AAR for Man. Part 1.
Man I Hate All Things Green
Right, where to begin this thing. I seem to remember my Pretender design for this game being literally a five minute affair due to a lot of RL crappy-ness at the time. And quite rightly, it was this slap-dash designing that was the cause of most of my limitations during the game. Plus the switch from playing entirely CBM games to suddenly playing a vanilla game did a real number on my senses with regards what Pretenders were cost effective. Probably should've just played a no-brainer card and gone with one of the Pretenders QM has nerfed the hell out of in CBM. Like Cyclops or especially PoD
In the end I went for a big multi-path Master Lich with 2's in all paths except for 3 in Earth, Astral and Death for obvious Rings and Hammers access. Part of my hastily put together plan was to take my Pretender awake to get a lot of gem income very quickly. That idea ended up a huge fail.
Scales wise I went for O3S3H2G3M2D2 and Dominion 7.
Order 3 needs no comment. Sloth 3 was fine as well IMO, since even though LA Man has some useful mid-level resource troops, I was planning to use mass Longbows to expand which are resource cheap. Plus once the first dozen or so turns are done, I find resource problems largely vanish with all nations by building forts in select locations (if you have a need for a lot of resources that is). Some nations do need to avoid Sloth though in order to get a decent expansion rate. Heat 2 was just a points grab for extra magic paths. Growth 3 was to keep those damn Arcane's alive. Since without Death or Nature paths their old age were sure to hit them hard come winter. Misfortune 2 is another no comment job given Order 3.
Drain 2 was the main decision scale wise. LA Man's mages can ignore the research effect of Drain scales, so it seemed a logical call. And I avoided Drain 3 due to the magic fading event it allows, which I've been hit with before, and remember it costing me literally hundreds of gems. But my research really did suffer all game as a result, and I'd certainly think about taking a magic scale with LA Man next time. Possibly even Magic 3, under which Magister's become research kings. But then along with this change, I'd also change practically everything else about my build as well, since it was generally very poor all round.
Onto the game itself.......
My start location was pretty dire (200) for LA Man's needs. Dire as in Forests and Mountains everywhere. Since the last type of forts LA Man wants to build are 1000gp Forest Castles, or the God awful 1200gp Hill Castle. So I forecast slim prospects of building any nice money boosting Citadels or Fortified Cities
Plus all the Forests meant a high likelihood of finding more Nature gems which I wouldn't be able to use for ages.
[Intermission] Some Dominions 3 trivia for you all. Did you know that LA Man are the only nation in the entire game that have a starting gem income but no corresponding national mages with the matching path to use them. In the entire game! No idea if this is WAD or just a pure oversight. But either way it makes no sense IMO, and it can be damn annoying to have only half the useable starting gem income compared to every other nation in the game. Plus it feels completely at odds with how every other nation in the game is setup. Maybe something for CBM to look into?! [/Intermission]
My expansion rate was reasonable enough, as just a few Defenders placed just back from centre are fine line holders for the Longbows to do their job from the back. The biggest problem I had during expansion was the sheer lack of options. With the connection between (200)+(219) getting cut during map balance for no logical reason I can see, I was left to either fight for a handful of provinces to my South, where I'd quickly run into whoever started at (138) (Caelum as it turned out), or take my chances into traffic by heading West. I really wanted to avoid the latter as I envisioned whoever started in (248) (Pythium as it turned out) was going to expand hard in a South-West direction, as they had the luxury of being able to ignore all East expansion until a much later date. Since all those provinces were gloriously safeguarded in the early game by the modified map connections. So this, along with a starter at (184) (Utgard as it turned out), left me pretty doubtful of securing any real provinces towards my West.
Not too much to report about the first dozen or so turns. Main disappointment came from the first three province searches with my Pretender all striking out site wise. Although I did get lucky with finding an Enchantment 30 site a bit later. But as the game unfolded, this province was to prove to be in a real hot-zone, which meant I never got a chance to fort it to take advantage of it. I also found all my neighbours, and witnessed Utgard doing a rush job on Abysia. Indeed, had Utgard come straight for me instead of Abysia, I doubt I would have stood much chance in holding them off. So guess I had a lucky break here when Utgard did their usual eeny-meeny-miny-moe on turn 2 with regards which VP marked capital to bee-line towards.
