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[Shadowlord]

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

[Bluerobin]

Honestly I think the thrones needed for victory was too low for a normal-length Dominions game. If I had a little more experience I would have picked an entirely different nation and sprinted for victory like Yomi and Tir na N'og did. I guess that's on me though! It was totally the 2 point thrones that tipped it from medium-length to short-length.

[AlStar]

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

Oh, absolutely, by the end there I'll freely admit that it was more about crushing you than any material gain I could get out of it. Biggest problem is that I was half-assing it for far too long, trying to deal with you with my minor mages. If I'd moved my big mages over 10 or 20 turns earlier, I could have taken your capital and the gems and gold that went with it, and leveraged that into more power, instead of frittering away my armies against you for so long.

Honestly I think the thrones needed for victory was too low for a normal-length Dominions game. If I had a little more experience I would have picked an entirely different nation and sprinted for victory like Yomi and Tir na N'og did. I guess that's on me though! It was totally the 2 point thrones that tipped it from medium-length to short-length.

Yeah, if I had it to do over, I would probably make it so that we needed 1 more point and probably replace one or both 2 point thrones with 1 point thrones.

edit: looking over the research graphs, I love how you can tell exactly when I went "duh! I've got an Amazon province right next to my capital - air/astral mages for just the cost of a lab!" and started mass-producing owl quills.

[Bluerobin]

I actually really, really love the shorter game length. I just wish I knew it would be this short, but the only way to know that is experience.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Personally I feel that mixing high and low point thrones really flips the game around in a way I don't like. Using only 1's or 2's lets everyone know how many are needed for victory and how close to it people are. With a mix of them people are left guessing, it makes prioritizing targets a pain. It also adds in additional luck due to the chance of someone starting near multiple high level thrones.

Yeah, looking at the OP it seems you only need 3 out of 12 thrones to win. Admittedly that requires some luck, but that's a very low number of thrones regardless. The general chatter seems to be that 50% throne claimage is a bit low for many people who want to avoid a short match. I can see how a 25% match would end too fast then

At least there were (presumably) no burn outs during this. That's always a nice end result to a dom match.

[Shadowlord]

I like some of the things the level 3 thrones do, and their guards are also not easy to knock over, so there's something to be said for including them in a big game - but I think they're more suited for disciple games than regular games, and I probably wouldn't object too much to removing the level 2 thrones from regular games either.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I wrote this bit in the 408 thread when we were setting it up. It's mostly factual (super domspread throne works now), but my personal bias against lvl 3's shines pretty brightly. There's still some good info if you want to make an informed decision about throne settings:

Anyway, I came here to post about throne stuff. I'm fairly lax about what types and how many we have except for few things.
I'd prefer if we avoided lvl3 thrones. Either they just don't work (super dom spread) or are a bit too good for a fun game all around (awe and crazy gem thrones).
Likewise I would strongly advise for 50% or less throne points to win. Any more and you're effectively fighting for total map control. Might as well ditch the thrones as a victory condition at that point.

But beyond that, level 1's, level 2's, one per player, half a dozen per player. It's all good. A few good-to-know bits however:
Most (all?) thrones that give mage recruits are lvl 2. Some of these mages are simply superb (metal adepts) while everyone is good for diversity for a lot of nations. If we go with lvl 1 thrones the effect of an individual throne will be lessened as none of them really expand magic paths available to a player. I see this as a taste thing. I don't really have a strong opinion either way, but it's something we should be aware of.
Then there's the matter absolute throne numbers. The more thrones we have, the bigger handicap we are putting on nations that lack
A) recruitable H3's
B) summonable H3's
C) mobile pretenders
Since I'm playing a nation with both A and B (and I'll be damned if I know my pretender build at this point), it doesn't concern me as much. But in general I would advocate for less thrones due to fairness. I wouldn't call any of the H3 nations exactly bad, so this is not a critical buff that they're losing.

[DarkerDark]

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

This is what I did with Berytos. Once I defeated his armies and saw the death of his mage corps, I figured I wouldn't have much to gain by engaging in a prolonged battle to take his capital, especially as Machaka was showing signs of army buildup on my newly expanded borders. Of course, that left Berytos' capital to be gobbled up by R'lyeh, but I had paid for R'lyeh's friendship early in the game and I guessed that Bluerobin probably wasn't going to engage in any hostilities with me any time in the near future.

