Immaculate-002: Late Age for Noobs (GAME OVER: ATLANTIS/SHATNER WINS)

[Immaculate]

Game over: Shatner wins!

Here is the llamaserver game link (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs).


game name "Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs"


-Noobs
-LA
-8 players
-Map: Land of Legends (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43144)
-Mods: cbm 1.92
-Diplo: you are expected to respect your agreements but ultimately you are responsible or your own negotiations, etc, and i will not get involved.


-HOF 15
-rename enabled
-rest by default
-winning condition: 5 capitals for 3 turns
-hosting schedule, llamaserver, 56h+quickhost, it will increase as the game advance


Due to the map geography, i would prefer to not allow water-based nations.

PLAYERS:

Immaculate T'ien ch'i
BewareTheBarnacleGoose Gath
Moanerette Man
Shatner Atlantis
Arnob Ulm (this player went AI sneaky-style- new players are welcome to adopt this position)
dojango Patala
Morla Jamon
triqui Marrignon

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Im in the process of being annihilated in my first MP game, so I figure this is a good time to join another.

Can I join as Gath?

[Immaculate]

Better luck this time?

And yes.

[Moanerette]

I'm not sure I can even call myself a noob yet - played the tutorial and not much more, no multiplayer, no experience with CBM whatsoever - but I still fancy it if you're happy to have me. If you'd prefer not then say so, I won't take offence.

My preferred nation would be Man.

[Immaculate]

Gotta learn somewhere.

You understand how to navigate getting the mod up and running and downloading the map and all that? How to submit turns?

[Moanerette]

Thanks :)

The mod and map I've got. Submitting turns sounds simple enough, either by email or Dropbox is fine with me. As I said in my intro post, I play PBEM Solium Infernum, so I'm used to submitting turns on time and games that take a while. There'll be no disappearing acts from me.

[shatner]

Would you allow LA Atlantis, who starts on land and has a whole "we were driven out of the ocean" theme? If so, I'll take them. If not, I'll give Marignon a try.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm somewhere between noob and middling as far as player skill goes. I am still in the process of playing my first MP game ever but I have also been playing a few other MP games as well. You learn quickly in MP games.

[Immaculate]

Yeah- no problem with LA Atlantis from me. The map and your capability to sail should be fun for you and ruinous for your opponents.

Hopefully we can get other strong amphibious nations to balance yours (is there one? How amphibious is Agartha in the late age? i've never played them or played against them)

[Numahr]

Jomon is the other "amphibious" nation of LA. Yes, I know, it is not obvious, but true nonetheless. Their roster has no amphibious troops, but they have some impressive amphibious dragons and other niceties they can only build UW, so a smart Jomon player should find a way to go under the waves, and can be quite competite there if they can build at least one fort.

[arnob]

I would like to try ULM please !

Arnob

[shatner]

Also, for what it's worth, a large chunk of the changes that went into CBM 1.92 involved making water less of a barrier for land nations by including a bunch of new land sites which let you recruit amphibious units, making a bunch more units amphibious (mostly undead and magical units which don't breath) and including some new spells to make non-amphibious units perform better underwater.

[Immaculate]

I like the Kappa.

[dojango]

Hey, I'd like to join up as Patala. If there's still room.

[Morla]

Hi, i´d like to join if there is still room. I´ll play with Jomon

[Immaculate]

Thats seven of eight. One more.

[triqui]

If there's a free spot yet, I'll take Marignon. I'll try not to die before year 1 this time ^_^

[Immaculate]

Okay, that its then, we are full.

[Immaculate]

Here is the llamaserver game link (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs).

game name "Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs"


Please submit pretenders.

[Immaculate]

Nations joined so far:
Patala
Chelms
Ulm
T'ien Ch'i
Atlantis

[Moanerette]

This automated server is damned clever, I must say. It would be wonderful for Solium Infernum games, which are often plagued by delayed turns.

[Immaculate]

How's everyone doing?

Looks like Jomon has a nice rainbow pretender and Ulm has some sort of SC chasis and everyone else is sleeping.

Any other indicators you can see?

[triqui]

A bit too early to read anything else, really. But it seems Man has the best scales.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

My scouts report that Ulm and I are neighbors

[Moanerette]

I've achieved my first aim of not being left behind with the first expansion - everyone took a province on turn 2.

A bit too early to read anything else, really. But it seems Man has the best scales.

How can you tell this, out of interest? I looked at the graphs, but I couldn't add the info up to make that kind of judgment.

[triqui]

I've achieved my first aim of not being left behind with the first expansion - everyone took a province on turn 2.

A bit too early to read anything else, really. But it seems Man has the best scales.

How can you tell this, out of interest? I looked at the graphs, but I couldn't add the info up to make that kind of judgment.

Income. Man has the highest natural income (some people is getting more than him, but their income bar is not straight, that means they pushed the taxes to 150% + patrol in the first turn. Man did not such thing in the first turn and had higher income than anyone else). Normally high scales mean high income. It's not true allways, though, some people could go for a high scale start with Magic 3 and Luck 3, and those wouldnt appear in the graph. But normally, high scales mean high income, as Growth, Production and Order all influence your income.

PS: and those with very low starting income, ussually have bad scales. Bad scales often mean high bless, or awakened SC. So beware those with very low starting income. :)

[dojango]

Doesn't the income graph also reflect random events such as trade fairs, gold rushes, etc? So with only one data point (two, now) it seems risky (from an analytical viewpoint) to start drawing conclusions from that.

But hey, if it's good enough for lancet...

[Immaculate]

Are you a microbiologist?

[shatner]

No, the gold and gems gained or lost from random events is not tracked on the graphs. Neither are gold and gems gained or lost from trade with other players.

The very first turn is actually a very good spot to look for income info because it is the only time in the entire game when every nation is in exactly the same situation: one province with an original population of 30,000. The amount that their income varies from the norm can only be from their scales.

Also, turn-1 research means an awake pretender 99% of the time (the other 1% is with select nations like MA C'tis who start with a stealthy commander capable of research; in their case a D1N1 assassin).

[dojango]

I see, I stand corrected.

[triqui]

Even if random events would apply to income (some does, like those events that permanently raise or reduce your population in a province), there is no event in turn 0. If one of such events happen, you will see the graph of the nation raising, just like you do when you raise the taxes (see my own country for example: it raised the income from turn 0 to turn 1. That *might* be taxes or *might* be an event. In any case, the *starting point* is what matters here) So the begining of the game is allways a trustworthy measure to make a statistical analysis of the scales, becouse nothing else can modify that very first data.

[triqui]

We, the rulers of Marignon, want to anounce the world that we are in NAP with the nation of Patala.

[Immaculate]

Seems like many nations are starting to 'bump' into one another. things should be getting more interesting soon enough.

Anyone go to war yet?

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Atlantis and I had an epic scout vs. scout battle as part of a botched province exchange. Mine lost. But no wars here.

[triqui]

Atlantis and I had an epic scout vs. scout battle as part of a botched province exchange. Mine lost. But no wars here.

Did you use the rules of Marquis of Queensbury?

[shatner]

Looking the rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_of_Queensberry_Rules) I can safely say no, no we did not. For one, we used spears. And secondly, I don't the the Marquess of Queensberry would have endorsed chasing your opponent down after they yield and finishing them off.

[triqui]

Is someone ready to make an inform based on the statistics shown by the game? :)

[Moanerette]

Not sure what you mean by an inform. I can inform you that my best-laid plans have gone a little tits up...

[shatner]

Here's my take on things...


Provinces
The early game baseline is conquering one province per turn every turn starting on turn 2, so by turn 13 the baseline is 12 provinces. Now that becomes an increasingly meaningless baseline over time as nations get additional expansion squads, bump into nations, engage in early wars, etc, but we just entered our second year so it still has some meaning.

Man, Ulm and Gath are behind the curve in this regard, Patala is exactly on track and T'ien Ch'i, Marignon, Jomon and Atlantis are ahead. No one's line has dropped meaning it is likely that no one is currently warring with anyone else. It bears pointing out that Jomon, Atlantis and, to a much smaller extant Patala, can expand natively under the water. Some of their size might be because they have more provinces to choose from when invading. No one conquered two provinces on turn 3, indicating that no one has an awake SC pretender.


Forts
Only Man, Ulm, Atlantis and Jomon have an additional fort, built in that order. At this stage that means either profound luck (getting a fort creating event, finding a fort creating site, getting a lot of money from events) or having decent scales. Atlantis and Jomon are the two largest empires so they probably have money to burn on forts. Now, LA Man has a lot of synergy with their forts (having strong and high admin forts, good siege-bonus troops and commanders, etc.) and uninspiring sacred troops. As a result, they usually opt for good scales which they can invest in forts to compound that income scales by the high income. This behavior backs that interpretation up. Ulm has many gold-cheap, resource-expensive troops who are effective against indies so they can recruit fully with money left over for forts.


