Just got the result of the DS vote on game 71 and it will be conceded to the FP.
As remarked in the previous thread this game suffered from the early drop out of the guy playing the Rhudaur/Cloud Lord combination.
Just for the sake of all playing in this game a word of explanation:
The early drop out (on turn 3!)meant that what should have been a good combination was broken up.
I was playing the WK/DaL and took the Rhudaur hoping the coordination between the WK and the Rhudaur would help safe things but the results was disastrous.
The Rhudaur was already under a combined attack, probably as result of the Diplo allowing coordination (I for one really want this out of the set-up). I tried to safe the Rhudaur out of a position I wouldn’t have chosen myself but the WK troops were too far off to immediately intervene.
Seeing the Rhudaur was going to loose it’s capital on turn 7, I transferred the MT at 2305 to try and save the nation. But unfortunately the Duns crushed themselves on the wall loosing two of it’s best characters I think (wonder if that was a mistake or planned) and that blocked the natsells and the nation went bankrupt. The transfer of the MT still continued however so I lost that too in the process. Running at 100% taxes to recruit as much as I could that immediately brought the WK in trouble financially.
Result was that I transfered gold from Dark Lieutenants to the WK and subsequently bankrupted the Dark Lieutenants after a surprise visit from the EO who crushed themselves on 3423, sieging the city and blocking sells.
I hung in there with the WK, who was still not about the die (though I did have to retire 2300HI to avoid bankruptcy), but it was a loosing battle if 4 nations were already out of play.
I would like to give a virtual shake of hands to the guy playing Eo/Noldo, some clever play from his side in this game.
Bottom line though:
If you play a gunboat game, please do commit yourself not to drop the game, it very likely ruins things for the guys on your side. I could understand dropping if you already lost one of your nations but not on turn 3 with still at least one healthy nation to back up the other.
let’s get rid of this diplo thing, things seemed more even when it was not there (if was never in favour of it in the first place)
The Corsairs, Dragon Lord and later Cloud Lord checking in with a brief report.
First, congratulations to a well played game by the free people. They definitely outplayed us. Now I can talk about the excuses as to why our side lost.
I am very disappointed in the starting gold for the Dragon Lord nation. Our revenue was miscalculated by Harlequin which I did not pick up on until turn two. We started short just over 20,000. Did other dark servants as well as free people have the same problems? If other dark servants suffered the same shortfalls, I know that would have added to our already stressed economies.
Although Harlequin did not correct that problem, they did try and restrict us from taking on the Cloud Lord. The actually wanted to give our nations Rhuduar and I assume the Cloud Lord to the Witch King and Dark Lieutenants. Since both the Corsairs and Dragon Lord were already on life support, we could not have taken Rhudaur without bankrupting one or two nations.
Initial free people strategy had Southern Gondor sending all his armies and second round of recruiting against the Corsairs. We miscalculated and immediately went on the defensive instead of the offensive. Tony actually considered combining our navies on turn one and going after the Southern Gondor navy on turn three just in case he did come after us. I wish we had done that now, but I assumed he would go into Mordor. Big Mistake.
The Dragon Lord managed to grab the ring of wind, curifin and later Miramarth. We did manage to capture and execute one of the twins trying to steal the ring of curifin which was a lot of fun. Secondly, we tracked the ring of impersonation and when Northern Gondor moved onto the Cloud Lord capitol and destroyed it, we assassinated the character with the ring of impersonation improving our agent artifacts.
Multiple agent activity against Harad and Southern Gondor had started to turn the tide by the end, but lack of agent activity supporting Mordor and the North probably aided in the demise of the dark servants.
The game was fun, but after four nations were eliminated, it was just a matter of time.
Please check in and let me know which nations you played.
I played the Woodmen / Arthedain combo and it was interesting.
