Invisible Swarm III: over

[jeffr]

Well, that about does it for me. Chris has destroyed my main army and taken most of my lands. The defeat was total with no loss to Chris. Boron is taking the rest of my undefended lands in the North.

I'll keep on until I'm dead, but there isn't much I can do. I guess I'll try and buy some time, so that everyone has a better chance against the Ulm/Mictlan alliance. But, for all I know, perhaps R'leh, Arco and Abysia are already very strong. Man, this game is humbling

I thought I was pretty succesfull until Chris and Boron double teamed me and I actually felt pretty good about the situation before their alliance. Oh, how wrong I was!

In hindsight, after seeing what Chris did to me, I guess I didn't have much of a chance, even if he had waited until I had finished Mictlan (assuming I could have, that is).

But, you never know. If I gone against Ulm one on one and had had my main force near Ulm instead of in the North fighting Mictlan, maybe it would have gone better. Maybe I would have been able to push him back fort by fort and I wouldn't have had to try to teleport and attack him at his capital.

A lot of maybes. The certainty is that Chris has wiped the floor with me. Very well played, Chris, both diplomatically and strategically/tactically

Looking back on it, I'm trying to think what I should have done differently (besides radically altering my strategy; perhaps avoiding wars and not appearing too powerful, but that's no fun ).

I defeated a few of Ulm's inital armies, but gave way before his main army because I wanted to redeploy my main army from the North first. This took a couple of turns and allowed Chris access to my lands. Chris then avoided battle against my main force, which surprised me (I thought he would go for my capital), and went south. He and Boron had probaby agreed to a North/South split.

Time wasn't on my side. Chris's spies were killing my production (maybe I should have patrolled more but I had suffered heavy losses against Boron's Jaguars and Moloch), his assassins were killing my soft targets and his Ghost Riders took out any small armies that I sent against him.

I couldn't just defend or I would certainly be engulfed between Chris and Boron, so I tried to be aggressive in attacking the Ulm capital. I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to harm the walls and I certainly didn't know the forces he had waiting for me. I thought his main army was in the south.

One thing that surpised me was that he survived casting Ghost Riders into a Dome of Flaming Death. I had never cast that before. It sounded lethal, but it turns out it didn't do squat (maybe he had the foresight to be fire resistant). I was pyched that I had guessed the correct province he would cast into, but it was all for naught.

Ah well, it was fun a very fun game while it lasted. Good game guys

[Aku]

Well the game is going to be won by either Chris or Jurri.

Pasha and Jurri are carving up my land and I am down to 4 provinces =(. So you will at least outlive me Jeffr.

[Jurri]

Dudes, it ain't over yet! Heck I recently lost almost a third of my provinces to Aku and Chris and look at me now: I'm supposedly the runner-up! If it were indeed down to me and Chris, we might as well quit already, since I can't for the life of me see how I could beat him as things stand. (Not that I would quit because of that, really. That's only rhetorical license! Fight to the finish!) Also, if no one else has a chance, what are they to do? Is Boron the kingmaker, or what?

[Aku]

Yeah dont give up!

I am down to 4 provinces and I am fighting to the bitter end and even still I am defending modestly well.

[Cainehill]

jeffr said:
I thought I was pretty succesfull until Chris and Boron double teamed me and I actually felt pretty good about the situation before their alliance. Oh, how wrong I was!

Heh. Never a good idea to become the obvious front-runner : makes it just too likely that a bunch of others will gang up on you. Even happens without any diplomacy involved, just people deciding it's a good time to bite their own chunk off.

[Boron]

You have done very well again Jeffr. Your Pan is always amazing. Reminds me on the cradle of zen game we played where i was pythium and you pan with your e9n9 medusa.

You were leading every graph in that game too and man persuaded me into attacking you which i did since i wanted to try out something else than clamming in that game.
You put up such a good fight then that i suffered so much attrition that nasty man could kill me then. We weakened each other too much.

This game has gone similiar. You have almost wiped out me. Fortunately Jurri gave me the idea with an SC then and out of a sudden i reminded my Moloch. This helped quite a bit but was not sufficient. You would have still killed me in a 1on1.
Chris couldn't let that happen because he would have been the next of your targets.

You did put up a very good fight again in this game and kept it interesting. It is one of the fiercest and most exciting games i have played so far.
As you said yourself your only fault was maybe that you looked too strong. That wouldn't be problematic but me + Chris could develop a bit too and while alone to weak to stop you i stalled you long enough for your downfall.

It was like with LotR. You were progressing well but my last forts did hold out long enough like Minas Tirith and then finally Chris saved me like the brave Rohirrims + the Ghosts in LotR.

You can maybe still have lots of impact on the game though both for you and me the future turns are not so fun anymore since we have the ungrateful role of minor powers now who can maybe be kingmakers but maybe make no difference anymore at all.

