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quote:Also the King of the Deep doesn't SUCK per say, but he is meant to die. Pale ones canonically in both Dominions and CoE are fated to have their poo poo wrecked. As someone completely outside: What makes you say this? Why would you make a faction designed to be stomped on?
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Oct 22, 2021 06:21
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Bloodly posted:As someone completely outside: What makes you say this? Why would you make a faction designed to be stomped on? he's talking about the overarching story, although the pale ones in coe are a middling-ish faction (unless they engage in Global Terrorism) and EA Agartha isn't especially strong in Dominions
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Oct 22, 2021 08:13
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GreyjoyBastard posted:he's talking about the overarching story, although the pale ones in coe are a middling-ish faction (unless they engage in Global Terrorism) and EA Agartha isn't especially strong in Dominions Correct, a player can totally win as Pale ones in either game series, but LOREwise the pale ones are fated to get dunked upon. In CoE5 pale ones have easy access to the oceans, and as Greyjoy mentions, can do a terrorism on the whole of elysium if they so choose.
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Oct 22, 2021 14:44
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AtomikKrab posted:In CoE5 pale ones have easy access to the oceans, and as Greyjoy mentions, can do a terrorism on the whole of elysium if they so choose. Is this some parallel to the "break the seal, mad dead gods go HAM on everybody" ritual from Dominions?
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Oct 22, 2021 19:14
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The very same
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Oct 22, 2021 19:21
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Notahippie posted:Is this some parallel to the "break the seal, mad dead gods go HAM on everybody" ritual from Dominions? That if they find the seal underground + they can simply breach a door into the inferno via digging and let the devils come chew on elysium
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Oct 22, 2021 20:45
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The bats aren't in this game are they? Stealing the sun would be a hell of a power move on the prime plane.
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Oct 22, 2021 20:52
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goatface posted:The bats aren't in this game are they? Stealing the sun would be a hell of a power move on the prime plane. No, but the high priestess can make new suns. Also the goat sun demon is very big mad because legally they are not allowed to move off the ground in elysium because it already has a sun.
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Oct 22, 2021 21:03
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Bloodly posted:As someone completely outside: What makes you say this? Why would you make a faction designed to be stomped on? CoE and Dominions vaguely share a common universe, although there are some differences. Dominions has three ages, Early Age, where magic and magic beings are abundant, and technology is not very advanced. Units which don't wear enchanted gear wear light armor, shortbows, spears and so on. In Middle Age, magic is waning, technological progress is being made and humans start to increase in numbers amongst most factions. You now see heavy armor, the occasional crossbows, more heavy flails and such to deal with the heavier armor. Late Age has magic being diluted a lot, most factions have been taken over by humans, crossbows and heavy armor are now standard for most nation's troops, not just the elite, and the world in general went to poo poo a bit. The three ages also tell a story. Take our bird people. In Dominions, they're knows as Caelians. In Early Age, the Caelians are ruled by the Eagle Kings, who are not promoted cloud lords, but instead the semi-divine ancestors of the modern Caelians. They rule over the three Caelian clans: The Spire Horn Caelians, who are the best flyers and also lightning resistent, the Airya Caelians, who are the most magically attuned (mostly air and water magic) and also cold resistant, and the Raptor Clan Caelians, who are physically stronger than the other clans but worse flyers, lack any special magic resitances, and are more into earth and death magic. In Middle Age, the Eagle Kings retired from mortal affairs, and the Raptor Clan has been expelled from Caelum, lead the Airya Seraphs to rule the nation (now consisting only of Spire Horn and Airya Caelians). Caelum now has ice castles made by the famous ice shapers of the Airyas, and the elites are the Airya Iceclad. In Late Age, the Raptor Clan has returned and overthrown the Airya Seraphs. The Harab Seraphs that used to lead the Raptor Clan now rule all Caelians, and Airyas have been relegated to minor roles. Some Harab Seraphs now practice both death and fire magic, a big anathema previously (which has something to do with the third king of elemental fire, who's been tainted by death magic). Meanwhile, many Airya Seraphs fled to the plains of Ragha, where they formed a dual nation of Caelians and Abyssians (basically humanoid fire elementals). Abyssia is also present in all three ages, though the native Abyssians gradually get replaced by humans and offspring of humans and Abyssians. Through all those lore blurbs (unit descriptions are a lot more serious in Dominions), you get a real picture of the changing history of the Dominion world through the ages. As for the poor Agarthans, Late Age Agartha is an exclusively human nation, plus some rare reanimated Pale Ones. Meaning the Pale Ones are all dead, only their corpses sometimes still move on behest of a human necromancer. Early Age Agartha also have an exclusive mechanic where their starting province contains The Chamber of the Seal, where some very bad beings were locked away ages ago. Very bad things happen when the seal gets broken, but Middle Age Agartha starts with The Chamber of the Broke Seal site... Some of the Agartha pretender god choices also shine some light on the origin of the Pale Ones, and describing them as "a race spawned by a giant cave lady shagging a hot sexy olm" is fairly accurate.
