I didn't think anyone started in the middle; I figured Catermune started in the top area. Granted, I never saw the upper central town until after Southern had it for awhile.

I seriously have no idea how my position was supposed to win that, though. I had zero detection ability, and vampires from my neighbor could reasonably steal any of my units (except spiders, which just get squished) until doom bats, including my heroes (one of which I very nearly lost to a nymph's seduction early on). Can't push out, virtually no cover for abominations to use concealment, slow walkers. All of my units except abominations, bats, and gluttons would have to get zapped by bridges or take numerous turns walking underground.

I almost crapped my pants when Southern started to move two stacks of vampires toward me. It would have been worse than a massacre as most of my units join him.

When your Wizard was evicted from her Tower, the spell went to the void with her. Same thing happened to Gabby (Vitek). I don't think anyone wasted the energy and time to disjunct it. That's a pain in the ass...
To be honest, I didn't take some of the Towers because I never had the troops available to do so. Plus, I had scouts in the air and water at all times providing good intel that couldn't be used against me later like a tower could.

The vampires were a strong unit for this map. No question. That's why I went for a Champions Guild as fast as I could, to get my flyers. I think Vitek did the same thing re: Pegasus riders. Doom bats were your answer. All three are units not able to be seduced.

I think the four starting spots were well balanced. Catermune was truly screwed in the middle though. I have no idea what his possible path to victory would be. Maybe watching and attacking the first Wizard to leave his home undefended. That would be a tough path...

I believe the centre seemed exposed due to a power vacuum there. If there were 5 players, then while Mimo would go direct to Catermune, the other three would have to go past that same central area to attack. I am not sure that position is as exposed or as central as it looked.

I should have either attacked Mimo or Bookwyrm, instead of defending against both. But then, the lightning deters attacks by lowlevel units. Another point in favour of building a champions guild, which I never did. I suppose I should have attacked via underground.

He did have a third city right below him that could make units with Steppe Concealment (which I realized FAR too late). He also had easiest access to the north section, though I don't know what other advantages he might have had. Maybe blanket bridge immunity?

Could you post a link to the map? I want to take a look at some of those triggers, because I managed to trigger a Death Storm and I'm guessing some sort of disjunction effect at some stairways.
The underground is far too slow. It twists and winds for a long distance to get anywhere, with random patches of water blocking some tunnels.

http://aow2.heavengames.com/downloads/showfile.php?fileid=314
It says 'AOW2 Version', implying the first version was aow1, which implies the storm triggers are a tribute to the Altars of that game (which I think are a good feature, shouldn't have been removed)

Thanks!

Oh, it's over?

Good game, everyone.

I did poorly all game in this one.
Started badly when I got all my units badly injured very quickly and had no way to heal them so I took some risks with them eventually lost them. Good thing I found some halflings in camp othrewise I'd be without any units whatsoever.
In the meantime I tired to clear a place with wizard. I did it on auto and almost killed one of 2 units there. DIdn't realize vampires have regeneration until I ran into them twice. Then I tried again with manual combat and got them both to 2 and 1 HP but died anyways so all of it was only to get them medals.

Later when I found out how close we are I thought of rushing either mimo or southern with pegasi and I wanted to do it with help of 2 resources I had lying around (I wanted to take southern's too but he was faster). I even built stone walls for it. I already had war hall so I only needed 1 hit. The first choice I got was tower 2 or halls of enchantement. I took tower. Then I was offered the hall or library and I was basically done for.
That's when I noticed the domain of darkness in my research options (unlike you I had mix of all spheres and most of things I got was death sphere) and I decided to be at least a nuiscanse. So I eventually got farcaster and tower 3 to cover as much space as possible.
And indeed it was most I could do as my pegasi kept dying (they are no match for bats nor frogs). Sure, I managed to snatch Bookwyrm's town but this was more by accident.
I needed either way to build good units (that was hindered by bad options) or good summons (hard with max 2 points in any sphere) and I got neither.
I didn't have good way to build things but hey, at least I had money. I had ariund 2000 most of the game. :-)


I too think the central position was quite disadvantageous Anyone was closest to it and if nothing else, you didn't have to cross any bridge to get to it other than your own.

I've taken a look at the map, and I can't help but suspect that it is actually better balanced when everyone knows what it looks like.

The "center" draconian player also isn't nearly as badly off as he might seem at first glance. His main early adversary is going to be the Halflings, with the halfling bridge leading toward him. The orcs and undead bridges lead into a common area, setting them up to fight, and it looks like the Archons lead to a random town before hitting that same common area.

The Draconian player has Day 1 access to his second town, and he has undamaging access to the two random towns in the north (the two north bridges are both geared toward him). His biggest advantage might be the terrain: he has a barracks unit with Steppe concealment. The frogs are limited to the reach of the water for staying concealed. Nearly the entire land surface of the map is steppe.