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A. Horsemen of the Apocalypse ain't nothin to fuk wit. Let the unholy lord of the underworld deal with them. Bonus Vote option: Marty Stu. Ensure he gets maximum items/promotions/etc.
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Jul 28, 2015 13:36
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Episode 36: Dracula Surprise Welcome back! This update's going to cover a pretty decent chunk of time building up and clearing indies, so I'd like to start with a review of our strategic position.  We have a rough idea of where each enemy team is based, and they're both along the western coast. Most of our income is generated in the south and southeast since our allies are mostly interested in turtling and stealing our stuff. Gold and iron income is pretty strong, and we have enough sacrifices to throw out two minor summons a turn. El freespawn is starting to become a problem, but there's only a few serious threats right now. Such as the Harbinger angel we can see in the west, for instance.  These angels aren't sneaky, but they're still pretty powerful. If it could grab some flagellants to act as meat shields, this unit could probably take on mines and villages. And conversion magic could end up letting Krate specifically charm bandits or generic infantry.  This Voice's bless has gotten pretty impressive. Awe is great on any unit, but since this angel already had awe that makes the morale check to attack it even more difficult. It also means flagellants are going to be dramatically more resilient, and I'll probably want to outnumber them at least 3 to 1 instead of 2 to 1.  Harbingers have an excellent weapon on top of the spellcasting they won't be able to use most of the time. Though the damage is low, the stun rider and multihit mean that Harbingers are excellent for groups of weak units. They'll also have more chances to convert stunned human units.  It's around this time that the AI for Plague makes a severe tactical blunder. After unflagging the farm, the Apocalyptic Rider headed right for that spooky old castle. And lost.  Well, so much for the vote about when to engage, the indies ended up taking care of Plague for us. The defeat of Plague isn't too surprising when we take a look at this castle's master. Vampires are one of two possible promotions for the Necromancer. In addition to being highly durable battle mages who regenerate AND can heal over their max HP with lifedrain, the vampire has a special option for reducing insanity from reanimating dead bodies. That won't come up unless a player somehow takes control, but the important thing right now is that undead don't care about disease and this guy could probably have one-shotted the Rider with a lucky Finger of Death cast.  That magic bottle spawned a free elemental at the start of the fight, which is also potentially very useful against Plague's tool set.  Our dynastic warrior is starting to look pretty powerful after some promotions and gear. The slam attacks carry stun effects and he's got actual combat regeneration now.  The health bonus from his flaming hat definitely seems to speed promotion unlock rate, and I gradually kill off his heavy infantry escort as I drag Marty Stu into ever bigger fights.  This guy's main gimmick seems to just be incredible resilience. There's still one or two promotions to go.   Routine indie-clearing and village-taking has progressed well, but we also recruited a mediocre hedge wizard with a magical gem we can actually use.  We have one particular mage who'd benefit from a bump in casting tier with this equipped.  Sadly, we'll still need to learn a level 3 spell before Ladar can cast it. Good thing the library in our city isn't used up yet!   Even with Plague eliminated, enemy angels are starting to raid into our territory. This one takes quite a few of our squares before blundering into an iron mine infested with our friendly neighborhood spiders.  One of the enemy paladins gets in the way with an army, and I decide to give our necromancer-giant a field test. You can see several flavors of ghosts here, but our blood summons have all decided they're more interested in taking the lead in this fight.  15 of ours lost to 33 of theirs, and they had the first strike. Nice, especially when our Malik managed to get a spell off and finish them with banefire.  Combined with our trade, sacrifice income is looking very good. Most of it comes from midsized villages in this era, but the bigger settlements are still definitely welcome. Note the fact that different coastal villages get counted separately depending on their orientation.  After another few turns, we're finally ready to go after the biggest summon of all.  Baal has replaced Venonosa, and he will not perform rituals personally. Is this really worth 1000 sacrifices?   Probably. Especially when we seem to have carried over some gear even though we probably don't have slots for it anymore. Baal is arguably the best unit in the game, with two guaranteed level 3 spells each turn and absolutely incredible durability. In a big fight, Bloodletting could bring him to around 400 hit points, though he's a still a back-rank unit and can't really protect our squishier mages. I hope we get the chance to learn a few more spells and push the crazy even further. Baal's presence also has a pretty big effect on the world. It isn't winter anymore, for one thing. Perhaps we'll see a few other things next time. Vote: Who should we make the first target for Baal's wrath? A. Check out the rakshasa's desert palace, it probably picked up something interesting when the traveling merchant blundered in. B. That vampire stole our first apocalyptic rider kill, we need to get our Belmont on and take him out! C. Those elves have been contemplating the scorched wasteland around them long enough, time to finish them off. D. Team up with Marty Stu and try taking out one of the Dynast's champions
