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I've always thought the death match reward should be an old school clam of pearls.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:44
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 Turn 6An oversight has forced you down a dangerous path. But you stay determined.  Oh boy, I got some research done. Also other things happened, but let's look at that first.  Enchantment has no level 0 spells, and some minor level 1 ones. A few might be useful, but there's nothing I'm really after here; this is a stepping stone to my real goals.  My first casualties of the game, but, honestly losing only two to that province is pretty great. Heavy cavalry are nasty. Especially since I once again hosed up with my positioning so that the cavalry got the first attack. Fortunately, after the initial pain my infantry and skinshifters ripped them apart, and then it was just cleanup. Other two things, meanwhile, normally death matches show the battles happening so everyone can watch them. Not showing any battles but having a result means...  The one person who entered wins by default. Congratulations Carcer. Though admittedly a vanherse probably would have won anyway at this point in the game, so not sending anything was the right choice for everyone else. He won the Champion's Gladius, possibly the second-worst prize. Better than the trident because at least you still have a free hand, but otherwise just filling a slot you probably want something better in. And lastly, we have that fight in Baudin's land. Note the position of the flags there.  Apparently, Baudin got a bad event and his lands were attacked by indies. Judging from the lack of casualties on their end, they won, too. So he lost that land and will have to take it back. Bad things happening to my opposition is good for me, so this is amusing to me.  The current state of the world; note that in the upper-left behind the province info you can see Kitfox's capital; as predicted last turn I wound up wrapping around the world with my scout and found his lands from the opposite side now. So, despite having a coastal preference Kitfox did not start on the coast. Man, this game's zero for two on getting people's cap preferences right so far. Anyway, my commander heads south with the army of olms and skinshifters from my capital, my diabolist builds a lab on my forest, my scouts keep infiltrating Baudin's lands, and my starting army heads... For the throne? Yep. See that blue line there that I mentioned last update? That is a water connection, meaning that a river runs between these provinces. You can actually see it just barely beneath the province border. Rivers and mountain passes are "interesting" (read: Annoying) because it's situational when you can cross them. Amphibious units can always cross rivers, units with mountain survival can always cross mountains, and flying units can cross anything because flying is awesome. If your units do not have these things, however, then you can only cross these when the temperature scales are right. If both provinces with a river between them are Cold, then normal units can just walk right across because the river's frozen, while mountain passes require neither side to be Cold (possibly both to have Heat even, I can't recall exactly) so that the pass isn't blocked by snow. Given that I have Heat scales and summer only just ended, that river is an impassable barrier to me. So it's either backtrack my army and don't attack anything with it this turn (bad), attack Kitfox (bad and dumb), or attack that throne. Given that it's only shown Lion Tribe units, my army should be able to take it, but still, it's a bit earlier than I wanted to bother with it. If this goes poorly it would really suck for me. Plus side, this province I took this turn had two magic sites on it that weren't even hidden:  The Turtle Village is nothing important; it lets me recruit merpeople who have fish tails in the water, legs on land. They're a way to break into the ocean if you don't have any other options, but I can forge water-breaking items for my commanders and eventually armies easily, olms and skeletons (which my marshmasters can raise) are amphibious, and if I have to I can summon kappa with my national spells, which would probably stand a better chance against the trolls (and, checking the scouting report, kraken) hiding in that lake. The other site is much nicer:  One Death gem a turn is not much, but it's something, and it's also a neat little thing for its flavor. Ruins from the past age/Ascension War and all; given that my made-up fluff for this game (that I wound up not writing in detail beyond my nation lore because doing a full narrative LP (like Gabriel Pope's Dom3 one, which A. Was amazing and actually is what got me into the game, and B. Sadly lost half its images when its image host went down) would have been rather difficult and probably rather silly) involves the last war wrecking everything, hence the new weird draft nations, it's especially appropriate. Looking at the throne, besides increased units I notice something interesting:  Turmoil scales. I have Order, no one has dominion here, and none of the thrones in this game raise Turmoil. That means that, in addition to the throne itself, there's a hidden site here that's raising the Turmoil. (Or a random event hit the province and gave it Turmoil scales temporarily, but I'm leaning towards a site.) There are only three Turmoil-raising sites in the game. One raises Sloth as well, so it's probably not that one. The other two are an F2 and an N3 site; I can have a lucky Marshmaster search for the latter, but the former I'll need to teleport my god in or something to search it when it wakes up. One last thing, I check mercenaries again, and the barbarians are already dead. Wow, that was fast. There's a new group there but they're utter trash and I'm not sure if anyone will take them. Anyway, after this turn I chat with the other players in IRC. Between talks with Bug and Shoeless, I come to the conclusion that Bug is to my north, James is east or northeast, and Carcer is somewhere around them and maybe by me, maybe not. Shoeless I don't think is a neighbor given what he's said about his position relative to other people. I'm slowly figuring out where everyone is relative to me, which is good; I want to be on good terms with my neighbors, right up to the moment I run over their lands with a million smelly furries and slimy pink worm things.
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Feb 4, 2016 21:49
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With Baudin going blood sac and temple specialized, I'm surprised he didn't choose to take and push Turmoil. It's basically the one combination in the game where Yomi demons' Chaos Power can actually work out. You can them go full Growth / Prod to make up the income a bit.
