AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[Roland Jones]

Prologue

Helheim. Land of the dead. Gate to the underworld. For ages, the Vanir of this land have watched over and guided the dead, under the rule of an old god, whose blessing granted power to his followers. Now, that god is dead, and though its blessing remained, its rule held no power in Helhalla. For a time, Helheim was governed by the Hangadrotts, ancient Helkarlar who hung themselves from an ash tree, learning the secrets of death. The wisdom of the Hanged Kings kept Helheim stable, but they gained little. The old magics and rituals fell to the wayside, and the Valkyries no longer served as messengers of death.

Then, one day, Marceline arrived. With powerful magic and great, wild ideas, she impressed and captivated the Vanir, effectively becoming their leader. She told them of a new future, one where Helheim reigned over not only the dead, but the living as well; one where they could act as they pleased; one where the world had been reshaped to their desires. To this end, she cast open the gates of Hel, and with them open to their fullest, its influence began to spread out into the world. In addition to this audacious act, she bestowed her own blessing upon the Vanir of Helheim, making them stronger, more powerful; combined with the blessing of the dead god, this magic made them demigods among men. The Vanir knelt before her, the Hangadrotts deferred to her judgment, the Valkyries flew once again. Helheim had a god once more.

However, Marceline was a restless, capricious goddess. Even as she told them tales of ruling the world, she was looking to other places as well, with other plans, or simply for her own amusement. She frequently disappeared from the halls of Helhalla, sometimes for months at a time. While her blessing remained when when she was gone, and the Hanged Kings could keep order, it was concerning that their deity was away so often, and seemed so unconcerned with the fate of their nation at times.

During her longest absence yet, something dreadful happened. The false gods of other nations put forth their own attempts to claim true divinity and rule over all. Deciding that they could no longer wait for her return, the Hangadrotts give an order heard by all of Helheim. They would prepare for war. Despite the fickle machinations of an absent goddess and the continuing spread of Hel's draining influence, the nation would not falter. Helheim would conquer all.

[LDiCesare]

[SPOILER]What's in italics is actually After Action. What's not is notes written on the spot. Therefore, italics may disagree with plain text as I've made a lot of mistakes, some of which were immediately clear, some which showed only later.[/SPOILER]

Thorion is my pretender. He is a Lich, ruler of Pangaea.
My idea is to have a strong dominion with bad scales, which is obviously a bad idea.
So... Why?
Well, Pangaea has Pan wizards, who bring forth tons of Maenads around them provided there's enough turmoil. So I want Turmoil 3 to get lots of maenads, and a big enough dominion to actually have turmoil 3 everywhere my Pans will go.
Having Turmoil 3, Luck 3 is a no-brainer. Anything else would be suicide in my opinion.
Now, I want a high dominion in order for it to spread, but what good is a high dominion score?
Well, it accomplishes two things:
1/ Immortal units don't die in friendly dominion. I do mean friendly
2/ Some global enchantments work better (or only) inside your dominion.
So, I so much want Gift of Health to turn skinny maenads into fat-hit-point maenads. And I've found out that immortal pretenders can be fun. Therefore, let's have a look at Thorion.
He's a Lich. Liches are death wizards with immortality inside. They don't have much else to go for them, but an actual test shows that a lich is actually a fairly good SC. He can single-handedly take out indie provinces, with no equipment, and even archer provinces provided he gets a raw-hide shield. With some more death, he's got both Fear and Awe. With some expensive magic diversity, he can even be useful later on, and let me out of E/N/B.
In order to get an awake, Dom 9 pretender, I pick utterly poor scales: sloth 3 and Heat 3. I take Growth because I will have to patrol, and Magic 1 because I so need it. I mean, seriously, look at Pangaean mages. Pans cost more gold than you can have, and dryads are so bad at research that it's pitiful.
the heat scale was an either/or. Heat was bad if I fell against Abysia, cold against Caelum. I actually fear Caelum far more. Their thunderstrike teleporters leading tons of Frankenstein monster armies are scary. Turns out my two neighbours woul be Abysia and Caelum and I picked the wrong scale seeing which of these was most aggressive.

It's important to point out that I have never played Pangaea in MP, and very rarely in SP either. I also never played a Lich, and picked him just because it looked actually cool and was surprisingly efficient at early expansion in my tests. I fancied using it for Carrion Woods, but I think it's not a good idea trying to go that route with EA Pangaea.
I'll also point out that I picked Pangaea precisely for the reason I rarelly play them. They require patience, which is something I clearly lack, as will be shown in later turns.

