Preponderance 2 [epic team game returns!]

[archaeolept]

11 vps really isn't sufficient. I suggest an immediate change to 15.

[13lackGu4rd]

quoting the original post of this thread, which contains the game rules:

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Victory conditions: 10/26 VPs [24 caps + 2 VP worth central island]

team MA Jotunheim+MA Abysia has conquered 11 VPs this turn, which makes them the victors. therefore I have declared the game finished on llamaserver. congratulations to Calahan and DrP, the winning team.

this game should have been over a while ago, there is absolutely no reason to prolong the game even longer once the actual victory conditions have finally been met. Calahan+DrP have been the clear winners of this game for a very long time now, it's just that they didn't meet the 10 VP cap so the game went on, giving the runner up teams a chance to catch up and snatch away the victory, which they failed to do.

so anyway, the moment we've all been waiting for, who was who. warning: the list IH gave me isn't 100% accurate, I will post the original list as unfortunately I didn't keep a very good track of the changes I was aware of, so I can't accurately correct it. please correct the accuracies in the list, if you're still around that is.

1. Squirrelloid + Raiel 53 – LA Mari 64 – Patala
3. Maerlande + Burnsaber 12 – EA Agartha 68 – Lanka
6. Baalz + militarist 43 – Bandar Log 52 – LA Ulm
7. Ferrosol + Kheldron 71 – LA Bogarus 63 – LA Utgard
9. TheDemon + Blazin961 0 - EA Arco 10 – EA Ctis
10. Apsophos + earcaraxe 30 – MA Man 7 – EA Mict
11. Alpine Joe + Ghoul31 18 – EA Kailasa 27 – MA Arco
5. Zeldor + Quitti 35 – MA Machaka 4 – Sauro
12. Agent Smith + Hoplosterum 34 – Ma Tien Chi 32 – Ma Marignon
2. FrozenLama + Trumanator 44 – Shin 29 – MA Pyth
8. DrPraetorious + Calahan 37 – MA Aby 42 – MA Jot
4. Juffos + Hermeister 58 – LA Abysia 19 – EA Yomi

I know that Squirrelloid was playing Patala and Raiel playing LA Mari, despite IH's list saying otherwise. I also know that the LA C'tis(replacing EA Kailasa)+MA Arco was played by Dimaz and Kuritza.

I think a few other players have also switched nations in between them. also, now I can say it, I've subbed myself for LA Abysia until it was defeated completely, than later I subbed in for Bogarus and held them until the end. no idea who the original owners were(whether the list is accurate or not about them), I just took over these 2 last stand positions that suffered from a lot of previous stales, as part of my efforts to keep this game going and preventing people from giving up. unfortunately, as you all know, quite a few people gave up and vanished, which caused us quite a few problems.

[DrPraetorious]

False humility is tiresome, but Calahan is awesomely good at this game. A lot of the attention to detail was his, as was his vicious dismemberment of Yomi/Aby early on, which is what propelled us into a lead we were able to hold. We also settled on a double-blood strategy that was his suggestion. So >50% of the credit goes to him; although I played quite well myself, I think.

I was a bit disappointed that our last turn prep was for not. Those armies storming our last three VPs were outfitted to resist multiple teleporting raiding armies, fires from the sky and murdering winters, and we'd anticipated a major communion-of-death to teleport into EA Saur and try to stop me there.

Nothing manifested . I had an absolutely fantastic army of slavering demons, and the castle was empty!

But to give you an idea of how fearsome Calahan is - we had forge orders replacing almost all of the at-risk inventory in the fort storms this turn, and you may have noticed teleporting squads of Asmeg thugs backed up with blood magic casters covering select retreats. As for winning the game faster: well, we might've tried, but that would've been the surest way not to win at all .

[TheDemon]

Apologies for the last turn stale, I misread the turn due time and ended up submitting 4 minutes late.

[Dimaz]

Too bad, I was hoping for some more fighting with the winners...

[Zeldor]

Well, congrats to Cal & DrP.

There is at least one "but" though - Ironhawk should have never allowed you to take 11 pointers and you should have never accepted it. No matter how good you are and how well you played, it can be said that you won because you had better team than other competitors.

[Calahan]

Thanks to everyone who played in this game. No thanks to those who attempted to screw it by bailing. I would be very interested to know exactly who played which nation (I was Jotunheim, Dr.P was Abysia for confirmation of our roles). Major thanks as well to our admins IronHawk and Blackguard, without who the game wouldn't have happened. Thanks as well to Zeldor for putting the game together, and a final thanks to Dr.P for putting up with me for 6 months

I will probably write up some sort of AAR when I get chance, but free time over the festive period will be a bit unknown (so it might not appear until the New Year)

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Well, congrats to Cal & DrP.

There is at least one "but" though - Ironhawk should have never allowed you to take 11 pointers and you should have never accepted it. No matter how good you are and how well you played, it can be said that you won because you had better team than other competitors.

Well the big flaw in that argument is that is suggests the teams were accurately scored to start with, which I personally don't think they were. Several nations should likely have been shifted a point or two up or down. Plus there could easily have been standard points added for certain factors. Any blood nation should likely have got +1. Same applies to any Forge Lord nation, as they are a must have in a team game (and likely worth ~15-20 gems per turn once mid game kicks in).

