Tourmaline - Mod Nations Game (Finished)

[Ossa]

Well... I'm ok with calling the game. THough I believe I would steamroll Agua... (sp) with all the stuff I took over from the previous player

[Septimius Severus]

Very well, rdonj, it would appear the game is over then. A stalemate having been called, no winner. The current turn (70) I guess will be the last. It was a pleasure and a privilege playing with all of you.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Ossa

Well... I'm ok with calling the game. THough I believe I would steamroll Agua... (sp) with all the stuff I took over from the previous player

Yeah, I agree. I think this game should be declared a draw between Itza and Stygia.

As for the game, when I took over a over turn 40 something, Alugra was a mess. Ferrosol's PoD gave me a pretty big empire, but the paths on it don't really contribute much. Also, Ferro hadn't really done much site searching either and the gem income was quite small and focused on absolutely wrong paths (only one hammer and +2 earth gem income, yikes!). I could see Ferro's PoD working out, but it seemed that he run into some really bad luck with his Librarians (over 12 GoR'ed and no W1N1) and sites.

So I did my best to get back into the game, but no mater what I did, I couldn't beat the 16% chance for a N1W1 Librarian. And thus gems that would have been better spent in making RoS and RoW's went pretty much to waste. When I finally managed to get decent gem income and forge 1 Blood Stone per turn, it was already turn 55+ and I had no clams, no RoS, no RoW, mages to can only get to pathpower 2 (no-real-late-game magic) = dead nation.

It's pretty depressing to play a nation that has no shots at winning, so I started to play in a more "fun" way. Not microing much and trying out some new crazy strats, which made situation somewhat worse, but allowed me to be motivated to play.

At least my war with Haida went smoothly, but that was mostly due to his suboptimal Thunder Bird-strat (if he had spent his mage-time and air gems elsewhere, I'd likely have lost).

But all in all, I have no one else to blame for my loss expect me (if I hadn't desperately tried to that W1N1 Librarian and instead focused on boosters, it could have gone different) and I learned a lot from this game. Alugra will likely get updated and put up to the llamaserver now that it has gone through it's "Trial of Fire", so to speak. Once he smiths get their nerf, I think it will a fun nation for MP with a unique gameplay.

[rdonj]

Alright, I'm closing the game. I'm sending myself the turn file for itza first though, so I can see what my empire looked like at the end.

It seems that earth gems were scarce pretty much the world over. I had a max of 10 earth gem income at the height of my empire, and I got something like half of it from killing the skavens. So it took me a long time to build up my bloodstones also. It also did not help that executor got extremely lucky very early into my bloodstone forging when I only had 3 or 4 of them, and assassinated my empowered skink who was forging them (and was carrying my only RoS). It took me a few turns to recover from that loss, and at the end of the game I had something like 20 of them. I was never able to forge more than one per turn. And hammers, hah. I had maybe 5 hammers, since I didn't really get into thugging and only had 4 or 5 golems at the end there. Two of which were supplied mostly with items I'd pulled off of bogus and crew. So I mostly tried not to need hammers, and did most of my forging while arcane nexus was up :P.

It seems nehekara got just about all the earth gems on the map, since he apparently had enough to give stygia bunches of them early in the game, and create a grand bloodstone horde.

I did much better on clams, though I still wasn't really pressing those very hard due to other goals. However, after haida gwaii knew they were dead, they gave me all their clams... 45 of them, under the condition that I had to keep giving him the gems until he died, which I did. Itza had probably forged about 70 clams when I left.

I'd also saved up hundreds of gems and 20,000 gold that ossa immediately began putting to good use, summoning saurus and buying shedloads of troops so that the losses he took fighting alugra didn't phase him. Looking at the turn, he's down to 6,000, so you did accomplish something burnsaber. Not sure how he got all those slann feebleminded... mind hunts? It's frustrating that, for a nation so excellent at mind hunting, almost every single nation in the game was immune to them :P. Anyway, that gift of nature's bounty was a ridiculously key global for me... moreso than arcane nexus, which never got me more than 60 extra pearls a turn. Without it I was losing money, so I really had to get it back up or lose (4k in upkeep each turn). So I did... with 300 nature gems. Until then I hadn't cast a single global for price, as I had two enchantment bonus sites. I had to convert a lot of pearls to cast that so high though.


