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This thread is a pro-christian, cuss-free zone. Sin will not be tolerated.          HELLO friends, lettuce-play dominions 4!! Dominions 4 is a turn based strategy game where a bunch of semirandom idiot loser gods, ruling over various factions inspired by things like norse myth, the sumerians, Herodotus, and H.P. Lovecraft, all get together to fight and decide who gets to become the new big shot ruler god, and then banish all the others to wherever dead loser gods go (tartarus or one of the nine layers of hell or whatever). It has an insane learning curve with an incredibly deep and involved magic system, and manages to be incredibly detailed while also giving players a hilariously low level of control over certain specific things. Battles, for instance, are semi-automated based on whatever you script your troops to do, but for a wide variety of reasons mages will gleefully go off script and nuke half your army while cackling madly and eating gold by the pound when they get home. It also used to cost like $85 or something equally insane which is why no one ever bought or played it at all There's no way that I'm willing or even able to go over every single mechanic in the game, but if people have questions or whatever I can probably provide better explanations and more pictures(!!) of things so just ask, if I can't then some of the helpful dominions 4 playing goons can chip in. I haven't even read the manual, it's like 500 pages and who even has time for that! The interface is absolutely atrocious and the graphics are literally from the late 90s I think. HOWEVER, it still has the silliest amount of detail with the bare minimum of playability to draw me to it, so I kind of love it despite being absolutely terrible at it. I'll be providing updates every day or two, the actual game will have started a few weeks before any of this gets posted(hi, future me!) and I'm thinking I'll keep a 1 1/2 to 2 year(18-24 turns) buffer between live game things and lattice-play updates. Turns are just about daily, with a 26 hour timer. I'm a very famous competitive starbound twitch streamer/youtuber and I would appreciate it if you treated me with the respect and reverence my fame calls for. ~~~Dramatis Personae~~~ modpud/gynoidpudding/pollyannapudding/moderate "I can't help it I'm an Aries" pudding/garth ferengi, the autist formerly known as pudd-chan (that's me! hi!!) - Lanka nomadotto - Niefelheim Eschatos - Pangaea Hatwer - Kailasa Lprsti99 - Mictlan LordSloth - Fomoria flavahbeast - Ulm Absum - Hinnom ILoveYou - Yomi Kitfox88 - Abysia Nuclearmonkee - Ur I'll describe the nations as they come up, but for now all you need to know about them is that they are all early age nations. Dominions 4 has 3 completely separate ages that are all(sort of!) balanced with eachother. The Early Age is my favourite, it's got ancient rome, sumerians, aztecs, gallic barbarians, demons from various mythologies such as oni and yaksha, book of enoch-derived giants that eat people and sometimes eachother, etc. Most Early Age nations are sort of powerhouses, with pretty powerful magic and usually one or two pretty amazing units/summons, sometimes a whole ton. Middle Age nations are more subdued and incredibly boring + clunky, while Late Age nations, despite being made up of more boring white guys than the previous two ages, have some of the more interesting and developed late games through their diverse (although weaker) magic access. That's just my uneducated idiot opinion though, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who would contradict all of my opinions while having extremely valid points of their own(except the people who think middle age is the best age. Those people are objectively wrong). There are something like 70 nations spread across the 3 different ages, and most of them are pretty different from one another or at least bring something new to the table. This game is using the sort of junky, jury-rigged mod awesomeishgods, a bad chinese port of a dominions 3 mod originally made by NinjaDebugger(who made a ton of different dominions 3 mods that haven't been ported to dominions 4). The maker of awesomeishgods didn't even ask NinjaDebugger for permission and seems to be a real rude shitter, honestly. The idea of Awesome(and awesomeish) Gods is to emphasise the pretender gods more, where in vanilla by far the most important thing is your choice of nation. The victory condition for this game is to claim enough of the former pantokrator's thrones(which do magic things, they're not just toilets)) scattered throughout the land and become the new pantokrator. LINKS AND THINGS The Dominions 4 Games Thread The Dominions 4 Manual UPDATES Turn 1: Intro Turn 2: Unit Overview Turn 3: The Turn Where Things Happen Turn 4: The Hurting Turn 5: ...When we last left our hero, she was getting thrashed at the bar. Uncontrollably. Turn 6: Raspberry Swirl Turn 7: Crystalline Green Turn 8: Burn, Don't Freeze Turn 9: But Then There's Girls Like Me, Who Sit Appalled By What We've Seen... Turn 10: Kick, Push Turn 11: Field Work Turn 12: The Changing Lights Turn 13: No Matter What You're Told Turn 14: Glamorous Glue Turn 15: Bigmouth Strikes Again Turn 16: A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours Turn 17: Little Man, What Now? Turn 18: I Will See You In Far Off Places Turns 19 & 20: Deadly Combo Turn 21: Golden Boy, Life Ain't A Video Turn 22: Half A Person Turn 23: On The Streets I Ran Turn 24: Don't Make Fun Of Daddy's Voice Turn 25: The Floor Turn 26: That's How People Grow Up Turn 27: What Difference Does It Make? Turn 28: Everybody Wants To Rule The World Turn 29: Unhappy Birthday Turn 30: MANNER PLEASE Turn 31: How I Do Turn 32: Fosc Turn 33: Behind the Mask Turn 34: Tokyo Story Turn 35: Moving On Turns 36 & 37: Sentimental, Regret Turn 38: Pounding At My Heart Turn 39: Love And Hate Turn 40: Sweet Revenge Turn 41: 7 Seconds Turn 42: So Prone Turn 43: Same Dream, Same Destination Turn 44: Psychedelic Afternoon Turn 45: Interruptions Turn 46: Water's Edge Turns 47 & 48: Bibo No Aozora Turns 49 & 50: Aishiteru, Aishitenai Turns 51 & 52: Nelson Mandeha Crosses Five Passes And Slays Six Generals Turn 53: Tango Turn 54: A Day In The Park Turn 55: Vanishing Girl Turn 56: Easy Easy Turns 57 & 58: Nothing Natural The End: Untouchable garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 17:08
