Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lorak]

Yeah I must say that was a rather impressive showing on his part.  I was hoping that massed crossbows would be able to do more damage than that.  Clearly I need to make more crossbows...

Also, the useless infantry is supposed to be in FRONT of the mages, not behind them!   And yeah, it was humorous to see them put away their crossbows and run up and melee him once he got too close.  XD

[Kagus]

Also, the useless infantry is supposed to be in FRONT of the mages, not behind them!   And yeah, it was humorous to see them put away their crossbows and run up and melee him once he got too close.  XD

Gotta love the AI...


Speaking of which, this is the first time I've ever seen an AI nation use an assassin...  Effectively.  Ack.

Now I need to do some clean-up to find stragglers and make them do something useful.  I also need to assemble an army to counter the 90-some flying demonic axe-wielding mutants Abysia is sending into my lands.

Current target is still Vanheim, at least in theory...  But since I'm currently under attack from a couple Abysian armies, I need to shift attention a bit so they mind their own business while I'm beating up the Vanir.  I hate losing provinces.

At least now Vanheim is essentially crippled.  There are a couple clusters of random-event militia on one side of the map, and he's got a few nasty elites to his name, but the old might of the North has been crushed.  All I need is one decisive plunge into his territory, and I should be able to wipe out the last of his backstabbing filth.

I've also got a new Oreiad and I'm trying to work out how to suit her up for some assassinations of my own.  Air magic actually lends itself quite well to this, with mirror images and items/spells that do AN damage...  I'm bound and determined to find out if they actually do make for worthwhile assassins, or if I should attempt to find other uses for them.

Hrrmph...  I still need to cut this off so I can refine the pretender design, but...  Damn if I don't have a vendetta against these dweebs now.


Update:  Well, looks like my army of cynical old bastards is going to be the force that wipes out Vanheim...  They've still got a few random forces here and there, but dominion strength is waning significantly and I've got skeptics in all the provinces that still have candles lit in honor of Pourushti the Frost Father.  PD will hold off any attacks they manage to throw at me before I'm awarded the dominion kill.

This is good news, because at the moment I can't really afford any troops being sent north...  126 Abysians have seen to that by burning up my doormat.  They've got just under 40 misbreds set to hold and attack rear, which is wreaking havoc with my provincial militia.  That, and charging headlong into Abysian formations is always good fun when you're confronted with those stacked heat auras.  Blecch.

At least it's winter...  And the AI doesn't seem to grasp the concept of 'friendly fire', so the random independents they've snowballed into this army are getting toasted by being placed inside the Abysian formations.

Well, I'm gonna attempt to head 'em off at the pass...  Hopefully I'll at least be able to put a sizable dent in their forces, I'm still rather relying on physical might rather than magical superiority, despite the fact that I possess several times larger libraries than them.  The fact that most of the effective battle spells open to me are either fire-based or primarily effective against unarmored troops doesn't exactly make matters easier.

Still, they're banking on this army.  This is the sum of their aggressions against me at this time, and a significant defeat for it would stop the Abysian invasion in its tracks.  All I need is for them to pull one stupid maneuver and step into a trap, and I can rush in to devastate their forces, thus opening the way to taking back the eastern border.

We'll see how this goes...  I have faith in my troops, but a nasty defeat for me would make things quite difficult too.  I have a difficult time raising new troops with my depressed production facilities, spoils of an early expansion fraught with chaos and meaningless foolery...

Should be fun.

[Il Palazzo]

Oh, fuck. I've just lost two Pinocchios to the R'yleh's ante portas defence.
Also, Jepetto decided to go crazy bananas after casting mind hunt "just this one last time".
Duh.

ed: grammar

[Ignus]

That was a rather impressive battle.

My vast hordes of mindless slaves pushed against Agartha's notorious pinnochios, distracting them long enough for my mages (deciding to finally follow orders) to blast them to pieces. Eventually.

Highlights include The Last Charge of the Mindflayers. A tragic fight, where a large group of those terrifyingly expensive fellows decided to take a pinnochio on mano-a-mano after running out of actual brains to eat. Brave, yet somewhat short sighted.

[Kagus]

Well, reached the turn limit on that game...  Abysia ended up splitting its army three ways, and I had people waiting for each one.  The entire force was obliterated in the space of a couple turns, and I lost a handful of troops for my trouble.

Vanheim proved to be more troublesome than expected, but with the turn limit running close I started getting sloppy anyways.  They still were effectively destroyed, it was just a matter of time.

Abysia had one or two more armies up its sleeves though, so while I did manage to reclaim all my old provinces I was staring down a bunch of burning bastards when the game ended.  Abysia had also just managed to open up some mildly worrying battle magic that was munching my troops, but it still wasn't much of an issue.  Given enough time, with the way things were going I would've been able to wipe them out without too much trouble.


I'm still impressed by just how far I managed to get, all things considered...  I'm especially impressed by the stuff I uncovered in regards to Arcoscephale's national troops.  I used to think that EA Arco was actually kind of gimped as far as national troops were concerned, but then I found this absolute gem of a unit that was just hiding in the lineup...  90% of all my armies were composed solely of that unit type, and I had entire troops of them with 3 stars thanks to independent conquests.  Almost nothing could stand in my way.  They cleared field after field, and the loss of a single one was quite unusual even against heavy cavalry provinces.

Behold...  The chariot archer.

