MP: Noobs vs. Vets III: Revolution, MA, CBM. Game Over. Noobs Triumph!

[chrispedersen]

I was curious about the vets strategy on this.

Obviously, research doesn't transfer between partners, with only limited migration - forge buddy, remote spells etc. So I'm curious if the vets tried a lead researcher - perhaps a bogarus or ea arco - who wasn't expected to to militarily dominate - but was expected to provide globals, magic items, etc.

Interesting challenge being outnumbered 2:1.

[TwoBits]

Originally Posted by namad

If you knew how many hours thedemon puts into his turns, you'd know that his strategy is just to work as hard as he can on every turn.

I wouldn't disparage him for that. Additionally, I'd be willing to bet that no one has spent more time on nvv3 than him.

Yeah, no disparagement intended I'd just noticed that he sometimes liked to wait until everyone else had submitted their turns, and figured he was doing some last minute coordinating or something. You can take your time, TheDemon, and ignore me when I'm whining for the turn

[TheDemon]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I was curious about the vets strategy on this.

Obviously, research doesn't transfer between partners, with only limited migration - forge buddy, remote spells etc. So I'm curious if the vets tried a lead researcher - perhaps a bogarus or ea arco - who wasn't expected to to militarily dominate - but was expected to provide globals, magic items, etc.

Interesting challenge being outnumbered 2:1.

We couldn't afford the luxury. All of us poured it on research early, except Ermor and Ashdod. I think Baalz had a Great Sage that did more than 40 RP a turn. The general idea is early army vs army is all about who has more stuff. So we need to reach the early-mid game evocations buffs summons and items first and use them to devastating effect on whatever armies are being thrown around.

I think our main miscalculation was that while army recruitment scales up significantly with the +150% gold/resources, mage recruitment scales up more slowly and spells don't scale up at all. So for example if I was spamming Thunder Strike, I would have to spam it 50% more times than in a regular game. A thug would have to kill 50% more guys than in a regular game. All the mid-game strategies need to be re-evaluated in terms of this.

I think this is why atul is doing so well, he's wielding armies and using buffs. Those DO scale up 50%. Prison of Fire spam or communions however, do not.

[Squirrelloid]

I've actually enjoyed the 150% gold/resources because I like army play a lot more than random totally uber guys running around. That said, i'm starting to run into battleground size limitations with my main army (I really want to spread out more!). But still, legions of dai-bakemono with mage support has been much more satisfying to me than making some uber-thugs or SCs to take down Ashdod's giants. (Also, i think 150%g/r is enough that Ashdod actually got to field things that look like armies of giants rather than just a few uber guys with retinues).

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by TheDemon

We couldn't afford the luxury. All of us poured it on research early, except Ermor and Ashdod. I think Baalz had a Great Sage that did more than 40 RP a turn. The general idea is early army vs army is all about who has more stuff. So we need to reach the early-mid game evocations buffs summons and items first and use them to devastating effect on whatever armies are being thrown around.

I think our main miscalculation was that while army recruitment scales up significantly with the +150% gold/resources, mage recruitment scales up more slowly and spells don't scale up at all. So for example if I was spamming Thunder Strike, I would have to spam it 50% more times than in a regular game. A thug would have to kill 50% more guys than in a regular game. All the mid-game strategies need to be re-evaluated in terms of this.

I think this is why atul is doing so well, he's wielding armies and using buffs. Those DO scale up 50%. Prison of Fire spam or communions however, do not.

You are exactly correct demon. Money changes the early balance between mages and armies. (Recruitment limit of 1/castle for example).

Also it puts a premium on fast out of the gate expanders - like mictlan, mercenaries...

[TheDemon]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I've actually enjoyed the 150% gold/resources because I like army play a lot more than random totally uber guys running around. That said, i'm starting to run into battleground size limitations with my main army (I really want to spread out more!). But still, legions of dai-bakemono with mage support has been much more satisfying to me than making some uber-thugs or SCs to take down Ashdod's giants. (Also, i think 150%g/r is enough that Ashdod actually got to field things that look like armies of giants rather than just a few uber guys with retinues).

It's fun all right. My concern is that it isn't "realistic", as in you won't find any other games that play this way. If the point is to teach you, well I know you've learned plenty, but standard settings would have taught counters better. When all you're doing is slamming big armies into big armies, the guy with the biggest army wins. Most of the time you can't change the size of your army in the time you have between scouting an attacking force and defending against it. I'm of the opinion that it's fortunate that in Dominions, the right spell picks and equipment and thug scripts and so forth has an effect much larger than the size of the army. In the end, the size of the army supporting those picks is a relatively minor factor. For example, when you (Shinu I presume) wiped Ashdod's army/thugs with Ice Pebble Staffs, you could have done that backed by an army half the size.

What these settings do is scale back the effect of these counters. It's foreign to me, and perhaps to some of the rest of the vets, because it doesn't resemble the game I'm used to playing. In a sense, many of you noobs have a big experience advantage on me here. Whether it makes for a good game or not, I'm not going to judge.

Anyway, the vets are used to my monologues on IRC, but you guys aren't, and I've rambled on long enough.

[Squirrelloid]

I still had problems with Ashdod's sacreds. And Namad threw me for a loop the first time he kept everyone at the back with guard commander to stay out of range of my rusting mist. So i'm definitely learning some things. And magic was still essential to beating Ashdod's giants, as witnessed by my first few losses against his army.

If anything, I'd say Team play, while interesting, is the worst for learning. I mean, as Shinuyama its not standard to be able to call in teleporting mage-duel teams to wipe annoying astral thugs.

[namad]

qm taught me the guard commander move about a year and a half ago or so

it's brilliant. although only useful in small doses.

[atul]

Okay, reading what I wrote the following comes off as too negative, that's not meant so badly. I'm just not able to rephrase. A game nice to have, and as the situation currently stand noobs can either learn new tricks or kill me by exhaustion (which isn't fun).

Originally Posted by rdonj

He has just run into his first significant noob nation though, and seems to be slowing down a bit.

You mean Ulm? I could march onto his capital with my closest army as it is and there isn't anything he's currently fielding against me that could stop me. I'm not that hot on rushing though as all the castles take a while to breach, and Ulm's troops don't take kindly to raiders.

I don't have that much trouble with 150% everything as I played Midgård in Preponderance with similar settings. Though I agree with TheDemon, this game has little resemblance to usual games. The charm of Dominions (according to my preferences) is finding solutions to changing problems with limited resources. Not just flooding people with More Of The Same.

As to this game being too much Team game, I must disagree. The setup made this into a series of 2-against-1s with some weak interaction. For an actual team game the placement should've been so that there would be at least some chance to cover your teammate. But, with the demands of 1/2 distribution and that every noob gets a straight route to fight that was pretty much impossible.

And, the map is a bit big to conquer on my own and so on, so I might stop complaining.

[melnorjr]

Well, this game has been interesting to say the least. It isn't over yet, of course.

another thing I think might be fun for a teaching type game, if any vets were at all interested and not totally burned out by the noob v vet series, would be to have multiple teams of one vet and like 2 noob flunkies. That way, the odds wouldn't be so stacked against the vets - it would be a completely fair math up, hopefully - and each noob would be able to learn directly from a vet on his team, as well as the ones they were fighting. In fact, I may try to start a game like this. But not until this one is concluded.