Tempest - Random Nations, Early Era (Micah Wins!)

[Reay]

I have gone AI too.

Burden of Time and Astral Corruption really hurt me as I lost a lot of eagle kings, seraphs and my pretender to old age and horrors.

A well deserved win to Micah who has given me plenty of ideas for future games .

Thanks to Velusion for being my ally and conquering Pangaea with me .

[Sensori]

What's the point in going AI if the game's ended anyway? I'm too lazy to go back into it. ;p

And unlike for you guys, my turns were quick and tidy. Like 20 mins and it was done. Thanks to the AC and the double Horror attacks on non-Horror Marked guys who were doing stuff... Bleh. Fail on global scale. I could've fought like hell for the SEAS, but [censored], I had nothing to go with to the ground except an insane amount of lobo guards. In other words, I couldn't really get anything useful done. Except Mind Hunts. And related crap. I hope I at least hurt Helheim a little. ;p

It really shows that the R'lyeh players before me really focused a lot on beating everything in the sea, though. Problem is, I couldn't see any logical path for the over-ground. In fact, the lil corner I had was something I took, and hell, I found Enchantresses and some other guys there, which would've helped a lot... From an earlier point. Now? Too late, even with Swarm, if you get a Doom Horror, you tend to die.

[Baalz]

Gah, Mount Chaining *and* the Steel Ovens? Despite searching every single one of my 100 or so provinces I couldn't find any blood magic bonus sites...which obviously would have made quite a difference (I was pulling in well over 300 blood slaves per turn at my peak).

Good to know AC had some teeth, but honestly by the end of it I was just as fed up with it as everybody else. I lost *several* really good dudes to doom horrors. I think it hurt me more than Helheim...

Oh, also, boots of youth absolutely do *not* protect you from burden of time as I assumed they would. That was by far the biggest clusterf*ck I've done in a Dom game yet...not only did all my mages die, they took a hundred pairs of forged boots with them...then all my blood hunters started dying. I probably would have lost to Micah anyway, but damned if I didn't outright cripple myself and piss off every single potential ally immediately after dissolving my NAP with a much stronger nation. FWIW, when I cast it I was concerned about Helhiem and Mictlan tearing each other down so that somebody else (Ulm) jumped up into first place and figured between the GoH and the youth boots it wouldn't effect me. Oh well, definitely a (painful) learning experience...

Heh, funny story about the BoT, once I realized how bad I was screwing myself over I tried to get rid of it ASAP. Problem was I had spent an assload of gems casting it for obvious reasons and I had cast it with a vampire count. I had been pushing my dominion aggressively so it took me several turns to sneak him deep enough to be out of my dominion, then I gave him an attack order, but Micah attacked that territory that turn, killing the count inside my dominion. Gah! When I snuck him back the *next* time he managed to scare off the light PD with his fear before I finally found somebody willing to drive a stake through his heart. That dude was really determined not to die!

[Sensori]

And the BoT... That crippled the last vestiges of what I could've called a "ground attack force" without putting insane amounts of gems in assloads of amulets of the fish on my Mind Lords. It totally decimated all the Slave Mages and Priests I had, not to mention the Amber Clan Mages and Priests... Enchantresses were quick to get old age... And it killed the several Lore Masters I bothered to buy to get some magical variety in a second due to them starting with Old Age status. Just now that we ended the game I had FINALLY managed to create something that could've worked as the basis of an offensive ground force after losing a mage after mage to that goddamn Astral Corruption while getting there, but it was a bit too late from the looks of it.

After this game I have come to the conclusion that having positive magic scales will destroy you if someone casts Astral Corruption (random second attack after returning = instadeath) unless your mages and bodyguards are seriously mighty, like Yomi's Dai-Onis and the other big-but-not-as-big fellers with the big swords. Mind Lords aren't really a problem to Doom Horrors when they can somehow kill them in a turn...

Oh yeah, and you probably finally realized, Baalz, that Burden of Time ONLY causes random afflictions to old aged people, which it makes of all humans very quickly. ;p It left Helheim pretty much completely unscathed due to the fact that Hel's OWN troops already have very long lifespans, like 300+ years, with over a hundred years to add on it even on the oldest ones, and the Elemental Kings and Queens have 3000 years to look forward to... Would've left me unscathed too if there had been a Plan (tm) in motion for R'lyeh, which wasn't there, much to my detriment. EA R'lyeh isn't really as good as MA or LA R'lyeh without summoned units and commanders.

[Velusion]

Welll I'm about to start another early random game - if anyone would like to reserve a spot just post here or pm me.

Basically you pick a few nations you don't want to play and get randomly assigned from all the rest.

I'll be using the big game mod which increases the costs of Arcane Nexus and the gem producing items.

Good game all!

[Baalz]

I'll play Vel, I'm spoiled by your email notifications and don't want to play anybody else's games... Can't think of any EA nations I hate but I may update that before they're assigned.

[Sensori]

I wanna play too. It'd be my second game where I was actually there to start out. I can think of a few I don't wanna play right here. R'lyeh, Oceania and... Uh... Can't think of anything else. All others are A-OK.

[Velusion]

Congrats Micah! I'll leave the game up for while to see if anyone else wants to keep playing.

[DrPraetorious]

The position I inherited was pretty poorly organized; honestly, I was not looking forward to wipping it back into shape, even if it was helheim .

If you do start another game, I'd like to play, and - could you please turn on commander renaming?

[Velusion]

DrPraetorious said:
The position I inherited was pretty poorly organized; honestly, I was not looking forward to wipping it back into shape, even if it was helheim .

If you do start another game, I'd like to play, and - could you please turn on commander renaming?

yep renaming should be available. The new thread is Sophistry. I can sign you up from here or, if you have preferences of nations you don't want to play - you can sign up there!