AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 12

And another short update.

Soundtrack:

A. Avkhimovich: The Sound Theory: 12. In Memory of C64



Somebody found a site? Neat.



Yay, death gems!

There are two events in Smallsea, both of them bad.



People leaving? I didn't take turmoil... and turmoil is required for
this event. Hmm, it appears Pangaea did, which is not surprising. Damn
them to the Outer Void!

On the other hand, at least it's not two dozen angry sea trolls.



And now that we've had a polypal mother in R'lyeh for almost a year,
let's have a look at how much freespawn we collected.



Hmm, that's... not bad actually, considering that the dominion in
R'lyeh isn't even maxed out yet. I think there's at least one store-
bought gibodai but even so that's a lot. In fact it's a lot more
gibodai than show up normally. The lone atlantean is a coward/survivor
from Auluudh's army's first battle.

[Bluemage142]

(Yes, I have been lazy as of late. This should do for now.)

Turn 8:



Hmm. Four battles. Since I ordered four battles, this is a good sign. Let's see how they went.





Not too shabby, overall. First one ran into what looks like one point of province defense. Lost a mercenary, but took the province. The second was my new formation against some militia, which was an easy win. The mage didn't even bother casting spells. Fourth battle was one of my groups against 2 PD. Economy-wise, I lost that fight, but it is a province won, and that's worth it.

That third battle, though...



That is a LOT of PD. At least 20 of it. To add to the fun, he's got a few of Fomoria's real units in there- the Unmarked (those guys with the purple shields), a Nemedian Champion (the mirage behind them, and a Fomorian Champion (the big guy in that mob, there). The last one was probably given to him at 20 PD, but the other six units are bad news.




The Champion is...difficult... to hit. 19 defense is quite impressive. Also, see that icon with the two men on it, below his stats? That's glamour, a really irritating ability. He makes mirror images of himself, which you have to hit before actually hitting him.

(Glamour has another, more insidious use, which I wish I'd thought about at the time.)

The Unmarked are bad news. 16 protection makes it hard for mere humans to actually deal damage to them, and 35 HP means they can take whatever gets past that armor. I COULD, mind you, but there's one other problem.

(The problem with Unmarked is that they're (relatively) expensive, sacred, and cap-only. This battle has one turn's worth of the things- in that time, MY cap can pop out 6-7 BCs for each of his giants. It doesn't take much to realize that, economically speaking, fighting Marverni with Fomorians is a losing proposition.)



I didn't bring enough men.

Luckily, diplomacy was achieved. I give those two provinces back, and no war. I withdraw my men, and redirect my attentions to the north and south.

No new mercs, no new magic (I miscounted RP), and I don't have enough gold to do much recruiting. I hold on to it, planning to save up for a fort.

This turn sucks. I don't have the heart to look at graphs right now, so have a picture of what happens when your screaming barbarians don't have good accountants.



Turn 9:



As expected. The first two messages were Fomoria taking back its provinces, as per the peace we brokered. Third was me grabbing a province between him and me, and the fourth was the new party headed into the southern forest. Between them, I lost about 13 units, and gained two provinces. Acceptable losses. The Archers in White are still mine, too, which is entirely a good thing.



I don't have the funds to do much recruiting, since I want my first fort up soon. I grab another Gut, pick up an indep commander in the west, and give orders.



The group to the south is taking the forest area well enough, and the western army is being recalled for reinforcements. They'll be headed north, next.



Thaum2 finishes next turn, so I'll have to change research. Alteration will give me the keys to the castle, as it were- ways to keep my oh, so very expensive Druids alive, and make my oh, so very cheap BCs far more effective in battle.

This really isn't a big turn, because a fort is EXPENSIVE. I make 661 gold a turn now. The cheapest forts cost 800, and I've seen some cost 1200. That's two turns of NOTHING else- no recruitment, no upkeep- NOTHING. Luckily, most all of Marv's forts (each nation has a few different types of fort, each built in different terrain types) are 800-gold cheapos. Figure that my 661 income is actually 544, after unit upkeep. 544, plus the 331 I have now, is 875. I can start fort construction next turn, and that makes this one worth it.

Turn 10:

Nothing much happened this turn. Here's the details.





So Caelum prophetized a mage. Interesting. Must've wanted some more dominion- I'll have to check the graphs. That second event is quite nice- 50 more pounds of income is a good chunk of my total income right now. The unrest bothers me not, since it's on a province worth 16 gold.