--- --- ---

My starting position is in the south east. I should have easy access to Tir na n'Og, which has a nice chokepoint to reach it, so this is huge. Unless there's someone close to the bog in the south, I can't think of a better starting position.
First thing, however, is that renaming id Off So long for good names, I won't be able to rename my prophet, so she'll be Graia the harpy. The good news is we won't see the infamous wizards named S2NA2 and such. Actually it seems to be on, but I must have mistyped R when trying to give a cool name to my prophet. Don't expect much of me if I can't even rename a commander!
Peiroos the minotaur immediately starts patrolling while I raise taxes to 200% on first turn. I buy a batch of harpies for patrol duty, along with a minotaur to lead them. I would have gone for a dryad, but since they'll be patrolling all game long, the 40 gold upkeep is cheaper than the 120 holy upkeep, and I'll need the money to buy Pans next turn. And then dryads, depending on income.
Research starts on construction. Depending on where my dominion spreads, Thorion and the satyrs will attack next turn. Hopefully Citala/Rath Chimbalth and Renthale (north) will not be too heavily protected. Citala would be great for a fort but Tir na n'Og's farmland would be good too, although I prefer forests.

Let's check the other pretenders:
Arcoscephale has 6 titles which look like a high astral goddess.
Marverni has 5 titles, looks like astral/air/death.
Abysia : 2 titles? What dominion score does that mean? I know he can blood sac, but still. It's certainly a good move of him to have attacked me by the way because in a dominion war, I could dom-kill him if I had enough temples, or at least force him to blood sac too with more expensive temples and priests than mine. Lots of wishful thinking here.
Caelum also has only 2 titles, and no blood sac. Dominion dead. Looks like nature, maybe earth. A great mother?
Fomoria has 3 titles, nature and earth. Well, surprising giant bless isn't it?
Helheim has 3 titles, probably astral and death, maybe earth?
R'lyeh has 4 titles, looking like astral.

I forgot there was a stinking fish in this game. I HATE water nations. So long for the good chokepoints of Tir na'n Og. Hopefully his home province is the norhtwestern sea on the other side of the map. Yes, I didn't think of checking the starting provinces before the game by running a test game or jsut looking at the map file.

[Roland Jones]

I'll post my first turn report when turn 21 comes in. We're on turn 20 now, so it won't be too long. Probably tomorrow, really.

On that topic, if anyone wants me to make a banner with their nation name and flag on it, just PM me or something. They'll probably be prettier than mine, too; I know some fancy effects for things like fire, ice, water, vines, and so on, but all the parchment tutorials I found were a bit lacking.

[jotwebe]

I'm playing two different Pangaeas in MarchMadness and aLearningExperience right now. Generally I think in CBM turmoil/luck is the way to go. Death/Nature is also nice. Even if you don't go for Carrion Woods you can summon the various vine priests and have them reanimate stuff.

[Shardphoenix]

D+N is the way to go for Pan, IMHO. Not because of Carrion Woods, but because of Lamia Queens - they bring much needed diversity to the table. Mannikin factories help too.
Oh, and don`t underestimate dryads - they are cost-effective resesearchers in magic-1, being cheap and sacred. Also, Pan doesn`t need awake pretender - they have revellers and centaur archers for expansion, after all.
If you want maenad hordes - go for Mass Protection. You will pick Mother Oak on the way (which is huge for Pan) and it gives your pans some early spells to cast (earthmeld and destruction come to mind). And even if someone gets Gift up - you can steal it later with your superior N income (from capital, Mother Oak and N4 sitesearchers).

[Immaculate]

EDIT: ignore this.

[Bluemage142]

(Everything here was written as I took my turns, except this. And, well, everything else inside parentheses. I'll do this to correct things that past-me said, and provide a bit more input from Turn 21-me.)

Turn 1:

Here's my starting location.



I like this. Quite a bit. I've got a couple directions I can expand, good resources near my capital, and really only three directions of land to worry about.

(True, but I really needed to look at the stuff around me more closely. I'll realize this later.)




My starting army is 15 Marv BCs and 15 Javelineers. I plan to get these guys killed off ASAP. First, though, I'm going to turn my starting commander into a prophet, and dispatch my scout to, well, scout.



