Game 176

[Lord Diamond]

Game details attached.

[Jhereg]

This was my second time playing the WI and I was excited to try a different approach than last time. I was all ready to focus on getting region 2 and then go artifact hunting, something I typically don't put a lot of effort into.

Well that went out the window on turn 1 with the RD sending a duke and count into Viperhead. Luckily I had put all my gold into raising Ryvor to P5 on turn 1 and started casting Demonic Visions on turn 2. I was hoping that I could wear down the RD before he could get rolling unfortunately the DW began supporting the RD which added to my troubles. Not knowing that I would make it through the war with the RD I used all my available orders on my immediate problem and didn't change my SVC which would come back to bite me later on in the game.

Over the next 15 turns i tried to make sure the RD stayed one dimensional by denigrating him in the region and sleeping emissaries when i found them. All the while slowly trying to gain control of the region while avoiding the RD military. By turn 9 I was finally able to gain control and by turn 11 I was able to scrape up enough gold to get a P6 wizard and started casting Dome spells on turn 12. This finally turned the tide for good and by turn 16 the RD had left the region. At this point I had 2 P6 wizards, a P5, P4, and two P3 wizards. So while the RD (with DW backing) really hampered my original plans I felt pretty good that I had weathered the storm and seemed like I was gaining some traction.

From T16 til about T26 I just sat back and built up with the intent of going after the DW who had ticked me off by helping the RD, not that I think it was wrong what he did but it gave me a reason to look to region 3 as a target. By now I had six P7 wizards, two L13 agents, a bunch of emissaries, and an Army group of wights worth over 100K.

So on turn 27 I moved into region 3 and immediately end up confronted by the 3GI army group vs my army group and all 6 of my P7 wizards. This was a very fortunate as I was able to kill around 13 brigades and a warlord with very minimal losses (1%). From then on I had no real opposition in the region as the GI had already done a significant amount of damage to the DW. By turn 32 I had gained control of region 3 was starting to move on region 1 which surprisingly was wide open considering the EL dropped back on turn 27.

At this point I new I could gain 3 and hold 3 regions but then I remembered I hadn't changed my SVC so I needed 3 regions (check), an influence of 22 (check), and 3 warlords (Ohhhh No) I didn't even have 1 and getting three was going to be near impossible so I decided to try for the REX. I looked around and region 6 looked promising so I made my move and on turn 36 I almost had it I gained control of regions 1, 2 and 3 and was close in region 6 but between the GI and the WA blowing up pc's i wasn't able to get over the hump. I tried again on turn 37 only to gain control of region 6 but lose control of region 1. From then on it was over I couldn't cover all 4 regions from the GI, DW, and WA attacks. I was able to hold on to enough for a 2nd place finish, my best showing so far. This was a really great game with a mixture of bad and good luck. Thanks to everyone who played and congrats to the GN who I was sure was going to win on turn 30 when he had 3 regions.

[Thudargh]

GN
 
Okay, I have finally found the time to weigh in on 176!  Wow – this was not the result I expected when the game started.  I actually began the game with no intention of trying to win.  This was my seventh game of Alamaze, and only my fourth 12 player version.  In my prior games I had never done much artifact hunting, so that was my plan for this game.
 
Things started off well.  I gained control of Runnimede on Turn 4, after which I focused on raising my wizards and searching for unusual sightings.  I had four L4 agents reconning for sightings every turn.  I recovered my first artifact on Turn 8, which to my great fortune was the Stone of All Minds.  After clearing Runnimede, I hired high priestesses to divine population centers in my neighboring regions – not with the intent to attack, but to know where not to look for unusual sightings.  I looked for unusual sightings and recovered artifacts through Turn 18.  At that point, I had searched the vast majority of Runnimede, Torvale, Arcania and a decent portion of the Southern Sands.  I figured the other regions had likely been cleared of unusual sightings by then, leaving me with the question of what to do next.
 
