YARG2 , 24 players EA RAND game [7/24 players left]

[rdonj]

Oh. I do know who the sub for Ulm was actually, but after a scathing post like that I am not so sure I should reveal who the player was unless they want themself to be known. But the sub did tell me they didn't really have time for this game, and wanted to pass it on to someone with more time on their hands. My sub search didn't get any bites though, so they decided to play on despite not being able to devote a proper amount of time to the turns.

[Slobby]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Oh. I do know who the sub for Ulm was actually, but after a scathing post like that I am not so sure I should reveal who the player was unless they want themself to be known. But the sub did tell me they didn't really have time for this game, and wanted to pass it on to someone with more time on their hands. My sub search didn't get any bites though, so they decided to play on despite not being able to devote a proper amount of time to the turns.

Haha was it scathing? I suppose so, but that's honestly how I felt at the time.

No worries on the reveal. It doesn't matter to me, all I know is that the player wasn't putting in what WingedDog put in, and that's all that's important.

Also I know you did try to find a sub and there were no takers. It is what it is.

Oh and also gratz to Psycho/Dimaz they played a good game.

[Psycho]

So, this one is finally over. I was TC until turn 60-ish and here is the AAR for that period. Dimaz will give the rest. I was pretty disappointed when I got TC, since I didn't like the nation at the time - all paths, but low levels in everything. But then I discovered how insanely powerful W5Es are and TC is now easily my second favourite nation (right after Kailasa).

Build: Dormant Lady of Fortune W9S5N4, scales are the standard Order 3, Sloth 3, Heat 1, Misfortune 2, Magic 1. First research goal was constr4 to equip my SC pretender after she wakes up, as well as some alt and ench for buffs. Together with nice blessed sacreds this meant an easy early game. After that I went for enchantment, since all important buffs for my sacreds were there - antimagic, elemental wards and arrow fend. Finally, rush to constr8 and pick up golems along the way. I aslo planned conj6 for celestial soldiers before that, but realized that I don't need them.

Expansion didn't go that great. Apparently my part of the map was crowded, since by turn 9 I ran into 5 (yes, five) neighbors and had nowhere more to expand. Also I ran into two neighbors with my two expansion armies on an early winter turn and lost practically all my army due to a bug with W5Es. I'll write more about the bug on the general forum - it is one reproducible cause of incorrect battle replays.

Fortunately, one of the neighbors was Kailasa with no bless and excellent scales, imprisoned oracle pretender (the only possible choice for those scales), recruiting tons of bandars and atavis. Kailasa without bless? Well, he asked for it. Of course, I rushed him. I quickly reduced him to his capital, but that is where the problem occured. Namely, his army size was 3-4 times larger than mine, so there was no way I could breach those castle walls and he refused to come out and play. I tried to lure his army out a few times, but unsuccessfully. He remained bunkered in the capital for the next 50-ish turns. Oh, I should also say that right after my pretender awoke, in the first two turns I got an elemental stuff and a ring of wizardry from random events. Can you imagine what kind of boost that is for TC.

On my south border Hinnom was growing insanely, gobbling up Ctis who overexpanded. At first, I though that Ctis would make a comeback or at least slow Hinnom down, because I profiled him as a better player than Hinnom, but this didn't happen. So, I had to attack a stronger opponent while having Kailasa with an army at least three times as large as my own sitting behind. I thought that others would join in once they see someone is making the first move against Hinnom - namely TNN and Pangaea, both of whom were in no wars and had borders with Hinnom. Boy, was I wrong. Thankfully, Ctis was doing some uber defence of his capital, crushing Hinnom's storming force three of four times, which really helped my cause. First year of the war I was probing him - took some territories, waiting for him to retaliate into traps I set for him. And also for others to join in. Nothing of this happened, so second year I went in with all my forces, save some token force on Kailasa capital. And I must say, I was disappointed with Pangaea especially at this point. Because, Hinnom had three armies, one of them on Ctis capital and the other two pinned by me in his castles, as well as all his SCs. Pangaea had a streak of provinces guarded by nothing other than pd on his border. The war with Hinnom was where W5Es buffed by masters really shined. Hinnom thugs/SCs were helpless against them. Imagine a Melqart or a Hinnom hero fully equipped with a frost/fire brand, vine shield and the rest of the standard equipment losing to a group of 20 sacreds, killing maybe one of them. All resistances, defence of 20, 16MR for those vine shields and astral shields and two short swords with water bless to go past luck and defence. Again, I quickly took the provinces, but the capital was the problem - three SCs fully equipped, one of them prophet and sphinx pretender.

