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Ugh, I almost forgot this again. Libuico Turn 53 Finally, Nuklearmonkee's AI leaves the game for good! And it spares me a lot of headache after that failed underwater-invasion made the AI recruit tons of shamblers. His rule is broken and replaced by lazy independents, which will not move from their home province ever.  Xanrick does some scouting.  Snakehaters!   Even more Snakehaters are dealt with. You won't tread on me anymore, heretics!  A lot of walking bones in the north. I should probably do something about them, just in case Xanrick can't save me again.  You know, I can't for the life of me remember why I moved this single Earth Reader. Based on experience, I'm guessing it was a really bad reason.  I really hope I didn't do this just to give those three ants a leader.  Some more left-over units in Florien. I probably should do something with them.  Back in my capital, there are lots of units waiting for me to do something. Maybe I should finally go out and burn some skeletons?  My flamespirit is supposed to gently caress the battlefield up with this spell. I have no idea if this will work, or if the last non-fire resistant units of my army will make a beeline to the danger zone the moment this spell drops. Just one way to find out, I suppose!  Some more research to help me out. But at this point I'm slowly losing hope and even my vanity is barely making me turn in my turns.  Just another way of burning things. Libuico Turn 54 Some good news at least! With that air barrel procured via diplomacy, I finally can take over that underwater-province for good! Also  , little scout. At this point I have no idea what I've done with the barrel, so this will be a surprise for all of us together.  My blind fire does something. But without scouts, I only know it was kind of neat, like fireworks.  Somehow three undead horsemen fall over themselves trying to get my scout.  OK I still have no idea why I moved that single mage, but I guess I can use him as a focus point to unite my armies. Or something.   Oh. I just send it back. Well, that was boring. Libuico Turn 55 My armies are assembled! And without parts of them accidentally running into hordes of undead! Perfect!  Just imagine three more screenshots with mages and magical units like this one.  Time for some house keeping!  Also time for dumb puns. Of course.  Libuico Turn 56 The turn time forgot.  Literally the only noteworthy thing happening this turn.  OK, next turn my shambling horde of abominations will finally make contact with the enemy. Finally!  And while my horde advances, time for some on-the-side recruiting.  Both of Nuklearmonkee's old forts are starting to churn out raiders.  I don't have a lot of money, though. Some fire gems are sacrificed to change this temporarily. Libuico Turn 57 Again not much happening. Except for the battle. Let's see what happened!  Yeah, yeah. But what happened with my army?  Some useless fire ants squished in exchange for a Nemedian Sorceress? Hell yes! We're back in business!  Time to go on a wild rampage! (Also pictured: My raiding force slowly taking form.)  Some emergency money was made.  Oh, I nearly forgot. All those ants died because my mages set everything on fire. Libuico Turn 58 This turn Xanrick and ChickenWing are clashing again and I do my best to do my part.  Enemies burn down so fast my own units get away without losses. Good.  Good.  OK, this is weird. Let's take a closer look.  ChickenWing's pretender roughing up Xanrick's poor scout. OK.  Interesting.  Welp, anyway. Time to tear down ChickenWing's stupid temple over there. Retaliation for invasion, here we come!  My raiding force is almost ready. (Most of the units are in the other fort, though.)  This is my research while all my mages are running around. Pretty bad. Pretty drat bad.  Raiding force, assemble! Libuico Turn 59 A message from our ally and another battle.  Xanrick tells me a bunch of stuff.  Oops. Looks like Santa is coming early and he brought lots of coal for us!  Here is coal raining down on us.  Here is the Big Elf teleporting back to the North Pole.  Man this hurt.  It hurt  At least I still have my raiders.  Welp, time for some damage control.  I tell Xanrick stuff. OK, this is getting a little unwieldy now, let's continue this later. Libluini fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 22:10
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Libluini posted:Well, you need to force a moral test before they route, obviously. The moral test is that thugs are op plz nerf 
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Apr 16, 2015 23:47
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Kitfox88 posted:The moral test is that thugs are op plz nerf abloobloobloo a pony with a firebrand killed my 50 pd  e: he said, whilst being reamed by even less equipped ponies
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Apr 17, 2015 00:31
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Kitfox88 posted:The moral test is that thugs are op plz nerf Or perhaps include one (1) mage and have him cast a spell!
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Apr 17, 2015 00:43
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Kitfox is just eternally upset at things that counter PD.
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Apr 17, 2015 03:36
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I started putting mages of the deep scripted for frozen heart around the places his thugs were operating but it was too late. 
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Apr 17, 2015 04:53
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 Turn 69: Fin And that's game, ladies and gents! Xanrick picks up two thrones and ticks over the number of points needed for the win! Let's take a look at what happened in our final turn.  One Nemedian, one commander. Twist the knife a little more Xanrick. BATTLES  Oh hey I forgot that we had an army in Libland! They apparently give a pretty good accounting of themselves.  That's a lot of summons. However, I have a fuckton of mages that are ready to murder some motherfuckers. He's got a better frontline, we have vastly superior artillery.  We summon a bunch of skeletons. Sorceresses buff up. Honestly, they all have mirror image, so I'm not sure why I've been doing this. Whatever.  Hannyas get fire shield. Everyone else buffs. Fire snakes advance and eat our deathponies  More skeletons. We fire off a token thunderstrike. Giant ants die quickly, fire snakes less so.  We lose a bunch more longdead horsemen. The wave of skeletons approacheth. Lib buffs all his Hannyas with phoenix power - we're going to be eating falling fires and flaming arrows in a second.  This will never fail to make me happy.  luv2javelin  called it~ Guess where the other falling fires hit  (hint there were two) Water elementals do a great job of holding the line. Line troops and skeletons are incoming, although I feel like they're going to be taking a whole lot more falling fires in the near future.  Our mages are fatiguing out. We get two casts of Horde of Skeletons, a Raise Dead  and some orb lightning. SURE. Our troops get stuck in and beat the hell out of some fire snakes.  Falling fires decimates our frontline. Fire snakes prove less scary than expected. Can't repel skeletons  The rest of the fight isn't that interesting. Lib casts flaming arrows the turn that 3/4 of his archers rout. Falling fires beats the hell out of our skeletons, but I've got a lot of them so I deal. A couple thunderstrikes land beautifully (  hnnnngh) but they only happen sporadically. Our trickle of skeletons manages to outlast their troops, and their frontline routs, followed slowly by the rest of their army. Honestly, this looks closer than it was - Lib's attrition was just too high, and I hadn't lost any mages - the turn after lib's frontline routs, my skelespammers wake up and raise some more chaff. Well that's unexpected. It's honestly a really vanilla battle. My water elementals take all of the storm demon aggro, leaving my sorceresses to summon truly ungodly numbers of skeletons. By the time they're taken down, my skeletons are already in melee range, and the storm demons are quickly overwhelmed. Also one of my nemedians is badass as gently caress and snipes storm demons with thunder strike.  welp  And, scene. Retrospective to come.