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  Well, there's our intro. It's no "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide." but it'll do for a silly internet video game about transylvanians ruled by the mage illuminati and vampires fighting cthulhu and his lizard man allies while ghost people who had long since fled underwater and become irrelevant perform a magic ritual that puts out the sun, crashing economies around the globe  This is our nation. It says we're on a forested island but that's actually a complete fabrication. Lanka is a pretty interesting Hindu myth-inspired nation. We have a diverse and fairly powerful magic pool, and some very powerful units that have a pretty major weakness.  Everyone gets to design their own pretender, from a pretty massive selection of different "chassis". The magic of your pretender, in addition to being incredibly useful for, you know, casting spells and poo poo, can also grant a specific blessing to your nation's sacred units. In Lanka's case, almost all of their worthwhile units are sacred so a pretty major bless would be useful. Every magic path has a different effect that changes in strength from levels 4 to 10, and a special bonus unlocked at 9. Our chassis, the Devi of Darkness, starts with 6 blood, so getting up to blood 9 for its major bless is pretty cheap. Blood Vengeance, the major Blood bless, gives a decent magic resistance-based chance of hurting anyone who hurts our blessed units. You get 350 points to spend on your pretender. Dominion candles and magic paths get more expensive the more you have already increased them, while scales(everything to the right of the candles) are a flat 40 points for bonuses/penalties. From right to left, they are: Order/Turmoil, Production/Sloth, Heat/Cold, Growth/Death, Luck/Misfortune, and Magic/Drain. Dominions candles determine how well your god's influence spreads. It starts anywhere from 1 to 4 depending on your pretender chassis, and the maximum is 10. Each point in dominion increases the chances of your temples successfully spreading your dominion, and the maximum power of your god's dominion, from 10% and 1 candle at dominion 1 and 100% and 10 candles at dominion 10. More candles and more easily spread candles means your god's influence will be harder to root out and spread easier. Order/Turmoil affect income, unrest reduction from patrolling units, and the frequency of events. Higher order will mean that your provinces make more money, are more easily patrolled, and less eventful, while turmoil means the opposite. Production/Sloth mostly just affects how many resources your provinces you get. It takes 2 things to make units, gold and resources available in the province you're building things in. Taking production was a stupid idea(I should've just given my pretender some air magic or something instead) but it's not the end of the world and will probably come in handy someday. Sloth is usually the best choice for most nations, because you tend to be gold-limited rather than resource-limited. Heat/Cold affects income and supplies. Every nation has a set level that they prefer, and outside of that level their troops become tired quicker and they take income and supplies penalties. Our preferred heat level is 2, so being just a single point away won't hurt us too much, and it'll hurt everyone else more. Growth/Death affects income, supplies, and population growth. Taking full growth means your provinces will slowly become richer and richer, and is quite powerful, but the combination of death and luck unlocks some pretty fantastic events that we kind of need to utilise. Luck/Misfortune is self explanatory. It affects the frequency of events(increasing both ways) and the chances that events are beneficial. Higher levels of luck unlock better and better events, especially when combined with a high level of magic and death. Magic/Drain affects how easy it is to cast and research spells. It also unlocks some very powerful(and sometimes bad!) events at the high and low ends of the spectrum. For us, it will mean plenty of events giving us magic gems. Lastly, you can choose to have your pretender sleeping or even imprisoned for more points. Dormant pretenders wake up about a year into the game, while imprisoned pretenders take 3 years to break free. Ours is awake, because she's meant to destroy poo poo day 1 and save me from being rushed and murdered by someone more competent and powerful than me, maybe, hopefully.  This is what our pretender looks like in game. A lot of the stats are pretty self explanatory, an average human has around 10 in just about everything. Since this is our pretender god, some of her stats go up/down based on whose dominion she's currently in, such as Magic resistance, Hit points, and Strength. Leadership is just how many troops the unit can lead, we'll go into more depth about it when it's relevant later probably. Move is first how many provinces the unit can move outside of battle, and then the unit's action points during battle, which is mostly how far the unit can move in-combat. Some things, like undead units, can be pretty slow in-combat but able to move farther than most units on the strategic map. Yes, she's a demon slaying divine being worshipped by and ruling over a nation of demon ogres. Below her stats are her magic item slots, all currently empty as you can see. Below those are her magic paths, research points, and special abilities, respectively. Her special abilities are, from left to right, fear(fairly self explanatory, enemies take a morale penalty near her), awe(that little bonus you get from having a pretender at 9 or 10 starting dominion candles. Awe makes it so that every time a unit tries to attack her in melee, there's a decent chance based on their morale that they'll just sit there and stare at her heaving tits and strong legs and supple body instead of actually attacking), the big yellow blob just means that she's a pretender, the next thing is an ability called damage reversal, which is like the blood vengeance, but with a major twist. Instead of both her and her attacker taking damage, she has a pretty good chance of just flat out reflecting it back at them. The final ability is ambidexterity, which allows her to use multiple weapons without a penalty, up to a certain point.  