|
How are u posted:Oh, well crud. I'll admit I don't watch them through before posting an update, so if somebody would like to figure out what Libluini video synchs to my current update that would be cool. Or, I can just let Libluini post a link to the correct video in the timeline for each update. Dude, I warned you this could happen, since my video-LP is really half-assed. Since I kept missing some turns (at turn 81 I had 69 turns recorded), this stuff will keep happening. Chances are the correct video has been posted already. So yeah, if you want total synchronisation, How are u will need to post some updates without my videos from now on, until he reaches winter.
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 12:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 21:14 |
|
|
This is a very thoughtful post that ignores that a) getting a small trickle of good events makes you happier than being hammered by bad events continuously when playing a three month game and b) THE GAME HATES YOU AND WILL SPAWN BARBARIANS TO TAKE OVER YOUR CAPITAL AND gently caress YOU OVER ON TURN 2. Fat Samurai posted:Turn 1 report: So yeah, what Lord Koth said, I was hit hard once and now I don't take Misfortune. Fat Samurai fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Oct 12, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 12:33
|
|
|
I mean, Howareu has L2 so a single scale of misfortune is not going to kill him, and the pearl income is pretty absolutely worth it. Plus, this is a mo money game, so really you don't have to worry about misfortune too much because you can just boost the poo poo out of your PD and handle 95% of indy attacks that way.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 14:26
|
|
|
So do the giants have any unit that really capitalize on the pearl income or are they just gonna be tossed in leu of other gems?
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 20:21
|
|
|
tankfish posted:So do the giants have any unit that really capitalize on the pearl income or are they just gonna be tossed in leu of other gems? Kohen Gadol have a 1 in 3 chance of S2 and the nephilim nation family has some pretty k-rad national astral summons, so there's that. No idea if they're actually practical to go for, but they are definitely snazzy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 20:35
|
|
|
I didn't know that. I will have to go look at the inspector later and take a look.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2016 20:40
|
|
|
Do your scales spread along with dominion? That is, can you use this throne effect to plague other people with lower Luck scales with even more misfortune than they already had?
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 01:17
|
|
|
Glazius posted:Do your scales spread along with dominion? That is, can you use this throne effect to plague other people with lower Luck scales with even more misfortune than they already had? Your scales are your Dominion, White Candles represent the strength of your Dominion but are really just only that. So, when your Dominion spreads so do your scales. Now, I am a little bit unsure as to how your scales affect other players, but as far as I can recall there are some scales that will -never- benefit other players and some that do. Example: I spread my Luck scales into my neighbor's territory, but even though his province under my Dominion now has Luck he won't receive the benefits of Luck. I've heard, though I can't remember where, that it could actually be that my Luck scales would function as Misfortune if they're manifest in a province that's owned by somebody else. An example of a scale that can never be a negative would be Growth. If my Growth scales are in my neighbor's province they will never function as Death for him. I'm 9/10 sure that they'll continue to function as Growth. I hope more knowledgeable people can chime in on this because I certainly don't know for sure!!
