Warhammerama - Running

[Sombre]

The idea behind this game is that since we are on the cusp of having 4 good quality warhammer nations (Lizardmen, Ogres, Skaven, Tomb Kings) we should have an all warhammer nation game to celebrate! :]

llamabeast and myself will play though we have not yet picked nations, so we are looking for two additional players. Preferably these players would be able to make the time commitment, hopefully be familiar with Warhammer in some way and /possibly/ enjoy a bit of roleplaying. The races have a lot of backstory and are geared to play a certain way, which very much fits in with ways they could be roleplayed.

Ideally I'd like to see scheming sneaky Skaven, aggressive pillaging Ogres, territorial and impenetrable Lizardmen and,.. well maybe llama can fill you in more about the Tomb Kings. Essentially they want to regain past glories and recover stolen artifacts though, so they're sorta similar to the Lizardmen.

I'd also like to play on a No Indy map, because this puts the focus far more on the races and the warhammer nature of the game.

Thoughts? Interest?

llama edit3: Players:

Lizardmen - llamabeast
Tomb Kings - rdonj
Skaven - RadioGibbon
Ogre Kingdoms - Sombre

llama edit: Attached map.
llama edit 2: Attached mod.

[RadioGibbon]

Hello,

I'd be happy to take part if a general lack of experience doesn't bother you too much. I'm reasonably familiar with the Warhammer world so long as it hasn't changed hugely in the last few years, and also enjoy roleplaying.

First choice would be lizardmen, but I'd happily play any of the other races.

[rdonj]

I have the feeling I'm going to regret this, but jumping on the general lack of experience bandwagon (I have 0 multiplayer experience) I'd be willing to give the Tomb Kings a go. If someone else wants them though I'm willing to just watch the thread and see how it all turns out. I don't really know the others well enough right now to play them.

[llamabeast]

My first choice would be lizardmen. I'd rather not play Skaven or Ogres for this game.

I'm up for a bit of RP. I reckon I can be impenetrable.

[Sombre]

Lack of MP experience doesn't worry me in the slightest - as long as you have interest and can spare the time then I'm glad to have you in the game.

I will play whichever nation is left at the end - I don't have any preference. If two of you can't decide who will take Lizardmen I suggest we flip a coin or something.

Are there any four player maps that are particularly suitable? Something with a nice variety of terrain would suit the different survivals and abilities well. And of course with minimal water. Once we've decided I'll NI it.

[RadioGibbon]

I'll take Skaven then.

[llamabeast]

Nice, sounds like we're sorted with regard to players and nations then.

A quick look on my map and mod browser reveals the following reasonably suitable maps:

Ander (42 land + 20 sea)
Caves and Corners (82 land + 8 sea)
Cirlani (69 land + 16 sea)
Fourmageddon (41 land + 0 sea)
Isle of Thrones (63 land + 0 sea)
Ossya (49 land + 12 sea)
Sha Bay (68 land + 12 sea)
Three Isles (85 land + 5 sea)
Urgaia (51 land + 8 sea)
Yalun To (58 land + 34 sea)

On maps which have an excess of sea, we can just set the seas to have no population or magic sites (I believe I have a script to do that), so that they no longer really matter. They still have some strategic significance, which makes amphibiousness still useful.

My preference would be Ossya, although I haven't looked at it closely. Actually maybe I'll do that now.

[llamabeast]

How do you want to host it Sombre? I must admit my preference would be to do it on the LlamaServer, since it's easy to administer, but I know you're not too keen on PBEM.

[llamabeast]

Okay, I've tried Ossya now. I think it's pretty cool. The terrain assignment is a little inconsistent though - some bits which look like forests aren't, and vice versa. Also I'd be inclined to turn a couple of the Border Mountains into Mountains. That's all very easy to do though.

[Sombre]

The llamaserver will be fine, as will Ossya.

I'll do a NI version shortly - point me to the provinces you think should be changed llama.

[rdonj]

Okay, just make sure and kill me off before the end game, my end game is just embarrassingly bad :)

[llamabeast]

Heh, mine too. But on a map of this size we shouldn't really hit too much of the lategame.

Sombre, do you want me to deaden some/all of the seas? If so, how about you NI it and then give it to me and I'll change some terrain around and do the dead seas. Otherwise I'll take another look at the map tomorrow to suggest some terrain changes. Bedtime now.

[llamabeast]

I presume we're using CBM? Is the current version of Lizardmen okay to use for the combined mod or should I wait? We can incorporate updates mid-game, although in order for it not to affect unit numbers in my script, and new units would have to come later in the mod file than any current units.

[llamabeast]

Actually I'm happy to sort out the map entirely if you're happy with that Sombre. I can get a script to do the NI-ing very easily. I'd like to make quite a few changes to the terrain assignments in the map editor, because there is a whole lot of craziness. Provinces are marked as big or small with no apparent correlation to their size on screen.

I'll do that this evening if you're happy for me to. Also if the Lizardmen are confirmed as good to go I'll create the mod and set the game up to accept pretenders.

[Sombre]

The lizards are confirmed to go unless someone spots a horrible bug in them before the end of the day.

I'm happy for you to do the whole map of course :]

I would like to use CBM as well, but I want to make sure the other two players are ok with it and understand the situation.

[llamabeast]

Okay great.

Do you normally NI-ify the seas, by the way?

[Sombre]

I normally NIify everything.

[RadioGibbon]

I'm fine with CBM and any map that takes you guys fancy.

[rdonj]

I've never played using cbm before. I suppose if we're going to use it I should probably take a look at it before we get going. Hopefully it won't change anything that will really mess with my planning.

