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Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



CptWedgie posted:

I did not. I heard RAWKET LAWNCHAIR! No launchers here, philistine. :arghfist::cheeky:
:hmmyes:

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GunnerJ
Aug 1, 2005

Do you think this is funny?
I am actually incapable of thinking about Metal Slug without hearing HEAVY MACHINE GUN! in my head

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Ramc posted:

This is how I feel about Hellenika nations like feet or rocks sometimes. Ideally to me a mod nation should make it so you have plenty of options/paths to take but dont really sideline yourself out of playing it just because you picked the wrong god paths. But yes. Appreciate the honesty of Metal Slug here.

Not having played all of them, and still not being quite sure how the Feet are meant to be played, all I can say is that the Birds are definitely designed around just beelining for one very specific global that declares war on the entire world and being mildly hosed if someone manages to yank it down.

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=

LukasR23 posted:

Bonus update: MY GOD
My scales are going to get slowly reset to 'Normal but drain 3' as the game goes on, for the record. I don't think I commented on this much early on (this is being rewritten as of turn ~35 or so, if you want a chronological reference.)

CptWedgie posted:

Game: I know you can't tell us much, if anything, about turns that you haven't posted in an update yet, but can you at least tell us the current turn number?

e:

PurpleXVI posted:

Not having played all of them, and still not being quite sure how the Feet are meant to be played, all I can say is that the Birds are definitely designed around just beelining for one very specific global that declares war on the entire world and being mildly hosed if someone manages to yank it down.
Ideal rock gameplay:
https://i.imgur.com/0RL1FSA.mp4

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019

CptWedgie posted:


Mods: Was there maybe an item ID conflict of some sort? If so, something might've overwritten the equippable HMG. (We'll find out for sure if something weird turns up from the Arms Dealers, I guess.)

Game: I know you can't tell us much, if anything, about turns that you haven't posted in an update yet, but can you at least tell us the current turn number?


Turn 35!

It was a Domingler issue of some sort. A bunch of stuff didn't get transitioned the first time around, and BeardBeard just cut the HMG rather than fix the event that (wasn't) giving it to me. Exact quote from the discord back when we were testing the modpack for bugs. Once or twice I've had arms dealers just.. not give me anything, and think this might be the cause of that in hindsight. It's not huge though, because the HMG isn't amazing and I have commandos for when I want it.

Discord BeardBeard posted:

@Lukas cool if i just remove the hmg arms dealer event since the others fire?

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=
I'm pretty sure the actual problem was when beardbeard was deleting unused nations/items etc from the pack he accidentally deleted too much including the metal slug weapons - then ran domingler, which meant that domingler couldn't find the right weapon IDs, etc.

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019
You’re probably right. I know I had to make him implement the Iron Lizard and MOBS/Nanobot Vial summons manually, and I remember a few other issues people had when we were testing.

The most obvious casualty seen so far is the dwarves not actually having names by default.Jedi lost theirs too, but at least had the dignity to rename their commanders manually.

AtomikKrab
Jul 17, 2010

Keep on GOP rolling rolling rolling rolling.

As said, Water Bottles are Legit, a free water elemental can wreck someone who was not expecting it. (also good against assassins)

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=

AtomikKrab posted:

(also good for assassins)

:sickos:

e: not this kind of water bottle note:

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.


this is violence

AtomikKrab
Jul 17, 2010

Keep on GOP rolling rolling rolling rolling.

Ramc posted:

this is violence

Oh please that's hardly a violence, at most an aggression.

biosterous
Feb 23, 2013




i don't play i don't know what half the icons are, please explain that joke thank you

like i think that's a seducer/assassin and it's got some magic paths and magic gear? but idk what it all means put together

Enjoy
Apr 18, 2009

biosterous posted:

i don't play i don't know what half the icons are, please explain that joke thank you

like i think that's a seducer/assassin and it's got some magic paths and magic gear? but idk what it all means put together

Yeah it's a seducer that's got the equipment of an assassin, so while "this is violence" isn't true, it becomes true if he says no to her

e: the flask blesses her

Enjoy fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jul 1, 2021

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=
Specifically it's a Dryad from the nation Pan, which is a really cheap, efficient, and deadly mage-assassin (in vanilla anyway) that can just be given 2-3 gems and then with the right timing is almost unbeatable 1v1 and a few of them can wipe out entire stacks at a very low cost by sniping all the commanders in a province.