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Apr 21, 2015 20:07
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I'm super bummed that I totally forgot to keep track of throne points, because there was a castle of his I was sieging down on a throne. If I'd realized how close he was, I could have gone all in and moved everything I had there. All the same, nationdraft was fun as gently caress and I hope I get the chance to play in another someday!
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Apr 21, 2015 20:21
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Congrats to Xanrick, and congrats on finishing a Dom3 LP!
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Apr 21, 2015 20:35
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Arcturas posted:Congrats to Xanrick, and congrats on finishing a Dom3 LP! Dom4, and it was a near thing, I tell you what.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:08
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This was a wild ride. Still, I'm pretty proud of myself: Somehow I survived to the end of the game with armies prone to violently explode themselves with fire/poison at any given moment. If we do this again I'll try to remember the lessons of this game for the next nationdraft. Lesson 1: Do not mix units surrounded with poison clouds and normal units. Of course, starting in wasteland with wasteland provinces next to my cap was some serious bad luck. I'm just hoping here this won't happen again next time. Oh, another lesson for next time should be Lesson 2: If you choose magic units, try to remember you need magic leadership for them. It was kind of hilarious how the units I wanted to use the most turned out to be incompatible with my main leader. Seeing my normal units trying to walk into my other unit's poison clouds as fast as possible was also funny, even if it got old fast.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:51
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Libluini posted:This was a wild ride. Still, I'm pretty proud of myself: Somehow I survived to the end of the game with armies prone to violently explode themselves with fire/poison at any given moment. No retrospectives yet, you still have turns to post young man
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Apr 21, 2015 21:54
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ChickenWing posted:Dom4, and it was a near thing, I tell you what. The point is it's done! (And I have basically forgotten that Dom 4 is anything other than a Dom 3 xpac)
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Apr 21, 2015 22:19
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You know what, longdeads should have some fire protection! At least 5. They are all bones, it doesn't make sense they are as affected by it as a squishy, meaty target like a living human!
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Apr 21, 2015 22:31
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Turin Turambar posted:
Well by that logic they should be completely invulnerable to electricity as well Honestly, the cold resistance makes the most sense out of everything, given that you can certainly burn a bone to ash, but you really can't freeze a bone to anything less than a cold bone.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:06
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OK fine, here's the rest: Libuico Turn 60 It's still Winter and stuff.  My research: Still laughable.  Santa is visiting again. Dull surprise.  Where there is war, disease will follow.  In the north, our sad retreat continues.  South: Operation Minor Gravedigging starts. We have great hopes for OMG!  Back in the capital, some gems are turned into hats and some reserves are summoned.  This message tells you all you need to know about how I calculate my chances to stop Fat Santa. Libuico Turn 61 A lot of dire portents, Xanrick and ChickenWing clash some more and Kitfox retarded stupid poo poo global starts creeping into my territory. Great! Another unsolvable problem for me! (No its not great gently caress)  Don't worry game, I know a secret Kitfox doesn't know. (But I'm not telling it.)  Too late, you overgrown Christmas Elf!  One of Xanricks' dudes spells doom on one of ChickenWing's armies. Xanrick also wins the other two battles easily.  In the south, my raiding force starts to dismantle the Elven Empire of Extensive Evil.  The battle starts splendid. That single noble can't hope to stand against us!  Not pictured: The commander who got poisoned and died.  Welp, nothing some re-ordering can't solve.  Time to stop some recruiting!  In the north, brave Minako tries to save some fireants. At this point most of those ants are dead meat: Without mages to control them, they'll simply stand around like dumb robots until someone wacks their heads off. And I somehow doubt the province defense alone could hold an attack, even with immobile ant statues soaking some hits for them.  Minako trying to save fire ants.  In my capital, I'm busy reforming my broken army. But it's kind of hard to form something useful out of poo poo, so I'm just being a stubborn dick for no good reason here. Every sensible player would have gone AI ~50 turns ago.  Just before hitting end turn I remember I wanted to take Nuclearmonkee's last province. The province may be independent now, but this just means no wild AI-recruiting. Would be funny if I can take over the province before the game ends. Libuico Turn 61 Not much happening this turn. OMG reaches it's first goal in the southern campaign, that's about it.  Something out of my ongoing discussion with Xanrick about how to deal with ChickenWing's teleporting Super-Elf if you don't have anything.  Again we win with ease, but again one of the leaders keels over dead.  The battle starts fine, with enemies running up to my little monsters to get a fresh breath of deadly poison.  Ugh no what are you doing? Stay away from those poison clouds, lady!  Another one bites the dust. Poison is hilariously effective on vulnerable units.  OMG now needs reinforcements. And I finally get it into my stupid head to forge something to protect my leaders from committing poisonicide.  The north sees more retreating.  My original plan was for the two leaders of OMG to split up to shutdown both forts. Since every leader except my priest died, said priest has to do the deed alone, while my scout pretends he sieges the first fort. I have a bad feeling about this.  The north sees some more scouting, too. I mean it's not like I can do anything else at this point, really.  Some more ideas about stopping Santa. Ideas there are plenty, I just lack the gold, research and gems to use any of them. Libuico Turn 62 More globals going up, more battles to prolong the inevitable. A standard turn.  We lose another player.  Eyes of god: Exactly what it says on the tin.  Fort lockdown achieved. Now let's see how long it stays this way...  Scenes from the battle: The defense strikes first.  But uh oh, my monsters are regenerating!  ChickenWing's soldiers are freaked out by this and abandon the battlefield. Victory!  And of course what I've prophesized last turn is happening: ChickenWing is back in Dommen and my ants do nothing.  