DMI VIII - The War of Wrath

[GreyFox]

Sorry, entire of this report is out-of-character ... too jet-lagged to devise a LoTR flavored report. Will aspire to do better the next round.

Hmm ... I thought conventional SG etiquette is to complete the last turn instead of leaving most of the units unmoved.

Anyway, I think this is pure exploitation of our buddy, given Beor has both copper and fish already ....

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... whether that turns out to be better (one could argue human player manages resources better than AI) or worse (one could argue the Deity partner has more beakers output, thus better not deplete him by claiming all his spare gold) is debatable ... still, I usually wont do that (to a vassal yes, not to PA buddy). Thus somewhere in the middle, I canceled one of them. The result does not affect the research output.

2 down, 13 more to go:

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Some where near the end of my turnset, the Ainur adopted emancipation (one wonders why a Ainur would demand that). More interestingly, a city got captured and recaptured (Beor is incompetent). More devastatingly, Manwe finished the Pentagon

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Result of emancipation:

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On the war front, I pillaged the towns of Morgoth. A slow process, but we are amassing gold as a results.

 

[Arathorn]

Got it -- hopefully for today.

Arathorn

 

[Arathorn]

The Noldor were unhappy. The weight of their oath [vassalization to Manwe], the rumors of new freedoms in Tirion [Emancipation], and the death of family and comrades [war weariness] were all conspiring to make the Noldor unhappy. So many were unhappy that they through themselves entirely into their labor, literally working themselves to death in their grief. Their efforts saw the erection of theatres, banks, and forges in various cities.

Theatres were the outcome of another odd Illuvatar-inspired research plan. Upon inheritance of the game, the self-styled Arathorn (who said they'd understand in a few thousand years) decided that Drama was critical for the Noldor people. Entertainment (and venues in which to share that entertainment) would help inspire the Noldor to maintain their dedication to the cause. Illuvatar agreed, and, with a single turn of questing, the secrets of Drama were unearthed, with no notification on how a planned 4-turn research was done so quickly. The Vala move in mysterious ways.

Manwe continued to display his mastery of all the secrets of Ea. His mastery is beyond the imagings of Feanor and his people. A miracle of greater awe than eagles floats by -- a ship made entirely of some strange metal harder than mithril.



Manwe also proved that Ea was round -- a marvelous feat. Apparently whatever means of containment envisioned by the master builder were insufficient to contain the light of the Valar. Manwe had discovered all parts of the world and knew them all.

In Middle-Earth, the valiant elves continued to struggle against the evil of Morgoth and Ulfang. Interestingly, Ulfang appeared more powerful than Morgoth, with more troops and a larger score. Haldad and Beor were fighting valiantly, but both were slowly being driven back. Haldad lost another of her cities. Beor kept losing and retaking Tlacopan, while the Noldor stood by, unable to help, except for helping defend the route to Tlacopan and slaughtering a few knights that had ventured too close to Noldor troops.

The efforts at capturing a city were proving ineffective. Morgoth was too strong. And catapults are too weak against Castles. Trebuchets and treachery were required. Both are being created and perfected, but the distance to Morgoth is great.

Meanwhile, pleas to Manwe to end the slaughter fall on deaf ears. Some mysterious words about "We're trying to win the game, thank you!" were all that he would utter, when queried about ending the current battles. This seemed very mysterious until a few minutes later.



Either Manwe broke out of his virtual prison [units on a submarine going under the ice? Insufficient wall? ] or Melkor simply feared his power. Regardless, with minimal additional fanfare, Melkor capitulated to the great western power.

[Where do we go from here?]

Arathorn

 

[Ozbenno]

Methinks this SG takes a surprising twist!

 

[GreyFox]

Heh ... what an anticlimax!

That's not suppose to happen ... at least not before Feanor made the sail to Ainur.

My guess is Manwe manage to convert culturally a city, and thus can bring troops out of his jail. (Either that or the legendary builder slipped and forgot to close one of the gaps).

--

 

[Winth]

Yahtzee! I won a Deity game! I won a Deity game! I won a Deity game!...

Wait. This is the end? Someone didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition how the power level of Manwe (OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!) will impact on Morgoth... (Balrog of Morgoth - what did you say?) I guess that we did some work and Morgoth was just scared of what Manwe was producing (units which were useless for him, that is), so he thought that the high power level of Manwe is really threatening. We can't get rid of vassals, so I strongly suggest to give Morgoth a 2x2 tile covered with peaks, upon which some modern armors will station (doing absolutely nothing) just to make power level higher.

