Game 507 Open Diplomancy Ends By Usurper

[Lord Diamond]

Congratulations, Atuan!!!  Thrilled to see my ally (I was DE before handing off to Tomag in connection with my hiatus) take the Gold in this game.

As for the Wizard Kingdoms, I agree with you again, LD.  Their relative power compared to the other non-Wizard Kingdoms was another thing that was noted during the first playtest.  It's one reason the recent non-Wizard Kingdom game variants have been so popular, in my opinion.

This seems the never ending discussion: are wizard kingdoms too strong, or too weak?  We've recently had a long time Imperator take a hiatus because his impression was the wizard kingdoms had become too weak.  And we have lots of people saying the wizard kingdoms are too strong.  I guess overall, this is a good thing.

I am pretty sure that Lord Thanatos is mostly uphappy that the wizard now has to be in the same area as the target to destroy it, that it has to have a brigade, that there is a range limit to Ward and Sleep, and that you can't have assassin patrols anymore. In those ways, wizards themselves may be weaker, but I believe tehe wizard kingdoms to be stronger.

I am fine with those changes and results don't lie. Wizard kingdoms are very viable, although perhaps more common than before. Then again, with 9 additional kingdoms all the kingdom types are more common.

I think, for some players, it comes down to the fact that Alamaze is a nostalgia game. The players who played it in the 90s sometimes want to play that version so the changes are unwelcome. If you don't enjoy it for the nostalgia, do you enjoy it for the game it is now? I do, but some don't.

[unclemike]

Evil Gnome here. 507 was a fun game. I was the last person who signed up for this game so I was forced to take the Gnome but it ended up being a pleasant experience.

As I mentioned in another post, the GN gets Summon Rock Golems fairly early so my initial plan was to summon a bunch of those guys in every group. Ended up that they were able to hold themselves against the RD group (before the RD kingdom was adjusted by Ry Vor) so my gnomes were going against the turn 0 RD without any wyverns. They held their own but I didn't locate the RD capital until later like around turn 8 so I was just playing defense for the most part in the early going.

When the RD went north because my wizards got dome (nullifying the RD's effectiveness in region 7), I didn't have a turn to recover from the RD before I got wind that Runnimede was under a political attack (by AN/DA). I think every pc in Runnimede was targeted between the two of them. That Conceal Emissary spell worked too well. I didn't have any idea that my pc's were under attack until they rebelled.

Luckily, the turn before I moved my four groups to different towns to start recruiting (8 brigs of westmen a turn) and that actually helped me quite a bit as it put my groups in position to reclaim some of the pc's that I lost. The AN had an invisible group around so I used my high level agents (three L15 agents) to assassinate his wizards. He only lost a low level wiz so he got lucky that my agents didn't wipe him out that turn (which would have meant no more invisible attacks by him either by group or conceal emissary).

I then set my agents on defense guarding my capital and it ended up being very effective. I didn't realize it at the time but if you have two high level agents, they can pretty much shutdown any nefarious covert attacks against your pc (and any emissaries, agents, priestesses there). Just needed to use my priestess/wizs to ward those two L15 agents and they pretty much make your guys invulnerable to attack.

With that secured, I decided to go after the AN first since he did the most damage against me and I teleported invisible groups to his pc's to cast meteor strike to destroy them (since I wouldn't been able to reclaim the pc's against the superior political AN). To my surprise, his capital was at a low strength village which ended up badly for him (killed a consul). Since my groups were invisible, I had two turns worth of destroying his pc's before he could react (so 6 pc's gone).

Around that time, I was also invaded by the DU/SO so I was going against 4 vs 1. My plan then changed to teleporting my groups around the map switching between regions after a turn or two to be out of range of any enemy agents because if I lost my wizards, I would have been out of the game. So after hitting pc's in the Sands, I teleported to Oakendell and destroyed some of the Druid's pc's since he attacked mine in Runnimede.

After a turn or two, I teleported to Synisvania to destroy some pc's there then back and forth always being on the move. It got kind of boring after a while but in the end, I destroyed nearly 30 pc's!!

Overall, I would say that this game was challenging and fun especially considering that I didn't even want to play the Gnome for my first 3rd Cycle game...

[Lord Diamond]

UM, you're mention that having two high leel agents protected your capital. I assume that one was on CE. What about the other?

[unclemike]

Both L15 agents were at capital, protecting the capital where I had all of my emissaries to avoid being captured/assassinated by the 4 vs 1 situation. What I didn't consider was that an agent that CE its own location is not able to protect himself so you need a second agent to protect the first agent. There's also the same-location bonus of +10% if the agent CE it's current location. Combined, my two agents were doubly protecting all of my emissaries (plus seapower since it was a coastal pc) and both getting the same-location agent bonus with each other (so essentially L17 agents). Only the agents themselves were being protected by the other agent's level of protection (not double protection like the emissaries were enjoying) because an agent cannot protect himself. So those two guys were shutting down all offensive attacks on my capital, all kidnap/assassination attempts on my emissaries/agents/priestesses, any sabotage on my seapower, and even prevented recons by foreign agents. Got a report one turn that one of my enemies tried to recon my capital and it was caught by my two counter-espionage agents - so no recon for them!! I guess the only way to counter something like this is if they increased their own seapower and risked moving a group there with True Seeing (which the Sorcerer did btw).

[Lord Diamond]

Or a P1 could do Raven Familiar, right? He would get past the agents anyway.