Only one of my units is actually doing something here. Spoiler: It's not the ants.  gently caress this Gay Earth! Time to summon more flame snakes! We won't go silent into the night!  In pure desperation, I start recruiting "normal" units again.  After fortifying her against poison, my new leader is on her way to reinforce OMG. The southern campaign is still going! (And as badly as the northern one, too!  ) I can't believe this is still working.  Xanrick's part works a lot better in this farce. Libuico Turn 63 ChickenWing counterattacks the brave forces of OMG, while Kitfox demented global starts punching my people again.  As expected.  In the north, Xanrick is slowly grinding ChickenWing's forces down.  Yeah, ChickenWing's Mega-Elf isn't the only one who can play the raining stone game.  Sentania falls back again under the evil reign of ChickenWing.  The game decides to kick me some more here. Good bye snake lady. You'll be missed.  Some nature gems turn up in the province I took from ChickenWing.  My army prepares for the final battle.  My strategy is simple: Send in the monsters and hope for the best. The archers are just for show, mostly. Even with their high range and buffed up to the gills they'll probably hurt my own units more than the enemy. I've grown to cynically accept this.  Hopefully I can stiffen this sad pile with some more mages and units before recruitment in my capital is shut down for the fourth time.  The southern campaign receives the long-awaited reinforcements. Libuico Turn 64 This time, ChickenWing walks right over my cap, preventing me from recruiting more mages. Looks like the last battle is arriving sooner then I thought.  Would have been really helpful a couple turns earlier.  Even though every turn since turn 1 was full of setbacks, I'm still confident I can win.  Xanrick destroys a small force hiding in my old northern border province.  Yeah, that was kind of one-sided.  It's a wonder there is still anyone left alive here, considering how many armies have just waltzed through my cap province multiple times.  The defenders died so fast I couldn't get a screenshot fast enough. So here you'll see ChickenWing's victory parade instead.  At least with Xanrick rampaging up in the north, I should be able to deal with this little splinter here.  The units Nuclearmonkee's AI recruited have evaporated, it seems! Good, this means my single scout should be able to take this province.  If you have good eyes, you already saw this. The reinforced OMG takes another attempt at disruption.  My strategical overview claims Xanrick is close to winning. Could be true.  Somehow I still have research.  This is a nice spell to have if you have mages addicted to friendly fire accidents. Sadly, it comes far too late to help me much. Libuico Turn 65 Some good news: We get a new prophet, I finally get Nucleamonkee's last province and my last research goal for this game is finished. All other news are bad.  This doesn't mean I can't keep trying, though!  Zeburia is back under siege, were it belongs. And only one lancer gets her stupid rear end poisoned this time. Double success!  Pure luck, though. Some fire ants prevented my toxic little hatchlings from getting too cosy with my lancers. Could have very easily ended in a massacre.  ChickenWing starts walking around again. Should I attack, or recruit some more mages first? Decisions, decisions.  After my scout heroically eradicated the last remnant of Nucleamonkee's empire, I send him heroically back to land.  A "hog knight" shows up.  Boy, did you join the wrong side here.  Eh, at least this way I can get some more research points in. The "hog knight" can go talk to that lonely adventurer and maybe convince him to go away. Better than wasting one of my mages' turns.  In a desperate attempt to hide before the inevitable counter-offensive, I order the OMG to storm ChickenWing's castle in Zeburia. Who knows? Maybe we get lucky...  Good luck. You'll need it. Especially you lancers.  Strategical overview: ChickenWing and me are still trading provinces, Xanrick is still winning. Kitfox is still upholding our NAP. Libuico Turn 65 A turn of battles.  Hog Knight vs. Adventurer: Duel to the Death.  Hog Knight wins. Fatality!  The storm goes a lot less good. Mindless ants and undead are fighting over the gates, while my lancers are uselessly charging the walls. Sometimes I hate the AI.  My lancers are fleeing at the worst possible moment: The enemy undead and some Tuathas have broken through my line of ants and are now flanking my hydra hatchlings. Total defeat.  TOTAL DEFEAT  Welp, now that OMG is destroyed, the northern campaign heats up again as my last army is starting to move.  Xanrick on the other hand is winning even harder now. Libuico Turn 66Kitfox breaks our NAP. Far too late to do any good, though. It's just annoying at this point. Also his stupid rear end water global makes it impossible to recruit in the fort bordering him. Until the end of the game his stupid elementals continue to slap down every commander inside the fort, until even my researcher gets hit and obliterated. This turn was so bad I forgot to take any screenshots. Libuico Turn 67UGH. Libuico Turn 68The end is coming.  My forces still fight bravely against two enemies.  Kitfox takes ChickenWing's old province back.  Xanrick destroys another large army in ChickenWing-land.  You already know about this. Essentially, everything in that fort is lost to me. Recruitment is impossible and every leader I sent in gets killed.  My people stopped the plague from spreading. Snakeland: Saviour of the World.  My forces moving to the final battle. Since Kitfox is rampaging around in the south, this is my last force remaining.  In the north ChickenWing is taught some hard lessons. I hope he sees the irony in him experiencing what I had to endure the entire loving game multiple times.  In a last ditch attempt to stop Kitfox, I start recruiting shamblers myself now. Yes, I know it's shameful. It's even more shameful because this is the last screenshot I took before the end. Libuico Turn 69Kitfox moves in and sieges the fort he filled up with his dominion. My last army is destroyed by ChickenWing's last army and Xanrick wins before Kitfox can break down and take away that empty fort full of corpses. The war is over.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:30
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It used to bother me that every Dom 3/4 game LP seems to end the same way. Someone gets gently caress off powerful enough to win unless a broad coalition forms. But a critical player defects or never joins, either because they think they can come up with a neutralizer given time or because they want to romp and have fun fights instead of getting steamrolled. But after seeing how badly player fatigue starts setting in late game, it's really a blessing. It prevents the game from turning into an interminable slog. I really enjoyed this LP showing how mistakes play out how easy they are to make. Congrats on finishing despite being hoist with your own petard. While I gladly acknowledge those who win gracefully, I most respect those who lose gracefully.
