First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?

[quantum_mechani]

Networkingguru said:
Lanka

-Really, really bad PD. Most times, you need to have double the points in PD as the number of units attacking a city to be truly safe. This gets very expensive very fast.

I think this needs to be discussed in greater detail.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Yes, we haven't had any real long discussions about bad monkey PD for over a week.

[Networkingguru]

quantum_mechani said:

I think this needs to be discussed in greater detail.

Really, or is this an inside joke? I did see all the threads on mismatched PD, so I'm not real sure how to respond. I will say that I've seen Lanka's PD get crushed by a relatively small number of units on many occasions.

[vfb]

It's a joke! Better start talking about something else quick, or all your threads will belong to monkey PD.

If you do like to crank up PD --- which I personally don't, but hey, to each his own, then that's another good reason to go with K's suggestion of MA Man. (Not that you need to use Man's PD, since their army has good mobility).

[llamabeast]

It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

[Networkingguru]

llamabeast said:
It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

LOL, will do.

As far as man, I just started a game with them based on the previous suggestions, and I have to admit, I am enjoying it so far. However, I am intrigued that you do not use PD. I can't see how you get away with no PD unless you keep an army in every province, which doesn't really seem economically feasible. With all the random events, not to mention spells that can target from afar and flying units, I don't see how you can secure provinces without using PD. Can you elaborate?

[vfb]

Networkingguru said:
LOL, will do.

As far as man, I just started a game with them based on the previous suggestions, and I have to admit, I am enjoying it so far. However, I am intrigued that you do not use PD. I can't see how you get away with no PD unless you keep an army in every province, which doesn't really seem economically feasible. With all the random events, not to mention spells that can target from afar and flying units, I don't see how you can secure provinces without using PD. Can you elaborate?

Oops, sorry to give the impression that you should have zero PD. I'll always buy 1PD -- this lets me see what I get invaded by. I'll buy 3PD if I can afford it (ha ha, no seriously, sometimes you're 2GP away from another elephant or knight or mage, and in that case I will get just 1PD). 1-3PD will stop enemy scouts from taking your provinces.

I'll put 5-10PD in any province that I think might get call-of-winded.

As someone else remarked, in MP, PD is not a deterrent to stop other players from attacking you. The deterrent is your capability to counter-attack.

When you lose a province to a remote attack or random event, if the province is now independent, you can take your time and send an army group to retake it. Or, a couple of assassins with skulls (sorry, none for Man!) can liberate provinces from Knights or Barbarians on their own.

If another player has done something like teleport or fly or sneak a stealth army into a province you own, then you can use your own rituals to kill their commanders. With Man, you get A3 crones, so you could rain down some seeking arrows. They'll have a PD commander so they won't auto-route, but if you can keep the army immobilized (no commanders) and bring up a bigger army to route it, your enemy will lose all the units.

Try not to leave temples outside forts, since it'll cost you 200 gold if your enemy razes it (400 for most other nations). Try not to leave labs outside forts, because they can be used against you.

[Networkingguru]

llamabeast said:
It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

Wow. One turn a day does sound incredibly slow. That's basically PBEM speed. However, I enjoy very large maps, so a few hours isn't going to cut it either. Are there "middle-ground" games? If not, what does it take to host a game?

[quantum_mechani]

'A few hours' is a very loose description of blitz games. They almost always last at least 2-3 hours, and I've played them as long as 8. That said, you will probably have difficulty finding players that want to blitz on very large maps, since 25+ provinces per player past turn 40 can already be nearing an hour per turn.