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Feb 5, 2016 02:09
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TheDemon posted:With Baudin going blood sac and temple specialized, I'm surprised he didn't choose to take and push Turmoil. It's basically the one combination in the game where Yomi demons' Chaos Power can actually work out. You can them go full Growth / Prod to make up the income a bit. Oh hey, that's a good strategy; half-price temples makes Turmoil considerably less painful, and Growth+Prod balances out Turmoil exactly. Though most of the time people go Turmoil they also want Luck and Magic for better events and stuff, which might be why he didn't; going for all that and an awake god is hard. I think he wanted the god to deter early rushes and prioritized it higher, and felt that he couldn't afford Turmoil or something/that it wasn't worth it on its own. I dunno. It'd be neat if he posted his thoughts in here and stuff; I like it when the other players offer their input and stuff. Tangent, you know what would be an awesome (if expensive and impractical) god for a chaos power nation like that? An Azi. Chaos Power 2, an extremely nasty breath weapon and loads of attacks, fear and probably awe from domscore, and it'd be able to go on the offensive as you push your dominion into enemy land with blood sacrifice. Would need to either thrash your scales or take it dormant, mind, because even with a 40 point discount that'd be 180 points for the chassis alone, but it'd be really cool. Impractical and probably not at all worth the points, but very, very cool. Edit: But, yeah, blood sacrifice + cheap temples + oni is a very good argument for Turmoil, however you go about it. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 02:55
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Yeah, that map does not look at all like you'd need to cross running water to get someplace. Oh well. Good luck storming the throne!
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Feb 5, 2016 13:12
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Turn 7 The discovery of great power fills you with determination.  Two battles this turn, one at the throne. Let's see them.   That actually went really, really well. No horrible mages hidden among the Lion Tribe, so it was just the masses of crappy units, while my other army just wrecked some standard indies.  The enemy army at the throne. Larger than anything we've faced thus far, but not particularly bad. Though, I lied; it does have a mage there.  Specifically, this guy. ...Not much of a threat, really. All he'll do is shoot a Vine Arrow (projectiles that do some damage and entangle the target if they hit, immobilizing them until they rip their way out) a turn until he dies or flees.  Our armies meet; a few shifters die in the exchange, but...  Overall, I deal far more damage than I take. And the witch doctor hits at least two of his own men with Vine Arrows rather than my soldiers. This is a massacre. Meanwhile, in the other battle:  Those guys being hit by the weird grey stuff are the targets of my olms' mind blasts. Perfectly accurate attacks that can hit from any range, unless the target makes their MR check they will be paralyzed and possibly a bit of damage. Mind blasters are amazing because they'll incapacitate chunks of the enemy army while your troops fight. Which is exactly what happens here; the olms paralyze enemy units, and the skinshifters cut everything down.  The current state of my empire. Despite being a farm Lombaria isn't that large, though it's still the nicest thing I've grabbed that isn't Terrym. In fact, with my current income, I can try to save up for a fort next turn; I queue up an Elder Druid this turn (he'll take two turns to recruit, though) so I can have someone out searching sites besides a diabolist, and then calculate my income versus expenses to have enough to start building a fort next turn in Terrym. (Why I decide on Terrym over Tyradir, what with it having a throne and all, I don't quite recall; possibly because it'll have more income. Going to fort the throne too eventually of course.) Speaking of that throne, let's take a look at it.  Oh my. Despite being only a level 1 throne, this is possibly the best one I could have found for me. As we have established previously, I need a lot of Air gems. This throne, meanwhile, makes a lot of Air gems. After I claim it (which will take a turn from my prophet, so I don't do that just yet) I get the effects listed there; prior to that, it's just one A gem a turn, but that's still nice. All thrones spread dominion like temples when claimed, but their other effects vary immensely. Anyway, my armies keep expanding, my diabolist heads up to search that throne (throne provinces are considerably more likely to have hidden magic sites than most provinces), and I do this to the forest now that I have a lab in it:  Going to be recruiting hags from there every turn until the end of the game probably; at 40g each they are not expensive, and the RP boost without a fort is very nice. I'll be labbing up every forest I claim and doing the same there most likely. My research is going to take off soon hopefully. Anyway, I also wound up talking with my neighbors some more. I got in touch with James this turn, confirmed that he's to my east, and apparently Carcer is to his east; neither is having an easy expansion apparently. Meanwhile more talk with Shoeless reveals that he actually is my neighbor, because due to the wrap-around what we thought was far to my north is also directly south of me. I work out borders with the both of them, getting The Mighty Pillars secured for myself (it's sort of in my cap circle, but also sort of not; the impassable connection is a bit weird), and I also learn that apparently Sloppy's somewhere near Shoeless and lost his god to an indie province. Given Sloppy's nation (which I will cover in detail when I scout it), I am okay with this development. Since I have the pillars secured via diplomacy, I don't expand to them just yet; as I'd have to backtrack out of them immediately to keep expanding, I instead decide to go a route where I can keep taking provinces and then grab that later when I have nowhere else to go. One last thing I noticed this turn:  Baudin's scales include Death. I don't know why he took Death; given that he's a Blood nation, getting population back from Growth would be very nice. Death is just an unpleasant scale. The rest isn't too surprising; high Productivity because of his armored units, Cold 3, and Magic 3. Likely has neutral Order to not weaken his oni, too. Outside of the Death scales this is about what I'd have expected based on the info I had.
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Feb 5, 2016 23:44
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I assume the point of death would be to give him a few more points for something else he wanted. Is there any way to negate or counteract the slow population loss of the death effect?
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Feb 6, 2016 00:17
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ousire posted:I assume the point of death would be to give him a few more points for something else he wanted. Is there any way to negate or counteract the slow population loss of the death effect? Not really. Population in Dominions is static before scales affect it; sometimes it moves around due to events, but as far as I'm aware if you don't have Growth it's going to stay the same or go down as events and enemy spells (and your own spells and you blood hunting your population, etc.) kill your population. Generally, the best way to mitigate taking Death is to not spread your dominion, but, well, the whole point of taking blood sacrifice is to spread your dominion everywhere, so Baudin's clearly not going with that.
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Feb 6, 2016 00:51
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Roland Jones posted:Baudin's scales include Death.
