[Dom3] Ancient's Game

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 2:49 am

FrankTrollman wrote:In general, if your plan is to have some human slaves catch arrows while you make undead, you should put those human slaves in separate units of 1. As is, you put all the chaff in one pile so they all booked it.

Not, of course, that there was much you were going to do. Were those guys really casting level 2 spells? This is too late in the game to send four Zanzumites into a battle and not know Raise Skeletons. But having your entire pack of chaff not run away on the first turn against the archers would have been good.

Okay, thanks for the advice. And... yes, my research to date has not been as good as I'd like it. I blame vampires.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:05 pm

Might want to something about those quote tags, dude.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:04 am

Turns 29-37 (incomplete)

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:46 pm

Only half of my stealthy commanders defended my fortress, resulting in my undead army autorouting. I thought all sneaking units de-stealthed when in a fortress under seige.

I still have 6 commanders in the province, including a few that sneaked in last turn, but for some reason they did not join the battle. Lame. Must have something to do with the turn order sequence.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:23 am

Winnah wrote:Only half of my stealthy commanders defended my fortress, resulting in my undead army autorouting. I thought all sneaking units de-stealthed when in a fortress under seige.

I still have 6 commanders in the province, including a few that sneaked in last turn, but for some reason they did not join the battle. Lame. Must have something to do with the turn order sequence.

Leaders and the troops under them will fight in a siege battle if their mission is "defend", and also if it is "research", "cast ritual", "forge magic item", or "preach". But not if it is "hide" or "sneak". If they are on "patrol" or any of its variants (like move and patrol or break siege), they will fight outside the castle before the castle storming battle.

You can sneak in, you can sneak out, but you have to be defending the castle if you want to fight in the siege battle.

-Username17

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:24 pm

All my stealthy commanders lost the Hide ability from the menu while in a fortress under seige. All my stealthy units in the garrison also de-stealthed. The stealthy units I moved into the province lost the menu option to hide or sneak, though I could copy the orders to do so from another unit.

I have used this to my advantage in orther games, by sneaking commanders and units into a fortress under seige. They immediately 'defend.' The only apparent exception to this has to do with the turn a fortress is getting stormed. I'm over it.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 2:49 pm

Well, circumstances beyond my control make it unlikely that I'll be able to get many turns in on time over the next week, which is fortuitous in that I have just finished getting thoroughly beat by Atlantis. So I've gone AI, knowing that any further input from me would probably make very little difference in the final outcome at this stage.

Frank, I'd appreciate one of your famous after-action reports on the war. Everyone else, you may want to turn their attentions SW before the frogspawn finish consolidating my territory.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:02 pm

There were few huge problems with the way Abysia handled the war, they simply marched sluggish columns of heavy infantry and indie archers around backed up by evokers. Problem was: Atlantis had bigger sluggish columns of heavy infantry and indie archers and more evokers. Atlantis has "all the money", so a troop attrition defense plan wasn't going to work. Abysia needed to do elaborate things. Strike at the rear with flying devils, set fire to battlefields to cause disproportionate losses to the enemy, engage in all-or-nothing Magic Duels or something, because any low-risk-low-reward plan of national defense was doomed.

There were of course a couple of real errors.

When you have a mass of archers, they shouldn't all be in one blob. If you put a couple of stragglers around in front, they can draw enemy fire that is targeting missile troops and keep the main group from getting shredded. But wherever you put the main mass of archers, it better not be the middle of the field if you're Abysia. Because that is where your PD shows up, and some of it has heat auras which will set your archers on fire.
When you go for a Soul Contract strategy, put them on expendable bullshit heroes who stay in castles and not on expensive Demonbred you want to use to battles. First of all: any Soul Contract holder is eventually going to be eaten by horrors. But perhaps equally importantly, you never want to put your Contract holders in harms way and you also never want to be prevented from fighting with Demonbred, because those guys are awesome.
A thugged-out Golem can lay waste to province defense or even a small army. But they can't take a medium sized army without backup. That Golem traded himself 36:1 for regular troops, but if he had come with a modest army backing him up that might have been him killing 30 something enemies and living to do it again, which would have been more useful.
If you're going to cast a bunch of fireballs, script a Phoenix Power in first, because it saves you a bunch of fatigue and makes your fireballs hit harder.