I also think the 50 word diplo should be shelved as it unbalances the game in favour of the freeps. It has to be said that despite this, the Woodmen/Sinda and Dwarves managed to screw up taking Dol Guldor. First the Dwarves threw themselves on the walls, then the Woodmen and presumably then the Sinda in successive turns! The 50 word diplo wasn’t much use from the Noldo/Harad either if you ask me!
As Arthedain I hiked taxes to 80% to go toe to toe with the WiK. Rhuduar sent his start armies towards Bree on turn 1 which directed most of the Arthedain forces south and then into Rhuduar, no doubt helping the WiK but making Rhuduar doomed. Cardolan and the Duns must have had a field day. I planned to use the Arthedain to subsidise the Woodmen but by game end (turn 12) I had 17 camps as the Woodmen and was subsidising the Arthedain instead.
I had both positions special serviced on turn 2 as well, so I was scrabbling a bit to get things on track early on.
It was the Woodmen not the Duns who threw themselves on the walls (through choice) of 2305. Only one character died and he was expendable. If it bankrupted Rhu then it was a good decision.
On 12, DG had been destroyed and Carn Dum captured. My agents were only finding ruins to steal from all round Mordor, so I didn’t think the DS would hang around very long.
I must admit, despite my reservations I enjoyed it.
Your team not taking Dol Goldur until turn 12 was a major annoyance to the Dragon Lord. We actually bailed out of Dol Goldur with all our characters and then when it did not fall we had to move characters back in to do nat sells, transfers and name characters. Sinda died on a dragon, he never siucided on the walls.
Our initial strategy was to go after the Sinda. We had reveal pop center at 50% and we moved onto 2514 and tried to reveal it on turn two. The reveal worked (cast worked not sure about the saving roll or not), but my esteemed brother moved the army E, NE instead of W, NW. You can tell just how good my checking skills are as I did not catch it. The mage was attached to the army so we probably managed to reveal 2814 whooop.
Instead we continued on to the Eothraim since his cohort was beating up on the Corsairs.
I played the Eothraim/South Giondor. After initial big hits by Dog/Ice/Dark/Dragon Lord I had to retreat with second wave to recapture what I lost. Destroyed 3822/3626 (lost a 50/50 challenge to Grasty later ouch!) early on (having played the Dragon Lord in game 14 it seems an easy target to hit), and then managed to take 3024, 3124 and walk through the Fk capital (decided Ithil was harder to defend against aggression with the northern Mordor nations going hell for leather aggressive) and finally sacrificed against the DKL capital (had hoped he had no troops!) - which looks like it killed him. Sacrificing against the Dog Lord’s capital (and next) this turn which looks difficult for the DS and 1600 HC to move through as well so I’m happy with my Eothraim play.
Less happy, but content, with my SG play - SG under heavy threat from the Cl but got my final wave of 6300 HI through to 3024 to hit the FK in a couple of turns. Ik has Smaug there but I had intended to just walk past and see if any over-runs occurred. Initially tried to help the Harad but there seemed to be a severe lack of recruitment there so eventually gave up sending reinforcements as I was just getting creamed from the CL/Cors combo. (I think otherwise there’s a decent swing in the FP favour there). Gave the RoI to the Dunlending asap - not sure why it’s at the CL capital!
Got some funding from Noldo - big thanks there! Good game - I’m probably up for another if anyone’s interested.
My take on the diplos - for me it helped with gold from Noldo to Eothraim (but I could have coped in a different manner). No co-ordination militarily occurred though from my perspective and that’s the biggy. So over all minimal impact. If anything I found it slightly discouraging seeing my allies doing wackey plans! (They were probably thinking exactly the same). I don’t know how it impacted on others - specifically what plans got sorted using the 50 words?
Seems that a lot of players never read the FS for the details on the combos of nations that were in etc and that’s my take on the over all level of impact this sort of information has on the game.
We guessed Southern Gondor gave ROI to Northern Gondor when it showed up on the cloud lord capitol same turn that Northern Gondor showed up with a huge army. Original Cloud Lord player left no commanders at his capitol so we could do no downgrades nor could we recruit an army to stop Northern Gondor. Just dumb luck that we tracked it two turns in a row and managed to assisinate the holder.
