Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[Psyringe]

Hi there

Found some time to continue my Merlin game (tiny map, 5 opponents). Here's the current situation:

9. The Age of Colonization

After the defeat of Mordja, I actually had the time to build up my economy. The other mages were rather peaceful with the exception of Tlaloc, who declared war on me for the second and third time. However since Freya's realm stretches a long way between Tlaloc and me, he never actually attacked me.

During one of these "wars" I shipped my Champions to the island west of my mainland (the "promised land" where I found the goblins), on the northern tip of which Tlaloc founded a city. Capturing the city seemed easy, but exactly one turn before I started my attack, Tlaloc built the Firewall. I still won the battle, but lost one of my four Chanpions in the process. Also Tlaloc had reduced the city from size 2 to 1, so that I couldn't take it, but destroyed it instead.

His other cities were defended by Ents and mostly built on hills - too tough for my champions, so I left them alone and extorted 6 gold per turn from Tlaloc for peace. This was more than I expected, because I didn't have any possibility to attack him on his mainland, where he ran around with elves.

In this period of relative peace, all mages started to expand onto the still unsettled islands. Most of them are unfriendly blobs of tundra, but probably better than nothing. It was very interesting to see the AI aggressively hunt for empty islands.

To my surprise, one of Ariels cities (which was bordering Lifemound) suddenly fell to Freya. I don't know what happened. A cultural flip from a life mage seems unlikely, and I haven't seen Freya using other units than Ents and half-gnolls either (which are weaker than the sorcerers with which Ariel guarded her cities). But no matter how it happened, it gave me some room to cram another city in some now-free space to the north. This also lead to some interesting borders, e.g. Freya owning a stretch of land right between Vlad's mainland and four of his "colony cities" on another island.

Nearly every space of the world is settled now, and I wonder what will happen now. I built up my economy and continuously produced hammerhands in one city, so I feel pretty safe. I lead in score and culture, Tlaloc is second, Freya and Vlad follow. However Tlaloc grabbed several wonders, so he might be stronger than he looks. I think about a mutual protection pact with Freya, because if Tlaloc delares war on me, he then would face Freya on two fronts. However Freya might also get into a war with Ariel, and I don't want to lose Ariel as a trading partner. Presently I sell her three luxuries for 19 gold per turn.

Tlaloc is generally doing well. Freya is a little out-teched, but I'm still astonished how she wrenched this city from Ariel. Ariel is falling behind, but now has a (yet unconnected) resource of trolls in her territory, I wonder whether she'll use it. Vlad still holds his ground.

I think I'll take a defensive stand now, try to outproduce the others and see how they do. For me this is a new and very interesting way of playing a tiny map. Usually on tiny maps I rush-build offensive units early and just overrun my opponents. With the strengthened defensive in MoM, and being a life mage, this isn't as easy, so other strategies might be better.

 

[Klyden]

Freya game report (continued)

We last left off with peaceful conditions and a period of infrastructure building and consolidation for Freya and her two neighbors, Oberic and Ariel.

I finally have the ability to produce corps now and have one under construction. My best producing town is around 23 after corruption and I am trying to optimize output by getting rid of the ancient forests and putting in regular forests or mines as appropriate. I am currently working on Ascendency on spells.

Lo Pan finally made contact and after doing some trading for maps, contacts and etc, I have a clear picture of the world and it is not a pretty sight. Lo Pan basically dominates the other continet with Merlin apparently the big looser (along with Morja who was blown out earlier). I had hope it would be a bit more even, but such as it goes. Other players include Tlaloc and Rjak. Merlin is down to 1 city on a remote island and Rjak is spread out and obviously has been on the losing end of a war. Tlaloc seems to be in fair shape considering his start location. Lo Pan has 55K for VP then Oberic, Freya, and Ariel are grouped together and then the rest.

Ariel proves not be much of a trusting neighbor and decides to get agressive with me. I managed to get a mutual defence pact with Oberic (why he did it, not sure) so now it is Oberic and I against Ariel. Ariel comes at me with over 100 units and the break down is basically as follows: 56 sorcerers, 29 clerics, 19 white riders, 1 champion, and 6 spiders. Ariel's mounted units take a beating against my units in good terrain, but she manages to get them out of the way, despite losses.

