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

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Aethyr

Congrats Corwin, by all accounts you have played a masterful game.

Thank you Aethyr.

Good game, Lord of Ulm. Very determined defense against mighty opponent.

[DrPraetorious]

Ugh, you have a forge bonus site as well? Yeah, fair enough - I can't win against that.

I do think it'd be more satisfying to have you grab the requisite VPs and actually win, but it probably wouldn't be in your strategic interest to do so. Might as well just wear us down.

[Corwin]

I do think it'd be more satisfying to have you grab the requisite VPs and actually win, but it probably wouldn't be in your strategic interest to do so. Might as well just wear us down

I agree, I think it would indeed just wear us down. And BTW missing VPs could relatively easy come from Ermor and TC territory - I wouldn't even have to push your or BL's armies back in order to gather remaining VPs, unless I would intentionaly choose to go down that road.

Originally Posted by DrPraetorious

Ugh, you have a forge bonus site as well? Yeah, fair enough - I can't win against that.

Yeap, it was my top-secret research and manufacture facility. It has heavy patrols to catch enemy spies before they had a chance to look at it, as well as magic domes. (it was dangerously close to my pre-war borders) the one turn ago it also served as my tartarian summoning/healing factory, where my 6 (Death 7) liches and Chalice were located. It has 20 site forging bonus. I've located it pretty late in the game, but for the last 6-7 turns I've been producing 50 items per turn there using 49 dwarven hammers and one Hammer of the Forge lord.

Surprisingly enough I haven't found (or conquered) any other bonus sites in my entire territory, despite searching everywhere.

[Corwin]

Originally Posted by Executor

Ouch, that was unpleasant.
Well I kinda half way gave up after that bloody massacre on the central front, still not sure how I lost that one.

I've actually watched that battle closely during replay, since it was the most important battle of our war. Well, if you are interested in my opinion - I think it was a combination of several things. But me using my water/blood tartarian as a secret weapon during that great battle has played a large part in it. That tartarian alone has banished to inferno 4 of your SCs before they had a chance to engage in melee, including some of your best anti-SC ("boxing" grendlekins). Also my best Tartarian Titan equipped with Mage Bane and best items that gems could buy had fatigued and killed one or two of yours in SC vs SC duels. All together that has shifted number of SCs on both sides from aprox. parity that we had in the beginning of battle toward me having advantage in numbers of meleeing SCs. Plus the quality of my remaining SC vs your remaining SC was slightly better - I had a couple of Ember Lords, Water Queen and Gredlekin, in addition to regular tartarians we both used. But that was a minor factor.

Perhaps you may have won that battle (or at least made it into draw) if you would keep your SCs in the back for the first 5 turns, beyond the reach of my Claws spell. Or if you would screen your SCs with non-GORed tartarians. (Both these tactics I that I was planning to employ against DrP's blood magic in the next few turns, should we continue playing ) But in your defense - that was the first time I've used blood magic against you in battle, so you didn't know to expect it. Also sending more of your mages into that battle would help too - you've wiped out my mages very efficiently early, but you didn't send too many of your own mages into battle. Since the battle had lasted for a very long time, and you've successfully sabotaged my anti-magic spell, eventually your mages would likely paralyze and soulslay some of my SCs if there would be more of them.

Nevertheless it was a close call. You didn't slay any of my SCs but you've come very close with several of them. And pretty much all of my melee SCs got a lot of nasty afflictions. I even had to pause my tartarian factory and organize improv Chalice-powered hospital in that province where we've fought battle. Even now two turns later more most of the participating SCs are still recovering from their wounds. BTW that's why I didn't counterattack you on the central front the next turn after battle - most of my SCs were crippled, and I wanted to heal them before sending them again into battle.

Anyway, just my two cents.

[Executor]

It was a good game,
For what it's worth, I think I dropped the ball when the war with Ulm and Midgard started, I shouldn't have left Midgard alone to fight you but I really didn't expect TC to join that war.
On the Ulm side, I should have really attacked Bandar first and swept trough that continent rather than send very limited amount of troops over the seas backed by a few tarts, it took too long, but I had a too long NAP with BL.

Another thing that really killed me was the lack of magic diversity, the only useful indies I found were enchantresses shamefully. And tho I had the largest mage force in the game, probably twice as large as you Pythium, they had a severally limited usage. There just wasn't a lot I could do with S1D1 mages even tho I kept bringing 40 to every battle.
If only I had those adepts of the iron order like Jotun...

I made some rookie mistakes, like sending RoS tartarians with a mage scripted to cast VoR and forgetting to put the mage behind and alike.

As for my SCs, ha, it's really annoying when you can't GoR tartarians since you have an army passing trough your tart factory so you can't select them.
I still have about 20 SCs left, and I can still keep popping out a lot of tartarians, but I have no equipment for them, and neither the gems to GoR them anymore. The poor felas had to share the items frequently, I guess it taught them a little about brotherhood.

