VampireBat - LA game for new players- started

[James243]

Ill delay till Sunday night. Only a couple of days and I haven't turned down anyone elses request. And in my mind this is meant to be a slow game with lots of thinking time.

[James243]

Just put in the delay. Only amounted to 24 hours. Aezeal, I wonder if our conflict has cost us the game and given it to ulm? Oh well... Been fun anyway! Ill certainly be back for more and yes I now understand the importance of naps!

[Aezeal]

For me attacking Jomon would have been much better.. for you too I think since we only have one province where we meet, both castles there so no way to take lands easily.. If I hadn't had problems with Jomon you'd have lost though.. since I only use 50 % of my resources on you.

Now I'm having some problems expanding cus I have two persons to war with

You could turn on Jomon in the south, I'd give you a new NAP and then I could take on Jomon for real near our castles...

let me know

[Zenzei]

[darth vader]NOOOOOOOoooooooo!cos(0)!!11![/darth vader]

On the fields of Borale a great battle was fought today and stakes were high: continued existence of Jomonese people. Jomon army was impressive, samurais numbered in hundreds, and they were commanded by their master lich false god. On the other side were armies of Ulm, vast numbers of rangers and creatures of night totaling about twice the size of Jomon army. Ulm was commanded by no other than Ixil, the dreaded Prince of Death who holds crushing grip over will of the living and unliving alike. At his side was Burchard Nachtzehrer, the legendary vampire general of the Great Keep, who was ready to unleash the power of blood to the heathens (Burchard's entourage of 20 blood slaves was freshly collected from the previous Jomon province of course ).

As the battle started Jomon formed a communion lead by the master lich Shek-Dimmu and archers fired at the ranks of Ulm. Samurais stood still, waiting for the command to attack. In return Ulmish troops advanced and Blood Marshal started to evoke the blood magic. Then, despite of all the careful planning and anticipation, the unthinkable happened : Ixil failed to call upon the power of the underworld, which was meant to Dust to Dust the master lich and end the fight before it started. After that Shek-Dimmu initiated the dreaded mind duel and actually beat the Prince of Death. This was the crucial moment.

With the their god gone, Ulmish troops were no match for the highly skilled samurais, while Shek-Dimmu was raining fire on them. Ulm suffered massive defeat and the hundred or so survivors retreated to the safety. And so the siege of Borale was ended before it started.

------

This battle was more or less a slaughter of my troops, which I could hardly watch. I think my initial plan to Dust to Dust Jomon pretender before the mind duel (I knew it was coming) was sound because without the lich Jomon would have stood no chance against my army. Heck, I'm certain my pretender could have taken the remaining troops alone, I just wanted to maximize Jomon casualties before mass routing. Anyway, my PoD refused to cast the said spell(probably because of range) even though I had calculated the distance in army placement screen. So into mind duel we proceed, which I lost. However there's more to this one. I was ready to take the mind duel because to my knowledge my pretender was equal to Jomon's in astral power , so 50% chance of winning was good enough for me to take the risk. As winning would have meant wiping Jomon out of the game. BUT Jomon had just empowered his pretender on the previous turn just for this purpose, so he had an advantage on the duel (big props to Wazooking for this one, it certainly paid off for him this time). With my god dead I stood no chance and lost, end of story.
Annoying side fact: Jomon archers were extremely happy to target my blood slaves in this battle regardless of abundance of other targets. Needless to say my blood magic didn't work out as well as I had planned either.


------


@James243: I think you have misanalyzed the power relations of nations or had insufficient intel available. Mictlan has huge lead in this game. And to be perfectly honest now that I failed to capture Jomon capital I don't think I can challenge Mictlan later on. I've had a nice research boost lately but I don't seem to be able to catch Karlem. In addition I'm going to suffer a big reduction in power because of the failed war effort, while he powers up even more. And my analysis of other nations (may be wrong of course) is following: Jomon is wrecked because of the multifront war. Patala is boxed in pretty badly and has fallen behind in research. Marignon is too small and too far away to challenge Mictlan (also falling behind in research atm). Arco is same as Marignon but even more behin d in research. Midgård has good research but is small and has quite likely big upkeep problems. Mictlan is #1 in territoty, forts, income & research, which is pretty back breaking. In addition his army is small but efficient and has low upkeep. Plus he is gathering SCs. Mictlan also has good gem income and blood income, which doesn't even show in the graphs.

So if things continue on their current course I'm rather certain Mictlan will simply win by a large margin. If a large alliance against Mitclan suddenly forms, I will join to it in order to make things a bit more interesting but not before my NAP with Karlem honorably expires. Otherwise I will continue to maintain status quo and entertain any army invading Ulm, which makes Mictlan even stronger.

Wow, that was quite a long post. I wonder how many grammar/thought errors I made there.

EDIT: I almost forgot: Jomon, I'm still coming for you!

[Karlem]

Fantastic report Zenzei!

