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Dominions Decline 11: The Grimgrinch vs Christmas

Joined
Jul 4, 2014
Messages
1,563
So, it's finally over?

Congratulations to everyone (also the winner).

:thumbsup:
 

sqeecoo

Arcane
Joined
Dec 13, 2006
Messages
2,620
Yeah! I've been meaning to do a little writeup for this, but only now have some time to do it :)

Aynway, here goes!

Mah Pretender was this guy:
god.jpg


I'm pretty happy with him. EA Agartha has recruit-anywhere sacreds but they are just bags of meat due to abysmal attack score, at least without F bless. This guy gives a very decent bless to my sacred mages (all of them are sacred), can make the staff of elements and go into endgame D stuff, and Rain of Stones and such in immortal suicide attacks as needed while searching for air sites and forging air boosters. He did very well. Scales are good, and the luck helped decently. Nothing super major, but it was nice to get good events in a game for a change.

Expansion went terribly - I used the regular Agarthan bags of hp and olms, which is decent enough, but kinda touch-and-go if you want to expand fast. You will usually win very handily, even against knights and such, but sometimes you will just lose stupidly, usually when the hp bags rout early. One of my expansion armies bumped into Grim's giants while trying for a cave I wanted, I lost 2 (two!) provinces in year 1 to random events (at least one of which already had Luck 2 :( ), and I lost like 3-5 expansion armies to barb provinces and such. Fuck, I thought. I didn't achieve my goal of reaching the main sea either, since it was cut off by Mictlan's crazy expansion. Thankfully, being the only UW-capable nation bordering the two smaller lakes kept my expansion decent at 10-12 provinces by the end of it.

I also managed to secure a NAP with KN, who thought about attacking me (he could surely win at that point) but went for Tien instead because the idea of fighting Olms was just annoying enough to want to avoid.

Since my recuritable troops were total shit and Olms are a big drain on the economy, and because I managed to get NAPs with all my neighbors, I focused on managing my small empire as economically as possible. I recruited lots and lots of researchers, especially the excellent researching Engravers (who are otherwise useless) and built as many cheap palisades as I could. I kept this up for the rest of the game though I stopped recruiting engravers at some point. I only recruited some beefy sacreds so my big Oracle mages weren't the only Size 4 thing on the battlefield for target largest orders, but no other national troops, not even olms.

This caused my research to be as good as it was (as well as income, due to forts and low upkeep from sacred researchers). Especially considering everyone else had early wars and other uses for mages (thugs, bloodhunting) that slowed them down.

Once I had Conj&Ench 3/4 I started relying on summoned armies. Even without the ridiculous statues of MA Agartha, Agarthan summons are very nice. The Magma Children are insanely cheap and quite effective, penumbrals are great, and Living Mercuries need no introduction. It helped that I sold some basic fire armors and helms and later Fire Brands to Nifelheim for his SCs in exchange for W gems. So, so many W gems.

I'll quote my own recap from this thread in the early-midgame:
----------
My tipsy recap of the stuff so far:

Theodoros and Oceania declare war on turn 1. Oceania wins, but is invaded by Grimwulf while weak, with terrible Nifel SCs. Pays him off, but is badly bruised due to that and early war. Still, good position of the can be left alone UW - two capitols is nothing to sneeze at.

Grimwulf boasts about his victories there and against Abysia on a consensual battle over a throne, alliance starts to form against him led by Koolnoodles and his allies Lanka and Abysia, but they have NAPs until turn 36. Agartha has NAP with Grimwulf till turn 30 only, and he honorably declares he will attack on turn 30. On turn 30 Agartha and Nifel are officially at war, but Nifel has ethereal giant SCs not even Living Mercuries can kill, and Agartha has tons of troops Nifel won't be able to siege through, so Nifel offers peace and alliance against Mictlan with TNN and Vanheim. Agartha (questionably) accepts.

Lanka, Abysia, and Mictlan fight Nifelheim, but Mictlan is hit hard by the Nifel-TNN-Agartha-Van alliance. One by one, people back out from the war with Nifel. Lanka is left alone, and there's this weird series of moves which leaves Nifel cut off from fighting Lanka by Mictlan and Abysia taking Lanka's territories at their border - from what I understood.
Agartha (having gotten a corridor to the big lake, which was my only desire really but I fucked up in early-day expansion) and Nifelheim sign peace with Mictlan, TNN and Van continue the fight. TNN at least seems to be loosing, on the whole, but wins some battles when stalling.

Agartha beats up poor Oceania. Vanheim and Nifel have some sort of quarrel over an indy province, terminate NAP and go to war. Mictlan happy, but gets backstabbed by Lanka who signed peace with Nifel, losing a ton of jaguars. Abysia giggles from the sidelines.

