Forums / In game politics / Valhalla 15

Bah humbug...Here I am two weeks later and my 42 exp  20k  adventurers still haven't gotten the last level of magic I need to cast Armageddon.   My halflings are, however, ridiculously fine farmers and miners.

The war, so far,  in brief:

Initially, LS pulled everything back to protects its core.  This allowed Stormcloaks to sweep LS out  of the east and eventually out of the mid areas near Looking Tower.    LS was always closer to us than Bod, and so had to be the primary target.

Ms. Sleepy smashed my initial army that I tried to hit their core with...I did have a 42% chance at her while the army was split and 1/3 frozen, immediately after casting repeated angers spells...I lost the roll however, and subsequently died.   She then took four Stormcloak mining cities.  I am speculating she pulled back from advancing into our core because of a BoD threat, but am not sure.

Another LS troll zerker army (Mr. Matrix...if I remember right) decided to wander around our core after it took a blocker.  I had to stay up all night chasing the damn thing and reinforcing cities it threatened as it zigged and zagged until we could finally freeze the damn thing. 

Eventually, our armies that swept the east arrived at the LS core, except one (Paperthiks) that has garrisoned the east vs. Blood of Dragons.  That army had done well, defeating (in the short term) 4 different BoD armies that came without adequate mage support.  Its success looks a little fragile, however, as it is currently retreating.

 It looks as though BoD, however, has spent atleast half of its effort attacking LS.  Strategically, I still think this a mistake, because I have no idea how BoD is going to take Stormcloaks once LS is gone.  They did, however, make it far easier for us to finally start breaking into the LS core. 

LS still has the top HoH dwarf army waiting for us...maybe us breaking into their core is some sort of unfathomable trap that is about to spring on us.  Or maybe they just plan to hole up in their bigger cities, so that Stormcloaks and Bod have more area in direct contact.

I have no idea what has happened on the North half the map, but I see some Bod armies taking some LS cities now.

Anyway, for those of you still waiting for Armageddon, I would cast it if I could......

soooo, when are you guys going to cast arma?

I am still waiting for the lucky adventurers to give me the last magic level to cast Armageddon.   The rate of finds has dropped dramatically..to maybe one per day....I am not sure what factors apply.

In the meantime, Rorgrun Deepdigger has launched a major dwarf army toward the Stormcloak economic areas  in the middle and Lost Souls kicked back one of our bigger assault armies.  In the east, BoD has pulled back (temporarily?) from their assaults on our eastern blocker.  

Blagorapoo looks like he finally has beat back the attack by Ms. Lilianna Vess.

Well, it was fun up to that point. . . .

News Update:  I am still waiting for the last magic level to cast Armageddon.   The advent finds seem weighted against magic levels.  I am trying different experiments to see if I can identify whether the type of find is truly random, or whether other factors affect the finds (nearby terrain, nearby LOS by other kingdoms, recent combat).

Blood of Dragons and Lost Souls appear to have made a temporary CF in order to fight Stormcloaks.    With this CF, Lost Souls has retaken almost all of the cities we took from them, except a few burn't by Mr. Selos of the Blood of Dragons.

Dimwit sent a several tiny Nazguls army north..and burn't several small BoD cities in the far north.  

A plague appeared..it swept the eastern half of the map.  This is a learning era....so I want to thank whomever cast the plague .... for teaching us that Plague is the most annoying spell ever. 

Ms. Hyacinth, a BoD elf, has sent a large army (Amaryllis) through the "Gatestop" corridor in the east.  It is through the first blocker and currently is seiging the second blocker.

A few BoD armies have marched up to independant player Torcherer and then disappeared or retreated.

We finally froze and killed Rorgrun Deepdiggers dwarf army that was running around our economic areas.  I think his army rolled bad on his initial "after the tick" hit of my main army.  He won the battle, but I think took more casualties <is that possible?).  Before Deepaxes died, it damaged three of our cities and pulled armies off of Lost Souls.  The main damage was to a 90k city owned by our poor elf....now it will be even longer before he can cast Armageddon :(

pls no

ur not the only people on the map. what makes your desires more important than everyone elses.

A few BoD armies have marched up to independant player Torcherer and then disappeared or retreated.

Have been inactive most era. But still had a little fun. :)

VICTORY!
We slaughtered them and left no one alive. Mr. Torcherer. We have won the battle!
We killed all of the 661347 troops and 0 peasants.

