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Great LP - that was fun to read especially considering the Mo Money aspect of it. Also, I feel the world is only 80% hosed up, which is quite an accomplishment.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:54
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Thanks for all the dedication and effort!
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Sep 1, 2017 02:33
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Amazing thread. Glad to have been following since near the start. I will miss it!
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Sep 1, 2017 03:13
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Congratulations to the win and a Thank you for making it through a massive Let's Play like this! Also thanks to Caelum und Bogarus 2.0 for staying in the game and keeping things interesting 
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Sep 1, 2017 10:41
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I have enjoyed reading this, very entertaining when you don't have the best internet connection.
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Sep 1, 2017 11:39
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 Dominions 4 in a nutshell, folks. Good stuff all around. Congrats on the win!
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Sep 1, 2017 12:21
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Congratulations!! It's been a hell of a journey
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Sep 1, 2017 18:23
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Accidentally winning is the best winning. Awesome work on the LP.
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Sep 1, 2017 20:56
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I'm sad the LP is coming to an end just because that means I wont be able to get Dominions fix till whenever the next one starts.  But seriously, grats on coming to the end of one hell of an LP. This one looked crazy even by Dominions standards.
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Sep 1, 2017 21:06
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But...what became of Gath? What became of the nation of Gath? Did it endure forever? Did the vampires retire to the countryside? Did the number of wolf police decrease?
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Sep 1, 2017 23:11
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Cathode Raymond posted:But...what became of Gath? What became of the nation of Gath? Did it endure forever? Did the vampires retire to the countryside? Did the number of wolf police decrease? I hope the afterword is set to Don't Forget About Me.
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Sep 1, 2017 23:40
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Well, that was quite an adventure and quite a game! I’m a little bit amazed that we made it through both the entire game and then the entire LP, wow! The actual game itself started in the beginning of June, 2016, so this goofy little LP has been part of my life for over a year. Crazy! In this final post I’m going to take brief look back at our progress over the course of the game, and also give some thoughts and feelings on Dominions in general. So, let’s take a look at how far we’ve come! Turn 113 We did it friends. We hurled our enemies down and ground their bones into dust. Wailing, gnashing of teeth, and declarations of fealty are ignored as The Might of Zionism and the Nation of Gath ascend to supremacy. Who needs friends when you have ultimate power? It was quite a journey getting here, and victory required both a lot of micro-management and a lot of luck. Mostly luck. I think most Dominions 4 players will tell you that random luck enables more victories than anything else. Let's take a look at the micromanagement, though! Here's the final turn's message report screen:  This is familiar  Wow the whole thing is bigger!  ...    You can see why I only ever posted the top bit! Not only are there a million things going on in every corner of the world, there are at this point hundreds and hundreds of unique mages and commanders that need to be organized:  A small snapshot of commanders in our empire!    Love those golem.    God, that's like thousands of gems worth of items! But look where that dedication got us!  I mean, just look at the ridiculous armies we're marshaling here.  Demons, Vampires, every badass thing you could ask for!  Stupidly strong empowered units!   I was prepping this guy to nuke whole armies of bird-men.  And this friend to Rain Stones upon our enemies until the cows came home.  Or just Master Enslave them!  Unlimited resources and magical power! Yes, we're a far cry from where we were when we started this game.  The world was so large, scary, and unknown! We can chart our rise in the final set of score graphs. Let's take a look:  Provinces. You can see where eating Staling Pangaea hurtled us into the lead.  Forts. I mean, forts doesn't mean too much at turn 100+, but we'll include it.  Income. Look at how Utterdark ruined the world.  Gem Income. More territory = more gem income.  Research. Man had a really solid research lead early on. However, he failed to utilize it effectively against us.  Dominion strength. LOOK at that Xibalba bump! Even at the end it still stands out as extremely impressive. He really could have won the game there.  Army Size. Remember now the difference between recruiting your armies with gold like Caelum and Bogarus were, and summoning them with blood sacrifices as we were. So now that it's over, how does it feel? Strangely empty, to be honest. Our victory built with such gradual yet intractable momentum that it became pretty clear we would win quite a while ago. The exact moment I couldn't say, but if I had to guess it would be when Pangaea started to stale turns and it became clear that the player wasn't coming back. We were leveraged to take advantage of that like nobody else, and, oddly, nobody else even attempted to. Victory in Dom4 doesn't always feel or play out this way, not at all! My first victory was in one of the first couple of games I ever played, and it was a break-neck rush for Thrones against an equally powerful opponent that had me on the edge of my seat until the final turn. It was immensely satisfying. This victory is also satisfying, but in a different way. I think that the "Mo Money" game settings, in kicking things up a notch in terms of game potential, also asked a lot more of each individual player. When the potential ceiling is raised so high in order to win you have to rise to meet it, and that means some serious dedication to micro-managing, scripting, and taking note of every available