Uakari - MA game (upload pretenders)

[anticipatient]

Haha, yeah I noticed. sorry I got sort of excited and jumped on it. Heh heh. I'll lurk and wait for next game Or maybe start a thread of my own. Ooh!

[Amhazair]

No problem. There's worse things to get excited about than dominions.

Of course, my imaginary girlfriend tells me there's better things to get excited about too. But then, if she starts nagging me too much I just un-imagine her, so she knows not too push too hard.

[Amhazair]

Janlm got in one more turn than I thought. (or I postponed a turn too soon, depending on your point of view. ) In either case, his turn is in, so we're now only waiting for Ermor's turn. Not that there's any particular rush or anything. If you're using the delay to catch a much needed breather, be my guest.

[johnarryn]

I am indeed. After a rather nasty demonstration of the late-game power of blood magic, the delay is quite good for me to think about what I want to do.

[Amhazair]

Demonstration? What demonstration? *whistles innocently*

I was afraid of the late-game power of astral magic (communions, master enslave) myself, so I decided the best way to deal with you was to avoid large army vs army battles, except those on my terms. Massive raiding of your territory seemed to be a good way to accomplish this. Your PD raising campaign from the last few turns required me to use more resources/province than I hoped to have to use, but on the other hand it obviously did cost you a lot of gold, so I'm not sure if it was in your advantage or not. I have to say I'm curious to see what your responce will be.

Not that providing my enemy an insight into my strategic thinking necessarily is the smartest thing to do or anything... but making a bit of conversation spices up the thread, right?

[johnarryn]

Heh, my "response" is fairly lukewarm. Although i've managed to get good enough at Dom3 that I generally can survive to the late game, I find that i'm not terribly great at this aspect of the game... Tarts are all well and good, but there's only so much one can do with them. And i do not have the meticulous preparation that you do (how many MR 29 demons can one person have????).

I would also say that Arga Dis is a bit gross - although you have also played them very well. Earth and blood is a nasty combo - blood stones, easy hammers, the late power of blood... and you seem to have found a loremaster site, which I imagine is rather helpful. Im rather amused by the fact that you can spam ghost riders more than I can.

Anyhow, my hat goes off to you... I shall continue to fight, but it looks rather bad for me.

Could we move to 72 hours, by any chance? Im in several games, and it takes me a bit on my turns in Uakari. Dying gracefully is difficult =)

[Amhazair]

Aye, I did have some time to prepare, and I tried to make most of it. I started building high-MR SC's from the moment I witnessed Pythium master enslaving Van's army early in the game. At that point I knew putting conventional armies in the field was most likely to just gift my opponent with free troops. Of course, after the defeat of Pythium you were strongest nation left, with quite a bit of astral magic of your own, so I just continued down the same road.

I agree that Arga Dis is a strong nation, for the reasons you mentioned and a few others (if we're talking in the context of late game they also have the ability to develop a really good magical diversity from their national mages and summons, without pretender help for example) Do you have the impression that they are too strong, as a nation? I myself don't, they have a number of weaknesses to balance their strengths, but I'm happy to hear other opinions. I'm sure Sombre would also like any feedback you might have on the nation. (though to quote from the guide I wrote on the Arga Dis nation: "In my game I managed to recruit about 40 mages without getting a single 2E one, meaning no site searching, and, maybe worse, no earth boots -> dwarven hammers. I ended up having to empower one mage to 2E. " so getting to hammers wasn't exactly easy for me this time around. )

I have to say I also have had outrageous luck with my magic sites. Loremasters help, but to be honest they're the least of it. I won't give away everything while we're still playing, (I can tell you the specifics when we're done) but let's just say (the) god(s) is/are entitled to at least a votive candle or two.

Oh, and I love ghost raiders. Must be my favorite spell in the game. I got reamed by Calmon using them in my first ever MP game, and never forgot.

I've set the timer to 72h. I just started working again today after being in-between jobs for the last couple of weeks, so I'm not entirely opposed to the idea myself either.