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Feb 6, 2016 00:55
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jBrereton posted:Could be a site. Alternatively could have a ton of Luck, which opens some okay events with Death, that hasn't quite spread to the province yet. Nah, he has it in an adjacent province too. I just showed that one because it has C3 and M3, whereas the other has them both at 2, so this one is likely closer to his true scales. Luck is theoretically possible but I'm not seeing it anywhere, meanwhile. And you'd think he'd have gone Turmoil if he was taking Luck and Magic. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 01:01
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Roland Jones posted:Not really. Population in Dominions is static before scales affect it; sometimes it moves around due to events, but as far as I'm aware if you don't have Growth it's going to stay the same or go down as events and enemy spells (and your own spells and you blood hunting your population, etc.) kill your population. I thought the best way to mitigate death scales was to use your presumably awake God or tri-blessed jaguars to murder your neighbors before they could out produce you.
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Feb 6, 2016 05:03
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sullat posted:I thought the best way to mitigate death scales was to use your presumably awake God or tri-blessed jaguars to murder your neighbors before they could out produce you. Well, sure, that works too.
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Feb 6, 2016 05:49
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Without overtax (Dom3 mechanic that was removed) it's difficult to properly leverage death. The best way to use it in a blood econ is to transition money provinces to blood provinces as they fall to 7k pop or so, but that's just getting the most for your dollar rather than actually building anything around it.
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Feb 6, 2016 06:33
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Bug_Squash Mage Selection I'm pretty lazy, so I'm only going to go over my mage selection. Part of this is that I've made some absolutely atrocious commander selection, due to this is my third ever multiplayer game of Dominion, so I don't think I ever recruit any of them. As Roland Jones mentioned my pretender is an Earth Snake, which I hope to compensate for my lack of skill and get me into mid game. Since I didn't realise it was cold blooded I've only gone Heat 1 with it rather than Heat 2 (at least I didn't go Cold 1, which I seriously considered). I also snagged the ability to build Pallisades as my special ability. In my last game I played Mictlan and quite liked being able to get a second fort up cheaper and earlier than otherwise possible so I grabbed that as well. Anyway, without further ado, my Mage Selection:   My double pick. As mentioned ealier, Yaksha as pretty fantastic. I've never played with serious earth magic before so I'm looking forwards to trying these babies out. What I didn't realise is that these were summonable with LA Patala magic, which I could have grabbed instead. D'oh. Master of Names I picked by looking though the list of mages and picking something that had a good research to gold ratio. The random Air and Fire I'll get will let me forge Air Quills and Lightless Lanterns, to ramp up my research even further. As my main research mage, I'll be making tons of these, so some kind of offensive ability means I can pull a massive mage army out of my rear end as a panic button. Astral 2, boosted up to Astral 3 with skull caps, and maybe to Astral 5 with battlefield boosters gives me some offensive abilities including Soul Slay and Enslave. Hopefully that'll discourage people from attacking.  So people keep telling me how great air magic is. I look through the list of the highest powered air mages, and once I'd skipped the ones already picked (notably Eagle Kings, which yes, I should have banned), this is what was left. They are recruit everywhere, so I can make a fair few is needed. Really looking forward to using air magic.  Long lost to memory, I once played a noobie game a year ago and made some great use of these guys. Once transformed into a were-wolf they can regenerate and generally make mincemeat of unprepared enemies. I kind of panic-picked these since for some reason I wanted a thug. Overall I think this is my mage pick I regret the most, since there is substantial redundancy with the magic paths with my other picks.  After my Mictlan game I had a soft spot for these guys, but mostly I just realised I was missing nature and death from my repertoire. As powerful as these guys are, I probably won't hire too many due to how massively expensive they are. But they can fly so they should be able to site-search my empire fairly effectively. I've got less to say compared to the others since there wasn't much theory crafting going into my decisions. I just picked mages that had reasonably high paths in as many paths as possible Edit: Added in the right mages 
Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 21:44
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I'd like to request a full overview of Bug's stuff from some veterans. It's educational to see things that don't work out as much as it is things that do.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:29
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TravelLog posted:I'd like to request a full overview of Bug's stuff from some veterans. It's educational to see things that don't work out as much as it is things that do. Well, I'm not really a veteran exactly but I'll do an overview of Bug's stuff when I encounter it. Though, I will say that's actually the wrong Seraph up there; Bug's nation has MA Caelum's High Seraph, which has the drawback of being old but the benefits of being able to reach A4 instead of being capped at A3 and also not having the limitation of only being recruitable in Cold provinces; Ragha's units have a gimmick where some are only recruitable in Heat, others only recruitable in Cold. (Given Bug's scales, if it actually was the Airya Seraph, it would be unrecruitable all but one turn per year as H1 base will only reach C1 in mid winter.) While Bug listed the wrong mage there, two other people actually did take Ragha units this game. Fortunately, they both took the right scales for it. Tangent, Ragha is one of my favorite nations and if a vanilla game (or at least one with vanilla nations) LP happens that I can be a part of Ragha's one of the nations I'd like to play in such a game. Though hopefully I'd do better than the game I'm currently playing Ragha in; while I made it to the endgame as one of the last few standing, things are still going... Not great. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 05:50
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TravelLog posted:I'd like to request a full overview of Bug's stuff from some veterans. It's educational to see things that don't work out as much as it is things that do. On a brief look, there're some issues. Not going to cover the first two choices since they're very good, and I hardly know what overall strategy Bug was thinking about.  I actually disagree quite a bit with Bug thinking Skratti were a bad pick. They might work as thugs, but that's by far a secondary purpose for them. Skratti are incredibly good at a role most nations really want/need in the late game, and that's being Communion fodder. Their high hp plus three separate forms means they can absorb an absolutely massive amount of fatigue if necessary, and their Blood access means you can leave one or two as masters instead to spam Reinvigoration. Onaqui are very good mages but, as mentioned, they're hilariously expensive. They're the third most expensive commander in the game, behind only Royal Mallqui and a monkey summon, at 565 gold. That is NOT something you can remotely mass, and unlike the Mallqui they only have 3 guaranteed paths(with ~27% chance for a single rank in a fourth) when it comes to site-searching - one of which is effectively worthless, since Blood has very few hidden sites. Incidentally, the picture there is not quite what Bug picked, as those are the summonable ones, as opposed to the hireable ones. The ones you actually pay gold for are slightly better mages, as they've got an additional point of Death and Holy, and an additional 10% chance for another point of FDNB. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 05:58
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Yeah, High Seraphs are another of the best mages in the game really. No Earth like Eagle Kings, but they can also hit A4, though A3 is enough for Storm + Thunder Strike, and while they're STR they can also be recruited at any fort, rather than only at one's capital. So, you get a lot more lightning out of them, even if they can't also drop rocks come lategame.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:11
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Master of Names are really good. Decent price, research bonus, Astral heavy gives you plenty of options for communions. I mean, obviously if they're fighting, they're not researching, which is a problem, but a handful of them can be an effective support group.
