Preponderance 2 [epic team game returns!]

[13lackGu4rd]

seems like Mictlan is played by someone other than the 1 listed on the list IH gave me. also, found someone to actually play MA Man, since earcaraxe abandoned it quite a few turns ago. extended the turn by 24 hours for the new MA Man player, will give him more if he'll need it.

[13lackGu4rd]

24 hour extension granted by player request. I guess a few more of you will appreciate the delay as it's nearing Christmas.

[13lackGu4rd]

meh, I wanted to give a 24 hour extension, but after llamaserver made it a habit to reject my attempts at doing so, causing me to repeat the command 3-4 times on each extension attempt, now it worked properly for a change and it got extended twice. so y'all have a 48 hour extension instead. sorry for the inconvenience, so if you wanted a longer turn you got it, if not than all I can say is that it'll be over soon.

[archaeolept]

11 vps really isn't sufficient. I suggest an immediate change to 15.

[13lackGu4rd]

quoting the original post of this thread, which contains the game rules:

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Victory conditions: 10/26 VPs [24 caps + 2 VP worth central island]

team MA Jotunheim+MA Abysia has conquered 11 VPs this turn, which makes them the victors. therefore I have declared the game finished on llamaserver. congratulations to Calahan and DrP, the winning team.

this game should have been over a while ago, there is absolutely no reason to prolong the game even longer once the actual victory conditions have finally been met. Calahan+DrP have been the clear winners of this game for a very long time now, it's just that they didn't meet the 10 VP cap so the game went on, giving the runner up teams a chance to catch up and snatch away the victory, which they failed to do.

so anyway, the moment we've all been waiting for, who was who. warning: the list IH gave me isn't 100% accurate, I will post the original list as unfortunately I didn't keep a very good track of the changes I was aware of, so I can't accurately correct it. please correct the accuracies in the list, if you're still around that is.

1. Squirrelloid + Raiel 53 – LA Mari 64 – Patala
3. Maerlande + Burnsaber 12 – EA Agartha 68 – Lanka
6. Baalz + militarist 43 – Bandar Log 52 – LA Ulm
7. Ferrosol + Kheldron 71 – LA Bogarus 63 – LA Utgard
9. TheDemon + Blazin961 0 - EA Arco 10 – EA Ctis
10. Apsophos + earcaraxe 30 – MA Man 7 – EA Mict
11. Alpine Joe + Ghoul31 18 – EA Kailasa 27 – MA Arco
5. Zeldor + Quitti 35 – MA Machaka 4 – Sauro
12. Agent Smith + Hoplosterum 34 – Ma Tien Chi 32 – Ma Marignon
2. FrozenLama + Trumanator 44 – Shin 29 – MA Pyth
8. DrPraetorious + Calahan 37 – MA Aby 42 – MA Jot
4. Juffos + Hermeister 58 – LA Abysia 19 – EA Yomi

I know that Squirrelloid was playing Patala and Raiel playing LA Mari, despite IH's list saying otherwise. I also know that the LA C'tis(replacing EA Kailasa)+MA Arco was played by Dimaz and Kuritza.

I think a few other players have also switched nations in between them. also, now I can say it, I've subbed myself for LA Abysia until it was defeated completely, than later I subbed in for Bogarus and held them until the end. no idea who the original owners were(whether the list is accurate or not about them), I just took over these 2 last stand positions that suffered from a lot of previous stales, as part of my efforts to keep this game going and preventing people from giving up. unfortunately, as you all know, quite a few people gave up and vanished, which caused us quite a few problems.

[DrPraetorious]

False humility is tiresome, but Calahan is awesomely good at this game. A lot of the attention to detail was his, as was his vicious dismemberment of Yomi/Aby early on, which is what propelled us into a lead we were able to hold. We also settled on a double-blood strategy that was his suggestion. So >50% of the credit goes to him; although I played quite well myself, I think.

I was a bit disappointed that our last turn prep was for not. Those armies storming our last three VPs were outfitted to resist multiple teleporting raiding armies, fires from the sky and murdering winters, and we'd anticipated a major communion-of-death to teleport into EA Saur and try to stop me there.

Nothing manifested . I had an absolutely fantastic army of slavering demons, and the castle was empty!

But to give you an idea of how fearsome Calahan is - we had forge orders replacing almost all of the at-risk inventory in the fort storms this turn, and you may have noticed teleporting squads of Asmeg thugs backed up with blood magic casters covering select retreats. As for winning the game faster: well, we might've tried, but that would've been the surest way not to win at all .

[TheDemon]

Apologies for the last turn stale, I misread the turn due time and ended up submitting 4 minutes late.

[Dimaz]

Too bad, I was hoping for some more fighting with the winners...

[Zeldor]

Well, congrats to Cal & DrP.

There is at least one "but" though - Ironhawk should have never allowed you to take 11 pointers and you should have never accepted it. No matter how good you are and how well you played, it can be said that you won because you had better team than other competitors.

[TheDemon]

Post-mortem:

Should be fairly obvious in hindsight what our plan was as the EA Arco/EA C'tis team. We were of the opinion that C'tis is very underrated in the early game, so we put him in the front, Skellyspam and Elite Warriors kicked major ***. I had an awake Great Sage and was rushing for Rain of Stones and Mother Oak. Blazin took a Lord of Rebirth and planned to put up a strong Gift of Health and do mentors -> tarts. We achieved this and it made us at least a minor contender in the lategame.

We were attacked early by Utgard, I think about 2 turns before we were ready to go to war with them ourselves, but Skellyspam and Elite Warriors beat the crap out of giants. Our big problem was bringing forces in through the various chokepoints so the war with Utgard/Bogarus took a dozen turns longer than we wanted. We should have moved on way sooner instead of taking time to clean up, and by the time the cleanup was finished Jotun/Aby had their commanding lead.

I guess we could have thrown the game at this point, but we counted caps and decided there was an very small outside chance we could grab enough. I dropped BL sucessfully, but we messed up on Ulm, and Jotun beat us to dropping on Lanka by one turn. Would have been an interesting battle on Lanka had it been one turn later. Obviously it would have been extremely difficult for us to take and keep Lanka and grab Patala, Marignon and Man (ok Man might have been easy) for the win, but that's the dom3 endgame for ya if you choose to fight.

Anyway, big congrats to DrP/Calahan, you played the game at a pace far above ours, and that led you to a well-deserved win.

I will mention that at the point where we were asked if we wanted the game to continue, another team (presumably the other Arco/C'tis) had already asked for the game to continue before I had a chance to PM Blackguard. So, it wasn't just us drawing things out. Personally I think that going out fighting for victory in the endgame was far more exciting than conceding the game. I felt much more fulfilled having fought the game to the end, regardless of what anyone says about it having been over long ago. I hope there are others who feel the same way.