Income
On turn 1, everyone's income is the same +/- their scales. As such we can tell that Man has the best income-enhancing scales and Patala, the worst. The top four incomes belong to the four largest empires, so no real surprises there. The spikes followed by dips this early on usually indicate overtaxing the capital. Note that this graph does not show income from events (whether good or bad), gifts from other players, nor does it reflect upkeep. We are looking at gross income from taxation; nothing more.


Gem Income
Jomon and T'ien Ch'i are both leading the pack by a wide margin, which makes sense as both nations can recruit very diverse mages who make excellent site searchers. Also, Jomon looks to have an awake rainbow pretender and their research curve eased off around the time their gem income started to shoot up so it's possible their pretender is out site searching. That dip in Jomon's gem income is probably from a bad event (barbarians attack, for example) stealing a province from them and then being reconquered the following turn.

Note that this chart gives no indication of income gained from blood hunting; something which both Ulm and Marignon are well equipped to do.


Research
Ulm and Jomon must have awake pretenders with decent research to have such good turn-2 research. Also, Ulm and Jomon's research lines have sharp climbs followed by plateaus which usually mean a pretender who has left the lab to go indie stomping or site searching. Of course, Ulm could be sending out mages to go blood hunting, which would also explain the declines in their research. Everyone else's research lines are more-or-less curving smoothly; this indicates that they have been hiring one mage a turn and sticking them in the lab. The fact that certain lines are curving more sharply upwards indicates that they have better national researchers and/or better magic scales. The rank-and-file mage of Atlantis, for example, pulls in a meager 4 research a turn whereas Marignon's recruit-anywhere Goetic Masters get almost twice that. And if someone has magic-1 or magic-3, the lines get even more divergent.


Dominion
Jomon and Ulm had the top dominions early on, which jives with them having awake pretenders (since a pretender counts as three temples for generating dominion). T'ien Ch'i and Atlantis have since gained in the ranking, hinting at them having either a really high dominion (which would make it likely those nations are relying on sacred units for their expansion, and as such might have a strong bless). Alternatively, they could have built additional temples early on. Man's upswing in dominion coincides with the turn they built their second fort, meaning they likely built a temple there too. Gath's losing dominion might mean they're hemmed in between high dominion neighbors, or they've just had a run of bad luck (there are several events which lower dominion, which make a big difference on the charts early on).


Army Size
First off, note that army size is literally the sum of the actual size of all the units for each force. Therefore, a nation with 35 size-6 elephants will have a larger "army size" than a nation with 100 size-2 humans. Since the absolute values aren't very telling, you instead want to look at the changes. None of the nations present get free-spawn save Ulm, who can hire commanders who spawn wolves. However, the chart doesn't really show that Ulm is building enormous wolf armies, or if they are they are dying almost as fast as they are being raised. T'ien Ch'i, Jomon and Patala all had spikes on their charts. For T'ien Ch'i and Jomon (whose troops are fairly resource intensive), that probably means they hired mercenaries and then threw them at indies until the mercenary force was depleted. That or they had the "good" event where they get a bunch of militia. Since those militia suck but cost upkeep, it is common for the player to use them as cannon fodder or outright suicide them to get them off the payroll. Patala has had the largest spike and they can hire a bunch of troops who are low-resource (monkeys), large (gorillas) or both (elephants) so it is possible that they turned a lucky event into a primate or pachaderm army overnight.

Gath has the smoothest army size line. You get that from recruiting the same thing every turn from your only fort and then never suffering meaningful casualties... which, given that they're giants, could be the case.

Beyond that, Jomon, Patala and Ulm all had moderate losses this most recent turn. Normally that would hint at war but the province chart doesn't back that up, so it could just be a coincidence that they all attacked difficult indies this turn and took losses. A quick glance at the Hall of Fame shows that Marignon's prophet is dead, so that's probably related. T'ien Ch'i and Man both seem to be growing their armies aggressively for the last 4 turns. Either they've got lots of indies to stomp, or they're gearing up for war.


Anyway, that's my take on things. Take all that with a grain of salt because I'm still a noob and Dominions is a complex game where a lot of stuff can happen which can cause the charts to be misleading.

[Immaculate]

for me that was very helpful.

[Moanerette]

Great stuff Shatner, a really nice demonstration of how to glean information from the graphs.

[triqui]

Yep, that's exactly what I meant with an inform :)
Very helpful, thank you shaetner. I would had made one if I weren't so damn busy lately, but it's a good thing to do in newbie games, so everybody learns how to extract data from the graph charts.
Nice job!

[arnob]

Impressive !

Now, I know why I'm still a noob

Arnob

Here's my take on things...


Provinces
The early game baseline is conquering one province per turn every turn starting on turn 2, so by turn 13 the baseline is 12 provinces. Now that becomes an increasingly meaningless baseline over time as nations get additional expansion squads, bump into nations, engage in early wars, etc, but we just entered our second year so it still has some meaning.

Man, Ulm and Gath are behind the curve in this regard, Patala is exactly on track and T'ien Ch'i, Marignon, Jomon and Atlantis are ahead. No one's line has dropped meaning it is likely that no one is currently warring with anyone else. It bears pointing out that Jomon, Atlantis and, to a much smaller extant Patala, can expand natively under the water. Some of their size might be because they have more provinces to choose from when invading. No one conquered two provinces on turn 3, indicating that no one has an awake SC pretender.


Forts
Only Man, Ulm, Atlantis and Jomon have an additional fort, built in that order. At this stage that means either profound luck (getting a fort creating event, finding a fort creating site, getting a lot of money from events) or having decent scales. Atlantis and Jomon are the two largest empires so they probably have money to burn on forts. Now, LA Man has a lot of synergy with their forts (having strong and high admin forts, good siege-bonus troops and commanders, etc.) and uninspiring sacred troops. As a result, they usually opt for good scales which they can invest in forts to compound that income scales by the high income. This behavior backs that interpretation up. Ulm has many gold-cheap, resource-expensive troops who are effective against indies so they can recruit fully with money left over for forts.


Income
On turn 1, everyone's income is the same +/- their scales. As such we can tell that Man has the best income-enhancing scales and Patala, the worst. The top four incomes belong to the four largest empires, so no real surprises there. The spikes followed by dips this early on usually indicate overtaxing the capital. Note that this graph does not show income from events (whether good or bad), gifts from other players, nor does it reflect upkeep. We are looking at gross income from taxation; nothing more.


Gem Income
Jomon and T'ien Ch'i are both leading the pack by a wide margin, which makes sense as both nations can recruit very diverse mages who make excellent site searchers. Also, Jomon looks to have an awake rainbow pretender and their research curve eased off around the time their gem income started to shoot up so it's possible their pretender is out site searching. That dip in Jomon's gem income is probably from a bad event (barbarians attack, for example) stealing a province from them and then being reconquered the following turn.

Note that this chart gives no indication of income gained from blood hunting; something which both Ulm and Marignon are well equipped to do.


Research
Ulm and Jomon must have awake pretenders with decent research to have such good turn-2 research. Also, Ulm and Jomon's research lines have sharp climbs followed by plateaus which usually mean a pretender who has left the lab to go indie stomping or site searching. Of course, Ulm could be sending out mages to go blood hunting, which would also explain the declines in their research. Everyone else's research lines are more-or-less curving smoothly; this indicates that they have been hiring one mage a turn and sticking them in the lab. The fact that certain lines are curving more sharply upwards indicates that they have better national researchers and/or better magic scales. The rank-and-file mage of Atlantis, for example, pulls in a meager 4 research a turn whereas Marignon's recruit-anywhere Goetic Masters get almost twice that. And if someone has magic-1 or magic-3, the lines get even more divergent.


Dominion
Jomon and Ulm had the top dominions early on, which jives with them having awake pretenders (since a pretender counts as three temples for generating dominion). T'ien Ch'i and Atlantis have since gained in the ranking, hinting at them having either a really high dominion (which would make it likely those nations are relying on sacred units for their expansion, and as such might have a strong bless). Alternatively, they could have built additional temples early on. Man's upswing in dominion coincides with the turn they built their second fort, meaning they likely built a temple there too. Gath's losing dominion might mean they're hemmed in between high dominion neighbors, or they've just had a run of bad luck (there are several events which lower dominion, which make a big difference on the charts early on).