Around that time Pangaea went full out on Ctis leaving his lands undefended and I reached constr8. Flying ship + flying mages = my troops on his capital instantly and without warning. And again Ctis helped me by destroying the force storming his capital. Djinn took the Hinnom capital on his own (those 30 att and 30 def are unbeatable, I love djinn). I was quickly done with Pangaea and proceeded towards Ctis. I felt bad about having to attack Calahan after all the help I got from him and the great game he played even though he knew he couldn't win since like turn 15.

Ulm was playing a superb game to my east, killed a very good opponent (Sauro), who I thought would last much longer. Again, as with Hinnom, I knew I must react in time. So, while I was attacking Pangaea and finishing Hinnom, I prepared the attack force for Ulm. I knew his bane and gargoyle thugs stood no chance against W5Es properly buffed. I also made some SCs of my own - golems and summoned lots of troops to breach castle walls. I tried to attack while his thugs were still busy north with Sauro, but he had more of them than I thought and he was ready for my attack. Still the attack was successful and his capital was under siege and about to be stormed by my more numerous and superior forces. The only problem were iron adepts he had and they were the only thing that saved him at the start of the war.

This is the moment when real life kicked in, I moved to Switzerland and had to find a sub. I hated having to quit the game, especially since I knew I was winning. Fortunately, Dimaz was out of the game early and at least I gave my nation into capable hands. So, he got handed this very hard late game position and did a great job with it. Anyone who subbed knows how hard it is to take over a nation in late game. He was in war with Ulm, nation about roughly the same in power as him, led by an excellent player and also Kailasa and Ctis left to mop up. And with my flawed plan about how to attack Ulm's capital. Namely, I thought that magic duel would target the highest astral mage in the army. So, I thought that sending the pretender along with the army, would make all Ulm's iron adepts try to magic duel the pretender, instead of the masters buffing the W5Es. I was wrong. That battle on Ulm's capital was the weirdest thing I ever saw - another case of bad replay. In the replay, iron adepts aren't very successful, the buffs go off and the whole Ulm's army is slaughtered with maybe 2-3 W5Es dying on TC side. In the battle report, however, Ulm loses 3 units and the whole TC army is dead, except the pretender. Crazy.

This was a really great game for me with many good opponents (Sauro, Ctis, Ulm just to name a few). Unfortunately, most of them killed each other and just as I attacked the best I had to leave the game. Winged Dog, I would love to fight you in another game. Thanks also WL for organizing and for playing a good game with Rlyeh. Would you share how you did your early expansion with aboleths. When I saw the HoF early on, I tried some tests with them, but they seemed to lack the killing power. And, of course, thanks rdonj our admin. When I left the game, I sent you a PM about my guesses for the remaining players. Do you still have it, I am interested how many I got right.

[WraithLord]

Slobby, my beach head was my first land province in the whole game.
Atlantis offed my pretender so I had a lot of catching up to do in order to get to end game level. I was nowhere near being in shape to attack any land nation, let alone TC.

Thanks for the explanation. You played as you saw fit and don't need to "defend" your decisions. I still think you should have gone at TC. For the simple reason that you had the best chance to win after him.

[rdonj]

I wish I did have it, but no I had to clear my messages since that pm. Maybe you still have it? I remember responding to it, and may have left the quotes in.