Here's the plan for this turn. The commander of our poor starting army is going to become the prophet of our god, which does some neat stuff, while our tiny cute monkey man is attacking the throne in The Rusty Badlands to see what's sitting on it, while our pretender is attacking Ironwood Forest and hopefully there isn't anything scary there that can kill her(spoilers: there isn't).  This is what the world looks like. It loops east-west. I'll go through some of the UI elements here too, I guess. Upper left hand corner is the stats of the currently selected province. Everything is fairly self explanatory, "Defence" is province defence, units you can buy for fairly cheap(sort of), except they just sit in the province and defend against attacks, unable to move or be scripted(and after a very early point infantry on its own without mage support is useless, anyways). Terrain type is there, along with the amount of dominion candles in the province and the current scales there. Below that is the listing of all commanders in the current province and their orders. At the top middle is the name of our god, the current season(spring), and then finally our magic gems. Magic gems are incredibly important, they are used for summoning powerful and not so powerful units, forging magic items, and casting powerful spells. Gold income tends to be more important in the early game, while magic gem income usually determines the final winners. On the right are a bunch of different buttons, we'll go into some of them as they become relevant. At the very bottom of that listing are the different sites and buildings in the province. We have our capital fortress, along with a laboratory and temple, and 2 magic sites that our nation starts with that give us some gem income and let us recruit all our important units(there are very few worthwhile units that we can recruit outside our capital). If we click the recruitment button, it brings us to this screen.  We'll go over all these different things next update, but this turn we are recruiting a bunch of horse headed, hooved demon ogres because they're fairly cheap and good at killing independents, our cheapest mage, and a single tiny monkey with a bow. I don't actually have any special purpose for that single tiny monkey with a bow, he'll just be joining the pile of tiny bow monkeys in our starting army and hopefully kill something someday maybe. garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 17:15
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Woohoo now I get to see exactly how someone who isn't terrible plays! Looking forward to how this pans out.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:31
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Are you gonna drunk-delete this match when you start losing again?
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Aug 7, 2014 17:33
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ChickenWing posted:Woohoo now I get to see exactly how someone who isn't terrible plays! Not in this LP, you won't.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:37
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MrBims posted:Are you gonna drunk-delete this match when you start losing again? yes Flame112 posted:Not in this LP, you won't.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:38
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I didn't know you were actually gonna make this. I doubt you'll ever see me though, so no one will see me not make plans and flail around.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:53
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Hey Neat - always enjoy the Dominions LPs. If I had more time, I would definitely play this game more often as it's really amazing.
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Aug 8, 2014 00:57
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Flame112 posted:Not in this LP, you won't. Flavahbeast is playing so at least one person who is good.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:28
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Oh dear the game where I go a bad gimmick and don't even look at what the modded gods do front and center There are actually a bunch of good players in this game, which makes it even worse
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Aug 8, 2014 02:31
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It has been far too long since the last Dom lettus-play. Can't wait to see how this pans out.
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Aug 8, 2014 13:52
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Couldn't stand Dominions from the demo, still enjoy a good LP of it. Looking forward to this.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:14
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Dominions is something I have always been keen to play but never bothered to pick up. Will be happy to see a LP so I don't have to do it myself.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:36
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My favorite part of past Doms LPs were the silly in-character diplomatic missives, hopefully they'll happen this time around too.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:40
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God speed, you are going to need it.
