random settings won by AI (Meglobob)

[Saarud]

Congrats to AI and Meglobob for that victory.

This was an immensly fun game for the TienChi empire. While I lost more and more ground to Ermor and R'lyeh with their free spawning troops I did try to hurt them. My biggest mistake in this game was that I forgot that it was a research victory game when I made my pretender, so I went with sloth 1... that was enough to set my research way back and I knew I never would be able to win the game.

I got a big empire from start since ther was no independant troops and I took advantage of that by hiring leaders in every new province and quickly spread to take more provinces with just one leader. I also tried to get underwater as quickly as possible but once there I realized that a battle with R'lyeh was quite futile and I would stand no chance. So I made peace with them. All my other neighbours including ermor I had already made NAPs with 3 turns warning (although I'm not sure Ulm ever answered my NAP offering to them) so I was locked in and started to build a huge army of Barbarian Horsemen and Ancestor Vessels (that was S9W9 blessed). They proved themselves when my war with Ermor started... we both sent messeges that we would leave the NAP at the same time. I had already been talking to Agartha and agreed on the attack against Ermor... I would initiate the attack and draw his troops to my front and the Maglobob would strike Ermor north of me. I had some mighty battles with Ermor and the first 4-5 turns I crushed many undeads but then Tibbs changed his tactics and avoided big battles and instead made small raids to destroy my temples. I started to lose faith in my provinces bordering Ermor which decreased my income quite some and the attrition warfare Ermor was making I had to replace my losses which become increasingly hard. I tried to go on the offensive but Ermor had armies of over 1000 undeads hiding behind the castles in every province bordering my empire. To break through the walls I would have to deprive many provinces of their defence along our border which would have spelled doom for me.

To this mess R'lyeh started to invade me. He had BIG problems with my PD and I slaughtered many of those slimy free spawned creatures in each and every attack but they continued coming turn after turn and finally ha broke through. At the end of the game Ermor and R'lyeh had broke my forces and I was almost helpless and since my ally Meglobob had gone AI I would probably have faced some sporadic attacks from the Agarthans. The sum of it all... I was toast. Thanks to AI for ending the game with a research victory... I would not had lasted for many more turns.

Anyhow... I want to thanks all my opponents especially Tibbs and Folket for all the great battles I had with you.

Signing out
Daniel

[Teraswaerto]

Congratulations from me also, Meglobob.

A recap of the action:

When the game started I was in fairly bad position, right next to Pangaea. He immediately messaged me with "let's ally or I will attack you", or something like that. I didn't want to fight him right away, so I instigated a war between him and C'tis, and then attacked him. It worked great.

Next was Abysia. C'tis and I had decided to attack him next long before we learned that he was at war with anyone else, and saw no reason to change our plans.

Similarly, we decided to attack Agartha next before the war against Abysia was over. It might've looked like we just ganged up on the weakest but it was more about geography, and bad luck on Abysia's and Agartha's part. I did contemplate attacking C'tis, but they had been a good ally, and I was worried Agartha would grow too strong if left alone.

I had around 80 blood slaves coming in every turn towards the end. I felt pretty confident that with blood magic and high level fire Evocations I could handle any threat, although R'lyeh had me somewhat worried.

Of course, it was not to be.

[tibbs]

I'll give a small recap of Ermor as well.

We started in a good position next to the edge of the map. We quickly ran into Tien-chi and Kalisia quickly. A few turns later, Argatha contacted us for a joint assault on Kalisia's territories. Knowing that all will turn against the undead eventually, we agreed and attacked. After taking their land Argatha suggested we jointly attack Tien-Chi. We agreed and on the first turn of the attack, Argatha switched to Tien-Chi's side and attacked us.

After testing the waters against Tien-Chi and being repelled by mass preachers and untouchable Ancestor Vessels the undead army sat in it's castles biding it's time until better magics were researched. We made an alliance with Ryleh to attack Tien-Chi and they made some progress despite the harsh provincial defense Tien-Chi had. After we learned darkness, rigor mortis and foul vapors we renewed our attack but we only got a few attacks in before Argatha claimed victory.

The End

[Folket]

I started at a really good position in the south sea. Most of my provinces were onland (4 out of 5), which hampered my expansion for two turns.

In the west I early got a good foothold on land ut tot he west Then Chi had mercinaries walking in my ocean. This was unacceptable and I attacked without warning. After two turns of fighting Then Chi surrendered and messaged me that I could have the ocean and the south-eastern island.

At that time Man attacked me on my western provinces and destroyed a temple of mine. This was intorable and as my income was still fine I raise massive armies and started to battle Man back. At first Man got some minor victories but as the bulk of my army arrived Man was turned to dust. At this time my armies first started to starve. While haveing no wineskins I decieded it was better to reroute some of my armies through Abysia. The gained provinces and destroyed temples was just a bonus. I had planed to take more provinces from Abysia but when Man was finaly defeated Abysia was no more.

At this point I knew that I had a good position. My intellegence told me that C'tis was regrouping thier armies north, possibly to wage war against Mictlan or Agartha. Mictlan would probably not fight alone against me exposing thier throat to the lizards. Most likly C'tis and Mictlan would attack Agartha together. Ulm was allready fighting Agartha and they had a long exposed coast against me so they would probably not want to break our NAP. Both Ermor and Then Chi had agreed not to enter the ocean.

Next I looked at my opponents. LA is probably the worst nation possible in a research game. They are not likly to afford enough mages. Ulm and Mictlan are blood nations. Blood magic is very wizzard intensive and it also lowers the income. Ulm, C'tis and Mictlan had all fought wars which should have cost them plenty. So I considered all my friends exept Then Chi and Agartha.

Since I only bordered Then Chi my choice was clear. When I first started to fight Then Chi I noticed that he had drain scales. This probably put him out of the running for victory. Next I hear reports of Agartha having lvl in many magic paths. Now I started to puit my resources into research. Increasing my potential with 60-100 rp a turn. At the same time I continued to send swarm after swarm against the defences of Then Chi.

The last turns was real killers, knowing that Agartha could win at any time and just hoping that I would make it to the finish line first.