[Dom3] ANOTHER newbie game - MA, [5/5] - In progress

koz · Post by **koz** » Tue May 29, 2012 5:27 am

Drago: Fix your quote tags pl0x.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed May 30, 2012 2:37 am

Mictlan waltzed in and kicked me out of my zen garden. I'm not in position to effectively punish them immediately, but I am ready and willing to defend the homeland.

It seems likely that Mictlan will soon be invading me, so anyone who wants to open a second front is encouraged to do so.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed May 30, 2012 3:58 am

Wait a second: I stalled? I could have sworn I submitted 11. Oh well, whatever.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed May 30, 2012 5:58 am

DSMatticus wrote:Wait a second: I stalled? I could have sworn I submitted 11. Oh well, whatever.

The term is 'staled'. You went past your expiration date, rather than your engine failing mid-run.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed May 30, 2012 10:07 pm

Can I get a 6 hour extension?

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed May 30, 2012 10:09 pm

Orion wrote:Can I get a 6 hour extension?

Gave you 7.

koz · Post by **koz** » Thu May 31, 2012 8:50 am

Hai Mictlan and C'tis. I'm laying claim to 55 provisionally. Mictlan, if you contest this, it will be tantamount to an open declaration of war, which I am both capable and willing to prosecute. So give me my expansion space.

To all others: I am willing to make you shit for Death gems. Just remember that.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Thu May 31, 2012 5:12 pm

Mictlan agrees to respect the borders of the expanding Machaka.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:48 am

I'm holding Mictlan off of my capitol, but can't retake my lands without help, at least until I have lots more research. Anyone who wants to can probably scoop up some land on their far side, since they marched up 160 guys to me.

Machaka: I want the province of Klon. If you want peaceful relations in the future, either leave it neutral or take it but be prepared to hand it over.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 2:48 am

Orion wrote:I'm holding Mictlan off of my capitol, but can't retake my lands without help, at least until I have lots more research. Anyone who wants to can probably scoop up some land on their far side, since they marched up 160 guys to me.

If we waste any more time on "Weeaboo," we'll be bankrupt by the end of the month!

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:19 am

Menawhile Ctis is pumping Marshmasters out of FOUR forts and is poised to have an absolutely ridiculous research lead if no one makes him take mages out of the lab.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:21 am

Shinuyama can take Clon. I have no claims on it.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:03 am

I'm not taking it any time soon. If you wanted to clear it out and site-search it, you'd actually be doing me a favor, plus collecting some gems in the interim. Just don't build buildings in it.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:18 am

Orion wrote:Menawhile Ctis is pumping Marshmasters out of FOUR forts and is poised to have an absolutely ridiculous research lead if no one makes him take mages out of the lab.

You can thank my L3 gold events for that

Its funny (well not for Machaka...

) because while Machaka had half his population die on turn 2, i got 750g on turn 2...

Do I have Siphon Luck or something? lol...

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:14 am

Yeah. If you were another faction you might have to spend some of that gold on troops, but Ctis doesn't have to build anything other than mages until war actually starts.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:06 am

Orion wrote:Yeah. If you were another faction you might have to spend some of that gold on troops, but Ctis doesn't have to build anything other than mages until war actually starts.

You mean 'ever', right? Your goal with C'tis is to replace your army as fast as possible.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:08 am

Well C'tis troops are generally quite bad. They have low morale, no archers, poorly armoured (compared with other nations' armoured troops) to no armoured troops.

I'm mainly relying on my god for early game. Summonable units and marshmasters are my army in the mid game (along with the obligatory SC or two).

This is only the 2nd time I've played this nation in a MP game, the first wasn't really much of a game for me.

So, opinions?

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:37 am

Elite warriors. If you don't screen your mages your casualties will be unacceptable, and most early summons don't really have a lot of screening potential on the open field. Getting SCs in the midgame is quite the trick if you aren't a giant nation, I think you mean thugs.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:54 am

Akula wrote:Elite warriors. If you don't screen your mages your casualties will be unacceptable, and most early summons don't really have a lot of screening potential on the open field. Getting SCs in the midgame is quite the trick if you aren't a giant nation, I think you mean thugs.

well with skelly spam it should be enough, but i guess some elite warriors can't hurt (i guess i can get a few even with sloth 3).