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Aug 8, 2014 14:40
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anilEhilated posted:My favorite part of past Doms LPs were the silly in-character diplomatic missives, hopefully they'll happen this time around too. Alas, the majority of dominions diplomacy happens in IRC so you won't be getting too much of that humour...although, it IS modpud playing so you'll get fun things like 
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Aug 8, 2014 16:06
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I haven't prepared any silly in-game messages or AAR content, but I do actually have a coherent plan this time. I'll start thinking about it, but I'll probably be waiting for the cornerstone of my plan to come online before I become loud and obnoxious. I was well isolated on a small peninsula, so I've been pushing into the seas. For now, I'll simply state that level three thrones are more... interesting with Awesomeish gods enabled. These thrones are basically guarded by upgraded pretenders.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:46
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Turn 2 already!! Time flies when you're having fun, etc etc I took like no screenshots this turn because I took the first half while really drunk and the second half REALLY drunk so I'm just going to include a rundown of our main units with this update since it would be 5 pictures and a paragraph of text otherwise. First, our turn, though. Let's see what was on that throne.  Nope  NOPE Okay we aren't taking that any time soon. That's a very powerful mage(and one of the chassis you can pick as your pretender, at that) with a huge amount of magic gems in her possession, which she would use to completely destroy anything we sent up against her. We'll have to wait at least a year or two before it will be cost effective(and possible!) to take that throne. Thankfully our tiny monkey friend escaped unharmed.   Our pretender wiped out those independents without taking a scratch, so there's that at least? We finally have sort of a real army between the handful of monkeys that we started with and what we recruited last turn, so let's take a quick look at their scripting.  Our new prophet, ANTI FEMINISM PRO EQUALITY, is set to cast divine blessing, a powerful spell that will bless all of our sacred units on the battlefield, and then he'll just cast whatever comes to mind after that(nothing particularly useful, probably). The tiny monkey archers are undisciplined, which means we can't give them orders at all, they'll just sort of do whatever, usually just shoot stuff and get themselves killed. The skinny monkeys in the center aren't scripted at all, which generally means they'll attack the closest thing they see. They don't really matter. Our fancy horseheaded Anusara are the important part though. They're set to attack rear, and they're fairly fast and hit very hard due to our blood bless, so they should flank the main enemy pack and tear right into them while the monkeys do their job of absorbing arrows since the Anusara are unarmoured. I honestly have no idea how/if this battle plan will work out. If you're wondering how our pretender is scripted, she's just set to be as close to the enemy as possible and charge straight at them. What are Anusara? Let's check out all the different commanders, mages, and troops available to us.  This is everything we can recruit from our capital. The upper section is commanders and mages, which we can recruit 1 of per turn, while the bottom is troops, limited by our gold, available resources, and holy points(our god's dominion candles, that we set during pretender creation). Holy points are just a flat restriction on the recruitment of sacred units. Our god has 10, so they're not a huge factor since our sacred troops are so costly.  This is our nation's scout. It's... passable I guess? I mean, it's cheaper and sneakier than most other nations' scouts, but it also takes up a turn of recruitment from a fort that I would much rather spend on a mage.    These are our nation's basic commanders. Only mages and priests can lead our demons so they're pretty much useless.  Our first mage! These guys are weak blood mages and priests but they're fine for research and blood hunting. Blood magic, unlike other magic, uses blood slaves(virgins), which you have to have your blood mages search for, greatly upsetting the populace. These guys are fantastically well-rounded for us though, being good at blood hunting, building labs and temples, and researching, all at a fairly low price. His abilities, from left to right, are sacred, forest survival(forests don't impede their movement), and "animal"("This is an animal.").  This is our only mage that isn't sacred. They're solid nature mages and passable researchers at a not-too-terrible price, although they aren't nearly as gold efficient as our Raktapata since the recruitment screen doesn't take into account the +3 research all our mages get inside our dominion. Their abilities on the far left and right are poison resistance and a supply bonus, both gained from having nature magic paths.  These guys are our cheapest, most powerful and widely available priests, which mean they're better at transferring a blessing to our troops than most of our other priests. The question mark is a random path, which, if we click on it, shows what they can get out of it.  So these guys are pretty much just a less diverse, sacred Yogini, with some priestly authority and the possibility of blood 2(an important path for us). Their new abilities, on the far right, are gluttonous(unit eats more supplies than normal) and darkvision(the unit can see in the dark better).  Finally, one of our Lankan Demons! The Rakshasi are incredibly diverse, powerful mages, but limited by only being recruitable in our capital, and also being slow to recruit, which means they take 2 turns to recruit one instead of 1 like for every other mage we have. They do bring a lot of powerful things to the table though, and I'll be recruiting at least a few. Their special abilities that aren't obvious are the crossed out supply bonus icon, which means they don't need to eat, and to the right of that, Shape Shifter, stealthy, and Demon. Demons can be banished by enemy priests and have perfect darkvision. On the far right is by far the most important ability to us, Chaos Power. Chaos Power is the best and worst mechanic Lanka has. The more turmoil there is in a province, whether through the turmoil scales or unrest, the stronger our demons get, while the more order, the weaker they get. Unfortunately, in Dominions 4, almost everyone takes order, so inside someone else's dominion our demons are almost unusably terrible, while inside it(or someone else's turmoil dominion) they are godlike. Chaos Power is why I took an awake pretender and 10 dominion candles, we need to be pushing our dominion aggressively from the get go to establish a powerful dominion base and make the best use of our demons.  