MP: Nub Bash 2010 - Late Age - Completed- Victor: Atlantis

[Corvus]

That was an independant province, and you had already done the same to me, taking provinces that had been taken from me by R'lyeh before I could go kick him out, and then refusing to even trade them back for other provinces.

[Verjigorm]

Well then, this little war erupted over a misunderstanding. See.. I missed the turn on which it was your property and didn't notice the changeover until after the battle had occurred. I assumed that you had taken it forcibly the turn before. I figured I missed the message because the message logs are so long at this stage of the game, I occasionally miss an event.

I obviously couldn't allow you to control it because it is a choke point between the southern and northern fractions of that portion of the map. I suppose, however, that it would have been better diplomatically (had I known it was taken from independents) to trade that province for the southern port island that connects to (formerly) Mictlan.

You never offered anything I wanted in exchange for that province. That little island is ****ing valuable and would have provided me a route for invasion of Mictlan which would eliminate a competing blood nation which, at the time, was my plan for after I finished with R'lyeh. Then both of them went AI and that, of course, changed everything. I wasn't interested in expanding eastward because all of the players on that portion of the map had gone AI--I've been calling that rather large Northeastern region "AI Land" for some time and had no interest in it since there was no real people to fight.

It was more interesting fighting you anyway, and I was bored which is why I chose to attack rather than negotiate.

I suppose, though, that I could go for letting this game slip into the recesses of history and concede, not based on the fact that I don't think it would be possible to beat Atlantis, but more rather based on the fact that I would have to consume all of Jomon before doing so and he would still have a leg up due to the gem income....

Septimus? Would you like a gimme win? If you want to continue we can still go at it, I think I can come up with a few more things, but it will probably be a lot of vs. AI between you and I unless you want to unfreeze the seas (which I can easily refreeze, btw). Plus you're relying on resource-generated troops in a nation with death scales...

Additionally... LA Ulm appears to be a very good turtling nation. You can't invade it with anything that doesn't have shields because of the Black Priests, and you need strong a strong dominion assault to punch through. I had the strong dominion assault ready, but I should have gone with my original idea and held the Juggernauts back until after the battle to prevent them from getting routed, and I didn't have shielded units. Demon Knights and Storm Demons would have been the best mix for that offensive.

Anyway... I have most of the Ice Devils insane or horror marked to the point at which summoning them isn't worthwhile anymore.... Belphegor got multi-horror marked so much that I can't keep him alive, either, and Mabakiel is quite insane (as well a lot of the ice devils). Its difficult to switch from Blood SC chassis with AC up, too.

The AC, btw, was a successful defense against the Nexus--without AC up, the Nexus was generating 70-100 gems per turn. Once you put AC up, the income from the Nexus dropped to 25/turn which means it takes 6 turns just to pay for the base cost of casting it, and I think you guys were able to dispel it in something like 6-8 turns.

People always say that the Nexus is "invulnerable", but it's definitely easier to defeat that people think it is. AC is a very potent counter.

Oh! another interesting thing about Bogarus: My pretender has been horror marked so badly that he gets attacked by a horror (usually a Doom Horror), every turn, and when he casts a spell, he gets attacked by two, and for some reason even though he has really high Astral magic, he always uses an extra pearl to cast Returning (uses 3 instead of 2 unless he only has 2), so I can't just give him 4 pearls when he casts a spell because he gets wasted by the second horror attack and loses any boosters I put on him. I have to give him 6 pearls. Therefore he costs 2 pearls per turn to keep him free of afflictions, and each spell he casts requires an additional 6 pearls to prevent him from dying in the process. I also didn't like his build and would change him significantly in the future.

[Septimius Severus]

It is turn 119. The longest game I have ever been in. I have learned a great deal and have had a good deal of fun. I am sure we all have. And I had a great time playing with you all. If the game ends now, it is fine with me.

There is certainly no point in continuing if people are bored, exhausted, or busy with other things. I will humbly accept the win by concession/exhaustion if you guys want to quit now. I personally don't mind AI fighting, but that is just me.

Verigorm is right, my death scales would eventually kill off all my population, largely shutting down my production capacity and income, though with the large amount of AI provinces yet to be taken, it might take quite some time for that to fully materialize.

Yes, Astral Corruption was/is a great counter to Arcane Nexus, which is why I pushed for it.

And yes, while Arcane Nexus is a powerful global, it certainly doesn't guarantee a win as the game shows.

I will abide by Corvus' decision as game admin at this point, whether to call the game. I have no objections. Large empires can be a headache to maintain anyway. Not just ferrying troops to the front, I also have to keep troops in the rear (at geographically spaced intervals) to deal with independent attacks and random flareups, which increases with the more provinces you hold.

[Corvus]

Hmmmmmm. To be quite honest aside from masses of chaff, vampires, and freaks now, I got nothing but my excellent black priests really. This'll show me to get a more varied pretender. I can probably devastate anything attacking me that isn't a heavy SC so I'm pretty sure it would take a really long drawn out war of attrition to crack me. On the other hand I wouldn't really mind to keep playing, the games winding down a bit, but I'd hate to just quit...uggh. *flips a coin* Heads, unless there's any last minute objections, let's call it. How about we leave the game up till tomorrow in case someone changes their mind.

[Verjigorm]

Yeah, you really needed some Storm Demons. Things that can fly in the rain are extremely useful--more cost effective than Spring Hawks and aren't mindless either.

I was also quite surprised that no one challenged me on any of the unique demons. I had all of them except for 1 of the Arch Devils for quite some time. This was back before I found out that shields block Iron Blizzard--I should've asked about that spell much earlier. Versus Mictlan and Ulm and I had to empower my pretender in Water magic to get the Ice Devils. Ice Devils, btw, are the best SC Chassis from Blood, IMO. They start with 20+ protection and can cast Wolven Winter on their target province before they go in to boost their protection score higher. This means that they can use the cool special armors like bone armor and robe of shadows instead of high protection armors.

My next SC was going to be a Chayot with the Forbidden Light so it vaporizes vampires; I was also considering the Ark. They transform 3 times so you can only Magic Duel their first form. They're not nearly as devastatingly powerful as a Seraph, but they don't have Magic Duel vulnerability either.

[Septimius Severus]

Great game guys. Thanks to Corvus for game admin and to Gandalf for hosting.