Mana Burn: Accelerated EA [ LoloMo WINS!!! ]

[lch]

Kydorias said:

Frankly I don't understand at all what Kissblade was trying to accomplish with Yomi. His tactics and strategy were unfathomable to say the least. I wasn't sure what would happen with Yomi, and I deemed it necessary to take down as much as Yomi as possible in case Yomi went AI and thus unpredictable.

WTF, KB stopped Dom3 for WoW? sucker... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

[Amhazair]

lch said:WTF, KB stopped Dom3 for WoW? sucker... [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img]

I stopped WoW for Dom3... seems like the much smarter course to me.

[Ironhawk]

Sensori said:
But as for the game itself, for me it ended up being horribly anticlimatic and a good reminder for me why substituting isn't such a hot idea. All I had time to do was gear up for war... And then it was over.

Tsk tsk, sensori!

I warned you that you needed to get into a war quickly because the game was coming to an end. Once those big nations took thier third VPs I knew it was only a matter of turns.

But in general, I tend to disagree. I think that in subbing you are actually more likely to have a fast paced game because other nations are usually preparing to attack any player that is staling. You seemed to luck out in that everyone who was planning to attack you instead moved on to other targets in points beyond your nation.

[Ironhawk]

The general results of Astral Corruption was that it would attack any mage who was forging or casting a ritual spell with what seemed about a 20-30% chance. You would always get your spell or item off (i believe?) but sometimes the mage would be attacked.

As for my experience with AC personally: it was a big problem for me. It hit right at the end of the CTis war and prevented me from summoning, which was the only way I had of producing elite troops! Unsurprisingly that war ran reallly reallllllly long as a result. After that I pretty much just had to put a hold on summoning and concentrated on battlefield-only spell strategies which did not rely on month rituals.

Later tho, I learned from Sensori that Astral mages have a fool-proof loop hole in Astral Corruption. They can just cast Returning at the start of the horror attack and escape immediately. After I learned this, all my magical skills instantly came back online without any real problems (except needing to move mages out of my cap after Returning, now and then). This is in fact the real reason I stopped the 2nd attempt to Dispel AC that I started I probably could have dispelled it as I had a large cache of pearls and recieved 60 or so more from other nations. But with my loophole in place, AC was hurting all other nations more than my own!

[edit]
P.S.
I didnt notice anything about these horror seeds you mention? All I saw was horror attacks on mages doing rituals/forging. Additionally, I noticed no effects from Illwinter - but I think I was too far away for your dominion to effect me.

[LoloMo]

AC really forced me to change my style after the biggest horror I have ever seen ate up my super equipped mage casting a 300 gem Gift of Health. I had converted all my other gems to put into that casting. I later found out that horror attacks are more likely to occur the more gems you spend on a single spell =( I think the likelihood of being attacked is more like 50% for spells costing 20 gems or more and the horrors are bigger. I decided to go blood hunting too after that. Then I experimented and found that leech works quite well, and 2 castings of leech even gave me a pretty good chance of killing even the bigger horrors. So I made a lot of thistles and other small magic items. On the other hand though, everybody else got hit with AC too, so it hampered everybody too. Mictlan was the only nation to really benefit from AC I think, and at that time, he was busy at war already. All in all I lost about 8 350 gold Pans, and maybe 12 independent mages.

The global unrest is pretty annoying too, I had like 80-90% tax rates most provinces. That and the cooling shift probably cost me on the order of 500+ gold per turn.

I didn't notice the horror seeds either but some attacks that I thought were because of AC may have been from horror seed instead. I had a few random curses too on my troops, don't know if its related.

And Ironhawk, I'm sure Tree Hugger can have a place as Divine Beckoner of the Forest ;-)

[Sensori]

Ironhawk said:
Tsk tsk, sensori!

I warned you that you needed to get into a war quickly because the game was coming to an end. Once those big nations took thier third VPs I knew it was only a matter of turns.

Yeah, that's why I was actually having my eyes on Agartha rather than Sauromatia after Kydorias said that he'd wanna continue the game for a bit longer so he wasn't aiming to get a fourth VP just yet. ;p Just that considering that the winner was the northern-est guy, there was very little you could do to stop that.

And even if I had helped you out, I still would've managed to fight for, what, a turn? Possibly not even that since I had that NAP with Pasha which he suggested we'd make.

You seemed to luck out in that everyone who was planning to attack you instead moved on to other targets in points beyond your nation.

