Game #1319 Tournament game#4 | Round 2 : 3vs3 PBEM TEAM TOURNAMENT 2018 #4

Just to add my few cents to the Fluks's recount:
 - in the stage of initial clearing, I used only tier 1 and tier 2 units (mostly t1 though ), therefore didn't spend as much for hires and therefore more gold for city building and diplomacy

- I made the stress on quantity of units, speed and stealth, therefore my skills were picked accordingly (partisan skills, units - mostly berserkers, horse archers and MH). Almost all t3 units were rewards/gifts from dwellings or empire quests. Only at the end of the game did I start buying them in taverns

- I believe I've reached advanced logistics on the same turn (or 1 before that) as Fluks, which gave us edge on the roads.

- actually before my leader was sent to the void, we have also had a bit of a stalemate with SinArcain, where he tried to tie my forces, but eventually decided to attack my Archon vassal and moved south. That was when I had thought of making a beeline for his domain, but eventually just decided to split troops.

- The split was not even - as I could mask only a single stack via the shrine (forgot its name ) in the snow terrain + around a stack of the MH moving over forests, mountains and swamps, therefore sent strongest forces there.

- In fact I used remaining forces to cover the fact, that a stack was missing immediately - making it look like I still had numbers and reinforcing with additional new recruits. At one point I moved them little bit too close and not in the ideal order close to the SinArcain (the idea was to tangle him with my troops for a bit longer to give more time for the raiding army to storm through his domain), and that was why he was able to kill my leader along with horse archers and berserkers. p.1 also was the reason I didn't have proper leader stack

- my raiding army attacked from two places - from centre (from water - MH) and a hero stack from the south-west passage, which made it a bit easier and faster to take down the remaining armies. Warlord's Death March also came in handy to take the last cities faster.  

- as I had good alignment skills - razing cities was a bit of morale hit for me but it was worth it in the long shot.

- we did spot the 3-rd Sin Arcain's stack with the hero coming from UG, but I decided against attacking it, as it'd dwindle my numbers (assuming I'd win, of course), therefore didn't engage or chase it.

- Akinos's domain was a bit of a gamble, as I didn't know the amount of troops he had, but since he didn't show up immediately to help SinArcain, I've guessed his main forces were not there.

- and we've long had troops sneaking around SinArcain's UG capital just waited for some stronger units to cut through those 2 defenders coincidentally, SinArcain lost his leader on the turn we've agreed to engage his capital with Fluks. 

Ok I wrote it up a bit in a long (and very subjective of course) text

This was one of the coolest games I had and remarkably also one of the very few that I ever played where I managed to stage a successful defense against a top player!

I decided to play dwarf necromancer trying to become sole ruler of the underground, mostly because I think Necro scales really well with bigger maps and is super handy in teamgames (whispers!) and also a little bit because it feels so “atmospheric” to turn the underground into the realm of the dead. That was very fortunate - my Necro pick was the perfect counter to Skuns Tigran Theocrat that I was pitched against in the underground.

I was approaching this game somewhat relaxed, because Necro isn’t my most comfortable class and a quick aggressive ghouling push would have been above my skill, instead I picked greyguard and builder planning to “sim-city” a bit, utilizing the synergy between whispers of the fallen and a sprawling mass of undead towns and fortresses until I could snowball. Being tucked away underground on a big map would give me the time for this, I hoped. Alx played a similar game with Warlord (but somehow managed to be faster with city building AND get an army right to the border of Sin Arcain). The early game went well, Alx and me both were booming heavily with Zyto close on our heels when my scouts spotted Skuns leaderstack coming for me. Of course already lvl 13 he was resurgence powercreeping everything straight into my realm and my leaderstack was far off in the middle of nowhere still clearing the extensive underground “hinterland” of my realm to make sure no nasty surprises would spawn later. Fortunately I spotted him early enough to rally my two heroes and everything I could towards a defense, Alx also sent a stack of mounted archers to help and the whole thing turned into a several turns stand-off with both armies staying just out of reach because he had three stacks stronger than my best 3 stacks, but in the end I think I had about 7 stacks in the area to attack twice in a row if necessary. I was also frantically researching advanced logistics to make sure I could jump his army before he could attack mine (we both had builders in the area). Fortunately I was successful and I managed to attack 4vs3 and with Desecration+ bone collectors - big battles really play into necromancers strength. With any other class I might have lost there I think.

Unfortunately shortly afterwards Sin Arcain surprised Alx and sent his leader to the void along with a good chunk of Alxs army. Eldritch horrors + knights are no joke…

This was an odd moment in the game as both team leaders had basically just lost their leader and main army to “beginners” of the opposing team

But in the Underground Skuns was unmolested while having lost his stacks far within my territory while on the surface Sin Arcain was right at Alx’s doorstep but was also quickly loosing territory to Alx’s 2^nd army that had made his way into Sin Arcains realm without much resistance

Mostly guessing main army movements from memory (might be pretty inaccurate! Couldn’t find a screenshot of Sin Arcain killing Alx leaderstack….)

