For some reason, I was on a roll that day. I had won a couple of games prior to playing God"O"War, and did not really expect to win this one. You see, it has been, for the longest time, a well known fact that I was one of the weakest players in the Nati on of Kul Tiras, and that God"O"War was eminently better than me. But I have fun playing him anyway. Once in a while he falls asleep. Anyway, I digress!
I am usually a fairly mediocre player, not really pressing the attack, and not committing all my troops to one attack, but like I said, I was on a roll this day. I started off pretty normal, going fast for knights, but he still beat me to them. Anyway, I started immediately to build a Dwarven Inventor, and produced a couple of Hoppycopters and scouted him out a bit... what I saw put the fear of God (no pun intended... well, not a big one anyway) into me... he already had like 4 barracks, and a HUGE army easily at least 4 times as big as mine! Oh shit! Well, I don't think he really noticed my flyers, so I pulled them back a bit, and covered the most likely routes of attack with them... and then started to scheme. You all probably know that women can be pretty devious when we want to be, and I really wanted to be! So, I came up with the thought that I had to take down those barracks, which were heavily guarded by guard towers... hmmm, how to do it without getting slaughtered? Well, I decided that my only hope was to get 'em down with Dwarven Demolition Teams (DDT's!). So, now that I had a plan, it started looking better and better... I had not relied on DDT's for a long time, so I did not think he would expect me to use them excessively. Heheh! I immediately set 2 peons to building 4 Inventors, so that I had a total of 6 inventors available. I started pumping out extra peons to chop lumber, cause I am always short on lumber when I use the damned DDT's and Knights and all the other buildings all at once, right? Then I started to pump out the DDT's, and storing them up... I then sent in the flyers to scout, and found that he had nearly doubled his army size! OH SHIT!
Now I was starting to get worried, I had hardly increased my army at all... So I started sending DDT's over to take out his arrow towers, but ran into a small problem... mages, Archers, and Lots of guard towers supporting each other! SHIT! OK, time for a diversion... I rounded up all my damaged units... from border skirmishes and stuff, and sent the over to attack his mage towers... 3 of the damned things...on a suicide mission... they just blew right by all his knights with hardly a hit, but got mauled by the towers, BUT! sure enough, his troops followed me to kill what made it by alive. Leaving of course, a largely unprotected major army encampment! BOOM!! I sent so many DDT's in there that I couldn't see from the smoke (well, not really, but you getthe idea!)I targeted towers at first, and then started sending in teams of two teams each targeting barracks...and I managed to get them all over the course of a few minutes! I was using stray teams to blow up large numbers of troops as I could, but I couldn't get near the archers to get them...Archers may suck singlely, but when they are upgraded and in large groups they really suck to get near. So I rounded up even more knights and sent them over to kill archers, running right through exploding barracks and demolishing knight-guts, and straight to them damnable archers...taking heavy losses, but totally devastating the archers ranks!
Anyway, I was getting no responses from him at all, other than a defensive troop deployment to try and stop the demo teams...which he succeeded admirably in, by the way. So I send over a friendly little message, something along the lines of "BOOM, BOOM B OOM BOOMdittyBOOM!!!" to which he replied "Bitch!" Then he screwed me and invaded me with invisible mages! I HATE that! And to top it all off, he started sending in DDT's of his own! He demolished 3 of my Inventors, and left a fourth burning brightly! DAMN! Well, I had asked for it I guess...I set up another Inventor, and repaired the burning one...Damn him to hell! OK, Time to retaliate...
I started pumping out the knights in earnest, and built a couple of extra barracks, for a total of six. And then for the first time in ages, I moved the silly flyers and found a couple of his mining camps...haha, totally undefended! Too good to pass up, so I sent in a group of 6 knights and had them stand ground right in the center of his gravy train...muuhhaaaahhhhaaaaaaa! Piles of peon guts! Anyway, I wiped out every damned peon there, and heavily damaged the hall with DDT's, but finally got thrown back...but, I noticed that his attacks slowed WAY down after that! Heheh!
