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deaht + luck i think got me "the king is risen" event in a blitz game which is a free mound king + a bunch of lorfmen
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Mar 7, 2018 20:58
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Normal Adult Human posted:deaht + luck i think got me "the king is risen" event in a blitz game which is a free mound king + a bunch of lorfmen Death + luck has some really nice events but it doesn't make up for all the plagues and unrest.
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Mar 7, 2018 21:50
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Hey everybody please upload your god for the game FICTION please. Couple of hold-outs.
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Mar 8, 2018 00:14
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The world building in this game is pretty neat. I didn't know that Marignon defeated MA Ermor using Devils, for example. And it's cool they put in stuff like a bit of hope for Atlantis with their Unsleepers. Now I wish they made more Late Age stuff just so I could see what happens to everybody.
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Mar 8, 2018 04:26
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Helion posted:The world building in this game is pretty neat. I didn't know that Marignon defeated MA Ermor using Devils, for example. Everyone gets eaten by horrors. The end.
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Mar 8, 2018 05:06
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Asehujiko posted:What do I do as Nazca? Do I go for their super expensive caster palanquins? If so, do I buy them for $850 or do I get the cheaper, slow to recruit component mages and then merge those? If I do go with these, do I use them as artillery on the battlefield or park them somewhere summoning ghosts? If I don't focus on the palanquins, what unit do I go for? Would it be worth turning the H3 mage-priests into half-strength palanquins just to summon ghosts? Totally tooting my own horn here, but this is how I won Newbie game as Nazca. Long story short, flying free spawn is blatantly overpowered...if you're a newb 
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Mar 8, 2018 05:27
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Today I noticed the game has a steam workshop section enabled (!) There is a single map on it, uploaded by Johan. It doesn't really appear on the game if you click on it (but it's downloaded in a Steam folder on your computer). I suppose the next version will enable Steam workshop integration.
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Mar 9, 2018 16:27
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I want whatever map is used in the manual.
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Mar 9, 2018 22:38
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In a surprise twist Trade and Taint will be downloadable as a workshop mod
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Mar 9, 2018 23:52
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SILT YOMIMOD This was a modded EA game where I took Agartha to victory. I’d seen Agartha played against me a few times, and while I really liked what I saw, I thought that the nation’s strengths were generally underutilised. The mods in action were the SILT mod, which changes the immortal summoning spells (Lich, Worm Mage, Vampire, Wraith Lord) into transformation spells. The logic is that this will stop people from accumulating enormous numbers of unkillable mages. In my experience this is only really a problem with vampires due to the absurdly low costs, and the main draw of the other spells is that you’re getting a powerful mage, rather than an immortal one. The other is Yomimod, which tries to make the hilariously terrible demon nation of Yomi playable. I’m not certain what all its changes are, or how effective it is, so I’ll leave the explanation to Conot who played them. Mu has an excellent lets play of Sauromatia in this game. Have a look! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3fgNyV9o8Q  Here’s my god, a real blast from the past, Python 3.4. The Earth Snake was the most common god pick in Dominions 4 due to being extremely cheap and one of the best early game expanders due to its extremely high protection and fear. Its cost is now much higher so it’s no longer as ridiculous. I picked it up as it was still and excellent early game expander (as I reasoned that Agartha’s terrible troops needed some help clearing out indies, and I wasn’t sure which of the other gods were viable expanders. I didn’t have any real use for a bless but since it came with cheap Earth points I pumped them into increased protection. With the rest of my points I rammed my scales as high as possible, using sloth and misfortune as dump stats (the high order, fortune teller mages, and general lack of threatening events made this fairly safe). The first few turns go according to plan - my starting army and my pretender go separate ways and start conquering. The Earth Snake goes on a long wide arc to the South. Players are often reluctant to fight over provinces in the first year, so I stretch my path into what would probably be rightfully Yomi, Sauromantia, and Caelum's territory. I dive into the water and pick up one province before some badass tritons stab him to death. NBD, the snake has done his job. Regular armies pick up the interior provinces, including two extra cave provinces that let me recruit about a half dozen scouts before they get forts built in them. Scouts pour out from my territory, giving me a pretty good lay of the land. Ermor is my nearest neighbour, with our Caps just four provinces apart. We negotiate ownership of our only land border in favour of Ermor - a farm province just East of my cap circle. This doesn't concern me - Ermor is a human nation and I'll be able to absolutely destroy them once I've researched Earthquake. Caelum, Yomi and Sauro are a little bit too far from my capitol to make defending conquered territory feasible. Instead, we look to the North. Icy wind are blowing south - the dark elves of Helheim and rushing Machaka. Helheim is running a Fear bless on their sacred glamorous cavalry. It's a potent combo. They charge in fast enough that glamour popping arrows miss them entirely, then beat up infantry that can't hit them past the glamour, until the Fear hits in and the enemy runs away. Having a bless rush nation right next to me is bad enough, but Helheim is being commanded by Ramc, notorious for being one of the best Dominions players. I've played against Ramc a couple of times, and what's concerned me most is that they are entirely cold blooded. Other opponents will get tangled up in forever-wars or grudges matches, but Ramc always plays to win. If he takes out Machaka quickly, I'll have an extremely dangerous threat on my border. My beefy scales have let me fort up my caves, and I've been churning out mages. Once I hit the first research goal of Conjuration 3, I start emptying my gem reserves into two of my national summons, Earth Elementals and Magma Children. I often hear these described as chaff for Agartha, which is absolutely absurd. These are both specialist troops, and for this first war we are using