Turn 14 has just run, and its looking a bit worrying for DS I would say
In the north DS are down to 1804 and 2006, which will fall in a matter of turns. Armies are working hard on the MM pops, and in a few turns there will not be any left, which should make dragon recruitment problematic.
Mordor has been surrounded by FP armies from all sides and massive amount of troops are inbound. For now DS dragons have saved the day at the gates, but its just a matter of turns before the dragons run out and we break through.
The only place where DS have some military momentum, is down in Corsairs country. After having spend 14 turns with all DS killer agents and curze team down here, they have finally removed enough Corsairs commanders and armies to gain the military advantage. But I think it may be too late to change anything
As for the character war, I think FP have just as many agents levelling up as DS, but DS of course still has curze and majority of major artifacts. No major characters have been lost yet on either side.
The last parameter which indicated the way this game is going is market prices. Market prices has been slowly declining to the lowest level so far at 2, 2, 4, 1 for LE, BR, ST, FO.
All in all we are happy with the way the game is going so far, it may still be a very long game and we thank DS for an excellent fight and great team spirit even though they lost CL early.
T16 has just run, and the DS are not worried at all.
All DS presence in the NW has been swept, true. The FP finally put a check mark by that #1 item on their to-do list.
Mordor basically starts surrounded; that’s the nature of a fortress. However, I can’t tell that it’s threatened from any direction. My quick mental math calculates well over 10,000 FP troop casualties this past fortnight within a few hexes of Mordor. Nasty business that overrun of yours that took out two dragons, but that’s what our team feared and expected before the turn ran. On balance I’d say it was well worth sacrificing those two cmd-only guys to ensure the dragons fought (again). If you’re gonna die, die with your boots on.
Interesting fight at 4321, your 1700.6HIe vs our 1735HI. After the game I’d love to see the exact stats of the NM armies and do some further analysis to quantify how tactics might’ve affected the outcome.
QA area is more in play than most games I’ve seen; and in a strange way I’m heartened to see the new huge SG fleet arrive in Corsairland, as I was afraid all but Havens and the two MTs on the xx39 row were going to be conceded.
Speaking of SG, now there’s an interesting turn of events. Orcs and saboteurs – maybe even orc saboteurs – running rampant through Prince Celdrahil’s fiefdom (or whoever’s fiefdom it is now after his untimely death this turn). SG Acmdrs are dropping like flies, and a flat line treasury for enough turns that I’ve lost track.
On the character front, we both lost agents to unexpected challenges, and the DS cmdr losses to overrun were more than offset by FP Acmdrs dueling with our agents and suiciding on our walls. Well, a tower anyway.
G73 will indeed be a very long, drawn out affair – T16 with neither side close to victory. Our thanks to the Praetorians for an enjoyable contest so far.
What a RUSH…
I think this game is a strong candidate for the best played game in ME history !!!
Turn 25 has just run, and the battle rages forth and back. DS are two nations down (CL/Harad) and we are sad that we dint nail Rhudaur as well last turn after an excellent performed plan which I’m sure the DS must admire as well. Unfortunately five MT/Cities was not enough, as Rhd just managed to flip one MT over in the right time. Well, at least we destroyed FK capital as well before the armies were slain by assassins
What makes this game so excellent is that FP can compete in the character war at this stage of the game, because DS are two nations down. DS still have 4-5 curze squads, but they take 3 characters for a kill
We loved turn #23 where 4-5 DS killer agents were slain due to both skill and luck, which also acquired RoW as a side bonus. But it IS hard to slay a 74 armycom at a hidden pop, unfortunately the commander was then slain later when he moved out. But then again Cirdan was curzed out this turn, so the character war rages on.
DS have played some excellent game plans as well, where they focus at one area at a time, meaning that Corsairs and SG homeland are huge battlegrounds, mainly controlled by DS.
The market has crashed completely, but at this stage of the game I’m not sure this is any disadvantage for any side. Every time a MT is burned to the ground, two new are upgraded. What I do know is that it will be one hell of a long game, and maybe if the game is still completely open at turn 50, we will agree on an honourable draw
Yup, definitely one of the best games I played ever. We need full concentration every turn, because even small mistakes can be fatal. What I can say is that Rhu did not flip Linhir on the turn you planned to eliminate them, but one turn earlier. So they were in no immediate danger. I rather admire your push for the Ithil Pass, we really did not see that coming until it was too late. BTW. when and why did Erestor die? We recently found his staff lying on the ground and I can’t remember that we targetted him with agents or cursers…
Erestor died to Lamthanc some 10 turns ago, we thought the artifact would go to the company like when curzed, but they went to the ground
I’m pretty sure that Rhd would have died if he had not flipped that MT, as he could then not have done any natsells, but how close was Rhd of dying ? I mean if we had taken a couple more of his camps, could he than still have natselled enough to survive ? We stole 5k gold the turn after from him, so he had at least 5k gold to spare
I agree this is one of the most exciting games I’ve had. Regarding your comment of best played game ever, well, surely not the best played DS game else the FP would already be defeated! I do salute the execution of your Rhu plan; you would have gotten them in more games than not.
