Turn 5: First contact
I actually had an unexpected event this turn!
Six beautiful nature gems! Keep them coming RNG! I need at least 30 nature gems to empower a druid. Otherwise I cant sitesearch remotely or forge boosters to get higher in the nature game.
Three battles happen.
My Paint Fu is weak but all the battles were victorious.
Our Fir Bolg finally start taking casualties though. The dying people were mainly dumbasses though as half of them were people who ran in to melee rather that threw their javelins like I told them to.
Javelin throwers often have these problems. Those in the squad closest to the enemy think they are too close to use their ranged weapons so they run in and die due to breaking squad coherency. My Fir Bolgs have defence 15 base with their shields. It does not help much because defence gets reduced by 2 for every previous attack a unit have gotten against itself. And with all the barbarians closing up for a hit they did not stand a chance. Had they stayed in formation the enemies attacks would have been spread around and their defence not been diluted as much.
In the northern theatre we finally encounters R'lyeh. I send him a message about drawing up boarders. The Isle of Balor is MINE! No mater what those huffy bankers might think! I tell R'lyeh that he can have the peninsula to the north in exchange. It is actually more in the zone-of-control of the guy starting to the north-east of me so R'lyeh landing there would be more of a threat to him and giving R'lyeh 3 provinces makes me look like a friendly and reasonable neighbor. It looks like R'lyeh have already made a failed attempt to land there based on the fact that he lost troops this turn and my scouting reports show that only 5 heavy infantry stands guard over Ermor.
Troops are marching north, but to not lose any speed by bringing a new expansion party to the eastern front. I instead recruit a mercenary party capable of beating weak indies on their own. Dante's Stingers.
I did not get the Archers in White despite my decent bid. Dang it. This means I have to combine two expansion parties to take care of the barbarians to the south of my capitol.
Oh well. The tiny expansion party killed militia just fine, but they might have had trouble with the barbarians in the province to the south of them if they were to attack alone. Ten Giants might be killy enough that they'll get through this without casualties.
Recruitment is cut back on in the capitol to account for the merc bid. I buy only what is absolutely necessary. I mean I'm not made of money. Not yet anyway...... Lets fix that.
You remember this picture from a bit above?
Like mushrooms, from the grounds sprouts militia!
This is all part of my clever plan to convince R'lyeh that I am an AI player. I often do things that must seem strange and witch only he can see due to his ocean provinces bordering just about everything.
What else hey are good for.... Well I think you can guess, good reader.
Oh yea! Some interesting things have also happened in the graphs since the game began.
I actually have a presence on the research graph now. The graphs reveal that Caelum seem to be using the famous Eagle King thug expansion strategy. Were in the player stay in his capitol for several turns while the research pretender with an earth bless (probably a great Enchantress from the female name) research the mistform and shockwave that the eagle kings need to expand on their own. Or maybe just air shield and mirror image if you feel like gamble. A solid strategy. If rather bold and risky.
Pangaea had his pretender research the first turn and then used it to expand. This combined with its nature/death titles indicates that it is obviously a Carron Dragon. A very powerful Pangaea only pretender with death and nature that got built in vine shield in CBM. A predictable build for Pangaea. But a solid choice none the less.
Arco seem to have built two philosophers. Or two Oreads. Though the later is unlikely this early due to cost. This means he is probably doing the sloth build thing. Good to know.
Several other players were complaining in their updates that Fomoria was looking scary and even though its early, this graph might explain it. My expansion curve almost look exponential! R'lyeh had a head start, but I am finally ahead of him as I should. Only Giants may be biggest! Caelum has only taken one province and then dedicated all its money towards research. Marvernis expansion stall and remain unimpressive. Pangaeas expansion stalled last turn. His pretender is not dead though so maybe it was just driven of by unexpectedly tough indies? Helheim has finally started to expand and Abysias line is hidden by mine. He uses stealth expansion to prevent people from realising how big he is!
From the income graph I can tell that everyone except Marverni probably overtaxed their capitol on turn 1. R'lyeh never stopped overtaxing it! Witch is why his income is almost on par with mine despite my scales.
Most graphs are pointing upwards due to new territories but Helheim's took a dive in the other direction and seem to have plummeted all the way down to 0 on turn 3! How this is possible is a mystery so I got in touch with him during turn 5 on IRC.
I dont have the chat logs because of mibbit, but this is what I remember.
Quote:
: Yea I was hit by the plague on turn 2 and my patrollers failed so now my capitol have more than 100 points of unrest to patrol down.
: Also I have a Kraken of my cost killing my dominion 
: But I fight on!