[llamabeast]

It alters pretenders a fair bit, and also makes many summons cheaper. I don't think it should mess you around too much though. Most of the changes are pleasing.

[rdonj]

Somehow a 0 point cost chimera seems a bit excessive to me, but alright....

Are salamanders going to be keeping an aoe of 3?

[Sombre]

Salamanders have aoe 3?

What chimera are you talking about?

-confused-

[rdonj]

The version of your mod I have on my computer has aoe 3 salamanders. This is version .18, I haven't downloaded the new version you released today yet. But I didn't see that as a change mentioned in your notes.

Oops. By chimera I meant manticore. Sorry about that.

Okay, I've had a chance to get a look in at CBM now. I didn't see anything that looks like it'll make my head explode in wonderment at how I'll have to adapt, so I'm fine with it.

[rdonj]

Downloaded the new version now, I still see aoe 3 on the salamander's ranged weapon.

[llamabeast]

I don't see AOE 3. Are you sure you've not got any other mods running which might cause conflicts?

Right, I'm afraid I'm going to be a failure and not sort this game out tonight. A horrible amount of my day has been sucked up sorting out the shocking business with MX cheating in Victoria.

I've got quite a few comments for Lizardmen though, which I'll go and make now.

[Sombre]

The Salamander's ranged weapon in the Lizardmen mod is a basegame weapon,.... AAH,.. I know what it is.

CBM ups the dragon's ranged weapon to AOE 3 and the salamander uses the dragon's weapon. Hmm,.. that's tricky. I can't put in an entirely new weapon because you can't mod the fire effect. Hmm,.. I could give them the non str based fire breath though, like the warpfire throwers.

[Sombre]

I'll fix the salamander issue and a couple of other bits about the lizards tonight, then we should be ready to get everything bundled together and downloaded.

[rdonj]

For the record, I had a "bad #startsite" error when I tried to play with all 4 mods enabled simultaneously. I think the conflict was between the lizardmen and ogre kingdoms mods.

[llamabeast]

Not a problem, I have a lovely mod-combining script which will remove all the conflicts.

Sombre hasn't taken ID numbers into account yet, but I understand in the final release he plans to make sure that the Lizardmen won't conflict with any of the more commonly used mods.

[Sombre]

I have updated lizards. No more salamander breath problem.

[llamabeast]

Okay, I am about to attach the fixed version of Ossya to the first post. I've made many many changes. The terrain assignments etc on the map were actually a bit bananas. Every single province was either large or small, and random provinces were farms and/or magic site rich. The forests and mountains were also quite odd.

So, graphically I've added visibly yellow provinces for the farms, and I've added three magic site graphics (stealing two from KO's "Map that will never be" screenshots). In total there are now 4 many-sites provinces (there were some standing stones before). The forests and mountains have been rationalised. With the mountains, note that some are border mountains and some are mountains. I've tried to make the mountains the ones where it really looks like you couldn't walk through in a hurry. Make sure you check anyway before planning marches through them.

The version we're using has 4 fixed starts at 13, 14, 49 and 50 (thought I'd better say where they were for fairness) as well as dead seas (no money or gems from the sea) and NI.

Phew! I'll attach it to the first post. I'll make the megamod in a second too.

[rdonj]

Huzzah!

[llamabeast]

Combined mod attached to first post! Game created!

When you've designed your pretenders, please e-mail them in to the LlamaServer - see my FAQ for how. The game name is "Warhammerama".

[rdonj]

I can't seem to enable the mod. I notice it didn't come with a .tga file... is that why?

[llamabeast]

You definitely should be able to enable it, although it's true that it has no picture so it doesn't look very imposing in the mod list.

When you say you can't, what is it that goes wrong?

[Sombre]

For future reference: It's good practice to always include a banner for a mod, even if it's just a big red blob or something. It avoids a lot of confusion.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm going to be following this game closely, if noone minds, because I'm a big fan of the Warhammer Nations, and I'm interested in how the Lizards do (the others I've already played).

Llamabeast-after putting all that work into the map, maybe you'd want to post it as an alternative version?

Would anyone be interested in posting some screenshots?

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I will post the map shortly. I just thought I'd give it a few turns of in-game testing (the chances of me having missed something are high).

[rdonj]

I mean, I can't find it at all in the list to enable it. I can click on a blank part of the list at the very bottom but I can't guarantee my doing so actually does anything....

Also: I would really hate to be the person in the bottom right of the map. Only 3 adjacent provinces? Their closest neighbor has 6....

[llamabeast]

Oh, you should definitely be able to see it! It may not have a banner, but it should still say "Warhammerama" there.

Make sure you've unzipped the whole contents of the mod into your dominions3\mods folder. If you go into that folder, you should be able to find the file Warhammerama.dm. If you can't, then you've not unzipped it into the right place (and if you can't find it through the Dominions Mod Preferences then I'm pretty confident it'll turn out that the file isn't there).

[llamabeast]

I hadn't really thought about the 3 adjacent provinces, I was just trying to make sure everyone was far away from each other and was likely to be able to lay claim to a similar amount of land. I can move it if you think it's bad.

[rdonj]

Oh... my problem was I didn't realize I had to take all the individual mods out of the folder, I thought it was supposed to work all combined into one spot. Sorry about that. I'll send in my pretender shortly.

I do think it would be a lot more fair for that player to be in one of provinces 19, 8, 6, or 5. I'm not going to go crazy over trying to ensure everyone has the same number of neighbors though.

