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Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
My guess would be Nemedians.

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AfroSquirrel
Sep 3, 2011

LordLeckie posted:

A kitfox province without PD you say.

He started going to PD Anonymous to get his life turned around, but now all that progress will be throne away with a single scout tap.

The Gentleman
Jun 21, 2012

Neruz posted:

Oh dear attacking an Annunaki of the Sky throne, this has the potential to go horribly wrong.

Why whats wrong with Annuaki of the Sky?

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

The Gentleman posted:

Why whats wrong with Annuaki of the Sky?

First up, battlemagic wise if you can only have one type of magic Air is the type of magic you want to have. Throne PGod chassi come with a supply of gems that refreshes after every combat, Annunakis of the Sky typically have Air 8 or 9 and access to fun spells like Arrow Fend, Storm, Shimmering Fields and Phantasmal Army and thanks to their regenerating gem pile they can freely cast these spells basically forever.

Most really powerful battlemagic is tied to certain combinations of paths or to multiple casters spamming the spell, but pure Air has access to a couple of combat spells that are very lethal even if only one person is casting them. Furthermore Annunakis of the Sky typically come with Air Elementals and Spring Hawks, both of which are arguably the most powerful versions of their respective summons.


Basically, Annunakis of the Sky are far more likely to wave around genuinely dangerous battlemagic than any other throne pgod chassis. While other throne pgods can luck into powerful battlemagics Annunakis of the Sky are the only throne pgod that routinely gets powerful battlemagics.

Have Some Flowers!
Aug 27, 2004
Hey, I've got Navigate...
They're also difficult to assassinate due to being able to cast things like Air Elementals and Ghost Wolves forever. Also, False Fetters cast by an A9 caster is a horrific sight to behold.

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
From my experience, the Annuaki of the Sky tends to always cast Arrow Fend followed by spamming Phantasmal Army. He also uses Orb Lightning if you get too close.
Illwinter addressed some of the more questionable Throne Defender casting AI and gave them a hardcoded list of spells instead of spamming stupid stuff like fire flies and flying shards.
PS: Bring along a Void Eye.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 22, 2014

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine

AfroSquirrel posted:

He started going to PD Anonymous to get his life turned around, but now all that progress will be throne away with a single scout tap.

It's fundamentally unjust that the next 4 posts were not 'holy poo poo, nice one'.

I'm trying to remedy that here, but I'm only one goon.

:megadeath:

garth ferengi
Dec 20, 2009

Not gonna lie that was like the first genuinely good post in this entire thread including my own

Turn 14: Glamorous Glue

Let's see what's on that throne!





This guy immediately casts mistform on himself. What mistform does is makes it so that the unit who cast it on themselves only takes 1 damage from attacks, unless hit especially hard or with a magic weapon, in which case mistform will disappear. I think our blood-blessed Palankasha can hit him hard enough that he'll lose it, so it's not a big deal. What's scariest about this guy is the amount of air gems he has. There are a lot of very powerful air battle magics that require air gems, and I have no idea what ones this guy might be busting out. Air 8 means that he's able to cast almost any air spell for only a tiny amount of fatigue too. This is going to hurt, even with his much-reduced contingent.



Spring Hawks are annoying, but not especially powerful. Ethereal and their decently high defence means they're pretty hard to hurt, but they don't hit too hard and they dont have a lot of health.



Not a whole lot! I think that Niefelheim must have failed to take it last turn. Hopefully they don't send another force this turn like we are.







The rest of the battles go smoothly. We're on track for taking one throne this turn, and another 2 turns after that.





I took a screenshot of this event because it's pretty useful! A free lab is basically a "build a loving fort and temple here" sign for us. Saving 500 gold in the construction of another mage center is pretty amazing, we'll definitely be building our next palisade there. The lightning spear isn't super great though, it'll probably just sit in our magic lab gathering dust the entire game.



We've finally found Pangaea's capital, too! Our scout that we sent to Abysia's capital last turn was discovered and killed by Kitsune Foxfur Heil Hitler's province defence. It looks like Mictlan is killing his nearby indies before attacking Pangaea, which isn't good but whatever, we're not under attack yet so I'm not worried.



This is what we're sending against that throne. It should be more than enough to deal with what's there, our prophet is also sneaking there at the same time so he can claim the throne next turn. Thrones can only be claimed by priests with H3, and pretenders. Our nation doesn't have any recruitable H3s(although we DO have one as a summon. Maybe we'll see it later...) so we have to rely on our prophet and pretender.

