King of the Isle (finished)

[Twan]

Yes of course.

[Twan]

Atlantis will be turned AI.

Unfortunately he used a password. :/

[Twan]

Sorry to slow the game one more time, I was planning to play this afternoon but had a surprise visit and am also busy tonight.

(delayed hosting by 24 more hours)

[IndyPendant]

Heh. Okay, this I have to share. I finally have the time to review this turn. Among my messages were these four, in immediate sequence:

Hedna has cast Cloud Trapeze.
A Seeker has cast Cloud Trapeze.
Heliotheus has cast Manifestation.
Suddenly a huge Ashen Angel appeared out of nowhere and attacked Hedna.

[Twan]

Mine report was something like :
A spell was blocked by the forest dome
A spell was blocked by the forest dome
Suddenly a huge Ashen Angel appeared out of nowhere and attacked xxx.
Suddenly a huge Ashen Angel appeared out of nowhere and attacked yyy.
Flying monkeys attacked zzz.
Suddenly a huge Ashen Angel appeared out of nowhere and attacked zzz'.
Greats ball of fire are falling from the sky, 12 units were killed.
Suddenly a huge Ashen Angel appeared out of nowhere and attacked zzz''.
(etc...)

And after all ennemy spells :

Wwww has cast an astral dome.

Really unlucky. :" (especially when my previous astral dome caster was killed the turn before because I stupidly send him to my army fighting Machaka).


---

I had some difficulties to turn Atlantis AI (I have his password, but I've forgoten I couldn't do it myself due to CD key violation, I'll have him turned AI by someone else for this turn).

[Twan]

1. in round one cast storm, both master enslave and undead mastery with penetration bonus, then fog warriors on all these people, and rain of stones for non enslaved ennemy mages
2. in case it's not sufficient have a stupid mage scripted to cast wrathfull skies
4. bonus : forget to give gems to the mage supposed to cast storm warriors
5. of course as the only non enslaved ennemy survivors are seraphs and tartarians with SR items wrathfull skies only kill your own soldiers
6. watch your enslaved army spending 10 rounds to kill the last seraph (and lose most of the troops you could have gained, as well as several communion slaves)

[IndyPendant]

Whelp. That's it. I'm done. Unless anyone else has something they can do, Arco wins.

Lesson learned. Never, ever, *ever* play in a single-province VP game. Ever again. Whoever gets that province first wins the game.

Still, it wasn't a complete waste of time. I learned a *lot* about late-game strategy.

Good game, all!

[Zeldor]

I have chosen really sucky nation. I had quite nice position but I could do absolutely nothing. I couldn't win war with Caelum in the beginning, then later couldn't even threat anyone on the island. I got some nice indie mage, but low level ones [I got Lore Masters but way too late]. If I had nation with cheap communion slaves it would be great.

Oh, and that map really needs to be played on higher gold settings and I think provinces near capitols should have really bigger population. Now if you do not have really big part of planes your income is pathetic and you cannot really afford serious numbers of mages and troops. And you need them if you want to fight for the island. With 11 other players that could threat the owner it would be much more interesting. And now? Only Ermor could do anything.

[Twan]

Yes I think a king of the hill game rule was not a good idea finally, casting first in defense is a too huge advantage in endgame (on the other hand you had 36 turns to do something, with more reactivity 20 turns ago I would have lost half my provinces and, unable to send reinforcements to the isle, finally everything -but the problem would be the same with any new owner : once endgame spells are researched a defenser in a fort win as long he has good mages + some SCs inside and a sufficient number of gems for them-). In last battle I made a huge error with my Wrathfull Skies, but even with that Ermor had no chance to win.

The only ways I see to actually take the fort would need some turns of preparation and a lot of forging : Ermor would need some good assassins (like spectres with black hearts) to kill my key mages before the fight, inside their three domes ; or to be able to defeat my troops with only well geared SCs and mages (sending anything with less than 20 MR is a gift for my enslavers, and any mage without sufficient protection to survive a rain of stones is useless as well). Except that, my only fear was to have to fight an army able to survive 30 or so rounds and including a SC carrying the unquenched sword (or other fatigue BE caster), to kill all my communion slaves with exhaustion, then a second wave could have defeated me.

Or I should have kept my first idea : a "no fort on the isle" game rule ; finally even a crappy forest fortress make an huge difference : without the fort an army can be attacked several times per turn, so defensive mages can't have gems left for all fights (on the other hand, without fort it can be the reverse problem : it would be impossible to keep the isle if attacked 4 or 5 times per turn).

ps : do we declare game finished or continue untill my ascension ?

[Herode]

I think we can declare you as The True God, if Ermor does not think he has a chance with his 1200+ undead army...

BTW, I have a spy on Aeternia and I did not understand what happened. That's my newbie question of the day :
1 - Arco attacks a big Ermorian army with a small troop of Draconians and a few SC. And looses.
2 - Ermor attacks the fortress but... only with a small troop. And looses.
WTF are all the undead gone ???

As C'tis, I did not very well. A NAP with my Ulm neighbour was concluded pretty soon in order to push towards the center, but all my battles against the Machaka troops were plain defeats and stopped my development plans. Obviously, I'll have to study strategy and planning in depth before having a chance to challenge such players. A great lesson indeed !