MP: YARG3, non newb MA+ENP2 RAND game. Executor's Ulm winner on turn 76

[WraithLord]

Sounds good to me. Any objections anyone?

[Executor]

Rejoice! A true God has ascended!
Thank God (me ) for that. The mirco started to became a real issue for me around turn 60ish. I started to lose interest in the game somewhere along my war with Shiny. The last few turns were critical too, was ready to leave the game at one point but decided against it as it would be really ****ing unfair.

Well I think this game is a perfect example to how ridiculous Ulm with the Forge is. I hope this will be enough to convince people to remove it from Ulm. A random no diplo game was probably the best circumstance to test it under.

WL, I assume you're Vanheim? I recognized your play style. I'm wondering what made you cast AC finally?
I'm pretty certain I could have rolled over any one of you without loses at that point in the game, and could have fought the rest of you with relative ease. The AC changed that considerably.
I was forging 50 items a turn for quite some time. Those 3 large army of mine possessed about 500 items between them total. Every turn was enough to equip a strong army of mine with good items and add a few SCs and thugs.

As for those thugs I think I had about 30-40 banes total. You completely screwed me over when casting AC btw.
I planned to use the gate stone to teleport a huge army on top oif one of your forts and hide 40 banes among the troops which would arrive in the regular phase with flying bots. The next turn would have been all your provinces captured in a single turn. I planned to have you completly defeated in about 4-5 tuns time. Kinda pissed off I never had the change to do that.

All in all I think game was pretty insane for me. I hit the 32000 research around turn 45. I could have done it faster but there was no point since I was the clear leader in research. Actually hit const 8 on turn 30 with hard research which I think stands for something. At one point I probably had over 100 lanterns. 100 gems for 600 research, another ridiculous thing.
Most of the items I could forge were laughably cheap. At one point I calculated that I could summon and equipped several thugs and a complete army with a load of stuff at the price of one your thugs or SCs.
It's quite possible that I forged over 1000 items over the course of the game. For a long time I recruited nothing but commander in every single province I could just so I could distribute bows, and other stuff to commanders. BTW, I could never recruit as many commanders as I could equip.

Best commanders to recruit was always spies. Give them bows and drag them along in hidding than reveal that at important battles. I think I won some major battle with Ashdod and Shiny that way. At one point I switched completely to them instead of mages. It was fun watching Vans and Svarogias income cut in half.

Anyway, it's been an interesting game to say the least. I hope all that transpired in it is enough to remove the Forge from Ulm.
I would also like to congratulate the rest of you all for joining up against the leader. I've never seen that happen in a no diplo game and wasn't really expecting it.

Rdonj, give me the names of my adversaries please!

[WraithLord]

Congrats for the victory Executor!

Yes. I was Van. I wonder what were the telltale signs that gave me up?

I knew you (Ulm) would win from very early on. I wanted to enter an early war against you but Eriu jumped me and no way I'd let someone attack me and get away w/ it. So I say screw the game I'm going to make Eriu pay for his stupid move and if Ulm wins (more easily than otherwise) then so be it.

You are absolutely right about Ulm and I think llama is also in agreement so we will see a fix in next CBM.

I've seen most nations fight very well and to the end. It was a high end game in terms of players skills and really enjoyed it (though I knew the end result from early on).

Van is a solid nation now which is a good thing.

Now I'm looking fwd to YARG4.
Hope to see as many of you there. You too Executor - I just pray to fate that you don't get an OP nation

[WraithLord]

BTW, I had a strong suspicion you were Ulm b/c of the murderous effectiveness Ulm's armies exhibited. I'd have been surprised had another name came as Ulm leader

[mockingbird]

Congratulations on the win!

I ended up with what is probably my least favorite nation in the game, got attacked and stuck in an early war that crippled me, accidentally started another war with a larger power through a movement mistake, and spent the rest of the game trying to figure out a way to be relevant.

All in all, a good game.

