MP: STACKERS, newbie game, (started)

[Greyjoy]

Pythium I'd say dances on the line. It's not as conspicuously overpowered as Hinnom/Ashdod - Gath is somewhat closer to sanity just because there are so many other LA nations with decent conventionals, thugs, or vampires - but there isn't much in the way of obvious weaknesses and they have a lot of decent strengths. They do fall a little short in magic diversity, but with very strong air and astral and okay water, I'm not sure they need it. Extremely decent infantry, an absolutely insane early game, mages that are purpose-built for communions, some pretty good thugs, and the lower levels of angels are GREAT.

So are the Seraphs, obviously, but in endgame anybody with astral's going to wish them up anyway, so them being Pythium "nationals" doesn't really count in my book.

I hadn't really thought of the emerald dudes as a thug chassis. You're right, they're really pretty good. More importantly, they're incredibly cost-effective. A nice thing to segue to if you get carried away with the early-game hydra rush and someone pulls poison immunes out of their bum.

Pythium's really more on the level of Van, Jotun, and so on. Whether that's "overpowered" or just "top tier" depends on your point of view, I suppose.

[krpeters]

So one thing that has me worried about this tower map... if we do decide we need to gang up on someone, it seems like the only thing we can do is funnel gold & gems to the poor guys adjacent to the troublemaker?

Later on I guess teleporting would work also.

So is it safe to assume R'leyh is clamming? Or is that huge gem income from site searching?

[Greyjoy]

Last time I checked, clams were invisible to the graph, so the reality's probably even worse.

R'lyeh's just spamming the hell out of Voice of Tiamat. Between that and his bazillion astral mages, he can sitesearch all 20+ of the map's water provinces for five types of site pretty painlessly. Six if he designed his SC with a dash of nature or death. And it's not actually a BAD idea to convert a lot of those gems you won't be using anyway and drop Akashics on captured land provinces. (It may be a bad idea to do it on sea ones, though, unless you see weird scales and really want to reveal the site causing them. Or have ludicrous amounts of gems and forgot to bring a nature caster to find kelp forts.)

Strictly speaking, it's not IMPOSSIBLE to bring more players to bear, especially if someone's getting hit hard on the other flank; on the other hand, best-case scenario leaves you with a pretty lengthy and of necessity very thin supply line, for a gain that may or may not be worthwhile. Depends whether you feel that stopping, let's say, Ashdod is worth committing some of your armies to a risky task as opposed to eating the buffer state outright and praying you can handle the threat on the other side.

Don't underestimate the power of gem donations, though. A couple (dozen) good thugs can turn quite the tide.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by Greyjoy

R'lyeh's just spamming the hell out of Voice of Tiamat. Between that and his bazillion astral mages, he can sitesearch all 20+ of the map's water provinces for five types of site pretty painlessly.

Everything but blood with his native mages and a single thistle mace actually. Starspawn get death, slave mages get nature.

[Nauquan]

Has Ermor dropped out? Can we set Ermor to AI? Quicker turns and AI is better than stale turns.