At the beginning of the game, I set my SVC to be aligned with my plans for the game.  The first was controlling three regions, because you have to have a territorial condition.  The second was to own two or more wizard artifacts in addition to four or more other artifacts and a Power 6 or higher wizard.  The third was to own 10 or more artifacts.  (Never did get to find out if the same artifact could count for both condition two and three.)  At turn 18, I had nine artifacts, two of which were wizard artifacts, a P7 and two P6s.  It was about then that I began seriously entertaining the idea of trying to win the game.
 
I ended up being fairly fortunate in how the game developed around me.  Courtesy of my spying, I knew that AN and DE had been warring with each other since near the beginning of the game, as had BL and RA.  I assumed this is why I had been left alone for so long.  The question was who to target.  AN had declared me an enemy early on – likely a hedge against me turning aggressive, or preparation for attacking me that was derailed by DE.  Either way, it did prevent the possibility of a surprise one-turn political flip of Torvale.  DE hadn’t declared me an enemy, but I knew Demonic Denigration happens before emissary actions – if any Demon Princes were in Arcania, they could prevent a one-turn political flip as well.  That left the Southern Sands.  I prepped for a few turns – hiring agents, raising wizards, reconning PCs – and attacked on Turn 22.
 
On Turn 24, the Southern Sands switched from BL control to GN control.  This was the height of my power during the game.  I earned 3,050 status points that turn.  I had control of two regions, two P7 wizards, four P5-P6 wizards, ten artifacts (I stole a Ring of Protection from AN), an influence of 22.33 and five agents over level 11.
 
But BL wasn’t ready to roll-over and die.  On Turn 24, 1BL was at YU with 13 brigades, led by a Warlord and two Marshal IIs, and accompanied by a P5 and a P1.  4BL was at WS with 13 brigades, let by a Marshal I and a Captain II.  And a 3BL patrol was also around with three generals and a P3.  And my assault on the Southern Sands did run into a pretty significant set-back that I should have seen coming.
 
As part of the assault, I attacked BL’s capital at VR with an invisible 3GN.  I also sent both of my princes to Vanasheen to take it.  The problem is that group attacks happen before emissary actions.  3GN with two P7s and a P6 easily crushed BL’s capital – which immediately relocated to…Vanasheen!  Both my princes were incarcerated and executed.  Doh!
 
BL successfully broke my control of the Southern Sands on Turn 25.  While I had Domed the town at WS, BL was able to dispel it.  I figured his P5 was responsible, so I decided to try an assassination – I got lucky and succeed on the first attempt.  On Turn 27 I noticed that BL groups had stopped moving and figured BL had dropped.
 
After hitting Southern Sands politically, I had moved immediately on Synisvania.  With BL dropping, I put final plans in place to claim victory.  I moved emissaries or groups a n – victory would be mine on Turn 29.
 
Of course, Turn 29 is not Turn 40 and I didn’t win by SVC.  I made a move that, in hindsight, was a riskier one than I should have made.  In order to hit every remaining PC in Synisvania, I teleported 4GN(which had two P7s and a P5) to SX and summoned two ghoul brigades.  One of my P7s realized there was an invisible group present as well.  So what to do about that?  I had no way of knowing what group it was and thus had no way to effectively defend against it.  The ghoul brigades were just a token force intended to allow an attack on the town – my wizards would be doing the heavy lifting with Earthquakes.  I decided there was nothing I could really do but hope it was a really small group that couldn’t stop me.
 
On Turn 29, at least two towns and a village were nuked by wizards.  4GN was completed wiped out by 1WA.  I failed to get control of Synisvania, but the destruction of 4GN was what screwed my SVC.  You see, I hadn’t thought to remove artifacts from 4GN before moving to SX.  I lost the Dragon Slayer and the Stone of All Minds.  I was able to get control of Synisvania on Turn 30, but no longer had enough artifacts to declare victory, including my second wizard one.  I was never able to recover them despite sending several high level agents after both them and ones owned by AN and DE.
 