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 02:07
|
|
|
Turn 17 Turn 17 begins with disappointing news: none of the mages we had site-searching last turn found a thing. That’s a shame, but it really just means that they didn’t find anything at their level of magic. I choose to believe that this means that there are actually tons of higher level sites hiding in our territory!  We also see that Ragha has declared a new prophet. Interesting, all of these dead prophets. It takes, I believe, 5+ months to pass before “the dead prophet’s power has left the world” and you are able to choose a new one, so I wonder if people were having a more difficult time expanding than I realized. Either way, this is non-news. Then we have 3 scouted battle reports of other nations. We’ll look at the two involving Man and Patala first. In Cederwood Forest a mid-sized Mannish army 300 strong smashed to pieces some Patala province defense. Bad luck for Patala, I did send him a PM on IRC letting him know that Man was planning to do it though. Man had mentioned his desire to go to war with Patala, and the better that Patala is able to defend himself (and the more intractable the war) the easier it will be for us to stab Man in the back when our NAP expires. This is just the opening move in the chess match that will be their war:   Some of the units Man is fielding in this army.  Next in The Curtain Wall we see Man’s small army got beaten by province defense + a few crossbowmen. Huh. That’s odd, because Man had 20 Tower Knights in his army. Tower Knights are Mannish heavy cavalry that are normally prohibitively expensive in gold and resource cost, but in a Mo Money game can actually be fielded without much issue. They’re drat tough, and should have wrecked that PD.   Haha! Well this explains it:  The Tower Knights and the PD Heavy Cavalry ran right by each other in order to slaughter the other side’s archers. The PD Heavy Cavalry murdered the hell out of Man’s longbowmen, who routed and in doing so led the Cav straight to Man’s single Commander, who they effortlessly killed. With the commander dead Man’s Knights routed and the Heavy Cav picked 8 of them off while they fled. lovely luck for Man, but the lesson here is always screen your archers. If the Tower Knights had just gotten into melee with the Heavy Cavalry this never would have happened [Much like having a gun] Finally, we have a real gem of a battle report. Remember how earlier I mentioned the importance of “pinging” Thrones? Well our friend Bogarus just learned a lovely lesson about that. He blind-attacked a Throne, and not just any Throne, but the Throne guarded by the Monolith and Watchers. Here is Bogarus’ army and Pretender God, arrayed for glorious battle:   Some of the units Bogarus is fielding in this battle. And the Throne defenders, each of those grey statues is a Watcher and can hurl a ball of lightning each turn:  Like so.  Goodbye infantry.  And cavalry.  And God.  Bogarus lost 80% of his army and his God and only managed to kill a couple score Deer Tribe warriors for it. Now, this is not a completely unmitigated disaster for Bogarus. Remember, his god was designed solely for expansion and was poo poo for anything else, and at this point expansion is finished. The God fulfilled its purpose. Bogarus will be able to replace all of the troops lost in that battle in one turn. Really, it is more embarrassing than anything else, and a reminder to Always. Ping. Thrones. The final three items on the messages for the turn are events that gave us some fire gems, astral pearls, and let us know that 80 people fled some province. Nothing important. We queue up construction of one lab and two temples, infrastructure must continue to be built after all, even if it is stupidly expensive. We also move two armies out to be in a position to assault our last two hemmed-in indie provinces. The turn after next our expansion phase will be officially complete! Next turn: more site searching, more building, probably going to be boring!
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 17:58
|
|
|
That was beautiful 
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 18:17
|
|
|
The commander of The Curtain Wall is clearly Sun Tzu.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 18:42
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:That was beautiful People getting brutally punished for small mistakes is what makes Dominions LPs so worth it to me. It's like 4X  except there are no bonfires.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 18:56
|
|
|
