ES visit: War Story

Me – Zeus
Swinger – Hades

versus

Kidd – Hades
Lance – Odin

Map – picture highlands, but without the shallow crossings. In other words, teams start on opposite sides of a river.

Swinger teamed with me in my first game, saving my butt, and this game was the same situation. (my second game) Kidd is a very good Age II player, as many of you know, but I had no idea how good Lance was. I was doing a pretty standard Age II build up, with a small boat boom going on the water. You can only have one fishing boat on a school of fish right now, which forces you to spread your fleet out all over the place.

I sent a chat message to Swinger, inquiring if we should take the water. He was all for that, and so as the third age rolled around, I began to make ships from several docks. I found Lance’s dock and began to pick off his few fishing ships he had around. I didn’t know that Lance had already transported some units across the river until he built a Hill Fort near me, which is the Norse Castle type building, which is actually pretty easy to take down if it’s unprotected. Weak though it may be, I wasn’t ready to be fighting a land war in my town, so his infantry and ram units began pushing me back.

Capt_Kidd had also landed on our side of the river, right between Swinger and me. Swinger and I were cut off from each other, so he couldn’t send any help. Kidd was now beginning to harass both of us with archers and some siege units.

However, it was not all bad news. Swinger had gone on the offensive. Since there wasn’t much going on in the way of naval warfare, Swinger invoked a very cool God Power called the Underworld Passage. It opens two very eery looking caves, allowing your units to go from one to the other in the blink of an eye. He was able to transport units from his town over to a spot on the enemy side of the river, and began to build a base there. He was right between the two players, and went undetected for awhile. They knew he had used that power, as the message flashed on the screen for everyone, but they didn’t know where he used it.

Meanwhile, back in my town, I built a fortress to help protect my town center. I wasn’t in real bad shape at that time, having expanded my town after finding another settlement, which are those areas where you can build TCs. The flood of Norse infantry and more importantly, rams carried by two beefy guys, began to take its toll. My fortress went down in a heap after a fight and repair battle, and soon to follow was my original TC. Battle Boars, a Norse mythological unit, began to appear around this time and went crazy snorting and kicking my villagers all over the place. It wasn’t pretty, and I was in big trouble. My second town center was now getting hit by Kidd’s Catapult fire, so it was doomed as well. But, all was not lost.

Relatively unscathed, Swinger flared me a path out of trouble and into his town. I fled my crumbling town, chased by a group of Kidd’s archers, jumped into Swinger’s Underworld Passage, and was transported to the enemy side of the map where he had saved me a settlement area to build a new Town Center. I began to build but was set upon by Kidd’s infantry, who were doing some serious damage to my unbuilt structure. My lone Minotaur, which came through the Underworld Passage too, was head-butting and hacking them up pretty good, but again Swinger helped out with some units of his own to kill off the attack. Finally, with a new TC up, I began to rebuild. It was a crazy few minutes of running and an intense fight.

My original town was in ruins, and being taken over by Lance. Once he had destroyed my town centers, he started building his own on those settlement areas, which increase your population limit. I was lucky to escape, and could now seek some vengeance.

Swinger’s army and a couple of my units went into Kidd’s town and began to put the hurt on him. Most of Kidd’s attention and military was invested on the other side of the river, and the attack went very well. Swinger had a brick of archers that were protecting some catapults, and my lone Minotaur. It wasn’t long before his TC went down, along with many of his other buildings and he resigned.

Swinger now swung north, up into Lance’s town. My economy was somewhat back on track now, so I pumped some hoplites to help out with the attack on Lance. Swinger’s siege pounded away at his defenses and our combined forces overwhelmed him. Swinger’s archers mowed down infantry and archers alike, while my hoplite’s took down buildings, got in the way, and looked ever so pretty.

That was pretty much the end of things. Both Lance and Kidd had their main towns and much of their economies wiped out. Swinger had held the fort over on the our side of the river, holding his original town through-out the game. Good game guys!

Many thanks to the ES crew for letting me sit in!

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