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Feinne posted:Bandar Log summons also gets him hilarious grandstanding poo poo like Mandeha. They are expensive but they are h3s that autocast darkness so they are kinda cool. If i'd gone with my gut and done a good bless they'd be a lot better. I was initially going to do like a b9/e4 or something bless but then I changed my mind after grabbing the Tuatha  uguu posted:Can raid well with fliers, stealthy troops and thugs, but lacks fire and astral. Ah Itz at best get a1 and storm demon is a2. I've got way better uses for air gems than empowering dumbo bats. I also deliberately didn't take astral as a metagame concern since I went so heavy into blood mages. People really don't like horrors/AC. Absum posted:Baudin isnt scouting these guys. Thespo did make a post of his turn 3 perspective though. It's good that his nation was explained though cause I think he's gonna make posts for more turns. Yeah i've been recording my turns. Also gently caress all ya'll, mace markata are dope as poo poo. Especially supported by a Yaksha or two.
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Aug 6, 2015 05:43
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Yeah Mandeha can be pretty sweet if you've got a lot of demons that don't give a poo poo about darkness. EDIT: And yeah looking over the items Air Boosters are just a much of a pain in the rear end as they were in Dom3, so getting an A1 blood mage up to A2 isn't really the ideal way to summon storm demons. Feinne fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 05:48
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Feinne posted:Yeah Mandeha can be pretty sweet if you've got a lot of demons that don't give a poo poo about darkness. He has Vanjarls, which have A2B1. He can just pay 30 blood slaves to get a Storm Demon summoner.
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Aug 6, 2015 06:00
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LA now has lemuria instead of ermor and they're basically what happened to the offshoot of ermor in MA that didn't get skeletonized. except in this case they turned themselves into spooky ghosts instead of skeletons. romans don't learn. they have lots of ethereal but they also kinda suck. in fact, they're a lot easier to ignore than ermor. also, i actually have fun playing LA r'lyeh because i'm broken inside
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Aug 6, 2015 07:45
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Is this the same Draft as the other one that was started a few months ago; or an entirely new one?
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Aug 6, 2015 07:46
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Gridlocked posted:Is this the same Draft as the other one that was started a few months ago; or an entirely new one? Do you mean ChickenWing's LP? If so then yes, this is a different draft with some different rules.
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Aug 6, 2015 09:51
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Sloppy Milkshake posted:They are expensive but they are h3s that autocast darkness so they are kinda cool. If i'd gone with my gut and done a good bless they'd be a lot better. I was initially going to do like a b9/e4 or something bless but then I changed my mind after grabbing the Tuatha Markata are good  Monkey nations have really good spells to make markata incredible easily. A single square of lucky ethereal markata takes ~100 hits in melee combat to clear. One. Hundred. And you have to hit 14 defense. I was just playing a game where I was blocking blessed black centaur with a handful of appropriately buffed markata to give my cascade casters time to put them to sleep and allow the markata to kill all of them. They can also be used as really good ablative melee armor in a normal battle with battle fortune. And in dom4 morale issues are not a problem now that rage of the cornered rat exists. Dumb relevant screenshot.  . That little dude killed a black centaur with a thrown rock to the head and then beat another one to death with his 8 damage club.
Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 14:14
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Monkey nations have really good spells to make markata incredible easily. A single square of lucky ethereal markata takes ~100 hits in melee combat to clear. One. Hundred. And you have to hit 14 defense. I was just playing a game where I was blocking blessed black centaur with a handful of appropriately buffed markata to give my cascade casters time to put them to sleep and allow the markata to kill all of them. They can also be used as really good ablative melee armor in a normal battle with battle fortune. And in dom4 morale issues are not a problem now that rage of the cornered rat exists. 
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Aug 6, 2015 14:18
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What the loving christ Monkee? Why has no one ever told me this before? I need to change my Lanka strategy immediately.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:55
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Gaghskull posted:What the loving christ Monkee? Why has no one ever told me this before? I need to change my Lanka strategy immediately. Lanka doesn't have yogis and uses skeletons instead usually.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:56
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Markata are good A very appropriate username/post combo.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:58
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Markata are good #Dominions  e: Obviously you just need to cast Army of Lead on your markata horde, friend. VVVVVV How are u fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:02
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Also do remember that's average melee hits to clear, AoE magic negates most of those defenses.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:21
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Wouldn't all those spells be better cast on any other unit instead?
