Solium Infernum: No fighting in the war room

Since this got the top of the page, I'll add the Prestige totals too.

Prestige Totals at start of turn 33 (with current earning rates from Places of Power)

Duke Meserach - 199 (+5 per turn) BANISHED TO THE ABYSS
The Usurper, Marquis nife2o4 - 171 (+3 per turn) - excommunicated, ineligible to win through PrestigeBANISHED TO THE ABYSS
Baron Bat Looking Demon (EduardoX) - 109 (+3 per turn)
Marquis Deadbuffalo - 98 (+5 per turn)
Baron kat - 81 (+0 per turn)
The Outcast, Lord Legion (Saccaroa) - 75 (+5 per turn) - excommunicated, ineligible to win through Prestige


The state of play as of the start of Turn 33, with the banishment of Marquis nife2o4 and Duke Meserach. (10/15 Conclave Tokens)

Legend

Territory
Teal - The Outcast, Lord Legion's (Saccaroa) territory
Blue - Baron kat's territory
Green - Baron Bat Looking Demon's (EduardoX) territory
Yellow - Marquis Deadbuffalo's territory

Places of Power
P1 - The Summit of Mount Erebus (Prestige +1, +2 Deceit roll)
P2 - The Temple of the Damned (Prestige +2)
P3 - The Pit of Tartarus (Prestige +3)
P4 - The Altar of Abomination (Prestige +2)
P5 - The Temple of Lust (Prestige +2)
P6 - The Tower of Pride (Prestige +1, +2 Tribute roll)
P7 - The Iron Staircase (Prestige +1)
P8 - The Palace of Gluttony (Prestige +2)
P9 - The Great Wheel of Pain (Prestige +1)
SM - Stronghold of Meserach (Prestige +3)
SN - Stronghold of nife2o4 (Prestige +3)

Legions
Lord Legion's legions are presently invisible, and hence not on the map!
K1 - Disciples of kat
K2 - Abyssal Striders
B1 - Disciples of Bat Looking Demon
D1 - Slaves of Deadbuffalo
D2 - Legion of the Damned

I have an additional update, Turn 33, Bat Wing Demon is eliminated by Legion. Oh and a conclave token is drawn :)

EDIT: turn 34 I'm eliminated, GG Legion, got me to do the heavy lifting versus nife2o4. Although he agreed to excommunicate with you so...

Oh there's a bit more, not content to leave things as they are, Kat tries and frames another player with a ritual against Pandemonium. Since Legion is already excommunicated, I can only assume this is targeting me... As in the player who is no longer there. I also should have seen Legion getting closer last turn, but failed to notice the hex border change.

Actually I thought Nife had good chances to survive your attack, and I wouldn't have minded him to, 'cause he agreed to go after Kat's stronghold, and he had the writ of rescindment card, which was a nice insurance. I even targeted your legion with a combat deception the turn before the excommunication, to weaken it while Nife was enacting his side of the plan, but the ritual failed.
Of course I didn't mind this result either, it got rid of a rival for free while keeping another busy during a crucial turn. It was a win-win situation for me.

I'm starting up a new game (probably additional to deadbuffalo 's). Thread over here.