VICTORY!
We slaughtered them and left no one alive. Mr. Torcherer. We have won the battle!
We killed all of the 375001 troops and 0 peasants.

While it has been alot of fun fighting SC, I truly do not believe we have any chance of overcoming you guys and am starting to tire of the era myself. So feel free to cast Arma whenever you can.

Darn it! Had I know that elf city guy was still active I wouldn't have trashed the city. Since almost every spelled cast that I am aware of, I assumed you were the mage Timur.  Also, I figured since I hadn't heard a peep from him all era he most likely inactive and that one of the main four or five SC fighters would claim the city for the mines. I have to admit though, I really enjoyed those mines. :)

Thanks Trollz! You guys have done an amazing job for a first era.

As for why we didn't team up, well LS originally mentioned a three for all and the newer half of my kingdom who dropped later in the era and did not have a chance for the early fighting wanted to go that route. I personally didn't particularly like that option, but based on their reassurances of activity and promised troop numbers finally agreed. Well that didn't really go as promised, as many of those troops had yet to be trained (or retrained due to a failure to include sufficient Mus). Which is what eventually lead me to attacking your core.  I knew at that time if I didn't put as much pressure on you as possible and force a CF with what was left of LS, in short order you would have finished LS off and then been sitting in our core. Surprisingly my dwarf attack worked out alright.

all of LDK is still waiting for someone to cast arma.

:) While you can't keep us out, we also can't make any headway or at least not much. So its looks a lot like a standoff.

I wouldn't worry about Mr. Jumongous. While he joined us, he still has to finishing warring Blagorapo who has an era long NAP with BoD. So he is occupied for now.

So if this new Armageddon correct? Did Ulfric really have enough magic LVs to cast it?

How much penalty is there in rainbowing?

As far as I know Ulfric did not cast Armageddon.  He does not have the magic levels, and he would not have chosen such an exposed city. 

 This is the same city that Zeta cast it on last time, so I assume someone emailed Zeta and Zeta graciously cast it again.

War Recap <sorry..long post>: 

I really love the "fog of war" aspect to this game.  We have to make decisions based on incomplete information...its lots of fun, especially in a relatively even contest.   Hindsight will show some of our decisions to be bad, but we certainly gave it our best effort.

About a week ago, Bod's Hyacinth, Conch and Twister crushed the main armies of Stormcloaks in the east.  They had faced off against Commander Pete, Dimwit and Paperthik, who were still recovering from the plague, and a plague disrupted  bid to take the Bod forward mage base of Resettle. 

The losses could be partially blamed on my own bad advice....Paperthik had been locusting the army (Conch's I think...can't remember) prepping against our joint defence next to a blocker.   Paperthik was locusting the attacker every five hours and losing 10k mages per attempt; I thought our extra 1 million op, plus Commander Petes army (which did have an equal chance against the attacking army) should have been adequate, and casually suggested he could locust less often.  I hoped that Paperthik could save up for a combined armys Anger flurry, allowing Commander Pete a good attack..Paperthik did slow the locust attempts, and lo..our defence force died.  

Against Hyacinth, who owned the blocker at the other end,  Dimwit's had exhausted his army doing gaia spam hit and run, while other's partially recovered from the Plague, leaving Paperthik preping on Hyacinth's superior Archmage army ..Paperthik maxed out at 16%.   This left us only bad choices...retreat, allowing her to advance into an undefended economic area, maintain the prepping..where Hyacinth was producing troops and could choose the time of attack, while Paperthik paid heavy maintence or take the 1 in 6 die roll for victory and a chance to stabilize the front.....

In the west, Ulfric's massively farmed Human hoh army faced off against Sleepy's massively farmed Hoh dwarf army, while my halfling army went around Sleepy and began to take cities in the Lost Souls core, facing mainly Prince Erthnul's forces...since he was also playing mage, I didn't think his forces could face mine...I think he agreed as he retreated to his mega human city to defend.  My main goal was to take Mr Matrix's economy out, because he had launched his massive Troll army into the Stormcloak economic area and Finagle, Gestem and I had frozen it mid way.  I hoped that it would die of lack of supplies, while frozen, because I felt it likely that we could keep it frozen indefinately.  Gestem was prepping on  Selos's 25?k Nazgul that had taken Trollz biggest city, and thus we were one army too short to respond..

