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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Oh yeah. It would be incredible if dominions had a quality like Forbidden island, where as you go, more and more provinces become so utterly torn apart that you can't even use them or move through them--as a fallout from what you're describing. People might finally use Dome rituals if that were the case!
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Aug 27, 2014 19:15
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Oh yeah. It would be incredible if dominions had a quality like Forbidden island, where as you go, more and more provinces become so utterly torn apart that you can't even use them or move through them--as a fallout from what you're describing. This actually isn't that bad because of the throne mechanic they introduced in Dominions 4. Very few dominions 3 games ever actually reached the "end" simply because the only way to win was to wipe everyone else off the map. But with thrones, it's a way to force victory well before you actually kill everyone else (not that many Goons do this anyway as part of their victory lap). But I have been in games where even if someone wasn't technically "winning" by provinces/income/gems, they stole the victory under everyone's noses by rushing thrones in 1-2 turns.
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Aug 27, 2014 19:22
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Oh yeah. It would be incredible if dominions had a quality like Forbidden island, where as you go, more and more provinces become so utterly torn apart that you can't even use them or move through them--as a fallout from what you're describing. quote:After completing Dominions 3 we were a bit tired of making Dominions, so starting with Dominions 4 then was out of the question. Also, Johan got a new full-time job at Sony Ericsson then and got his programming needs fulfilled there. Many Dominions 3 patches and a long break later we got inspiration for making a new game again, but we wanted something different from our earlier projects. So we started with Trade & Taint.
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Aug 27, 2014 20:01
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Oh yeah. It would be incredible if dominions had a quality like Forbidden island, where as you go, more and more provinces become so utterly torn apart that you can't even use them or move through them--as a fallout from what you're describing. Be EA Agartha and cast Unleash Imprisoned Ones; it nukes your cap's pop and gives you about 300 mixed umbrals and penumbrals as well as spawning 3 neutral God Vessels that turn into Legions of Gods on death randomly around the map (they appeared on enemy capitols when I casted it in Dumbinions so they might always do that?). The God Vessels are basically undead titans\pgod chassi and the Legions of Gods are basically doom horrors. Oh and they wander from province to province randomly eating population, raising unrest and murdering military units.
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Aug 27, 2014 23:34
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Oh yeah. It would be incredible if dominions had a quality like Forbidden island, where as you go, more and more provinces become so utterly torn apart that you can't even use them or move through them--as a fallout from what you're describing. This was actually a common problem in dominions 3. You could law waste to the world until there was basically 0 population or gold income left anywhere in the world. This was problematic because it meant that fighting over provinces was almost irrelevant. Fighting over provinces is the key interaction in the game. Infinite gem generators were a big part of this stalemate scenario. Once all the gold income in the world vanished, if half the gem income in the world lived off map in a laboratory screen there was basically no longer any way to break the stalemate. I'm glad dominions 4 doesn't have infinite gem gens, AND it has throne victories. In dominions 3 killing all the people in the world was actually very very boring and lame, hopefully in dominions 4 games it's actually fun.
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Aug 28, 2014 00:58
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Domes on your cap/throne provinces isn't a bad idea. Because you counter, say, people raining toads on your cap. Or spamming assassination spells at you.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:02
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Veloxyll posted:Domes on your cap/throne provinces isn't a bad idea. Because you counter, say, people raining toads on your cap. True, but the dome spells start at Enhance 6, while rain of toads is at blood 5. So there's always going to be a period of time where you're vulnerable. And it could be a long time, depending on your other research needs.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:15
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Fortunately attack spells have limited ranges in this game, making it hard for an enemy's cap-only mages to spam attacks at lots of enemy provinces.
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Aug 28, 2014 02:44
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Speleothing posted:Fortunately attack spells have limited ranges in this game, making it hard for an enemy's cap-only mages to spam attacks at lots of enemy provinces. Still, it seems like at least having the possibility to do a tower-defense-esque strategy where you don't field a substantial army, but, instead, focus on spell casting enemy armies into oblivion as they penetrate your dominion could add some interesting variety. Plus someone mentioned rituals being kind of uninteresting right now, and setting up to have some kind of spell-based airstrike capability could be interesting. As it stands, and I'm no expert, it feels like the best you can hope for is screwing with people by making their empty provinces go neutral or temporarily fall to you. Then they just send their guys by a turn later. It's almost like all you're really doing is forcing them to micromanage more. Which is a crazy gaslighting thing to do, and seems kind of meanspirited in a game that's already unwieldy the more it progresses. It's a shame they didn't virtualize your mages between 3 and 4. I think that's the main thing I'd have liked to see. Sliders on mage recruitment, forging, summoning, and ritual casting, like for research, instead of a mage-by-mage micro. Instead of buying units and commanders separately, unify them into a single purchase where you buy your caster or commander with a bunch of guys from a fort. It'd even be a good opportunity to reign some poo poo in. I wonder how much jaguar shenanigans we'd see if you were forced to purchase an unimpressive commander with your unit of jaguar warriors. Or if you could only get your good researchers with a bunch of uninspiring units that cost too much upkeep. I mean, I know a lot of people are going to just say 'that's not whta dom is about--it's about picking and choosing crazy combinations and getting in up to your elbows in the details', but I don't know. I think I hear about how XYZ is 'totally useless' so much from experienced players, I tend to wonder why they're even there, except as newbie traps, unless they show up because you have to buy 20X to get a Y or visa versa. Certainly, a lot of the summons and some of the mercs work that way. It could be a cool way to make the game more accessible and diversify strategies.
