Turn 1

This is the thread for turn 1. Turn 1 probably will not be very busy, so mainly this thread will be used for pre-game discussion and advice, i.e. pretender builds, what the vets might do with their racial selections, etc. Also it would be a good idea to give a general outline of what you intend to do in the game. For example if you're planning to forge for others, or aim at powerful globals, etc. There will be a map thread made showing all noob starting positions once the game is started so you all know where approximately where the others are. You can continue it as long as you like, but I am only going to make the initial version (unless someone else does it )

I encourage you in the following turns to be very careful and precise about letting everyone else know your movement orders. In the last game one of the players lost a large army to a friendly fire incident and could have been in serious trouble from having lost them. Keeping friendly fire incidents to a minimum will be important in making sure things go smoothly and that you guys have a chance of fighting off the vet team.

Now, we don't have knowledge of what nations will be remaining when the vets are done picking theirs, so to some extent, planning cannot be done.

However, I've been brushing up on my EA Agartha and EA Tir na N'og. The EA Agartha is probably stronger right now because I resonate better with the strong earth magic, plus my build for it uses a forge lord, which should be good for the team.

Anyway, we're sure to be facing Pangaea, Sauromatia, and Oceania. Discuss the possible strengths and weaknesses to watch out for and exploit.

Well, the planning is more or less intended to be done once the vet team has picked their nations and team noob is picking theirs. And continue until all pretender gods are submitted, more or less the same as how it worked out in the previous game.

Whether they want to have oceania or not may be a somewhat moot point depending on how current discussion on the other forum goes....

My picks for the vet team's choices, while we're waiting for things to develop: Hinnom, Niefelheim, Lanka, Mictlan, Pangaea. Of course, I could be completely wrong but I think you'll be seeing at least one or two of these.

Hmm, if I'm in the backrow I though about EA Arco, forging clams and handing out money while going more or less straight to const-8.
If someone lets me seduce death and blood mages I should have access to most artifacts.
After that I could cloud trapeze around so no direct access necessary.
Another idea would be EA Ulm with forge bonus and stealth.

Anyway, thought I'd post my pretender design for Agartha.

Dormant Forge Lord
dom 7, D4/E4/F4/N4
Order 3, Sloth 1, Heat 1, Magic 1 (and I can't remember how much Luck/Misfortune to balance it out)

He exists like that to give my powerful earth mages the reinvigoration and the affliction boost (woo, affliction-boosted blade winds en masse!). Also, my Ancient Ones will need the fire bless to make their attack something approaching a respectable number. Forge Lord with dwarven hammer has a 75% cost reduction on items, which makes everything ridiculously cheap. If only I had anything that could be thugged or turned into a SC...

Oh, and if there's a place that has crystal amazons recruitable, then I humbly request possession of that to close that gap in my access and to get me someone who can cast Aim on my horribly-imprecise oracles for when they blast waves of blade winds. Otherwise the troglodytes get it into their "heads"* that they should be caught like footballs...

* Or, the faces that appear in the middle of their chests.

---

Alternatively, if I went with Tir na Nog, then I'm not so sure what pretender to use. I had some success with a E10 Cyclops since it has a protection in the low 30's WITHOUT armor. So, it requires a completely different approach to kill it than the rest of the high-defence Fir Bolg and Tuatha. Unfortunately, it doesn't really get me the magical diversity I'd want since that would give me air, nature, earth, and a little water. No Death, no astral and no blood is bad in the long run.

This map has nice special sites and recruitables, perhaps I'll post a list.

The vets are making the most of having first choice, Giants, I recall that fire worked well against some, at least Hinnom I beleive, can someone confirm this? Any hints on giant fighting from anyone?

Niefelheim's giants are susceptible to fire attacks. If we rely on that, I'm sure they'll just load them with fire immunity/resistance items, though. It seems like the individual giants being used determine the counter. If the giants have low protection, use swarms of little things, like hoburg militias and markatas. If they have high protection, you can still do this, but need to preface it with a rusting attack.

Unfortunately, Niefelheim is a big cold-damage powerhouse. Caelum is a big lightning-damage powerhouse, and Hinnom is great with fire. We're going to have a lot of rock-paper-scissors moments in this game, which we're likely to lose just on account of caelum being more maneuverable than we will be.