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Aug 6, 2015 16:39
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Poil posted:Wouldn't all those spells be better cast on any other unit instead? markata cost 5g and 1 res, they can be massed like no other.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:55
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How are u posted:e: Obviously you just need to cast Army of Lead on your markata horde, friend. Army of Lead will not save you from a fireball Or even just a dude with a magic stick that's not MRN
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Aug 6, 2015 17:14
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Feinne posted:Also do remember that's average melee hits to clear, AoE magic negates most of those defenses. Mages target large blobs of hp first. Markata are 5hp each and 30/square. If your markata squad actually ends up being the primary target you have bigger problems  Poil posted:Wouldn't all those spells be better cast on any other unit instead? No. Body Ethereal and Luck are aoe1. Markata are size1 so you are hitting 6 units per cast instead of 2 or 3. They also have a high 14 defense which is extremely good when combined with being size1. Every time you are attacked in a turn, you get -2 to your defense for following attacks on that turn. If there are 6 idiot monkeys in a square being attacked by average 10-12ish attack stuff, statistically they are not likely to be hit very often and have their defense pushed down a lot since each hit has a 1/6 chance of any particular monkey. Then, if they are hit, it has to get through ethereal (75% chance of a non-magic thing to miss ) and luck if the blow is fatal, which it will be because lol 5hp monkey (Luck is a 75% chance to ignore damage dealt by a killing blow).
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Aug 6, 2015 17:22
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Feinne posted:Also do remember that's average melee hits to clear, AoE magic negates most of those defenses. Not Luck. Luck is stupid-good on low hp units.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:44
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Poil posted:Wouldn't all those spells be better cast on any other unit instead? being 5 gold and size 1 counts for a lot. you gotta think in dominions terms, my friend, and certain things are much more valuable for dumb as hell reasons because illwinter is full of people who have no idea how to balance anything.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:48
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:being 5 gold and size 1 counts for a lot. you gotta think in dominions terms, my friend, and certain things are much more valuable for dumb as hell reasons because illwinter is full of people who have no idea how to balance anything. All this time i've been under the impression they don't balance poo poo because they're just trying to make cool poo poo, and as a result LOL balance
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Aug 6, 2015 18:54
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if they're trying to make cool poo poo then they've probably failed because legit like 90% of the spells in the game are functionally useless and are thus not fun at all
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Aug 6, 2015 18:55
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:if they're trying to make cool poo poo then they've probably failed because legit like 90% of the spells in the game are functionally useless and are thus not fun at all That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah, at least half of the stuff in the game you will never use outside of edge cases, if at all. One of the most egregious examples is MA Ashdod, a different nation of Jewish giants. They have about 7-8 kinds of giant toops, of which you will ever recruit exactly one of in a serious game, and the rest of the time you'll use nothing but indies and human slaves, with the giants relegated to being mages. Basically, the devs have long stated they're more concerned about the fluff than the mechanics. It's still fun because of all the insane poo poo you can do.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:11
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See, stuff like the last page of discussion and the fact that the interface for dominions inspires this reaction: Really means that its more fun for me to watch the game being played then to actually play the game. 
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Aug 6, 2015 19:18
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So Ponymen Old Alfheim was the canon nation of the previous Pantokrator? Kill all elves.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:22
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please post more funny pictures so that i dont have to give a prize to the troll face legion of gods
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Aug 6, 2015 20:50
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Samog posted:please post more funny pictures so that i dont have to give a prize to the troll face legion of gods the mug will be mine, samog
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Aug 6, 2015 20:52
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Samog posted:please post more funny pictures so that i dont have to give a prize to the troll face legion of gods 
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Aug 6, 2015 20:54
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Baudin posted:I’m going to put it out there right now - my “strategy” for this draft is terrible - it’s giant jews for the most part. That guy you just saw? Giant jew. Most of the rest of my picks? Also jews, or giants, or both. I’m As I only know you from EVE, when I first read this I assumed you were doing some sort of economy build, and as a result I was disappointed in the casual racism. Sometime mid page 2 I realized that nope, you were in fact picking units that were actual jews or actual giants or both at the same time. Discussion content: can someone explain how the heck magic works? The whole d9 e3 h1 nonsense is super confusing. If I had to guess, I'd say that you somehow loot these gem things and then give them to units, which makes them mages? And then those mages can cast spells using the gems (which may or may not be consumables). How terribly wrong is this?
