Nations - MA, CBM 1.6, max lvl 6, NI, Assimilation - Olm/Man and Louist/Ulm win!

[Olm]

O.K.
Here comes some very very short form of AAR. How the game developed in my eyes, and my questions to it:

My Pretender is a rainbow great enchantress with F3A4E2S3 and good scales for income. I figured my nationals would give me enough nature. My idea was to roughly follow Baalz guide. Expanding rather fast and build lots of fortresses. Additionally I wanted to use my Foresters to overtax all my provinces rto 110%
It worked quite well, as I was leader in money or nearly so most of the game.
I started in Province 79. I started immediately south, to block entrance to my lands at the lake. I met the Ulm PoD and nearly killed him with Longbowmen. I agreed with Ulm on a border at the lake and secured it with fortresses. That gave me a somewhat smaller than medium realm with no access to the center. But my lands were very defensible, and I built lots of forts to strengthen that, and to collect more income.
The problem was my lack of access to the smaller nations, so I tried some diplomacy to prevent Ulm and Pan eat them up. Tried to play those other two against each other. Pan finally ended all my efforts by beating down Arco which resulted in the world war with Man and Ulm against Pan and Eriu, that decided the game. I still had access problems to Pan. I was not able to conquer Giants Rest in reasonable time. And behind it there was Rethia with its Plaguewater stream, diseasing my armies. It really took some time until I mustered enough slingers to tear down the walls. Same goes for Livenmark in my heartland, which Pan conquered with a feary trod. It was costly, but Pan held it for a long time.
I tried some tricks to get past the choke point in Giants Rest, going by sea, or by magic and it worked to some degree.
Pan started to send out scouts with banevenom charms, which I found to be very effective, diseasing lots of my many Mothers of Avalon. I sneaked too with Wardens and Lord Wardens. They were quite effective.
But in my opinion what did the trick were the Bards. They are just very, very effective at crippling an economy. And with very expansive Pans, Pan just needs its money.
So to speak of my war against Pan:
What decided it was the absence of the Gorgon and my Bards.
What could have turned the tide were more Pan Thugs/SC's. The last one (Thenetos?) was even stronger than Ares, as he had more MR (28?). He alone was not enough in the end, but 3 or 4 of them could have driven me back.
If I look at my armies now, there is not so much left. Most died from Disease. Only the Knights of Avalon are nearly immune, which makes them even greater units than they are anyway.

Now some questions from me:
What is an effective counter to Bards spreading unrest?
I would like to know some things about Eriu:
-Why did they fare so badly in the beginning? They had a similar starting position as me, with a nice backyard and a very defensible acces to its realms.
Was there an early war between Eriu and Arco?
What happened later to Eriu? Why did he suddenly beat bqack Ulm on large scale? Eriu even reached my southern border. And Ulm gave Gems to me because he thought he wouldn't stand much longer. What was Erius strategy in that successful campaign?
What ended that campaign, and why in turn couldn't Eriu put a stop to Ulms advance afterwards?

I have to say I learned a lot in this game, and I really learned to love Dom as an MP game. Thats why that Eriu comeback fascinates me. In most of the strategy games power scales almost exclusively with size. And if you have a certain size advantage you almost certainly win, because the smaller one has lesser resources every time. But in Dom this seems not to be so strict a case. The smaller one has his chance with good tactics and strategy. And thats really great.

Thanks to all and I am looking forward to the Gorgon

[buzzsaw]

I can only comment on Eriu from like turn 33 or so, since I took over for Samhain. He still looks at this thread and may comment on the earlier life.

Eriu had several things going for it at my takeover.

Great research
Good income
Good gems
NAP with Pan

A Sidhe Lord and champion every turn along with a Tuatha was being recruited every turn.. A very minimal amount of non commanders was being recruited as well.

I created two distinct undead armies based on heat and cold. These were supported by Sidhe C/L and Tuatha. More or less, the undead armies were damage sponges while the mages did their things. I was going to create a poison army but it never happened.

Going for Arcos cap, All who could buffed mistform. I used a D4 mage to cast darkness, equipped all my non-thunderstrikers mages with bows of war, set them to eagle eyes and fire closest. I had another mage cast wind guide, another cast arrow fend, and my pretender, who was a rainbow crone, to cast fire arrows. All other mages were set to eagle eyes and spam thunderstrike. Since Eriu gets 50% darkvision, this really tore Ulm up, especially the trolls..... all those poor, poor trolls. My army used about 70 mages and 150 or so troops.