This one has 50+ gems worth of gear. Also it has a flask of holy water, an item that looks like a water bottle (that contains the big water elemental) but very much is just a different item with a pretty minor effect.

Finally, this image specifically is from one of the newbie lps, and the player at the time didn't know you could script assassins so instead the lethal and efficient Swarm, they presumably just self-buffed for 5 rounds and then died.

e: oh also Ramc is a very experienced Pan player who has used Dryads to great effect many times, so him seeing this image of such an expensive and useless, well, use of them is me causing violence to him.

gonadic io fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Jul 1, 2021

Decrepus
May 21, 2008

In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.


I played agartha one time and all of my pale one commanders were seduced and assassinated by stupid sexy dryads. Filthy creatures.

biosterous
Feb 23, 2013




Enjoy posted:

Yeah it's a seducer that's got the equipment of an assassin, so while "this is violence" isn't true, it becomes true if he says no to her

e: the flask blesses her



ahhh, this is the crucial element of the joke i missed, the holy water

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015
It just occurred to me that the Metal Slug mod author probably implemented the Regular Army's pretender gimmick in the least efficient manner possible; for a guy who doesn't even have the game to see that, the problem has to be pretty drat glaring.

Like, looking through a list of modding parameters, I'm assuming that he could've just attached 1 level of Fire and 1 level of Earth to the pretender's unit, set the cost for new magic levels prohibitively high to prevent any extras, and reduced the unit cost to something more manageable. I'm assuming this approach would mean he could enforce his desired build, prevent the player from crippling themselves by picking elements he didn't plan the faction around, and avoid forcing the player to cripple themselves by making them take all the debuffs in order to afford the ability to play (and, incidentally, remove the need for a "dummy" pretender that just tells you how to start the game as the Regular Army).

He could even set the unit's cost to equal the pretender creation budget, to force the player to make tradeoffs if he wants to adjust the scales. Of course, I'll admit that if he did switch things around to this approach, he'd probably need to make other adjustments to the faction to roughly maintain its gameplay (since it's almost certainly designed to compensate for the incredibly inefficient implementation of the pretender)...

Just food for thought, in case he's reading this thread (I probably can't tell him directly, since I don't have an account on the forum he's distributing his mod on and don't have his contact information). Or in case someone else decides to make their own gimmicky faction in a similar vein.

senrath
Nov 4, 2009

Look Professor, a destruct switch!


CptWedgie posted:

Just food for thought, in case he's reading this thread (I probably can't tell him directly, since I don't have an account on the forum he's distributing his mod on and don't have his contact information). Or in case someone else decides to make their own gimmicky faction in a similar vein.

He's definitely reading the thread as he's posted in it already.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

senrath posted:

He's definitely reading the thread as he's posted in it already.

Didn't realize/remember that, but at least that means I can be sure he'll see my suggestion (even if I, admittedly, could've phrased it less insultingly).

Whether he decides to IMPLEMENT it is, of course, a completely different question that nobody can predict the answer to.

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

gonadic io posted:

e: oh also Ramc is a very experienced Pan player who has used Dryads to great effect many times, so him seeing this image of such an expensive and useless, well, use of them is me causing violence to him.

its this 100%. swarm dryads kill a lot of things with minimal investment while been way less likely to die than the tricked out thug posted before.

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019

CptWedgie posted:

It just occurred to me that the Metal Slug mod author probably implemented the Regular Army's pretender gimmick in the least efficient manner possible; for a guy who doesn't even have the game to see that, the problem has to be pretty drat glaring.

