Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[The Last Conformist]

No matter. I don't think anyone is gonna play any more games with patch 8 or earlier, and I doubt I had played very many turns more in that game anyway.

Look at the minimap in the screenshot - I'm the big bluish civ on the eastern continent. There's no way any of the AIs could threaten me.

 

[Klyden]

My game continues as Freya.

After getting Centars and Gnoll rangers, I started on a huge buildup with the intent to go to war with one of the life mages that I share a border with. I just about get ready to pull the trigger and Oberic and Ariel sign a mutual defense pact. Blah. Now I figure I have to wait a bit, but continue to build anyway.

Oberic, after getting the pact, decides to invade a couple turns later. He comes at my southern city with mainly champions, but also some clerics and more sorcerer units as well. Oberic's navy harrasses my east coast and my dragon ships don't make a very good showing against his wind ships, especially if he has them stacked and they fire in support of each other. I have a good road net and good mobile defenders, so they shift up and down the coast to meet him.

Oberic comes over the border and his hordes of champions, clerics, and sorcerers run into my horde of Centars. I also have other units there that I attack with including the gnoll rangers, Ents, and some trolls. At one point, he had 4 stacks of 28 champions, 4 clerics and 6 sorcerers. With it being an offensive slugfest, I come out way ahead on the exchange as my 5 point attackers generally make mincemeat of his 2 point defenders. The sorcerers are another matter, so I don't exactly get off for free.

The war continues with him trying to send more troops to get at my southern city (damm trees just happen to be in the way, so he can't attack the city without first exposing himself to my counter attack). My resources are stretched thin and at one point, my army is pretty much exausted and depleted, but Oberic's attack has a lull and I am able to recover. All the time, I am careful not to cross the border with Ariel and I want to keep her out of the war. Oberic continues to make landings that are wiped out by my roving troops and I do start making his navy pay a price, but it is not an equal exchange as he has more hps than I do and his units are cheaper. His champions have 1 more hp than my centars and are cheaper, but don't have the ability with moving through the forests.

Oberic persists in his war and soon I have white riders on my door step, but only a trickle as I think he has shot his horde and while my losses increase, I am able to smash him. At this time, I finally get a leader and also get Trolls 2, so it is time for a jumbo troll of 6-3-1. I choose to group 3 of them into an army. Many of my centars are becoming elites from all the fighting.

I look over the situation and discover that Oberic and Ariel have not renewed their defensive pact. I have the opportunity to go on the offensive and capture one of Oberic's cities. We now have 12 cities each. Oberic is far ahead of me in the tech race as I immedately get pelted on by 4 spells from the ascendancy wonder, but the town is firmly mine. I am more exposed to counter attack here, but have been holding my own as Oberic is at full stretch producing units and sending them to the front piecemeal.

I have a tough decision to make. I have life 5, death 5 and chaos 5 to work on yet. Each will take me 20 something turns to complete. Chaos 5 would be good as I can produce corps markers. Death 5 looks attractive as I could increase my production and also reduce unhappiness (a problem with my high pop cities and preventing them from generally reaching 12). Life 5 would help my naval efforts. In the end, I go for death 5 to help my overall economy and population management.

As far as the rest of the world, it is anyone's guess and Morja is the only other position that has been destroyed.

Great game so far and I am looking forward to continuing it.

One note is the relative costs of units. Centars are very expensive at 5-2-2 with no upgrades and while they can see 2 squares and move through trees, they are more expensive than the white riders, which are 5-3-2's and do have upgrade potential. The dragon ships, I guess I am batting just about half with them against wind riders (6 attacker against a 4 defender with bombard). The extra hps they have make a difference and it has really been tough taking on a stack of them. Again, the dragon ships can be troop transports, but are inferior in every other way to a wind rider and the wind rider is cheaper to build.

 

[LordGek]

@Drift,

Thanks for the clarification on embassies and the like.

@Folk,

Reading Klyden's tale above I'm left confused on one point.

How could you research Death V as a Nature wizard? According to both the Mod's BIQ and the Civapedia one of Death V's prerequisites is Death which is ONLY available to Death Mages I thought (a non-tradeable tech).

