Just Me and My Pretty Birds (A N00b Dominions 4 MP AAR)

[sbr]

That attack last turn was a terrible idea and I got my ass kicked.  My Pretender, 7 Capital-Only Mages and most of my entire army was wiped.

I am continuing to support Chelms with scouting reports of what I see but I am not sure when I will be able to continue the fight.  He seems confident he can defeat Atlantis' armies by himself letting me just move in and take undefended provinces. 

We will see.

I got a message offering an olive branch for my "transgression".  I responded with:   

[sbr]

Ugh.  My bandwidth limit will reset in 2 days.

Should I move away from Photobucket?  If so where?

Move to imgur, use the chrome imgur extension and its a one click rehost.

Yep, that is what I am going to do.  Photobucket can Suckit.

[sbr]

Ok where were we?

On Turn 20 I made an incredibly dumb attack and lost most everything.  I told Chlems they were basically on their own, but they reassured me that they would be OK and to just rebuild and rejoin the fight.  So I decided to do that. 

I have been rebuilding my army, recruiting Mages since mine all died and my Research has ground almost to a halt and recruiting Scouts.  And more Scouts.  And then some more Scouts.  Now on turn 23 I have at least 1 Scout in every Atlantean province and I am feeding Chelms recruiting reports every turn.

This is what I sent him for Turn 23 (the current turn):

Stone Heavens(213) - 8: Ice Guards.  Angakok.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Erfel(211) - 9: Ice Guards.  One and Future Queen.  PD:  Well organized
Fever Fens(214) FORT - 10: Snow Warriros, Shamans.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Behemoth's Rest(197) FORT - 20:Snow warrirors,Tungaliks.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Feldan Forest(198) - empty.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Glimmering Fields(199) - 1 scout  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
The Greater Wild - empty.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Old Man Mountians(187) - 1 scout.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Atlantis(188) FORT - 30:  Ice Warriors, Arssartuts.  Angakok.  PD:  Stong and well organized
Juec(181) - 20: Ice Guards, Ice Warriors  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Mite Marsh(182) - empty.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Solian(183) - 30:  Crossbowmen, Ice Guards, Ice Warriors.  PD:  Well organized
Trenceber(169) - 6: Crossbowmen.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Watronia(179) - 80:  Ice Guards, Ice Warriors, Crossbowmen, Arssartuts.  Angakok.  PD:  1 officer and a few henchmen
Barra(151) - 20 Crossbowmen.

We have a basic idea of where everything is and where it will be coming from.

Chelms and I are also coordinating our attacks as much as possible.

On Turn 21 Man gave the Atlantean Army a good thumping and took a province or two. 

On Turn 22 Atlantis and Chelms fought again, and again Chelms won but this one was Pyrrhic for sure.  The fight started at 94 troops for Man and 79 for Atlantis; Man took 54 casualties to Atlantis' 46 and Chelms lost their Prophet.  I made a probing attack (code for a silly attack with some fodder I had lying around I thought I would just throw it in there and see what happens but forgot his Provincial Defense would fight too otherwise I had him) against Barra, on the Caelum/Man border.  I lost, but not decisively.

At this point Chelms had to stop and regroup, his units can only march 1 province per turn so it takes him longer to get reset.  It worked out well that when my ally needed to rest I was ready to go back on a limited offensive.  I sent most of my flying army to High Peaks, just over the mountains and Atlantis' most south west province.  In the meantime my flightless armies, including my Mammoths which still do not have Flying Carpets, are on the move and ready to converge on Barra on Turn 24.

There was only one Atlantean Scout in High Peaks and he was driven off with little difficulty.  Taking this province was a real boon; besides the resource and income loss to Atlantis this province has 3 Magic Sites that I immediately discovered gaining me 3 Death Gems, 2 Earth Gems and 1 Astral Pearl.

I don't cannot fight Atlantis head on, so I raised the Provincial Defense up to 15 and am now returning to my Forts to grab more fresh recruits.  I would like to keep High Peaks, but not enough to commit any units to hold it.  I hope the threat of the Chelms invasion on the other border keeps Atlantis from just trying to retake it next turn.  If not, hopefully the Provincial Defense makes it bloody enough that they regret sending too small a force; if they send a large force that should relieve pressure on Chelms.  If Atlantis does retake high Peaks I will be moving right back with my full armies on the next turn.  With an ally that can stand up to the Atlantean Infantry I can jump in and out all day letting him bleed himself out on two fronts.