Army Size
First off, note that army size is literally the sum of the actual size of all the units for each force. Therefore, a nation with 35 size-6 elephants will have a larger "army size" than a nation with 100 size-2 humans. Since the absolute values aren't very telling, you instead want to look at the changes. None of the nations present get free-spawn save Ulm, who can hire commanders who spawn wolves. However, the chart doesn't really show that Ulm is building enormous wolf armies, or if they are they are dying almost as fast as they are being raised. T'ien Ch'i, Jomon and Patala all had spikes on their charts. For T'ien Ch'i and Jomon (whose troops are fairly resource intensive), that probably means they hired mercenaries and then threw them at indies until the mercenary force was depleted. That or they had the "good" event where they get a bunch of militia. Since those militia suck but cost upkeep, it is common for the player to use them as cannon fodder or outright suicide them to get them off the payroll. Patala has had the largest spike and they can hire a bunch of troops who are low-resource (monkeys), large (gorillas) or both (elephants) so it is possible that they turned a lucky event into a primate or pachaderm army overnight.

Gath has the smoothest army size line. You get that from recruiting the same thing every turn from your only fort and then never suffering meaningful casualties... which, given that they're giants, could be the case.

Beyond that, Jomon, Patala and Ulm all had moderate losses this most recent turn. Normally that would hint at war but the province chart doesn't back that up, so it could just be a coincidence that they all attacked difficult indies this turn and took losses. A quick glance at the Hall of Fame shows that Marignon's prophet is dead, so that's probably related. T'ien Ch'i and Man both seem to be growing their armies aggressively for the last 4 turns. Either they've got lots of indies to stomp, or they're gearing up for war.


Anyway, that's my take on things. Take all that with a grain of salt because I'm still a noob and Dominions is a complex game where a lot of stuff can happen which can cause the charts to be misleading.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Sorry about the taking so long to send in my turn, everybody. We lost power here, and I couldnt get online.

[Immaculate]

Stuff happens. Seems like we are all good now.

[triqui]

Impressive !

Now, I know why I'm still a noob

Arnob

There are quite several tricks that we all need to learn, it's much better if we share experiences here, that make the learning curve much faster.

For example, several new players ignore the fact that in your first turn, it's often the best play to put taxes at 150% in your capitol and put your commander to patrol to fight unrest, instead of becoming a prophet. That's true often for all non-blessed nations, the impulse you get from that extra half a turn in gold is better than the slight increase in combat efficiency that 1 smite per turn gives against indies. Of course, this might prove false depending on your nations, several nations *need* that divine blessing and/or the sermon of courage+smite spam.

Some other common first turn tricks is to attack blindly a province with a scout scripted to retreat. This way you see a perfectly accurate report from one of the province, which may help to decide what to attack in the first turn (your scout get experience and goes into the hall of fame as a side bonus :P)

Other thing that often is overlooked by newbies, is manual taxation. When you start to play, it's common to leave the taxes in "auto", so the game move the taxation acordingly to your unrest. That's suboptimal. First, you can tax 110% most of your provinces. Unless the unrest is 6+, there's no drawback. So you can set all your provinces with unrest 0-4 to 110% taxes, and leave it to 100% taxes when it goes unrest 4-5, without any drawback. Second, the AI overreact to unrest. You clean 1 unrest for each 2% taxes left. So if you have unrest 5, the AI will go tax 90%, to remove 5 unrest. However, with 6 unrest, the AI will go to 80% tax, to remove 10 unrest, That means the first 10% tax gives you 5 unrest removed, and the second 10% tax cut gives you 1 unrest removed, which is not efficient. Third: if you keep all your provinces with unrest 0, you are losing the benefit of several good events (those that lower unrest)

Another common mistake is to forget to raise Province Defense in every conquered province. An undefended province is vulnerable to even a scout attack. PD 1-2 cost next to nothing and avoid this. The best way to never forget this is combining it with the manual tax: go to Nation Overview (in the statistic section) and check every province has Def >0 and every province that has unrest <5 is set to 110% tax.

Then an often overlooked aspect of the game for new players is long term planning. Often we tend to do what is "needed" for the next turn, without looking what is needed 2-3 turns in advance. One good example of this is castle building. If you recruit every turn everything you can, you often can't build a castle in the first turns. That is a very big hindrance for middlegame, you HAVE to be building a castle before year 1 is over. Same goes with site searching: often we don't put mages on site searching becouse "we really need that extra 6 research *this turn*". This leads to midgames where you have research, but nothing to do with it becouse you have a lack of gems.

[Immaculate]

tell us more about the unrest events.

[triqui]

There are several beneficial events that reduce the unrest in a province. If you have 0 unrest, they do nothing. If you have 5 unrest, they reduce it to 0. So if you have taxed your province at 110% tax rate for a couple of turns, and you hit one of those events, you have got extra free gold. If you don't, just go back to 100% taxes and leave the province at any unrest level from 1-5, which does not hinder you at all (you need unrest 6+ to lose gold). You get a few extra gold coins this way, and in the begining, that might mean the difference quite a lot. Buying one extra mage at turn 3-7 means a LOT of research through the game. Buying a few extra soldiers might mean the difference between taking 2 provinces in turn 4, or taking 1, and so on.

Another popular strat with some nations (Man, Tien Chi, bogarus, Pangea) is to patrol your capitol at 200% tax rate. Those nations have very good patrolers (either free patrol bonus, or very cheap high movement or flying units, such as Pangea). This way you get an extra punch of gold in the begining. Overtaxing your capitol and/or main provinces in the first year might give you an extra 5000 gold, which mean 3-6 castles (specially for nations with good Administration in their castles, such as Bogarus or Man). That's a nice bump. Getting a good headstart might give you a much more confortable midgame: it's way easier to fight midgame if you are leading in provinces, income, castle, or resarch (or any combination of those), than if you are a mediocre nation (or the underdog).

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Thanks, Triqi, this has been extremely enlightening! Since we are on the topic of unrest, I have a question- I've read that friendly dominion decreases unrest. Is it known by how much it does so, and does it scale with dominion strength?

[Calahan]

That’s some pretty good newbie advice you’ve been giving out there shatner and triqui, much credit to you both for that :) (and indeed some well seasoned players would do well to listen to what is being said regarding the autotax as well, since while it cuts down the MM loads, it really is pretty inefficient at its job as triqui says)

But thought I’d correct a few points in passing (since one of my many faults is hating to see misinformation, even if it’s only slight in this case, but it's best to drill-in correct info from day 1 IMO, rather than aim to correct it later once the pupil becomes more educated)



Income
On turn 1, everyone's income is the same +/- their scales.

(what follows are very minor points, but thought I'd mention them for those like myself who like to be anal about every minor detail :))

1 – The starting income is highly influenced by scales as you say (and so again as you say, the turn 1 income graph is a great source of intel on the enemy scales in this regard), but it is not the only factor as you suggest. Since it has to be mentioned that the type of fort a nation has at their capital also affects that nations turn 1 income. i.e. if you start a test game with EA Ermor and EA Agartha, and take max positive income scales with both, then you will see a distinct difference in their incomes due to EA Ermor having a Great City of admin 60, and EA Agartha having a Cave City of admin 30. And those 30 admin points can make a noticeable difference in turn 1 incomes. (watch out for differing populations throwing the figures off though. See next)

Also the starting population is not exactly 30k for each nation, as it can be anything between 29500 and 30500 (or maybe 29501 and 30499). And while the 1k difference between the max and min values doesn’t make the biggest difference in the world over the long haul, 1k of population will probably add something like 15-20gp to the income if a nation has taken good scales



Unless the unrest is 6+, there's no drawback. So you can set all your provinces with unrest 0-4 to 110% taxes, and leave it to 100% taxes when it goes unrest 4-5, without any drawback.

Second, the AI overreact to unrest. You clean 1 unrest for each 2% taxes left.


2 – Your unrest data is a bit off triqui. Firstly under-taxing reduces unrest by 1 for each 3% below 100%, and not for every 2% as quoted above. (this formula is given in the manual (and the Wiki - http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Province), and it is correct on this one). So setting taxes to 90% reduces unrest by 3.3 (rounded down to 3) and not by 5. Although unrest can be reduced by more than 3 with 90% taxes due to the effect of positive dominion. As positive dominion can reduce unrest by between 0-2 each turn (which might be where you are getting your figure of 5 from). But note that there is no guarantee that positive dominion will reduce unrest, only a chance that it will. So 90% taxes is only guaranteed to reduce unrest by 3 and not 5 (excluding all other factors of course), but unrest can be reduced by 5 with 90% taxes if you get a good roll from a positive dominion unrest reduction.

Also any amount of unrest will affect income, as it is certainly not ignored until 6+ as you state. IIRC you lose something like 2% of income per unrest point. This is easy enough to test as well by starting a new game (take neutral growth), making note of the cap income for a few turns (although watch for variations due to temp scales changes), set 110% taxes for a turn or two to generate 1-2 points of unrest, then reset taxes to 100% and take note of the income figure. You should see that income is down by a few percentage points due to the unrest in the province (and by too much for it to be just the loss of a few tens of populiation caused by the overtaxing).