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Aug 28, 2014 03:51
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Most of the things that are useless are there because Illwinter do not understand how their own game works. They think being bigger is a buff 
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Aug 28, 2014 03:56
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Unify them into a single purchase where you buy your caster or commander with a bunch of guys from a fort. It'd even be a good opportunity to reign some poo poo in. I wonder how much jaguar shenanigans we'd see if you were forced to purchase an unimpressive commander with your unit of jaguar warriors. Or if you could only get your good researchers with a bunch of uninspiring units that cost too much upkeep. This is totally, completely moddable. Someone could write a total conversion mod for dom4 that does exactly this, if they wanted to.
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Aug 28, 2014 04:05
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Still, it seems like at least having the possibility to do a tower-defense-esque strategy where you don't field a substantial army, but, instead, focus on spell casting enemy armies into oblivion as they penetrate your dominion could add some interesting variety. Plus someone mentioned rituals being kind of uninteresting right now, and setting up to have some kind of spell-based airstrike capability could be interesting. raiding someone's undefended territory in a strategy game is not a form of emotional abuse
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Aug 28, 2014 04:09
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Still, it seems like at least having the possibility to do a tower-defense-esque strategy where you don't field a substantial army, but, instead, focus on spell casting enemy armies into oblivion as they penetrate your dominion could add some interesting variety. Plus someone mentioned rituals being kind of uninteresting right now, and setting up to have some kind of spell-based airstrike capability could be interesting. Uh this is literally how I've won half a dozen games against other good players. It's super viable and I think modpud won like 3 straight games doing this. Have you even SEEN astral corruption/send horror or vengeful water or any of the various tower defense spells?
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Aug 28, 2014 05:27
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I Love You! posted:Uh this is literally how I've won half a dozen games against other good players. It's super viable and I think modpud won like 3 straight games doing this. Have you even SEEN astral corruption/send horror or vengeful water or any of the various tower defense spells? Apparently not! I'm stoked to, though.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:39
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despite the thousands(???) of various units in the game the only ones that really matter in the end are the ones that can fart out magic. properly used magic can decimate entire armies and/or swing the game in your favor pretty handily. as much as blesses can be important, they mean jack poo poo against properly equipped casters guided by players who know what the hell they're doing. basically what this means is that the effectiveness of a nation begins and ends at how good their mages may or may not be
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Aug 28, 2014 05:47
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There is not that much that stopps the bless nations from also bringing their casters.
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Aug 28, 2014 07:16
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:despite the thousands(???) of various units in the game the only ones that really matter in the end are the ones that can fart out magic. properly used magic can decimate entire armies and/or swing the game in your favor pretty handily. as much as blesses can be important, they mean jack poo poo against properly equipped casters guided by players who know what the hell they're doing. Bless nations have a better early game and that's important because early leads tend to snowball unless everyone allies against you.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:27
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when i said all that the assumption was that someone would be trying to use mostly bless tactics w/ little to no mage support against someone with mages who have at least some mild research. the game is still ultimately decided on powerful/well-used mages and they're straight-up what you need to win unless everyone else is a dumbass or is playing a weak as hell nation (probably weak due to their lack of good/useful mages) because illwinter has no idea what balance is.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:35
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Balance is for other games. Also, I'm 99% sure that domes have to be cast on the province a mage is in. And last only a number of turns equal to the gems you throw in. Depending on the dome. Mage based warfare can be amazing as some of the other LPs (and maybe this one since our author hasn't crashed and burned yet) have demonstrated.
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Aug 28, 2014 08:58
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Veloxyll posted:Domes on your cap/throne provinces isn't a bad idea. Because you counter, say, people raining toads on your cap. Also Fire Dome was recently buffed to have a chance of burning down the offending lab so if the other guy isn't cautious you could gently caress up his research for a turn or two.
