Acouchi - MA game for new players (full)

[Aapeli]

There seems to be lots of anger between the nations of Ulm and Ermor. From the lizards point of wiew the nasty stench of the forges covers the sweet smell of the bog. There fore it seems that I must get rid of this nasty next door nation of mine as they happened to declare a war on me. You said you offered peace Heinric? I didnt receive an offer (probably my mistake as I made my first turns quite carelessly).
There seems to be a lots and lots of nations in this game and very little room for my little snakes to play.
Oh yes by the way it seems that players tend to deal diplomacy with pms rather than with ingame messages as its faster and more convinient.

[Darkstone]

Wow, Vanheim is dead. I figured the skinshifters would be a deadly foe.

Did someone attack him so early? Or is it a matter of self-domkill?

[Stout]

Why did I log in to find all my stuff gone without any battles?

[llamabeast]

Sounds like dominion kill to me.

[Stout]

So you can just boom kill a nation at a distance on turn 7 like that? What fun. How well balanced.

[Darkstone]

Actually, this wasn't caused by someone else.

You should read section (VII - Dominion) of your manual. The part of how you died should be made clear in the last part of that section.

So to prevent that sort of thing, either take a strong dominion (7+), prioritize building temples, or start preaching with your prophet early on. Or if you're a blood nation, you can also start sacrificing blood slaves in your temples.

[llamabeast]

Stout: No of course not. It just means you ran out of candles. I'd be very surprised if it was due to anyone deliberately trying to extinguish you. However, the underlying point of the game is to maintain and spread your dominion. If you don't notice that your dominion is fizzling out and start preaching etc then you can lose the game. It does seem very harsh, but you have to remember that the whole point of the armies and magic are to give you the power to expand your dominion.

Even experienced players occasionally lose the game by not noticing that their candles are diminishing though.

Edit: Oh, Darkstone beat me to it, and very did so with great clarity too.

[Heinrich]

Sorry aapeli, I offered you peace when we first met in the mountains. As you didn't answered my first message I supposed you weren't interested.