So running provinces with unrest until they hit 6+ before looking to reduce it is not likely to be very efficient IMO. (speaking as the MM loving freak that I am, I often run income provinces in positive dominion at 110% until they hit 2 unrest, and then reduce to 100% and let positive dominion reduce them to 0. Then rinse and repeat. Which it seems is roughly what you are suggesting, albeit a less efficient version IMO due to your figures being off, but the basis of your idea is good none the less IMO).


Although it should be noted that there are several events, both good and bad, that are triggered by having unrest in a province (As you indicated in regard to unrest reducing events). Not sure if this can really be factored into an “allowing unrest” strategy or not though. I wouldn’t completely rule it out, but I can’t imagine it ranking anywhere high on an efficiency scale. Those interested in the mechanics behind the random events should follow Edi’s signature links to the list of random events and their triggers for more info on the subject. (Edit - link to event list - http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45185)



And I hope you will all please excuse this intrusion, especially if it was unwanted (it's one of my many bad habits as I said), and hope you both keep up all the good newbie education that you are doing :D

[triqui]

Thanks for the corrections, enterteining read. The admin in the capitol is quite good advice, I overlooked that. Certainly, Man would probably lead just becouse of that, even with average scales. Good advice.

It has been a lot since the last time I read through the math of the game, so my memories might be wrong. However, what you says makes me remember it was so.

Just that I thought 5 unrest was the right move regardless, becouse 4 unrest gives you -8% income, while you get +10% from having 110% taxes, and that's why I decided to stop once you get to 5 unrest and then swinging it back. Probably it's not the best way to do, though, but having some extra gold in the begining is better than having some extra gold in the long run. That's why you pay an interest for a credit :P

[Immaculate]

bumping this back to the first page

[Moanerette]

Sorry for turn sluggishness, having a bit of a tricky weekend. At least I got rid of those annoying heroes.

[Immaculate]

Congrats- what did you use?

[Moanerette]

A large army of longbowmen, with a bunch of heavy infantry at the back to tie down the scripted heroes, and some mages chucking lightning bolts. I planned a small communion - first one I've tried - with one master and two slaves, but one of the slaves got plugged straight off so I didn't get to see if it worked.

It seems one of our nations has gone AI, I noticed.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

That would explain why Ulm suddenly attacked me despite our treaty....oh well. Race you for the capital, Triqui!

[triqui]

Yeah, I noticed the stupid Ulm move against us too. Ulm lost like 40 soldiers and managed to kill not a single Marignon brave warrior. That was so stupid that it had to be AI movement, no player would had done such a stupid move.
Ulm capitol is so far away from me, that I doubt I have any chance to race no one

Their neighbours will grow big and strong, though.

It's a pity, I hate stealth leavers with a passion. If you can't play, you should at least ask the rest of players for a sub, I might have found one.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Im not so sure that he left because he couldnt play. I think he was discouraged by being steamrolled by Jomon in a big fight. Also, I was mistaken earlier, I meant to invite Morla to race for the Ulm capital, though I think he will probably get there first.

[triqui]

Regardless of the reasons to stealth quit, in my opinion you should, at the very least, tell the other players you are leaving. That way they can either look for a sub, or prepare to defend against AI.

[Immaculate]

-hosting schedule, llamaserver, 56h+quickhost, it will increase as the game advance

The hosting schedule is now 72h+quickhost.

[shatner]

Attention everyone. Atlantis will trade water, death or nature gems for a pair of earth boots. Please PM us with your asking price so we can discuss a trade.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Sorry for turn sluggishness, having a bit of a tricky weekend. At least I got rid of those annoying heroes.

Didn't you kill those guys? Some suspiciously similar trolls showed up in my territory this turn. Must be cousins or something...

[Immaculate]

This game will be put on hiatus over the American thanksgiving break to allow people to travel and be with their family. The extension will begin Wednesday (the 23rd) evening and we will resume on Monday or Tuesday (28th or 29th).

[Moanerette]

Sorry for turn sluggishness, having a bit of a tricky weekend. At least I got rid of those annoying heroes.

Didn't you kill those guys? Some suspiciously similar trolls showed up in my territory this turn. Must be cousins or something...

Yup, I killed them. Lot of trolls around nowadays ;)

Wishing a happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans :)

[Immaculate]

back

hosting interval set back to 72h.

[Immaculate]

AARs?

If players wish to, i would highly encourage them to begin providing some details of their early game so that we can learn from one-another, seeing as how this is a Noob game.

Also, players that are defeated should also consider giving an account of their nation, if they so choose.



For my own part, my early game involved expansion with ancestor vessels and a bee-line for alteration 4 for wind guide but i didn't realize that a rank 1 air mage could not use two air gems to cast the spell (which requires air 2 and 1 gem) until i had tried to cast it about a million different times. To start again i would have compensated for that in some way much earlier and 1) hit more stuff with my arrows and, 2) lost way less of my army (maybe?)

In terms of diplomacy, i started between patala and Atlantis and they both expanded very well, then Atlantis declared on Patala and eager to get a piece of the territory i attacked Patala also.

I think Patala's major battles were with Atlantis and i got to watch a few courtesy of my scouts- and they were very impressive indeed- those Atlantian ice guards look tough for sure. Most of my battles with Patala, unfortunately, were mostly fairly small-sized skirmishes by comparison so I don’t really feel that I got to have an adequate taste of what the Patalian war-machine is really capable of.


Anyway, if anyone else wants to share, I would be very eager to hear about how things are going for them, especially Jomon who seems like a (very threatening) giant and Patala, whom I am curious about because I know so little about them.

[triqui]

I tried completelly different approach this time with Marignon.
I expanded with royal knights, and signed NAP with all my neighbours. I researched construction to build sanguine douses only to discover that they are banned in CBM. It is not lost research though, becouse lightless lanterns, boosters and stuff for thugs are needed anyways. Then the usual suspects, thau, evo, blood...

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

What does AAR stand for?

Well, whatever it is, I'll provide mine:

I've got an E9S9 bless, so expansion was done by teams of Kohens leading a few zealots and a giant or 2. I expanded much too slowly, however, especially since I was stuck with a lot of low income provinces. I would have been more aggressive if I could do over. Ulm going AI was a huge windfall for me, allowing me to snap up most of their land in the course of a few turns.; without that, I would not be in good shape right now.

As anyone can see, Im lagging in research, but my early targets Con-4 and Alt-3 for my Gadol thugs, and Thaum-2 and Evo-2. Im only just starting to get into blood, something I would have been able to do sooner had I expanded better and built more castles.

I've found myself very grateful for Triqui's advice about manual taxing. It has really brought a lot of extra gold into my treasury.

[dojango]

Patala:

OK, their troops suck. My expansion was on the slower side (elephants backed with high-morale gorillas), and was funnelled towards the island by my neighbors. I was hoping to get some of the good kailasa/lanka summons before getting into a major war, but alas, it was not to be.

Once war came, I whipped out alt-4 and enhance-3 for some buffs for my troops, but it wasn't nearly enough. Those Asstaturts are tough. Their magic weapons ignored ethereal elephants and they regen'd to fast for monkey swarms to take them down. So yeah, if it had been someone else it might have worked, but after Atlantis killed a few hundred of my troops and a dozen mages, it made sense for my other two neighbors to either 1) gang up on Atlantis to prevent him from getting too strong, or 2) ganging up on me to limit atlantis's gains and then ganging up on Atlantis once his armies are weakened.

They seem to have chosen option 2.

I should have beelined for conj.5 and tried to crank out as many ghandharvas as I could. But then, my bless for them kind of sucked, I should have gone with a rainbow pretender.

[shatner]

With LA Atlantis, it isn't a question of whether you are going to expand quickly but in what direction; your national troops are too cheap and kick too much butt not to, especially if you have a halfway decent bless for your cap-only sacreds. Do you rush a neighbor? Do you focus on capturing water territories or land? Do you capture around your capital for the extra resources (the basic non-chaff of LA Atlantis costs 22 resources and the troops you want cost 35) or do you spread outward with the intent to back-fill later?

Anyway, I had a focus on spreading out and going for land provinces over water. I didn't figure I'd have too much competition for water provinces but boy was I wrong! I had to contend myself with a paltry 3 water provinces what with T'ien Ch'i and Jomon snapping up the rest.

I expanded into indies rather than rush a neighbor (last game I played as LA Atlantis, the first neighbor I met immediately declared war on me; I decided to play it diplomatic this game if I could) and made friends with everyone I encountered. Since my troops are cheap but resource intensive, I had money left over that I spent on forts and mercenary mages to help out my otherwise mediocre research (my national researchers only bring in 4rp/turn in neutral scales and aren't super cheap).

