Tourmaline - Mod Nations Game (Finished)

[rdonj]

I'm intending this to be an all mod nations game. However, if I can't get the minimum number of players with just mod nations I will allow people to choose vanilla nations. Vanilla nations will also be made available if we reach the goal of 8 mod nations, though vanilla nations will have to be chosen from the middle era. I would like to see all the warhammer nations represented and am willing to include mod nations from other eras as well. All the mods being used will be compiled together using llamabeast's mod-combining script and the resulting mod will be downloadable from this post sometime before the game begins. All mod nations will be considered, but if they are deemed to be excessively strong by me/the other players they will either be disallowed or nerfed into a more reasonable status. For the purposes of this game all currently existing and playable ma mods on the llamaserver (skaven, ogres, tomb kings, arga dis) are considered balanced and I highly encourage players to take one of these nations up.

Settings:
Era - Middle
Mods - CBM 1.5, for nations see below
Players - 8+
Gems - 50
HoF - 15 (warhammer in particular is all about the heroes)
Score Graphs on
Hosting interval will start at 24 hours and will stay that way until the majority of voting players wishes that to be extended or it becomes necessary to grant a particular player or more regular extensions to get their turn in, at which point it will switch over to 48 hours.. Hosting will stay at 48 hours until, again, the majority of voting players wish to increase the timer or players are consistently having issues getting their turns in on time. Extensions will be granted liberally, so if you know that you might have difficulty getting your turn in, ask ahead of time. I cannot guarantee an extension asked for only a few hours prior to hosting.

All other settings default unless a majority of voting players wishes otherwise. If you do not vote, your voice does not count. Map to be determined by a majority vote, though I personally would prefer a no independents map. I would be interested in adding Burnsaber's CPCS mod as well, but I am pretty sure that will be more or less impossible.

Game is to start hopefully sometime after sombre makes a couple small corrections to the latest iteration of the lizardmen mod and the next iteration of ogres, but if we have a full game and that looks to be taking too long we will start earlier.

Players:
1. rdonj (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=9481) - Itza
2. Lavaere (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=14021) - Skaven (purged by lizards)
3. Trumanator (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=10255)- Nehekhara
4. Ferrosol (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=8566) - Alugra (taken over by burnsaber)
5. Executor (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=9906) - Stygia (taken over by Septimius Severus)
6. Alpine Joe (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=10339) - Arga Dis
7. statttis (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=13251) - Ogre Kingdoms (slain by stygia)
8. The Vanishag (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=18355) - Alchera
9. Valerius (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=8960) - Haida Gwaii
10. viccio (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/member.php?u=14879) - Tharoon (slain by stygia)

[Trumanator]

I'll join as Nehekara. What magic sites/research will we be using?

[rdonj]

Default, but as I said if a majority of voting players wishes otherwise I am willing to change the settings. Although actually personally I would prefer slightly higher gem settings than default for ma, so I will change the op to reflect that.

I would also like to add that this game is open to players of all skill levels. I myself am intermediate at best. So if you'd like to play a mod nation in an mp game, go ahead and join :) There are not many opportunities to do so, though admittedly there are a few mod nation-accessible games going on at the moment.

[Trumanator]

I agree that adding more gems will make it more fun, especially since it will enable more usage of the national summons. I am also in favor of CPCS if we can wrangle it.

On a sidenote, there is a definite dearth of mod nations for MA on the llamaserver list, and the MA mod list on the forums is nearly a third Amos mods, which, while certainly entertaining, are generally considered fairly OP from what I've heard. Maybe we should look into allowing EA or LA nations?

[Septimius Severus]

Lavaere finally gets to play Skaven.

[rdonj]

I already said that's fine :D Since I plan on combining the mods with llama's mod-combining script anyway, changing eras for some of the mods is really not an issue.

With regards to amos' mods, there are at least a few of them that I don't feel are really overpowered. A number of them clearly are (like hellgate), but I am not going to dismiss all of them out of hand. If someone wants to play one of amos' mod nations and can convince me and/or enough other players that they're not overpowered, they are welcome to it.

Lavaere finally gets to play Skaven.

:D Yeah. I knew he really wanted to so I made sure to ask him before starting the game. Of course, he gets them in another game as well (redwich) so before long he'll be all skavened out.

[Ferrosol]

if mod nations are allowed from other eras count me in as Alugra, Failing that I will take the Ogres but I would really prefer alugra.

[rdonj]

Alugra is perfectly fine by me :)

[Executor]

This is too good to pass!
Is Stigia allowed?

[rdonj]

Not as familiar with stigia off-hand. I'll get back to you on that one.

[Executor]

There are only 3 mid mod nation that interest me, Stigia, Seraphim and Commonwealth.
If they aren't allowed that I guess I won't be joining.

[rdonj]

I'm not saying they won't be allowed. Commonwealth I don't think there'd be any problem giving you. Stigia I just don't remember, I'm about to take a quick look at them to jog my memory. Seraphim, well, that nation might be a bit much.

[Executor]

Well Nehekhara is taken, so I looked for other nations that seemed interesting, and yes Seraphim need some repair on mages, reduced magic paths, and a bit more expensive troops IMO.
Stigia is too overpowered, they have immortal sacreds and really overpowered summons, not to mention free spawn.
I probably wouldn't allow those two nations myself, so I'm good with Commonwealth if it's ok with everyone else, and given they only have water for magic paths it probably is.:)

[rdonj]

Well, personally I am not so sure about stygia. They do have immortal sacreds, that's true. So does nehekhara, albeit you have to summon them. Still I'm not sure that's a big problem. And the freespawn are particularly bad freespawn imo. They do have some pretty nasty summons. But with how high they are, I actually don't think there's a big problem with them. So as far as I'm concerned, you can play them. I don't think they're in the same league as, say, ashdod. As long as we avoid stupid overpowered, I'm fine with it (besides, my nation oozes priests. I'm not afraid :)).

With seraphim, I completely agree with you, they'd need some serious nerfing to be very fair. Some of those angels are just too much, what with three magic paths at level 4 and no handicaps.

And also, as I said you can play mod nations from any era. So don't feel constrained to just pick ma nations.

[Alpine Joe]

yay a mod nation game. I'll grab Arga Dis.

[rdonj]

Welcome aboard.

Also, it seems we're already up to 6 players. Two more and we're at the minimum.:) I would hardly mind more than that though.

[Executor]

It's strange that this is the first game of this kind, well maybe the first since I joined the community, don't know.

Map will be determened by the number of players right? May I suggest a slight increase of provinces per player as to see most of the nations expand and grow a little before going into war. It should make things more interesting.

Also, if anyone objects to me having Stigia in this game I will change the nation.

[rdonj]

Well, we did do warhammerama. Tomb kings, lizards, ogres and skaven. But so far as I know there was only one big, non-themed mod nations only game and that was well before my time as well. Mod nation games seem unfortunately rare around these parts.

Yeah, map will be determined by number of players. If we go with a no indies map, I would love to play on shahrivar. Just so long as arga dis doesn't end up on the top left of the map, heh. It has some preset magic sites and the 60% blood discount site is up there. It could be modded out though for this game. Shahrivar is 168 provinces, so anything less than 11 players and we'll see a bit more than 15 provinces per player. I'm open to other maps though.

I'm glad to see you being so flexible about stygia. Self policing is the way to go imo.

[Executor]

I like Shahriver too, it's a really beautiful map, my compliments to whoever created it. And it seems very strategically balanced to me.

Thanks, I realize that Stygia is far from helpless but I'm in this game for the fun. So I'm good with any nation that seems interesting to me and if folks have a problem with them it's no problem for me to change the nation.

[rdonj]

Hmm, any more takers?

[statttis]

I'll be the Ogre Kingdom

[rdonj]

Welcome aboard. I'm glad to see someone take the ogres, they should be a "fun" neighbor for some poor, unsuspecting soul :)

[the Vanishag]

:vroom: Ooo! Ooo! Me too!

I really want to try out my mod nation, Alchera (Early Era, but that's an easy fix). Please take a look at it and let me know if there are any balance tweaks you think are necessary. The one I've been agonizing over from the beginning is the Dreamhunter: capital-only and expensive, but a powerful stealth leader, ok mage and (this is the biggie) assassin.

Feedback on the Alchera thread so far has leaned toward that unit being, if anything, underpowered, but...

(Note: this would make the 3rd game I'll be in simultaneously, but that's my self-imposed limit, so I don't think I'm overcomiting.)

[Valerius]

I would like to try Haida Gwaii.

[rdonj]

:vroom: Ooo! Ooo! Me too!

I really want to try out my mod nation, Alchera (Early Era, but that's an easy fix). Please take a look at it and let me know if there are any balance tweaks you think are necessary. The one I've been agonizing over from the beginning is the Dreamhunter: capital-only and expensive, but a powerful stealth leader, ok mage and (this is the biggie) assassin.

Feedback on the Alchera thread so far has leaned toward that unit being, if anything, underpowered, but...

(Note: this would make the 3rd game I'll be in simultaneously, but that's my self-imposed limit, so I don't think I'm overcomiting.)

I'm looking at alchera now. For some reason there seem to be recruitable bashanites? Also one of the commanders is messed up. This seems to be an error with the start site "Te Korekore". It points at unit numbers not used in the mod. I'll need you to fix that or for you to tell me what they're supposed to be if they're going to be in this game. I suspect dreamhunters are the missing commanders

I suspect summon yarama yha-who is too cheap, they're very good units for the price. You have Yowie listed twice... the first form turns into 2393, but there is no 2393. The second Yowie has the same id number (2390) as the first, so I'm not quite sure what would happen if they changed shape.

I have the feeling Compel Maero is just a tad abusive. Immortal chaff is not in and of itself unfair. Immortal chaff that costs basically nothing probably is. I think they're too massable too early.

Dream hunters aren't weak, but for 400 gold they aren't amazing either. I would leave them where they are for now and see how the game plays out.

I don't feel that alchera is overpowered overall though. I would probably nerf compel maero a bit, but aside from that I think they are reasonable. Go on ahead and play them.

Will take a look at haida gwaii next.

[rdonj]

I'm going to go ahead and okay Haida Gwaii as well, so valerius you're in.

[Valerius]

Yikes, I just took a look at Itza. They're insane. I'm almost afraid to look at Stygia since Executor was concerned they might be overpowered for this game.