With the collapse in the east, Ulfric took the 45% chance he had on Sleepy's defending dwarf army after some 40 hours of prep.  Ulfric won, and Stormcloaks hopes were preserved..at least for a while.  If we could completely take out Lost Souls and advance into the Bod core, we might still catch up, especially if Dimwit could be successful in defensive scorched earth campaign in the east.

More or less simultaneously, Rorgrun launched his second rebuilt dwarf army and took out the borderland area east of Lost Souls core..the area originally built by H20.   Finagle sent his Archmage army up to try to face off against Rorgrun's army as Finagles army was about half the size of Selos Nazgul's army and of Matrix's Troll army.  Rorgrun's army, unfreezable with his dwarf bonus added to his mages, did a solid job of taking our cities, and eventually marched all the way to the south and took out my mage heavy blocker holding back the Eastern advance of Bod (Dimwits scorched earth campaign was...I don't know how successful...too much freezing by the Bod mages).  Finaggles Archmages tried to chase Rorgrun..Rorgrun took my blocker one hour before Finagles army could hit him.

Tiny H20 got a small measure of revenge, however, manuevering around Rorgrun's army, taking back much of their their original core and also retaking their cities, after Rorgrun marched through their mountain chain of a dozen cities.

Eventually my Hoh army reached the Bod north eastern core.  Desperate time breeds desperate measures.  I took the first city relatively easily, but had to advance against a mountain chain blocker.  At the blocker, after only partially prepping, I could see a steady chain of multiple BoD's sending reinforcements to the blocker...I took the 35% chance because if those reinforcements arrived, I would have been stopped.  I won, killing the defenders, and another large force 1 tick away.  I lost about 1/5 of my troops, and another 1/5 stayed behind injured.  Bod has massed multiple defenders on the next big city..I think it is more than I can take...I have to try to move round and see if they can move their multiple player defence quicker than I can move around.

Matrix's damn 70k? zerk army survived, although he had no cities left, and our three mages eventually failed on several 60% freeze attempts..he marched south and took another of Trollz larger cities. Meanwhile, Selos's Nazgul chased Gestem back to Gestems mega human city, laid seige and just won a few ticks ago.  Gestem thought he had a 50/50 of holding out with locust support...   Bah...should I stay up all night freezing Selos' nazgul raiders as he send them out in 1k nazgul packets?

As it stands now, Stormcloaks has no chance of catching BoD with only two days left.   Matrix's army and Selos's armies in our core are held back mainly by freeze spells although if they split into smaller armies, we could freeze and kill them piecemeal...Ulfric's army is too far away and held back by small Bod armies trying to retake the Lost Souls core 

Its been a ton of fun, ...I want to thank Lost Souls again for protecting us in the initial stages and I look forward to the next era.

P.S.  I never did get that final magic level...and I had no idea that halflings sciences could advance this far....

Military Science Level 7 We are currently using: Magic weapons and mithril armor that gives +70% more defensive and offensive power. Upgrading will cost 663,329,669,589,000 gold, 66,332,966,958,900 stone and 66,332,966,958,900 tree.

Farming Level 19 Upgrading will cost 608,724,585,823,631,000 gold and 60,872,458,582,363,100 food.

Mining Level 16 Upgrading will cost 421,695,869,984,064,000 gold and 42,169,586,998,406,400 stone.

Forestry Level 8 Upgrading will cost 490,103,042,895,000 gold and 49,010,304,289,500 tree.

Medicine Level 4 Upgrading will cost 20,426,040,909,000 gold.

Magic Level Level 8 Upgrading will cost 5,510,679,480,236,250 gold, 489,838,176,021,000 stone, 489,838,176,021,000 tree and 489,838,176,021,000 food.

Hopefully we'll have a better shot next era. Kinda came in midway through, didn't stand a chance.

Whoa, yet another great post Timur. Thanks for sharing and thanks for a great late era fight. Your kingdom was extremely tough to fight.

It was good having you aboard Twister, I look forward to fighting alongside you again next era.

Prince Dakarta, your kingdom certainly proved that they knew how to build cities efficiently during protection, so I look forward to seeing what happens when you start with everyone else and actually have a chance of fighting.

Prince Erythnul , thanks! You and your kingdom proved to be both great allies and honorable foes. I look forward to seeing you on the battlefield as well