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Aug 6, 2015 21:29
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Turn 4: IRC Quote of the Turn: (10:21:23 PM) foolofsound: why are you using ancient ones and not your good sacreds (10:21:37 PM) Baudin: which ones are good (10:21:50 PM) foolofsound: compared to ancient ones? (10:21:55 PM) foolofsound: either of them Ok, lets see what happened with the second expansion!  Ow, gently caress. What the hell happened? Apparently I dramatically misjudged how strong my army was compared to the target. And now I’ve got… issues. Messing up early expansion is not a good thing - I’m now behind compared to every other nation that hasn’t failed yet. Luckily others quite possibly have also failed, this isn’t something that completely unrecoverable from (I hope). Anyway I don’t have a lot of options so I start up my recruitment of new units and move on to another target while I lick my wounds. I’m going to try out a province with heavy infantry and militias, maybe that’ll be a good target?  And finally I’ve found another player - one that’s doing far better than me so far.  Overall not a good turn. Goddamn.
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Aug 6, 2015 21:33
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Tarandis posted:As I only know you from EVE, when I first read this I assumed you were doing some sort of economy build, and as a result I was disappointed in the casual racism. There are 8 magical paths. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Nature, Death, Astral, Blood. Also holy which is for priests but it's not a real full path like the other ones as there are only a few limited holy spells and no holy gems. Every mage is a dude with some combination of those paths. and the d9 e3 h1 is shorthand. For example  This dude is a2e1s1 (the cloud is air the hammer is earth the star is astral). Every spell has some path requirement, though they do not necessarily require gems. For example, lightning bolt requires that you have air 2 in order to cast it. Any dude with a2 or more can do it. More powerful spells generally require more powerful mages and lots of the big powerful spells require gems in addition to their path requirements. Out of combat strategic spell casting, magic item forging and rituals all require gems. You can also use gems to temporarily boost your magical power in an obscure and relatively complicated way which is detailed in the obscure and complicated manual. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 21:38
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Turn 5: I’m very very nervous about this expansion.  I designate my expansion army and a few reinforcements to move onto the farmlands to my capital’s north, to increase my capital’s resource intake again. I also send my marshmaster to the forest to check for sites next turn.  Now to start up another round of recruitment, starting with a scout in the province I just took. I’m going to need these guys to keep an eye on the neighbour to my north west. Back in my capital I make another Anahim Anakite and a load of zealots along with the requisite smith.   My scout’s found another player to my northeast - I’ll send him out further to check for more detailed information on where they’re located.  As always I jam N a bunch of times, check my research (I can cast some new alteration spells) and then end the turn. e: and yes I am double posting to move past my minor catastrophe in expanding. Baudin fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 21:42
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Awesome, thanks, that makes a surprising amount of sense.Baudin posted:Flawless Victory. Awesome, now to watch the battle! I was curious about the units too, so I bugged Gedder in jabber: tarandis: what is with those jewtrumpet things in the first battle gif tarandis: are those jewtrumpets or normal trumpets? gedder: uh those are horn blowers tarandis: ok so not jewtrumpets gedder: jew trumpets tarandis: oh they are!? gedder: they are good at sieging tarandis: well naturally gedder: because they knock down walls tarandis: ahh tarandis: yes tarandis: that was in the bible This is easier to figure out than I thought!
