Re: The Ascension Wars: MA,12 players, no mods, newb friendly. [Year 4, 8/12 remainin
About me: I am a veteran from the times of Dominions PPP. I played my first game in 2001, and have played with some of the guys that helped in the development of Dom3 (Gandalf Parker -still active here-, Jasper Phillips, Jacques Vidal…we even had one of the Johans in a game once, I guess we were a small community back then). I was not that active in the times of Dom2, and have played very little Dom3. Thus I have a reasonably good knowledge of the mechanics of the game & the original nations, and a much weaker knowledge of what has been added afterwards. This reflects in my nation & tactics choices.
In this game I went with a 2F,2A,1W,4E,4S,5N dormant Void Lurker, with 3order/sloth/cold/luck/magic & neutral growth. Dominion 6 IIRC.
This is a very strong long term build. Other good pretenders for R’lyeh are the Ancient Kraken & the Wyrm, but with no other water nations in the game the Kraken was unnecessary, and as I had no intention of rushing any landlubbing newbies early on, I did not either need the early amphibian power of an awake Wyrm.
The Void Lurker has cheap additional paths, and once teleport & a few buffs are researched he can actually destroy armies on his own with up to 4 damage shields, but mostly he stays away from battle, provides some minor blesses & opens magic paths I might otherwise have trouble getting into.
Fire & water (with a water bracelet) give me rune smashers. Earth gives dwarven hammers. Nature allows searching for Kelp forts underwater, and lets me GoR a Vastness as soon as it shows up. 5N might be too much, it allows for an earlier Gift of health, Faerie Court & Gift of Nature’s Bounty, but just 4N and either 1growth, 2W or increased dominion would have been solid alternative choices.
The minor E & N blesses synergize well with Vastnesses, Greater Othernesses & Formless Spawn from the Void Gate. Starspawn mages can also be equipped with shrouds, which increase their survivability & casting time for little cost, and the bless bonus to morale helps with their morale issues when fighting in enemy dominion.
Regarding the scales: 3order, sloth & cold are pretty much standard for R’lyeh, 3 luck is there for the increased chance of getting Void critters (and the better quality of these). 3 magic provides a research bonus, is also the equivalent of equipping each Starspawn with a built in spell focus when fighting in home dominion, & results in reduced fatigue from spellcasting. Mind hunts vs raiders are also stronger.
R’lyeh finest are its big three: Starspawn mage, Starspawn priest & Starchild, so the above benefits from a 3magic dominion are a key part of the build. The military is kind of weak, and although some of the troops have niche uses, it is the mages that win or lose for R’lyeh. This has been a constant since the times of Dominions PPP.
TheAscensionWars game combined players with a huge spread of experience levels, and because of that my first objective was to fight for the victory while avoiding attacking the newbies for as long as possible.
My second objective was to achieve a competitive endgame without forging a single clam. Back when the clam fever & discussion started, circa 2003 in Dom II, I was in the camp of players that favoured using the gem income aggressively, rather than turtling up & clamming. I can see how investments with a RoI of 15 or so turns can be profitable in long games when facing passive opponents (or even decisive with a construction bonus), but that’s not always the case.
I expanded with crab hybrids & illithids initially. But the seas in this map are pretty poor, with none of them being above 10k population in this game, as opposed to some grasslands & coastal provinces in the 15-20k range, so my expansion was middle of the pack at best.
C’tis started just 2 provinces South of me, and we were eyeing each other for a while. His Prince of Death was a tough nut to crack this early in the game and by turn11 he was sieging Man. With him this near & around a 60% bigger than me I had very little chance of expanding inland to the South, and I was suffering miasma, death & misfortune in some seas. I needed to stop him before he became too big and gained too much territory inland, but I was too small to do that.
Come turn14 I was nº7 in income, far from stellar. I also had dominion issues, with 3 Dom10 nations around the seas, and one of them with an awake pretender, so I built 5 temples, placing them in the seas bordering nations that were already engaged in wars.
This was a key turn: My pretender awakened, my Void summoner found a Vastness, I researched thaumaturgy 3, & C’tis PoD attacked a coastal province in the east with a local population of shamblers & atlantian spears. I took this as an offensive move (getting a province he could recruit amphibian troops from), and noticed two very important facts: the PoD was in enemy dominion & had no retreat path!