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Apr 22, 2015 05:02
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At least Dominion 4's throne mechanic means the game can officially be won in another way than defeating everyone else or driving them into quitting.
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Apr 22, 2015 11:01
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frankenfreak posted:At least Dominion 4's throne mechanic means the game can officially be won in another way than defeating everyone else or driving them into quitting. Yeah, if it weren't for thrones, Xanrick would have needed to destroy both us and the still relatively fresh and unharmed Kitfox to really win. The game could have easily dragged on for a couple dozen more turns.
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Apr 22, 2015 11:29
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Araganzar posted:It used to bother me that every Dom 3/4 game LP seems to end the same way. Someone gets gently caress off powerful enough to win unless a broad coalition forms. But a critical player defects or never joins, either because they think they can come up with a neutralizer given time or because they want to romp and have fun fights instead of getting steamrolled. Trust me, it wasn't graceful at the time. I'm glad you enjoyed it, it was a tough slog at times. Losing at Dom4 can be soul-sucking to begin with, having to screenshot and document your every move and decision at the same time doubly so.
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Apr 22, 2015 13:12
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RETROSPECTIVE Holy poo poo what a game. When this first started, I was *certain* this was going to be either a Nuclearmonkee or Modpud win. They're absolutely the most skilled players in this game, and they both had amazing drafts. I don't think I'd really heard much about Xanrick, I hadn't had a game with him yet, and as far as I was concerned he was an unknown, meaning that he didn't really have a reputation for being a gamewinner yet. Then suddenly I had this rear end in a top hat who had kicked the crap out of Monkee putting armies of 300 scarewulfs on my borders and then there were RoS traps and marauding centaur bands and scouts attacking everything and then I found myself being unceremoniously curbstomped. That wasn't a lot of fun, I tell you h'wat. Props to Xanrick for anticipating just about everything I did, to the point that I thought he had my password at one point. The early game was something of a clusterfuck, which I blame 75% on the map. If you don't recall, here's my starting position:  That's a wasteland to the north, a cave to the southwest, a level 2 throne to the south, a forest (admittedly, with a guaranteed site) to the southeast and a regular province to the east. I have next to zero mobility, meaning that reinforcing my expansion armies is extremely difficult and that mobilizing any sort of army is going to be very difficult. To compound this, I expand in probably the worst direction: South. You know, in the direction of all that difficult territory that I can't move across with any reasonable speed. Admittedly, I was really pushing for Copper Woods, but I could have achieved that in a slightly longer timeframe simply by expanding east (where all the nice-movement territory is) and circling down. By doing this, I could have put a bit of a damper on Xanrick's RIDICULOUS early expansion and maybe not have been forced into my early war with Belgium, land of raiders and holy loving poo poo ridiculous sacreds. Honestly, I really should have at least gone for the entirety of my capcircle. Not only was my expansion plan a joke, my expansion battles were ridiculous. I tested my expansion army a number of times, and they gave a great accounting of themselves each time BECAUSE I selected my targets intelligently. I completely gapped on the combat prowess of wolf tribe, and honestly I should have been more wary of the numbers in that province. With my starting army it was a risk either way, and what I REALLY should have done was waited an extra turn for more Tuatha, or even eschewed tuatha entirely and made Sidhe. My Tuatha were awesome, but I rarely had the income to produce them in the numbers I needed, in part because of my godawful expansion. Holding of Tuatha recruitment for the easier-massed and almost-as-good Sidhe might have given me another expansion boost. Basically, my expansion laid the groundwork for a truly mediocre game. When Flame112 sold me the graphs from eyes of god later in the game, I was shocked because even despite my awful start, I was actually in the top tier for most categories. If I had nailed that expansion a little better, I might have been able to transition into my next war on somewhat more solid footing. My war with Belgium was a disaster. If we hadn't all guilted Diabl098979869748652589675076865 into virtual seppuku, I'm not sure I would have survived. I know Kitfox was being aggressive towards him at the time, so it might have turned out largely the same. I took a lot of risks and didn't do nearly enough research. Everyone had always told me that Abysia was unmitigated poo poo, so I took that to mean that Burning Ones wouldn't be an issue.  