them for two very particular attributes that they have, Mindless and Spirit Sight. Mindless has a few effects, but for us its main draw is that it renders a unit completely immune to fear, while Spirit Sight allows a unit to ignore Glamour. So, with a snap of our tectonic fingers, we've just summoned up a substantial army that entirely counters Helheim's main strength. Backing these up will be my Great Olms, which will be bombarding the elves with 100% accurate paralyzing mind blasts, and my Earth Reader mages, which will be casting Earth Meld to hold the cavalry in place, denying them charge bonuses and breaking up their attack. In a rare fumble Ramc has also neglected to put province defence in our bordering provinces, so I scout nab them and march my armies towards him. I expected Machaka to get creamed by the elves, but in the opening moves of the war, they pull off an absolute blinder. They correctly predicted that Helheim was about to attack heavily into a province where Machaka just happened to get discounted province defence, and poured their entirely treasury, army, mages, and god into its defence. The battle of Lovedon becomes the stuff of legends, and practically every Helheim and Machaka unit dies there. Helheim would have lost to my armies regardless, but this turns the war into an absolute cake walk. I crunch his cap, and spread out to take the rest of his empire. Machaka pushed out into the old territory with his god. I wait a few turns and take them off him after I see Fomoria starting to attack him in the East. Welcome to the jungle, buddy. I notice war breaking out between Caelum and Ermor, and have a small detachment from my Capitol opportunistically pick off a few of Caelum's border provinces. I start to move my forces towards Machaka after picking up Earthquake, but notice Lanka going ai for reasons unknown after suffering a big defeat. I reverse course to take up this easy meal, and a couple of armies sweep through Lanka. I find Vanheim sieging Lanka's capitol. They have a much scarier bless than Helheim, including quickness. They’re still elves, and my previous tactic works perfectly - spirit sighted units take them out, while my massed great olms paralyze Vanheim's small elite army. I crack the capitol instantly, and put my magma children front and forwards to eliminate the fire vulnerable Lanka demons. Vanheim fears me pushing forwards with that army, and bribes me 30 earth gems not to. I take that up and turn them into more Earth Elementals. Yomi pushes up a little, and I concede a Lanka fort to them. I estimate I could win a fight with Yomi with what I had available, but the demons are reasonably tough and I would lose troops doing it. Me and Yomi arrange a tense peace, and I make sure to put the fear of Agartha into them by having a second enormous army of Agartha show up at our border commanded by my recently returned god. Yomi keeps their agreement, and my God’s army moves on to grab the first level 3 throne of the game with the benefit of my recently researched Marble Warriors. This is the shattered throne, which would be a massive, massive benefit to any blood nation as it gives a big blood discount. Sauromatia was just next door, and would kill for this throne. I bolster the defences there, before taking the opportunity to wipe out Caelum's last remaining major army in exchange for Ermor's fort nearby Sauromatia's capitol. I'm sitting extremely pretty at this point. I've got three capitols, the land area of about four empires, and sky high scales to take advantage of it all. I use my extra gold to entirely switch recruitment from gold efficient researchers to Earth Readers. They have a much higher cost, but they let me research ever faster and will be able to function as combat mages when the time comes. I'm surrounded by potential enemies, so launching into another war right now would just create a risk of someone else taking advantage of the situation to invade me. Instead, I build up my forces to make sure I'm able to defend my empire, and work towards to the goals I need to make myself truly unstoppable. I do some empowering to lift a lizard shaman up to nature 2. This lets me start manufacturing thistle mages and moon vines, giving me n3 available ability on any lizard shaman. I've already dispersed them across my empire in case Ermor starts casting Mind Hunt. An oracle of subterranean fire gets empowered in death, letting me mass produce flaming skulls for fire boosting. I summon up a host of Mound Fields and pass each of them a Skull Staff to boost them to D4. These disperse across my empire to meet up with my main armies. Their use is simple - cast Darkness at the start of every battle so my night vision troops gain a major advantage. The real prize is Alteration 9, a heady goal that rarely get realised, but I'm churning out so many researchers that I reach it before turn 50. This gives us Army of Lead and Army of Gold - these give an army wide buff of 20(!) protection plus magic resistance or fire resistance, with the downside of Thunder Weakness. Now is the time to wipe out our only theoretical threat - Sauromatia. I launch two major invasions from each side of my double border with Sauromatia, and four minor attacks looking to grab some easy pickings. Five of these occur on our Northern border. One major attacks rolls over a throne that Sauro had grabbed, killing a bunch of mages. One minor attack irritatingly bounces off some weak province defence thanks to the overall crappyness of Agarthan troops. One minor attack wins, while another walks into a skelespam trap and needs to retreat. The major attack on the Southern border was a lot more interesting though. My attack comes from the fort nearby Sauro's capitol. He has a good chunk of forces building up there, but the major issue is his god and main force are on a throne two provinces away. Feeling all Sun Tzu, I launch my attack in between these two to divide and conquer. If you've watched Mu.'s series, you'll know this happens just as he tried to start invading me. So instead of a nice empty province, our two doomballs walk directly into each other. My set-up in relatively simple, and designed to counter what I think will be Sauro's likely plays. Sauro has plenty of death magic, so I'm certain to face horde of skeletons and very likely to see Plague. I put my Earth Elementals front and centre to face this. They are lifeless, so plague can't target them, and will be able to trample their way through multiple skeletons a turn. Taking up the flanks are my magma children. Sauro will likely try to launch skeleton horsemen set to attack rear here, so the magma children will intercept and kill them. Afterwards they will converge on the hordes of skeletons. Here's where their Fire Shield ability will kick in. Everything attacking a magma child will take a set amount of fire damage, minus their weapon length. Skeletons are low hp and are just armed with regular swords. When they try to ineffectually attack my protection 20 magma children, they will get instantly incinerated. With the front completely saturated, this is when the Great Olms really shine. They will completely ignore mindless units like skeletons, and will instead target Sauro's elite lancers, and his mages. I've brought along a few Olm Mages to cast quickness on Magma Children to increase their killing power. Earth Readers power-up in Earth, maybe buff a few troops and then spam Earth Blade. Those with a fire random eat a fire gem to Fire Power up to F2, boost in Earth as well, and then spam Magma Eruption to bombard the enemy with massively damaging spells. The wight mage casts Darkness - it won't help against the skeletons but it won't hurt me in any way and Sauro still has non-skeleton units. My God casts Army of Lead first, then he has a nap to recover from the fatigue before Earth Powering and spamming Earthquake. It's a given the death mages will cast Invulnerability if they have it, so there's no point trying to open up with it, but once all my troops have protection 20 I can use it to clear out the skeletons without any harm to myself. Ferrus comes along to to spam Gifts from Heaven. Here's the result!  