Game 171 (Pagan)

[Lord Diamond]

     We haven't run the report to get the end of game file yet, but I thought I'd post a brief synopsis of my game.

     Ranger - The Sorcerer and I decided to fight one another for Synisvania this game and I am sure that we both wish we had made some sort of early unspoken arrangement. He beat me down early and gained control of the region. I knocked him out of control, but he got it back. I was eventually able to gain control and keep it. I spent a portion of the game doing my best to eliminate him, but never could quite manage it even though I did kill a couple of his wizards. In the end, he was down to two villages that I am aware of with my armies camped at both.

     It turns out that the Royal Cartographer made a grievous error early on and neglected to update the maps with the location of a single backwoods village. A spirited interrogation revealed that this village, Elbryan, is best known for growing turnips. The cartographer has despised turnips ever since some horrid experience when he was young and was afraid that if we brought Ebryan into the Ranger kingdom, he would be expected to eat them at the Royal table. I had him sealed into a pantry filled with nothing but several large mounds of turnips and a barrel of water. He can leave once he has converted them all to fertilizer. As you may have guessed, the Sorcerer took advantage of this oversight and was able to maintain his court in Elbryan. The Elf claimed victory the very same month that the 1st Ranger would have reduced Elbryan to ashes. Only my archmage and the Sorcerer's failure to ward his king allowed us to finally locate him.

     I didn't feel nearly as bad about my performance when I discovered that the Sorcerer was played by Vball Michael! I knew that it had to be a very good player.

     I did take a break from chasing down the annoying Sorcerer to let the Black Dragon know how upset I was about his attacking my town and village in Southern Sands. I was eventually chased out of the region, leaving a couple of high ranking nobles behind, but I hope I caused him a great deal of inconvenience.  

     I actively avoided fighting the Darkelf and the Demon Prince.

     I was rebuilding my armies, but my early war with the Sorcerer stunted my kingdom's growth. I was delighted, and surprised, to achieve my major ESO on turn 10.

     Although I championed the format, I do not believe that Pagan games are for me.

     Congratulations, Canticar! I have no idea how you managed to gain three regions in an Anon Pagan game, but good for you.

[mafmiller]

Black Dragon -
I enjoyed this game very much, even though I was near the bottom. Since the DE delayed me from taking my region by blocking my conquest of the city, I vowed that he would not finish in the top three and succeeded in contributing to that happening (Sorry, Cloud! You're one of my favorite players ... if I had known it was you, I might not have been so annoying. )Speaking of annoying ... yes, Lord Diamond, you did cause me quite a bit of inconvenience! I may have taken Arcania before the GN got so involved there, if I hadn't had to come back and defend my region. I took your PCs because there was one point in the game when I had some starving dragons to feed. I made a point not to take anything in your own region, but I guess that gesture wasn't enough ... oh well! And ... speaking of the GN, I think intentionally avoiding his PCs in the hope that he would help vanquish the DE, but leave me alone, backfired. All together, a very enjoyable game. Congrats to Canticar!!!

[Lord Diamond]

Black Dragon -
I enjoyed this game very much, even though I was near the bottom. Since the DE delayed me from taking my region by blocking my conquest of the city, I vowed that he would not finish in the top three and succeeded in contributing to that happening (Sorry, Cloud! You're one of my favorite players ... if I had known it was you, I might not have been so annoying. )Speaking of annoying ... yes, Lord Diamond, you did cause me quite a bit of inconvenience! I may have taken Arcania before the GN got so involved there, if I hadn't had to come back and defend my region. I took your PCs because there was one point in the game when I had some starving dragons to feed. I made a point not to take anything in your own region, but I guess that gesture wasn't enough ... oh well! And ... speaking of the GN, I think intentionally avoiding his PCs in the hope that he would help vanquish the DE, but leave me alone, backfired. All together, a very enjoyable game. Congrats to Canticar!!!