Any chance of giving Haida Gwaii a boost so they can compete? :)

[rdonj]

Itza is probably the strongest overall nation currently in this game. Perhaps this is poor form on my part :P I wouldn't say they're quite insane though. I don't think they're quite as good as the top tier vanilla nations like la ermor/ashdod/mictlan. They have significant issues to overcome, such as preposterously expensive forts and cap only mages :P I do think having their sacreds recruit everywhere is probably a bit too good. If the other players deem it necessary I am willing to limit them to cap only for this game.

I'm less inclined to boost haida gwaii. You've got plenty to work with :)

Also I note that we've reached the minimum number of players. I will continue accepting sign ups for say a few more days and then I'll put the mod together. I'll give another day or two after that for people to play around with the nations and see if any bugs pop up. Then we can start.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, I don't think Lizardmen are too OP, they're a bit hard work on account of expensive forts and mages. However, I would agree with limiting the temple guard to be capital only.

[Valerius]

Itza is probably the strongest overall nation currently in this game. Perhaps this is poor form on my part :P
Nah, you're the game organizer. You should be able to choose the nation you want to play.

I wouldn't say they're quite insane though. I don't think they're quite as good as the top tier vanilla nations like la ermor/ashdod/mictlan. They have significant issues to overcome, such as preposterously expensive forts and cap only mages :P I do think having their sacreds recruit everywhere is probably a bit too good. If the other players deem it necessary I am willing to limit them to cap only for this game.
Hmm, well most nations have cap only mages - just not ones as good as Itza. And the recruit anywhere Fifth Generation Slann aren't that shabby. But I don't think you should change them for the game. Anyway, I took a look at Stygia and they'll probably give you a run for your money. Units with a defense of 34+? They laugh at clumsy glamour nations with their defenses in the 20s. :). Weapons with soul slay and banish to inferno? :confused:

I'm less inclined to boost haida gwaii. You've got plenty to work with :)
Off to convince Foodstamp to change the Haida Gwaii mod before this game begins. ;)

Also I note that we've reached the minimum number of players. I will continue accepting sign ups for say a few more days and then I'll put the mod together. I'll give another day or two after that for people to play around with the nations and see if any bugs pop up. Then we can start.
Sounds good.

BTW, I took a look at Shahrivar and it's beautiful. Definitely would be a nice map to use.

[Valerius]

Yeah, I don't think Lizardmen are too OP, they're a bit hard work on account of expensive forts and mages. However, I would agree with limiting the temple guard to be capital only.

I think the thing that throws me off is the troop lineup: a good recuitable anywhere sacred, a size 6 trampler, several units with magic weapons/attacks (that's a big one), a variety of special purpose units. As far as the mages, the slann are excellent but it's also that they have access to every path but death. I think you can get around the fact that things are expensive if you take decent scales (which shouldn't be a problem even with, say, an E9 bless).

But it all depends on the competition. Against vanilla MA I think they're OP; against Stygia, no.

[Trumanator]

Itza is indeed very good, but keep in mind that the trampler is 300 gp, the sacreds are going to be cap only in this version, and that their non cap mainline mage is 650 gp, with the cap only one being 850! I do worry though for Haida Gwai and maybe Arga and Alugra. I have no idea about Alchera.

[rdonj]

Itza is probably the strongest overall nation currently in this game. Perhaps this is poor form on my part :P
Nah, you're the game organizer. You should be able to choose the nation you want to play.

I wouldn't say they're quite insane though. I don't think they're quite as good as the top tier vanilla nations like la ermor/ashdod/mictlan. They have significant issues to overcome, such as preposterously expensive forts and cap only mages :P I do think having their sacreds recruit everywhere is probably a bit too good. If the other players deem it necessary I am willing to limit them to cap only for this game.
Hmm, well most nations have cap only mages - just not ones as good as Itza. And the recruit anywhere Fifth Generation Slann aren't that shabby. But I don't think you should change them for the game. Anyway, I took a look at Stygia and they'll probably give you a run for your money. Units with a defense of 34+? They laugh at clumsy glamour nations with their defenses in the 20s. :). Weapons with soul slay and banish to inferno? :confused:

I'm less inclined to boost haida gwaii. You've got plenty to work with :)
Off to convince Foodstamp to change the Haida Gwaii mod before this game begins. ;)

Also I note that we've reached the minimum number of players. I will continue accepting sign ups for say a few more days and then I'll put the mod together. I'll give another day or two after that for people to play around with the nations and see if any bugs pop up. Then we can start.
Sounds good.

BTW, I took a look at Shahrivar and it's beautiful. Definitely would be a nice map to use.

My point wasn't that the 4th generation slann were cap only, but that they were expensive... at 850 gold as trumanator pointed out :). That's as expensive as some forts, and you need to recruit a certain number of them just to get paths you need for forging, not to mention rituals. The slann are very poor ritual casters, while being great battle mages. The only way to really break into ritual casting is with the summonable 3rd generation slann, who are pretty expensive at 50 pearls a pop and conjuration 7.

Well, the only two units stygia has that get that soulslay attack are a mage and a hero. The mage is hardly terrifying with its 9 hp and dreadful combat stats. The hero, well, he's a bit meaner. What has 34+ defense? I looked through the .dm file and saw nothing with stats so high. Anyway, my personal feeling is that stygia is kind of ermor lite early in the game, eventually getting some nasty unique summons that heavily entice other players to cast Well of Misery so they can't have it ;) And trust me, there are plenty of death nations in this game who have good reason to pursue that well. We'll have to see how the game plays out, but I think there will be plenty of work ahead for stygia if he wants to win this game. Same with me :)

[rdonj]

Itza is indeed very good, but keep in mind that the trampler is 300 gp, the sacreds are going to be cap only in this version, and that their non cap mainline mage is 650 gp, with the cap only one being 850! I do worry though for Haida Gwai and maybe Arga and Alugra. I have no idea about Alchera.

Haida Gwaii has spammable thunder strikers, alugra has ubiquitous thugs. Arga has great non-sacred infantry and recruitable SCs, as well as decent forging paths and blood magic. Alchera is probably on the weaker side of nations playing in this game, but ethereal sacreds are nothing to sneeze at. Well, for anyone other than myself... :P

[Valerius]

My point wasn't that the 4th generation slann were cap only, but that they were expensive... at 850 gold as trumanator pointed out :). That's as expensive as some forts, and you need to recruit a certain number of them just to get paths you need for forging, not to mention rituals. The slann are very poor ritual casters, while being great battle mages. The only way to really break into ritual casting is with the summonable 3rd generation slann, who are pretty expensive at 50 pearls a pop and conjuration 7.

Well, the only two units stygia has that get that soulslay attack are a mage and a hero. The mage is hardly terrifying with its 9 hp and dreadful combat stats. The hero, well, he's a bit meaner. What has 34+ defense? I looked through the .dm file and saw nothing with stats so high. Anyway, my personal feeling is that stygia is kind of ermor lite early in the game, eventually getting some nasty unique summons that heavily entice other players to cast Well of Misery so they can't have it ;) And trust me, there are plenty of death nations in this game who have good reason to pursue that well. We'll have to see how the game plays out, but I think there will be plenty of work ahead for stygia if he wants to win this game. Same with me :)

Ok, I see my mistake. I was looking at the (EA?) version of Stygia from here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=31195). Now I found the MA version.

[llamabeast]

Sombre is quite careful with balance. I honestly think Itza is not crazy. The sheer expense of producing the Slann makes it hard to produce them in any numbers, and having done so they're surprisingly un-useful. Very hard to boost you see (no slots), so they're terrible ritual casters. In battle they're okay but you'll never has very many, so frankly I would generally be more scared of say Marignon's fire mages. Also if you want a second or third fort to churn out skink priests (which you do) they cost a whopping 2300 gold before you can make the priests, and take 6 turns to put up.

[Burnsaber]

!

Alugra, my precious baby, is in! Oh, the happy day! (The nation was somewhat designed with MP in mind, so I'm glad it's in)

Just wanted to tell everyone that the Alugra nation mod makes some global changes*. They're not that crucial and Rdonj can remove them if he so wishes.

* Alugra adds a new (very weak) forgeable fire magic item: Hellfire Bracers. It also boosts the "Brigand Lair" common blood site and changes the names of some astral were for thematic reasons.

[rdonj]

I'm not worried about the changes alugra makes. Thanks for pointing that out though, I'd forgotten about those.

I don't suppose you'd like to take a crack at the game, burnsaber? You do seem a bit busy with other games though.

[rdonj]

The same invitation is extended to llama of course, but I have the feeling if you're popping in that many times without signing up, you're not gonna :P

[Burnsaber]

Thanks for the invitation, but I'll have to decline. Althought I'm absolutely tempted to play Ulm Reborn, I have a bit too much on my plate right now.

But I'll keep very close eye to this thread. You know, just for the far-out chance that someone mentions something about Alugra.

Oh, you'll probably have to off the CPCS dream. No way you are going to get them to fit with so many national spells. Unless you are willing to override 78 vanilla national spells. Also remember that the llama's mod combiner script doesn't take into account magic site recruitables, so you'll have to set capital only troops (and the Alugran change to Bringand Lair) by hand.

Also if you hit the spell limit, you can overwrite vanilla national spells to get more spell slots, but llamaserver had some problem with that, if I recall the Unsanity-drama correctly.

[llamabeast]

I'm very tempted to join actually, but had better not. In the next six weeks I have to hand in my thesis (Friday), start a job (my first non-summer job), move house (twice!), practice an improvised comedy show (almost every weekend) and take it up to the Edinburgh festival for a week-long run. Gosh! And this week, while I'm meant to be working like a maniac I keep on thinking about the game I'm playing (Crusaders) and looking at the forum, like a fool!

[llamabeast]

Also remember that the llama's mod combiner script doesn't take into account magic site recruitables, so you'll have to set capital only troops (and the Alugran change to Bringand Lair) by hand.

Man, I really should fix that. I didn't realise it affected capital only troops, does it really? Next week!

[rdonj]

Thanks for the warning burnsaber. I can see a number of potential issues cropping up that I'll have to check. For example I'm pretty sure between all the mods I'm going to have to remove some of the nametype changes. I was pretty sure there would be pretty much no chance for CPCS, unfortunately, this is just about the worst game type format to fit it in. Maybe if I'm feeling really ambitious I'll look into it and see how impossible it would be.

