Re: Unsanity... surely this is modness!
Damn, it's all over. Never mind...
My biggest mistake in the game was to forget, around turn 30 or so, that I needed to be concentrating on capturing VPs instead of being ready for late game fun.
AAR...
So, early on I was, well, early game BL. 'Nuff said. No SC Pretender, not great starting troops, and no soft provinces around me. Just to add fun, I was starting in a big swathe of wastelands so my early game income growth was guaranteed to be pitiful and my cap was never going to have huge resources... just what I needed really. Still, I took a province north of my capital on turn 4. On turn 5 I found my first site, the Cathedral of the Tablet. Shortly after, I had an extra H3 priest (holy slab - enslave mind and small area holy fire, as well as huge hits and good armour) and a constant supply of the almost reprehensibly useful mystics (90g, H1?1, where ? can be any path - need I say more?). To help more, I got in a successful bid for everyone's favourite mercenary longbowmen. Suddenly, I could kick off a better rate of expansion and had a dirt-cheap source of researchers!
I soon had a castle building next to my capital (I know... but it was better than putting a fortified city in wastelands), and then I found that R'lyeh wer getting on the land early to my north and Cealum were to my east. R'lyeh had enough illithids to walk all over my humble monkey forces and small number of Tiger Riders, and Caelum could eat me alive if they got Evo 5, so I was very gled when both asked for a NAP-3. I set to work getting armies south before Caelum could encapsulate me, and just managed to take critical mountain passes before they did. By now, my mystics and yogis were powering up my research and by turn 14 I could finally afford the occasional Rishi, even. I was recruiting sacred units almost exclusively, because with my shabby income I couldn't afford to be making big upkeep payments. I had taken several minor blesses on my Pretender, meaning the various sacreds Holy War gave me via sites were pretty darn good when blessed. Expansion was therefore not too much of a problem. Site searching was easy when I started it - my Pretender bumped round a few provinces to get a starting income in various gem types, and he could make booster items to let various ?1 mystics search all the gem types that national mages couldn't.
By this point things were looking safe, so I started clamming. Arco, when I found them, didn't want a war with me - which was nice. I did look pretty good on the graphs, and while I was highly vulnerable from the seas Atlantis and R'lyeh were having a very expensive stalemate from what I could see. At this point I settled in for the long haul, sent B1 mystics blood hunting and did some serious work in turning into MA Lanka. I even had the wonderful Shadow Priests with auto-darkness to help me if I needed them (definitely one of the power sites in Endo's Site Mod).
By turn 50 I was in a place where I could start wishing once per turn, and if the game had been a normal one I think I'd have been okay. Unfortunately, I'd taken my eye off the ball as far as VP sites went. I had a small stock of Dakini going, and was working on getting to Rudras when Caelum decided to end their NAP with me. That was a shock to my system that reminded me what the point of the game was. I spammed out items, got all my thug/SC chassis to labs, and started to kit them up with an eye to grabbing VPs before Caelum could invade me with horrible numbers of Seraphs. I was a little too late, and was only able to attack VP provs the turn after Caelum got their 5.
I only got 4, as the graphs will show. I lost an attack on Holystone Desert (3 shadow priests =/= 3 Darknesses, and when the first one died from a bad case of Ark, the factor that let me kill off enemy troops with near-impunity disappeared), a couple of other provinces (Restore Natural Order was almost completely ineffective as a mass-damage vs. undead spell, even with pen boosters), and both attacks on the underwater provinces were ineffective. In the case of province 97, I completely underestimated what Mytheology had done to Kraken and lost badly. In the case of province 64, which Caelum had already taken, the remote attack spell I sent in (Sea Dragon Attack) was bugged and the units that actually went in never stood a chance. That was a real shame, as the remote attack occurred before that Kelp Castle appeared and I might have been able to at least render the province independent.
I was definitely outplayed, though, and I'm happy to congratulate Caelum on a well-earned victory.
It's been a very enjoyable game for me, and I'm seriously considering starting another similar one. Does anyone have feedback on what parts of the mods were good/bad/meh, and ideas for improvements?
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I completely missed that weak VP province - I think that's part of the problem of taking over complex late games, it's very easy to miss things. I think I'd got SCs onto most of the others.
Linear Mode