News, it seems. There's Helheim to the east. Fomoria is to the south as well- how big ARE these guys?! Nothing too surprising.

(This is the point where I should've been panicking. That much land is NOT a good sign.)

Thaum2 is finished, so I set all my RP into Alteration. Alt1 will finish next turn. Now, for my biggest mistake this turn.



See this? This is a fort not being built. I forgot that my commander would take a turn to get to the build site. Painfully dumb of me.

Recruited reinforcement infantry, another mage, and PD enough to keep scouts from stealing my southern provinces. There will be construction next turn, I SWEAR!

Turn 11:



Nothing really special here. Somebody outbid me for my archers, but I'm to the point where I don't really need them any longer. The battle went smoothly, and I got hit with a dominion loss in Kratas, here.




Like I said, nothing to worry about.



This, on the other hand, sucks. Caelum has grabbed two provinces I sort of need. Worse yet, I know from diplo that he's blocking Helheim's only other way out of the NE peninsula. There will be a war there, and I don't know who with. Oh, and Pangaea is down there, too. I'd make war, but my connection to the homeland is rather weak.



CASTLE. BEING BUILT. This should've happened three turns ago.



NW expansion force is on its way, though I know that there's going to be diplo involved. R'lyeh has the tip of that peninsula. My current goal is to take some of it peacably, and aim him at Fomoria as part of a combined strike. Then take the rest in return for some of Giantland. We'll see how well that pans out.

None of the other barbarians are worth anything, I don't have the money for troops, and research is right where I want it. Another Gutuater, and that's the turn.

Turn 12:



Everything here is as expected. That first notice means that, over the next few turns, any nation that decided to create a dormant pretender god will have it appear in their capital. This would be a cause for joy and celebration... if I were one of them. More on that later. The battle was won rather cheaply, and the event was water gems.



No armies on the horizon, which is good. Right now, I'm consolidating my position- fancy-talk for 'I'm scared to get into a war, so I want to get EVERYTHING figured out first'. My western army is good enough to keep going, so I send it on, while sending my scout deeper into Fomoria. Helheim is has some DEEEEEVIOUS PLANS involving teleportation, so I'm scouting out arrival sites for him. I'll have the gold for my third fort next turn, so that's what my southern army is waiting for.



FINALLY. The time of the Druids approaches. I intend to crank one of these buggers out every turn from here on out.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Bluemage142

This really isn't a big turn, because a fort is EXPENSIVE. I make 661 gold a turn now. The cheapest forts cost 800, and I've seen some cost 1200. That's two turns of NOTHING else- no recruitment, no upkeep- NOTHING. Luckily, most all of Marv's forts (each nation has a few different types of fort, each built in different terrain types) are 800-gold cheapos. Figure that my 661 income is actually 544, after unit upkeep. 544, plus the 331 I have now, is 875. I can start fort construction next turn, and that makes this one worth it.

With some spare troops, and a indie commander you can easily overtax. Gets the first castle so much sooner. Works great with growth. (Which you have ).

[Corinthian]

Turn 8: We have seen the enemy. They are naked!?!


An unusually eventful turn! Our first level of magic research has been completed by the lonely nerd that we left back in the capitol with the quills. To alleviate his loneliness he has invented a method of raising corpses by blasting them with lightning. This discovery does not help anyone.


A magic mound is also found outside the Crystal Amazon settlement. Death is one of the two magic types that we have good access to, so it is highly useful.

And our expansion is going better than ever! Six battles!

But wait! Aren't some of those provinces mine already? Oh yea! Marverni said he was gonna attack me this turn. It very sportsmanlike of him to announce this to me ahead of time, but I still feels like that it is a bad idea to fight this early in the game while so many indie provinces still stands. Especially as neither of us have a real rush build.

I wonder how it went?

He seem to have split his forces in order to take as much of my land as possible. Two losses and one victory for me. Though I seem to have killed about 2/5's of his forces in my defense. Furthermore, the only province that was actually valuable, Nardago, with its strange gold income, remains in my custody.

Two battles were pretty much walkovers due to me putting up only token PD. But what about the third battle?

