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[Mini]

I got distracted by LD37, but I'll be able to do my turn (finally) tomorrow or the day after. Might need an extension over the next weekend, but that's in a week.

[chaoticag]

You really need to stop having your extensions when I'll have them. I'll be dropping one on or before friday as I'll be travelling anyway.

[Mini]

And we are back on.

[chaoticag]

And we are now done. Welp. Kinda sat on my ass a little too long there preparing for that fight

[Gigalith]

GG, all. This one was close.

I think I'll write up a little post-mortem of my first foray into multiplayer Dominions. Some highlights:

* Going through innumerable schedules and throne steal plans, failing twice. The first time my UW army was too badly damaged by Arco/Man that they couldn't hope to hold the Throne near Arco, so I aborted. Then when I had sent two stealth Bacabs over land, both were discovered on the same turn. This bizarrely worked in my favor, since one Bacob routed into the other's territory. We thought of teleporting Dendrite onto the last throne on the spot.

* AH! IT'S A FROG MAGE conquered most of the river but lost his entire army to Man's UW force, and was chased back  yakky-sax style, to my territory. Then, some time after I had retaken most of the UW (while FROG MAGE was churning out krakens) I send him with a new army into Arco's part of the river. (This was part of the original throne steal) When he lost that army (having run out of Death gems for shadow blast), he attempted FROG ANABASIS by walking across land to Troea. At one point he was attacked and routed closer to Troea. He stayed there blood sacrificing until the throne steal, where he flew to Star Peaks.

* Dendrite suicide-teleport-bombed into Ulm's doomstack in the hope of slowing them down, and accidentally routed them instead. He had to spend a turn building a laboratory just to get back. Then he bombed Arco's army with the same intend, but instagibbed the one commander and had to build another laboratory.

* I set up so many communions (a.k.a. BAT SABBATHS) and not one saw the light of day. Either the army would go the other way, or, in the case of Ulm, just was Bone Ground to death by Dendrite.

* The first time I used Darkness in a large was so one-sided that I lost one bat while crushing an entire army. Then I tried raiding Man's capital. It wasn't so effective. D: There went an entire army, many boosters, and quite a number of gems.

* I discovered a combo (Darkness+Earthquake) and never had a chance to use it. Either the army would be in a different place, or I tried to be tricksy and not use it (at Man's capital) or, in the case of the final turn, Arco/Man remote assassinated the Darkness caster.

* I ganked so many things with raiding bats, including an indie mage recruitment site (as seen in the threat), a lizard communion, and a couple temples. (Xibalba has to be one of the trolliest nations.) Infernal Disease ganked a bunch more commanders, leaving bits and pieces of armies everywhere.

* I attempted to stop one of Arco's invading armies by setting a horde of bats to Attack Fliers. Given that there was only one flyer in Arco's army (the Siren) we reasoned that it would target her. The Siren didn't show, but somehow they interpreted it as "Attack a bunch of the army, and then jump the mass of commanders anyway."

* My favorite commander got diseased, so I went about conquering every indie province I could, ending with Star Peaks. He died, but somehow undying triggered and gave him full hit points again. So I did this again, attacking Star Peaks eventually, and on the same turn Man invaded. Commander retreated and died in enemy territory.  .

* There were multiple Misfortune sites, and I was paranoid about accidentally finding the Vale of Infinite Horror with a random blood mage. We believe it's in Zanthrast, and as a last-ditch doomsday device I had considered Bowl of Blood-ing it.

* Man attacked a fort that was one turn from completion at the beginning, greatly changing the course of the war.

* And yes, the throne by Agartha was, in fact, the Throne of Night.

OK, now that the game is over, I have to ask: What was with the fortress at Polgrave? If it was on Troban we would have been doomed. Was it actually an anti-Ragha fortress?

NINJA EDIT: You've had had to fight through quite a bit of Agartha and then break through a Citadel to get that one throne. I'm not sure if attacking earlier would have been enough.

[Cheeetar]

I didn't die! Hooray.

[Jilladilla]

So. That ends that. I will admit though, that was us snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, I was pretty much on the brink of collapse (Too many fronts needing reinforcements NOW, plus cag broke through my eastern lines this turn (Although I extracted my pound of flesh from that army to be fair.... (No seriously, it was 627(Ulm) vs 423(Agartha) and the losses were 298/301...) Definitely enjoyed fighting you more than Man. Even if it was really only one fight...))

