[Dominions 6] Grogspocalypse: The Return! (FINISHED)

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah, forcing imprisoned only would just have the opposite effect where expanders are basically useless and the "meta" would shift towards immobile or titans.

I don't think I even saw that bump actually, but yeah I figured a bunch of bat troops aren't taking on a dragon without some assistance. I suppose a little dragon dance helps take the pressure off Ulm a bit, but their prospect of survival still seems fairly low.

Dragon never set foot in Ulm's dominion and was never going to.  Going out of dominion is dangerous, even though my bless doesn't mean much the lower max HP and stats certainly can.  Kept expanding and doing border duty.  Also gassing stuff is strong, unless it's your own stuff.  I guess it's still strong then, but for the wrong side :p.  Regardless, his titan of forge could take a piece of gear or two + a poison resist point buff and if I attacked into him with 4 candles of hostile dominion or something I'd get the drakon butchered in 1-2 rounds, easily faster than a reduced-strength drakon could kill it.  Wrong tool for the job.

I think with imprisoned the tier 1 pretenders are likely the best, though it depends on nation.  Tons of non-incarnate bless points, and the ability to forge/boost/summon using any path is handy.  Even in Dom 5, most nations have multiple ways to kill supercombatant titans by turn 30s, and in Dom 6 my prediction is that's even easier now.  For example any earth nation can put strength + sharpness on a passable chassis and even ridiculous prot like 36 gets chopped to 18...very easy to have more damage than that on weapons when strength is adding +4 or more.  There are now mid-level AN poison spells too, in addition to AN lightning, fire, and water magic.  It's hard to kit for everything and still have kit left over to tank basic hits.  Moss body got heavily nerfed too, which makes "physmoss" less oppressive.

Those chassis still have a role for things like gem baits or "wind of death --> returning" type plays, but I think you could do some of this work with a tier 1 guy too.  Especially now that there are more types of gear that give some hp.

[solops]

I was chatting with one of the other players and floated another idea that I am currently testing out. I do not know how it would work out in MP, but it is giving me a really unusual solo experience and I think you all might find it entertaining. Starting with the idea of "what if there were NO indies?" I tried to set up a game. I found some limits. First the game does not allow you to assign more than 9 provinces to a nation at startup. And the minimum number of provinces that can be assigned in the map creation is 10 per nation. So, the closest I can get to a "No Indies" game is each nation starting with 9 provinces and there is one indy province floating about for each nation. So I started such a game. It is really, really different. Even vs the AI Thing One is diplomacy. Lots of money and turf. Low PD leading to lots of revolutions creating new indies. It is a really different experience so far. Oh, and I set the Indy strength to 10.

[al_infierno]

I would honestly just prefer to play the game normally but bump up the number of thrones a bit so people don't get desperate to secure a win quite so early.  Otherwise, like you said, we're a bunch of warmongers and there's not much to be done about that 

[solops]

I would honestly just prefer to play the game normally but bump up the number of thrones a bit so people don't get desperate to secure a win quite so early.  Otherwise, like you said, we're a bunch of warmongers and there's not much to be done about that 

Sure! I'm not trying to twist any arms or sell you a used car. This idea popped up and in trying it out I am having an interesting time. It may not be suitable for MP. I don't know. But, If you are tired of beating up the AI in the same old way, give this a try for your next solo game and do it vs 6 or 7 Aggressive AIs. Never a dull moment!

[Tanaka]

I mentioned this to al-Infierno, but is it possible to set game conditions so that it is not the same every game - frantic expansion followed by instant war on the perceived Big Threat? It would be a change to have a game that required (or at least encouraged) economic and magical development before war was desirable. I know that things happen, circumstances change and personalities intrude, but every MP game I have played has been pretty much the same script. I am beginning to think you are all a bunch of violent warmongers :) Since I KNOW this is not true (wargames, grognards....hmmmm) it musty be the game conditions.

Stronger independents to retard expansion, force development to expand? Weaker independents so that expansion is more "equal"? I don't know. Comments? Have to stop ruminating, my wife is ordering me about...

Frantic expansion followed by war on the weakest or the strongest. This is Dominions lol.

[Tanaka]

The main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games.  For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them.  Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.

Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).

One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation.  I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck.  There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars).  You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.