Yeah, I figured both of you were too busy. But wow llama, that's quite a lot going on! Oh well, maybe next game.

[Executor]

Valerius, if you have a problem with Stygia I can change the nation, it's ok. I feel they are somehere in between MA and LA Ermor myself, with the limited magic paths and all the undead.

[Valerius]

Valerius, if you have a problem with Stygia I can change the nation, it's ok. I feel they are somehere in between MA and LA Ermor myself, with the limited magic paths and all the undead.

No, I think MA Stygia is ok. A strong nation, but not like the version (LA) of Stygia I based my comments on - link here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=31195). That version ... well I think Foodstamp's comments in that thread sum it up well. :)

[Trumanator]

Lol, I was just running a test game with CBM 1.5 and Tomb Kings on the NI version of Sharivar, and I just ran into a bunch of heavy cavs wielding Divine Flails. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when my troops starting dieing madly to fiery explosions!:D

The more interesting part though is that this did NOT happen on the regular version of Sharivar...

Secondary note, the regular version also has an improbable prov connection between 31 and 4. I also though it funny that the province numbers start in the bottom right corner and go right to left bottom to top. :D


Yet another note, I think we should set starts, or at least make sure that everyone has a semi-equal one.

[the Vanishag]

I'm looking at alchera now. For some reason there seem to be recruitable bashanites? Also one of the commanders is messed up. This seems to be an error with the start site "Te Korekore". It points at unit numbers not used in the mod. I'll need you to fix that or for you to tell me what they're supposed to be if they're going to be in this game. I suspect dreamhunters are the missing commanders

I suspect summon yarama yha-who is too cheap, they're very good units for the price. You have Yowie listed twice... the first form turns into 2393, but there is no 2393. The second Yowie has the same id number (2390) as the first, so I'm not quite sure what would happen if they changed shape.

I have the feeling Compel Maero is just a tad abusive. Immortal chaff is not in and of itself unfair. Immortal chaff that costs basically nothing probably is. I think they're too massable too early.

Dream hunters aren't weak, but for 400 gold they aren't amazing either. I would leave them where they are for now and see how the game plays out.

I don't feel that alchera is overpowered overall though. I would probably nerf compel maero a bit, but aside from that I think they are reasonable.

:doh:This is what I get for not testing a new version before uploading it.

I went ahead and made some changes - only the last one is a "buff":


Update: v1.66
* fixed all the stuff I broke renumbering the mod for 1.65
* balance tweaks:
* Compell Maero now summons only one (was variable by skill), but only costs 2 gems (was 3) and Maeros now have 14 HP (was 12)
* Summon Yarama Ya-who cost increased to 15 pearls (was 10)
* Maohi Diver now has mapmove 1 (was 2 - makes them a little less land-friendly) and MR 10 (Maohi norm)
* Possum Warrior now has MR 14 (was 13) to accurately reflect "+2 bonus" from enchanted Possum-skin Cloak (which doesn't actually give +2 MR, but all units in the mod with this armor have +2 MR relative to a comparable unit without


Regarding the Maeros: as they increase unrest in their province 1/turn (each) and aren't stealthy, so you can't use this against hostile provinces, I figured that was a major balance point - losing a lot in a single turn could cripple one's capital the next turn.

[rdonj]

Compel Maero used to be 11+ ;) I take it that wasn't intended. I think they would be reasonably fair at 2-3 per cast. At 1 a cast... well, you could make a case for them, but they probably would not be worth the mage time.

[Sombre]

Interesting game. I think you're going to be beset by random issues from having that many mods, but if you can cope with it and get started for good without too much drama and hassle then you'll do fine.

We have run a couple of all mod nation games before and the hassle of random problems caused them to kinda collapse.

[llamabeast]

Lol, I was just running a test game with CBM 1.5 and Tomb Kings on the NI version of Sharivar, and I just ran into a bunch of heavy cavs wielding Divine Flails. I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when my troops starting dieing madly to fiery explosions!

Yes, that's a rather ridiculous bug in the last version of Tomb Kings. What I don't understand is why no-one ever mentioned it before. I thought it must be some change that I only had on my system since no-one had mentioned it.

I'll make a fixed version shortly, tonight maybe.

[rdonj]

Interesting game. I think you're going to be beset by random issues from having that many mods, but if you can cope with it and get started for good without too much drama and hassle then you'll do fine.

We have run a couple of all mod nation games before and the hassle of random problems caused them to kinda collapse.

Yeah, this could easily be mod conflict hell. I'm going to try to iron out all the bugs before the game starts, but there's no guarantee I'll catch everything. I just hope nothing really bad sneaks its way into the final version.

Llama- I have no idea how I didn't notice. I played a bunch of quick test games on aran with the tomb kings recently and never noticed heavy cavalry being equipped with divine flails. Maybe I just didn't watch the right battle replays?

[the Vanishag]

Compel Maero used to be 11+ ;) I take it that wasn't intended. I think they would be reasonably fair at 2-3 per cast. At 1 a cast... well, you could make a case for them, but they probably would not be worth the mage time.

Yeah, at 1/cast I wasn't planning on using them at all. They were supposed to be 2-3/cast... that's me not (sufficiently) testing my mods again. :re: I'll go fix it.

[rdonj]

Okay, I'll check the new version out later today. Then I think tomorrow I will try to get the mod put together. I'll see how many bugs I can iron out myself, but I would highly appreciate it if the other players went out bug hunting as well. This would put us starting on saturday or sunday assuming everything goes to plan.

[Trumanator]

Sounds good.

On a scheduling note, me and my family are leaving on vacation thursday the 16th, and I won't be back until saturday the 25th. I expect internet access to be little to nonexistant. I probably should have thought of this beforehand, but if you would like me to either A) find a sub for the intervening days or B)simply bow out, I would be prepared to do so. If you would prefer to just start the game a little later thats fine too, but I would hate for everyone to be waiting on me. Sorry for forgetting about this until now.

[rdonj]

I think option A or B would be best personally, but I will let the majority decide. I don't suppose frozen lama would be available to sub for you :P

[Gregstrom]

In the next six weeks I have to ... practice an improvised comedy show (almost every weekend) and take it up to the Edinburgh festival for a week-long run.

What's the show? I'm tempted to turn up :)

Edit: and which venue?

[Trumanator]

I don't suppose frozen lama would be available to sub for you :P

lol I wish, he would probably do better than I would. Its a both cool and a little annoying how much better he is at a game I introduced him to. :)

[llamabeast]

Gregstrom: Yes, you should come! Do!

The show is "An Improvised History of Absolutely Everything", it's on at Augustine's (on George IV Bridge), 25th August - 1st September. I can't remember the exact time, but it's something like 2.30pm. If you come (do!) make sure to hang around outside the theatre afterwards to say hello.

[llamabeast]

I can sub for Trumanator. Would be fun.

[chrispedersen]

Gregstrom: Yes, you should come! Do!

The show is "An Improvised History of Absolutely Everything", it's on at Augustine's (on George IV Bridge), 25th August - 1st September. I can't remember the exact time, but it's something like 2.30pm. If you come (do!) make sure to hang around outside the theatre afterwards to say hello.

Rehearsing something for six weeks for an improvised history.. hmmm....

still edinburgh in the winter... wistful....

[Gregstrom]

If I didn't live in Edinburgh, I too would become wistful for the winters. Oh, the cold and the horizontal rain...

Luckily the festival is in the summer, so you get nice things like traffic disruption and crowds of tourists instead :p

(I jest - August is really quite pleasant on average)

[rdonj]

I can sub for Trumanator. Would be fun.

Thank you llama, that makes things much, much easier.

[rdonj]

Tangaroa Tohunga lose sacred status when they enter the water. That should probably be changed. Anyway, I think that's it for bugs easily observable.

[rdonj]

I'm pretty sure we've got everyone we're going to get, so I went ahead and made the .dm file. I haven't had a chance to check it over and make sure nothing was messed up in the great combining, so I'm still going to wait on releasing it.

We should also decide on the map now. We have 9 players. We can play on shahrivar, we'd have 18 provs a player. A little bit big, but probably not awful. Or if people prefer another map they can go ahead and suggest it and we'll look into it.

[Executor]

I say we stick with Shahriver.

[Trumanator]

Shariver sounds fine to me.

[llamabeast]

Would you mind just checking that my stupid Divine Flail bug has been fixed by the mod combining rdonj? It probably has. I'll just feel a bit silly if your game gets sabotaged by indy knights with divine flails. It's particular bad for Tomb Kings in fact!

[Trumanator]

Well actually in the game I encountered them I won the battle! However, I think that had more to do with there being only about 5 heavy cavs.

[Executor]

Yeah, but someone could recruit them and use them to crush you into the ground.

[Trumanator]

True, that had occurred to me later...

[rdonj]

Would you mind just checking that my stupid Divine Flail bug has been fixed by the mod combining rdonj? It probably has. I'll just feel a bit silly if your game gets sabotaged by indy knights with divine flails. It's particular bad for Tomb Kings in fact!

I read this post and I suddenly realized... I forgot to include cbm! Well, that part is fixed now anyway. Do you happen to know where exactly the conflict is? That would save me a lot of time. After running the script it gave me a "duplicate armor definition" error, but nothing else. So at least your script isn't complaining that there's an error with the divine flail.

Also, a fun fact - this mod is 697 pages long in word. A lot of that is CBM though, which I dearly hope I won't have to pay too close of attention to.

edit: I looked briefly at the divine flail weapons and none of them are assigned to anything weird by the mod. So unless there is a conflict with a vanilla weapon it doesn't seem to be an issue.

[llamabeast]

The problem I think (I have only just looked, naughtily!), is that I do #newweapon 710 Divine Flail, and CBM does #newweapon 710 warhorse hoof. However if I remember how it works correctly the script will have fixed that, since it's exactly the kind of conflict it's meant to fix.

Sorry about that, should have just sat and thought for a minute instead of posting!

[rdonj]

Yeah, your script fixed that, there should be no issues with divine flail-wielding knights.

[viccio]

If possible I would like to play with "Tharoon, Decadent Overlords" or "Tarent, Rise of Technology"

[rdonj]

I'm not sure I feel inclined to include tarent in the game. They seem too undominionsy, with their automatons and guns, they seem out of place compared to the others. Tharoon I'm more inclined to bring in. So I will include them in the mod.

