the Gold Lion (running)

[Micah]

Well, given that you just took a 2nd capital over on turn 7 or whatever I'd say you're in pretty good shape, since that's a huge chunk of extra income and gems. The trick now is to leverage that and continue to expand, since if you stop it's an invitation to get passed up by someone with better scales.

[AdmiralZhao]

No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

[Hellboy]

AdmiralZhao said:
No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

Lankans == hobbits

Now that's a hoot!

[Dragonlord]

Hi Zhao, I really appreciate you posting here on how things went from your point of view. I'll just add some info to some of your comments.

AdmiralZhao said:
Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.

That is right, it was a roll of the dice on whose movement went first, and you got lucky. I had taken the one good province to my west (which was on the coast and had really good income, and was crucial for me), and that turn I could either retreat into my capital again and get new troops, or try to take the crappy province directly north of my province in the hope that you would ignore that one and retreat back north yourself. I had reason to hope for that as you had sent an ingame message that turn professing a desire for peace, and an intention to explore your east rather than gambling everything so early on on taking me out.

But the way things went you even took my nice western province from me, but got weakened in the process. Then I saw your new army of reinforcements show up from the north, which the game reported to me as having 30 troops, mostly archers. By then all I had was my capitol army of about 50 troops, and I had to prevent those reinforcements linking up with your pretenders army. So, I sent my 50 guys vs your 30, while bidding like 250 for some mercs in capital. If your pretender would jump my capital next turn I would gamble on my PD + mercs winning, or weakening you so much that I could return my 50 guys after taking the 30 archers and finish off your pretenders army.

What happened though was your 30 turned out being 40 including like 20 very good sacred infantry, killing my 50 guys while I only killed 5 or so. Those 50 routed back into the capitol which by now was besieged by your pretender (all same turn, luck of movement priorities?) so my 50 all died without a place to run too, and I gave up.

2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears.
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Agreed.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Actually no, In my memory I only won 1 bid, which was crap, I paid like 200 for a troop of infantry that had already been used by another player and only had 8 units left when I received em, so it was a bad deal, but I had the money anyway and needed every drop (I could only recruit like 5 decent units a turn anyway having only my capitol).
(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Yep, I freaked when I saw the big dominion swing your pretender and prophet had caused in just one turn, and then I set all my 4 mages in capitol to preaching rather than researching.

Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?

[johnarryn]

Yes, I don't think Lanka is just going to "fade away." At the same time, everyone else is going to take notice of his early aggression... and we also know that Lanka isnt built for a long-term fight in this game =)

So, good luck to Lanka!

[AdmiralZhao]

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

I only had cheap monkeys (not sure how many), mercenaries, and ~10 holy troops with the starting group. I was able to reinforce it each turn, since it was always within 1 move of my capital.

(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

I agree with you about the Marveni troops. They seem underpowered when compared to some of the early beasts like Jotunheim or Ryleh.

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?

Heh, sorry, I did not know that you were Dutch. I picked the Netherlands because I think of it as a nation that had amazing early successes relative to its size, and then had a relatively peaceful retreat from a global empire to well governed nation with (I assume) universal health care. Another reason for the Netherlands it that it is incongruous with Lanka, like the Shire is. Hopefully I've avoided an international incident.

[Hellboy]

We the warm and peace loving people of Abysia are now the victims of an unprovoked, unjust war! Our attempts to placate the insatiable Dragon of the West (aka Nodens of Arcoscephale) have failed, and now his forces have attacked Abysian territory.

In Nodens correspondence with us he has repeatedly impugned our honor and accused us of lying, so we use this public forum in defense of our honor. Skipping the details of our correpondence, the upshot of it was that on turn 8, Nodens claimed a perimeter that fenced in a whopping 27+ provinces, while our perimeter would be likely 19-21. When we accede to some of his demands (but not all) Nodens sends us missives including such statements as:
"... while talk of peace you take provinces I clearly establish as my dominion ... ".
However these claims of his were never established by mutual negotiaion, instead unilateral on Nodens' part. Were we to accept all his demands, and cede uncontested this area of 27+ provinces, it certainly would have crippled our nation, but also likely led to great trial and tribulation for any neighbor of Nodens.

In defense of all the people in the world of the Golden Lion we have drawn a line as to how much Arcoscephalian greed we will tolerate. No more, we say! We Abysians being the peace loving people that we are, are ill prepared for this war. If any nation would be willing to render any type of assistance, be it however minor, we would be most grateful. Types of assistance that we could use would include: scouting reports, trade in forged items (particularly ones useful for SC combat), loans, etc. We encourage any nation interested in defending the world from Arcoscephalian appetite in engaging us in private discourse via PM or email.

Tchort
High Priest of Nar Kalath, Lord of Fires


Edit:
All the above is (of course) in character. Out of character, we get it: Have dragon, must travel

[Hellboy]

Oh, btw, it may sound ridiculous to talk about giving loans to a power that is against the ropes, but we do have a stock of gems that could be used as collateral. I.e. a loan might look like payback w/ 100% interest after N turns, but should the war go badly, I would pay back w/ a large # of gems, just before my demise... Anyhow, might be worth considering.

[Nix]

It seems things are getting a bit... spicy, at least on my side of the map. With my personal knowledge, and from the past few posts, I deduct that:

1. Arcoscephale and Abysia are duking it out on the Western continent (from the amount of provinces in play, they're probably alone).

2. Lanka stretches out over the northern part of the Eastern continent - Agartha is cowering in the northeast corner, awaiting Lanka's attack.

3. Pangaea, Ermor and Yomi are somewhere in the southern part of the Eastern continent. Their exact locations are somewhat vague to me, but Pangaea is probably the most centrally-positioned of those three nations. Ermor and Yomi would, therefore, be in the southern corners.

4. I have no idea what's going on in the seas, as I (Tien Chi) am completely removed from any expanse of water.

[Ferrosol]

The People of Pan have moved to supress the evil Arcos their wanton crimes against nature will not go unpunished!