13 thoughts on “Tournament Finals 2023 – Ep 65 – Most Bountiful Gifts of Heavens”
Thanks for an interesting episode You misinterpreted the Pan/Gath alliance condition. It was not a defensive alliance condition, it was a condition that prevents each party from starting new separate wars or making separate peace. Pan insisted on it to prevent me from pulling out of the TC war, IIRC. Basically, the main condition was the turn 80 NAP, and everything else after that were the conditions that would void it
The shared perspective of Latch and me, which you can read from the tone of his message at this point, is that we've given up on trying to win the game and are just trying to have fun with the armies we have. We're still attacking on the off chance that Pan messes up, since fighting defensively is a guaranteed loss given how much he can replace every turn.
We're no longer attempting diplomacy directed towards the goal of increasing our chances of victory; it seems impossible both diplomatically and militarily. We did approach Gath about whether he wanted to fight Pan while we had their armies forced to our border around this time, but as you can see from the alliances announced this turn, that wasn't a possibility. And to be honest I think Pan plus Gath could basically fight the map at this point anyway, especially with Agartha committed to be Pan's vassal and Erytheia feeling militarily insignificant and not possible or desirable to work with given his treachery just a few turns back.
BTW attacking Erytheia's infrastructure is not easy while also at war with Pan and Gath. While we've demonstrated we can fight the Idol using a ton of careful preparation and scripting, it's really hard to deal with it as part of 5x gem burns before storming a fort: Ghost Riders, the Idol, Erythiea forces breaking siege, potential Pan forces racing or flying in during the normal phase, possibly Gath sending something. Because we need to cast Fog Warriors with an A2D2 dude carrying a Twist Fate amulet turn 1, both of his miscellaneous slots are required to just cast the spell via crystal communion, so we can't use the tempgem items that go into that slot. And the cloak of Astral storms has no body protection, which feels very unpleasant for a key caster. There's several ways around it, but no options that aren't cheap, and we didn't have any Air tempgem items at this point at all, so the play would have been 24A stacked on that mage.
Currently our tactics involves not placing armies anywhere that Pan can Idol drop; also Erytheia doesn't have tools like stealthy Pans able to do normal phase gem burns not on his border.
BTW one of the things that the casters haven't highlighted yet about having two Idols in this game is that it makes throne rushing extremely difficult, because you potentially have to deal with both of them dropping on your armies attempting the final sieges in addition to lighter gem burns… And at some point one has to consider that they may empower their Idol in fire to do the Soul Drain plus Phoenix Pyre combination.
Fun fact: Wind of Death doesn't kill anything if an army exits due to Vortex of Returning. This interaction is not something I understood make this game, but it will be important in the coming turns.
The big Gifts play from Pan this turn is the way we thought our army would die the previous fight, when I said there's several ways Pan can kill our army. I'll note we didn't get Will of the Fates up; we apparently decided to roll out with a Golem who didn't have the necessary boosters. Fun fact is that now that Dominions 6 has pushed whole army luck to legendary research, Gifts from Heaven spam has considerably less counterplay in the midgame for nations that can't field large numbers of Glamour mages to AOE20 paint the spell.
We probably should have used Evocation bait in this script; the best counterplay would have been to surround the enemy with turn 1 flyers such that they'd suffer friendly fire.
That said, to be honest I think the spell is just way above the curve of other evocations, since there's no resistance that targets it (and undead are immune to luck), only certain special units like dark vines can survive it, and you get to kill 3 squares vs the one for Thunder Strike. While it does require a cross path to use, it's a very common cross path, and Astral is the communion path, so it is very accessible at scale in practice, as seen in this battle. I am not sure why it should be 3 meteors when Thunder Strike has the same inaccurate tag and does considerably less damage.
Other nations with the E/S cross path can do the same cancerous Gifts/Returning play, but with Pan in particular, the big cost of having to walk all your mages from the Capital back to the front isn't expensive, and options for disrupting such a play involving early evocations are insufficient to kill Centaur Sages with Army of Gold up.
The reason of the vortex returning is that iwas taking in account all other small army around wher ethe battle have took place and with all of them, i would have lost, i dont have enough +X moral for my unit and my centaur sage rout in 5 to 10 turn. in this, you lose all the slave Note : the vampire is only there for reinvigoration stuff (how to make your communion leave longer)
Pangea is terrific. Now I am not sure who is gonna win this game Gath or Pan anymore. They are both monsters both diplomatically and on the field of battle…
These long-standing alliances are very effective in games like this. It's a similar concept to why in werewolf/mafia/etc (informed minority vs uninformed majority) that the mafia or w/e needs to be a small fraction of the town for a balanced game. In a big FFA, your win probability benefits greatly if you arrange this, at the expense of players outside of it. In tournament qualifier with squeeco, he arranged such an alliance immediately. In that game, he did better in wars and outscaled me, but there was a world where if I were a better player at the time that alliance benefits me more instead. However, that squeeco makes arrangements and aligns game states like this probably explains why we've seen him in the finals every time so far.