[rdonj]

Known bugs so far:

Sons of the Sun have no weapon
Lord of the summer plague lacking ranged weapons

Once those are fixed I'll release the mod for people to play with. If any further bugs are found I will fix those asap.

Edit: if burn/llama/sombre are still reading this thread... how many free spell slots are there? We're at 135 for the mod here.

[rdonj]

Also remember that the llama's mod combiner script doesn't take into account magic site recruitables, so you'll have to set capital only troops (and the Alugran change to Bringand Lair) by hand.

Man, I really should fix that. I didn't realise it affected capital only troops, does it really? Next week!

For the record, the script handled this just fine.

[rdonj]

Hmm. There was a bug in flood of serpents, for some reason llama the script did not know to change the damage number when the serpents of sotek changed id numbers. Looking more closely at the spell, there was a misspelling in fatiguecost that caused the spell not to work right. could tat have caused your script to ignore the spell?

[rdonj]

Alright, all known bugs are dead. I'll be uploading the mod shortly, and then, yay, I get to start looking at how to fix up the map for us. The game will start on sunday unless we start finding a lot of bugs with the mod.

Also llama - the error with sons of the sun was only for nehekhara, or at least as far as I checked. It's because nehekhara alters the son of the sun after cbm changes the weapons, and the flails are renumbered by the mod script. So it goes looking for weapons that I don't think are there.

Edit: Files uploaded in both .zip and .rar format. Enjoy.

[rdonj]

I've just realized lizards aren't cap only yet. So I'll definitely be releasing a different version of the mod later to fix that. But for the moment go ahead and use the current version for playtesting.

[viccio]

I'm not sure I feel inclined to include tarent in the game. They seem too undominionsy, with their automatons and guns, they seem out of place compared to the others. Tharoon I'm more inclined to bring in. So I will include them in the mod.

i don't understand if i'm in game or not

[rdonj]

You are. You get tharoon.

[Trumanator]

So are we going with pre-set starts or not? IMHO it is going to be very necessary, since when I started up a game with all the nations I got several that had only 2-3 neighbors, and at least one instance of 2 nations sharing a neighbor.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I'm going to do pre-set starts. Bug hunting the mod yesterday took a lot of time and frankly I was just too tired to want to mess with the map at that point. But I will probably release a map later today. If not then early sunday.

[rdonj]

Okay, turns out I won't be able to get the map done tonight. Sorry about that. I will get that done as soon as I can tomorrow. I am looking at two potential maps. One with starts balanced geometrically and another taking geography more into account. If I do both of them I will submit both and have you guys decide which seems more fair. Or I will just do the one that is mostly planned out.

[rdonj]

Alright, the corrected version of the Tourmaline mod and the geometrically based map have been uploaded to the first post of the thread. I'll release the geographically-based one a little later today.

[rdonj]

Here's the geographic version of the map. I reached the upload limit for the first post so I have to put it here. Please state your map preferences, I hope to start the game sometime tonight.

[rdonj]

Just realized I never gave out the .tga for the map. Sigh. Well, hopefully that hasn't been too much of a bother. Image attached to this post, again in .rar and .zip format.

[Lavaere]

Started two tests, sadly they both show as the same name so not sure which is which. But I prefer the one that actually found a start

[rdonj]

Both of the maps work fine for me. Did you use random nation assignment? There are no water starts in either map, so if any water nation was chosen that would cause the game to crash.

[Lavaere]

ah ok, maybe thats what happen. and it looks so purrdy. well either way I don't mind which one or what type of start really

[rdonj]

Okay well, not having heard either way I'm going to go with my preference, which is the geometric design from the first post of the thread. I'll set the game up now and hopefully we can get all pretenders submitted in the next day or two.

Edit: Or not? The llamaserver seems to be confused. I will have to pm llama about this. As he is away at the moment we may have to wait a few days to start the game. Hrmm.

[rdonj]

Llamabeast has identified the issue. Unfortunately I had to alter the name of the map image and change the .map file. So you will have to download these again from the first post. Hopefully with this done all our issues will be out of the way and we can move on with the game. Also I will set the game up shortly, so prepare your pretenders everyone.

Also, please make sure you have the correct version of the mod. Only 5 people have downloaded the new version out of 9 who need to. If you don't download the new version you will be plagued with battle replay bugs.

[rdonj]

Ignore that the map claims to be albatha, somehow I messed up the referral post when uploading the map.

[rdonj]

Note the thread title... ;)

[statttis]

The Tourmaline mod seems to be missing some stuff. It crashes when I try to make a pretender.

[rdonj]

Please PM me with details. What pretender? Do you get a crash message? Do you have any other mods enabled? In particular, CBM will definitely cause crashes while using the tourmaline mod as it incorporates cbm into it.

[rdonj]

You may notice that the mod on the first page has changed again. You do not need to re-download it if you got the last one. I had to upload a new version because not everyone had gotten the image files from the first download. Nothing about the actual mod itself was changed.

[Alpine Joe]

So I was trying out these mod combinations, and the lizard nation has these saurus oldblood's that are ridiculous with these mod combos. whoever plays them will have to not use the oldbloods.

[rdonj]

What is it making the oldbloods ridiculous? Looking at them I am almost 100% sure that they are no stronger than they are vanilla. There is no doubt that they are good, but...

1. They are cap only
2. They therefore compete with 4th gen slann
3. In the early game using them means giving up recruitment of a mage that you really, really want.

So it's really hard to use them effectively. I will recruit some, but it won't be for a while. And when I do it will be largely to move armies around. So you really don't have to worry about it. But seriously, they're no stronger here than they normally are, and I would hardly say they're ridiculous. Maybe they are a little on the cheap side for what they offer... but they have nothing on real SCs.

[Trumanator]

Well, I'm leaving today for vacation. I have submitted my pretender, but you should just send the turns to llamabeast till I get back in a week or so. I am looking forward to having a nice little piece of heaven when I get back! :)

[rdonj]

Well, assuming everyone even gets their pretenders in before you get back, I'll be sure to do that....

[Alpine Joe]

What is it making the oldbloods ridiculous? Looking at them I am almost 100% sure that they are no stronger than they are vanilla. There is no doubt that they are good, but...

1. They are cap only
2. They therefore compete with 4th gen slann
3. In the early game using them means giving up recruitment of a mage that you really, really want.

So it's really hard to use them effectively. I will recruit some, but it won't be for a while. And when I do it will be largely to move armies around. So you really don't have to worry about it. But seriously, they're no stronger here than they normally are, and I would hardly say they're ridiculous. Maybe they are a little on the cheap side for what they offer... but they have nothing on real SCs.


Hmm maybe it is a problem with compatibility with CBM then. THe ones I saw had at least 7-8 magic paths, including blood, for 80 gold. I will check my mods when I get home from work.

[rdonj]

They should most definitely NOT have those magic paths. When you're using the tourmaline mod, you can't have any other mods enabled. At all, including CBM (I included it in the tourmaline.dm). Or you will have serious bugs because of the wide range of unit ids that are used. I'm not sure what would be giving the oldbloods quite that much magic but I can assure you they will not be so obscene in our game.

[Lavaere]

yay, I'm so happy this didn't start why I had lost internet. though I'm kinda curious as to when it will start

[rdonj]

You lost your internet? :( That's not cool. Well, it's been a bit tough contacting viccio about getting his pretender submitted for tharoon. I was able to get in touch with him today, but the game didn't accept his pretender. I offered some advice about how to get around that but I haven't heard back from him yet. My hope is that his pretender will be submitted sometime tomorrow. If it doesn't get sent in soon, I don't know, I may have to just start the game without him to make sure it gets going.

[llamabeast]

Sorry about the game disappearing. Ironically it was a twist on the previous problem - this time the issue was that the .map file had spaces in its name! Anyway, fixed, and you don't need to rename any files or anything. I will do some maintenance on the LlamaServer soon to prevent such issues coming up again. It is in need of some TLC at the moment.

The game has just started now, so you should all be receiving your first turn files any second. Have fun!

[rdonj]

Oh... the .map, not the image. Heh, I wasn't aware of that, sorry. The original had spaces in the name so I didn't figure it would be a problem. Well, now I know better....

[Lavaere]

Wow, first turn and it says Arga Dis cheated

[Alpine Joe]

Hmm yes I don't really know how I cheated, but it says I did somehow. Perhaps we should restart the game with me sending in a revised pretender? If you guys are okay with continuing, so am I.

[rdonj]

Well, it's possible that happened if you got a luck event or something. Did the game say that your pretender was reduced in power? If it did we may have to restart it.

[Alpine Joe]

It did say it had been reduced in power, and it is dormant, so I can't tell what happened right now. It may be best just to do a restart, with me resubmitting my pretender, just to be safe. I hope you all don't mind.

[rdonj]

Yeah, sounds like it. Well, I would restart the game, but my admin password doesn't work. I will have to figure out the new one from llamabeast.

[Lavaere]

I don't mind, just first time I've seen a cheat message before

[the Vanishag]

Maybe another CBM + Tourmaline error? Joe, did you have CBM enabled when you created your pretender?

[Alpine Joe]

Maybe another CBM + Tourmaline error? Joe, did you have CBM enabled when you created your pretender?
Hmm I don't think so. Since I made that specific mistake when looking at the various nations, I made sure to disable it prior to pretender creation. There is a small chance I simply uploaded the wrong Arga Dis pretender (I tested several), but I don't believe any of them were created under CBM.

Sorry about this inconvenience people, I know how annoying it is to have a game stall this early. If everyone is okay with continuing, we can, and I will just play with whatever pops out at the end of year one.

[rdonj]

Well. I would be willing to keep playing if you are. There's still the minor manner of hearing back from llama about whether he still wants to sub for trumanator or not. By the time we hear back from him I think it would be fairly easy to unstart the game, get your pretender back in, and get going. Just as long as you're on the ball about it alpine joe. Only three people have submitted turns so far anyway. They would have to resubmit their turns I'm pretty sure... I don't think that's going to be a huge problem.

I just want to try and keep this from getting out of hand. All kinds of crazy errors could pop up if someone has the wrong mod or something, and that could kill the game just as dead as a slow start. So I am inclined personally to get this issue ironed out.

[Alpine Joe]

Yeah I'll be on the ball for when the game pops up again waiting for pretenders. Will this mean everyone has to resubmit, or just me?

