Lord Ember day 1

A glorious day in the valley called Kor-Falas. We embark out to see what we can see.... and what we see is very pleasing. A nice peaceful land to be conquered.

We hear that Lord Drake has designs upon this land too, not to worry, he will be crushed!

Good luck my new friend.

Lord Drake - Day 1

I'm a little bit confused but I'm hungry. The world seems to be small and only one drake can be alive.

Lord Ember day 2

We embark on glorious battles, killing the local farmers and taking control. Income is steadily improving and we hope to make some mighty friends soon... at least the rumors tell us of some mighty friends waiting for us.... Darn nordic glows, must find a way past them first

Lord Drake - Day 2

Gold, gold - I have found gold! I'm feeling rich

Day 3

More expansion efforts... more gold... more battles.... everything going according to plan!

Day 3

Four citys. Thats enough. Time to attack.

Four cities! Yikes... our enemy has been busy!

Guess we'll prepare for the attack (somehow or someway)

Day 4

My Hero ist very powerfull! One stroke with his sword and the blood is spraying!

I cause a problem with the game:
I see a message "The game was restartet. Please ask Lord Drake".

Explanation:
I had to change my notebook, because it had a damage with the RAID-Controller and Dell change the complete notebook yesterday (I send you pictures as evidence with my last gamemove today). So I had to copy my AoW:SM files from the old notebook to the new one. Because it was a problem with my harddisk I hope there are no broken files in my new installation now.

Sorry for the trouble, but this is the matter for the message. I have not restartet the game otherwise and I hope you accept my explanation.

I'm not at home on weekend. I will be back on sunday and will play my next move then.

Day 5

Our forces are working on several important tasks. Today... we accomplish one of them. Tomorrow... we hope to accomplish another. Things are settling in nicely for us so that is good news.

Ember day 6

Advancements on several fronts.... and we wonder what we'll see tomorrow... hope those area guards are kind to us

Lord Drake - Day 6

Done.

BTW: I'm back from weekend.

And another day is done.

[This message has been edited by vicbrother (edited 08-31-2009 @ 04:33 PM).]

Lord Ember day 7

Not much to report.... had way too much fun trying to get off my boat

3 restarts... after the second game crash sent turn to Swolte and he thinks it was the infamaous "boat" bug as he had no problems with it. So yes... I was trying to get troops off a boat during all those stupid game crashes. No battles.

Lord Drake - Day 7: DONE

Cool day. Three Heroes - four citys, a lot of troops, and a big fat magic empire!

Ember day 8

Well... our frog tried something really interesting.... he saw a mighty hero and flyer sitting on a windmill. So he said to himself.... wow... they're both beaten up badly and have only a couple hitpoints each. Can we get lucky and actually get a strike in on them before we die... and maybe... just maybe... kill one of them.

We have got to try!

Elsewhere.... things going quite well.

Lord Drake - Day 8

Today one of my heroes eat froglegs from Lord Embers troops. Nice. Three of my dragonians will fly in his empire to kill some more frogs..

Lord Ember

Must rethink a few things.... but we did pick up a quest to go do something we had wanted to do anyways.

Lord Drake - Day 9

Good day, another city

Ember day 10

We are starting to wonder how accurate the reports are coming from our enemy. Methinks he tries to deceive us with his reports of 3 flyers coming to kill our froggies. Haven't seen a single flyer on our side of the mountains... yet.... and we also must wonder at the ever increasing size of his lands...

Guess we'll just have to invade and find out for ourselves if it's true or not

Oh... and we kill a scout, he should know better than to venture underground.

Day 11

Wait for my troops. I have a nice stack now. And this stack will go to you...

Ember day 11

We wait for the troops to arrive.... we'll see what kind of force they can muster.

On our side... our forces stand ready!

Ember day 12

Seems our enemy lost a couple hereos yesterday.... always nice to check the info on the other leader. Too bad he's quite unpopular now... and we are great and soon to be magnificent.. mwahahahahaha

Ember day 13

No sign of our enemy today... maybe tomorrow.

Ember day 14

We have emerged.... using the rebuilt teleporter in the SE corner we arrive on the surface with a couple mighty stacks and see very little resistance. We decide to raze the teleporter going underground just in case, may as well protect what we own down there.... only 6 cities

Oops... a chaos lord showed up as an avenger... well... we can hope that he attacks someone else in the night. Maybe we shouldn't have razed that teleporter

Elsewhere... no sign of the mighty forces of Drake.

Ember day 15

Capture a town from Drake (after the chaos lord died in the night). The extra two furnaces will help us out greatly in our efforts to build more troops in our dozen cities.