Also, I can't say I mind someone following the game closely. I am following a few right now and have been known to observe games just to see how my favorite mod nations do. You want screenshots of the map?

[llamabeast]

Er, I'm not quite sure what you mean about the mods rdonj, you just had to drag all the contents of the zip file into the mods folder. But if you have it working now, that's cool.

I'll take a look at the map this evening.

[rdonj]

In the zip file there was a folder called "warhammerama". I just dragged that into my mods directory. That's why it didn't work, I had to take everything out of that folder first and wasn't quite thinking right at the time.

[llamabeast]

Ohhh... sorry, I did that wrong then, or at least, not as I intended to. Glad you got it sorted.

[rdonj]

I sent my pretender to the server several hours ago and still haven't gotten a confirmation email....

[llamabeast]

That's odd. Can you send it again, and copy in both me (llamabeast[ at ]llamaserver[ dot ]net) and yourself? Then we can see if it's sending okay.

[llamabeast]

Okay, I'll move the bottom right start position to province 6 on the server's copy of the map.

[rdonj]

Will we have to redownload the map?

[llamabeast]

No. Actually you don't even need the .map file, I only included it so you could take a proper look at the map. The server uses its copy of the .map file and the information's then included in the .trn files that you'll receive each turn from the server.

Sombre - just waiting on you now for a pretender.

[llamabeast]

Hello from the LlamaServer!

This message is just to let you know that I received a 2h file from you, and it seems to be fine.

Details:

Game name: Warhammerama
Nation: Invalid Age! Era Itza
Turn number: 1

Who's sent their turn in:
Unexpected NationWaiting for 2h file
Unexpected NationWaiting for 2h file
Unexpected NationWaiting for 2h file
Unexpected Nation2h file received

Heh, seems that the receipt e-mails for mod nations are rather buggy. Never mind, I'll fix it at some point.

There are always more bugs to fix...

[Sombre]

Blood and shards of tooth sprayed from the maw of the Slaughtermaster as he crunched down on a mouthful of bedrock. The Ogre Bulls ahead of him grit their teeth as the power of the maw flowed through their bodies, hardening their skin against the flimsy blades of their foes. The wolf tribe had mustered a force of many hunters and raiders, but even against a handful of Bulls the outcome was predictable - a slaughter. Not a single Ogre was felled and the entire tribe was brought down in a matter of minutes, smashed by great clubs, dismembered and devoured in an orgy of violence and hunger. Even as gnoblars squabbled over their meager possessions, the gnarled old Bruiser known as Clubby Bang had already turned his attention to the next village of humans. They would eat well for many months to come, but these minor raids would be nothing compared the the storm that was brewing. The Butchers spoke of a great migration to the West and the voice of the Great Maw, hungry for flesh, grew stronger in the gut of every Ogre.

[rdonj]

In the blistering heat of Nehekara, Amenemht the resurrector slowly works to revive the legions who once served the great kingdom. Glory will once again be known to its people, and revenge shall be taken upon the living for the terrible curse they have been made to bear. Though they are slow to stir, their hatred is not. Woe unto the living.

(figured I'd give it a go...)

[llamabeast]

Just so you don't all wait eagerly by your PCs, I'm off out now and don't have time to take turn 6. The war shall continue tomorrow!

[llamabeast]

Actually I lied - I just took turn 6. However, I _definitely_ don't have time for turn 7.

[rdonj]

Not much of a war yet. Could get nasty in your neck of the woods in a few turns though.

[rdonj]

I'm sick and slept terribly last night, so I'm not going to be as fast today. Hopefully we will get more turns in tomorrow until things start getting busier.

[llamabeast]

Oh dear, sorry to hear you're not feeling well rdonj. Make sure to take it easy.

Oh, also, being as we're playing on a no-indy map, how did you end up with human archers?

[rdonj]

The longbowmen are mercenaries, my good fellow.

Also, retribuion will be swift and merciless if any lizards are spotted in the following provinces: 11, 26, and 3. It goes without saying that it would be viewed upon poorly for them to be spotted east of that boundary as well :)

[llamabeast]

Fear not, your borders are safe.

I got tricked by the icon for the mercenaries being a knight. I guess that must be just the commander.

[rdonj]

Indeed it is. The farstrikers are currently enjoying the great honor of serving the ancient rulers of nehekara.

[llamabeast]

I changed the hosting interval to 48 hours, just to prevent any mishaps. At this rate we're unlikely even to use 24 for quite a while though.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I'm not having any trouble with the pace. I'll probably be able to keep it up to at least one or two a day no matter how busy the game gets.

The 48 hours is handy though, just in case I have an off day or something and try to screw it up :)

[Sombre]

Wow I didn't even see there was a death match at the arena. I guess I'm so used to ignoring it that it doesn't even register any more :[

I was going to send my biggest tyrant too.

[rdonj]

I almost sent someone, but I didn't really have anyone to spare that had a decent shot of winning. Good thing I didn't, had you remembered :)

Also, let this serve as a warning to those who would seek to defile the ancient crypts of Nehekara in search of our lost treasures.

[llamabeast]

Wow, that's quite impressive.

Sombre - yeah, I was astonished my poor guy didn't get mashed by an ogre. I just thought I'd send him in because it was fun. He was a saurus-riding general, so pretty much the toughest thing I've got, but I still think you'd have smacked him down.

[RadioGibbon]

Hmmm, now I think about it (instead of just laughing about the idea of my vermin going one on one with anything) I should have sent somthing really manky and pestilent to try and spoil the winners day.

Then again it is kind of all hands to the pumps at the moment (Lizardmen :soap:!).

