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[Shadowlord]

I'm good with calling it for ThtblovesDF.

[chaoticag]

Alright, thanks for playing guys. Looking forward to the next game.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Well that was a fast game overall. Went in with minimal gameplan and that showed pretty glaringly. Remember kids, experience is no substitute for homework! Was good fun though, I don't usually get crushed as badly as I did here, that was refreshing. And I don't want to imply that was all thanks my ineptitude, C'tis did a smashing job on the early war front. Seemingly less so on the diplomatic table

It'd be interesting to hear how my Blight rituals affected Marignon. I was amused when I got attacked by all three C'tis, Marignon and Arcoscephale. Far as I could tell it was three opportunistic individuals making a grab at a vulnerable nation. I can dig that. However, don't make a push if you can't follow through. C'tis could. Marignon I presumed could not. So to show my feelings against such unprepared opportunism I threw several blight ritauls at his capital.

When I finally kicked the bucket I sent all my belongings to Arco. I've never been sure how if at all wealth should be redistributed at player death. Usually I take it to my grave or, in this case, gave it to perceived weakest player.

Blight
E2D1
5E gems
The caster unleashes a blight upon a distant province. Five percent of the population will die, unrest increases and eighty pounds of gold must be used to feed the starving.

[chaoticag]

To be honest, I might have been involved in orchestrating against you somewhat, albiet unknowingly to some degree. I knew you were the most experienced player, and that put me on edge, so I was talking a lot with other players about how you seemed to be expanding too fast. Marignon at that point was negative space on my map so it really looked the part that you were big. At some point, Oceana hooked into that, and I think they orchestrated the three way fight to some degree. Although I spent way too long fighting marignon to a stalemate as a result it seemed, heh.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I expanded significantly better than Arco, Mari and dead Pan. I can only assume I expanded in unfortunate directions so as to appear bigger than I was. I certainly spread myself a bit too thin on C'tis and Mari/Arco fronts. Couldn't really defend those in any realistic manner.

[ThtblovesDF]

I'll attempt to give a lightly drunk report.

Early game was a "breeze" where my failures where compensated by having a awake waterdragon - which quickly ran into the issue of "there really isn't a whole lot of water here. I did NAPs with everyone I could find and those who where receptive where offered more advanced deals as it fit.

Arcosphodel was my first find and I very quickly choose to murder all undead (and therefore water-walking) nations I could find. Remember, I came at this as a newb with one desire: surival. It's why I picked a underwater nation in the first place.
It was easy enough to get ulm in the boat against arcosphodel and we somewhat rolled over it, with ulm both doing most of the work (even when they thought I did) and receiving the capital as means to get a good ally for the rest of the game - sadly the player switched.

With C'tis it was very much the same game, but I very heavly worked on making them both seem scary and getting everyone in the fuck c'tis boat - nicly along the lines of "get rid of all underwater nations".

At the same time, Marigon and Arco had there beef. The only real kicker here was that marigon was putting up a total block to my lovly fishy diplomatic approch, so they had to go - C'tis itself was a none issue at this point and arco a completly secured ally due to my intense help - so I had both Ulm and Arco on my side, after that it was a somewhat easy game of "Lets punch the guys that are not secretly my allys" - at one point I had NAPs with every player in the game.

And at that point, Vanrus started messing with my Globals, something nasty. After plentyful talk and back and forth I was able to nail it on vanrus afterall, which made the plan clear - get in there, get revenge, screw the rest.

Turns out, Arco really did hold out near forever against Ulm and got me the victory by doing so - Ulm was a slow war maschine, while I just threw everything in the general direction of the enemy and hoped for the best, in nearly all turns Vanrus could take any province they wanted - but I usually had more then they did - and the entire war played on there land, once again leaving my underwater provinces and base safe. A big boonw as the the national hero I got, that give research bonuses and allowed me to turn the useless shamans into "decent" researchers - a shaman can spam frozen heart, slow with slime, summon water elementals and build both labs and temples like no tommorow - so I did plenty of that.