[rdonj]

Well, I just got my new password. Woohoo. I'll unstart the game straight away and figure that out.

Edit: Okay, it looks like we just need your pretender alpine joe. So whenever you're ready, the game will start.

[Alpine Joe]

Alright its in we should be good to go. Sorry about the holdup people, hopefully we can still have a good game.

[rdonj]

Heh, the game disappeared again. I should have expected that. Time to send out the llama signal.

[rdonj]

Alright everyone. The game is started again. There are no cheating messages. Everything should be good to go. Let's get this thing started and see how many turns we can get done before trumanator gets back.

[llamabeast]

Lots! I want to get some action with my pet Tomb Kings before I have to hand them over!

[rdonj]

:D

Also, I must say I'm very pleased with my start location. Imo it's one of the best 2 or 3 on the map.

[rdonj]

Good job guys, let's keep these turns rolling.

[Ferrosol]

Damn I miss my indy scouts

[rdonj]

Eh, you probably wouldn't have any yet anyway :P

[statttis]

I'm going to miss the indy mages. Ogres are the worst researchers of any nation ever.

[rdonj]

Now that one I can believe.

[Ferrosol]

Eh, you probably wouldn't have any yet anyway :P

I normally start recruiting scouts the moment I take a province with them in. I am an information junkie:)

[rdonj]

Well, what I meant is, so few turns into the game it's a bit unlikely you'd have scout provinces anyway.

[Lavaere]

Wow this is really bad, thought I'd try a new experimental pretender. And now I'm dead last and have afflictions.
Well atleast its going to be fun to see how the other nations work out.

[rdonj]

:( I was hoping the rat things would do a bit better. Well, hopefully you'll be able to put up a good fight for someone before you go down.

In other news, perhaps I should not have been so quick to express my happiness with my start location. It seems that heavy cavalry and elephants have been placed strategically to deter me from a brisk expansion. I can kill most of them, but there's the occasional group of heavy cavalry that's just too big and hurts one of my expansion parties too much to continue :(

Meanwhile, ferrosol, you seem to be doing rather well for yourself.

[Ferrosol]

Meanwhile, ferrosol, you seem to be doing rather well for yourself.

Well I tend to do best in the early expansion phase providing I dont run into any unexpected barb uprisings or large amounts of heavy cav. Mostly where I screw up is in the mid game so many options tend to have me going around in circles rather than focusing on one tactic :)

[Sombre]

Man Skaven never seem to do well :[

[the Vanishag]

That's weird. Looking at them before the game, I would have guessed they'd do well. They didn't strike me as having the most raw power, but as having an attractive balance of power and subtlety. But I'm still a Dom n00b, so I may have missed a fatal flaw.:dk:

[Sombre]

It's probably just bad luck, though I think they are also tricky to play and have a suspect early game.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I think probably their biggest problem for multiplayer is they don't have any particularly brilliant opening. No recruitable SCs, no powerful sacred, and even their elite units have pretty bad morale and a fairly average sat line. They're not completely helpless, but I can see them being a bit of a slow start.

[Lavaere]

Well with skaven I tried a pretender I've never used before. Which really collapsed when he got affliction on the first turn. And that now I reallised. I did stupid thing by forgeting there are no Indies to recruit.

[rdonj]

Grr, wind mages :( I hate running into those guys. Luckily the battle went much better than I'm used to.

[statttis]

Over half of the territories I've seen so far are heavy cav, including all but 1 of my capital borders. I would be ruined if I was using a nation with weak troops.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I'm in the same situation. Heavy cavalry, wind masters, elephants, and this turn? I found some druids and dark vines. Sigh. I really shouldn't have let myself be cowed in the beginning by a HC province I shied away from, I have this feeling I'm really going to regret it in a few turns. Unless maybe one of my neighbors happens to be playing skavens or tharoon... but I am betting it will be alugra or something :P

[Trumanator]

Well when I was playing around with the skaven preparatory to this I actually found that the plague censor sacreds were quite good at expansion with something like an S9D?N4 bless. Just 5 with a shaman/priest/whatever could comfortably clear a few provinces, and you can churn that out in a single turn.

[rdonj]

Interesting. I would never have tried to expand using censor bearers. How do they fare against cavalry/elephants? This is where I'd really expect them not to work out so well, at least not without some kind of screen.

Also, are you back? Do you need nehekhara transferred over to your control now or has llama already done that?

[Lavaere]

Censor Bearers do make good expanders, with a screen of there green friends. Though against large enemies and missile heavy armies they can die quickly.
I've come to realise if you want to play Skaven then take a F9 or D9 bless. To make your sacred have magical weapons.

[Trumanator]

Yes I am back. I don't know if llama has transferred me, but I haven't gotten a turn file yet.


Back to skaven, I found that they are actually surprisingly good against cavs, but I didn't quite have the courage to send one of those expansion parties against eles. The best part about that bless is that you can get it quite cheaply, and you also get to use a thematic pretender (gray seer).

[rdonj]

Yeah, we just got a new turn this morning. You will want to send me your email address and I'll set you back up with your nation.

Next time I'm playing skavens I'll have to try that....

[Sombre]

I would expect censers to do great against elephants, since they hit so hard. Mixed in with other pestilens they get cav def down enough to hit them and again their damage output is very high (since they have a huge two handed weapon).

[Ferrosol]

For the skaven I find that a W9N4 bless works quite well and that using Censer bearers mixed with plague monks makes a good expansion army. You can get this using a Frost Father plus decent scales and a further level 4 bless of your choice. I prefer A4 for the increased protection from arrows and the extra magic diversity but really anything works.

[Trumanator]

That works too, but the advantage of the S9 is that it gives you a kickass pretender for the late game.

[Lavaere]

W9N4 is ok I think, but then you have no magical weapons. And your really gonna want those magical weapons when you start meeting other players.

[Trumanator]

you've got poison don't you? Being etherial won't protect them from that.

[rdonj]

Well! It seems that the merciless skaven overlords have declared war on the small and harmless nation of Itza. With this act they have truly laid bare their intention to subjugate any nation which would appear less powerful than their own. We of Itza shall strive to meet this great threat and turn it back before the shadow of dread skavenblight should spread to all corners of this most beautiful world.

As their vile god rides at the fore of the army (well, the rear technically, but he's still there...) we hereby claim right of possession over the capitol of skavenblight once the ratmen have fallen. However, should anyone decide to scavenge pickings from the ratmen we could probably be convinced to make some sort of deal rather than war over his territories.

[Ferrosol]

We the people of Algura, Have launched an invasion of the lands of Arga Dis, We wish to make clear to all that this is not of our will and we extend the hand of friendship to all our neighbours however we can no longer tolerate the actions of the leaders of this barbaric nation. They have been kidnapping young Alugran women for use in their vile religious rituals. We call on the people of Arga Dis to rise up against their tyrannical giant overlords we will refrain from any further military action only if the government of Arga dis agrees to hand over the criminals responsible and undertakes to recruit no more of their vile blood magi.

Signed

Commander Sam L. Angry,
Director
Strategic Weapons Operational Research Division

[Lavaere]

Itza's aggresion and exspantion have called to action Ratkind. There obvious march towards Skavenblight and its surrounding lands was cause for alarm. As such under the guidence of the Horned One's Avatar. We have taken action to make the borders of our lands.
Any further advances by Itza towards Skavenblight will be taken as a declaration of war. And appropriate action taken to halt such aggresive actions.

[rdonj]

Itza's aggresion and exspantion have called to action Ratkind. There obvious march towards Skavenblight and its surrounding lands was cause for alarm. As such under the guidence of the Horned One's Avatar. We have taken action to make the borders of our lands.
Any further advances by Itza towards Skavenblight will be taken as a declaration of war. And appropriate action taken to halt such aggresive actions.

Que? Itza has only two expansion parties on the skaven side of the map, and they are quite some distance from the capitol so I have no idea what the tricksy Skaven leader is talking about. Itza has done nothing but practice the will of the Old Ones, bringing the petty kingdoms of this land together that they might prosper. That this unification of ignorant barbarians could seem "aggressive" and threatening is beyond even the most enlightened of the Slann to explain. Certainly no action made by our Unification troops justifies the all out attack of a powerful pretender and over 100 soldiers!

All should know that Itza guards its land zealously. No matter how grave the threat, we shall not allow our lands to fall under the control of another. Particularly a race so foul and twisted as the Skaven.

We the people of Algura, Have launched an invasion of the lands of Arga Dis, We wish to make clear to all that this is not of our will and we extend the hand of friendship to all our neighbours however we can no longer tolerate the actions of the leaders of this barbaric nation. They have been kidnapping young Alugran women for use in their vile religious rituals. We call on the people of Arga Dis to rise up against their tyrannical giant overlords we will refrain from any further military action only if the government of Arga dis agrees to hand over the criminals responsible and undertakes to recruit no more of their vile blood magi.

Noble warriors of Alugra, we applaud your brave efforts to rid the world of such a villainous nation and wish you well in this endeavor. The Gilgans are a blight upon the world - their removal would be cause for much rejoicing. The foul art of blood magic is an abomination... many were the Slann who have fought and died to free this world from its tyranny.

[rdonj]

By the way - NAPs. I realize that I forgot to specify whether they are inviolate or not. That being the case I think it is better to assume that one's word is law, since I think that is how most people see them. However, like just about everything else in this game, if a majority of voting players wishes otherwise, that's how it will be. I would really rather not lose players over this though, so try not to freak out over it too much if it doesn't go the way you'd prefer.

[Alpine Joe]

We the people of Algura, Have launched an invasion of the lands of Arga Dis, We wish to make clear to all that this is not of our will and we extend the hand of friendship to all our neighbours however we can no longer tolerate the actions of the leaders of this barbaric nation. They have been kidnapping young Alugran women for use in their vile religious rituals. We call on the people of Arga Dis to rise up against their tyrannical giant overlords we will refrain from any further military action only if the government of Arga dis agrees to hand over the criminals responsible and undertakes to recruit no more of their vile blood magi.

Signed

Commander Sam L. Angry,
Director
Strategic Weapons Operational Research Division

An unprovoked attack on our peaceful nation! A vile move, but one that should come as no surprise from Alugra. Never fear Commander Angry, you are about to face the finest warriors mankind has ever fielded. Your soldiers will be privileged to meet their end at the spears of our hoplites.