[rdonj]

The lizards have enjoyed a rather astounding level of success thus far. If the ogres are really migrating to the west though they could have a bit of trouble trying to fight off swarms of rats and ogres at the same time.

[llamabeast]

Don't go making suggestions like that! :shock:

[Sombre]

I'm really interested to see the turn this evening and work out how you managed to trash 20 odd ogres with the loss of only 3 undead.

I suspect tomb swarms had something to do with it.

[Sombre]

oh and...

Gutclaw tribe weak, got dead from old bones. Old bones no good to eat, got nothin we want. When you got wat we want, you gunna know, cuz we gunna already et it. We Mawsmash, we smash for the Maw!

[rdonj]

Sorry llama :P

I've been experimenting with tomb swarms a bit in singleplayer and am finding them somewhat hard to use. They seem not to be very fond of moving forward, frustratingly. They are still very useful though :) I'm not quite that far in the research yet, but I'll be there soon. Hold on to your flesh.

[rdonj]

That is a disgustingly large army of temple guards beating the rats into the ground :)

[RadioGibbon]

I can see how it might look like that, but you have to remeber that we live under there, and so what might appear like a rat being beaten into the ground to a casual observor may just in fact be a rat going home for his tea, or to watch Neighbours or something.

[llamabeast]

:D .

[rdonj]

My apologies good sir, on second glance this does seem a bit more likely than what I suggested.

[rdonj]

Ouch, my battle orders failed rather horribly that turn. And I forgot to have one of my commanders move and patrol! :doh: Still, we didn't do too poorly. I'm going to have a few choice words with some of my commanders though.

[rdonj]

While putting the bodies of fallen ogres up on spikes after their last raid on nehekara, it was discovered that several of them had actually eaten some of our most ancient treasures. Luckily they were slain before the artifacts could be devoured, but who knows how many more yet remain being digested in the stomachs of those ogres who escaped our wrath. Seeing this situation as completely unacceptable, we hereby declare our intent to purge the world of this filth race of fat, slobbering fools. May the sands consume you.

[Sombre]

Hah. On the exact turn I move my previously stationary army you attack that province.

Either you have amazing timing or mine sucks because I'm sure I'd have won that if I hadn't moved. Oh well : ]

[rdonj]

Either way it's very good news for me, that was shaping up to be a rather apocalyptic battle over by my poor little fort. Regardless of whether I'd won or not my losses would probably have been pretty much catastrophic. I don't need any more victories like that first one....

[rdonj]

The kings of Nehekara see no great and pressing need to kill those of the cold-blooded race at this time, given our most ardent desire to exterminate that most annoying race of ogres who continue to eat our treasury. We have a certain soft spot for the lizards as they somewhat remind us of our own nation, if we were simple barbarians who worshipped giant space frogs instead of the glorious nation we once were, whose power and majesty is unmatched in the history of civilization. To that end, we have decided to graciously return the province of Senextro to the control of the lizardfolk, which we believe the ogres stole from them to escape our mighty armies.

However, our great lords will tolerate no incursion by the lizard peoples into our territory as a result of Ogre aggression.

-Amenemht, he who speaks the word of the lord of this world.

[llamabeast]

I'm just going away for two days, until Saturday lunchtime.

[RadioGibbon]

Welp! The Lizard men have completed their pest control and its safe to say that even the most rigorous Health and Safety inspector would have to call their territory vermin free :(.

It was fun while it lasted. All the best and hope to play aginst you guys again sometime (hopefully with more success).

[rdonj]

I'm sad to see you go, though I have to admit of every nation I could have had to fight, I was most afraid to fight yours. I was pretty much terrified of having to somehow survive mass wither bones with no living national units save my watchers. I don't think it would have gone terribly well.

Also, death to all ogres!

[rdonj]

Well, I'll admit it, that battle certainly hurt me a lot more than I'd hoped it would. Certain high priests definitely didn't have the most intelligent idea of who to cast smite at.... I was really hoping they'd find the slave giants a bit more attractive. And the incredible morale of my commanders seems to have backfired on me and cost me the majority of my commanders. But never fear! Though it may look like my armies were irrevocably butchered and I have little chance of defeating the ogres at this point, that is only completely accurate. Pay no attention to this total defeat of my main army and the fact that his best troops didn't even partake in the battle. Also pay no attention to the army that is about to enter province 11 this next turn. It does not really exist.

Really wish I'd passed out more of those death gems. Seems I forgot I had more than one shadowblaster in that army. A bit ridiculous considering every single D mage I have can cast it.

[Sombre]

It's just a shame Clubby Bang wasn't in that fight (or was he?). iirc he's been with me since the first turn of the game. He's in the hall of heroes if anyone's interested.

I'm fairly pleased with how the slavegiants performed (well, one of them) however I think the real reason I broke through the Buried was the handful of Tyrants and Pitfighters that were out there.

The ogres feasted well on ancient gold treasures and dusty bones that day!

[rdonj]

Clubby Bang was there, actually. I saw him in amongst the fighting... I had his health pretty low but he managed to escape his doom. *shakes fist* The few tyrants you've used have definitely been hurting me. I keep bringing their health down but I don't think I've killed even one yet. And they're doing a frustratingly good job of taking out my buried. I've had a slightly better track record with pitfighters but they're also doing a fair job of thinning my ranks. So I pretty much agree with your assessment. That slave giant on my right flank though... maybe he didn't kill his price tag's worth of skeletons, but he made a right mess out of me.

I really need to come up with something better to do with my tomb kings than spam shadow bolts.

[llamabeast]

Tomb swarms? Shadow blasts? Blindness?