My best units are the centar, troll (6-3-1) and Gnoll ranger for the most part. The centars just don't have the offensive edge anymore to do anything against the sorcerers with reliability. (I loose 3 centars in a counter offensive against the loss of 1 sorcerer in open terrain). This will be a very defensive war for me as I try to hold and weather the storm of units and hope that Ariel exhausts herself on my heavily defended positions as I really can't do a lot offensively. My usual mode of operation is to typically counter attack on friendly territory, but I don't have the offensive units to make this work and be economical, so will have to depend on her attacking my good defenders. (sorcerer against Gnoll rangers in good spots are not a good match up).

She is trying to infiltrate past my southern city to the north, so I will have to do some attacking there sooner or later, but at least it is towards my production centers.

I did manage to trade for the nature summons spell from the other nature mage and have built a couple of the birds. Nice thing that I have been using them for is to rush troops to trouble spots in a hurry using the rebasing mission.

How long I will play this out just kind of depends. So far, it is interesting. If Oberic can put some real pressure on Ariel, it will help.

 

[Psyringe]

Hi Klyden

I like reading your game reports, especially the economic data you provide and the breakdown of large armies. One thing struck me as odd: Ariel is attacking with an army of 75% defensive forces? Is this normal, or is does your game have the upgrade chain Protector -> Sorcerer? If the latter is the case, consider yourself lucky. You might have faced dozens of white riders instead of the sorcerers otherwise.

However I have absolutely no experience with troop movements of these proportions. Does the AI still defend its cities properly under these circumstances?

 

[The Last Conformist]

Does the AI defend it's cities properly under any circumstances?

 

[Klyden]

To hopefully explain/clarify a couple things:

When Oberic attacked earlier, he sent in his offensive units first and then came in with both Sorcerers and the clerics (not sure what he expected to do with the clerics as they are 1-3-1's). Oberic took very heavy losses against both Ariel and I and lost most of his offensive forces. At the moment, he does have Wizards (4-6-2's) and also White Riders. Paladins are right around the corner I am sure, so my life will be really miserable. At any rate, he did attack Ariel with some White Riders (Did not have a lot I am sure after being reduced to 8 cities and having to rebuild some defensive units).

Freya joined the war late against Oberic. She sent in most of her offensive units against the city next to her and captured it. She then sent a ton of units at Oberic's capital, but it held and I speculate that Freya's white riders took heavy casualties. She never got a chance to really send in her foot units, although she was moving them that way when she made peace with Oberic. For me, I took balanced losses but probably lost more Centars than anything else taking the three cities from Oberic. My casualties soared when I had to start dealing with Sorcerers and while at war, I actually shut down being agressive to rebuild my forces. It takes most of my cities 6-7 turns or so to produce one centar.

To sum things up after the first war, Oberic was shattered as a military power, but had enough to dig in and hold. Of help to him was the fact he had just gotten the wizards and Freya just did not have the offense to dig a lot of those out. My military was ground down from losses, but in ok shape. Tech started to tell against me as my gnolls and centars went from facing 4-2-2's to dealing with more 3-4-1's and 5-3-2's. Freya lost much of her mounted army trying to dig out Oberic, but the vast majority of her foot remain unengaged. There was probably a period of 20 turns or so of peace. Freya used that time to rebuild her mounted troops, but they still remain smaller compared to her foot troops.

Both life mages had no issue using the sorcerers on attack along with moving clerics through enemy territory. (Not sure what the clerics are supposed to accomplish). Sorcerers with 3 point attack are not that bad of units to use on offensive. My best defenders right now are my gnoll rangers as 4 point defenders, so we shall see how they hold up. I have a tendancy to ignore the clerics as I don't think they can do much offensively.