How did you get Death, and if you didn't have this prerequisite tech how were you allowed to research Death V?

 

[Zurai]

Klyden's continuing a game he started in beta 9. The tech tree was changed signifigantly in beta 10 (the current version). The only faction-restricted techs in b9 are the summon techs.

 

[LordGek]

Ahhh. That explains it.

Thought I might have been missing something obvious there.

 

[mrtn]

bug report: in the pedia for the life 25% production booster it says it's only available to chaos.
I'm glad you made different icons for the different wonders.

 

[Drift]

Okay, some replies to feedback.

Hitpoints: let's keep an eye on them. If dwarves for example turn out to be nigh invincible, it's a problem. Luckily they are easy to tweak.

Krakens: yup, I believe they are ok. In my last game there was a trend of my exploring galleys meeting two krakens. First one they could handle but the second one sinked them. Let's keep an eye on them too, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

@Zurai

Ariel is a level 2 aggressor and Vlad is a level 3. But isn't it always the peaceful ones who do the most backstabbing. I've noticed that I can never trust the death mages if they compare at all with me in power, but Ariel was a new one. Chaos mages are really unpredictable too. And actually, so is Raven and Tlaloc. Actually, I don't think there is a mage you can really trust.

Firewall seems to be stronger than I thought it would be, but naturally free walls for each town is powerful. BTW while we are on the subject of walls, are the Nature and Death mage walls too ugly to look at? I've been meaning to redo them, but I've had more important stuff to work with. (this question is directed to everyone)

@Klyden

Really exciting game! Nice to see the Nature vs. Life seems to relatively balanced in terms of unit strenghts. Unit costs can be tweaked though. Centaurs already cost 70 instead of 80 in the new patch. As for Nature vs. Life at seas, I'll look into it. Life mages are supposed to be strong at seas, but they aren't meant to dominate so completely that fighting them in an otherwise balanced war is a struggle.

If you feel like it, send me a savegame. It's always nice to check out how things have gone in other people's games. This applies to everyone BTW. I may not always reply in length, but I do check out each savegame I get. However, anyone shouldn't feel obliged to send saves over.

@mrtn

Ah, forgot to update the pedia. Glad to hear you find the new pediapics useful - I know I couldn't go back after using them for a while.

 

[Psyringe]

@Drift: What I heard so far sounds good, I'll check the beta 10 pre-release as soon as I finished my current game and find some time. (Probably have to take a break until Friday though, as some unexpected work cropped up.)

The wall graphic for death cities was somewhat unexpected when I first saw it, for a moment I couldn't make anything out of the green surrounding line. Then I envisioned it as a force field of some kind. From then on it looked okay.

Firewalls per se are not *that* strong, but for two reasons walls *are* stronger in MoM than in unmodded Civ3. The first reason is that the Firewall is (appropriately) linked tzo a Chaos technology, and so will often be built by chaos mages, because they get the technology first. Chaos mages defend with devils as soon as they have them. This leads to a cumulated effect: The devils have a bonus hitpoint, which makes it harder to defeat them, and the wall increases their defensive power, making it harder to reduce their hitpoints.

The second reason may be that in MoM walls are usually used when your defenders have a power of 3 or even 4, whereas in unmodded Civ3 your defenders usually have a power of 2. Together with the bonus of being fortified and depending on which terrain the city was founded, this means that the wall may be able to raise your defensive power by 2 points instead of just 1. But that's just a guess right now, I'd have to check that with a combat calculator. Unfortunately I'm at work again, I probably can't do that until friday.

 

[The Last Conformist]

If dwarves for example turn out to be nigh invincible, it's a problem. Luckily they are easy to tweak.

Lo Pan's Berserks (D=4 in beta 8) were tough to take out with Shades and Great Eagles (both A=4 in beta 8), especially when fortified in size 7+ cities on hills, but nothing can withstand a sufficiently big stack of Fire Catapults. The problem is, of course, that the AI won't use such ...