All in all? It was fun. Never really fought Man before and you made it frustrating for me with your sit in the back and spray bolts tactics, you literally made me more or less put my mages way further up than I was comfortable with (to get them in range) and waste turns on Ironskin just so stray bolts didn't kill them.
Arco surprised me with that Siren hero for sure, before then (And I apologize for this Mini, it's not you, it's the nation, Arco really doesn't have anything to deal with crossbow spam...) I didn't really consider you the big threat. It came at a good time too.
Whoever commanded Bogarus (Sorry! I'm not good with names!) did exceptionally well with how little you had. You have my respect.
Cheetar, I'm still highly amused with how your god more or less single-handedly held the gates of Marignon against three separate invasion forces, inspired me to teleport Dendrite onto Ulms first attack force and snap all their bones (Bone Grinding... Does an alarming amount of nigh-unstoppable damage when you think about it...)
No comments on Ragha as I really didn't see you fight too much, same with Ulm, except for the comment that I almost wish we could've kept fighting.

But in the end, we ended up victorious. Good game everyone. (Also holy carp cag, Ulm ALMOST has as much resources as Agartha! (558 vs 567, and bear in mind that LA Agartha's home sites give +50 resources!) You truly would be the only one who could trade troops 1 to 1 with me and come out ahead...)

(P.S. Wow I took too long writing this, also cag if you attacked sooner I would've holed up in that fort instead of holding the line like that. Even with that many troops cracking a fully upgraded citadel isn't quick, on top of that Gig could've sniped commanders.
Also, Mini, like Gigalith said, if you put that fort at Polgrave at Troban instead, this game would've gone VERY differently.
And finally, to Gigalith, I think krakens are kinda bad? They didn't seem to really accomplish much...)

EDIT: Oh right, my failings.
I lost at least 3 expansion forces.
Probably switched to heavy infantry too soon and heavy crossbows too late.
Gold issues. Gold issues EVERYWHERE! (No seriously, I was literally converting all but a few of my fire gems and a good chunk of Gigalith's into gold.)
Biggest issue was I completely and utterly forgot about LA Agartha's biggest flaw, Logistics. Have a feeling the Man/Arco war would've gone better if I remembered to maintain a constant stream of reinforcements instead of more or less assembling a new army and marching it out every 5 turns or so.... Had too many troops just sitting there on the backlines... Probably should've committed more of my mages too.
There was probably more, but I can't remember it now. I think.

[chaoticag]

The thing is I had plumbed the depth of hell for some thugs, heh. I had the blood earth elemental king and all the ice devil uniques under me. Some were even heading your way. Mainly, we should have focused on getting 3 thrones under our belts to delay the throne capture rate until I can churn out all those troops.

Also yeah, ulm on scales is silly. My expansion actually suffered early on in the game, so I never really had enough gold to back it up, but by the last turn I am pretty sure I was fielding the largest army. And 800 research. Ah well, I turtled too hard this game.

[Mini]

Arco surprised me with that Siren hero for sure, before then (And I apologize for this Mini, it's not you, it's the nation, Arco really doesn't have anything to deal with crossbow spam...) I didn't really consider you the big threat. It came at a good time too.

Yeah, I was avoiding as much as possible your army until Hatman reminded me about all the air spells that stop ranged stuff, and then I also remembered that I had a hero with high air paths I could use for it (and nothing else, other than maybe figuring out a way to get to N5 and conj 8, which probably would have required an empowerment, probably blood onto a priestess), so that happened and it was quite effective. Good thing we went luck, and good thing that particular hero showed up.

Also, Mini, like Gigalith said, if you put that fort at Polgrave at Troban instead, this game would've gone VERY differently.

Yeah, I forgot about Xibalba's insane raiding potential when I built it, even though at that point you were already raiding a long way in.

[Gigalith]

Man, I'm glad I didn't shell out for Father Illearth if you already had him. Additional amusing anecdote! I had set up Polly to be able to summon Onaquis and eventually Rain of Jaguars. I got to Blood 7 in the final turns of the game... and never did either. Too little blood slaves to do everything, and I was planning to dump a Horde from Hell on Arco's throne. Except, since Dendrite actually took it, it couldn't have helped. I fired a final Infernal Disease at Arco itself, hoping to maybe assassinate their Golden Idol.

This seemed a relatively SC-free game (at least from my perspective) aside from immobile pretenders single-handedly owning armies. Arco threw a tricked-out sleeper at me (he had the trample-flying armor.) I think said sleeper just got unlucky, since a random wound diseased it.