I did have some unfortunate luck of starting close to a level 2 throne that was guarded by a Titan with 7 air and 5 earth. He was backed up by about a 250 unit flying army that he would buff with Fog Warriors. I made the mistake of thinking that Spring Hawks were simply those silly crows that were usually unable to defeat even sparse Militia PD, I had no idea that in reality they were flying ethereal ghost hawks from Mount Olympus that shot lightning from their flesh rending beaks! This cost me an army that would have been put to use against Yomi if he ever decided to invade. And so, Yomi was able to take that throne with his massive stack of doom, pretty much unopposed on my end. Actually, I think that Titan and his Springhawks killed more of my men and mages than all other engagements combined.

[Hellheart]

So, the graphs. I'm grey, Ermor is purple, Machaka is orange, Tir is green, Berytos is dark red, and R'lyeh is dark blue.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Hellheart]

Yomi is seen as an underpowered nation, especially since they need more gold than practically any other nation in EA (no Sacred research mages, expensive unarmored non-Giant troops) and Turmoil-3 is a requirement. Yomi is also seriously underpowered early because they're incredibly vulnerable to a Bless rush; the only units that can stand against Sacreds are the exact same units that die horribly to mass Banish. Yomi is very powerful in the midgame because they can mix and match several powerful strategies (Flaming Arrows, Ghost Generals, Darkness, and Dai Oni Caster-Thugs or SC's) and their researchers aren't terrible; they're just really expensive. We didn't get into the endgame here, but I think that Yomi needs to make some serious moves because the mage upkeep eventually spirals out of control.

I ran with an Awake Idol of Man (1F, 2A, 2N) with 8 Dominion, 3 Tur, 2 Prod, 3 Growth, 3 Luck, 1 Magic; Awake was for a strong early Dominion spread. I think this was a terrible Pretender choice; Yomi needs to either have an awake Pretender that can beat an early Bless rush or have an awake Sage to accelerate early research and get some summons that can stop the rush.

So, here's what happened in the early game, which was mostly terrible as illustrated by the Province, Forts, and Income graphs. Remember how I said that Yomi was gold-dependent and runs Turmoil 3? Yeah, being near the bottom of those graphs as Yomi is pretty much the worst thing ever.

My very early game was strong because I won Dante's Stingers, but I lost them on Turn 5 to Ermor. Over the next 5 turns, Ermor also took my main army (w/ prophet) and 3 provinces including the farmland chokepoint province. I staled twice around this time period, which didn't help at all, but Machaka attacked Ermor soon afterwards and the expected crushing army never came. I took back my 2 provinces, but Ermor got a Fort on that farmland. At this point Tir had become visible to the North. I took a couple provinces to the West and ran into Berytos near the Amazon throne.

If Machaka doesn't attack Ermor there, I almost certainly die. I had no answer for a bless rush with high-morale troops that had cool things like shields and armor.

Stalling on provinces here really hurt me. I threw a bunch of guys against the Amazon throne simply because I couldn't deal with their upkeep, and Berytos ended up taking it and building a Fort on the cave province that lead to his Capitol. Then Tir took out my other expansion army by expanding to the same location. On that turn, he contacted me and we agreed to go after Berytos and leave each other alone. I build up a massive force over the next few turns, and move out with Hannaya to take the cave fort from Berytos.

If Tir attacks me instead of making a truce, I almost certainly die. He was set up for heavy Javelin spam backed by his Sidhe commanders, who just happen to have a Holy level so they can Banish my Oni.

I invade Berytos' cave fort, and he invades my two coastal provinces with Temples with groups of 60+ Spearmen. He takes my other two coastal provinces on the following turn, when I'm storming the Fort. I take out one of those groups with a Hannaya that fell back with a bunch of Oni to keep my Capitol alive (and stop starving my Bakemano); on the same turn, I move to the adjacent Cave province where I run into his Pretender and a bunch of elephants. I lose practically every melee Bandit, but my Bakemano Archers and Hannaya end up taking out the Elephants and his Pretender. Berytos contacted me at this point, probably expecting to gloat. I needed to retreat regardless and said as much, but I offered to back off and leave him be if he pulled his Spearmen away and let me take back my core provinces and the provinces around the Amazon throne. I knew Tir was being a huge PITA for him and he probably couldn't afford to fight a war on two fronts.

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income. I also have no recruitable Thug chassis and a force large enough to repel his Spearmen costs way too much in terms of Upkeep to feasibly use.