I looked this information up to make sure it was roughly the same between Dom3 and Dom4, and anyone is free to correct me should I say something stupid (again). For those unfamiliar with the game, you might be wondering, 'wait, the pretender God died? Isn't that their main character? What happens now?' The answer is...not a whole heck of a lot. That particular chassis (the term often used for what kind or what build of pretender God) is, as noted, not good for much beyond this point in the game. Losing your God doesn't have any immediate effect on your empire other than the loss of that unit. Now, you can revive your pretender God if they die, using the 'call God' command on units with priest levels. The way this works is that each priest with the command throws holiness equal to their priest level onto a pile every turn they have that command running. Some units get a bonus to doing this. Ultimately, when your priests have thrown enough bibles on the pile, your pretender reawakens! ...with some caveats. First, you don't control where your Pretender revives. They are teleported to your capitol. If your capitol happens to be under siege, this can have hilarious and short-lived consequences for that unit. I think it technically actually occurs during the magic movement phase, meaning that you could teleport in other units and have them all join the battle with your (unscripted) Pretender. There aren't going to be many situations where this is ever a good idea. Second, there's a very painful consequence to dying as a pretender, in that you lose one in each magic level you have when you're revived. If you had nature 2, you now have nature 1. If you had astral 7, you now have astral 6. If you had fire 1, you now just don't have fire magic anymore. Unless Dom4 has changed things, there is a silver lining in that this magic loss DOESN'T affect the power or availability of your nation's bless. [Similarly, you can't make your nation's bless stronger by empowering your pretender god with extra magic during the game.] Since most pretenders you would care about have magic paths and use them for something (even something as simple as self-buffing for combat), the loss of magic paths is a VERY painful consequence of death, and given how much priest-power it takes to revive a pretender, this means dead pretenders don't get revived all that often. If that wasn't bad enough, there's also a third caveat to revival! Most pretenders keep any afflictions or other debilitating long-term debuffs they might have had when they died. Afflictions can be gained through combat, and are inflicted more frequently when a unit that's low on health takes damage. So lost eyes, punctured lungs, withered limbs, all sorts of fun injuries. Your pretender might be returned to life, but they come as they are, not as they originally were. There are also some permanent debuffs later in the game which can be INFURIATING to deal with because they persist FOREVER, even after revival. That's not meant to be cutesy hyperbole either, there are a couple of dangerous debuffs that simply do not go away ever and will inevitably lead to a unit's death, over and over and over again if necessary. Finally, it is worth noting that there are exceptions to most of the points above. Some pretenders auto-revive as long as they died in a province under their dominion (I think this is the 'immortal' tag?), and if memory serves they don't suffer from the loss of magic path levels. So as long as you don't take that Pretender on adventures in areas that have black candles (or no candles), they can just keep fighting the good fight in their own holy lands. Some pretender chassis may be exempt from some of the problems above just as special features of that chassis, and some nations have priests that are very, VERY good at reviving pretenders and can reasonably get together to do so in a couple of turns rather than a few in-game years. There are ways of healing afflictions as well; some units regenerate naturally, and there are healer units that can be very useful for propping up particularly expensive units that get injured, if you can find them/have access to them. You could, technically, also replace a pretender's lost magic levels by empowering them to raise their magic levels, but this is a VERY expensive use of gems that could be seeing use against your enemies instead, so you shouldn't do so without an incredibly good reason! In in-game fluff reasoning, your pretender still essentially exists as long as there's at least one white candle of their dominion somewhere in the world, representing enough power of belief in that area to sustain them. Dying as a pretender isn't that devastating in the very big picture, since if your nation wins the ascension war, they could just call you back and fix you up, easy-peasy. The real threat is in the populace losing faith. If your dominion gets snuffed out, you do too, or at least your religion does. At that point, you're no longer a candidate in the ascension wars and you just lose, straight up. That's why everyone gets pissed when someone starts blood-sacrificing virgins on altars to spread their religion all over the world, incidentally; it's a legit existential threat and you can lose the game to having your religion snuffed out. Shady Amish Terror fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Oct 13, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2016 21:51
|
|
|
Alive and awake pretenders are also a source of "temple checks" to spread dominion.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2016 01:10
|
|
|
Hello Sailor posted:Alive and awake pretenders are also a source of "temple checks" to spread dominion. Ah, good call, I'd forgotten that. It's usually not too big a deal, though it can make a difference if you're up against a neighbor who's trying to domkill you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2016 01:26