Like, looking through a list of modding parameters, I'm assuming that he could've just attached 1 level of Fire and 1 level of Earth to the pretender's unit, set the cost for new magic levels prohibitively high to prevent any extras, and reduced the unit cost to something more manageable. I'm assuming this approach would mean he could enforce his desired build, prevent the player from crippling themselves by picking elements he didn't plan the faction around, and avoid forcing the player to cripple themselves by making them take all the debuffs in order to afford the ability to play (and, incidentally, remove the need for a "dummy" pretender that just tells you how to start the game as the Regular Army).

He could even set the unit's cost to equal the pretender creation budget, to force the player to make tradeoffs if he wants to adjust the scales. Of course, I'll admit that if he did switch things around to this approach, he'd probably need to make other adjustments to the faction to roughly maintain its gameplay (since it's almost certainly designed to compensate for the incredibly inefficient implementation of the pretender)...

Just food for thought, in case he's reading this thread (I probably can't tell him directly, since I don't have an account on the forum he's distributing his mod on and don't have his contact information). Or in case someone else decides to make their own gimmicky faction in a similar vein.

There's a few problems with that, sadly. I'm not amazing at modding yet (my experiements will show up in a bonus update) but there's a few things that can't be changed on a pretender. Mainly the cost of raising a magic level. He can stop me picking up new schools all he wants, but not from raising them to level 2 or more, which would amplify them even further with the Ritual/Forging boosts. So instead the cost is set at "All negative scales+2 paths" and a magic site at the capital forcefully resets my scales to (mostly) neutral.

Don't get me wrong, it's definitely hacky. But while I'm feeling the ability to not take positive scales pretty badly, my scales have stopped actively boning me by this point in the real game and the only things still around are the Drain 3 and Cold 3. If I was to ever play these guys again I'd pick heat 3, but more on that later.

...poo poo. I don't think I actually showed off the cap magic sites. I'll edit that into the first post tomorrow, because it's 3am right now.

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019
Turn 6 - Sweet Dreams are Made of Bees

Hoo boy. This one’s going to be an interesting one.



Not because of the events, mind. Those are all pretty much what I expected. As before - events first, battles second.



Extra credits are always nice! If a little niche. It gives one free guaranteed revival on death, and is consumed.
Along with the rest of your items.



It’s pretty much only useful on the spec ops commandos, honestly. Because they can kinda do work while naked - or at least without a weapon. But imagine this on a real thug or late-game summon... that's where the real fun will begin. Speaking of the heavy machine gun, which used to be forgable but got lost somehow in Domingler:



Six AP17 shots makes for some nice tasty crowd control.



I’ll take 6 fire gems and 2.5 fire/earth gems. They’ll be useful for me eventually, and I do have an S1 caster I can recruit if I really want to do some probing.

The first battle report is about what I expected. Two commandos against a dozen actual troops is a slaughter that’s very much in my favour.

The actual battle isn’t too notable. Fio managed to flub three rocket launcher shots in a row, but when there’s this few enemies it’s not really that amazing. She landed one hit the entire battle, and…


Yeah. Not her finest moment. Eri nearly died this time from bad chaining on her battery, but I don’t think she’ll be in a fight quite like this again any time soon.


This was also pretty predictable. I was slightly worried about their casualty rate, but apparently only one man heroically died doing his duty brutally murdering the natives.



Single stray blowgun shot did him in from what I could see, but the actual enemy broke pretty fast. Especially after the two barbarian chiefs charged into melee and got smited.




Remember, don't forget to set your unit leaders to stay behind troops! Or this might happen.



The world map is getting a lot more crowded! Oceania is finally visible on our borders - looks like they’ve got a slight advantage territory-wise over Ryugo-Jo so far. And off to the right is EA Cassia, played by Ramc. Diplomacy update to come after this, especially considering I’ve spotted another person down south.



I’m jealous of their spot. That’s a lot of resources, although I can probably sneak a few provinces depending on how their expansion has gone. Vespika, run by PurpleXVI is kind of a scary neighbour to have - at least by reputation. However I’m also contractually obligated to refer to them as the coolest player on the server, so.. There. Are you happy, man?



