|
Cool. Will read this. Is Dominions 4 on Steam yet?
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:26 |
|
|
Yeah, if Mictlan is in the game: 1.hope you aren't next to Mictlan 2.then kill Mictlan. Kanthulhu posted:Is Dominions 4 on Steam yet? Yes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 12, 2014 22:27
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:Yeah, if Mictlan is in the game: Alternatively: 1. Have quality sacreds 2. Start next to mictlan 3. Rush before critical jaguar mass.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2014 13:45
|
|
|
Mictlans Ain't poo poo Turn 6: Raspberry Swirl  Oh. Since the barbarians didn't have any living commanders left, they routed on turn 1. MY BAD  As expected. This turn, our first priest arrived in our capital! Let's see the cool things he can do!  Reanimating ghouls kill population but creates some pretty fantastic troops for Lanka, high HP bandar ghouls called pisacha. Soulless are zombies, and require fresh corpses, which we don't have in our capital. Longdead are skeletons, which we have a pretty good selection of. He's going to make skeletons, probably forever. It's always nice to have some skeletons you can pull out of your rear end when you need to. Unfortunately we've only had the gold for 2, more will have to wait until we get the money to build another temple, since our palisade will be finished next turn and it's not worth it to recruit an independent priest over one of our raktapata. Indie priests can be recruited without a fort in the province, and are slightly cheaper than raktapata.   Not a whole lot going on otherwise! our second expansion army is moving to Stone Heavens, and from there they'll probably go west or north or some combination of the two. I'd like to curtain off as much territory as I can here, preferably without clashing with any of the other players just yet. However, there's one neat thing I can point out! We found our first magic site this turn!  This was in that province our first expansion army got wiped out in. 1 water gem per turn isn't really a big deal, but maybe we'll make use of it. Lanka doesn't actually have any native water magic access so more than likely they'll just be traded away at some point. We only have 7 provinces, and it's already turn 6. Our expansion has not exactly been good, or competent, at all. It's worse than average, even for me. Generally, if you can't manage 15 provinces by the start of year 2, you've hosed up. My first test game as Lanka, just to make sure I COULD expand well, was 30 provinces at the start of year 2 with an okay starting position, and my best in an actual game(not as Lanka) was around 25, maybe a little more. We're definitely not going to get that many. garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Aug 13, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
ChickenWing posted:Alternatively: I dunno man, jaguar critical mass can be like two turns of jags if they're lucky.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 03:18
|
|
|
Jags arent, on their own, better than many other sacreds. It's the fact that they take jack for resources and can be recruited from ANY fort that really matters, since most great sacreds are capital-only.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 03:21
|
|
|
having a were-form also helps matters
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 03:33
|
|
|
Agent Kool-Aid posted:having a were-form also helps matters IIRC having a were-form is the most important part - the actual jag warrior isn't the good unit, the werejaguar with the bite claw claw and improved stats is.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 14:32
|
|
|
Right, jags that are being jag warriors are a reasonable unit unblessed but nothing special. Would not buy for 25g. Jags with a massively more dangerous second form, horrible to face.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 15:33
|
|
|
ChickenWing posted:IIRC having a were-form is the most important part - the actual jag warrior isn't the good unit, the werejaguar with the bite claw claw and improved stats is. I Love You! posted:Jags arent, on their own, better than many other sacreds. It's the fact that they take jack for resources and can be recruited from ANY fort that really matters, since most great sacreds are capital-only. I would say it's both. Strong blesses are a free force multiplier, for example troops has x0.6 more value with a high blood bless, we can imagine. If you apply that multiplier to 10 holy troops, it's as you win 10x0.6=6 more troops, or said 10 soldiers perform as 16 normal soldiers. Apply it to 100 troops and it's 60 "free troops". Having were-form makes it the value apply twice, one in each life, and being recruited in any fort makes it easy to recruit 5 or 6 times more holy troops than other nations. A normal nation could recruit let's say 50 holy soldiers in x tuns. gross advantage with a bless = 30 more "value", they will fight as if they were an army of 80. Mictlan can recruit 250 holy soldiers in the same amount of turns. Double life in each combat where the bless is applied in each: 250x2=500. Gross advantage gained with a bless = 300, so 250 base + 300 "bless value" = 550. As you can see, using the same points in a pretender build to get a bless can be made the most with a bless-favored nation like Mictlan, up to 10x of difference (30 vs 300) Holy troops that are cheap x recruit in several forts x blesses are a force multiplier = all is multiplied.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 15:38