 

[Klyden]

Freya game continued:

I have managed to take one of Oberic's cities but he now throws mass foot troops at me including sorcerers and clerics (1-3-1's). I continue to counter-attack and he is taking losses, but my losses have now gone up as well. We are both being bled while Ariel builds up and my big fear is getting hammered by her when I can do little about it.

Ariel suprises me with an offer of a mutual defensive pact for pretty cheap demands. (Turns out, she wants some of Oberic herself!). I take it and hope that Ariel gets attritioned down heavily in attacking. Ariel initially attacks withthe 4-2-2's, but soon enough, white riders make an appearence and also Ariel sends in the foot troops as well.

Ariel manages to capture Oberic's city next to her border and then runs into a sticky situation. Oberic's next city is his capital and it is in a good spot behind rivers. I managed to advance up the north coast and take another city from Oberic. I sort of question myself on this as it is drawing me out with a very long border, but figure to strike while the getting is good. At one time I wondered if Ariel was going to back stab me by some troop manuvering in my territory and I was tempted to break the treaty as Ariel had 15 units at 1 point of life that she was pulling back from attacking Oberic's capital, but I let it go.

Ariel continues to assault Oberic's capital, taking heavy losses doing so (hurray). Eventually, Oberic offers me a peace, which I take for the price of one of the level 5 techs I am looking for. Ariel and Oberic continue to attack each other while I lick my wounds and try to consolidate. My losses have been heavy. I begin to work on the death V infrastructure upgrades as it will take me a bit to get both the production kicker and halls in to help support my pop growth.

Oberic makes the mistake of attacking Ariel in her territory and brings me back into the war. I have a good strikeforce built back up with some elite troops. Rather than try to slug it out with Oberics capital, I decide to again advance up the coast and take the next city up. I get there and while there are several defenders and my casualties are heavy, I manage to take it. Much to my dismay, Oberic offers Ariel a peace and now it is just me and Oberic again.

The city I had just captured is pretty open to attack, but I have a lot of the gnoll rangers there to help defend. Oberic also has a fixation with one of my positions in the mountain that is near his capital. I put in several ranger units there and he can't break the position with his wind riders. My army of trolls manages to keep the middle city that I got from Oberic and defeat the foot units he sends in. I have a couple catapult units there to help. With most of my economy tied up working on improvements, there are few troops coming to the front. I do manage to get 2 ship loads of troops into my new city and that pretty much ends him taking it from me anytime soon.

I eventually get Oberic to listen to reason and take a peace (getting another level 5 tech again). The three of us are now at peace with each other. Oberic and Ariel still have a sizeable tech lead on me, but I am finally working on Acendency. With my science bonus, I will get a free tech in the next era and it will be a hard choice. Do I go life 6 for the city improvements, nature 6 to get earth elementals or chaos 6 to start working on trolls 3 for the troll upgrade and troll arena? Right now, I am leaning on the trolls. I will need their bigger firepower (8 point attacker) to deal with the life mage 6 point defenders I know they are going to have.

My infrastructure is coming along and I have several cities that produce 20 shields each now. I don't have one single big producer in this game. Econ is 324 income and 112 to sci, 21 entertainment, 40 corruption, 123 maintenance, 51 for units.

My army is 10 workers, 6 warriors, 11 ettins, 1 army, 16 gnoll, 20 gnoll rangers, 22 ents, 4 catapults, 6 ships and 11 centars. Note how low my centar total is now. this is representative of the losses I have taken and also at the expense of the centar unit. I probably will build very few more of them as their 5 attack and no extra hp just don't get it done enough now against the units coming into play for the life mages. Instead, it will be ogre city for a bit. I will see how much it is to upgrade some of my treants to earth elementals if I go that way, but I have a feeling it will be too expensive.

I have the war college almost complete and also have the dark tower under construction near the border with both Ariel and Oberic.

City totals right now are Oberic 8, Ariel 11, and Freya 15. (I managed to drop another one in my territory up north after clearing out some swamps).

 

[Klyden]

Here is a screen shot of the game. The three Freya cities shown are the ones I have taken from Oberic. Oberic is to the right on the screen and Ariel is to the bottom and left.