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Feb 7, 2016 06:41
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i'm a middling player at best, i'll talk a little bit more about Yaksha. they are insanely good! even without their randoms they can turn 2 earthquake or cast tons of really good de/buffs. add in their randoms and you're able to turn 1 eq, cast Gifts From Heaven (150 damage!!!), plug into communions, cast Relief or Gaea's Blessing without forging a booster, do rust mist, make manticores, cast Foul Vapors, and they have native awe which is cool! oh and since ~1/4 of them will come out e4 you can do Earth Attack or Petrify later in the game which is honestly pretty dang nice. i don't think that Bug chose at all poorly drafting these guys even though they can be had as a summon since they aren't StR and are not too pricey given what you get from them. i mean, i like them so much i based a portion of my drafting strategy around casting a global so i could cast even more of them. overall, bug's picks are good, but suffer slightly from not really having an overarching strategy. for instance: Onaqui auto summon beast bats in their own dominion, and are fat sacks of hp with low prot but otherwise good stats that happen to be sacred. given that Yaksha had earth magic well covered for this nation, i'd have considered a pretender with n9 for the regen or b9 for the blood vengeance (especially given that bug drafted dawn guard which are big hp sacreds that have decent armor). that said, taking an awake expander is almost always the superior choice and erf snake does that job better than most.
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Feb 7, 2016 07:27
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I think his mage picks are good but instead of the bat guy he should have picked a cheap blood mage for blood hunting. Other than that they read like an all star list of each age so...
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Feb 7, 2016 07:44
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Turn 8 Strange creatures lurk in the night. You are filled with determination.  Oh boy, random events. Also, still no magic sites, but whatever. First, let's check research again.  Ench 2 is actually less useful than Ench 1 for me; while I can think of a few situations I'd want the elemental resistance spells and stuff in 1, 2 doesn't do anything for me. If I had a big god with N magic Personal Regeneration would be nice, though; it makes already-tough gods practically invincible (I had a dragon in another game who regenerated like 50-75 HP a turn) without magic to stop them. Next, battles.   First time any of my infantry died; they're tough, but barbarians hit hard. They also rout easily though, so after a few of them fall the rest flee. Meanwhile, the olm-backed skinshifters are practically invincible.  A nice little event. Luck-Magic will bring in plenty of gem events, even if you also take Order like I did.  This... Is less great. I mean, that is a lot of Death gems, but that was my capital it hit, which already has full Magic scales, and unrest lowers income significantly. In fact...  Yep. From over 400 to 284. That's not great. Makes it so I can't afford a fort this turn, actually. That is annoying. Next turn I want to start hiring my Eagle Kings, too, so I have to do some math to make sure after upkeep I'll have at least 1200 gold next turn for that and the fort. Also note, that event was actually considered a good event by the game. Which, well, if it had hit any other province of mine, it would have been; a double-digit quantity of D gems in exchange for a province going from 40 income to 30? Great deal. On my capital, though, that's less great, particularly this early in the game when I need gold far more than I do gems. Also, minor note here, last turn showed my diabolist heading up to that throne, but as you can see he's doing that this turn as well; turns out last turn I set him to move, backed up the turn, then realized I should instead have him search the province he's already in before moving and changed the order, but apparently didn't back up the new turn version. Whoops. Oh well, it's only a minor discrepancy. Anyway, besides moving that diabolist for real this time, my armies keep expanding, a new indie commander heads back to my cap to be ready to lead a third army when I can afford it, and my scouts keep scouting. Also, I've found not one, but two new nations found this turn. Bug up to my north-northeast, as expected, and Carcer to my west with only a thin border of Baudin and Kitfox between us. So, that'll be two nation overviews coming up. Which is good, because that's it for this update. Despite the two events this was a fairly uneventful turn; unless things go weird the first year tends to be pretty uneventful, with everyone drawing out their borders and sizing each other up. Things will hopefully get more exciting too, though, once expansion ends and people have to either start killing each other or fall behind.
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Feb 7, 2016 20:42
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Can you get rid of that unrest again or have you lost 160 gold/turn permanently?
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Feb 7, 2016 22:06
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The Lone Badger posted:Can you get rid of that unrest again or have you lost 160 gold/turn permanently? Unrest can be reduced through several means. It naturally lowers by one a turn normally I believe, Order decreases it faster (while Turmoil penalizes unrest reduction and will halt it from reducing naturally), as do high amounts of PD, and you can also have units patrol to reduce unrest at the cost of killing a small amount of population. Patrollers can also catch sneaking units in your lands, at which point your army will try to kill them. Given that my capital has full Order and high PD (everyone's cap starts with 25 points of PD), it will fade naturally over the next few turns. The event was a momentary annoyance, not permanent damage, and was mostly notable for causing me to have to wait another turn to build a fort. Again, had it hit literally anywhere else, I would not have cared much and been pleased with the sudden infusion of D gems.
