HappyKatanakka - MA Game COMPLETE

[shatner]

MA Jomon: Year 2 retrospective

Another full 12 turns of gameplay have come and gone, and a whole lot has been happening therein. Let's see how MA Jomon has fared through it all:
Provinces: 1st place! This is the result of lots of successful raiding, as is shown by Ulm being dropped from 1st to last place. However, once this war winds down, a large chunk of those provinces are going to be redistributed, so this number is somewhat inflated from it's "real" number.

Forts: 1st place! My early investment in real estate stands tall. Still, I am likely going to lose one of those forts to Ulm next turn so this is another number that's likely to change soon.

Income: 2nd place behind Shinuyama. My income chart has been zigzagging as provinces are captured, lost, overtaxed and exhausted and then allowed to return. I also have good scales but a weak dominion so having a province go from 1 white candle to 1 black candle represents a decent loss in income.

Gem Income: 1st place! Shinuyama and I have been neck and neck a lot lately, but since I am temporarily holding two-empires worth of provinces, my numbers are higher. This is another inflated value because of post-war province re-distribution, but that won't keep me from enjoying it here and now.

Research: 1st place! This has been another tight race between me, Shinuyama and Man. I can only attribute this to me having good scales and the time to accumulate a solid core of cheap-but-efficient researchers (something that was missing in the first year).

Dominion: 6th place. Unchanged from year 1. I was doing well for a time but all of my few non-H1s have been pulled out of the temples and into the labs/battlefields. Again, worrying.

Army Size: 2nd place. I've been funneling a lot of money into troops for a long time, many of which have been hiding behind walls or running around Ulm's backyard. Also, my pretender generates a small trickle of size-4 shark warriors, which certainly helps my numbers. That said, I'm 33% smaller than Shinuyama's crazy 1st place position. That's... a LOT of goblins.

Average Score: 2. Very nice and up from last year. I suspect that this represents a short-lived high point for my nation, while I'm holding most of Ulm's old territory before re-distribution occurs. But this last year hasn't exactly been easy so I'm pleased with my handling of things, both at home and at war. Of course, I'd feel better without an Ulm super-army sitting in my heartland, but I guess it can't all be sunshine and rainbows.


As I said last time, MA Jomon is not a straightforward nation, and for lots of this year I have been fighting Ulm, a profoundly straightforward nation (Ulm SMASH!). In fact, facing an enemy I can't hope to face in an open fight has forced me to consider all sorts of other strategies, a task which MA Jomon proved surprisingly but exceptionally well-suited towards. Flying raiders, naval raiders, amphibious raiders, and lots of N2 mages spamming vine arrow have come of this. It's gotten to the point where Legowarrior and I, with heavy assistance from this fine gaming community, are trying to find ways to limit MA Jomon's raiding potential in future versions of the mod. Rejakor's Ulm has proven to be a profoundly stubborn and cunning opponent, which is good for the sake of testing out MA Jomon but bad for the sake of me finishing this war. Just DIE already! Er, I mean, well done.

My place in the charts is very promising overall, but I find my dominion score very worrying. In the lead in to this game, a few people who'd played MA Jomon in MP games had spoken of troubles with black candle infestations. I wanted to give that a test in this game so I intentionally went with a weak-ish Dominion... and, well, I can see what they mean. I've been pretty intelligent in building walls of faith, using my pretender and my prophet to try and ward off the creeds pouring out of Shinuyama, Oceania and Ulm, but my efforts so far are... mixed. If/when I can find a moments peace, I'll have to dedicate a lot of time and energy into solving this problem... if I can. MA Jomon has many skills but candle-pushing doesn't seem to be one of them. That's not a bad thing inherently, every nation should have strengths and weaknesses, but I should take this as a sign that Legowarrior and I should advertize MA Jomon's weak priests more heavily so people go into playing MA Jomon with the right expectations.

Fighting against Ulm, while quite a challenge, is a weird experience. Since 90% of Ulm's force has thug, if not SC, levels of protection it means many of my troop options have been ignored because they would simply fail to scratch Ulmic steel. Wokou (the infantry, not the sailing commander), Ashigaru, Ashigaru Bowman, Miko, No Dashi Bushi, and Samurai Archers have all been used rarely, if at all (outside of the Ashigaru that make up my PD). That only leaves Onna Bushi, Naginata Bushi, Samurai Cavalry and Shark Warriors as troops worth recruiting, which has made for a very skewed trial of MA Jomon's troops. But, that's just how fighting Ulm goes.

For year three I'd like to end Ulm, divide up it's remains and then settle in to the business of peace. We'll see how well THAT idea holds up. If I had to boil this year's events down to a single sentence, it'd be this:
By land, sea, or air, MA Jomon will show up where you don't want it to be, and vanish from where you do.