Have you got lots of Buried Sorcerors? They should be able to cause a lot of pain.

[llamabeast]

Actually tomb swarms might well be cruelly effective against ogres, if you can spare the gems.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I've been throwing a few shadowblasts at him. They're reasonably effective and I could have caused a lot more casualties with them in that last battle if I hadn't forgotten to change orders around and left 10 death gems on one of my h1 priests. Tomb swarms have unfortunately not proven terribly effective against the ogres. Either they move too slow to keep up with the rest of the army (even on hold and attack) or the other case, I had a lone tomb king site searching with some gems to cast tomb swarms if attacked, and the ogres tore through the swarm in 1 turn, dead tomb king :( I'm pretty sure at this point to use them effectively against the ogres I'd need several mages to cast the spell, and a large artillery battery standing behind them.

I did have a pretty solid block of sorcerors. Probably 10 or so in that big battle, but he killed all of those... I have 3 or so left now. They did cause a lot of damage but he's covering his armies pretty good with fire/shock resist and the main use of sulphur haze has really been to fatigue his pitfighters enough to kill them (he's covering regeneration pretty well also). So with a combination of high health and decent resistance he's made my sorceror's jobs tough. They did claim quite a few kills in that last battle though.

[llamabeast]

Unfortunately I have to head off on a course for 4 days (back on Saturday lunchtime), so I won't be able to take a turn for a little bit. Sorry about that.

[rdonj]

Someone's turn went bad? Which path are we taking?

[llamabeast]

It's a server bug. Hopefully I should have it fixed shortly, and then I'll rehost.

[llamabeast]

Fixed! Use the more recent turn.

[rdonj]

Sent in my turn... next turn came in and it got an error again. I have since been sent 2 .trn files. Is the new turn playable?

[llamabeast]

Yep, use the latest one.

[rdonj]

I wasn't 100% sure my turn would work correctly after patching so I did my turn over and re-submitted it to make sure that it didn't decide to mess up. I don't terribly want to stale my next several turns....

[rdonj]

Huh... my high priests must be spending too much time around the ogres or something. Apparently my copied ctrl 5 script has changed itself to repeatedly cast brain gobbler?

P.S. - stupid lizards with incredibly long lifespans!

[lch]

This is a bug introduced by the 3.21 patch which shifts the spell ids. You need to redo the scripts for all the mages that were saved in the turn files.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I fixed it. I had to do a lot of rescripting that turn anyway, due to a rather large lizard infestation cropping up in the south of my empire. Hopefully this turn will go better than the last :)

[llamabeast]

Phew, turn submitted.

Sorry I've taken so extraordinarily long to do each of the last three turns. I should be able to get pretty much back to normal now. Plus, doing this turn has got me enthusiastic again! Exciting wars are to come.

That last turn was pretty dramatic in fact. A great victory for the lizards in the north, and a terrible defeat in the south. Can the lizards halt the advancing Tomb King hordes in the south? What tricks have the ogres still got up their sleeves? Only time will tell.

[rdonj]

I was rather astonished by just how dramatic that victory in the north was. I'd been fighting the ogres to a stalemate all this time, and suddenly they were almost completely wiped out with what appears to be almost no casualties. As of last turn I believe I could have defeated that ogre army... but not with such ease. What horrific armies rampage through the north that such a mighty foe was so heavily damaged?

As for the south, such losses will continue to plague the lizardmen for many months to come. For the folly of waging war against nehekara lizards shall die in numbers beyond comprehension! We are the masters of death, and death is what you shall get from us.

[rdonj]

Err, it would be best of me not to mix up ooc and ic comments into the same post, I should think. In any case, I am happy as well, that battle took two turns in maneuvering to make and finally I got the battle I was looking for. If only I could have gotten a few of your mages as well. I was a bit disturbed by how easily my immortals were banished on that first turn. In light of this I am very happy with the bless I chose, frustrating as it is that it makes my own priestly spells so much less useful. In spite of my success though I suspect that the next turn or so will go rather more poorly for me. Certainly you will not make the mistake of weakening your own armor for my buried this time around :)

I do wonder a bit about the sacred lizards though. They seem to me to be worth a bit more than their cost, when compared against ogres. Basing this solely on stats, rather than anecdotal evidence of any sort, temple guards seem to be reasonably equivalent to the weaker ogres without a bless, cost less, and require far fewer resources. With a bless, which I find very hard to see Itza not taking, they're definitely superior and being recruit-everywhere I think is very powerful for them. I haven't actually fought it out to see how it goes, but any impressions on this? That said it doesn't feel so far from my end as though llama's armies are that excessively strong, but I have a number of mitigating factors working for me and I don't think I've faced quite the worst of the magic itza has to offer me just yet. Whereas he pretty much has faced mine.

Please ignore if I'm talking strangely, I just spent ~12 hours with my nose buried in a book and I tend to be somewhat spongelike about speech. Plus I lack sleep.

[llamabeast]

Ouch!!

[llamabeast]

Sorry about the VERY slow turn-taking by the way rdonj. You've been very patient.

[Sombre]

I'm still looking at the balancing of lizards and indeed ogres. The Temple Guard should perhaps be cap only also - though in the case of lizards since building a fort is pretty tough, things being cap only isn't so bad.

[rdonj]

You're only saying that because I took out 3 slann this turn :D Unfortunately I still don't have a lot I can do to stop that most frustrating god of yours. I have a thought on how to get around this but it will take me a few turns at least. So beware! Bewaaaare! I really wish now that I'd paid more attention to your cyclops' strat move, I've never used a cyclops pretender and I wouldn't have thought he'd be able to move quite that far. I'm pretty much down to just immortals now, who have fought in only a few battles as of yet. I must also bear in mind that apparently my own god will choose to use 3 astral pearls every time he uses magic duel so that he can cast returning as intended. Although I suppose it worked out in that particular battle to be for the best that he did not.