Ok, so what is the difference between an SC and thug exactly? I'm a bit hazy about the differences

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:51 am

Thugs are just generally hardcore troops that can take a province on their own.

Supercombatants are one-man armies.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:11 pm

In my opinion, a Thug is a unit intended to fight large numbers of generic troops by itself, while an SC is a unit intended to fight troops with mage support by itself.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 5:32 pm

Thugs can kill PD and some moderate amount of enemy soldiers on their own. The key is thugs are designed to do that for the lowest amount of gems possible. You have a successful thug if you are getting 1 province per turn for around 20 gems, 30 at the outside.

SCs are designed to be really hard to kill, to the point that regular troops will have about a 0% chance of killing them. They also should be tailor made to deal with the most common things the enemy mages might try. SCs don't really have any kind of cost restrictions and most of the suitable chasis are very far into their respective research trees.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:25 pm

In the event that anyone cares, I postponed hosting by two hours just to make sure I'd have time to do my turn after work.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 2:14 am

So Mictlan started invading me a few turns ago, but until today I just gave them land on my western borders virtually for free. Today we finally met on a real battlefield, and we dealt Mictlan a painful blow. One battle doesn't win a war, and should we fight to the death it's still anybody's game, but Mictlan's ambassadors are making noises about withdrawing and leaving me alone, so if that actually happens I guess I survived. This seems like an appropriate time for a bit of a post-mortem.

Mictlan opened this war very well. They carved a line through the middle of my territory with their main force, isolating several provinces they could then take at leisure, and also trapping my prophet behind enemy lines. (It's okay, I was getting sick of him anyway). They stole a massive amount of income from me early and potentially got a whole pile of gems out of it, if they site-searched the land they took. (I hadn't site-searched yet.) They pushed me back until we had a border two provinces long, which was pretty defensible for them since I didn't know where their troops would be.
They then attacked further into my territory, and this is where they lost a big chunk of troops, including Jaguars. This was a badly-chosen fight for several reasons. The first was the geography. I only had two provinces bordering Mictlan, but more importantly, Mictlan didn't have a province that bordered more than 1 of mine. That meant Mictlan was forced to telegraph their attacks. Wherever their main force attacked, I could be certain to have all my troops and mages there.
Failure to bring enough chaff. Shinuyama has cheap archers and powerful evokers, so you know you're going to take a lot of damage up front. From early in the fight, my fire darts were landing on your jaguars, which is really unacceptable.
Failure to account for PD. Any time you are attacking a province containing a large number of troops, you should assume it also contains some PD. And when you've telegraphed the attack, you should expect a LOT of PD. To actually win a pitched battle as the aggressor, you either neither overwhelming troop advantage or you need enough mages that dispersing their chaff is essentially free.

This war is by no means a total loss for you. If you simply hunker down where you are now, then the PD will work for you instead of against you (although Mictlan's PD isn't as good). Throw some forts up and you could keep that land for a long time, at least unless someone else goes after you.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 2:47 am

The advice is appreciated; I clearly need it, and sense that it's being given in earnest as opposed to being provided to lead me astray and make me lose the game. (I don't need any help doing that, I can lose my first game on my own, thanks.)

And yeah, I way underestimated the effect your mages might have in that battle. The amount of damage I was taking from fire darts was outright shocking.

I took a gamble and it went poorly. At least watching the battle report it was really clear why. Mictlan is by no means defeated and hopes to carry the advantages it gained in this war forward, but man, that's what I get for being impatient.

That reminds me, what advice can readers give a newbie on how to balance mage-turns between research and site searching? I get that remote site searching is way more efficient turn-wise and ultimately is the way to go in the long run for the most part, but turns spent searching are turns not spent researching. Granted, having a pile of research and no gems to cast anything is a total waste of time, but what factors should be considered when deciding how many mages to allocate to research and how many to site searching?