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Feb 7, 2016 22:28
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Bug Squash Nation Overview I have two nations to cover here, but I'll start with Bug's since that one's been the subject of recent posts already. National Ability: Cheaper forts, labs, and temples Or, more specifically, Bug can build palisades and fortresses, rather than fortresses and castles like most people (or castles and citadels like Kitfox). Whereas fortresses are arguably the "basic" fort, at 800g and five turns to make, castles the next step up with more defense and administration for 1000g and six turns, and citadels a step further, palisades are the step before fortresses, requiring only 600g and four turns of construction. They have benefits and drawbacks; as they're very cheap and quick to make, you can get forts up earlier and faster, so if you're using them as mage factories you can get that going much more quickly. Their defense, however, is pathetic, and they can be breached pretty quickly if the sieging army is even slightly stronger than the defending one. Also, Bug only gets a fortress for his capital rather than a castle, but that's likely not a big deal. Additionally, Bug's labs and temples only cost 3/4's the normal price, so 375g and 300g respectively rather than 500g and 400g. No drawbacks here, they just cost less. Overall, it's a pretty nice ability, really, even with the cheaper forts being weaker; tempo is very important, and getting those forts up faster can make a big difference. Cap-only Mages  Besides posting the wrong seraph, Bug actually posted the wrong version of the onaqui; the summoned ones have lower Death and Holy levels than the ones you recruit. Anyway, as established, these guys are awesome mages, but also really expensive, being nearly 150% the cost of an Eagle King. They're great Death and Blood mages, they summon free sacred bats, and they excel at blood hunting apart from the issue of raising unrest where they are. A major thing I'm worried about is that, if he gets to lategame, these guys are the perfect vampire summoners; they can get the required paths through randoms or just make the cheap Death booster, and, as established in my banned units post, vampires are nasty. If he gets those going then his lands will be effectively uninvadeable. Fortunately, he has no cheap options for blood hunting, so he has no cheap options and thus might neglect it for a while, if not the whole game.  Bug's other cap-only, these guys aren't exactly cheap either but are considerably more affordable than onaqui are. They are also, as people have been saying, pretty awesome mages. So much so that three people in this game actually took access to them, though only Bug can recruit them (the other two people took national spells that include, among other things, summoning yakshas). Great at Earth magic and decent at other things, with some fun crosspaths, these guys are definitely a solid pick, and I predict Bug will make far more of them than onaqui. Recruit-everywhere Mages  The actual seraph Bug took, these guys are great. One in four equals an EK in Air magic, they're considerably cheaper, and they can be recruited in any fort rather than just at one's capital, they provide similar quality in considerably greater quantity. They are old, however, so in winter there's a chance of them gaining random afflictions (despite them being cold-resistant; you'd think these things would interact, but no), and they cannot fly in storms, which they will probably be utilizing a lot in battle. Not likely to be a big deal, but having to run away rather than instantly flying out of a losing battle can occasionally be deadly. Also, no Earth, so no RoS. Still, though, these guys are fantastic and will likely serve Bug very, very well.  Big tough guys with good Water and Blood, these guys can serve several roles. While not a spectacular combination (Water-Blood summons the least-awesome of the various demons, though they can still kill things dead) their magic can still do good things, and they are rather hard to kill. They can be thugs or casters depending on what's needed of them, and have other uses as well.  Cheap-ish (in terms of gold-efficiency they're good, but even as Bug's cheapest mages they have a triple-digit cost), effective researchers. They have good Astral, though not quite high enough to force boosters for it, and one in three will have Blood, making them Bug's cheapest option for blood hunting. Which still isn't that cheap given the cost and randomness. They're a good choice for researchers and have other uses, but as stated, Bug might have some trouble getting into Blood, at least early on, before he's built up a ton of mages anyway. Commander  A flying guy, probably taken primarily to lead the Zotz Bug also recruited, since his encumbrance makes him a rather terrible fighter himself. Flying raiders are definitely very useful. Priest ...Due to what I assume is an error in the mod, Bug does not actually have any priests. At least, not any things that are only priests; onaqui and yakshas are mage-priests. Given how rarely one recruits non-mage commanders from forts, this is probably not a major issue for him (heck, we're over four years into the game and from what I can tell he hasn't even noticed), but, yeah. Anyway, here's what he drafted:  Standard, old H2 priests. Nothing notable about them; as I said, I don't think Bug even realized he didn't have them available. Scout  A cheap little monkey. Stealthier than many scouts, and its terrible combat stats mean little since pretty much any scout would get its rear end kicked in combat anyway. Also, very cheap if he ever decides to recruit more for some reason. Recruit-everywhere Units  Bats. Cheap, flying units with mediocre stats, but who are so easy to mass that you can still raid and take provinces with them. Zotz guard have better morale than most Zotz, so they won't break as easily, though they're also a bit more expensive, being 9g 4r where others can be as cheap as 7g 1r. Still serve the same purpose, though.  Heavy infantry with large shields, these guys are likely there to serve as blockers and arrow catchers. Not much to say about them otherwise.  Very awesome units, but also rather expensive, these guys are both good archers and good fighters. They also have the benefit of being for, so you can recruit them outside of your forts as well as in them (though, due to it being hard to amass resources outside of forts, you likely wouldn't be recruiting that many per turn per non-fort province). ...Except, looking at the mod inspector, they aren't foreign recruit for Bug's nation. So that's two bugs for Bug. Jeez. At least these were relatively minor things.  Big tough dudes with magic swords, they're expensive and their size isn't completely an advantage (combat takes place on a grid with up to six combined units of size per square, so while three size 2 human can occupy one square only two size 3 giants can fit in one, so against standard units these guys will be facing more attacks per square versus fewer targets), but nevertheless these guys are pretty strong and can do some damage. And magic weapons can be useful.  