[rdonj]

2 hour postponement added to hopefully give alugra time to get in his turn. I'm about to go to bed, so there won't be another.

[Frozen Lama]

I will be controlling Haida Gwaii for the next three turns, just in case anyone has anything to say to them.

[rdonj]

I think we're fine. Feel free to go rat hunting though, so long as you leave the nest for me. The nasty rat things put me rather behind where I was hoping to be by now and they must be punished for upsetting the will of the great old ones :mad:.

[Ferrosol]

Alugra has nature gems to trade and desires earth or fire gems in trade. Anyone interested please contact me in game or by PM

[rdonj]

In this vein, itza has pretty much everything to trade and desires earth gems/dwarven hammers.

[Lavaere]

Don't blame the rats for your lizards :)

[Executor]

Touche Tharoon, completely unexpected.

[Trumanator]

Wow, it appears that noone here has any desire to give up! Tharoon just refuses to die in the face of Stygia's massive armies, and right when I was about to write off the Ogres they start smashing Alchera into little bits of dreamy mist!

[rdonj]

I wouldn't count alchera out just yet. He has lost some territories, but the ogres seem to be hurting rather more at the moment. Frankly I am surprised at how well alchera is performing in this game. I have to hand it to you the_vanishag, you are giving quite a good run of it this game. Perhaps there is something to be said for a nation being played by its creator.

I think it would be interesting, once a nation is defeated, for the player to talk about what they did and what they think about how the different nations interacted. This is one of the best chances I have seen to really take a measure of the different mod nations and their capabilities.

[Trumanator]

Well once I got a look at Alchra's sacreds my estimate of the nation jumped about 4 notches. You think shadow vestals are good? Try them with a decent shield, 12 hps, 11 strength, high damage magic weapon, and unbanishable. Not to mention their only 40 gold 7 res. I dunno about the rest of his troops and mages, but those sacreds alone make his early and mid game.

edit: I don't want to tell another player how to play his own mod nation, but just judging by their similarity to shadow vestals, an A9 W9 bless strikes me as... less than optimal. Of course if there's some master plan then consider all this my own misunderstanding. :)

[the Vanishag]

There is a plan, we'll see if it works out. It depends partially on Alchera's non-capital sacreds, the Dreamwalkers, and partially on something else I won't mention. Also, the bless is partially for the Dreamhunters (Assassins), whose invulnerability I wanted to maximize. They're too expensive to be disposable.

My kudos to Stattis for continuing to come up with the blood slaves to get more Mawtribe Ogres and otherwise making life difficult for me.

Out of curiosity, Trumantor, what bless would you have taken? Fire?

I lowered their cost from 50 gold and 8 (or 9) res in my last update to the mod. I may undo that with my next update. I'm also thinking about increasing the gold cost of the Dreamhunters but making them one year shy of old age, rather than starting old.

[rdonj]

Personally I don't feel there's anything wrong with them at the moment. They have nice attributes, but they also have serious issues. Like having 6 encumbrance. But this is a good chance to find out if that really is the case.

The bless definitely makes sense with regards to the dreamwalkers, though I would be wary of w9 on a 6 encumbrance unit. Obviously it seems to be working for you though :)

[Trumanator]

Well, despite the 6 enc, I would probably still go with the W9 since they have such high def and they kill things very quickly. F9 would definitely be an option, but I think that E9 might perhaps have been interesting as well, as would S9, though its not as useful for them as for the SVs. D B and N would probably not be good options though IMHO.

I'm not sure I understand your point WRT the dreamhunters. If they could cast Ironskin, I could sort of understand it, but its not like they can't cast airshield/res lightning? For the dreamwalkers... IMO ethereal is enough protection against most of the projectiles you're going to be worried about.

[rdonj]

Man, ferrosol you sure have a habit of stealing my mercs in this game :( If only I was better at predicting skaven movements it might actually hurt me one of these days.

[the Vanishag]

Is it just me, or is W9 much more powerful than most of the other comparable blesses? N9 is great for nations with really high HP sacreds (Niefel Giants, for example), and E9 is great for spellcasters and high armor-high enc troops, but those are both limited cases. F9 packs a wallop, but it's purely offensive, whereas W9 offers double move and attacks (quickness) and +4 Def...

[rdonj]

I would agree, the water bless is definitely very powerful, probably the most powerful single bless, except possibly earth (sacred mages with reinvigoration are quite handy). In general I tend to feel the defensive blesses are more powerful overall. Though sometimes a fire bless can prove quite useful.

[Lavaere]

Water bless are great, and I like to try and add a Air or Earth as the secondary.
Makes for some nice staying power exspecially if its good items to increase your Defence of Protection even higher.

[Ferrosol]

Is it just me, or is W9 much more powerful than most of the other comparable blesses? N9 is great for nations with really high HP sacreds (Niefel Giants, for example), and E9 is great for spellcasters and high armor-high enc troops, but those are both limited cases. F9 packs a wallop, but it's purely offensive, whereas W9 offers double move and attacks (quickness) and +4 Def...

Of course this is somewhat balanced by the fact that high level water magic is useless. Take an S9 bless and you have wish, master enslave etc, a E9 bless gets you Forge of the Ancients, A D9 is an excellent tart summoner etc. Generally when blessing I prefer an S9 for the defensive part of the bless with depending on circumstances nature earth or fire bless as well.

[rdonj]

No one wants to give itza hammers? :( We can offer very diverse trading agreements for them.

[Valerius]

I'm back and ready to take over Haida Gwaii again. Thanks for subbing Frozen Lama!

[Ferrosol]

replacing those gilgans will be expensive 2.5k~ gold is hard to come by in your condition.

[Alpine Joe]

Oh Ferrosol, we've been together so long, but there are things we just don't see eye to eye on. To better explain my feelings I've created a mix tape for you, featuring such hits as
"What happened to all my support troops" (ft HopliteProphet)
"How do I kill your invincible smiths? (without breaking your heart)"
"**** the independants" (Ft. Barbarians and Manikens)
and of course
"stale me baby one more time" (ft. llamaserver)


I hope these songs explain my feelings better than words.
I still want to be friends.

[rdonj]

At long last, the armies of the under empire have been shattered by the brave warriors of Itza. Though many have fallen, the end of war is at last in sight. Long have we dreamed of returning to our prior, peaceful existence.

The fall of Arga Dis and its vile exploitation of blood magic also seems imminent. All good news for those who serve the will of the great old ones. However, the certainty of Tharoon's doom at the hands of stygia should be of concern to all who live in this world. The might of stygia's armies is vast. Even the most horrific of casualties do little to halt their advance. Should the eyes of stygia happen to fall upon you, beware.

[Executor]

So speaks the leader of the most powerful nation...

[rdonj]

Most powerful nation... eh. Materially, maybe. Our research still leaves much to be desired though. Granted, so does stygia's, but yours is rising far faster than ours is. I would hazard a guess that Haida Gwaii is soon to be the most powerful nation. Not too far from itza materially, and with research blazing along he should soon be at the head of the pack.

Still, stygia is powerful far beyond what its possessions or knowledge might imply.

[Valerius]

Hey! What's with putting a target on Haida Gwaii? Not very neighborly...

[rdonj]

I tried to steer it back towards stygia.... We bear no ill will towards your people, regardless of how much research you may have. Haida Gwaii has thus far been a peaceful nation, whereas stygia is an aggressive and ruthless conqueror. Clearly one of these is more dangerous than the other.

[Executor]

We resent such accusations, why is the nation of Stygia being singled out?
We are a friendly and peace loving nation, the war with Tharoon was merely a defensive act and an effort to protect our people from their evil ways!

[rdonj]

Was it? From the score graphs it would appear that the war with tharoon was completely offensive in nature. Of course it is always possible to misinterpret score graphs. If so, you can assume you have been singled out to confuse the masses :D

[Executor]

A good offense is the best defense!:)

[rdonj]

Then I must stand by my original accusations, and call you out as an enemy of all! Not that we are in any position to do anything about it.

[Trumanator]

After that turn, the question is this: Are the Ogres REALLY prepared to take on the secondmost powerful nation in the game...

[statttis]

Why should the most powerful nation fear the next in line?

Ogres smash!!!!!

[rdonj]

I want to thank lavaere for sticking it out as long as he did. He stayed and fought until all his armies and his god had been vanquished. Well done.

Personally, I am very interested to see how the nehekharan war plays out. That part of the world seems most turbulent.

[Trumanator]

Obviously the Ogres are laboring under some severe misapprehensions... Oh well, if they wish to waste more of themselves against the skeleton hordes, so be it.

[Lavaere]

yes rdonj, well played

[Trumanator]

The same thanks should go to Tharoon. They certainly kept Executor exceptionally occupied.

[Sombre]

I'm guessing these are the pre update Ogres too. Well done to their commander!

[the Vanishag]

I'm guessing these are the pre update Ogres too. Well done to their commander!

Did you make them even <i>more</i> powerful? I know they have expansion problems, with the blood sacrifice and no cheap blood mages, but I had their perfect counter: etherial troops when the Ogres have no units with magic weapons and limited attack spells, and we fought more-or-less to a standstill.

That said, statttis has been playing them <i>really</i> well.

But that isn't the main reason for this post. I'm going out of town this weekend and will not have Internet access Saturday or Sunday. I should be able to get in any turns that are ready on Friday (Aug. 21st), but if it's not in by 22:00 GMT, it's not coming. After that, if the next turn could be pushed back to Monday (the 24th) at about the same time (22:00 GMT) I should be fine.

Thanks and sorry, everyone.

[rdonj]

Yep, these are the pre-update ogres. I've not felt brave enough to try and incorporate the update into our game, especially after another game with the ogres in it had issues because someone did that.

In the last update, ogres gained: Stationary h3 blood sacrificers, a spell to turn slaughtermasters into thugs for 13 or so blood slaves, and some magic diversity summons. Also I believe ogre recruitables had their prices decreased. So it was a fairly decent update for them.

Also, I am sure your schedule can be accommodated vanishag.

[Executor]

Well, Itza seems to be doing very well...

[rdonj]

Says the nation whose research will soon be passing mine with half the number of forts.... I guess I am doing reasonably well though. But I would hesitate to say I am the strongest nation, despite my gem advantage. For one thing my nation is one of the least efficient with gems :P Alugra, haida gwaii, and nehekhara are all probably at least as strong as me. Nehekhara for example is fighting two nations at once right now and not doing so badly.