Last turn we took six shots at Southern Gondor characters (all low level characters with exception of Dunsul). Ji Indur was the only one succesful as all the others failed aaargh. Most of those shots were with artifact agents on all those darn army commanders at 2527.
Made a huge mistake pulling the agents out of 2535 the turn Marahil showed up to pick up your ships. We debated on if your ships were stuck their and if we should wait one more turn for you to come pick them up but elected to take the fight to your capitol. Oh well, live and learn.
Failed the assisination of your eothraim commander the turn he took the clould lord town, yes we won the 50/50 challenge which saved our town and village as we had no assisins on you anymore. The last turn we lost the challenge to Sinda who had the stealth artifacts otherwise we would have picked those up as well unless he was in a company (probably was).
Fortunate to win move initiatives otherwise your original and second wave would have captured 2236 as well Clint.
Well played by Southern Gondor. When you failed to show up on 2534 the last turn I assumed you were headed to Mordor and we had nothing to stop you.
Duns did indeed suicide on the walls of Rhu capital T7 in hopes of bankrupting him. We didn’t have enough force to capture it. Looks like that worked. Good thing because we sacrificed a nice Duns commander to do it (The Dun backup commander survived). That was the same turn we destroyed the CL capital. The NG plan all along was to consolidate forces & attack the CL from the south, while the DS pay for lots of starting troops that don’t do much for them. We ran ahead of the Ithil DS forces, and made the DS pay for those troops for many turns more than they otherwise would have (also part of the plan). I suspect Clint found this strategy “wacky” - is that what you meant by allies with wacky plans Clint? But I still like it very much. It’s a viable NG strategy in GB, but not so much in normal 1650 as a combined/coordinated DS can thwart it. But it’s much more difficult for the DS to thwart in GB. We took out the LR cav, then the CL cav, without really getting much loss at all to the NG armies. NG also took out the eastern QA infrastructure and Harad/Noldo took out the rest so he went bankrupt. Another advantage of this “wacky” NG strategy is that it ties up a bunch of BS and CL troops hanging around in southern Mordor as defense. Those troops cost money… Then if they don’t get to fight, they have a long trek to get anywhere usefull… (which is what we did - we didn’t engage the BS or CL troops. We just went back around and in through Ithil. All in all, I’m extremely happy with the NG strategy in this game. NG will have taken 3 Mordor capitals by turn 13, CL, FK, FK. That’s not too bad.)
Does anyone know what happened to BS? why did he die? I figured EO’s move against DkL is what did DkL in. Didn’t know Rhu was combined with DkL/WK at the time we suicided on Rhu’s capital. We didn’t notice the change in nation pairings until the turn after (doh!)
NG also used navy to transfer troops across the river time & time again.
Kudos to our Freep team-mates. I especially liked EO’s push in through Ithil after the Ithil defense armies all went south into North Harad (a forever trek).
Brilliant move, that. Harad/Noldo did some very nice things against WK and QA. Card & Arth play was excellent. In hindsight, we could have used starting Dun cav better. We sent it to support NG’s CL assault. But it was blocked by bridge being taken down at Pelargir by CL agent on T2. We were ready for loss of the bridge with NG troops having positioned the navy. Should have used that Dun cav force better helping out EO attack Mordor I think.
As I’ve stated earlier, i think the Diplos help the freeps a LOT. We totally coordinated with Arth/Card against Rhu/Wk using those sparse messages. Harad paid attention to NG’s diplos and that helped him bankrupt QA. I totally agree with getting rid of the diplos next go-round.
Also Tim/Tony - NG starting deficit was 3300 larger than T0 turn report indicated, and starting gold was not adjusted upwards to account for that larger deficit. I discovered that on a very thorough review of NG finances in pre-game planning. I talked with Rob and he validated that the deficit was larger than the T0 report indicated. Thus I think both DS and FP suffered from less funds than they should have had. Rob said something about running the setup program for the game far in advance of actually starting the game…
Problem is, the DS need the funds much more than the FP do… So, i’ll admit that gave a small advantage to the freeps.