I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game.  Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too.  Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.

As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script.  There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes.  Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys.  If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.

-

All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG.  He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!

Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.

So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.

Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.

[Tanaka]

You picked the fight knowing about it though :)!  There are minor differences between particular drakons, but their package is petty consistent; solid but not spectacular prot, E/N self buffs, and then it will try to beat stuff down with high strength attacks or gas them.

To illustrate why I feel Solops is under-selling the strategy that goes into these early wars a bit: when you saw me win bump vs Ubar jinn warriors, that was a piece of evidence available...basically a demonstration that 18 slash wasn't (sufficiently) cutting it.  When you positioned to attack me, I actually second guessed a bit, because sun guides barely hit harder and die a lot faster than jinn warriors.  There are things sun guides can have on their bless that could kill it (most likely candidates being stacking something like +6 strength or thunder weapons), and I considered whether you might have one of them.  I considered thunder weapons very unlikely because I can see you're mostly positive scales and it's an expensive incarnate.  If you went dormant twep expansion would be awful because Xib needs help in expansion.  I considered strength, but you actually have better scales than me (greedy!) which means even an imprisoned bless couldn't be too heavy.  Unless strength was literally the only thing you built, you probably didn't have that.  Thus, guessing it unlikely you had a bless that gave good odds to kill a drakon, I opted to move it to predicted attack province.  If you had trashed scales, I absolutely would not have done that w/o confirming exactly what was on those.

A lot of moves require similar consideration.  I correctly guessed the turn Ulm decided to move into my cap circle, and which province.  This paid off, but it wasn't guaranteed.  No choice in this game ever is.  Ultimately you make predictions and measure relative risk vs potential reward.  Speaking of Ulm, they just didn't have the body count since their peninsula start was pretty unfair and they had bad expansion on top of it.  However, I was expecting to see more 2h stuff to hit through giants' protection, which is why I drummed up so many archers against them.  Archers have a bad rep, but they're pretty good vs low-mid prot stuff w/o a shield.  Ulm mostly stuck to the dual wield stuff, which is admittedly only a little worse if you don't have strength buff magic up yet (where 2h gets the 1.25x multiplier, thus iron warrior and steel warriors could have 30 damage with SoG, or more for steel with any strength on bless - this starts to be noticeably better vs stuff with protection than the dual wield setups).

I'm one or two wrong moves from getting overrun, but so far have managed to hold the upper hand on trades/positioning.  So far.

-

Forcing imprisoned pretenders will again constrain nation choice.  Don't forget that imprisoned was meta on many nations in Dom 5, might still be in Dom 6, and that nations which tend to abuse stat blesses like Pangaea or Marignon in MA would *LOVE* to have targets like MA Bandar or MA Xib where they can guarantee the enemy has no pretender before turn 30+.  Bless up, run them down with 40-80 sacreds that have good prot, high damage, and like 20 def with full knowledge that (at best) the target can meet it with a PD dump and maybe a few rooting spells.

Granted, these kinds of sacreds are also very capable of killing pretender gods before turn 12 as well.  But the option to put buffs on pretender, limit split raiding, and simply keep up with imprisoned stat bless sacred expansion keeps nations w/o an obviously strong troop chassis to bless in the game.  We could still play "imprisoned only" rules of course, but it would basically make some nations unpickable.  How confident is everyone in identifying which those are :)?

Unless skill is relatively level, it is more or less impossible to prevent an outcome that some players are "ready" for war before others.  In some Dom 5 games, I saw players with level 8 magic by turn 40, despite winning wars.  Having someone whip out foul vapors (enchantment 5) on turn 20-24 range was super common, in fact outright expected from some nations...and seeing it earlier wouldn't be shocking.  Magic should already be a relevant part of strategies!  I made some sacrifices there due to early wars, but still have useful things to cast.

Yes I expected my Jinn warriors to hold up better than that...

But that is so true about Dominions and what makes it so great. So many things you have to consider like you mentioned...

[Yskonyn]

The main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games.  For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them.  Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.

Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).

One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation.  I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck.  There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars).  You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.

I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game.  Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too.  Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.

As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script.  There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes.  Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys.  If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.

-

All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG.  He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!

Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.

So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.

Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.