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Oct 23, 2021 20:46
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I mean, look at the muscles on the olm, that has to be a 128-pack of abs at least, enough to seduce any lonely cavewoman. Early age agartha also mentions the older sister of one of the elder oracles having a relationship with an Olm, and dying during childbirth. The offspring are recruitable half-olm, half-pale one hybrids.
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Oct 23, 2021 22:23
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God's Perfect Himbo, part 7 God's Perfect Himbo goes to avenge the guard tower.  Again the fortifications wind up working against the Pale Ones by narrowing the front line. I don't know that it would have made a difference one way or another, but with the defenders bottlenecked they don't even have a hope of doing damage.  By this point I have plenty of gold, gems, and iron for basic troops so I form up a squad to take on the ruined castles in the east. The dark mage does some minor damage before the Dusk Guards summarily dispatch everything on the walls.  Sure enough, now that I have a scout with eyes on it the other ruined castle has a couple ghosts backing up the skeletons. The combination of ethereal+fear makes them pretty brutal against weaker troops, especially if they roll a life-draining spell from Necromancy.  I also have troops to spare to send a raiding force on a deep incursion into purple's territory, grabbing a nice 2 diamond iron mine.  Thuella and a second solar eagle go off to explore the southwest part of the continent. Lots of bandits and horrors, not much of a presence from purple. This may help explain why the illusonist is struggling so much--the pale ones can swim across the bay but the illusonist has to go right through horrortown to get anywhere.  Having the eagle's vision is great for spotting horrors, so I decide to chance flying in to the city. Looks like purple hasn't completely given up on the territory.  Further south, more mines, the illusionist's stronghold, and a pit leading into the subterranean caverns of Agartha. Just like the Cloud Lord's sky start, Pale Ones get to start in a little pocket of Agartha with a gateway up to the surface. In my experience it's even less likely to be connected to anything than the Cloud Lord's start.  Both purple players attempt to rally reinforcements to counterattack.  I upgrade a Cloud Apprentice to level 2 and stick the Robe of Shadows on him to go explore the sky above.  My raiding party descends into the earth below.  The pale ones' garrison is not particularly impressive, although it's more than enough to stop these light raiders.  An attempt to chop down one of the ancient forests gets eaten wholesale by ants.  The illusionist's latest foray gets eaten wholesale by mist warriors.  As do the ants, shortly later.  First contact with the hoburgs! They left behind a garrison in their mines, and while there are 40+ troops there they're all hoburgs.  Even so, those tiny crossbows hurt.  On the other hand, there's plenty of time between reloads to mow the hoburgs down.  Considering that this was 400 gold + some gems worth of birds vs. 150 gold worth of hoburgs, the hoburgs are some seriously legit troops. These mines are definitely worth the cost, though, even if I only keep them another few turns.  Queen #2 joins the party. Thuella has a better spell list than Nephele, with the ever-amazing Call Lightning plus Thunder Ward to cut down on friendly fire from Lightning Storm.  Having reached the coast, Winddancer starts exploring the sky too. Naturally-placed beanstalks have castles atop them, often with giants living in them although it looks like this one's been cleared out. Maybe this was where the pale ones were getting all those cloudfolk?  As expected, the pale ones' starting cave has their starting iron deposit, some fungus, and nothing else.  Well, that was nice while it lasted.  The illusionist has managed to sneak a small stack into yellow's old base.  The illusionist nails a couple birds with fear, but they're having no luck bashing through the iron gate and they're losing the archer duel.  Poor showing, old man!  Huh, looks like the Pale Ones had a different cloud castle all along. That might be enough cloudfolk to put a dent in the mist warrior line, and against most conventional bird forces it would be a tough nut to crack. It is the kind of situation where the Dawn Guards would actually come in pretty handy for, though.  Whoops, looks like I stirred up a real hornet's nest over in blue's territory.  