In any case, the advancing tomb king hordes were pretty handily defeated in a mere two turns by The Old One, and once again I am on the defensive. I'm not quite sure I'll be able to turn the tide around this time, the lizardmen seem to have almost unending numbers to call upon while my own would be dwindling even without that accursed cyclops. Though I am certain there are fewer temple guards living today than there were when the lizards declared war on me.

As for turns, I am probably underthinking mine a bit. I get them in fast, but then I make two or three corrections almost every time. That last turn was probably a pretty good example of where I should have put more thought into it. Perhaps you are taking just a bit long with yours though ;)

[llamabeast]

Taking out 3 slann is pretty painful! Do you know how much they cost?! Also the threat of your fountain effectively prevents me from using them in future, limiting my battle magic quite horribly. Hmm, it's going to be a pretty hard battle! Definitely proving an exciting game.

Incidentally you've wiped out all my main armies, so it's interesting that I seem to have unending hordes. You appear to have unending hordes! However, I do have a considerable advantage in cash, so I suppose maybe time is on my side.

While we're on the subject of time, I'm actually just about to go to a conference in Boston (my first time in the US!). I'll be back next Sunday. Sorry for yet another delay. I've done the current turn though, so if you take yours Sombre, we can get at least one turn further on.

[rdonj]

Oh yes, that is exactly why I had to do it, even though I was certain I would lose the battle :) 2,150 gold of dead slann, ah yes.... You can still use your slann for research though, I'm falling pretty far behind there having to use almost all of my mages to hold you out.

Well, you seem to have unending hordes probably because of your rather enormous skink army. Your losses from the horrible defeat in my lands were replaced in one turn, and I pretty much inflicted the same amount of damage here. So perhaps you are down mostly to skinks now but they are pretty overwhelming in number. Time does seem definitely on your side, I suspect that if sombre is defeated I am soon to follow. I just don't have the armies to hold all of my territory on all sides. Unless I get lucky and kill off your god soon :P

Wow, you are one busy llama!

[rdonj]

Holy temple guards, batman! Something gives me the feeling that the next turn is either going to be a major tomb kings victory or a near death experience.

[llamabeast]

Wow, another very dramatic battle. The fields of Barra must be soaked in lizard blood and littered with bones and the charred remains of ancient mummies.

Thank goodness, my gambit with the smashers paid off. I had no idea if it would work, but it seemed to go quite smoothly. It's a shame both my sleepers had to die along with their items, but I think it was a very worthwhile sacrifice. I'm glad I noticed that the fountain had the lifeless tag.

Apart from that it was a complete debacle at the lizard end. Your wailing winds and other magic, combined with your endless hordes of Immortals which make any casualties I inflict irrelevant are making things pretty tricky for me. My quality sacreds are effectively just chaff. On the other hand, I expect you _really_ regret casting that Firestorm. Fog Warriors, combined with an accidental Luck on all my mages, really saved me from the worst of it.

[rdonj]

Hmm. Well, that certainly didn't go as well as I had hoped. I was really hoping you'd be considerate enough to throw everything you had at me there, including those wolves sitting in skavenblight. And as a slightly annoying side effect of my wailing winds I failed to kill pretty much any of your skink horde. I also really was not expecting my god to die on the first turn of combat! Blech. If I had not insisted on throwing out that one magic duel before the intended returning the smasher gambit would have failed completely and my god would be ready to go in for another run at your slann next turn. And my god dueled a skink. That hurts, that really hurts.

As to the fire storm, I was really hoping fire fend would help more than it did. I've never had occasion to use it before, but my fear was more along the lines that most of my commanders wouldn't get the fire fend rather than it just completely failing to save them. I figured with immortal sacreds to use as chaff and fire fend on my commanders I would be pretty much safe... not so, it would seem. I certainly wouldn't regret it nearly as much if it had destroyed your enormous skink communion. On the other hand, only one of my tomb kings died, and I have a number of sorcerers that I kept out of the battle, so while losing 17 commanders certainly hurt it isn't nearly the "near death experience" I was contemplating earlier.

I would never have done the fire storm if I was really expecting to win this game... I'm pretty well convinced that I'll never be able to actually kill you, as anything I send at you that isn't immortal is guaranteed to die if it meets your god. Although if you noticed, his intended assassins were in that battle :) And my immortals are taking up a huge amount of upkeep, so I really don't have a lot of flexibility in what I can do to attack you. Either I can kill my immortals off in your dominion, or I have to somehow get candles in every province I attack. But I am too poor to build much of anything due to immortal upkeep and the cost of recruiting a tomb king each turn. I also have yet to get a single 2 astral tomb king, somehow, to turn into a teleporting thug.

And of course, you're starting to counter my magic now with your endless bag of tricks....

Edit: Something very strange has happened. One of my experienced tomb kings in my capital has entered old age, and for some reason he has gained the #immortal tag. He also is listed as crippled, where my scripting for him implies he used to have air magic, but currently does not. Any idea how this could have happened...?

[llamabeast]

It's not one of your capital Tomb Kings, it's the one you said died. When a Tomb King gets very badly hurt in battle (i.e. reach 0hp and would otherwise die) they become weaker (magicbonus -1), get the old age tag, and change to appear skeletal rather than brown. This represents a big release of magic to save them. However, from then on they are immortal.