I think the deficits should have been fixed, but by turn six or seven pretty much a moot point either way. Finances were ok by the end with the dragon lord actually funding the corsairs and clould lord towards the end, but he did not have an army either.
Again, well played by the free side. It would be nice to here from more than just the Witch king player on the dark side.
Thanks Clint for giving it to Duns early. we put it on our best agent (who had 28 stealth) and sent him directly to support attack against CL. We didn’t notice (our worst mistake of the game is this not noticing) that CL had become allied with DrgL and Corsairs, or for sure we wouldn’t have used it elsewhere! We did know the name of every agent in that hex at the time of the assault and Isspers’d them all.
bummer that CL was teemed with DrgL and was able to LA/LAT #4. If not, he’d never have known that agent was there… oh well. our bad.
Well as the Noldo/Harad darned if I knew what to put in a message to be honest.
Once I saw SG was coming south hey I just ignored the Corsairs and traded with the QA. Sent my timber to NG to rebuild the bridge and instead threw myself on the walls of the Cap QA to knock him out.
But it was not a case of not hiring with the Harad those nasty CL agents kept killing my comms as they came to live down south.
Hey at least it kept Mordor Open for you and you seemed to take advantage.
Noldo played about doubled a rhu char early on and knew he was gone ealry on therefore and decided to steal from the WK and bankrupt him.
I did not like the 3 player combo and even with 3 dark nations out and more on there last legs, its not the winning for me that counts but getting the team to win, so passed on the combo to make it eaasier for us to win.
Only the Corsairs/CL/DrLord combo worRied me and I think my move negated that and thus the dak side where doomed not to be able to drag out the game.
SG made me play another game with the diplo and the QA took in on the chin, for me it was to powerful.
Now getting gold to the EO meant it did waht it wanted perhaps and it did not have to cut its cloth down and in a game where the dark guys are more stuck for money that hurts them a lot.
But the striking thought here is one nation seems to have draggged the whole side down in a snowball effect.
But of course we on the good side simple played better or so it seems and to the victor goes the spoils.
Hey guys, try that suicide crud on my nations next game and leave my allies alone. It won’t work on me as you did try it twice on the Dragon Lord. Putting that aside, you did manage to probably bankrupt two nations with that strategy so I guess it is more affective than I think.
Glad to here we were at least annoying your Harad nation Vandal. I don’t know if the fire king was out, but if we had had two more nations active I would have brought the agents home to defend Mordor as we finally had secured the south.
I dont’ know either. But NG burned FK capital on turn 11 and his backup would have burned on turn 13. I don’t think he had a secondary backup…
As to whether or not suiciding will work, the answer is of course, “it depends”… Even had Rhu built a boatload of new camps, he was in a world of hurt due to the loss of his other starting pops. It was a pretty good bet that suiciding would be effective on turn 7 when we did it. If nothing else, it will pump up taxes a LOT and that will make a bunch of those new camps go poof. So even with a bunch of new camps, it’s tough to suffer the loss of most of your starting infrastructure and then take a suicide against the capital walls… Survivable in some circumstances, but painful none-the-less.
My bottom line conclusions are:
a. that the FP have an advantage in GB
b. diplos add to the FP advantage
c. drops really hurt the game (whichever side is hit by them)
“Last turn we took six shots at Southern Gondor characters (all low level characters with exception of Dunsul). Ji Indur was the only one succesful as all the others failed aaargh. Most of those shots were with artifact agents on all those darn army commanders at 2527.”
*** Gotta love army commanders. I managed to keep the navy and all except a few hundred troops as well… I’ve seen it happen so many times now that I’m convinced it’s the way forward against agents.
