The map : MAP.zip (16 Mb)

The 2 mods : MODS.zip (6 Mb), this includes Alexsa Modpack 1.01 and Worthy Heroes 6.10

All the 73 turns : TURNS.zip (7 Mb), no password required (this was a llamaserver game)

This is a nation of dragons living in cold lands. Blue Dragons, atuned to the frost and unlike their cousins, with a deadly freezing breath.

The nation in itself is easy to grasp as it has really a small number of commanders and troops.

Starting with the troops, there are the Dragenheim Hunters, the Archers and the Warriors, as well as some human serfs.

What makes them strong is that these Size 3 units all have 2 attacks with rather decent damage (an attack from 17 to 19 dmg, and a bite attack for 18 or 19 dmg). They all have a decent armor (14 body armor, and 9 to 20 head armor) and some good HP (22 to 24). Their map move is correct (14) and they all have mountain survival (proved useful several times) and what makes them really better than normal troops are the native elemental resistances (FR 6, CR 10, PR 6).

When it comes to combat stats (att/def), the warriors are clearly better (12 att, 13 def) whereas the hunters and archers are below average (11 and 9). But what really makes the difference is that the warriors have a shield and a long weapon, and in all the tests I made that increased their survivability by a lot compared to the hunters.

Also, the hunters/archers are 30 gold each when the warriors are only 35 gold. So, when I built armies, I focused almost only on the warriors.

They also have cap only sacreds that are monsters. And as such are super expensive (180 gold each) … They are size 4 units with 42 HP and 20 prot, but, sadly, they don’t have the elemental resistances of their smaller brothers (apart from a CR 15). However, when it comes to firepower, they outclass anyone : 3 high damage melee attacks + 1 armor negating breath attack !

Just look : first attack is a magic spear that deals 24 dmg, second a bite for 22 dmg and third a tail sweep for only 15, but affecting the whole square ! The breath attack deals 7 AN cold damage, range 6, lingering 1 turn, and as much as 5 ammo. Enough to deal severe damage to anyone without cold resistance.

And that’s it for the troops (well, there are the human serfs, some human naked archers not worth of any more details).

About the commanders, their scout is also a sacred assassin with a net and a spear. 105 gold apiece is a bit expensive, but may be it could be good if you want to play assassin.

The Seithmathr is the cheap researcher : W1 + 1 random (S/D/N/B), meaning 9 RP for only 85 gold. Their random astral can also make them communion slaves, and their random blood can also be used with that in mind, or as blood hunters.

The Chieftain is a bad researcher and is good mostly for commanding troops (60 leardership, there’s nothing better in the dragenheim army). However, he has a random F path, the only way to access F for Dragenheim.

Then comes the Shaman, a sacred mage A1/W1 with 11 RP and a random (A/D/N/B), allowing a potential A2.

Finally, before the cap only ones, the Sea raider. A1/W1 with a random (A/W/S/D), opening a potential A2 or W2. However he has sailing 50 for size 3 troops. A small bonus that proved quite useful in some cases.

Now, the cap only mages, that are the core of the nation : the Broodmaster and the Bluewing.

Both of them are already very good thug/SC chassis. Sacred, 52 HP, 3 attacks + 1 breath attack, fear 5, flying, 13 natural protection … and native W3 mages and H2 priests. For the broodmaster there’s also a native B1+N1, when the bluewing has A1 + a S/D/N/B random. They also have a nice humanoid chassis that leave space for every kind of magical items.

However, here comes the very interesting feature of dragenheim. At Ench 5, there’s a ritual “Awaken Dragon Blood”. W5 and only 16W gems. Only a Bluewing or a Broodmaster can cast it … but when he does it, he transforms himself into a Blue Dragon. A big one, like the pretender chassis.

