Jotunheim? Mmm, they're powerful sure, and they also have quite a number of options. Easy for a beginner? Well, depends on your playstyle I guess.

You can get in touch with myself or Kissblade if you want some dedicated coaching though. We'll both be more than happy to help you out.

mahrgell

Germany3943 Posts

August 18 2014 17:21 GMT

#1390

about kissblades dedicated coaching... He agreed to play my TLG4 nation for the time of my vacation in september

So you maybe should not share everything :D

mahrgell

Germany3943 Posts

August 18 2014 17:57 GMT

#1391

Also, I think every remaining player in TLG2 has agreed to declare Ulm the winner. So this game should be over now.

entropius

United States1046 Posts

August 18 2014 18:08 GMT

#1392

I was about to say ... well, I'll either win in this next turn, or not, and we'll see who is best able to handle Burden of Time (probably not me!). If you guys are conceding, I've got prophet + pretender sitting on the thrones I need for victory, so it should be one more turn (and then we can see scoregraphs etc.)

I'm quite surprised the ladies of Ulm did as well as they did, honestly -- I was prepared for a much tougher slog.

Icapica

Finland206 Posts

August 18 2014 18:13 GMT

#1393

We should really have started a war against you much, much earlier. Oh well. It was fun anyway, though I feel like I didn't do much.

Edit - But anyway, I'm totally fine with doing one more turn. I want to see those graphs.

entropius

United States1046 Posts

August 18 2014 18:30 GMT

#1394

Yeah, I was sort of expecting Yomi/Sauro troops to come pouring in, although honestly I think TC was stronger than me overall up until our battle.

I was quite worried about fighting Sauro before getting a bit more research done, since I couldn't risk using my pretender against him because of magic duel, and he was my only antimagic caster until I found some indies that could do it.

Icapica, you spent most of your resources fighting TC, no?

Icapica

Finland206 Posts

August 18 2014 18:31 GMT

#1395

Well that war was really short. I should have abandoned the entire idea and joined you in the war against Mictlan. I think that way I'd have gotten bigger than I did and you'd have stayed a little less huge.

entropius

United States1046 Posts

August 18 2014 18:48 GMT

#1396

Final turn submitted.

Yeah, the war vs. Mictlan was my first real MP war, and I wasn't expecting it to be as easy as it was; ironically the only two reasonably-sized battles were of my secondary force against two big stacks of jaguars, but I had enough magic there to win both. I would have definitely welcomed the help against him, and you could have gotten some land. Still, those calls are so much easier to make in retrospect...

EA Machaka looks interesting. Not quite sure what to make of Boudas -- they have so many fantastic abilities, and yet they hose your dominion and unrest...

Icapica

Finland206 Posts

August 18 2014 19:07 GMT

#1397

Unrest is easy to deal with since Machaka will always have Order 3 anyway. Just have some few units patrolling there and it should take care of that even if you have a lot of boudas. Heresy might be a bit more of a problem, but I had multiple boudas in a province with 7 or 8 Dominion and a temple and they never seemed to get it down. The higher the dominion is, the harder it is to lower.

lpunatic

235 Posts

August 18 2014 21:40 GMT

#1398

I dramatically underestimated Ulm's magic, which basically lost me the war in one big fight. I think I could have gone much further saccing a fort and pushing into Ulm's territory while avoiding that big fight, but I think I still would have lost in the end because I was having a lot of trouble massing units. I had a force that was highly effective in small to medium engagements but a bit weak in big ones. Ulm made better use of his mages than me - I had tons of 1D mages that I just didn't know what to do with, and my flying raiding parties weren't strong enough and died too often.

I also think a big mistake was accepting a peace offer with Icapica and going after Ermor. It left me diplomatically isolated and meant my forces were committed to war for a few turns longer, which was part of the problem when Ulm attacked.

entropius

United States1046 Posts

August 19 2014 00:18 GMT

#1399

On August 19 2014 06:40 lpunatic wrote:
I dramatically underestimated Ulm's magic, which basically lost me the war in one big fight. I think I could have gone much further saccing a fort and pushing into Ulm's territory while avoiding that big fight, but I think I still would have lost in the end because I was having a lot of trouble massing units. I had a force that was highly effective in small to medium engagements but a bit weak in big ones. Ulm made better use of his mages than me - I had tons of 1D mages that I just didn't know what to do with, and my flying raiding parties weren't strong enough and died too often.

I also think a big mistake was accepting a peace offer with Icapica and going after Ermor. It left me diplomatically isolated and meant my forces were committed to war for a few turns longer, which was part of the problem when Ulm attacked.

That probably would have paid off for you, as it would have given you time to pull your guys back from Ermor. I figured that a midgame war would likely be in my favor, since I've got the same mages cap and non-cap, while your fantastic cap-only mages would decline in importance as we both got more forts -- until you really got your summons rolling. Machaka told me he gave you a bunch of gems as tribute, so that prospect worried me. Incidentally, in the turn of our battle I was able to mapmove-2 my pretender and about 20 more mages in from Mictlan's land, which is why there might have been more magic there than expected.

I think ghostgrip spam on your D1's is about the best they can do, but I watched the battle again and noticed that about a half-dozen of them got clobbered by an archer volley early in the fight. I'm not sure what to think about Ulm's armored mages; on the one hand they cost resources and have nasty spellcasting fatigue, but on the other they can shrug off arrows/random bladewind projectiles/rain of stones.

Here's the battle video, incidentally:

KissBlade

United States5718 Posts

August 19 2014 00:43 GMT

#1400

Tien Chi S&A late game has very good battlefield wide evo's that are incredibly hard to defend against. Boosters/Empowers are things you shouldn't be too stingy on with them. D1's are great ghost grip spammers but also you want master of the ways to assist with summoning vitrols/water demons, etc. You had lizards so communions are probably the best mid game scenario. You actually have the stronger late game due to how much gems EA TC gets thanks to it's site searching and the fact that their sacreds scale as one of the best late game sacreds. IMO your main issue was committing to a bad fight from the looks of it because you basically just got outmaged which is what mid game fights mostly come down to. You also had very little archers that fight for EA TC especially since EA TC is an archer nation. Wind guide + Flaming arrows + 100 archers would've made a really big difference that fight for obvious reasons.