I immediately prepared a teleport squad of 5 Starspawn mages scripted to cast Spirit curse, 5xTwist fate & 16xSolar rays. With 6-8 Solar rays the PoD should either die or rout (and with no province to retreat to, routing would also mean death). There were 2 incognita however: his script & whether he would have recruited troops/pd, or not. Up until this turn, my scouts had seen him using a script consisting of air shield, attack. This meant that from the 2nd round onwards he would be in range, so I decided to place my mages backwards, which would leave them time to retreat/cast returning and survive the local defense. This was a mistake. C’tis upgraded his script to air shield, mistform, mirror image & attack this same turn, so my mages were out of range for most of their script & only 5 Solar rays hit the Pretender, resulting in 2 afflictions, but he survived.
Thus started the war with C’tis. I also spoke with Arco, who was in C’tis natural path of expansion, and started raiding the coastal provinces.
By turn19 I GoRed my Vastness, and Spaceballs was born. I did not expect her to survive until the endgame, yet she did, and performed as a very profitable wildcard: raiding, destroying armies in the open with no mage support, and even killing enemy SCs when buffed up. Spaceballs did it all.
By turn 23, disaster struck: Spaceballs got diseased by miasma when raiding C’tis capitol, and C’tis killed Arco’s pretender & main army. Arco, being a new player, had been out-manoeuvred by C’tis, who slipped an army past him & sieged the capital. Arco’s relief attack failed, and with nobody inside he lost the fort to the besieging army.
I decided to hide the diseased Vastness, already down to 40 hps, and sacrificed my prophet to appoint her instead (so that regeneration would stop the hp drain).
By turn 28 C’tis was the most visible threat in the game, already controlling 3 capitals and with Arco almost dead. Abysia & Bandar Log attacked him, but Bandar Log fell back as soon as the PoD showed up. Despite the size difference with C’tis, I was still pretty safe in the seas, with my cold dominion & mages being quite of a deterrent for a cold blooded land nation.
In the NE, Ashod was almost dead after being attacked by Ermor & Mictlan, while Mictlan was dying to Tien Chi & Bandar Log.
By turn 30 Spaceballs became my prophet, and I redoubled the raids vs the coastal provinces with small teams of etherealized thralls. C’tis concluded he could not win this war in the long term, and decided to instead pillage & overtax his backyard, while taking most of his main mage force in a rampage.
The PoD finally died to a Soul Slay, and after that there was little left to defend C’tis capitol (already down to 2k pop), so I took it by turn 37 with an army of Sea trolls, Undead, Void critters & Starpawn equipped with rings of poison resistance. The teleporting Vastness & Starspawn mopped up the forces remaining after this.
By this time I was leading in provinces, yet well behind in income (with half of my lands depopulated, suffering unrest in the 200 range, and under miasma dominion of death & misfortune), I was also behind in gems & research. TC was comfortably leading in all the above, with Ermor & Bandar Log being roughly 2nd and 3rd in size, except that Ermor had very poor research.
Up until this point, the 4 nations in the NE (Tien Chi, Bandar Log, Agartha & Pythium) had been cooperating, and their collaboration had not flattered despite some players pointing out that TC was benefiting the most from this agreement.
By turn 40 TC offered me a NAP. I had until this moment refrained from signing any such agreements, mostly because I did not need them, feeling pretty secure in the seas. But this time I accepted. The reason being that such offer could only mean that TC was preparing to attack Ermor. As the 4 nations in the NE were allied, if I rejected the offer I would be the one attacked instead, by at least TC & Bandar Log, and maybe even by Ermor. If I accepted, I could as well end the NAP as soon as TC hit, and fight 2vs2 rather than 1vs2 or 1vs3.
Thus I accepted, and watched. But Agartha & Pythium entered TCs war vs Ermor pretty soon, which complicated things. I was pretty sure that as soon as Ermor fell, I would be next in line. I kept in touch with Ermor during this time, and it was obvious from our talks that he would not last long. Meanwhile, I pushed my dominion into the South & searched the lands heavily, increasing my gem income & uncovering a -20% enchantment site. I used this site to cast Gift of Health in order to cure my Vastness & other diseased troops & commanders, and also Stellar Focus.
At this point I contacted Bandar Log with the most rational offer: he was currently number 2 & me number 3, we could launch a joint attack vs the leading TC, and fight each other for the game afterwards. Yet no answer came: BL stayed loyal to his ally. Faced with this, my options were:
-Attack TC, and end up fighting vs both TC & Bandar Log, and maybe even Agartha & Pythium also.