One thing to note is that, with the exception of Oceania, the vet choices are all exquisite expansionist races. Giants overwhelm most indies easily and Caelum blasts them with eagle kings.

Another thing is that they have all selected nations that do not suffer extra from cold scales. Caelum and Niefelheim both are BETTER with cold scales. Hinnom doesn't really care (except insofar as they eat vast quantities of food). Oceania doesn't care about heat at all so long as they're under water. We might want to give heat scales extra consideration simply to combat their cold ones.

We could try racing to second sun as a possibility.

I was thinking of taking sauromantia. I was thinking Pangaea at first as with CBM you can cast carrion woods on turn 8 guaranteed if you give your pretender N6D5, but probably won't have enough experience with it to warrant a try.

LumenPlacidum wrote:Anyway, thought I'd post my pretender design for Agartha.

Dormant Forge Lord
dom 7, D4/E4/F4/N4
Order 3, Sloth 1, Heat 1, Magic 1 (and I can't remember how much Luck/Misfortune to balance it out)

He exists like that to give my powerful earth mages the reinvigoration and the affliction boost (woo, affliction-boosted blade winds en masse!). Also, my Ancient Ones will need the fire bless to make their attack something approaching a respectable number. Forge Lord with dwarven hammer has a 75% cost reduction on items, which makes everything ridiculously cheap. If only I had anything that could be thugged or turned into a SC...

Oh, and if there's a place that has crystal amazons recruitable, then I humbly request possession of that to close that gap in my access and to get me someone who can cast Aim on my horribly-imprecise oracles for when they blast waves of blade winds. Otherwise the troglodytes get it into their "heads"* that they should be caught like footballs...

* Or, the faces that appear in the middle of their chests.

---

Alternatively, if I went with Tir na Nog, then I'm not so sure what pretender to use. I had some success with a E10 Cyclops since it has a protection in the low 30's WITHOUT armor. So, it requires a completely different approach to kill it than the rest of the high-defence Fir Bolg and Tuatha. Unfortunately, it doesn't really get me the magical diversity I'd want since that would give me air, nature, earth, and a little water. No Death, no astral and no blood is bad in the long run.

Actually, your oracles are completely thuggable. You'd have to work a bit on fatigue control, but they have good buffing paths. Just don't rely on them actually hitting anything, they need an aoe weapon if you want them causing any damage.

As for tir na nog, you could go worse than adapting baalz's eriu guide to them

Septimius Severus wrote:This map has nice special sites and recruitables, perhaps I'll post a list.

The vets are making the most of having first choice, Giants, I recall that fire worked well against some, at least Hinnom I beleive, can someone confirm this? Any hints on giant fighting from anyone?

You've got several options for dealing with giants. Aside from what lumen already mentioned, paralyzing is good, as well as fatigue spells. Actually even humble slime is pretty useful on giants, and spells that do AN damage. Hand of death for example can be quite potent if you can deliver it. Ideally you would paralyze them, fatigue them, and destroy their armor all at once. Wind guided flaming arrows could be useful against niefelheim (who you should always try to fight in heat, but they'll be casting wolven winter just about anywhere they expect to fight so don't expect this to really work out for you). Also don't forget buffs such as strength of giants, earth might, weapons of sharpness. One of the bigger problems you'll probably encounter is that giant thugs will probably start wearing magic armor shortly after you start using armor breaking spells against them, which of course can't be destroyed by such effects. For Niefelheim in particular, if you can get a cold immune thug, equip it with an armor negating weapon, or a fire brand or such... as long as it has decent defense, it should be able to tear up most niefel jarls. Send them in packs to make sure they live longer. I could have missed something, but if you check out the strategy index I'm pretty sure there's been a thread or two on giant killing that should be in there.

LumenPlacidum wrote:
One thing to note is that, with the exception of Oceania, the vet choices are all exquisite expansionist races. Giants overwhelm most indies easily and Caelum blasts them with eagle kings.

Another thing is that they have all selected nations that do not suffer extra from cold scales. Caelum and Niefelheim both are BETTER with cold scales. Hinnom doesn't really care (except insofar as they eat vast quantities of food). Oceania doesn't care about heat at all so long as they're under water. We might want to give heat scales extra consideration simply to combat their cold ones.