Once I was beating up indies on the island, I encountered Patala. They had claimed a good third of the island with a force of elephants buffed with body ethereal (this sort of info is the godsend that is aggressive scouting). My troops carry magical "screw you ethereal" ice weapons and our mages can spam slime so we weren't afraid of ghostly elephants. We declared turf war on Patala and kicked them off the island after a few limited skirmishes. We offered Patala peace in exchange for them leaving us alone on the island (remember, Patala is on the exact opposite side of the map so reinforcements take a LONG time getting over there). They would hear nothing of peace and so we had some truly intense battles at Olypha (97). Patala made very good use of their naga casters (who are early age-caliber mages despite being in the late age) in addition to throwing an unholy number of monkeys at us. We were also fighting in Patala's heat dominion (which lowers the protection of my ice-clad infantry) so the battles were very close but the sheer survivability of our infantry allowed us to last juuuust long enough for the monkeys to route each time.

We invited Patala's neighbors to the brawl because we sure as heck couldn't beat Patala so far from home this early in the game. When the neighbors agreed, we fought defensively and played a game of hit-and-run while we tried to get enough troops and mages across the entire freakin' map to cement our tenuous hold. Fortunately, between Patala losing a few decisive battles against my entrenched forces at Olypha, my surprise attack on their capital (which ended rather poorly but it served it's purpose all the same) and T'ien Ch'i showing up in force, we were able to exhaust Patala enough for them to lose the war.

We didn't make much in the way of territorial gains from that conflict (Marignon got the capital and T'ien Ch'i got most everything else) but it was a proud war for Atlantis all the same. Even if we're cut off, way away from home and fighting in the thrice-cursed heat, we can still kick several metric tonnes of butt. As is, we're mainly concerned with consolidating our holdings and prodding our mages to keep up with the research race.

[Immaculate]

@atlantis

I contend that you did indeed get a sizable territorial gain- all of patala's island holdings...

[Morla]

Nice reports.

As Jomon, low cost, high resources and no shield elite troops early expansion is easy with the help of my, never forgotten, dear arrow catchers. It is very important to go underwater as soon as possible, thanks to a trusted mercenary group i was able to go underwater in the 2 or 3 month and compete with Atlantis.

My first reasearch objetives are the site searching rituals, Jomon needs gems!!!.

I was afraid of my neigbourghs, Ulm and Marignon, cheap crossbows is my nemesis during year one. But a few NAPs solved that problem.

I face the majority of ULM´s AI forces, damm rangers and ghouls, but my dear spirts arrive just in time and solve a few situations 60 ghouls 50 rangers.

[triqui]

AAR stands for "After Action Report"

[shatner]

For my own part, my early game involved expansion with ancestor vessels and a bee-line for alteration 4 for wind guide but i didn't realize that a rank 1 air mage could not use two air gems to cast the spell (which requires air 2 and 1 gem) until i had tried to cast it about a million different times.

25% of all Ancestor Guides and Celestial Masters are A2s and can cast the spell normally. 100% of all Ancestor Guides and Celestial Masters can cast Wind Guide if you give them a crystal shield.

[Immaculate]

murphies law and all that.

[triqui]

For my own part, my early game involved expansion with ancestor vessels and a bee-line for alteration 4 for wind guide but i didn't realize that a rank 1 air mage could not use two air gems to cast the spell (which requires air 2 and 1 gem) until i had tried to cast it about a million different times.

25% of all Ancestor Guides and Celestial Masters are A2s and can cast the spell normally. 100% of all Ancestor Guides and Celestial Masters can cast Wind Guide if you give them a crystal shield.

Comunion also works.

[Immaculate]

yeah, i did end up using that in some situations actually.

[Moanerette]

This is not only my first MP game, but my first game of any sort (excepting the demo). Coupled with the fact that in games I like to discover things as they occur, rather than obsessively reading wikis and whatnot, my modest ambition was to last a reasonable amount of time.

That said, in order to be at least vaguely competitive I did peruse a Chelms strategy guide, and started out by following its advice to build as many forts as possible. However, I was severely delayed by the hero infestation; dealing with that cost me valuable time and momentum and meant that my territory post-initial phase was far below optimal.

By the way, I've sent my turn 30 in but have not received any acknowledgement from the server.

[triqui]

The server is having some problems. We have to wait until Llama comes and reboot it...

[Moanerette]

Really sorry about the stale turn; I was away and had to stay longer than planned. I'm back in now anyway.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Hi all,

Im going to be doing a lot of traveling this month, so I am going to need to find a sub. Does anyone know someone?

I will be gone from the 4th to the 6th (if it's ok with everyone, maybe we could just postpone?) and then from the 9th to the 20th (so I definitely need a sub!)

Sorry for the inconvenience!

[Immaculate]

Anyone seen moanarette or morla around?

i.

[Immaculate]

Okay, so what should we do? I am reluctant to set two nations to AI. Do we wait and see? Do we find subs (if thats possible)? do we just declare a winner and close it down?

[shatner]

Morla is around. I'm in both the MorlaEA and MorlaMA games and have been exchanging PMs with him here and there. I believe he was supposed to be without internet access from the 1st through today so maybe he'll pop back up soon.

Moanarette I can't speak for but I can say (as a close neighbor of his in the game) that he's in the process of losing a war to T'ien Ch'i and won't likely be in the game too much longer. He's trapped in a corner with only me (uninvolved) and T'ien Ch'i (invading) to keep him company so I think his conquest is just a matter of time. As such, setting Man to AI won't massively alter the game the same as setting Jomon to AI.

If Morla remains MIA I say we get a sub, if possible. If not then we vote on a winner (if any) and call it good. There are really only two wars left to fight: Jomon vs. Atlantis-Marignon-Agartha and then some combination of the winners from that war fighting over who gets the win (most likely being Marignon vs. Atlantis with Agartha and T'ien Ch'i weighing in when and where they see fit). If Jomon goes AI it kind of spoils the mid-to-late game fun. I worked hard to get a good anti-Jomon coalition in motion and relish both that fight and the inevitable backstabbings that'll follow.

[Immaculate]

k- i hope to hear from Morla very soon then.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

When I annulled my NAP with Jomon, I messaged Morla to give him a 3 turn warning, and he said and he said "attack me now, Im done for", so maybe he gave up? I hope he didn't though, I was looking forward to the fight. Also, I was hoping that he could do a debrief and tell us what he might have done differently. Jomon had a really strong start, and I wonder if there was anything else he could have done to avoid his fate?

(Also, does anyone think they can find a sub for me from the 10th to the 20th? I might not actually be gone that long, but I'll definitely be back by the 21st)

[Morla]

Hi, just bad timing, i spent a lot of gems empowering for the next stage of the game, Jomon is a full driven gems nation. And just after that turn a declaration of war from Marignon and Atlantis.

I will try to do the best i can to defend my lands.

I am still on holydays, spain is diferent. I may have time to do my turn later today or tomorrow morning.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Hi, just bad timing, i spent a lot of gems empowering for the next stage of the game, Jomon is a full driven gems nation. And just after that turn a declaration of war from Marignon and Atlantis.

I will try to do the best i can to defend my lands.

I am still on holydays, spain is diferent. I may have time to do my turn later today or tomorrow morning.

Great, look forward to fighting you!

Also, I've finalized by travel dates- should be the 11th through the 17th. So I really need a sub! Does anyone know one?

[Immaculate]

i have no idea. jomon and man are still missing as far as i know. i guess this game is on hiatus?

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Ok, I found a sub! It's jimbojones1971. I dont remember how subbing works, though. You just send my turn emails to him, right?

Also, sorry about killing your angel, Triqi :p

[Immaculate]

I set the e-mail address for gath to jimbo.

[shatner]

Starting Wednesday the 11th and going through this weekend, I'll be driving over six hundred miles to attend a couple of weddings in wildly different parts of Texas. I may need an extension or two during those days, though hopefully not. Just putting this out there as a heads up. Furthermore, I'm having to blow an awful lot of dust off this game, which I'm finding is slowing down my progress finishing up the turn. A 24 or 48 hour extension, while hopefully not needed, mightn't be a bad idea.
- Shatner

(back in character) The great, icy and endearingly hickish nation of Atlantis wishes to extend the damp, webbed hand of welcome to Jimbojones1971 (can we call you Jimbo?), the new big man of Gath. We hope you'll remember all the good ideas the old big man had, such as joinin' our good ol' fashioned curb stompin' on Jomon, and stay the course. Atlantis is a big nation, with a strong desire to share spoils with its buddies and an even stronger desire to share violence with its enemies; we're nothin' if not generous. Anyway, we were pretty good buds with Gath beforehand and we're hopin' things'll stay amicable with ol' Jimbo at the helm. See ya at the fight and the feast afterwards!
- Atlantis

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Hi all,

If possible Im going to need Jimbo to keep subing for me for a while. Im actually free for the next two days, and would be down with playing those turns, but I will be very busy from the 19th to the 27th. If Jimbo can't sub, I'll probably be able to get my turns in, but I'd need extensions, so I think it's best if he keeps going.