[rdonj]

Good game everyone, and congrats to executor for the win. With turns like that, you really do need those week long hosting timers :P

Here's the list of nations:

1. WraithLord Vanheim, Arrival of Man
2. Stagger Lee Arcoscephale, The Old Kingdom
3. TwoBits Svarogia, Dark Forests by Executor
4. Executor Ulm, Forges of Ulm
5. wonderloss Bandar Log, Land of the Apes
6. ghoul31 Abysia, Blood and Fire
7. Slobby Shinuyama, Land of the Bakemono
8. don_Pablo C'tis, Miasma
9. danbo Ashdod, Reign of the Anakim
10. tratorix T'ien Ch'i, Imperial Bureaucracy
11. sansanjuan Arga Dis, Blood of Warriors by Sombre
12. GFSnl Marignon, Fiery Justice
13. mockingbird Pangaea, Age of Bronze
14. Deadnature Pythium, The Second Empire by Burnsaber
15. Curious Yellow Eriu, Last of the Tuatha
16. Aethyr Man, Tower of Avalon
17. yandav Shangri-La, Hidden City of the Secret Masters originally by Nounours,
extended and maintained by Globu
18. Bullock Al-Nadim, The Thousand and One Nights by elmokki

I don't have all of the subs written down in an easily accessible location, but the last three subs for svarogia were, in order, Calahan, BlanketThief, and Korwin. 3V4JKZ2 also subbed for svarogia at one point, and StaggerLee took over control of vanheim for WL for a few turns a while back. And Tratorix subbed for eriu after it had taken a good beating. Any other subs, I'm sorry if I've missed you, but you are all appreciated and commended for your work in keeping this mammoth game running!

[Mightypeon]

Originally Posted by Executor

Rejoice! A true God has ascended!
Thank God (me ) for that. The mirco started to became a real issue for me around turn 60ish. I started to lose interest in the game somewhere along my war with Shiny. The last few turns were critical too, was ready to leave the game at one point but decided against it as it would be really ****ing unfair.

Well I think this game is a perfect example to how ridiculous Ulm with the Forge is. I hope this will be enough to convince people to remove it from Ulm. A random no diplo game was probably the best circumstance to test it under.

WL, I assume you're Vanheim? I recognized your play style. I'm wondering what made you cast AC finally?
I'm pretty certain I could have rolled over any one of you without loses at that point in the game, and could have fought the rest of you with relative ease. The AC changed that considerably.
I was forging 50 items a turn for quite some time. Those 3 large army of mine possessed about 500 items between them total. Every turn was enough to equip a strong army of mine with good items and add a few SCs and thugs.

As for those thugs I think I had about 30-40 banes total. You completely screwed me over when casting AC btw.
I planned to use the gate stone to teleport a huge army on top oif one of your forts and hide 40 banes among the troops which would arrive in the regular phase with flying bots. The next turn would have been all your provinces captured in a single turn. I planned to have you completly defeated in about 4-5 tuns time. Kinda pissed off I never had the change to do that.

All in all I think game was pretty insane for me. I hit the 32000 research around turn 45. I could have done it faster but there was no point since I was the clear leader in research. Actually hit const 8 on turn 30 with hard research which I think stands for something. At one point I probably had over 100 lanterns. 100 gems for 600 research, another ridiculous thing.
Most of the items I could forge were laughably cheap. At one point I calculated that I could summon and equipped several thugs and a complete army with a load of stuff at the price of one your thugs or SCs.
It's quite possible that I forged over 1000 items over the course of the game. For a long time I recruited nothing but commander in every single province I could just so I could distribute bows, and other stuff to commanders. BTW, I could never recruit as many commanders as I could equip.

Best commanders to recruit was always spies. Give them bows and drag them along in hidding than reveal that at important battles. I think I won some major battle with Ashdod and Shiny that way. At one point I switched completely to them instead of mages. It was fun watching Vans and Svarogias income cut in half.

Anyway, it's been an interesting game to say the least. I hope all that transpired in it is enough to remove the Forge from Ulm.
I would also like to congratulate the rest of you all for joining up against the leader. I've never seen that happen in a no diplo game and wasn't really expecting it.

Rdonj, give me the names of my adversaries please!

Some tangents concerning CBM Ulm:
1 Gem items are totally sick. How much use did you make of Crystal Matrizes and Crystal shields? I am constantly forging 5 or so crystal shields per turn, this gives simply soo many options to further support large armies (Any Smith with a Crystal Shield can cast flaming arrows, warriors of Muspelheim, Heat from Hell etc. A random smiths can cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend etc, S randoms add Antimagic...) especially if you lucked into some indies. Got an A2 from somwhere? Mass flight ftw! N2-N3ss with a crystal shields can also cast intersting things too.