This is my recruit screen, which you might recognize from my second post. Right now, I have plenty of gold, and not nearly enough resources. I grab an Eponi Chieftain for a leader (since 40 guys just isn't enough), and load up on Carnute BCs and Slingers. Cheap, effective, and enough of them to make up for my second-turn losses.






I've spent my resources and used my commander slot for the turn, and I still have 180 gold. Now, I want to expand FAST, so I take this chance to check the Mercenaries screen. The Archers in White, 20 Amazons and a Pegasus Rider, are up for bid, so I put 172 gold down on them. I only needed to spend 100, but the extra gold gives me a really good chance of getting the mercs. If I do, it'll speed my expansion nicely, so I change my recruitment to a mess of BCs (meat shields for the Amazons), and end my turn.

(Both parts of this ended up being good decisions, BTW. Archers + Barechests = effective expansion.)

[Roland Jones]

Turn I: The Beginning





Standard starting message stuff. Everyone who's played the game sees this, but since no one else put this in I figure I may as well. For those not familiar with it, the first screen is the message screen you see before every turn (unless nothing happens, which is rare); apart from the first turn, when you get this narration, it's mainly random events and battle summaries, plus some other things we'll eventually see.



Here is my capital. I'm in the north-east, on a peninsula. Rather penned-in. While I can cordon it off easily, I can't make the explosive expansion and claim everything like Helheim normally can. Not great, but at least I am relatively safe from being attacked when I inevitably piss off everyone and make them all want to murder me.

So, let's take a look. I start with a Helkarl, who is decent but not as good as Vanherses for the purpose of raiding, despite slightly higher stats. He gets to patrol with my starting army, because he's an *******, and I need money (note that these pictures are from after all my orders have been given; I started with the same 400 everyone else did). Also have a Van Scout, who is currently becoming Marceline's prophet. You can also see my dominion, which is horrible. I took a hilariously inefficient pretender; I could have easily gotten one that could have done the same, mostly, for a lot less, but I wanted to do this instead. Because it's funny. Helheim doesn't need the help, anyway.

Topic of that starting army, let's take a look.



Twenty-five units, which is less than some nations, but the troops are slightly above-average, so that makes up for it slightly.



These are Huskarls. They're Vanir, so they have above-average stats, and more importantly, glamour. There's only a fifty percent chance of melee attacks hitting them, which, while not as good as what my Vanir commanders get, is pretty awesome. I could also stealthily lead them into enemy territory, but, well, an army of these guys isn't as good as a blessed Vanjarl thug, so I won't.



And these are the other troop I start with. Serf Warriors, utterly ordinary and boring humans. They are completely uninteresting, so I will waste no more words on them.



Here is what I'm recruiting this turn, a Vanjarl and two Helhirdings. A Vanherse would cost half as much and do just as well for the beginning, but I want my first hero (I mean that literally; the early commanders easily make the Hall of Fame, and thus get special abilities, really easily) to be awesome. Besides, it's not like I'm going to be short on money or anything on turn two. Nothing can go wrong that early, right?

Next turn: Something goes wrong.

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Bonus: Pretender guesses.

As LDiCesare went over in his post, pretender titles hint at what paths they have and what their dominion is; certain titles only come with certain circumstances, like nation, chassis, and paths, and generally more titles means greater dominion strength. So, for the entertainment of everyone here, let's take a look at what everyone has:

Arcoscephale worships "White Wedding" by Billy Idol, Mother of Gods, She Who Holds the Fate of All, Patron of Arbitrators, the Afterthought, Princess of the Hierarchs.

That's five titles, so somewhere between eight and ten dominion, I'd bet. Sadly I can't guess the paths from this; I've seen "the Afterthought" before but I was never able to connect it with anything. The one about "Fate" implies Astral maybe, though? Also, the titles are all female, something that only happens with chassis that are such; by default titles are male. So he has one of the few female chassis, like a female titan, or maybe a Virtue (angel thing).

Marverni worships King Roland, King of Many Names, Prince of Clouds, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory, the Stealer of Corpses, the Unforgiving King.

Again, five titles, so high dominion. Also probably has Air and Death magic. Maybe other paths too, but those aren't showing up here.

Abysia worships Dwayne Johnson, the Everburning One, the Fortifier.

