Game 5041 (Anon Steel Pagan) ends

[Diws]

Place Kingdom    Player                Results-25  Grand Total

          1     DA     Imperial Tark             20,040      28,575
          2     IL     Diws                       8,820      14,025
          3     CI     DuPont                     7,480      11,286
          4     DU     Avantar                    5,100       8,730
          5     WA     Wayde                      4,000       8,045
          6     EL     Dalon                      4,300       7,150


Dark Elves win by the Rex:

Controlling
Region Kingdom

Oakendell (1) Elven
Northern Mists (2) Cimmerians
Talking Mountains (3) Dark Elven
Torvale (4) Druid
Amberland (5) Cimmerians
Eastern Steppes (6) Dark Elven
Runnimede (7) Illusionist
Arcania (8) Illusionist
Synisvania (9) Dark Elven
Southern Sands (10) Dark Elven


2nd place for me.  I'm getting better, though not quite to the point of dangerous to the really experienced players at least 1 on 1 .. yet 

[Mad Hatter]

Congrats Tark! I was playing the UN. This game was going awesome for me. I lead for the greater part of the game with status points. I had the Ring of Power, the Gem of the Planes and a ton of other artifacts. Hidden cap had 77+ gold and defense. I had 2 P7, 1 P6 and 2 P4 wizards. Massive groups.

Then the dome on your city in R9 screwed me, as I was led to believe that I could threaten it to get around the dome....don't even want to go down that road again in discussion. But in our one battle my group went from 98% morale to 72%. Attack value 87k down to 34k. It took me 10+ turns to build up that group, to summon all of the troops and recruit from the wild....juggling artifacts, wizards, etc just to get that group. I admit, I was sooo pissed, in a fit of adolescent rage, I dropped.

Anyway, I'm over it now. But the one thing that I just don't get in these games is the HC. You controlled 2 regions almost from the beginning and yet you were still getting yes votes on the HC from other players. WHY? I did vote no a couple of times, but 2 to 1 didn't do anything. You would think that you wouldn't help someone else progress even further in the game, when they have 2 regions already and attacking a third, if your intent was to win it yourself. Am totally baffled by this.

PS: Sorry that I had to kill your wizard in that patrol, I believe it was on turn 8. You were at the city and with one more step you would have been on my cap.
PSS: That L13 agent you had in my town, that I couldn't kill or kidnap, who was guarding prisoners....was he a decoy? I couldn't find the location that he was guarding.

[Diws]

I was the Illusionist. As a wizard kingdom, my early game goal was to be left alone while I took my region and built up. Not an easy proposition with a middle slot.. So I ignored the provocations of the Dark Elf and the Underworld grabbing my PC's in their regions. What I could not ignore was the Tyrant scouting my region out. there was a nasty 3 cornered war going on with the Druid, Elf, and the Tyrant, it seems; I launched into Runnimede and never faced much in the way of Tyrant troops, as they were busy in R4 mostly. The Tyrant tried to contest me with emissaries , but was basically fighting with one hand tied behind his back. Meanwhile the Underworld player started denigrating me in R10, but I knew that he and the Dark Elves were fighting and assumed that this was more of a defensive measure on his part. I did have some agent activity, trying to kill off one of my agents and I believe a steal gold; I never did figure out if it was the UN or the TY. So I confined myself to denigrating the UN in turn, training up my agents, and continually building up my City (inconveniently located in the extreme NE corner of R8), which is part of what slowed me down in attacking Runnimede.. I could see that the Dark Elf player was steamrolling toward victory, but I was heavily invested in the SW and not in a good position as yet to do much about it. the IL was looking pretty powerful once it got some momentum.. its probably the most formidable kingdom that I have yet built up in my still nascent Alamaze career. So congrats once again, Tark, and to everyone who made it to the end. Would be interested to hear what went on with the TY , DU and EL in particular.

[Mad Hatter]

I was the Illusionist.  As a wizard kingdom, my early game goal was to be left alone while I took my region and built up.  Not an easy proposition with a middle slot..   So I ignored the provocations of the Dark Elf and the Underworld grabbing my PC's in their regions.  What I could not ignore was the Tyrant scouting my region out.  there was a nasty 3 cornered war going on with the Druid, Elf, and the Tyrant, it seems; I launched into Runnimede and never faced much in the way of Tyrant troops, as they were busy in R4 mostly.  The Tyrant tried to contest me with emissaries , but was basically fighting with one hand tied behind his back.  Meanwhile the Underworld player started denigrating me in R10, but I knew that he and the Dark Elves were fighting and assumed that this was more of a defensive measure on his part.  I did have some agent activity, trying to kill off one of my agents and I believe a steal gold; I never did figure out if it was the UN or the TY.  So I confined myself to denigrating the UN in turn, training up my agents, and continually building up my City (inconveniently located in the extreme NE corner of R8), which is part of what slowed me down in attacking Runnimede..  I could see that the Dark Elf player was steamrolling toward victory, but I was heavily invested in the SW and not in a good position as yet to do much about it.  the IL was looking pretty powerful once it got some momentum.. its probably the most formidable kingdom that I have yet built up in my still nascent Alamaze career.   So congrats once again, Tark, and to everyone who made it to the end.  Would be interested to hear what went on with the TY , DU and EL in particular.