-Attack Arco & Abbysia in the South, who were small & would fall easily, but this went against my purpose of no aggressive play vs newbies.
-Sit on my ***, and wait for sure death.
-Attack Bandar Log, who was at this time bigger than me in both income & research, yet smaller in gems. I could do this using TCs NAP against him, and maybe deal a blow hard enough that I would be in a stronger position once the war with TC started. It was all a matter of hoping that Ermor would bleed TC more than BL would bleed me. Also, I wanted to remove BL’s 9astral Oracle before the endgame.
By turn 47 I attacked Bandar Log:
He had a mostly missile army sieging the last Mictlan fort & preaching the 20 defending mages away, and I hit that with a host of etherealized & arrow fend protected HI. A second army hit the province behind cutting the retreat path. A Rudra in the open went down to mind hunt, and Spaceballs teleported on the capital, sieging it. I used teleport rather than normal movement because I also cast 2xWolven winter this turn on the province, and I wanted to be the one getting the event message: if he was not paying close attention, this would hide the fact I was changing the weather scale in the province to blast his Rishis with Murdering Winter the following turn. A couple other provinces were also taken by raiders.
In one turn BL lost a third of his forces. During the following turns any armies in the open were killed, and BL barricaded inside his forts. I started storming these, mostly using Mass Flight from some Faerie Queens summoned by my Pretender.
By turn 50, what remained of C’tis rampaging Marshmasters turned my way, but at this point in the game there was not much they could do vs communion boosted Basnishment & Nether darts, particularly as I had prepared the battlefield with Wolven Winter.
Some Elemental royalty was summoned, and a Mound Fiend first, and a Demilich afterwards settled up in a fort taken from BL with a Thaumaturgy 20% discount site, which was bound to be my Tartarian Factory (because of the cheaper Gift of Reason). I also planned to hit TCs capitols from here with Black Death, but the game ended before all this.
By the time TC canceled his NAP, BL was already down to just a few forts under siege. The big question here was whether I would be able to take BL’s capitol & kill the Oracle before being attacked, or not. Also, Agartha was on the move through TC lands.
By turn 58 Agartha attacked a fort of mine that was very lightly defended (some hybrid freespawn & some sages, plus a Sea King I had just flown inside, Agartha breached that same turn. His army consisted of his PoD Pretender, 20 or so mages, an Earth King, a marble Oracle, various equipped thugs, trolls, sea trolls & HI.
I conversely breached BLs capitol at the same time, and had to plan thus 2 heavy-duty battles. The one at BL I had already prepared, and had in place everything I needed. The fort defence I had to improvise, but when you are R’lyeh, the core of your mage force is just a few astral gems away.
In the fort defence vs Agartha, chaff & Ice elementals held the gate long enough for my Vastness & Sea King to buff, and while the Sea King almost died to frozen hearts (he overrode his script of casting Breath of Winter, so he had no cold resistance), they both held fine while Nether darts & Gifts from Heaven massacred the attackers. Meanwhile, Grip of winter put most of the attacking force to sleep. All the Agartha army got destroyed, save for an Earth King, a Troll King & 2 Oracles that the Starspawn enslaved during the rout.
In the Battle of Bandar Log the main problem was surviving the first turn Master Enslave. Battle formations consisted on 30 sea trolls up front (to draw the Enslave minds, Charms & evocations from the defenders), Lobo guards (on guard duties mostly, in case of wolves), air elementals (from Aella) & Formless Spawn. Of the above, only the trolls were non mindless, every other trooper was immune to mind spells and my meteorite guards did not even take part in the attack.
The mages formed up behind the trolls: Starspawn mages & priests, and 3 Faerie Queens with crystal shields & AAM. Finally, 18 or so communion slaves.
My army survived the initial Master enslave losing only a few trolls, and immediately casting Antimagic & other buffs. Wrathful skies, Grip of winter & Air elementals killed the defending BL mages, and the fort got conquered.
This turn apparently sealed the game: Agartha announced he would be going AI in short time, while TC launched his attack in turn 59, but apparently lost faith & staled the turn after.
This turned out longer than I expected, hope you enjoyed the tale.
Been a pleasure, and good luck in future games!
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