Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[Doo]

Turns 17-23

Refresh: Up to this point I can say I'm happy with where I'm at, which is easy to say when you have very little idea how everyone else is doing, graphs are turned off

No real contact yet made with the enemy, its been an indie bashing extravaganza.

Our pretender Chris the Sheep has awoken and the hero Lugh joined our worthy cause. So had the mercenaries Dagan the Renegade Sage and the Archers in White.

Or they were with us, on turn 18..



and



Losing Dagan is a blow as apart from Chris the Sheep no other Tir na n'Og character has native Astral access. I simply forgot to bid on him.

However on turn 19..



Seems everyone else is forgetting to bid too

In a fit of role-playing frenzy I lock Dagan in the magical workshop to forge items, never to be released again.

Has anyone wondered why he is the "Renegade" sage? I googled him and found he is actually a hip hop artist who aims to be able to cast Master Enslave. A challenge to any reader, at a base Astral level of 1S, what would Dagan have to do to be able to cast Master Enslave?

Bet you can make me love you? Dagan I already do

On turn 20..



Neither Tien Chi or myself wanted this, we both targeted the same indie province.

The Tien Chi force..



As a benevolent human I sent Tien Chi a message stating that we hoped humans and AI's could live in peace.

Elsewhere scouts report on an indie province..



Their leader..



A little bit of SemiRand magic.

On turn 23 Tien Chi reveals the treachery of the cold electronic heart..



A totally unprovoked attack on the hapless PD..



There are thesis's to be written on the economics of PD, I'll sum it all up by saying that the game has it wrong. Basically that first person to sign up would actually be the most expensive and every other PD recruit would cost less. Why? Because when your god only hires three of you to defend against that you really should have a pension put away for your loved ones, and a 1gp sign-on fee is going to get your widow diddly-squat.

Conversely due to the magic ability of all PD to miraculously resurrect upon victory the wise PD recruit would price themselves to allow their god to recruit as many as possible to ensure victory, especially given that once a critical mass is reached victory is almost a certainty, thus a widows pay-out is not needed and employment is ensured.

I digress..

This is where we are at. Here is my research..



You will notice Alt-3 is almost done, the big spell there is Mistform.

Switching to Evocation my aim is Evo-5 for Orb Lightning and Storm. These spells are for my Tuatha Sorceress's, Storm allows us to eliminate 50% of non-magical ranged attacks (note our armies have zero ranged units while Tien Chi seems to be largely horse archers), allows our Air mages to cast Summon Storm Power for a +1 to Air magic and finally Orb Lightning casts one Lightning Bolt per level of Air magic per turn.

For my Ri and Sidhe Lords I've been forging Pendants of Luck, Vine Shields, Rainbow Armors and Frost Brands. Coupled with Mistform and Mirror Image my guys are going to be kicking. I may need to add a secondary Reinvigorating item but lets see how they go first, I don't want to be having to invest too much per thug, because as Stalin said "Quantity has a quality of its own". To this end Chris the Sheep is forging the third Dwarven Hammer this turn.

Our Gem income..



Only one extra Air and Astral per turn since last update. This is mainly due to Chris the Sheep having other duties than site searching. I am reminded to invest some more effort into finding more sites.

The map..



Its a bit hard to read, I'm trying to conserve peoples bandwidth by shrinking the image, but if you squint you can see Tien Chi's and our border to the west. That Tien Chi province to my north is cut off from my lands by two rather tough indie provinces, I will need to pay attention to ensure I'm not surprised. To my east I have just found Caelum, I'm sending through scouts to find Abysia, and through diplomacy I know Caelum is also to my north. Caelum is of course human and thus an ally.

Lastly another challenge, keen eyed readers may notice one picture in this post does not belong in the context it is presented in. Which one is it?

[Gandalf Parker]

More and more Im getting requests for game-check links on private games.
So we now have two.

One for ALL games (private and public)
http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/games_chk.cgi

And a smaller list of just the private games (like this one)
http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/privategames.cgi

Gandalf Parker

[Doo]

Cheers for this Gandalf, I've book-marked that page.

[Hrum]

Thanks Gandalf! That's really helpful. And, since I don't think I've said it already, thanks for hosting this game and dom3minions in general.

Turn 25 is up.

(Probably less necessary for me to begin my posts with this now that we have that status link from Gandalf, but I am a creature of habit.)