"Made a huge mistake pulling the agents out of 2535 the turn Marahil showed up to pick up your ships. "
*** Had a back-up and was prepared to go again - the first time hurt (slowed me down with the attack a turn), the second time I hope I was ready but you never know and with the SG just keep making a transport send it down and pick up. I think you should have blown the Port though and that would have scuppered me.
"We debated on if your ships were stuck their and if we should wait one more turn for you to come pick them up but elected to take the fight to your capitol. Oh well, live and learn. "
*** Not sure what was right there. Looks like you did a good job on the Harad and 2236 was on the initiative (and then into the floppy lands to the west). Seeing as the FK had lost his capital as well it just looks to me like the FPs did an excellent military game (well above par I’d say) and that cost you guys big time - then the drops occurred. I thought you played it well…
Eothraim was THIS close to going out a couple of times - had to trust to gold arriving and one turn had a bit of a hike that wasn’t fun! With only my capital left as a MT I went Emmies to get some extra product and PC protection should the inevitable nth wave of DS hit me. Didn’t want to support the DS economy with SG gold but had no real choice for lots of the game.
One piece of advice for diplo games - sign your name! It helps your team-mates enormously. Good game - lots of army fun for everyone…
It must be me who did not sign my name but was loathed to waste the characters on my name and used them in the message.
I am indeed very happy having knocked out Chris C as the QA and taught him who really is the best player, well thats what I tell him.
As regards the game I think the dark side lose more than the free people in the transfer, no dragon, market, arty or LAT coordination and thats hurts the dark side more.
Hence it edges always to the good side, may not be that huge imbalance but there is one none the less.
But if you want a challange play the dark who said war was fair.
Small advantage to the FP. Northern Gondor gets shorted less than 4K, and the Dragon Lord gets shorted 20K. Please Dave, that’s a HUGE advantage to the FP, especially initially. It restricted every action we could do as it regards rehiring armies, naming new characters, placing camps…I finally convinced Tim that we HAD to capture 2912 instead of destroying it because we needed the money that bad and we knew that the Eo couldn’t take it back right away…If I had had the initial 20K available I would have destroyed that pop center, and we also would have destroyed 3113 (although that would have been close to failure…).
Clint…army commanders thwarting agents I can understand…we had the following: Guarhir a 53 agent with +30 (Curifin) go for Gilgad (failed), Carog a 51 agent +25 (Ring of Impersonation thanks Dave fail on Marahil, Maud Dib a 52 unadjusted fail on Gilgad (expected to fail that one), and Khamul a 51 with 30 stealth fail on Junule…granted Khamul doesn’t get the +20, so him failiing doesnt seem so bad…Guarhir and Carog with adjustments were 95+ agents, and they failed on what 30-40 commanders without guards…
Sheesh, the only success we had was Ji Indur who had the Ring of Wind…and it took him two tries.
I just stink at agent nation activities I guess…we failed on Harad the turn before with the Curifin and RoI agents…sigh. At least we “scared” y’all…even if we didn’t do that much damage. We did have four SG characters kidnapped and a couple killed…about the only way we could slow down the Corsair assault.
Dave, your tactic worked at least against this CL player before we picked up the position. We had to drop our troops when you didn’t come into Mordor because we couldn’t afford them any longer (somewhere around T8 or T9). What I don’t understand is why the previous CL player, having run into two NG armies at 3231 or 3130 with his cavalry on T2 AND seeing a FP army at 3533, continued moving his infantry on T3 towards the Ithil pass, away from his capital. AND he left no commanders in the capital…we saw you coming for our capital, and there was not a DANG thing we could do about it.
If I had been playing the CL from the get go, I would have reversed course, and got back to capital with initial army, after blocking you off the capital for at least a couple of movements. All the feints to throw off agents was a waste of time…we were so desparate beating off SG in Corsair land that the only effective agent we had Ji, was working down in that area by the time you got to our capital…
Anyways, I do like the concept of your approach though…that is an ideal way to make the DS pay for troops and not even let them use them…