One things for sure, after this game I've really started to hate tartarians, shattered soul 25 my ars!

A funny thing too, I had 4 tartarians summoners, but only 1 of them was in my cap, but somehow it was always him that ever managed to summon a commander tartarin, and the damn tartarians always decided to pillage my cap with 36000 pop and dom 10 GONB on the single turn he was there, ingrates...

Anyway, congrats Corwin, it was a gentlemans game and your admining was superb. I look forward to killing you a bit sooner next time.

[DrPraetorious]

Oh, enchantresses. I would've loved some. The lack of enchantresses was killer for me. If I had any - I didn't - I'd have had Immortal Elixirs and some other cross-ele or ele-nature items *years* ago, and I'd be in much better shape. In fact, I venture to say, with enchantresses it would be me and not Pythium that everyone would've been complaining about in the midgame.

As it was, although I had every path of magic except substantial air, that was a strength of my nation. It was only recently that I acquired even a good share of the cross-elemental paths, and I never had nature-elemental casters.

It was killer, and the lack of enchantresses more-or-less-choked-off what was a very promising start. I did have Mount Chaining, which ought to be definitive for a blood nation. But without enchantresses, what could I do? I couldn't even build fire brands until my iron order came online, and I didn't find that until late, with a troll king, summoned by my God, spamming earth-site finding spells.

In the end, on a map this size, I was very powerful but had neighbors of above-average competence, and I had below-average luck on magic diversity from indies.

We should try this again on a wrap-around map .

[Aethyr]

I personnaly, would love to have another go with such sklled and knowledgable opponents...as long as I don't have to play Ulm again.

Also, it was both entertaining and instructive to read the "real time" AAR by various players as the game unfolded. Good stuff.

[Corwin]

Great game everyone!

I am glad you guys had a good time. Personally I also have enjoyed it a lot.

My thanks to all players for participating in this game and for making it such an interesting and enjoyable experience.

[Corwin]

Some random afterthoughts:

I think our game settings have worked very well overall. IMHO getting only strong veteran players with no newbies made the game much more enjoyable (and fair, since no veteran player could quickly roll over a newbie that happened to be next to him, as always happen in mixed newbie/veteran games, which would throw the balance out of the window)

I was also glad to see endgame not determined by who has casted one of the 3 game-winning globals but instead by strength of arms and magic on the battlefields.


Ok, since we are all bit*hing about our nations - let me bi*ch about Pythium a bit... So about my nation - I had very rocky start in this game (not related to my actions). In fact in all my years of playing MP Dom2/3 that probably was the worst starting location. If you look at our map, you'll see that Pythium capital has just 3 neighbors. All of these 3 provinces are totally disconnected from each other(!), plus one of them is deadend(!!), and another is 5 province long narrow tunnel leading into Vans territory(!!!), and was stuffed with tough indeps.

All that made my earlier expansion a real logistical nightmare and the speed of it was much slower then it would be if not for such horrible starting location.

It took me two wars (vs Agartha and C'tis) and absorbing both of these nations to partly catch up with the game leaders in a number of provinces, but even then I was still lagging behind them territory-wise.

Another totally weird and unlikely situation in this game for my Pythium nation was my death income. I've searched each and every province of my land for death gems, including farmlands, using death games I've traded from other nations. You know how much death gem income I had at the end of this search? 4 gems per month! (for comparison - for each other gems type my income was within 20-30 range) And that was at the stage of the game when I was supposed to start getting into tartarians and lich summoning...

So I had to ravenfeast like crazy using my large spy network to comb the earth for places where Death reigned... (thank you Ermor for those large battlefields full of corpses that you were leaving behind you in your wars ). BTW ravenfeast spell is really efficient with our balance mod. Changing its casting cost from 5 gems to 1 has made all the difference in the world. I've also traded death gems as much as I could, and forging Sickle has became my top priority when I've reached Con8, once I've realized that the Chalice was taken.

Only after I've conquered Vans territory and got several 30-strong loads of death gems from my Sickle's harvest the deathgems situation has became less dire for my nation.

[Corwin]

Regarding another game like this that several of you guys have suggested recently. I am afraid I am goign to take a break from Dom3 for an undetermined period of time. Since my return to Dom3 half a year ago, I've played two non-team games(won both of them ). It was great fun (especailly this game of ours - thank you all guys for your interest, efforts and commitment!) But unfortunately I don't have time anymore to play a serious competitive Dom3 game vs strong and challenging opponents (the type of game I enjoy the most) due to various RL commitments that I have at the present. So I will have to go back into Dom3 retirement, at least for the close/medium future.

It was a pleasure playing with you guys, thank you.

Good bye everyone!