Newbie Slug Fest - Mose Hansen game - ENDED

[The Panther]

Grim Knight said:
I have not played around with different victory conditions before, if there is one that allows you to set a winner for 50% of all provinces in the game that would be cool, as you say if someone gets to 50% provinces then they would most likely clearly win the game unless they only had one opponent left who had the other 50% of the provinces.

This is why it is usually chosen with one more than half. To do this, just select alternate victory conditions and pick provinces from the menu. It opens up a slider bar and, unfortunately, you typically cannot select the exact number you want since the arrow keys don't work. You also need to know the total province count in the map from the .map file in order to decide on how many you want to use as the victory condition.

Another thought is the score graphs. I played my second MP game with graphs off, and I liked it a lot. It put far more reliance on scouts. It also led to some interesting diplomacy when you never knew for sure who was truly leading the game. I was one of the three major powers in that game, and I was constantly persuading the lesser powers that the other guy was winning and they needed to join my block instead of the other guys! It was a lot of fun, but the game unfortunately became glitched and crashed totally. We never could agree on who was winning when it crashed.

Anyway, here are my votes:
Map: TBD
Mods: No
Victory: Half the provinces
Sites: 50
HoF: 15
Research: Very difficult
House rules: Must take nation with no MP experience
Indies: 9
Score graphs: off
Host: 24h QH


The Panther

[PashaDawg]

My vote:

Map: Aduria (this map suggests victory point conditions)

Number of players: 10-12 (Aduria has a lot of room for water nations).

Mods: No

Victory: Victory points (e.g., 8 out of 12, that is, 2/3rds)

Sites: 45 or 50

HoF: 15

Research: Very difficult

House rules: Must take nation with no MP experience

Indies: 6

Score graphs: off (graphs off can be very fun)

Host: 24h QH

Again, I'd like to play Pangea.

Pasha

[deccan]

Well, Panther, I suppose you should shut down the game once everyone has had a chance to look at their turns.

I think I was the one who first suggested the Arco-Ulm-Jotunheim alliance against Caelum, and that was before Pasha went on holiday. Our plan was to wait until Pasha came back to attack you, but then you started carving up Vanheim with Abysia, and Steerpike egged me on to attack you without waiting for Pasha.

I agree with you that Arco was the best placed among us to defeat you. Not only for the mind-attacking spells you mentioned (though those would have worked best seeing as you had a magic scale which would reduce MR), but also the easy access to elemental combat spells.

Personally, I tried a variety things:

1) Cold-immune, lightning-immune thug. I think that worked okay. The problem was that I had no air magicians other than my pretender and so I gambled on spectres to get a random air but never succeeded. You never did catch that raiding Bane Lord. I should have made a bunch of them.

2) Massed indy archers. That didn't work very well. I thought a hail of arrows would kill a clump of false horrors, ethereal or not, but they kept missing.

3) Undead and vine ogres. Well, the tanks are mindless, but you could still scare away the mages, which dissolved the tanks. Ouch. It didn't help that false horrors actually have very good attack / defense. Mindless tanks are useless unless you actually have mages in the back to cast some good spells.

4) False horror spam could be defeated with overwhelming numbers if I arranged a full line of troops so that some would slip past the false horrors and attack the mages.

5) I watched some fights with Ulm, and while the charcoal shielded Black Lord could pop false horrors, it didn't help him against lightning bolts / frozen heart.

Overall, I'd say that false horror is definitely overpowered. It *can* be countered, but the costs of countering it is so disproportionate to the cost of deploying it. And against Caelum, you can always switch to frozen heart / lightning bolt once the enemy gets close, so I'd need to defend against that too. And throughout the game, I was wary of assembling a huge ***-kicking army for fear of a Wrathful Skies.

It was frustrating too that my GK died so easily. He was supposed to cast Fireshield + Breath of Winter but I guess that Air Queen and all those False Horrors next to him persuaded him to attack instead of casting spells.