That didn't work out too well for me. This was a situation that begged for a touch of magic instead of just bulling ahead with my dudes. I shouldn't have come near Belgium's cap without at least someone to cast Rain. However, with the pressure from the raiding Mairya Ahu, I decided to take a whole bunch of really terrible risks that got me caught out with my pants down and lost me a whole bunch of those ever-valuable Tuatha. Following that was a whole lot of sitting around with my thumb up my butt. I have this really terrible habit of being completely unable to multitask, and so instead of putting pressure on my enemies I snapped up a tiny little bit of AI territory and licked my wounds a bit, accomplishing impressively little. I'll confess, I wasn't too unhappy about Nuclearmonkee getting steamrolled, terrified as I was of his tribless jags. Grabbing the easy now-AI modpud territory was the safe bet, and so while Xanrick was getting set up in a solid first place I was squabbling with Flame112 over modpud's capital  .Nuclearmonkee dying pretty much heralded Xanrick's inevitable victory. Nobody other than Monkee really quite knew how much of a lead he had on us, and so we didn't take him seriously until Monkee went down. Even after their war was finished, we just sorta sat back and tried to consolidate instead of bumrushing him while he was repositioning. Of course, the unwritten rule is that the more time you give someone in first place to sit around, the further into first place they'll be able to push themselves. Thus, while we faffed about making sure we had all the fancy toys we wanted, Xanrick was summoning ungodly numbers of scarewulfs, equipping mind hunters/earth attackers, et cetera. I think the point at which I knew we were well and truly FUBAR was when I realized that Xanrick had been laying the beatdown on both Rotekian and I at the same time. The war with Xanrick was funny, because it was never really a "war", per se. While Xanrick definitely had the forces to beat ten colours of hell out of me, he was smart and didn't. I imagine he well knew that if he was actually going to properly fight against everyone arrayed against him he wasn't going to do nearly as well. Thus, instead of fun army-on-army fights I got army-on-rocks-fall-everybody-dies fights, army-on-nothing-because-stealth fights and commanderless-army-on-scarewulfs fights. I had a single "proper" fight against Xanrick, and that was the last march from Fowlland - and I don't really think you can call that a proper fight, outmatched as I was. At every turn, he was two steps ahead of me, and in every case I either didn't consider the counter (bottles for earth attack), or simply didn't have access to the counter(decent raiding forces that wouldn't have to worry so much about RoS). I think one of my major problems was in my PG design. BFE was a good RoS bomb, but that's about it - I could have (and should have) leveraged him for so much more. A bless for my Tuatha might have mitigated the losses vs Belgium and amplified my expansion ability. Different magic paths could have given me access to more globals and forging options. An SC pretender might not have gone amiss - my good troops weren't easily massable without a lot of resources, and my chaff took a ton of attrition. Some sort of early expander with flying or something would have overcome my terrain problem and given me early access to the resources I needed to start churning out Tuatha/Sidhe. My draft was also fairly flawed - while I hit the main notes that I wanted, there were a few key misses. Harab Seraphs were a dumb pick. I don't know how I missed the 33% E pick, but it relegated a fair number of them to research bitches/feather forgers and not much else. Triarii were similarly awful. Admittedly, I wasn't really interested in much besided the Sidhe, but I'm sure I could have found SOMETHING that wasn't such a completely garbage unit. I don't remember what I had access to for simple units during my pick, but I really wish I'd grabbed something with javelins instead of the Berytians. This game put a couple things into sharp focus for me, one of which was that massed javelins are the poo poo for regular troop-on-troop fights. Overall, I think that while I could have played quite a bit better, I managed to at least keep a solid mediocre throughout the game. The root of the majority of my game problems was simply that I wasn't taking the game all that seriously - writing an LP makes it REALLY easy to burn out right quick, and so instead of checking up on what units my enemies had access to, how my units stacked up against theirs, et cetera, I was busy desperately holding off playing another turn for as long as possible for about half of the game. Regardless, while I managed to keep my nation going through a little luck and a lot of "UGH I can't let this LP die gotta keep trucking", I don't think I was ever really in a winning position, much less state of mind. Congratulations again Xanrick on winning a hell of a game, I won't be underestimating (or hopefully playing against  ) you again.
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May 1, 2015 16:11
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Xanrick played Dom3. Also I only had dubbless though I should have gone tri for comedy factor. Belgium annihilating people was a hilarious high point in the game and it was totally legit imo since there was no flying raid ban on the game.
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May 1, 2015 16:47
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Xanrick played Dom3. Also I only had dubbless though I should have gone tri for comedy factor. The amusing thing for me is, all those developments in the early game went right past me since someone was always sitting on my cap, so I had zero intel to what was going on elsewhere. Then Xanrick helped me out and I felt oblidged in helping him win the game, the end.
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May 1, 2015 17:59
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This was a really interesting thread. Thanks for keeping with it.