Iron Angels are cool, but have the misfortune to cost E.

Did you preplan for the dreaded "magic is fading" event?
I lost an insane amount of gems to it in a goongame, it happened about 3 times and wiped about 50-100 gems per happening.

[Valerius]

Congrats, Executor! I've been keeping an eye on this game ever since I noticed mid-game that three nations that got boosts in the latest CBM were among the game leaders.

WL, I haven't played MA Van but based on my experiences with EA Van (not as good as MA IMO) I agree completely that they are a strong nation. What build did you go with? Light bless with good scales and some magic diversity?

Exec, do you think the only problem with Ulm is their Forge? I wonder how many of the games they won since the release of 1.92 they ended up casting their Forge before the game was already decided.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Congrats, Executor! I've been keeping an eye on this game ever since I noticed mid-game that three nations that got boosts in the latest CBM were among the game leaders.

WL, I haven't played MA Van but based on my experiences with EA Van (not as good as MA IMO) I agree completely that they are a strong nation. What build did you go with? Light bless with good scales and some magic diversity?

Exec, do you think the only problem with Ulm is their Forge? I wonder how many of the games they won since the release of 1.92 they ended up casting their Forge before the game was already decided.

Oh, I tried many different builds but ended up w/:
van, King of Primordial Waters, King of Many Names, Councilor of Gods, Ruler of
the Ocean's Surface
Vanheim, Middle Era
Father of Winters (Body 1561, 88 hits)
Magic: Air 2 Water 9
Dominion 8
Scales: Order 3 Productivity 3 Cold 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 1 Magic 1
Imprisoned


It worked excellently and Van was on the top for a good part of the early+mid game and probably caused the most PITA to Ulm (AC).

I made the mistake of summoning the blood royalty. In hindsight I should have taken more cost efficient summons and earlier AC. But certainly MA Van is a strong nation as should be (nation of fierce vikings should be nothing else).

[Curious Yellow]

Wow, we can finally talk about this game now?

First off, congrats Executor on your win.

I played Eriu from the start until turn 53. One of the main lessons for me from this game was that I don't really have the stomach for lategame micro with large empires, so I burned out and subbed out. No more games with more than 6-8 players for me.

In my mind the turning point in the game was about turn 40? or so, when the Ulm-Ashdod war was winding down with Ulm on top and with an active Forge. At that point, Vanheim and Svarogia both attacked me and I felt at the time this ensured that Ulm would win. Ulm was left to turtle with the Forge and secure their holdings.

It's weird that Wraithlord rememembers it like I attacked him. I had just absorbed Man and the furthest thing from my mind at the time was war with Vanheim. The nation I wanted to go after was C'tis actually, but being attacked by Vanheim and Svarogia (which were both about my size) sealed my fate. The war started out okay, winning a few big battles but started losing a lot of small ones. Micro weariness really set in for me at that point and I didn't play as well as I could/should have.

My "war" with Pangea was the funniest part of the game for me. He couldn't find a way to kill my thugs in the field, and I had little hope of storming his maenad-filled forts with my commanders-only strategy. I took one fort by building like 5 siege golems, but didn't have a chance of putting a dent in his capital. Funny that he managed to hang on until the end of the game.

Made some mistakes with globals during the game as well. I tried overwriting Pangea's Mother Oak with like 60 extra gems, but didn't work - after that I really struggled with nature income. When war with Svarogia/Vanheim set in I tried casting Mechanical Militia, thinking it would slow down raiding - but it never came online, someone else cast a global and mine just fizzled.

By the way the 11th hour switch to CBM 1.92 kind of screwed my plans, removing awe from the Tuatha commanders. My testing showed that in order for the tuatha to be effective as expanding thugs against indies 9 with CBM 1.92, they needed to be able to self-buff barkskin. Therefore I went with an awake master druid with E9N4 + some astral/fire and terrible scales, so that I could research alteration 1 early enough to have a decent expansion. The forge bonus on the female commanders was a decent compensation though, which I made good use of later on.