WA proceeded to go on a nuking rampage against me.  He nuked me out of control of Synisvania, then out of control of the Southern Sands, then moved on to Runnimede.  I’m sure the Stone of all Minds helped increase the potency of that campaign.  Both Vanasheen and Cradia were turned to dust.  Cradia was especially impressive – I was hit with ten Destroy City spells in a single turn.  (I take some pride that he had to hit it with five more the next turn before finishing it off!)
 
I also ended up fighting DE.  My fault, of course – when I knew my SVC was in jeopardy, I moved on Arcania in the hopes of pulling off a Rex.  That might have worked if WA hadn’t been nuking everything in sight.  As it was, I had to back off – and there’s no way to make peace in an Anonymous game.  (Not that he would necessarily have been interested in peace at that point.)  Also, GI showed up at Jukanta and started tromping around Synisvania.  The final nail came on Turn 36.  Cradia was destroyed on Turn 35, but my king escaped to RN – just in time for 1DE to show up at RN.  My king did not escape from 1DE.  A baron became my new regent and my influence when from 17.94 to 9.44.  While I had more gold than I could spend, I no longer had enough orders for that to be useful.
 
Of course, Turn 36 was also when WI got control of his third region but failed at his victory check.  While I still led in total status points at that point, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to hold on.  WA hadn’t dropped yet, so it was still possible for me to get nuked to oblivion.  GI grabbed control of Synisvania from me on Turn 37(I had gotten it back while WA was nuking me in Runnimede).  And WI was clearly very close to victory himself.  Perhaps I was being overly pessimistic, but I saw a possibility of ending the game in fourth place!
 
But that isn’t what happened.  Ultimately WI wasn’t able to quite get to victory, while I was able to largely maintain my remaining status point items, and I snagged back Synisvania on the final turn.  What a ride!  A long, twisting, unexpected ride!
 
Kudos to everyone who stuck it out to the end!

[Ry Vor]

Holy Cow, People!  That's a lot of blood and destruction from all accounts!

[unclemike]

WA here.

This game started back on May 28 (6 months ago) so it was a long game. I felt really bad dropping out of the game with only two turns left but I had to in order to get 3rd Cycle finished by Dec 2 (my last day for development).

This game was probably the last one that had the excessive number of pc's in a region (up to 10) before official rules reduced that limit and that actually ended up being a problem for me who wanted to play the mad wizard that was bent on destruction to ruin everyone's game.

Actually the most fun that I had in this game was before it even started! For my initial strategy, I thought that the GI would be gunning for me so I had to decide which direction to take:

(1) pump up about 5 wizards to pwr-2 for sleep spells and go for Avalon at least (and Evanon if possible)
(2) develop a large military with cheap troops like the Summon Monster spells and tango with the GI
(3) pump up a single wizard to high level and count on demonic visions to slowly weaken the GI brute and have death ready to kill 2-4 brigades per turn (which would really hurt the GI early in the game due to winter and knowing that he couldn't expand with Ogres to absorb my death spell attacks)

I was gearing for #1 strategy but then remembered that the GI gets Ward at 1st level so even if I had 5 sleeps prepped to counter his natural GI sleep resistance, a simple ward on turn 2 would nullify my emissaries chances at the cities. So then I thought about doing strategy #2 but I just got done playing something like that in another game and I wanted something different for this game. So I shot for #3 and sacrificed everything to get a pwr-7 as soon as possible.

And I do mean sacrifice everything. I didn't pay or feed any of my troops, didn't bother raising Amberland to Friendly, sold all of my fleets, didn't bother leveling agents, sold influence in order to reach an important wizard level in the turn if needed, and didn't bother moving emissaries to either city allowing the GI easy control of the region (which also may have helped me in having the GI think that I was a noob that didn't know how to play the game since none of my emissaries showed up at either city on turn 1 and he may have left me alone because of that misdirection).