To shift the topic back to expansion, Fio and Eri are up against some.. Tough customers. I’ll basically be relying on their holy levels to take out the horsemen, so it’s time to re-script! Again.



Fio I straight up do not know what to do with, so she’s explicitly getting no orders - hopefully the AI will math out whether or not banishing is a good choice and then swap to sticking rockets in faces. Eri’s the same as always. With how the dominions AI works it should try to banish if that’s better than smiting regardless of my scripting, so we’ll see. This might be their first death of many.



My first system upgrade goes on one of the AIs, upping her research to 150! Which will make climbing to Construction 4 a lot nicer. I’ll be making a second one of these this turn with my god, and then turning to more normal forges for a few turns until it’s time to make the v1.2 at Construction 4. And then 1.3. And so on. I think the 2.0 is technically an artifact, so that’s nice.



I’m going to try to take two provinces again this turn, sending Watched too much Rambo the commando to assist the FCV and his comrades in taking white peaks. Horse tribe have lances and that's kind of scary, but I think they can pull it off.

Recruitment is a big departure from the norm. I’m eschewing normal units entirely, choosing instead to grab my first wandering ghost and a pair of Metal Slugs alongside a couple of recruits.





Rumi’s main gimmick is her 100 map movement and teleportation, allowing her to go.. Basically anywhere. Her second gimmick is that hilarious pile of equipment slots. She can carry anything to wherever you need it, allowing for quick resupplies or equipment changes in the field. But there’s no real way for her to use anything she’s brought along, unless you stack like four summoning items on her which is niche at best. In this case I mostly just want her for scouting capabilities, but that one astral is kind of nice for arcane probing at least. As a bonus she also has a very useful 10 magic leadership, while being half the gold cost of a commando.

Which is important as it’s the only way I can afford to buy those two Metal slugs.
These things are.. A bit bonkers, to say the least. I think they’ve been nerfed since my testing so I don’t plan to rely on them, but if my attack on the horse cavs goes incredibly well I’ll be using Rumi to move them onto the throne next turn.



Sure, there’s no real melee power. But that’s not necessary.




Not when it gets *eleven* shots per turn, one of which explodes. This thing is pretty terrifying, and imagining it with flaming arrows is making me drool a little.


Future Lukas Note: It also sieges like 43 men. These can crack forts pretty fast if you get a few of them together.

Research process is accelerating, we should have Construction 4 in.. two turns, I think. Who needs research diversity?



Next time: Construction three, and two more provinces!

Bonus update to come over the weekend probably.

LukasR23 fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jul 14, 2021

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

LukasR23 posted:

And off to the right is EA Cassia, played by Ramc.


they sound cool

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.
Love to see that the ranged weapons are just as strong here as in the aliens.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I am excited to see gods and men humbled before King Metal Slug the ridiculous adorable anime tank.

BaronOhShi
Jun 30, 2019

LukasR23 posted:


Don't get me wrong, it's definitely hacky. But while I'm feeling the ability to not take positive scales pretty badly, my scales have stopped actively boning me by this point in the real game and the only things still around are the Drain 3 and Cold 3. If I was to ever play these guys again I'd pick heat 3, but more on that later.

You're more or less correct here, another small note if I recall correctly there is a Maximum cost that magic paths can be, else I would have limited the paths to one for even less magic. It's been a while since I made this, but I spent a LONG time fiddling and trying to make things work the way I wanted, but ultimately dominions is designed to work a certain way, and pushing that for dumb BS can be difficult. It's possible theres an easier way to do what I wanted, and it'd be interesting to see that, but I was reasonably happy with what I ended up with.
Also, yes Heat 3 is much smarter than cold 3 when you don't have any units who can ignore the snow.

quote:

Love to see that the ranged weapons are just as strong here as in the aliens.

If you're going to make a nation focused on range weapons you might as well make them GOOD. Ranged single target weapons (as opposed to AOE) have a history of being very anemic unless fighting at very close range behind a wall of shielded units. Note that the regular army does not have those at least.