Nephele goes to "solo" the illusionist citadel with her freespawn.  One of her sylphs goes down to arrow fire but a doubled Gale decimates the defenders, and that's basically it.  Team Air Elemental spends several dozen turns trying to destroy the lightning-proof gate. At turn 50, the gate mercifully opens and the lone surviving archer immediately gets murdered.  Not content to wait it out in their fortress, the pale ones march an army out to meet Nephele above ground.  The heavily armored cavern guards weather the weather much better than the flimsy human troops do.  Nephele's built-in wind attack is considerably stronger than Gale, and tears them apart (along with most of her children; ethereal only does so much against this kind of firepower.)  The hellstack is working its way back towards the pale ones' home.  Queen #3 also comes with Lightning Storm + Call Lightning, but no Thunder Ward, so there may be a bit of friendly fire from Lightning Storm.  Purple does have a guard tower at the base of their peninsula.  The illusionist has enchanted it with their Mirror Wall ritual. Just like the more portable mirrors, these will periodically spit out illusionary enemies. It spits out a grand total of 2 illusions, which immediately kill themselves on the solar eagles' fireshield.  The eagles team up to take on some wandering soultorns. Fun fact: solar eagles throw around a lot of fire AoEs and have no fire resistance whatsoever. One of them promptly burns the other one to death.  God's Perfect Himbo converges on the hellstack with the queens.  As predicted, the olms are the first real threat to the mist warriors we've seen, paralyzing and killing mist warriors at an alarming rate.  By the third salvo of lightning, olms are most of what they have left.  Somewhat belatedly Nephele decides to bust out the big guns, wiping out most of our remaining fodder.  After that, it's all just so much mop up.  And that's it for purple. Theoretically there's a green team out there, but I'm guessing they're getting bullied pretty hard by blue, given how little of either we've seen.
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Oct 25, 2021 23:00
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Totally missed this lp. Caught up and really enjoying it.
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Oct 27, 2021 16:16
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God's Perfect Himbo, part 8 Sure enough, green dies just a couple turns later. Voice of El is... not great, but I'm glad they got steamrolled by other AIs because they can be a pain in the rear end if left alone. Priest king is pretty strong, but I suspect the AI likes to use up their resources spamming their lower level summons which is a problem since priest king really relies on their mid-level rituals.  A large joint force of hoburgs and demons sits at the isthmus connecting their territory to mine. Here's hoping it stays distracted and doesn't come across; all my real forces are way down on the south coast.  I seize the now-empty pale one lair, but there's not actually much that I can recruit there.  The air queens skip across the bay east of purple's base and find some lands occupied by blue. If they're all the way down here at the coast it's probably safe to assume they control most or all of the unexplored territory on the map.  Chopping down some forests in the west to keep down the spawns. Since I lost my first axe I had to fly another one in from the eastern edge of the map.  Now that I have all three Queens of Air, I need to find something else to spend air gems on. I roll a couple more 2nd tier rituals to get the one I want. Rainbow Curtain is another fort enchantment similar to the illusionist's mirror wall. I guess it's neat, and possibly relevant vs. the AI since it's often possible to bait them into attacking forts they don't quite have enough oomph to crack, but I have a hard time caring. I'm more interested in the storm giants.  Storm giants look a lot like the God-Emperor, but they're a pale imitation (although they do innately fly.) Really, for 75 gems they're not a great summon--Solar Eagles have a lot more utility and let you spend less-desirable fire gems for most of the cost. Even though storm giants come online earlier they pale in usefulness compared to mist warriors.  However, by sinking another 100 air gems in to upgrade them to titans, you can start to realize the storm giants' real potential. The upgraded titans get some decent magic, and more importantly, they can summon a whole batch of storm giants for 100 gems. The Cloud Lord doesn't have a lot of options for front line meat shields, so this is pretty handy. A couple turns and a bit of alchemy later...  