Small World - EA, CBM 1.94, No Diplo, NI, Intermediate/Vet - Debaser8 / Helheim Wins! Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

Age: EA
Players: 5
Diplomacy: None
Banned nations: water nations
Commitment level: High
If, due to RL circumstances, you cannot continue please do not set yourself AI in order that a sub can be found. Also, please do not password protector your pretender.
Hosting: llamaserver
Hosting interval: 30 hours up to turn 20, 48 hours up to turn 40, 72 hours from then on
Mods: CBM 1.94
Map: Fivelands (No Independents version)
HoF: 15
Graphs: Off
All other settings default
Exploits: Don't use them.

A small, no diplo EA game. The hosting schedule is pretty relaxed and will be flexible to accomodate people's RL schedules.

Fivelands appears to have disappeared from Mediafire so I'm repurposing one of my Shrapnel threads to post the image as well as the regular and a NI version of the map file.

A few things:

Please note that this will be played on a no indies map so don't assume you'll have indie archers, etc.

Graphs will be off. I could see this being a problem in a larger no diplo game but this is a fairly small map so I think it reasonable everyone buy enough scouts to get an idea of who is about to win the game.

Since this isn't a newbie game I expect everyone knows this but to avoid any mistakes let me clarify that no diplomacy means no messages of any kind to another player, no posting in the thread (other than admin requests), no sending items/gems, no renaming your commanders "NAP 3???". You get the idea.

Nations
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Debaser8 - Helheim
Riverfish - Pangaea
SenorOcho - Marverni
Teraswaerto - Vanheim
Valerius - TNN

Edited by: Valerius.

Hey, the Val, master returns!

And isn't it about time you bought the full game Val? As while the demo limits you to playing just one nation, there really are lots of nations to play in the full game you know
.

Oh and can you please state in the OP (update your template ) what commitment level you expect from the players who sign-up. This is a new thing we decided to try and promote (during your absence) to help prevent incidents where players sign-up for games without realising how committed to the game the organiser/admin expects them to be, and then leads to incidents later in the game when players either start sending token turns, or start moaning that other players are sending token turns. (ie. players with two very different mindsets ended up playing in the same game)

So if you could state some variation of low or high that'd be great, and depending on whether you expect all players to fight to the absolute death, and to give 100% effort over every turn regardless of their situation (high). Or whether you are happy for players to start losing some interest once they are nearing the end, and willing to let players turn AI when they only have a few provinces left (low).

Although players must always ask for permission before turning AI in all cases (Which is something else we are trying to promote on this forum. That being an end to stealth AI-ing ).

Edited by: Calahan.

Doesn't no Indies also mean no indie scouts?

Every faction that can't recruit scouts has Death magic for Black Servants.

(...I think.)

Edited by: gothefungus

Calahan. wrote: Hey, the Val, master returns!

What's that? Micah's playing again?

Calahan. wrote: And isn't it about time you bought the full game Val? As while the demo limits you to playing just one nation, there really are lots of nations to play in the full game you know

Lol. You know, if IW included TNN or Van as a demo nation that could actually work for me. Limits on magic? No, problem, I prefer low level magic. Only 40 turns? Great, eliminates micro!

Calahan. wrote: Oh and can you please state in the OP (update your template ) what commitment level you expect from the players who sign-up.

Sorry, forgot about that. My knee-jerk reaction is to say casual because I consider myself a casual player in terms of going for fun pretender builds over optimal ones, not being all that concerned with min-maxing, etc. But that's not really the purpose of your specifying the game type and with that in mind I'm inclined to say high commitment. I'll update my OP now.

SenorOcho wrote: Doesn't no Indies also mean no indie scouts?

It does, but this being EA those can be hard to come by in any case. Even so, I kind of like the idea that it forces a choice if you want scouting info: either take the hit on research or spend gems.The nice thing about NI is that it really focuses on your national units. Archers may be the best example. If your nation doesn't have archers, you can't just assume you'll recruit indies. If your nation has archers, but not great ones, you won't automatically recruit indies that have better range/damage, movement, terrain survival, etc. It's a nice change of pace from a game with normal indie settings.

gothefungus wrote: Every faction that can't recruit scouts has Death magic for Black Servants. (...I think.)

Is there another nation other than EA C'tis with this issue? They received one with the latest CBM update.

I'm interested in joining as Helheim.

I apparently need to get smashed in another game, and all this talk of the demo is steering me to Marverni.

Vanheim!

Welcome everyone!

Two observations:

While I'm certain I've been in games with all three EA glamour nations before I think it's safe to say this is the first time I've seen all three in a small game such that they comprised 60% of the nations.

Also: ready, set, blood sac!

I look forward to two glamour raiding parties running into each other in the middle of hostile territory.

