Quote:
Originally Posted by bbz
Ye I was really afraid because our positions are similar so the brutal late game would have taken as my mentioned months maybe half a year. But at the end I think you'd have won just because you had a better way to generate unlimited ammout of undead chaff.
I dont really know, I had about 150 blood slaves income(which I was planning on turning into about 200-250 at some point) so it would have been an interesting game. Also had 20% forge reduction + the two hammers(16 S rings of sorcery) and also 20% enchantress reduction hence the many grendelkins that I had. I also had the chalice and tartarian factory(and almost all of the artifacts) and I'd gotten deep into death magic so that I could eventually use undead mastery against you. So I dont really know who would have won between us two  but I figured that you probably would have lead a war of attiration which would eventually make you the winner(with all those 30k undead chaff). Anyways it was a really fun game and I'm sorry that I'm leaving for now maybe once I get my life sorted I'll come back.  |
I had been watching you closely this game and tailoring my forces to fight specifically against you. For instance, you relied on a large raiding force to blitzkrieg your opponents in the first turns of war, but I had fielded a large force of anti-raiders (Golems and Asynjas) that were specifically geared to knock out your your raiders and been frantically building fortresses to protect my territory. Next turn alone I would have had an additional 6 completed and probably had another 6-7 in various stages of construction.
I knew Undead Mastery would be coming and likely Purgatory as well, so I made sure all of my armies I was assembling could cast it in return with full penetration gear and had a large number of fire gems ready to cast Purgatory. I think Earthquake (which I know you like to use) would have been an issue (assuming you got first strike), although I did try to mitigate by having Gift of Health up and spreading my dominion around (this is to protect my mages of course -- undead are expendable).
Although you were generating more gems then me, I didn't need to spend very many gems myself and had stock-piled quite a few. Although I had been building some SCs and had my own tart factory going, I never used a single SC or thug in battle and didn't foresee needing to use them much beyond an anti-raiding role so I didn't have to deal with any attrition.
On the ritual front, my long-term plan was to wish away some of your key artifacts and then put up a 999 gem Arcane Nexus with my 20% enchantment site and then tear down your enchantments one-by-one as I flooded you with a bunch of smaller armies backed with about 2,500 undead generation a turn (more later as additional fortresses came online). It probably would have taken me only 5-6 turns to accumulate enough astral gems to pull off this strategy, although I was still coming up with the list of artifacts to hit first. It depended on whether I thought you were capable of casting wish or not.
I think one of the problems you would have faced would have been trying to crack my fortresses. With Arouse Hunger spam, I can fortify a fortress pretty easily. If you tried to send in a large army, I would have blasted it to smithereens with Flames from the Sky and Murdering winter (or tried to steal it with Master enslave). I was actually very worried about you doing the same with me, and was planning to send in a bunch of smaller armies to try to mitigate.
I had my own blood economy going, although I didn't make much use of it. I was thinking that in a grueling, long-term game, it would be handy for the three red seconds spell to secure territory gains and to help minimize spending gems.
By the way, I have about a million guys that can cast Vengeance of the Dead -- some of which have full penetration gear (my mind hunters) -- that were itching to knock out Tredel, your Grendelkin, that was using the sickle to harvest death gems from Pangaea. He was a strategic threat and every turn I agonized whether to break our NAP and knock him out (using either VotD or my anti-raiders), but I figured the long-game favored me and it was best to preserve the peace.