MP: Land Rand - Jotunheim Wins!

[Meglobob]

I agree upon thinking about it, a black list of nations you do not want to play is better than a list of nations you do. For this game I would have had 2 nations on it, Ctis (just because I had finished a 80+ turn game playing them) and Machaka. Would have been happy to play MA Ulm, largely because I have never played that nation in MP and its been a long time since I played Ma Agartha or Ma Man so would have been ok giving them another go too. Although I wouldn't have high expectations.

I also like the idea of giving the least experienced players 1st choice of the power nations like Ashdod, Jotun, Ermor and Mictlan. better than banning them from the game in my opinion.

I had luck 3 this game and it was great, had the full 3 lucky events most turns, unlucky events were so rare I hardly noticed them. I did have dom 9 thou.

[Meglobob]

The Game From Ctis Point Of View

I was really fed up with getting Ctis as a nation pick, it just totally put me off this game straight from the start and really I totally lacked any interest which I did not shake off until Pythium attacked me.

My pretender design was crap, I should have gone with the exact same pretender in the game that just finished but wanted to try and spark some interest for playing Ctis so went for a vampire queen. I had some vague idea of getting into blood, for mass vampire spawn and making sure I had earth access for hammers and even a drop of air for gargoyles. I normally put alot my thought in to my pretender, design but this time I wasn't interested and knocked up my vampire queen in under a minute ( you can catch horrible diseases doing this). I was really sulking and hoping someone killed me quick.

Of course the early game went well, I got my designated area of provinces plus 1 or 2 more, typical when you want to die quickly! The bad news however, was my neighbours were, Jotuns, Mictlan and Pythium. Still with my high dominion everywhere I doubted wether any of them would attack me, what with my miasma dominion. I crossed Jotuns / Mictlan off my expansion list, I could not hope to match there blessed troops this early in the game. Pythium offered my best hope for conquest but they weren't exactly weak and I would probably get crippled, so opted to build up and see what developed.

Would you believe it Pythium invaded me! I perked up abit for the 1st time this game, did they not know about miasma dominion? I let them wonder around my kingdom for a few months getting diseased, killing PD, I just took the occassional province back. They had a fatal flaw which Ctis was probably one of the best nations to exploit, they had no nature magic and thus no defense vs posion. It was easy for me with posion slingers, posion vapours and mass skele spam to completely destroy Pythiums invading armies. With Pythium fatally weakened, I marched in and took his entire kingdom, adding it to my own and doubling Ctis in size. The only negative was putting up with swarms of seeking arrows, Pythium must have launched hundreds at me during our war, killing dozens of my mages. Thunder strike and later astral fires took hundreds of lizards lives but the Ctis war machine was unstoppable, as far as Pythium was concerned.

[Meglobob]

We were now in the mid game and having seeded scouts all over the place, I was seriously concerned about the Jotuns, they knew exactly what they were doing, very clearly being played by a experienced vet, my guess being Micah, Wraithlord or Zeldor. I dicounted Quantum because I know he is generally a defensive player, I did not think it was Micah really either because he is a ultra, ultra aggressive and Ulm's excellent defense did slow the Jotuns. I really needed free troops so put up the global Enchanted Forest. I formed my Jotun policy at this point, which was, I was not going to attack the Jotuns on my own but I was going to keep well above 50% of my entire forces in 3 castles along the Jotun / Ctis border. If the Jotuns got in trouble trying to conquer another nation or Mictlan attacked the Jotuns I was going to attack them as well. There was no chance of me attacking Mictlan / Ermor and Tien Chi at this point as well because I needed 1 or 2 of them, plus myself to try to stop the Jotuns.

However, there was no need for me to sit around, by conquering Pythium I had opened up access to some weak nations who had been fighting each another namely, Arco, Ashdod, Pan and Bander Log. I would try and carefully grab what I could. I put up the Forge of Ancients to help equip my growing number of thugs / SCs. I started with Arco who were fighting Ashdod and took a couple of provinces but Ashdod were swift and took the rest. So I started looking Bander / Pan way. However, the Jotuns then swept in crushing Ashodod with breathtaking speed. I tried to take a province or two for myself but Jotuns Mage Bane weilding Arch Devil, supported by ALL the other Arch Devils, Ice Devils and Heliophagus destroyed my meagre forces. Once again the Jotuns scared me silly, I could see the Jotuns summoning all the blood 9 demon lords and tartarians. It was at this point I knew it was hopeless and the Jotuns were unstoppable.

I played about with Bander Log / Pan, slowly weakening them in order to devour them, well the Jotuns went after Tien Chi. In the very last turn of the game I had a very pleasing battle with Pan, with Pan having 28 mages 1000 strong army on one side and Ctis having 46 mages and 500 strong army on the other. Ctis won, killing 14 enemy mages and destroying vitually the entire 1000 strong army, I lost 0 mages but 80% of my army. In the same turn I also got lucky and killed the Pan with a Earth Attack who had cast the global Mother Oak thus dispelling it. But it was all for nothing the Jotuns had won, they were our masters now.

[WraithLord]

I think a short nation black list per player is a good idea.

I was playing a bit with the idea of introducing very rudimentary diplo to RAND. For example: each player starts the game with three "Peace offer" tokens. The way the token is used is by nation A contacting the admin and asking him to pass the "peace offer" to nation B. The host then returns "yes"/"no" answer from nation B and nation A's tokens are subtracted by 1.
This is very far from full blown diplo and will not explicitly allow dog piling. It would help stop silly wars that both parties don't want and may allow for a more interesting end game.
Perhaps I'll even introduce these two concepts to next installment of YARG.

Pasha, thank you for hosting this RAND game. Though I lost early and had a sub-par nation I did enjoy the game. In-fact I'm looking forward for another game whenever you'll feel ready.
Could you also kindly send some of the turn files?- I'd like to watch the drama of the end game.

[Zeldor]

Ermor bashin again? First me, complaining about him attacking me, then other people complainiong that he did not invade Jotun when he was at war with Ulm [well, he was the only one that could do it, as C'tis got attacked by Pyth].

I am against all complicated stuff that WraithLord is suggesting. Whole idea is to make the game simpler, without diplo, etc. And as it has no NAPs it's about signals, army movements etc. Ermor was giving me clear signal that I should not attack Jotun, because he will attack me [1k troops on my border].