Guys with crossbows. Not quite as accurate or well-equipped as Kitfox's or Baudin's, but also considerably less resource-intensive and therefore easier to mass, which can be better because accuracy matters less when you have three times the bolts being fired. A good choice for ranged units. Cap-only Units  Sacred cavalry with glamour and higher-than-average stats, these are pretty nasty. Fortunately, given Bug's god I don't see him taking a bless, and they're also extremely expensive, so they're probably just something he picked to fill the slot rather than a thing he'll be making a lot of use of. Pretender  As we've seen before, Bug has the Earth Serpent. It's very slow and only has a single attack per turn, but between its HP and protection (the latter of which is raised further for every point of Earth he gives it), plus it having fear, it conquers indie provinces by doing nothing but sitting on the field, getting hit and eating an enemy a turn until the enemy army flees in terror. It's so tough it doesn't even need awe to survive most indies, making it a very cheap, very effective god. Bug probably took it with Earth 6 or so, making it an effective caster come midgame as well as a nigh-unkillable tank, and would have been able to take multiple positive scales and have good income despite it being awake. Basically the best budget expander in the game, so long as you don't have a Cold preference, as it being cold-blooded will result in racking up tons of fatigue and passing out in Cold provinces, at which point every hit on it will likely crit and it will actually die to indies. Other Stuff Bug took +2A +1E +3S for cap income. Not as focused as me, but not as spread out as Kitfox; not 100% sure what he's going for with them, but it's a gem selection I like. His temperature preference is neutral, and he probably took H1 as a result. I think this was a bit of a mistake, as if he took H1 or 2 as a preference and bumped it up one for scales, he'd have roughly the same benefits, without his lands having C1 one turn a year. While not a major issue, he has cold-blooded units and a cold-blooded god, so there's a chance this could hurt at some point if he's not careful. His terrain preference is plains (i.e. no special terrain). As plains have the best balance of gold and resources and he has no terrain-dependent things, this is probably a good choice. Summary Overall, Bug's nation is solid. Good troops, good mages, good god, good scales. His only real "weakness" is that he doesn't have any cheap ways to get Blood going, but given his god and how much RP all his mages have he can probably take a point or two of Drain (in fact, I haven't shown it yet but his dominion seems to have Drain in it) to buy even better scales and have a lot of income to buy all his expensive mages with. There aren't any weird gimmicks or tricks I can see here, or a big overall strategy, but again, overall his nation is very solid. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 23:39
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Bugs nation looks to have the least synergy between units too. I think, I mean I'm not sure because I'm really bad at Dom4.
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Feb 8, 2016 01:55
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Gridlocked posted:Bugs nation looks to have the least synergy between units too. I think, I mean I'm not sure because I'm really bad at Dom4. Yeah, like I said, I don't really see an overall strategy, but he drafted a lot of good enough things and should at least do alright. I didn't notice an obvious hole or anything.
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Feb 8, 2016 02:08
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bug if you really have these recruit problems in game let me know, i can fix it.
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Feb 8, 2016 03:39
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I only noticed them after loading the mod in the mod inspector; the bishop wasn't under his nationals at all, and the horsemen are only regular recruits, not foreign. I started a new game as his nation to check the bishops and confirmed them not being there, didn't know about the horsemen until after I did that and didn't bother to do a game for them though. Tangent, the mod inspector is very, very good for, well, inspecting mods. Though for some reason it only shows my national spells as national ones in there, even though in-game you guys have all of yours as you should too. No idea what's up with that. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 04:54
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In addition to the missing unit's, I also don't have the cheaper temples and laboratories. It's too late in the game of that to make a difference at this stage. I'd have noticed if I was a better player, so it's my own fault. 
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Feb 8, 2016 09:10
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okay it should be fixed, sorry about that!
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Feb 8, 2016 10:00
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No problem. I'm too inexperienced to have a realistic chance of winning, so missing those things won't tip the balance in any way. I've already learnt a massive amount just seeing the others in action. Incidentally , could someone explain how a cheap blood hunter would be used? I was starving for blood the whole of my Mictlan game and I just didn't know what I was doing. Edit: Also, what makes vampires so great? I get the immortality thing, but I don't know what they would be doing in actual battles. Edit2: spelling Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Feb 8, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 11:01
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well you need them to find blood right? so you grab one that's cheap to make (and ideally sacred so it costs less upkeep) and give it an sanguine dowsing rod. then you send out 2 to hunt a province with 5k+ pop (usually you'll want to not hunt provinces that that 10k+ pop or your capital because patrolling unrest happens after income generation, so you're cutting into your sweet monies) with some patrolling chaff (usually wolves because they are fast and cheap). then you ferry your slaves back with scouts (ctrl+v and ctrl+z are your best friends here) which is tedious but them's the breaks. since you'll need a bunch and they won't be doing anything other than blood hunting 99% of the time it's good if they are cheap. vampires can fly right into the enemies back lines and if they die you don't care because immortal. but what people are usually talking about are Vampire Lords ! which are d3b3 immortal mages who can do stuff like Horde of Skeletons or Soul Vortex or with a D booster Blood Rain+Darkness+Terror or w/e. they make invading you a huge pain in the rear end.
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Feb 8, 2016 12:51
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Bug Squash posted:Incrementally, could someone explain how a cheap blood hunter would be used? I was starving for blood the whole of my Mictlan game and I just didn't know what I was doing. A lot of weak blood hunters net you more slaves than one strong one, especially when dousing rods become available. Besides that strong blood mages generally cost a ton in upkeep which makes it really expensive to build a bunch of them for hunting and as you'll generally need those strong blood mages to do the actual casting they can't be out hunting at the same time anyway. This means that it's a better idea to pump out a ton of cheap low-path blood mages for the hunting part. Bug Squash posted:Edit: Also, what makes vampires so great? I get the immortality thing, but I don't know what they would be doing in actual battles. If you have a strong blood economy, they're really easy to mass. Combined with the immortality thing, this means that things can snowball out of control pretty quickly. It's hard to keep up an invasion when your army gets hit by twenty vampires every goddamn turn.