And there you enter in dreamland … 125 HP, 18 natural prot, 18 MR, W4 mage, and all the things the humanoid form could do, but better : 3 melee attacks and 1 breath attack that has a longer range and affects more squares and does even more AN damage. And of course they are sacreds. Also they can shapeshift into a human form where they get back their initial magic path but with +1W. Can be useful to do some site searching or do some tricks and shennanigans. Last but not least, they fly for 30 map move.

Also, compared to the pretender chassis there are a few differences : they have the Defense Organizer (2) trait, meaning they increase the PD by 2 each turn they spend in a province ! Very good for raids as every raided province will have a free 2 PD. They also have the Tax collector trait, meaning a raid deep in ennemy lines will still collect the spoils.

Finally, both a bonus and potential problem : they have Heretic 5. This means that every turn they spend in a province they kill 1 full candle of dominion, either yours or enemy. So if you put them in defense of your territory they’ll kill your own dominion … but if they attack in enemy dominion, this is a nice ability to reduce it.

So that’s it about Dragenheim … they also have other national spells, death ones that allow to summon some other kind of big dragons. However, those are not sacreds and the spell require a high D level with some crosspath that are difficult to reach (D4F2 or D4N2 or D4W2). In believe that the only reliable way to have them is with a pretender, or to summon a Kokythiad with a random D bluewing (I never tried it in this game).

After this long and detailed presentation of Dragenheim, a short summary of the other nations.

Ochreil

A strange nation of 3 eyed creatures living in caves. They always looked odd to me, and I have no idea from where their creator got the inspiration …

In any case, it is a nation of size 2 and 3 creatures with 3 eyes. All of them have at least 2 and sometimes even 3 attacks. The size 3 ones have pretty good damage for so many attacks, ranging from 17 to 20. The sacreds on their part have 2 attacks, including a 29 pierce magic damage… all in all, they are very killy with a pretty decent armor (usually 15). You don’t want to stay too long in close combat with them…

However, it must be considered that, despite the armor and good HP (more than 25 for the size 3), all of their units are quite vulnerable to elemental attacks : -3 FR, -3 SR, -3 PR, but +10 CR. So, resistant to cold but bad against everything else. The sacreds are a bit different with +25 CR and +10 PR but -5 FR and -5 SR. The sacreds also have a 5% built-in regeneration, useful against chip damage.

About the mages, there are a lot of different ones with different paths and crosspaths, but they are pretty much all level 1. Some common mages can get random D2 or A2 but you have to get to the cap only to have a native N2 or W2 and other level 2s. They can also get to some level 3, but this is very rare… They can have everything except blood, but F and S are pretty rare. All in all, their overall low magic path makes them not so good combat casters as there are not many good lvl 1 combat spells. I suppose the crosspaths can help for forging or point buffing, but I was very unimpressed overrall. The best I saw was some skellespamming for the D2 randoms, and flying thugs.

Last but not least, every single one of Ochreil’s units have Recuperation. Still a good thing, making them almost impervious to disease and making afflictions less of a problem. However, their best thugs, the Heralds, are cap only and have to fight commander points with the 2 other expensive mages…

Also, I have no idea if they have national items or spells, I just felt threatened by the troops and sometimes the thugs.

Drakonia

Drakonia was the original EA nation on which a civil war erupted, seeing the split between them and Dragenheim. They are a dragon nation, just like Dragenheim, that can also awaken the True Blood with Fire and Nature dragons. However, in spite of those similarities, there are several major differences.

First, of all, their basic troops are really not as good as Dragenheim ones. A lot of humans – slaves – or mixbloods (humans with dragon blood). All or those are overrall plain average human troops. However, the mixbloods have some of the native elemental resistances we can expect from dragons, with +5 FR, CR and PR, and better stats. As such they should probably be the bulk of the armies when magic comes online … you also have amongst them, humans and mixbloods alike, good 2-handed weapon and dual-wielding damage dealers.

The sacreds are decent but nothing like dragenheim ones. Size 3, two decent attacks, decent armor, good elemental resistances like the mixbloods, they can sure hold their ground but won’t break the game. Drakonia can also recruit dragon riders, that ride small drakes like the ones you can summon in conjuration. These can add some poison or fire breath attacks to your army.