I believe that in that battle a couple of other TKs got hurt enough to go skeletal. One apparently then got destroyed again, and so his immortality returned him to the capital. He won't stay crippled for long.

I'm surprised you hadn't come across that before, but it's good news for you, because you've got immortal mage-thugs to go along with your immortal armies.

Oh, by the way, I *did* throw in everything I had. I basically have no other troops, apart from a posse of skinks sieging the Ogre Kingdom. I didn't send in the wolves because I think they'd do more harm than good, since I don't think their cold aura will affect you, and it'll knock out my lizards fast. I get them from a magic site you see, it's not that I'm choosing to summon them.

[rdonj]

Ahh, so that's why. I've never used tomb kings as thugs in battles before and I almost never lose them when they're mages. And I've never actually lost any inside of my own dominion before. So I was thinking the description of immortality they had meant they had phoenix fire, basically, and I just never actually saw any of them die when they were below 100 fatigue. That's pretty cool actually, I never realized they did that. So I guess I do have a fairly major advantage, again, as long as I can stay in my own dominion. And looking at my tomb kings, it would appear the fire storm caster is the other king that went skeletal. So you can appreciate that :P Too bad I don't really have the gems to thug out many kings.

Actually my units are only 50% cold resistant, so they would fatigue me, just not very much. Plus they're ethereal, and I don't have a magic weapon bless, so they wouldn't make bad army blockers. Of course all my evocations would still work. You would just have to use them away from your temple guards somehow.

Anyway, unless things change soon this is going to be a very long struggle between the two of us, between my undying armies and your endless skinks. You must be sieging sombre with a LOT of skinks. Skinks killing ogres... what're the odds.

P.S. - This is one of those turns I'm glad you two are taking longer than me with, I did my turn a bit hastily earlier and nearly left the assassins with very bad orders :D

[llamabeast]

Muwahaha. The tired inhabitants of Barra have found hope in a newfound belief in The Old One.

[rdonj]

Blast your excessive gold income :P It's okay, I turned them once, I can do it again... maybe.

[rdonj]

I just had a great idea for a way I could try to kill you! Unfortunately, I don't have anything remotely resembling the research, and by the time I did you'd have three or four paths at 9. Bleh.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, intriguing!

Also, I really have to apologise to you rdonj, you've been the most patient opponent in the world while I have been freakishly erratic in my turn-taking. I'm just beginning to come towards the end of my PhD and I'm generally getting more erratic in life - lots of unanswered e-mails, piles of laundry, I'm sure you know the thing. Anyway, I'm really enjoying this game, but I'm sorry you've had to put up with such a frustrating opponent! Thanks for being a good sport.

In other news, reports from the lands of Nehekhara indicate that the locals are being led astray by idols carried by the agents of Itza. By the time patrols arrive, nothing can be found but the occasional hint of a blur of motion in the corner of a soldier's eye.

[rdonj]

I'm just going to tell you now, since you're definitely going to kill me before I gain 6 levels in a path with 80 research a turn. I got the idea to use tomb king communions to make lucky, phoenix pyred, soul vortexing, invulnerable communicants to attack into your territory. Hmm, if I used two masters I could get even more buffs. Anyway they'd be pretty tough like that, I think you'd have to work a bit to kill them :) But I spent too much time researching other paths and marching armies of mages around the map. And then incinerating them.

Well, getting into a second game that was more active helped a lot. That game just got put on hold for half a month though, so I'm going to have a lot of waiting to do now I guess. It's okay llama, this has been a good experience for me. I've learned a bit, validated some of my ideas and got to play around with some things I don't normally get to. You're more of a frustrating opponent in the way you seem to infallibly target my armies with that colossus god of yours! I still haven't gotten over those two turns of death.

Oh, so that's how you managed to keep Dommen down at 2 candles with all my preaching. It really is too bad I killed off every single high priest I had with that fire storm... oh well. It's not as if you have a whole lot to worry about from my patrols anyway... my long, closely matched war for dominance with the ogres left me with somewhat income-plagued lands as he had a penchant for taxing me into oblivion. Plus he managed to take at one point or another just about every province I had. Then came the lizards. Our front is rather more defined than the one I had against sombre was, but I'm still poor and haven't had time to restore the pd to its former levels. Some of my provinces still haven't recovered from the ogre invasion, actually. In any case, for the most part my pd is minimal at best. There are all of three provinces that are even capable of patrolling.

I can see the game quickly drawing toward a close... sombre seems to have gone AI, so the ogres are probably going to be gone soon. And with them gone the lizards will be free to swarm all over my nice clean desert and make a big mess of things. Until then, I dare you to come into my dominion :)

[rdonj]

Well, hmm! That turn seems to have gone exceptionally poorly for me. Not only did I lose an assassin, but I failed to kill the rather frustrating god, as well. Further annoyingly, it was outside of my dominion so no resurrection :( I didn't even get a decent affliction on it. Sigh.

And then I had to go and lose 4 provinces in 1 turn. It's about desperation time here in nehekara.

[rdonj]

Okay llama, if we were playing mortal kombat right now, my character would be wobbling on his feet and two words would pop up on the screen... FINISH HIM! :P

[llamabeast]

Heh, I'm working on it!

By the way, that battle a couple of turns ago when you tried to assassinate my pretender was terrifying! I think he was really really lucky to get away, especially without any afflictions.

I wonder how this turn's battles are about to go...

[llamabeast]

Aiee! Poor Old One! I have to say you took him down very efficiently. I noticed quite a few cunning things you did there, like give your assassins fire resistance. Attacking there was definitely a mistake.