Haha, well... They were really intending to attack Yomi (as I found out like a turn after I had taken over 'em, not exactly the most fun thing to find out the hard way as I had to go in blind), but Pasha figured it'd be nicer of him to leave me alone for now since I was subbing someone who hadn't told me ANYTHING about the situation in the game. Well... AFTER I had made my displeasure known and had told him that I'd do everything in my power to help Niefelheim survive if he'd continue the attack. I had lots and lots of unique items lying around, and still had them at the end of the game, and would've sent them to Niefelheim quick-like if he had continued attacking me cuz I would've died in record time. Don't know how much of a difference they could've made in the wars Niefelheim was having, but at least I had enough stuff to equip an SC or two.

So Pasha ended up attacking you because he had made up his mind that he had to attack *someone*, and since he didn't wanna attack me anymore and Kailasa was his ally... ;p

[Kydorias]

I didn't really notice Illwinter much except for one Giant attack, but they don't stick around so its easy for a single commander to move in and grab the province back. More of an annoyance really. Although the cold scales definitely hurt my 2-Heat loving populace.

Looming Hell (is that the right name?) was certainly more effective as I penetrated the Neifelheim dominion. Luckily I had stocked up with lots of Bells of Cleansing during my wars with Lanka and Yomi, so all my weaker commanders and lots of my semi-tough ones had Bells that would banish the attacking Devils. Even still I lost a couple commanders while Preaching the Neifelheim dominion away.

Astral Corruption certainly had a big effect on my strategy. I had to blow a bunch of Astral pearls in order to enable Astral ability on my powerful summoning/forging mages. This was of course to enable them to cast Ritual of Returning. So in effect my powerful summoners/forgers were taken out of play half the time while they traveled back to a non-capitol laboratory so the Returning would work next time they summoned/forged.

The game was certainly fun, I was definitely looking forward to hitting Agartha hard I had several powerful Mages (including three Air Queens and several Devalas) geared up with Astral Travel and Air Trapezes with lots of elite support troops available to enter the Astral gateways.

If I had known that Pangea was about to take his last VP, I would have brought in a rather formidable force, although a battle against 1,000 Pangeans would have been a hard fight indeed.

Anyway, great game with wonderful opponents/allies and I'm looking forward to playing with/against you all again!

--Kydorias

[Ironhawk]

Would you look at that!!

I didnt realize that the CB mod made Bells of Cleansing a non-unique item! Certainly could have used some of those vs Pasha

[Rathar]

With 20/20 hindsight I think that I did a somewhat poor job as Agartha.. Far far too timid in many ways. First thing was that I let AC scare me totally for a while and we did a whole LOT of researching with a tiny amt of summoning earth kings/fire/bane.. The kings of various sorts were cool but I only got a turn or 3 of use out of them before KURGI and friends and them.. I think I went through 3-4 of the royalty this way and never summoned their horror marked asses again..

So I sat on my *** and grew, mostly, for 20+ turns.. Very boring so I put on a +gumption item and started forging/ritualing wildly and discovered that the losses due to horrors were actually acceptable, especially with my immortal God! I did notice a seeming definite correlation between the level of the ritual/item forged and chance of horror attack. Data is scant but I bet the variable is 10%+10% per level of ritual/construction magic to get horror attacked. Plus I think that big spells attract bigger horrors. Babble, babble but I also just realized that the three times I saw horrors of power greater than Horrors they were all "directed" at powerful, high hit point, SC type creatures such as Kings. Rathar with his measly 10 hps met 85% lesser horrors and 15% horrors.

Looming hell for me equaled one demon attack the whole game, think your dominion was in that province and never had it happen again (I boosted dominion all over). The giants were a bit more of a pain in the rear for whatever reason with approx 7 total attacks one of which I defeated and the other six were at best minor annoyances. The ice part would have been nasty but I didn't fully read Agarthas description and gave them a cold scale (Doh! Cold blooded!) so I was already screwed in that dept!

But then when I think upon the fact that this was my second dom 3 game and that it's only my 6th or so dominions MP game I smile and give self slack.!

Oh and Lolomo, nice work and congratulations on the win! You dirty dog you!

Hey! I just recently randomly picked up the fact that Lolo implies superheroic abilities in Tagalog, whats the Mo for?!

Rathar

[LoloMo]

Hehe thanks Rathar. Lolo actually means grandpa, Mo means "yours". Taken together, Lolo Mo means "your grandpa". Used in a slightly irreverent tone, it's like Yo' Grandpa; in the same vein as Yo Daddy. Heehee =)

Don't know where you got that Lolo implies superheroic abilities, but it may be taken from a common situation where two kids would brag what their grandpa could do. Like "my grandpa once wrestled a rabid carabao to the ground!"

Also "Super Lolo" is a type of firecracker that several years ago used to pack the biggest bang. They have now since been superceded by even bigger bombs that probably have Lolo in its name somewhere =)