ROTQM13: Rolling Over The Quintet's Magic

[Ozbenno]

The scene is the throne room of the Bannor empire, the leaders all gathered around a table and having a heated discussion. A statue of Sabathiel looms over the proceedings. Some say it is Sabathiel himself, in stasis until he is need in times of war to defend the Bannor.

"All I'm saying is that magic is no good and must be rooted out. You mess with unnatural stuff and look what happens."

"What you mean, like falling into hell after the fall of Braduk and being rescued by an Angel of Junil." They all quickly glance at the statue of Sabathiel.

"Exactly. What good has magic ever done for us."

"Well Regeneration is quite nifty in battle."

"Ok granted but...."

"Oh and Loyalty, great for your armies."

"Yes yes..."

"Courage"

"Hope"

"Right but apart from Regeneration, Loyalty, Courage and Hope, what good has magic ever done for us!"

Silence....

"So what do you have in mind!?"

All speak at the same time

"HOLY WAR!"

"We haven't had a good HOLY WAR for ages, this will be great."

A deep booming voice from behind startles them all. It is Sabathiel, awakened from his stasis!

"HOLY WAR, awesome! Count me in!"

 

[Ozbenno]

Welcome to the latest edition of the wildly (un)successful ROTQM series.

If anyone cares to delve into the history, the following should check out the following. Basically they are all always war games with a variant of some sort. My particular favourite was Roll on the Quarrelplegic Midgicants (no link as it was on a dead website) where all our warriors were quadriplegics in wheelchairs and had to have an individual worker escort them to battle. We lost surprisingly.

Rise Of The Queen Mother - Won
Return of the Quantum Monkeys - Loss
Refrains of the Quatrain Mavens - Loss
Revenge on Those Queen Muthaz - Loss
Really OK Thanks For The Memories - Won
Rune Oaths Terrify Quarrying Midgets - Won
Raging Over The Quarreling Mountains - Won
Re-enactment Of The Queen Mother - Won

The particular scenario is we are the Bannor and are playing against 5 wicked spellcasting leaders (those with Arcane as their trait). Valledia, Thessa, Tebryn, Perpentach and Faeryl.

 

[Ozbenno]

Roster so far (plenty of spots for more!!)

Ozbenno
King Bullrush
pholkhero
Tinadafish

Let's talk settings!

Leader Sabathiel. Noble for difficulty I reckon! Always War and No Tech Brokering. What else?

Additional variants! We have to head for Orders from Heaven, adopt it straight away and go into Crusade civic as soon as its available! Anything else!

 

[Tinadafish]

Sign me up, I think no magic casting outside of divine casters and heroes is appropriate

 

[Ozbenno]

Sign me up, I think no magic casting outside of divine casters and heroes is appropriate

You're in

Good point, no adepts/mage guilds can be built. Confessors can cast their divine spells (Bless, Cure Disease etc) and heroes (think only Sphener of the heroes we can get can cast).

 

[pholkhero]

oh my god. i can't believe we played that game. i mean, sure it's in bad taste, but every unit w a warrior?

or was it every stack needed a road to move on??

edit: also, first one i clicked on just had you and i in teh signups to start good times

 

[Ozbenno]

oh my god. i can't believe we played that game.

I'm more surprised how many of the games we actually won, I seem to remember them all being losses.

Any other thoughts on the game setup? If not, I'll roll up a start end of the weekend.

 

[Tinadafish]

Should it be allowed to use command promoted priests to convert adepts/mages?

 

[Ozbenno]

Should it be allowed to use command promoted priests to convert adepts/mages?

Hmmm! Captured adepts/mages surely should be subjected to a show trial and eaten by Sabathiel. Not sure how we do this though?!?!?!

 

[King Bulrush]

Let's talk settings!

Leader Sabathiel. Noble for difficulty I reckon! Always War and No Tech Brokering. What else?

Additional variants! We have to head for Orders from Heaven, adopt it straight away and go into Crusade civic as soon as its available! Anything else!

I'm in too. Hopefully this will go better than last time.
Bannor is a good choice I would say. It's my favourite civ to play so I have some experience with them so I hope to do better this time. They are also quite "generic" regarding units and buildings, so they should theoretically be easier to play for less experienced people.
One disadvantage is that the Bannor are also a civ that shines in the late game so the beginning will be a bit rough, but at least, unlike the Amurites, the Bannor shouldn't be completely helpless in the early game.