More structurally, I am not sure why I haven't seen a Warlock yet. Those guys are very powerful and have some amazing magic. And yet, all I've seen are apprentices, who are just "pretty good at collecting blood slaves". Atlantis has steamrollered like 60 devils. And in almost every case they were fighting Atlantean main armies. That's not exactly a bad thing to do with them, Devils are really good and sometimes they broke into caster parks and between their sharp forks and the Atlantean Evokers' dull vision, were able to kill a number of casters. That's certainly valuable. But it wasn't going to keep Atlantis from advancing, because Atlantis could always just reinforce with a continuous conga line of more troops and more casters coming from the sea.

To turn things around, Abysia would have had to go long with its devils. 60 devils could be like 6 packs of 10 backed up by a couple Demonbred casters each. Send those around to cut Atlantean supply lines and maybe even murder small groups of reinforcements. Abysia had five Soul Contracts, which means that even if an entire Devil squad was wiped out, if it cost two turns (which I remind you is simply the time taken to perform a detour and then return), the losses would have regenerated automatically. Abysia needed to raid, because that was the only way the soul contracts were going to pay out enough to turn the raiding forces into real siege breaking forces.

And of course, big spells. I'm not privy to exactly what spells were available, but things like Heat From Hell needed to go up all the time in the big battles. Even the battle at the gates of Abysia that was a "victory" was really a defeat because so many Devils were lost. Much better to pull that the other way - handing out some Pyrrhic victories to the Atlanteans by dumping fire on the battlefield would handle things.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 4:35 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:When you have a mass of archers, they shouldn't all be in one blob. If you put a couple of stragglers around in front, they can draw enemy fire that is targeting missile troops and keep the main group from getting shredded.

Augh, y'know I saw you doing this and even noted that it was clever, but I did not put two and two together and do it myself. From now on, skirmisher screens.

That said, I don't remember ever having my indie archers and PD fighting together.

When you go for a Soul Contract strategy, put them on expendable bullshit heroes who stay in castles and not on expensive Demonbred you want to use to battles.

Yeah, that's a micromanagement thing. Just buying random indie commanders and marching them into my capital to hold cursed objects isn't intuitive for me. Since the Soul Contracts were coming out of my immobile pretender in my capital, they were going on either rapidly aging warlocks of one grade or another, or essentially ageless demonbreds - but lesson learned.

A thugged-out Golem can lay waste to province defense or even a small army. But they can't take a medium sized army without backup. That Golem traded himself 36:1 for regular troops, but if he had come with a modest army backing him up that might have been him killing 30 something enemies and living to do it again, which would have been more useful.

Hey, that army was a lot smaller when I gave the attack order. And I did not have an army to back him up with at the time, unfortunately.

If you're going to cast a bunch of fireballs, script a Phoenix Power in first, because it saves you a bunch of fatigue and makes your fireballs hit harder.

Done.

More structurally, I am not sure why I haven't seen a Warlock yet. Those guys are very powerful and have some amazing magic. And yet, all I've seen are apprentices, who are just "pretty good at collecting blood slaves".

Talk to me some more about this, because while I definitely see the Warlock's power as ritualists, I'm honestly not sure what to do with them in battle. I was reluctant to deploy them much anyway because I needed their research steam to hit some key (I thought) benchmarks during the war.

Abysia needed to raid, because that was the only way the soul contracts were going to pay out enough to turn the raiding forces into real siege breaking forces.

Check.

And of course, big spells. I'm not privy to exactly what spells were available, but things like Heat From Hell needed to go up all the time in the big battles. Even the battle at the gates of Abysia that was a "victory" was really a defeat because so many Devils were lost. Much better to pull that the other way - handing out some Pyrrhic victories to the Atlanteans by dumping fire on the battlefield would handle things.

This comes down to a key misunderstanding of the magic system I had: not knowing about the path-based limit on gem spending. I actually had a Fire Storm scripted for that siege breaking, based on Phoenix Power + Extra Gem to get the Dragon to path 5 fire for casting - not knowing that was a non-starter from the beginning. I could have gotten Heat From Hells going if I'd known, but I'd spent the research differently already.

Well-fought and well-taught, sir.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:11 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Talk to me some more about this, because while I definitely see the Warlock's power as ritualists, I'm honestly not sure what to do with them in battle. I was reluctant to deploy them much anyway because I needed their research steam to hit some key (I thought) benchmarks during the war.

Having Astral and Blood lets them do communions, which allow you to increase your magic paths so that you can do bigger nuking - particularly the dudes with Fire 1 and/or Earth 1.

In a pinch, he can also cast Hellpower, which ups all of his paths by 2, plus a bunch of other buffs.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Hell_Power

The Warlocks with Earth should also never walk around without at having a Blood Stone, so they can cast good Earth spells like Earthquake.

