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

[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.

[Immaculate]

Arcosephalae
Turn Two: Men At Work

Click the turn name! Its time to get to work! Down south! Awesome fluting in the trees at 1:01.



With my starting expansion party, I order an assault on the province I feel is probably the weakest. I need resources and this provinces has some of those at least and I feel its also least likely to cause my initial expansion party to be completely murderfied.



I script as shown. The forward heavy infantry units are under orders to withdraw to their commanders location. Hopefully this will cause the barbs to follow them. Meanwhile the slingers and peltasts will fire slings/javelins at the barb flanks. Then, if everything goes well, the central heavy infantry will meet the barb line just as the peltasts engage the flanks. We’ll see next turn if it works or not.



This turn I order the training of a few chariot archers and a philosopher.

Here is what the philosopher who is set to research looks like.



As mentioned, he gets a +3 to research for the three points of sloth, then another point for the magic scale. So yeah, he’s researching pretty fast for someone who only costs 50g. There are bad-sides to this equation of course; old-age, sloth scales, no magics… but it’s a good way to get a head-start on research and also save some money. I didn’t rename him because he’s not terribly important. Oreids will get renamed for sure though- so many good 80s songs to use…




All in all I think this is a pretty standard low sloth arco opening except maybe most sloth scale arcos would probably have an awake pretender to help their expansion. I do not unfortunately.

[Roland Jones]

Turn II: Things Go Wrong



Okay, six prophet proclamations, including my own, and an event. Since I have Order 3, this isn't particularly likely. Let's see what it is-



Oh, wow. Wow. That is bad. In fact, since most events of that magnitude have, in a "recent" patch, been changed to not happen until about a year into the game at the earliest, that might be the worst possible turn two event. Let's, let's just take a look at how bad it is...



Good grief. Look at my unrest. It's over one hundred. That is terrible. My capital is now really unprofitable, and due to the population loss, will be worth a good bit less even when I get rid of all that unrest. And I can't recruit anything this turn, not that I can afford anything with less than 100 gold.



This is what your recruitment screen looks like when you have over 100 unrest or the area is being besieged (the other situation where you can't recruit). Hopefully we won't be seeing this anymore.

Anyway, as seen in the picture above, while Marceline's prophet is heading out to scout, Sir Slicer and his army are patrolling another turn to help stamp down on the unrest, which is aided by me setting my taxes to zero. Meanwhile, Finn, the Vanjarl I recruited last turn, is preparing to attack one of the three adjacent provinces; while the one to the west has fewer units, it also has two elephants, which trample things, and trampling ignores glamour, making them really bad news for my small attack force. Meanwhile, the one to the right has cavalry, who are tougher than unmounted units generally. Finn here is scripted to cast Blessing twice, which will activate Marceline's blessing on him and the Helhirdings with him; while Blessing has enough of an AoE to hit them all at once, sometimes it misses, somehow, so I script it twice to be safe. After that, he casts Air Shield on himself, which makes projectile attacks miss him, before moving in to attack, with the Helhirdings guarding him so they stay near him and help him murder things. Only three units may seem risky, but these guys are ridiculously strong; a single Vanjarl can take on most provinces alone. He's going to take that province, and things are going to get better.

Next turn: Things don't get better.

[Immaculate]

tough break...

[Memento]

continue the good work - really love this nice AAR!