These guys are absolutely incredible. In addition to being powerful mages, they aren't slow to recruit so we can(in theory, in practice we can't afford it) recruit one every turn, and they're pretty powerful warriors too. With a handful of items and some spell research these guys can wreak havoc on the battlefield. Unfortunately, they are only available in our capital like the rest of our demons. That wraps all of our mages up, what about troops?   First, we've got our Markata. These guys suck. I'll recruit a few bow-using Markata here and there(and maybe a giant pile at some point), but they are insanely, gleefully terrible at just about everything.   To be totally honest, these guys might suck even worse than Markata though. They're incredibly expensive for what they do(little more than a markata), and I don't think I'll ever be recruiting them.   These are our real soldiers, and probably the best units available to us outside of our capital. The archers are a little niche, since they need at least one or two buffs to be useful, but the warriors are some of my favourite soldiers of the early age even if there are many more gold and resource efficient units. With a few buffs, those sticks and stones will absolutely murder things, although I'm not sure if I'll ever be showing that off.  The Kala-Mukha warriors are the only sacred unit that we can recruit outside the capital. They're also our only sacred without chaos power, which can be helpful, and our only unit that wears helmets. I'm honestly not sure if I'll ever be using them, but I doubt it. Bandar warriors are a much better option for us.   The first 2 of our demon troops. The Asara are complete garbage, they could probably be passable with a few buffs but they're way too expensive and take up sacred slots in our capital that are much better spent on sacred units that are actually good. The Anusara are less terrible, but still far too fragile for me to be recruiting after the first few turns. They have their uses though, it's just not worth it to me to recruit them over our final capital-only demon unit, these guys.  I love these guys. They're terribly expensive, but so tough, strong, and fast that I don't even mind it. Inside our turmoil dominion these guys are incredibly powerful. I'm not even sure what else to say about them. They're fantastic and I love them, and even if we didn't have a bless(I almost didn't take a bless at all) I would still be recruiting them. These are just the units we can recruit with gold, there are even more demons available to us as summons later down the line!
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Aug 8, 2014 21:06
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This game is fascinating and absurd and I am completely awful at it, so I always like when a new LP of it pops up. That independent Great Mother is terrifying, E7/N8? And it's right next to your capital? Yeah, good luck with that.
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Aug 9, 2014 02:05
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I'd like to point out that Atavi Archers are actually quite good for their cost and are fantastic if you are fighting lightly armored things and/or using flaming arrows as they are stealthy, cost few resources, can be recruited en masse at a moment's notice and have forest survival to make getting around the map easier. The stealth aspect is really the key though as you can shuttle them through enemy lands and showing up to a fight with 100 more archers than the enemy expects can be crippling, especially with either Flaming Arrows (to light arrows on fire) or Destruction (to destroy enemy armour). But Lanka doesn't do much of either of those things so maybe they won't make much of an appearance.
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Aug 9, 2014 07:15
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Snodgrass Supreme posted:This game is fascinating and absurd and I am completely awful at it, so I always like when a new LP of it pops up. That independent Great Mother is terrifying, E7/N8? And it's right next to your capital? Yeah, good luck with that.
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Aug 9, 2014 09:57
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jBrereton posted:It's alright, for some reason it's full of Water Gems. I don't know what the new casting AI has for Great Mothers, I'm guessing something like Maws of the Earth?, but she won't be casting Foul Vapors which would be completely devastating for Lanka's non-demon troops so early (and you need your Atavi Archers to put in some work a lot of the time). She will have a random selection of spells that she can cast with her paths as well as a random selection of gems from the paths she has. Not having nature gems is indeed pretty lucky but she still probably has access to a number of dangerous spells. Probably worth sending ~50 monkeys at the throne to die and see what she has to cast.
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Aug 9, 2014 11:46
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Ah, Dominions. This game is just so unashamedly batshit insane and I love it for it. Even if I am terrible at it because my strategy is generally: Be Lemuria -> Undead Doomstacks. Which is, uh, one of those strategies that kinda works really well right up until it... Does not... Although the ability to spam certain whole-battlefield attack spells without a care is quite fun.
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Aug 9, 2014 14:51
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Couple thoughts: 1. Atavi archers are great. They're cheap, easily massable shooty guys. If you had fire you could make a whole mid-game strategy out of them. 2. It's silly that rakshasi are slow to recruit but raksharaja aren't. 3. Kala-Mukha warriors are what you recruit when people start banishing your Palankasha. They're a bit expensive but, particularly if you take a big bless, they're still great troops and they can't be banished. 4. Great mother is begging to be taken by Lanka for W9E9N9 bless and then just rolling over everyone ever. 5. Good luck with the LP!