Current wars:

Agartha - Oceania
Nifelheim - Vanheim
Vanheim, TNN - Mictlan
Lanka - Mictlan

Again, this is my limited drunk info. I'm not diploing heavily this game since it's supposed to be fast-paced, but some asshole asked for slower turns so now it's slow.
--------------------
The asshole is me, just for clarity :)

Basically, Grim didn't go through with his attack on me because my forts would have been a huge pain to siege due to my summoned army (but his SCs could have beaten me at that point). We agreed to be allies instead and went for Mictlan. I grabbed like 4-5 provinces and made peace - all I really wanted there was a way to get into the large sea. Which I did, crushing poor Pelagia that was hurt badly earlier, and then moving that same army to attack a weakened Abysia. Basically, I ate up Nifelheims semi-defeated enemies. Nothing wrong with that in my book :) Seize the moment and all that.

Abysia defended well with mass elemental spam and killed my national hero that tried to spam earthquake, but was eventually overwhelmed when I managed to bring in the Pretender with mass flight.

At this point Grimwulf started calling for a global alliance against me, with increasing frustration. Quite rightly, as it turns out. I didn't really understand how powerful Agarthan summons+high research would become, and since Nifelheim had multiple globals, including Illwinter annoying everybody, and as much land as me, and of course the scary giants, neither I nor other players really though he was right about my power during the game. In their defense, Dayyalu and to an extent Malakal if I remember correctly also thought he was winning handily.
I think it's also true that Agartha had excellent tools for dealing with his SCs in my "regular" summons. Penumbrals and Mercuries have natural AP attacks, and Magma Children ignore defense and attack with fire. As we saw from Nifelheim-Vanheim battles, Nifel's SCs could handily defeat even Vanheim's elites. Jags and such probably wouldn't have fared any better. So it's quite possible that an alliance against me might have ended with a dominant Nifelheim victory.

Be that as it may, Grim was quite correct in assessing my strength after conquering the sea and the smallish Abysian territory. I'll let him recap, from earlier in the thread:


Guess I might as well post my own history wrap of D11, coz I honestly feel a bit bitter about this whole thing. Sometimes I feel like all players of D11 are just a bunch of Isiloons. So, here is how it was, trying my best not to miss anything:

- First year expansion. Mictlan and Vanheim both had a crazy gud expansions; Lanka failed; other nations were mediocre. UW situation was pretty ridiculous, as we all remember.
- Therodos gets wiped out early on, and sends Niefelheim a death basket to deliver some vengeance upon Oceania. Niefelheim agrees.
- TC gets ganged and wiped out.
- Niefelheim attacks Oceania, although having no intentions of conquering any of its provinces. Never recruited a single UW unit to attempt any wall breaking - that would be a gold waste. However, Oceania tries to fight back hard and suffers massive losses as a result.
- Skirmishes occur worldwide, mostly bumps, or localized conflicts. It's rather peaceful overall.
- Oceania finally agrees to discuss peace with Niefelheim, which was actually very easy and cheap (duh!). A bit too late, though - the military might of Oceania was gone after this war.
- Niefelheim prepares to wipe out Agartha, because it's rather easy to do early on; almost impossible at later stages. Niefel moves its forces to the borders, Agartha is preparing to defend itself.
- SUDDENLY everybody decides to gang on Niefelheim. Eddard Stark reveals the plot beforehand, and decides to cancel the war with Agartha. The latter hesitates to agree, and still wants to fight. But it all ends peacefully in the end.
- Niefelheim organizes anti-Mictlan coalition with Vanheim, TNN and Agartha. The coalition is ready to attack Mictlan as soon as gangbang on Niefelheim starts. Eddard Stark begins to act in provoking fashion, shouting and mocking people in the thread. Abysia, Mictlan and Lanka move their forces towards Niefelheim.
- Mictlan casts Mother Oak. Two turns later, Niefelheim steals its Mother Oak.
- Mictlan gets ganged and fails to invade Niefelheim properly. Turkey people pay a modest tribute for a peace.
- Abysia attacks Niefelheim and fails. Has to pay a rather large tribute, and is left in shambles.
- Lanka invades Niefelheim, but immidiately escapes. Later on they too pay a substantional tribute.
- Meanwhile, Agartha takes a massive bite of a weakened Mictlan, enjoying fighting a 3 vs 1 war.
- Craving for more, Agartha invades Oceania, which still has zero military after the war with Niefelheim.
- Craving for even more, Agartha invades Abysia, which still has zero military after... you see the trend here? Anybody?
- Mictlan pwns TNN.
- Niefelheim wants to be left the fuck alone and deal with research somehow, which has been in total shambles since the start of the game.
- Vanheim attacks Niefelheim all of a sudden. Ffs.
- Vanheim casts Eyes of God. Several turns later Niefelheim steals Eyes of God.
- Agartha casts Well of Misery. Nobody gives a damn.
- Niefelheim casts Illwinter. Everybody gets edgy all of a sudden. The game makes less and less sense with each passing turn.
- Dreaad changes the timer to 24h.
- Now everybody is about to jump on Niefelheim, violating ongoing NAPs and totally ignoring Agartha.