About the mages, they have casual F2 and N2, and can get F3 and N3 with the cap-only mages. Otherwise, they have a diversity of other level 1 paths with everything but S and B. The cap-only mages are like the Broodmasters and Bluewings of Dragenheim, but with fire breath (the redwings) or poison breath (the greenwings). So those are pretty good thug chassis, and they can also be transformed into the big bad dragons of their kind with the right spell in Ench 5.

Swarmhive

The first of the hives. Those are giant ants (from size 1 to size 4) that can have some freespawn. Some of the ants are like normal ants, but bigger, and some elite ones can even carry some weapons and shields. Some humans are also fanatically devouted to the hive queens and can be recruited as sacreds (the only human troops, in addition to some human mages and commanders).

About the ant troopers, they have several specific abilities :
– All of them are magic beings, which makes them vulnerable to a number of spells
– Also, they are all naturally blind and so can’t be blinded, making Solar Brillance a cast anytime spell
– Several troops have the “Pincer latch” melee attack : it’s an acid attack that can destroy armor … can be deadly against a thug and I lost some vine shield (and the vine shield wielder) because of that
– A number of them have the “Mental shock” attack. It’s like mind blast, but weaker : the paralyze effect is really short and the damage is capped by 1. Also, both effects are MR negates. However, the real power here is not to kill things (though it can happen), but in that a successful hit on a mage will interrupt your spells. So when fighting against them Antimagic is almost mandatory … when you have 100+ mental shockers in the enemy army it can be a real problem.
– Last but not least, they have several bonuses for siege, both in attack (troops and commanders) and defense (mostly commanders). That can really turn the tide in a war with lots of sieges.

The nation can also grow underwater with some native amphibious troops (but you need to go UW first).

About the mages, they have some nifty human S1/E1 mages with an additional random element (F/W/A). Those are the workhorse or their communions with many options. Then to the more powerful mages, you can have some random E2, native N2 (the cap only Hive Princess) and S2 (the cap only Hive Queen) too. Amongst those, you can have some random S3, rare E3s and the N2 can be N3 in rare cases too. Most of the leaders also have a “Mind blast” attack, like the agarthan mind blast.

Last but not least, they have a leader with the Mason ability. As such, they can upgrade their fortresses to citadels, with 750 defense and +2 commander points ! This means that if played properly they can spam a lot of research mages …. and given some of their siege defense abilities, their mage forts can be pretty tough to crack.

Abolethive

And now Abolethive. They are also an Ant nation, but entirely amphibious and dominated by Aboleths. This means they are like R’lyeh but instead of triton slaves they have ant slaves. As such, they have all the advantages of the ants, as stated above for Swarmhive, including the better forts with +2 commander points, and some of the best mages of EA R’lyeh. Also, they don’t do in humans, only ants and Aboleths.

Compared to Swarmhive, their mage lineup doesn’t have the fancy human mages but a lot more high level S. Many S2, some W2, the best mage you can get is a A1 + W3 + S3 with some randoms that can push him up to S5 or W5. The other mages have also access to most other level 1 paths but this is usually random. They don’t have any E or B however.

But, the main strength of Abolethive compared to swarmhive, is that they can buy in any fort the “Marmecoleth supplicant”. These sacred ants are natural communion slaves … and given you can recruit a lot of them wherever you want, Aboleth can easily gather huge communions that have access to several paths (W/E/N/D/A and sometimes F). And given they are sacred, they can also get a bless which opens additional strategies.

Being slaves is the main drawback of this nations as they usually get a low morale. The leaders have max 12 morale, and non sacred troops have a max of 11, and the freespawn get down from 9 to as low as 7. Quite vulnerable to fear plays, especially for the easy-to-scare mages.