Overkill! Due to the bad scripting of my Unmarked, they winded up in the back behind the PD and barely got a stab in. The PD however behaved in an excellent fashion. The militia cant hit well but they are strong enough to punch straight through the Bare clad's shields and cause damage that way. They are also tough enough to withstand a few hits. The Fir Bolg warriors filtered through the militia. Because the militia is size 4 and the warriors size 2 they can both fit in the same square. And the Warriors can both hit and oneshot BC's . Finally although slingers are normally not very good and fomorias 11g slingers are outright bad, any ranged weapon works great vs BCs due to them not having any armor.

The outcome of the battle was never in doubt. I might even have beaten all of his armies that attacked me if they had all attacked here. And although the 28 points of PD was expensive the enemies losses cost roughly as much and atleast I get to keep the PD. You never know when some random powerful PD surprise an enemy! (This investment in PD will turn out to be very useful indeed, in time.)


Eventually I talk with Bluemage and we both agrees that it is stupid to fight when there are so many indy provinces left in close view. He agrees to give back the provinces he took and I promises to not go for any of the indies to the north east. This is fine to me as I was planing to stop there anyhow. Invisible borders and whatnot.

I am fine with peace because, clearly, I expand much faster than him. In peace my power will grow faster than his power and although I am already both more powerful and richer than him, I gain more from attacking easier prey than another player.

To the south I send a third party of Unmarked to join forces with the two already there in order to beat the province with the huge number of barbarians. My scouting reports put them at between 90 and 140. I dont think that number of barbarians can exist naturally so I assume that a barbarian province got invaded by barbarians. As ridiculous as it might sound. My troops fair badly vs barbarians, true. But that is the province with the growth scales in it and maybe I feel like gambling?

Furthermore I can tell that the province to the south of me have sloth scales witch makes me think that it might be Arco that I got down there.

In the capitol I feel like trying something new. I'm at peace now and I dont need further expansion forces. Instead I'm recruiting something that could be useful in upcoming wars.

Nemedians are the Fir Bolgs older, and much more competent cousins. They have better stats in pretty much everything and they have magical golden weapons. More importantly, they have stealth and glamor, meaning that the enemy will not see them before its too late. How they can stealth while clad in shining gold is a mystery, but they can!

Unlike Fir Bolgs, Nemedians are not cheap and they requires surprisingly many resources to construct. But thats why you have a scale build. And even if I do not have any direct use for them now, the glamor means that the enemy will not see them and will not plan for them when contemplating war against me. Even on the statistics screen they dont count as more than a militia.

Originally I bought Nemedian Champions because they were cheap and reliable commanders to use with my Unmarked. But some later assessment shows that they are in fact awesome. More on that later.

There is also a Nemedian sorceress to complete the series. But you will never see her because she is mopey and terrible. Just about anything she can do, a fomorian king can do better.

They will join my garrison, and... What is this?

Suddenly, poorly dressed humans crowds the streets of Fomoria!

How to explain this? Well Immaculate had a good idea earlier. Let me explain my feelings through song!


Gold in the early game is more important than gold in the late game so I have no reason to not squeeze my capitol for all its worth. This gold will be more than what several of my enemies get combines and will fuel an new Fomorian construction boom to compensate for the old bubble that collapsed. Once winter comes I might even get rid of that pesky heat scale point I took. (No it wont! Almost everywhere but the capitol will lose the heat point!)

I also put in a new minimum bit for Dantes stingers. I dont think anyone might challenge me for them as they have taken casualties and might lose half their remaining numbers from the upcoming battle.

Turn 9: We get better neighbors.


Five battles. And for once they are five conquests. Only casualties are 2 mercs. Though two of the battles are just me retaking undefended provinces that Marv took from me during the One-Turn-War.

In Chilad, a couple of children finds two earth gems. Their fathers are not very impressed, but the children seem endlessly proud.

And in Fomoria, the militias hunt for filthy people have begun for real.

We finally meat our southern neighbor. And as I had guessed, its Arco. It is being played by my friend Immaculate. I immediately send my newly recruited Nemedian warriors down to Arco to scout out his weaknesses and prepare for a potential attack. Despite the size of my empire I have not found a single scout province.

I said earlier that Arco can be considered one of the weakest nations in the Early Age. This statement needs an explanation. Arco can be really strong or really weak depending on whom it winds up next to. If it starts next to a heavy infantry nation like Abysia, then it is a monster because its were-chariots can trample and their armor piercing attacks can easily bypass heavy armor.