[tompliss]

my Bakemano Archers and Hannaya end up taking out the Elephants and his Pretender. Berytos contacted me at this point, probably expecting to gloat.

Guilty.

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income.

Mutual Assured Destruction.
With Tir loosing much less than you in his invasion of my lands and me being much less efficient with sailors raiding him (wasn't as easy to attack him from the back and I didn't scout him as much), I couldn't keep my capital if I didn't retreat my troops from your lands.
Anyway, it's pretty clear in the graphs when you and Tir attacked me, and I couldn't get back in the competition afterwards. My lack of experience with Berytos failed me there, with me not summoning sacred goats early and not recruiting enough sacred units. I should also have inspected both Tir and your units to understand how my "mass javelins" could not stand a real chance agaisnt Tir (he simply let me attack then assassinated the commander more than once) nor against your biggest armies (cause you had, you know, spell-casters).

[E. Albright]

Most (all?) thrones that give mage recruits are lvl 2. Some of these mages are simply superb (metal adepts) while everyone is good for diversity for a lot of nations. If we go with lvl 1 thrones the effect of an individual throne will be lessened as none of them really expand magic paths available to a player.

To touch back to this (quite old) point, 4/13 mage-recruitment thrones are level 1 (the seasonal thrones); all grant a 2X1X mage with one elemental path and one (non-astral/non-blood) sorcery path. They actually can increase path diversity quite a bit (in 404, my team would have been beside ourselves had we started next to Spring). They may seem to do it less since they're not 2S2X thrones like half the level 2s are, but the seasonals can make a fairly significant difference even if they don't give a quite so devastating set of mages as the level 2s do. Only picking level 1s mitigates the semi-random path-expansion-from-thrones issue, but it doesn't eliminate it.

[DarkerDark]

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income.

Mutual Assured Destruction.
With Tir loosing much less than you in his invasion of my lands and me being much less efficient with sailors raiding him (wasn't as easy to attack him from the back and I didn't scout him as much), I couldn't keep my capital if I didn't retreat my troops from your lands.
Anyway, it's pretty clear in the graphs when you and Tir attacked me, and I couldn't get back in the competition afterwards. My lack of experience with Berytos failed me there, with me not summoning sacred goats early and not recruiting enough sacred units. I should also have inspected both Tir and your units to understand how my "mass javelins" could not stand a real chance agaisnt Tir (he simply let me attack then assassinated the commander more than once) nor against your biggest armies (cause you had, you know, spell-casters).

Yeah, the moment your first raiding group made landfall on the shores of my nation, I immediately dispatched assassins to provinces that I suspected of being targets for raiding. It may have seemed like I had assassins everywhere, but really I think I only had 4. I would simply make an assessment on where your next target would be and sent an assassin over there to intercept your raiding group. I would assassinate the commander and attack with a small skirmish group on the same turn and watch as all those commanderless spearmen would flee back into the sea. I think buying at least 1 PD in the provinces you raided would have made this much more costly for me, since I would then have to actually fight all those spearmen, which would have resulted in casualties on my side.

Once I captured your fort on my frontier and you counter-attacked with what seemed like everything you had (research mages included?), I just held up in my newly captured fort and rounded up the assassins. So those 4 assassins sallied forth from the fort each turn to assassinate one of your commanders/mages until the walls finally fell and I simply marched out to fight your army that was seriously depleted of magical support. I think putting a few soldiers on "Guard commander" for your mages might have helped you a lot, as my assassins weren't kitted out very heavily, they had a handful of acorns and that was it. Those same assassins ended up meeting sticky ends at the hands of Machaka (who had actually assigned guards to some of the 'less-fighty' commanders)

When I made the run for Machaka's water throne I actually had a rather small task force of necromancers and lords equipped with Shambler skins for water breathing and supported by dispensable mercenaries to fight their way into Machaka's lands. Unfortunately the resistance I met managed to knock out a couple of my Sidhe Lords who were crucial in protecting the necromancers for the upcoming underwater fight. This wouldn't have been a big problem as I had plenty of Sidhe Lords accompanying that group. The problem was, those Shambler skins I needed for underwater breathing were picked up by the mercenary captains and they stubbornly refused to give them back. So I sent my necromancers into that water province without any thugs to tank for them. Still, I expected a handful of necromancers firing off a shadowblast and then summoning skeletons to fight would be able to take on a bunch of wimpy mermen. I completely underestimated how fast Shark Tribe warriors could move. It didn't end well, and it set me back a few turns as I had to recruit a few more necromancers. In the meantime I just gave my surviving assassins some shambler skins and sent them in to assassinate the mermen commanders (I should have done that to start with).