As far as defense goes, I guess part of the question is what is considered an adequate defense? I have seen the AI typically hoard units in its capital and have it be in a relatively safe place and have the city at the front not have much in the way of defenses. I have also seen cities be jammed full of units too. To answer the question in this game, the cities that I took from Oberic had no less than 3 defenders in each of them. (think it might have been 5 in one, 4 in another and 3 in the other). For myself, I have a tendancy to put minimal weak units in my interior cities to maximise garrison happiness benefits, put a couple strong defenders in "front line" and "coastal" cities and also try to have a offensive "fire brigade" with perhaps a mobile defensive unit or two (gnoll rangers in this game would fall under that category) in reserve to deal with incursions.

Hope this helps clarify, etc.

 

[Drift]

Thank you both for the game reports. Lots of things that caught my interest in terms of future balancing. I'm too busy now to reply in length though.

Sorcerers are 2.4.1 in the latest patch BTW. I felt there was no point in the 3 attack.

Keep on playing.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I may note that the Life mages never used Sorcerers offensively in my game.

As for the AI's lack of adequate defenses, I don't mean they put too few defenders in their cities, but their fairly consistent failure to reinforce threatened cities properly when they're threatened. The AI understands concentration of force when it comes to attacking, but when it comes to defending, it tends to spread its troops all over the place, instead of concentrating where I'm actually attacking.

 

[tjedge1]

That's not really a bad strategy on their part. They force you to spread yourself when takinga city, then having to wonder where their next stacked offensive strike will be. They can easily retake a city that isn't defended well enough. At least they do this on higher difficulties. A real pain. It sort of forces you on the defensive after taking a city. You still have to send an adequate number of units to take the next city while leaving enough behind to quell the resistance.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Thing is, if I plop down sufficient force to take a city next to it, they won't take troops from currently undefended cities to assemble a force strong enough to defeat mine and not lose the city in the first place, despite having the opportunity to do this.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Double post removed

 

[The Last Conformist]

Update on Vlad game: I got attacked by Sss'ra, and after some ridiculously bad luck with the RNG, I was happy to get away with only two cities lost. Damn! Getting back from this is gonna be tough, since everyon is now bigger than me.

Oh, and there's a pile of trailing blanks in the city name Iron Wall.

 

[The Last Conformist]

2nd update: Got attacked by Lo Pan, and after another round of RNG evil - two Clansmen fortified in a city went down to two Chaos Warriors attacking across a river, for a start - it went pretty much downhill, so I retired the game. I'll start a new one shortly.

 

[The Last Conformist]

OK, started up a new game as Vlad.

The start didn't look very nice at first, with alot of desert and swamp just around my capital. I however again had several race resources close by - Lizardmen just beside my capital, and Orcs and Goblins a bit to the SW. I was also able to pump out Settlers quite quickly early on, thanks to a flood plain tile next to my start (no standard tile penalty rocks when rexing!).

After a super-early war with Lo Pan, in which I stole his starting worker, I settled in for peaceful rexing and building for a while. I even became the leading cultural power, which is rare for me.

Then I pounced on Sss'ra, who had been beaten up by Tauron, and took tow of his cities, incl the capital, and securing a second source of Lizardmen.

I'm now the biggest civ I know of, with Tauron as a strong 2nd. The next target is probably my ol' nemesis Lo Pan, who against started close to the south of me.

 

[Psyringe]

With some help of embryodead, I dug out his resources thread in the C3C forum. Can be found here. Very useful. There's still room for further study of course, but it's probably not necessary unless we get results radically differing from what embryodead's formula predicts. Will check that when I have some time.

 

[Psyringe]

@TLC: 122 turns, including wars, in 100 minutes? You're quick.

 

[The Last Conformist]

@TLC: 122 turns, including wars, in 100 minutes? You're quick.

So I've been told; Klyden commented on it in the ACW C3C thread.

 

[Klyden]

Freya game continued:

Things are a bit tough for awhile as I try to hold against Ariel's onslaught of units. I managed to destroy a good size stack of white riders and spiders near my southern city and this takes a lot of steam out of Ariel's attacks on me and I am able to reenforce my other garrisons. Oberic decides the time is ripe to get one of his cities back and I loose my farthest city up the coast to him on a bribe, even tho the city has the Oblisk and is in a "celebrate the nature mage" mode. I loose a few units there, but not much I can do about it. A couple of turns later, Ariel takes it from him anyway.