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May 1, 2015 18:16
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First of all I would like to congratulate ChickenWing on finishing this LP. You are joining a pretty small club of LPers who have finished Dominions LPs which are a test of endurance even when the game is going well! I held off on posting about my turns since it seemed like it might spoil the experience on seeing how the mind-games of late game wars can go, along with the difficulty of operating with limited intel. (That, and I'm not as diligent as ChickenWing, Libluini or Nuclearmonkee in recording my turns.) To start off with the recap, I'm going to look at the details of the last turn:    This is what late-game turns tend to be like. Fortunately in this case the size of the map was modest so things aren't half as bad as it could be. Even though I was pretty sure I had the game clinched this turn, I still cast my usual batch of spells that had been ongoing for most of the late game, which largely consisted of summoning lots of storm demons and remote attacks. The earth attacks targeted ChickenWing's last commanders holding out in his capital, just in case he left a nasty trap behind, but as you saw in ChickenWing's turn, all that was left was just a stray commander and mage. Slightly more interesting is this assassination event:   This went as you'd expect:  The scout was yet another sacrifice for my ongoing scout-gimmick containment 'tactic' for on Rotekian's capital.  Quick strategy chat: As you may recall earlier in the game Rotekian had a decent sized force heading my way around the time I deployed my mega-stack of Jotun wolves and mages. Rotekian realized that my army would be able to beat his and withdrew his forces to his capital. My strategy at that point, facing multiple enemies attacking me on different fronts, was to try and focus on eliminating the armies of one or more opponents facing me and avoiding draw out sieges that would force me to leave an army in place. An enemy army bottled up in one of my opponent's capitals was the next best thing to destroying it, even better really, when you consider that I needed only to maintain the threat of my superior army being in the area, rather than actually have to use it directly and risk losses. After probing Rotekian's capital for several turns with retreating scouts I finally knocked out his PD with Vanjarls. He counter-attacked with his PG as an assassin, killing a geared Vanjarl. To minimize losses, and to free up the Vanjarls for more raiding, I swapped out them for scouts already in the area to maintain the siege. This would force him to either commit troops and mages and risk their destruction with a breakout attempt, (given that my large army move might unexpectedly onto his capital, very likely with the map move of 3 on Jotun wolves!) or remain locked down. As the scouts died to assassinations I just moved a couple extra each turn to keep the siege going. Anyways, getting back to the final turn:  Here is an example of one of the Vanjarl raiders I was using against Kitfox. All the equipment is overkill for a Vanjarl, but I could spare the gems and I had a lot of cheaply forged gear left over from running the Forge of Ancients for awhile.  All the gear came in handy against the signature Kitfox PD levels and the frequent Water elemental assassinations. However, since Dark Skies had gone up and with the occasional deployment of mages of the deep casting frozen heart, I decided to upgrade raiders:  While it won't score any points for gem efficiency, it has the advantage of being able to blunder in a stack of olms and not die to mind bullets. The flying boots and ability to cast returning further boosts the golem's survivability.   The main point in using these raiders was to attack as a distraction while I went for a throne victory. The golems would force Kitfox to start deploying even more mages - hopefully drawing them out into the open where they could be picked off by remote attacks, and keeping them out of the large armies being sent my way. Speaking of which the largest battle for this turn was on my fort with the Throne of Spring:  Kitfox brought a huge stack of chaff supported by quite a few mind-blasting olms. The olms have served him extremely well this game and acted as a great early game counter to sacreds and a force-multiplier.  On my side I brought out a bunch of mages that I had been building up in my throne fort, for just such an occasion - and finally a chance to use a communion again without as much risk of Rain of Stones. Not to mention a good-sized contingent of revelers, jotun wolves, mechanical men I built awhile back as a nod to the threat of olm mind bullets and most importantly, sprites!  I had a bunch hanging around after summoning fairy queens for their air access and their bows cause a pretty respectable amount of a fatigue damage against normal troops:  Just a few hits is enough to knock a solider over 100 fatigue and incapacitate them. I cast Fog Warriors, Anti-Magic, Mass Regeneration, Iron Band, Fire Fend and for the heck of it, Fire Storm. Anti-Magic and the respectable base MR on my revelers does a decent job of blunting the impact of the olm mind blasts.    Evocations do a number on the massed troops, though really it's overkill considering how much damage that group of revelers is capable of dishing out against humans in broken armor. The northern group, having already taken a beating from my Flame Spirit's falling fires, is largely broken.  The battle ends with an almost total slaughter.  A battle that shows off the power of n9 blessed Vanjarls happened during my mop-up of uFlame's AI territories. My modest force raiding force:  And a rather unfortunate surprise:  Note the good-sized pack of water elementals headed my way.  I managed to get lucky, and the elementals bunched up and didn't surround my Vanjarls enough to overcome their defense and land more hits than I could regenerate.   After picking up a ton of fatigue, uFlame's PG goes down quickly to frost brands, and both of my Vanjarls hang in there admirably.  A fight that by all rights should have been complete loss. The major turning point in the game was when I had started to win the raiding war against Rotekian, thanks in no small part to Vanjarls, but also my battery of mind hunters that I built up during the long lull in the early stages of my war with ChickenWing.  I had geared 7 mystics like this, knowing that a dog-pile was inevitable at some point, and that both uFlame and Rotekian would be using difficult to catch flying or stealthy raiders. With +2 penetration from the eye of the void and another +2 from a rune smasher, these mindhunters had a decent chance at killing mages who tend to have 16 - 18 MR. Usually I would double-up or triple-up on most targets that I wanted to kill before they could cause more damage with raiding and for lower priority targets I would assign one mindhunt in hopes of a lucky kill. Against ChickenWing who had a substantial number of astral mages, I made frequent use of Earth Attack.  Very easy to do with earth random basalt kings, but ramping up my blood economy with Vanjarls let me forge bloodstones which would let me use my far more numerous e3s, such as my wonderful winged monkey.  After counter-attacking Rotekian I shifted my strategy to try and make a quick play for thrones.  With only 8 points required and my holding the 2 point throne of Death, and the throne of Spring and Autumn, the most straightforward strategy was taking ChickenWing's Silver throne and uFlame's Throne of Fortune. When uFlame went AI, it significantly sped up my plan as I had expected I would stay on the defense on his front while eliminating ChickenWing and securing his throne. Since the AI is almost completely inept at using mages, it made going on the offensive on both fronts much less risky.   Thanks to this I managed to fort an extra throne that I never captured, and got 9 out of the 8 needed to win.  