[WingedDog]

The game has ended already? A bit unexpected.
My congratulations to Psycho and Dimaz, hope you did like our battles and mindgames as I did (but I think you did enjoy them even more since you actually won ).
It was certanelly the most interesting game I ever participated thanks to the players, the ballance Cal brought to the game and to rdonj, who is a perfect adminisrator.

Today I'm on a construction site, so I will have time to write an AAR only tomorrow or on Saturday.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Slobby

As both WL and Cal pointed out already the player behind TNN didn't do jack, and I found it funny that the turn after I attacked TNN the player went AI.

Didn't know about this extra "someone attacked him" part of why he bailed, but it does make TNN's existence even funnier.

As TNN in this game was like a mirage. As I'm sure some players looked at TNN throughout the game and thought "Hhhhmmm, they could be a slightly tricky foe due to their mass raiding, and they could certainly have a say in who wins this game". But then when Slobby decided to be the first to actually touch the mirage, POOF!!! they immediately went up in smoke, as TNN didn't actually exist Superb stuff

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Nice write-up Psycho

Originally Posted by Psycho

On my south border Hinnom was growing insanely, gobbling up Ctis who overexpanded. At first, I though that Ctis would make a comeback or at least slow Hinnom down, because I profiled him as a better player than Hinnom, but this didn't happen.

Yeah, on reflection I certainly over-expanded. Although oddly I still think that it was more that my expansion rate was normal, and everyone else's was just slowed due to the Indy 9, so this just made mine look over-ambitious One thing I do need to change with my play in Indy 9 games is to realise just how much they slow others down (as tbh they rarely have much effect my expansion rate). Lessons learnt for next time though

And I had intended a comeback against Hinnom, but 3 crucial factors prevented me.

1 - Couldn't find an answer to those Hinnom Chariots, as tangle vine casters would always target the Hinnom infantry (mainly as they can pack 2 in a square. They have to be made at least size 4 IMO, but that's another story)
2 - Some snipers (TNN, Pangaea, nation North of TNN) took away my income base by grabbing half a dozen provinces off me the turn after Hinnom attacked.
3 - Most crucially of all, the retarded Pangaea player who not only decided he wasn't ever going to attack Hinnom, but also made sure I wasn't able to counter-attack either by sitting on my second fort with his main (only) army for 10-15 turns. As Hinnom could only pin one of my forts down with what he had in the area, and so what he desperately needed more than anything else for a comfortable victory over me was someone else to pin my other fort down. And lo and behold, fortune favoured him by having a lifetime member of the "I love Hinnom" fan club right next to him in the forest sitting in the Sacred Grove.

Originally Posted by Psycho

Thankfully, Ctis was doing some uber defence of his capital, crushing Hinnom's storming force three of four times, which really helped my cause.

I was more than happy to help your cause against Hinnom (and help myself of course by surviving), since you were the only player who showed any brains in attacking them. As by that stage "Complete destruction of Hinnom" was my only aim in the game. And then again "likewise all the above" with Pangaea when they came back for their second helping of Lizard. (why they attacked me again after I beat them off the first time I have no idea. As it was blindingly obvious what would happen if they did. ie. TC would kill us both easily. Oh yeah that's right I do know why, it's because the Pangaea player(s) were useless retards, that's why)

Originally Posted by Psycho

I felt bad about having to attack Calahan after all the help I got from him and the great game he played even though he knew he couldn't win since like turn 15.

And you certainly shouldn't feel bad in any way about attacking me after the Hinnom/Pangaea dust had settled. As there's no place in this game for "lets all join hands and live in peace". Attacking me got you another cap for very little pain, and it would have been a bad mistake IMO for you to have done anything else, especially considering you had decent forces in the area anyway. (and I wouldn't have expected anything else either)

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Originally Posted by WingedDog

Today I'm on a construction site...

...constructing evil plans

[Valerius]

Congratulations to Dimaz and Psycho on the win. Also, thanks to rdonj for admining.

