MP: I Need More Power! - yet another MA newbie game - Finished (Ulm won by agreement)

[Mightypeon]

I would gladly not script any additional turns
I can aslo put up a roughly 400 Gem Nexus to rub it in I guess.

[jimbojones1971]

No objections so far. I'll PM both TC and Lucy to see what their thoughts are. We've got about another 48 hours left, if no-one objects within that window then I will pull the trigger. (Well, I will probably turn off force hosting and let it sit for another week, just to sure everyone has had a good window to be heard.)

If we go for a rematch, what parameters do people wants? I think CBM 1.92 is pretty much a must, but what era, and what map? I'm keen to try out the LA cold giants again.

[Lung Drago]

Well, I'm OK with proclaiming this over. I am preoccupied with IRL stuff lately (though it should be over in few days) and frankly I already missed even the smallest of chance I had anyway.
Considering this was a new experience for most of us, in retrospective I think we all learned something from this game. Diplomacy is key Ulm literally conquered around himself like mad rabid dog and got away with it with no rough edges While Dominions isn't a game where you are instantly screwed if your opponent is a little bigger than you, this time, it went out of control and we are hands down powerless to do anything even if we combined into super collaborative effort. Reminds me of a certain well known WW2 dictator who did just this and the other powers, scared sh*tless, did nothing against it
Not to mention I was kinda unlucky from the very start. My starting area is exclusively mountainous, practically every province is a border mountain and few swamps here and there. Thing is, it's very incompatible with my pretender design. Ariasa is a Production 3 scaled pretender with very little income scales. I usually had a cash overflow as Tien Chi, when playing this nation you often see Order scales because of their PD generating dominion but I went for something different this time. Didn't pay off Every province of mine produces sooo many resources, but no hard cash to back it up The situation got better as I conquered Atlantis, water provinces are good gold, but, I had a very slow start that crippled me in the expansion phase.

I still think a "rematch" is a good idea. I wouldn't call it exactly a rematch since it points to having some kind of teams, but I would certainly welcome another game with you guys, since I enjoyed it. We did face a lot of unfortunate drawbacks, but those are rough edges we learn from. Our next game shall be smoother, since we'll be having two admins from the very start, and we also know to avoid rolling back turns (I suspect that strange behavior when you "win" a lost battle for example, are possibly results from this) and so on. But I certainly enjoyed the role playing layer of our game and shall expand on it more, possibly :P

Upgrading to newer CBM is a no-brainer I think, the real questions we need to resolve are:

1. The player roster. We might want to send PM's to our deceased brothers and inform them of this. I just checked Heinrich's profile and he still seems to be dead, but we might even want to expand our player base and have an even more epic game :P
2. The era. I don't exactly care that much, but it does affect nation choices and such. Do we want to roll MA again? Personally, I dislike LA, not enough magic for me Naturally, I love EA the most. But as I said before, I don't care that much about this to be bothered by LA too much. Still, I vote for EA for even more magical power!
3. Map. Plains of Rusty Nails was good, but I would welcome a change anyway Game settings depend on the map choice and number of players, I think. If we go for a bigger map, it may be a good idea to have slower research or something. By skimming through the map browser at llama's, I throw in Map for Old Kings, Riverlands, Cradle of Dominion or Westeros (strange that one)

Oh, before I forget, here Ulm, have a fanfare!

[Mightypeon]

A short recap on what worked well for me:
1: I got a very decent starting position for Ulm, I went with an asleep Crone with good scales, and my early army (after failing to expand in turn 2) expanded fairly quickly. I also had Jade Zons nearby which did a lot of magic diversity.
2: I first spotted Pan, saw his total lack of expansion and thought "Oh crap, he is propably going to gently caress somebody with stealth units soon", so I signed an NAP 3 border sharing agreement with him. Afterwards, I found Abyssia and Mari, and both of those only had a one province border. Following flavahbeasts old strategy of "sign NAP3s with number of neighbours -1, defeat other neighbour, repeat", I proceeded to attack Shinuyama. Funnily enough, my Guardians killed his pretender in a "scout clash". He was the only target I didnt have an NAP 3 with, he was SHinuyama and thus propably the nation with the best lategame, and I just killed his god. Invasion of Shinu immdiatly proceeded. I found out that Ermor bordered Shinu, and did not need much to convince him of joining in. The war against Shinu was fairly straight forward, I had an economy and castle advantadge, and while a Bakemono Sorc is much better than a Mage Smith, this is less important if you send 2 mage smiths for each Bakemono Sorc. Bonus points if the Sorcs are close to their archers and die to crossbows.
After dealing with Shinu, (and bribing him to go and annoy Ctis), I went after Ctis together with Ermor. Around that time I put up the forge, and, by trading heavily with Abyssia, I pumped out a retarted amount of 1 Fire gem lightless lanterns. This gave me a sizeable research advantadge, and propably disuaded other aggressions.
Going for Ctis was not particularly hard either, the only strong fight being the cap, and I had research advantadge when that happened. I initially wanted to go for Man immidiatly after, but got distracted with building up stuff, Pangea and Shinies. I think I actually got all artifacts...
My Blitzkrieg agaisnt Man went off well enough too, although I would have prefered to launch it while Abyssia was still alive.

[jimbojones1971]

I will post a thread, for the game "INeedMUCHMorePower". Sounds like EA is the go, with CBM 1.92.

With the map, the key things we need to think about are:
* Player to province ratio (say 12-15 provinces per player max)
* Are we OK with corners, or do we want a wrap-around map?
* How much water? Do we want to have water nations? What about dead seas?

I completely agree that the rematch has to be a total reboot - alliances are reset, old grudges are set aside etc.

[Lung Drago]

I Need MUCH More Power? Oh, please.
Take it to the next level.

[Lung Drago]

For some reason the edit button dissapeared from my last post. Oh well.

Anyway, since apparently jimbojones didn't get to it, I created the new game thread and took the liberty of adding your names in the player list already (well, those that voiced their rematch opinion) and will be sending a PM to others. Naturally, you still have to post your nation pick.
We'll do EA this time and LA for a possible third game, just so that there is no timeline continuation between the games so it can boggle our minds, lol! If it's ok, of course.

And here is the link to the thread, Power Beyond Comprehension!

[Mightypeon]

I am already in a fairly high number of games, cant join another one atm.