Chinchilla - Running

[dmentd]

A short brief on Oceania is that the nation is weak. The trient knights were quite powerful and provide an easy thug to use. Otherwise, the mages are deplorable because they have very limited paths which mostly disappear when leaving the water. I feel very fortunate that there was no other water nation which helped me be big in the game.

The free access water nations have to invading countries that border the ocean is impressive. I could enter and leave at different points for raiding that is quite useful. This is the only reason I was useful against Pythium. Even though he concentrated on me and made me pay with numerous commander deaths, I had the benefit of fading away from his main armies until they got worn down a bit.

Finally, maelstrom is a good global. It increases all of the gems a little, which actually was quite nice.

THank you all for the game. I enjoyed it.

[Burnsaber]

One note about abyssia I wan't to share from another game. Burden of Time with huge amount of gems = game over. I was playing Abyssia in another game (Allegiances) and Burden of Time got up. 7 turns later, my I lost blood economy, research and combat magic as I had ~5 mages left -> this is a huge weakness. Even if the BoT is up for 1-2 turns, most of your ages would still have got disease and die anyway.

I unfortunately had already burned up all my death gems when I heard about this strat and you had managed to take the Well of Misery for yourself.

Oh, and I had the chalice. Pythium gave me it to me before his demise.

[IndyPendant]

I played MA Tien-Chi in this game.

First of all, I would like to apologize for the...snarkiness in my earlier posts (in this thread)--particularly to Caelum. I was annoyed with myself much more than anything else, and that annoyance bled through into my writing. It should not have.

This was my first MP game (note: not my first MP Dominions game; this was my first computer game ever played against other players, period!) I made an embarrassingly large number of mistakes, almost too many to count, although a lot of them were mentioned in my earlier posts. Still, I also learned a *lot* in the short time I was in the game.

Agartha did very well to defend against my 'surprise' attacks. Caelum defeated me fairly--if, uh, frustratingly handily. ; ) And I learned that although MA Tien-Chi remains one of my favourite nations to play in SP, I probably will never play them again in MP. I did not play well this game, but here's what I think of the nation itself:

MA Tien-Chi is a one-trick pony. They shoot, they shoot, they shoot, and oh, by the way...they shoot. Their archers are awesome, arguably the best in the age--but their other forces are sub-par. All of them. Their mages were also pretty weak--particularly in midgame, which is where I drowned under hordes of winged mages and seeking arrows. They have low levels in all their magic, and need the late-game magic boosters/communions to truly shine. They suffer from low hit points and/or old age, so are easily assassinated with spells and creatures. They don't have a good recruitable thug chassis to take advantage of their multiple magic paths with crafting. Mid-game, MA Tien-Chi is easily neutered via Arrow Fend and/or Staff of Storms. One single spell or item reduces their effectiveness dramatically.

I was playing in in version 3.9, and 3.10 has helped MA Tien-Chi's mages significantly, so that I like playing them even more in SP--but the patch has done absolutely nothing for their armies, leaving Tien-Chi with largely the same old problems. Agartha stopped my offensive dead with high-prot summoned statues, which Tien-Chi really could not deal with adequately at all, without high-level magic. Caelum defeated me with Seeking Arrow, Storm, Summon Air Power, and their (much much MUCH) better mages.

Basically, shooting is pretty much all MA Tien-Chi is good for.

I would recommend MA Tien-Chi to anyone for SP games. I would recommend it to absolutely no one for MP games.

[Chicanist]

^ I was actually VERY surprised that you were able to raise so many horsemen so quickly. I'm not sure if my understanding of scouting was correct. One of the reasons I was so quick to attack you is that all your armies I could see just had hundreds of crossbowmen, which I thought I could deal pretty easily with between Storm + Arrow Fend. Seeing lots of cavalry tearing through my flying guys was not fun
Fortunately I think my mobility + lightning bolts still saved me in the end.

[Warhammer]

I am not a huge fan of MA Marignon. They look good on paper but they are vulnerable in a number of ways.

First, their crossbowmen are great, but their rate of fire is slow. The problem is that you need to set them back from the front lines a bit, so they can get more than one shot on the approaching enemy.

Second, you almost have to take some magic scales with them. If you take any drain, their witch hunters are terrible at research. Their big mages are nice, but their old age really sets them back quite a bit. They also do not have a lot of precision, so unless you get a lucky step in air magic, you're going to be whiffing quite a bit.

Third, their scales are hard to balance. You need good magic, good production (to produce plenty of troops) and you need pretty good order to make sure you have the money for your mages. Where are you going to pay for those scales? Don't even think of taking misfortune. It's one thing to have barbarians plunder a province, its another when it is a bunch of knights!

Fourth, their magic diversity is absolutely brutal. Yes, astral magic is powerful. However, you need a lot of boosters to do that. If you want to pursue a mind hunt strategy you really need some penetration boosters to help you out, and for those you need more paths than just astral and fire.

Fifth, I think their best bet is to take a Water or Fire bless. This makes their knights a very good unit, and one that can absolutely put fear into your opponent. The problem is that is very expensive, and you need your pretender to have some decent magic paths for site searching as well as scales. I'm not sure what is the best pretender to have, but there are too many weaknesses that need to be shored up by him that you don't see with other nations.

Sixth, they really need to have a good starting location with plenty of resources. To really be able to send out good armies early, you don't need cash, you need resources. This nation is very vulnerable to a bad starting spot. One more thing, if you start next to Abyssia, good night. Unless you have an ally, you are hosed because their units are immune to fire, and rage, paralyze, and other early astral and fire (non-damage) spells you need to have a ton of mages present to win.

Again, they look good on paper, but in practice they are a hard nation to play. Coincidentally, I think LA Marignon is a very powerful nation the more I dabble with it, even though it doesn't look as good on paper.