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Aug 6, 2015 21:45
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Tarandis posted:Discussion content: can someone explain how the heck magic works? The whole d9 e3 h1 nonsense is super confusing. If I had to guess, I'd say that you somehow loot these gem things and then give them to units, which makes them mages? And then those mages can cast spells using the gems (which may or may not be consumables). How terribly wrong is this? There are 8 paths of magic: Fire (F), Water (W), Air (A), Earth (E), Astral (S), Nature (N), Death (D), and Blood (B). There are also special Holy (H) paths, that only priests get, and which behave somewhat differently. Mages, priests, and mage-priests come with certian preset paths, and most of them also get one or more random path from a pool determined by the unit. For example, the Tuatha Sorceress that Thespo chose always gets Air 3, Nature 2, and Holy 2, and have a 100% chance of getting a random +1 to any of the following: Air, Nature, Water, or Earth. There are also 8 schools of magic which act as your research trees: Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Construction, Enchantment, Thaumaturgy, Blood, and Divine. Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Enchantment, and Thaumaturgy all unlock spells from across all the paths except Blood as you level them. Construction instead mostly unlock magic items that mages can construct using magic gems, and which can be permanently equipped to commander/mage/priest/scout units. Divine starts fully researched, but has limited spells that only require Holy paths. Unlocked spells/items require a minimum path score, and many scale with additional levels in the path. Some spells also consume magic gems, which are attuned to any of the paths except Blood or Holy. Gems are collected automatically from magic sites that are randomly hidden in provinces, and require a mage of the same path as the site to uncover. Blood magic is a bit special: all spells that require a Blood path are contained in the Blood school, and instead of gaining gems through magic sites, you have to perform blood hunts; literally having your Blood mages and troops kick down doors and kidnap virgins. For some reason this upsets your people, so you have to have massive piles of units to patrol out unrest so your Blood mages can continue hunting. Almost all blood magic requires blood slaves to cast (unlike other paths, where most spells only cost fatigue), but blood slaves can be collected in greater numbers that any other gems. e: You get research by recruiting mages, then having them sit on their asses in your labs.
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Aug 6, 2015 21:47
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Also blood is the most powerful path and most games that go long end in the world being flooded with demons and horrors from beyond conjured with the power of pure virgin blood.
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Aug 6, 2015 21:49
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Nuclearmonkee posted:There are 8 magical paths. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Nature, Death, Astral, Blood. Also holy which is for priests but it's not a real full path like the other ones as there are only a few limited holy spells and no holy gems. Fun fact: When modding, I found out by accident that there are actually holy gems hidden in the code of Dominions 4. You can mod a spell to use the holy path as first gem requirement, which in effect creates a spell you can never cast since the game demands holy gems, which you can't get. They are probably a weird artefact of programming, leftover from a time when the devs wanted to implement holy gems. Or it's actually possible to create holy gems and I just didn't find out yet how to mod them into the game.
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Aug 6, 2015 22:51
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Libluini posted:Fun fact: When modding, I found out by accident that there are actually holy gems hidden in the code of Dominions 4. You can mod a spell to use the holy path as first gem requirement, which in effect creates a spell you can never cast since the game demands holy gems, which you can't get. They are probably a weird artefact of programming, leftover from a time when the devs wanted to implement holy gems. They're almost certainly an artifact of the spell system. Dominions modding has always been a loving mess of weird poo poo that makes you beg for death after a while, after all. Feinne fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 23:03
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It's also nearly impossible that you can't break into blood with any nation. Prior to an early patch, there was a magic site that showed up a bit too often called the Slave Market which gave 3 a turn (which is incredibly handy), which is harder to find now, but anyone can hunt for blood slaves, they'll probably just be crap at it. There are a handful of independent mages that have good blood access (Garnet Amazons spring to mind), but mainly you have to either start with it or commit a ton of commanders and/or mages to it really hard to break into it, at which point the ball starts rolling and things rapidly become easier.