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Aug 28, 2014 12:41
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Still, it seems like at least having the possibility to do a tower-defense-esque strategy where you don't field a substantial army, but, instead, focus on spell casting enemy armies into oblivion as they penetrate your dominion could add some interesting variety. Plus someone mentioned rituals being kind of uninteresting right now, and setting up to have some kind of spell-based airstrike capability could be interesting. I'm not certain where you got the idea that rituals are kind of uninteresting. Magic is super useful in murdering the gently caress out of enemy armies. I, personally, will never stop loving neutering enemy armies with mass mind hunts. Admittedly, a lot of it comes at higher research - but that's to be expected of a spell that does 7+drn damage plus extra in cold dom to 50% of the enemy army. The whole deal with dominions research is that magic goes from being something you use on a single person in a fight, to something you use on a bunch of people in a fight, to something you use on a single person over the map, to something you can wipe an entire army out with over the map. quote:As it stands, and I'm no expert, it feels like the best you can hope for is screwing with people by making their empty provinces go neutral or temporarily fall to you. Then they just send their guys by a turn later. It's almost like all you're really doing is forcing them to micromanage more. Which is a crazy gaslighting thing to do, and seems kind of meanspirited in a game that's already unwieldy the more it progresses. This is called raiding. Destroying your opponent's income and forcing him to divert forces that could be currently fighting you is integral to strategy. Maybe in a comp stomp, where all the computer is interested in is building infinity useless soldiers and has mans to spare, this wouldn't be a huge deal - but that's a comp stomp, and thus isn't really worthy of consideration. Also lol if you're ~e-honouraboule~ in a video game. quote:I mean, I know a lot of people are going to just say 'that's not whta dom is about--it's about picking and choosing crazy combinations and getting in up to your elbows in the details', but I don't know. I think I hear about how XYZ is 'totally useless' so much from experienced players, I tend to wonder why they're even there, except as newbie traps, unless they show up because you have to buy 20X to get a Y or visa versa. As far as Illwinter is concerned, 'balance' is a four letter word. Mightypeon posted:There is not that much that stopps the bless nations from also bringing their casters. If those casters are garbage, though, the bless nation isn't going to get too far when the enemy nation is rocking turn 1 rain of stones. At a certain point, all troops are really good for is being warm bodies that can eat a magma eruption instead of your mages. quote:~domes~ Domes are fun. I almost killed AXE_COP's PG in noobsrus with a frost dome  .
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Aug 28, 2014 14:23
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Turn 22: Half A Person  Mictlan is fighting Pangaea, at their capital. This is just about all of Mictlan's army of mages, versus what seems to be most of Pangaea's centaurs.    Mictlan did about as well as could be expected with their low level magic and incredibly poor early expansion. The loss of that many White Centaurs will hurt Pangaea pretty bad, since ilu xuande began his invasion of them this turn. Some pretty great unexpected things have happened for us today.   These are both artifacts. They normally require construction 8 to forge, which very few people actually research because most artifacts are so niche as to be not at all worth it over researching high level magics that are actually useful on a broader level.   This is Lanka's hero! He's not very useful. He has the pillager trait due to his axe, which lets him raid enemy provinces for some gold while creating unrest, but that probably won't be very useful for us since we can just unleash the toad artillery if we need to create unrest. I might find a way to put him to use, though for now he'll just be raising more skeletons.   Despite the description, anyone can use this item, not just astral mages. Mind Hunt is very powerful, and will allow use to remotely assassinate enemy commanders without any real backlash. We'll need a turn to research Mind Burn to make use of it.  This isn't a super great item, not worth giving to any of our units except maybe our Pretender, who I'll hand it to as soon as she heads to a friendly lab. Considering that all of this is completely free, I'm pretty pleased. I've never taken luck/death/turmoil/magic like this, it's really working out. We have piles of gems, free labs, and gold pouring right into our waiting hands. This turn I've summoned quite a few asrapa, too.  They're pretty fantastic. I've decided I'm going to be summoning them instead of rakshasa warriors, since they're half the price and with a few magic buffs will be just as good, maybe even better. If we had taken an earth/nature/astral bless like I should've, rakshasa warriors would be the way to go, but with straight blood 9 I'm thinking asrapas are the way to go.  We found Fomoria's capital! Right where I thought it would be. It looks like since they're so squashed in, they've gone underwater, since some of Fomoria's more powerful capital-only units are amphibious.   Not even worth showing off.  Cavemen are pretty lovely. I don't know why Niefelheim recruited that one. I'm sending our Pretender to take Cacevic Highlands on her own, I don't want to risk her in full enemy dominion. The rest of our army is proceeding east, straight to Niefelheim's capital. Our undead proceed behind them, to lay siege to their fortress once the rest of the army has taken the province itself. Things are looking pretty good, honestly! Our toad batteries are up and running, we're summoning some pretty fantastic units, our research is a little weaker than I'd like but still proceeding well enough, and we've gotten so many magic gems from events that I've been able to empower a few of our mages in magic paths we wouldn't otherwise have access to.  SUPER SECRET DIPLOMACY CHAT LOGS code:
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Aug 28, 2014 19:12
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Holy poo poo. Free mind hunts in the second year? That's pretty baller. Not game-breakingly so, but useful on many levels. Could be good for sowing confusion, who would suspect Lanka of mind hunting people? Until now, I suppose.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:33
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A mirror that dispells illusions you say, and there's a guy who just loves his phantasmal army just over there. Would be a shame if anything were to happen to him.