 

[Drift]

Thanks for the report, Klyden. Game continues to be thrilling. Really even battle between you three. Also, like I said in the e-mail, the happenings at the second continent have been very interesting - can't wait for you to find it.

Centaurs probably need something to upgrade to. I just don't have anything really useful. Unless I reconsider the Griffins. Although I do like them as fast defensive units, but it isn't right that a unit that is often produced in large quantities, doesn't have anything to upgrade to in the late game.

Something Psyringe's thoughts about walls and Klyden's game report sparked was an idea of reducing the defensive bonus given by walls and city sizes. If MoM is balanced so that the difference between the attacker and the defender is smaller than in regular game, it doesn't make sense to use defensive bonuses made for the regular game. So, maybe a 20-25% cut in the defense bonuses of walls and city sizes? Too much, too little?

 

[Gladi]

I do not know about defensive bonuses, but probably yes because of AI.
Vlad's city of Iron Wall have spaces after name.
And I do not know if this is good or bad but pterodactyls can act as teleporting machines: you load unit into pterodactyl, rebase and can move- in two turns you can get anywhere on a large map. Maybe move pterodactyls up a tech ladder, or I do not know...
Anyway last patch was really a change, but very good.

 

[Drift]

@Gladi

I meant to test if the Pterodactyls work like that. It's not what I intended - I'll have to look into it and see if I can do something about it. I'll also try to check all city names for possible added spaces.

I'm glad that you like the changes in general.

 

[LordGek]

Hey Gang,

How am I supposed to get off my Island as a Chaos wizard? As it stands, unless I'm missing something obvious, I can't build any sort of troop transports until the second age? Is this intentional to force Chaos into a conquesting mode of play rather than simply settling the lands first?

 

[Drift]

@LordGek

War Galleys are transports. They come at Life II.

 

[LordGek]

Okay, I gave myself the out with, "In case I'm missing something obviois", didn't I? ;-)

Somehow while reading the description I completely missed the "transport capacity" line. My only feeble excuse might be that with the bombard info where the transport capacity info usually is I just thought it didn't have any (the royal eyes couldn't bother to look a little further down, I guess).

Thanks for the clarification, I knew that would make absolutely no sense to have NO transport capacity for the first age with the Chaos folk.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to take off my clueless newbie hat and contribute some useful stuff to this damn clever mod!

 

[mrtn]

I thought only Lizardmen were supposed to be able to pillage? A Skeleton Guard just pillaged a tile for me. (EDIT: The pedia leaves this as a nasty surprise too.)
I'm playing a small pangaea map now, I (Ariel), Lo Pan, Mordja, Vlad and Merlin. Rjak is isolated on another island, she has a huge but obsolete army. Merlin just got destroyed, so now there's only "evil" wizards left, but me. Mordja's territory is divided in half, his starting position, and some cities, on the far side of Lo Pan, some of them taken from Vlad in a long war. So the communal corruption is just the thing for him...
Merlin was technologically advanced, but got clobbered by a bigger neighbor, I fear this will be a common theme.

 

[Drift]

@LordGek

Don't worry about it. You're enjoying the mod and that's the most important thing.

@mrtn

Death mage units were pillaging when lizardmen were still in their infancy. It's a common perk for the two.

Keep me updated on the game. Especially on the faction balance.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Started up a new game (newest patch, I believe!) as Vlad, Monarch level.

The start loc looked unexciting to begin with, with granslands, forests, no food bonuses. But this was kind of made up for when I started exploring around - my 2nd city secured an Orcs resource, my fourth Goblins and Dwarves, and my fifth will net me Trolls.

Nothing else much exciting has happened yet. I'm on a big continent with at least five other civs (eight civs in total). Lo Pan is again right to the southeast of me, and if his Fanatics are gonna continue menace my southern border he's in for an early war.

I like the faction-specifc shrines.

I've netted alot of Zombie Workers from barbs. There is something inherently bizarre about a bunch of animated skeletons defeating a pack of jaguars and making humanoid zombies out of them!