[sbr]

By the way details on the death of a Pretender.  You obviously lose any benefits of the Pretender being alive:   Dominion spread, researching, forging, fighting, etc.

The Pretender can be resurrected but it will take a long time.  Each Priest unit can pray to Call God each turn; each level of Priest adds to the counter.  When the counter gets close to 50 (for randomness sake) she is resurrected.  When Nininsina died I had 1 Level 1 Priest.

Once resurrected the Pretender loses 1 point in every Magic Path, so my A5E4S4 Pretender will become A4E3S3.  You don't lose the Bless effects though, so even though I no longer have E4 or S4 I still keep the Invigoration and Magic Resistance Blessed effects.

[sbr]

Turn 24

Slow news day, but last turn was slow.



The Spirit of my old Prophet has left this world, so can I now appoint a new Prophet.



I finally take Barra from Atlantis.   I am a bit confused about this turn, I know that if Mammoths (or any other large animal/creature) route they will run over and though anyone behind them.  I knew that and thought I had positioned all of my units so nothing was behind the Mammoths, but for some reason that is not how it played out.  It wasn't a huge deal but the Mammoths did route, and right through my Earthbounds, my most expensive Sacred units.  I only lost 1 but that slowed them down enough to extend the battle longer than it needed to be, increasing my casualties.



A worldwide event, this is the second day this has appeared.  There is a chance that another player is doing this; some Ritual Spells will appear as random events.



Here is the map at very close to the start of the turn.  The left-most arrow is a random Commander gathering up recruits.  The center arrow pointing down is a Commander going to get the routed Mammoths.  The longer right-to-left arrow is the 2 Mages involved in the battle for Barra returning to the Lab in Caelum.

This another slow turn as I position my units for another attack on Atlantis.  Both of my Storm Generals both have some cheap armor now and meet in Wic Forest which is 1 turns move from 3 Atlantean provinces, including Atlantis itself.  I think the Men of Chlems will be attacking next turn as well, but I haven't heard from him yet.

At the start of a new year, here are some in-game graphs that are filtered to just show me, Chelms (Green) and Atlantis (Dark Blue).

Total number of Provicnes:



Income:



Gem Income:



You can clearly see where I took that province with 3 Magic Sites last turn.

Dominion



Army Size:



We have the biggest army of the 3 again, but it needs to be much, much bigger before I can fight anyone one-on-one

Research



Blech

[sbr]

Turn 25

Last Turn was another turn of positioning.  Atlantis re-took High Peaks and I didn't want to risk meeting his main army so I stayed on my side of the mountains, but moved 1 province east, as the one I was in didn't have enough supply for my army.  My main army all went under the command of one of the Strom Generals and the other returned to Caelum to grab more troops.  I am still trying to reincarnate Nininshina and I forgot to name a new Prophet the first turn I could so I did that on Turn 25 as well.

Turn 26



I got my new Prophet.  That will help in bringing back my God and in Dominion spread.



The battle between Man and Atlantis is not the big showdown I hoped for.



Here is the map and the plan:




Atlantis either has something very interesting planned, or he thinks I am a complete idiot.  I assume he doesn't think I will just march right back into High Peaks and risk a battle between our main armies, so I a guess he has something good up his sleeve.  He can hang out here in the east with me while the Men of Chelms take his western provinces unopposed, that is fine with me.

My main army will move up to Trencebor, while the small reserves in the Capital will move into Watronia.  Both have risks, but I think I will be OK.  The ~20 Crossbowmen in the province just east of Man's army could move southwest into Watronia but that seems like a poor move with Chelms moving eastward.  There are also ~30 units in Atlantis that could meet my main army in Trencebor, but again moving south into the mountains doesn't seem like an optimal move when they could very well end up cut off down there.  I am not too worried about the fight in Trencebor even if he moves south.  The crossbowmen could very well ruin the attack into Watronia though.

The Men of Chelms will be  moving east again this turn, but I don't know which province they will be attacking yet.

