Opossum - Started

[Zylithan]

Wow. New turn. Good games to Man and Shinuyama. Shinuyama - you played an excellent game, really much better than I did. Man.... I rarely saw you, we started so far away, but I had fun diplomacy-ing with you.

Gotta say... wow... blood sacrifices are.... effective.

[Potatoman]

Good game to everyone!

I was looking forward to the free for all at the end of the game, but it was not to be. The dominion push was incredibly potent! Despite my military and magical supremacy, and my 20+ priests preaching with my pretender in my home province, my entire empire was wiped out from full strength in only 3 turns.

The war against Ermor was the highlight of the game for me. After the first bloody battles, I realized that I just couldn't match Ermor's battle magic and decided that I had to rely on supercombatants and ritual bombardments to win against his deadly Thaumaturgs. Fortunately he was occupied with Abysia while I hid behind a wall of earthquake traps and researched up to Flames from the Sky, which proved just as effective as I had hoped it would be. But had Ermor really pressed me at the time, he probably would have been able to hurt me badly before I teched up to the spell.

Anyone out there know how to defend against a blood sacrifice push? It seemed unstoppable, on the level of a moon-sized asteroid plowing through a tissue factory.

[Janlm]

wow thats increddible, I didn't even think it was possible for us to do this...

Well thanks for a great game potatoman, sorry I had to turn on you like this

[Janlm]

err, its only you and me left Zylithan

[AlgaeNymph]

How'd I get dominion killed? Not that I mind pre-se but I didn't get to bequeath my skull mentors to Abysia.

[Janlm]

oh well it seems i'll get dominion killed too, how the hell did you manage to spread your dominion that extremely?

[carlosib]

Great game guys! I love the way Abysia won this game. This is why dominions is such a great game, forcing us to be aware of every aspect of the game and not just building troops and winning on brute force. I thought Abysia was lost, being Shinuyama so powerful, but he found just he right game strategy and that was it. Well done!!

[Zylithan]

If I had been a better player I don't think I would have won, I would have been militarily competitive, and would have lost. But I gave up, and thought, maybe I have a long shot to dominion kill if Ermor and Shinuyama are caught up fighting each other. So I built a temple in every province I owned. Then I realized I could blood sacrifice. So for surprise, I put a lvl 3 priest in every province I owned, got a steady blood flow (80+ slaves/turn) before I did any sacrifices, and then... WOW.

good game, I had fun, and ended up getting lucky, but I think many of you played much better.

[Janlm]

well congratulations zylithan, game is not officually over. I went from about 7 positive dominion everywhere, to -10 in all my provinces in one turn

[Zylithan]

yeah, i wasnt ready for what happened at all, but i figured.. 20 lvl 3 priests maximally blood sacrificing, plus 20 temples a turn...

i think the way to stop this is not to let a blood nation build that infrastructure. because each sacrificing priest is worth several temples i think, so there is no way to fight them on a dominion basis unless you have overwhelming province count. being in the corner helped me, i had fewer risks... militarily i was quite weak the whole game.

anyhow, lots of learning for me. i had never seen communiuns used before, and ermor showed me to them to the tune of my whole army at one point.