My checking account after the expansion phase left my balance looking reasonably ok, apart from the major drawback of having a really strung out empire. As besides a clump of provinces to the South of my capital, all the other provinces I grabbed were in a flat line leading West. Which I had no doubt would be impossible to defend logistic wise if anyone apart from my Southern neighbours attacked me. Heck, I would even struggle to reclaim them if the multi-coloured sock wearing Baa-Baas paid me a visit. So while my province count was looking healthy on the surface, in reality it was suffering from a lot of deep rooted afflictions.
So with expansion over, and with having built forts on the only two secure provinces I had that allowed 'good' forts, it was time to look for opportunities at the expense of others.
My scouts had brought home a lot of info by this time, and had learnt of wars between Utgard-Pangaea. Mictlan-Gath. Jomon-Pythium. Atlantis-Everyone. I really wanted to attack Utgard at this stage, but knew it could be a bit of a struggle given their typical giant nation bless without the necessary spells (Destruction mainly). But a huge collection of pathless Magister's was really slowing my research down badly. Although they would give me good unrest causing options once a war did kick off.
In the end I settled on attacking Caelum to my South, since they were occupying themselves to their South by sticking their nose into the Ulm-Atlantis war. Also thought it'd be a good idea to get rid of Caelum sooner rather than later, since they could prove to be the nemesis to my Flaming Arrow's mid-game once they had Storm and/or Arrow Fend researched. With hindsight I should have attacked Utgard, but everyone knows hindsight wins every game, so no point dwelling on this.
In the turns leading up to my war with Caelum, I had started stockpiling a load of gold. Think I had about 3k by the time the fighting started. This was not so much because I had nothing to spend gold on, and more because I was refusing to build those crappy forts I mentioned earlier, and I was eyeing some of Caelum's provinces as nice future Fort sites. So thought it'd be good to have the gold to fort them instantly at hand the moment I secured them. The first two turns of the Caelum war went precisely as planned, as I found little resistance against my mass Communion + Defender/Longbow armies, due entirely to Caelum's main force being on war duties far from home. But a dark cloud was looming on the immediate horizon in the form of a giant-shaped twister.
Now, for the first time in my RAND game experience, I actually witnessed a war between two nations coming to a complete halt. And as anyone who has played in a few RAND games will know, this is a pretty rare occurrence, since with no diplomacy to ask for peace, you usually have to keep fighting your enemy(s) until you win or lose. And it was the sudden stop to the Utgard-Pangaea war that caused all my plans to be turned on their heads when Utgard attacked me the very turn after I attacked Caelum. Found this a real curve-ball to deal with, as Utgard-Pangaea had been squabbling over the Abysia capital for a good dozen turns beforehand, and I didn't expect a winner to be found between them anytime soon. And the prospect of them suddenly embracing for kisses in a loving peace hug didn't enter my head for even a moment.
But this sudden turn of events left me facing the stark reality that my plans of being the minnow hunter getting turned against me, as with blessed giants now knocking on my door, the odds were looking good that it would be Man and not Caelum who would be the little fish heading for the catfood factory.
So from having no wars two turns ago, I suddenly found myself in two of them. With the main problem, besides the usual ones associated with fighting on two fronts, being a huge logistical one given my map-move 1 armies, and the large distance between the Caelum and Utgard battle zones. Plus the temporary problem of having absolutely all my forces sitting on the Caelum capital. Not because I needed all my forces to win the battles against Caelum, but because I wanted to get Caelum's huge 700 defence capital breached before they got any key anti-Man research done. Which would be a tall order given Caelum flying advantage during sieges.
So with this sudden emergence of a new war against a powerful enemy, I needed to come up with a plan quick, else find myself on the losing backfoot on both fronts........
This is probably a good as time as any to end Part 1 of this AAR. Part 2 at some point soon I hope....
Re: YARG - Yet Another RAND Game [Isokron's Midgard wins!]
Linear Mode