After taking over Arcos cap and the surrounding lands I headed on towards 46, 47, 42 enjoying good success until dragons ridge. I had split my army off to grab more land while seiging dragons ridge when Ulm broke seige. With most of my good guys out, he attacked with a very potent army that devastated mine and even killed my pretender. I lost count of the number of master smiths he had that seemed to spam magma eruption.

While the above was going on, I sent a small force of hall of fame, heavily equipped tuatha through the south and into Ulms backyard. I found lots of nice gem sites and was raiding at will, destroying anything that they met, except for troops on forts. I tried to lure Ulm out using glamor and hiding and sniped a few troops but for the most part he stayed put. I cloud trapezed more tuatha in for a total of 10 thugs. This is when i i Had Ulm down to the mat. I think he had 11 provinces left but of course, 9 forts. I could not siege them with what I had and thats where the southern group ran out of steam. I wish I was able to give them some siege weapons, but I couldn`t at the time.

After the defeat at dragons ridge, I sneaked most of the surviving mages out and around Mans area while running a non glamoured suicide force to distract Man. Any troops that went to the West sneaked through and joined my southern army near Ulm which brought them up to 17 thugs. I`m confident at this point that the southern group could stand up to almost anything currently on the map. Over half are in the HoF and the rest were at 3 stars.

Man started doing the raiding in my area and I watched in horror as my unrest started to skyrocket. At one point Arcos was at 350 unrest.

I ended having to set just about everyone on patrol and cast watcher in many provinces, which gives a patrol bonus of 50. That helped at the end, and most of my provinces were back at zero unrest.

I hope I answered some questions you may have had and please ask if you have anymore or need more details. This was like my 3rd MP game in public, had a few private ones at work, so this was a good learning game for me as well.

I really think the success I had was due to the magic cap at level 6. I don`t think Eriu is a powerhouse at end game.


Short Version: Thunder Strike kicks butt.

[buzzsaw]

For me on the mercs, I didn`t have the income to spare, as my commanders were much too important not to recruit.

Assimilation helped some with astral when I took over Arcos, but I was also summoning spectres who gave me some astral as well. Thats when I started mind hunting.

[buzzsaw]

One other note to my AAR, after the dragons ridge battle, I never fought Ulm again on the large scale. He did have dragon ridge swelling with troops/scorpion beasts though. We more or less see-sawed some lands. I think the biggest army I encountered was in the south had 95 troops plus commanders.

I put up a large army in Arcos for when he did strike from dragons ridge.

I would love to hear his account of the battles as I didn`t know I had him that badly off. Even when I had him down to 11 provinces, I figured he was stronger then me.

[Olm]

Ah, a comment on the settings:
I don't like the dead seas. Make them less important O.K., but this way you gain absolutely nothing by conquering them, and I didn't like that so much.

The absence of independents really makes one concentrate on the strengths of the own nation. Was interesting and surely forced me to learn Man inside out.
What I couldn't understand was that noone contested me with the mercenaries. They were the only means of magical diversification. my two merc mages served me well, forging many a pendant of luck and a fire brand.
I even had a death mage and let him die before summoning at least a reverent

Magic only to level 6 i cannot judge yet, since I really never played an endgame yet.
Whats not so good is, that all my mages had nothing to do in the end.
And I sure missed GoH

The assimilation part played no role for me. I conquered Pan rather late, and it gave me nothing I didn't have.
I guess that works better with much more nations in the game, preferably really tightly packed. So that half of the nations are gone by turn 30 or so.

[Valerius]

I took a sleeping gorgon pretender with some A magic, good scales and strong dominion. I used my national troops for expansion. I didn't expect to be rushed but if someone did get that idea I figured the gorgon would shut them down. My plan was to get a good share of territories and then turtle while I researched and developed a blood economy.

However, I didn't stick with my plan. I became worried about Arco, who seemed like he might turn things around and defeat Ulm after having made peace with Eriu. The thought of risk free mind hunts, soul slay and gifts from heaven really worried me so I attacked. I also really wanted those mystics as fire, water and astral would give me access to 3 of the 4 paths I lacked.

