Part 77: The After Action Report
THE AFTER ACTION REPORTSo what did we learn about playing Pelagia, and underwater nations in general?
Well so that all happened. With extremely permissive throne settings this game was anyone's to take, honestly. I had an excellent window to win but Phelgra slammed it shut pretty hard. After that I was desperately spinning my wheels while C'tis leveraged its superior research to snatch the win. Probably the biggest thing to take away from this game is the importance of mobility. The best nations, for me, are ones with a lot of map agility. You need to be able to rapidly respond to emerging threats and if you have some nation of goth horse elves and flying birds or bats or like centaurs you can get to where you need to be very fast. Flipping your fins, you don't get too far, and everyone can see you coming and you can get back to where you need to be. Phaecia was crippled by losing their mobility. C'tis won by leveraging arcane magic to basically poof right into the middle of Phaecialand and cap a throne.
Anyway what happens when you lose by being one of the last people standing when someone else wins via throne claim?
All of your troops poof off the map. No orders to put in but also makes it basically impossible to screenshot any unit that wasn't involved in a fight. This also poofs any global enchantments you had up. The skies of the world clear for the first time in years. Their miseries may have returned with my spite closing of the well, but at least the sun is visible again.
The graphs are revealed to all on game end (also if you die before game end. You could spite post graphs if you wanted after getting eliminated!)
Provinces. I was always going to be big. Phaecia and Phelegra are pretty large too, but it seems past a point they didn't get to accomplish too much with it.
Forts is another place where the big nations were all pretty much in the same ballpark. You can see the spike at the end for C'tis, making a bunch of forts with magic.
Income graphs reveal that Phaecia and I were both rolling in it mostly. I appreciate past a certain point you can kind of see the scallop pattern in Phaecia where the only major influence on his gold is the turning of the seasons making the temperature scales more or less favorable. You can also see global income for everyone but me take a good spike when Perpetual Storm went up about halfway through it all.
Gems are very important and both Phaecia and C'tis were rolling in them. It also sounds like C'tis was given gems by assorted dying nations so no wonder he could swing the towers. Stupid diplomacy!
Research. Sometimes being a huge nerd doesn't win you the game but sometimes it does. You can see the droop at the end where C'tis just mobilized all his mages out of the labs for the win lunge.
Dominion. I could never really temple the undersea with impunity, alas, but I make a good showing. But you need dominion candles not to die, not necessarily to win as C'tis shows.
Army size tells the zigzag tale of my troop use here doesn't it. You can also see huge spikes for Nazca- summoning freespawn, and C'tis- summoning tons of critters.
Ascension points. You only need 4 thrones to win. Kremath game. KREMATH GAAAAME!
Once more here is the hall of fame and no you can't see details on them.
Dominions 5 also has a nifty History function at game end that shows a sort of recap of everyone physical and dominion expansion. I am no gif maker though so have a series of screenshots.
Here at the game start you can see where everyone started out. Hosed in particular by the 4 nations of ocean are TC and Jotunheim who have their expansion cut off in an entire direction or three by the seas. TC in particular has it pretty rough in that they will be bottled up.
Year 1 we can already TC is pretty much locked into a war with Ulm because well it is literally his only land border. I'm expanding happily and lordy look at that Phaecia lunge into the remains of Asphodel. C'tis has a visibly weak expansion which clearly shows a bad start doesn't preclude a strong finish.
Year 2 of my forever expansion and Phaecia bullying. Asphodel is dead certainly and I see Shinuyama spread into the inland sea. Shinuyama got a bunch of buffs in the form of cool summons after the end of this game by the way. We can see TC has set up in his peninsular demesne. Van and Marignon are already basically rump states and Eriu sets his borders that will basically never change for the entire game.
Year 3 perhaps the apex of my province strength I have seized nearly the entire ocean and am even eating bits of TC and the coasts. We are certainly winding up on my aggressive campaign against the Phaeacian cap.
Year 4 is C'tis beginning to fuck me up but hey we have that lake throne and look out Nazca throne you are next.
Year 5 I've been kicked off the lake throne of course and am finally getting my legs back against C'tis. Shinuyama has been pretty quickly rendered a rump state by Nazca. It is too bad they didn't border C'tis so they could invade them instead because...
RIPPPP
Well as they say don't be sad it's over, be happy that it happened. We did The Good Fight and lost, and you lose most Dominions game. Even me! i mean my win rate is still formidable but honestly just remember you need thrones to win and you are halfway to being a good player.
I will probably put a post together in the next few days about my LP process for those who might harbor imperial ambitions of making an LP themselves.
In the meantime, Disney's the Normal-Sized Mermaid has been defeated and cast into the Disney Vault. I presume all his followers scatter or get smote by the new god. Cyborg Prince Eric- Revengeance probably starts his own PMC. All the sea hags and rebels no doubt are having a field day and pseudo Egyptian C'tis I am sure somehow sets the stage for the Pelagia -> Erythria LA shift. That's all she wrote until the next ascension war though, thanks for reading!