We'll have our 4th(!!!) fort finished next turn. Right now, with a little luck and event gold, we'll be on track for 5 forts by the end of year 2, which is pretty drat decent.

This turn we summoned the first of our Ganas. Ganas are pretty great.



They're ethereal and have a shield, and a passable level of morale. Against troops without magic weapons, they do a pretty good job of holding the line. Their weapons have to get through magic resistance to hurt people, though, so against anything with more than 10 MR they're going to need a lot of support to actually do things. White Centaurs don't have any sort of magic weapon, but Pangaea's have a death 9 bless, which adds 2 magic damage to all their attacks that has to go through magic resistance. I'm not sure if it actually hurts undead since it's supposed to be a disease attack(and diseases living units if it actually hurts them).

Ganas cost 12 death gems for 20, which is fairly cheap, at this stage of the game. We get 3 death gems every turn just from our capital alone(not that we have any other death magic sites yet), so we'll have 60 or even maybe 80 ready for attacking the throne.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves
I am prepared for the battle of the pretender gods.

Magil Zeal
Nov 24, 2008

amuayse posted:

From my experience, the Annuaki of the Sky tends to always cast Arrow Fend followed by spamming Phantasmal Army. He also uses Orb Lightning if you get too close.
Illwinter addressed some of the more questionable Throne Defender casting AI and gave them a hardcoded list of spells instead of spamming stupid stuff like fire flies and flying shards.
PS: Bring along a Void Eye.

Just recently in another goon game I saw a 130ish unit army get wiped out by a much smaller army led by the Annunaki of the Sky guarding a throne because it cast Fog Warriors on its first turn and then proceeded to spam Living Clouds. It was absolutely brutal.

I'll cheer our Devi of Darkness on here, but it could go very badly.

garth ferengi
Dec 20, 2009

That's actually the last update of my lattice play. I lost the battle and then I went AI

Lattice work over bye cya next thread

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves

garth ferengi posted:

That's actually the last update of my lattice play. I lost the battle and then I went AI

Lattice work over bye cya next thread

Wait seriously?

:colbert: I am unsure if you are messing with us or not.

Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Aug 22, 2014

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

She's joking.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


ChickenWing posted:

She's joking.

It is a dom4 lp can never be too sure.

garth ferengi
Dec 20, 2009

Turn 15: Bigmouth Strikes Again

Last turn we assembled probably our largest force so far, in order to take a fairly weak looking throne. Let's take a look at how it went!





Our force looks a lot more imposing, no?



This fucker casts arrow fend on turn 1. Arrow fend gives all of his units air shield, which makes our archers entirely useless.



Otherwise it's going just fine, until...



This fucker starts casting phantasmal army. Phantasmal army is an air magic spell that summons a ton of these guys.



It summons something like 15 or 20 at the base level to cast it, and more and more the higher your level of air magic. It only costs a single gem to cast, too, so this guy can cast it close to 30 times if we let him.

They're ethereal, and their weapons have to go through magic resistance. They're like worse versions of our Ganas, but considering how many more of them there are...

Things stop going our way.







I forgot the biggest rule of attacking throne provinces.

code:
<iloveu> DONT ATTACK THE ANNUKAKI OF TH ESKY EVER
<iloveu> EVER
Pretenders sitting on throne provinces regenerate their magic gems after every fight, so that throne is pretty much impossible for us to take right now. We'd need a lot more front-loaded firepower than we are capable of producing right now.

Let's take a look at our current gem stores!



The + amount is what we get every turn. We've gotten quite a few gems from random events. The last of our death gems are being used to summon Ganas this turn. We'll have 80 for our attack on the other throne.



Thankfully that loss hasn't hosed up our timetable, we'll still be able to attack the throne next turn.



Only one small piece of new intel this turn. See that fancy yellow flag up in the right hand corner? That's Kailasa, played by Hatwer. Hatwer is one of the best players in this game, probably, especially from a mechanical/technical/scripting standpoint.



Kailasa, The Other Monkey Meat. They've got a lot of neat things going on, sort of like us, with a lot of unique and powerful summons of their own.

I'm still not sure what direction we're going to take after this second, hopefully successful, throne assault. Niefelheim is looking pretty tasty, and Mictlan seems to be pretty small. If Niefelheim attacks Mictlan, I'm definitely going to go after Niefelheim, and then clean up Mictlan afterwards if I can. Even if all we can successfully pull off is the destruction of Niefelheim, we'll be the most powerful nation in this half of the continent. Hopefully Pangaea doesn't spoil anything.