Ariel continues to try to assault Oberic's capital and even gets several alliances going on the far islands to help her. The other nature mage is soon at war with several people and looses a couple cities to Lo Pan.

Ariel finally offers me a peace, which I take to get out of the war and continue to rebuild my forces and upgrade my infrastructure. Ariel and Oberic are just pounding each other silly and I don't have a problem with that. Lo Pan is going to win this game on points and not much I can do about it, but will continue to play anyway.

I have started to like the bird transport the life mage has. It allowed me to shuttle units around to threaten spots by doing the redeploy. Very handy.

I finally get Trolls 3 (what I have been waiting for) and go for Nature 6. I now have some offensive power restored and continue to build up. I have many cities over 20 now for production, but none over 30. I build up for about 15 turns and prepare to go to war with Ariel when I get nature 6.

On the eve of the war with Ariel, I have 171 unit army (allowed 56). Break down is as follows:

15 workers, 1 warrior, 4 raiders, 3 etten (in first army), 39 giants, 3 army, 16 Gnoll, 40 Gnoll ranger, 13 ents, 6 earth elementals, 8 Pterodactals, 4 catapults, 9 ships, 6 lighting spells, 9 centars.

As you can see, centars have almost disappeared from my force pool due to attrition and no upgrade for them. Giants are now my premere offensive unit.

Econ is 399 with 147 to sci, 32 corrup, 131 maint, 115 to units.

The upgrades to giants were cheap, but the upgrades from ent to earth elementals are expensive.

Some side notes:

Could not fast build a spell with a leader I had. Would think you could (Be nice to have completed that transmute spell right off the bat).

Consideration to making wizards 3-6-1's. At 4-6-2's, they are very powerful. There are two issues with them. 4 point attacker on a very powerful defensive unit (you were looking at reducing the sorcerers anyway). The fact that they move 2 means that faster units can't escape from them, causing their casualties to be higher.

I have run one attack so far in the opening of my war with Ariel. I took the city that she established early up along my west coast (a thorn in my side). There were 12 defenders, including 3 monk units. We will see what she has in her other cities as she has been pretty committed to attacking Oberic.

 

[Zurai]

I'm not certain that embryodead is correct about unique resources being possible in C3C. I have several resources set to an appearance ratio of 1, which with his formula should give 0.09 per map with 12 players - but I still get 2 of them. My mod's playable (though not released) now, so I'll see how well his formula works out as I tweak my resources.

Anyway, on topic: I played a bit of 1.10, and it went pretty well. I definately wasn't feeling as much like I was trying to push a boulder uphill as a nature mage, so that's a definate improvement.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Someone told me that there'll always be a minimum of two of each resource on random maps. No idea how reliable that is - there's been reports of maps with no on the basic SRs too.

Edit: Checked out Embryo's article again, and turns out he says the minimun was 2 in PTW, but is 1 in C3C. So I guess this post was completely unhelpful.

Edit2: Set the appearance ratio of Iron to 1, and generated a bunch of maps. Sure enough, they all had exactly one Iron resource. Loaded up the MoM.biq, and changed the appearance ratio of Death Nodes to 1, and generated a much of maps - again, they all had precisely one Death Node.

This, of course, disagrees rather with Zurai's experience. I have not idea to explain the discrepancy.

All maps generated where standard size with standard climate and age.

 

[Zurai]

I've been testing on 256x256 maps, which probably affects it to some degree. I used maps that huge because, at the start, I had somewhere around 60 resources and only the biggest maps would actually have enough tiles to use that many I've since reduced the number of resources (more because of bugs than map size - I was getting phantom resources, ie I'd found a city and it would think it had access to a resource that wasn't even linked to any terrain) and thus I've reduced the map size. I havn't had the chance to see if that reduced the minimum back down to 1 though.