Game 520

[Netstrider]

Victory!             The Wise One, leader of the Necromancer kingdom has won by Rex Victory
                         (control 4 or more regions), regards to all who made this game an exciting
                         contest.

                          Game End Status Points

        Place Kingdom    Player                Results-25  Grand Total

          1     NE     The Wise One              17,600      23,800
          2     IL     Netstrider                 8,080      13,631
          3     DE     Atuan                      6,700      12,595
          4     DU     Titus                      7,400      12,360
          5     AN     DuPont                     6,970      12,103
          6     TY     Drogo                      7,400      11,758
          7     UN     Tomag Ironfist             5,320       8,897
          8     SA     Rytek                      4,060       8,455


Congratulations to the The Wise One on his victory!

This was a strange game. I started out by forgetting to set both my kingdom customizations and ESO. So the IL had many fewer wizards then possible. I did have great luck finding goodies, however, and that helped down the road. Or at least until someone stole most of them


There was some early action in the North with the DE taking R3 from the Warlock on T9. That would be Jumping Fist (I believe) executing his advice for the other kingdoms to jump on the mage kingdoms early, I believe

Being in the middle of the map, I avoided conflict to build my wizard corp and collect the local loot. This kept me in good position with status points and held out hope for a shot at a status point victory. At T12 it looked like:

         Demon Princes      1,475              1,875
         Ancient Ones       1,130              1,605
         Illusionist        1,290              1,565
         Necromancer        1,200              1,500
         Lizard Men         1,050              1,500
         Sacred Order       1,015              1,490

But the DE was the obvious problem with that plan since they had possession of two regions to my one and would out produce everyone else. I saw no reason to let the DE (who I thought was JF) walk away with it, so maneuvered to launch a devastating sneak attack on T15. I moved all my emissaries and a couple of units into the Steppes and cackled with glee as I waited for my turn results. Man, the big bad JF was going down!

Who would have thought that all his Princes would be in the Steppes? And his armies? And that he would have Dome of Invulnerability? Or that he would masterfully double denigrate me? On my first turn of my brilliantly planned and executed invasion I lose 3 dukes and failed to take a single PC. Great start!

So fine, I'll teleport to R1 with my military. He can't have high ranking Wizards everywhere, right? Well, that's correct, but it looks like the NE has witnessed my attack and figures this might be a good time to jump in. So now I get domed in R1. Sigh.

Meanwhile, R8 witnesses a flood of DE emissaries and I'm knocked out of control. I'm also assaulted by agents, losing a handful of my best artifacts. Someone has found my hidden capital. It looks pretty grim. On the bright side my best agent armed with Demon Death does take out a Demon Prince. Baby steps, right? On the bad side a TY army has decided to check out R8. Oh come on now!

In R3 and R6 the NE pummels both the DE and my feeble efforts. He clearly has better wizards than I do or just uses them better. But with the DE out of R8, I do manage to regain control. The TY is stymied by my own domes and wanders around for a few turns with no effect. The UN also shows up with an army but runs into one of my better groups with heavy mage support. No problem there. I find the DE capital in a village in R8 and liberate most of my missing Dukes. My mages are still healthy, so my position is decent, but the NE is on a roll and there's not much I can do to slow him down. Between defending R8 from the TY/UN and a few DE emmys I can't fully engage in R6. The SA crumbles under the NE assault and he has his four regions for victory. Well played!

NS

[unclemike]

NE here.

I didn't have much of a plan for this game other than to develop my wizards as quickly as possible. Made some sacrifices like not develop agents, influence, artifacts, and even skipped paying/feeding troops in order to maximize my wizard levels in order to get ready for the WA (Morgan Kane) next to me.

The WA dropped out on turn 6 which was disappointing because I think this was the first game that the two of us were ever in a game together and I wanted to see how good he was as a player. That never came about and his drop occurred at the same time that the DE (Jumpingfist) went in his region of which he took without opposition. That allowed the DE to have control of two regions which another kingdom didn't accomplish until around turn 20.

That allowed the DE to have greater politicals, agents, wizards, troops, etc. than normal and I figured he would win the game without a doubt. I changed my tactics a little to prepare for an assault against the DE to help weaken him but then the SA attacked my pc's with a fairly large group and high level emissaries which changed things for me.