|
|
|
Turn 18 Turn 18 begins with a bunch of site searching notifications. We only found 1 site, a Grove of Fertility:  Not very exciting! Then we have two battle reports from the Man – Patala war. In the first report Patala tries to kick Man off of the fort of his that Man is sieging in the province of Cederwood Forest. Here’s the Patala army:  And the Mannish sieging army:  Man’s longbowmen are divided into groups and scripted to fire at both closest enemy and enemy archers, which was basic-level smart of Man’s player. However, he neglected to script anybody to fire at large enemy monsters, which allowed Patala’s elephants the time to get close enough to stomp one of Man’s units of lizard warriors dead. We’ll see if he learns that lesson in future battles.  Glorious pixel-combat Once the elephants are dead Patala’s Naga Warrior sacred units move into battle.  Looks like Patala has gone with a Blood 4 Earth 4 Nature 9 bless for his Naga. That gives them 2 points of reinvigoration (great for melee troops), 2 points of strength (great for melee again), and +9 hitpoints plus regeneration (excellent for any sacred unit). They’re not -amazing- sacreds but they’re pretty good with this bless. They make short work of Man’s second unit of lizard warriors and his handful of Tower Knights.  However, due to lovely Dominions AI, the Naga Warriors then decide to move up to Man’s archers just close enough to use their poison spit attack instead of engaging in melee and chopping them up. This allows Man’s archers to pour volley after volley of arrows into the Naga, eventually breaking them.  The little green balls are Naga 'Poison Spit' attacks. Man’s army begins to rout just after Patala, and it’s a race between the two to see who vacates the field first. Patala wins, so the remnant of Mannish troops remaining on the field at the end of the battle are still sieging the castle on the strategic map. Patala played well and killed a bunch of Mannish troops, but he lost a fair number of cap-only sacred Naga Warriors, hard to replace, and failed to decisively win. He’ll have to do better if he wants to win this war.  The second battle is just of Man sending another, larger army to try and take the province of The Curtain Wall again, the same province he failed to take due to PD last turn. This turn Patala reinforced the province with some crossbowmen and a handful of Guru mages, and considerably upped the province defense. Man ended up winning the battle, but he lost more units than he really should have. I think both Man and Patala are getting a feel for each other and learning which tactics will be required to win.   Sun TzuFinally, we have two events occur in our province of Bithayne. One is awesome:   Heck yes, I will take it. That’s a 500g value for the lab plus free gems and a goofy low-level magic item that isn’t ever worth crafting but hey it’s free. The other event just gives us more fire gems. We move two armies into our last two remaining indie provinces. Also, I talked with Xibalba on IRC hours after finishing this turn and we extended our NAP to turn 27. My NAP with Man expires a couple turns after that, so we will see what the world situation is at that time and plan accordingly. Next turn: expansion complete, building continues, more Man – Patala war updates!
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 00:20
|
|
|
That's interesting! I totally forgot Patala was even in that game! I've played with the idea of playing Patala myself sometime, but I guess I should have thought of that before launching three new games one after another! And a massive video LP of a fourth one. Welp, maybe after 1-2 games end. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 00:27
|
|
|
So Patala is like, what, non-monkey Hindu? And Man is England or Wales?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 04:38
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:So Patala is like, what, non-monkey Hindu? And Man is England or Wales? Patala is snakes from the underworld that conquered the monkeys, Man is indeed English/Arthurian-era folklore.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 05:26
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:So Patala is like, what, non-monkey Hindu? And Man is England or Wales? Throughout the three Eras of Dominions 4 Patala is always a nation of Monkeys and Apes inspired by Hindu mythology. In the Early Era the primate populace were ruled by Celestial beings that came down from Heaven to live on Mount Kailasa and set themselves up as Kings and Priests of the Ape people. In the Middle Era the Celestials were driven from the world, and the Apes rule themselves and form the Kingdom of Bandar Log. In the Late Era, in which we're playing, the Naga, snake-men who live under the earth in the Jeweled City of Patala, use their innate mesmerizing abilities and their mighty magical strength to seize control of the Apes. I think the Ape nations of all Eras are really cool and have great background and super interesting (and super strong and expensive) national summons based on Hindu mythology. Man is just a straight up 100 Year War Britain + King Arthur + bits of Anglo mythology mashup. I find it a fairly boring nation, conceptually.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 10:30