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Aug 9, 2014 15:07
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Yeah I completely changed my mind about atavi archers like 3 days after writing that, but Lanka still can't really do a whole lot with them with their native paths Turn 3: The Turn Where Things Happen Last turn we were doing things and this turn we get to stare sorrowfully at the results of our actions. This is another turn where I was about as unsober as it gets so my screenshotting is a little lacking and it's not like I save these turns or anything so yeah. I'll get better, eventually, I promise!! ON THE OTHER HAND, you get to see me completely loving up constantly, so it's probably win-win This turn we got a massive pile of gold from some event or another, which is great because I sort of hosed up our scripting in the first battle involving our actual troops. I was so happy about it that I got up and did a little dance  It looks like our formations will be sort of doing their job, buuuuuuut  Our horseheaded thunderthighs decide to charge into the wrong group! The other pile of bear tribe warriors promptly launch like a thousand javelins into their faces.   Good enough, I guess. I think our one markata archer loss was due to friendly fire and blood vengeance.  Predictably, our pretender has no trouble with random indies. Now, looking at the map...  The currently selected province(the one at the center of all those yellow lines) is definitely someone's capital, based on the dominion candles next to it. I have no idea who, but, looking at the list of players and their nations, there are only one or two players who I'm not willing to rush within the next 2-4 turns. If I can kill them, I'll have my own secure corner of the continent. However, chances are they took order 3, which means it would be a pretty big struggle to actually kill them with our chaos power units. I need more information. At the very least, our pretender will go south to curtain off those provinces on the other side of the mountains across our capital. As for that throne our pretender is next to...  Nope. Not touching that. The Annunaki of the Sky is another pretender chassis, focussed on air magic. Both of the thrones we are closest to appear to be the highest level of throne, level 3. This is both good and bad, but honestly, mostly bad, especially at this stage of the game. The only thrones involved in this game are level 2 and 3 thrones, in case you're wondering. Level 1 thrones are boring and in my opinion just clutter up the map, so this game doesn't have any.  We have so much money that we can actually start our first fort on turn 3! There are 4 levels of forts. We can only build the 2 that are the cheapest/weakest/quickest to build, palisades and fortresses, which is just fine with me. We're also building a temple there, because we can recruit random puny human priests from that province if we do, and Lanka has a special, neat usage for them that you'll see in a bit. Unfortunately our poor capital placement means our expansion will be stifled for at least a bit, and we probably won't be as big as I'd like to be at the end of the year.  Our scout reports that there are around 30 barbarians where our prophet's army is going, so I adopt a vaguely defensive formation. Hopefully our markata can thin them out slightly before they smash into and through the poor monkeys, both large and small. I'd like to say at this point that I have no idea what I'm doing with Lanka. I'm the newest player in this game(although probably not the worst), and have never played Lanka before, although I've played a few nations that do some of the different things Lanka does. Lanka has a huge amount of different options, most of which I will probably never utilise in this game, and it seems like they got hit really hard with the introduction of chaos power, which didn't exist in dominions 3. However, I thrive in hardship, so I'll probably be able to accomplish something and maybe even knock someone else out of the game! Maybe garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Aug 9, 2014 |
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Aug 9, 2014 17:27
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You may want to keep your big screenshots width down to 1280 or whatever. 1860 is kinda ludicrous.
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Aug 9, 2014 17:50
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if you don't cast utterdark and use demonic armies led by mandehas this let's play will be a gigantic failure and i will be very disappointed in you
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Aug 9, 2014 18:09
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:if you don't cast utterdark and use demonic armies led by mandehas this let's play will be a gigantic failure and i will be very disappointed in you Good luck casting Utterdark without taking high death on a pretender.
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Aug 9, 2014 18:23
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Neruz posted:Good luck casting Utterdark without taking high death on a pretender. no excuses
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Aug 9, 2014 18:30
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Xander77 posted:You may want to keep your big screenshots width down to 1280 or whatever. 1860 is kinda ludicrous. Yeah I've started toning the screenshot size down in later updates alternate post: gently caress the poors, and phonehavers
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Aug 9, 2014 19:36
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garth ferengi posted:I'd like to say at this point that I have no idea what I'm doing with Lanka. I'm the newest player in this game(although probably not the worst), and have never played Lanka before, although I've played a few nations that do some of the different things Lanka does. Lanka has a huge amount of different options, most of which I will probably never utilise in this game, and it seems like they got hit really hard with the introduction of chaos power, which didn't exist in dominions 3. However, I thrive in hardship, so I'll probably be able to accomplish something and maybe even knock someone else out of the game! Maybe
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Aug 9, 2014 20:10
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This is the first Dominions LP I might actually read all the way through. Please continue screwing up all the way to victory.