|
|
|
There are some diminishing factors to take into account for the jags. They've not simply recruited ten times as many troops as the opponent. They've recruited ten times as many sacred units. Likely a very similar amount of total troops. The comparison of 800 versus 80 isn't quite as fair as maybe 180 versus 800 would be. Although I don't really agree that a jag is free double bonus unit. They're undercosted for their power but perhaps not on the scale of 100% undercosted. Some other units are nearly as good like the vanheim shifter wolves. So perhaps a comparison of 100 jags against 100 of these shifters. The jags get blessed and that's a force multiplier and 160 is still greater than 100. Jags absolutely rip weaker units to shreds to the point where one advantage of the Jags becomes spreading them thin over many provinces because they can rip an arbitrary number of these weak armies to shreds all at once.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 18:05
|
|
|
I was comparing holy vs holy troops. Instead of 50 vs 250, consider it 3 vs 15, a more real world case, the ratio is still the same. In any case it's a very gross comparison yeah, mainly because recruiting 15 troops instead of 3 usually is going to be five times more expensive, a datapoint I willfully ignored :P. The point is really how well you can amortize the pretender points invested in bless. You may spend up 100 points in it in the Pretender creation, so what how many troops affect that bless, and how many times is applied in combat is important, it's not the same 10 than 100 than 1000 troops. If I was Illwinter, I would increase the Jags price, not a lot, just 2-3 gold. Which seems little, but given that Mictlan players recruit them by hundreds in a game, it would accumulate over time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 18:41
|
|
|
Jaguars are really really good if you can prevent them from getting shot at, I'd use them even if they weren't sacred/without a bless(but the way I prefer my scales I always have enough points for a major bless if I want) Turn 7: Crystalline Green Battles first!  I have nothing witty to say.      Perfect.  These are our plans for this turn. Moving from Lanka is our 4th expansion force, made up of another Kala-Mukha leading the last of our Palankasha. Our 3rd is attacking Comsath from Stone Heavens, set to hold at the very back of the battlefield, hopefully safe from arrow fire, while the Kala-Muka blesses our Palankasha. We now have our 2nd fort. Forts are incredibly important, they allow us to recruit our national units from any province that has one, and they draw resources from surrounding provinces so we can mass troops more easily in them. Let's see what we can recruit out of it.  Everything that isn't a demon, along with the independent troops that were in the province(a generic commander and priest on the far right of the commanders section, and those 3 units on the far right of the units section). Most of these we won't be bothering with, the most important part of having another fort for us is to recruit more Raktapata for research and, soon, blood hunting. I'd like to get another palisade or two started by the end of this year, hitting critical monkey mass is important. Our pretender and Government Gets Girlfriends' forces' orders are unchanged. I'm certain that Yomi is where I suspected it would be, now. Why?  When your dominion borders another pretender's dominion, you can see their scales. Who else but Yomi would be taking turmoil/death/luck/magic like us? We can also take a look at Mictlan's suspected capital this way.  Order, sloth, heat, growth. Definitely Mictlan's capital. With scales like that, they probably didn't take 2 major blesses like I feared. Probably a single major and a minor, we'll have to wait for better intel but we can find out what sort of magic paths their pretender has taken already through one of the statistics screens that lists all the pretenders and their nations.  Keeper of the Celestial Records is definitely an astral epithet, and I'm not sure about King of this World or the Morning Star or Jaguar King but I'm quite sure that at least one of them is blood-related(although they could all just be due to his pretender's high dominion score). Guessing right now, I would say they took blood 9 and astral 6 on their pretender, which is all to cast a single specific spell, late in the blood magic section.  Astral corruption is one of the more powerful global spells in the game. It nearly completely halts the forging of all non-blood magic items and casting of all non-blood magic rituals, and is generally a gigantic KILL ME sign when cast. Horrors are strange alien beings from another dimension that are attracted to powerful mages/magic items. There are several spells that involve them. The biggest one, which Mictlan has easy access to and that is usually used in conjunction with Astral Corruption, is this one.  