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Aug 28, 2014 19:39
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garth ferengi posted:Turn 22: Half A Person Dominion army variety!
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Aug 28, 2014 19:50
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Maybe caveman lawyer was recruited to set up a new law office in that province? "I'm just a caveman, your demons confuse and scare me."
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Aug 28, 2014 19:52
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I refuse to believe you got two ARTIFACTS from random events, let alone in the same turn.
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Aug 28, 2014 20:51
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Now everyone knows I can be bought out  (I can be bought out) I Love You! fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 21:44
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I'm now imagining a TC gimmick featuring Ol Dirty Crone.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:04
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GenericOverusedName posted:I refuse to believe you got two ARTIFACTS from random events, let alone in the same turn. Eat poo poo and die, scrub (this was even after the patch where illwinter said that artifacts couldn't be gained from events. lol) goatface posted:A mirror that dispells illusions you say, and there's a guy who just loves his phantasmal army just over there. It never even occurred to me that I could do this and I feel so stupid and embarassed right now. lettuce play over
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Aug 29, 2014 00:26
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garth ferengi posted:(this was even after the patch where illwinter said that artifacts couldn't be gained from events. lol) I thought about asking about that but it seemed pointless as it clearly happened.
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Aug 29, 2014 00:52
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I always enjoy getting into Dom4 games, and I can generally get to mid game as I have a lot of the basics down, but past that I tend to start flailing a bit, as I really can't be bothered with a lot of the micro management that needs to take place. I'll inevitably forget about some mages I have sitting somewhere outside of my capital or won't realise I lost a commander in some army that was quite important, and so the number of small mistakes that I make end up adding up and bringing me down. Further to that, I'm generally too focused on summoning/conjuring or damaging spells and forget to focus on some of the more important buff or global level spells. All I really want to do is summon cool dudes and then put funky equipment on them and send them into battle
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Aug 29, 2014 01:18
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PotatoManJack posted:I always enjoy getting into Dom4 games, and I can generally get to mid game as I have a lot of the basics down, but past that I tend to start flailing a bit, as I really can't be bothered with a lot of the micro management that needs to take place. I'll inevitably forget about some mages I have sitting somewhere outside of my capital or won't realise I lost a commander in some army that was quite important, and so the number of small mistakes that I make end up adding up and bringing me down. Then dom3 is the game for you!
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Aug 29, 2014 01:38
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since anyone can use the mirror, does that mean you can just throw it on an indep commander and have him 420 mind burn ev'ry day? Since who cares if a 40 g trash commander gets feebleminded. Getting the mirror is drat nice though.
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Aug 29, 2014 01:45
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Veloxyll posted:since anyone can use the mirror, does that mean you can just throw it on an indep commander and have him 420 mind burn ev'ry day? ya. and they can use it even if they are feebleminded. Except maybe MAYBE according to patch notes they made it so only a astral mage can use it. But they also made it so you cant get it from random events and look how that poo poo worked. e: to be clear the patch that made it only work with a astral mage happend after the current events of the lp i think jsoh fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 01:48
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Oh snap. Equip it and Shift-M that poo poo on an enemy cap right away. Start killing the mages straight away.
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Aug 29, 2014 01:54
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I have begun the long process of learning this drat game. Stupid modpud and her stupid lettuce being so stupidly interesting and making me learn things. Edit: And already I am confused because my map looks more cartoony than hers arrrgh Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 03:41
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garth ferengi posted:Eat poo poo and die, scrub (this was even after the patch where illwinter said that artifacts couldn't be gained from events. lol) If you take those scales it seems very common, i got the shield of dawn ages ago in a current Yomi game.
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Aug 29, 2014 03:50
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Illwinter lied when they said artifacts could no longer be gotten from events, I expect they changed a couple of events to not be able to grant artifacts and completely missed some others because having to do each event manually instead of having them refer to a universal table sounds like something Illwinter would do.
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Aug 29, 2014 06:52
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Gridlocked posted:I have begun the long process of learning this drat game. Every designed map has its own art style, and the random maps are the only ones that looks like her screenshots.
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Aug 29, 2014 09:51
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