Guys. Next time just post in the OP, "Grimwulf is banned, everybody else is free to sign up". It's ok. I won't take any offence. It's way better than turning a perfectly normal pbem into a retardo-circuis, just for the sake of one player.

Rght now it's not about winning for people - it's about not letting Grimwulf win. Agartha has 4 caps. Vanheim has 2. Mictlan has 2. Niefelheim has 1. Let's all attack Niefelheim!

I'll tell you what, you treacherous bastards. You can come at me all at once, and of course Agartha will have a perfectly easy score winning D11 (not even a single REAL war! Not a single one, dammit!) - but I will destroy every last invader, and make a humiliation out of your defeat! Up until now every single invasion of Niefelheim was a complete fucking failure, but you just keep coming. You want yer arses frozen to death? Be it so.

Decline 11 - SUICIDE FIESTA!

Well, after this Grim cast Astral Corruption. Man is that spell annoying. Here's some stuff I learned: nothing bar a SC is safe even from a lesser horror attack - you sometimes get like 5 horrors against your guy and bodyguards. If you don't want your guy to die, equip him as an SC or don't cast with him. Thankfully at this point I had some Liches summoned up which I could afford to risk due to immortality, but getting into Nature and Faery Queens cost me a lot, even some unique items.

Also, while spells with cost above 10 are a near-deathsentence, even <10 spells get you a lot of deaths. I lost countless mages summoning even simple 1 gem penumbrals, and at least 100 gems in boosters from Ghost Riders who I though I could cast semi-safely. Basically, don't cast rituals, ANY rituals, with casters you are not prepared to lose. Also, blood stone forging can also trigger horror attacks, as I learned painfully.

Again, I managed to survive this because I poured ALL my cash into mages - but my research lead was nullified outside battles. No Earth Attack spam for me.

As to diplomacy, I had a long period of peace since I conquered Abysia, due to long NAP with Nifelhiem, now my main rival.

Much of sitting back and researching was fun, but after AC got cast, man was that "buildup" period annoying. I probably lost more to AC than to wars. During that period, I really had no master plan. Go with the flow is what Diplomacy taught me, and I was also pretty convinced I would lose horribly to Grimwulf's SCs, especially seeing how poorly even Van sacreds and thugs performed against them.

The only thing I was actively trying for, diplomatically, was to get Mictlan, in third place in strength, to attack Nifelheim instead of me. An alliance topic was opened between Lanka, Mictlan, Vanheim, and I for the anti-Nifelheim alliance once Illwinter had been cast, but while Vanheim was already at war with Nifelheim the rest of us had lengthy NAPs with Nifel. We all agreed to fight him, but couldn't really agree on a date. Lanka had the shortest NAP with Nifel and argued that we could use Illwinter as just cause to dissolve any NAP. I agreed, but Mictlan delayed, saying he didn't want to break the NAP. This was obviously a (quite fair) ploy to get Lanka and me to fight Nifelheim first, and then decide who to join after sitting on the sidelines a bit while the NAPs expired. Thus I agreed to wait out the NAP with Nifelheim and not use Illwinter to dissolve it, trying to force Mictlan to get in on our side.

Vanheim was unhappy but stoic about this as he was slowly being conquered by Grim, and Lanka was understandably dissatisfied because his NAP with Grim would expire half a dozen turns before Mic's and mine. As I said, my goal was to get Mic, the stronger of the two, on my side. We agreed to attack Nifelheim as our NAPs expired.

As Lanka's NAP neared expiration, he announced that he had extended his NAP with Grimwulf and declared war on Mictlan. This was a sound move on his (and Grimwulf's) part, but in my mind it voided any inter-alliance NAPs we might have had. Simply leaving the alliance would have been fine, but straight-up attacking an alliance member deserved repercussions from other alliance members - and I said so. Isiloon still went ahead with his decision, and I joined Mictlan in fighting him. I only took a couple provinces before my NAP with Nifelheim expired, and Mictlan only took a few provinces from Nifelheim once the war started, but my goal was achieved - Mictlan didn't attack me and I fought Nifelheim 1v1. Still, I was completely honest about the Lankan thing - in my mind, a sneak attack on one alliance member by another member deserves reprisal from the other alliance members.