Thanks to everybody for your patience! I live in China and it's almost Spring Festival, so everything is kind of crazy.

[triqui]

Am I the only one that feels that the quickhost of this game is too slow? :/

[shatner]

The turn hosts in about 18 hours from now and I'm not certain I can get my turn in before that what with all the stuff I have going on this evening. On top of that, tomorrow is the much delayed Christmas Party for my office so I don't see tomorrow evening being any better for me playing this game. Could we delay the hosting by another 48 hours? While I hopefully won't need that long, I'd really hate to stall, so I'd appreciate the buffer.

[Immaculate]

done

[Immaculate]

Beware the Barnacles has been set back as the Gath player; everyone be super careful now!

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Beware the Barnacles has been set back as the Gath player; everyone be super careful now!

Ha ha, thanks! Im back for good now, should be no more interruptions (I hope!!). Did I miss anything good?

[Immaculate]

I am willing to concede the game to atlantis but will continue for as long as someone thinks the tittle is in dispute.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

I am willing to concede the game to atlantis but will continue for as long as someone thinks the tittle is in dispute.

Im certainly in no position to dispute titles with anyone, but I would like to keep playing. I've never made it to the late-game before, so I want to see what it's like. That said, if everyone else wants to call it quits, then I wont be upset.

[Immaculate]

No- if you want to keep going, lets do it. Time to unleash the tartarians (maybe thats a little late to say that?)

[triqui]

Atlantis is leading, but he is just a little bit ahead of Marignon or Tien Chi. The game is far from be decided.

[triqui]

Just checked: Atlantis has 48 provinces, Marignon has 41, Tien Chi has 40, Gath 22. He is by no mean more powerful than any other two nations combined. He is not even in the point where he is the "must be destroyed or will win" target.

[Immaculate]

gath has been set to:

rXXXn.jXXXa@gmail.com

[Immaculate]

I got this:

"Hi. On trying to host Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs just now, Dominions crashed. This is not a LlamaServer issue, but rather Dominions itself crashed with a "Nagot gick fel" error.

These errors are normally caused by a (generally inexplicable) problem with one of the players' 2h files. Therefore the LlamaServer moved all your 2h files away before hosting again. This is why you will receive a new turn file in which you've staled.

There are two options from here. Either you can treat the stale turn as a random event and carry on with the game, or you can roll back the turn and try to host again. If you try the latter your game admin will have to do the rollback via the admin options on the LlamaServer website, and you will all have to do your turns again. Note that in this case it is _really important_ that you actually do redo your turn, rather than just sending in the same one again (which people sometimes seem to do because they don't believe me). If you just send in the same file, hosting will simply fail again.

I hope you manage to get the game back on course, whichever option you go for."


There will be no roll-back. There are as many problems with roll-backs as there are with anything else and i don't want to have to manage those too. Sorry- everyone... we all get a stale. Enjoy your extra turn of income/disease/whatever else.

[shatner]

I think it might be worse than just a stale turn (I got that email too). When I go to the llamaserver page I can't find this game. I'm in another game as well and it's there and seemingly fine, but no sign of Immaculate002LateAgeNoobs. Does this mean the game got eaten by a server bug or will it reappear sometime soonish?

[Immaculate]

hopefully- lets not freak out just yet. maybe it will just show up again.

[llamabeast]

It's back! :D Thanks for your patience.

[Immaculate]

thanks for taking the time to come and tell us directly- its much appreciated.

[Immaculate]

SEEMS LIKE everything is fine after all. well, except someone cast that well of misery spell :(

[shatner]

NOW THAT was one hell of a fight! That made my day. I hope all of you who had scouts, spies or scrying spells in Jomon's capital enjoyed the show. Two big *** armies with major magic being tossed around having a fight to the death. Even if I had lost, that would have made for good entertainment.

Thanks for that, Morla; you were a good opponent. Your guys fought well and bravely, your mages were nasty, especially when they blew up, and your spirit-thugs were lethal and all but untouchable.

I just wish sieges gave you the fight stats afterwards like normal fights (X soldiers, X undead beings, X magic beings, Y killed, Z lost, etc.). I'd be interested to know the numbers.

[Immaculate]

darn- i missed it.
what spirit thugs? shuras?

[shatner]

Mainly Ujigami (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Ujigami) and Kenzoku (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Kenzoku), fully equipped. Sadly, all that equipment ran off at the end of the fight.

[Morla]

NOW THAT was one hell of a fight! That made my day. I hope all of you who had scouts, spies or scrying spells in Jomon's capital enjoyed the show. Two big *** armies with major magic being tossed around having a fight to the death. Even if I had lost, that would have made for good entertainment.

Thanks for that, Morla; you were a good opponent. Your guys fought well and bravely, your mages were nasty, especially when they blew up, and your spirit-thugs were lethal and all but untouchable.

I just wish sieges gave you the fight stats afterwards like normal fights (X soldiers, X undead beings, X magic beings, Y killed, Z lost, etc.). I'd be interested to know the numbers.

THX, a few mages go off their script, but good battle. A few bad decisions doomed my game.

[Immaculate]

such as?

[Morla]

Instead of using my gems to rise an army and a few more thugs i used them to empower a few mages to forge and cast high end summons. Stop building a human army, and of course lack of diplomacy.

[shatner]

Very sorry for the late notice but it's looking unlikely that I'll be able to submit my turn in time tonight. Could I get a 24-hour extension?

[Immaculate]

In my infinite mercy i hereby grant you the extension.

[Immaculate]

Morla:

any chance of a brief AAR?

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Is the server down? I sent in my turn, but I dont see it on the game page...

[Immaculate]

yeah, its down.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Sorry about the stale, I just wasn't paying attention. Shouldnt have much effect, though.

[Immaculate]

Marrignon- we are breaking our 5 turn NAP at this point. Sorry.

[triqui]

Exactly in which turn does our NAP end? I didn't read this in time, and I'm not sure which turn was it when you made me the notice.

[shatner]

Crap! I have got to follow this thread better.

Anyway, with Jomon dead and buried it's time for someone to start something and it looks like T'ien Ch'i has. *Sniff* I'm so proud. So yeah, Marignon, consider this notice that Atlantis is ending our 6-turn NAP agreement. So there's no confusion, this announcement is coming at the start of turn 50 which means your nation and mine will have all of turns 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, and 55 to get ready for the slugfest that'll start on turn 56. Aqualibrium really doesn't appreciate having her enchantment handiwork knocked down time and again.

[Immaculate]

turn 49 + 5 turn nap is turn 54.

So on the opening of turn 55 i will expect to see a huge number of remote spells bouncing off my domes in futility while your armies are slaughtered here there and everywhere. by turn 56 your entire empire should be in flames and i will be declare high cheese of the world! Vive all the cheeses of the world!

Just jokes... but in all honesty, i will order attacks during turn 54 and when you open turn 55 you should recieve news of attacks from myself. And vice-versa.

Tell me if i got anything wrong.

[Moanerette]

Sorry I didn't participate more fully, though I think I managed to get most of my turns in at least. To be honest I found the micro-managing overwhelming. Thanks for letting me play and I apologise again for my mediocrity.

[Immaculate]

I don't think you were mediocre. you just had the double-bad luck of starting next to a very strong atlantis that hemmed in your expansion and gettnig the troll and his adventurer buddies stalling you for a long time. Than you picked a fight with me- which you sort of had to do i guess... and it was going well until patala died.

Anyway, don't feel bad. at least my attempt to use the ride the wind spell on your immortal pretender when he was out exploring by himself didn't work. grrr...

[triqui]

It's ok, turn 55 and 56 will be the attacks.
Fine enough, will try to hold a little bit before Atlantis win the game :P

To Shaetner: I'm sad you arent happy with your enchantment being knocked down, but casting a enchantment that make everybody ages fast when your "ally" has a nation that more than half of their mages have severe old age problems is almost casus belli. It's like poisoning our wells and telling us it's unfair to clean it. It looks like Tien Chi doesnt share this vision, which means that either they don't care about their own old mages (maybe they don't recruit them), or that they didn't notice your subtle attempt to decimate everybody magical support to secure your domination of the world. In any case, I did what I thought it was best for my reign.

See you all in the Battlefields I guess :)

[shatner]

To Shaetner: I'm sad you arent happy with your enchantment being knocked down, but casting a enchantment that make everybody ages fast when your "ally" has a nation that more than half of their mages have severe old age problems is almost casus belli. It's like poisoning our wells and telling us it's unfair to clean it. It looks like Tien Chi doesnt share this vision, which means that either they don't care about their own old mages (maybe they don't recruit them), or that they didn't notice your subtle attempt to decimate everybody magical support to secure your domination of the world. In any case, I did what I thought it was best for my reign.