Final note: The other nations in the mod pack are far less gimmicky than the regular army, having full rosters, god choices, etc etc. This nation was simply a test in "Hey can I make a nation that uses ONLY the heroes of the games?" and then all the allowances I had to make for the fact this is dominions. Maybe one day I will make an alternate version with no troops and whatnot that simply makes all the heroes absurdly OP.

BaronOhShi
Jun 30, 2019

LukasR23 posted:

This thing is pretty terrifying, and imagining it with flaming arrows is making me drool a little.

Ha-ha, Wizard

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019

BaronOhShi posted:

Ha-ha, Wizard


If you didn't want me to cast flaming arrows, why did you give the Regular Army F2 mages?

Checkmate, Wizard-haters.

BaronOhShi
Jun 30, 2019

LukasR23 posted:

If you didn't want me to cast flaming arrows, why did you give the Regular Army F2 mages?

Checkmate, Wizard-haters.

Once Declare Hostilities has been cast, everything is out of my hands, it was a late addition so far out of the realm of possibilities and imagination that im suprised the fabric of dominions does not shatter upon casting (*cough*).


After all, the fantasy United Nations DOING something? what the

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

BaronOhShi posted:

You're more or less correct here, another small note if I recall correctly there is a Maximum cost that magic paths can be, else I would have limited the paths to one for even less magic. It's been a while since I made this, but I spent a LONG time fiddling and trying to make things work the way I wanted, but ultimately dominions is designed to work a certain way, and pushing that for dumb BS can be difficult. It's possible theres an easier way to do what I wanted, and it'd be interesting to see that, but I was reasonably happy with what I ended up with.
Also, yes Heat 3 is much smarter than cold 3 when you don't have any units who can ignore the snow.

In hindsight, I suppose it was rather presumptuous of me to try to make suggestions while admitting I have no idea how the game works, wasn't it? I mean, the "solution" I suggested was probably one of the first things you tried.

Now, I'm still questioning why you felt the need to attempt to prevent a faction from using magic at all (and attempting to avoid saying anything too blatantly confrontational), especially since, from what you're saying, the game itself was doing everything it could to stop you, but...

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

LukasR23 posted:

I’m jealous of their spot. That’s a lot of resources, although I can probably sneak a few provinces depending on how their expansion has gone. Vespika, run by PurpleXVI is kind of a scary neighbour to have - at least by reputation. However I’m also contractually obligated to refer to them as the coolest player on the server, so.. There. Are you happy, man?

Gems well spent.

Also hey, I'm not a scary neighbour to have, just make it funnier to support you than it is to fight you, and don't give me a reason to spite hellwar you, and we'll get along gloriously.

I've been a very good neighbour to a lot of people because they were entertaining to support.

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019

CptWedgie posted:

In hindsight, I suppose it was rather presumptuous of me to try to make suggestions while admitting I have no idea how the game works, wasn't it? I mean, the "solution" I suggested was probably one of the first things you tried.

Now, I'm still questioning why you felt the need to attempt to prevent a faction from using magic at all (and attempting to avoid saying anything too blatantly confrontational), especially since, from what you're saying, the game itself was doing everything it could to stop you, but...

Well...

BaronOhShi on discord posted:


The other nations are a little more standard, although a common theme is that I hate wizards and wish that default units were good

He hates wizards. I'm still not sure how much of this is a joke, but it definitely shows in the other modded nations too. Every nation in the metal slug pack prioritises units over mages, the Regular Army is just the most forceful about it.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

One big issue I've noticed with Regular Army is that Arrow Fend stops every single one of their regular troops HARD, and there's absolutely no way to get around this. This isn't necessarily an issue for a while against enemy nations (assuming someone doesn't deliberately run up Enchantment... or has Air Shielded sacreds), but indie wizards don't have research restrictions... which means certain throne defender compositions can just toss it up and you can watch your whole army accomplish nothing before being overrun.