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Aug 6, 2015 23:07
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So now Baudin actually is scouting Jonjoe's nation: The Mongler Horder This is probably the most dangerous nation in the game, but unfortunately it's dangerous in a very obvious way, which means that someone is probably going to try to kill him the second they think they can. Jonjoe's central gimmick is that almost all of his units can be recruited outside of his forts, either in a particular terrain type, or just in general. ---Capital Only Mage: Bride-In-Waiting   EA Berytos' Bride-In-Waiting is the game's premier demon summoner; able to summon Devils and the mighty Storm Demons out of the box, and the powerful Demon Knights with a single pathboost magic item or 25% random path. She's also an extremely powerful and versatile battle caster, and is tough enough to withstand a hit or two or most of the field-clearing effects humans tend to be vulnerable to. She is one of the major reasons Berytos rarely survives the early game, and is one the first in the Monglers' line of horrors.---Anywhere Mages: Member of the Second Tier, Way, Oni General, Mystes  The first two are top tier blood mages, either of which is cause to try to rush a nation. LA Ulm's Member of the Second Tier is recruitable outside of fortresses, is a decent researcher and powerful mage, and has extremely high stealth, meaning the can strike from anywhere. They also have the dubious honor of being one of the easiest mages to turn into a Horror caster, probably the single strongest endgame strategy; once it's online, it's almost impossible to stop or even survive.  LA Xibalba's Way is recruitable both in fortresses, and in any forest province. They're naturally excellent blood hunters, and have a decent level of Nature magic; a strong path throughout the game. Mostly, however, expect to see these sitting in high population provinces capturing blood slaves.  EA Yomi's Oni General is one of a number of oni units, whose major gimmick is turning into a ghost on defeat, and coming back to life at the end of the battle if not destroyed. The Oni General has a fairly high Undead/Demon leadership score, courtesy of his Death magic paths. If the Monglers survive long enough to start producing demons, expect these tough mages to be leading them.  LA Pythium's Mystes is a terrible mage (though I guess they can cast the useful Swarm spell if you give them a gem), but like many of JonJoe's mages, she is recruitable in any province with a lab. Depsite her descriptions she was chosen as a researcher, since she's extremely cost efficient, and turn efficiency isn't such a problem when forts aren't necessary to unlock your units. ---Other Commanders: Warrior Chief, Missionary, Black Harpy   EA Ulm's Warrior Chief and LA Marignon's Missionary both have the same purposed; non-fort recruitable general and priest, respectively. The warrior chief is recruitable in any mountain or forest, and the missionary in any non-fort province with a temple.  The Pangaea/Asphodel's Black Harpy is the hands-down best scout in the game. Cheap, recruitable in any forest, very stealthy, and flying. Whoever has these has will almost certainly have near perfect intel on their opponents. ---Capital Only Troop: Ghoul Guardians  LA Ulm's tough, brave, high armor units who can knock out enemy sacreds on hits. They're high resources, but since we know JonJoe took Productivity 3 scales, he can afford them. They can effectively shut down many kinds of rushes on their own. ---Anywhere Troops: Barbarian Heavy Horsemen, Xibalban Warrior, Limitane, Axe Warrior, Limitane Standard, Harpy All of JonJoe's troops are first and foremost recruitable outside fortresses, so I'll just hit the highlights:   LA T'ien Ch'i's Barbarian Heavy Horsemen and EA Ulm's Axe Warriors are both pretty powerful and effective offensive units that are characterized by having decent stats and a lot of attacks.   LA Xibalba's Xibalban Warrior and Pangaea/Asphodel's Harpy are both cheap and dangerous flying alpha strikers.   LA Pythium's Limitane are cheap and tanky blockers, and their Limitane Standards increase the morale of all other units in their squad. Jonjoe took extra mage picks as his gimmick, so no national spells or anything this time. JonJoe's basic strategy is pretty simple: use Ghoul Guardians to survive long enough to start summoning hordes of demons, and to eventually transition into Horrors, the Astral/Blood strategy. The Horror strategy involves casting the infamous Astral Corruption spell, which has a chance to kill any mage who casts a non-Blood magic spell, and Send Horror, which calls a bunch of hideous Lovecraftian monster to invade an enemy province. Everything is going to rely on his ability to fend off the inevitable aggression he's going to suffer in the early game.
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Aug 7, 2015 01:17
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fool_of_sound posted:
Any chance you could quote yourself on the pretender design with the nation posts? It's nice to see how it all works together.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:14
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Please don't thumbnail everything in the update posts. It makes it a pain to read.
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Aug 7, 2015 02:50
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