That commentary on diplo early in the video is so spot on. You have to factor what other nations want for even somewhat accurate predictions/choices.
Recently in a game with newer players, someone ended NAP with me and said "I don't necessarily want war, I just want to take pressure off another player who's already coalitioning you". I got more annoyed than I should have, but the question remains…how am I supposed to take that, from a game state perspective? If he's going to force me to put troops on that border, am I not supposed to use them if he doesn't also mass troops and mages there? And if we're both investing heavy assets into the border and not fighting, why? Troops have both direct and opportunity cost…that game state hurts both of us pointlessly…basically the player hurting his own nation to grief me. You're either attacking or you shouldn't end NAP (nobody was near throne win). But it seems the newer players don't see the game the same way, so their motivation for such actions can be genuine despite them making no sense ^_^. In that case I decided to just add that to the coalition list lol.
I wonder if the counter to that Pangea stack is curse of stones? If the fatigue calculations really are so tight Pangea has to vortex of returning out of the field to prevent burning out, then the additional encumbrance could be devastating. Then again, I barely play this game compared to anyone in the tournament. I could just be, and probably am, spouting nonsense.
I have made this sort of agreement only once before in a game. The random map gen put our capitals so close together that in order for me to expand into the rest of the map, I had to own part of the other guys cap circle (it was an incredibly scuffed map). We figured we could either fight early and cripple each other, or treat it like a disciple game (this decision was made early year0, and we stated our NAP to last until turn 90 for reference, though this was on a 30 player game).
Ultimately we both became some of the biggest players on the map, but neither of us won in the end because someone else throne rushed right as we began to even border them. I personally dislike this sort of military alliance play (and even when I did it, we rarely warred the same target, though the map made that impossible a lot of the time anyway). It is however fully on the other players in this game for failing to treat the disciple team in a ffa like it should, and coalitioned it. Some of this is the fault of Arco (who made themselves so hated by everyone), but also Erythria and Xib whose target selection in this game has been less than stellar, especially Ery.
I just cant get over the fact that Pan+Gath have been left alone to do whatever the hell they wanted the whole game. This together with the incredible TN diplo throw is what really sticks with me (that and the despicable actions of Agartha, Arco and Ery)
Thanks for an interesting episode
You misinterpreted the Pan/Gath alliance condition. It was not a defensive alliance condition, it was a condition that prevents each party from starting new separate wars or making separate peace. Pan insisted on it to prevent me from pulling out of the TC war, IIRC. Basically, the main condition was the turn 80 NAP, and everything else after that were the conditions that would void it
The shared perspective of Latch and me, which you can read from the tone of his message at this point, is that we've given up on trying to win the game and are just trying to have fun with the armies we have. We're still attacking on the off chance that Pan messes up, since fighting defensively is a guaranteed loss given how much he can replace every turn.
We're no longer attempting diplomacy directed towards the goal of increasing our chances of victory; it seems impossible both diplomatically and militarily. We did approach Gath about whether he wanted to fight Pan while we had their armies forced to our border around this time, but as you can see from the alliances announced this turn, that wasn't a possibility. And to be honest I think Pan plus Gath could basically fight the map at this point anyway, especially with Agartha committed to be Pan's vassal and Erytheia feeling militarily insignificant and not possible or desirable to work with given his treachery just a few turns back.
BTW attacking Erytheia's infrastructure is not easy while also at war with Pan and Gath. While we've demonstrated we can fight the Idol using a ton of careful preparation and scripting, it's really hard to deal with it as part of 5x gem burns before storming a fort: Ghost Riders, the Idol, Erythiea forces breaking siege, potential Pan forces racing or flying in during the normal phase, possibly Gath sending something. Because we need to cast Fog Warriors with an A2D2 dude carrying a Twist Fate amulet turn 1, both of his miscellaneous slots are required to just cast the spell via crystal communion, so we can't use the tempgem items that go into that slot. And the cloak of Astral storms has no body protection, which feels very unpleasant for a key caster. There's several ways around it, but no options that aren't cheap, and we didn't have any Air tempgem items at this point at all, so the play would have been 24A stacked on that mage.
Currently our tactics involves not placing armies anywhere that Pan can Idol drop; also Erytheia doesn't have tools like stealthy Pans able to do normal phase gem burns not on his border.
BTW one of the things that the casters haven't highlighted yet about having two Idols in this game is that it makes throne rushing extremely difficult, because you potentially have to deal with both of them dropping on your armies attempting the final sieges in addition to lighter gem burns… And at some point one has to consider that they may empower their Idol in fire to do the Soul Drain plus Phoenix Pyre combination.
Fun fact: Wind of Death doesn't kill anything if an army exits due to Vortex of Returning. This interaction is not something I understood make this game, but it will be important in the coming turns.