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Jul 29, 2015 07:07
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Having just played a game as them, all I can say is some of the Dynast heroes are absolutely horrifying. I feel the one you got is honestly one of the weaker ones - just a large blob of HP(admittedly with regen) with four single-target attacks. As opposed to one that opens with two assassination attacks(and thus hit rear rank) - except they're enslave attempts rather than damage. And it's either MR Resists or MR Resists with Extreme Difficulty. Oh, she has a 6 target enslave attack as part of her standard attack set as well. Or the one that gets Fire Aura(at least two do) along with a Fire Stomp which hits the whole front rank with a Burn rider. Several cause Fear as well, and due to the mechanics they are always in the front rank. Or the several that get Blood Vengeance(of different strengths, but there's at least one with +2) - though it is amusing to watch catapults kill themselves firing at those.
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Jul 29, 2015 07:45
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C Your hero is never going to murder as many people as a strategist or even a shield-bearer. It might have been interesting to see COE 2 style elves with the new "dumb" system. I know troll forests are the intended replacement but it would have been nice to see a self expanding forest empire.
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Jul 29, 2015 08:17
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C>B>A. Murder destroy kill. Also Marty Stu needs to continue in his quest to become the protagonist. Make sure he gets to solo a Dynast hero. Preferably with enough gear to win 
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Jul 29, 2015 13:43
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Defintiely time to Clean out the Elves
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Jul 30, 2015 00:41
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Take the fat dude along with god-boy. He can suck up the hits while godman murders chumps.
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Jul 30, 2015 01:35
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Update tomorrow. I waited just long enough for the elves to send out another couple of raiders to use as magic item piñatas before hitting their home base. Baal's now got a ring that halves damage from slashing attacks.
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Jul 30, 2015 04:07
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Episode 37: World on Fire Welcome back to Conquest of Elysium 3! Last time, we finally managed to unleash the god Baal and plunge the world into an unnatural summer under the Blood Moon. Let's take a look at how that impacts the world.  In addition to switching us into summer from winter, the season no longer changes from turn to turn. In addition, forest tiles are randomly catching on fire, and the lakes are all frozen over as if it is winter. I don't see any frozen rivers, but I have seen Baal's appearance freeze rivers in other games. All in all, this is pretty helpful for our mobility, and it's reducing potential herb and fungus income for rivals as well. In the west, the Lady of the Lake has sent out a lone unit. Let's take a look.  Basically a bishop, so this looks to be about as bad an idea as when the Voice to the south was doing it. Worse, actually, because I think this priest might have cost hard-to-get sapphires instead of gold. The blessing's interesting though, I wasn't aware the Lady of the Lake had a bless development mechanic.  After finally making it to our magic library, I get our Pyromancer a level 3 spell. Pretty nice, this could be very helpful against the Dynast or apocalyptic riders.  You know, I could feel bad for our allies missing out on income from the ancient forest here, but I think I'll just give thanks for the reduced harassment we'll get from indies.  In fact, perhaps Marty Stu will focus his arson in ancient forests from now on. The spontaneous immolations combo really well with all the burning we do by moving his flame aura around. Plus, we've finally been able to promote him to max, and there aren't many forest monsters that could pose a threat at this point.  Marty Stu can't do as much crazy stuff as some other dynasty warriors, but he's very resilient. The items protect him from fire and cold damage, the sword gives him limited area attacks, and the helm gives him a fire shield that damages whoever attacks Marty. With a little more armor, this guy could be absolutely unstoppable.  