Age of Wonders - Shadow Magic email game
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Name: Mimo solos Holy Alliance
Map: Holy Alliance

Players:
Halflings - Vitek
Archons - Bookwyrm627
Syrons - Mimo

versus

Orcs - Emperor AI
Undead - Emperor AI
Shadow Demons - Emperor AI

This will be my second Shadow Magic game, the first having been our aborted attempted at this map (Vitek couldn't load turn 5, possibly because I didn't have the upatch installed).

If it makes you feel any better, my first game was an 8 player PBEM (LINK) with Vitek! I signed up and in between turns played the first campaign in AoW:SM to try and figure out the game.

Of course, that game took 11 months so there was plenty of time to learn the mechanics.

I'm alright with it. I figure I'll be posting questions here as we go along. Like "Did you claim that watch tower on the middle level, and someone took it from you? If you didn't claim it, why not?"

One of the super annoying things about multiplayer is that when one person takes a watch tower on a bridge, no one at peace or allied with that player can use the damn bridge. This map has a lot of places like that. Only affects human players. When you see a teammates tower potentially blocking your path, always ask for it in diplomacy before it's too late.

All questions are welcome. Though at this point, I may need to let Southern answer them since he's eating my lunch in our most recent PBEM game. ;-)

You've got mail, Meg.

I don't know why the Syrons have historically had such problems with the Shadow Demons. My pegasus and avenger just stomped all over the spawn, stag mount, and spirit that were guarding the nearby chaos node. The lightning caster Syrons from last game were much more dangerous.

TS!

Irene in the basement, Day 1

It felt sort of like deja vu. Not quite though since I sent my units in different directions this time. Instead of North and East, we went East and North.

And I hate the name Irene. Much prefer Meg. Makes me want to move to Seattle and listen to acoustic Pearl Jam. Or maybe just Eddie on the ukulele.

TS

Everything is so different.
We lost our wizard while the Other Me didn't.
Why can't things stay the same?! QQ

Sorry, Irene, no one gets to pick their name. Except me, of course, I am privileged.


Turn sent to Meg. I liked that map. But I amde mistake by not killing catermune and adding his forces to mine.
Gosh, you won your first AoW game ever. It was my second MP one and I haven't played campaign by then either but I was fairly fresh of Wizard Throne campaign.

The two players in the underground close to me on that map both died to independents, so I had no restriction on my growth (other than the craziness of the map). Once I finally defeated the guards at specific gates, I suddenly had the ability to double, then triple in size with no worries of a counterattack.

Not that I still remember playing that map. And I definitely don't remember using a teleporter to suddenly surround your attacking units and overwhelm them. And I doubly don't remember how annoying Domain of Darkness was for you either. ;-)

That's awfully specific. :D

Also, is the AI actually affected by Fog of War and Hidden Map?

Also also, is one or two shrines more highly recommended (or unrecommended) than other shrines?

AI sees all. Concealed units (and entire stacks) are what make mulitplayer games fun and the lack of their utility takes away a lot when playing the AI.

Re: Shrines - Order is by far the most useful since it provides 10 production points and useful quests. War is second most useful since it makes troops veteran, but it has a tendency to ask you to break alliances/peace and raze towns you'd rather not raze.

Nature and Magic are virtually useless (in my opinion) except in a very long game. They both give you quests to do stupid stuff like razing income structures. Um, no thank!


It was a pretty epic map. One of the biggest and most highly rated of all the user created maps. The fact that I got to ally with DaveSpice who created the email wrapper almost made it memorable. :-)

Interesting. I remember a few instances in the AoW1 campaign where I had a concealed wall climber running around in a small AI starting area sniping and resniping towns and structures. If my guy ended his move in place where he was visible, the computer would stomp on his head. As long as I ended my move in the forest (and NOT next to one of said structures) I was able to keep harassing him.

More amusement was had when I realized the local AI stacks didn't have wall climbing, wall breaking, or flying. So I paid for construction of a wooden wall around the local cities.

Good to know. Since I started with a Pegasus this time, and since I didn't see those production resources laying around this time, I decided to start by building a Master's Guild in my city. Hopefully it will pay off. I'll probably add a Shrine or Order later.

1) Are there any issues with mix-and-matching shrines in different cities?

2) How do you determine fertility of a potential city site (max population and stuff)?

3) What sort of bonuses do cities get from various terrain?

4) What is the minimum distance that must be between cities?

Most of these are AoW:1 issues. Map makers set max levels for cities and I'm not actually sure of the various terrain bonuses since I'm not creating maps or outposts very often. (Outposts take 30+ turns to get to a useful size and by then, who cares...)

Re: Mix and match shrines - No issues. Makes sense to have factory towns with War or Order, but backline with Magic in an ideal world.

...oh, so that's where the pile of building resources were. Lets go take it.

TS.

Also, I finished researching Bless, and Call Hero came up in my spell learning list. I've started research, to be finished in ~2 turns.