Mictlan, as I see it, though that Nifel and I were about equal threats - he would certainly have more trouble with the SCs than I - and hoped to, as a blood nation, be strong enough lategame to win. In territory he didn't lag behind very much, if at all, and he really wanted to kill Lanka due to an earlier betrayal.

Anyway, the war with Nifelheim started! It was hard for Grim to raid very much since I had forts practically everywhere, so we had a clash of doomstacks on turn 72, ending in a decisive victory for me. I guess Mercuries and Penumbrals are just that good - they did almost all of the SC killing with their AP attacks. Magma Children were completely decent even in Cold 3 since they have AoE 1 attacks that ignore defense, so their reduced stats don't matter too much. I also had Army of Lead, the ultimate spell for all three of Agarta's national summons, all of which are great but have 0 protection. This spell makes decent numbers of the three national summons into an army that remained unstoppable for the rest of the game. Of course, Queens of Air I had summoned with my pretender before AC were awesome for Flight and Fog Warriors. I only lacked lizzurds or something for nice communions, but even that was bypassed to an extent with crystal matrices from my throne mages.

You can see the deciding battle against Nifel in my turnfile here:
http://www.filedropper.com/earlyagartha

Frustrated, Grimwulf quit after this battle. It's not that he could win after this, but turning AI, especially for a SC-focused nation, would make any resistance trivial - and NIfel still had a dozen or so fully decked-out SCs and huge territory. Thankfully, Lizzurd stepped in as a replacement and fought bravely to the end, defeating one of my full-fledged armies and killing an air queen among others. At this point, Mictlan spammed out 5 globals and Lanka marched his doomstack to my capitol, while I rushed for the remaining thrones. I honestly thought Mictlan would have a ton of stuff, but he only had one huge army that danced around missing mine (or I missing him). He put up a great and subtle defense with what he did have, though, and inflicted heavy losses. At this point though, I was summoning like 50 Magma Children and 10 Mercuries per turn, so there was no way to lose, long-term, even under AC. Although my summoners were getting killed off by the end there :)

Lanka's epic march and ensuing demise/capture of his army is described just a little back in the topic, including a save file with the battle.

Mictlan's great army remained unfought because he stalled the last turn when we had arranged a fight, just as I captured the last throne I needed, which I am sorry for. I was very interested to see how that would go!

All in all, it was a great game guys, with plenty of intrigue and drama and butthurt, in currently the longest dom4 topic on the 'dex. It definitely can't be said that my battle tactics and challenges I faced were anything amazing, but my economics and strategic decisions were sound, and I have to give myself credit for not breaking down and crying from the frustration of playing a summoning nation under Astral Corruption.

My pick for Most Valuable Unit goes to Magma Children! I love those guys, although both Grimwulf and Malakal look down on them a bit. At 0.4 gems apiece they are cheaper than some of the summonable chaff, and their flame attack will damage anything even in cold 3, barring fully fire resistant stuff. With Army of Lead, achieved by my research lead, they become a formidable army in their own right. It also helps that there is not all that much good use for fire gems as Agartha or in general. These were the mainstay and meat of my armies, and never disappointed.

Thank you very much everyone, it was a pleasure to play this, and I hope no butthurt extends beyond the actual game :)

As I am now only down to D10, if someone doesn't beat me to it I plan to open up another game on the Codex sometime soon (perhaps halfway through the summer - with people's vacations starting soon it would probably end up in an immediate pause, but it also takes time to arrange the game). I hope to see you there!
 
Last edited:

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,487
Location
Shaper Crypt
I still mantains that if whoever the heck got Therodos after me dared to fight on open fields instead of ending up with their 25 PD dead and sieged, Therodos would have been a terror for the ages. Still got the most unlikely victory of all my Dominions games here.

On the TLDR, Magma Children are awesome against common foes and a gem-supported EA Agartha is very good. I still think that Grimmie could have creamed ya if he would have dared to go full *autism* and micro everything. Or at least he would have made you insane.

Still, happy to see this over. If you win Dec10 I'm gonna strangle you.

usa_.jpg
 

Isiloon

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2015
Messages
1,670
Grats Sceecoo, you played very well.

Your skill on the battle was over shadowed by your diplomatic skills and strategic decisions.

Everyone else was too busy getting into wars that did not suit them, I made some big mistakes early that potentially cost me the game ie not being strong at any point in the game.
 

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