the Gold Lion (running)

[Dragonlord]

Nix said:
I can see how he did it. Expansion with mercenaries (you can see Lanka hired a lot of them) while the pretender sticks around building up troops; then he stumbled upon a red candle, gathered his men and followed the trail straight to your fortress.

Red candle ?! This was frigging turn 5 ! I had just given my first order to capture my first province on turn 4 ! (Mostly cause I was scared of getting beat by indies and kept failing to buy mercs, even though I offered em twice their asking price.... and I staled for a turn). Point is there *was* no trail to follow back, I found his home province just before dying and it was 3 hops due north of me. Way too close. Its not like he ran into my dominion candles either cause I noticed that the turn he showed up I was even down to zero dominion in my home town, and 1 candle in 2 neighboring provinces.

A map setup like that (in terms of player density) pretty much forces everyone to be ultra agressive from turn 1 onwards and spend 300-400 on mercs, otherwise you get run over by the others who do that. Boring...

Anyways, I am considering starting (hosting) a new MP game that hopefully addresses this by having 12-15 provinces allocated to each player (so no more than 10 players on a 130 province map). That should allow for more refined strategies to also get a shot...
Perhaps the Cradle of Dominion map, I like a well designed map which also graphically looks nicer than the stuff the random generator makes.

[Hellboy]

Dragonlord said:
Red candle ?! This was frigging turn 5 !

He's talking about your domain going positive, which will show up as red candle on Lanka's map. This is certainly possible by turn 5. (and actually it's a black candle w/ a red tip)

I had just given my first order to capture my first province on turn 4 ! (Mostly cause I was scared of getting beat by indies and kept failing to buy mercs, even though I offered em twice their asking price.... and I staled for a turn).

For your next game you should figure out how to take your first indy no later than turn 2. (I know some people do it on turn 1 - not sure if that's a good idea or not)

Point is there *was* no trail to follow back, ...

Again, a single candle could screw you.

... it was 3 hops due north of me. Way too close.

agreed (see below)

Its not like he ran into my dominion candles either cause I noticed that the turn he showed up I was even down to zero dominion in my home town, and 1 candle in 2 neighboring provinces.

I think it's more complicated than that. For one thing dominion candles come and go pretty frequently in the first few turns.

Anyways, I am considering starting (hosting) a new MP game that hopefully addresses this by having 12-15 provinces allocated to each player (so no more than 10 players on a 130 province map). That should allow for more refined strategies to also get a shot...
Perhaps the Cradle of Dominion map, I like a well designed map which also graphically looks nicer than the stuff the random generator makes.

Sounds good (let me know, I'll likely want to join in!). However, you're actually describing a very dense map - the map for this game had 17.6 provinces per player, at the outset (230 provinces w/ 13 players). So, you might want to consider upping the provinces per player a good bit more.

I suspect that it is actually rather difficult to write the code for a good map setup, that is maximally fair to all players. I noticed that DrPraetorious has hosted a couple of games where he used a script to generate fair starting positions. I don't know if he's considered making that publicly available, or not.

[johnarryn]

Well, Lanka also risked quite a bit going right for you... lets say he hadnt found you, or couldnt beat you and ran into another nation with a SC, hed have wasted all his time and troops, and not have cleared all the provs around his capital.

I am a bit curious how Lanka was able to pay for all these sacred troops plus mercenaries... regardless, he got lucky, and you got unlucky. I dont know if it completely erases the validity of random map set-ups. I also dont think you have to buy mercs... in fact, on a map with so many players, bidding for mercs is often a very bad idea in my opinion.

Anyway, sorry you got knocked out so early, it sucks.
Let me know about the new game you plan to start =)

[Micah]

yeah, he also spent 250 points on having an awake pretender, plus another chunk getting his dominion high enough for awe. If he couldn't have a good shot at taking a lot more provinces than other players early on in the game (or even taking them out entirely) he'd be pretty screwed down the line once his horrible scales and/or limited magic selection start to be felt.

Sure it sucks to get taken out early, but if you'd met him on turn 50 instead of turn 5 you'd have just as much of an unfair advantage as he did now, it's all part of the choices you have to make. I also saw one battle you had with him with a scout, and I believe I remember you sinking a few javelins into his ghost king, though not enough to kill him. Pretenders aren't invincible, and he did have to wade through a bunch of indies, plus you get the advantage of having more turns of recruitment and the benefit of PD.

Oh, and whoever said that you need to expand on turn 2 is 100% correct...having to recruit with only the 80 resources in your capital is a really good way to lose.

[AdmiralZhao]

Hi all, Lanka here. I thought I would throw my two cents into the ring and give you an idea of what it was like to walk in my shoes to Marveni's capital.

Finding Marveni:
This step was not very difficult. When I took my 2nd or 3rd independent province I saw one of Marveni's black candles on the independents to the south. I sent my army to investigate and immediately found Marveni.