Summoning storm giants at 25 gems a pop (give or take; the amount you get is somewhat random) beats the hell out of paying 75 gems for them. The 75 gem version does get you a commander, but since they're not really strong enough to solo much, the commander status isn't really worth it until you start upgrading them.  The demonologist sends a modest stack of generic human fodder to meet the air queens' incursion, which goes about as expected.  They follow up with another, larger stack with some light demon support, but it was so boring I didn't even bother screencapping it.  My deforestation squad finds an ancient forest guarded by a whole mess of indie revelers and their freespawn. They outnumber us and got us in an ambush, but only manage to do a single casualty.  In addition to beanstalks and mountain spires, you can also occasionally find rainbows leading to the sky, which also provide gold and gems? No air gems, but it's a perfect set for alchemy at least.  The western half of the continent is now free of ancient forests, although there's still a lot of wandering animals to clean up.  The tower next to the rainbow falls with little resistance.  There is a second tower just on the other side of the rainbow, and some serious reinforcements are piling in.  The demonologist takes most of his minions to the southwest as the queens move in to intercept another incoming column of conventional troops.  Nephele and Aella summarily delete it.  The demonologist turns back, and the queens scatter to safety; I'd like to meet this one with a bit more concentration of forces. Also, it emerges that there is a third guard tower. No wonder there's so many fodder troops in the neighborhood.  Slowly whittling down the wandering indies to try to keep my backfield secure.  My storm titan spots a stack of random indie trolls and animals wandering around tagged as the horrors. Curious...  The three queens join up to tackle the demonologist horde.  They have a bunch of spellcasting devils on top of the demonologist himself, but outside of a single storm demon nothing has lightning resistance.  A very evenly matched battle: they kill one of our guys, we kill one of our guys.  The horror stack jumps the storm giant squad.  I guess that accounts for the random horror team indies, it's packing a mind control spell. Storm giants have pretty good MR, so I'm not overly concerned.  Repeated lightning strikes take out its slave minions, and the giants begin whittling away at the moon horror. It does have a displacement buff, though, which makes ranged attacks considerably less effective, on top of a luck spell (flat 50% chance to avoid any attack.)  The storm giants have enough MR to shrug off most of its spells, but they're more vulnerable to its fear.  It dies, but not before turning a couple more giants.  Theoretically we have the advantage in numbers and HP... but the moon horror had put its buff up on the enslaved giants. Who manage to murder our remaining giants, leading to a total wipe for everything that fled earlier. Goodbye 500 gems worth of giants.   More bad news: before they got killed by horrors, the storm giants got a glimpse of the hoburgs pushing in with a big stack containing multiple dragons. And we just lost our anti-mech squad.  With the demonologist stack down I secure the three towers, but the hoburgs are pushing in quickly.  The hoburgs have a second stack with a dragon, plus so many fodder hobbits that they don't fit on a single screen.  I stick what defenses I can in the forwardmost tower, hoping they can score some attrition.   Goddamn, hoburg mechs are brutal. This is what I meant when I said that the dragons weren't even that big of a deal compared to the rest of the mech summons; while there are some duds in the lower level mech ritual, it tends to get you a lot of firepower for cheaper.  Final score. Honestly, I did better than I thought I would.  Slowly rebuilding my giant corps so that I have a chance against those things.  I decide to let the hoburgs muck about with the towers and push eastward while the demonologist is down. Hoburgs may be strong, but they are slooooooow; they have no hope at all of keeping up with flying raiders.
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Oct 27, 2021 23:12
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There's something darkly hilarious about how you've built an unstoppable bird/cloud war machine only to encounter your greatest foe: Hobbits.
