C'tis postgame writeup.
As the graphs show, I was leading in forts and provinces for the entire game, and after the early parts I had the income lead as well. You could say I grabbed the advantage on turn-2 and never let you guys catch up to me. Dragon helped me expand earlier and faster. I also used him a few times to take provinces several moves away from borders/expansion armies, so I was able to claim way more land than my neighbours. That's a real big benefit to any flying expander.
I didn't want to lose my edge so I pressed for a quick war with Ulm. It took me four turns to go from "expansion finished" to "war with Ulm", longer than I would have liked but I considered it necessary for me to be somewhat ready. Even so, I was counting on him being less prepared than I was, which luckily ended up being the case. He had four vampire counts IIRC, which caused quite a few losses after he went AI but I had the manpower to spare. Ulm gave me two forts but almost no gems beyond his cap income, but I found some decent sites post-war which were nice. (including an enchantment 20% bonus site, more on that later).
After Ulm I wanted to quickly take out the biggest threat to my supremacy, which I viewed to be Utgård>TC>Man>Arco. I tried to secure peace with the last three, which seemed to have worked. I even got TC into allying with me, which made things a lot easier. The original plan was for us two to attack Utgård in the wake of Agartha-incident, but that was changed at some point. I figured that if us two were to attack Utgård, Utgård could appeal for a C'tis & TC vs. The World fight, which I didn't want to face.
So TC and I agreed to first rush Man out of the picture, followed by Utgård. Arco was small enough to not be a consideration at this point. You all know how that went, Man didn't really have a chance when the top-2 players crushed him like a grape. Utgård could have had a fighting chance against me, but I was lucky enough to start my attack after his disastrous attack on Agartha's capital. He had almost nothing to protect his long southern holdings, which I took full advantage of. I just rolled through his provinces and forts all the way up to the capital. The fact that Arco joined in on the fun didn't actually hurt my advance. I lost some scouts in the area so I'm not entirely sure just how much of Utgård's resources Arco managed to attract to itself, giving me easier time. Help was certainly appreciated.
After Utgård went down, I had five thrones within reach. I took them all at the same time and claimed victory. I never claimed any thrones in the game to try and appear as less threatening (did I ever fool anyone?). I had three easily taken thrones at that point, while the fourth was within reach of my major army in Utgård. The fifth was interesting, it was an underwater throne which actually took a lot of planning. I had some 30 shadow troops as chaff (ethereal, amphibious, pretty decent line holder stats, got from a site) and I had empowered one of my mages with 50W gems and had him forge water rings for many turns, enabling me to take half a dozen sauromancers and a lizard king beneath the waves.
Diplowise, I tried to keep talks up with all my neighbours to make myself less likely to be targeted, seemed to have worked. I generally aimed to get demilitarized borders (no significant troop placements in border provinces). It avoids the pitfalls of NAPs, while being a decent indicator of aggression. It won't do anything against sneakier attacks, but that's why you scout and think. At least it gives you a turn of preparation if someone moves a big army next to your border. People seemed to be pretty happy when I offered demilitarized deals.
For most of the game I traded 3E-3D with TC, he had trouble getting enough E and I could always use more D. I also purchased a hammer and flying boots which came useful when I started moving liches around. The extensive trade made it natural to also discuss various plots and schemes while we were at it.
I did try and arrange something with Man, but the trades never really worked out, he was also weaker than TC and had a rainbow pretender, which meant that his lands presumably (and indeed did) had good gemsites for little resistance.
Arco and I agreed to a peaceful border early and that never really changed, I didn't expect him to have much effect on Utgård but I was pleasantly proven wrong. He probably took the edge off of Utgård, making my conquest even easier.
I chatted with Utgård a lot on IRC, but it didn't amount to much in-game. I don't think we ever traded, and he was my second war target. We both agreed that vampires are scary and thus I got to attack Ulm without fearing Utgård's backstabbing. He was free to concentrate on Agartha knowing that I was busy with Ulm. Win-win.