At first I used the gorgon and she destroyed Arco's main army. During this war I decided she was OP for these settings and shouldn't be used. Man attacked while I was still fighting Arco but Arco was in bad enough shape that my decision to just hold off Man while I focused on Arco was successful. But I think before I could even take Arco's cap Ulm declared war as well.

Unfortunately I staled at this point and that prevented me from getting enough troops inside Arco's cap to just hole up there until Eriu was ready to enter the fight. I decided I would fight for Arco's cap and basically lost my entire southern army.

Ulm suffered heavy losses as well but almost all of his approx. 30 mages survived (a fair amount of my mages survived as well). I never recovered from this and after that point my forces largely consisted of maenads and harpies. They were fine for dragging things out and making my forts difficult to take but they couldn't match up with Man or Ulm's forces.

The painful thing about having my pretender out of the mix is that it meant I had no A magic. I was of course aware that under these rules the one type of mage you couldn't summon was an air mage. When I was designing my pretender I considered both the gorgon and the phoenix and later I really regretted not taking the phoenix.

Something I really underestimated was the power of evocation. In that battle for Arco my troops were able to handle Ulm's but the magma eruption spam killed me. In the current version of CBM nature has options like flood of life but here I was completely outclassed and even if I had the phoenix pretender and had done a better job in choosing my fights I don't know if I could have stood up to a nonstop barrage of lightning and magma.

Also, since we were limited to level 6 magic I took drain 2 (I also figured it would help to protect against mind hunts, etc.). This proved suprisingly painful as it meant dryads were fairly useless as researchers. I think I'm the only one who never finished researching everything to level 6.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Olm

What could have turned the tide were more Pan Thugs/SC's. The last one (Thenetos?) was even stronger than Ares, as he had more MR (28?). He alone was not enough in the end, but 3 or 4 of them could have driven me back.

My experience has been that Pan's aren't great thugs. Those prophets worked because they had so many more HP than a normal Pan. And keep in mind that you could easily cast gift of flight on one of your thugs and hit the Pan before he even finished buffing. But the Iron Will heroic ability on my second prophet was a nice bonus given how the first fell to stream of life.

Originally Posted by Olm

If I look at my armies now, there is not so much left. Most died from Disease. Only the Knights of Avalon are nearly immune, which makes them even greater units than they are anyway.

Yes, the Knights were definitely a problem. But in a strange way I was glad you had them because without GoH or the chalice or faery queens it felt kind of cheesy to just be poisoning everything. So at least you a troop option that could deal with it.

Originally Posted by Olm

I would like to know some things about Eriu:
-Why did they fare so badly in the beginning? They had a similar starting position as me, with a nice backyard and a very defensible acces to its realms.
Was there an early war between Eriu and Arco?

Eriu tends to be a slow starting nation and he also had a bad cap location in terms of surrounding provinces. And yes, the first war that broke out was between Eriu and Arco.

Originally Posted by Olm

In most of the strategy games power scales almost exclusively with size. And if you have a certain size advantage you almost certainly win, because the smaller one has lesser resources every time. But in Dom this seems not to be so strict a case. The smaller one has his chance with good tactics and strategy. And thats really great.

Well, size is important in that it will translate into more gold (more mages = better research) and gems and so all things being equal the smaller nation will fall behind - however a small nation can definitely have a chance. If the larger nation has been exhausted by other wars or if the smaller nation has chosen a build that emphasizes strong research they can apply that advantage the larger nation can leverage their superior resources. And of course tactics and strategy (including diplomacy) matter hugely. Being the front runner can really work against you if it just means you get dogpiled. Better IMO to be in 2nd-3rd place and then make a move when you think you can avoid it backfiring on you.

Originally Posted by Olm

The assimilation part played no role for me. I conquered Pan rather late, and it gave me nothing I didn't have.
I guess that works better with much more nations in the game, preferably really tightly packed. So that half of the nations are gone by turn 30 or so.

I agree that it wasn't a big factor and that it would work better in a game with more players. I think everyone would have liked Arco's cap but that was the only one that really turned over for most of the game.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

Going for Arcos cap, All who could buffed mistform. I used a D4 mage to cast darkness, equipped all my non-thunderstrikers mages with bows of war, set them to eagle eyes and fire closest. I had another mage cast wind guide, another cast arrow fend, and my pretender, who was a rainbow crone, to cast fire arrows. All other mages were set to eagle eyes and spam thunderstrike. Since Eriu gets 50% darkvision, this really tore Ulm up, especially the trolls..... all those poor, poor trolls. My army used about 70 mages and 150 or so troops.