It may sound odd, it's true.  At first glance, this really is just a chariot that thinks its an archer.  It's not as well-equipped as the standard chariots, and it makes for a pretty crappy archer overall.  So why buy this unit?  The answer lies in one very special property...

When a chariot archer withstands the pathetic 10 points required to kill it, the whole unit doesn't die.  Indeed, as the description states, a new archerless chariot appears in its place to charge the ranks of enemy units.  We've seen this happen before with serpent riders, lobster knights, all sorts of other units...

The difference is that these archerless chariots are fully restored as chariot archers once the battle is over (apparently, archers grow on trees).  This effectively gives you two chariots for the price of one, and it becomes impossible to kill one in a single hit.

They're expensive, no doubt about that...  Shelling out 55 gold for anything is murder on the pockets, but considering how ridiculously effective these units are and how long they'll be able to last (even the few who manage to hold on to battle afflictions can be healed by the beautiful Arcoscephalian priestesses, so they're free to accumulate stars as they like) compared to cheaper units, I'd say that they're pretty worth it. 

In a different match, I just conquered a province with 36 indie troops using only 9 chariot archers and a naked mystic who couldn't cast anything beyond fire darts.  I didn't lose a single chariot.


They've got 20 effective hitpoints, they trample anything smaller than size 4, and they even have bows to soften up lighter targets or pick apart far-off routing enemies.  Hold and Attack orders define these units.  They've also got 12 body protection and 17 head, plus mapmove of 3 (you even have a chariot commander who can shuffle these guys those 3 provinces, and who makes a minithug if suited up accordingly).

Peltasts and cardaces are nice for initial expansion, but are light infantry and thus suffer heavy losses regularly.  Wind riders are hideously expensive and not really worth the cost of purchasing them, let alone the cost of getting a suitable bless.  Icarids are jokes with wings, sporting the price tags of elites and the fighting ability of chaff.  Myrmidons are fantastic blockers, but cannot move more than 2 spaces per combat turn and suffer from 10 encumbrance (what's interesting though is that this means a crippled myrmidon will only move one square slower than his brothers).  The standard chariots are okay, but cost several more resources for a mildly lower gold price and don't have a second form.  Chariot archers suck all the usefulness out of the other Arcoscephalian nationals, climbing their way to the top of the dog pile to become super-units in the early game.

The only things they're not very good with are giants and massed arrows/Blade Storm.  They're fine against independent archers because they don't generally have the firepower to do much more damage than losing a couple archers off the back of a chariot, but they still lack shields and 12 protection will only get you so far. 

Legions of Steel will get you farther.  It just so happens that Arcoscephale can handle that.


Anyways, I'm now trying to re-work the pretender design so he has something other than blood...  I also heard bad things about the Misfortune/Drain combo, so I'm trying to steer away from that.  I'd really like to get Air 4 on a forge lord, because Air has some really awesome items in it...  But mystics don't get Air randoms, and I open up some nice things with the 3 Water I'm currently testing out.  Half-price Rune Smashers, Staffs of Corrosion, Manuals of Water Breathing...  Not to mention the much-loved Clams, which I estimate can be forged for 7 sapphires and 2 emeralds each.  As all mystics get at least one point of Astral magic...  I figure this is probably the right choice.

I didn't get much of a gem income last time around, but I think Arcoscephale can do some mean things with Fever Fetishes too (and my smithing pretender can make 'em at 50% off).  On the one hand you've got a pile of old philosophers who are going to get diseased anyways, and on the other you have priestesses who can cure disease.  Testing is required to see exactly how effective this is...

EDIT:  This was much longer than I expected it would be...

[Il Palazzo]

Heh, not a bad move, Lorak.
I love how both sides can't really harm each other, me having some serious problems with sieging forts, Caelum not wanting to risk another devastating battle. So we both just engaged in the scorched ground strategy.

Also, my mind hunting attempts are failures, bordering on disasters.

R'lyeh is counterattacking, and I'm not sure how to bite them, now that my local force of Pinocchios suffered such a hard blow. Maybe I'll just stall them until their false god loses all of his followers?(IGNUS: LOW DOMINION WARNING!)

At least, I've got Pythium pinned down at the mountain ranges for now. Neither of us apparently feeling strong enough to push with an offensive.

And somebody's been stealing all the cool artifact designs from me! Grrr.

[Ignus]

Thants for the warning, the low dominion has been somewhat of a burden. But fear not, Mr. Palazzo, I have contingencies.

[Happerry]

So, my computer crapped out on me last night, and it will probably take at least a day before I can figure out if i can get it working or not. As such, may I have an extension please?

[Il Palazzo]

Done.

[Happerry]

Ok, the computer expert has been in and has spoken. My power supply is dead. I think I'll be able to get a new installed by tomorrow. I hope so at least, but it sounds likely.

[Il Palazzo]

No worries.

[Happerry]

Alright, A new power supply has been purchased and is being installed soon. Unless something else breaks, I should be back on by the end of today.

Edit : It's in and working. I'm back and ready to play.

[Il Palazzo]

Oh shit.
What a setback. Damn you, Lorak, how did I not see it coming?

[Lorak]

Wow. I gotta say I was nervous as shit about this turn because I really had no idea how my elementals would fare against your pinocchios, but damn...   I could not have asked for a better result.

[Kagus]

What's up?  Sounds interesting.  Also sounds like one of those situations where the quick, adaptable human mind came into play...  And also where it needs to come into play again.