(sorry this is so late. I got interrupted about 3/4 of the way and never came back. The last bit is rushed, but if I didn't do it now, it would never get posted.)
The Tale of the Distracted Gnome......Squirrel!
My tale for this game does not start at T0. Instead, it starts back in the middle of Game 161. (Stop making weird faces, I'll explain). Remember, I'm still mostly newb, so when I happened to do a recon of a gnome town during that game, I was utterly surprised. It was producing more gold than a city! Eventually someone explained to me that, that is just what gnomes do. Well... I had to get me some of that! So when I signed up for this game, I picked gnome. (See, I told you it would make sense..
) Anyway, shortly (very shortly) after I posted that I wanted the gnome, I got a mail from RyVor asking if I knew what I was getting into. That since JF had picked the UN, there would be a special, implied burden on the GN to keep him down and he was letting me know what to expect. (Thanks!). However, since my primary goal was to see if I could achieve such massive production, I had no real intent on fighting anyone at first. (Later, I read about the gnome being a 'sleeper' position and thought, PERFECT!).
Well, the UN had plans and seemed more than happy to form an alliance. I had delusions of sitting in the corner all game and funding other people's wars. A quick NAP with the AN and things were looking good. Turn 1 results appear and BOOM, I'm first on the high council. Never done that before, so I was excited. With Cradia uncontested and pop centers rolling under my belt, I turned my attention to gold. The gnomes apparently get the spell to increase gold production in a pop center at P2. So, I get control on T3. On T4, all but 2 of my wizzies are P2. They are all P2 by the next turn and my production is shooting through the roof. By turn 10, the portion of R7 that I control is cranking out 173K gold (Plus I'm trading almost my entire food production on the marked for gold too). On turns 6,7,8, and 9, I dump 50K gold on the UN. I probably would have continued (I was giddy with wealth) but he told me to stop it and train my wizzies instead. Summer hits in the south and production drops to only 93K, but by the time T15 rolls around, I hit my high of 223K gold. It stays there for one more turn and then things start to go sour. After that, my gold production bounces around, wildly, between 40 and 100K. Still, that was more gold than I'd ever had to play around with. I'm hoping that is at least on-par for what a decent gnome player sees. Had I not made so many other mistakes and stayed on top, I cannot imagine what kind of production that would mean. Regardless, I am still very excited about my gold production in 168.
Emissaries. At some point early in the golden age, JF mentioned that I should be promoting my emissaries up to princes. Like a good little puppy, I did (although it meant less orders for re-investment of gold into gold production). By the time we launched our attack on the WA, I had 6. Later on, I got worried and made two more for 8 total. By T23, I was down to only 4, so I hired 5 ambassadors, promoted them a bit and sent them out. On T27, I hired five more. By that time I was down to only 2 princes. They survived, though, until T38 and 39. Is it a good thing that my last two princes fell to an assassin's blade while they were Regent?
Wizards. Somehow they avoided the rapid rise and fall that my production and emissaries had. Granted, by turn 17, I had two P6's and had failed THREE attempts to get to P7. Production was falling, so I didn't try again for a P7 until T31. He made it, bringing my wizards to 7,6,5,4,4.
OK, so have I bored everyone to tears yet? Sorry, apparently my memory does not go back 40 turns very well. So I went digging through the turns.. and that yielded nothing but baseball stats. I hate baseball. Let me try to cobble some kind of story together.
Like I said, I was happily making gold and princes in my little corner of the world. I talked to some of my neighbors, but not as much as I usually do. It is not long though, before UN says we need to jump the WA before he gets powerful. I was worried that 'making the first move' would end my sleeper status and I'd actually have to do work. But the RA/DA/DW/BL had started out fighting, so I told myself this wasn't really the 'first move'. So we do it. But, I guess we made bigger waves than I expected.