Essentially, these guys can do the army-killing spells that your little casters couldn't do.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:33 am

Never hellpower across a communion. The results are... well let's just say that the per-turn horror attack chance is rolled for each member affected.

Warlocks have two 10% chances for magic boosts, meaning that once in a while you get something stupidly awesome like a Fire/Earth caster who can lay down Magma Eruptions. But really, even a Fire 1 or Earth 1 can get you a lot of anti-horde power.

Every Warlock is a big Astral caster and with communions and equipment you can make him even bigger. With Fire 1, that's Astral Fires, which is a very large area of crowd clearance. But they are also big Blood Casters, which means that if you load them up that way and let them loose with blood slaves they can lay down Hell Fires that are really big. 6 squares of armor piercing fire is no joke.

But you are also uniquely geared to boost Earth. An Earth 1 Warlock can wear Boots and carry a stone and on the first round cast Summon Earth Power. That's a turn 2 Earth 4 caster with Astral access, and that means that you can start in on Gifts From Heaven, Blade Wind, or Earthquake. And that's with Evocation five.

-Username17

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:49 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Never hellpower across a communion. The results are... well let's just say that the per-turn horror attack chance is rolled for each member affected.

I didn't intend to say that you should communion then Hellpower in a pinch (my intent was to say do one or the other), but I'm glad you mentioned it as I wasn't sure if the Horror effect applied to everyone in the communion.

It might work as part of a suicide plan though (maybe with a reverse communion), but it'd be a waste of a precious Warlock if the Horrors get him.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:06 pm

Sorry I staled. Was indisposed.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 3:19 am

Winnah - did you get our message?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 5:32 pm

Is Llama server down?

Also, if Ctis has been avoiding posting the spoilered Let's Play bits for fear of giving away that they have been raiding Atlantis with Ghost Riders... it's OK. We don't read your turns and it was totally obvious that it was you because no one else had nearly enough research to pull that off.

-Atlantis

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 7:35 pm

It's more because blindly casting Ghost Riders into provinces on the other side of the map that might or might not have been yours was the most interesting thing I did up till turn 47, when I resolved to help Ashdod in its war and starting taking screenshots again. Now I'm actually using G.R. tactically to keep enemy armies from moving.

By the way, did the casting I sent after a water province take? I don't know whether the wraith lord would inexplicably drown or not.
====
Also, it looks like miasma works underwater. I just summoned up Asp Turtles with some aquatic mages, and at least one was diseased on arrival.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:34 pm

Turns 47-50 [incomplete]

[prior buildup, remote attacks]

47

48

49

50

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 9:10 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:It's more because blindly casting Ghost Riders into provinces on the other side of the map that might or might not have been yours was the most interesting thing I did up till turn 47, when I resolved to help Ashdod in its war and starting taking screenshots again. Now I'm actually using G.R. tactically to keep enemy armies from moving.

By the way, did the casting I sent after a water province take? I don't know whether the wraith lord would inexplicably drown or not.
====
Also, it looks like miasma works underwater. I just summoned up Asp Turtles with some aquatic mages, and at least one was diseased on arrival.

Yes, Ghost Riders attack water provinces just fine. You should have seen the battle. They don't stick around after the magic phase, but if they kill the PD, the province does go neutral.

-Username17

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 5:13 am

@Ancient

Check your inbox

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:23 pm

I noticed that Llama sever was back up but that it had not sent out turns yet. I requested a "resend" for all the players, which got me my turn and will presumably get everyone else a turn too. It says it is a resend, but of course it never sent the first version, so whatever.

Things should proceed as normal from here on.

-Username17

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 10:18 pm

The game is over and Atlantis is victorious.

We had only recently entered the crazy science-fiction future, so not a lot of really mad things went down. Atlantis teleport ambushed a victory point, but that should have been neither here nor there.

The primary issue is that once someone gets within striking distance of victory, other people can't leave victory points undefended.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 3:03 am

Oh hey, looks like some pretty significant stuff happened when I staled again. I have 2 unopened turn files in my inbox. Now I just need to decide whether I should open them or just end the AAR with a stern admonishment about this being what happens when you forget to check your email.

Nice game, everyone. I had fun.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 12:58 pm

I will never again play Agartha, but good game, good game.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 3:36 pm

AH, you should try the Agartha fixmod I made. Download and details are here.

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 7:54 pm

Nicely done. I'm satisfied that I at least learned a lot from playing this one.