It'll be interesting to see if/when this problem shows up in-game, and if so who it's against.

BaronOhShi
Jun 30, 2019

CptWedgie posted:


Now, I'm still questioning why you felt the need to attempt to prevent a faction from using magic at all

The characters in metal slug aren't exactly known for their powerful wizardry, at least not the Regular Army or Rebels...

Lord Koth posted:

One big issue I've noticed with Regular Army is that Arrow Fend stops every single one of their regular troops HARD,


The original idea is that you werent supposed to be dependent on troops, and thats still somewhat true, the heroes can carry AOE weapons of various sorts that ignore arrowfend.

CptWedgie
Jul 19, 2015

BaronOhShi posted:

The characters in metal slug aren't exactly known for their powerful wizardry, at least not the Regular Army or Rebels...

Okay, thematic reasons, at least, make sense. Well, more than "I just hate magic" (and if that's the case why're you playing a game about gods fighting among themselves to take over when the capital-G God disappeared? Magic's kinda unavoidable in that situation).

Of course, I can forgive the whole "relying on minions more than you'd like" thing quite easily (more than the implementation of the pretender, even if you've explained that you didn't have much choice in that matter) because... well, if you make one unit strong enough to take on an entire army like the Metal Slug protagonists do on a regular basis, that one unit would be WAY too strong (as in, "singlehandedly wipe out entire factions" too strong).

HerpicleOmnicron5
May 31, 2013

How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?


CptWedgie posted:

Okay, thematic reasons, at least, make sense. Well, more than "I just hate magic" (and if that's the case why're you playing a game about gods fighting among themselves to take over when the capital-G God disappeared? Magic's kinda unavoidable in that situation).

doesn't that make killing all the convoluted magic poo poo with mundane armies cooler

LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019
Diplomatic interlude 1 - Is it really better down where it's wetter?
This is a summary of my chats with various people so far. I was originally going to stick it on after turn 6/7, but doing it as a bonus felt more fitting and I've got enough extra conversations to stick in that it feels worthy of its own post.

First of all, Jonjoe! Who I'd talked a bit with pregame.

[03:09] JonJoe: would you like some FREE INFO
[03:09] Lukas: Sure!
[03:10] JonJoe: One of the cassias (not sure which) is in province #22
[03:10] Lukas: How do you-
[03:10] Lukas: Twee.
[03:10] JonJoe: twee
[03:10] Lukas: Do you seriously share a cap circle
[03:10] JonJoe: no
[03:10] JonJoe: well
[03:10] JonJoe: yes
[03:10] Lukas: Right
UW
[03:10] JonJoe: im UW
[03:10] JonJoe: yeah
[03:10] JonJoe: i also technically share one with you
[03:10] JonJoe: the throne
[03:11] Lukas: oh hello there
[03:11] Lukas: god drat it
[03:20] JonJoe: okay so news for you
[03:20] JonJoe: the cassia is ramc
[03:20] JonJoe: so ea

We chatted a bit in between turn 6 and 7 as well.

[01:18] JonJoe: hi in atrocitwee
[01:18] Lukas: Hello
Good luck in your underwater hellwar
[01:18] JonJoe: i will be taking province #194
[01:19] Lukas: uh
[01:19] Lukas: Yeah sure
[01:19] Lukas: I can't lodge my displeasure with rocket launchers there anyway
[01:19] JonJoe: haha
[01:20] Lukas: well okay I can
But the stupid truck doesn't want to cross rivers

Well, okay. It was a bit more than that, but I'll be adding that to a future update as it discusses events from turns to come. 194 is in his cap circle (Pholothras, as seen here) so he’s kind of got a right to it?
I’ll kill him for it if he loses the water brawl. Might even get a fort in the bargain.



I also had a slightly more interesting conversation with Ramc basically right after.