This is ruinous for Sauromatia, they've lost just about everything meaningful in this battle. Things play out most as expected except that their pretender tries to attack my rear lines. He manages to eat a lot of Great Olms until he gets paralyzed and beaten to death with their stubby but buffed up arms. The magma children perform vastly above expectations, they work their way through the skeletons like a tide of lava before reaching the mages and snuffing them out. Ferrus’s head falls off due to getting too tired, but he’s a merc so we don’t really care. Sauromatia has managed to put my fort near their cap under siege, but with just a small force, while I've brought a third fully loaded doom ball to our border. They're broken but go down hard. I swamp their lands, while their breakout heads towards my cap. Mu. uploads his lets play series then, including his latest raiding moves unfortunately before the turn is complete. I do a literal spit take while I'm watching, and move my capitol defence for to intercept. Pretty scummy, but I make no apologies. He makes his final stand at the Statue of the Sitting God, where he's taken advantage of the Enchantment bonus to mass produce Long Dead Horsemen in terrifying number. After seeing how Army of Lead magma children performs, I reworked my front line. It was just a solid wall of magma children. This works perfectly, and they walk forwards incinerating everything thrown at them, shrugging off spells and blows alike. I mop up the rest of Sauromatia, leaving me wrapping around the world from North to South and holding five capitols. I cast Mother Oak and Well of Misery, which boost my income to around 8k and sees me pulling in 54 death gems a turn (if only I had a good use for them other than darkness, since the Lich spell is now modded to pointlessness).  I'm literally unstoppable at this stage. My doomballs take the remaining Level 3 thrones with minimal losses. All I really need to do is swap around which buffs I'm casting depending on the elemental damage the throne is putting out. The final stand comes from Noble Machaka, who manage to clear out a Sping Hawk throne. I've had a scout on it all game so I see their strategy, and it's glorious. Machaka has been hording pygmies all game at his fort in Lovedon, where Vanheim fell. I'd been planning to wipe these out with Earthquakes all game, but just always had better targets. Now the pygmies were coming into their own. Machaka casts Fire Arrows, and all of a sudden all of these hundreds of pygmies armed with puny slings become lethal armour piercing death dealers. The damage output from these things is stratospheric. My incoming army veers off from this sudden unexpected threat once I see the battle report. I'm mostly confident that by switching to Army of Gold I can tank the fire damage, but I bring in something extra special for this final blow. Previously squirreled away in my capitol, I bring my special weapons out of reserve. The Fire Spirit equipped with a Flaming Skull and Coral Blade named Big Kills, Big Money, Big Women. He boost up in fire, then casts Fire Storm. Alongside him was Merman Chad, a W2F1 triton equipped with a Water Bracelet, Robe of the Sea and Coral Blade. Round 1, he starts casting Acid Storm. Both of these spells are board wipers for anyone without high natural protection and fire resistance. We bring along a guy to cast Army of Gold, and watch the result.  The game ends a couple of turns after this when I grab another level 3 throne. The throne requirements were pretty onerous in this game, but on the strength of Army of Lead and Gold I'm able to get more than enough before cataclysm even hit. I think I was probably set to win as soon as I killed Sauromatia's god. I had Demon Cleansing ready to go if Yomi tried to invade, Ground Army and Mechanical Men on standby if Fomoria crossed the oceans, and my board wipers and massed Earthquake if Ermor or Machaka had tried to interfere. Just to be extra safe I was cloud trapezing Faery Queens onto my armies to cast Gift of Flight, as the last remaining weakness of my Magma Children was their low speed. On my penultimate turn I cast the Earth and Fire gem generators in case something had gone wrong, and used this to throw up Wizard's Towers on my few remaining unforted thrones. Graphs Provinces  Vanheim takes a huge lead after rushing and wiping out Maverni off screen, but eventually meets their matching in Skelespam Ermor. I’m picking up provinces gradually the whole time. Forts Who cares. Income  Me and Ermor have great scales, so we’re well head on income the whole game once we make our initial gains. Gem income  I diligently site search the whole game, but I get relatively meagre results thanks to Agartha’s limited diversity. Once I take Sauromatia I go through the roof. Research  I always try to research like a madmad so my line’s not a surprise. What is a surprise is that Yomi is somehow doing incredibly well. What the hell? Dominion  Only really built temples in fort to build mages, so I’m behind in this. Army size  I conduct all my wars with only minimal losses while most of my rivals wind up losing lots of troops. I use this to build up my steamroller, so every war becomes more and more one sided. Points  This game had really bizarre score requirements. Mostly level 3 thrones, and something like a 70% requirement. Normally this would stall a game and guarantee a cataclysm. I’m so far ahead I’m able to just sweep the thrones regardless. Usually I’d try and keep a holy 3 priest hidden on all my thrones and grab them all at once and sneak a win. Here I feel so unstoppable I just grab them when I get them. Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 10:48
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Indeed, I did all the work against Vanheim and then you stole all their poo poo because I barely had anything left to capitalize on the Great Elf Resistance Battle, so you got a massive territorial gain for free. I was robbed.
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Mar 10, 2018 12:04
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Bug Squash posted:The other is Yomimod, which tries to make the hilariously terrible demon nation of Yomi playable. I’m not certain what all its changes are, or how effective it is, so I’ll leave the explanation to Conot who played them. I guess I'll have to sit down soon and do that... No promises about my level of insight though.