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Feb 8, 2016 14:04
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Yeah Vampires are pretty spectacular because they can serve double duty as blood hunters and anti-raiders that don't die so long as you've got dominion. And then when you go on the offensive with them they're just flat-out good mages. Note also that your research corps is a loving awesome backup weapon in the midgame. S1/S2 en masse = stellar cascades spam = sleepy enemy army. This goes out the window the first time you fight someone with RoS or equake though :v
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Feb 8, 2016 15:37
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Carcer National Overview Okay, here's the other person I encountered this last turn. Fun fact: Carcer's nation is one of two that made me decide to go for Enchantment first this game. National Ability: Reanimation And this is the reason why. Carcer's national ability allows for the nation's priests to reanimate undead depending on their priest level. H1 priests can reanimate ghouls, soulless, and longdead warriors, and H2 priests can also revive longdead horsemen. Ghouls are weird, infected humans and creating them kills ten population per ghoul, and soulless are zombies and require unburied corpses (a side-effect of battles or most things that kill population in your lands) and neither of them are worth it (generally; you can mass ghouls from terrible provinces for various uses, as they are non-mindless undead, but you probably don't want to set up a ghoul factory in your capital), but bringing back longdead requires nothing. Longdead are skeleton warriors, and while they are not spectacular at killing things you can reanimate massive amounts (H1 priests reanimate 7 per turn, higher level priests more) and overwhelm your enemy with sheer numbers/have a massive, almost impenetrable screen of blockers for your mages. Longdead horsemen, meanwhile, are just as brittle as regular longdead but their lances make them a lot better at killing things; however, since H2 priests can only summon 2 a turn I doubt we'll be seeing many, at least from this source.  A sample longdead and a longdead horseman. Note that there are many more types of longdead; not only do they get somewhat random equipment, with some having more armor or less or different weapons, but there are actually different types of longdead for different population types, such as lizards, giants, Caelians, and others. Soulless have different results depending on province population type too. It's pretty neat really, even if most of the time it doesn't matter. This is a very effective and dangerous ability (and was my original first choice of ability before Carcer took it, though in retrospect I think getting Jomon's spells worked out better for me), as you can use a lot of cheap H1 priests to make staggering quantities of skeletons every turn, and particularly in the early and midgame it's hard to deal with massive armies of undead running at you. (Mid-lategame, when battlefield-clearing spells come out, the skeletons don't fare quite as well, though.) Which, again, is why I went for Enchantment first. Remember in Kitfox's nation writeup, how I talked about "magic leadership"? Well, to go into more detail, there are three kinds of leadership in Dominions, normal, undead, and magic. Commanders need the right kind of leadership to lead troops of that type, and can only lead so many of each unit on the strategic map, while in battle, units left without the right kind of leadership will, depending on whether they're mindless or not, either flee or do nothing. (Though note that leadership numbers don't matter in battle; if you have 500 units but something kills your commanders so you only have one guy with Leadership 40 left, 460 units aren't going to start routing. You will, however, have a hard time leading those guys around after the battle if you win since that leader can only organize an army of 40 units.) Now, Enchantment has a spell called Seeking Arrow, which I've mentioned before. Basically, you pick a province in range, and it hits a random enemy commander in that province with an arrow through the heart, possibly killing them (despite that description, due to how damage works it usually takes two casts to kill a normal human target). This is good for stopping armies with only one or two commanders, as they won't be able to move without a leader, halting their advance. It's even better here though, because, while you can prevent a leaderless army from routing by buying PD in the provinces you take (PD provides a leader and some troops in all battles in that province, so even though your troops will have no orders, they will have a source of leadership and not auto-rout), undead require undead leadership. An army of longdead without a necromancer or other undead leader will stand around and literally fall apart instead of attacking, so sniping their leaders would stop them in their tracks, making it especially useful here. It's already a nice anti-invasion spell early on, it's just extra-useful here. (One other useful thing my nation has is that mind blasts, as one might expect, only affect being with minds; mindless creates can't be affected by them. So if there were an army of nothing but longdead being led by living mages, my olms would try the brains of their leaders, hopefully killing them and leaving the longdead without leadership so that they, as described above, disintegrate.) TL;DR: Skeletons are awesome and scary, I researched particular things early on specifically to deal with them and one other threat we haven't seen yet. Cap-only Mages  Nagarishi are powerful mages, with high Water and Earth as well as some Astral and Nature. They're fairly expensive, but provide a lot of magic, and while they're cold-blooded and don't have feet normally they can shapeshift to a humanoid form with feet if you want to put Earth Boots on them or fight in Cold provinces, provided you don't mind slightly weaker Water magic, and they're amphibious in naga form so they can do useful stuff there too possibly. Recruit-everywhere Mages  Sauromancers are pretty awesome guys, being expert skelespammers and, as their lore would imply, being able to cast Bane Fire (a rather nasty evocation) right out of the box. However, they're also STR and cold-blooded, and being mage-priests require both a temple and lab to build. More importantly, though, they're a bit redundant with this next pick.  Hannya are pretty good mages. No random paths, so every single one is F2D2N1, but those aren't bad paths, and they're not STR so they can be massed fairly easily. They also have some various other traits, such as a heat aura that's honestly probably more of a downside than upside, since if troops reach your mages the mages are likely gonna die anyway so really all it does is make it so that you need to be careful about what non-heat-resistant things you position by them, their being demons, and being cold-blooded, but for the most part they fill about the same niche as the sauromancers: Fire-Death mages who can lead undead and skelespam. Sauromancers are better at it, but Hannya can be recruited in greater numbers, so while either is a good pick having both is a bit unnecessary.  Carcer's research pick. Fairly cheap, low but varied paths, relatively durable as far as mages go, can probably make pretty good communion slaves for the nagarishi come mid-lategame. Not much to say here, really.  