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Aug 10, 2014 06:45
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garth ferengi posted:
Here is what the bulk of my armies look like in that game as of right now.   I can't make these from forts, just from a single forest which has been cranking them out since like turn 4. 
Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 03:27
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for anyone new to the whole dominions thing, you should check out the unit inspector and poke through all the weird nations and assorted junk people can use. also lists spells, items and magical sites. it's fairly easy to navigate. just remember to keep the dropdown box under nation choice set to 'available' if you want to view all the units specific and relevant to that nation. http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/
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Aug 11, 2014 03:36
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To be fair, the reason your armies look like that is because you are the nation of Ur, and you are going to be casting the spell Destruction. A Lot.
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Aug 11, 2014 06:25
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And Wooden Warriors and Swarm and Mass Regen and Maws of the Earth and Earthquake and Sleep Cloud and Blade Wind and the list sort of goes on because Ur have some excellent mages.
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Aug 11, 2014 06:51
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Hey Neruz, stop posting in my thread please thank's. You're gross and obnoxious and nobody likes you except maybe your mother Turn 4: The Hurting Last turn we were attacking some barbarians or whatever. Let's see how that went.  gently caress  And  PISS!!! Well, that's our prophet dead. RIP ANTI FEMINISM PRO EQUALITY. You were too young, far too young. On the other hand, we recruited this guy.  This guy is my loving hero. He had a(these are calculations off the top of my head, and I'm drunk so take this with a grain of salt) 0.0625% chance of getting these amazingly useful magic paths. All Raksharaja get air 2 at the very least, which is an amazing magic path on its own, enabling them to cast a few self buffs that greatly increase their survivability in melee, but this one has death 3 as well, which allows him to cast Soul Vortex, a self buff that lets him steal the life force from those near him, which is then used to heal himself and make him less tired. If this guy doesn't die young, he will become a loving terrifying monster.  We can see some candles to our north and west now, which is a little worrying. I've already hosed up my expansion, and we've got people closing in on us on all sides. I'm sending a Raktapata down to Cedarwood Forest to try and make the demons take Timeless Waste with the help of some monkeys I'm recruiting there this turn, while Government Gets Girlfriends is going to Ironwood Forest to lead some Atavi Archers(who I've decided might be useful) to Stone Heavens. I need to curtain off more land here, so I send my pretender up to Fowanshire(it looks like she's going south but I changed my mind after taking the screenshot) to do what I can to hem in whoever is to our east's expansion. Hopefully we'll find out what they are next turn. I really hate our starting position. If Stone Heavens was in our capital circle it would be fine, but instead our armies have to waste 1-2 turns moving to actually attack things, and at this point in the game I was doubting we would even break 15 provinces at the end of the year. Ha ha ha. You thought that was going to be the entire update, didn't you? WRONG. Idiot The following is perhaps the slimiest meta thing I've ever done.  ILoveYou is playing Yomi, another nation with chaos power demons like us, Oni. From here on out I'm going to abbreviate his name to "ilu", or "ilu xuande", which I've been honoured to be able to call him ever since we swore an oath in a peach garden. The rest of you can call him "ilu bei". Anyways, before this game started, we agreed to an informal turmoil build alliance against the rest of the nations who almost certainly all took order, because we are cool and they are lame. However, on turn 2, he told me that his capital circle is a throne too powerful for him to take, and 2 massive piles of barbarians that he doubted he could kill. At the start of this turn, he posted this in the dominions PGS thread. Looking at the map...  This looks like a pretty likely spot. There are other possible locations as well scattered all across the map, but the enemy candle location makes it look like a definite possibility. quote:<modpud> what kind of a takeover of your nation are we talking here. are we talking a peaceful one or will you make someone fight for it dominions diplomacy dot tee ex tee This might all be for nothing. I'll drink even more heavily if it is. ilu xuande would've been an amazing ally, he's definitely one of the better players in this game and might really gently caress me up if/when our armies clash. Kailasa is played by Hatwer, a friend of ilu's and another likely ally, meta-wise. He's a pretty good player though, and I don't know who Absum(Hinnom) is at all, so it could go either way. Kailasa is the other monkey nation in the early age, they are ruled by slightly more benevolent demonic/celestial beings than Lanka. Hinnom is Book-of-Enoch-based people eating giants, complete with Nephilim and Grigori. They tend to be a liiiittle bit stronger than Kailasa in the early game. With all this in mind, we are modifying our orders slightly. Our Pretender is moving to Ironwood Forest where she'll pick some atavi archers up and then proceed to eat barbarians or whatever, while our new expansion army is going south to pick up the remains of our first expansion army before busting out west.  Oh, and in case anyone is wondering what "SC" means, it stands for super-combatant. Around mid-game, Dominions games usually transition into a stage of the game where people's armies become primarily driven by "thugs" and "SCs" rather than their chaff units. A super-combatant is a powerful mage/monster, such as our pretender, usually given a huge pile of magic gear to make them as unkillable and dangerous as possible. Thugs tend to be cheaper, smaller units given only one or two magic items, and used for killing medium-large groups of enemy chaff or raiding someone's provinces alone. In Dominions 4, SCs have fallen out of favour due to the prevalence of sources of unresistable damage, and thugs have become a bit more important and widely used. Our Raksharaja are probably best classified as thugs, and we don't have a bless good enough to really turn them into anything more without a lot more gear, which is a problem, but not one that we can really do anything about at this point. garth ferengi fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 14:58
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Although Kailasa was my neighbour he was a bit further away than that just. He also took a bless and I ran some tests and my troops actually lose to his sacred archers in melee because awe 3 and two attacks to say nothing of his melee sacreds. This plus some other things including way too many chokepoints and both of us being cowards led to us stalemating which I was perfectly fine with seeing as he had less provinces and shittier scales than me.