opportunity. Point-and-click your way to victory this is not. This is also where I think I had an advantage in that the fact I was doing an LP of the game gave me a huge shot of motivation to keep plugging away, even when the tedium (and yeah it can get tedious sometimes) grew. What it never became, however, was un-fun. Dominions 4 is a game that, in my experience, is always fun. At any scale! I tend to enjoy the huge, epic, unlimited potential of a Mo Money type game, but it's also a ton of fun scrapping around in the early game with armies of just dozens of units. The stakes are always high, and every battle could contain the decisive moment that leads to true victory. If things don't end up going your way then it is important to simply adjust your expectations and to have fun with the options you have left. Even if some other nation invades you and beats you thoroughly, you can put in just enough effort to help ensure that they waste enough time trying to fully eliminate you that they're denied the ultimate prize. Spite is one of the great currencies of this game. So! What about this game? What are our thoughts as we stand here, looking back at the length of our endeavor? Well, we started off solid. I don't regret my initial decision to take a Double Major bless for our sacreds. I knew that Mo Money settings would entail stronger independents that would require stronger armies to defeat, and specific to the nation of Gath I knew that if we could just survive long enough to start summoning Se'irim we could field unstoppable armies.  No regrets (other than the name). Our initial diplomancy went well. We secured initial peace with all of our neighbors, but made sure that the timeframe of our peace with the most dangerous (Xibalba), expired a lot sooner than the others. We also found a powerful ally in Pangaea, with whom we marched off to war and rolled over the bats without any real fuss.  Never go to war on your own if you can help it.  Yuck, bats. We didn't gain a lot of territory in our war with Xibalba. We let Pangaea make the first moves and take the most risks, swooping in ourselves to pick up scraps. We did, however, get Xibalba's cap, one Throne, and a wasteland province with which to summon Se'irim later on. Perhaps more importantly we also proved to Pangaea that we were a communicative, dependable ally. Being in touch and easy to talk to is one of the most important things in playing this game with other people. We utilized that relationship a dozen turns later when we entered our second real war against Man. Pangaea joined us in squeezing Man from both sides, resulting in victory another dozen or so turns later.  Doomed.    It was around this time that we achieved something that went a long way towards bringing us ultimate victory: we broke into Vampires.  Remember this guy? He may have won us the game.  Sidebar: It was my experience in this game that taught me that Vampires as they exist in vanilla Dominions 4 are bullshit. They're way too strong and way too cheap to be Immortal. Once you get the train running it's almost impossible to stop. And, if you're a nation that can blood sacrifice, like Gath, then you've just unlocked monstrous power. I now only play in games where there's some kind of mod that nerfs Vampires. We sat back and built up our exponentially growing power-base for another dozen turns before we entered into war with Bogarus. Pangaea, our esteemed ally, started to stale shortly after, and the rest is history. Retrospective Q&A Was it worth it? Yes. Finishing a game of Dominions is a lot of work, but it's worth it. Those Mo'Money settings, tho? You have to adjust your expectations, but I think they're super fun. Epic as hell, massive armies crashing into each other, all that poo poo. Game moment you're most proud of? Probably figuring out that Golems don't accrue Horror Marks, then utilizing my resources to build New Model Armies of kitted out Golem thugs that generated their own unlimited Imp chaff units. I was really proud of myself Most thankful for? Every single one of you people who read this LP and encouraged me along the way. I really, really did not want to succumb to the "Dominions LP curse" and fail to complete it. The fact that I ended up winning makes it all the sweeter, but finishing was my one goal. Special Shout-outs? Yes! To Libluini for being an awesome, dedicated player, good friend, and ally. He's a really solid guy who you can trust to keep his word and act in good faith. I really enjoy playing Dominions with him. To Ramc, who jumped into the driver's seat of Bogarus and took over a huge, complicated, dumb empire in order to help keep the LP interesting. I really, really appreciate your doing that, friend. You are a wonderful person and a deadly opponent (thus me never beating you 1 on 1)! A shout out to the nation of Man's player Ubaten, who, if I recall correctly, was playing one of his first few games. You played really well considering, and you stuck it out for a long time after it became clear you would lose, which is a really big and good thing in this game! And finally a call-out for Afrosquirrel, who played Pangaea. Your abandoning the game really threw things out of wack and sealed my victory. Getting tired of a game is fine, but if you can't find somebody to sub into your nation then at least go AI. Shame! Anything else? Oh man, the thread art! Thank you so much to all of y'all who made such fun arts. I linked them all in the OP and they make me so happy But what became of Gath? The end of the story is for you to decide for yourself. From my point of view, however, a nation that subsumes itself into dark, occult magic and blood sacrifice, summoning demons, devils, vampires, and all manner of other Horrors from beyond the Veil, is destined to become a tragedy of its own making. Gath, and The Might of Zionism, may have proved victorious in the end, but they sold their souls along the way. The Doom Horrors lie in wait, out of sight, out of time, patiently. I'll happily answer any questions you have about the game to the best of my ability!  Yes. How are u fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Sep 4, 2017 |
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Sep 4, 2017 03:56
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Also, shameless plug time: I'm starting a couple of new Dominions 4 games, one of which is a vanilla no-mods game and the other of which is a Mo Money type game. If you've ever wanted to try Dominions now is a great time to do so! Link to game announcement post
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Sep 4, 2017 04:05
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Congrats on making it to the end of the long road.