On the other hand, the Great Crusade now stands before Nehekhara itself. If the capital can be destroyed, the Slann will finally have no more need to fear the Immortals. As the last march begins, will the Nehekharan defenders be able to hold against the powerful magics of the ancient Slann?

[rdonj]

I have to say I'm very happy to have managed to take the old man out before kicking the bucket. Though I wish I'd killed him a few turns earlier (he just would NOT pick up that crippled affliction I was hoping for), my assassins finally paid off, so I'm happy. Having to hit him with my god, several fire immune thugs with dusk daggers, and an army of immortals to take down your god is a bit humbling. I will never underestimate the cyclops again.

And I just received the next turn, realizing belatedly I forgot to pass out a death gem for wailing winds! Wow what a blunder.

[rdonj]

Well I see now that it would have completely failed to matter :D Next turn I have one last thing to try. I fully expect to lose, but I want to see how effective it turns out. Scripting this may take a few minutes.

That has to be the most effective use of rain of stones I've seen so far. Stupid fog warriors.

[rdonj]

Okay, I'm ready to face my doom. *hands in .2h file*

[llamabeast]

Muwahaha! The walls of Nehekhara are broken! Soon the ancient palaces and temples shall be brought crashing into the dust, and the Immortals shall find peace at last.

That was a very cool thing you did with the Tomb Kings there. I think the one issue really was fatigue. By the time my guys reached your line your TKs were all knackered, so they were able to get loads of critical hits in despite all the buffs. Otherwise I think they might have really struggled. Using Darkness was very cunning, since it made my evocations ridiculously lame - apart from the Rains of Stones, of course, which cleared away the Immortals very handily. This time I was clever enough to buff my communion with Invulnerability, having found that neither Twist Fate nor Luck seem to work and afflicted all my dudes last time.

Bit annoying that you won in Skavenblight. Having been using uber battle magic for a while, I'd forgotten just how deadly your armies are when I can't use Fog Warriors and other megaspells.

[rdonj]

Hmm. Somehow I seem to have failed to leave a tomb king scripted to cast divine blessing. Wouldn't have saved me, but it might have helped a bit. I have to admit, I was fully expecting to lose that battle but not nearly so badly. Aside from getting them all pretty fatigued with my buffs, they don't seem to have listened to me! I had them scripted to (communion slave)(attack closest), and I don't know what you saw, but in my battle they became slaves and... stood there. I thought attacking was supposed to work with that. The darkness did work great, it was fun watching all those magma eruptions hit blank space... but you did get lucky enough to pop a few mistforms, so it wasn't all bad.

Muahaha, not so tough when you don't have a 56 mage communion backing you, are you? Well, in any case that last turn saw the loss of just about everything I have, and no real loss to you. It's pretty obvious you've won at this point, so I'm quite willing to concede the game. I'll go ahead and turn in my next turn though so you can have the pleasure of killing my god. Er, again.

[rdonj]

So just how DID you destroy sombre's army so easily, anyway? Was it a giant communion like what got me, was it the Old One? Or was it something completely else?

[llamabeast]

Muwahaha! Nehekhara is fallen! Its pyramids have been crushed by the powerful magic of the Slann, and the enchantments preserving the buried Tomb Kings have been broken. Never again need the living fear the walking dead of Nehekhara.

Man, I did a big scripting effort for that battle - the few Slann were going to leave after one turn, so as to not lose too many to Magic Duel, and the skinks had lots of little nasty spells (Frozen Heart, Farstrike) to kill off your army. I'd expected that your Tomb Kings and Immortals would have been reborn yet again inside your walls - I guess perhaps it doesn't work like that?

Yeah, I noticed that none of your TKs had cast Divine Blessing last turn. That was quite unfortunate. I'm surprised they didn't cast it themselves. As for the communion - once one of the communion masters has cast a spell, all the slaves take no action for the rest of the turn. One slightly gamey way around that is to make sure that all the slaves are first in the list, and the masters at the end (actions are always taken in the order the commanders are listed in).

I beat Sombre's army by having a huge array of skink priests with astral, and perhaps one Slann at the end of the list. The Slann (or it could have been a skink casting communion master) cast Power of the Spheres, and someone brought the Banner of the Northern Star. So all the skinks were S3. Then I just spammed Stellar Cascades. There's no way of resisting that, so all the ogres went rapidly over 100 fatigue and I had a horde of red crested skinks to mop them up. It was brutal. I can find a turn file if you'd be interested.

So, game over? Thanks very much for the game, I enjoyed it a lot. And thanks again for being such a good sport with my _extremely_ slow play recently. I think I'd better not take on any more games for a few months, till I'm done writing up, but after that I look forward to playing with you again some time.

[rdonj]

Yeah, immortals don't seem to come back if you've got an army sitting on the capital, even if they still own the fort. I did say last turn that I'd lost almost everything I had :)

I see! I hadn't quite understood the way that worked before. Hopefully I will remember that in the future, I think if I'd been a bit more careful with buffing I could have made a pretty impressive army out of communioned tomb kings toward the end there. You could definitely make an attempt out of it at least. Just too bad I never got phoenix pyre researched, I would have gotten a little extra damage out of it and maybe killed a few more things :P

Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing that turn file. It was a very impressive victory, I'd love to see how it played out. And definitely game over, there's just no recovering from that. The little army I have sieging skavenblight is certainly not going to be able to do anything to stop your iminent domkill, congratulations on your win. I'd love to play with you again sometime, but maybe it would be best to wait a while on it and avoid 11 day turns :)