All this delay allowed Yomi to come in and take the level 2 throne from that Sidhe-murdering Titan. This didn't matter to me much since I gave him my blessings in the first place and I was expecting to win the game a few turns before he was able to do anything with that throne anyways. One teleporting totem later and Yomi wins. Yikes! Serves me right for not making sufficient preparations. I originally planned to send a bunch of Tuatha down into that province for defense against R'lyeh early in the game, but somewhere between the birth of that thought and the war with Berytos I completely forgot about it.

[Hellheart]

So I owe my early-game survival mainly to diplomacy and luck. My turnaround during the mid-game transition came from a combination of better focus, heavy research, and smart limited aggression.

I continued my non-aggression pact with Tir and focused on research and building Hannaya out of both forts. I tried to time things so that I'd hit Enchantment 4 when I created a large new army at my Capitol. The goal: to hit Ermor's farmland fort with Flaming Arrows and some Hannaya, both to get me a 3rd fort and to increase my (still extremely low) income. I also began to set up multiple screens of 3-5 Ao-Oni in front and on the flanks to eat any Banish spam I may encounter. Flaming Arrows (from a Hannaya using Phoenix Power, then gem-empowering to 4F to cast it) worked incredibly well, allowing me to take out massive PD backed by some priests with virtually no losses on two consecutive provinces. I then found myself flanked by THREE Ermor forts, which brought me to a dead halt for a few turns. During this time, I finally hit Enchantment-6 and switched to Dai Oni at my Capitol, then began researching Conjuration-4 (I had stopped at Conj-3 much earlier, which was a terrible choice).

Machaka took one of the adjacent Ermor forts, and then R'lyeh made the post about a player possibly winning in a couple of turns. Machaka mentioned this, and I kind of freaked out and collaborated with him in making a map of projected Tir provinces. We ended up with what looked like a sea of green covering 4 Thrones, so I pulled my large army back to my Capitol and further reinforced it with a bunch of Oni and a couple of Dai Oni. My first Dai Oni cast Ghost General twice before he left, though. I equipped one with Gloves of the Gladiator + Horror Helmet, and the other with Frost Brand (from Tir via trade) + Shield of Valor + Horror Helmet. I gave both of them charms that gave them Water Breathing and attacked an underwater Throne with 60+ Triton defenders.

This is where I got extremely lucky. Subsequent tests show that I had no business actually winning that fight. Between the underwater Attack and Defense loss and the Defense penalty for multiple attackers, it's entirely possible that my Shura die within the first 2 turns. Instead, they survived about 5 turns before the Tritons finally started to rout. I pull the Shura out of the water and name a Hannaya as my prophet so I can claim the Throne. The Shura move towards the Amazon throne, as I never took the provinces around there and I needed the income. My upkeep at this point is around 800, but my income is only slightly over 1100. I move my main army north with the intention of taking the cave (something that I had discussed earlier with Tir) and moving from there into Tir's heartland towards a Throne far to the East of his capitol.

Then I looked at the provinces again, and I realized that if Machaka took the lake thrones near his capitol and Ermor's capitol, he would also be at 4 Thrones. In this situation, attacking Tir will simply allow Machaka to win. After checking some links, I realized that I could path my way through some border provinces at minimal threat to Tir and end up at the cave Throne that divided Machaka and Tir. This would allow me to play spoiler and hopefully extend the game. This became my new plan going forward.

[DarkerDark]

So I owe my early-game survival mainly to diplomacy and luck. My turnaround during the mid-game transition came from a combination of better focus, heavy research, and smart limited aggression.

Yeah, It made perfect strategic sense to invade you immediately after I beat your expansion force. With my armies already in position on a broad front and with you standing to lose some border temples and a few site searching mages, it was sooo tempting. But with you being the only neighbour I hadn't sent a message to, I thought it might be a little unfair to just help myself to your provinces uninvited. So we had a friendly little chat via Steam. Your willingness to engage in diplomacy was what set my sights on Berytos instead, since he was the only one who hadn't replied to my generic elf-boasting diplomatic inquiry. Sorry, tom, but your silence made me paranoid, and ultimately it's what killed you.