The UN and I scout out the WA pop centers and then flood them with emmies. Plus the UN takes out a number of the WA emmies. By about T16, the only WA pop center we know about is Avalon. We were hoping he'd quit, but he didn't. I knew it was a bad idea to leave him alive, but I never got around to getting any troops over to the city. Classic and fatal mistake. Anyway, about that time, the AN and DE are going at it pretty good too. We are on good terms with the AN but had not been helping him. I guess the AN talked the UN into helping, but I will not get in because that would be 3v1. Instead, since I've heard that the DA was messing with the UN, I'd pay him a visit. I probably should have just stopped and built, but I wanted to make sure I stayed away from the DE.
If you didn't sleep during all the stats earlier, you know that I'm riding high about this time. I've got tons of production rolling in. I have 8 princes, two P6 and 5 P3, and Cradia's defenses are over 60K. Plus we just wasted the WA like it was nothing. Feeling invincible, I just waltz into R6 and start taking stuff from the DA with a "Mess with my ally? I'll show you" attitude. I cannot say I did not deserve what happens next. Quite naturally, the DA will have none of that foolishness and strikes back hard. And his ally, the DW, jumps in. The DA and UN were already at it a bit, so this is just a nice little 2v2. Except that now I see that the WA refuses to roll over and die. Hmmm... bad, but I'm still feeling relatively invincible. I can handle him and the other two. Besides, the AN has had great success against the DE and the UN should be freeing up shortly.
And then the BL blind sides me. Well, not exactly. I did stumble across his army group right on the border of R7. That should have warned me, but nope. I was invincible and there hadn't really been any hostilities between us yet. I just figured he was 'cleaning up' R10 or something. Hubris sucks, LOL! So anyway, I am completely surprised when that same BL group shows up at Cradia the next turn. Suddenly I remember how to add and realize that 1+1+1+1 is way more than I can handle. So I pipe up on the forum. I wanted to make sure that each of them knew that they were not the only ones attacking me. Sure, I had picked a fight with 3 of those 4, and fully deserve what I got. But I'm also sure none of those players would knowingly participate in such a gang up.
Quite generously, the DW/DA backed off and left R7 alone. And it is a good thing, because the BL did an awesome job punting me back and forth across the zone. Cradia's defenses were really high, but the whole sky was black with flying, scaly things. I had all of my troops sitting outside the city and I hoped to be able to reduce his force's strength enough that he could not siege me. Well, my actions apparently had the opposite effect, barely touching his numbers but greatly increasing his moral. My group lives and we do it again next turn. Ditto. I do manage to sneak in my patrol of invisible wizards in there and take his out (I think). The UN takes out some leaders and I think we poisoned their food. But in the end, the city falls and my king is captured. (I would LOVE to know if I ever came close to breaking the siege)
Meanwhile, the DW/DA have reclaimed the stuff I took from them in R5 and R6 and I'm left with far fewer resources than I had grown accustomed to. The BL and I continue to spar in R7. How he can continue to give me so much trouble is amazing, because he was going toe-to-toe with the EL in the east. Hats off the the BL, amazing player.
Eventually, the WA gets a very dangerous magic, military, and political presence in R7. It was almost like he was hell bent on cleansing R7 of both gnomes AND dragons. So it was a fun little melee we had down there. Eventually, I got my military back into play and even managed to kill some dragons. And the WA.... he probably hates me forever. On two occasions I was able to port in my invisible wizard brigade and take out his wizards. The first time, I think I killed a P5. The second time was really cruel. I saw he had a group of 3 P3s sitting at Avalon... So I port in with a P7,P6,P5 and take them all out at once. He must have been leveling them as I think one or two were P4 when they died. Oh, and the DA had showed up again. He had a big group running around down in R7 too. I was hoping to do the same wiz-kill to him, but never got the chance.
About this time, though, something strange happened. We were rapidly approaching the 40 turn limit and it seemed like no one was really in position to Rex (as far as I could tell). Suddenly it seems like everyone's priorities switch to focus almost 100% on status point acquisition. I guess that is normal, but it was strange to me.
I'm sure there was a ton more I was planning to say, but it has been too long and I've forgotten so much.
It is sad that the BL wound up so low on the status point list. That does NOT reflect his level of play. It was an honor to get pummeled by him. All in all, this was a great game. Thanks to everyone who played.
Buddy/Ignore List