Carcer's last mage, these guys are a thug pick. (Thugs, since I haven't explained them, are solo commanders meant to go around taking enemy provinces and maybe fighting small armies, usually with the aid of equipment and possibly some magic. In Dom3 thugs and "super-combatants", which are basically bigger, stronger thugs that can take on actual armies, were a big part of the game, but in Dom4 changes to the mechanics reduced the prevalence of SCs, though thugs can still be useful as long as you don't send them at an enemy army or something.) With good combat stats and glamour, they can take on PD with some gear, and possibly even take on lesser quantities without it, though only having A1 is a bit of a drag since they can't cast Mistform, a very useful spell for these things, without using gems. I'm not 100% sure why he went for these guys over vanjarls, who are similar but A2B1H2 instead. Perhaps the price? Either way, these guys aren't bad. Commander  Fairly standard leader, though inspirational to boost troop morale is nice, and berserk can be situationally useful, though sometimes it can be disadvantageous as well. Priest  A normal (but not old, which is good) H2 priest. Decision here is debatable; while H2's are nice, with reanimation taking one of the foreign recruit H1's might have been a better choice. There are indie H1's so you can still get priests from outside forts, but at the same time having them available at any province is still useful. Scout  A flying scout, so good at scouting fast. A nice choice here. Recruit-everywhere Units  Armored centaurs. Everything I've said about centaur units in general applies here, plus they're harder to hurt due to armor. They'll also eventually fatigue out if the battle goes on too long, due to said armor, but if your battle's lasted that long you're probably in trouble anyway. Besides that, these are surprisingly tough guys.  Arguably the best crossbowmen in the game, as they are tied for the highest accuracy with things like Kitfox's defenders, but are considerably less resource-intensive and therefore easier to mass. Not as tough if they get in melee, but they're not meant to do that anyway so if tat's happening things have already gone wrong. I've seen these guys snipe commanders without arrow catchers from across the battlefield. Additionally,they're stealthy, so a stealthy leader could possibly lead them to go do sneaky things. This is probably the crossbow pick everyone who didn't want a Defender-esque crossbowman wanted, but Carcer got them first.  Heavy infantry with tower shields, i.e. Arrow catchers and PD units. Not much to say otherwise.  Carcer's starting army picks, he got two types of satyrs, one of whom can also be recruited from forests and is stealthy, while the other has a shield to block arrows with and is a considerably better fighter. I'm not completely sure why both have been picked, but the stealthy ones can be led by vanherses with ranger backup for stealth stuff, which could be useful. Cap-only Units  Stealthy, sacred, glamoured infantry. These guys are pretty tough and hard to kill, and can also join in the aforementioned stealthy armies if desired. Kind of expensive though, and being sacred limits their numbers somewhat. Pretender  The Great White Bull, as stated before, is a strong early expander as he has a lot of health and will trample enemy armies, his recuperation will result in any afflictions he takes healing over time, and thanks to his Nature magic he can make himself regenerate if Carcer researches the right spells. He's a common choice for getting EN blesses on awake gods, but given Carcer's units I doubt there's a bless here beyond maybe E4N4 for reinvigoration and a bit of extra health, so it was likely just taken as a big stompy god more than anything. Other Stuff Cap income is +1F +3W +2D. I'm not sure why so much Water; personally I find W gems one of the less-useful ones beyond forging a lot of a certain item after I get Construction 6, but, that might just be me. Temp preference is H2, which is unsurprising given three different cold-blooded mages. Terrain preference is forests. Satyrs being forest recruit makes this, likewise, unsurprising. Summary Carcer has a lot of nice things, even with the sauromancer-hannya redundancy, and reanimation is a major threat even on its own. Even with some choices that are not 100% efficient, this is a very dangerous nation, and while my nation is somewhat better equipped to deal with them than most, between Seeking Arrow and olms, I am still rather glad I did not start next to Carcer nevertheless. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 8, 2016 23:29
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Just going to point out that ghouls are not, in fact, useless, and massing large numbers of them via draining crappy provinces is pretty common with mass reanimation access. For one, they protect your leaders from said Olm and the like shenanigans since they are not mindless. For a second reason, again since they're not mindless, you can stuff untold numbers of them into an important fort(s) - like, say, thrones - and basically never have to worry about it being taken since they have no upkeep, require no supplies, and contribute fully to rebuilding the walls, unlike longdead. Also, while the ratio with H2s is dubious, if you actually have H3s reanimating horsemen instead can be worth it. You touched on it, but all longdead horsemen are the same, and thus have that 9 protection, but most normal longdead will have 5 or lower, leaving them much more vulnerable to battlefield removal. Unless, of course, the ability is actually literally the Scelerian version, and thus he can get the Ermorian longdead variants, which actually do very much match up to longdead horsemen.
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Feb 9, 2016 01:38
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Sauromancer's are my boys. In fact all of C'Tis are my boys. Literally the only "good" guys in the setting cause they use necromancy for good and try to be everyone's bros.
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Feb 9, 2016 01:58
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Lord Koth posted:Just going to point out that ghouls are not, in fact, useless, and massing large numbers of them via draining crappy provinces is pretty common with mass reanimation access. For one, they protect your leaders from said Olm and the like shenanigans since they are not mindless. For a second reason, again since they're not mindless, you can stuff untold numbers of them into an important fort(s) - like, say, thrones - and basically never have to worry about it being taken since they have no upkeep, require no supplies, and contribute fully to rebuilding the walls, unlike longdead. Fair enough; I haven't played the reanimation nations so I mostly went off of what I heard secondhand. I can edit the post to reflect this. Also, the draft rules refer to the reanimation as "like Sceleria", so, it might be? I'm not sure. I'd have to play around with it and see what it makes, which I don't really feel like doing. Gridlocked posted:Sauromancer's are my boys. In fact all of C'Tis are my boys. Literally the only "good" guys in the setting cause they use necromancy for good and try to be everyone's bros. Well, they are slavers, but, I think literally every nation in the game practices slavery in some form or other so they're not exactly unique there I guess. At the least, the events involving it are generic so literally any nation can have them. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 02:06
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Roland Jones posted:Well, they are slavers, but, I think literally every nation in the game practices slavery in some form or other so they're not exactly unique there I guess. True enough. Though MA and LA are a lot less dickish about it. Mostly cause the Crocodile people are like "Everyone is below us or equal" Also all the Predator Lizards are gone in LA for some reason. Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Feb 9, 2016 |
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Feb 9, 2016 02:15
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