Bandar Log, Ermor

Well, if you are a dominions player, you probably already know what they can do …

About Bandar Log, I never had a border with them and they were killed very early by Drakonia and Swarmhive, so not much to say here.

About Ermor, well, they kill all of their population to transform them into undead beings … scary freespawn to whoever is scared of undeads. Now that I write this AAR, I have already fought Sceleria in another game and had time to devise strategies to beat them. But at the time of this game, I wasn’t confident at all and wasn’t sure how I would deal with them if a conflict ever happened…

A daunting enemy

Ochreil had announced his intention to destroy Ermor as soon as turn 9. At that time, I was far from ready to help him and I could only guess the war from the movements on my border.

On turn 14, Ochreil was besieging a fortress adjacent to Ermor’s capital, and all of my scouts were giving alarming reports on the size of its empire. So I sent ambassadors to every other player to see what they knew about him. The answer on turn 16 was what I had feared : he had had a huge expansion and was as big as 25 provinces, and probably close to 30. Given I had only 15 on my part, that was quite scary.

Also, on turn 15 he took that fortress and looked poised to besiege Ermor and kill him once and for all. Given Ermor gives 9D gems per turn, and given how powerful he already was, I felt him a contender for early victory. Also, I started to study his nation and I understood that he was one of my worst possible enemy along with Ermor.

Indeed, all of Ochreil’s troops have native Cold Resistance, and most of them have many attacks that hit quite hard. His sacreds in particular with a 29 dmg magic piercing attack were particularly scary. What it meant for me was that my dragons would be weak against them : Ochreil’s units could easily kill them and were almost impervious to their breath attack, the most powerful tool in their arsenal. Also his bless included +4 attack, meaning his sacreds would hit 100% of the time.

A reckless plan

So I took some time to think about it. If I chose to expand on my part, using my dragons to crush one or another nation, I would grow, true, but Ochreil would still be bigger than me : they had taken too much advance in terms of expansion and there was no way I could cope with them.

And I saw what was my other choice : stop them before they would be unstoppable. But … given they were already so strong, and given their advantages against me, how would I do that ?

The thing is that I had my crystal sorceresses. Without them I would never have thought about that plan, but they had some qualities that changed everything ! Indeed, Ochreil’s troops have native shock vulnerability, and with a large enough communion, I was pretty sure I could wreck them. However his sacreds had +10 shock resistance … but given their vulnerability that would be only +5. So sure they wouldn’t be vulnerable to the side effect of the spell, but a direct hit would still hurt them bad.

So, given I knew I could win battles, it occured to me that with Ermor and Ochreil at war, it was my two worst enemies using their ressources to kill one each other. So if I could save Ermor, given how Ochreil had beaten him up, I had hope he would continue the conflict until he could have his vengeance.

Thus, I watched closely how the conflict evolved while preparing for the war. My hope was that he wouldn’t take ermor until I was ready, meaning until I had researched my dragon spell as well as Communion (Thau 1) and Thunderstrike (Evo 4).

So on turn 19 he finally started his move to take Ermor’s capital (the only province left to Ermor) and I gave the order to my first Dragon, Vortigern, to attack.

The first objective was to force him to divert ressources from the siege of Ermor : I wasn’t fully ready for my communion (3 more turns were needed) and I hoped Ermor could hold the siege at least 1 or 2 turns.

My attack surprised him and started to upset him as, turn after turn, his plans started to crumble. I quickly had my first 3 dragons active and my raiding began to be a real problem. At first, he decided to forget about Ermor and go after me, but he was confused and the turn after (probaly after seeing my sorceresses waiting for him), he went back for Ermor while another strong-enough party started to counter-attack further north.

So on turn 23 he was besieging Ermor and, to my delight didn’t breach it immediatly. On my part, everything was ready, I moved my army to save Ermor.

Outmaneuvering Ochreil

After the skirmish in Obocte, Ochreil was feeling overly threatened by my dragons. Fighting one of them was one thing, but fighting 3 or more at once was another. He was also facing a newly raised army of undeads coming from Ermor.