AAR:
Build: Marquis, Lust, Paranoid, Wrath 0, Cunning 0, Intellect 1, Wickedness 2, Charisma 3.
I have mostly played with Destruction rituals in the past, so since I was most familiar with them I figured I'd stick to them. Also Paranoid because I've played this game more than twice. And think I only failed a roll against a deceit ritual once.
From my initial threat assessment notes : "Saccaroa is probably going to deceit it up, but is otherwise in a corner until he gets flying." which is pretty much what he did (flying to attack meserach, flying to capture the tower of pride, flying to attack EduardoX). I also summed up nife2o4 as a good target to pick on based on not only his proximity to a valuable place of power, but also because I think he only started with 2 charisma, which even with the +2 roll, can leave you weak. Kat I ignored because slothful is a matter of dice on if you can get a fast legion fast enough or the puzzle cube, and neither were there on turn 1. Eduardox I expected to be an economic powerhouse, but I think he just got too involved with kat early on.
Turn 4 I was just waiting on more flames for charisma 4...From notes: "nife2o4: has kept moving for prestige, took the +tribute PoP this turn, labeled himself "leader". Turn 5-8 for me was just hoping to get enough hellfire. and then miscalculating my tribute consolidation and having to wait until turn 9 to actually bump to charisma 4. At turn 10 my threat order list was "nife2o4, legion,kat,eduardox, meserach. I think I got this right for the most part since I never ended up casting a ritual versus someone who wasn't my top 2 threats. I worked with EduardoX to coordinate demands against nife2o4 in return I would put pressure on kat, which didn't really work out until the last bit of the game, and by then Legion was clearly the real threat. When Legion stole the tower of pride I was about to take, I was a little bit frustrated, and worried that a protracted vendetta with nife wouldn't work out for me, but somehow I stole the tower of lust in exchange for the palace of gluttony. This is pretty much how I ended up in a position to kill nife2o4 whenever he or I got excommunicated, and I was alright with that. I really hoped that when the beast came to Legion it would take the tower of pride back, and I stood in position to grab it as soon as possible, having blocked legion from easily retaking it. But then the excommunication vote happened, and I got ready to take out nife, thinking that he would probably go for me as well being the closest threat and to avenge his loss in our vendetta. I initially tried to rally a no vote, sure that Meserach was voting yes, but quickly switched to yes myself. kat and meserach voted no it turns out which was 6 yay, 6 nay. I'm still baffled by kat voting no there for the extra prestige when he was in dead last prestige wise. All remained quiet for a while, and I started increasing wickedness and then charisma, finally offering kat my demand that I owed Eduardox. Were it not for having to deal with the coordinated insurrection, I would have smited kat with 2 rituals in one turn 4 wickedness and the eye of vengeance for +2 more make quick work of level 2 legions. I don't know who was responsible for all of them, but there were a number of attempts to take away the infernal engine from me. A level 4 artifact and the +3 from paranoid would really require 2 amazingly opposite rolls, maybe Legion with the +2 Deceit roll pop and high deceit would have been able to pull it off. That or whoever had the amulet of shadows (kat). As nife said, unless he had a different perk, it was 50/50 on the destruction ritual against him which is pretty good in this game. On the last turn I expected that Legion would fly over from EduardoX's stronghold after building a powerful combat card. I bought the praetor blocking combat cards figuring I had at least one more turn. I didn't expect the infernal juggernauted legion marching over, having missed the hex border change on the prior turn.
I'm impressed with Sacarroa's level 6 wrath AND level 5 deceit, that's like 60 ichor and 30 darkness/souls in less than 35 turns, probably more than 2 ichor per turn + all the legions you bought. Clearly I should not have let you just hang on to the Tower of pride. Then again, I think you only made 1 demand, and never gave into one, so you've had a quiet game until you're ready.
Final stats: 0/0/2/4/5: I feel like I don't get how to bootstrap in this game effectively since both nife and legion were clearly ahead of me stat wise. Then again they both had the tower of pride for a while.
Good game all, a special thanks to Meserach for his amazing maps. I specifically requested orange though and he ignored it. This game is as good as I remembered it, although maybe that's because I didn't get pandemonium cube killed on turn 20 this time. I'm definitely interested in playing more of this.

what is up with that? I tried throwing that ritual twice, but it never worked :/

AAR: (game’s not over yet but by now Kat knows everything I’d have any interest in keeping secret)

Build: Lord, Lust, infernal cardinal (+2 to tribute rolls), Wrath 1, Cunning 1, Intellect 1, Wickedness 0, Charisma 3.

General strategy: the prestige game serves mostly as a distraction to keep players busy in the early-mid game. But since everybody can opt out of it at will, the only value in being a prestige leader is that you can defend and wait for the others to take action, instead of having to go on the offensive. Even then, being the prestige leader is only useful if you can defend your stronghold, otherwise it’s just painting a big target on yourself.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a developed build can easily weep the floor with an undeveloped one, and the only way to develop is tribute. So the dominant strategy would be a turtle focusing on tribute acquisition, except the other players (should) know that, and the turtle is very weak to early aggression. The other way to react to a turtle is counter-turtling, but that makes for an incredibly boring middle game and a chaotic endgame resolved mostly by random luck.

So my goal for the early-mid phase was to play the prestige game just enough to stay in the middle of the pack and avoid attracting too much attention, while developing as quickly as possible, and expecting everybody else to do roughly the same. So I spread my points to various attributes to get a starting legion strong enough to capture some unclaimed POP early on, and sacrifice rank (mostly useless if you aren’t going for vendettas/blood feuds) to buy charisma and a tribute enhancing perk.

Early game goes pretty much as planned, everybody stays close enough in prestige except for Nife. I don’t worry though, to become the leader he has to be wasting precious order slots, so by midgame he'll be weakened and hopefully taken care of by somebody else. I wouldn't even interact with him except he has the +2 to tribute POP, which I want to capture if at all possible. I reach an agreement with Meserach allowing him to take the nearby useless POPs, which are costly to capture and give way too much prestige to the holder. I position my newly acquired Darkwings legion to capture Nife’s tribute POP whenever the opportunity presents itself; I raise INT to 4 (which gives me another order slot and a ritual to boost my diplomatic rank, useful for making demands with some weight); I start making demands to Nife but he pays the tribute; a couple of turns later the beast frees the POP I’m after, and I immediately capture it without having to get into a vendetta.

Unfortunately my Darkwings legion is wiped out by an event on the same turn, so I’m not confident I can hold the POP. But the others don’t seem as interested in it (or in me, nobody ever tried to loot my vaults). At this point I’d be happy to cruise to the late game staying close to the pack in prestige, maybe capture the Temple of lust later, stay flexible and see what happens.