So everything else in my kingdom sucked at being effective but I'll have that single wizard at uber-power level in no time. In fact, I was geared at developing a pwr-7 on turn 4, yes, turn 4. I don't think that's ever been done before in an anonymous game (or any non-team game) but reaching level 7 was everything to me in order to cast demonic visions and if the GI showed up at my capital, hit him with death spells every turn with a patrol trailing his group. That would destroy his valuable GI troops during the winter (since he couldn't recruit from the lack of food and two cities) and my lone wizard would have defeated the GI kingdom just by himself.

But when turn 4 came around, it looked like I didn't need to get a pwr-7 right away since the GI either didn't land on any of my pc's or ignored me (maybe by allowing him control both cities did the trick) but there was no rush to fight him since he didn't look he was going to be aggressive against me.

So that ruined my plans of having a single wizard defeat that brute. Oh well, maybe I'll try this strategy again in another game. After that point, I slowly developed two high level wizards to Summon Wights for a military. Actually, I had a fairly strong group by turn 13, two pwr-7's and 10 wights ready to teleport invisibly anywhere on the map. Since the GI still didn't bother me (or anyone else), I decided to develop a second group of wights while developing two more wizards to teleport an invisible army (which I had on turn 17).

Then it became an issue of where to expand and the Eastern Steppes was still not controlled at that point (which is a long time for a region to go uncontested without a DA around) so I decided to go after that one. Then moved to Synisvania with the GN moving there at the same time so I ended up messing around with him.

After I gained control of the Steppes, the GI acted against me and moved a bunch of emissaries to my pc's in the Steppes and elsewhere. I was disappointed a bit since I thought we had an understanding of sorts to leave each other alone but I figure he was doing so for the win. He could have won by invading the Mists instead where his natural enemy was but decided to go after me and that will cost him the game.

So I concentrated on destroying his pc's in Steppes (and I had a bunch of level 7's and 8's at that time) so he failed at his SVC that turn. Then I took him out of Amberland but the GN gave me trouble in Synisvania (another transgression that had to be dealt with) so I switched to taking out the GN who was probably in better shape to win the game with the south being uncontested by the drops (RA and BL both dropped before doing any real damage against the GN).

So that that point, I was bent on destruction like a mad wizard destroying everything in sight. I especially wanted to take out the GN capital at Cradia which had a ridiculously high defense (140k) that took all of my 10 pwr-8's to bring down. I bet that left the GN sore since he must have thought that his capital was untouchable at such a defense with his people laughing behind such high walls. Cradia burned down in two turns and the little Gnomes scattered about like flies. Never mess with a wizard!

In the end, I destroyed 8 cities: Avalon, Evanon, Lorethane, Viperhead, Gundibar, Jukanta, Vanasheen, and Cradia along with about 25 towns, and about 35 villages. And that's without issuing any orders during the last two turns! Was fun destroying the realm with 10 pwr-8's. Everyone should give it a try.

For those who wish to play the WA in an anonymous game, you may want to do what I did early on and put everything into developing a single wizard for dome, demonic visions, and death spells. That lone wizard may save you against an aggressive GI and put him in his place. And if those battles don't happen, use the pwr-7 to summon wights and teleport invisibly around the map.

So don't be pushed around early on, develop that 7th level wizard on turn 4 and spank the GI like a powerful wizard kingdom should

[Hawk_]

WA here.

This game started back on May 28 (6 months ago) so it was a long game. I felt really bad dropping out of the game with only two turns left but I had to in order to get 3rd Cycle finished by Dec 2 (my last day for development).

This game was probably the last one that had the excessive number of pc's in a region (up to 10) before official rules reduced that limit and that actually ended up being a problem for me who wanted to play the mad wizard that was bent on destruction to ruin everyone's game.