|
|
|
How are u posted:Throughout the three Eras of Dominions 4 Patala is always a nation of Monkeys and Apes inspired by Hindu mythology. In the Early Era the primate populace were ruled by Celestial beings that came down from Heaven to live on Mount Kailasa and set themselves up as Kings and Priests of the Ape people. In the Middle Era the Celestials were driven from the world, and the Apes rule themselves and form the Kingdom of Bandar Log. In the Late Era, in which we're playing, the Naga, snake-men who live under the earth in the Jeweled City of Patala, use their innate mesmerizing abilities and their mighty magical strength to seize control of the Apes. I think the Ape nations of all Eras are really cool and have great background and super interesting (and super strong and expensive) national summons based on Hindu mythology. You can be an incredible rear end in a top hat though when playing LA Man, at least two of their mages are immune to drain scales. Maximum dominion strength, maximum drain, spam temples, laugh like a maniac whenever enemy mages suddenly get headaches before succumbing to a torrent of thunder strikes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 11:27
|
|
|
I'm incredibly boring, in Dom 4 I really like playing LA R'Lyeh or Ermor with Dominion jacked up huge, just to cause massive fuckery of insanity or undeath in anything that gets near me. Tends to make everyone rush to kill you before their armies are gibbering or they're up to their elbows in skeletons. It's been a while since I played, but with Ermor in longer games, it was definitely possible to create enough undead that the game simply crashed when trying to run a battle because it couldn't figure out how to handle those living waves of corpses.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 13:01
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:I'm incredibly boring, in Dom 4 I really like playing LA R'Lyeh or Ermor with Dominion jacked up huge, just to cause massive fuckery of insanity or undeath in anything that gets near me. Believe me, crashing the game with skeletons is possible with multiple nations, if you're determined enough.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 13:50
|
|
|
Does that count as winning?
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 15:36
|
|
|
Fat Samurai posted:Does that count as winning? 1. Conquering all territory 2. Dom-killing all other pretenders. 3. Capturing enough thrones. 4. Outlasting the other players' frustration with micro-management in the late game and being the last to quit. 5. Crashing the game with skeletons. 6. Not playing. JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Oct 19, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 15:48
|
|
|
7. Casting Burden of Time on turn 15 and going AI.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 15:55
|
|
|
...I am vaguely recalling a discussion in one of the old Dom3 threads about an infamous BoT rush strat. I assume the goal is to make any nation not leaning heavily on immortal spellcasters go AI out of frustration. The New Meta, impeded only by the incredibly long memories of the incredibly small Dominions community.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2016 16:15
|
|
|
What do you need to be playing as to even get to unlocking BoT and having enough gems for it in 14 turns?
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2016 13:12
|
|
|
As Nuclearmonkee, IIRC.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2016 17:03
|
|
|
Asehujiko posted:What do you need to be playing as to even get to unlocking BoT and having enough gems for it in 14 turns?
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2016 00:04
|
|
|
Crashing the game with skeletons is just another "gently caress this gay earth" strategy. Loved the monkey nations in Dom 3, especially Bandar Log, but has Patala gotten any good in Dom 4? I mean, just look at these dudes, their stats aren't that great and that encumbrance is horrifying, basic 9 enc + cold blood and wrong temperature is just a killer, even with minor reinvigoration.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2016 20:35
|
|
|