After taking over Arcos cap and the surrounding lands I headed on towards 46, 47, 42 enjoying good success until dragons ridge. I had split my army off to grab more land while seiging dragons ridge when Ulm broke seige. With most of my good guys out, he attacked with a very potent army that devastated mine and even killed my pretender. I lost count of the number of master smiths he had that seemed to spam magma eruption.

Those types of battle were to me the highlight of the game. Lots of mages, lots of troops.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

I found lots of nice gem sites and was raiding at will, destroying anything that they met, except for
troops on forts. I tried to lure Ulm out using glamor and hiding and sniped a few troops but for the most part he stayed put.

I cloud trapezed more tuatha in for a total of 10 thugs. This is when i i Had Ulm down to the mat. I think he had 11 provinces left but of course, 9 forts. I could not siege them with what I had and thats where the southern group ran out of steam. I wish I was able to give them some siege weapons, but I couldn`t at the time.

This is actually a very typical pattern for TNN/Eriu - you grab a huge number of provinces with raiding but can't take the forts and gradually the defender starts taking back his provinces. Ideally you want to back up the raiding with an army coming in to take control of the forts and you did just that but when Ulm stopped that army you were left with the raiders. IMO raiding is a nice supplement (and very fun to do ) but you need an army to back it up and really make gains.

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

Man started doing the raiding in my area and I watched in horror as my unrest started to skyrocket. At one point Arcos was at 350 unrest.

I ended having to set just about everyone on patrol and cast watcher in many provinces, which gives a patrol bonus of 50.

That helped at the end, and most of my provinces were back at zero unrest.

The bards certainly did a good job. Heavy patrolling is the best bet, especially if you start it before unrest has gotten too high. But the tricky thing is, at least in my teritory, he also had forces of wardens so I needed something tough patrolling to deal with them when they were uncovered (for instance if I used harpies they might discover the hidden units but they wouldn't beat the sacreds).

Originally Posted by buzzsaw

I really think the success I had was due to the magic cap at level 6. I don`t think Eriu is a powerhouse at end game.

I would definitely agree with that. They are at their best in the midgame and since this game only went up to the midgame it was a good fit for them. The same could be said for Man, which while less thug focused and more troop focused, shares the same paths.

[Samhain]

I'll try to recap Eriu's early position as best as I can. But, due as the time crunch that forced me out of the game was a creeping condition, I took scant notes.

Here was my design for Cailleach.

Physical: Crone
Awakening: Dormant
Magic: F4W4E4S4D4N4
Dominion: 4
Scales: S2C1L3M1

My strategy was to have a healthy enough gold income to build plenty of forts and push out a Tuatha and loads of Sidhe Lords every turn. Cailleach's purpose was to site search early then later summon some good mid game undead mucle with Hidden in Sand and Hidden in Snow. Spectres, mainly to guard against Mind Hunt, was to be my primary use of Death gems. Later, she would forge key gear for my top thugs.

The bless went far short of the classic Eriu/Tir Na N'Og bless of E9N4+. But, with no indie mages I felt the magic diversity was going to serve me better in the long run than the uber raider bless.

Expansion went well save for getting penned in by mountains and Arcosphale's expansion to his east. I envisioned the 28 cap nation to expand to the southwest after securing its adjacent provinces. Of course, ghoul31 went right into me.

When he built a fort in 40, I felt war was better sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, I completely underestimated the number of chariots he had. My Sidhe Lords couldn't lay down the False Fetters fast enough. He drove me back nearly to my own cap before Ulm weighed in on the other side and I was able to regain some territory before calling for a NAP to turn 36.

Fortunately, I lost no, or perhaps almost no, commanders. Still, I needed some peace to get things back on track. I was too busy at that point for war anyway. I turned the game over to Buzzsaw before things got interesting again.

[Valerius]

Ok, time for the final showdown. My gorgon is breaking the siege of 53 this turn. I'll force host when I see your turn is in.

[Olm]

Lets Go.