The Were-Chariot is all that Sloth build arco have going for them though, and size 4 chariots are completely worthless against size 4 giants. And due to the sloth, they will not be able to build a lot of other units. And guess what? All my sacred giants are size 4-6! He would normally also be able to counter me with magic and he does have good research. But I'm betting that all that research was made possible through non-magical philosophers. And those guys could not cast Flying Shards to save their lives. It should be a walkover.

I dont attack him right now however, as I have better things to do. I do send him a friendly, and vaguely threatening message that was though to have been lost in the sands of time, but can be read in one of Immaculats posts above.

I though I said that I would be building castles this turn but it turns out I burned all my money on other things. Namely a Fomorian King with retinue! The king alone almost cost half a castle all by his wholesomeness.


These babies are the main reason anyone ever play Fomoria. Few nations have anything comparable in power and almost no other nation have recruitable SC that can also teleport without boosters. (Well, Hinnom and Ashdod on occasion.) I mainly designed my bless to benefit these guys. And with it they regenerates 11 hp/turn and have only enc 3. More about how I get around the rest of the enc problem later.

They come in 3 flavors depending on what randoms they get.

The First flavor is the A4D2 one. These guys are just like eagle kings that cost 100g extra and dont fly and... well I bet they can take an eagle king in a fist fight and thats all that maters. A4 is useful for all manner of things, but in the short term they will probably get pigeon holed in to the roll of thunder-strikers.

The Second flavor is the A3D3 one. It it mainly useful due to being my only D3 access and thats always cool. It is too expensive to do any real skelly spamming, but after a lot of alteration research it can eventually become a SC with the help of the Soul Vortex spell.

The Third flavor is the real SC of the group. The A3W1D2 guy that can cast quicken self. He need very little gear and research, so you will probably see him thugging far sooner than the others.


Out in the hills to the northeast of my capitol, a Crystal Sorceress is finally being recruited. This means that I have broken in to astral magic at last. Yay! This is important when you are living next to R'lyeh.


Many of my expansion parties stops their conquest here, and start site searching instead, as they have ran out of viable enemies to attack. The amazons have been promised to Marverni.

The commanders only got A1D1H1(D) but I suspect that 1 in a path is enough to find 50-60% of all sites in a path. And air and death are the kind of magic that I need the most.



Turn 10: Motherland! Here we come!


The various site searching pays out unexpectedly well for this light level of looking around.


A total of 4 extra gems are pretty nice. I have also previously gotten an extra 3 gems from sites that are automatically reveled when you capture a province. This means that I am now number one in gem income with a total of 14 gems/turn!

Two provinces are also captured. The brave mercenaries fight almost to the last man but eventually prove victorious. These guys have definitely been worth their money. Having singlehandedly captured four provinces for only 337 gold.


Oh wait. Having looked at the battle it turns out that the only reason I won was because 3 crippled mercs did not have time to leave the battlefield before the enemy. Praise redacted!


But there is something wrong with the event list here. Something is not there that really should be.

The combined power of all my 80 hustlers did not manage to find a single victim to sponge money from! Unrest is spiking from this and I am forced to lower my taxes for a while.

And finally, as see above, an expedition to recapture the Isle of Balor is being levied.

I have no idea what kind of barbarians the new tenants might be so I send a comparably large force. One of the many qualities of Fomorian Kings is that they can sail over water provinces. Bringing every troop under their command with them without touching the ocean in between.

The force consist of a line of giant, sacred spearmen that will hold the line. Meanwhile the smaller Fir Bolgs will filter through the legs of the spear-man formation and launch surprise attack against whoever is attacking the giants. Brilliant!

In the speshul province of Nardago, a fort is finally being built. My prophet has been preaching there for a while in order to bring them my excellent scales.

Another army is being recruited in the capitol in order to prepare for the upcoming war against Arco.


On the diplomacy front, Immaculate and I send several messages back and forth in witch I reject the concept of having NAP3s in AARs. I also subtly hints that he should attack Abysia as they would probably be busy fighting Pan right now. We also agrees that he can take the barbarian province to the north as I dont feel like wasting troops on it. After all, I can always take it from him later.

To Be Continued.....