For leader I would pick Capria (for spiritual). Changing civics without anarchy is allways good and gives great flexibility in times of crisis (especially swithching in and out of Crusade during wartime). Also, religion hopping will be a must in this game to get as many priests of different faiths as we can for more divine magic (since we won't be building any mages of our own).

Regarding captured adepts/mages, I would say keep them (they are supposed to be "converted" after all). It would introduce a challenge of acutally capturing them, and the element of randomness, since we newer know what spellsi we will get. If we do keep captured mages, I whould suggest however, that we use them to change all raw mana nodes under our control to law nodes (law being the domain of Junil, and by extension of Sabathiel, and of the order religion which the lore says we should favour). Also, having law mana is very usefull for reducing maintenance costs.
The more important question is what we want to do with our enemies? With Bannor & always war we want to try to go for a conquest or domination victory, with the latter being much easier. So, do we allow capitulation or do we destroy our foes completely? Since game mechanics don't allow us to forbid our vassals from using magic, our house rule might mean that we have to destroy them completely.

One last question: We already know who 5 of our foes will be. On a normal sized map there is room for 7 players. Us and the quintet that makes 6. Did you decide who will be the final player, or do we leave it random?

 

[pholkhero]

I like the idea of capturing them. The "show trial" could consist of converting our nodes to mana, ie, they have to repent of their sins and purify the nodes into pure, Law nodes.

are you suggesting by "destroy" as in must hunt down all units, too? b/c i really like the flavor of that: our magic hunters on the prowl for the last remnants of those we've already purified.

my guess is that Oz just left off the civ, and kept it at 6 players. so there's some extra room i think.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Just for the record. In my experience the "require complete kills" option can be a terrible pain in practice.

 

[Ozbenno]

Yeah, require complete kills can be a pain.

Some nice thoughts out there!

As it is Always War, we'll always be in war and must always be in Crusade once it is enabled. I had imagined we'd be Sabathiel but Capria also works. I don't think vassals would work (as KB pointed out we can't stop them using magic), so was thinking Conquest but really, just winning is the trick.

I'm OK with the idea that if we capture a adept/mage, they have to convert all mana nodes to Law but they have to have Metamagic II (Dispel Magic) to actually do this, which only Amurite mages are likely to have. Maybe we fortify them all on mana nodes as a sort of prison?

As pholk pointed out, was just going to leave the last spot blank.

Will roll something up soon, been a bit busy recently

 

[pholkhero]

Yeah, require complete kills can be a pain.

please let the record show that i'm still in favor of it though

that's the kind of thing that it'd be great that if we can't then eliminate them in 10 or 20 turns after the fall of their last city, someone can hijack the save and world builder them a settler.

 

[King Bulrush]

For the record, I wasn't speaking about complete kills (i.e. destroy all units). I was talking about conquest (take or destroy all enemy cities) as opposed to vasalizing them.

Regarding the crusade topic: The game mechanics allow switching in and out of crusade during wartime. Or do you want this to be a house rule (stay in crusade all game)?

 

[Ozbenno]

Regarding the crusade topic: The game mechanics allow switching in and out of crusade during wartime. Or do you want this to be a house rule (stay in crusade all game)?

Was thinking house rule, as it is Always (Holy) War it seems fitting.

 

[Ozbenno]

Settings were like this (with Raging barbarians to keep the AI on their toes)



Which gives us



No too shabby. Certainly looks like it can handle plenty of production.

Settle in place and research Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry while building warriors?

 

[Tinadafish]

definitely a decent start position, getting animal husbandry seems reasonable, we'll be able to start subduing animals with our recon units too

 

[King Bulrush]

In principle I favour settling in place unless that place is really bad (which in our case it isn't). But anyway I would say move the military units first to reveal some more tiles and then settle in place unless you spot some absolutely great spot that can be reached in one turn.

 

[Ozbenno]

I generally settle in place but definitely will move the other units first to see what is out there. If I was going to not settle in place only other place I'd consider is 1N (keeps both food and Patria and has fresh water). I'll move the warrior NE and the scout NW and see what is what first.

Scouting is going to be pretty important as we need to know where the attacks are going to come from and can we get a pinch point city to repel them.

I'll kick things off on the weekend.