Send Horror requires magic paths that Mictlan has easy access(astral 4, blood 3) to through one of their capital-only mages(one that isn't slow to recruit, though) and, in conjunction with Astral Corruption, tends to send some incredibly powerful horrors at armies. Additionally, you can have several mages casting it at an enemy army and the horrors will all arrive at once and sometimes fight alongside eachother(othertimes, they all kill one another). There are two types of spells. Combat spells, and rituals. Rituals require the usage of a mage's entire turn outside of combat to cast a single spell, while combat spells are just on a turn-by-turn basis in battle. We'll go over them in a little more depth later. Mictlan is played by Lprsti99. I've been in a few games with him, and he didn't do particularly well in either. I'm not super worried about him long term, but I do want to kill him within the first few years of the game. We now have 2 priests sitting in our capital reanimating monkey skeletons, and another fort to recruit bloody monkey mage priests out of. Our research will slowly ramp up as we mass monkey mages, and then we'll finally get around to doing some blood stuff. Let's take a look at the research screen.  We are currently research evocation. I want to get up to evocation 3, as it has some neat spells we can make use of, like lightning bolt(direct damage, highly accurate, all of our Raksharaja can cast it) and sleep cloud(an amazing early spell our Yogini can make great use of, if we get enough together). It takes 50 points for level 1 in a magic school, then 100, then 200, then 400, then 700, etc etc up until 9, which is where it ends. If we right click on one of the schools, we can see what sorts of spells we get out of it:  There are quite a lot of spells, nearly 1000 I think? Being able to make the best of the magic paths your nation has access to and adapting to whatever spells your opponent is using(and preemptively defending yourself against spells they might use) is the most important part of dominions 4. Magic is everything. garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Aug 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 20:40
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:I was comparing holy vs holy troops. Instead of 50 vs 250, consider it 3 vs 15, a more real world case, the ratio is still the same. In any case it's a very gross comparison yeah, mainly because recruiting 15 troops instead of 3 usually is going to be five times more expensive, a datapoint I willfully ignored :P. Back in dominions 3 I actually considered mictlan to...well...sort of... suck. They did awful in every game I was in in which they were chosen. The mages were just too weak for late game victory. Yes they won their first war almost every single time, but then usually lost their second war as their poor scales and weak magical options caught up to them. Now in dominions 4 where a lot of things are slow to recruit... and there are 108 other changes too, mictlan may or may not be as OP as they seem. I'm curious to see how they face up to their neighbors in this game. Lanka has some pretty solid troops of their own. tl;dr. Jags might be the best troop in the game, but they aren't the best troop in the game by that huge of a margin. namad fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Aug 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2014 23:22
|
|
|
namad posted:Back in dominions 3 I actually considered mictlan to...well...sort of... suck. They did awful in every game I was in in which they were chosen. The mages were just too weak for late game victory. Yes they won their first war almost every single time, but then usually lost their second war as their poor scales and weak magical options caught up to them. Now in dominions 4 where a lot of things are slow to recruit... and there are 108 other changes too, mictlan may or may not be as OP as they seem. I'm curious to see how they face up to their neighbors in this game. Lanka has some pretty solid troops of their own. Their mages are/were fine. With blood communions they had access to plenty of fire (and ice) power, and blood had plenty of spells for killing stuff. Main problem, as you say, was that they might not have enough handy to compete with other nations because of their scales and cap/only limitations, but that isn't a game breaker. I've killed them (and been killed as them) enough to know they aren't completely overpowered, but I wouldn't say they're very weak due to their mages. Also, with scales like that, you should be careful, garth. The LP curse is more likely to strike in turmoil or death dominion.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 00:27
|
|
|
mictlan is fairly strong in every age. in a game where a nation's quality can vary wildly from age to age that's pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 01:13
|
|
|
Mictlan is extremely powerful and the main reason that I see it not due well is people dogpiling them because of it. Micltan is a lot easier to kill when they only have one fort cranking out sacreds and don't yet have a blood econ.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 02:47
|
|
|
I gotta say modpud this is making me want to buy this and waste hours of my life getting mad as I struggle to figure out how the game works while proclaiming I am indeed having fun. Kinda like I do with DF.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 02:52
|
|
|
Gridlocked posted:I gotta say modpud this is making me want to buy this and waste hours of my life getting mad as I struggle to figure out how the game works while proclaiming I am indeed having fun. Except with an even longer feedback loop when you screw up! I am also tempted to get dom 4 (Birdmaens for life!)