 

[Arathorn]

Ihmotep will have to decide whether this is the end or the middle or a reflection point or what. I'm just reporting that the game ended on me last night. Was a reasonable shock to me, I'll tell you. But Manwe's power was just ridiculous. And with a destroyer out, he obviously had some way out. And that's all it takes. One hole can get a lot of modern armor out. But, for the purposes of this SG, I'm not sure what it means.

Arathorn

 

[·Imhotep·]

Back on the line. Yes, a rather surprising end. I'll let the team decide - if you want to continue, I'll take a look at the game and see what was the reason for this...

Imhotep

 

[Winth]

My vote is to continue when we fix the bug. We didn't even do anything to Morgoth that would be really worth splendor.

 

[Arathorn]

I've thought about it...and my vote is to not continue. While I really like the concept, I have a few issues....

- Melkor was way too weak. It seemed conceivable that the allied powers (Noldor, Beor, Haldad, and Thingol) might be able to take him and Ulfang out even without Manwe's help. Yes, I know world-builder could take of some of that, but the whole feeling was just ... off, IMO.
- Manwe was too powerful. Emancipation and Pentagon and circumnavigation and everything so early. Manwe shouldn't be THAT much more powerful than Morgoth so quickly and so definitively. Of course, militaries might be equal by the time we could scrape 10 great people together.
- The whole allied/vassalized thing seemed buggy. We got techs out of nowhere (clearly not just Manwe gifting them to us). The happiness penalty of vassalization, on top of deity happiness, was just not fun, IMO. Add in emancipation unhappiness, which was only going to get worse.... Not unplayable, quite, but not the Tolkien feel I get from the books. At least, not until much nearer the time of Earandil's voyage, which would be closer to 10 great people.
- Similarly, the whole 10 GP thing was so hard because of our alliance with Beor. He kept jacking up our needed points for great people. The whole thing had a bit of dues ex machina feel, too, with varying numbers of great people being required.

It was fun and a very interesting concept. Just some game mechanics didn't quite work. And Morgoth didn't oblige by being a bad-@$$ and, well, Manwe got his conquest win. I'm content to let it end. But, if the team wants to continue, I'll still be here.

Arathorn

 

[·Imhotep·]

@Arathorn:

Very valid points - all of them. I'm not content with the way the game has developed either, but this sometimes happens - the game cannot always live up to a scenario design it wasn't primarily made for. Anyway, as I've said, I'll go either way. DMI IX and DMI X are waiting in the row in case this one ends anyway...

Imhotep

 

[GreyFox]

On getting tech out of no where: actually it is Manwee gifting it to Beor, and since we are PA with Beor, we get the tech as well (but with no dialogue of Manwee, thus it seems to be "out of no where").

I am fine with not continuing on this one (it is already won by Manwee, what's the point?) ... a separate game perhaps?

 

[·Imhotep·]

So, right now we have:

The Roster:

1 ·Imhotep· >> undecided
2. Arathorn >> end of game
3. Ralph Jackson >> no opinion yet
4. reverend_oats >> undecided
5. Winth >> continue
6. GreyFox >> end of game

Right now it leans towards end of game, but I'd want to hear from RJ and reverend_oats before deciding...

Imhotep

 

[reverend oats]

Wow. That was a shock. I am still undecided, but if we continue, the first thing Imhotep should do is implement Winth's idea with the walled-off modern armours.

 

[Quotey]

Errr, not to insult the benevolent mapper... but, you do know how ship travel works, right?

Spoiler :

Top left corner of the map. Wordbuilder. Ships can travel diagonally there. Manwe is a MONSTER in this game, can you say how you beefed him up?

How would you have dealt with Beor breaking off?

But yes, perhaps vanilla Civ isn't suited to induced story telling

 

[Ralph_Jackson]

I didn't have a strong preference and was sitting on the fence hoping that a strong consensus would emerge which I could then just follow!!

On balance I would say not continue as it doesn't feel right.

But if we decide to press on I will happily continue (See ' told you I was sitting on the fence!!)

Obviously would happily come back to this theme again.... I am trying to get up to speed in FFH as I am sure there's an opportunity for a great Tolkein theme game there.


Ralph

 

[·Imhotep·]

Okay, I'll make a decision then. It's hard on the one hand as I'm very fond of the theme, and I can't easily let it go. On the other hand it's easy as this is another scenario that didn't work as designed because I made some mistake.

So the decision is to not continue, and I feel sorry for all the playing time you wasted with this SG. Hopefully at least the story-telling part made it somewhat enjoyable for you all. My sincere apologies !

Anyone of you will be welcomed in another one of my SG's, as I enjoyed playing with you - it was an especial honour for me to have Arathorn aboard, not meaning any disrespect to all other worthy members.

See you all in another SG !

Imhotep