Towards the end of the game, I was making a lot of vine ogres and longdead horsemen to tank for N3 mages with Spell Foci capable of casting charm. Too bad I never got to use them.

Oh well, I'm good for a new game as well, though I'd need some time to experiment with Zen's mod. I want to call dibs on C'tis this time.

[The Panther]

I would be the very first to agree that the false horror spell is overpowered and needs to be nerfed. I already posted that elsewhere on the forum. Nearly any race but Ulm can counter it, but the cost is usually higher than the cost to Caelum for doing it. Only Arco, Pythium and R'lyeh can easily beat the horrors without having to target it specifically since they are usually researching up Thaumaturgy anyways. Abysia has a good counter if they go the devil path. Until the inevitable Caelum staff of storms shows up, that is.

I also suspected that you were going to enlist Ulm in your alliance, so that is why I went to 3 day QH to slow down the game while he was gone. I did not want Pasha's holiday to influence the game, and it really did not all that much.

I too was surprised just how easily your GK died. I did not know you would attack with the lone GK, though. I did expect you to attack there, but with your army, and maybe also with the pretender. And because I was so close to getting the required number of VPs, I decided to jump in with every single troop I had that could reach the castle. I definitely wanted to break the walls in one turn to try and win the game at once by taking that VP. It was a very nice army. I think I had 23 mages, 2 AQs and a ton of archers, ogres, and draconians. I had 2 wine bags and the army was still starving! I had not realized until this game that the Caelum archers are size 3 and eat more than you would think.

Turns out that I found Pickles with an undefended VP province that he took from Ermor and that is what let me go one over the requirement. It was my insurance policy in case I lost the battle to you.

As for the bane lord, I never did get the chance to attack it with a decent army and see how it might have worked. And, as you know, I did lose several times with a small strike forces of a single seraph and a couple of archers when I guessed wrong on where you were going.

I always seem to easily predict the AI during SP. But people are rarely predictable, which is one of the things I really like about this game.

[KroolDeath]

Yes, I would be interested in a new game as well. Good group. I personally made a serious mistake on relying on convential troops for the most part. Yes, I built an SC Pretender (Ghost King), and he performed well for the most part, but when he got killed in an Indy province on the same turn that Abysia attacked, well...I was done...

I really think you don't crack open this game until you explore the magic options extensively, which I didn't do well. As a newb, I started 5 games at one time and got severely overwhelmed.

Anyway, I'm up for another game...Really enjoyed playing with you guys.

Krool

[deccan]

Hmm, I'll follow the standard format for the new game:

Map: No preference.

Number of players: No preference.

Mods: Zen's Pretender Mod. (I know we had at least three GKs in this game, and it would be nice if there were a little more variety.)

Victory: 2/3 of provinces

Sites: 50

HoF: 15

Research: Difficult (I already have a very difficult research game going. I can do another one, but be warned, it just means that everyone will take a fire 9 or water 9 blessing, which can be boring in its own way.)

House rules: Must take nation with no MP experience

Indies: 9 (punishes people who get too reckless about fast expansion)

Score graphs: off

[Steerpike]

Ok Ok I was the best placed to defeat Panther and in my arrogance I thought I might have had a good chance.
Even though we attacked without Pasha it was still two on one and Pasha could join the attack within 3 or 4 turns.
In my defense it was my second multiplayer game and I think I have learned from it.
We will see.

[Cainehill]

Hey, congrats on the win Panther - now if only there were trophies to bring home to Albuquerque.

[deccan]

The Panther said:
I too was surprised just how easily your GK died. I did not know you would attack with the lone GK, though. I did expect you to attack there, but with your army, and maybe also with the pretender.

Well, I didn't know you would move that much stuff there! I expected maybe the two AQs, the Wraith Lord, plus some seraphs, but I didn't know you that that big bunch of archers, draconians etc. on hand.

Besides, I was worried that if I sent in the GK with a bunch of giants, the false horrors would just scare the giants away and the GK would just rout with them.

[DragonFire11]

Has anyone claimed the giants?