[01:22] Ramc: this is metal slug right
[01:22] Ramc: ya
[01:22] Lukas: Yup
[01:22] Lukas: 17 is in my cap circle, other than that I have no beef w/ you right this second
[01:24] Ramc: ok
[01:25] Lukas: I am however taking any and all lovely secret agent names for my commanders
Because I fully expect to run out super fast
Question:
did JonJoe try to claim 5 as his territory
[01:27] Ramc: no
[01:27] Lukas: huh
Good to know
[01:27] Ramc: I think he knows I will have little tolerance for that
[01:28] Lukas: I'm at least a little tolerant because his stupid lesbian assassins can and will utterly ruin my research and I can't actually go back under the water to shoot him yet

Emphasis mine. I think I was being a bit weak, I could have probably pushed back harder in (30 turns later) hindsight and made him go elsewhere? JonJoe is active in the thread, so I'm curious to his take. I do think that I could have been a lot more pushy early on with a few people, but I'll come back to that if I ever do a 'mistakes' post.

Unless I’m missing some context, Oceania’s only other land territory would be on the far side of his ocean - away from me, and near to Purple's Vespika. We’ll see how that turns out for him if he does expand over there.

The hellwar has already begun down where it’s wetter.



(This shot is technically from next turn, but it fit better here.)
After this shot I reached out to BeardBeard to see if he needed a hand, as I was somewhat interested in them killing each other for as long as possible.

[16:00] Lukas: Are you doing OK down there
I've some spare gold I can throw if you need it
[16:00] beardbeard: im good, he attacked first and i lost some crabby boys
[16:00] beardbeard: its time for the sacreds to dismantle him
[16:00] Lukas: Nice!

But he didn't seem interested.


CptWedgie posted:

Okay, thematic reasons, at least, make sense. Well, more than "I just hate magic" (and if that's the case why're you playing a game about gods fighting among themselves to take over when the capital-G God disappeared? Magic's kinda unavoidable in that situation).

Of course, I can forgive the whole "relying on minions more than you'd like" thing quite easily (more than the implementation of the pretender, even if you've explained that you didn't have much choice in that matter) because... well, if you make one unit strong enough to take on an entire army like the Metal Slug protagonists do on a regular basis, that one unit would be WAY too strong (as in, "singlehandedly wipe out entire factions" too strong).

There's enough ways to gently caress over a single unit that buffing a hero until it's strong enough to wipe out an army is doable and honestly probably should have been done in this case (although sadly the current incarnations of Fio, Eri and co cannot) without unbalancing the game too much. While there's not much blood magic in the game there's at least two blood spells that are no save "gently caress you, you're in hell now" - and that's before we get into all the ways an astral mage can permanently gently caress up solo units. Or Decay/Burden of Time. Balance wise my biggest issue with the Regular Army is just the fact that everyone is a ranged unit.

While you can forge some (really good!) Melee weapons for them in case of air shield, it's still a nation whose success hinges on how much air or flying unit access your foes get early on. If I'd been on land and hemmed in by both Cassias and Vespika (to use a random example) I'd probably have gotten wiped out really early unless I pulled something truly absurd out of my rear end.

LukasR23 fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 3, 2021

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

You can usually be pretty pushy with an underwater neighbor who is sharing a body of water with another UW. They are going to be locked into their thunderdome for awhile. Once the ownership of the lake is sorted out (or extremely unlikely they come to a peaceful accord) all bets are off.

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer
I was giving my dad (the forum poster, not my actual father) the blow by blow on this game and I remember talking with him about how I can't believe you just casually let me on land. I also specifically mentioned there was no way ramc would.

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LukasR23
Nov 25, 2019

Jon Joe posted:

I was giving my dad (the forum poster, not my actual father) the blow by blow on this game and I remember talking with him about how I can't believe you just casually let me on land. I also specifically mentioned there was no way ramc would.

This was literally my second multiplayer Dominions game at the time (The first had zero UW), I didn't see the big deal and figured you'd pick a fight or otherwise find some way to make my life hell if I didn't just shrug.

Knowing what I do now I'd probably have at the very least fought you for it, although probably not with my heroes simply because they're more useful elsewhere.

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