Just as a note: Dust to dust with 1 mage? Did you check it in SP? Ithas an awfull precision son it is better to have it casted multiple times by small boys than a pretender. Also I do not understand why Jomon leaded a communion for the mind duel. Did you know that the communion bonus is not added to the S level for astral? you only use innate bonus, not even items.

********

Regarding the power relations I do not think I am so ahead. Until ths turn I had less research than Midgard and this can change easily taking into consideration the number of forts we all have (we are tied with 4!). You had very bad research and see now where you are!

I have more provinces because you were figthing Jomon in the south and he had his main armies there, now I think that I will be punished by him and it will probably hurt. . Nothing is decided yet.

Of my 2 thugs (well at leat I think they are thugs, not SCs, your god is an SC, this are thugs) one died last turn. The wonderful fire bless bug converted my frost brand in a one shot weapon and the poor boy was anihilated by the samurai warriors .

So well I really think that this game still has many things to say: I just watched recent Midgard fight and I have to admit that I was impressed. However Jomon will probably take care of his upkeep problem soon (if he has it).

BTW I knew there should be an explanation to your drop in army size.

[Zenzei]

@James: Haha. I'm by no means an expert player myself but I do have read some stuff in these boards. Most notably reports like I just wrote and nation guides (I especially recommend those written by Baalz, I find them fundamentally educating). The spell range calculation was pretty extreme for me too, I certainly don't do it normally, but this battle was so important I wanted to have every advantage I could think of.

For upkeep my own rule thumb is as long as your upkeep is less than ~40% of your total income, you're doing great. More than that and you're starting to have increasing trouble getting money for new forts/temples/labs or replacing those that got destroyed. Of course sometimes, most notably during war, you just need those troops and upkeep gets high but that's the time you save gold in other pursuits.

For research/battle I aim to have as low number of mages in the battlefield as humanly possible to minimize the research loss but I usually make those mages count. In battle a single power mage is way stronger than dozen crappy ones imo. Also, use the most cost effective mages for research, that is the one with the lowest cost/upkeep/research value ratio, because it saves money in the long run. For any particular mage I consider this ratio good if it is equal or less than 0.8. For example EA Ermor Augur Elder has cost of 250 gold, upkeep 16.7 gold/turn (250/15) and base research value of 8 iirc. So for him the ratio is ~2.1, not very good. However he is very good battle mage/item forger/ritual caster so you should use him for more those kind of tasks and less on research. EA Ermor also has Flamen 120 gold, upkeep 4 gold, research value 4 sacred mage. His ratio is exactly 1, which is not super but way better than the Elder for research job, no? If you took magic scale 1, the Flamen's ratio improves to the target number of 0.8.

For mage improvement find ways to create magic path boosters(for ritual caster and later on for battle casters) and use booster spells in battle (summon earth/phoenix/storm etc power). They make a huge difference in mage perfomance. I hope some of this was helpful and not some crystal clear rambling.

I 110% agree with you that the better understanding of the game you have, the more enjoyable it becomes.

@Karlem: Glad you found it a good reading.
I ran some simple tests in SP and Dust to Dust worked fine then. My PoD has a pretty good precision and there's no way a master lich can survive 22+ damage, no MR, armor negating punch if it hits. You're right about more death mages being more safe choice but I don't have so many of them to begin with and moving them to front lines would have taken many turns, more time was something I didn't want to give to Jomon. Afterall I got this master idea just previous turn when I was brainstorming ideas for how to bybass the mind duel. The communion Jomon had was for Power of the Spheres to boost the slaves so they could throw Blade Wind, it wasn't important for the duel itself. Now that I think more carefully the master lich's levels were in fact boosted by the spell and not by empowering, so a slight error on my report there. This means my loss in the mind duel is even more bitter but now I do get to erase the props I gave to Wazooking earlier.
Yep, I know mind duel is only affected by base astral skill, can't speak for Jomon though.

My prediction about Midgård upkeep is based on the fact Aezeal advertised having found a sage guild some time ago in this thread. Midgård has pretty horrible national mages for research but sages have high research. If he has bought a lot of sages, it would explain his great research accumulation but sages are pretty high upkeep mages (and therefore not very cost effective), which would translate into money issues. Especially so because Midgård has had its share of conflicts and province losses, which have reduced Midgård's income. It would actually be pretty interesting to know if Aezeal could confirm whether or not my theory is correct.

[Karlem]

Did Jomon use Reverse comunions? That must be nasty I was on the received end of 5 bladewinds so 4-8 mages casting it will be... ufff.... I cannot think a word bad enough

[James243]

Wow . This is my first game and posts like this make me realise just how much I don't know. Things like measuring spell ranges etc. I think I've botched the game so far only aided by a convenient mountain range for defense. My war against marignon has tied up or killed most of my research staff. And my armies are big so I'm guessing my upkeep is bad. I've read the manual cover to cover but still coming to terms with translating the concepts to the game. Still trying to figure out how to improve mages and what is an efficient use of their time eg make item or research . But hey even with my bad understanding I'm having a blast so I guess it just gets better!