Still little resistance or signs of resistance from Drake. Should get interesting to see what he has in store for us.

We press forward

My day will come...

Ember day 16

At last we finished researching explorer, the extra movement certainly helps this turn as we move out. We were blasted in the night by a fire storm, it still burns but our frosty troops rush through it without worry and attack Drake. He is sitting with only a few guards out in the open. The Flyer dies, the boars he summoned die, they all die! Drake is in the void.

Too bad we can't reach his capital.... but that will come soon enough.

Our troops have rounded the southern horn and are fast approaching and will soon join up with the frostling troops from below. Then we will march to victory!

Ember day 17

Another fire blast from above.... kills our healer but we march on! We are within sight of the capital. Drake is lucky he was able to recruit a lvl 6 hero to help him out, it will not matter. Tomorrow, we storm the capital and methinks Drake cannot see all the troops that will join in the battle.

Ember day 18

Drake decided it best to attack with all the forces he could muster.... First he blast me with some fire from above, it hurt and then he attacked!

It was to no avail, Drake was sent into the void and all his supporters died in the vain attempt. We survived, though wounded greatly.

Fortunately our cavaliers and hero had rushed around the southern end of the mountains and joined the frostling troops in the last battle against Drake. This time, he will not be returning from the void!

Victory!

Thx for the game, well done. Great job on playing quickly. I wonder how you lost your troops earlier on, I see you lost two heroes several days ago and I wonder what else. Too bad I beat you to the frostling troops in the SE corner underground. I got there about 1-2 days before you. That was part of my plan to rush down there and pick up the frostlings, quickly capture the two towns and then speedily find my way to your side. I was hoping I could ambush you with troops spread out capture the cities but I got lucky. You weren't there yet, so it was a nice surprise to pick up an entire second stack of frostlings troops.

Again, thx for the game.

Good game. I have the hardest opponents

I lost two heroes and my fighter stack in a cave - the fight was won, but then came an earthquake and all my troops died! I was very shocked! Very bad and in my opinion not a good game balance, but thats life in a fantastic world

TNS reporting from the site where Enginerd obtained a victory over Vicbrother. Vicbrother lost some of his main troops in a mysterious earthquake. It seems the Gods were not with him today. Enginerd was quick to profit and with a blitzing strategy even beat vicbrother to the (opponent's) Frostling refugees!!

- shuffs microphone in face - Enginerd, congratulation with the victory! A first step has been made towards the second round, for you.
It seems you chose a very extreme strategy that relied on some luck. How could you devise a strategy and count on your opponent not having accessed the refugees!?

You're mocking me... aren't you

First to explain the strange earthquake.... it was a magic vault that Vic explored and suffered the pangs of death when the magic blasts killed his two hereos and other support troops. I stayed away from them.

So... my strategy. First of all, it might not have happened had I been smart enough to realize that the teleporters underground start out being razed. Silly me never noticed it in my playtesting. My evil plan was to rush to the refugees quickly. I used a frog to help me on day one, sending him through the teleporter on day 2, capturing the eastern town on day 3 and the southern one on day 4 and ending day 4 part way down the channel. I picked up the mines and towers along the isle as I went down and ended up next to one indie city on day 7. Completely surprised to see it controlled by indies. I was hoping to catch him in the city with only part of his troops and ambush him. Things went quite well when on day 8 when I captured one town and then picked up the refugees. Then on day 9 I killed his scout that came down... he was a day too late. And then as I moved the nearly two full stacks I discovered the teleporter was razed and I let out a great moan.

At least I controlled the underground. Built a builder, got lucky that it only took 2 days to build him and not 4, rushed him over and got the teleporter rebuilt and then 13+ armies emerged on the surface.

Above ground I used a classic cavalier rush capturing the resources to the NE before capturing the outpost so my capital benefited (and I got champion guild from it). I swept through the southern pass, picking up another knight and minatour from the hut, researched explorer as quick as I could and when my 13 stack from below emerged I was also bringing 4 cavaliers, my beefed up hero and 6-8 other support troops. It would have been a mighty battle above ground into his realm on or about day 14.

Meanwhile in the underground I had been building armies and exploring the islands, picking up resources. A lucky hero emerged down there with control animal so the polar bear helped me clear things out. In the end it was not necessary but going quite well so Vic was in trouble on several fronts.

Two of his mistakes hurt him badly, not getting the refugees faster... and losing troops early in the magic vault. Everything else I saw him doing was good. Flyers with regeneration, the fire storm blasted me and hurt me, he got one of the quests above ground. All in all Vic was doing several things well. Especially, playing reliably and fast.