[LDiCesare]

TURN 13:


Abysia assassinated a commander of mine. My only indy commander in fact. Not a big deal, but it does mean I need to put some bodyguards on those non stealthy commanders of mine. Luckily, I only have one, who is a mercenary, and I don't care much about her.
I conquer Midria with my army of 10 harpies. Quite effective cost-wise
As expected, Abysia besieges Pangaea and wins but can't harm my walls. Also as expected, I take another abysian province that I'll lose next turn. But now he'll have to wonder where I go.
The situation is bad of course, but the problem is I am facing a very **** opponent.
I edited away the insult. I really feel that the whole move was utterly stupid. I believe Excist thought maenads were worthless in terms of defending sieges when they are in fact awesome. So his whole war was doomed to fail from the start but ruined the game for both of us because he made a bad assessment of my fort defense.
He cannot take Pangaea. I have so many maenads inside he'll never be able to breach the walls. Of course, the maenads will eat food, but what do I care? He takes some of my provinces, but I'll cause trouble in his backyard. What benefit does he expect? He'll get attacked in the back when all his forces are near/on my capital. Like I said, it's a lose/lose. To be fair, Excist is much brighter than what I portrayed here. He would try to preach me out. That's a good idea with H3 priests. Not so bright with a low dominion vs. a dominion of 9 and someone who can blood sacrifice. Also, committing all one's wizards to a rush means you lose about 40 turns of mage-research time plus the time spent besieging. That is suicidal, particularly considering your neighbors will inevitably attack you after a rush, either because you're losing and are an easy target, or because you won and look threatening. So putting all your forces in a short term benefit and neglecting research is really a bad idea.

Meanwhile, Fomoria built a second fort and R'lyeh a third fort!
Which is really what nations should be doing early on. Getting forts for mages to do some research.
I somehow don't see Abysia building a fort anytime soon. He'll have conquered indie provinces that I took, and left other indie provinces to Arcoscephale and Fomoria. He won't have my capital, ever. Never, I tell you.

I've made a lot of tests to see if my forces in the fort can defeat Abysia besiegers. Surprisingly, they can, but with a low probability. At best 2/3. One chance in three of losing the game now is still too much. It would still have been better than 1 in 2 a few turns later, though. So I bring back revelers and one more dryad. I need chaff. The tactics is to draw abysian troops to a side, considering he'll likely use the same placement as right now, which is a solid troop placement. Drawing to one side, casting tangle vines, I turn his burning ones into useless junk that minotaurs can turn to shreds. The problems are:
- tangle vines has a small AoE.
- tunes of growth would replace it fine, but it is very hard to place wizards well to use it.
- F** spellcasting ai wants to cast tune of fear on berserk abysians.
- I have too few minotaurs.
- Flares are what really kills my troops, since tangle vines protects them enough (I mean, the minotaurs and my god and casters, I don't care about maenad losses).

TURN 14:

This may be a bad idea, but turtling is boring. Arco should be attacking Abysia next turn. R'lyeh doesn't have any troop nearby. My tests indicate a 2/3 chance of winning for me. I brought some more maenads, some revelers and some dryads. I have better magic, but that's mostly irrelevant. The mercenaries I bought should cause some more trouble inside Pangaea lands.
If I fail, my surviving Pans can sneak back inside and hopefully hold the walls while my pretender will hopefully do suicide come-backs.
I also discover that maenads are generated AFTER an attack, not at the same time. So my mercenary archers attack a 20 PD province, get killed, and only afterwards do a dozen maenads pop up and flee. Please color me silly for not checking that before playing. I can say all I want about Excist's maenad assessment, but mine is also quite faulty. With a bit of luck, seeing the maenads will make Abysia think my Pan(s) is (are) moving south and will divert some of his troops, but that's unlikely to have any effect. I wonder why none of the maenads fled to a neighboring province. Might be a bug.

TURN 15:

Big battle expected. Abysia played well in preaching there, so my god is no longer immortal. This means game over:


Abysian deployment. Exactly the same as before, but more misbreds and 1 more annointed, as expected.

Pangaea deployment. Minotaurs down, slightly back so as not to draw the first fire. God in front in order to cast resist fire first. The rest up to draw enemies this way. Archers to shoot at fliers.

OOOPS!!! Huge mistake. I didn't order these dudes to hold and attack. Hopefully they'll just get killed so my songs will kick in in range. That's a small misplacement, but every single soldier mattered and, combined with the +1/-1 morale from unfriendly dominion, it counts a lot.
The result is a rout. My minotaurs didn't attack straight the regular infantry on the right contrary to all my tests, but ran into the burning ones immediately. This ment that I didn't kill those 5 or 6 abysian infantry which would have provided crucial hp loss for the opponent morale check.
I'm bringing my Pans back and the maenads to defend the fort. It's not too damaged, so hopefully maneads can hold it, but that's not certain. Still, it should take Abysia a few turns to dent it as they have a very low troops count there.
I don't usually play Pangaea, and I'm not a patient person. I will have to learn to turtle in this game. I should have done that already, but waiting it out till I get Mother Oak inside my capital sounds so boring... Not that I'll ever be able to cast Mother Oak, mind you.