The whole war with stygia was pretty dumb. I should have just rushed him and lived with the losses I took killing his stupid undead things. I could probably have replaced them, and I might have gotten somewhere. That war had me so uninterested in playing my turns, because we hardly did anything. I kept trying to preach dominion in his land, and his stupid h4 priests mostly kept me out. It was only when septimius attacked into my dominion and lost a bunch of them that I was actually able to make any progress on that front... and then the war ended when I finally had positive dominion under one of his armies. Meh. At least that war allowed me to stockpile gems, summons and equipment that would later be put to use against alugra. Oh, and skink priests. Hordes of them. Although you did see most of them burn.

I'm really surprised alugra was so weak gemwise, but I suppose it maeks sense. It can be pretty hard relying on randoms to get the paths you want. Last time I played alugra I didn't have much luck getting a good librarian for clamming either. But I managed to find enchantresses to do it for me.

Why were you using so many gifted as soldiers, and almost none as thugs? When I play alugra I tend to mass watchmen and smith thugs. And hardly use the gifted as soldiers at all. I should actually try using them that way at some point. Anyway, I'm glad that alugra finally got its chance in mp. I don't think you did so bad, considering.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Why were you using so many gifted as soldiers, and almost none as thugs? When I play alugra I tend to mass watchmen and smith thugs. And hardly use the gifted as soldiers at all. I should actually try using them that way at some point. Anyway, I'm glad that alugra finally got its chance in mp. I don't think you did so bad, considering.

I didn't use gifted thugs because Haida had sprinkled his ravens all over his provinces, who'd decimate the Thugs between their buff cycle. I had so many gifted soldiers because I had money to burn and tons of resources in my capital (so, why not?).

[rdonj]

Fair enough.

[Trumanator]

I dunno about getting the majority of the E gems on the map, but I definitely had something like 30-40 BS all told at the end. At first I thought that the B3 avatars were useless, but then I figured out that 2 of them will basically set you up to forge 2 or so stones a turn for the rest of the game. I still find the randoms on them rather annoying though. I also had no clamming, and almost no S income, but I didn't feel like I needed it as much, since I had my own national SC chassis, and I was planning on spamming Poison Golems once I had someone else's territory to put them in. I will say though, TK is perfect for epic skellispam :P

[Trumanator]

lol, at least this means I get to clean out all the PMs related to this game out of my inbox

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

At least my war with Haida went smoothly, but that was mostly due to his suboptimal Thunder Bird-strat (if he had spent his mage-time and air gems elsewhere, I'd likely have lost).

LOL. Suboptimal is a nice way of putting it. This is the second time I've put all my hopes on immortal troops - time will tell if I make the same mistake a third time.

Interesting to hear people talk about the lack of E gems - I had no E gem income and that was a problem. The other strange thing is that I only had 4A income (2 of which were from my cap).

I figured early on that clams were going to decide things and Haida is a clamming nation so I played that game, even though I hate clamming. My big mistake was declaring war on Aulgra before I was ready. I rushed it in order to help Nehekhara, but when he cast BoT I called it off - too late to avoid war with Alugra, though.

[Trumanator]

Originally Posted by Valerius

My big mistake was declaring war on Aulgra before I was ready. I rushed it in order to help Nehekhara, but when he cast BoT I called it off - too late to avoid war with Alugra, though.

lol, this situation was pretty unintentional, but probably looked like some pretty good statecraft from a distance I really figured that you would actually be pretty safe from it with your GoH, and that it would be pretty bad for Alugra. I will admit though, the metagame improved for me drastically when Alugra shifted focus to you.