More elves move out of their citadel-forest. You voted for having Baal wipe them out first, and that's probably a good idea now that we have the firepower. Siege weapons won't work in an elven forest, but we've built up enough other assets that we can probably move in a force that can take them. We might even be able to take out these raiders as we move the main assault force into place.  Wow. It looks like our allies managed to do something useful while I was distracted in the south. So much for the knights.  Yes, it looks like the Matriarch massed a pretty big force and hit the castle with it. If the garrison was anything like it was before, she probably lost a fair number of units taking it. That 101 units is what's left after she won.  Definitely a respectable force. Those spiders in the back all can cast tier 1 battle magic, and the pinkish ones drain HP. I wouldn't want to fight them without serious magical support, but thankfully I'll never have to.  We've intercepted both elven raiders. The lower one was hit by an assassin leading heavy infantry, and they took a few losses. The northern one was squished in one round by Baal.  Here's the assassin battle. That Perelda lord withstood multiple rounds of attacks from a large group of infantry, and usually killed one of ours every turn.  Up in the north, we've found the headquarters of the last Voice of El. This one is very well defended, and I think I'd prefer to leave the other team with a distraction until I've picked off one of them as well. This team is going to wind back towards home for now.  Finally, we hit the last of the elves with Baal's forces. We are lucky, and one of our assassins kills the queen with a lucky crit before the battle starts in earnest. The fight drags on for a while afterwards, but we don't lose anyone important even though our Shedim eventually get forced into melee.  The Sylvan Queen is vanquished. By the way, if you look at the combat log you'll see that the se'ir that landed the final blow also used it's second attack flailing at nothing before the battle end registered. Units with particularly long attack routines like dynastic heroes can end up doing this multiple times, and it can be kind of funny watching them scrambling to finish their comboes even when there's nothing to target.  Marty Stu's first real test comes against a Dark Wizard sent by the southwestern voice of El. They manage to debuff his attack strength at the start of combat, and they also repeatedly summon ethereal shadow monsters immune to the frost waves that come off his sword.  Thankfully, Marty's flame aura is pretty strong, sometimes enough to kill an attacking human soldier outright. He soaks up 40 or so damage in the first round, but afterwards rarely takes much more than his regeneration heals.  The last 3 or 4 rounds are just watching as shades get summoned and torn apart. Marty picks up an affliction, but that should heal before too long thanks to his regeneration.  At this point, without many seals broken the only real threat to us is a doomstack of 100+ units or a fully promoted dynastic hero. Our enemies have at least one of those, and in this shot I've surrounded it with strong stacks of our units. There's Baal (with minions), Marty Stu, and an army led by multiple High Priestesses. The Marty Stu stack could use a little boost in case the enemies rush him, but thankfully our priestesses have enough sacrifices saved up that we can spend 400 to call in special reinforcements.  Nice! Nimrod is one of the Grigori, with tier 3 access to a magical school that partially overlaps with Dark Prayers. Nowhere near as powerful as Baal, but as a resilient monster placed in the same rank, he's good as a battle-buddy who still lets Baal soak hits and doesn't die when a Bloodletting cast goes off. We'd probably want a magic weapon in that role, but thankfully the Infernal Torch the enemy's using would fit that role. Blood Rush boosts the strength/damage for one of your ranks, and Rain of Blood forces a whole enemy army to check morale or run away. This Watcher would do well as support for larger force, in addition to being a solid melee monster with Fear.  After getting boxed in, the enemy's Unstoppable Champion bolts south. That places him in range of Baal and our Priestess army, but Marty Stu and Nimrod are one square too distant to engage now. Vote: How should we move to engage the enemy hero? They are fully promoted, with 10 archers for backup. A. Hit them with the two southern stacks. We've got enough troops and magical support to swarm them under easily, though we'll certainly take some attrition. That leaves Marty and Nimrod free to take out that paladin. B. Wait until we can engage with the northern stack, so we have two dynastic heroes + armies facing off in battle. C. Send in Marty Stu with just some token infantry and archer support, for a “fair” fight. D. Send Baal, alone, and see if our god can wipe out a superhero+entourage completely unsupported.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:32
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A We are horrible demon worshipers. A fair fight is anathema to us.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:46
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If we do it right it'll B just like my animes! 