TURN 16:

My dominion is sinking in my capital. I got some maenads who spawned, but only a dozen. I have no idea why I sent a Pan in the north. My priests are preaching in their temple, ans are researching and one summons vine men, just to check how many I get. They are mindless, so they don't help much at repairing walls, but 10 of them would be worth 1 burning one in defense. Monkeys are also coming back to help and will be there in 3 turns. My defense is 229 out of 250, so it's rather good as it should hold long enough.
I also try to build a fort in the north, hoping the abysian reinforcements go to my capital rather than try to take the mountains. this is called wishful or desperate thinking.
Arco took one province, but failed to take another one.
R'lyeh is out there in the south, probably to attack my island, maybe the troll province, but more likely myself or the two indie land provinces.
I grabbed this screenshot, so I guess R'lyeh attacked on turn 16 in fact:

[Torin]

cool aar

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 13

Our research has been pretty abysmal so far. Nevertheless, we have
reached something of a way point. The first school we researched was
Conjuration, and this turn the busy monster fish have succeeded in
unlocking the secrets of the second level.



As you can see, the spell we're most interested in is Dark knowledge, a
remote site searching spell. Finds all death sites in a province, costs
three death gems, one more than most other site searching spells. There
are also some actual summons we could use, but we're not interested in
them. We're waiting for more powerful stuff.

For now, the new research target is thaumaturgy 2:



We're aiming for a bunch of different site search spells and more
importantly this one:



Could come in very handy to move out mages quickly. Could be we're not
going to use it, but if there's a problem in the southwest, the big
stuff can arrive quickly.

There is an interesting development in the distant south east:



Looks like war. Let's play vulture.



Like Leprechauns, the Abominable Mind Eaters of the Deep bring good luck!



A great victory for the heroic diplomatic corps of R'lyeh. Note that
I'm not all that surprised; I doubt that Excist wants me to jog his
elbow, and this way he doesn't have to divert resources to keep those
provinces pacified. "Nice war you're having here, be a shame if
something happened to it..." LdiCesare, on the other hand, is hardly in
a position to object.

Obviously I'd have preferred the whole island, but let's not get greedy
now. More greedy, I mean. Not right now, that is.

Meanwhile, in the sea of Underhome, off the Fomorian coast, the traitor
pronce Ra'ntegoth has completed our third fortress. He and Auluudh
march south to conquer the land we claimed.



In R'lyeh, a momentous event has occured:



So sue me, I lied again. Here's the host of mermen:



And here's a close-up of one of these miserable creatures:



Hmmm, morale 10 isn't horrible, compared to some other stuff we have. Nets can be very useful at times, too. It's a once-per-battle attack that if it hits reduces the target's defense massively and stops it from attacking until it breaks free. How long that takes is probably based on strength in some way.

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh ~~ Turn 14

Our army of aboleths scouring the ocean floor has some success. They find a curious field of ethereal clams that sift starlight instead of water and cursed island that is impossible to find unless one knows the secrets of certain constellations and just as impossible to leave for the poor souls stranded there.



It seems fate favours R'lyeh again. Taxes flow like the great currents, and even better, on the abyssal plain near R'lyeh a sunken Fomorian ship from the time of their exodus is found. Maybe it sunk because one thousand pounds of gold were a bit to heavy?



The lost treasure is immediately put to use: across the world, in Lake Vastness, Nyarlathotep commands the construction of another fortress. The actual work is overseen by a local triton who has seen the light (the mad, leering light of the green star Phna'ghshug). Nithü the shark-taming Slave Mage is in charge of building the lab. You may have noted that it was him who found the clam field: go Nithü!

Maverni (Bluemage142) wants Numecria after all. I want Maverni to have good access to Fomoria, and it's just a land province. If we go to war at a later time, I'll be able to get it back easily enough.



The mermen in R'lyeh didn't come with a leader, so I buy them one. Since they need normal leadership, it'll be a traitor prince.

