Devil Review

[alexti]

Boron said:
When you only castle the important provinces with e.g. a citadel or high admin castle then you won't have a lot temples .

So to protect your temples a bit you normally castle .
Otherwise you get probably either dominionproblems or the enemy kills your temples with ghost riders / other raiders always .

Many strategies are not dominion-oriented and you don't suffer too much from fighting in enemy's dominion, so you don't need too many temples. If you're doing well, it's not uncommon to have 1/2 of your provinces outside of your dominion. And often it's a good idea to pick up your castling neighbour. With him spending his gold on castles he often is an easy prey. Then you can build your temples in his forts and reuse his labs as well. On top of everything you will get temples right where you need them - in hostile dominion

[Cainehill]

Yep, you'all should listen to Alexti. He's almost as good as, er, no, he's probably better than me, he's almost as good as ... Cohen or Boron or Stormsomething

Ahen - sorry, no insult meant to Alexti by use of those names. A lot of people have been put up on pinnacles as being "good", and frankly, most of them aren't - or at least, they're good at particular strategies, and not at the game as a hole.

(A hole - like a house, in which you throw money).

I'm the same way - I have certain nations I'm solid at, so of course I like to play those. In theory, I don't need dominion as much if I'm building forts far outside my territory - I can take drain 3, misfortune 3, if I start building strongholds in the territory that Last of Tuatha has _so_ nicely made Growth, Magic, and Luck for me. (I may not get the benefit of the Luck or Magic - but 0-magic is _so_ much better than drain 3, don't you think?)

Dominions is deep enough (and one of the _few_ games deep enough - chess isn't as deep in comparison, albeit more focused (and yes - I could dredge up awards that might indicate that I have a clue about chess, at least ) ) that different strategies have a real chance. For instance, in Chess, no one wins by claiming the outside ranks. It's all about the center, unless perhaps you play a Reti-based opening, or one of a couple of gambits.

On a more solid tangent - I've got several games in which I'm rolling along, having taken a _lot_ of castles from someone else (literally castles) where all I had was watchtowers or mausoleums.

I got their labs for free, their forts for free (minus my cost in taking them) and simply built my temples - 36 at Last count in one.

If someone spends all their money on mages, on forts, on temples - they're vulnerable. If others are too pacifiscist to take advantage of that - may there be more pacifists.

[Stormbinder]

Cainehill said:

On the other hand, I've spent about 12 castings of GR on one R'lyan army - mostly Vine Ogres, some Illithids, and about 10 mage/priest commanders. 12 GRs, as many as 4 at one time, plus two armies (including powerful artifacts in one), and I only now have it whittled down to killing strength where I can dispose of the artifacts in order to reforge them.

Heh. Ghost Riders are totally useless against good Illhids army. You are lucky that your opponent was likely not very expereinced with playing R'leh, or your GR attacks would be just waste of death gems. Remember, only GR's commanders are not mindless (and they don't have high enough MR and hitpoints), so Illhids can kill them very quickly, if there are enough if them and if his army would be positioned and scripted appropriately. He should get at least 3 full valleys of mindbalsting your undead commanders before engaging onto melee, 4 if you tried to attack him underwater. And by that time all your GR's cavalery would be disolving due to lack of undead leadership.

[Pickles]

Well I may not be very good at R'lyeh (it is my first MP game with them)& my scripting is indifferent but I get lots of savloes of mind bLast & have not killed the wraiths before all the riders were bashed by vine ogres.
Unless your army is small you only get 2 rounds before contact too.

Pickles

[Stormbinder]

Pickles said:
Well I may not be very good at R'lyeh (it is my first MP game with them)& my scripting is indifferent but I get lots of savloes of mind bLast & have not killed the wraiths before all the riders were bashed by vine ogres.
Unless your army is small you only get 2 rounds before contact too.

Pickles

If you position your illihids far in the back and in the coreners, you'll get your 3 rounds before serious mellee starts. And if your ogres killed all undead cavalery before the illhids killed whaiths, it means that you clearly didn't have enough illihids. There is not much point of mindbLasting if wraith lords are still Last to die in your battles against ghost riders. You might as well have no illidids at all if this is the case and spend the money on something else, since your ogres would tear the wraithlords appart anyway by themself with their strength and double attacks, once regular undead troops are gone.

[Chazar]

I've seen that battle. I didnt pay close attention to it and I am not sure to recall it correctly, but I think that the two Wraiths went below 10 hp pretty quickly and stayed at that level for a round. I guess you were just unlucky...

[Cainehill]

Gandalf Parker said:
Another advantage with Pangaea for assassins is that even without a charm they speed up taking provinces ALOT! A Pan assassin tosses Maenads each turn. So you assassinate a commander then there is an attack by 3 or 4 loose maenads. It makes it easy to know when you get the Last commander, and the province is yours automatically without having to take another turn to do an attack.

Hrm. I'm watching the maenads spawned by the Lord of the Wild just now - they attack the province, and immediately rout despite being berserk. I had thought that berserkers kept fighting without any commanders, but it seems not.

This tends to make the maenads less than useful when spawned in hostile territory, since they can probably rout quicker than even leaderless troops in a province.

[Graeme Dice]

Cainehill said:
I'm watching the maenads spawned by the Lord of the Wild just now - they attack the province, and immediately rout despite being berserk.

Maenads don't start out berserk, they have to be damaged and succeed a morale check to go berserk.