YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]

[Dimaz]

So, who is our winner? I bet it's WL

[WraithLord]

Nope. I'd have thought it was you but now I know better

[WingedDog]

Rejoice, True God had ascended! My congratulations to Midgard.
I did enjoy the game, even if I didn't have chances to win and played as a background most of the game. Credit to my opponents.

My personal discredit to Tien Chi player for total pacifism, and to player subung Patala after Executor (not the last Patala player, whoever this mysterious person is) for not even trying.

List of the players to the studio, please!

[WraithLord]

ok. Now that the game's over we can remove the masks. I was playing Bogarus. Here's a short AAR:

Prior to this game I'd no experience with Bogarus. I had no idea how it plays so I set out to experiment and at the end went for an awake E4 Wyrm + good scales build.
The Wyrm made my initial expansion a breeze. Unfortunately I was hit by Arco from the north while my armies were expanding on the south so it took me a while to swing back and hit Arco hard.
Meanwhile Ctis has intervened and I was content to let it finish Arco.
A mistake since Ctis cont. by attacking me. Ctis with W9 bless but little research didn't seem like much of an obstacle to stellar research Bogarus thus came my 2nd mistake - underestimating Ctis.
So I thought, no need to open the after burners and squish Ctis. I can take my time with it while running longer term projects in the background (research, forging & summoning).
As it was, Ctis was led by a very competent player and the war that ensued lasted for the rest of the game. The war was actually fun, it had everything: raids, skirmishes and huge battles, mind games, surprises, disappointments and tragedies aplenty for both sides.
Now Ctis is almost dead (thanks Patala for that extra push ) but the war with Ctis practically neutralized me the whole game so I could only watch in horror as Midgard made his way to victory.

At times it felt like there were two games. One in which Midgard and the rest were playing it out and another - my private hell, shared by my hated cellmate - Ctis player

[WraithLord]

congratz Midgard!

Come forward all. I want to know who's who

[Dimaz]

I was Gath. Also no experience before this game (however, after it started I was really impressed by them and took them in Sharivar). I don't want to tell all the details now as some of them can be used against me in Sharivar, but after Constr 2 and 4 I started equipping Gadols as thugs/SCs and they were my main force after that. I was bordered by Mictlan and Tien Chi and decided to attack Mictlan first before he had tons of jags, even before I had Constr research done, and we had some nice battles, including tele-fragging his Dagon with my god in neutral dominion, after which I managed to take his second castle and siege his capital. In the process Tien Chi took some of my lands, but I was able to stop him moving further and he fought with Utgard after that. Mictlan was able to break my siege with his tons of sacreds, but my Gadols were able to retreat and regroup and sieged him again, and now they were all set to preach as breaking the Mict capital seems as tough as Pangea's. I reached Constr8 and forged many nice stuff including Chalice, Gatestone, Magebane, The Summit, Boots of Planes and some other arts. Finally Mictlan was preached out (our war was 40+ turns long I think), and I started invading TC who finished with Utgard at the time. He made no attempt to retaliate at all but I was overcautious and lost some time here too. All this time I had almost no nature (2-3 or so for the first 40+ turns and 4-5 in the end) so I had no clams and fetishes, but in the end I started spamming Bloodstones, unfortunately it was too late.
Midgard was climbing the graph but I had no access to him (except teleporting on some of his rear VP with astral gadols and Gatestone, which I was planning) but he did it first, I equipped all teleporting forces last turn with all I had and threw them in the final battle, but they had absolutely no chances.
So, all in all, it was rather interesting game for me and I hope I will join the sequel

[WraithLord]

Oh and many many thanks to our gracious host - rdonj!

Dimaz: Yes. A sequel is certainly in store.
I think players of this game should get the chance to join first. So all who wish to join the sequel please speak up now. I'll open a new thread for the sequel in a day or two.

rdonj: are you still willing to perform as admin for the sequel?

All: The sequel will be CBM 1.6. Any other changes you want to make please speak up now.

[Calahan]

Congrats to Midgard. My guess is Midgard is Isokron ftw. And it was looking pretty ominous for everyone else even before RL forced me to bow out as Man somewhere around turn 50.