Defeating Marveni:
This was more difficult and a lot more risky. I was very lucky to have this turn out well. A couple of crucial points:
1) Right after I arrived next to the Marveni capital, we both attacked the same independent province. The Marveni army had to fight the independents first, and then faced my army without their PD to back them up.
2) In the battle that Micah mentions, 1 or 2 more javelins would have done for my ghost king. As it was, he caught a disease from one of their spears.
3) If at any point I lost a battle, or my mercenaries, or hit any sort of significant delay, I would have been locked into a long grind of a war while everyone else was expanding. I think it pretty much would have been game over for me if I lost any of our battles.

Mercenaries:
I agree with Micah, mercenaries are a sometimes food. They are very useful when they complement your troops or if they give you an immediate boost in a crucial province. I kept trying to get a second group of mercenaries for the push on the capital, but other people kept making even more outrageous bids than me. Marveni actually won the bids on 2 groups of mercenaries, which is one more group than me.

Candles:
I believe that you can see all enemy dominions that neighbor your own dominion. When Marveni's capital went down to 0 candles, that was because my pretender and prophet had been next door to the capital for at least one turn. When I first showed up the Marveni capital had 1 candle.

Notes for next game:
This is my first game using a SC pretender; the main reason I picked one is because in my previous 1 on 1 against seej, he did to me what I did to Marveni. Dragonlord, I would encourage you to try a SC pretender in your next game. It makes an amazing difference in the early game in terms of your rate of expansion and your strategic options. Of course, as Micah points out, the SC becomes much less impressive as the game rolls on. Now there is nothing for Lanka but to fade into gilded obscurity in the middle game, much like a cannibalistic Netherlands....

[Micah]

Well, given that you just took a 2nd capital over on turn 7 or whatever I'd say you're in pretty good shape, since that's a huge chunk of extra income and gems. The trick now is to leverage that and continue to expand, since if you stop it's an invitation to get passed up by someone with better scales.

[AdmiralZhao]

No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

[Hellboy]

AdmiralZhao said:
No, no, you misunderstand. The Lankan people have had enough of foreign adventures. Now we just want to rest on our laurels, do a little magic research, and maybe write our memoirs. We are well content with our current lands, just like Hobbits in the Shire. Or, Holburgs. You get the idea.

Lankans == hobbits

Now that's a hoot!

[AdmiralZhao]

OK, bad luck for me that we started so close together and your first movements took you south rather than east. But if your army that found me and arrived on turn 5 had 70 troops left after fighting indies, presumably that was the army you had on turn 2? How did it get so big, or how were you able to reinforce it (more travel distance) in turns 3-5 ?

I only had cheap monkeys (not sure how many), mercenaries, and ~10 holy troops with the starting group. I was able to reinforce it each turn, since it was always within 1 move of my capital.

(PS: I now dislike marverni troops, slingers are so weak, and they dont seem to have anything special going for em as a nation, unlike e.g. Mictlan or Ermor or Vanheim).

I agree with you about the Marveni troops. They seem underpowered when compared to some of the early beasts like Jotunheim or Ryleh.

Lol, please clarify that remark :-) This is the first time I ever see anyone associate the Netherlands with cannibalism... and I assume you mention something like this because my email address shows that I am Dutch ?

Heh, sorry, I did not know that you were Dutch. I picked the Netherlands because I think of it as a nation that had amazing early successes relative to its size, and then had a relatively peaceful retreat from a global empire to well governed nation with (I assume) universal health care. Another reason for the Netherlands it that it is incongruous with Lanka, like the Shire is. Hopefully I've avoided an international incident.

[Hellboy]

We the warm and peace loving people of Abysia are now the victims of an unprovoked, unjust war! Our attempts to placate the insatiable Dragon of the West (aka Nodens of Arcoscephale) have failed, and now his forces have attacked Abysian territory.

In Nodens correspondence with us he has repeatedly impugned our honor and accused us of lying, so we use this public forum in defense of our honor. Skipping the details of our correpondence, the upshot of it was that on turn 8, Nodens claimed a perimeter that fenced in a whopping 27+ provinces, while our perimeter would be likely 19-21. When we accede to some of his demands (but not all) Nodens sends us missives including such statements as:
"... while talk of peace you take provinces I clearly establish as my dominion ... ".
However these claims of his were never established by mutual negotiaion, instead unilateral on Nodens' part. Were we to accept all his demands, and cede uncontested this area of 27+ provinces, it certainly would have crippled our nation, but also likely led to great trial and tribulation for any neighbor of Nodens.

In defense of all the people in the world of the Golden Lion we have drawn a line as to how much Arcoscephalian greed we will tolerate. No more, we say! We Abysians being the peace loving people that we are, are ill prepared for this war. If any nation would be willing to render any type of assistance, be it however minor, we would be most grateful. Types of assistance that we could use would include: scouting reports, trade in forged items (particularly ones useful for SC combat), loans, etc. We encourage any nation interested in defending the world from Arcoscephalian appetite in engaging us in private discourse via PM or email.

Tchort
High Priest of Nar Kalath, Lord of Fires


Edit:
All the above is (of course) in character. Out of character, we get it: Have dragon, must travel