[Executor]

Says the nation whose research will soon be passing mine with half the number of forts.... I guess I am doing reasonably well though. But I would hesitate to say I am the strongest nation, despite my gem advantage. For one thing my nation is one of the least efficient with gems :P Alugra, haida gwaii, and nehekhara are all probably at least as strong as me. Nehekhara for example is fighting two nations at once right now and not doing so badly.

And yet you perceive me as the most aggressive nation here, at least I don't double team.

Got no money to build forts, one of the disadvantages with Stygia, they consume money like America does oil. And the fact that my dominion kills population doesn't help either, not that it's mentioned anywhere in the nation description.:mad:

[rdonj]

Eh, not really. However, back when you were warring with tharoon you made a good scapegoat. Now that I've realized where you are I can see you probably won't be bothering anyone for a while. Me, I am finally at peace and would like to stay that way at least a little while longer :D

Oh, I thought you would have known about the pop killing. Yeah, it is a bit harsh. If it weren't for that stygia would be much, much easier to play. As it is I think you are more or less stuck with armies of yilan tanri. I bleed gold pretty fast too. You should see how quickly I can go 3k gold without even buying any troops.

[Burnsaber]

I've been keeping an eye for this game. Seems like things are heating up. Hopefully the game will end with action instead of some usual Arcane Nexus forfeit. More gameplay testing that way.

Early on I was worried if Alugra is too powerful because Ferrosol got that awesome expansion start. But it seems that City of Wonders has worthy adverseraries in this game.

If any of you need a sub or last stander at any point, just call me.

[Executor]

I don't plan to make any wars in the near future, got my mind set on more important things for now.

Not only did I not know about the pop killing I took death too, and plenty!
Gold? Heh, I think I haven't recruited a single troop for the last 20 turns, not that I didn't want to.

As a side note Crime lords seem to be nice.

[rdonj]

I've been keeping an eye for this game. Seems like things are heating up. Hopefully the game will end with action instead of some usual Arcane Nexus forfeit. More gameplay testing that way.

Early on I was worried if Alugra is too powerful because Ferrosol got that awesome expansion start. But it seems that City of Wonders has worthy adverseraries in this game.

If any of you need a sub or last stander at any point, just call me.

Yeah, ferrosol has done pretty well with alugra. Even if his pretender died, he is almost finished with his first war and is one of the leading researchers. Alugra is a nation to be feared. But I don't think he performed unreasonably well. Perhaps once alpine joe is defeated he'll have a different opinion to share, however. Sombre's nations sure don't seem to be doing well in this game. It's just me and the ogres remaining out of 5 nations now.

Sucks about all the pop killing. Stygia has those very nice composite bowmen who would be handy additions to the undead horde you have assembled.

[rdonj]

Alugra and Nehekhara both staled? Not cool guys.

Also, perhaps I spoke too soon abot stygia...

[Alpine Joe]

I've been keeping an eye for this game. Seems like things are heating up. Hopefully the game will end with action instead of some usual Arcane Nexus forfeit. More gameplay testing that way.

Early on I was worried if Alugra is too powerful because Ferrosol got that awesome expansion start. But it seems that City of Wonders has worthy adverseraries in this game.

If any of you need a sub or last stander at any point, just call me.

Yeah, ferrosol has done pretty well with alugra. Even if his pretender died, he is almost finished with his first war and is one of the leading researchers. Alugra is a nation to be feared. But I don't think he performed unreasonably well. Perhaps once alpine joe is defeated he'll have a different opinion to share, however. Sombre's nations sure don't seem to be doing well in this game. It's just me and the ogres remaining out of 5 nations now.

Sucks about all the pop killing. Stygia has those very nice composite bowmen who would be handy additions to the undead horde you have assembled.


Well I'm completely dead now,so i'll feel free to comment a bit on relative nation strength.

First off congratulations to ferrosol for killing me off. He used a nice mix of troops, and managed to concentrate strength where I was weak. Other than a few small tactical victories (killing his pretender) he significantly outplayed me. Part of the reason was simply my over-confidence. I took a pretender focused on midgame, and took sloth scales. i didn't expect to get attacked with quite that much focus :)

However, as perhaps the first nation ever defeated by Alugra (or have they been in mod nation games before?) I will make some commentary on their relative strength.

Alugra is a powerful nation. I don't know if I would say overpowered, but they are very very powerful. The alugran smiths caused me no end of grief. 20 natural protection on an encumbrance three unit.....I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to kill those guys. My red achilleans, supposedly the finest infantry in the world, and balanced by gluttony, low map move and magic vulnerability, had their butts handed to them royally by the smiths, by virtue of the fact they simply couldn't scratch that huge protection stat. Eventually I just rushed researching Harm, and that was moderately effective, but by then it was too late, and I ran out of blood slaves because blood battlefield mages are idiotic with their slave use..... I can't imagine what a normal MA human nation without access to good (nonfire!) battle magic would do against the smiths.

Watchmen are also an extremely nice unit, and Ferro used them very well by mixing them with a GoR watchmen spamming shockwave.

I don't think either the smiths of the watchmen are overpowered, but both in the same nation, without that nation being the nation of WTFBBQ elite troops, might be a little excessive.

Also Alugra has access to a ton of magic paths, and thugs of various types, a unit with a forge bonus, and big communions.

Its a lot of really good stuff to cram into one nation, and Ferro used it all extremely well. Arga dis certainly isn't a weak nation, but in that situation I definitely felt i was playing with a much weaker hand of cards, metaphorically speaking (although a lot of that was my own poor planning:doh:) I've never been defeated so quickly after such a good early start.

[Trumanator]

Sorry about that, it seems that I did my turn and then forgot to send in the turn. Hopefully nothing irrevocable happened.

[Executor]

Shouldn't we do something about Algura and Alchera? They seem to be staleing a lot.

[rdonj]

Yeah, I'm postponing the game 24 hours while I try to contact them and see what we can do about it. If I can't get in touch with them, then I guess I'll begin the search for subs. However I don't expect such a search to be very fruitful given the nature of this particular game. So if at all possible it would be best to try to keep the original players.

[the Vanishag]

Well, I guess I can give up my illusions about people reading my posts (see below).

It's my fault, really. I should have PM'ed rdonj as well as posting.

I'm guessing these are the pre update Ogres too. Well done to their commander!

Did you make them even <i>more</i> powerful? I know they have expansion problems, with the blood sacrifice and no cheap blood mages, but I had their perfect counter: etherial troops when the Ogres have no units with magic weapons and limited attack spells, and we fought more-or-less to a standstill.

That said, statttis has been playing them <i>really</i> well.

But that isn't the main reason for this post. I'm going out of town this weekend and will not have Internet access Saturday or Sunday. I should be able to get in any turns that are ready on Friday (Aug. 21st), but if it's not in by 22:00 GMT, it's not coming. After that, if the next turn could be pushed back to Monday (the 24th) at about the same time (22:00 GMT) I should be fine.

Thanks and sorry, everyone.

[rdonj]

Oh damn. A few days ago I had this niggling feeling in the back of my head that I was supposed to be doing something for one of the games I'm admining. So I went to check my PMs and was relieved when I didn't find anything. I am somewhat forgetful so it's a good idea if you need something done at a specific time, remind me when it comes time to do it or I may forget, ESPECIALLY if I haven't gotten a pm.

[Trumanator]

For future reference- Undead could care less about horrors. They don't have any life to suck, and its not like death holds any terrors for them. But please, do go ahead and waste your bloodslaves.

[the Vanishag]

Oh damn. A few days ago I had this niggling feeling in the back of my head that I was supposed to be doing something for one of the games I'm admining. So I went to check my PMs and was relieved when I didn't find anything. I am somewhat forgetful so it's a good idea if you need something done at a specific time, remind me when it comes time to do it or I may forget, ESPECIALLY if I haven't gotten a pm.

Yeah, it was sloppy/newb-ish of me not to PM you. I'll do better the next time something comes up. Anyway, I'm back, and nothing devastating happened to Alchera while I was gone, so it's no biggie.

[rdonj]

It's my fault too, and I feel bad about it. You DID say you were going to be gone. I need to start writing stuff down or something. I'm glad to hear that nothing too bad happened though.

[Lavaere]

well Skavens gone, so I have nothing against subbing in for someone when the time comes

[Trumanator]

Well, its not like Alchera's doing much besides besieging their own cap.

[rdonj]

Alright, burnsaber is in to sub for alugra. We'll see how that goes. I've added an additional 24 hour postponement. Now let's see if we can return to that frantic pace from before the stalings.

Lavaere, I'll keep you in mind if we need a sub later. Thanks for volunteering :)

[rdonj]

Sorry about your scout valerius. That fort has an unrest site under it.

[Trumanator]

Yowza! I didn't know cloud of death was so badass! Needless to say, its now my goto spell :D

[Valerius]

Sorry about your scout valerius. That fort has an unrest site under it.

No problem; got to expect a certain attrition rate with scouts. :)

Yowza! I didn't know cloud of death was so badass! Needless to say, its now my goto spell :D

Another of my scouts saw that battle - brutal. I don't know that I've seen that spell used before - certainly not cast as many times as you did. The cumulative effect was impressive.

[the Vanishag]

Alchera = whipping boy of this game. :hammer:

May I have another, sir!

[Sombre]

Alugra is a powerful nation. I don't know if I would say overpowered, but they are very very powerful. The alugran smiths caused me no end of grief. 20 natural protection on an encumbrance three unit.....I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to kill those guys. My red achilleans, supposedly the finest infantry in the world, and balanced by gluttony, low map move and magic vulnerability, had their butts handed to them royally by the smiths, by virtue of the fact they simply couldn't scratch that huge protection stat. Eventually I just rushed researching Harm, and that was moderately effective, but by then it was too late, and I ran out of blood slaves because blood battlefield mages are idiotic with their slave use..... I can't imagine what a normal MA human nation without access to good (nonfire!) battle magic would do against the smiths.

Watchmen are also an extremely nice unit, and Ferro used them very well by mixing them with a GoR watchmen spamming shockwave.

I don't think either the smiths of the watchmen are overpowered, but both in the same nation, without that nation being the nation of WTFBBQ elite troops, might be a little excessive.

Also Alugra has access to a ton of magic paths, and thugs of various types, a unit with a forge bonus, and big communions.