For what it's worth I reckon the Bogarus + Utgard team was the best pairing by some way, and they were actually our first choice (I'd be interested to know how we lost out on the tie-break actually). They were easily a 13-14 point team IMO, since Bogarus being a 3 was an absolute joke, and 7 would have been closer to the mark. Since they had the killer combo of blood + best research + Forge Lord = kick arse nation that'll allow all the Artefacts by turn 25 at good discounts, plus have the weakest "early rush victim" part of their game removed. And I still don't think there is a 1 point difference between Utgard + Jotunheim on a 1-10 scale. On a 1-20 scale maybe, but not 1-10.


Plus another big problem for me in focusing on our 11 point team total is that it gives an excuse for the real reason we won, which was generally poor play by most of our neighbours. I'll likely go into this when I do an AAR, but our potentially tough early war became easy when Yomi stupidly just let me walk into their cap for nothing, while LA Abysia decided on bizarre research goals that didn't help in the slightest in stopping my forces. (whereas other goals would have caused problems)

Add to this that during the potentially vulnerable early turns of our first war, Pythium and TC both had chances to attack and make things complicated, but both decided to keep to themselves and wait to die (like a lot of players in the game). But it should have been obvious to both that whoever won the Yomi/Jotun war was soon going to be targeting them. So as I say, focusing on a minor issue like an 11 point team is just diverting attention from the real reasons we won / problems that existed in the game.


Anyway, thanks again to all who played and did the work for the game. Best wishes to you for a fun and happy Christmas and New Year

[TheDemon]

Post-mortem:

Should be fairly obvious in hindsight what our plan was as the EA Arco/EA C'tis team. We were of the opinion that C'tis is very underrated in the early game, so we put him in the front, Skellyspam and Elite Warriors kicked major ***. I had an awake Great Sage and was rushing for Rain of Stones and Mother Oak. Blazin took a Lord of Rebirth and planned to put up a strong Gift of Health and do mentors -> tarts. We achieved this and it made us at least a minor contender in the lategame.

We were attacked early by Utgard, I think about 2 turns before we were ready to go to war with them ourselves, but Skellyspam and Elite Warriors beat the crap out of giants. Our big problem was bringing forces in through the various chokepoints so the war with Utgard/Bogarus took a dozen turns longer than we wanted. We should have moved on way sooner instead of taking time to clean up, and by the time the cleanup was finished Jotun/Aby had their commanding lead.

I guess we could have thrown the game at this point, but we counted caps and decided there was an very small outside chance we could grab enough. I dropped BL sucessfully, but we messed up on Ulm, and Jotun beat us to dropping on Lanka by one turn. Would have been an interesting battle on Lanka had it been one turn later. Obviously it would have been extremely difficult for us to take and keep Lanka and grab Patala, Marignon and Man (ok Man might have been easy) for the win, but that's the dom3 endgame for ya if you choose to fight.

Anyway, big congrats to DrP/Calahan, you played the game at a pace far above ours, and that led you to a well-deserved win.

I will mention that at the point where we were asked if we wanted the game to continue, another team (presumably the other Arco/C'tis) had already asked for the game to continue before I had a chance to PM Blackguard. So, it wasn't just us drawing things out. Personally I think that going out fighting for victory in the endgame was far more exciting than conceding the game. I felt much more fulfilled having fought the game to the end, regardless of what anyone says about it having been over long ago. I hope there are others who feel the same way.

[blazin961]

Originally Posted by TheDemon

Post-mortem:

It was a good game. Congrats to Calahan and Dr P. Also much much thanks to the admins!

TheDemon summed up our perspective on the game rather well.

I thought we did decent even with our 8 point team. I think it was a huge mistake looking back not going blood.

The map was generally good though the movement restrictions were a blessing and a curse. Great for the beginning of the game but such a huge pain near the end. It basically encouraged being able to summon up armies rather than actually move armies.

My biggest disappointment was the lack of any large decent battle for myself before the end of the game.

Otherwise if you guys ever do this type of game in the future, you might want to consider anon diplomacy through dom messages only. It would have certainly made the middle/ end games more interesting in that weaker teams could have teamed up on the leaders. I feel that for the most part people were too frightened to do anything of the sort in this game.

I'm taking a dom break for a while but I've enjoyed my first and only sharpnel forums game. Hopefully ill returned sometime soon and play another with you guys either here or in goon games.

[TheDemon]

Big thank you to Zeldor for setting the game up, and huge thank you to Ironhawk and Blackguard who kept this game going through all its lulls and difficulties, subbing for missing players is above and beyond the call of duty.

Originally Posted by blazin961

I'm taking a dom break for a while but I've enjoyed my first and only sharpnel forums game. Hopefully ill returned sometime soon and play another with you guys either here or in goon games.

Blazin fails to mention that he came into this game as a newbie having only played for about a month, he played nothing like a newbie, and he leaves the game as a bitter vet who needs a dom3 break

Oh and our 8-pointer was our 1st choice yeah we might have shot ourselves in the foot there. But I think our result proves our team was competitively strong. We probably should have put our "powerhouse" choice first: LA Marignon + EA Sauro. THAT'S a 13-point team right there. Our picks were:

1. EA Arco + EA C'tis
2. LA Bogarus + EA Helheim
3. LA Marignon + EA Sauro

Originally Posted by Calahan

Plus another big problem for me in focusing on our 11 point team total is that it gives an excuse for the real reason we won, which was generally poor play by most of our neighbours.

I think if anyone actually had a problem with the 11 point teams, they would have raised a stink when the game started. Talking in hypotheticals about it now is stupid. You won the game fair and square, and no one disagreed with the rule that allowed 11 point teams.