Faerun - started

[Huzurdaddi]

The Panther said:
My dragon (as Machaka) in the Mad-Orania game took level 9 indies all by himself from Turns 2-7. He lost an eye on Turn 2 and lost the second eye on Turn 7 after taking 6 level 9 provinces. Being blinded, he then retired to help with research. I was really pissed that he didn't get tamer afflictions, like a chest wound or battle fright. Admittedly, I did not attack anything dangerous (meaning heavy cavs or knights).

That's pretty much how it goes for dragons. They last between 4-12 battles or so. But in the end they get a couple of afflictions that doom them. The chest wound, btw, is a death sentence for a dragon as now a battle with just HI can become death if they do not route quickly. In the faerun game ( which had no hoarding thank god! ) my dragon lasted only 6 battles which irked the crud out of me, since it is on the lower part of the range.

Then, starting on turn 4, my prophet army began to take provinces easily. But that was helped by the fact that the each player started with a bunch of pre-built sites plus the income from 5 inital provinces, thus kick-starting my non-dragon battles immensely.

It highly nation dependent. Certianly nations with good sacred troops can start early if they have a good bless. Turn 4 is difficult for many nations, I find turn 6 to be the sweet spot for many nations.

I must admit I am wondering how Huzurdaddi can hope for the game to be resolved quickly without a victory condition. The only way I know how to do this is to be eliminated from the game

Well I was going to try the marignon strategy that I talked about in the other thread but now I am going for the elimination strategy! It requires *far* less micromanagement!

Anyway the marignon strategy (tm) is far less powerful when hoarding is allowed. But Soapy and I are sure that this game will go to the nation who is most able to hide in the background and hoard like nuts.

But I'm a belligerent *** so I'm not going to do that It will be my undoing.

BTW: Ulm is *s00pa* in this mod. Wowzie. As is Atlantis.

[Jurri]

The Panther said:
On turn 13, I had a lot more provinces (maybe 21 or so) than anyone else but eventually died because Abysia had a built-in 30% blood bonus site, which terribly unbalanced the game.

'Ey Pantha, it wasn't like that! I didn't use the blood30 site almost at all before you were down (a couple HfHs at most); What I did was build soul contracts (yes, at base 160 slaves each) with my blood-cyclops and construction-site and use the resulting devil army to pound you. The bloodsite entered the equation in force a bit later. Also mostly you fell due to diplomacy, I'm afraid to say.

Other than that, I'm with Panther in that you can certainly start taking indies with a suitable pretender from turn 2 onwards on indies 9 - turn 1, even, in certain cases. Also, assassins are a very potent means of expansion for the nations that have them, especially on high indie settings.

[Saber Cherry]

Huzurdaddi said:

Pythium gets kind of Borked in this mod. Thurges more expensive, communicants more expensive, troops slightly more expensive. It's pretty watered down.

As for Caelum it's beyond comprehension but they were improved in this version. At least their primary troop: the archer.

Pythium did get slightly toned down, but they're still very potent with cheap communicants and cheap, powerful, sacred, holy mages. Also, assassins were improved and cheapened, so they may now be of use to Pythium. I think that people just don't using things that are "nerfed" even if they are still powerful . For example, I was trying to convince someone to buy a Celeron-based laptop (personally, I only use AMD, but notebook computers are one area where Intel still has some advantages). This person had a very tight budget, of around $600... and he was never, ever, ever going to use the computer for anything other than Word, Outlook Express, and Internet Explorer (so he really didn't need anything above a Pentium 100). But he would not buy the Celeron because "he had heard from people that Celeron is worse than Pentium," which is true, but made him pay $100 more on the processor and compromise on things like screen size and RAM, which would have been much more important to him in practice... just to avoid something that was "nerfed"

As for Caelum - the troop lineup was toned down, IMO, in that magical weapons and flight no longer came "free." Their scouts became more expensive too. The only units that dropped in price were:
Archers, who are essentially unarmored and unshielded and therefore die easily to anything (even soulless or 4g slingers) and also get -1 morale;
and Wingless, who are capitol-only and thus compete with Temple Guards for resources, and are hard to use with other Caelian units because they can't fly.
I'm fairly certain that Caelum was reduced in power, not boosted; considering that the gold cost of the Caelian Archer was dropped by 10% while indy unarmored archers were dropped by 25%, even that unit was weakened in the context of the mod. The only area where Caelum was empowered was in food, as the mod's 60% supply increase is very handy to Caelum (and Jotunheim and Ryleh, for that matter).

