Here's that short postmortem.
I started with a F2S3B7 Demon Macaw, with the hope of summoning some Onaquis, and maybe doing some Horror Artillery too. One moment after I had sent my disciple in, I realized I had one too few Astral to actually get Send Horror. But, good news, the Demon Macaw has three slots, including a helm. (I'm picturing a little starshine beanie atop Polly's enormous parrot head).
However, I had a bigger issue: I did not know you couldn't rush Blood 7 in the same you rush, say, Blade Wind. Much research in blood, albeit useful, was "wasted" in that there was no way I was getting to Blood 7 in the early or even the middle game. This was not helped by how I tended not to buy researchers when I had the chance (dude, it's worth it.)
First turn, I realized I was not only two UW provinces away from a throne, but I had native UW units, one of whom was an H3 priest! Shortly after conquering nearby indies, I sent AH! IT'S A FROG MAGE! down below. I should mention that I was doing quite well at expansion--perhaps the best in this game considering what everyone else has been saying. Bats can often snipe commanders and turn a battle nearly bloodless (for your own side, of course.)
I should mention there are two kinds of bats--warriors (stealth bats) and city guards (actually useful in combat bats). All of them are absurdly cheap in resources and Gold--I was regularly fielding and losing armies a hundred strong and it didn't even matter to me. Actually, I was more miffed when I lost one of the throne stealing armies because I couldn't get a replacement fast enough, not that it hurt the purse.
Anyway, major mistake: I didn't get a blood economy set up immediately. Xibalba is very good about blood--there's plenty of B1 mages with a hunting bonus, with a chance of getting a B2+hunting bonus hunter. It was only when I was actually in a desperate struggle with Man, then Arco, that I finally had a good blood hunting base. Troea was my original planned base, but it happened to fall to Man almost immediately. It was raided so often and fought back and forth it's basically fantasy Stalingrad. Pollygrad? Anyway, had I the resources, I probably would have had Rain of Toads on repeat until Man was a disease-ridden 100+ unrest wasteland. As it was, I kept running out, so I spent it on other things.
Man/Arco and we had a kind of minor cold war prior to the actual attack. I kept thinking that the horde of undead by my borders meant something--and lo and behold, it did. Much of the early war I spent fretting as I watched apparently unstoppable armies fight through my territory. Then I discovered the joys of raiding and began the War of Cartographical Insanity. Protip: attack two adjacent provinces--if you lose one, your dudes will retreat to the others.
The big MVP goes to a spell I never actually cast: Solar Eclipse. It's essentially a Fire and Astral version of Darkness--which meant Polly could cast it. And my bats do wonderfully in Darkness. Once I realized I could cast it, along with Bloodletting and other powerful spells, I decided I didn't need to freak out even if they besieged my capital. (Bats are very good at sieges, by the way.) This lead me to prepare spells such as (actual) Darkness, Earthquake, Iron Bane... Meanwhile, Agartha actually came and killed Arco's army for me, so I went and made other plans...
Meanwhile, some of my raiders had landed near Man's underground fortress, and after some thought I decided to attack it. Magister Spookthorne could conceivably die in our dominion, after all. I ended up successfully sieging said fort, which let Agartha's army get there. A siege and one or two epic battles later, Agartha exclusively possessed the caves (except for that one UW province I never got to.)
I'm not sure when exactly we thought of the throne steal. We had four of the thrones within easy access, and all we needed were two more. Much simpler than winning a conventional war against a conventional war powerhouse nation.
I had spotted Troban had only 1 PD and an otherwise defenseless temple. One squad of stealth bats smashed it and did quite some raiding before Arco finally tracked them down. I also realized I could forge any Holy booster artifact, which I could stick on an H2 Ajaw. Stealthy throne claimer! ...then Jilladilla pointed out I could just forge a Winged Boots and a Shademail Haubregon to stick on a Bacab. FLYING STEALTH FROG GOD was born.
Later, I saw that Arco had once again only 1 PD at Troban. We spilled many electrons on planning the perfect attack and, as mentioned, we ended up changing it mid-attempt twice.
More on that second time: I had set up two Bacabs (FLYING STEALTH FROG GOD and NINJA SKY TOAD DEITY) to bring flights of 80-100 stealth bats each deep into Arco's territory, along with Earth gems, boosters, Darkness... Then Dominions' giant ruleset reared its head. It turns out that even if there are no patrollers, sufficiently poorly stealthed armies can be discovered anyway. It must roll those open-ended dice regardless. Anyway, they had poor stealth in the first place, minus 1 for every unit... Both of them were discovered on the same turn.
But they were adjacent, and even though one Bacab's army was destroyed, the Bacab itself fled to Javal Kish (where I had accidentally won.) Our last ditch attempt was throwing all I had left there at Troban, and Dendrite teleported to the other throne.
Again, GG. This was a great first multiplayer game. It really is it's own beast in MP.
EDIT: "short" postmordem, yes.
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Topic: Dominions 4 Round 24 - Year ??? It's over (Read 22385 times)