I received an interesting diplomatic proposal.  The Lizardmen of C'tis, one of my southern neighbors has proposed a 20 turn Non-Aggression pact and trading/crafting agreement.  He wants to trade Gems and is willing to pay me to Forge some Air Magic Items.  I have no doubts that these will likely come back to kick my ass later but 20 turn of peace from that direction will be welcome.  C'tis wants Earth and Death Gems, which are important to me too, so I don't know what sort of trades we will be able to work out unless he has excess Air Gems.  I can give up some Earth Gems, but my Death Gem income is only 3 per turn, until I retake High Peaks that is.

[sbr]

The game is on a hiatus while the entire continent of Europe is away from their PCs either watching the World Cup or on Holiday.  It will resume with a daily turn sometime in mid-to-late July.  I hope to use that time to get this caught back up.  I am about 12 turns behind.

Turn 27



Finished Construction Level 4, that is a big one as it allows for the Forging of some nice Magic Items.  Specifically Death Staff (gives +1 Death Magic), Earth Boots (+1 Earth Magic), Winged Helmet(+1 Air Magic), Flying Carpets, Wall Shaker (Increases Siege Power when besieging a fort), and Storm Spool (gives me 2 more Corpse Man Constructs when casting the Ritual spell, for a total of 5 per Air Gem when combined with the Lightning Rod).  I will begin Constructing Corpse Men this turn, even before I craft a Storm Spool.  My next step in Research is Enchantment 2, to get to Revive King, which summons a Mound King, an Undead Leader who can lead the Corpse Men into battle.

I have also started forging Owl's Quills



There were 3 battles between Atlantis and Chelms and I, none of them worth a shit.









I was expecting something from Atlantis this turn, but I was not expecting the German Atlantean Army moving though neutral Benelux Mictlan to get around the Maginot Line Mountains and into the soft underbelly of France Caelum.  At this point I panicked a bit; I had no idea how to stop that army before it reached my Capital, and once it got there I was in deep shit.  Besides losing a ton of income and resources, my other 2 forts didn't produce enough troops to beat that army before I lost Caelum.  I had been recruiting a bunch of trash around the countryside, generic Infantry (Heavy and Light), some Lizardmen from the swamp province in the south (even though the cold-blooded beasts don't fight very well in my and Atlantis' cold homelands) so I began marching them all towards the enemy army hoping to at least bleed them a bit before they hit my capital.

With my excellent mobility I figured I didn't need to send my main flying army home quite yet, if Atlantis is going to leave their homeland undefended I will do everything I can to make him pay for it.  I send one small group up north to take Glimmering Fields which is between his capital and his northeast fort.  I send my biggest group west to retake the Gem mines in High Peaks.

I don't remember exactly what I was recruiting these turns along with my normal Storm Guards/Horn Spire Archers in my forts I began to recruit 5 Earthbounds per turn.  I had stopped recruiting these even though they are my only Sacred units, and my best and strongest melee units, but they don't fly and that didn't work for me.  Now that we are in a defensive mode they are required and fast.  I am also recruiting as much chaff in the countryside as I can afford.

[sbr]

Turn 28



Finished Level 1 of Enchantment and one to go.



My pretender Nininshina finally came back to life as well.  Cause for much celebration!! 

However this is when I REALLY started to hate the Atlantis player.  One of his national summons spells is a Tupilak which targets a province and attacks a leader there.  He sent two to Trencebor, where both of my armies were.  Both fought the same Storm General; my guy won the first fight but lost the second. 



Now I had 97 leaderless troops sitting on their thumbs in Trencebor instead of attacking High Peaks.



It took me a while to figure out how to counter this.  Atlantis also used this same spell against the Men of Chelms to slow their advance as well.

At least the smaller group made it up to Glimmering Fields, which they took unopposed.



The Atlantean advance on Caelum continues as well...








At least there are small groups that might cause an Atlantean soldier to stub his toe or something.  Not looking good at all.

The Random hero event will help, with a Level 2 Death mage and Level 2 Priest.



But it won't help much.

Somewhere around here C'tis and I confirmed our 20 turn NAP and agreed that I would send him 10 Earth Gems and 10 Death gems in exchange for 20 Air Gems.  He also wants me to Forge him some Winged Shoes, which gives the Flight ability to anyone wearing them but I told him that with the hostile army in my territory I would have to wait on that.

More recruiting and figuring out how to get enough Commanders up to Trencebor to get my army back under control and useble.   

[sbr]

Turn 29



Finished researching Enchantment Level 2 so Mount Kings can be summoned to lead my growing army of Corpse Man Constructs.  I have moved my Research into Evocation and Alteration now, will be able to finish a level on both next turn.