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Aug 11, 2014 15:31
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Oh good, another Dominions Lp. Don't break my heart like all the others.
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Aug 12, 2014 21:41
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Prepare to have your heart broken, KID Turn 5: ...When we last left our hero, she was getting thrashed at the bar. Uncontrollably. Last turn we moved our scout towards our eastern neighbour, and this turn he spied on a battle! Hooray for scouting!   Niefelheim. Giants, especially ice giants, can be a little scary, but honestly I'm pretty sure our Palankasha can take on just about anything that they might have without too many issues, especially in our own dominion(probably not in their incredibly cold, probably order-based dominion though).    They're not so tough. The Skinshifters turn into a giant werewolf when they get wounded, and have decent regeneration in addition to having a big spear, but their giants are also all size 4, when the maximum total size of troops that can be in a square is 6, so they have to be pretty spread out as well. Our Palankasha are size 3, so we can beat them in troop density while having troops on par with theirs. Of particular note here is that their prophet is in this battle too.  Prophets are always blessed, so let's take a look at their blessing, shall we?  That's a water 4 and death 4 blessing, which, in combination with their dominion's spread so far, probably means that they took an awake pretender to expand on its own. At this point I'm pretty sure I know which one, but we'll cover that later. Undying means that the unit can go into negative HP, but if it's not undead and ends the battle in negative HP, it will die. Now, I don't know anything about nomadotto, so shortly before this game, when I realised he was my neighbour in another game running at the same time as this one, I internet stalked him a little. I asked everyone in my little dominions circle what they knew about him(absolutely nothing), checked out what his GGS(goon game service, the dominions 4 hub, essentially) profile number was(8. He was the eighth person to sign up on the site. I, on the other hand, am #317 or something.), even googled his name to see what came up. I didn't get anything concrete out of those, so I finally mustered the courage to talk to him directly! quote:<modpud> hi. are you fine with our current borders? id like province 52, but we can decide on who gets that throne between us at some point in the next few years Well, that went well enough, I suppose. I think he's a little more scared of us than we are of him. We got some good info out of that, which we'll go over in a few moments. We have 2 armies to give orders to this turn.  The first is our pretender, leading some atavi archers to go pick on some Lion Tribe independents. I'm not too worried about its success.  The second, lead by Government Gets Girlfriends, is going to finish off those barbarians that wiped out our first expansion army. There's no way that they can lose this fight.  In other news, we are just barely able to set up a second expansion army this turn! Our event money trust fund has run out, so now we are going to be incredibly poor. I'm going to try to split up all of our expansion armies later, they are far too large(we really only need 8~ Palankasha and a Kala-Mukha to take pretty much any independent province). Kala-Mukha are just fine as leaders for our demons, and much more gold and resource efficient than recruiting a Raksharaja at this point in the game like we have(I am nothing if not wasteful and terrible with money).  Mictlan's capital is the currently selected province north of us. They definitely don't have an awake god, which is how our dominion candles snaked their way into their cap circle. Mictlan is a nation of blood-sacrificing Aztecs with the greatest sacred troops in the game, the Jaguar Warriors, and they have some of the most solid magic access around in addition to a ton of amazing national summons. Mictlan might be my least favourite nation in the game. Jaguar Warriors make their expansion completely effortless, and most people who play them are pretty terrible so they invest in a huge bless for them and rush as many people as they can in the early game. We don't know what kind of bless they have, though, so I'm going to be completely passive here and let nomadotto take the lead and find out what their bless is, if any. Jaguar Warriors are amazing enough that they don't even need a bless to be one of the best recruitable units in the game. My hope at this point is so kill whoever is to my West, hopefully ilu xuande, curtain off as much territory as I can so that whoever is north of my western neighbour can't have very much, and maybe end up with a very large corner of the continent to myself. Then I can start turtling up a little, by constructing temples and blood hunting my provinces until I can bring a massive blood summon-driven economy to bear on my opponents. That probably won't be for awhile though.
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Aug 12, 2014 21:52
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