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

[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.

-------

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.

[Roland Jones]

Now that the updates have started, and the turns have been extended to 48 hours, I'll be doing my update the first day and my turn for the game the next. Which means, for all you viewers out there, I have another turn coming later today, after I get some sleep, and there should be an update from me every other day. For the other players, I'm sorry if this slows things down somewhat, but between the game, the updates, multiple things on other sites, and job stuff, I'm a bit busy and this is the best way to keep myself from being overwhelmed. Also, at least it gives more time for diplomacy and whatnot.

[Immaculate]

No need to apologize- the intention had always been to slow things down a little bit to allow players to post their updates and still play the game(s).

Not all of us spend part of every night awake with a child who just needs to be rocked while we write the update.

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh - Turn 3

Turn 3 starts off with a nice event:



Where is turn 2? I seem to have mislaid it -- or have been made to mislay it... What happened that the aboleths do not want us to know? Are we, perhaps, better off not knowing, lest the terrible truth crush our puny intellects in its inhuman vastness?

Let's go with that.

Anyway, 400 extra gold, sweet.

Yöt-Webbogoth successfully conquered his first province, it had Amber Clan tritons. Here we see him taking on his second. This one is defended by unexceptional triton militia:



The tritons rush up to him gamely enough, but then only a few can bring themselves to actually move into the reach of the kraken's arms. At the last moment, the triton warriors freeze time and time again. Meanwhile, the kraken spews clouds of poisonous ink at them.



The Ancient Kraken comes with a fear aura out of the box -- this reduces the morale of units close by. I took a dominion strength of 10, which is where the awe comes from. Awe makes it necessary to pass a morale check before attacking every round. Nice synergy there.

The kraken isn't immune to its own poison clouds, by the way, although it does have a 50% resistance. Together with its massive HP, its not much of a problem.

Unlike the wyrm, it doesn't regenerate, but recuperation does a good job of removing any afflictions it does pick up.

Meanwhile in R'lyeh, I get lucky recruiting a mage: A nature pick, just the one I wanted.



This little guy will get to site searching in Yöt-Webbogoth's wake (behind a slave priest I think I recruited the turn before). I'm hoping for a kelp fortress site. In vanilla, there tend to be a lot of those. CBM I think made them a lot less common.

Interjection from an older, wiser jotwebe: "Yes, they had their rarity set to 1, whatever that means exactly. CBM adds another nature site, the Kelp Grove, that needs N2 to find. This little dude will walk (or swim) right past them."

Still a good outcome. The other possibilities (EWS) I can also get on aboleths.

For now, I recruit another one that will go in the other direction, and finalize the expansion army. I think I recruited all slave trolls last turn.



The lobo guards are there to stiffen the starting troops, which have been diligently patrolling the whole time.

Why have I recruited 60 gold gibodais over the cheaper 40 gold giboleths? They only cost upkeep like a 30 gold unit, since they're holy. And it's very unlikely they'll die during expansion, so they'll stick around quite a while.

Why didn't I recruit all gibodais, then? 'Cause I'm indecisive, I wanted critical mass for my mindblast battery and also wanted to get the show on the road.

That's it from R'lyeh -- ahead of the pack!

[Warhammer]

Been a bit busy, I have had this done, but forgot to post.

Turn 1

What remains of our once proud empire? How were the believers enslaved? My punishment and their debasement shall be avenged!

Caelum is a nation of flying men. They have unsurpassed strategic movement capabilities. Their archers are among the best of the Early Age. Add to this with unsurpassed Air magic capabilities in the Early Age and you have a force to be reckoned with.

Let’s break their standard units down. The Caelians come in three different varieties. The first are the Spire Horn Caelians. They are differentiated from their brethren by their 50% shock and cold resistance. High Caelians have 100% cold resistance. Finally, the Raptor Clan has slightly above average strength, but no resistances to the elements.


Each one of the clans has an “elite” unit. When referring to Caelian units, “elite” is a term that should be used loosely, as their units are not strong in hand to hand. The first of these three “elite” units are the Tempest Warriors.


The Tempest Warrior is a decent unit. They are completely resistant to lightning which will come in handy later in the game. Their attack skill and defense skill are higher than many basic units, but their size 3 hampers their performance. One nice thing about them is their Ice Lance. This is a magic weapon, which means they can hit ethereal units out of the box. One of the limiting factors of these guys is their map move of 2. This limits their usefulness to us.