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Sep 4, 2017 04:07
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Congrats. It seems like you did a solid job of diplomacy early that set you up well to take advantage of Utterdark and Pangaea staling, and then you had some magic diplomacy to not get dogpiled once you worked on those leads. (Not to mention the diplomancy to keep Arcane Nexus up for a million goddamn years with nobody caring.)
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Sep 4, 2017 04:40
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Long time coming, but it's finally ended and I've enjoyed every single post of it. Dominions lps are just magical for some reason, and I applaud the effort (holy hell what a goddamned effort it must be to do an lp like this) more than I do the result, even. Thanks very much for a lot of entertainment and your hard work.
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Sep 4, 2017 09:36
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Glad you made it to the end! It's been a wild and fun ride.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:47
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I cannot believe this LP has been going for nearly a full year and now it's over. Great job How are u.
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Sep 4, 2017 10:55
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Great LP!
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Sep 4, 2017 11:31
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Great LP, thank you for all the effort you've put into it!
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Sep 4, 2017 11:39
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Thanks for the LP!
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Sep 4, 2017 12:14
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Excellent LP! Glad we got to see it all!
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Sep 4, 2017 13:02
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Congratulations to you for finishing this LP and to everyone who fought through the tedium and saw this through to the end.
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Sep 4, 2017 13:12
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Wonderful LP. There really is no other multiplayer strategy game like Dominions and I think that's why it makes such fascinating LPs. I was wondering, is there a mod opposite to no money? I'm curious because the early game is so interesting that it might be cool to see people using smaller scale tactics. But maybe the balance couldn't work because some nations don't need money in the first place to do well?
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Sep 4, 2017 13:35
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The closest you could get would be massively decreasing the speed of research and maybe lowering the number of magic sites. I think this'd also decreases the number of slaves you'd get from blood hunting, but if not than blood would likely need to be banned.
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Sep 4, 2017 14:35
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I am sad this is over. This was one of my solid standby lps. Good job How Are U?
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Sep 4, 2017 15:12
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Vauron posted:The closest you could get would be massively decreasing the speed of research and maybe lowering the number of magic sites. I think this'd also decreases the number of slaves you'd get from blood hunting, but if not than blood would likely need to be banned. I am 99% sure it does not reduce bloodslaves. An interesting corollary is that mo money settings makes blood slaves less valuable as gathering them loses you massively more gold, and they still won the game . Blood is hosed up.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:17
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Magic site frequency has an impact on blood hunting. It's just largely irrelevant. You could also run a mod that removed most of the high-level spells. We played like that a few times in Dom3, and it was good. But you run into a problem of not having effective counters to some spammable things.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:29
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Bug Squash posted:I am 99% sure it does not reduce bloodslaves. As research gets better and boosters are built, all magic resources become exponentially more valuable. Gold is incredibly valuable early game, but it doesn't scale up as the game goes on beyond the ability to recruit mages and build infrastructure. On top of that, Utterdark went up and hosed over people who were gold recruiting their units, since those units started to desert en masse.