: Did you by any chance start on the “Peninsula of Bad Starts”?
: Wait? Its cursed?
: Why dont people tell me these things!
(I knew he started on the peninsula due to knowing were the Kraken went, but its best to not reveal these things in order to not harm my prophesy)
: Oh yea, everyone who starts on that peninsula, weather in SP or MP, fill be doomed to failure!
: Misfortune after misfortune!
|
More banter followed and he learned my starting position. But so terrified was Helheims player that he must have used mindbleach to remove the memory of this prophesy and our conversation from his mind. But the foretold misfortune came true anyway.
Anyway, I'm not sure if its good or bad that he did not start near me because although a weakened player like that just begs to be rushed, Fomoria have a hard time dealing with glamour cavalry in the early game. Maybe he will become someone else's target. Though starting on the peninsula he will only have two neighbors plus R'lyeh. That means he is hard to gang up on but his neighbors also knows that he have to attack one of them in order to expand. That makes for wary diplomacy.
One of these days I must make a post about the metagame. This post is as good as any. It is interesting to see that none of the players in this game picked any of the true EA powernations like Lanka, Hinnom, Mictlan or Niefelheim. Or Sauromatica. Instead we have many of the weakest EA nations like Caelum, Pan and Marverni. (Arco is a special case) Granted marverni gets stronger over time and with research, but...
In Vanilla, both Fomoria and R'lyeh would probably count among the weak nations as well. After all, Fomoria could not clam, make bloodstones or fetishes or hammers. Nor could it really afford to put these abilities on its pretender as fomoria could not afford to not have an imprisoned pretender if you want a bless, due to lacking the temperature preferences of the other giant nations. And you know what? Now, no one can forge those things, making the playingfield much fairer. Fomoria is still highly cap centric, but good scales can mitigate that to an extent due to decent non-cap troops.
The rest of the changes to Fomoria are relatively minor. Cheaper Morrigans, Fir Bolgs and fomorian giants, and weaker kings, are the main ones. Further changes were not made to the nation itself, but every heavy armor nation got reduced defence and encumbrance penalties on their armor. Making heavy infantry more viable. Several items have also been made better so that they are actually worth using, witch change Fomorias game a good deal.
The changes to R'lyeh are much larger. The fact that all the aboleths now are amphibious were a necessary no-brainer of a change. But thats only half of their increased power! The other half relies on the fact that R'lyeh is currently the only nation capable of making gemgens! (Llamabeast! I, what is this I dont even!!!) Ehh, I mean troop gens. R'lyehs 50g H2 Priests domsummons(2?) aboleth spawns and domsummon20s his sacred cap only 60g mindblasters. This means that every 50g priest he recruits from any fort will produce 10 (5?) spawn chaff and ½ giboleths each turn in dom 10 for the rest of the game. Or half of that in dom 5 witch is the highest they can reach by preaching. If you imagine him recruiting 3-4 of those each turn you can see the long term problem. He'll eventually run out of money due to upkeep but sacred troops and commanders never desert so I dont know how much that maters.
Jotwebe, the player of R'lyeh does not seem completely unaware of these things.
Anyway, lets talk about the rest of the opposition. I did not know most of the people in this game at all when I signed up. Some I has seen on the forum and some I knew by reputation, but I have never played a game with any of them in the past.
Immaculate is probably the one I have had the most contact with. I have been coaching him a bit in another game and from those conversations I would probably say that he is an intermediate player that learns quickly. He will be real dangerous one day, but for my sake, that day is hopefully not sometime during this game.
Warhammer and Excist: They exist. I have seen them around the forum on occasion but I have not had any diplomatic contact with them whatsoever. Or at least I have not gotten any answer on my diplomatic feelers to Warhammer. (Oh wait I did! Eventually.) Both seem very busy with real life stuff.
Bluemage and Roland Jones are Goons. I know next to nothing about them but I will assume from their goon reputation that they are axecrazy madmen that will attack their neighbors on sight and who do not believe in things like peace or NAPs. So far Bluemage have lived up to his borrowed reputation but Roland Jones have been disappointingly calm. Possibly due to his bad start. I have talked fairly much with both of them over the course of the game. Mainly because you can always find them on IRC.
LDiCesare is the most veteran member of this game. Probably the one I'm the most worried about before starting the game. Granted he plays Pangaea and thats a terrible nation. But they can get really annoying when played by a good player due to them having stealth troops out of every castle. And being unable to actually lose those castles due to them stacking the walls full of madwomen till they reach the sky.
Re: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 8-9)
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