Overall thoughts:

Arco: Was basically forced into getting in bed with me, which worked out well for him I'd say. Certainly assume him to be my ally in victory.
Marigon: He suffered from being the slightly weaker faction in a 1v1 war and I'm a bastard.
Shinuyama: Was promissed much help from me and had very little delivery - at the same time, C'tis having nearly half its force sitting on his capital for like 20 turns caused c'tis to die. Don't be the biggest most scary thing in the world, I guess. Sorry mate, but you also had to many undead things : (
Ulm: At first things where very well and I did consider it the nation I'd march to victory with (cling to the side of it like a parasite) - but we all know how all that ended. In the end, the nation was to passive.
Vanarus: He had no friends and thats how he died - some more pm's would have saved the natio and while he had a very good understanding of both the game and who might be dangerous, that wasn't always communicated to the others. I'm suprised I won the war against him with "so little" loses. Share your opinion?
C'tis: You where scary big and it was really easy to make you look even more scary big. Also undead troops and all that - of course I played both sides, both as leader of the "fuck c'tis" and the "I'm your best ally mate" faction - so if you had been winning your wars, I would have crushed the nations that became weak in there wars, if you would have clearly gone down, I would have joined in on the pileup - however, as things went I basically did nothing in fear of offending a ally or steping on toes. Rather have 3 bigger allys, then 3 normal sized enemys.
Asphodel: You  honestly just got screwed for being a dom-kill nation, sorry.

Where can we look at the graphs?

TL;DR: "Offer everyone friendship, murder everyone that refuses, then murder everyone that answered with maybe". I certainly became a much better player by the end of this.

[Culise]

My problem in the late game was pretty simple; rather than it being a matter of lacking friends, my two friends went after each other, which left me with nothing when Oceania took advantage of it to swat me like an annoying fly (I have my guesses on who sold me down the creek, especially given that Oceania was under the impression that I had no friends when I was under the impression that I did).  I tried to convince Ulm to leave Arcosephale and go after Oceania on the logic that the original casus belli (the neutralization of the Throne of Pestilence) was accomplished, but he was intent on Arco's death at that point, so I didn't even try to sound out Arcosephale on the other half of the peace after that firm refusal.  That said, when Ulm invaded Arcosephale unilaterally, I did immediately start sending free support to the latter.  I did not want Oceania to win, but neither did I want Ulm to run away with the victory, either.  When Oceania really whomped me, I dumped even more on Arco, including all of my artifacts that I hadn't lost to Oceania at that point, then turned to Oceania and attempted to give them the win by rejecting a peace proposal that gave me one of the thrones and staging the defense of Vanarus proper outside the fort (the intent was that with six thrones and no need to keep a serious force in Vanarus, they could secure one of the remaining thrones quickly and claim it for the win).  That's not to say I didn't try to give Oceania a decent fight, but honestly, I'm not nearly as competent as seems to have been assumed by some others.  I cannot script a battle, gear a thug, or really do much of anything worth a darn, and when Vanarus traditionally weakens in the endgame even in the hands of a powerful player, it's really no surprise that I underperformed as badly as I did when I finally stood and fought.

Early to mid game, Ulm's insistence on keeping a large army two turns away from my capital was crippling, because I had to keep a major reaction force there to avoid a two-turn defeat; due to my relatively poor early expansion, that was effectively the vast majority of my available forces.  I eventually demanded a full demilitarization, but by that point, USEC had dropped and Shinuyama was getting rolled too hard for any intervention to make a difference; my invasion of C'tis was too little, too late, so I ended up eating what remained of Shinuyama as well.  I can't really make too much else in the way of assessment; my biggest problem is likely, as noted by ThtblovesDF, that I'm too passive diplomatically and militarily.  I won't lay groundwork significantly in advance unless I'm certain I can follow through.  I was trying to convince Ulm to make common cause against Oceania even before the Ulm-Arco war broke out, but that didn't work, and I thus didn't follow through with Arcosephale.  Before that, I wanted to make common cause with Shinuyama, but with USEC-Ulm threatening me constantly, I couldn't guarantee aid and thus never reached out to Delta as I should have.  When I went after Oceania's globals, that was indeed because I considered Maelstrom a major threat, but it was also last-ditch attempt to either stem Oceania's gem economy from flooding the world or to make Oceania the aggressor in a war that would give them enough thrones to win (Ulm at this point thought Oceania had 1-2 more thrones than they actually did, a margin that meant that annexing my three gave them 7 in total) and thus force the other players to band together out of simple self-preservation.  Unfortunately, Ulm was a bit too blithely confident in their ability to block an Oceanian victory by throwing one or two golems at the problem, and even if I had reached out to Arcosephale and they had been willing to help against Oceania, there was nothing they could have done to help with Ulm still trying to crush them.  What I did when it became clear that Ulm and Arcosephale would not stand in the way of an Oceanian win was probably a bit petty at that point, but honestly, it amused me more to see a traditionally "weak" nation like Oceania win than anything else, so I went for it. ^_^