I don't remember now exactly what my plan was, though somewhere around this time something interesting happened.  The game was updated and it made some changes to my nation.  A lot of my units became better armored, with a corresponding increase in Resource cost (which I didn't have to pay retroactively obviously), and more importantly all of my Caelian and Spire Horn units gained the Storm Immunity trait.  This is interesting because there is an Evocation 5 spell called Storm that makes "flying impossible and shooting difficult."  It also makes Fire Magic less effective.  There is also a Conjuration 2 spell Summon Storm Power that when cast during a battle and in a storm increases an Air Mage's Air Magic by 1.  So assuming this works out like I think, I could fight battles where no one else can fly (no other flying nations but there are Magic Items and Summons that give/have that ability), enemy archers and fire magic are less powerful, while not only am I not affected by any of these things, but I can get an extra boost to my Air Mages. 

Storm is a very powerful spell and needs a A5 Mage and costs 100 Fatigue to cast, so at this point only Nininshina, my Pretender will be able to cast it and it will knock her unconscious when she casts it.  I need to get lucky and get a A3 Harab Elder or two and Forge a Winged Helmet (A+1) and Bag of Wind(A+1) to be able to make a habit of casting this spell.

At this point, whenever it was, this is where my Research priorities moved to; getting Evocation 5, then to Conjuration 2.

There were a couple of battles this turn.  A small force of Men took an almost unopposed province of Juec from Atlantis and Atlantis retook Glimmering Fields after I abandoned it.

The Atlantean steamroller made quick work of one of my ridiculous speed bumps between the Atlantis army and my capital.



Yikes, nothing I have is stopping this army.

An event, a scout died, troops starving, yadda yadda yadda .... Nothing else very interesting there.

Map time ...



I open the map and get confused, where the hell is the huge Atlantean army that should be bordering my capital?

ERMAHGERD!!

He turned the wrong direction and attacked my other fort!!  I didn't even register the name of the province our battle was in, and I just skimmed right over the Your Shit is Besieged message at the start of the turn.

I have no idea what he was thinking here, and will be very curious to talk to him after the game.  To me our war changed right here, it went from me being doomed to him being in trouble.  I still think he could have walked right into my capital province and I couldn't have done anything about it.

Not only that, but what is the strategic thought in abandoning your homelands to the Men of Chlems only to take a periphery fort of mine?  And a very unproductive one at that.  Very strange.

From this point on I went from scrambling to stop his advance to building and positioning an army that could hopefully break the siege, or if not smash the Atlantis army right after he broke through.

This is the collection of junk I have in the province between the siege and my capital.



It won't beat the Atlantean army by itself, in fact it wouldn't even be close, but it could be a nice meat shield to protect my real army and mages once they get rallied (and if a bunch of it died saving me Upkeep costs that would be nice too).

I do make a couple of attacks this turn.  I send my largest army in to take Wic Forest and cut off the Atlantean army.  There is a chance that he realizes he has mad a mistake and pulls out this turn and smashes my army but I am willing to take that chance.  I also move a smaller group back into High Peaks to get those valuable Gems flowing back to me.

More recruiting of stuff in Caelum and Constructing Corpse Men in order to build an army big and strong enough to deafeat this army and move in to help Chelms in the Atlantis heartland.

Turn 30



C'tis and I complete our trade of Gems this turn, I get 20 Air Gems in exchange for 10 Earth and 10 Death.  I am going through Air Gems pretty quickly with Constructing Corpse Men and Forging Owl Quills so this is needed.

Atlantis sends out a couple of more Tupilaks, this time killing a Scout and a random generic Commander in Zoglia, the province with my big trash army.

I win both battles, Wic Forest and High Peaks, very easily as both are undefended.

There seems to be some sort of cult forming in High Peaks but I am not sure what that means or how to get rid of it, so it is time to pull out my favorite strategy of ignoring it and hope it goes away and bothers someone else.



The Atlantean army won't finish knocking down the walls of Herghendorf this turn, but they will next turn.  The Fortification has 199 strength left and they did 167 points last turn.  I will have everything ready to hit Atlantis' army the turn after next; movement and attacks happen before Castle Storming during the turn so I will be able to hit them before they get in and kill my undefended Mages.  I don't know if I have enough to win the battle, but I will definitely do some damage and make Chelms' conquest easier.

