Leaderboard October 2020: Mega Lo Mania & Darkmere

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by Harry

Your score is still 0, as you dont have any men left.

ok! I sent a load of men to fight against the enemy. I think I had quite a few left but I didn't return them to the 'base' (for lack of a better word). Is they why they weren't counted? I don't quite understand otherwise how I can have zero men left. If I had zero, wouldn't that mean that I was made extinct and I couldn't have won the epoch.

[Harry]

You have a pool of men who can be sent to an island. When that pool reaches zero, you cannot attack a further island of that epoch, but if you send your last men from the pool to the last island of the epoch, all is fine (gamewise).


You cannot recall men living on an island to your pool. The only addition to your pool are the 100 men epoch completion reward. The passwords given for the 3 competition epochs are are hacked - you cannot achieve these numbers in real.

[arcanist]

Made it to Epoch 3 from a clean start, with 55 extra men. I haven't quite developed a feel for deeper strategies, yet, but here's what I've learned so far:

• There's no difference between winning an island with 1 man alive, or 100. (Prior to Epochs with stasis.)
• Win each island with as few men as possible so you can carry unused men to the next Epoch. You can retry islands if you fail.
• Split men between research/mining and idle to let your population grow.
• Offensive weapons seem better than defensive in the early Epochs. You can flatten enemy armies with weapons from 1 Epoch ahead.
• Making an alliance with your neighbor leaves the other two to fight while you grow.
• Base placement affects available resources for weapons. These are persistent so you can retry an island in a different spot if needed.
• "Ergonomically terrific" designs have optimal resource usage.
• You need at least 1 of a resource to reveal researchable weapons that require it.

It's an interesting take on RTS. I haven't yet reached the point of exhausting resources and needing to grow beyond one base.

[manossg]

Progressed to level 2 of Darkmere, despite the monumentally clunky controls.

I found out that in the WHDLoad version there are no restrictions in saving the game, thankfully. You just have to choose 'help'.

[Biscuit]

Great summary arcanist. Finally got round to Mega lo Mania. I had no idea how many men was enough and randomly threw 100 at the first island and it was really easy. So I can better this score later. Very much a numbers balancing act. Needed to be careful when multiple attacks came on the last island.

Had to work out which resources were for what on the fly. Seems some are for defensive weapons, others for offensive, not sure about the rest, maybe for advancing eras. Probably in the manual but I skimmed it.

The interface it actually very good, with pop ups that tell you stuff. Almost feels modern.

22

[Biscuit]

Improved the 2nd epoch and had a go at the 5th, definitely gets tougher. I threw a lot of guys at it. Especially the 3rd island where I played as a super fast arms race. How are you managing on so few men Harry? That's impressive.

Also noticed that the minerals are different on each square. And to use the blueprint reader, doh.

Epoch 2 = 130
Epoch 5 = 270
Total = 400

[arcanist]

Currently getting my butt handed to me on Epoch 3.

I haven't quite figured out the strategy behind expanding to multiple tiles. Since research doesn't carry over from previous tiles it has quite a penalty. I'm going to try exhausting resources more aggressively, rather than hoping for better research options.

[Biscuit]

I didn't do any expanding to other tiles in epoch 5 because of the penalty to how fast you can advance. But I did need to restart an island because the tile I chose had no minerals for offensive weapons which meant I couldn't ever attack. Neither did the only accessible one next to me. Bit annoying.

I've found that so long as you can work out which weapon will be a game winner, just focus on getting that and defend if necessary. My strats are pretty weak though.

[Harry]

Originally Posted by Biscuit

How are you managing on so few men Harry? That's impressive.

Also noticed that the minerals are different on each square. And to use the blueprint reader, doh.

I completed Megalomania several times before and know how to play.


As i wrote before: Attack the little wandering armies and try to make alliances with the gods of other islands so they can not build further outposts (early).


And possibly replay the islands several times, especially in some islands of later epochs you can only hope that the others extinct mutually with the nukes. (I didnt do that in epoch 8 in this play, didnt have the patience.)


The blueprint display shows you what resources to mine, I assign the workers with these ratios to produce eg. aircrafts fast.


Also you can overcome high level weapons with lots of men, you can defeat a spaceship with 250 unarmed men (a bit silly but works).


And dont forget to enable auto slow in the options.