Actually the most fun that I had in this game was before it even started! For my initial strategy, I thought that the GI would be gunning for me so I had to decide which direction to take:

(1) pump up about 5 wizards to pwr-2 for sleep spells and go for Avalon at least (and Evanon if possible)
(2) develop a large military with cheap troops like the Summon Monster spells and tango with the GI
(3) pump up a single wizard to high level and count on demonic visions to slowly weaken the GI brute and have death ready to kill 2-4 brigades per turn (which would really hurt the GI early in the game due to winter and knowing that he couldn't expand with Ogres to absorb my death spell attacks)

I was gearing for #1 strategy but then remembered that the GI gets Ward at 1st level so even if I had 5 sleeps prepped to counter his natural GI sleep resistance, a simple ward on turn 2 would nullify my emissaries chances at the cities. So then I thought about doing strategy #2 but I just got done playing something like that in another game and I wanted something different for this game. So I shot for #3 and sacrificed everything to get a pwr-7 as soon as possible.

And I do mean sacrifice everything. I didn't pay or feed any of my troops, didn't bother raising Amberland to Friendly, sold all of my fleets, didn't bother leveling agents, sold influence in order to reach an important wizard level in the turn if needed, and didn't bother moving emissaries to either city allowing the GI easy control of the region (which also may have helped me in having the GI think that I was a noob that didn't know how to play the game since none of my emissaries showed up at either city on turn 1 and he may have left me alone because of that misdirection).

So everything else in my kingdom sucked at being effective but I'll have that single wizard at uber-power level in no time. In fact, I was geared at developing a pwr-7 on turn 4, yes, turn 4. I don't think that's ever been done before in an anonymous game (or any non-team game) but reaching level 7 was everything to me in order to cast demonic visions and if the GI showed up at my capital, hit him with death spells every turn with a patrol trailing his group. That would destroy his valuable GI troops during the winter (since he couldn't recruit from the lack of food and two cities) and my lone wizard would have defeated the GI kingdom just by himself.

But when turn 4 came around, it looked like I didn't need to get a pwr-7 right away since the GI either didn't land on any of my pc's or ignored me (maybe by allowing him control both cities did the trick) but there was no rush to fight him since he didn't look he was going to be aggressive against me.

So that ruined my plans of having a single wizard defeat that brute. Oh well, maybe I'll try this strategy again in another game. After that point, I slowly developed two high level wizards to Summon Wights for a military. Actually, I had a fairly strong group by turn 13, two pwr-7's and 10 wights ready to teleport invisibly anywhere on the map. Since the GI still didn't bother me (or anyone else), I decided to develop a second group of wights while developing two more wizards to teleport an invisible army (which I had on turn 17).

Then it became an issue of where to expand and the Eastern Steppes was still not controlled at that point (which is a long time for a region to go uncontested without a DA around) so I decided to go after that one. Then moved to Synisvania with the GN moving there at the same time so I ended up messing around with him.

After I gained control of the Steppes, the GI acted against me and moved a bunch of emissaries to my pc's in the Steppes and elsewhere. I was disappointed a bit since I thought we had an understanding of sorts to leave each other alone but I figure he was doing so for the win. He could have won by invading the Mists instead where his natural enemy was but decided to go after me and that will cost him the game.

So I concentrated on destroying his pc's in Steppes (and I had a bunch of level 7's and 8's at that time) so he failed at his SVC that turn. Then I took him out of Amberland but the GN gave me trouble in Synisvania (another transgression that had to be dealt with) so I switched to taking out the GN who was probably in better shape to win the game with the south being uncontested by the drops (RA and BL both dropped before doing any real damage against the GN).

So that that point, I was bent on destruction like a mad wizard destroying everything in sight. I especially wanted to take out the GN capital at Cradia which had a ridiculously high defense (140k) that took all of my 10 pwr-8's to bring down. I bet that left the GN sore since he must have thought that his capital was untouchable at such a defense with his people laughing behind such high walls. Cradia burned down in two turns and the little Gnomes scattered about like flies. Never mess with a wizard!