Here you can also see some up my geared a2 Rain of Stones casters. The option to cloud trapeze them was occasionally very handy, such as when I set up the RoS trap on ChickenWing's capital.  I made two unusual choices with my research, I researched high levels of construction fairly early, going up to Construction 7 and picking up 8 not long after that and I cast Forge of the Ancients which sees little use in the Dom4 meta. My reasoning was to make outfitting mind hunters and Vanjarls more affordable, and to aid in rapidly breaking into high air access for boosters and the ability to cast Fog Warriors with my a3 Fairy Queens. Then I pushed my research into Construction 8 for a pretty pragmatic reason:   I had plenty of h2 commanders, but h3 is required to capture thrones. For most nations, there are only 3 items that boost holy paths - all of which are artifacts. To quickly secure a throne win, and stuck with an immobile Irminsul PG, I forged these artifacts and positioned h2s on several freshly captured/forted thrones and passed the boosters around to cap 2 thrones a turn in rapid succession. The holy boosters proved to be good investment, particularly when my prophet was killed by ChickenWing's seeking arrow, stranding my white centaurs for a few turns. Fort sieges were quick affairs in this game thanks to army compositions like this:  This was my secondary army, built up to defend against uFlame and then used to quickly seize his throne forts. The size and strength of jotun wolves often made forts able to be stormed after a single turn, presenting a major threat that was hard to react against. One aspect of this LP that I thought was quite important, but didn't get a large amount of attention was everyone's draft picks and how they shaped the way the game played out. Some players picked extremely strong combinations, such as modpud's Vanhere, Oni General and Dai Oni, or Nuclearmonkee's Jaguar Warrior, Eagle Warrior, Se'ir and Tuatha Sorceress. But this also had the consequence of making them out to be a large threat right away - I was able to play this to my advantage, while being able to downplay the extent of my territorial expansion. Most players had some kind of synergy between their troops and mages, though they didn't always pan out as hoped - uFlame had a strong bless for his tengu, and flying priests to lead them, but could not secure a strong air gem income to really exploit them. My national picks didn't really have much of a grand strategy behind them, but rather consisted of good picks that I was able to take moderately late and provided to be mutually supporting throughout the game. Here is my range of options out of my capital:  We drafted troops first, so let's look at those to start:  Revelers are hands down one of the best troops in the game. I was 4th to draft a recruit anywhere troop, and I felt very fortunate to draft these. Their stat line is outclassed by many blessed sacred and elite troops, but for the extremely modest cost of 13 gold and 3 resources you are getting a hell of a bargain. The only real downside to them is their vulnerability to projectiles, low protection and their ability that causes unrest in their current province. With enough research, a few buffs such as arrow fend or fog warriors will eliminate most defensive issues. During this game revelers provided a quickly recruited cost-efficient way to counter Nuclearmonkee's double-bless sacreds. Not only were they easy to mass (large numbers being necessary to block his flying troops) but they pack enough of a punch with 6 attacks per square to inflict damage even against his blessed jaguar and eagle warriors. The fact that for the same gold cost I could have 2 revelers for every jaguar didn't hurt either!  Rorarus was a pick in the simple troop category. Unexciting, but reasonable stats for the cost and the javelin as ChickWing noted is a nice advantage in infantry combat. I would recruit some of these as blockers to bulk out my forces early on, but generally they didn't see much action outside of my initial expansion force.   The Lancer and Raider were drafted as part of a set. One of my weaker picks, I only ever recruited a handful of lancers with some extra gold early on in the game. I drafted them with the intent of having a (for cavalry) low-cost mounted unit with decent defense skill. In practice, every bit of gold I had would be better spent on mages, forts or white centaurs. (Though I didn't know I would be able to draft white centaurs at the time.)  My worst pick. I originally meant to draft the glaive-wielding medium footman but instead ended up with a redundant tower shield and spear infantry troop. The stat line is nearly identical to the Roarus, but it is strictly worse with the lack of javelins and costing (for some reason) 14 resources to recruit instead of 13. I never recruited even one of these. Though I did have some in my initial starting army, who managed to survive the entire game:   So hats off to these guys for sticking around and drawing archer fire for 68 turns, something that glaive footmen would not have been able to accomplish. Now, for my MVP troop pick and my sole cap only troop pick:  I felt very lucky to have gotten these as a 6th cap only troop pick. Having white centaurs not only provided an excellent tool for initial expansion, but became a mid and late game menace stealthily raiding enemy provinces and then slipping away before a counter attack could arrive. From an overall strategic level they were also a good platform for a n9 bless which supported all of my other sacred troops very effectively. (Though I would contend that the best bless taken purely for white centaurs would be w9). Now, lets look at my mage picks:  Mystics are a great mage, offering a mix of very useful cross pathes and one of the most efficient researchers that double as effective mages in communions. In this game mystics formed the backbone of my research, and helped me to gain and maintain a research lead throughout the game without forging a single research booster. In combat they proved to be helpful in my mid-game battles against Nuclearmonkee, but they proved to be too fragile to use against ChickenWing with his Rain of Stones capable PG. Instead, they provided a source of numerous astral 2 mages suited for mind hunting and forging the necessary gear.  Basalt Kings were a fairly solid pick. I mainly choose them to due to wanting a guaranteed source of high earth magic, a useful school to support troops and as a low-research counter to highly dangerous sacreds such as Jaguar Warriors and Vanheres with Earth Meld. In practice, being slow to recruit and very expensive I did not recruit as many as I would have wished. Worse, only a handful got the earth picks for the very useful earth 4 base. With e4, you can access everything earth magic has to offer, making useful spells such as Earthquake, Petrify or Earth Attack easy to cast. On the whole, I may have been better served drafting the excellent Yaksha cap-only mage, given their lower price and non-slow to recruit status. That said, Basalt Kings are tough as hell for a mage with a pile of hp, sacred status with an n9 bless and decent protection. This can make them an anchor for your armies that can mostly ignore battlefield wide evocations like Rain of Stone or Earthquake. Fire, Water and Earth mage in high quantities lend themselves to some pretty useful battle evocations as well, Acid Rain, Falling Frost, Magma Eruption and Bladewind. My next pick actually turned out to be one of my best:  I really wanted a decent h2 to bless my White Centaurs, but being one of the late picks for that round of the draft I wasn't left with a lot of options. However, I noticed that one h2 had been overlooked since it was cap-only. I gladly gave up the ability to recruit a national h1 priest anywhere for a very useful h2 that was cap only. As an h2, Bishops of the Sacred Shroud could consistently bless my White centaurs with two orders of bless and 3 rounds of holding position then setting to cast spells. This would allow a fragile priest to lead an expansion party of White Centaurs without wandering into melee range - a serious problem with using h1 priests to lead troops. As a consequence of this pick, I was able to afford recruiting a priest and a group of 5-8 White Centaurs every turn from my capital almost right away. This permitted a very rapid rate of expansion with a low rate of attrition, given me a major edge over most other players initial expansion. This was further compounded by several of my neighbors having a slow start in expansion, letting me push my borders out further. Then, once I was done expanding with the priests, I positioned them in major mystic recruitment centers both to heal afflictions picked up from old age, but also acting as feeble-minded healers for my mind hunter corps in the late game. I got a great deal of value out of this pick.   