Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

In most games your big concern is finding out who your neighbor is. In a game this large, you want to work very hard at finding out who your NEIGHBORS neighbor is. Who is on the other side of your worst enemy? Keep in mind the adage "my enemies enemy is my friend". Even if you dont do full alliance it can be important intel to know when someone is attacking him on the far side drawing his big armies away from you.

Also do alot of research into who has what gems, and what commanders. Especially what mages they have. Not with the focus of meeting them in battle, but with the focus of meeting them in the trading market. It might be a factor on whether or not you attack them when you meet them if you feel that they will be powerful trading nations later. Trading mages can be especially powerful for late game.

Consider before you put lots of PD into a province that you plan to build a castle or lab in. You cant remove PD. PD can count against you when you work with allies. It can work against you in lab provinces that you will use for trading mages, or in castles province that you might want to setup to allow an allies army to move safely thru your area and help you out.

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Good points, in the ones I have played I've made it a point to get as much intel as possible as to what is going on in the world. Who borders who, who's attacking who, etc Trading information. In a huge game that would be a lot harder to handle, and will probably come down to the 5-10 nations in the surrounding area. So I definitely agree.

That would be the point Shovah, only reason I would ever say exact gem cast would be to reduce percieved threat. They KNOW exactly what it would take to dispel it and it would then just be a matter of whether they wished to or not. Less of a threat than an enchant that may cost you 80 astral to dispel and then fail or not knowing if you wasted 30 gems. If I was actually putting it up for the reason I said, then I'd be fine with it getting dispelled if I felt it paid for itself. I would be annoyed if it was next turn, but that would be the risk weighed vs. the benefit of reduced threat.

is it common to trade mages? Charm and hellbind? or vacating a mage producing site province?

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Yeah, I'm kinda curious with this mega game to see if there will be a level of gem pooling to get certain globals up. Nobody in this game is going to cast Burden of Time without using a ridiculous amount of death gems...but it'll benefit a certain set of nations regardless of who casts it so it'd make sense to poll for donations just like is usually done for a dispel. Same goes for Utterdark, Astral Corruption, and many others. My guess is the non-threatening spells won't stay up long, not because they're dispelled, but because the five global slots are going to be fought over by large power blocks for globals that benefit more than one nation.

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Interesting, I had not thought of that, in theory the 3 Mictlans nations along perhaps with other blood nations (Abysia?) could form a gang and get astral corruption up with huge amounts of blood slaves. Making it undispellable and crippling 2/3'rds of all nations. Eeek http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif thats scarey...

I agree completely with your 2nd point Baalz, those 5 global spots are going to be fiercely fought over.

Probably, better to gem spam in secret... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Its been common in my larger MP games. And not because I initiated it. I find that many of the veterans do some trading along that line. Of course there is eq trading also which I meant to mention but everyone thinks of that. They dont often think of straight gem marketing or commander trading. I also saw one game where a person created quite a market selling SC's. Summoned, altered, then sold or traded.
Yes it usually involves some sort of conversion spell.

@Baalz (and others)
Most of the predictions about the game really need to wait and see. But from what Ive seen in big games, defensive agreements are much easier to arrange than offensive ones. In other words, a destructive global cast with XX gems is fairly easy to arrange to get broken with a pool of XXX gems. By the time someone can cast a destructive global with XXX gems, or enough that a shared effort cant afford to break it, its usually so far into the game that its not some sort of unusual event. That nation is powerful enough to deserve to keep the spell up. IMHO opinion there doesnt need to be enforced balancing of such things with mods and such since I feel the game would have balanced it on its own by being large and many nationed.

But.. come to think of it.. a game using all of the nations with all human players is new territory (even for me). Having multiple beneficiaries does bring up an interesting point. Whether or not the beneficiaries of a global can pool more than the ones hurt by it is something I hadnt considered.

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Sorry for not being constructive but (I)n (M)y (H)onest (O)pinion opinion dosnt really work Mr Parker.

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

marketing fairness and willingness to micromanage may be a definite factor. Some folks just don't want to deal with it.

I think the 62 game is going to be crazy no matter what. My main questions concern this game, but also what might apply to other late game strategies. The info on globals is definitely interesting, and I'm curious how much unit trading goes on. Seems the easiest, especially early is to trade provinces that produce indys.

How about perceived threat vs real threat. I've asked the question before because I think its a huge part, but have gotten some good responses so want to see if there's more info to be had.

Is it ever good to curtail research, site searching or expansion for the cause of portraying yourself weaker then you are? Leave indy's within borders unconquered, site search slowly even though quicker searching allows better accumulation, purposely stop recruiting mages to curtail research, stop recruiting troops to keep the army #'s in check, etc? I know this is related to score graph games primarily.. but it also can be taken as what you can say during negotiations, etc.

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

General principles of negotiation say it is better to appear strong than weak. However, it's bad to appear DANGEROUS. Some people are so terrified of Niefel Giants that they won't rest until Niefelheim is extinct. I suspect that e.g. Marverni can get away with pulling ahead on the research graph where LA R'lyeh could not. You might try combining an appearance of strength with NAPs with your weaker neighbors; assure them that you'll be going after somebody else if they'll consent to support you with some minor tribute. Paradoxically, paying tribute could make them feel safer (as long as it's cheap) because it gives you a reason to want them around. If you phrase it nicely enough they might even think you're spearheading an alliance.

-Maximilian

Edit: another way to make people feel threatened is to keep them in the dark. Conversely, it might be useful to provide strategic information to your tributaries when you extort money from them. "Player X has 300 Z units parked in provinces A, B, and C. I want to build 200 Ys to attack him. I need an extra 200 gold from you to make this work." If you've done things right they'll be eager to be helpful as long as you can protect them from retaliation by X. If you wanted to you could also lie about how many units are involved to make yourself look bigger and tougher to your tributaries. Of course I would never condone outright lying but maybe Yublub the Old Old One, Dweller in Everlasting Burnings has a different perspective on the matter. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Who would volunteer to actually CAST Burden or anything else similarly nasty though? Sure you can find 15 nations to kick in some gems for it, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to be the one to put a bullseye on my forehead by actually casting it, since nations 1-14 get the benefit from it as long as nation 15 can manage to keep a single mage alive...so basically until his entire nation gets destroyed by his PO'd neighbors.

AC is going to be inevitable, I think, because of the amount of blood nations. It might not always be up, but I think it'll reappear even if it gets taken down...If a blood nation is up against the wall getting some slave donations to cast it will probably be easy, and if they already look like they're going to be taken out casting it and holding out for 10 turns or so seems like a real possibility. Looming Hell less so, but I think it'll end up going up and staying up since it's not a large enough AoE for it to be a dispel target. That's 2 of the 5 slots gone.

Blood overall will be weakened a bit since the SCs will get spread out all over the place though, although the same goes for the royalty...

Re: Request for strategy: Late game tips
 

Jutetrea, I've found its much more often the case that it's better to appear powerful than to appear weak. Unless you're in first (possibly second) place by a good bit, you're more likely to be ganged up on because two or more of your neighbors think that you'll be easy pickings to their combined forces. True, you don't want to shoot out way ahead of everybody else unless you're ready for the attention, but definitely don't retard your growth for the sake of appearing non-threatening. Much better to be feared than ignored....