Greetings folks.
2950 gunboat ended…
My team was Dragon Lord (Bradford Fisher) / Corsairs (Kevan Mull) / Dog Lord (Ken Shannon). Ken added later after the dog lord player dropped.
Brafdord
BS (Steven McAbee) me
FK (Fred Young)
QA (Fred Young)
Nice job by you all. Were the FP passive? A bit surpirsed by the headway you guys made.
Who put the Duns out?
We were hoping you would not attack at 4014 because we wanted to use the dragon on the pop center. Of course you attacking mostly insured we would get to use it since Rhun could not hire.
Curse company was stilling outside of Mt Gram (Ranger MT).
FK captured Bree on T16 and was would have moved onto Mt Gram T18 with curse support.
We had lots of the artifacts incluingd Elrond’s ring
Dumped E Mere Vardo in the BS’s pond
It was a rather strange situation. Kevan (Corsairs) and I (Dragon Lord) decided to go military early, so he attacked Southern Gondor on turn two while I began to go camp-stomping in Mirkwood.
In Mirkwood, I abandoned Goblin Gate on the first turn-- Glorfindel showed up the following turn and spent several turns trying to threaten it away. I danced around squishing camps, but they were very passive in Mirkwood. The Woodmen bankrupted himself by raising huge numbers of troops while I torched camps, and the Silvan didn’t react until someone took them over just as I landed on the first of their village/towers. They saved the second village by fortifying it, but I suspect that they could ill-afford to buy 3000 timber from the market and that, plus the troops they raised to fight me, led to their bankrupting.
Around that time I began attacking the Sinda capital, he had eagles defending (sigh) but my second wave punched through and captured it. This was getting late; around turn 13 or so? I was clearing out the Woodmen population centers just to get a solid grip on Mirkwood.
My economy was strong by game’s end-- 14,000 surplus, mostly due to camps I’d thrown down around the Corsairs and built up to villages. We’d assembled a multi-national agent company between the Dog Lord, Corsairs, and myself which was just starting to move around and cause problems.
As for the Corsairs, he smashed a lot of Southern Gondor’s economy early then sank the Northern Gondor fleet to secure the south. He built up a cavalry force to send into the fray around Rhun (along with the Dog Lord), but you’d already cleared most of it. Corsairs spent a lot of the game propping up the Dragon Lord and Dog Lord economically.
Ken Shannon took over the Dog Lord turn 8 or so (can’t recall exactly when); it wasn’t in bad shape but his economy was unstable so the Corsairs had to prop them up through winter. He threatened away a few camps and fought off a few Rohan armies, but nothing dramatic.
Frankly, the Free seemed fairly passive to us and seemed to defeat themselves.
The Dunadan moved into Mirkwood just ahead of the Corsairs, but I was able to overrun their base before they could get it going.
Bradford
Congratulations to the DS!
Dwarves/Dunlendings here, then S Gondor as of T5, after a VERY early drop by that player (SS T3/T4).
FP Passive? Yes, mostly. Or what I could see anyway.
I decided to make Dwarves/Duns an economic powerhouse – especially the Dwarves. The goal was to be doing one-man market manipulations for the FP.
That didn’t work out so well.
Dwaves went mega-economy, and built up Cav units to ride down invaders where found.
The Duns were agressive economically, but constantly built up a force to take on the WW.
SG was on the defensive from a huge Corsair onslaught from the turn before I inherited them. I defended it well enough, but I never quite turned that around.
HIGHLIGHTS
The Dwarves never showed up to help the Northmen militarily. BAD.
The Duns gutted the WW starting wad and proceeded to Threaten away the WW economic base. GOOD.
The Dwarves were unable to maintain the market manipulation pattern consistently. BAD.
The Duns amassed a huge army of over 7500 troops (some of it Cav) at the WW Capital. GOOD.
The Duns couldn’t afford to help with market manipulations with the rising military cost. BAD.
The Dwarves built an Army with War Machines to join up with the Duns at WW Capital. GOOD.
The Dwarves never sent the kind of bucketload of money to SG it would have taken to get them back on the offensive. BAD.
The WW folded. GOOD.
The Dun/Dwarven Army sat at WW ex-Capital for four turns instead of marching on the Black Gate with all that military strength.
BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD !!!
After three turns of Dwarves failing to Hire Army, I finally got my economy sufficiently correct so I could use my last 37,574 Timber to make one last batch of War Machines to use against Mordor. GOOD.
Huge enemy army showed up at the Dun capital, and me failing to provide Characters at the backup Capital to issue backup NatSell orders BECAUSE I OVERLOOKED THAT DSTPOP COMES BEFORE NATSELL!. VERY, VERY BAD.
Duns fell in one smooth stroke, unable to afford the troops without a NatSell to back it. I lost 4/5 of my military and probably close to 3/5 of my economy in one turn.
(In case there’s any confusion, that’s BAD.)
The Dwarves couldn’t compensate for that much loss. Even if I did quit trying to manipulate the market. I was done.
Congratulations, DS. Can’t wait to do it again, but no more over-the-top economy stuff from my corner.
That was my take as well but this is my 3rd GB game you guys did a great job. Dol Guldur was lost in both the previous ones.
The Northmen placed camps down in Khand which FK burned and we re-camped. FK had an agent moving around most of the game from unknown camp to camp. Whenever Tonn recovered RoC (or was RoI) Elrond was in the hex with him and we stole his ring. QA recovered RoW out of the water and was trying for Collohwesta.
Nothing much else to report,
Good job again to al the DS
I didnt get to play much. Just the one turn and had a few pops taken from me by influence, was the Ice King for a turn BTW guys. Cheers Alan J.