As such, he had stopped his raidings and gathered all of his forces in the fortress of Grey Barrier (104). Gathering such an army was understandable. More than 250 units was something to be accounted for, and if there ever was a battle, he wanted to win it.

However, the place he had chosen for that gathering was like a gift to Dragenheim. Indeed, from there, he needed at least 2 turns to reach his northern provinces … which meant they were free for raiding.

In fact, the geography was in my favor. He didn’t have mountain survival and so the moutain provinces and mountain passes completely hindered his ability to move. And while my dragons were free to raid, my main army was still up and had almost recovered its former strength : a now 20-strong communion thunderstrike party along with 85 warriors and truebloods. Sure, some of them were weakened by disease but it’s likely that the enemy didn’t know it.

So the 3 raids fought turn 28 were a success and one of them even destroyed a small raiding party. Turn 29 saw 4 other raids, taking all 4 provinces when he only took 1 with a small party of sacreds. Ermor on its part had taken back his full cap circle and was already teasing the other Ochreil’s positions.

That turn 29 saw also my main army raid just close to his northern fortress. This way, I was threatening to take it and I was pretty sure he would send his main army to help there. That wasn’t my intention however, I only wanted to make him lose time. Indeed, if I ever had done that, I took the risk to let him take my Sorceress factory and I certainly didn’t want him to do that.

Also, turn 29 Abolethive told me that Swarmhive was attacking Drakonia, and as such he felt free to, finally, join our struggle against Ochreil.

So by turn 30, my plan had perfectly worked. Ochreil was indeed losing time to move north to save his fortress from … an attack that never occured. I had outplayed him and whatever happened gained time. But with the attack of Abolethive on his flank, Ochreil knew he was now in a tough situation and I was really wondering what he would do.

The Spoils of War

And this turn, I received a desperate message from Drakonia begging for help. He was of dragonblood and I felt compelled to answer him. So I studied the situation carefully, and my reasonning was that I had, some way, beaten Ochreil. He knew perfectly well that in a 3 vs 1 he was fucked, and given the large territory I had conquered, I felt I could propose a truce.

So at that point, my plan was very simple : make peace with Ochreil and move south all of my dragons along with a new army, to raid as much of Swarmhive as possible. Also, I had opened another border with them on the north of my empire, and I could then attack him on both sides, and hopefully join forces in the middle, making my empire fully connected from north to south.

But for that I needed Ochreil’s agreement. To ensure it, I defined the new borders so that he could retake 2 provinces. I hoped he would feel like he gained something in the process, and wouldn’t try to negociate.

All in all Ochreil was now down to 20 provinces, and me up to 20 too. Ermor was alive and healthy (as much as undeads can be…), and with Abolethive on his flank, Ochreil had other other fish to fry. He had every reasons to accept my truce and the new borders.

I also felt a bit bad about it as I hadn’t told any of this to Abolethive. I hoped he wouldn’t feel betrayed, leaving the coalition just after having pushed him into it …

In any case, when turn 31 arrived I was still worried : would Ochreil accept my proposal ? His army now gathered in the north looked stronger than ever, 400 men strong and even for my main force difficult to beat. Sure I was on the verge of having my 7th dragon out, but would it be enough ?

Turn 32 was the final relief : Ochreil accepted the truce and a NAP-1 : I was now free to expand against the ants. Against them, I believed I didn’t need any crystal communion : dragons and warriors would be enough. And so that turn I sent a declaration of war (“Your actions against our cousins are unforgivable. Dragonblood is sacred and must be protected at all costs !“) and gave my orders to start a large scale invasion …

Also, whatever happened, I believed I had to keep my big crystal army ready, as a constant warning to Ochreil … that’s why I did let them on the border for some time.

Finally, I told to Abolethive about the truce and suggested him to do the same : let the undeads and the 3-eyed cavemen fight one each other !