Well, I did technically attack first in game terms, but the underlying reason is a lot more nuanced. :)
Mekone and Ulm tried to engage in diplomacy pretty much at the same time, but it was quite clear Mekone was out for war. Ulm tried to get some leverage by taking a province from Mekone (which looked to be undefended when the decision was made) where this province would be given back to Mekone after diplo. Just to stress the importance of Ulm keeping a certain other border province which served as a very nice chokepoint in between mountain ranges.
The turn after it was clear that Mekone either sprung a trap or Ulm just made an unfortunate move, which wiped out the expansion army whole.
Mekone already had told Ulm that there was no reason to hold back and would press on Ulms provinces without any diplomatic agreements viable (and rightly so, considering Mekone's position vs Ulms expansion).

Due to the hampered expansion of Ulm and frankly not expecting such an aggressive game right from the start, there really wasn't much I feel I could do as Ulm to just consolidate and try to rally all troops back to Cap to try our luck there in defense.

It doesn't seem we will hold much longer, though.

[TheMeInTeam]

Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.

Ulm attacked out of necessity in his position.  His account is true/pretty much consistent with mine.  I had good expansion and he struggled (due to combination of build and crummy start position).  By the time we met, we already had border problems that were unlikely to be resolved.

The only thing Ulm was mistaken about is my mindset right at the start of conflict.  I anticipated that he'd attack me sooner or later, because I had inadvertently boxed him in and his only alternative route to anybody else was through the water.  Thus if he wanted to grow, it was me or nothing.  For that reason and that he was small, I did have him pegged as first war, but a number of turns later.  What I wasn't expecting was aggression before he finished expansion phase.  But he left units on border, signaled failed diplo and that indies weren't his priority, and I guessed I was probably getting attacked.  A good chunk of my units weren't in position yet, but I figured I'd get attacked on that turn and guessed the most likely province, so I upped PD there a bit and sent troops.  It was a trap, but one I set at the literal last moment.  That's also why when pushing into his territory I used that army to take an indy province that was out of the way; it gave the rest of the army I cobbled together for an early knife fight based on the diplo some time to catch up and consolidate.  As for why I opted to just fight right away after that...well he lost 60+ guys in that first attack w/o killing any of my national troops, and the economic disparity from expansion was overwhelming.

You ended NAP with me.  There is no world where that doesn't imply hostile intentions in Dominions games.  When you do that, you signal that either a) you intended to attack the moment the NAP ends or b) you intend to attack at the first moment you consider it opportunistic/gainful (aka if I send troops literally anywhere else, you could freely raid me to hell).

To the extent the 3v1 was orchestrated it, however, that would be by Xibalba, not you or Ulm!  It is highly atypical in MP games for corner-positioned players to fight, because of the difficulty in movement logistics and that even a successful campaign would expose the winning nation to many angles of attack.  It was pretty obvious to me when Xib delayed a turn for "diplo" then you ended NAP what happened there, and also fairly easily confirmed by simply requesting a NAP from Xib and seeing what the answer was.  If I was mistaken, he'd have no reason to refuse it (it would be strictly favorable to his position if he didn't plan to attack).  I'd have preferred to be mistaken, but I've played and seen enough games cast where it would have been a surprise if I were.

[Tanaka]

The main problem with trying to enforce war incentives is that doing so has consequences that are not immediately obvious, but can distort games.  For example, if you make indies stronger, you will *greatly* encourage particular awake expanders and nations that can handle clearing them.  Anybody who builds anything else will lose before they play a turn, with a more extreme outcome in expansion disparity than we observed this game.

Weaker indies will level the expansion playing field, but it will also make it so fast that wars by t12-15 are an obvious choice...there's nothing else to fight, and players will then try to find their best matchup and go for it. (Edit: this type of setting also makes it possible for some nations to build an expansion-viable party every single turn, get > 20 provinces by like turn 8 with reasonable scales, and pile their sacreds + 300 archers onto a target by turn 13, just as an example of what tweaking settings can do).

One thing that will greatly help, however, is if everyone practices their expansion and knows the basics of their nation.  I get that it's very early for Dominions 6, but under-expanding is one of the most consistent ways to be a sitting duck.  There aren't many strategies for "try to beat that guy with 4x your assets" which tend to work out well (more possible as the game goes on, but not in early game wars).  You need the other side to make multiple mistakes just to equalize.