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Mar 10, 2018 13:05
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I got owned hard there yeah. I should have been more cautious hitting into Machaka but I was in a hurry for no good reason. Fear bless turned out to be not that great all in all and my bless points would have been better placed elsewhere. (I gave all my gems and items to Vanheim) Oh well these things happen. Remember when I used to win Dominions games all the time?
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Mar 10, 2018 22:52
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Ramc posted:I got owned hard there yeah. I should have been more cautious hitting into Machaka but I was in a hurry for no good reason. I was excited to do a fear bless, with memories of how well massed demon knights/horrors worked with fear. Then I read that in dominions 5 the stacking affect of multiple fears was massively reduced.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:25
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Did you actually use Pale Ones for anything, or were they just for sieges and arrow decoys?
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Mar 10, 2018 23:26
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Speleothing posted:Did you actually use Pale Ones for anything, or were they just for sieges and arrow decoys? They generally followed behind my summons with a bunch of buffs stacked on them (strength of giants, marble warriors etc), but not a lot got past high protection magma children. Unsupported they're pretty terrible and die rapidly, but Agartha should be focused on getting those buffs up pronto.
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Mar 10, 2018 23:36
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I won dominions five tho Late Stage Capitalism was an LA game using a cartographic revision map with a cataclysm set for turn 69 (nice).  I played heat scales Ragha with the above dormant god. The bless was Magic Weapons and Magic Resistance along with Quickness. Heat Ragha is infamous for its Zhaedyn sacreds. They fly, have four attacks and if you kill the rider the beefy griffin fights on and is still sacred. In Dom4 if you killed the rider but not the griffin they would get a new rider at the end of the combat. Now, though, they only get the new rider if they go back to the capitol, but this proved only a slight problem in the long run. With magic weapons their 4 attacks bypass invuln and ethereal, and with Quickness they actually have 8 attacks this is very balanced.  The map had tons of hilariously bad starts. Check out Pyth and Ctis all hedged in here. jsoh embroiled Erythwhatever in a brutal forever war that kept the new nation occupied basically the entire game.  And Utgard here who could only expand into me or into Pan so they did nothing.  I expanded well and started out next to LA Ulm so I invaded them before the end of the first year, killing them with a thought then taking their castle as easy as turning my hand. He went AI once my Quickness came online on turn 12. In the meantime all of Lemuria's neighbors were trying to dogpile him in what would very eventually prove to be a self destructive undertaking for all involved. I then mercy killed Utgard. At the tail end of that war Midgard tried to invade me and take the Ulm cap from me, but Zhaedyn are crazy map moveable so I was able to rush in and turbo-dunk the siege force and then moved on to destroy Midgard. Ctis helped a little. Agatha was getting killed by Lemuria so I bulldozed through to take some thrones around there. I ended up lunging for the final thrones through Ctis while some very token efforts were made to stop me. Most of the game the global list was dominated by Pyth because jsoh had nothing to do in his cap but amass N gems. I got up Pyre and eventually snuck in Gift of Health and Vengeful waters. The zoroastrian summons are fun as heck. Ragha is probably way too powerful. Ramc fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 10, 2018 |
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Mar 10, 2018 23:53
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I'm enjoying these write-ups. I'm super new to the game so seeing people's thought processes in pretender creation and mid/late game help me out a ton.
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Mar 11, 2018 18:41
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joneswt posted:I'm enjoying these write-ups. I'm super new to the game so seeing people's thought processes in pretender creation and mid/late game help me out a ton. Most of my thought process was to take relatively quick wins and maintain a sort of border presence to discourage anyone from getting any ideas. "Don't look weak" is a good rule of thumb to avoid stabbing most of the time. Research-wise with Ragha if I remember right I favored Conjuration early for elemental summoning if I needed it- i didn't- then some evocations for my fire wizards. After that I went for construction 6 for lightless lanterns to improve my research then enchantment to cast Pyre. Then blood and conjurations for the late game elemental kings, Zoroastrian summons and VAMPIRE LORDS. Heat Ragha Zhaedyn are badass enough that magic wasn't super important at the battlefield level, but at the strategic layer the summons, globals and research and the like were fairly important. I still have a backlog of AARs to do (ok 2 more) because i am too good
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Mar 11, 2018 22:35
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A report from the victor of lmaoo (née lmao) In which we discover that RNG is the only real winner So I somehow won my first MP game of Dominions using a strategy based on a several-years-old post in the Shrapnel Forums. I took Niefelheim because it was my first MP game and I have a vague idea of how to play that nation in SP. My basic strategy was to use a powerful bless (Larger, Regeneration, Reinvigoration, Blood Surge) and try to headshot as many pretenders as I can. I've heard MP games move more quickly than SP, so I didn't want to risk being asleep or imprisoned, and I wanted the bless out there immediately, so that meant taking an awake pretender. The only one I could make work is a Crone (E5D1N10S4). My scales suck--Turmoil 2, Sloth 2, Growth 0, Misfortune 2, Drain 3--but at least my Dominion is a 4.  