MP: Noobs vs. Vets II: Mysterio's Revenge, EA, CBM, Game Over. Vets defeat Noobs.

[quantum_mechani]

Originally Posted by rdonj

So who do you guys nominate as graduates for this game? I'm going to assume one of them is C'tis, since he stymied you for a while

Personally, if I were to play in the next game, I would mind at all some less newbish newbs in the next game as long as it's accounted for in the player ratios.

[TheDemon]

It's fine if you don't until we're officialy done. The vets forum doesn't have very much scripting info in it or tactical info because most of that was on IRC. Lots of intel, but not so much that can be used against us.

I'd also echo qm's sentiment, I think even if we restarted this game right now with the same players, it would be a lot more challenging for the vet team. C'tis and TC were the ones that stood out for me, TC for his good use of magic, C'tis because every time we had a new trick he'd try something different in response.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah Darloth did a good job. The sauro player did an ok job too - however the only reason he survived was because CTis kept sucking away resources. Honorable mention goes out to whoever thought up the Rain of Toads plan, also. That was a real concern for us, as you can see in our forums. It effectively shut down Niefel for 10 or more turns. In a non-team game that would be have been a death sentence.

So, the vets had talked a couple of times throughout the game about putting together a list of advice for the noobs. We never got around to it but I thought I'd just post some ramblings:

1) Expand FAST - We specifically designed our nations for truly insane expansion speeds so you dont have to shoot for that, but you get the idea.

2) Focus on military gains, not territory gains - I think a lot of the noobs felt a false sense of security when they were able to tie up our raiders or push into vet lands. In dom3 wars, territories change hands rapidly becoming almost valueless except for their location and what you can attack/defend from them. To win, you have to destroy enemy armies and disable enemy production (capture or seige forts). If you arent doing those things you arent winning.

3) Predict Raiders, dont chase them - Dom3 movement mechanics will never allow you to catch raiders if they move away. You have to guess where they will go next to intercept them. Or use magical transport to attack them before the movement phase.

4) Dont buy more than 10 PD!! - Almost uniformly, all vets will purchase only 1pd in any of their provinces. PD are usually bad troops. PD cannot be moved if the front moves away. PD becomes insanely cost-inefficient over 15 or so. And lastly, no determined army or raider will be stopped by just PD. While there are certain exceptions to this rule based on nation and situation, I believe that all noobs should adopt it.

6) Fort production - Almost halfway through the game, we vets marveled at the fact that many noobs still had only their capital forts. Almost from turn 1, any vet will be planning where they can build thier 2nd (and maybe 3rd!) forts. Forts not only give you more mages (!!!!!!) but they also give you more troops and a defensive advantage.

6) Mages - Once any decent amount of research has been done it is suicide to send a large army out into the field without backup of mages. The number one thing that vets do when planning campaigns is figure out what assortment of mages to bring and how to script them.

7) Skelly Spam - the Ench 3 spell Raise Dead is very cheap and quite powerful. So much so that it has its own tactic name. Both my enemies could have used this very effectively early on.

[Ironhawk]

Can someone post a link to the noob forums? I'd like to read them...

[rdonj]

As I said I am considering opening up the noob forum early, but I won't do so unless I get approval from the noobs. There should be a link to the forum on the first page of this thread, you just won't be able to see anything interesting yet. I'll announce in here when the noob's forum is open for public viewing. If I open it before the game officially closes down however I will leave out the last several turn threads so that there is still some mystery.

Illuminated One (mictlan) is the one who came up with the rain of toads deluge. He had planned from turn one to lock 1 person down perpetually. I haven't read through all of your forum yet (comparing your turns with the noob turns side by side. It's an interesting contrast.), but it seems he managed to go for a double lockdown. There was some talk of try to lock down all of your caps if I recall, with priority going to caelum/niefel/helheim. I guess somewhere in there the priorities changed.

[Septimius Severus]

Yes, good job by Illuminated on shutting down vet caps.
Amazing stuff in the vet forum, the organization was equal too if not better than the noobs organization in the original game. This time we had played it somewhat footloose and fancy free and it cost us. Though I doubt I will ever have the time or devotion to take it to some of the extremes the vets did in their intricate planning and chatting sessions.

[TheDemon]

Not sure why you guys didn't go for more cap shutdown than you did. Had you shut down the Caelum cap for more than 5 turns it would have put me out of the game. I was pretty much exclusively using EKs and summons, next to zero troops and very few non-cap mages. That also meant that my expenses were basically a static 400/turn. I mean, I'd spend extra if I had it, but raiding me wasn't going to accomplish much I'm afraid. Niefel, Hinnom and Helheim are all somewhat cap-vulnerable too, but they have good troops they can recruit in their other forts. Not so with Caelum.

Once I realized I wasn't an immediate target I wasn't too worried as I had beelined it to Enchant 4 pretty early and from there it's only a few RP to level 5 and Dome of Solid Air.

On PD - it has its uses, but more than 10 is the exception not the rule, and divining what those uses are is pretty tricky. Often, too much PD in a defensive battle can be a liability rather than an asset as when they get mowed down they can accidentally cause a rout, or they can get caught in your AoE spells and effects (like Hydras, for example). One of the big reasons why I stuck with between 5 to 10 PD for all my lands was because if I ever had to deploy an EK group defensively, I would end up killing all my PD by accident, and they would cause a premature rout even if all that killed them was my own thunder strike spam.

[Illuminated One]

Well, I thought about locking down three caps, had the mages for that. Rdonj put Caelum high on the priority list but I used them against whoever was most scary at the moment, but Caelum would have been next.
But I lacked the bloodslaves through almost all of the game.
When I started it I had two bloodhunting provinces, and with the continous rituals I had trouble expanding it. By the time I could have thought about the third the casts were ineffective against Hinnom and Abysia and Lanka were going down so I focused on blood summons instead.
Kind of surprising that Niefel almost despaired, he seemed never to run out of Jarls.

[atul]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Well, I invite Atlantis to defend 140,

Ha, one turn notice for a nation who'se troops don't fly nor teleport and who is looking at the other direction currently. All right, if it pleases you I can put troops into that pit and leave Abysia for you, but if you were looking for a fight it went to C'tis direction. Sorry.

Hope you like what little I managed to gather, though.

And Sept, what extremes are you talking about? I don't recall any excessive stuff, though we had to plan around you and ourselves every now and then.

And isn't the game over officially if noobs have waved the white flag? Open the forums, rdonj!

[LumenPlacidum]

I have high hopes for being able to devote more attention to Noobs vs. Vets III over the summer when I'm not in final exams crunch mode. In the latter half of this game, I ended up staling a few turns and not being able to devote myself to planning and talking to my team. Sorry about that, all.

One of the biggest things I learned: I really don't like Agartha.