See you all in the Battlefields I guess :)

Aqualibrium's been castin' Well of Misery (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Well_of_Misery) which does two things:
1) Everyone (you, me, and everyone else) gets 10% more income from their provinces
2) I get a butt load of death gems

What you are thinking of is Burden of Time (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Burden_of_Time), which causes all units to age a year or more every turn and is really bad news for old dudes.

Two completely different spells with radically different effects.

Edit: T'ien Ch'i probably doesn't care because he enjoys getting more money. Plus the spell says it eases the woes and aches of all the world's peoples so his old mages probably appreciate the spell cuttin' down on their arthritis.

[Moanerette]

Thanks Immaculate. I did try my best to hinder you with curse spells and so on - go down fighting rather than just give up - but I had no answer to your Ancestor Smiths and suchlike. I'd hoped my various summoned beasties would make more of a fist of the final battle, but so it goes. Maybe I should have been using them earlier.

I didn't have a coherent plan for my research, and I had no idea what items would have assisted me. I think this is the sort of game where note-taking is helpful!

[Immaculate]

@Moanarette: Yeah- i am not sure how to best leverage 'man'. i've never played them. They did really well in MA Morla but i have no idea how they went about doing so.

@Triqui: Burden of time i would have thrown pearls at you to help dispel

[Immaculate]

I force-hosted the turn because everyone had gotten their turn in except 'Man' and... well... it doesn't make sense to wait for their turn. hope that was okay.

[Moanerette]

Glad to hear that; I just came on to express my puzzlement at receiving a reminder when I've been knocked out!

[triqui]

To Shaetner: I'm sad you arent happy with your enchantment being knocked down, but casting a enchantment that make everybody ages fast when your "ally" has a nation that more than half of their mages have severe old age problems is almost casus belli. It's like poisoning our wells and telling us it's unfair to clean it. It looks like Tien Chi doesnt share this vision, which means that either they don't care about their own old mages (maybe they don't recruit them), or that they didn't notice your subtle attempt to decimate everybody magical support to secure your domination of the world. In any case, I did what I thought it was best for my reign.

See you all in the Battlefields I guess :)

Aqualibrium's been castin' Well of Misery (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Well_of_Misery) which does two things:
1) Everyone (you, me, and everyone else) gets 10% more income from their provinces
2) I get a butt load of death gems

What you are thinking of is Burden of Time (http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Burden_of_Time), which causes all units to age a year or more every turn and is really bad news for old dudes.

Two completely different spells with radically different effects.

Edit: T'ien Ch'i probably doesn't care because he enjoys getting more money. Plus the spell says it eases the woes and aches of all the world's peoples so his old mages probably appreciate the spell cuttin' down on their arthritis.

Ouch :confused:Completelly messed both spells :/

[triqui]

I am willing to concede the game to atlantis but will continue for as long as someone thinks the tittle is in dispute.

Ok, I agree with you now, I am willing to concede the game to atlantis too.

[shatner]

I am willing to concede the game to atlantis but will continue for as long as someone thinks the tittle is in dispute.

Ok, I agree with you now, I am willing to concede the game to atlantis too.

Well, how 'bout we put it to a vote to determine where the game'll go from here. I'll abstain since I'm obviously in "conflict of interest" territory, plus it means there won't be a tie.

Also, two suns?! We of Atlantis take that as a personal insult. Heck we consider one sun to be pushin' it. We'd be angrier but we figure with Marignon so full of old mages, they probably did that just so they wouldn't have to keep turning the thermostat up. It's official, LA Marignon is the Florida of Dark Fantasy.

[Immaculate]

k- game over.

i had 8 tartarians kitted out and ready to go- some with artifacts... none with any afflcitions and i was summoning 1, restoring its soul (if necessary) and kitting it out every single turn. Not sure what you had but i think that would have caused some hurt.

I am happy to finish this game though- i was really really newbish when i started and i feel i learnt a lot but that the decisions i made in the begginning have set me back a quite a bit.


EDIT: wait- gath- you want to keep playing this or not?

[shatner]

I'll lay all my cards on the table if we end the game, and if we don't I promise I won't use the info about your Tartarans in my in-game decision making (not that that would change my current plans very much anyway).

[triqui]

Internet ate my long post. Twice. :(

I can summon a blood SC per turn too if I want. Latelly I was invoking 10+ demon knights and 20+ Devils per turn, as well as Enliving Statues and some Vine chaff to reduce the gap in total troops.
I have several SC too, including my god, a Heliophagus, a couple Fire Devils, awakened golems, awakened Eater of deads, a Djinn, and Elemental Kings. I can as well summon angels, including Seraphs. Most of them can be a challenge for Tartarians, specially if they use AntiUndead weaponry such as Flamebeaus or herald lances, etc.

I have also a very large amount of comunion-able thunderstrikers and a dozen bow of wars with quicken self that can shoot 600 high precision flaming arrows per turn, which might be powerful even against arrow fends, I suppose. Every single LA Marignon mage can comunion or sabbath, which is somewhat cool too.


The problem is I'm facing not only tartarians. I'm facing 3vs1, so it's a moot point to try to defend. I can hold my own for a couple of turns at best, you only need to attack every singlen province I own without a castle and I'll colapse. Also, Atlantis is already winning, he generates as much gems as everybody else combined, and in the late game, gems are the thing that matter. If we would face him 3vs1, it would be a coin toss. In any other situation, it's just pointless to keep the game running for another month or two just to wait for the inevitable.

I also learned a lot in this game. Diplomacy is not the most important thing. It's the only important thing. Patala faced 2vs1 and died (with me taking late spoils of war), Jomon faced 2vs1 and died (with Gath being the late robber), and now I face 3vs1. If I should have joined Atlantis half a dozen turns ago when he was asking me to attack someone, I might have got a chance, but I thought he was already winning too much. However, I did not join him, but I did not plot against him either, and that's a heavy mistake.

Overall, nice learning game.

[triqui]

PS: what are we waiting for? There are 4 people in the game, 2 of them vote for finishing. 1 of them abstein, just becouse he is part in conflict. Even if he votes to keep the game on, it's a 2'5 vs 1

[Immaculate]

agreed on your point regarding diplo. Atlantis played well strategically and especially diplomatically and earned the win in my opinion.

[shatner]

I've played and won as LA Atlantis once before so I wanted to try something a little different this time. First, I had a rainbow with lots of little blesses instead of a big W9N4 like last time. Secondly, I wanted to emphasize Atlantis' unique "I can invade far away" schtick, so I made it a point NOT to attack my neighbors (Man and Gath).

Because I was big and scary early on, my neighbors seemed happy enough to agree to peace (though I tried to be generous with gold and gems when needed to help cement the deal). I then went to war with Patala but my research was not to the point where I could remote-invade someone by myself. As such I invited Patala's neighbors (T'ien Ch'i and Marignon) in on the fun. I got bogged down in cracking a particularly tough fort and Marignon was a little late to the fight, leaving T'ien Ch'i to gobble up the largest chunk of Patala.

My neighbor Man was doing poorly and had no where to expand but into me or T'ien Ch'i. To give him something to do and to prevent T'ien Ch'i from gaining too much from our joint war with Patala, I encouraged Man to attack T'ien Ch'i. The majority of T'ien Ch'i's forces were way up north and had a lot of slowing terrain in the way so I figured Man could gain some turf and delay TC's consolidation of it's Patala spoils.

I don't know the particulars of that war but the end result was Man gaining little before TC stalled them out and then TC was able to bring his Patala invasion force south to successfully invade Man. Of course, Man takes a long time to actually lose a defensive war, which kept TC very busy for a long time... as in, busy for the entirety of the Jomon war.

During all this, I was cozying up with Marignon because I was quite worried about Jomon and a little worried about TC (both of whom were Marignon's neighbors). Marignon and I became good trading partners (mainly trading skull mentors for lightless lanterns) and started scheming on who to invade next. I suggested TC but Marignon (for his own calculated reasons, I'm sure) made a compelling case for attacking Jomon. Great! However, that left me with the problem of eventually having TC on my doorstep with me possibly still embroiled in a war on the opposite side of the map. Also, technically TC didn't have a land-border with Marignon (which doesn't matter much to Marignon since they can sail); if TC conquered Man, their only invadable neighbor would be me.