[Shadowlord]

I think it's worth mentioning that the main reason I went from blitzing C'tis to moving slowly against Arco was that I was worried about a few things, among which were:
1. Arco mind hunting all my commanders to death if I didn't keep astral mages in each army
2. Being backstabbed if I pulled all my military north to drown Arco in bodies, or worse, losing so many troops and mages that it would be impossible to survive the next war, or having them all crippled by Burden of Time while they were outside of my dominion (while I had Gift of Health up).
3. Limited iron blizzard casters, and slow recruitment rate for them since both the mage and priest that can cast it are cap-only.

In practice, by not intervening directly on Vanarus' behalf when they asked for help, and by not crushing Arco quickly, I allowed Oceania to grow out of control (probably they were already too big after eating marignon, though). I also didn't pay much attention to the battles there, which meant I was also lacking in intel when I did end up at war with Oceania.

I attempted to negotiate covert aid for Vanarus in the form of gem or item exchanges, but they weren't interested.

I also still had to give my most essential mages boots of youth to protect them from Burden of Time, even with GoH up to cure afflictions, until I dispelled it anyways.

(I've had enough experience with games where I expanded faster than everyone else and was never attacked by more than one or two at a time, and went on to win, along with games where I was blocked in and crushed by a larger nation, that I should know how bad an idea it is to allow anyone to expand unchecked, and yet I ended up attacking the smallest remaining nation and not trying to negotiate peace)

P.S. If Asphodel (Asp-hotel ) was spelled "arcosphodel" nobody could call arcoscephale* arco.

* I had to look that up because I never type it out, and I had two missing letters

P.P.S. Golems are kind of shitty since they can't regenerate, among other reasons (such as low prot, att, and def). I've never really used them extensively before, but there were lots more important reasons I lost than that I blew pearls on golems - I had an income of 25 pearls per turn, iirc, and only stopped summoning them when it became apparent that they weren't working so well anymore against Arco.

Oh, and the golem and other guy who dropped in on Batimor and got crushed by a defending army was chiefly a failure of scouting. I couldn't see the army nearby and didn't expect one to appear on Batimor that turn since Oceania's thrones on my southern border were still basically undefended.

[Culise]

The reason I wasn't interested was because you were offering fire gems for blood slaves at what was for me a really, really bad ratio; it felt more like you were more interested in milking all the profit you could out of my situation than in actually helping me.  I could turn blood slaves into soldiers I could field.  Anything I could have summoned with those fire gems would not have matched in numbers or need. 

EDIT: Also, Asphodel.  I suppose you couldn't call Arcosephale Arco if Vanarus was Arcorus or if Ulm was Arcolm, either, but I'm not sure what relevance it has.

[ThtblovesDF]

Maelstrom was disspelled about 3 times this game, quite annoying, but I had little else to dump my watergems into.

I really was pretty clueless about thrones and throught this was a annihilation game until Ulm (Shadowlord) explained things to me - and Vanrus King of Elemental Earth was quite well thugged in my expierence, no amount of horror marks seemed to help (I burned easily 30 gems for as many horror marks from astral 1 casters, without effect) and it taught me to bring little riding dudes with "Quickenself" and vison-piercers or feeble-mind bows - until they showed up, you could have ran the king into any army and straight up won, as I had extremly little in the way of getting damage onto him and even sleep-cloud & spirit spam didn't work. Makes me wonder if turning the King onto my main army or having him join your doom-blob at the right time would have worked out?

The main issue was the massive lighting damage output from Vanrus, but at the same time - it was only one element and with boots + earthpower + generous gems (I learned about overcasting this game), I could protect against just that, provided the army was big enough and had a blob of dudes with it. More Caster & Elemental divisity would have worked greatly in your favor, but is very hard for Vanrus I assume?