Angry Lobster posted:Crashing the game with skeletons is just another "gently caress this gay earth" strategy. Oh no, no not at all. They are still very bad for many reasons. The monkey nations in Dominions 4 remain conceptually awesome but practically low to mid-tier in strength. I posit that the bless that Atlanton chose for Patala in this game is not meant primarily for the Naga Warriors, which for reasons you laid out are dog-poo poo compared to many other sacreds. The Bless is for all of the truly fantastic sacred troop and commander summons that Patala has access to, in both the Conjuration and Blood schools of magic. The Minor Blood (+ strength) portion of the bless indicates that Patala's god has Blood 4, which he 100% took just to be able to kick-start blood hunting and open the door to advancing in Blood Magic. In the Early Era there are actually two monkey nations. There is Kailasa, the previously mentioned nation of apes ruled by divine beings from the Celestial Sphere, and there is Lanka, an island nation of black-furred apes ruled by demonic Rakshasha in an orgy of blood and violence. Kailasa and Lanka each have access to national summons that reflect the tenor of each nation. Kailasa can summon various types of divine units, ranging from extremely powerful medium infantry to strong astral mages that teleport around the world at will to even the mighty Rudra, the ultimate harbingers of divine fury, bringers of war and thunder and fire and death that strike like a hurricane with all four of their arms. Lanka, on the other hand, can summon varieties of demonic ogres, ranging from extremely tough and hard-hitting infantry to lithe demonettes that strike with life-stealing daggers to powerful, spammable Air and Blood mages to, ultimately, the stupefying Mandeha, a titanic demon-ogre black as night with wings the size of a building whose singular goal in life is to eat the Sun itself and plunge the world into eternal night. The Middle Era and Late Era iterations of the monkey nations gain access to both sets of national spells, though they do not natively have any Blood magic on their mages. SO, I can tell you with certainty that Atlanton is planning to break into Blood ASAP so he can get to those drat fantastic summons. Basically, if one of the monkey nations can survive the first few years of the game they -can- become extremely dangerous and strong.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2016 23:04
|
|
|
I love this game. How are u posted:Mandeha, a titanic demon-ogre black as night with wings the size of a building whose singular goal in life is to eat the Sun itself and plunge the world into eternal night.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2016 23:28
|
|
|
Turn 19 The turn begins with a message that we have achieved another breakthrough in Thaumaturgy research. That’s excellent, just a few more turns and we will hit level 3 and will be able to begin remote site-searching for nature and fire sites. Then there are two global announcements that Thrones have been claimed. First we see that Patala claimed the Throne of Gaia, which is very similar to the Throne of Life except it gives you +2 to growth scales and only 2 nature gems a turn. I think the Throne of Gaia is one of my favorite Thrones in the game.  We also see that Bogarus has taken the Crystal Throne, and can now recruit Crystal Mages in addition to the Iron Mages from The Iron Throne. Man, he’s getting all of the magic diversity Thrones, and he doesn’t even need them! At this point I am feeling kind of jealous about my lovely Throne of Misfortune that I haven’t even claimed yet    We do see that one of our manual site-searchers found a site in Blackdale:  It's just a low-level Astral site, but gems are gems. Then there are two battle reports for the last two indie battles we are likely to have in this game. First the bountiful farmlands of Florien and their well-equipped defenders:  Then the cave province of Stalagmia and its massive population of Cavemen:  We take both easily, but the cavemen of Stalagmia actually kill more of our men than the Heavy Cavalry of Florien. That is because cavemen, while wearing only furs and with terrible attack and defense stats, are massively strong and wield a 2 hand club that does 21 damage. They can kill a human in one swing, and they manage to bring down 5 Gibborim before they rout.  Anyway, we are now fully, 100% expanded. We have 21 provinces including our capitol, not a terribly bad haul all things considered. We’re at peace for the moment, so we will continue to focus on building up our hideously expensive infrastructure and recruiting more mages to up our research. We desperately need more forts and mages. There are a couple of events, one of which is a +10 to province income from the opening of trade routes and the other a bunch of free fire, air, water, and earth gems. Additionally, one of our scouts in Xibalban territory got caught by patrollers and murdered. Next turn: More boring site-searching and building of infrastructure, but I will also write a turn 20 reflection of how I feel we are doing and what I wish I could have changed or done better!
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 17:05
|
|
|
How are u posted:Next turn: More boring site-searching and building of infrastructure, but I will also write a turn 20 reflection of how I feel we are doing and what I wish I could have changed or done better! Is the answer that you wish you could have murdered more enemies and bathed in their blood? But yeah, what's the plan, ultimately? Does Gath benefit from a long, slow turtling for some awesome national summons and superspells? Or do they have good enough starting dudes that it's just about learning a few spells/grabbing a few artifacts for commanders, and then murdering other nations before they can get their own super-stuff online?