I don't know that it's completely fair to count ea oceania out as a quick expansion race... but that said, they're not using oceania in this game, they've switched to atlantis. Which was quite a sane decision as they are much better on land than oceania is. Expect atlantis to raid the shores mercilessly.

The second sun strategy is interesting, especially if you all take some heat on your pretenders. Certainly it would ruin niefelheim's day, I'm sure they'd put a bit of effort into getting that dispelled.

rdonj wrote:
I don't know that it's completely fair to count ea oceania out as a quick expansion race... but that said, they're not using oceania in this game, they've switched to atlantis. Which was quite a sane decision as they are much better on land than oceania is. Expect atlantis to raid the shores mercilessly.

Even though I've placed a good distance between the opposing fronts and placed our capitols someonwhat inland, I am recommending maybe an NAP for the first 10/15/20 turns just for good measure, especially given this change to Atlantis by the vets. Additionally, I may raise indy strength to 5 instead of 4.

Hmm, given the nation choices so far I'd really say we should discuss our nation/god selection before we choose.
I think the vets have every path covered as a team and we should try to do the same. But for the individual player magic diversity is not that important imho as long as someone else can fill the gap. Maybe even counterproductive if you're buying the diversity with strength.
The blood nations (sauromatia mictlan lanca) are not picked and pretty strong I believe.
A second thought is that the evil globals (Arcane Nexus, Astral Corruption, Darkness, Burden of Time) etc. can be freely cast without making enemies. And with easy research if everyone contributes pretty early...

[quote=LumenPlacidum](woo, affliction-boosted blade winds en masse!).[/quote]

Sorry to say that but I am in a game where I had the same thought and it sucks.
Afflictions are useful against strong expensive units but blade wind is strong only against weak units.


edit:
@Septimius Severus
Do you think stronger indies will really stop niefel/hinnom expansion? Chance is it slows us more then them.
Though I would personally just leave everything as in the first post. Maybe a small nap so that battle magic can be researched but 20 turns sound really much.

I'm not too bad with EA Arco, and I don't see them as a backline nation by any means - a good bless on their pegasi can provide some really horrible raiders, and oreiads, as has been mentioned, make extremely nice thugs once you gear them up a bit.

I think I can expand quite effectively with them and I'd usually take an Imprisoned god for scales and bless - I was considering a Sphinx (or perhaps statue or fountain or somesuch) with W8E4S4 or thereabouts. Could also drop the earth magic and go for an Asleep fountain, that would get it into play a bit faster for making pearls. No reinvig on the pegasi though. I wonder if I could manage a dual earth/water high bless, that might work well.

I was also considering Sauromatia, although I havn't played them much before I'm not too bad at Pythium. Suggestions on a build for them would be welcome.

Finally, I've poked at Vanheim occasionally and I think I could do okay there. No ideas about build, maybe a ghost king or lich?

That's about it for ideas from me, I have no idea how the rest of EA plays except Yomi, and I -know- I'm not good enough with them to be worth it. They're fun, but I can't make them competetive

Edit: - Should one of us consider taking monkies of some flavour? They might work well on the giants.

If you want Arco I'll not stand in your way. I'll chose when everyone else has.

One thing we do have to our advantage is I control placement, so it be nice to let me know which of you are more skilled, and which are least skilled, even though we are all front liners (Except Illumnated), some spots are more dangerous than others.

Thanks.

Edit: It will also depend on what nation you pick. I'll put our giants opposing theirs, etc...

Well, it's true that my blade winds tend to afflict more of my troglodytes than the enemy units in tests I've run... blasted shields. It gets much better when I have someone who can cast Aim on the oracles. However, that's interesting, I could replace the 4D on my pretender with whatever, since I do get some pretty strong Oracles of the Dead. Astral might be good, since earth and astral do seem to mix well and having a dwarven hammer-equipped forge lord pretender to forge rings of sorcery/wizardry could be VERY handy.

At least, with Agartha I don't have any illusions about what my PD can handle. Their PD is AWFUL, so really it will only counter scouts.

LumenPlacidum wrote:Well, it's true that my blade winds tend to afflict more of my troglodytes than the enemy units in tests I've run... blasted shields. It gets much better when I have someone who can cast Aim on the oracles. However, that's interesting, I could replace the 4D on my pretender with whatever, since I do get some pretty strong Oracles of the Dead. Astral might be good, since earth and astral do seem to mix well and having a dwarven hammer-equipped forge lord pretender to forge rings of sorcery/wizardry could be VERY handy.

