MP: ANDalusian Sun: Lolomo wins after more than 2 years of gruelling competition!

[Dimaz]

Hi,

Tien Chi player contacted me with a message

I've reached the point where I don't think I can continue to play the ANDalusian Sun game. I have a major new work responsibility now, and as things stand I am getting steadily outplayed in my turns by Ulm because I don't have the time and will to micromanage my position.

Given that I am steadily losing ground to Ulm, I am prepared to concede the game.

Of course, if the other players wish to continue, I'm happy to let someone sub my position.

From my point, I'm OK with finishing the game. Rlyeh, Ulm, please PM me your position and we'll decide what to do.

[Dimaz]

Both Ulm and TC agree that Ulm is the likely winner and RLyeh suggests a tie. As Ulm and TC probably have better view of their position, I propose to finish the game and declare Ulm as the winner. If no objections, I'll do it in 2 days.

[Dimaz]

The game is finished. The winner is Ulm lead by Lolomo. Congratulations to the winner!
I don't have much time right now so maybe I'll put some more words later, here's the player list

mockingbird Tien Chi
WraithLord R'lyeh
Fantomen Atlantis - PriestyMan
Don_Pablo Utgard
P3D Mictlan - rejakor / CUnknown /Stagger Lee
Aethyr patala
Yandav Ctis
Amhazair Jomon (Broken Swords)
Lolomo Ulm
DrPraetorius Abysia
Baalz Arco -
Calahan Bogarus - Maerlande
Llamabeast Marignon
Please feel free to post your thoughts/comments etc. Finally you can do it

[Amhazair]

Oh my god. It's over or what?






I might have more to say later, but for now that's the overwhelming emotion.

[LoloMo]

Yes it's finished after two years!

All the while, I had Wraithlord pegged as Tien Chi. The fight against Mockingbird was really tense for many many turns

This is a brief summary as far as I can remember, and may not be entirely accurate as some of it was 2 years ago!

When I designed Ulm, I went for late game advantage by choosing order, growth, productivity and luck scales. I chose an imprisoned moderate astral oracle. It was quite a risky and non conventional build for late Ulm, but I was hoping that the buffs from the lesser holy war mod would synergize with Ulm's low magic resistance. It didn't, although I might have forgotten a some fights against indies that were helped by divine armaments.

I had middle of the pack early expansion against indies. Sometime around turn 30, my first test arrived when Atlantis rushed Abysia, conquered their capital, and became my neighbor, and at that time arguably the leading nation. I knew I didn't have much time to act before Atlantis solidifies his power, so I attacked with the majority of my troops after spying that Atlantian troops stationed at the Abysian capital was manageable. I was successful, my rangers worked well against shieldless Atlantians, and I used communions and blood burst.

Around the same time, R'lyeh mounted an attack on Atlantis itself so I was able to consolidate my gains.

[LoloMo]

At this time, I still had no vamps, and for many turns after focused on empowering in blood and building up a vamp and blood hunting economy.

Tien chi and Mictlan quickly took the lead in income and gems, and this lead they would hold till the lategame.

I turned to churning out loads and loads of wolves from wolfherds to inflate my army score to make myself an undesirable target. I had the biggest army score from mid game to the end, and I think this allowed me to work on developing my blood economy unmolested. I was probably 40 turns behind Mictlan in terms of blood, and by the time I tried to summon them, all the blood SCs were already taken.

Tien Chi, Mictlan, and Bogarus were the most aggressive mid game, taking out nations left and righ. Tien Chi never relinquished his lead till the end and Micltan was consistently second. Ulm was somewhere third or fourth along with Bogarus.

Around turn 60 or so, I started feeling Mictlan's dominion push. I had to work extremely hard to counter this, and ended up making more than a hundred juggernauts. In late game, I was alchemizing most of my gems to make juggernauts just to maintain my dominion.