The second of the “elite” Caelian units is the Iceclad. This unit is a little stronger defensively than the Tempest Warriors. They retain the map move of 2. But their resource cost is substantially higher. The two advantages they have is their cold resistance of 100%, and their Icicle Mail gains protection with each additional cold scale. However, unlike Tempest Warriors, their resistances do not mesh well with what we will be doing later. However, I may use these as a change up vs. my normal forces.




The last of the “elite” Caelian forces is the Iron Crow. They are the Raptor Clan elite. They have arguably the best stats of the Caelian “ground” troops, but they are not worth investing heavily in. They have no resistances so they will not be very useful in our mage heavy armies.



One other ground unit I should mention is the Mammoth. These beasts are tramplers and can lead an army of archers into battle. One of the best traits of the Mammoth is their average morale. The Achilles heel of Elephants is their morale of 5. The Mammoth with their superior morale will not rout as easily.



So if most of our units are junk, what will we be using?



The Eagle King is the backbone of Caelum’s Power in the Early Age. These guys are a A4W1E1H2 mage-priest with a FAWE 10% random. These guys are expensive, but they are a force to be reckoned with. They can fly into a province, self bless, fight, and fly out again. They have a map move of 3, along with guaranteed access to cloud trapeze when that becomes available. They are 100% shock resistant, and have 50% cold resistance. Plus, the have Awe +2, so anyone trying to whack them with a pointed or blunt object need to make a morale check first.

The other mages are nice, but we will not see any of them for a while, so I will not discuss them yet.

Based upon our units, our early strategy will be to build up a force of Eagle Kings. We will use our massed mage power to expand, but not quite yet. I will send my scout north to determine who my neighbor is in that direction. Ideally, there will be one or two weak provinces I can nab with my starting army, but we need to wait until next turn to see what that brings.

[Warhammer]

Looks like I need to re-up on one of the online picture sites...

[Bluemage142]

Turn 2:



Here's what happened at the beginning of the turn. All the 'proclamations' are nations making prophets. Looks like six of the eight players chose to prophetize either of their starting commanders, which is interesting. I also got the band of mercenaries I wanted, which is good.



Speaking of mercs, there's a new band up for grabs. 60 Militia. You know what? No. Just no.







Here are my neighbors. The unit types that these pics give are (mostly) accurate; the numbers attached to them can be wrong by quite a bit. Still, I like fighting Militia as much as I dislike the thought of ever using them. Heavy Inf is doable, the undead I'll discuss in a sec, and the bakemono should die easily enough. The Amazons will be a pain- best leave them for last.

(You don't know how right I ended up being. On BOTH levels.)



So here are my new troops. I have a prophet, 30ish melee guys, and 35ish ranged guys. This is what I want them to do.



Now I have the melee troops screening my archers and javelineers, everybody ready to charge, and my commanders safe enough. My prophet is set to toss out Strength of Boars, a buff unique to Marverni- it'll boost strength for all my guys, which helps the BCs on the front line and the javelineers behind them. He'll follow it up with some morale boosting, and Banishment, which should cut down ghouls and soulless en masse.



Let's look at the score graphs. Here, we see that R'lyeh struck out first-turn. This suggests that they took an awake combat pretender- I bet it's a Kraken. Now income, and what do we have here...?



Looks like Helheim got hit with a painful event. Just looking at it suggests some population loss, but which one? The player was kind enough to tell me...

Roland_Jones	Look at the income graph.
Bluemage142	What.
Roland_Jones	That is the effect of a famine event, -1/5 population, on turn two.
Roland_Jones	103 unrest on my capital.
Roland_Jones	Less than 100 gold in my coffers because the event cost 100 in addition to the unrest and pop cost.

...but I really need to learn to tell on my own.



The only way to get research is to have an awake pretender with magic paths, so I know Caelum and Pangaea have done this. Don't know if they're rainbow pretenders or combatants yet, since most people don't move until Turn 2, but I'll know next turn.



Army size is basically what I expected. I'm near the top, beaten only by Pangaea (who gets free infantry), so this is all going according to plan.

(Maenads.)

Recruiting a mage, some slingers, and some BCs. The infantry is dual-purpose: replacements for casualties, and some of my next expansion party.



Plans for the next turn. Attacking the undead, and scouting the next turn's target.