I also disagree that economic and magic development aren't relevant in this game.  Yes, having someone hit me before turn 15 influenced how I allocated resource to a degree, but I've still put up infrastructure and other players have too.  Spells other than "blessing" and "divine blessing" have already had an impact on player combats in this game...both things I've cast, and forcing me to make estimates for what opponents are likely to have by now and which things I will probably have to deal with.

As an aside, I don't know how many games you've been in that go past turn 50-60, but those are not easy turns to script.  There are interesting strategy and prediction aspects, but doing these turns quickly still takes > 30 minutes.  Doing them WELL, as in something approximating a high skill lobby, might take 1-2 hours even if you're familiar with hotkeys.  If you've ever played an astral nation where you're setting up communions with 60 mages in the fight on multiple fronts in a single turn and not only the magic you choose but the sequence (and whether you commit matrix items for t1 casts etc) all matter, you might not be so eager to run settings that encourage that haha.

-

All that theory aside, Xibalba attacked me this turn and lost 43 of 57 sacreds he sent slamming into my PG.  He's corner positioned to me and orchestrated a 3v1 gank, so I'm not really in position to press his infrastructure, but maybe this information could be useful to others looking to become a significant player in the mid-late game...perhaps Xibalba could enjoy a little multi-front action too!

Great points about tweaks to the game. Tweaking magic research and economy also really affects things this way.

So Ulm attacked you first? That is very surprising if he had bad expansion? If so that was a very bad move. I saw an indy province in his cap circle the whole game yikes.

Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.

Well, I did technically attack first in game terms, but the underlying reason is a lot more nuanced. :)
Mekone and Ulm tried to engage in diplomacy pretty much at the same time, but it was quite clear Mekone was out for war. Ulm tried to get some leverage by taking a province from Mekone (which looked to be undefended when the decision was made) where this province would be given back to Mekone after diplo. Just to stress the importance of Ulm keeping a certain other border province which served as a very nice chokepoint in between mountain ranges.
The turn after it was clear that Mekone either sprung a trap or Ulm just made an unfortunate move, which wiped out the expansion army whole.
Mekone already had told Ulm that there was no reason to hold back and would press on Ulms provinces without any diplomatic agreements viable (and rightly so, considering Mekone's position vs Ulms expansion).

Due to the hampered expansion of Ulm and frankly not expecting such an aggressive game right from the start, there really wasn't much I feel I could do as Ulm to just consolidate and try to rally all troops back to Cap to try our luck there in defense.

It doesn't seem we will hold much longer, though.

Thanks for sharing the view from the Ulm side very interesting! You must hold!

I thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?

[Tanaka]

Orchestrated a 3vs1 gank? You mean Ulm, Bats, and Me? Ulm attacked you and you attacked me lol. I don't think he orchestrated anything.

Ulm attacked out of necessity in his position.  His account is true/pretty much consistent with mine.  I had good expansion and he struggled (due to combination of build and crummy start position).  By the time we met, we already had border problems that were unlikely to be resolved.

The only thing Ulm was mistaken about is my mindset right at the start of conflict.  I anticipated that he'd attack me sooner or later, because I had inadvertently boxed him in and his only alternative route to anybody else was through the water.  Thus if he wanted to grow, it was me or nothing.  For that reason and that he was small, I did have him pegged as first war, but a number of turns later.  What I wasn't expecting was aggression before he finished expansion phase.  But he left units on border, signaled failed diplo and that indies weren't his priority, and I guessed I was probably getting attacked.  A good chunk of my units weren't in position yet, but I figured I'd get attacked on that turn and guessed the most likely province, so I upped PD there a bit and sent troops.  It was a trap, but one I set at the literal last moment.  That's also why when pushing into his territory I used that army to take an indy province that was out of the way; it gave the rest of the army I cobbled together for an early knife fight based on the diplo some time to catch up and consolidate.  As for why I opted to just fight right away after that...well he lost 60+ guys in that first attack w/o killing any of my national troops, and the economic disparity from expansion was overwhelming.

You ended NAP with me.  There is no world where that doesn't imply hostile intentions in Dominions games.  When you do that, you signal that either a) you intended to attack the moment the NAP ends or b) you intend to attack at the first moment you consider it opportunistic/gainful (aka if I send troops literally anywhere else, you could freely raid me to hell).