[Biscuit]

Originally Posted by Harry

As i wrote before: Attack the little wandering armies and try to make alliances with the gods of other islands so they can not build further outposts (early).

I guess this is what I'm missing. Haven't tried doing it yet, I go straight for the base.


Was playing Darkmere again and I'm sure the town map is messed up. You can go south from the armourers and walk around the block and end up on the other side of town at the juction of East Road and Fennel Street. But you can't get back that way because it takes you somewhere else, where it's supposed to go. Very odd. The armourers should have been on a dead end but I suppose it makes an interesting short cut, lol.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by Biscuit

Was playing Darkmere again and I'm sure the town map is messed up. You can go south from the armourers and walk around the block and end up on the other side of town at the juction of East Road and Fennel Street. But you can't get back that way because it takes you somewhere else, where it's supposed to go. Very odd. The armourers should have been on a dead end but I suppose it makes an interesting short cut, lol.

Darkmere seems to be nearly impossible without maps, with all this clunkiness/backtracking involved! :S

Been making some good progress on level 2, but I don't think I can make it before the end of the month and I don't want to walkthrough my way out of this one.

[Biscuit]

@manossg
Sounds like level 2 is tricky. I'm under the impression the stuff after that is quite quick. I've no idea if I'll make it to the end but I have some more free time this week and am going to give it a good go. Almost out of the town now. I had a nasty incident with the armourer where I accidentally (honest) stole his axe and ended up killing Dewotty the barbarian. So decided to replay some of it. I really thought I'd paid for that axe. Dumb mistake.

[arcanist]

It took me a while to figure out why an enemy was out-teching me in Mega Lo Mania. He had a full spear army before I'd even finished researching them. If I threw lots of men at the island he'd still have spears before I'd mined enough materials to make them.

Turns out if you reload (with the level code) the computer chooses different starting spots on the island. I picked the spot the spear guy had been using before and, lo and behold, it yielded a blueprint that required only passively collected elements. Put 25 men in, blitzed research, and then armed then all within a couple of minutes for an easy victory.

This would feel a bit exploity if the game didn't incentivise carrying as many men forwards as possible.

[Biscuit]

Todays Darkmere adventuring included disappointment that it won't let me eat human flesh. Surprise that the clear potion is spring water and the brown potion is whiskey, which ups your health (what are we teaching the kids lol). And disgust that the yellow potion is, well, best described as a sailors emergency drinking supply. They wanted me to drink that too.

Also found a couple of orcs so dumb that one killed the other one while trying to hit me over and over again. Anyhow, am in the forest now with a very angry skeleton. Making another map.

Not gonna beat Mega lo Mania but will definitely try to get a score for the last epoch.

[Biscuit]

I'm sure I'm really close to getting out of the forest and onto the last level, must be on the last quest now. Something something mushroom queen, ha. Sadly there's no chance I'll make time to finish before the end of the month, must be a good few hours to go. I'm gonna finish Darkmere anyway though as it's been strangely addictive. Should have got into it quicker. Looking forward to the next games now.

[manossg]

I just found out the damn path leading to the grandfather, so I also have no chance of completing it before the end of the month. I will also take my time, endure the backtracking and complete it because of its superb atmosphere. I also struggle with Odyssey and have to start working on Spindizzy...aaaaaargh, so many great games, so little time!

[Biscuit]

That was the same path I missed. I had explored the whole level before I found it and had to backtrack to unlock events. It was a mistake to make it so hard to see.

Yeah, there's too many fun games out there. I'll never finish enough of them. Haven't gone back to Odyssey yet, but plan to finish Darkmere during November.

Now I need to go see how well Spindizzy works with a dualshock controller.

[arcanist]

I made it to 5-2. Had the southern island locked down before learning I could only reach the north with aircraft. By the time I'd relocated my base and built as many fighters as I could - a whopping 15 - the AI swatted them like flies with their 200 defenders.

I guess I'm more of a Settlers guy but it's not a bad game.

[Biscuit]

That's further than I've made it through MegaLo in the past. Wish I'd had more time to give it a proper go this month but I got very caught up in Darkmere.

Another round down. No one able to put up a fight against Harry's big score. Moving on to a couple of very different games to these.

[manossg]

Congratulations to Harry and to all who participated, time for the next round and some Spindizzy!