Invisible Swarm III: over

[Jurri]

A new turn.

[Aku]

Jurri you are not going to like your turn when you watch it lol.

I may be dying but I probably pissed you off this turn on what I killed.

[Jurri]

Notice the topic of the previous post

...damn you, you craven bastich!

EDIT: Oh, well, at least I learned something: I really don't have a clue! I mean, I have absolutely no accurate perception on how things relate to each other: general level, sure, but just how many foul spawn do you need to counter a bunch of devils? No idea. At all. Enjoy it while you can, you miserable things; When I ascend I shall make the world have deterministic and simple rules that will prevent gits like me from fouling up a good thing!

[jeffr]

Well, that about does it for me. Chris has destroyed my main army and taken most of my lands. The defeat was total with no loss to Chris. Boron is taking the rest of my undefended lands in the North.

I'll keep on until I'm dead, but there isn't much I can do. I guess I'll try and buy some time, so that everyone has a better chance against the Ulm/Mictlan alliance. But, for all I know, perhaps R'leh, Arco and Abysia are already very strong. Man, this game is humbling

I thought I was pretty succesfull until Chris and Boron double teamed me and I actually felt pretty good about the situation before their alliance. Oh, how wrong I was!

In hindsight, after seeing what Chris did to me, I guess I didn't have much of a chance, even if he had waited until I had finished Mictlan (assuming I could have, that is).

But, you never know. If I gone against Ulm one on one and had had my main force near Ulm instead of in the North fighting Mictlan, maybe it would have gone better. Maybe I would have been able to push him back fort by fort and I wouldn't have had to try to teleport and attack him at his capital.

A lot of maybes. The certainty is that Chris has wiped the floor with me. Very well played, Chris, both diplomatically and strategically/tactically

Looking back on it, I'm trying to think what I should have done differently (besides radically altering my strategy; perhaps avoiding wars and not appearing too powerful, but that's no fun ).

I defeated a few of Ulm's inital armies, but gave way before his main army because I wanted to redeploy my main army from the North first. This took a couple of turns and allowed Chris access to my lands. Chris then avoided battle against my main force, which surprised me (I thought he would go for my capital), and went south. He and Boron had probaby agreed to a North/South split.

Time wasn't on my side. Chris's spies were killing my production (maybe I should have patrolled more but I had suffered heavy losses against Boron's Jaguars and Moloch), his assassins were killing my soft targets and his Ghost Riders took out any small armies that I sent against him.

I couldn't just defend or I would certainly be engulfed between Chris and Boron, so I tried to be aggressive in attacking the Ulm capital. I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to harm the walls and I certainly didn't know the forces he had waiting for me. I thought his main army was in the south.

One thing that surpised me was that he survived casting Ghost Riders into a Dome of Flaming Death. I had never cast that before. It sounded lethal, but it turns out it didn't do squat (maybe he had the foresight to be fire resistant). I was pyched that I had guessed the correct province he would cast into, but it was all for naught.

Ah well, it was fun a very fun game while it lasted. Good game guys

[Aku]

Well the game is going to be won by either Chris or Jurri.

Pasha and Jurri are carving up my land and I am down to 4 provinces =(. So you will at least outlive me Jeffr.

[Jurri]

Dudes, it ain't over yet! Heck I recently lost almost a third of my provinces to Aku and Chris and look at me now: I'm supposedly the runner-up! If it were indeed down to me and Chris, we might as well quit already, since I can't for the life of me see how I could beat him as things stand. (Not that I would quit because of that, really. That's only rhetorical license! Fight to the finish!) Also, if no one else has a chance, what are they to do? Is Boron the kingmaker, or what?

[Cainehill]

jeffr said:
I thought I was pretty succesfull until Chris and Boron double teamed me and I actually felt pretty good about the situation before their alliance. Oh, how wrong I was!

Heh. Never a good idea to become the obvious front-runner : makes it just too likely that a bunch of others will gang up on you. Even happens without any diplomacy involved, just people deciding it's a good time to bite their own chunk off.

[Aku]

Yeah dont give up!

I am down to 4 provinces and I am fighting to the bitter end and even still I am defending modestly well.

[CUnknown]

Jeffr, dude, you are a bad-*** Pangea player and you are definitely overdue for a victory in one of these games!

About the army that broke the seige: what was preventing you from breaking in were the guardians and the wolves I had summoned with the Soulstone. But, a chunk of the strength of my attack came just a turn before I broke seige. I cast 'legion of wights', summoned more fire snakes, and built that Sword of Aurgermer (I love that thing! It is underrated as a magic item, I think) the turn before I broke seige. A lot of the items my commanders used in that battle came from my main army (love the insta-teleport through labs in this game), and they're going right back there, heh. So, it's not like I had this huge force waiting at my capital for you, most of it was assembled just for that battle. I was fortunate to have my main army on a lab the turn I needed them there. Oh, well, the huge force of smiths has been there the whole game, of course.

One on one (if Boron had stayed out of it, and let's say Jurri didn't attack me either), you would have beat me, definitely. Or at least I couldn't have attacked you, and I imagine your raids would have taken me down eventually. Your 'Gift of Health'ed centaurs are just phenomenally powerful. That is why my main army avoided yours..even if I had won, I would have been decimated. I figured that out when you slaughtered some groups I sent in the beginning.

It's hard being double-teamed. I don't think really anyone can manage it. Well, Jurri did in this game, but being a water power helps because there's only so many places we can attack.

I guess if there is a problem with your strategy, Jeffr, it's that you seem monstrously incredibly powerful and scary, heh. I freaked that you were going to roll over Boron, so I wanted to make peace with Jurri. Jurri's strategy makes him seem less scary than yours does, although you're probably equally powerful.

What was this about the Dome of Flaming Death? Was it supposed to have nuked a mage of mine? I never got a message that it was triggered.. Is there a bug with that spell in one of these mods, maybe?

Anyway, great game, Jeffr! If Boron hadn't been at war with you too, I bet you would have beaten me, or at most I would have been able to fight you to a standstill.

p.s.

One more thing I would like to note is that I believe the elemental summoning spells to have been beefed up a little too much in Zen's spell mod. I love them, but I can't help but think they're too good. For 2 gems, my lvl 2 earth-casting smiths can 'summon earthpower' then cast 'living earth' to summon 4 elementals! I think each one can do that twice per battle, if you give them maybe 4-6 gems each. That's 8 elementals! Maybe it should be like: lesser elemental is 100 fatigue, normal elemental is 150, living earth is 200 or something. Being all at 100 fatigue is really probably too good.

[Jurri]

CUnknown said:
and built that Sword of Aurgermer (I love that thing! It is underrated as a magic item, I think)

It's official, this guy has the clams hoarded! He's dispelling the globals faster than the eye can see and forging 80 pearl artifacts (guess it's 40 with his superhammer, but still)!

It's a great item, I would have liked to make it Wish I had the pearls. Listening to the proceedings I certainly understand that I really should clam waaay more myself... I'm not sure how my strategy would adapt to that, though.