I would have been okay with you taking my village in Southern Sands, but drew the line when you decided to take my starting town as well. I was hurting pretty bad and hoped to use that town to recruit. Instead, the recruiting group spent the rest of the game scouting out your region for my eventual revenge. Besides, I wanted you to be too distracted to head into Synisvania. If you'd wanted me to consider it a truce, you should have attacked the village and then made a point of leaving my town alone. I would never have bothered you.

[Cloud]

[DE]  This was a pretty frustrating game and I'm glad my torture is over!  I took up this game as a standby player on turn 5 and I thought I would be jumping in before too much had happened, but it turned out that my predecessor had started the game by sending a blocking emissary to the cities in Runnimede, Southern Sands, and Torvale.  I tried to set things right - I declared the GN an ally and pulled back all the blockers, but it was too late.  GN and BL were soon attacking me and, while I defended for some time, it was just too much to handle.  I had a fair amount of intel on Southern Sands so I decided to abandon Arcania and move into that region and have one enemy instead of two.  That worked OK, but the BL turned back and engaged me in full and the presence of a third kingdom in the region (RA) complicated the situation further.  The last few turns of the game left me scrambling as I lost my capitol multiple times and was down to 2 DP's and a Duke.  Well played, everyone - I was hosed before I started, with two great players in Thallion and Damelon set against me already.  At least AN didn't feel the need to strike back at me as well and I didn't have to deal with DuPont as well!

[gkmetty]

Canticar (EL)
Thanks everyone for a fun game. Here is my long game synopsis. It might help if the Pagan format stays around.

The Pagan format is relatively new, at least to me, so before I submitted my kingdom selections I did some research. I found that the Elf, Ranger and Giant receive the magic spell Unveil Pop Centers (751) at P6, all other kingdoms get the spell at P7. The GI maximum assured power level is 4 while both the EL and RA can go to 6. With the EL having their own region, and I had never played the EL kingdom previously, the EL became my first pick. I was very happy when I was awarded the EL kingdom.

Having the EL kingdom would give me a time advantage on the other kingdoms, other than the RA, but I knew I would have to move quickly to keep the advantage. The longer the game went on the more likely it was that another kingdom would discover a means to locate pop centers in additional regions.

Early in the game things went fairly routinely. I was able to take Oakendale relatively quickly and started developing my mages. I would need two P6s to divine pop centers and a P4 to teleport the group around. I also wanted a large emmie corps to take advantage of the EL special ability, +10% to usurp. Lastly I wanted as many agents as possible so I would be able to look at towns and villages in the regions I would invade.

Due to physical vicinity I was going to target Torval, the Northern Mists and Amberland, in that order. That plan changed on turn 6 when Dupont’s Ancient Ones declared me an enemy and denigrated me in Torval. I was a little concerned that he might launch an early attack but the Pagan format meant that an attack was unlikely so development continued.

Around turn 12 I was starting to collect pop center information in the Mists and Amberland when I received a surprise visit from the SO. I first received a report of a division sized group in the region and a turn later the group arrived at one of my towns. I was confused as I did not have any other reports of SO activity in Oakendale and I did not think a SO division could take a town. The SO group moved away from the town and landed at a village. When the SO took the village I moved an emmie there and set up an agent to watch the pop center. I reviewed a few turn results to see what I could tell about the situation in Synisvania and let the SO keep the village thinking it was an escape mechanism. It seemed the RA was pushing the SO out of Synisvania. I kept watch on the village and the SO never moved his capital there.

I don’t know who played the WI, put I apologize. My goal was to totally demoralize the WI. I needed to take and hold the Mists in order to win on turn 20 so my invasion was devastating. On turn 14 I launched my invasion of the Northern mists. On turn 15 I took every pop center in the mists except the WI capital and the city. I also took the WI town in Oakendale. I slept every WI emmie that could maintain and the WI king. The WI went from friendly to Hostile in one turn. I killed his highest agent, a L10, and my invisible battle group wiped out a WI group at his capital killing three WI P5s. All of this on turn 15. To his credit the WI persisted. He took back a town but on turn 17 my invisible battle group wiped out anther WI group killing two P3s and I took the city. The WI gave up.