Me and Ulm had a cordial relationship early, but two factors conspired against him. He had the biggest border with me, meaning he was the biggest threat to me and also the easiest one to attack. Second, he had cold scales, cold throne and ability to summon vampires. Those combined could make it extremely painful to invade Ulm at a later date. Based on my success I'd say I was correct on those accounts. It was pretty easy to conquer Ulm in peace, Utgård had no love of letting vampire counts fly freely and Man was happy to vulture Ulm's eastern holdings. I can't remember if I had anything particularly noteworthy with TC going on this early.
I did expect to face a lot more resistance when the Eyes of God went up, as I imagined I had the lead on other players and was worried Arco would use that to stir a C'tis vs. The World fight. Didn't you guys think I was that big of a threat or what?
While I could have used that enchantment sites to get more tomb kings to get more undead, I decided to get liches with it. Immortal D4 casters (26D a piece) seemed like too fun thing to pass up. I had managed to get seven or eight of them when the game ended. I had placed them in my border regions and was prepared to use them and my ridiculous income (25D + TC trade) to throw nasty D spells at invading armies. They never got tested, but I'm sure they could have been annoying to deal with if nothing else, considering my wide and strong dominion. I also summoned three wraith lords (D3, immortal thug/SC's, 40D a pop) before I had the research for liches. Overall I had a ton of immortal D mages running around in my lands. I could have probably used those gems more offensively, but I've never used immortals, I wanted to give them a shot.
I was also summoning couatls (I had two, I could summon one every four-ish turns by the time we ended). Flying S3N3, helped me get anti-magic and howl in any battle I desired. Could have been useful against TC's mageblobs.
Some stuff related to the graphs:
See how I had the most forts? Almost all of those forts kept pumping Sauromancers (StR), and yet I had, relatively speaking, not that great research for much of the game. STR on your main mage really kills your research speed. With LA C'tis you pretty much need to make a choice between research (reborn) or battle mage (sauromancer). I decided to take the research hit and be sure to have a ton of great mages in all my forts should push come to shove.
My army graph? That was mostly me having enough tomb kings to summon just below 50 tomb chariots every turn. It added up. I only had ten reanimators with amulets of the dead, I could have had a LOT more of tomb chariot summoners if I went that route. It might have actually been smarter use of my D gems. With way more tomb kings, I could have easily been creating several hundred tomb chariots PER TURN by the time I won. That could have been fun, they were pretty good in the battles I had access to them.
My pretender build was:
F4 Dragon,
Dom9,
O3P0H3G0M2M2
I could have gone with a W4 dragon (N4 would have been bad tactically) for diversity, but I reckoned that fire dragon with heat was more thematic and the F4 could be useful when forging a booster. Which it did, it let me get to flame spirits much faster without detouring through const-6, letting me get started with just const-4. It was pretty convenient.
I had old mages and no growth, which wasn't that bad actually. It was probably my sauromancer's big D magic, but I only got a few afflictions and all but one were limps, which is bugger all for mages. One mage did get mute in the final winter (halved magic paths). Maybe I just got lucky with the afflictions, but LA C'tis doesn't seem like it NEEDS growth, like some people seem to say about any nation with oldage mages.
Magic-2 was a mistake on my part though. As I said I went with sauromancers, which meant I only had half as many mages even taking advantage of the increased RP. Granted there's still the MR bonus when using shadow blast and whatnot, but I tend to view magic mainly as an RP scale. I could have saved points here and go for something else.
Idea was to use the dragon aggressively to jump and deny provinces from my neighbours, and then follow up with my slower expansion parties. It worked splendidly. MM3 flying helps you claim provinces that you might otherwise need to concede to faster expanders from other nations. One major reason I took a dragon was also that I was afraid people would act a bit more aggressively this time around. I wanted to have some very early muscle to fend off any would-be attackers. But it seems people weren't in a hurry to start any wars, not that it made my dragon useless. I certainly attribute some part of my victory to people's general lack of aggression here. Now I could be wrong, but it certainly sounds reasonable that more aggression => more provinces => more gem&gold income => ?? => profit.
Things could have been different in a graphs-on game. I'm guessing I managed to get bigger than people intended or anticipated.
That's some thoughts on the matter. I might return with some more if I forgot anything. I'd like to hear from the rest of you too. What sort of gameplan did you have? How did it work out? Any observations, thoughts etc. regarding the game?
Author
Topic: Dominions 4 Round 4.08: Small committee game ! (Read 33983 times)