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Jul 30, 2015 22:09
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What you really want on marty is luck or ethereal granting items. The lady of the lake can summon a priest of el through a series of summons, and yes the priest can break seals and all that. habituallyred fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 00:10
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A. Fair fights are for people who didn't manifest the unholy lord of the underworld. Let Marty go keep solo-squishing other stacks.
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Jul 31, 2015 13:50
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Update pics are taken and the run is complete, but I've got about twice as many screenshots as I usually use so it might take a little longer to write. When I got to the mopping-up stage, I started taking dumb risks, and a couple of really funny deaths happened. One involved my superpowered blood angel with magic equipment falling through thin ice and drowning, and the other involved Marty Stu getting swallowed whole by a big fish when I decided to try fighting sea monsters. I guess that the moral of the story is that in Elysium, you might want to be just as frightened of water as you are of deer and goats.
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Aug 1, 2015 04:45
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One of the most dangerous spells in Dominions 4 is one that randomly turns water barrels and lakes and latrines into water elemental assassins. They jump out of cups when you're trying to drink and drown you. Water is scary poo poo 
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Aug 1, 2015 12:23
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Note that even before it is literally jumping out of your cup to strangle you to death, water is still terrifying and best avoided in Dominions.
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Aug 1, 2015 12:33
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Slaan posted:One of the most dangerous spells in Dominions 4 is one that randomly turns water barrels and lakes and latrines into water elemental assassins. They jump out of cups when you're trying to drink and drown you. I feel really sorry for the latrine elements.
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Aug 1, 2015 23:58
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I dont know posted:I feel really sorry for the latrine elements. Nah, they don't mind. Feel sorry for the guys drowning in the latrine elements.
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Aug 2, 2015 03:23
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Always fear the carp. Always.
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Aug 4, 2015 04:37
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Feinne posted:I feel like the High Cultist wants to stake out as much sacrifice income as he can get his hands on quickly enough to start calling up some things that are actually worth a poo poo like fishman troops and Starspawn. Yeah, he's a really, really summon-heavy class. As soon as he gets rolling he wants to only ever spend gold on special recruitables and crossbows (and garrisons, I guess), because he's going to have a giant pile of very decent meatshields. High Cultist teching up is a little more complicated than some, because the Cultist himself can't cast the best summon spell. - Summon enough infantry with the cheap summon spell that you won't lose your leaderstack if he botches the medium one. - Summon enough infantry with the medium summon spell that you can roll around and secure a bunch of territory. - Start rolling Summon Old One. Starspawn get to be support mages, and are entirely adequate at their job, but what you want is the Basalt Queen. Once you've got her, your high cultist is no longer in charge of your deathstack, she is. - Cast Army of the Deep until you win. High Cultist excels at Water Raiding like the Pale Ones do, with the endgame involving arguably slightly weaker, more numerous mages escorted by insane piles of infantry and however many crossbows you feel like scraping together. High Cultist freespawn is just a slight boost to his otherwise fairly weak early game. An extra dozen or two chaff is not completely trivial in the Deer Wars, but once the summon engine gets going it's not really worth sending someone to pick up the Innsmouth citizenry. Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2015 07:39
