MP: GotM: Gardens of the Moon, Game Over: WL wins.

[Dimaz]

I can answer for myself - never played UW nation before and this game is as good as others to try them. Also, Ermor still has allies so my war with Mictlan is indirectly against Ermor. Other than that, I agree with your analysis.

[Hoplosternum]

I hope you are all sitting comfortably. Then I'll begin....

Once upon a time, after the usual early knock outs and hoovering up of the high strength Indies, the Gardens of the Moon game was quite close - having three large powers. In order of size, but not necessarily power - Ermor, Jotun and Pythium. And several medium sized powers - Shin, Ulm and TC. The victor of the UW war - R'leyh. And some small crappy island powers - Vanheim, Marignon and Mictlan And the sad remains of Arco and Caelum.

Then war began between the big three. Jotun and Pythium against the already huge hoards of Ermorian undead. It looked like an even fight or one that favoured Jotun and Pythium. And there did not seem much doubt that Jotun (serious blood power with a big empire and income so potentially a huge blood income) and Pythium (good end game) were the ones the rest of us feared most at that point.

So as the rest of us wound down our own wars we all planned to join in. I am afraid a very predictable pair of gankings were plotted. The love on this board for all against all games, or so many VPs it hardly matters, means such gankings are common

So I joined Ermor (and the besieged in his capital Caelum) against what looked like the more dangerous faction. We only needed to wound Jotun before we could turn on Ermor. But we did need to knock him down to size before that blood income overwhelmed us. R'lyeh promised to join in a few turns later - and after various delays - did. And Ulm and Shin a few turns after that (once they had digested TC). Now I don't want to give away too many secrets but it's just possible the plan was to then turn on Ermor, after Jotun and Pythium were reduced

But it all went wrong due to two factors. One was Jotun's type of defense and the other was the change of ownership of R'leyh.

Jotun did not try and defend all his empire. He gave up many provinces without a fight which meant that although he got smaller he took little damage to his skrattis or other forces. So no significant reduction in mages, troops, expenditure of blood slaves or forts. Neither I nor R'leyh could do any permanent harm to him. In his inner core he had Gift of Health backing a large hoard of Vampires. It proved difficult for myself or R'lyeh to do any permanent harm to his forces while we lost a lot of our own. It was only when Shin, Ulm and Ermor all joined that he started to crack (Pythium was slowly crushed by Ermor with I think Shin grabbing his last few territories).

Worse was to come as Jotun started putting up obnoxious globals. First was Illwinter. We could all have lived with that But it was followed by Burden of Time. Then Arcane Nexus. Then Astral Corruption. So we had Jotun - getting more powerful each turn and making himself so obnoxious he had to be taken down.

Now had he been a friendly talkative diplomat he may have talked us all round in to switching sides while he still had a decent stab of winning late on. His pretender was E/N so was not one of the obnoxious global casters who therefore may have been deemed expendable by him in return for peace. But he made it clear to me (at least) that he was not interested in diplomacy. NAPs and a bit of trading that was all he was prepared to do. It seemed to be a position driven by philosophy rather than game situation

During the war R'leyh quit after losing a large army and force of mages to a Jotun counterattack. The two may be unrelated of course We will never know.... Still Dimaz stepped in after a short pause. Now there was a clear long shot win strategy for R'lyeh. He needs 9 capitals. He has two and can fairly easily take and hold the three Island powers capitals as all the island nations are weak and very vulnerable to him. That is 5. He then just needs to seize four more. Not impossible with his teleportation / gateway abilities and so many capitals being on or close to the coast. And the situation of everyone fighting the by then dominant power's enemy rather than Ermor must have seemed stupid to him. And those obnoxious spells are less bad for R'lyeh. He can laugh at BoT. And Arcane nexus - even if he got no cut - would simply give gems to a power fighting his enemies. So I can see why Dimaz has played like he has. And he has been taking on Ermor pretty much singlehandedly.

But for the rest of us it slowed down the assault on Jotun just at the time his obnoxious globals were starting to bite. Further pushing back the time any switch to opposing Ermor could take place and forcing us all closer to Ermor. And to take up the slack the departing R'lyeh forces left, Ermor stepped in. And so he gained some more territories there too.

So the game has drifted to an Ermor win. The most likely outcome for some time. And I don't think anyone could say Wraith has not deserved it. He's fought well (and often) and done the diplomatic spade work.

Of course if people want to carry on I am happy too. It is difficult to muster much enthusiasm now in my one sided fight with R'lyeh but having held on in such a hopeless position, fighting hopeless wars, for so long, I am not going to quit here. But considering Ermor now owns the Nexus backed by quite a few gems Even a final crusade - for those of you who remember or care for such plans - now seems rather futile....

[PriestyMan]

All i want to know is how much *** kissing WL had to do to make the original Ryleh player build dozens of hammers and send all the items away. its become an IRC meme about games with WL. Me and Maer both looked at subbing and were shocked at what we saw. Not only was ermor clearly running away with the game,but somehow ryleh had no items.

i can't verify that he was sending things to Ermor, but i cant think of anyone else they would have gone too. and i doubt he made a dozen hammers and no other items

btw i dont mean to be offensive to WL, i'm just curious

[Dimaz]

In fact he clearly *received* at least 3 rune smashers (probably from Ermor). Just to make your remark more comlete, I don't argue that the situation with hammers and gems was pretty interesting.

[Hoplosternum]

Well R'lyeh had just lost a large force within Jotun's lands. In that battle he lost a lot of commanders. It is possible that many were equipped thugs and mages and that is where most of his items went.

I can confirm that no items were sent to his other ally at the time - Mictlan

Shin would surely be a more likely provider of Rune Smashers as he can build them from his main mage???

[PriestyMan]

executor was on IRC at the time and was just as suprised as the rest of us. he at least didnt mention that

[WraithLord]

Wow. So much went on when I was out partying.
It's late night here so I'll try to briefly address some of the comments made.

Calahan & Dimaz, I had similar thoughts but this was born of complex and somewhat rare (at least for me) circumstances. I think Hoplosternum has articulated this well though there probably is more to the story.

PriestyMan, I don't recall R'lyeh sending me anything, let alone hammers and if he had sent something he got something of similar value in return. I've no idea why he had no items, maybe he had no E forgers, maybe he had a strange strat. Sorry but I wasn't the recipient of or in any way involved in that
Certainly not kissing them squiggly monsters behinds
Oh, and Dimaz, rune smashers weren't my dpt until recently so he can't have gotten them from me.

I fought hard most of the game. Not as much as Exec but neither have I been idle on the battlefield. I have spent time and effort to engage in diplomacy which (as it turns out) is a part of the game I really like and having played so many RANDs lately forgot how fun it can be.

I will of course abide by whatever the fellow players prefer. Cont. the game or cede it. I'm good with both, though I must say that I tend to agree with Calahan, Dimaz and Hoplo.

[WraithLord]

ok. I checked my game logs (good thing I keep them ). I did make one deal with R'lyeh on turn 46. He has sent me 60N in return for 12 bags of wine.

[PriestyMan]

well that is funny. dozens of hammers but no items. he could forge his own hammers too iirc, so its not like he bought them from someone

[LoloMo]

I vote to give Ermor the win.

Jotun gave ermor the win by putting up BoT. We had to destroy Jotun when he did that. Of course we planned to fight ermor after that, but the long war against Jotun and his BoT and AC sapped whatever resources we had left to fight Ermor with.

Of course if we aren't agreed to a win yet, I will continue on fighting!