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Sep 4, 2017 15:51
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Bug Squash posted:I am 99% sure it does not reduce bloodslaves. Well, point one would be that gold tends to be massively less valuable as a game goes on anyways, as even nations that haven't bothered to get into blood (and any nation can with some effort), will generally switch over to a gem economy - especially as things like Armageddon and Utterdark hit. Point two would be that anyone can win if they're ignored like howareu was. Even ignoring everyone else paying no attention to the slight issue that he had vampires + blood sac (which is a combo everyone should attack immediately, alliances be damned), anyone doing anything remotely like proper scouting should be noting the sheer disparity in size between nations. Yes, Dom games can get draining (momoney doubly so) as they go along, and yes, good diplo can help, but there's a point where you need to stop just going along with another player, regardless of how friendly they are.
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Sep 4, 2017 16:00
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How are u posted:
Thanks! To be fair though, I'm only playing Dominions like this because no way in hell could I keep sneaky poo poo straight, considering I tend to forget things left and right when playing. (I'm one of those guys, you know the ones, the ones who switch their brains off when playing video games.) Also, since your LP is now over, can I just post my own leftover-turns to show what happened on my end? Last Saturday I was this close to record more commentary, but then I had to visit relatives, so it was a bust (On Sunday I played Space Empires V for 12 hours straight, which didn't help exactly, either) I still want to finish my video LP, though! This weekend it looks like I can finally sit down and record stuff without some emergency stopping me.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:33
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Lord Koth posted:Well, point one would be that gold tends to be massively less valuable as a game goes on anyways, as even nations that haven't bothered to get into blood (and any nation can with some effort), will generally switch over to a gem economy - especially as things like Armageddon and Utterdark hit. To be fair, by the point in the game where it was painfully obvious that Gath was winning (after Arcane Nexus was inexplicably ignored for a dozen turns or so) I can easily imagine many players saying "If I attack him, I can keep him from winning! And then... then the game won't end... maybe... maybe I'll just leave him be..."
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Sep 4, 2017 17:40
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:To be fair, by the point in the game where it was painfully obvious that Gath was winning (after Arcane Nexus was inexplicably ignored for a dozen turns or so) I can easily imagine many players saying "If I attack him, I can keep him from winning! And then... then the game won't end... maybe... maybe I'll just leave him be..." In my case, I was also not keen on suiciding myself against someone who was literally two steps from my capital, thanks to the hosed-up geography we settled on. Having Gath on my side meant having the entire north secured (after Xibalba's untimely death) and it also lead to having a secure eastern side thanks to How Are U convincing Pangaea to not invade me while I was busy in the south. And my western side was a confused mess of impassable mountains and choke points, rather unpleasant, but for both sides so again, basically secured. So when the players to my south kept going AI and therefore "donating" their territory to me, I finally secured that side too simply because there was nothing left. Turning west (since by then I was basically south of said hosed-up western mountains and the way was free) towards Bogarus was the logical choice! And of course, the more powerful Gath became, the less sense did it make to turn on him for the same geographical reasons. Pangaea was a different matter: I was simply so tied up in the Bogarus-war, I completely missed the point where Afrosquirrel gave up, which cost me multiple thrones and finally, the game.
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Sep 4, 2017 17:49
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I got onto this LP only about two weeks ago and consumed a lot of time I should have been working - it was great and although tempting to try and get into Dominions, I just don't have the time to do it justice. Thanks for the great read and look forward to the next one.
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Sep 4, 2017 18:25
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Thanks for a great LP How are u! It's been a wild, long ride, but I drat well enjoyed it.
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Sep 4, 2017 21:03
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I just found this LP yesterday and gave up on my social life for the day to read all of its fantastic absurdity. Well done!
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Sep 4, 2017 22:06
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The practical opposite of a Mo Money game would probably be a Bad Draft game played on the worst possible magic settings with no one having innate blood access. Unfortunately Bad Draft is a huge pain in the rear end to set up last I knew (you literally have to craft a custom mod with everyone's terrible nations at the end of the draft), and then playing it would be a special brand of Fun as virtually no one has any access to anything and has to stump it on terrible traditional units until someone lucks into actual magic access and probably just wins the game from snowballing.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:10
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On the other hand seeing someone end up with every single type of elephant and nothing else is very fun.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:20
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It's totally possible to win the game without Blood, just really hard if there's someone else exploiting Blood. See section MA Sceleria, paragraph Skeletons.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:23
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SIGSEGV posted:On the other hand seeing someone end up with every single type of elephant and nothing else is very fun. Or the nation of bannermen. That was fun too.
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Sep 4, 2017 22:33
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