DomIII: Cosmic Team-Up

[Ancient History]

The new turn is in, for a bloody turn - the larger portion of Agartha's army besieging the Atlantean citadel has broken off to the north, effortlessly overrunning the province defense of another province, leaving only a smaller force to continue the siege. Meanwhile to the north a new Agarthan force appears to reclaim one of the provinces Atlantis had just taken from them, and the Atlantean army's effort to invade the province of Solas was successfully rebuffed, albeit with losses on both sides.

To the west, in the former Mictlan, Agartha's lightly-defended provinces fall to a handful of Agarthan troops, though it appears little real advantage has been gained. The net gain for both sides this turn then is naught, but Agartha has perhaps the better positioning, and certainly took fewer casualties in the fighting. With them bringing more troops up it may only be a matter of time for Atlantis, but there are battles yet to be fought...

[Ancient History]

Turn 38. Agarthan armies conquer Atlantis' rich northern provinces, depriving us of wealth and gems, and smashing temples. But to the west it looks like Caelum has broken through a former T'ien Ch'i province, and if their long-standing armies of fresh troops can engage Agartha and R'lyeh maybe there is yet hope to throw back the Agarthan advance.

[folytooo]

Alright lets see if I can also die horribly.

[Archmage]

Postponed another 24h. This is shaping up to be a hectic weekend.

[Archmage]

Contrary to previous statements, turn's in.

[Archmage]

Apparently llamaserver is down:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/ind ... topic=1487

No word on when it'll be fixed

[Ancient History]

Llamaserver is back up, turn was received, and Atlantis took a beating. We lost pretty much every fight except one, sometimes giving Agartha a bloody nose in the process but otherwise suffering considerable losses, though it appears Caelum and T'ien Ch'i had a little more luck, and with a random barbarian horde wandering through Agartha appears to have faced a net loss for the turn. Bloody but unbowed, we'll see how badly we manage to fuck up the next turn.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Llamaserver spammed my inbox with 40 'wrong turn number messages.' I don't even. However, my turn seems to have gone through okay anyway.

[Username17]

Llamaserver spammed my inbox with 40 'wrong turn number messages.' I don't even. However, my turn seems to have gone through okay anyway.

That's a thing that happens when the server gets rebooted sometimes. Don't worry about it.

-Username17

[Username17]

Hoogla Khan has taken the field. He crushed Caelum's forward army with his mighty sorceries.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Right now between them Agartha and R'lyeh have 67 provinces and 14 VP, and Atlantis, T'ien Ch'i and Caelum have 36 provinces and 9 VP. I think perhaps setting the limit at 20 VP was too high, and barring Frank having a surprise lobotomy team Dreaming Stones is going to win. While I'm willing to keep playing, I'm going to ask whether anyone else wants to call the game as it is.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I wouldn't mind. I'm basically out at this point anyway.

[Username17]

I'm willing to keep fighting. If you want to sharpen your late middle game teeth on a reasonably powerful opponent while we maneuver around and try to take the last remaining VPs, I'm game with that.

If you just want to lower the VP threshold to 18 or even 15, I'd be game for that as well.

We are knocking on Tien Chi's front door, and if you want to watch our final confrontation, that would be cool too.

-Username17

[Archmage]

15 VP I foresee us achieving in a couple turns at most.

If you're not enjoying the game anymore and people want to surrender, I can't really stop you. But the winner of the game does seem fairly clear at this point.

[angelfromanotherpin]

We are knocking on Tien Chi's front door, and if you want to watch our final confrontation, that would be cool too.

Our 'final confrontation' almost certainly involves Tien Chi blinking out of existence from DomKill. It's dramatic, but not very interesting.

[Ancient History]

...and T'ien Ch'i is domkilled. Agartha and R'lyeh control the bulk of the map, with Caelum already severely reduced; the only reason Atlantis hasn't quite followed suit is because because Agartha hasn't managed to get its armies quite so far south (yet). It's the end game, so I guess we try to finish well over the next couple turns.

[folytooo]

Gg. You guys are pretty effective.

[Ancient History]

Armies continue to march. Atlantis has moved into general death-spiral mode; Agartha is currently fielding something in excess of three times our troop strength in the field, and those are almost entirely comprised of crossbowmen which Atlantis still doesn't have really good defense against.