Had you split your army into 8 equal parts, all with some casters, my 2 dudes that could cast "Ground Army" would not have been able to stop you from raging past the lands - sailing is also quite strong, but never saw any use if I recall?
___

For Ulm, all there troops could beat my troops in a fair fight. All there casters could beat my casters in a fair fight - thankfully you have/had many armys of 1-2 commanders & 60 minotaurs without anything [Its a fine choice, since I spam iron bane like no tommorow] and no casters - Iron blizzard & Iron Darts really did destroy me and any heavy investment into crossbows or other stuff would have worked wonders - hell, the "Thoughness" of my army comes fully from spells (Army of Giants, Mass Regeneration, Mass Protection, Fury, Serpents Blessing, Gaias Blessing, Ground Army) - that take time to work - A suicide earthquake caster would always have 1 turn to act and I'm sure you had a Earth 3-guy somewhere? How bad did Burden of Time hit you anyway?

Even now I think if we put all Ulm Units in the game on one side and all ociana units on the other, Ulm would win when defending. Also my units would drown, but hey thats life.
___

In the end I pin it on me only getting into wars I could win with less then 30% loses and fully commiting to them - In nearly every war I had no homeforces and any 30-dudes-with-water-pills would have rekt my stuff freely - but at the same time I did have NAPs with the relevant factions that could endager me and they had there own issues.

[chaoticag]

I think as far as anyone that managed to get into the lategame, my expansion was likely the worst, though Van seemed to be in second place or somewhere around there. I lost at least 3 expansion parties to bad expansions, which kinda makes me realize that Arcosophile's army is something I ended up... uh, overestimating their abilities. If I expanded further, I might have been able to grab some asphodel lands, but I ended up getting boxed in with people that pretty much held the line as far as fighting went. That war with Marignon was such a pain, that I kinda realize that almost no spell would have been good to rach before I got soul slay and mindhunt down as far as wars go. And then the wars I was in had opposing nations with astral access, and eyes of god told me I'd have fought a vanarus with astral access too. I was still trying to work out a counter for Ulm research wise when I got Ulm'd though, and I was really hoping Oceania would have taken the fight to Ulm while it was distracted by me. I think Oceania wanting to settle it with Van plus how horrible I underestimated iron blizzard (despite using it in a game before mind you).

I also likely should have made better use of my crystal sorceresses, since let's face it, that's the only way I would have enjoyed any air enchantment stuff like storm or whatever, and those would have helped save my bacon.

[Hatman]

I lost because of vanarus. That is all. I had effectively beaten shinuyama, I was slowly taking the advantage against ulm, on the back of shadow blast and foul vapours, but I didn't have the scales for a war on so many fronts.

In retrospect, knowing that thtblovesDF was agitating against me and wished for my early demise explains a huge amount.

[ThtblovesDF]

I lost because of vanarus. That is all. I had effectively beaten shinuyama, I was slowly taking the advantage against ulm, on the back of shadow blast and foul vapours, but I didn't have the scales for a war on so many fronts.

In retrospect, knowing that thtblovesDF was agitating against me and wished for my early demise explains a huge amount.

Yeah sorry about that - but again, if you had won I would have crushed whatever stood in your way - being allied with both ulm and C'tis at this point left me in a silly position, where I couldn't attack vanrus (which i assumed was in bed with ulm, too btw) and had to wait for someone to come out ontop.

I found the stealth mechanics to be "ok", sadly stealth moving into enemy territory is no different from normal movent and therefore means I'll have to fight - apperently one has to stay in the province about to die and set yourself to "hide", when surrounded?

[Hatman]

I quite like the stealth mechanics, in that I haven't seen a grand strategy game with better ones, yet. Some ability to be selective in who an assassin targets would be nice - it would keep non-magical assassins relevant without loading them down with summoning items - and some ability to order spies or scouts to look at a particular unit in their province, check out its' inventory etc. would be good additions for a potential dominions 5 in my opinion.

[Shadowlord]

No, you can send entire stealthed armies through enemy territory, and only have to worry about being caught by patrollers/PD. The default move order if your army is all stealthy isn't move, it's sneak. Well, you also have to worry about them all dying if they are detected and try to retreat and there are no adjacent friendly provinces.