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 17:29
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:But yeah, what's the plan, ultimately? Does Gath benefit from a long, slow turtling for some awesome national summons and superspells? Or do they have good enough starting dudes that it's just about learning a few spells/grabbing a few artifacts for commanders, and then murdering other nations before they can get their own super-stuff online? I didn't start this game with any sort of ultimate plan, I rarely do in any game of Dominions 4. The initial goal is to survive the first two years of the game, and to establish yourself with forts and research so that you won't be a pushover and lose your first war. You'll want to have some research goals, but those are very dependent on the paths your mages possess. At this stage of the game I think that our troops (more specifically our sacred Gibborim) are good enough that our neighbors aren't interested in invading us. That would probably end up being a long and costly war that wouldn't benefit either side, and it is much more productive to take a bite out of somebody else who is already engaged in a war, or to find an ally and go gently caress up a 3rd party as a team. That said, there are precious few troops in Dominions that remain elite and relevant and powerful enough on their own to last you an entire game. Eventually, battlefield magic advances to the point that even the most elite troops will put up the resistance of a wet paper towel. Because I feel we have a little breathing room at this time (Man is at war with Patala, we have a cordial relationship with Caelum, we have an NAP with Xibalba) I am focusing research into Thaumaturgy so we can get some of those great remote site-searching spells. Magic gems and Research are the two pillars of ultimate strength in Dominions, and the earlier we discover all of the sites in our kingdom the stronger we will be down the line. In the first Mo Money Mo Problems game I ended up turtling and researching for quite some time just because that's how things shook out, and I felt that it really benefited my nation in the end. So, at this point in the game, I am inclined to do the same thing with Gath. Speaking of Gath, the nation does have national summons and spells (not super-spells), and they are of varying usefulness! National summons can range from loving incredible to pieces of poo poo, and this is true of most nations in Dominions 4. Often times I find that national summons are a bit too expensive to really utilize thoroughly, but because this is a Mo Money game price becomes less of an issue. Here are a few examples of Gath national summons:  The Malakh here is our lowest level Conjuration national summon. It's dumb. It's an H1 priest for 9 Pearls. Sure, it's also an Angelic chassis (Invulnerability, resistances, Awe, flying, etc), but it's still a loving H1 priest for 9 Pearls. Pearls are invaluable, Pearls are Life, never waste Pearls! I cannot think of a scenario where I'd ever summon one of these guys. They also sit in Conjuration 4, so they're not even something you could leverage in the very early game where they could be even slightly useful.  The Hashmal is the next level up from the Malakh, and it's still not great. It's far more expensive, but it is more useful (for what that's worth). Somebody on IRC once told me that they found success thugging out Hashmal and using them as raiders, which I can see working fair enough yet not so well that I'd want to spend 21 Pearls + gems for gear on them. They are Inquisitors, however, which gives them a niche purpose in preaching away enemy Dominion. They sit at Conjuration 6, which is starting to get deep in the School.  Alright, this is some weird poo poo here. The Ophan is a huge step up from the Hashmal in terms of price, coming in at 49 loving Pearls for an (admittedly robust) H3 priest. It's big, its extremely mobile, but it is ultimately a 49 Pearl H3 priest. Many nations would be overjoyed to be able to summon a H3 priest! H3 priests are very important in Dominions 4 because only Pretender Gods and H3 priests can claim Thrones. Gath, however, can recruit H3 priests from its capitol!! The Ophan doesn't even have decent item slots so you can't (stupidly) try to make it some kind of Super Combatant or just even give it more survivability. Could there be anything dumber than this???   Amazingly cool, amazingly stupidly priced.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 19:31
|
|
|
Eyeloss on attackers is so cool though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 20:05
|
|
|
Jesus, 222 pearls. That's loving expensive, though it looks reasonably tough. But it feels like it's not really on the same level as some of the other level 9 path summons. Does it have any noteworthy interesting differences in its other forms? Does it become more powerful? Or just differently flavoured?
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 21:03
|
|
|
Does that Chayot have negative magic paths? I didn't know that was a thing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 21:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 21:14 |
|
|
Each form has negative scales and one positive. Something to do with the way the back end handles magic paths and shape changing. AFAIR the only real difference between the forms is the magical path it has.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2016 21:17
|
|