Anyway, he was still attacking me of course, but you know what? I was not really paying it attention at all, just replacing my losses and defending where I could, but concentrating hard on my goal of killing his peons. By this time I had totally mined out about 2 mines, and was going strong on another 2 or 3. But he was harassing those peons a little, and I did not have the troops to spare that much, so I threw up a bunch of towers and hoped he was too busy to tear them down! It worked fairly well, but I still spent a lot of money replacing peons and towers...oh well, the ravages of war I suppose. I kept checking out the other mines, and couldn't find where he was getting his gold, until I went back to that mine that I had hit before. SHIT! , he wa s there and going strong, and was defended now! Well, I had the answer for that...2 DDT's later, and there were 8 little decaying sets of knight-bones on the ground, pushing up daisies! In ran other DDT's, taking down his hall, and then the knights went in and killed all them peons schlepping their ways back to his castle way off in the distance! Hehe... Well, he was on the ball that time, and knights arrived in short order, totally eradicating my small force easily...but it was an easy price to pay for me...I derived immense satisfaction from the devastation of that little foray, cause I knew that he had no more money coming in...or so I thought! Anyway, I needed to stop and regroup a bit, and make some more troops, and low and behold, in come more damned mages! Tons of the fucking things...20 or 30 at least...my farms were TOTALLY devastated, I think I had about 6 left, all burning merrily. SHIT! I really hate that! Well, I started an army of peons to building and repairing, and started building up all the troops I had lost...I had more sheep running around that town than the English countryside! Dammed Polymorph! You know, the insidious thing about polymorph is that it is quiet! Just a quiet groan, and an extra sheep running around... .You comeback to look for those troops, usually when you REALLY need them, and they are gone! DAMN!
Anyway, I decided to renew my DDT attacks, and to serve up some of my own sno-cones (Blizzards). He had his castle walled in with at least 12 guard towers, most of which could back each other up. I couldn't get a demo team anywhere near it...mage time! I had not been using my mages that much, just a few blizzards on his peons and barracks, and troop concentrations, but I had never tried to assault his main town. Anyway I trained up half a dozen mages or so and sent them over and blizzarded his tower line something fierce...I didn't even look at the mages again, figuring they were history anyway. I started attacking his secret peon line at a mine he had dug out of the trees in the upper right corner...Damn, I forgot all about those mines...no wonder he wasn't hurting for money damn him! Anyway, he left the entire front of that clump of trees undefended, so I just parked a mage there and blew Sno-Cones at him for a while, before he figured out what had happened and killed the mage...it took him a whilethough!
I was attacking on foot now, wearing him down cause he was getting no gold again so I thought... and I finally managed to take down his damned mage towers...with a few well placed demo teams...and then mopped up the stray mages that were just standing around... I really don't think he even noticed me doing it! I took down that hall in the trees, a couple of times, and then found he was mining again at that mine in the middle left, the one I had attacked a few times, and gotten thrown out of...but there was only like 2000 left in the mine, so I just left it alone.
I never really had to worry about gold cause I had gotten the middle...just like in Garden of War, there are 4 mines in the center, around a small pond. I was mining them for all they were worth, and I had tones of guard towers up for defence. But at this time, he decided to take out my gold, and blizzarded the whole damned center, missing like 6 peons and 2 towers...I ran off the peons to hide, cause they were all I had and I had absolutely NO money! I mean none...less than 200 gold...what a fuck up on my part! I had not been paying attention, and he had taken out one of my mines in the lower center, but I had kept right on producing, spending money like water...it takes a lot of money for a large scale war dammit! anyway, I managed to kill all his knights and archers and varied other troops, but only after my center hall was toast, and all the towers were gone...DAMN. I was in real bad shape...but I guess he was too, cause he didn't press his advantage. I schlepped those poor peons back and fourth , keeping a small contingent of knights with them all the way, untill I had about 1500 on the bank, the re-built my hall closer to the 2 remaining mines...I had had them running around the pond to get gold from the top and left mines, while my hall was at the bottom mine...that really wasn't smart, but I felt safe with all the towers, and in a way it saved all the peons I had left, cause they were far enough away for me to grab them and stop em from running into certain death. I built a hall, and repaired it with the other 5 peons...it went up real fast, and then I started pumping out peons at All my halls...I had like 4... and sent them up to start mining...pretty soon I was on track again and producing foot troops, cause I was convinced he was going to come roaring into my town and demolish it. But he never showed, so I sent some mages up to his main town, and lo and behold, it was WIDE open...no troops, one tower burning like a candle, and a great big white castle burning merrily away! He hadn't repaired it from my last attack, which had been almost an hour before! HA! Needless to say, down came the castle, along with his stables, his smith, tons of farms, and a dwarven inventor, all sorts of stuff...the wizards lasted through two blizzard attacks, and took down several buildings with lightning, before they were wiped out, cause I was attacking with foot troops at a different location. I love diversions that work!