I sent a stack to help Alx defend a bit, but Sin Arcains victorious army didn’t push further (maybe scared for his leader?). In the Underground I was preparing to go on the offensive against Skuns. I thought just having wiped his main army would give me enough time to rally my troops over, Zytozid also joined with a stack and so I had my leader pushing into the mid towards a Naga dwelling under Skuns control and an army pushing north, more or less backtracing the route Skuns had previously taken into my territory. Yet I was somehow too slow and before my stacks would even be remotely close to Skuns territory he had already mindcontrolled a ragtag-gang of around 15 units or something that was bumbling into my territory with a lvl 5 leader. It wasn’t nearly as frightning as before, but at that point it started to feel that no matter how hard I hit and how often I kill his units he somehow kept coming up with threats that keep me busy. Must be mentioned that at the same time he was keeping Zytozid busy with a flying stack that kept raiding the coastal region of our southern flank, a frustratingly efficient way to force Zyto to stay on mostly defensive duties. While distracting my northern army and Zytos main force he had also taken full control of a dragon dwelling and was starting to build dedicated to evil, lifestealing, fire dragons – It was crazy how, despite continuously loosing ground, skuns kept forcing all my actions, I have rarely ever had a game where all my big armies were so tightly bound in what they have to do, the northern army had to deal with his mindcontrolled army just because they were already in my territory and my leader had to beeline for the Dragons to prevent skuns from amassing those foul beasts and just deepfrying everything, there really wasn’t much choice.

Fortunately we succeeded in all these “tasks” and while Skuns kept Zyto and me occupied Alx had continued his crusade from Sin Arcains realm into Akinos territory burning most of their cities.

The final nail in the coffin was when Sin Arcain attacked again but was really unlucky because while he won the fight his leader died and his hidden capital had already been found. Alx, zyto and me all had scouts positioned in the area and could take it out while his leader was in the void.

In the underground, after burning the dragon dwelling, Zyto and me were heading for Skuns capital and when Skuns last charge into our troops in front of his capital failed (his three fire dragons all got their killing strike from Zytos sunguards ) he surrendered and we won the game.

I sincerely think that if I hadn’t played necromancer I would have lost the battle for the underground. It feels nearly impossible to win big battles as Theocrat against a Necro once bone collectors and desecration are on the field. Also I think our teamwork was great. Zytos side army kept pushing with my leader through the dragon dwelling right into the heart of Skuns empire, Alx had a stack of mounted archers by my side when Skuns first scary push came, in return a stack of mine was ready to make life harder for Sin Arcain when he had just killed Alx leader, a combined army of Zyto and Alx lost the battle but managed to kill Sin Arcains leader on his last attack and finally a combined scout-force of Alx and me took his hidden capital, but there were also two of Zytos crows ready to attack.

Really enjoyable in this specific game was that it felt as if we won partly due to our defense. I managed to deflect both of Skuns pushes and only after that managed to actively push into his territory (fortunately being just in time to prevent the dragon production getting out of hand!). With the exception of Skuns last hooray all of the big and deciding battles took place on our half of the map, but our realms were deep and sturdy enough to take the initial losses of front towns and their attacking armies never really broke through, and not for lack of trying! For large parts of the game Zyto was fighting off intruders on our southern border, while I was defending against Skuns in the north and both of us did our meager best to somehow help deterring Sin Arcain from pushing the middle further by supporting Alx in there. At the same time Alx counter attack army met very little opposition burning and plundering through the realms of Sin Arcain and later Akinos.

The game also demonstrated why Skuns and Alx were the team leaders, it’s quite astonishing how active their armies were all over the map all game even though their main armies were obliterated in the first big fights.

The final scores:

It really shows just how devastating Alx burning crusade was, despite loosing his leaderstack to Sin Arcain, he quickly rebuild while Sins economy was in shambles and his progress basically came to a halt, up until that point Sin Arcain was dominating research and had probably the scariest stack on the map with eldritch horrors, knights and the high lvl sorc leader.

The other thing I really like on this graph is just how my scores explode pretty much directly after I manage to get rid of Skuns in my territory (Domain is of course inflated because I just 1-turn migrate their cities and Alx burned them instead)

Would be interested to hear from the other team, I hope it wasn’t too frustrating, iirc their team also changed between games and at least in this game Akinos seemed not to have a good time.

Thanks again to all involved this really was a fantastic game (at least for our team )

Was a great game, I'm writing up a (hopefully nice) big report which I'll post soon.

Thanks for the game everyone involved. I really enjoyed it. But I'm not up for another one of these "marathon-games" just yet

Yes, maybe let's have a fun game with those who are interested? Those who aren't can be replaced by other players. What do you guys say?

@Sin Arcain, what do you think?

Thanks for the great game! It took very long but it was always interesting.

Sin Arcains early troops really pit some pressure on us. Maybe we can have a fun game some time.

Thanks for the game! Nicely done, opposing team!

I am kinda glad it is over. It took so long, but I think I have learnt a few lessons during its course.

Ok, will turn off the tiemr soon  I hope you'll fix your graphics card properly

 Confess, Zytozid! How could you turned on the timer after your turn?

Thanks, Marcus & Ezekiel.

Turn timer will be turned off till 23-rd 

Update:

Ezekiel agree that Fluksen get a warning with proof.

Its also requested that the same moves as done previously are made and a video or such are shared to confirm this.

You can continue to play the turn and pass it over to the next player.

/Marcus

Well, will wait for Ezekiel.

Guys, I need inform you that I'm going to the vacation trip from 19-th till 23-rd of February. Probably I can't play my turns at this period. Sorry for that

Have reviewed the file shared.

On turn 60 Fluksen entered a site and when attempting to close the spellbook (without casting any spell) the game crashed without warning.

Still waiting for Ezekiels feedback, but since there is video of the crash its pretty clear cut.

/Marcus

HI thanks for the note I was just about to write that it is currently my turn, but I might need a bit longer this time around.

But I'll surely manage to make my turn before the 10th of January!

Have a nice holiday and stay safe

Hi guys. I have to inform you that I'm going to the vacation from 30-th of December till 10-th of January, so probably I can't play my turns at this period. Sorry for that

I've already turned off the timer because of holidays (X-mas & New Year).