My scout and commander picks were dictated by a lack of options at that point in the draft. The commander was handy being a stealthy leader for revelers, and being recruitable from any border mountain or forest province. This lead them to be being slightly overpriced scouts for the first part of my game, but as the game has shown - scout early and scout often. My pale one scout I picked just to have something other than a generic human scout. He's amphibious I guess? One mage I almost forgot:  You didn't seem much of him during the LP, but he was very useful, forming the backbone of my mage corps especially in the early game. I though this mage was a very solid late pick, with good path access in nature, decent access for earth and the usual quality of being recruitable any province with a lab and without a fort. One of my first priorities was to drop a lab in a nearby province and start recruiting these non-slow to recruit mages right away. They also performed much of my early manual site-searching, jump starting my solid gem income that I would rely on throughout the game. Later on I would use the transformation spell to save on their rather high gold upkeep cost - that is the origin of some of the stranger mages, such as flying monkeys, giants and bog beast mages. Now, for my MVP mage and my last pick in the draft:  At this point in the draft I was concerned about 3 things: I had no mages with air, death or blood access. This was a concern, since each of these paths are very strong, especially air. Second, I was getting nervous about only have a priest as a cap-only recruit. It was one thing to rely on a fragile priest that used up a capital recruitment turn for initial expansion, it it was another when trying to bless large numbers of jotun wolves with a handful of h2s, or having stealthy leadership that can bless white centaurs. Thirdly, I had a n9 bless and two types of sacred troops, but I felt like I could be getting more mileage out of it. Thus, the Vanjarl was the perfect pick. Granted, I would have rather gotten the Vanheim version with sailing - but Nuclearmonkee had picked that first. For the first part of the game I recruited Vanjarls only sparingly, I generally skimped on building forts with temples and instead focused heavily on labs, forts and recruiting mystics to get my research going. Then ChickenWing cast the Perpetual Storm. This changed my gameplan substantially. Not only did the presence of storm in every battle make an air 2 mage much better, being able to cast storm power and then thunderstrike, but it also made my other mage's evocations worse due to the accuracy penalties when fighting under a storm. The Perpetual Storm also put a decent dent in my gold income. Whereas previously I was making fairly heavy use of my excellent gold-recruited revelers and white centaurs, but now they were difficult to afford with my reduced income. The across the board lowering of gold income for provinces also made blood hunting that much more appealing. I also realized that if ChickenWing and uFlame were content to turtle in their throne forts under the protection of storm with their good death and air mages I would have a very hard time taking those key forts. I saw storm demons as a possible solution and made recruiting them and forging blood boosters my main focus for my blood income. Having 3 Vanjarls with the ability to cast thunderstrike hanging out in several provinces also had the side benefit of making these provinces resistant to raiding which came in handy during Rotekian's invasion. Vanjarls sealed their spot as my top pick with their major contribution to raiding. They allowed me to very quickly gain territory, overrunning Rotekian and ChickenWIng's territory, allowing my large army the ability to move largely unmolested. With gear, Vanjarls also proved to be a match for the water elementals from Kitfox's Vengeful Waters global, giving me a great deal more flexibility in invading territory that players other than Kitfox would have difficultly retaking with Vengeful Waters rendering whole regions of the map impassible. Then there are these guys:  A great summoned troop. Relatively high hp, which is further enhanced by my n9 bless, decent attack power with two attacks that are boosted by going berserk and a massive amount of strength. Their fear aura is handy too, but at size 4 they will not tend to have a lot of overlapping fear as you can get with troops like morrigans. A very high AP, which allows them to move into range quickly when facing evocations and a high map movement round out a great summoned troop. When playing Niefelheim or Jotunheim you will want to recruit a lot of these if possible, but you may be hamstrung if you get poor nature gem income. I was dead last for drafting a national spell and was pleased to have been able to pick up such a useful summon, especially since the next pick was for the capital gem income - for which I picked Pan's capital income of 6 nature gems.  I further doubled down on my nature gem strategy by taking a sleeping Irminsul with a n9 bless who would wake up at the start of year 2 ready to cast a quick Mother Oak global. Because of this and my strong early expansion, I was able to quickly field massive stacks of Jotun wolves who would form the core of my armies throughout the rest of the game. My final income ended up looking like this:  Very well balanced, with a slight bias to earth and nature gems which suited my mage picks well. In the end, a combination of good luck with gem income, early expansion, diplomacy and a strategic focus on avoiding major army battles when facing multiple opponents while draining their resources with remote attacks and ambushes allowed me to win this game. My territory by the end of the game:  Sorry for the massive post, but I figured I ought to make up for not providing anything throughout the LP - and thanks for reading!
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May 1, 2015 22:43
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This is one of the few games I've been in where I made it to the end in any sort of position of 'might pull it out and win', so I was stumbling fairly blind. My biggest problem was, as usual, I just didn't have enough mages, and the ones I did have were somewhat subpar in a battlefield force method. Only one non-StR really shafted me, and if I get into another nationdraft I'll be not making that mistake again. I'm also still super salty that dark skies leaving your thugs with -1morale does not cause an immediate route. They're so scared they're NEGATIVE BRAVE. At any rate, congrats on the win!
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May 1, 2015 22:57
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You still have to trigger a morale check even if they are -1. A single cast of panic or frighten would work.
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May 2, 2015 00:26
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Well I know that now, after I wasted like 250 air gems on it thinking it'd make a difference.
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May 2, 2015 02:18
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