Age of Wonders 3 SG 2: I Can't Believe It's Not 1UPT!

[Der_Zorn_Gottes]

I got it, will play tomorrow.

My goals for the turnset are:

Conquer the Giantdwelling, if possible

Found a few new cities (

[Der_Zorn_Gottes]

Played today, probably shouldn't have. Not too proud of my set.
Anyway, here's the report:

Turn 21:

First, a decision: Race gouvernance level 2.
Hurl net for Prowlers or +10 gold from observatories?
I don't like hurl net - it's powerful but too much hit or miss for my taste - most of the time I would rather attack instead.
On the other hand, we have not that many observatories, and with treasure raiding and corpse looting money isn't such a big issue. And since Tigrans have a couple units with coup de grace, I went with the nets in the end.
After that, I cast poison domain, and attacked the dwelling with all we got. We lost one Cheatah. Fair enough.
We have much trouble with our mana income, so I sent the settler up towards the two mana nodes.
Oh, and the Ai rejected our peace offer.

Turn 22:

An Event: Shooting stars: Units get lucky, or even very lucky. Uah.
I attacked a flowrock quarry and a mana node. The mana from the node solved our mana problem for the next few turns, and from the quarry we get this very nice item:

Turn 23:

This turn I conquered the next mana node and then the trading post, which was defended by halflings. Funny enough, we were lucky twice.
However, I estimated the movement of a roaming spider stack wrongly, and it attacked the giant dwelling. It was defended by a cheatah and our worker. Both lost. Sorry guys.

Turn 24:

I regain our dwelling, but two turns of absorbing are lost.
The other stacdk clears a fire temple.
On a positive note, we fulfill the empire quest eternal city: Nice boost to our capital.

Turn 25:

I attack the spider spawning site. The units would flee, but I hunt them down. Would have anyway to stay neutral, but I have a grunge against them. Tried to charm the big spider, but failled.
During the AI turn, a small stack shows up next tooour northern city. Erm.

Turn 26:

Take a heart of the vulcano.
AI conquers the city, and sends a vanguard, a single boar rider towards the cap.
Fortunately there are two units in the vicinity that can intercept.

Turn 27:
Technically, a ranged and a pike unit have no trouble with a single mounted unit.
Actually, the boar was 4 times lucky in the fight. I hate lucky.

However, the AI retreated its wounded unit rather than move into our empty cap. Phew.

Turn 28:

While one army moved back to reclaim our city, the other explores the south. in an earlier battle I converted an goblin mosquito darter. I like these guys.

In the west, we found another AI, who also rejected our peace offer. This:

is tempting, but the cheatah is too weak. Next turn the Ai catches him anyway. I replaced him with a crow.

Turn 29:

A landing. It shows a bit that I never played random maps before, only scenarios. These things just don't happen there....
Anyway, I have to pull our southern stack back to deal with this.

Turn 30:

Retook our city. We lost an sun guard, but I converted a shield guard to make up for it.
In the north east, we lost the dwelling and the city, but the stack is almost back, so we can farm a the units. It's not too much (though the AI has the berserk spell, which is annoying).

All in all, the loss of these cities blows, but they can be quickly regained. We are producing 1 turn Prowlers with medal and killing omentum , so there is that.
We got a new hero, an Archdruid last turn. I leveld him to be a ranged support, so that the Theocrat can lead a stack of it's own (Theocrats make pretty good stack leaders.)

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, the random map AI is vastly better than the campaign AI, which according to one of the developers is programmed to mostly serve as a series of boss battles for the player. They're quite proficient with naval invasions.


This is where the combination of playing as a weak class on close to the toughest difficult settings possible is starting to bite us. We don't have the powerful economy and strong buildable units of a Warlord, Dreadnought or Theocrat, nor the summons of a Druid or Sorcerer, so the AI can simply flood us with more & higher tier troops. We can't defend everywhere, but we also can't be constantly putting out fires and not expanding. We might find salvation in building Succubi- turn the AI armies to our own ends, although unfortunately some Warlord troops are immune to mind control.


Anyway, it's all good, relatively speaking. If we lose here, and that's not a given, we can take another shot with different settings. It's not like we're in a tournament or anything

[Der_Zorn_Gottes]

Well, the quality and quantity of the incoming troops wasn#t even that impressive - I just didn't expect it at all and had no defenders. The enemy leader is currently in the dwelling, alone as it seems. I think the retrurning army is in striking range and can snipe him there. That should gove us the upper hand against him
What worries me more is what happens if our western neighbour decides to visit us in the next turnset. I would not hate walls and a couple defensive units in our two westen cities.

[MJW (ya that one)]

--Random bitter thoughts--

It's not a good idea to leave hero in captial ever. MPers don't do that and your leader is much easier killed there. The biggest reason is because your leader gets all the "casting upgrades" and spells for free and becomes an uber-unit.

What's happening now looks bad but I think I would be able to stop the bleeding with our uber-prowlers and get carried by corspe looting and +300 gold. I would have to rely on luck to win now because I won't have enough time to stop an uber-AI winning a seals victory.

You cannot afford to lose units constantly on this level. So you ether have to be willing to reload or take a long time playing your turns. This is very true for a class like the rouge that requires micromangement to be effective. It took around five hours to do my set.

I'm not going to fight you on SG-issues but I will tell that it might be a good idea to reduce the number of turns near the end because of the seals victory as you said.

Aside from losing a few units Der_Zorn_Gottes played a good set because +300 per turn is a lot and should be able to take out the leader as he outlined. Most of the problems were caused by him not having experience on random maps and not caring about units enough. It would be much better to wait a turn and lose our thorne city for a turn than risking it.

The AI also cheats and does have full visabilty at all times. So if you have a loss city they will take it. It would not be a good idea to defend anywhere. Because you don't lose buildings when you lose a city and it takes at least an extra turn for them to do anything it's better to play some "zone defense" and "hot potato". Also, if your units have steath and they don't have LoS they cannot attack and you can do all sorts of things still.

[Der_Zorn_Gottes]

Well I lost 3 Cheatahs, a Sunguard and the builder during my set and converted 2 enemies,you are right thats a tad much.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well I lost 3 Cheatahs, a Sunguard and the builder during my set and converted 2 enemies,you are right thats a tad much.

The builder and cheatah was killed off the world map. I've read an MP guide that the world map is more important then the battles. It's probably true againt humans but not against AI. You can still very nasty things to them though like splitting thier stacks--using the adjacent hex rule and can retreat while defending rules against them (rogue's better scouting helps here). You can see how fast monsters can move by clicking on them and moving them yourself. The AI knows how to use the "attack with one unit" trick so you have to add 1 sometimes. Did they do this to you (attack with one unit)?

[Quagma Blast]

Got the save, will play soon. Probably tomorrow.

Objectives:
1) Don't do anything catastrophically stupid.
2) Don't go into autopilot mode during combat. (This probably falls under the heading of objective 1, but it's important enough to reiterate to myself, I think.)
3) Expand, whether by conquest or by building cities.

I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm probably the weak link here, and I'll do my best not to let you all down.

[Lewwyn]

Just saw this! I've got like 200 hours in AoW, so I'm curious how you guys play. Will catch up when I have some time.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Just saw this! I've got like 200 hours in AoW, so I'm curious how you guys play. Will catch up when I have some time.

You can still join as we have yet to play a second set.