[Mini]

Arco threw a tricked-out sleeper at me (he had the trample-flying armor.) I think said sleeper just got unlucky, since a random wound diseased it.

I guess I've have to go back and watch that battle again. The idea was to exploit my hordes of scouts (I had one in basically all of Xibalba/Agartha's territory, as well as all bar 3 or so of the provinces on the northern side of the river) by being able to jump around wherever the PD was the weakest... And then it died in the first battle.

Fakedit: Yeah, it got diseased, but also got tied up not killing infantry while getting pelted by crossbows so it would have died anyway, even if not in that battle. Just didn't have enough health. A group (or even two or three) probably would have worked, but that's getting into pretty large numbers of gems (not that I didn't have them, I am still terrible at spending gems). Setting to attack archers probably would help too. But yeah, 55 gems for dying to PD...

[Nirur Torir]

That was fun, even if I didn't do much other than bash Marignon and then feed Ulm ~100 blood slaves/turn and a bit of gold. I didn't want to start a war with Arcos or spend several turns marching an army over.

The early battles against Mari were odd. My heavy cavalry and indie shortbows had great kills:losses against blood flagellants, but had pretty heavy morale problems and I had to collect ~2/3s of the cavalry after each fight. I don't know how much Ragha's special helm helped, since there weren't any close fights after I made it.

And finally, to Gigalith, I think krakens are kinda bad? They didn't seem to really accomplish much...)

They scared me away. My water forces were just playing containment until the last few turns.

[Jilladilla]

Also yeah, ulm on scales is silly. My expansion actually suffered early on in the game, so I never really had enough gold to back it up, but by the last turn I am pretty sure I was fielding the largest army. And 800 research. Ah well, I turtled too hard this game.

Haha yeah I know the feeling, I had bad luck early with province pop giving me a bad income (A VERY large chunk of my income was locked behind hidden gold mines...)

Oh right I remember another failing of mine! Not getting sufficient numbers of forts up fast enough. If it wasn't for me finding the High Temple of the Magi (it was on that little island on the bottom right corner) early on my research would've suffered badly... (Still ended with ~1000 research though. Well, that was last turn, this turn I shipped out half my research team onto the Throne of Night JUST IN CASE. Shame things escalated when they did though, was really really close to Alt 9 (7 turns). Army of Some Heavy Metal is such a fun spell~)

(Also I see your Ice Devils and raise you an Iron Ancestor with a Mercury Barrel or two.)

Yeah, I was avoiding as much as possible your army until Hatman reminded me about all the air spells that stop ranged stuff, and then I also remembered that I had a hero with high air paths I could use for it (and nothing else, other than maybe figuring out a way to get to N5 and conj 8, which probably would have required an empowerment, probably blood onto a priestess), so that happened and it was quite effective. Good thing we went luck, and good thing that particular hero showed up.

Actually, you didn't even need that Siren (and next fight with me would've had a crossbow squad explicitly targeting flyers), you had Sorcerers of the Sands from the Desert of Sighs at Javel Kish, they have A1, and you could've had an E1S1 Mystic forge a Crystal Matrix (Construction 4 research) to key one of those guys into a communion, at which point his Air paths would've been however high you wanted.

Should've just gone for Darkness+Earthquake.... My troops were tough enough to take it... Or just settled for Maws Spam. That's always fun. Heck could've even dipped into Thaum a little more for Terror and just scared your elephants off.

[chaoticag]

So I guess the next question is when the next game is going to be and if I will have to host it again. Since I think I'd wanna take a hosting break.

[Hatman]

I want to thank you all for the game. As far as post mortems go, my big mistake was trying to push against Agartha underground, rather than hole up and wait for them to open the second front. I had a lich. Defensive deadlock is good when you have a lich. I got impatient and second-guessed myself into losing a fortress far too early in the war!

On analysis of man as a nation, they are very good and deeply frustrating at the same time. I only recruited about 5 units out of my lineup, and 2 of those were purely to support a stealthy raiding hero and otherwise would not have been used. Your highest random is 50% on magisters and magisters arcane, and the random on arcanes has a high chance to be basically wasted on fire. On the other hand, between power of the spheres, summon X power and their basic paths, magisters arcane are capable of terrifying shenanigans in the field. On the copper arm, relying so heavily on a very old, very fragile mage can and repetedly did bite me. As did the fact not a single flaming arrows cast I scripted all game went off, which I will confess was slightly dissapointing. I will likely play this nation again some time, though there are many others I'd like to try.

Good game to all. Grateful I was able to play.