Niefel Giants are expensive, but my second hope is this: Brood of Garm. My pretender has N10 so as soon as Conjuration 4 is researched she'll be on site searching duty. Getting nature gems flowing is essential to getting sacred Jotun Wolves (who go berserk). Niefel Giants should be able to wade into a fray and just tank damage all day long due to being size 6, regenerating beasts, and the wolves can go after units in the rear. Alas, the wolves died by the score and never really came into their own. The other national summon--Draug--were quite good, though. Our Map  The Early Years In which we learn that early rushing is a gamble. The first year saw me ignore protecting my capital, and expanding south and southeast towards my first throne. I beat Ulm in a minor skirmish for it and thought I was doing well. Well, other than moving a Jotun Herse back west to respond to Caelum invading my capital, and leaving 13 Niefels behind to get butchered by Ulm. This was around half of my Niefel army at the time and could have lost me the game. I beat Caelum by the skin of my teeth. By now I had figured out the best tactic vs. flyers was to cluster in a square around my leaders and put "hold and attack closest." Caelum got a charge in and surrounded me, but invariably couldn't punch their way through the Niefel's regen. Towards the end of the Caelum war in Year 2 they got thunderstrike, but then went AI so welp. Also in Year 2, my dear friend Arcoscephalae (played by Ari) attacked my capital. He had realized I had a hell bless, and wanted to stop me before I really got the Niefel production going. He took a gamble and lost, but I had no idea how strong he was so I sued for peace. We were bff's the rest of the game, occasionally trading intel and generally trying not to step on each other's toes. In retrospect, he probably sent his main army against my capital, and I might have pressed westward and conquered him. In the event, I ignored my borders with Arco for the rest of the game in the vain hope he wouldn't stab me in the back, and my trust was rewarded. (I'll have to give his pretender domain over something nice, like making the flowers bloom in spring or something.) The Middle Years In which we see how being passive-aggressive has its perks. Years 3, 4, and the first half of 5 were relatively peaceful. Caelum and later Pangaea and Ulm all went AI, and I made one of my better strategic decisions: I went after their territory with a vengeance. I think most of the human players kept relatively peaceful relations in a game of "let's see who looks too weak or too strong," but I'm guessing. Sauromatia (played by nomadotto) got a small piece of Ulm, but Therodos and he skirmished enough he was willing to keep peace with me and ally against Therodos. Then, in the fall of Year 5, I made a mistake. Having conquered much of the land to my east, I was moving a Niefel army back west to try to grab the throne between me and Abysia (played by A Bakers Cousin). Abysia had spanked me in an earlier skirmish, but then mysteriously stopped. I had spent a lot of time worrying he would come screaming across my western borders, which was guarded mostly by researching Gygja and a couple Skratti. I really wanted to get that Niefel army back west, both as a deterrant and to grab the throne. So, I decided to take a shortcut through one, eensy-bitsy province of Therodos (played by Demiurge). The Hellwar In which we learn that boredom is the final enemy. The result was a two-year hellwar that I only partially won because Therodos grew tired of microing his endless freespawn and went AI. To be honest: I think he had the game won. During the war I never lost a battle in which Niefels were present. Therodos sent Queens of Air SCs, Wraith Lord SCs, and hordes of freespawn...but never together. He never combined forces that, together, could have defeated me (though an army with 2 Kings of Elemental Earth was tough to crack, and temporarily took one of my thrones). I mostly pushed him off of the land, but only by sending every army I recruited northeast, and I never really harmed his power center. At the same time, I made another significant mistake. Seeing the throne in the water to my southwest, I launched a minor incursion to try to seize it and the surrounding ocean. After some initial successes, it quickly became a resource drain to no benefit, and I finally abandoned the sea after months of fumbling around. I later found a good combination when taking a single-province inland sea that I should have used from the start: masses of Draugs. Alas: they were being sent to the northeast to fight Therodos on land. By the start of Year 7 my position was both strong and weak. On the one hand, I had a good set of thrones that were geographically dispersed. On the other, my armies were scattered and depleted. Then, disaster struck. In the span of 2 turns, the Therodos AI annihilated two of my Niefel armies, one of which had over 30 giants. I had allowed Therodos to siege me to pin down an army of several hundred troops. When I was ready, I went to break the siege from the inside. He cast Rigor Mortis. Experienced players can probably guess what happened next. My Niefels passed out on the battlefield, but their regeneration was so high that his troops couldn't harm me. I lost due to turn limit. The Cataclysm In which RNG stands triumphant over its foes. A few turns later, the Cataclysm arrived. Sauromatia finally attacked me (there is some dispute over who shot first). After a couple months of back and forth, Sauromatia annhilated my one other large Niefel army using the same trick: Rigor Mortis with undead spam. Never had a I been more vulnerable--perhaps not even since the first year of capital defense. My armies consisted of a single Niefel army in the far west guarding a throne; a new, small Niefel army in my capital; and two large clusters of Gygja: one in my capital, and one in the east. After Therodos went AI I thought I had an outside chance at victory due to the number and geographic dispersion of my thrones. No single other player could get to all of my thrones, and with multiple thrones I thought I might be able to survive long enough if RNG favored me. This would only work so long as I didn't get dog-piled, which was a real possibility because others in chat were saying, "I think you might win." I did not want them thinking I might win. So I went to my bff Arco and asked that we play kingmaker to each other. He would fight Abysia, and I would fight Sauromatia. This was made easier by Abysia attacking Arco the prior turn. That meant that I had only to survive Sauromatia and the horrors. As you might have guessed, the horrors ate enough other thrones first so that I eked out a victory. The throne between me and Abysia was critical: it was a level 3 throne. Had Abysia been less passive towards me, the world may have fallen. Retrospective First, graphs! History Video I can't figure out how to make this embed. Here's a link. http://www.screencast.com/t/rraq5ODGNx Army Size You can see my armies getting annihilated towards the end.  Forts I never built a single fort or lab the entire game. I just took everyone else's. (I did try to build a fort twice, and both times was interrupted and lost all my gold.)  Dominion Therodos probably had Dom 10 by the end. Multiple priests + temples could barely slow it down.  Ascension Points Nothing interesting here.  Provinces You can see me beat up on the AI here when Caelum, Pan, and Ulm leave.  Income I did a terrible job managing unrest. In retrospect, I probably should have hired a small, cheap army to do nothing but run around the backfield patrolling to keep income levels up. The Cataclysm, of course, just causes everything to tank.  Gem Income I never had enough Death or Nature gems, but foolishly didn't spend what I had before the Cataclysm. On the bright side, my caster armies were well-supplied.  Research I was consistently outresearched by all of my major opponents for the entire game. Not having Blood at 8 before the Cataclysm was a major limitation to replacing casualties with summons.  Final Thoughts Some things went well:
Some things didn't:
In summary, a Crone with an over-wrought bless managed to hang on just long enough before, in Late Spring, Horrors ate enough of her competitors' thrones that she won by default. This game is good and fun, and more people should play MP.