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

Annuaniki of the Sky Throne, AKA "WELP guess I'm not getting that particular bit of my capcircle".

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
An Eye of the Void makes the Annunaniki of the Sky thrones way, way easier to capture.

Donkringel
Apr 22, 2008
2 questions.

1) why does everyone rag on kitfox? Only thing I see is the massive pd which isn't too terrible.

2) Is it possible to have ai general strategy scripts. For example a mod that adds to the ai empires like "mictlan bless strategy jaguars go go go" or something where the ai follows a predictable route that includes magic and an endgame strategy beyond "SEND IN EVERYTHING!"

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
While high PD works on some things like an average solo brand thug through sheer weight of numbers, they probably won't do much to a later game doomstack other than give the mages more xp.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Aug 23, 2014

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

Donkringel posted:

2) Is it possible to have ai general strategy scripts. For example a mod that adds to the ai empires like "mictlan bless strategy jaguars go go go" or something where the ai follows a predictable route that includes magic and an endgame strategy beyond "SEND IN EVERYTHING!"
That tragically isn't moddable, other than setting factions to work on certain parameters, like for example telling the AI that they need an immobile pretender, or that they have to use Blood Sacrifice to keep dominion going.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

The Gentleman posted:

Why whats wrong with Annuaki of the Sky?

I hope your question is now answered Gentleman.

The Gentleman
Jun 21, 2012

Neruz posted:

I hope your question is now answered Gentleman.

Dear god thats worse than skelespam

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

Skele spam, at least in 3, was gem-free. So was slightly worse.

Air magic is AMAZING though.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

Veloxyll posted:

Air magic is AMAZING though.

Straight up if you can only have access to one path of magic, you want access to Air. It is hands down the best path to have. All the other paths have things that they are good at but air has everything.

Good buffs? Check. Good battlemagic? Check. Good rituals? Check. Air magic is the bomb.

I Love You!
Dec 6, 2002

Neruz posted:

Straight up if you can only have access to one path of magic, you want access to Air. It is hands down the best path to have. All the other paths have things that they are good at but air has everything.

Good buffs? Check. Good battlemagic? Check. Good rituals? Check. Air magic is the bomb.

I mean that or death. EA C'tis gets by pretty well for itself.

AfroSquirrel
Sep 3, 2011

I Love You! posted:

I mean that or death. EA C'tis gets by pretty well for itself.

Having high Death means having access to all schools of magic in the end, though.

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer
If there was a nation that only got three mages; 1 in a path, 2 in a path, and 3 in a path (cap only), I'd want that path to be blood assuming I had the troop quality to protect my early blood econ. It just straight up gives the most options.

If I had terrible chaff-like troops I'd definitely want Air or Death, yeah.

Istvun
Apr 20, 2007


A better world is just $69.69 away.

Soiled Meat

Jon Joe posted:

If there was a nation that only got three mages; 1 in a path, 2 in a path, and 3 in a path (cap only), I'd want that path to be blood assuming I had the troop quality to protect my early blood econ. It just straight up gives the most options.

If I had terrible chaff-like troops I'd definitely want Air or Death, yeah.

Perhaps, but if that nation got 1, 3 and 5 in the path I'd want air, no question.

I Love You!
Dec 6, 2002

Istvun posted:

Perhaps, but if that nation got 1, 3 and 5 in the path I'd want air, no question.

I'd still consider death. Skelespam beats t-strike and isn't that much worse against other poo poo.

It depends on the troops at that point.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


I've always been unclear about how one should best deploy skelespam. Is it better to have a small number of high death summoners, or a large number of low death summoners?

jsoh
Mar 24, 2007

O Muhammad, I seek your intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight

wiegieman posted:

I've always been unclear about how one should best deploy skelespam. Is it better to have a small number of high death summoners, or a large number of low death summoners?

yes

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer

wiegieman posted:

I've always been unclear about how one should best deploy skelespam. Is it better to have a small number of high death summoners, or a large number of low death summoners?


Pretty much.

The only time the option really matters is when you're doing a communion for skelespam, in which case you'll want to calculate the perfect master to slave ratio for casting the most skeletons over the course of the battle (long term matters more than short term for skelespam), keeping in mind the fatigue reductions for the added paths on your masters, the fatigue division among slaves, the conversion rate of 10 fatigue to 1 damage past 200 fatigue, and that the battle ends on turn 50 no matter what.

I Love You!
Dec 6, 2002
Yeah to put it in perspective, a lategame raiding force of 1-2 D3+ guys and 3-4 D2 guys is sufficient to plow through almost any amount of PD and even small armies.

