MP: No_NAPs_Land war ended, earcaraxe won!

[Valerius]

72 hours is fine with me - you guys take whatever time you need.

[earcaraxe]

sure, no problem. postponed by 36 hrs. i didnt raise the hosting interval yet, so please tell if u would like more postponements for the next turn anytime.

[vargr]

Thanks, I'll let you know if there's problems but I think I'll be fine with 72 h intervals after this turn.

[vargr]

Vanheim surrenders.

I don't have time for proper turns in the near future and even if I had I don't think I can change the end result. It would likely be a long and tediuos grind. High access to death is just that much better than air in the end game and I suspect you have me in the blood department as well.

Thanks for the game!

[earcaraxe]

thanks Vargr for the game, u proved to be a cunning opponent!

and ur pesky raiders were my achilles heel as Valerius showed me enough of their capability already in an other game.

and thanks valerius for the amazing feat of ur resurrection, i havent seen a province-graph like that ever.

would u care to sum up the history of the game? were u two in war in the early game? or ever?

from my perspective:

i started with an awake serpent lord pretender with 2 in every path, to get me a lot of gems early and by saving on sitesearching. taking luck and drain, and building skkull mentors. I waited a little to build up my kingdom, do the critical research, then planned to not turtle, so attack someone as early as possible. i saw the 4 of u get in a war early, and i saw a very strong abysia in the early game. so i attacked my only neighbor who wasnt in war: tien Chi. After a long war my skellyspam+darkness prevailed. just as i finished off TC basicly 3 of us remained: vanheim, hinnom, sauro. and a very small eriu (but with valerius at the helm, i knew he was capable of pulling off some suprises). hinnom immediately attacked me, but proved to be weaker, and finally i won (perhas it was kinda 1 vs 2,5). what happened in the meantime? as i remember vanheim was also in war with hinnom. who had erius cap under siege and how didnt he finished it off?

i have learnt a lot about fighting zmeys, first of all that they are superefficient, and easily worths their cost. at the end i had the income to summon 3 every two turns.

it was funny that valerius beat me by a second to both mother oak and earth well (wasting 130 gems). first i was reluctant to try to summon the earth and air royalties, but then i decided to take my chances. i got both erath kings, and nephele too, who (after about 2 hours of testing) i could equip to be an efficient zmey-killer.

i was also helped by the wolven gate west to my capitol, which gave a nice help to my bane summoning and ghost rider spam.

i dont have much experience playing with air nations, u might be right about the usefulness comparison. what are air gems can be used for in the endgame? i mostly use them for flying boots and booster and one or two big summons, but than again, i rarely play air nations.

those fire and water evocation rituals really stopped my main army at the gates of vanheim's cap, then it took me until now to gather up a new 700-ish (or something like that) army again.

thanks for the game again!

[vargr]

A recap:

Abysia had their burning ones two provinces from my cap at turn 6 or something, this really messed my game plans. I had to commit everything I had to survive which cost me a lot in terms of midgame developement. But I think I managed to use stealth to my advantage and buy time to get my evocations online. By the time I had storm, I had the upper hand but then Hinnom started to raid the former Abysian lands from me. I was somewhat surprised at this because they still had their forces bound by the TNN garrison (which was never beaten in this game) Frankly, I think Hinnom overextended which lead to their demise. Otherwise, I would rate Austen's play much better than he gave himself credit.

The heads up was with Sauromatia. I took some border forts but otherwise was unable to advance, Sauro however pushed relentlessy for my cap. Sauro could match my raiding with ghost riders and the pyre fueled zmeys, and their troop output was better than my ability to inflict losses. So in the long run so I couldn't really hope to gain ground, just try to keep it with constant raiding and counter raiding.

As for the A + B vs D + B, well that's just my (nonexpert) opinion. I consider the A nations more midgame powers. However, the heims do have good blood potential now with the 50% random. I've played EA Caelum to a large undecided endgame once and as you can easily have all your flying armies fully immune to lightning and go crazy with wrathful skies and shimmering fields in every fight, then maybe A can still be a winner in late game, but with Van, I think less so. At least I would have needed to start the heads up with a stronger position here but maybe with a better Van player, who knows.

Couple observations:

-As pointed out several times before, zmeys are ridiculous. When I'm able I always put my midgame F gems to these. I wouldn't want to, but is there really better use for them barring some very specific and situational needs?

-0.9% growth allows amazing amount of blood from just couple of large provinces, as opposed to the usual 3 hunters / prov. You just need enough patrollers. I was able to maintain essentially even population with over 50 slaves pulled from a province / turn. I don't know if it was meant to be this powerful. Learned this too late in this game to matter.

[earcaraxe]

wow, i didnt know that 50 slaves per turn was possible with that little pop loss. i have experienced in one of my previous MP game (when i was fighting a 2 vs 1 versus valerius and (i think) legowarrior) with abysia that growth 3 was unneeded when bloddhunting without patrollers: my provinces kept gaining population which i considered unnecessary, so nowadays im just using G1.

u did have the chalice, right?

did u have any blood discount sites southwest from ur cap? they seemed like some blood summoning nodes.

[vargr]

You need to sacrifice income from a very large province for that but its still cheaper, easier more efficient than spreading out.

A didn't have blood discount sites but had one with devil summoning. As for the artifacts, I had the teleport items, aegis a score of the 'junk' uniques + flailing hands and some other booster. Captured barrier, the ivy king hat and the bracers from you. But I didn't have the chalice, I think TNN had that

[earcaraxe]

oh, i didnt expect that. thats valerius's new tendency to put astral on his eriu pretender :P

i planned for a tart factory, but without the chalice or GoH its kinda "different feeling".

btw, i got one of ur zmeys with my army with the two demonlords 2 trns ago, and Pazuzu picked up the lycantrophos amulet, yay! So much for lightning protection... i wonder if its possible to mod its cursedness out. or its pickupability.

that move of urs to take out my ember lord "Kemence" was nice!

[vargr]

Originally Posted by earcaraxe

that move of urs to take out my ember lord "Kemence" was nice!

Thanks! Certainly better executed hitman mission than (I think) the two lost airboosted dwarwes who attempted RoS on your armies only to find out that their great leader had forgot to bring proper decoys with them

I think Valerius has mentioned this already, but the lycantrophos amulet relly add to the insult, even if you kill the damn zmey it still curses you afterwards