[sbr]

Turn 31



A couple more Tupilaks were summoned and while I now know how to deal with them, I am not always able to do it perfectly.  The key is to have 4-5 units with Guard Commander orders.  Those units usually appear to help out in assassination attempts, and with the Tupilaks low Defense and Protection (both are in the 5-6 range) they can be killed rather quickly.  If they are not killed in the first combat pulse you will be in trouble though; the Tupilak has the Fear ability and any one routing from an assassination attempt is auto-killed.  This happened to me in one of these battle, I smashed the Tupilak down to like 2 HPs on my first pulse then all of my guys just ran and were killed.  I was pretty pissed until I figured out what was happening.  The only downside is that those 4-5 units will stay behind and Guard Commander during a pitched battle as well, so they are not in the battle.

Enough Guards:



Not enough Guards:



The battle in Atlantis was a silly idea by me.  I figured I would be more than willing to trade a Scout to know the composition of the Army in his capital.  It didn't work out that way, as that army moved and the Provincial Defense killed my Scout.

There were 2 really interesting battles this turn.

The first was in Wic Forest, where again Atlantis made what seemed to me to be a weird decision to abandon the siege at Hergehndorf (he left 1 unit there to continue the siege but it will die next turn as the defenders in the fort come out to Break the Siege) just before the walls came down, though the attacker has no idea about the state of the walls so he didn't know how close he was to bringing them down.



Fortunately I only had a few meaningless units there as my main Flying army had moved north to Nydian Range to take that.

All sorts of things happened in High Peaks.  I had tried to move that army out of High Peaks (don't remember where they were to go, just another province to harass Atlantis) but the Tupilak attack that killed my Commander was in High Peaks, so my 56 units were leaderless and couldn't move.  Atlantis then attacked them with the army from his capital, so while my units were killed and scattered I still got some intelligence on the size and make up of that army; it was more costly than I wanted though.



Yuck, 109 units here and I assume the other 144 will be moving north to join up and fight in Atlantis' territories.  The 30 remaining Storm Guards were scattered to the 3 friendly bordering provinces. 




As I said before I assume that the army that just left Herghendorf is headed north to defend Atlantis, there is the slight change that they may now move to attack my capital but at this point I want to fight that army and I think Atlantis knows that.  I would love to stop them before they link up, but the army that can catch them can't beat them and the army that can do a lot of damage can't catch them.  The birdman army north of Atlantis' army will fly 2 provinces south and Army Group Trash will move north hoping that maybe the Atlantis army stays put, but that is extremely unlikely.

Turn 32



I am continuing to Summon Corpse Men even though I don't need them at the moment.  They will never be able to catch up before the large battle that is looming.  I don't remember if I did stop at this point though.

All of the battles were expected.  Wic Forest is where I moved Army Group Trash, Nydian Range is where the Atlantean army moved and the battle in Herghendorf was me breaking the siege and killing one dude.  There was nothing interesting about any of those battles, though here you can see the composition of Army Group Trash



The map looks as expected, the Atlantean army headed home with a tail of my two armies wagging behind.  I am assuming that he will move that army all the way the his capital, so the flying units will just move one province at a time to help with the supply issues I am having with the large army.

I am also starting to get the reserve flying units and Mages in my other forts into position for the attack on Atlantis in 2 turns.

[Sophie Scholl]

Arise, thread!  Back to life with you!  So... I started reading into this game, and I think I'm going to get it at some point.  I ordered the hardcopy rulebook they offer, as I love being able to actually hold such things and read them not on a computer screen.  Would those of you who have played it recommend it?

[Ed Anger]

Arise, thread!  Back to life with you!  So... I started reading into this game, and I think I'm going to get it at some point.  I ordered the hardcopy rulebook they offer, as I love being able to actually hold such things and read them not on a computer screen.  Would those of you who have played it recommend it?

I'm enjoying it, but I only play against the AI.

too bad you missed the steam sale on it. It was 9 bucks.

[Sophie Scholl]

Damn.  When's the next big Steam sale?

[Alcibiades]

I really enjoyed it for a while.  AI is kind of meh, though.


And I still never got resolution on that problem I had as the lizard people.  Haven't played since. 

[Grey Fox]

Damn.  When's the next big Steam sale?

Easter