I suppose there's always room for someone to try a goofy Nemedian-only Fomoria game for a fourth.

Count me in as Pangaea.

Welcome, riverfish!

Once we had four nations signed up I was actually thinking Pan would complete the picture nicely. So, we've got 80% stealth nations and 80% blood sac nations. This has the makings of an interesting game.

EDIT:

Ok, the game is setup on the llamaserver. Note that I don't have the correct map selected because I want to double check it before uploading.

Speaking of the map, I'm going to upload a version to the llamaserver that removes nation restrictions so that if someone wants to use the NI version in a mod nation game they won't have problems. If you'd like this version for own files see the updated attachment. I also made a small change to the map titles so you wouldn't see "Five Lands" repeated in your list of maps. You don't need to do any of this - as long as you have the image file you'll be fine.

PS - it throws me off that if I post twice in a row the forum appends my second post to the first one.

Edited by: Valerius.

Only one archer, it's 22g and has a horse's butt. Interesting. Marv's unarmored dudes aren't looking too bad right now.

Submitted my pretender. Is the game map right?

Debaser8 wrote: Submitted my pretender. Is the game map right?

Nope, that's just a placeholder. I want to test the map before uploading. I'll do that right now. I'll have my pretender ready in the next 24 hours. This glamour/stealthfest isn't quite what I expected... I mean, someone always takes a giant nation in EA. What's up with that?

SenorOcho wrote: Only one archer, it's 22g and has a horse's butt. Interesting. Marv's unarmored dudes aren't looking too bad right now.

Yeah but that horse butt makes 'em fast. That, combined with forest movement, bailed me out at least once. But I'm sad: I thought our slingers would provide the game's massable missile troops but yours are so much cheaper than mine that I can't compete.

I finally realise you are talking about centaurs (always forgot them).They may be awkward archer,but competent as ranger.

Edited by: riverfish

I know it's hard to remember Pan having units other than Maenads and Minotaurs.

I looked the map over once more and am glad I did since I had missed declaring one province as being NI. Everything should be ok now and I've uploaded the map to the llamaserver. If you were also downloading a copy for yourself please go here to download the revised NI versions of the maps.

Once all the pretenders are in the game is set to start automatically.

Edit 8/3:

I've been very cautious about saying anything given the no-diplo nature of this game but at this point the battle lines are clearly drawn so I think it's safe to get opinions from both of you on continuing. I'm happy to continue if that is the preference but I don't like to drag games on if it isn't going to change the result.

Edited by: Valerius.

I'm pretty much out of it at this point, so whatever you two decide.

I was going to ask for everybody to surrender, but last battle you kicked my ass, so I scrapped that plan.

Ok, I've given this a lot of thought and I'm willing to concede. I think I could drag this out for quite a while but I don't see a chance to win. My main army is still powerful (though I've only now got a decent number of troops again to serve as blockers for my mages after that big battle with Helheim), the problem is that's all I've got and I don't have the resources to project force elsewhere. That means each turns that goes by I fall further behind Helheim. If Marverni loses his large army and Helheim loses that distraction then things will go downhill very quickly. But even without that happening Helheim is getting relatively stronger. And if I split up my main army to go on the offensive then I won't be able to stop a Helheim push into my home territories.

So at this point I think we are just taking up time completing turns that won't change the end result.

A few comments:

1) Debaser8, that big battle was really something! It just went on and on. At first, when I saw your lineup of thugs I thought "I'm toast." But then the lack of full elemental immunities caused several of them to be taken down. The real terror were those two mechanical giants who just kept steadily plodding through my ranks. I got to the point where I was just hoping maybe my weapons of sharpness buffed mage bodyguards would manage to take them down. In the event, I think a stream of life got one of them, not sure about the other. Then there was my only SC, the aegis-wielding treant. I was really frustrated that he spent much of the battle stuck in side conflicts, not doing much useful, and on top of that your high MR units weren't even being petrified all that quickly. But later on, when your mages were off-script and the skelly spam started the aegis proved useful. There were times the treant's HP dropped pretty low but he managed to keep going and I started to think he'd survive the battle. Then he was enslaved towards the end and that was a huge blow. Not even so much for losing the treant but because I lost the aegis. My E income was horrible (3 gems/turn) so there was no chance I'd be able to re-forge it. I was actually surprised you hadn't yet forged it since then.

In any case, it was a great fight. I'm really not sure which of us was hurt more by it. You lost more mages but I lost a lot of troops as well as the aegis. I think you could afford the losses more than me.

One other thing: I was really impressed with my energizer bunny mages, who just kept going and going.

2) I think Pan's early attack on Van set the course of the game (I think it was Pan who launched that war but I'm not certain). But with only 5 players any early war will change the course of the game heavily.