Anyway, at that point it was over...I mopped up a bunch of stray troops (footmen! haha) tore down all his remaining buildings, and I sat back to chase down a star peon or two...I couldn't find em, and he keeps sending messages saying I will never find em. ..so I started my peons running all over the map, putting up scout towers at every intersection, and I started producing gryphons as scouts too...I was back to rolling in money...and I still couldn't find any peon! Damn! I kept looking at the minimap, hoping for a flash of movement, but nothing...there was only a very small section that was still blacked out in the lower left, but I had mined out the mine down there as my first expansion, so I didn't bother with it...
All of a sudden, the "We are under attack" warning went off, and I started laughing, thinking he had gotten tired of running his peon around and was attacking one of my scout towers...I look up, and the whole friggin bottom of the minimap (my main city) was FLOODED with troops! I mean FLOODED! What the fuck!!! All my troops were scattered around the map, in groups of 4 or less, so I rounded em up and sent 'em running back, and started producing troops like crazy in town... God"O"War had somehow managed to get about 40 footmen in to my town, and was running rampant, destroying everything in sight...I couldn't believe it...and more just kept coming! Ask him if you think I am lying...by the time it was all over, he must have sent in like 60 footmen!I was toast! I kept pumping out knights and killing footmen, and finally my troops arrived from the other side of the map, and I really started to kick butt...but took heavy losses doing it! He took down my barracks, which didn't help matters much, so I was using demo teams to take out troops in my town...sometimes taking out farms and stuff with them...boy was I PISSED! Its 2 in the morning, and I am screaming at my computer screen things like "Shithead!! Bastard! Where the fuck did you come from!!??" Stuff that was totally un-ladylike! My poor mouse was smokin', and I was going nuts hunting down troops...I was reduced to footman cause he took out my stables, and that didn't help, and all I kept thinking was "Christ I hope he don't go after my gold!", which was in the middle still, and heavily defended by towers, but not that heavily defended! If he had take out my gold, I would have bean easy meat!
Anyway, I finally get on top of the situation, and start cursing him on the messages, and flew my hoppycopter over that black spot...lo and behold, the entire area lights up! He had sneaked a peon down and set up a mill and chopped and blasted his way into the other hidden mine! He had tons of farms blocking off places, and four barracks clogging things up, but hardly any defence. I got back on my feet fast, making more barracks, a stable, and a bunch of farms...I produced a shitload of archers and knights, and sent them in and tore the place down...what a comeback! for both of us...I never realized just how close it was until I got a look at that compact little town! Its a good thing he didn't have his castle left of I would have had 40 mages running around turning my entire town into one big Sno-Cone! That it his style, he loves his mages. By this time he knows its over but lets me keep tearing things down, which I do with rangers and blizzard (Rangers are great for taking down towns, cause the can hit things with out having to be told to go attack them if they are not right next to them). We start talking, ranting and raving over this game, which, by the way, lasted for 4 hours if it lasted a minute! You know, just going over high points, and great attacks, and stuff...We dropped to Kchat pretty quick and I RAN for the bathroom, cause four hours is a long time to be sitting still and chugging Pepsi!
This was a GREAT game... I made it last by taking out his barracks early, which set him way back, then kept him on the defensive for most of the rest of the game, although he made me grind my teeth to do it! Check out the screen-shot. I really hope Shlonglor puts this story up, cause it is a great screenshot! I have never seen anything close to it...though I hear ChrisM had a long game too!,
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TheWitch