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The high cultist is cool thematically, but I like the bakemono more as sacrifice-summoners with freespawn. You basically get a free goblin every turn from mines that aren't coal, and some of those have bows. Dai bakemono are great, though the lack of siege weapons can hurt. Oni are amazing, and the smaller oni generals get regular equipment slots so you've got a nice candidate for any magic boots or hats. EDIT: Maybe I've just got a grudge against the high cultist because of all the times I went exploring for islands and it ended badly. avoraciopoctules fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 16:52
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Episode 38: Hydrophobia Welcome back to Conquest of Elysium 3! It's been some time coming, but this update will cover the remainder of our run as Baal. We're about double standard episode size since I didn't see any interesting choices for a vote during mop-up.  To start things off, we're going to mow down a fully promoted dynastic warrior and his archer backup. We've massed an impressive number of assassins at this point, and they pick off several ranged attackers before the fight starts.  All units in Conquest of Elysium have two sprites, one default and one for attacking/spellcasting. Baal switches from a giant floating face to a giant floating skull.  Baal's first spell just picks off some archers, but his second cast hits the enemy hero with Vengeance and applies a permanent curse. This could be a pretty big deal if we land one of the nastier afflictions when our soldiers manage to deal a little damage.  Well. It looks like the modder did indeed manage to code a one-eyed hero, but they did it by copying the pale one chassis instead of making them start with an affliction. We give Jin Jia an eye wound shortly after landing the curse, and that gives him around a 90% miss chance on all his attacks. This fight just turned into a cakewalk.  A few attacks still get through before we wear Jin Jia down completely, but ultimately casualties are a tiny fraction of what I'd expected.  Meanwhile, Marty Stu and Nimrod split off to wipe out some secondary enemy groups. This fight went pretty well, Marty probably didn't even need Grigori backup.  A couple turns after that, we track down the last remaining commander for another Voice. This guy's got regeneration and luck from items, and also gets a nice boost to HP and awe from his bless. He's about as tough as one of those mod elves from before, and manages to survive our assassins with several hit points left. Thankfully, most of our good units are nonhuman and/or high Magic Resistance, so we don't have much to fear from Mass Conversion.  Once you start stacking up multiple ranks of archers like this, it tends to dramatically improve the damage per round of the army. Most rounds, this force generally kills more soldiers with arrows than spells.  After this battle, only one enemy Voice remains.  Now, our enemies are the Dynast in the southeast and the last Voice in the northwest. Our first priority is to claim the defeated Voice's territory so the Dynast doesn't use it to ramp up their income.  Of course, we run into a further-upgraded version of their other hero soon after advancing Baal's force. This time he's got an impressive amount of backup.  Guan-di has incredible area damage potential and stun ability, but he's more fragile than other dynastic heroes.  Ice imprisonment works a lot like the Gaze of Midas PROSPERITY GOSPEL had, but it's got a higher chance of wearing off. But it also deals damage over time like poison or being set on fire.  With his first attack routine, the enemy hero kills most of the units in both our two foremost ranks. Some of his magic blasts can hit anywhere.  It turns out that Guan-di is the last of the Dynast's leaders. That means we've only got one enemy left, so I resolve to finish the game in this update.  Shortly afterward, Baal's endless summer ends, and all the lakes suddenly unfreeze. As it so happens, our incredibly expensive blood angel summon happened to be flying over a lake just then. Nimrod indeed.  Well, at least we've got enough income now to replace him with another grand summon or two. Here's a big monster that can soak up lots of damage and kill 4 or 5 soldiers a turn.  As I explore the scope of the third Voice's holdings, I find a well-defended large city, a powerful roving angel, and the enemy leader parked on a seemingly normal village.  The city comes first, and this time our assassins are able to deal with the priests and siege weapons before they can weaken our army at all. With well-armored giants and scorpions in our front rank, the siege goes pretty smoothly after that.  Marty Stu moves to kill off enemy freespawn. A harbinger makes for a moderate challenge, but not especially risky.  Two celestial lions with a strong bless end up being much more threatening. Marty Stu almost lost this one, even with magic gear.  I check out the Voice's home base, and it's still fairly well protected.  However, the leader seems content to stay in an indefensible village with a much smaller force.  