Now, if I had been less of a ponce at the beginning and planned ahead, I probably would have invested more heavily in some indie archery and equipping field commanders with long-range magical weapons, and then had a small group of shield-bearing ice guys out front to draw fire while raining arrows and spells on the crossbowmen from well out of their range - as it is, usually the best I can do is scrape together whatever indie archers I can get to back up the sizable infantries I can still recruit and field each turn.

Really, looking back at this game, I made several serious errors beginning with picking scales: I basically tried to run LA Atlantis like LA Man, and that is why I have a hideous drain scale and lots of money even as I lose provinces left, right, and center to Agartha. This is why my research has been in the toilet the entire game, and now I'm at a distinct disadvantage. Even though my extensive site-searching provided me one of the most sizable gem incomes of the game (after R'lyeh, but even ahead of Agartha at one point), without the research I couldn't really use these effectively...and arguably, still cannot. By the time I could build research boosters worth a damn, Agartha was already mopping up what was left of T'ien Ch'i, and equipping a solid thug is still a highly questionable prospect. I could do it, but given the armies Agartha is tossing about it's highly questionable as to whether it would be effective - and of course, Agartha has their own mid- to high-range thugs armed with better equipment probably making their way south as we speak.

[Username17]

Caelum has surrendered. If you want, you can surrender as well. Or if you want to meet the newly equipped King of Magma, that's happening this next turn.

-Agartha

[Ancient History]

If Caelum surrenders, I surrender. All hail our new overlords, and good game.

[Ikeren]

After action report by any chance?

[Ancient History]

Not much to say. R'lyeh started out in the most advantageous ocean position and expanded early with little competition; Agartha also expanded aggressively, particularly to curtain expansion from the south. Because of starting positions, Atlantis was stuck between Mictlan and Caelum in the south (and so brokered NAPs early in the game to secure out borders), which further curtailed expansion; T'ien Ch'i by contrast was relatively alone up north with the bigger, more aggressive Agartha.

So Agartha came west and south to keep Atlantis and Mictlan from the ocean, and targeted Mictlan as the weaker of the two - aided immensely by an early, disastrous battle where Mictlan walked their forces straight into a trap. Caelum was effectively bottled up between T'ien Ch'i and Atlantis for 90% of the game until R'lyeh and Agartha overran the lonely side.

By the mid-late game, things were pretty bad - Mictlan had fallen to Agartha, so Caelum joined up with T'ien Ch'i and Atlantis for a triple alliance, but even then Agartha and R'lyeh already had more provinces and gem income between them than any two sides. Eventually Caelum broke through - but their armies were a paper tiger, unequipped to deal with Agartha's pretender or the thugs sent out by R'lyeh. Atlantis hung in there a bit, but only because Agartha never brought the full weight of its armies down on it, and there's no reason to think our forced would have dealt much better against a thug or SC.

As Atlantis, I can say a couple things. The first is, I screwed up from word go by taking a heavy drain dominion as Atlantis; it put me at last place in research for most of the game, and I never developed the units and counters I needed to make a showing in the late game. I wasn't as aggressive as a I could have been either - partially because I was afraid of getting squeezed by Caelum and Mictlan from east and west; that indecision (and our treaties) cost me necessary expansion. Lastly, I never really developed a good anti-Agartha strategy, which is pretty sad considering all of my major battles were fought against Agartha. Atlantis is a great LA nation, but it lacks archers of any kind and without magic support it is at a distinct disadvantage.

In my later battles with Frank my general strategy involved a long line of really good snow warriors and other troops - which I could afford to buy in bulk - backed up by whatever indie archers and crossbowman I could scrounge up, which wasn't many and in the latter cases largely involved hoburg crossbows. I aimed the crossbows at his archers and told my front-line troops to surge forwards across a broad line, because they generally had better range than I had. If I had been more clever or capable I might have put a hero in front with some protective magic items to soak up crossbow fire while directing longer-ranged magic or weapons at the enemy - but my available resources didn't support that strategy either. My best (and my dangerous) tactic was usually to summon lamashtas and hope they went after the enemy casters (worked well once or twice, went disastrously wrong once when they turned against my casters).

But, even though we kept up several running engagements, I don't think Atlantis ever really had a chance to win that war. We were outgunned and outgeneralled.

Now, I still think the format of the game was pretty good - though the VP points was too high in hindsight - and if we'd had another couple of teams it would have been a very different game. But the geography was against us, and I think that really hampered our cooperation as well.