With TC clearly winning the TC-Man war, and with TC clearly occupied by said war, I gave a pretty blunt communication to TC where I spelled it out. I said that he and I were pretty much doomed to fighting in the future and it'd be a fight to the death. With that being the case, I'd normally invade him now rather than wander off and join Marignon in a fight against the distant nation of Jomon. However, if he was willing to sign on as "ally-for-life" then we could share a victory with Atlantis' god reigning supreme and Atlantis ruling the island and the ocean, while TC could have the outer-ring of land and worship whatever they wanted so long as it didn't try to unseat Atlantis' god. He agreed, signed an NAP-12 and suddenly I was free to invade Jomon.

I made sure to get Gath onboard for the Jomon invasion, mainly to make sure Jomon didn't talk him into invading me. People are generally willing to go along with whatever war will get them the most spoils and the deck was stacked against Jomon with me and Marignon already committed against it. The war on Jomon went surprisingly well, with Marignon kicking all sorts of Jomonese butt, while I had something of a repeat of the Patala war and ended up bogged down trying to dig the enemy out of a couple of castles. Fortunately my resources and research was more matured so I was able to simultanesouly besiege 3 of Jomon's castles (including their capital) while the Marignon blitzkrieg raged on.

As soon as the Jomon capital fell (oddly enough, this was the only foreign capital I controlled despite being the biggest nation), I started planning with TC about invading Marignon. I chose Marignon over Gath because he was reachable by my secret ally TC and also because I was very worried about Marignon's angel-devil-blood-blood-astral-fire endgame of doom. When I approached Gath about joining up (again because I sure didn't want to fight a two-front war), he said that invading me would probably be better for him. After all, my capital was closer to his forces and I tended to use convential armies, which he felt he was better equipped to handle than fighting Marignon's crazy blood-raiding-remote-attack armies. However, I had always been a pleasant, cordial neighbor and I had traded pretty favorably with him in the build up to the war with Jomon. In contrast, he had never had any sort of substantial diplomatic exchange with Marignon, so he was honestly open to either of us as targets for expansion. The point which tipped him into agreeing to fight Marignon was that I said fighting them would probably be more interesting and educational than fighting me. Gath agreed and that pretty much brings us to the present.


So this is a shared victory between me and and T'ien Ch'i. Congrats TC, we of Atlantis salute you from our island and ocean strongholds.

[triqui]

Very enterteining read and a very valuable one to learn about.

A great Sun Tzu's The Art of War approach. Being able to manipulate and bribe your neighbours properly is very important, probably more than being able to push an early expansion or create a late game good threat with research or whatever.

For example, I took Jomon over TC as a target for our combined assault becouse I had conversations with TC regarding you, and how he was affraid of your growth. I thought it would be easier for me to convince him to attack you if, after Jomon, you happened to take more provinces than me and your leading of the game was enough to make you a long term winner. I, however, was lenient in my diplo, and you convinced TC in the meanwhile to join you as the best of the losers... er... I mean... to share your victory as second one :P

From all your diplomatic manipulation, the one I think is more brilliant is the last one with Gath. "attack him becouse you will learn more" is simply brilliant, I would never had thought of it myself. I note it for future use, if you don't have it copyrighted ^_^. Sure, it didn't work for Gath, as he won't learn that much, but it worked greatly for you. I find it to be just brilliant. Probably it influence in the game was much lesser than, say, your ability to sign a long term alliance with TC after you pushed Man to fight them. That was probably the winning move.

I've learned a lot in this game. Interesting one indeed. So long live to Aqualibrium, the new God in the Pantocrator. I concede the game to Atlantis.

[shatner]

As far as wartime assets, Atlantis has always been about having (webbed) feet on the ground. I've been recruiting an Angakok and 10 Arssartuts plus probably 25 or so Ice Guard every turn forever (and I could turn that 25 into 50+ if I needed to). Given 2, maybe 3 mages casting buffs, these troops will result in even or favorable battlefield attrition... and I can win a war of attrition. In other words, if your baseline troops are just plain better, more numerous and as-or-more mobile than your opponent's, you don't really have to do anything fancy to win; cleverness is for people who are fighting uphill... the other guy just has to not trip while he charges downhill.

I've got a fully tricked out Bane Lord and Wraith Lord just sort of hanging out waiting to stomp on any raiders that wander over. I have one Elemental King of Earth and I could easily have all three Water Queens but I haven't bothered since I don't have any water-born threats. I've got a fairy queen and as many S2E2s, A2s and N2 neutral mages as you can shake a stick at. I also have a few pimped out ancient kraken, but those are mostly relics from my war with Jomon. I have an ever growing pile of naiad warriors, ghosts, catoblepas, and LOTS of wights. I also have dozens of thugged out banes (frostbrand + lycanthrope amulet or demon slaying sword + jade armor or dual axes of hate + lycanthrope amulet) and dozens of winged boots lying around ready to send my counter-raiders out in force.

The theme behind all this is flexible defense; until now I've always been fighting the other guy on his turf way away from my home provinces. So far my opponent's ability to project force on my homeland has been effectively nil. That means my need for a garrison, domes over key provinces or any other sort of defensive counter-measure has been minimal to non-existant. Even if Jomon or Patala had crushed my forces, my power base would still be untouched. With Marignon, I was having to gear up for all sorts of flying, raiding, teleporting, remote crap that I previously hadn't had to worry about.

My plan has been to pick a few outlying areas of Marignon's (island holdings mainly) and invade the crap out of them with excessive force while staying out of my allies' way. Meanwhile, I have such an insane stockpile of gems, a truly awesome gem income, and almost 100% research (8s or 9s in everything except thaumaturgy), I can pretty much cripple Marignon's economy without having to set foot on their homeland. The opening turn of the war was going to involve Marignon eating at least a dozen tidal waves that'd wash about half of his population out to sea which, combined with the massive unrest that spell causes, would heavily drop his gold and blood slave income. In other words, I'd attack Marignon's mainland with Tidal Wave, Locust Swarm, Blight, Volcano, Wolven Winter, etc. while conquering his peripheral holdings. Any sufficiently large armies that wandered out into the open would probably eat a Murdering Winter or two. All major battles would include Demon Cleansing and Neifel Flames.

I intentionally didn't bother with artifacts or super-high end summons because I played with that stuff last time I was LA Atlantis and this time I wanted to try going for lots of mid-range stuff economically equipped or buffed. I have two provinces that let me scry on stuff so I had very thorough accounts of Marignon's assets. For example, Gath was planning on casting Wish and asked me whether there was something he could steal from Marignon. I told him to wish for a Seriph and then have it forge the lamp to steal Marignon's genie (the archdevil wasn't worth stealing and I didn't know which Heliophagus he had because the scrying kept reporting his forgelord's name instead). I also had 1-2 scouts in every province of his because while the land routes into his mainland were heavily patrolled, the water routes weren't. I have an UW 20% conjuration discount, which is nice but still kinda limited because there's a lot of stuff you want to summon and most of it can't be summoned underwater. I have a crystal mage site, an illusionist site and an animist site, all of which really helped my magic diversity.

It's surprising the mileage you can get out of high-level water and mid-level death. Atlantis really is a very efficient nation whose handful of strengths seem very limited at first glance but are surprisingly versitile once you get used to them. But mainly this was a game about diplomacy.

Good times.


Edit: As for the "attacking him will be more interesting and instructive", or any of the other advice I gave any of my allies, it was all true. Gath had a pretty good idea of what I was capable of throwing at him, it was more a question of what volumes I could call upon, as well as how artful I was scripting it all. Late game LA Marignon however... that's a hard foe to anticipate. Hence my somewhat conservative strategy for the opening of the war.

[triqui]

Didn't say or tried to imply that your advice was false. I said it was genius. Gath told you that your armies were troop-based and mine were more about remote-crap and blood/astral stuff, and you used that very same argument to convince him to attack me instead of you.

"Well, it's true that I have "regular" armies with troops, but hey, if you attack me, you'll face only regular armies with troops, you'll learn more if you attack him". It's kind of genious, and I'm being sincere at that, not ironic.

In this case, it happen that it didn't work for Gath, becouse I don't see the point to continue a game that is decided, but that's not something that you, or Gath, could had known beforehand. The diplomatic trick was a good manipulation regardless of it.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Congratulations to Atlantis! I myself would have liked to play a few more turns, since I was looking forward to fighting Marignon, but I also felt like the game was getting a bit tedious. I think I learned a lot, but I would have liked to actually fight a real war (AI Ulm and Jomon's outlying provinces dont count).

Diplomacy was definitely a strong influence on my decision not to fight Atlantis. But in my defense, I was not "tricked". As the weakest remaining player, I didn't have a shot at victory, so I just wanted to have some good combat experiences, and I thought Marignon's summons would have been more interesting to fight than Atlantis' infantry hordes.

Anyway, it was fun just lasting until the late game and seeing what it is like. Next game, I think I'll try to be more aggressive, and start wars rather than waiting for them to come to me.