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Oct 27, 2021 23:18
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Tricksy hobittses, we hates them 
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Oct 28, 2021 01:37
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Yeah, the Burgmeister faction looks a lot more like a Hanseatic Trade Federation when you get a ton of the Clockwork Soldiers. Ruby ones shoot Tons of fun descriptions as well. https://coe5.fandom.com/wiki/Diamond_Clockwork_Soldier Heres the Diamond Clockwork Soldier description: quote:It is quite easy to notice if an approaching Hoburg army contains a Horologist due to the clanking sound of his many Clockwork Soldiers. Though clunky and erratic, they make a very good addition to the army as they can man the first line of battle while the Hoburghers finish their pie and beer snack. The constructs are all powered by a large mainspring and a jewel imbued with a certain element. Before battle all constructs have to be wound up and the jewels have to placed in the right place, which is why it is preferable to attack the Hoburg forces by surprise. As everyone knows, the diamond is connected with the Plane of Air and a construct that is powered by a diamond will shoot out a fork of lightning. It has been speculated that it should possible to increase the power of the lightning by directing it towards another Clockwork Soldier, thus charging the diamond in that construct and producing an even more powerful lightning bolt. This theory was meant to be tried out by Ortolf the Master Horologist at the battle of Sahnenburg, where he had placed twenty constructs in a circle, meaning for them to charge each other for a few rounds before the resulting lightning should have been directed towards the enemy. The result of the experiment is not known, as neither of the opposing armies nor Sahnenburg could be found afterwards. So yeah, Ortulf was charging diamonds that drew ever more power from the plane of air as a result and directed it to other diamonds in a reactor setup. Its Techno-Bavarias first wind up plasma reactor, and it obliterated 2 incoming enemy armies... along with the town of Sahnenburg.
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Oct 28, 2021 03:07
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Ah, so the meteor event is actually a hoburg false flag. Good to know.
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Oct 28, 2021 03:19
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the holy poopacy posted:
 This will never not be funny.
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Oct 28, 2021 11:09
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Storm Titans make giant toga parties  .
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Oct 28, 2021 16:52
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Voting time! It does look like this run is going to wrap up a bit quicker than Bernie's, so I think it's time to start planning the next run. I was hoping there would be more content updates to guide the vote but after the initial batch of stuff Illwinter has just been doing bugfixes & minor modding updates. So Kobold King/Scourge Lord are still on the table, and I'll throw in some stuff that hasn't been seen so far yet: A) Kobold King - D&D tiny dragon people, the ultimate expendable fodder faction plus sorcerers and dragons. B) Scourge Lord - D&D Dark Sun defilers: wizards who drain the planet's lifeforce to fuel their magic, leaving barren wasteland behind. C) Barbarian - an older faction who recently got a few new updates but still aren't very good, more of a challenge run. D) High Priestess - Ba'al worshippers, lots of stuff from the Dominions Hinnom nations, just as hilariously OP as Hinnom was when it was first added E) Troll King - the bad guys from Beowulf and other Germanic mythology, just a few powerful giants stomping on things until they die to something stupid and random F) High Cultist -  G) Markgraf - evil hoburgs, who suffer all of the problems of the hoburg faction and have none of the advantages H) Something else - everything else is also on the table
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Oct 28, 2021 17:26
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Kobolds
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Oct 28, 2021 17:30
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I think it's time to go full evil.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:31
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B - Scourge Lord I want to see the life force mechanism
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Oct 28, 2021 17:31
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D. High Priestess
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Oct 28, 2021 17:44
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Kobolds are always a fun time.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:48
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B Scourge Lord always looked neat.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:52
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C. H: Dwarf Queen.
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Oct 28, 2021 17:56
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High Priestess- take our Ba'al and go home
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Oct 28, 2021 17:58
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Koboldsgoatface posted:I think it's time to go full evil. You're going to have to be more specific.
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Oct 28, 2021 18:02
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I was thinking something with demons that gently caress about with the player as much as the enemy. Full Demonologist, probably.
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Oct 28, 2021 18:05
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Kobolds
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Oct 28, 2021 18:28
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Enchanter
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Oct 28, 2021 19:22
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Kobolds
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Oct 28, 2021 19:54
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Troll King because you get a good starting expander with hilariously low MR so you can easily end up getting owned by mind control effect at turn 3 
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Oct 28, 2021 19:56
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The people want Kobolds, dammit!
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Oct 28, 2021 19:58
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Scourge or Bolds
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Oct 28, 2021 20:03
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Kobolds Cause I like the little buggers but suck at these games.
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Oct 28, 2021 20:05
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To Koboldy go where no Kobold has gone before!
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Oct 28, 2021 20:18
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Donkringel posted:To Koboldy go where no Kobold has gone before! To the celestial plane!
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Oct 28, 2021 20:25
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Kobolds. My early game with them could definitely do with improvement, I expect I can learn from a playthrough with them.
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Oct 28, 2021 20:27
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