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Mar 12, 2018 15:58
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Congrats! I've been thinking about handling Niefelheim's difficult mid game. I think my best idea is getting a gygas to cast howl and sit behind the giants. A fire shield bless might get some more mileage out of the giants, since what renders them useless in late game is that they can only kill 1 skeleton/wolf/bug a turn.
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Mar 12, 2018 17:15
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A report from the kingmaker (?) of lmaoo (née lmao) In which we discover that the most potent magic is patience. I won't go into excruciating detail because my insight into Dominions strategy or tactics is at best wanting Arcosephale ~ The Golden Era Arcosephale is a bit of an oddity in EA, being a nation of basically all-humans in the era dominated by giants, beastmen and more. They're loosely based on Athens, during the very start of the Greek States (8th century BC), though with heavy notes of Greek mythology, unsurprisingly. Unit wise, Arcosephale fields cardaces (basically early hoplites), peltasts (javelin throwing light infantry), myrmidons (heavily armoured swordsmen), icarids (men equipped with magical wing harnesses), chariots and finally Wind Riders (sacred pegasus riders). All of these are pretty cheap on the gold side, though the resource cost for the likes of Myrmidons and Icarids means that Arcosephale is in need of good forts. Commander wise, in addition to the usual "unit promoted to commander" that exists for most nations, Arcosephale has quite a few interesting commanders, including the magicless 10 RP (!) researcher, healer 3 priestesses, sceptics (who destroy enemy dom when they sneakpreach), and Mystics, 1S mages who have a hilarious number of possible branching paths  With that, the stage is set: The Game My Pretender God for this game was a bit of a failure to launch, and a good reason why you should always test run a pretender before uploading. I took the Statue of War chassis, interested if the Dominion Summoner skill would allow me to get some free units out of the deal. However, that chassis is a) expensive b) only trickles out a barbarian or two every turn. c) Immobile. And Arcosephale needs good scales, so the statue was only boasting 1E 2F. Not exactly the model of future Pantokracy. I pretty much realized this from turn 1, but no point crying over spilt milk, I set around my usual expansion strategy, recruiting spearmen and getting to taming the barbarians. Early Expansion Arcosephale's expansion is actually pretty good, their Length 3 spears and javelins mean they effectively deal with that usual terror of EA expansion, cavalry, and formation fighter cardaces mean they generally kill enemies before they get many hits in. More concerning was that I was penned in by the sea to the north and south, with Pangea on one side and Niffleheim on the other, neither nations that Arcosephale would do well against in the early game, while my philosophers were still philosophising. I diplomacied my way out of difficulties with Pangea (for now), but my eastern border was less comfortable, Caelum and Niffleheim fighting back and forth. My sole advantage was holding a chokepoint that denied Caelum or Niffleheim access into my lands without a siege. For a while I was content to merely sit back and observe from my chokepoint, but eventually Caelum was coming too close to victory. Having an ascendant Caelum on my border was bad, and Niffleheim's pretender death meant I had a good chance of wiping Niffleheim off the table too, if I was lucky. The War For Niffleheim I did well against Caelum, in part aided by a simultaneous invasion from the opposite side of the world by Atlantis. Of note here, my minotaur hero decked out to the horns with equipment massacred a bunch of Caelum warriors who had the poor view to be set to attack rear, a common birdman tactic, which in bird culture is considered a dick move.  As I pushed Caelum out, I came within sight of Niffleheim's capital, and it was an inviting sight, staffed predominantly by crones (presumably research fodder). I harassed and took territory from Caelum till eventually Niffleheim fought its way out of its capital (a turn or two before I planned to beat off the sieging army myself). At this point I engaged in intense tactical discussions with my Atlantean partner. If Caelum was on the ropes, I'd be best advised to take Niffleheim now and avoid any future giant related headaches. If Caelum still had a heartbeat, I was best off being the helpful neighbour to Niffleheim, here to help liberate them (and keep the territory I had acquired in said liberation), and thus get a nice buffer state/ally against Caelum. Word came down the line however that Atlantis had Caelum on the ropes, taking key forts and threatening their capital (a report that in hindsight seems accurate, given Caelum's not distant going AI). So I sieged Niffleheim, making no pretense of my intent to Ynglaur. It was a gamble, but a gamble worth doing. I can't remember how the exact fight went, but I believe Ynglaur pulled enough giants out that he was able to rout my army of cardaces and peltasts (not the highest morale units at the best of times) At this point, I was dissapointed but not "crushed". What Niffleheim had pushed off was my main army, but hardly my only army. That, combined with PD investments and the chokepoint meant that Ynglaur would have a hard time pushing into my more important territory, and at a time when he still had Caelum menacing on his border. Peace seemed mutually beneficial, since my chances of putting him in the ground seemed dashed, and I had bigger fish to be concerned about, Pangea (As a side note, I drew great amusement from watching many, many scouts getting caught in the chokepoint, from pretty much every nation to the east of me. Pangea The peace had held on the east border for a while, but Pangea was getting kind of obscenely huge, and probably had a good idea of my own size. There were a few skirmishes and white centaur sneaking army attempts (thankfully repelled), but things were clearly about to go hot... When Pangea went AI. As far as I know, they weren't being beaten back in any way by anyone, so I guess the player just got bored. Regardless, this presented a landgrab for Arcosephale, especially since there were two thrones in spitting distance of each other I had had my eyes on. And the rest The midgame/lategame was kinda boring, mostly me insulating my position and ensuring my new neighbours of Sauromatia/Ulm/Theodoros didn't try anything funny. I had minor scuffles with Abyssia in the process of claiming Pangean territory, but none of it really amounted to anything. My 2 thrones actually put me tied 2nd for ascencion points among the remaining players, but my only real hope was that the horrors would aggresively pursue Niffleheim's thrones over mine. With this in mind, I set up massive communion stacks of Mystics armed with artifacts and boosters on my two thrones, hoping to Soul Slay the incoming Horrors to death... and they never came. Plenty of Mystics died to the random Horror marking that happens during the Cataclysm, but the main fight never happened, and eventually Ynglaur was ascended, in part thanks to the AIs love of eating independent neutral thrones. It was a good game, other then the part where lots of people went AI for seemingly no reason!