I've been massing siege weapons in a watchtower nearby, and the wizard I hire to lead them comes with a very convenient item. Monolith armor makes you slow, like heavy infantry or catapults, but it also gives 15 extra hit points and some useful defensive abilities. Basically perfect for the leader of our siege team.  Here's our army of undead summons. I wish we'd got more ghouls, since they spawn another ghoul whenever they kill something and tend to snowball into an unstoppable force when you hit critical mass.  Here's another colossal army our allies left sitting around when their suicide bomb commander died.  I wait to pool Baal's army with our undead before engaging the last Voice of El.  Sadly, he's got a magic ring that keeps him from being finished off by the poison of our assassins.  Not quite as good as Awe, but improved armor and strength from a bless is really useful.  One of our mound kings picks up the ring afterwards. Mound kings have a chance of spawning with an item, but I assume this one didn't. Usually the item drops will prioritize commanders who don't yet have items.  Marty Stu tries exploring the oceans with his ring of water breathing. This doesn't end well, since he soon runs into a monster fish with the Swallow Whole ability and loses the fight in two rounds. I'm sure he'll have all sorts of exciting undersea adventures in the belly of that fish, but it means we've lost Marty Stu and items for good. And that probably means we won't be spending any more time looking for offshore islands.  Here's another grand summon result, who gleefully kills half of my army in one engagement when I forget to switch off Hellfire. Nice artillery, though.  This guy's one of the best results for a medium-grade summon, since he gets access to Hands of Glory and necromantic summons. Also spellcasts more reliably as a back rank unit.  Baal starts wandering around solo looking for the last enemy commanders. Most battles get pretty hilarious when he chain-summons spiders more quickly than the enemies can kill and also hits them plus all the enemies with lifedrain damage to double his maxHP.  Meanwhile, the rest of our army steamrolls over the last temple of El and it's outclassed nonsacred human defenders.  Finally, I locate the one remaining enemy citadel.  Over a full rank of attacks, but we only take a single point of damage. Then half their army runs in fear. THEN we start actually attacking.  We swarm them under with hordes of summoned spiders, and the last enemy leader is finally defeated.  Here's an extra-large map of this version of Elysium. You can see the monster fish that swallowed Marty Stu floating right next to our Temple of El on the northwest coast. There's also well over a thousand friendly spiders sitting around and doing nothing.  For reference, take a look at the army size statistics. Matriarch freespawn is a pretty big deal, maybe even more than for the Voice or Dwarf Queen. Still, our careful movement, ability to summon on the move, and better-quality units meant that Baal's forces had a much bigger impact on the game. Hope you all enjoyed the run! I'm not sure what I want to focus on next run, but I'm probably going to crank up the difficulty of a few opposing players close to the max. Perhaps two superpowered factions and a large team with Common Cause on. That means we need three factions that aren't Warlock, Enchanter, Voice of El, or High Priestess. I could also try showing off Conquest of Elysium 2, and some of the factions that didn't end up carried over into this game. Or perhaps round up a friend for multiplayer. Opinions?
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Aug 9, 2015 01:26
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If it was practical I would volunteer for multiplayer. Maybe pass the turns around with dropbox? Failing that how about an "underground" grudge match? Dwarves vs. Pale Ones vs. Bakemono? Or if you want the two superpowers vs. a team have the Senator and the Baron as the superpowers. Bog down their conventional armies with druid or witch summons.
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Aug 9, 2015 04:30
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I think you've shown off some pretty cool stuff about this game, but if you can think of another neat way to do a playthrough I'd be all for watching it.
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Aug 10, 2015 07:52
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:59 |
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I might be able to do a multiplayer blitz game on Friday, depending on work. I'll focus on that for now, and consider another big single-player game later.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:50
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