"A Song of Ice and Fire", veterans-only game, MA. In progress, midgame...

[Dimaz]

MR27 can be penetrated with many castings, once I had MR30 pretender who was paralyzed in the first few rounds. The battle was interesting and probably Corwin is right that low precision from darkness played the major role in spell selection due to heavy friendly fire in test castings that are used to get spell scores. But I think it wasn't wise to script WB in first rounds because it has lower range.

[Executor]

I've had battles against dozens of SC's with up to 30 MR which got disintegrated by vampire spaming them.
I'm sure if they had continued casting it they would have eventually done it. Besides, the communion gave a +2 penetration and I was hoping on a numbers game, percentages.

All the soul slays they used were scripted by me I think.

You're probably right about splitting my forces. I should have moved that whole army to the fort, I kinda expected the AI would at least cast a raise something now and than to support me.
With 2x undead chaff I might have actually won it. And the damn tartarian who was supposed to AoL my army was stuck crazy.

In any case I was rather disappointed at the battle results to say the least.
Corwin, the problem with large battles and the 5 spell rule is that the first 2-3 rounds you end up buffing yourself and the troops are still out of range as you *have to place mages behind as to not get killed by attack rear or archers. Quite often so it happens that mages can't cast scripted spells due to range and you have to rely on long range spells, or, in my case now, the AI casting something that can actually kill.

[Lingchih]

Meh.Semantics.

[Lingchih]

Woah! DrP on the rebound. That was truly impressive.

And Corwin, why are you attacking my swamps? I told everyone I was just going to sit there. If you make me mad though, I will go ahead and send out the Tarts. Get your *** out of there.

[Lingchih]

And still Sea of Ice at this time? Guess I'll have to knock it down myself. That sucks.

[Dimaz]

So the story of the Last Legion ends, and I fear it was the last chapter of Vanheim's history. The only thing that still interests me here is if I manage to heal my rainbow crone from that stupid mute before I get crushed. SHe got it on turn 5 from desease that she got from hidden site on the first turn of sitesearch run. So there were no ember lords and other high-path stuff when I needed it..

[Aethyr]

Dimaz, Ulm shall not last long and, in fact, may preceed you into the great beyond. The stories of your last legion have very much intrigued me (I did not get to view any of the battles), so I'm hoping that after the game is finishd (in total) you'll agree to share the files that depict some of these epic battles.

[Lingchih]

Heh. One should not anger DrP, Dimaz. That was a true butt-kicking.

My intel is suffering, and I can't see much that is going on these days. But, it appears that Corwin should probably win it. Ermor has the numbers now... he needs to get those battlefield breaking armies into the fray to have a chance.

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Dimaz

So the story of the Last Legion ends, and I fear it was the last chapter of Vanheim's history.

Well, that was quite a story. When I have managed to prevail after brutal struggle with your forces during the invasion of your northern homeland, little I've expected that a small group of exiles in the far away south would refuse to go quietly into the night, and instead would cause so much uproar and chaos in the south, crushing an allied Tien Chi empire in the process, and dealing a stunning blow to Jotun's mighty juggernaut.

But as with all stories, it must end at some point. Empire of Pythium salutes its brave enemies.

[Corwin]

An update from frontlines with Ermor:

The global war with Ermor is heating up. There were two huge battles this turn with Ermor forces, in additions to dozens skirmishes across the realm.

The smaller of these two battles was a clear victory for my forces. In a pitched battle they have destroyed large Ermor's communion and about half thousand undeads, with minimal losses.

However the larger and much more important battle did not go so well for my forces. It was the most important frontline on the war, and Ermor has committed a lot of troops and resources into it, trying to break through my bottleneck castle. I knew the battle was coming, so I have committed many valuable troops and units there as well. Nevertheless, the Ermor has prevailed, they have routed my forces destroying many of them in the process.

Ermor got very lucky during that battle - for some reason my antimagic spell didn't go up as it was supposed to. That resulted in death of few of my SCs, that were going to be critical for this battle, as well as making the rest of my army much more vulnerable to the barrage of neither darts and astral spells from ermor's necromancers. I have no idea why it wasn't cast, but it was not because of ghost riders Ermor casted before the battle - in that skirmish no gems were spent by my forces. With that spell the outcome of the battle would be much better for my troops. Oh well... ;(

Anyway, ironically I have won the battle, technically, thanks to few paralyzed and regenerating SCs who would refuse to die despite being surrounded by the sea of undeads and few SCs. Ermor had to retreat. They have also suffered losses as well, in particular all slaves of their communion were wiped out. Nevertheless I consider the battle to be a clear defeat for the Pythium Empire, my losses were significantly more severe then those of my opponent. Well played Executor.

The only good (for me) outcome of that battle is that the bottleneck border castle still stands and is in my hands.

Doubtless our dark Ermor brethren will be back next turn in even larger numbers, the tidal wave of 3000 undeads is about to crash into that castle again. I am rebuilding and preparing my defenses.

(NOTE: BTW what I see in battle replay for that huge battle does not match the outcome(my survived forces are different from what they should be according to replay). I've seen such problems with Dom3/2 several times in the past in other games. Any ideas what maybe causing it in this particular case and if there is any way to fix it? )

Also Ermor has succeeded in killing two of my fully healed and equipped tartarians outside of these armies engagements.