I don't recall coming after your agents, but I did have all of R8 reconned. I did not know where your cap was thou. I did consider stealing the Cloak of Disguise you had on your emmy in your city, that was doing status quo, although at the time he was in the city alone. At one point, I did consider coming into R8. I found the Ring and Gem both in R8 directly on our border and 3 others in your southern mountains that I found on turn 1. My cap was a square right below them and I couldn't pass them up.

With the DA having no emmies in R9 I knew everything he had was in R6 and he was pressing the WA. So I decided to move on him instead, albeit a little too late. And, I didn't realize the enormity of the pluses that the DA has until I decided to play them in a primeval game.

I found the TY city on turn 3ish on the border with R10 too, which I totally missed on my turn results.

Was it you that took that P1 wandering wizard out of my region? I went to it, tried to get it and moved. Failed on getting it, went directly back, it was there, but when I went to go in it was gone. I did, however, find a P2 in R9 a couple of turns later.

[Diws]

I don't believe that I ever made any moves towards you in R10. I suspected that someone sniped my Unusual Sighting . Had I known it would have been war, of course. As it was, I was training agents, counterspying, and basically watchfully waiting for a real incursion by you or the Dark Elf while concentrating on taking the Tyrant region. I may have played it overcautious, as I often tend to do, but am starting to come out of a bit.

[Mad Hatter]

I don't believe that I ever made any moves towards you in R10.  I suspected that someone sniped my Unusual Sighting .  Had I known it would have been war, of course.  As it was, I was training agents, counterspying, and basically watchfully waiting for a real incursion by you or the Dark Elf while concentrating on taking the Tyrant region.    I may have played it overcautious, as I often tend to do, but am starting to come out of a bit.

I think that I might be spending too much time looking for and recovering US's, I'm not sure. However, when I have everything where I want it, I end up screwing up playing the military part of the game.

[DuPont]

I was the CI in this one. The game started off well enough, with me getting my region in timely fashion. One thing I did NOT know when I chose this position was that all positions were open - that is, had I known somebody could still pick the NE, I would probably not have taken the CI. Anyway, the NE went after #5, so I just considered myself lucky. Not so lucky when he quickly came back and attacked me - he seemed to get going in record speed. I had some bad luck and he managed to Summon Death on my groups and I lost my leaders. Now on thing that I do consider a flaw is that you can't recruit if you don't have a captain and you can't get a captain if you have no troops. I hired some Centurions and went after a US that I could not win just to advance a couple of them to captain. Meanwhile, I played possum against the NE - fighting back would have not worked as he had every advantage. I had a water capital and a 12 ship fleet to keep me safe, there. And a gold stockpile. The NE eventually got busy in #1 and I emerged from hiding and took my region back. Then he dropped - not sure why, but it was also going badly for him in #1 it seemed, but he still held #5. I moved into the vacant #5, though I was aware of the DA threat. I had started to move on him in #6 when the game ended, though I figured (correctly) that I'd be too late to stop him. I would have never won, anyway - the NE had put me too behind the eight ball, but I was enjoying the game and would have been happy to see it go on. I was glad to get third considering how far down I was at one point. Congrats to all!

[unclemike]

I was the NE. Since I wanted early action in this game (like how 2nd Cycle used to be with two kingdoms being pitted against each other from game start), I had to decide to either attack the CI or go elsewhere. Since it's common for the CI-NE to battle, I decided to do something different and went for Amberland. That meant that region 5 had 4 kingdoms of BL, SA, TY, and NE fighting for control and all the action that I could ask for :[]

However, to my surprise it didn't end up being that way at all! I think the BL went northward for some reason, TY went south to Runnimede, SA hung around but must have went exploring for artifacts because I didn't have to battle him. So I was left pretty much alone in 5 with human/neutral pcs. That was really annoying because I wanted the early conflict and immediate action of a 2nd Cycle game.

Well, I gained control of an uncontested 5 in 2-3 turns then I was stuck in not knowing what to do next. Thankfully, the CI attacked my pcs in 2 (even though he didn't need them since he already had control of the Mists) so I decided to teach him a lesson :0

When I teleported my small divisions to his region thinking I would be slaughtered by his superior military, I found that his troops were all spread out among several pc's (I guess to block emissary movements?). So I ended up battling really small groups of which my wizards took care of without an issue. Since the CI's military wasn't in shape for battle, I changed directions a little and cast a bunch of Imps (L7 agents) to assassinate his emissaries (took out a Duke and such).

Sorry DuPont but your CI military wasn't a challenge for me and went down quickly. Still don't know why you didn't combine everything you had and used your wizards to counter my efforts but spreading everything out like that made it really easy to conquer the region.

At that point, I had control of two regions (2,5) and no one to fight. Other regions had conflicts going on of kingdoms battling each other but I didn't want to intrude since that may ruin their enjoyment of the game of having an evenly matched contest. So I just sat idle and raised wizard levels which was something that I definitely didn't want for this game.

By turn 15 or 16, I just couldn't take it and called it for myself. Decided instead to work on the Ice Age code. Sorry about dropping like that but I lasted as long as I could when I wanted a different experience for myself in this game...