To the extent the 3v1 was orchestrated it, however, that would be by Xibalba, not you or Ulm!  It is highly atypical in MP games for corner-positioned players to fight, because of the difficulty in movement logistics and that even a successful campaign would expose the winning nation to many angles of attack.  It was pretty obvious to me when Xib delayed a turn for "diplo" then you ended NAP what happened there, and also fairly easily confirmed by simply requesting a NAP from Xib and seeing what the answer was.  If I was mistaken, he'd have no reason to refuse it (it would be strictly favorable to his position if he didn't plan to attack).  I'd have preferred to be mistaken, but I've played and seen enough games cast where it would have been a surprise if I were.

Very interesting early game dynamics! Yes I ended NAP as I had to prepare to start making strategic decisions. Also I ended NAP in the hopes of giving Ulm some relief as you might divert some troops back to my border. I did not attack though and you came for me which was in your right. Thus war. But yes not having a NAP leaves things very open to whatever intent which was my ultimate goal. You needed to be distracted from Ulm. I will say that the Bats did not orchestrate me to do this as this was my own decision. But the Bats definitely also decided you needed distraction as well. Don't you just love what goes on behind the scenes in Dominions MP games? No other game has such diplomatic flavor 

[TheMeInTeam]

There seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works.  There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns.  It takes time to move stuff.  It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished.  That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately.  The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front.  You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions.  It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP.  Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion.  The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.

What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops.  However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops.  Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm.  He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.

I thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?

Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff.  It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.

I stormed him previous turn and technically lost...I'm actually not sure why I HP routed first, I suspect it's because I brought so much chaff and it was hostile dominion.  Fortunately for me, almost all of his non-fort PD army also routed and made it off the field before everything of mine did.  Thus I got to keep most of the retreating stuff.  When troops retreat in forts it's a 100% kill, so I THINK I win storm this time.  We shall see!

[Tanaka]

I stormed him previous turn and technically lost...I'm actually not sure why I HP routed first, I suspect it's because I brought so much chaff and it was hostile dominion.  Fortunately for me, almost all of his non-fort PD army also routed and made it off the field before everything of mine did.  Thus I got to keep most of the retreating stuff.  When troops retreat in forts it's a 100% kill, so I THINK I win storm this time.  We shall see!

Yep I figured. I guess Ulm will be done next turn...

[Tanaka]

There seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works.  There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns.  It takes time to move stuff.  It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished.  That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately.  The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front.  You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions.  It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP.  Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion.  The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.

What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops.  However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops.  Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm.  He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.

I thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?

Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff.  It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.

Anything diverted from Ulm was my goal

There seems to be a misconception about how strategic mobility works.  There's nothing that can happen in a war between us (or Xib) where anything I have on the Ulm front can contribute in the next 4-5 turns.  It takes time to move stuff.  It's a completely unrealistic expectation to think I would ever, under any circumstances, pull troops from the Ulm front before it's finished.  That choice would be me choosing to lose deliberately.  The reason I met you and Xib immediately was not because I took stuff off that front.  You have to have some ability to answer on your borders at all times in Dominions.  It's one of two big reasons MA Ulm, despite being popular to advocate to beginners, is actually pretty tough to play in MP.  Moving stuff takes ages, so the nation's de facto troop count per frontage shrinks after expansion.  The other is that they need matrix items to play the late game, and that's a burden.

What you have managed to do is force me to pull gold that would go into infrastructure to keep making troops.  However, you also sacrificed infra to make troops.  Xibalba less so, he has at least 3 forts now, which I will not have unless I capture Ulm.  He will out tech us given enough time, or he would if he didn't decide it's better to sacrifice his own win % to lower mine rather than trying to win the game :/.

I thought I saw that the giant Mekone army sieging you had left? Or was there a battle lost?

Moving from there would mean it takes 4+ turns to get to our front, and give him the ability to lift siege and make more stuff.  It would be incredibly stupid for me to do that lol.

Diverting troops from reinforcing the siege and sending troops to my border was my goal. I did not think you would stop sieging.

[TheMeInTeam]

What I sent to Ulm was already more than I could supply though.  Even if you guys did nothing, I sent too much!