Immaculate-002: Late Age for Noobs (GAME OVER: ATLANTIS/SHATNER WINS)

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Originally Posted by Moanerette

Sorry for turn sluggishness, having a bit of a tricky weekend. At least I got rid of those annoying heroes.

Didn't you kill those guys? Some suspiciously similar trolls showed up in my territory this turn. Must be cousins or something...

[Immaculate]

This game will be put on hiatus over the American thanksgiving break to allow people to travel and be with their family. The extension will begin Wednesday (the 23rd) evening and we will resume on Monday or Tuesday (28th or 29th).

[Moanerette]

Originally Posted by BewareTheBarnacleGoose

Didn't you kill those guys? Some suspiciously similar trolls showed up in my territory this turn. Must be cousins or something...

Yup, I killed them. Lot of trolls around nowadays

Wishing a happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans

[Immaculate]

back

hosting interval set back to 72h.

[Immaculate]

AARs?

If players wish to, i would highly encourage them to begin providing some details of their early game so that we can learn from one-another, seeing as how this is a Noob game.

Also, players that are defeated should also consider giving an account of their nation, if they so choose.



For my own part, my early game involved expansion with ancestor vessels and a bee-line for alteration 4 for wind guide but i didn't realize that a rank 1 air mage could not use two air gems to cast the spell (which requires air 2 and 1 gem) until i had tried to cast it about a million different times. To start again i would have compensated for that in some way much earlier and 1) hit more stuff with my arrows and, 2) lost way less of my army (maybe?)

In terms of diplomacy, i started between patala and Atlantis and they both expanded very well, then Atlantis declared on Patala and eager to get a piece of the territory i attacked Patala also.

I think Patala's major battles were with Atlantis and i got to watch a few courtesy of my scouts- and they were very impressive indeed- those Atlantian ice guards look tough for sure. Most of my battles with Patala, unfortunately, were mostly fairly small-sized skirmishes by comparison so I don’t really feel that I got to have an adequate taste of what the Patalian war-machine is really capable of.


Anyway, if anyone else wants to share, I would be very eager to hear about how things are going for them, especially Jomon who seems like a (very threatening) giant and Patala, whom I am curious about because I know so little about them.

[triqui]

I tried completelly different approach this time with Marignon.
I expanded with royal knights, and signed NAP with all my neighbours. I researched construction to build sanguine douses only to discover that they are banned in CBM. It is not lost research though, becouse lightless lanterns, boosters and stuff for thugs are needed anyways. Then the usual suspects, thau, evo, blood...

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

What does AAR stand for?

Well, whatever it is, I'll provide mine:

I've got an E9S9 bless, so expansion was done by teams of Kohens leading a few zealots and a giant or 2. I expanded much too slowly, however, especially since I was stuck with a lot of low income provinces. I would have been more aggressive if I could do over. Ulm going AI was a huge windfall for me, allowing me to snap up most of their land in the course of a few turns.; without that, I would not be in good shape right now.

As anyone can see, Im lagging in research, but my early targets Con-4 and Alt-3 for my Gadol thugs, and Thaum-2 and Evo-2. Im only just starting to get into blood, something I would have been able to do sooner had I expanded better and built more castles.

I've found myself very grateful for Triqui's advice about manual taxing. It has really brought a lot of extra gold into my treasury.

[dojango]

Patala:

OK, their troops suck. My expansion was on the slower side (elephants backed with high-morale gorillas), and was funnelled towards the island by my neighbors. I was hoping to get some of the good kailasa/lanka summons before getting into a major war, but alas, it was not to be.

Once war came, I whipped out alt-4 and enhance-3 for some buffs for my troops, but it wasn't nearly enough. Those Asstaturts are tough. Their magic weapons ignored ethereal elephants and they regen'd to fast for monkey swarms to take them down. So yeah, if it had been someone else it might have worked, but after Atlantis killed a few hundred of my troops and a dozen mages, it made sense for my other two neighbors to either 1) gang up on Atlantis to prevent him from getting too strong, or 2) ganging up on me to limit atlantis's gains and then ganging up on Atlantis once his armies are weakened.

They seem to have chosen option 2.

I should have beelined for conj.5 and tried to crank out as many ghandharvas as I could. But then, my bless for them kind of sucked, I should have gone with a rainbow pretender.

[shatner]

With LA Atlantis, it isn't a question of whether you are going to expand quickly but in what direction; your national troops are too cheap and kick too much butt not to, especially if you have a halfway decent bless for your cap-only sacreds. Do you rush a neighbor? Do you focus on capturing water territories or land? Do you capture around your capital for the extra resources (the basic non-chaff of LA Atlantis costs 22 resources and the troops you want cost 35) or do you spread outward with the intent to back-fill later?

Anyway, I had a focus on spreading out and going for land provinces over water. I didn't figure I'd have too much competition for water provinces but boy was I wrong! I had to contend myself with a paltry 3 water provinces what with T'ien Ch'i and Jomon snapping up the rest.

I expanded into indies rather than rush a neighbor (last game I played as LA Atlantis, the first neighbor I met immediately declared war on me; I decided to play it diplomatic this game if I could) and made friends with everyone I encountered. Since my troops are cheap but resource intensive, I had money left over that I spent on forts and mercenary mages to help out my otherwise mediocre research (my national researchers only bring in 4rp/turn in neutral scales and aren't super cheap).

Once I was beating up indies on the island, I encountered Patala. They had claimed a good third of the island with a force of elephants buffed with body ethereal (this sort of info is the godsend that is aggressive scouting). My troops carry magical "screw you ethereal" ice weapons and our mages can spam slime so we weren't afraid of ghostly elephants. We declared turf war on Patala and kicked them off the island after a few limited skirmishes. We offered Patala peace in exchange for them leaving us alone on the island (remember, Patala is on the exact opposite side of the map so reinforcements take a LONG time getting over there). They would hear nothing of peace and so we had some truly intense battles at Olypha (97). Patala made very good use of their naga casters (who are early age-caliber mages despite being in the late age) in addition to throwing an unholy number of monkeys at us. We were also fighting in Patala's heat dominion (which lowers the protection of my ice-clad infantry) so the battles were very close but the sheer survivability of our infantry allowed us to last juuuust long enough for the monkeys to route each time.

We invited Patala's neighbors to the brawl because we sure as heck couldn't beat Patala so far from home this early in the game. When the neighbors agreed, we fought defensively and played a game of hit-and-run while we tried to get enough troops and mages across the entire freakin' map to cement our tenuous hold. Fortunately, between Patala losing a few decisive battles against my entrenched forces at Olypha, my surprise attack on their capital (which ended rather poorly but it served it's purpose all the same) and T'ien Ch'i showing up in force, we were able to exhaust Patala enough for them to lose the war.

We didn't make much in the way of territorial gains from that conflict (Marignon got the capital and T'ien Ch'i got most everything else) but it was a proud war for Atlantis all the same. Even if we're cut off, way away from home and fighting in the thrice-cursed heat, we can still kick several metric tonnes of butt. As is, we're mainly concerned with consolidating our holdings and prodding our mages to keep up with the research race.

[Immaculate]

@atlantis

I contend that you did indeed get a sizable territorial gain- all of patala's island holdings...