[jeffr]

Hmmm, perhaps in the next game I will pursue a more peace loving game so that everyone does not feel the need to destroy me It seems that the good players can mask their strength.

But in this game, I only started the first war against IronHawk's Man. I was attacked first by both Machaka and Boron, so I'm not sure what I could have done differently there. Perhaps offer peace instead of seeking to wipe them out.

Chris - I did cast a Dome of Flaming Death, and the messages said that two spellcasters (that had cast Ghost Riders) were struck by the fire blast but survived. It would have been a good counter (and maybe a nasty surprise ) if the spell worked a little bit better.

Zen's item mod increases the cost of hoarding items? I'm all for that. Anything that discourages inaction is a plus in my book. From what I've seen, I like these Zen's mods.

One possible bug is that I think I read that the Hama Dryads are supposed to have Enslave Mind, but when I summoned a few, they had Steal Strength instead. Or is it a spell that doesn't show up on their unit description? They didn't seem to cast it but maybe they routed too quickly.

Now, how do I stop this tactic of casting Ghost Riders and then taking the province with a scout or spy? My initial strategy of just killing the Ghost Rider casting enemy before he could do much damage didn't work very well

Also, Chris mentioned the Soul Stone or something like that. Does this give you free wolves outside of combat?

[Boron]

Jeffr both me and Machaka attacked you because Ironhawk told us how scary you are.
Machaka attacked you because he tried to help Man and i attacked you because i knew your playstyle and assumed that if i do not attack you you will attack me soon anyways. I thought that my jaguar warriors are stronger .

Regarding the soul stone: It gives you 1 free summoning of call of the wilds per turn.

According the Ghost riders: They are a cheesy strat. Zen made them D6 to cast (Vanilla D4) so they are not as frequent anymore but still annoying. In vanilla i always summoned a bunch of demiliches just for the purpose of Ghost Rider Summoning and as "Landsturm".
Some kind of SCs beat the ghost riders and so do very large and well composed armies. But Ghost Riders are a problem since they are so cost effective. Even if your Army is huge and basically untouchable some Ghost Riders cast upon them can force this army to spend all their gems and thus soften it up for the next combat. It is almost impossible though to do several such Armies that cannot be damaged by Ghost Riders. They are just a great great tool.
With Ashen Angel + Ghost Rider attacks you can soften up almost any Army/SC. But they are fairly late spells so they deserve to be powerful.

[Jurri]

The soul stone allows you to cast call of the wild once a turn for free. In combat it gives you a bunch of wolves each turn.

According to the spellmod, tha hama dryad has weapon id 284, which is steal strength. Yeah, they suck.

The usual tactics against ghost riders I've seen/used include equipping a high penetration mage casting a spell that targets the wraith lords (like Charm) as the riders will dissolve if the leaders die, getting a bunch of priests casting banishment with some high protection troops to shield them, fielding SCs that can off the riders without too much trouble. (Luck and etherealness and prot of 20+, preferably combined with fireshield, in the way of an example.) Another option, especially with stealthy armies, is to sneak every other turn, which prevents the Ghost Riders from ever catching them. Then use said army to take back the ridered provinces; in theory two such groups can keep a province from enemy hands. (Attack the province on alternating turns.) Anything that can off a scout/spy is enough, so maybe army is a bit strong a word.

In this case it's probably a waste of time to try to target the casters, as they are likely lamia queens or wraith lords or demiliches; the latter are immortal and the lamias are pretty buff. Also, a prudent ghost riderer twiceborns any living mage to prevent any mishaps, especially with the increased level-demand of the mod.

Castling will also reduce the damage done; it's not an option for you with your huge castle, though You should really try a game sometime with a 40 admin castle: It costs 300g and 2 turns less to build and offers almost the same level of resources and gold and supplies.

There's little you can do to prevent/survive a ganking, aside from aggressive diplomacy. It really doesn't matter who you play against or how: it's always preferable to attack an opponent with superior force, so weaker opponents will band up to gain an advantage. If you are the strongest there is, there's no single nation left with enough force to challenge you alone; thus you'll be ganged on, unless you can do the diplomacy to prevent it. Ask Chris how he does it: it looks like he's first convinced Aku that I am the greatest threat, and now he's convinced Boron of the same thing, while to me it's obvious he himself has more provinces and magical gem income and armies than anyone else. Even if my globals stay up.

This will turn ugly, with players like Boron around... Either he's a master schemer trying to get a benefit from driving me to a corner, or just plain clueless and misinformed.

[Jurri]

Hey guys, I might have slight trouble harnessing enough computer-time to do a turn even every other day for the next two weeks. So could we switch to, say, 72h quickhost for the time being so I don't need to rush things (cuz where's the fun in that?). Sorry for the trouble and the delay, I will try and overcome the obstacles to not hold up the game untowardly much. Thanks in advance!