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Mar 12, 2018 17:37
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Reading these makes me wonder how much "diplomacy" in this game is just paranoid imagination. I was convinced that everybody was out to get me in Mekone game, to the point where I'd been feverishly preparing to go Full Hitler and invade on multiple fronts to get first blood... As it turned out, the rest of the world wasn't paying any attention to me whatsoever.
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Mar 12, 2018 17:54
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Really enjoying these game reports. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to write them!
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Mar 12, 2018 19:05
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Mukip posted:Reading these makes me wonder how much "diplomacy" in this game is just paranoid imagination. I was convinced that everybody was out to get me in Mekone game, to the point where I'd been feverishly preparing to go Full Hitler and invade on multiple fronts to get first blood... As it turned out, the rest of the world wasn't paying any attention to me whatsoever. in retrospect this was my fault, mostly. I'll be excited to post my massive list of gently caress-ups and blunders after your writeup.
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Mar 12, 2018 22:13
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Mukip posted:Reading these makes me wonder how much "diplomacy" in this game is just paranoid imagination. Hugely. Being able to block out the paranoia and look at things objectively and without bias is probably one of the skills that elevates a player the most.
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Mar 13, 2018 01:54
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diplomancy is an air spell
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Mar 13, 2018 01:59
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How are u posted:Hugely. Being able to block out the paranoia and look at things objectively and without bias is probably one of the skills that elevates a player the most. When I was first starting out someone (I think it was Nuclearmonkee) gave me the advice that other players largely see what they want to see. It is a very good thing to keep in mind when analyzing both your enemies and yourself.
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Mar 13, 2018 03:35
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It also ties back to the old advice (it's even in the OP!!) that a talkative neighbour is less threatening then a silent neighbour.
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Mar 13, 2018 10:06
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Ramc posted:When I was first starting out someone (I think it was Nuclearmonkee) gave me the advice that other players largely see what they want to see. It is a very good thing to keep in mind when analyzing both your enemies and yourself. Then there are idiots like me, who tend to play like they're in a fantasy version of Sim City, instead of in a war game. Basically, I never see anything coming ever, and am always playing Dominions like I'm perpetually drunk, or bonked on the head a couple times
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Mar 13, 2018 19:05
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i rush everyone around me, to my own detriment, and literally cannot help myself.
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Mar 13, 2018 19:47
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Normal Adult Human posted:i rush everyone around me, to my own detriment, and literally cannot help myself. This guy gets it
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Mar 13, 2018 20:14
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Okay so buckle up everyone at long last it is time for the Stupid Robot AAR. Stupid Robot was more or less one of the most unintentionally well-named games I've played in so kudos there I guess. I was EA Caelum and I had a powerful secret strategy-  meme courtesy of decrepus memes inc. For my god I picked a F8 dormant solar disc with good scales. The blesses were Death Explosion but along with that I picked the powerful self-own-avoidance bless of Major Fire Resistant. EA Caelum is actually a pretty fun nation to play. Their cap mages, the Eagle Kings, are powerful air wizards and their rank and file wizards support a lot of strategies for you to leverage at the same time. Harabs can become skelespammers, assist in thunder strike communions or summon loads of corpse construct blockers depending on how their randoms turn out. The wizard-priests can lead troops and sneak. The more boring ones can research or do the thunder strike thing. Caelum can mass lots of cowardly garbage bird men who are nonetheless highly mobile with magic weapons so they are extremely good enough. There are mammoths too if you are into that sort of thing. The beneficiaries of my bless, however, were the cap sacred raider birbs you can get. My dream was that they could attack into the rear of enemy formations and detonate all over their commanders in the event of their death and when it came up that DID sort of happen, so score. The fire resistant part of the bless was to stop them from string detonating themselves unnecessarily and to stop my normal sacred wizards from doing the same in a spectacular chain reaction that I've seen core out mage corps in other games it owned hard.  the pretenders At the start I found Mictlan first to my east owned by jsoh who had a giant pile of minor blesses amalgamated into a hellbless. jsoh told me he would murder me and eat my face because I couldn't stop him but then he changed his mind maybe because he got attacked by yomi or attacked yomi. Yomi was controlled by recent serial Yomi player Conot I think and I never noticed his bless. My border with Mictlan had a province with crystal sorceresses which was nice but then I site searched and found a site that let me get golden order wizards who are powerful fire/astral dudes who sometimes get earth so hell yeah I put it on auto recruit forever. Eventually they would break me into S5 to cast Eyes of God. To my west I expanded some and ran against Yomi then immediately into Lanka too and we kept bumping and I kept losing those bumps but eventually we settled peacefully. Lanka had some sort of regen bless going on and was played by Jerek. To my south C'tis went AI so my early aim after year 1 was to eat it. Lanka ate them too.  year 1 from the replay one of dom5's best new features Also going on about this time, Helheim, owned by known "Baalz Hellfucker" Nuclearmonkee was running a Fear bless and rushing Sauromatia owned by I have no dang idea. He would very eventually win but it sounds like it was quite the draining slog. To my north Abysia who was idk who was engaged in a brutal war of aggression against the virtuous T'ien C'hi who was controlled by the Craftiest loving Owl Decrepus. Decrepus entreated us for aid and though Caelum is a meagre nation of little talent we attempted to win credit to our name by assisting in his righteous struggle. Abysia had some sort of blood surge going on while TC had a bless involving solar weapons, I think. The war went very well. I got a vampire commander from a random event who showed up wearing a ring of fire resistance so the boy did his homework for sure. I made him a commander and he proceeded to get killed a few times but I rebuilt him every time-  i named my first vampire lord 'this is -exactly- what it looks like' I took all of his southern stuff and started raiding his capital with my sacred raider birbs killing thousands. I was approximately 14 fatalities short one turn from getting 1488 deaths and 69 catties of gold and was thus denied a powerful screenshot. Abysia eventually tore down his cap fort and went AI allowing Decrepus to take the ruins. We maintained a virtuous peace forever after.  