Rejoice, a true god has ascended! Long live Dark-Omen of Arcosephale!
Oh wow - thats terrible luck you had there Dimaz. You had to have randomly hit my Gift of Health, which was backed with almost 300 gems I'd been hoarding for almost the entire game. Only a 20% chance of that happening and for such a critical spell of yours. Ouch!
This ended up being a very strategic (rather than tactical) game for me. I inherited the nation early and was given the directive to get the artifacts first, which i did and secured several key ones - notably, the Sickle, the Soulstone, the Ankh, and the Dim Rod + Forbidden Light. But more important than that, given the focus on construction research, I began clam and blood stone hoarding early and devoted considerable resources to it over the course of the game.
That choice of strategy made me extremely weak early on and I protected myself with a very thin veil of diplomacy. My plans were almost ruined by an early war with Aby but I bluffed him and he backed down to fight Tir, instead. This was great luck for me cause while I might have been able to muster a defense vs. Aby, I would very likely have lost any chance of winning. After this is was only a matter of time while I reached critical mass with clam -> Wish -> gem production, so I then went on the offensive and wiped out Aby.
After that was the controversial war with CTis alongside Sauro. Dimaz, I know you think I was more powerful than you and CTis combined at this point but I'm not so sure. Remember that CTis threw the majority of his forces at me and with all my resources I had a tough time defeating him. It was a tough and bloody war, but I learned a great deal about using tartarians and Rains of Stone that I employed in later wars.
Once CTis was defeated and his lock of the Well and the Gift broken, I seized the opportunity to take Tartarian dominance. Put my liches to work summoning tarts every round and out-wished Marv for control of the Chalice. I then proceeded to eat Neifelheim who was weakened by war with Helheim. It was at this time - when my tart-factory was running at full steam with basically no external threats - that my power really exploded out of control.
Sensing that I would very soon be ganged by the remaining nations, I preemptively declared war on Marv to try and defeat him before my peace treaty with Sauro expired. After reconsidering my chances I realized I could not win a conventional war in time and instead decided to cast Armageddon under the assumption that if I was prepared for it, it would hurt Marv and Sauro (with their reliance on blood) far more than me.
To achieve that, I stole the Gift of Health from Marv to both expose his mages to Armageddon damage and similarly protect my own. Then I spent many turns forging armor full-tilt across my entire empire. Even at full production, many of my own mages were still unarmored and died when I cast the first armageddon, but I could not wait any more.
So, now you can see the history of decisions I made with this nation. Thanks to all of you for a really fun game!! I can't believe I've been playing this for half a year and I will admit to being very happy to conclude it with a win! Special thanks also to Dimaz for doing a great job admining and being a great sometimes ally sometimes enemy for the full course of the game
Thanks again to all! I'll include my last turn file along with this post if any of you are curious.
Re: Aquamarine EA CBM Game Running
Linear Mode
