, did the others have an effect and were simply "unrecorded" on top of the screen, or did they have no effect?

6) I have a Nagini in my capital this turn that has 12 afflictions, including losing both eyes and her head, but she's somehow still alive and not an undead. I have no idea how that possibly happened since I had no Nagini with afflictions the turn before...

1) The Fire arrows were cast by mistake and probably did more harm than good as they overwrite the 15 AN lightning damage with 8 AP fire damage. Traitor! What he was actually supposed to cast was Heat from Hell. The problem is just that Buer seem to auto cast Heat from Hell and you cant cast the same enchantment twice.

This is a bug though. Buer is actually supposed to cast the spell Heat of Buer witch have an effect identical to heat from hell. Thus doubling the effect. No such luck. Not sure if this is a CBM issue or if it has always been this way. Heat of Buer is a real spell that exist in the spell list though. I'm not sure why he does not cast it.

Anyway, with only one of the spells cast it could not overwhelm the effect of relief. Sadly.

2) It only does fire damage to 50% of the field each turn and you can still use the surviving slaves even if they are damaged as long as they dont run away. Also, due to an undocumented feature it seem to become useless if the enemy have any amount of fire resistance. Because fire resistance removes the armor piercing capabilities of the fire. If I had been smart I would just have skipped it and had all three mages stand in from and cast Flame Storm on turn 1. (A different spell!)

3) Solar brilliance never help. People think it does but it really dont. At least it does not help damaging undeads and demons like it claims, because it is both armor piercing and MR resist and only does 4 points of damage.

It can help make sure that most of the mages on the battle field becomes blind if the battle drags out long enough. I managed to blind large parts of a thunderstrike communion with this spell once.

5) Was there really more than 5 ongoing enchantments. Not every spell that affects every unit is an ongoing enchantment. You only need to change peoples skin in to gold once and it last all through the battle.

6) Haha! I think that might be a bug as normally only magical constructs and hydras and stuff are supposed to get that affliction. But they are magic beings so why not?

[bbz]

Congrats on the win, well deserved.

[Zywack]

Actually... I wasn't paying attention at all, but looking back at the map, my capital actually dropped at 1 candles and a lot of my territories that were at 9 candles a turn or two ago are actually under your religion... So your sacrificing spam did hit me incredibly hard this turn. And since I didn't have too many candles over T'ien Ch'i ancestral lands yet, I guess I'd be dominion-killed in the near future even with 8 points in Dominion. Maybe the mass sacrificing just needs to hit a critical mass before it gets going.

The stealthy naga (the Nagini) do come with Astral at 1/4 odds. Since I spent a pretty large amount of turns not having enough income to buy a single Nagarashi, I ended up with quite a few Nagini and I kept the Astral ones safe in prevision of using them as anti-mind hunters since the start of the game or usage in communions. They've proven useful as researchers and as battle mages as a big part of the original moose army so I think I made the right decision to buy mainly those instead of buying an ultra cheap monkey one turn to be able to buy a Nagarashi the following one. I could start to buy a Nagarashi each turn following taking only 3 of those rich T'ien Ch'i provinces anyway so I did end up with a pretty decent Nagarashi amount by end game.


I actually did have a Conjuration Bonus: 20 site at province 204, but I only got that territory around turn 60 and had it running with fort + lab at around turn 66 so I unfortunately didn't get as much usage as I wished out of it. It did prove pretty useful for those rocs, shishis and rudras, though.

Regarding Solar Brilliance... Yeah, the spell description sounded way too good on paper to be accurate. Thanks for informing me of it's usage (or lack thereoff). For the 18 MR, I was more thinking about those krakens that got sniped off than the Shishis, but... That's extremely useful information about the extreme rolls! Plus, I totally missed the amulet and the eye. In a totally unrelated note, I didn't realize that it was extremely likely that Storm Demons actually had Storm Power: It didn't screw up things too badly fortunately, but it certainly could have!


Anyway, I won't play more turns: If the winning condition has been hit, then the game is over. It'd be nice if the two Agarthas and Sauromatia did come to confirm everything though so it can be all officially over.

Edit: Thanks for the guidance and the help during the game, bbz!

[bbz]

No probs. I'm glad I could help