When I subbed in Ermor was one of the smaller nations but with game leading research (pretender was an F2E3S3 forge lord with Order 3, Productivity 1, Growth 3, Misfortune 1, Magic 1). Two of my land neighbors were Fomoria and Ulm and attacking them didn't seem like a good idea. I was planning on attacking Pan but TC beat me to it before I felt I was ready (in retrospect I think I was being overly cautious). I could perhaps still have jumped in, though I'm guessing TC would have perceived this as poaching and proceeded to attack me. Unfortunately, this meant I now had three much larger neighbors and I wasn't sure where to go from there (I never seriously considered going into the water where Atlantis and R'lyeh were busy fighting it out).

This was my first time participating in a RAND game and my thoughts at that point were to not suicide myself against a far stronger nation, try to weaken the strong nations, and try to increase my nation's power (though my chances of winning were of course virtually non-existent). The best I could come up with was to help Arco/TNN if/when they were attacked (I was assuming it would be Fomoria since TC and Ulm were occupied). But then the same turn Fomoria made his move R'lyeh attacked me. In any case, once the TC/Ulm war was no longer a stalemate I should have scrapped the original plan and attacked TC.

I've really gotten used to the EDM summons and missed having them (iirc the mod hadn't yet been released when this game started). When a global spot opened up and I was able to grab earth blood deep well I really wished I had some EDM summons to spend it on. As it was I did my best to get some tarts with my weak D and N income.

Btw, at one point I wished for the Chalice and had it for about a dozen turns before it was wished away. I immediately wished it back but lost it again the next turn. At that point I would have had to alchemize my remaining gems in order to try again and I probably still would have lost it so that marked the end of my healing tart afflictions. I'm curious who I wished it from originally and if that was the same person I went back and forth with a bit later.

[Dimaz]