The fishmen look to be winning the war on the northern provinces of the frost giants. Atlantis is now sieging both of the indie forts along the coast, having kicked Niefelheim off of the eastern one in prov 60. In the southwest, Niefelheim is also at war with our friends C'Tis, but I am not sure how that is going - it does not yet look conclusive.

And Kailasa has decided to join the fray - sacred troops and human infantry have marched into Niefelheim territory and taken a couple of provinces! We now march on the southern fort of the frost giants!

Unfortunately, some foolish monkey forgot to bring along the bags of endless sustenance. After offering our flying friends in the north our counsel to avoid starvation at all costs, the troops of Kailasa have fallen prey to this very thing in the barren mountain passes that the monkeys must pass through on their way to Niefelheim. Endless bags of ghee and gulab jamun syrup are being rushed to the front.

A monkey scout has spotted an Abysian expansion force in the south. That isolated fort has finally managed to start expanding. It appears that they have only that one additional province so far, but perhaps they will continue to conquer their neighbors now.

A chittering monkey runner eager to deliver a message to our mages knocked over some volatile substances in a magickal research lab and the whole building went up in flame. This is the 2nd time Kailasa has lost a lab to fire in recent memory. Some discussion with the Yogi researchers about safety precautions may be in order. The markata who caused this has been demoted from runner to mango picker - he now spends his days attached to a long pole that is used by a bandar retired-military-officer-now-gardener who wields the markata-pole for pruning mango trees and picking the harder to reach fruit. If he ever stops chittering excuses and looking to place blame elsewhere perhaps this markata will be allowed to return to his previous profession, but he is currently far from attaining even a modicum of enlightenment.

[Hrum]

Originally Posted by Doo

Lastly another challenge, keen eyed readers may notice one picture in this post does not belong in the context it is presented in. Which one is it?

How about a hint?

Here's the map situation on the southern continent as it looks to Kailasa currently:



I've been fairly conservative these last several turns. I was trying to catch up some in research before tackling Niefelheim, and I've been avoiding expanding into contact with Atlantis. I expect Atlantis to be the tough fight in this game.

Any news from TC up north?

[endomorphious]

Alrighty, this was a devastating turn for C'tis. Had hunkered down in province 12 after taking it from Niefel. I bumped up the local PD to 25. Had a nice number of troops there and either due to my poor scripting or just Niefels superiority he destroyed me with minimal losses to himself. Lost my god about 10 magic items. He was fighting in my Dominion too and the heat didn't seem to matter to him one bit. He now has serious ability to continue deep into my few territories and obliterate me. I'm 1 point away from having Alt 5, already have const4 and conj 1. Mayhap I can limp along long enough to get my darkness/skellispam up and running.

Atlantis is a MONSTER this game. With all the activity being reported by the other players I was hoping to not see him down my way. But, he took a province at 73. Not sure what he's got there yet. Maybe next turn.

Good luck.

Anyone looking to trade for gems? I need death gems primarily right now. Would also trade for blood slaves at say 1 gem to 10 slaves. Can you trade military units in this game?

[Doo]

No, you can't trade military units. I have heaps of Air gems to spare, I suspect that won't help you much..

Have you a thug chassis? I can forge Vine Shields and Lucky Pendants if you want them.

A clue as to the picture is that the numbers don't add up. A better clue is that Tir na n'Og doesn't have Blood access.

I'm officially at war with Tien Chi, our border is currently a narrow strip of single provinces in a sea of indies. I've kitted out some thugs and hope that I can push him back to his castle. From my scouting I'm going at his second castle, his main castle and surrounds are pretty much all Tien Chi.

How you going Thanatus Del Dragos? I see you have a fort bordering Tien Chi.

Congrats to Mauxe on busting the Wraith Lord, although I wonder how much harder it would have been had it not fallen unconscious due to skelli-spamming?

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I'm preparing for a war on two fronts right now. Hasn't started yet, but Atlantis is creeping north and Tien Chi has an Army of Horsemen ready to pounce on my northern fort. My Southern Borders have two indie provinces, one filled with trolls and another with a Tarasque SC that I can't think of a way to defeat he regens about 50hp a turn, so that might stay as a border for now. Might send an Army toward Tien Chi's Northern Fort at 210. At least see what kind of resistance I will meet.

[Doo]

Towards Tiens northern fort is where I'm going too, my scouts suggest Tien doesn't have much up that way so lets kick down the door

[Thanatus del Dragos]

Sounds good to me