At least, with Agartha I don't have any illusions about what my PD can handle. Their PD is AWFUL, so really it will only counter scouts.

On the other hand, if you had a smidgeon of death on your pretender you could forge really cheap skull mentors.... Having astral on him though would be very handy. Anyway, looking through the list of vet team picks... I highly doubt you'd ever find a good target for blade wind. Giant nations are bad targets. Caelum probably won't be using anything resembling a large group of units, but if he had enough mammoths or archers in a battle you might get somewhere with bladewind. Atlantis is probably your best target but if he uses mostly sacreds, they'll be basically invulnerable to blade wind. You're going to want to focus more on high damage single target spells for this game, or high damage multiple effects spells like magma bolts.

I confess first pick is leaving me slightly overwhelmed, I'm poking through various possibilities and not seeing much, if only because I have little experience with proper Builds, as it were.

I was first thinking Yomi with a Pheonix pretender. But after going over the nations I am now thinking Lanka.

Fountain of Blood (Dorment)
Blood 10, Dominion 10, Order 3, Productivity 1, Heat 3, Growth 2

With this I'd be able to get 10 Sacreds each turn. I've also been thinking. Maybe take the Magic -3, and see about adding some Fire for the Attack Skill bonus.

I'm thinking T'ien Ch'i. I seem to get them pretty well and I was holding my own against Darloth with Vanheim.

Lavaere wrote:I was first thinking Yomi with a Pheonix pretender. But after going over the nations I am now thinking Lanka.

Fountain of Blood (Dorment)
Blood 10, Dominion 10, Order 3, Productivity 1, Heat 3, Growth 2

With this I'd be able to get 10 Sacreds each turn. I've also been thinking. Maybe take the Magic -3, and see about adding some Fire for the Attack Skill bonus.

Yomi has no recruitable sacred troops. Don't do this.

Edit: whoops, didn't notice the thing about Lanka. Sorry! Hmm, why would you want to go with the major blood blessing when Lanka's sacreds are so expensive that you don't want them dying anyway. They also have very high strength, which offsets the usefulness of the extra strength gotten through the blessing.

Yeah well they had so many blood magic, and that was just the first thing I did. But I've since had a glance through the guides and tested a few different designs for a Lanka pretender. And I have come up with this one.

Dormant Lady of Fortune
Water 6, Astral 4, Nature 4, Dominion 6, Order 3, Heat 3, Growth 3, Luck 1, Drain 2

Will give some defence and magic boost, and some regeneration. Being a Lady of Fortune would also allow access to water regions once she awakens. So what do people think about this design.

Lavaere wrote:Yeah well they had so many blood magic, and that was just the first thing I did. But I've since had a glance through the guides and tested a few different designs for a Lanka pretender. And I have come up with this one.

Dormant Lady of Fortune
Water 6, Astral 4, Nature 4, Dominion 6, Order 3, Heat 3, Growth 3, Luck 1, Drain 2

Will give some defence and magic boost, and some regeneration. Being a Lady of Fortune would also allow access to water regions once she awakens. So what do people think about this design.

As a variation on this design, what do you think about losing one growth and luck to get an extra point of dominion and 2 more astral? Anyway, I've tested the design and it does work quite well on independants, suffering losses usually only to heavy cavalry/elephants. I'm not sure how well the sacreds will do against niefel giants with that cold aura, but you should be reasonably successful overall.

Jachra: I suggest testing against giant nations to get a feel for what you'll be going up against T'ien Ch'i is reasonably strong though and is a good choice.

Wow, you guys are really into this decision making stuff. Uhh, well we do need some nations with amphibious units.

Ehh, if I may suggest, maybe we could focus early expansion in two directions, main force towards the land enemy to deny them provinces (we can fill in our backyard in due time), a secondary force towards the sea, to deny the vet water nation provinces, cut access routes, maybe build an undersea fort. I figure we could all (except for Ill One) make it a priority to take and hold 1 water prov with amph, undead, or whatever.

Bonus, If we do an NAP, the vet water nation will not be able to retaliate for a bit.

The question is the length of the NAP, unless there are objections to it.