[Corinthian]

Turn 11: Interlude



A short and eventless turn.

150 extra gold in taxes are had due to a mild winter in the mountains of Cimri. Snakeys heat dominion keeps the snow at bay and the roads usable.

The other main event of importance is that The Isle of Balor, sometimes known as Koromoo, has been returned to its rightful owners!


I was right in bringing a large force, as the enemy turned out to, in fact, *be* barbarians. Two Unmarked and two Fir Bolgs dies to their madness. This marks the first time in the game thus far that an unmarked have died. Those thing are surprisingly sturdy.


Desmond and his men spend some time on the island admiring the scenery and partake in the ancient Fomorian arena culture. But its just not quite what he remembered. Eventually he decides that his nostalgia has gotten the better of him and returns to New Fomoria and his work.

On the east front, expansion is happening at a comfortable pace. Actually I have slowed down my expansion a bit in order to not over extend myself. I though from previous diplomacy that Marverni was going to have the provinces in the forest so I only slowly made my way there. Many of my commanders are instead occupied with site searching.

Dante, for the crime of cowardice, is sent on a mission to negotiate with the horse tribe people.


Turn 12 End-of-Year-Wrap-Up.


Lots of people searched for magic sites this turn. But only one was successful.


A ****ty death mage finds yet another ****ty death site. Well, many streams small and all that.


Armies conveys in the province of Isurian for a mysterious meeting. There they talk of war and conquest, but not everyone is happy with the current course of action. They say that the omens are against us and that we should wait.


The Kings of fomoria will not listen to that ear however. They gather a mighty host and continues their preparations.




As this is turn 12 ,witch many considers to be an important turn in a game, I will have a graph wrapup to show people how the game have proceeded thus far.


Oh wow. This Graph really is rather impressive from my perspective. I count 24 provinces at turn 12, witch is almost twice the average of the other players. There is no wonder that my neighbors fear me. Exiting!

Despite that I have actually slowed down my expansion a bit in order to get more manageable borders. You really dont want more neighbors than necessary. So Marverni holding the forest in the center of the map prevents me from sharing a border with Caelum and Pangaea. It is my opinion, that from a psychological perspective, it is hard to attack someone who does not share a border with you. Not to mention the logistical problems and the problems of holding ground in a part of the world not connected to the rest of your empire.

This is why I prefer normal maps to wraparound maps. In the later the biggest player will always have so many boarders and fronts that he can not focus much on anything and risks being overwhelmed. On this map however, I only have three neighbors. So even if they were all to attack me all of a sudden, at most I would only have to fight 3 people at once. Thats the theory anyway.

It is too bad that its no longer going so well for Abysia, as I was counting on him to soak up some of the threat factor for me. But no such luck. I can tell from all the graphs combined that he is fighting Pan though. And I'm trying to convince Arco to attack his unprotected back.


Another interesting graph. You can clearly see were I started to overtax my capitol. Before that I was not leading as much, compared to the province graph, because most nations get the lion share of their income from their capitols were they have good castles and scales. Still, my income is even more huge when counted after my upkeep. This should leave much gold for infrastructure projects witch I am building around my lands.


Despite finding only minor sites that can be uncovered with a mage with only one point in a path, I am still in the lead, even here. The fact that Aby has stolen gem income from Pan is one of the reasons I know they are at war.

The rest of the graphs are either not interesting or not flattering to me so I will leave them be for now.



Turn 13: A view to a kill.

Oh, and taking inspiration from Immaculate again, you really should listen to this song while reading this turn in order to get the proper feel for things.

This is it gents! This is war!


My armies will launch a three pronged assault on Arco. The expansion force to the center will go for the growth province, the stealthing Nemedians will attack the entry province next to his capitol and the major army will simply sail over the seas and land on the other side of his capitol. Next turn the two groups will siege it and with the help of my strong giants they should be able to break down the walls to the helpless philosophers in just 2 turns. After that it is over for arco, and the rest will be just mop-up work. The Chariots he have been relying on until now are completely unsuitable for fighting my giants. So while he might be able to raid my provinces still, he will not be able to break the siege.

Even if my other neighbors take offense to this it will take a few turns for them to get their asses in gear. And by the time they have done that Arco will be a nonentity, thus allowing me to divert my forces to fight my other neighbors.

It is a perfect plan and I'm a genius!


To be concluded....

[Immaculate]

Oh Noes!!!!