Meandor 25

Nothing to report.

Julioch - last 2 turns

An important battle successfully won without loss. In the south my halfling village recaptured.

Meandor 26

Not good, not good at all.

Julioch -

My 2 prong attack moves forward, or maybe there is a third, or a forth prong too... ?

Meandor 27

Waiting for the deathblow to come.

Julioch -

A big battle in the south goes in my favor, the hero barely surviving.

In the center my forces advance further behind Meandor's retreating forces. His reinforcements are spotted coming from the north.

Meandor 28

We expected that loss down south. Let's see how we hold up in the middle.

Julioch -

My southern force continues forward, the central force gathers, the north is silent. The armies of goodness are happy.

Meandor 29

Clinging to what's still mine.

Julioch -

My southern force captures Meandors throne, but he must have another...

Meandor 30

New troops are arriving, but most likely too little and too late.

Julioch -

A new hero joins my host. Other than that, little action today, though a draco village is spotted across the frontier in the center.

Meandor

What can we do? Sit and wait...

Meandor

Still awaiting the overwhelming white army to attack. Or don't they dare?

Julioch - 30

Meandors central force, the current garison of Astori, is stronger than the rumors so my forces pull back.

Meandor 30

Those pansies just ran away! We killed some scouts.

Julioch - 31

A quiet day, though the troublesome z-bird was hunted down.

Having some trouble with independents wandering about and burning some stuff.

Meandor 31

Trying to secure what I can, but it's tough.

Julioch -

Taking my time to consolidate my gains while some indies cause me some bit of trouble.

Meandor 32

Time for some action.

Julioch -

All the troops that could muster to intercept Meandor's strong force moving north charged out and engaged in a victorious but bloody battle. A second force is sent out to support the wounded victors by posing a threat to the nearest city.

Meandor

It won't make a huge difference but for once sweet victory is mine. Quite a few heroes died today. Sadly a second force is already storming to Juliochs rescue.

Julioch

The supporting army avenges the loss of my hero stack and captures a farm and town. Unfortunately the undulations of the land caused a mistake in which my fairy attacked the stack alone before the rest of my attack force was in position.

Meandor

It's useless to continue this battle. I surrender to you Julioch. There is nothing left here to gain for me.

Good game Fubarno. I never really got into this one, losing too many important in the hard battles I had to fight in the beginning. Have a whole city of rebelling Dwarves join me didn't really help my cause too. Weird script that one.

Let's start another game on your new map!

Thanks for the surrender.

This one doesn't go down as one of my favorite maps. I understand what the concept was but it played wierd. I really liked the start though.

Was this a ladder game? I can't remember.

I'll start up another game on my DoR map, but I made some changes and enhancements which I'll try to complete tonight. More custom heroes, an expanded underground and some tougher defenders in many places that I found to be too easy. I also made some major changes to the shadow lands, splitting the towns between syrons and shadow demons to support the back theme that Belegor has a more evil nature vs the more good nature of Tolimar. There is some definite juggling though when ones wizard's alignment drifts towards neutral and one must exert control over undead and archons. I experienced this on some of my testing....

I'm thinking of making a version of DoR map with 4 wizards working in a cooperative fashion as a 2 vs 2. The allied wizards would start in the same place and would share the starting units. I would convert one of the three starting heroes into a wizard.

As soon as I am finished with my changes I'll send you a version. If you have any suggestions let me know as I'd like to release the map soon. Thanks!

[This message has been edited by Fubarno (edited 01-10-2006 @ 00:17 AM).]

I had the same feeling about the map. It started out very nice but played really weird up to a point where I found it really annoying.

Being alligned to neutral races only isn't such a big deal, but if the major city you capture only contains Dwarves you have a problem. Especially when a big force of Dwarves offer their services to you, but their morale is all terrible. Some realy weird terrain quirks too.

Anyways sadly this WAS a ladder match, though I pretty much regret it.

Looking forward to the new game on your betamap. Some battles indeed could be made a bit more difficult, but not that one with the crypt please! I lost a pretty decent piece of my army there.

I really like the idea of the allied wizards starting in one location! But you have to make sure there that it won't be too easy for one team to quickly kill the other team. I think a team like GM and ZE would be able to do that in not that many turns, while this map asks for a good long game. Perhaps on the 2vs2 map both teams should have access to one wizardtower a bit earlier on?

I had the same situation with the neutral and evil races on this map. I captured both of the other wiz towers and a stack with a leader offerred to serve. I immediatly sent both stacks into fights with the nearest challenges and in the first case every unit was killed and in the second case every unit but a couple and I had a real dificult time keeping them from mutiny. I figured use them or lose them...

Regarding DoR: I didn't change anything on the crypt.

As far as killing off the other wizards too quickly, the initial starting forces don't contain any units that can float, swim, or fly (I think!). The initial town either wiz captures of course does have access to some flying/ floating units with some construction, but with a spirit quest one might get a lucky break and get some unit that could throw the game off. The initial towns along the coast have access to boat building, but I beefed up the sea monsters in the ocean a little too so that any sea attack will be further delayed. I changed the hireable units in the nearby recruit sites to include a unit with crossing ability and this may be a mistake, we'll see...

I want some tension and potential disaster in the early game which may be a map flaw, we'll see, but with careful play there is a chance for some very long games with large and diverse factions and encounters, I hope.

Take a look at the map to see the teleporter path to the west side of the map. Depending on ones priorities, I think the initial wiz tower could be had by turn 6 or seven even. Of course the teleporter could be used by the rival wiz for a sneak attack (unless you raze the teleporter ).

By the way, all caverns entrances on the map that have any sort of mystical emanation will be the entrance to a teleporter unless it is a razed teleporter. There are two teleporters that are razed that can transport the traveller from the far south to north or reverse, if the teleporter is repaired.

[This message has been edited by Fubarno (edited 01-10-2006 @ 01:10 PM).]