Its a lot of really good stuff to cram into one nation, and Ferro used it all extremely well. Arga dis certainly isn't a weak nation, but in that situation I definitely felt i was playing with a much weaker hand of cards, metaphorically speaking (although a lot of that was my own poor planning:doh:) I've never been defeated so quickly after such a good early start.

It's worth noting that Red Achilleans are one of the worst units to go up against Smiths because while they are superb fighters and themselves pretty damn hard to kill, they just don't do that much damage. I can easily imagine how they'd get completely stuck against a wall of prot 20 units with very little fatigue.

Arga Dis does have a couple of units that do significantly more damage though - those with berserk for example. Though against smiths where a hit is usually a kill, I guess they might not get to berserk too much.

[Alpine Joe]

Alugra is a powerful nation. I don't know if I would say overpowered, but they are very very powerful. The alugran smiths caused me no end of grief. 20 natural protection on an encumbrance three unit.....I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a way to kill those guys. My red achilleans, supposedly the finest infantry in the world, and balanced by gluttony, low map move and magic vulnerability, had their butts handed to them royally by the smiths, by virtue of the fact they simply couldn't scratch that huge protection stat. Eventually I just rushed researching Harm, and that was moderately effective, but by then it was too late, and I ran out of blood slaves because blood battlefield mages are idiotic with their slave use..... I can't imagine what a normal MA human nation without access to good (nonfire!) battle magic would do against the smiths.

Watchmen are also an extremely nice unit, and Ferro used them very well by mixing them with a GoR watchmen spamming shockwave.

I don't think either the smiths of the watchmen are overpowered, but both in the same nation, without that nation being the nation of WTFBBQ elite troops, might be a little excessive.

Also Alugra has access to a ton of magic paths, and thugs of various types, a unit with a forge bonus, and big communions.

Its a lot of really good stuff to cram into one nation, and Ferro used it all extremely well. Arga dis certainly isn't a weak nation, but in that situation I definitely felt i was playing with a much weaker hand of cards, metaphorically speaking (although a lot of that was my own poor planning:doh:) I've never been defeated so quickly after such a good early start.

It's worth noting that Red Achilleans are one of the worst units to go up against Smiths because while they are superb fighters and themselves pretty damn hard to kill, they just don't do that much damage. I can easily imagine how they'd get completely stuck against a wall of prot 20 units with very little fatigue.

Arga Dis does have a couple of units that do significantly more damage though - those with berserk for example. Though against smiths where a hit is usually a kill, I guess they might not get to berserk too much.

Well, their only berserking recruitable has only claw attacks, so total damage is still pretty low, not to mention they wouldn't survive a single hit from smiths. THe only arg dis troops that do more damage than the achilleans are the disgustingly expensive cavalry (which I ended up switching too) and the glaive wielding fliers who are also very expensive and resource intensive. Perhaps I should have massed them from the beginning, but i simply was unaware of the protection of the troops I was facing until too late.....

[Burnsaber]

Well, Smiths have been problematic form the beginning of the development, but I just love the concept too much to scrap them. I'll give them a bit of a overhaul after this game. Some nations just are in too much trouble when facing them. I'll probably reduce their fire res to 50 (Allowing them to take fatigue from heat auras) and increase enc to 4.

[Executor]

Let's play a quiz!
Who is the nation with, most provinces, most forts, biggest income, biggest gem income, strongest dominion, and a very scary rising research rate?

[rdonj]

Oh, oh, I got this one. Stygia! :angel

[Sombre]

Well, their only berserking recruitable has only claw attacks, so total damage is still pretty low, not to mention they wouldn't survive a single hit from smiths. THe only arg dis troops that do more damage than the achilleans are the disgustingly expensive cavalry (which I ended up switching too) and the glaive wielding fliers who are also very expensive and resource intensive. Perhaps I should have massed them from the beginning, but i simply was unaware of the protection of the troops I was facing until too late.....

There are other ways of triggering your berserk units too, using blood magic like bloodletting - but this was probably too early in the game for that. Sworn Brothers in their second form have str 16 also, so they would probably be best for cracking that prot.

[Burnsaber]

Early on, smiths had 5 encumberance (but higher attack), back then the best counter was just to drown them in chaff. In hindsight, it was a mistake to bring them to encumberance 3. I'll probably let them keep the fire immunity, but just up their enc back to 5. Then the easiest counter would be just to spam your cheapest troop on them (especially if you have access to markatas/imps or anything with size 1 and def over 12) and watch them flail around wildly and fatigue up.

But back to the point why I'm posting.

Can be pretty please up the hosting time to 36h or 48h soon? My schools starting and I likely won't be able to keep up if we go on with 24h hosting. I had to post a half-assed turn today cause the deadline was closing in fast.

[rdonj]

Yeah, we can add more time to the turns. 24 hours Is pretty fast for turn 45. I was enjoying the pace, but it is probably for the best that turns get more time soon. I will switch to 36 hours and we can see if we like it. If that doesn't work out I'll go to 48.

[the Vanishag]

sorry about the stale... I'm not sure what happened. I remember playing the turn, but I'm not sure whether it didn't go through or if I <gulp> forgot to email it in.

It shouldn't happen again.

[rdonj]

Well, it's not a big problem for us... however, looking at the graphs this turn, I think you picked a bad time to stale. Now alugra and stygia are both apparently attacking nehekhara, and he still managed a rather impressive land grab this turn.

So executor, it looks like for once it isn't you on the wrong side of the ganging stick.

[Executor]

Rdonj, your info is very wrong. I'm not ganging anyone, nor do I plan to.

[rdonj]

Lies! You are the big bad wolf and nehekhara, alchera and the ogre kingdoms are the three little pigs.

[the Vanishag]

Lies! You are the big bad wolf and nehekhara, alchera and the ogre kingdoms are the three little pigs.

Oink.

[Executor]

Lies! You are the big bad wolf and nehekhara, alchera and the ogre kingdoms are the three little pigs.

What does that make you than? The little red riding-hood?

[rdonj]

Yes. That is exactly who I am.

[Executor]

Who is it that's ganging again rdonj? I'm a little confused?
Get ready to feel the wrath of Stygia.

[rdonj]

What the crap? Those guys were supposed to be sneaking. I have no idea why my stealthers attacked you :(. Argh, stupid scouts betraying me to the enemy. Well, that certainly has made a mess of things. I guess I have no choice now but to go to war with you. I won't lie, I was certainly planning to go to war with you. You can't be allowed to grow even more powerful by preying on your lessers. But this is a few turns earlier than I'd intended.

Although, I don't see how you're being ganged on. Unless you seriously expect me to think your attack on nehekhara's enemies was a defensive action rather than a calculated land grab, or way to draw me into war ;)

[Trumanator]

Hmmph, right when I start getting control of the situation someone new jumps on me. Bring it on though! The dead do not fear death, for they have already experienced it!

[rdonj]

Well, trumanator, that province I took completely by mistake. Of course I'll have to take the province above it to gain a land route to stygia, you understand. Perhaps we can work something out.

[Executor]

Hahaha, I wasn't talking about myself, Trumanator is under attack by 4 nations now, that includes you.

[Executor]

Could we switch to a 48 hour schedule now?

[rdonj]

Hahaha, I wasn't talking about myself, Trumanator is under attack by 4 nations now, that includes you.

Ah, that's what you meant. Well, I have no real intention of fighting nehekhara at the moment, but I will if he is nwilling to part with that one province. I'm still pretty upset about that last turn, I can't believe I made such a stupid mistake.

Hosting is now set to 48 hours as per your request.

[Executor]

Thanks for changing the hosting interval.

This was a halfassed turn from me but better to submit anything rather than nothing, well let's see whay Itza has planned for me.

[rdonj]

I think you'll be pleasantly disappointed :)

[rdonj]

Hmm. Well, I can't say I didn't expect the mindhunts to fail. I was obviously hoping they wouldn't though. Oh well, I'll heal those mindhunters back up eventually. I have to say, this turn does make me worry though. Everything I worried about you doing seems likely at this point. Which is of course to be expected as you are a much better player than I am. I am just hoping you haven't got anything planned that I haven't yet considered. A hope which I find to be rather feeble.

I am not quite sure what to think of this burden of time. On the one hand, my units are all capable of living absurdly long, so they are in no danger of dying in any way, shape or form. On the other hand, I took a pretty big income hit this turn. I did lose 4 200% taxed provinces and a province in my own territory though. I guess I'll wait a few turns and see.

[Executor]

What? Nothing? Just a few lousy mind hunts? You've got to be kidding me!
Why in the world would you try to mind hunt me anyway? All I've got are immortal death mages and astral mages, but now I assume you have the chalice.
At the very least I expected some magic duels.

Bah, losing provinces to skirmish attacks doesn't bother me at all, I've had an upkeep of 3/4 of my income the whole game, in fact, if I didn't attack Ogre my upkeep would be bigger than my income, not that it would matter since the only troops I ever recruited were in the first 10 turns of the game.

What exactly worries you about me? I really don't have much to work with here?

[rdonj]

You have immortal resul al'zaman (what a mouthful) as well, and I was pretty sure that guy was out of your dominion. I figured it was as good a chance as any to try and kill it. Although come to think of it they do have astral on them don't they? D'oh. And I'm not kidding you, I was really unprepared for war that turn. I was expecting to have several more turns to prepare, that land grab thing was a complete fluke. What I planned to do was something completely different.

Also, there is no way I am teleport magic dueling with my slann. After seeing the technique used in noobs vs vets, I have come to the conclusion that doing so would be far too costly for me to justify. Send a 650 gold, 3s mage to magic duel someone and have a good chance of dying? I don't think so. Not yet anyway. I'll need to become slightly more desperate first.

I am worried about the numerous immortal SCs you have wandering around your territory and the fact that you have nature magic :P

[Executor]

Yap, they do have astral on them, but than again they are immortal so the magic duel wouldn't have worked either.
Why does me having nature magic worry you? It's not like I need it for tartarians.

The thing that worries me is your magic diversity, and all the cross paths and high magic levels that you have. You only lack death magic, and luckily you didn't take that on your pretender.
Oh, yes, and that level 9 summon of yours looks nice.:)

Well this should make for an interesting war, although I must warn you, I have no intention crossing over any time soon, so you'll have to meet me in my dominion if you wish to fight.