Also on turn 17 my envoy was Killed and my agent that was watching the SO village reported an AN patrol. I was fairly certain the WI did not have an agent of high enough level to kill my envoy and I did not think the SO wanted hostilities with the EL so I drew the conclusion that the AN was invading. Again I relied on the restrictions of the Pagan format and continued with my plans to invade Amberland. I did denigrate the AN in Oakendale however.

On turn 18 the AN invaded. He brought at least 5 emmies and an army group landed at Lorethane. I don’t know if it mattered but I moved two P6 wizards to a group outside of Lorethane. The next turn would be a deciding turn. If I could hold Oakendale against the AN invasion I felt I would have a good chance at the win on turn 20. I sent two governors from my invasion force to towns the AN had moved to in Oakendale with the hopes that I could hold Oakendale. The UN also moved a division to a town in the Mists on turn 18 but with no other reports of UN activity I did not think this would play a factor.

On turn 19 the AN was able to take 5 pop centers from me. I think he turned them all neutral. We also had a battle at Lorathane. The AN killed one of my two brigades while I killed three of his 16. The important result was that the AN sieged the city. This was great news for me. The siege would end one turn too late. As long as I could take control of Amberland from the GI I would win.

Jhereg did a great job defending Amberland. I landed at every Town that was not blocked by a military group and half the villages. I tried to sleep the GI emmies that were in position to maintain but Jhereg had them warded. As it turned out I was barely able to take Amberland.

The Pagan format seems to limit Kingdom interaction. As I outlined the EL seems to have an advantage in this format. I don’t know if I would play another Pagan game.

[VballMichael]

SO

Yes, LD, I very much knew from about Turn 2 that you and I were both in trouble, with no way to "un" enemy each other. I even did a write-up in one thread defending the practice of kingdoms sharing regions being able to "ally" each other to avoid exactly our situation. Oh well, I knew you would win the overall war, and you did so quite handily, but I hope I did some damage .
Like the RA, I was very stunted in development, ending with a P5 and a P4 and a few P1's. No agents, 3 emissaries besides my King. And, apparently, a well-hidden village.
Good job to LD who was able to beat me and still harass the BL in SS. I was near elimination, but I did teleport out of the region and found and took a village and guarded that with my life just to avoid an elimination .
I just wanted to hang on until game end, so kind of glad it ended early. I did place 10th out of 10 remaining players, so pretty proud of that.

Congrats to the podium folks, great job in an anon game. Nice that only 2 players dropped, and one of those was right near the end.

[Lord Diamond]

If I could do that game over, I would not send an emmy to the city on turn one. I was afraid that if I didn't you would still take the city and use that as a base to attack me. I still thought we might have peace, but you went and attacked my village. I considered declaring you an ally, but I didn't know how to extricate from the situation and still maintain the Substantial control I needed for my ESO. Then we were balls-deep in the war and there was no way to stop it in an anon game.

When your group vanished, I was afraid that you had found a bolt-hole.

[Ry Vor]

Thanks to all who have taken time to give their after action reports.  Fun to read and informative.

I'm curious Canticar how you were able to move so many emissaries and keep intel seemingly everywhere.  What was your influence?  How many standing orders? 

[gkmetty]

On turn 19 I had an influence of 20.20. 

At its peak the EL had 11 emmies of Baron rank or higher and 3 govs.  I lost a few emmies in the last 3 turns.

 I had 7 L1 agents, 2 L4, a L8 and a L15.  Two of the L1 were on standing order to look at Lorethane and the SO village.

I would take two turns to look at pop centers in a region and then invade on the third turn in sequence.  Generally I would have intelligence no more than 2 turns old for all the towns and many of the villages in a region.  I ignored the cites until after I owned the region.

I would use 6 - 8 orders per turn doing recons and still be able to move emmies into position, not invade, advance mages etc.

As a funny note,  I lost one of my L1 agents doing a recon of my own city.  I guess the city guards did not believe the agent when he said they were on the same side.

[Lord Diamond]

Game details attached.