Two titles, so really, really low dominion. Ouch. Also, first title implies Fire magic, and the second implies Earth. Not much else to say here, as there really isn't much here.

Caelum worships Metatron, Goddess of Strength, the Creator of Wine.

Another god with two titles, jeez. Another female chassis, probably a Virtue, with... Hm. I dunno. The first title is generic, and the latter... Nature? I really don't know here. Also if it is a Virtue he didn't increase her dominion at all, which seems insane to me, considering how easy it is to get hers up to awesome levels. I dunno, guess we'll see.

Pangaea worships Thorion, the Terror of the Tomb, the Beast, Guide of Souls, Gatherer of the Dead.

Four titles, which can be middling to near-max dominion. Also, Death. Death death deathy death death. Seriously.

Fomoria worships Snakey, Prince of Animals, Prince of Metals, Prince of the Wildlife.

Okay, so it's a prince. Also has Nature magic and okay-ish dominion, I bet.

Helheim worships Marceline, the Terror of the Tomb, the Hidden One, the Fortifier.

And here's my god, obviously the best. Three titles, so my dominion is presumably middling (spoilers: It's five, actually rather low), and she seems to have Death and Earth, possibly something else. See if you can figure it out; there is no way you will ever guess what it is based on its name and all the names I'm gonna be using for my units. Nope. Not a one.

R'lyeh worships Yot-Webbogoth, the Beginning and the End, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory, God of Near and Close, Patron of Soldiers.

So, four titles, meaning high dominion, and his titles imply no paths. Considering that a pathless kraken is awesome for expansion, this makes sense. And, as his earlier post shows, this was right.

So, wasn't that fun? I predicted the paths and dominion levels of everyone's gods based on public information, and guessed or at least narrowed down what chassis they were using in a few cases too. If I wanted to, I could open up the pretender creation screen for their nations and look at the options to narrow it down further, especially in the case of the female pretenders. Metagamey? Yes. Fun and useful? Totally. And if you think this is bad, just wait until you see what I do with the score graphs. But that'll be in a later post. Look forward to it.

[LDiCesare]

TURN 2:

Looks like renaming is on after all...
Only 6 prophets. All scouts except a Marverni chieftain.
I get a 200 gold lucky event.
Score graphs are on. Damn. That sucks. I don't like graphs on because it makes it easy to gang up on the fool who expanded like crazy early-game. On the other hand, it makes it easier to get people to strike those who attack you, as the graphs show clearly what's happening. Knowing that graphs are on, rushes are a bad idea unless you're really sure of killing your opponent by turn 15 or 20 at most.
So what do the graphs say?
R'lyeh started expanding. Helheim has a money problem. I have a money problem too, but that's just my scales.
Caelum and I are the only ones to do research. I guess everyone else is asleep or imprisoned, except likely R'lyeh.
The dominion scores are somewhat like expected: R'lyeh strong( awake, likely 10 since it's underwater and needs it to survive). I come second, then Arco and Caelum, then Fomoria and Abysia. Helheim is at the bottom and didn't increase. Wtf happened to them?
I got the biggest army! Yes, like it's going to be that way all game if I can get maenads. Not that it matters much.

So here's a maenad. She's beautiful. A naked madwoman who wants to kill you with her nails. She appears wherever Pans go. After the battle, most of the time. This makes the Pans' natural stealth rather awkward. They try to remain unseen but naked women pop out of the woods wherever they go, so Pans suck at scouting others provinces as they are easily spotted.
Looks like Abysia tried an attack with someone and failed (HoF). Marverni also has a lots of experience.
I use my gold to recruit a Pan, and get some longbow-cenraurs to get along with since I have some archer neighbours.
I send my starting army north. There are some deer tribe there, who are usually weak, but they have some archers so I can lose the battle. But my dominion is positive there. Unfortunately, it's not in the southern province.
My pretender goes in the marsh northwest, instructed to cast some frighten and then close to melee. He doesn't face archers, and should be able to find some D site in the marsh with a bit of luck. Plus he's immortal.
The map is rather uninteresting at this point so I don't think it's worth posting it with just indies all around. I'll post nicer maps later with intelligence about everybody's provinces and a complete map (which is off by 1 province at worst) by turn 22.

[LDiCesare]

Hey guys, bring in the AARs!
I guess my turns are faster to play than anyone else (except Abysia?) but still.