[LoloMo]

Around turn 80 onwards, Mictlan, Bogarus, and Tien Chi got into a brawl that would last the next 40 turns. During this extended period, Tien Chi got Arcane nexus, Gift of Health, and Misery up. However I took my time before attacking TC, as I had such a difficult time countering Mictlan's dominion, and didn't want to deal with a victorious Mictlan. Although Mictlan was loosing provinces, it didn't look like he was loosing his fighting capability.

At this time I started making plans to take out R'lyeh. Between Mictlan blood sac and my juggernauts, R'lyeh dominion was constantly in danger of being snuffed out. I used possession to make lots of sea troll commanders, and made lots of piercers for them. My plan was to march them over to R'lyeh capital along with juggernauts, and hopefully just take his last candles out. It was going to be a massive investment with high risk of failure, as R'lyeh had a massive mage army.

I didn't get to implement this plan, as Bogarus fell (became AI), and Mictlan was at this point suffering from low morale as he had been fighting TC for so long and was steadily losing ground. I turned around and attacked TC and Bogarus.

[LoloMo]

War with TC was a lot of prodding attacks and back and forth land grabbing. Both of us were hesitant to commit a significant amount of power into any single battle, as a loss would be catastrophic. I had the advantage of being able to make a fort in one turn with 3 red seconds, so I made full use of that, creeping steadily into TC lands, and moving juggernauts into my border forts. TC had lots and lots of SCs - Zmeys, Wendigo's, Tarts, Grendels.

I had terrible luck with SCs, so I stopped making them after I lost the first 5 to the silliest of things. I think one died to TC province defense. TC had super huge income and just piled on the PD everywhere.

I started making assassins using vamps, fiends. At first success was limited, and many attempts resulted in expensive assassins dying or retreating to their deaths. Breakthrough for me was when I realized that the vine whip didn't need to hit to entangle. Took a few tries to finally got a combo that worked reasonably well: vine whip, piercing or armor negating second weapon, berserker pelt, horned helmet, messenger boots, black heart, water bottle, and 30 blood slaves. I had a few infernal hell assassins also mixing things up. With this set up, I was able to check TC's raiding SCs. Speed boots was a good counter to my low hp vine whip assassins, but then you get hit by an infernal hell assassin instead.

[LoloMo]

Sometime during this period, someone cast armaggeddon. This was quite a blow to me, as a few decked out juggernaut summoners were killed, along with quite a few astral window casters too. This caused me to become paranoid that multiple armaggeddons are on the way, so I unequipped everyone and put stuff onto my sea troll commanders. The turns after really became micromanagement hell as I have to keep moving items back and forth between my sea trolls and other commanders.

This put a halt to juggernaut summonings until I was able to make stone boots for my casters. I also put up astral corruption so my casters also have to be able to contend with horrors.

Eventually, Mictlan gave up, as he was getting the brunt of TC attacks. I think TC hoped to get Mictlan capitals and win, as he needed only 3 more to win. TC capitals within my reach were fortified with thousands of troops. I was always afraid of TC astral 9 pretender coming in and enslaving my army, so I never commited more than 10 percent of my total power into any battle.

[LoloMo]

I was doing a lot of sneaking vamp armies around to make them as unpredictable as possible. I hoped to make the illusion that any seemingly empty fort could actually be holding a legion of vamps. I might have been successful with that.

The last few turns were very intense. TC made a strong push for the win, and at one point was only 1 or maybe 2 turns away from getting the necessary victory points. Luckily, R'lyeh saw this also and attacked one of the capitals, while I was able to teleport an army plus move a hidden vamp army to take by surprise a small sieging force on one of the victory points, and take another capital under siege by surprise the next turn.

Ok, sorry my my short summary that turned out to be very long!

Wraithlord, I salute you for hanging in there till the very end even if your nation had low chance of winning, and making it really difficult for any leader to get ahead.

Mockingbird, there were days that I thought of nothing but what to do in the game to eek out a small advantage against you. This has been an exciting though often tiring match!

Now I need a break!