The big Gifts play from Pan this turn is the way we thought our army would die the previous fight, when I said there's several ways Pan can kill our army. I'll note we didn't get Will of the Fates up; we apparently decided to roll out with a Golem who didn't have the necessary boosters. Fun fact is that now that Dominions 6 has pushed whole army luck to legendary research, Gifts from Heaven spam has considerably less counterplay in the midgame for nations that can't field large numbers of Glamour mages to AOE20 paint the spell.
We probably should have used Evocation bait in this script; the best counterplay would have been to surround the enemy with turn 1 flyers such that they'd suffer friendly fire.
That said, to be honest I think the spell is just way above the curve of other evocations, since there's no resistance that targets it (and undead are immune to luck), only certain special units like dark vines can survive it, and you get to kill 3 squares vs the one for Thunder Strike. While it does require a cross path to use, it's a very common cross path, and Astral is the communion path, so it is very accessible at scale in practice, as seen in this battle. I am not sure why it should be 3 meteors when Thunder Strike has the same inaccurate tag and does considerably less damage.
Other nations with the E/S cross path can do the same cancerous Gifts/Returning play, but with Pan in particular, the big cost of having to walk all your mages from the Capital back to the front isn't expensive, and options for disrupting such a play involving early evocations are insufficient to kill Centaur Sages with Army of Gold up.
That was the most insane mass of gifts of heaven I have ever seen.
The reason of the vortex returning is that iwas taking in account all other small army around wher ethe battle have took place and with all of them, i would have lost, i dont have enough +X moral for my unit and my centaur sage rout in 5 to 10 turn. in this, you lose all the slave
Note : the vampire is only there for reinvigoration stuff (how to make your communion leave longer)
Pangea is terrific. Now I am not sure who is gonna win this game Gath or Pan anymore. They are both monsters both diplomatically and on the field of battle…
Frost father at least survived, but uf, that meteor swarm is stronk.
These long-standing alliances are very effective in games like this. It's a similar concept to why in werewolf/mafia/etc (informed minority vs uninformed majority) that the mafia or w/e needs to be a small fraction of the town for a balanced game. In a big FFA, your win probability benefits greatly if you arrange this, at the expense of players outside of it. In tournament qualifier with squeeco, he arranged such an alliance immediately. In that game, he did better in wars and outscaled me, but there was a world where if I were a better player at the time that alliance benefits me more instead. However, that squeeco makes arrangements and aligns game states like this probably explains why we've seen him in the finals every time so far.
That commentary on diplo early in the video is so spot on. You have to factor what other nations want for even somewhat accurate predictions/choices.
Recently in a game with newer players, someone ended NAP with me and said "I don't necessarily want war, I just want to take pressure off another player who's already coalitioning you". I got more annoyed than I should have, but the question remains…how am I supposed to take that, from a game state perspective? If he's going to force me to put troops on that border, am I not supposed to use them if he doesn't also mass troops and mages there? And if we're both investing heavy assets into the border and not fighting, why? Troops have both direct and opportunity cost…that game state hurts both of us pointlessly…basically the player hurting his own nation to grief me. You're either attacking or you shouldn't end NAP (nobody was near throne win). But it seems the newer players don't see the game the same way, so their motivation for such actions can be genuine despite them making no sense ^_^. In that case I decided to just add that to the coalition list lol.
I wonder if the counter to that Pangea stack is curse of stones? If the fatigue calculations really are so tight Pangea has to vortex of returning out of the field to prevent burning out, then the additional encumbrance could be devastating. Then again, I barely play this game compared to anyone in the tournament. I could just be, and probably am, spouting nonsense.
Didn't I just say on a C'tis video that everybody loves huge numbers of rocks falling from the sky? Apparently Pan agrees with me!
I have made this sort of agreement only once before in a game. The random map gen put our capitals so close together that in order for me to expand into the rest of the map, I had to own part of the other guys cap circle (it was an incredibly scuffed map). We figured we could either fight early and cripple each other, or treat it like a disciple game (this decision was made early year0, and we stated our NAP to last until turn 90 for reference, though this was on a 30 player game).
Ultimately we both became some of the biggest players on the map, but neither of us won in the end because someone else throne rushed right as we began to even border them. I personally dislike this sort of military alliance play (and even when I did it, we rarely warred the same target, though the map made that impossible a lot of the time anyway). It is however fully on the other players in this game for failing to treat the disciple team in a ffa like it should, and coalitioned it. Some of this is the fault of Arco (who made themselves so hated by everyone), but also Erythria and Xib whose target selection in this game has been less than stellar, especially Ery.
I just cant get over the fact that Pan+Gath have been left alone to do whatever the hell they wanted the whole game. This together with the incredible TN diplo throw is what really sticks with me (that and the despicable actions of Agartha, Arco and Ery)