Yes it was disheartening losing two shooters against the same Warlord but alas all you can do is trudge on. However I think IK got some measure of consolation over the next 3 turns at 2617.
Of all the successful assassinations this past turn, we did miss a critical one against the Noldo Acmdr currently at 2619, else that would’ve been a bit of a sore spot for you temporarily. Oh well.
Well one thing that worked in our favor in an odd sort of way was almost all the Rhu field armies being defeated shortly before your big push, so there wasn’t much of a maintenance deficit to manage. And something I considered bad luck on our part, great timing on yours, was your flipping of one Rhu MT the same turn a 770 was scheduled, and taking a second MT of fairly decent loyalty in one turn of 525ing. But in any event, you speak as if Rhu flipping that Gondorian MT was dumb luck. You surely know us better than that by now?
I’m glad to hear Lamthanc is good for something other than moving when we go to get him and abandoning army right before combat, as he seems wont to do in this game.
Yes, it was an excellent game, and it deserves a detailed comment, but I have been very busy recently.
Except maybe for the very first games I have been playing, this was the most intense gaming experience I ever had. It needed full concentration, and while it was very entertaining, it also was very strenuous, the more as we have lost two players in the process of the game and had to take over additional nations. But what am I lamenting - I played “only” three (started with BS and LR and took over WK around t 15), while Drew played five.
According to my theory, in a 1650 game with two equally skilled teams, the DS will always win. Now that we have a draw, this leads me to the conclusion that the FP were slightly better skilled. At least they did not make as many mistakes as we did. Losing the Cloud Lord simply MUST NOT HAPPEN. And we could have prevented losing him with relative ease. Same goes for Harad. I congratulate the FP for their determination to take out the CL. It follows the simple truth that with a CL supporting 21 characters, it is impossible for the FP to survive past the midgame. Taking out CL was levelling the playing field for the FP so they could at least compete in the character war in midgame and possible superiority when Harad was out, considering they potentially had 42 more characters on the board. The only way we could prevent them from dominating us was total control of the SM artefacts. The FP never laid hands on a single spirit mastery item, while we built up to four curse squads and another sickness squad that would have been ready on t 35. We had the mages but not the artefacts to build a fifth and even a sixth curse squad, considering that at an average of 30 points of mage artefacts per caster were needed to get a reliable casting rank - thats 360 points of mage arties in total. We either would have had to get control of the +50 rings, but the FP had concentrated them to build a dragonslayer and kept them moving every turn, or wait until the mages slowly improved their rank to get along with less artefacts.
But that progress would have been very slow - at t33 Akhorahil, who had the best curse rank, was still only at 78.
If we did not have this instrument of magical deterrence, the FP would probably have overrun us sooner or later.
Yet, after the loss of Harad in t 18, we decided to concede this game if the FP would manage to eliminate another of our nations. They came close to that with Rhu, and some other DS nations weren’t in very good shape at times. Not before t 25 have we been in a position where we could say that all our positions very relatively safe. After that we somehow managed to swing the balance. With taking control of the SW and SG, we moved the attention away from Mordor a bit, proceeding to the gap of Rohan and into the NW. Still, the Morannon pass had to be guarded and the FP managed to slip in armies to the back gate repeatedly. My thinking was that if we could prevent the FP to pose a military threat to Mordor, we could divert resources to other parts. We have been on a good way to achieve that, but still it would have been a long way to actually eliminate a FP position. As we have seen now (the FP send us their final turns), Corsairs and the Gondors have not been in a good shape, but there were dozens of major towns to give to them in the NW. So maybe a concentrated attack with agents, cursers and emmies could have yielded some success, but we would have had to strip our defenses to do that. Considering the quality of play the the FP have maintained throughout the game, I think it is safe to say the the game would not have seen a winner in turn 50. And I definitely would have not been willing to carry on past that. I hate to see this game go, but at the same time I am somewhat relieved because of the strain it caused. It definitely affected the perfomance in my other games, and not in a good way. So I guess the draw was a good decision after all.
Now of course 1650 is somewhat spoiled for me. What use is there to carry on if you have had the best? :o)
Kudos to our opponents for an excellent game and thanks to my teammates Drew and Marty for turning this around together!