In the end, I destroyed 8 cities: Avalon, Evanon, Lorethane, Viperhead, Gundibar, Jukanta, Vanasheen, and Cradia along with about 25 towns, and about 35 villages. And that's without issuing any orders during the last two turns! Was fun destroying the realm with 10 pwr-8's. Everyone should give it a try.

For those who wish to play the WA in an anonymous game, you may want to do what I did early on and put everything into developing a single wizard for dome, demonic visions, and death spells. That lone wizard may save you against an aggressive GI and put him in his place. And if those battles don't happen, use the pwr-7 to summon wights and teleport invisibly around the map.

So don't be pushed around early on, develop that 7th level wizard on turn 4 and spank the GI like a powerful wizard kingdom should

Very Impressive!! Sounds like a great 2nd cycle strategy for the WA/SO.      Am I correct that in the 3rd cycle summon death will require you to engage in combat?

[unclemike]

No combat required but you do need at least one brigade of troops in the group when you cast the spell (same for the kill leader/wizard and meteor strike spells).

[Ry Vor]

Wow, the sacrifices for the P7.  Interesting.  Maybe Mike's new nickname will be Chairman Mike Mao.

Still, an interesting approach. Yeah, why aren't you guys getting ten Power 8 wizards?

[unclemike]

Funny. Everyone can say it's a lousy opening move but I still think the strategy is a solid one for the following reasons:

1) GI politically will dominate WA every time (unless the GI doesn't get Ward at 1st level then that may change an opening move)

2) Exploratory mode: can WA cover more ground than GI in the first few turns to pick up pc's to survive? Not even close with the GI picking up more pc's by far.

3) WA military vs GI: not a chance of surviving so why bother pay/feed them? I figured the GI could intercept my group(s) and destroy them at will at any time. If that happened then the gold expenditure for those WA troops would be a total waste of time and would be better spent on something else.

I thought about going the typical route of raising a bunch of pwr-2's to create gold for the long term (not hidden ore since the WA can't prevent the GI from taking the pc a turn later) but a bunch of level 2 wizards aren't going to do much against a GI army knocking on their door. I needed something more powerful to make him regret fighting me. The only spell that can make the GI run with his tail between his legs is the death spell so it boiled down to how quickly the WA can get a 7th level wizard.

I looked at which was better: pay/feed WA troops up to turn 7 (if they even last that long with an aggressive GI) vs. getting a pwr-7 on turn 4 and summoning 3 brigades of wights. Consider not just the gold expense but also the combat worthiness of the two forces: weak WA brigades in both combat value and defense/staying power vs 3 wight brigades. After comparing the numbers, I thought 3 wights would be better, more interesting to play (wights on turn 5, oh, yea), no longer cost food/gold to maintain, AND you get a 7th level wizard on turn 4!! How cool is that?

With a pwr-7, I had demonic visions to weaken him each turn (and that -20% does add up after a few turns), dome in case he forgot about the GI parley bonus, and death to kill off those indispensable GI brigades. With winter approaching and allowing the GI to have both cities, there's just no way he could build a large force to absorb death's effectiveness against him. If he left the region then Amberland was all mine.

So some may say this strategy is a bit extreme but I really think it is the ONLY viable opening move for the WA to survive against an aggressive GI.

[Ry Vor]

No, very inventive, and we love that.  Still, recalled the sacrifices Mao told his people would be great.  At least your people are not even pixels. 

Once more, an inventive strategy that has merits, and the advantage of surprise, particularly in the Anonymous format.  But various things have to go right and its not just the Giant.  I'm not sure the Warlock, or the Giant for that matter have to be tethered to Amberland in 2nd Cycle.  (In 3rd Cycle, there is no Giant, and the Warlock in The Talking Mountains.)

Warlocks often get Wall of Flame to work for them, teleport about, gather a few interesting trinkets, and generally avoid a conflagration with the Giants, if no diplomacy is had.  But that brings us back to anonymous in this case.  Anyway, congratulations to The Wise One for inventing this new strategy.