I had to develop wizards high enough to counter his resilient troops, summoning skeletons and such wouldn't do. So instead I switched to going for the death spell to eliminate his troops with a bunch of pwr-5 wraiths so my wizards wouldn't die from battle. Having three groups with a single brigade each (even temporary phantom troops from the spell) would allow wraiths to kill SA troops by magic instead of doing so by brute force in battle.

But that forced me to stay out of the way to develop wraiths which allowed the SA to gain control of my pc's unopposed. I felt like a boxer taking punches by losing pc's until the time was right for me to move in and take out his superior forces. When his group showed up where I was expecting him to go, he was met with 9 death spells from 3 groups. That would have devastated any other kingdom but against the SA (who has the Resist Death Magic trait), I had to play the odds and hope for the best. I was planning on hitting him like this guerilla style multiple times until his group was whittled him down in size but I got lucky with the first batch of death spells and wiped out his mighty group.

With the SA no longer a threat, I switched back to the DE and on turn 18 saw that the DE had a commanding lead in status points over everyone else so I had to act or he would end the game soon. He picked up his third region around that time which put pressure to move sooner rather than later even though I wasn't fully ready to take him on.

He must have encountered some opposition down south by the IL and others which allowed me to make my move. But then, the DE dropped out for some reason and it opened up two free regions right next to me. I picked up 3 and 6 without opposition and then moved to 5 for my 4th region. I felt cheated by both Morgan Kane and Jumpingfist who are probably the best players in the game and I wanted to see how I would match up against them. Instead, I walked away with an undeserved Rex victory.

So that's why I posted the discussion on whether dropped positions should have their pc's destroyed. If that policy was in effect for this game, my NE would only have a single region after the drops which was on par with everyone else and that would have made for a far more competitive and exciting game. The game probably would have lasted until turn 40 because we were all evenly matched if it weren't for the drops.

[Titus]

DU here. This was my first game back to Alamaze and first time in a no communication format. I liked the idea because I figured I could not be hanged up on. The DU has a strong position in the corner. I spent my early turns building wizards and influence. I found the altar of ancients and went artifact hunting, but shockingly enough a bunch of artifacts were found. I used my priestess to scout pc's in regions next to mine. Iwas shocked early to see the UN take Torvale from the Anazons. I scoured Torvale and saw a contested region so I built up emmys and a group and moved into R4. I started taking pc's and the UN did not declare me an enemy so I was able to knock him out of control. The TY came in to R4 and so we began to fight. The AM dropped and I took his city and his artifacts. I got fourth. I am hoping to do better next time but was a good game to get back into

[Rytek]

I was SA. lets see. I sent a Duke to Evanon and Count to Avalon. Amazon sent a governor to Avalon. I was hoping he was just passing thru but he maintained status and thwarted my counts efforts to turn the city neutral. So, instead of taking the city on turn 3 it took me till turn 5 which is also when I took the region. I vowed veangence upon the Amazon for slowing me down and started preparing to invade Torvale when low and behold the Underworld took it. Well ok then, I didn't want to fight another military Kingdom and figured I should go after a wizard kingdom. With the Warlock gone at 5 my choice was DU, IL or NE. IL sent me some food so figured NE. I was worried about DE but didn't think it was a good idea to let the NE go unattacked (as it turn out rightly so) On turn 09 I sent some emmisaries in and sent in the 1SA and 2SA armies in to the Northern Mists. On turn 10 I was able to militarily take my targets. on turn 11 got domed so had to resort to sieging. On turn 14 he had 9 wizards able to cast summon death. I had both the 1SA and 2SA at the same town with 10 brigades each. He met me with all 4 of his groups. 2 of them had 1 brigade each and 2 were patrols. He targeted the 1SA with 9 death spells which destroyed the group. The 2SA went and killed both his brigades but was a pyrrhic victory as his wizards were Liches and could not be killed. I went on to attack the town but didn't even get that as one of his patrols summoned phantoms(so he could cast more summon death) and the phantom brigades stopped the attack on the town. I withdrew to regroup. Also, I was after the ring of power and marched all the way to the bottom of the map to get it. My power 4 wizard failed 4 times to advance to level 5(this would have given me a power 6 wizard to cast dispel dome).
The turn before the last turn I staled. Didn't have internet connection. And missed turn 18 I think. Not sue what happened there as I think I closed the program before my orders saved.

[Lord Diamond]

Summon Death is way over powered and is the reason Wizards are dominating 3rd Cycle, IMO.