Nation and starting location selection

atul wrote:Yeah well, to take out a nation fast some boots on the ground are needed. Just pure raiders can't breach walls. So I'm thinking of going with troops in the beginning. Going to bite me back should I end up against some archer-heavy nation and/or Miasma C'tis, but can't have it all.

Very good point, I'm focusing very tightly on cripple-and-bleed, slash-and-burn raiding. I'm not going to be able to storm a castle, but I can hopefully singlehandedly neutralize (or at least largely mitigate) the offensive potential of 3-5 nations so one of your slower movers can step up for the killing blow.

Let's all focus on confirming a specific set of nation placements so we can get the game moving along... like with a goal of finishing this topic by tonight and then taking another day or two to agree on pretenders?

namad wrote:ermor/vanheim are clearly the top/bottom nations.
I'd like it if ashdod could get a non-middle location because the middle locations have the least resources.
Amongst ashdod/eriu/marignon I think ashdod/eriu are the most mobile and capable of defending teinchi.
...
Does this sound like reasonable logic? does this disrupt anyone's plans? then of course if this is logic we can all agree on we still have to choose which set gets the north and which the south

Um, so, Ermor - Ashdod - TC - Eriu - Marignon - Vanheim?

I can live with that.

That south start will be really tricky to defend, but easy to attack from. Any preferences, Lingchih? I can go either way, could sail from a province next to my capital to province next to noob capital, but same applies to submerged nation too.

this will sound insane but.... we had marignon ranked below mictlan... want to swap marignon for mictlan? or is marignon better for us?

Everything that's been put forward sounds fine. I'm going for a research-heavy build with marignon, so I'll be a capable forger if necessary.


I personally think we should go with the obvious plan with north/south placement. Vanheim in the south, ermor in the north. Just because its obvious doesn't make it bad, and we're counting on the noobs to play less than optimally. If we're going with TC, then use early money for fort money to Eriu (in fact all of us should have a 2nd fort funded) followed by constant gold injections to Vanheim for funding a massive skinshifter+sailing campaign would be my proposed plan.


I want to mention that the raiding tactics in this game will need to be modified slightly compared to other games. Just taking provinces isn't going to do us much good. You need to be able to "raid" away armies to even the odds. Our raiding last game might have kept up to 200 troops off the front for the last dozen turns, but at 2:1 odds even that didn't take the pressure off of critical areas. I know you know this and are capable, so I'll just leave it at that.



If there are no objections (I'll wait until late evening), I'll submit Ermor, Ashdod, TC, Eriu, Marignon, Vanheim as our north -> south pattern.

namad wrote:this will sound insane but.... we had marignon ranked below mictlan... want to swap marignon for mictlan? or is marignon better for us?

Mictlan is good for one thing only really, Eagle Warrior rush. While its true we probably need as many strong early nations as possible, we didn't exactly count on getting ALL of Ashdod, Vanheim, Ermor, and Mictlan. Since we do have all of them, I think its reasonable to give up one for some versitality, especially needed in terms of astral magic.

i'd like to get going a thread or threads where everyone lists every province they will be engaging in some form of combat in during each turn


either every turn is it's own thread or we just group them together? maybe every turn is it's own thread and everyone only posts once? that way when we see we've reached a certain number of posts we can know everyone posted? can infinitely old posts be edited on this forum? also... to remove clutter we could have the admin merge all the topics of the old threads? would that work?

is there a better suggestion? we don't want as many vet versus vet battles occurring as there were in other games?

Yeah Namad, we will be starting a new topic for the actual gameplay when the time comes. Each turn will have a thread, ie: "Turn 12 thread", where everyone posts the critical info for the turn, such as what happened to them last turn, and what they will be doing this turn.

Nation choices and placement sound fine to me.

Do I want a supercombatant or a superresearcher?

I'm easy either way, but I really want to try the Deva.

Main thing we'll be missing if Marignon and I are the designated forgers is *death magic*. We need someone early on who can make fear helmets, etc.

Well, I would say I have a fair amount of death magic.

DrPraetor wrote:Do I want a supercombatant or a superresearcher?

I'm easy either way, but I really want to try the Deva.

Our first stated equipment need comes from Eriu (though Ashdod might want 'em too), I'd assume he's going to start needing stuff after the first year and level 4 equipment should do. No reason why you shouldn't be there just fine without a research pretender.

To set the nations to correct starting points for test games, paste the following into the .map file:

#specstart 28 361
#specstart 45 304
#specstart 34 230
#specstart 69 157
#specstart 32 82
#specstart 41 25

fear helms are only death2? ashdod could probably make those if they are const2? i mean ashdod needs const2 for the 15% off dhammers anyways right? then again.... with a forge bitch ashdod could probably postpone const2 quite a while....

ashdod will be recruiting SCs before year one is over and will be able to put to good use any SC items forged on any turn... however ashdod is capable of expanding with these units naked or on stay behind troops duty.

Const2 is cheap enough here that either Ashdod or Ermor should be able to get it - just worried b/c they have so many other things they need to research. Even so, 60 points is nothing, so I'll not worry further.

I can start sending useful items to Ashdod around turn 8 or 9 (depending on how many site searchers I send out, etc.) but this delays the really groovy stuff at Const 4 (frost brands!) and I'd need people to send me gems.