It will also wreck small amounts of mages since skelespam reaches a critical breakpoint long before other battlemagic. So they can't just bring along an equal-sized army with a handful of mages to stop you, they have to bring a mini deathball or at least a comprehensive blenderarmy. That's when you add in another 2-3 D3+ guys and 3-4 D2 guys and step things up again.

Death stacks very well with Death, you'll find.

The D2 guys are helpful to spread out from North to South on the battlefield to give you a good strong line and fatigue out everything while stopping lone squads from punching through to your mages. The D3 guys you want in an area that you want to try to jam through troops or fatigue things the heaviest or where you want to draw the most spell fire. Usually this will be nearer the center of the map, though if you're cramming on rigor mortis and using other living troops as line fighters you may want 1-2 around the edges so when everything passes out your skeles can still wrap around and butcher sleeping guys instead of getting stuck behind your living meat.

garth ferengi
Dec 20, 2009

Turn 16: A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours

No battles this turn! hosed up and boring, I know.

Our entire army is attacking The Rusty Badlands. This is sort of a make-or-break moment for us, because if we lose here we'll have lost so many soldiers that we'll have fallen hopelessly behind all of our neighbours except ilu xuande.





I've set all of our archers on fire large monsters, because I want them to shoot at the vine ogres, who were up top if I'm remembering correctly. Our ganas will be hurt a lot less by those arrows than our Palankasha, and vine ogres/men have incredibly low magic resistance so hopefully our ganas rip right through them. I couldn't remember what was down low, so I set our Palankasha backed up by our pretender down there, set to attack rearmost so if it's totally clear they'll flank whatever is in the center. Our center line is just our reanimated undead, the ones that are actually worthwhile combatants in the center with the ones that are not below them, hopefully shielding our Palankasha somewhat.

The Raksharaja are all set to cast lightning bolt, the only worthwhile battle magic they have access to right now. It should kill something like a unit or 3 every turn, depending on what it hits, so it will help a little at least.



We're starting our 5th(!!) fort in Timeless Waste this turn. Pangaea's army is way up in Dragonscale Mountains, it looks like they're going for all those independent provinces between them and Mictlan and Abysia.



We've found Ulm's capital, and it looks like Abysia has taken back their throne as well. I have no idea what is going on up there, ilu xuande and I need to hurry the hell up and kill all of our neighbours, so we can fight whoever is winning up north.





Thanks, I guess? Cockatrices aren't super great but they're not the worst thing ever, and I won't get mad about getting one almost for free. They have an attribute called magic being, which means they can only be led by mages, standard commanders and priests aren't enough. We'll probably put it to use at some point, but I'm not going to go out of my way for it.

A pretty uneventful turn overall, which isn't necessarily bad I guess?

Xenoborg
Mar 10, 2007

Does that event kill one of your existing commanders or is that just flavor text?

edit: By kill I meant replace. If this event happened to a 40g generic commander its pretty cool, it it happened to a 500g cap only 2 turn mage thats another story.

Xenoborg fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Aug 24, 2014

AXE COP
Apr 16, 2010

i always feel like

somebody's watching me

Xenoborg posted:

Does that event kill one of your existing commanders or is that just flavor text?

He didn't die, just transform into a different thing, but yes it does actually effect one of your units. For the most part flavour text is pretty mechanically accurate.

Johnny Joestar
Oct 21, 2010

Don't shoot him?

...
...



there's actually a spell that lets a caster transform itself into various critters. sometimes you can luck out and get something like an ettin chassis but with good magic paths, but other times it'll be something halfway worthless.

either that or their brain is fried in the process.

I Love You!
Dec 6, 2002

Agent Kool-Aid posted:

there's actually a spell that lets a caster transform itself into various critters. sometimes you can luck out and get something like an ettin chassis but with good magic paths, but other times it'll be something halfway worthless.

either that or their brain is fried in the process.

They can also just legit explode.

RBA-Wintrow
Nov 4, 2009


Clapping Larry
On the upside, they no longer cost upkeep. For some-one who's paying a fortune in upkeep on expensive mages (Pan) it's worth it to lose a few of them to a botched Transformation spell but end up with vastly lower upkeep.

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jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

Agent Kool-Aid posted:

there's actually a spell that lets a caster transform itself into various critters. sometimes you can luck out and get something like an ettin chassis but with good magic paths, but other times it'll be something halfway worthless.

either that or their brain is fried in the process.
It also crashes multiplayer games at the moment, apparently.

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