The kingdom, long divided… reunited at last Concurrent to this I was very eventually killing Ctis in the south. I expected Formoria to have gotten in on this as they were pretty huge but somewhere down the line I realized they had gone AI but they were so huge noone could do much about it. Mictlan also went AI and was big and nasty enough Yomi got embroiled in a brutal forever war with... ... the AI. I eventually finished off C'tis which was a huge pain in the rear end because their god was a Golden Lion with regeneration and Awe so I had to lure it into my candles and paralyze it but it was doable because the AI is dumb. Then my neighbor Lanka went AI and Kailasa and I ate him. I was getting thrones around this time, I had put up Eyes of God, Pyre and Dark Skies around this point, and eventually I got Conj 8 (my research was insanely good) to get a water queen to cast Vengeful water. Later I did Wild Hunt. Invading me was a nightmare so noone tried. Arrrrround this time everyone was AI but me, Monkee and Kailasa who was running a fire weapons bless of some sort. We bumped on Lanka's cap and it was mutually gruesome. Everyone was swimming in a sea of AIs trying to get the most thrones and I got them first, before the cataclysm even, by eating AIs the fastest. Monkee teleported his god at me in a bid to bone grind the poo poo out of my army taking the last throne from the AI but it didn't work alas. Here is my god by the end- I empowered him in death to summon Daevas-  Are you triggered?   The final turn. The gist of the graphs is a neck and neck game by most metrics except I pulled way ahead on research early, and in monies in the mid game. By the end my dominion and gem income was wild as heck. But let us all praise the new Pantokrator of Stupid Robot: Self Immolating to Own the Libs. Do you need a safe space, snowflakes? :rides motorcycle without helmet into the sunset: Ramc fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 22:46
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I fought sauro and barely won in a long grueling war which sucked. Then I made some vampires (late because I forgot SILT wasn't on lol) and this cool guy I was too slow in grabbing thrones to contest the immolation birb really.
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Mar 13, 2018 23:07
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 My god in Stupid Robot, the bless was kinda bleh, too spread out to be useful, and the Kunshu is neither a great mage nor a great SC, though he performed more then adequately vs Mictlan, who fought me once, saw I had fire resistance (and complained about solar weapons being bugged against fire resistance?) and promptly went AI. I spent the rest of the game trying to sweep up Mictlan but being unable to put the final nail in the coffin and eventually went AI because it wasn't fun fighting an AI I couldn't beat. quote:Yomi was controlled by recent serial Yomi player Conot gently caress you, I don't have a problem, you have a problem.
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Mar 13, 2018 23:12
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Hello friends and welcome to another edition of The Moon Skeleton Report. Your friendly neighbourhood moon skeletons would like to take this opportunity to remind you that on the moon gravity is reduced and, being native inhabitants of said moon, skeletons are well versed in zero-g combat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1yzAndK9Yw  Anyway, let's see what's going on elsewhere in the solar system. As you might be able to tell, the evil forces of Agartha, Arco and T'ien C'hi are all attacking the poor innocent moon skeletons. Donations to the war chest are always welcome - send a shield so the moon skeletons can shield you from the forces of EVIL.  From the plane of the eliptic on down ... Agartha have managed to creep out of their cave moon, although they seem to have given up on contesting the oceans on Pankor 5. Arco still hasn't managed to subdue Ulm, which makes it interesting that he is persecuting the poor skeletons. Over on Pankor 3 Marignon seems to be well on track to destroying Asphodel, while Bandar has gotten depressed and gone AI. On Pankor 4 Vanheim has been vanquished by the cruel daoists, while the space aliens from outer space but not this space somehow are still co-operating and gracefully sharing the planet with him. Your humble correspondent of course retains his position on the ringworld and adjacent moons. Finally Pankor 5 is as bad as it ever was, Man and Mictlan and Ys and Oceania and Abysia having a massive brawl. Okay, graphs: Provinces  No surprises here. Psst, the red line is TC. R'lyeh is in second place while Man, Oceania and Marignon all scrap for third place. Forts  Winner: Joint R'lyeh and TC. Income  Winner: The same two as ever. Loser: Poor underpaid moon skeletons. Print journalism just doesn't pay like it used to (it's actually Asphodel / Ys - I'd be surprised if they're pulling in 200 gold/turn). Gem Income  Once again it's the cultivators, followed by generic human #7. Research  Man, then R'lyeh, then Oceania. TC is now in fourth place and closing in fast. Dominion  Longbows, then Daoists. Then me, just about. Army Size  Yeah, do you need to ask? Skeletons gonna skeleton. That's all folks.
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Mar 16, 2018 00:13
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Moon skeletons are best skeletons.
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Mar 16, 2018 01:14
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RockyB posted:On Pankor 4 Vanheim has been vanquished by the cruel daoists Agreed 
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Mar 16, 2018 02:09
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Agreed I gotta catch up on your posted turns.
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Mar 16, 2018 03:06
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The idiot hellclowns of Nazca take some pride in blunting Man's meteoric rise and uncoming easy victory into a 2nd or 3rd place ranking despite being irrelevant since turn 1  I'm not sure what the other guys on Pankor 5 think his 10 billion longbowmen and infinite worm wages are going to do when I die in about 2 turns.
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Mar 16, 2018 09:58
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