I'll try to write a AAR when I find time to cover the uneventful campaign that was Man. Not much to mention, but a few scolds to hand out to those who gave away nation id's, and a mention about the OP starting location Pythium had. (A ridiculous 7 provinces automatically safeguarded at the start due to the connection between 200+219 being cut. Bad map editing someone, as Pythium cap should have been a lot further East than it was, or the connection kept open)


And thanks to the players, and of course the fabulous and selfless admin work done by rdonj. Hope I didn't annoy you too much with my regular pokes regarding stalers and pestering for sub-finding


Edit: @ Wraith - I'd potentially be up for a CBM sequal. will try to gather some ideas for it (can't think of any right now though tbh, apart from my usual requsts of a wrap-around map and not having caps marked with bullseyes)

[Psycho]

No surprise here. Subbing Pangaea three-four turns into the game I already saw Midgard as winner. I took over Pangaea with no Pans (except for 1 panic apostate), almost no national army (just indy crossbows and giants), all gems spent, no items in the treasury, nature income of 3 (no site outside of capital and everything searched for N) and pretender dead. Obviously in war with Midgard, but my main army standing on the border with Ulm. I rushed the army towards the capital, but it was too late. I tried to entice Ulm to attack Midgard, but he attacked me. So, while everyone fought mostly even fights going back and forth - Ctis and Bogarus, Mictlan and Gath, Man and Utgard - Midgard just steamrolled over Pan and Ulm. Many experienced players in the game, but everyone just let Midgard get away with it (at least while Pan was still alive).

[WingedDog]

I was the one behind C'tis.

I took W9E4 awake Blue Dragon, becouse after few initial expasion tests I found C'tis troops to be pretty weak to expand against indies 9 on their own, so I needed an SC. C'tis had lot of sacred troops, mages and summons, so SC with a good bless seemed to be good idea. After few more tests I found water bless to be most sufficient as it made sacred serpents a lot more effective in early game and turned Tomb Kings into unstoppable killing machines later on. Earth was taken as a bless for mages + hammers and possible earth summons.

Alas, I had the worst beginning I ever had so far. I started in the area with only forests and mountains around. For the first 7 turns I had 3 indies attack on my provinces (misfortune 1), one of them destroyed my early fortress

at the building stage the very same turn I moved my pretender away from the province (ironicaly scales in that province atm were order 2, neutral fortune ). Ouch! Retaking provinces was a hell, becouse mountans and forests were annoyingly slowing my movement. Then, my pretender got a disease affiction from indies, and got muted the very next turn. Ouch! But I wasn't the one unlucky around - my scout reported Arco's pretender was lost to the indies, and I took it as my opportunity to climb out of the pit. Bogarus was also displaying interest in Arco, so I desided to launch an attack as soon as possible to capture the capital first... And it was my mistake, I should have just continued taking indie provinces around them, growing in streight. Arcoscephalians repelled with everything they got, totally devastating my invasion force, and launching counterattack afterwards. I managed to overcome them in a bloodshedy war, but was considerably weakened and lost my pretender twice.
Bogarus player acted wisely and stayed out of our fight researching, bloodhunting and building forces. He striked precicely after I took over Arco capital with thunderstrike spamming reverse communion never giving me a time to recover from the war. The research level of Bogarus was the gratest at the moment, while I had to place most of my mages on the battlfield in order to defeat Arco and thus having the lousiest research in the game. Had Bogarus brought more mages out of his labs - I'd be a lost cause for sure, but with some 'cat and mouse' games I managed to win some time and to withstand the invasion by the price of a loss of Arco's capital. After reaching a sertain level of research I finally managed to bear of my fangs. Rigor Mortis, Quagmire, Winter Grip and their combinations were a nightmare for Bogarus's comunions, I took the upper hand in war for some time and even managed to break into Bogarus's capital destroying ~30 comanders, mostly starets's and 2 Queens of Air... but it was my magnum opus for this game, Bogarus started using Life after Death and focusing on building skeletons, vampires and tartarians. Having way less resourses then Bogarus I started slowly fading.
In the meantime my intelligence informed me of Patala, gathering forces for the reasons unknown. Keeping in mind Midgard marching all over the rest of the world, I decided Patala prepares an attack on him, but still had an itchy feeling and built some forces in my capital... And it was a right decision, Patala attacked me with such a number of artifacts I felt almost flattered. But from geopolitical point of view they had unbound Midards hands. Seeing Patala is occupied with me Midgard atacked Pythium - the only other nation who could make a difference for him beside Patala (and possibly Ashdod) the very next turn. Even if I managed to pull first Patala wave away - second one was deadly for me, but it did not really matter, becouse Midgard rockes the World, baby!

But, anyway, I really enjoyed the game, and special thanks to my opponent, Wraithlord, for that.
Thanks to all participants.
Very special thanks to rdonj for being a perfect administrator.
Looking forward for the next RAND game.

P.S. Glad to see you back, Cal.