4-player ME game - Started!

[Amhazair]

Phew, I'm so happy I finally found a way to hurt your mages, they had been causing me a LOT of pain... With hindsight I might have been better of sending in a couple less mages of my own, so the earthquake would have cost me less, but I didn't know how effective it would be (never used it before, SP or MP) Anyways, all in all that battle went more or less as expected, now I just have to find a way to gain as much advantage from it as possible. (as you still have an enormous edge in research) (oh, and btw, do you think etherealness protects you from earthquake? I would have thought that would be classed as magic damage, though I admit I have no evidence to base that on. )

As for having earth magic: my warlocks have 100% FEAB and 2x 10% FEAB randoms, so they can get as much as 3E without empowering or items (though only one in 6400 will get all 3 earth picks ), and with earth boots (actually, I captured the pair I was wearing from you aaaages ago) and summon earthpower 2E is enough to cast the earthquake.

And the magical assault on my capitol: I've been getting 2 deadly disease events each turn for the past 10 or so turns, each killing 700 (when Abysia was still densely populate to 400 (now) people, and occasionally diseasing my commanders and troops. That seems quite a long shot to be atributed to bad luck, though I have to admit I searched the manual looking for the spell that did that, and I didn't find it, so I dunno what's causing it... do those bane venom charms of yours get reported to me that way too?)

In any case, I'm having tons of fun this game, I can't believe how long our war has raged on now without someome gaining a decisive upper hand. I love to hate you Ermor

[Amhazair]

I just played my turn, but I'm going home for the bachelor party of the guy my sister's going to mary this weekend, and I'll only be back by sunday early afternoon (CET), so unless one of you is kind enough not to play his until 3 hours before the deadline or so I'll be missing my next turn

But, on the bright side... My little sis is almost getting married

[llamabeast]

Okay, I should be able to not upload my turn file until near the deadline tomorrow.

What's CET?

Amhazair, I have to know - did many of your people die of old age?

[llamabeast]

Bit of a problem - I played my turn, then clicked "Save game and quit", which says it won't upload the turn. But it lied, and uploaded it anyway. Poo. I can't work ut how to undo it, so I just hope Cerlin can avoid playing his turn too soon - is that possible Cerlin?

[llamabeast]

Problem solved, my girlfriend logged in and miraculously "un-uploaded" my turn file. Very odd!

[llamabeast]

Cerlin, I'm impressed at the tenacity of your shamblers throwing themselves against my walls. I must say, I thought you should have one at least two of the three attacks you've made lately - your men keep running away at the critical moment!

Seems like a real stalemate, this water situation. Your shamblers are dangerous, and it's very hard to spare an army to hunt them down with Abysia putting so much pressure on. Every time I've sent medium-sized armies in their losses have been so horrendous that I've just been forced to retreat (although once I was conveniently able to retreat into Abysia territory and attack him a bit). I'll get you in the end though...

Amhazair, about earthquake - in the manual it says it does mundane damage, so etherealness would work fine. And all the population death messages were indeed the bane venom charms on my black servants. I didn't realise they were that effective! Or that they'd give you messages. I thought your population dying off was because of your patrolling so heavily with such high unrest. So did they manage to disease many of your commanders? Good synergy with Burden of Time eh?

You're right, it is amazing how long we've kept fighting without either of us getting much of an advantage. Well, I keep on _thinking_ I've got an advantage, but it never quite works out in practice. I guess it's because you keep on doing things too! I always forget that the other person will also be working on cunning plans so they're a moving target. I also forget how damn good your Abysians are!

4 posts from me in a row - man, that kind of seems a bit sad.

[Amhazair]

Don't worry, I keep thinking you've got the advantage too - wich doesn't mean I plan to roll over and die of course

The bane venom charms diseased quite a few mages, I reacted too slow to move them out of the province (thinking you were casting a random event, costing you lots of gems, yadda yadda). If I had realised what they were I could probably have patrolled them to death fast, but as it is they did really bad damage. Luckily I had been moving all the demonbreds I recruited closer to the frontlines immediately, where I could have them researching, and then, if I needed them they could reach any battlefield province in one turn, so you only got warlocks and their apprentices, but still...

Anyway, from my point of view, my big problem in my war against you has always been a lack of mages: first, I get into a war with Pythium, and I really had to use all my resources to kill him (hopefuly fast enough not to get swamped by you...), so I couldn't spare anything to build a second fort to build more mages in. Then, I capture Pythium, but the only non-capitol mages are both kinds of Anathemants. Those guys might be awesome priests and battlemages, but their research is not exactly stellar. Then your bane venom guys manage to disease half of my research squad, and now, to finish it of you cast a burden of time (to answer your question, 16 killed, 31 badly affected according to the message ) and most of the mages (only the demonbreds are still fine) I still have left are now diseased... So, yes, I think you have the advantage


On another subject: thanks for the effort to allow me not to miss the turn, it's really appreciated. The bachelor party was really fun, I didn't know most of those guys, as I've been living in a different city since my college years, so the going-out paths of me and my sister seldom crossed, but they were real fun... she's allowed to keep them ... and since it got quite early I decided not to bother to go to bed anymore (at my parents place), but instead to come straight back to my place, so I'm a bit sooner than expected... hope I didn't screw up too much with my sleepy-beer head


And CET is Central European Time - or in my case Belgian time.

[Cerlin]

Well I am doing my best to tenaciously hold the waters and am attempting to mix more undead into my armies for the morale boost. I'll not be giving up any time soon, and a dominion kill will not happen just yet! to the bitter end I say!

[llamabeast]

Amhazair, what's happened to you? Looks like you might stale this turn.

[Amhazair]

I managed to knock over my cup of water and ruin my keyboard yesterday, just installed the new one

Ah, well, I'll try to pull of one more surprise win, but it prity much looks like you just have to wrap this game up now anyway.