Then Meserach starts acting weird. He takes the prestige lead when it’s way too early, and more importantly he does so by capturing POPs that give him +5 prestige per turn, which means it will be very difficult for others to catch up later. He makes a demand to me, and I’m wondering if he wants to lose on purpose, to give away one of his POPs and restore some balance to the prestige race. So I make a combat card for a nearby legion and prepare to move. But no, apparently it was an honest vendetta. I still have no idea why – he was already ahead in prestige, and he didn’t try to take any useful POP I was holding. He kills my disposable legion, whatever. But now we have two prestige runners (Nife and Mes), and I don’t think I can get rid of both without excommunicating myself, so I speed up my preparations. I was already building up my stats (I reached 4 cunning, then 5 wrath, then 5 charisma, then 4 wickedness, getting to 6 order slots and improving my tribute rolls), and I focus on improving wrath to 6, and cunning and wickedness to 5, to acquire the advanced military rituals I’ll need.

In the meanwhile I draw the “vote to excommunicate a random opponent” card. I play it hoping the event will target Meserach (or Kat, the big unknown). Instead it’s Nife, but that’s not too bad: if he’s excommunicated and eliminated, it will be one less stronghold I’ll have to conquer, and maybe he’ll take someone else with him. I try to persuade the others in this direction, but Meserach and Kat vote against the excommunication (I don’t know why, being too far away either ahead or behind the others none of them should want prestige by this point).
[continues]

GG WP and all hail our new overlord Saccaroa!

Next turn Nife contacts me offering an alliance: he has a “writ of rescindment” card, which removes excommunication from all players who don’t hold the pandemonium. He proposes we excommunicate ourselves, I go for Meserach’s stronghold while he goes for Deadbuffalo’s, and once they are eliminated he’ll play the card. I was going to wait a bit more to raise my cunning and wrath to 6, but this is too god a chance to pass. With two excommunicated players the situation will be more confused, coalitions less likely to form, eliminations quicker. So I agree, asking for a couple of turns to prepare, and suggesting he goes for Kat instead of Deadbuffalo – better deal with the unknown by proxy. I fire and keep active an INT ritual protecting me from cunning (it will be a waste, nobody will try anything) and I spend those two turns amassing enough tribute for a few high level combat cards and for some infernal juggernaut rituals. When the agreed time comes, I cloak my legions with a deceit ritual, buy a new flying one, equip a legion relatively far from Meserach’s stronghold with the Vadrasomething carpet (an artifact that allows the legion to fly and attack unexpected over the river barrier). Oh, and I don’t exactly excommunicate myself, I try to frame Meserach. The chances of this succeeding are infinitesimal, but by this point I’m swimming in hellfire so why not take a shot. If I luck out I’ll eliminate him and excommunicate myself later, when there will be fewer players remaining and it’ll be safer; if not, no problem, proceed with the plan. I equip my legions and stronghold with cards, but for the moment I don’t use the infernal juggernaut, ‘cause I don’t want to raise too much alarm should the cloaking ritual fail.

In my first turn as an excommunicated fiend I immediately attack Meserach’s stronghold with my carpet-flying legion, and I contact Deadbuffalo explaining to him the “writ of rescindment” agreement with Nife, and suggesting he does not hinder me – eliminating Meserach would be to his advantage as well. I also encourage him to attack Nife, but not immediately: it would be best for me if he waits until Kat is eliminated. My goal is to reassure Deadbuffalo, divert his attention, and hopefully buy one or maybe two turns of his inaction.

Unfortunately Deadbuffalo doesn’t wait, he immediately eliminates Nife. When I see the next turn log I realize it’s just as well: Meserach is out, nobody planar-locked me (I was expecting at least one), my vault wasn’t raided, nobody corrupted my essences. I should be able to eliminate Bat looking demon on the next turn, and to infernal juggernaut a couple of legions, so I won’t need the writ of rescindment after all.

Everything goes according to plan: Bat looking demon is eliminated, and my juggernauted legions have enough movement points to attack Deadbuffalo’s stronghold on the next turn. I can’t reach Kat because an event eliminated the carpet-legion I was flying into position; no matter, I’ll fly in another one, it should take just one more turn.

And that’s where we are now, next turn I’ll hit Kat’s stronghold with my flying juggernauted legion and if there aren't big surprises I should win the battle.
In any case, GG everyone and thanks to Deadbuffalo for hosting.

Congratulations Saccaroa! The barren wastes of hell are all yours.

3 units with infernal jugernaut at the end there, and maxed orders, nice! I think you had a nice turtle spot as well with the rivers, mountains, and one bridge.The only time I considered demanding from you I ended up either distracted by the excommunication vote, and then trying to "punish" those who voted out of line. Nice analysis of the prestige game for those who are used to playing vs only the AI.

It took me a while to find it, but the die modifier for someone's starting legion to deception rituals is +10.So unless you have a very high modifier of your own, it's not very likely to work.