Well, first of all, thanks to our admin rdonj and game organizer WraithLord for very interesting game. Also I want to say in the beginning that it’s clearly Psycho and not me who deserves main part of the victory. In fact, I lost in this game almost a year ago
Some words about that first part. I got Yomi (another thug nation after Gath in YARG1) and my planned strategy combined Baalz’s size-1 goblies and Dai Oni thugs. Expansion went pretty good (those goblins are great at it) but the start position was in the middle of mountains and caves so even with one of the top province count I was in the middle by the gold income. It hit me immediately as there was not enough gold to hire both Dai Onis and goblies. And their strength is in numbers, as you know.
My neighbors were Lanka, Ulm, Sau and Vans and the Van was in the map “corner” so it was pretty obvious that we started to fight (I don’t remember who attacked but it doesn’t matter). Soon I discovered that in tests my goblins fail to kill his infantry in reasonable numbers so I started sneaking all around and taking the undefended provs while researching const and buffs for Dai Onis. One turn IIRC I had all the Van lands except the castles. But I had no means to kill his army yet. After some time when research was finished I started adding Dai Onis to goblin groups and had pretty good chances to finally deal with Van but at this time Sau attacked with lots of archers and Witch Kings. I wasn’t prepared for it and after some battles lost pretty quickly.
Then, after long time, I was contacted by Psycho who asked if I can sub his TC who had a leading position. I looked at the turn and decided to help. TC position was really strong; he had some unfinished business in the west (monkeys and Ctis) and a war with second big power in the east (Ulm). The only thing that surprised me was that he didn’t have lanterns with fire global up and has been researching with his cap mages and fighting with ordinary ones.
First of all I started forging lanterns with everyone who had F so there was some drop in research graph after switching the players, but after that I moved lots of the (now free) mages to the Ulm cap that was sieged before I joined. On the west front, after some unsuccessful attempt to storm Ctis, I was able to finally do it. Also, monkeys were able to break my sieging forces and moved to my neighboring castle and tried to storm, but I ported some EA guys there so he received 3 or 4 RoS on the first turn and the storm failed, after that it wasn’t that hard to take them too.
So the west front was secured, I hit my target of 1000 RP/turn and had the strangest situation never encountered before in Dom: I had too much money. All the research was done with cheap sacred mages with lanterns, but it was hard for me to find those mages any other task – 2W and WS can do some tasks in battle, but D, WN, WA – well, I think it’s possible to use them with success, but I don’t know how – in late game. So I completely stopped buying anything except Celestial masters, W5Es and some indy mages (iron adepts mainly). So I had several thousands free each turn. I started castling like crazy and in the end I think all the lands I had originally were castled almost completely.
OK, so the west front was secured, but what about Ulm? I tried to storm his cap (that was already sieged) but failed, and I don’t even know why: replay bug. I lost ton of cap-only mages, fortunately the pretender survived. Another Ulm castle, Fever Fens, was also sieged and it was in the middle before my cap and Ulm’s; I concentrated all the remains there.
Ulm decided to counterstrike and used flying banes to capture lots of (not castled yet) lands, I started to use golems to hunt them, but it was a trap – one turn he killed 3 or 4 golems with duelers there. After that I started to act more cautiously so part of TC lands were under Ulm rule for some time. Also I started hiring Ds to put with PD everywhere to spam DtD on banes but it wasn’t that effective.
However, at that time we had AC in play which I think also influenced our war. I had S mages with all the important combinations so I was forging gear for bane thugs/golems without fear of losing the hammers and the forger; also as I had Iron adepts I started MHing those banes so he had to retreat eventually. Somewhere at that time I tried to storm Fever Fens but he had very strong force there so I lost again.
Now we are approaching the final part. I had the chalice from the beginning so the obvious route was to go for tarts; VH research made it not that easy, but still after some time I got the con9. Also I had the ench site near cap where I summoned several Liches; it was during AC period so some of them entered the neverending death cycle (I saw it first time, when horrors attacked them several times – one during forge/cast phase and another one during horror attack phase) and several permadied in Fever Fens storm (I think it has something to do with turn resolution sequence as I always had my dom there but during the battle it was Ulm’s). Anyway 2 Liches started to summon Tarts each turn; while Ulm prepared another raiding party, now with Harvesters of Sorrow. Somehow I managed to deal with them and it was the time when the Ulm ownership switched. New player made several mistakes and lost many valuable items and commanders on me, after which I stormed the Fever Fens again. I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for 6 RoS during turn 1 so my battle plan failed almost completely; however I had 6 or so fully geared tarts and several banes there and 2 Liches somehow survived so one of the main part – 4*Undwad mastery with all pen boosters – still worked so in the end Fevers Fens became mine. After that I ignored the Ulm army in the next castle and move to the cap, taking it without much effort. Now I had all the roads to Ulm lands open, I moved there and the turns became like 1) equip 2 new tarts 2) send teleporting ones 3) send moving ones 4) forge equip for 2 tarts and Gate cleavers 5) repeat. That’s how it ended.
Also someone tried to wish away the chalice from me (2 times) but I got it back pretty soon both times. And in the end I was wishing for gems every turn and captured Conj site from Ulm so even more tarts.
In fact I was somewhat afraid of Rlyeh because he had easy access to some of my caps and of Fomoria for the same reason. But they played as they played and TC won. I’m not sure they had the chances anyway; I had pretty strong Tart force, many Iron and silver adepts and other stuff. I’ll attach the trn file to this post.

[WraithLord]

"Would you share how you did your early expansion with aboleths. When I saw the HoF early on, I tried some tests with them, but they seemed to lack the killing power."

Sure, though in retrospect I'm not sure I'm all that happy with my build or strat.
I took a rbw research pretender with aim of getting some crucial alt. spells ASAP.
Once I had those the mind lords became semi SCs, they could quite dependably clear indie provinces of any given size.
They started failing against Atlantis fully equipped Basalt Kings. This was where I started a desperate search for the right counter, after many failure I found one. Water Elementals.

This game convinced me that R'lyeh needs an awake SC. No getting cute about it.

Guys, any interest in a YARG3?