Both nations seem (to me) to still be stronger than average, and I think only the "nerf factor" prevents people from jumping on them like in unmodded games But I'll be watching closely to see if I'm wrong...

[The Panther]

Jurri said:
Also mostly you fell due to diplomacy, I'm afraid to say.

Heh heh, I almost forgot about that, but I do recall now. I was sorely pressed for time in RL and had entered too many games during the winter. I was very sorry I had entered that particular game (especially after I realized that Machaka is hopeless on that map) and was wanting to get out of it. So, because I hate to quit games, I instead opted for the time-honored 'elimination strategy' and declared war on the entire world. I even attacked the two AI nations next to me to get them to invade also.

It was definitely a blast fighing everybody at once, especially after Cohen gave me nearly 1000 gems right before he died. I surprised the heck out of Ulm with my mass summoning when he thought me mostly dead and gone. The only thing I regreted was that I killed only 80 or so Abysian devils before I died.

You did have a very nice victory in that game, Jurri, using the (heavily nerfed) Soul Contract strategy. I was indeed impressed with the power of the soul contracts after seeing it used against me.

[Jurri]

And good thing too that Soul Contracts were nerfed, for it would have been silly beyond words otherwise.

But so as not to hijack the thread for a trip down the memory lane (the game was great fun until the nosedive of an end, though), aren't you guys really not going to remove clams and such? Pretty hardcore!

Hey, the next time you (=someone) feel like hosting a massive game, why not the world war scenario with some sensible victory condition? I always wanted to try that one.

[PashaDawg]

So Panther & Jurri - - - you're not joining this game? Just talking about it?

[Huzurdaddi]

Saber Cherry said:
The only units that dropped in price were:
Archers, who are essentially unarmored and unshielded and therefore die easily to anything (even soulless or 4g slingers) and also get -1 morale;

The reason why I said ( perhaps unfairly, we will have to see ) that Caelum was buffed is that the troops I make by far the most of with Caelum is the Archer. Once my research gets moderatly high I then rely upon the glorious casters much more than any troops. We'll see how it goes though.

As for Pythium's cheap communicants IIRC they cost 60 gold in the mod. That's actually quite expensive. A 1S caster should cost slightly less than 60 gold if it has no special abilities and communicants are in many ways less useful than a 1S caster. I still love communion though. It can be frighteningly powerful.

I thought that at 1st you had made communicants 40 gold and thurges 180 gold which I think would have been a decent deal for Pythium. I don't know where I got that crazy thought from though.

Also, assassins were improved and cheapened, so they may now be of use to Pythium.

Oh? Were the stats on Assassins improved? Well now, that could make a decent sized difference! Perhaps I should go back to Marignon ( I generally like them they have all of the toys, although their more expensive crossbowmen are a little bit of a pain ).

One question: Did you Nerf pangaea's White Centaurs over your 1st version? A quick glance still shows the light lance ( did they have that in the stock game ) and decent stats? I thought that many people had been ( rightly ) overrun by these guys in your 1st test game. I don't expect them to be as big of a factor in a Faerun game ( although as his nearest neighbor I may be eating those words! ).

[The Panther]

PashaDawg said:
So Panther & Jurri - - - you're not joining this game? Just talking about it?

Um, no, I cannot think of a game format I would like to play less than this one, except for the same settings with no mods...

Plus, I am not getting in any more games until after my trip to France. And maybe Dom 3 will be out by then and Dom 2 is history.

[PashaDawg]

When do we expect Dom 3 to be out?

[Boron]

Soapy asked me if we want to play with an anti-hoard mod. Me + Aku didn't plan to hoard in this game (it is hard to believe i know ) so we didn't think on the issue cause we thought without wish hoarding is not such a big deal. Now giving it a closer thought it is though: A clamhoarder could cast Arcane Nexus and get insane amounts of further gems and then just spam hordes of mech men or banelord thugs etc.. Though not as nasty as hoarding + wishing still quite nasty.
I would personally like to play with an anti-hoard mod also.

So please everybody post what you want and as soon as we have a simple majority (9 of 17 players) we will play with this setup.

P.S.: Huzurdaddi i gave you atm the claim for both caelum and marignon cause i guess you would rather play caelum if we chose to play without an anti-hoard mod and marignon vice versa so that you can decide then

Edit: Aku suggested that we could disable the forge of ancients. Imho this would be an interesting idea.
Without forge we could leave blood stones as they are and would only need to slightly balance clams and fever fetishes.

So the above poll is obsolete and we start a new one:
Question 1:
Disable Forge of Ancients?
Question 2:
Which Hoard items should be nerfed?