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 02:57
|
|
|
Veloxyll posted:Except with an even longer feedback loop when you screw up! Well thanks to these LP's I have learnt Bloodbowl in the last week and a half; have started a rather fun succession campaign with 2 friends in CK2 and am learning EU4 so we can export it and continue our game there. DOM4 will be next on the list at this rate. Soon I will need to venture into the scary part of the internet known as IRC to meet other Goons to play these various games with.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:02
|
|
|
I'm going to take a guess and say that Kidney Stone Depository is a fountain of blood pretender.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:31
|
|
|
namad posted:tl;dr. Jags might be the best troop in the game, but they aren't the best troop in the game by that huge of a margin. Yeah, eagle warriors have them beat in terms of overall value imo
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 03:53
|
|
|
Gridlocked posted:I gotta say modpud this is making me want to buy this and waste hours of my life getting mad as I struggle to figure out how the game works while proclaiming I am indeed having fun. dom4 is pretty much the dwarf fortress of 4x games but toady somehow manages to make more sense than illwinter with what he does go figure
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 04:06
|
|
|
Agent Kool-Aid posted:dom4 is pretty much the dwarf fortress of 4x games but toady somehow manages to make more sense than illwinter with what he does Sadly this does not improve my confidence in my ability to learn it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 04:49
|
|
|
Gridlocked posted:Sadly this does not improve my confidence in my ability to learn it. Well unlike DF it's actually a game. Ho ho. (It's not that hard to learn it's hard to figure out what all the spells and poo poo do and how to do WELL, come on people)
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
and it's a better 4X game than say, MOO3 
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 07:56
|
|
|
Veloxyll posted:and it's a better 4X game than say, MOO3 Used Toilet paper manager retail chain: The game would be better than MOO3.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 09:13
|
|
|
namad posted:Back in dominions 3 I actually considered mictlan to...well...sort of... suck. They did awful in every game I was in in which they were chosen. The mages were just too weak for late game victory. Yes they won their first war almost every single time, but then usually lost their second war as their poor scales and weak magical options caught up to them. Now in dominions 4 where a lot of things are slow to recruit... and there are 108 other changes too, mictlan may or may not be as OP as they seem. I'm curious to see how they face up to their neighbors in this game. Lanka has some pretty solid troops of their own. I haven't played Dom3, but from 3 to 4 they slowed down the research pace from mid game onwards right? That makes normal armies (with Jags) more powerful than mages at least for a while, in comparison. If you play your cards right the game will be decided before late game. And hell, in Dom4 the late game is different and sooner than in Dom3, because people win with Thrones.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 10:02
|
|
|
Flavahbeast posted:Yeah, eagle warriors have them beat in terms of overall value imo Eagle warriors are noticably less effective if they don't have a frontline of jags to engage the enemy frontline before they fly over and start murdering all the commanders. EA Mictlan just has some really good synergy with its sacreds. Also a note about Moon Priests and Send Horror: Moon Priests start at Astral 2 Blood 2 and thus require boosting Astral by 2 and Blood by 1, boosting Astral by 1 and Blood by 1 is easy but the second Astral boost requires access to an Astral 2 Earth 2 guy to make Crystal Coins or significant item cost investment in Rings of Sorcery or Robes of the Magi. While there are indies who can reach E2S2 without empowering they are fairly uncommon and Mictlan has no native access to Earth which means they can't Send Horror without using substantial amounts of resources to do so. That said, based on the pretender name, scales and titles I wouldn't be surprised if his pretender has E2 for coins. Given that he appears to have gone for an Astral Corruption endgame goal I would assume that is indeed the case as going for an AC endgame as EA Mictlan without Crystal Coin access is a huge pain in the butt.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 10:32
|
|
|
Frankly, I am a big fan of having a B minor on Scales Mictlan. Jags occassionally struggle against very heavily armed troops, and a B minor is a nice low Budget solution to this.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 12:06
|
|
|
Neruz posted:Eagle warriors are noticably less effective if they don't have a frontline of jags to engage the enemy frontline before they fly over and start murdering all the commanders. EA Mictlan just has some really good synergy with its sacreds. With the right bless, once you reach critical mass you don't need anything else. F9W9 eagles are multi-attacking death machines. You either have to storm/wipe the field with battlefield evos on round 1 defensively or get absolutely wrecked when the eagles come in and just kill everything.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 13:34
|
|
|
Nuclearmonkee posted:With the right bless, once you reach critical mass you don't need anything else. F9W9 eagles are multi-attacking death machines. You either have to storm/wipe the field with battlefield evos on round 1 defensively or get absolutely wrecked when the eagles come in and just kill everything. Perpetual Storm is your friend then?
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 14:05
|
|
|
Jags are less useful in the LA due to everyone and their grandma running around in full plate and crossbows. Sadly, Mictlan didn't upgrade their weapons to compensate.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 14:36
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Perpetual Storm is your friend then?
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 14:37
|
|
|
The best way to fight off Mictlan is to use better sacreds, so always play Morrighan-bless Fomoria!
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 15:15
|
|
|
amuayse posted:Jags are less useful in the LA due to everyone and their grandma running around in full plate and crossbows. Sadly, Mictlan didn't upgrade their weapons to compensate. They're still insane. You can reach late game in LA pretty much running off W9 bless for your jags. They are that good.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 15:46
|
|
|
AfroSquirrel posted:The best way to fight off Mictlan is to use better sacreds, so always play Morrighan-bless Fomoria! What's that?
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 16:12
|
|
|
Kanthulhu posted:What's that? Morrigans are a Fomorian national summon that are basically non-commander super thugs for 4d/per. They're dumb and stupid and ridiculously good.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 16:22
|
|
|
They're conj 6 to get them as permanent units though (I think there's a spell that lets you summon a couple temporarily in battle?) so they don't come into play until later. But Fomoria is already so freaking good that having the amazingly awesome Morrigan is really just icing on the cake.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 16:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:26 |
|
|
Neruz posted:They're conj 6 to get them as permanent units though (I think there's a spell that lets you summon a couple temporarily in battle?) so they don't come into play until later. Hitting conj6 is pretty easy on a nation that already rules and gets amazing skele/tstrike spam options.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2014 16:51
|
|