3) Site searching: frustration. I was incredibly frustrated with the poor gem income of my home provinces as well the complete lack of finding any indie mages (I was very jealous when I saw Helheim had found lore masters ). To add insult to injury I didn't get a single hero the entire game, and TNN has some nice ones. I went with a divine serpent scales build with E6S3N6. It would have been better to get G3 and drop the bless to E4N4 but I just couldn't resist having my bless make my thugs fatigue neutral - it's a fun rather than a smart choice. But G3 would have helped a lot, especially since our version of CBM had the .3% growth rate. I am, however, glad that I did make some concession to practicality and got some S on my pretender. That definitely proved useful given my complete lack of finding sites with recruitable mages.

Anyway, thank you to everyone for playing and fighting hard and congratulations to Debaser8 on a well-played game! Also, SenorOcho, thanks for continuing to fight at the end even though your chances of winning were gone.

Valerius. wrote:
2) I think Pan's early attack on Van set the course of the game (I think it was Pan who launched that war but I'm not certain). But with only 5 players any early war will change the course of the game heavily.

I as Van was the one who attacked. Made a few dumb mistakes. 1. forgot I could not break the walls of a fort with maenads spawning there all the time. 2. had too low province defence which let Pan take a bunch of provinces with Call of the Wild. 3. did not expect him to pump like 1k gold or something ridiculous like that into those provinces when I moved to retake them. Well played by Pan, I would've beaten him eventually but Helheim attacking me was that, and something I feared constantly after the Pan war did not end quick like I had imagined. It was too late to do anything about it at that point.

Edited by: Teraswaerto

I am happy to accept your concessions, but you might want to reconsider. I"m about to go on the offensive again and maybe you (TNN) can inflict a mortal wound on me. My army is a total pain in the ass to script and organize though (even in it's diminished state) so if you still want to concede you will save me a lot of work . Otherwise I will post up my turn file and some more thoughts on the game.

No, I'm ok with conceding. I have an extensive scout network and while I of course can't see the strength of your glamour forces your non-glamour forces alone far outweigh what I've got. Given that, there's no point in you suffering through having to spend a lot of time on turns when it won't change the result.

I went with an awake rainbow research pretender to research construction 4 for me, manually site search and raise my magic diversity. I gave him E4 for the bless for thugs. I got luck 3 for the additional gold and gem income and heroes, and growth 3 because games tend to drag-on longer than people expect making growth scales very valuable (plus .3% a month is really good as Valerius mentions). I funded this with drain 3, which I hoped wouldn't be too much of a burden on my skull mentor fueled research and would help my in domain demons and undead.

When I saw Pangaea and Vanheim fighting I was very happy and started to plan my attack on Vanheim. I think I just went with fog warriors and blood summons for the attack knowing that I would have fog warriors first and he didn't have enough magical firepower to stop me. After Vanheim I had to decide whether to just sit back or attack TNN or Marveni. I decided on Marveni because I didn't want to deal with recruit anywhere druids and Master Enslave late game (and in a no diplo game I hoped that I could deal a mortal blow to Marveni while he was dealing with Pan and before TNN moved against me). Also I figured TNN would use Storm against me and would have a ton of thunderstrike casters which even though I could protect my commanders from it, would be a total pain to deal with. Luckily Marveni decided to fight me, I was worried he would just refuse to engage me and I would be left trying to chase him around the map while TNN moved to engage me. Fog warriors + mass flight + rigamortis + darkness + relief + a nicely magic resistant Sea Troll SC proved to be too much for Marveni. After taking over Marveni's capital I concentrated on equipping a 2nd army to deal with TNN.

Mechanical giants were reasonably priced and had great immunities so I built some of them. Also summoned a nice little group of storm demons. Unfortunately, Marveni put a lot of thought into our big battle and things went wrong for me. He cast fog warriors + mass airshield (fend?) + rain of stones which I didn't expect. Most dominions players don't seem to cast spells that might harm them, even if they harm their enemies much more. The initial rain of stones barrage wiped out my mass cold resistance + grip of winter caster plus a lot of other casters. Also, I cast darkness but not rigamortis and I think the darkness had at best a neutral effect on the battle (TNN guys can partially see in the dark a lot of my guys can't) and riga mortis would have slowed down the TNN evocation barrage and been much better (I also didn't expect evoc 9. Who reseraches evoc 9?....). My replay of the big battle was bugged and showed my army routing, but I guess I was able to kill that really annoying invincible treant. Anyways, I routed TNN's army but didn't harm his huge group of casters (all of his capital only casters seemed to be camped on my door step) while I lost a lot of casters and thugs (the latter were very replaceable). I was busily forging hats for my casters too prepare for a second battle when Valerius decided to concede.

Next turn partially completed below.

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