Gemstallnacht, the last days of Rephalim (Let's lose at Dominions 4)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Gemstallnacht, the last days of Rephalim (Let's lose at Dominions 4)

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

TheDemon posted:

wtf is that draft lol

It is a beautiful draft of good things. BIG GOOD. BIG STRONG.

Stuff like longbows are a less useful draft choice due to the heavy prevalence of zotz spam, though if you couple it with something to sandwich the longbows in, they can kill swarms of zotz quite easily. It's just problematic in that first year.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2015 14:27

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:15

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Klaus88 posted:

I remembered LA for dominions 3 always had the the condition of no Rrmor or Rylth because nobody their freespawn/province ruining dominion.

They moved Ermor to MA and it is usually banned there too. R'lyeh is sometimes banned but you can usually relegate them to their lovely ocean and let them rot there so they aren't as terrible really.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 01:06

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Sloppy Milkshake posted:

They are expensive but they are h3s that autocast darkness so they are kinda cool. If i'd gone with my gut and done a good bless they'd be a lot better. I was initially going to do like a b9/e4 or something bless but then I changed my mind after grabbing the Tuatha

Ah Itz at best get a1 and storm demon is a2. I've got way better uses for air gems than empowering dumbo bats. I also deliberately didn't take astral as a metagame concern since I went so heavy into blood mages. People really don't like horrors/AC.

Yeah i've been recording my turns.

Also gently caress all ya'll, mace markata are dope as poo poo. Especially supported by a Yaksha or two.

Markata are good :colbert:

Monkey nations have really good spells to make markata incredible easily. A single square of lucky ethereal markata takes ~100 hits in melee combat to clear. One. Hundred. And you have to hit 14 defense. I was just playing a game where I was blocking blessed black centaur with a handful of appropriately buffed markata to give my cascade casters time to put them to sleep and allow the markata to kill all of them. They can also be used as really good ablative melee armor in a normal battle with battle fortune. And in dom4 morale issues are not a problem now that rage of the cornered rat exists.

Dumb relevant screenshot.

. That little dude killed a black centaur with a thrown rock to the head and then beat another one to death with his 8 damage club.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Aug 6, 2015

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 14:14

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Gaghskull posted:

What the loving christ Monkee? Why has no one ever told me this before? I need to change my Lanka strategy immediately.

Lanka doesn't have yogis and uses skeletons instead usually.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 15:56

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Feinne posted:

Also do remember that's average melee hits to clear, AoE magic negates most of those defenses.

Mages target large blobs of hp first. Markata are 5hp each and 30/square. If your markata squad actually ends up being the primary target you have bigger problems :v:

Poil posted:

Wouldn't all those spells be better cast on any other unit instead?

No. Body Ethereal and Luck are aoe1. Markata are size1 so you are hitting 6 units per cast instead of 2 or 3. They also have a high 14 defense which is extremely good when combined with being size1. Every time you are attacked in a turn, you get -2 to your defense for following attacks on that turn. If there are 6 idiot monkeys in a square being attacked by average 10-12ish attack stuff, statistically they are not likely to be hit very often and have their defense pushed down a lot since each hit has a 1/6 chance of any particular monkey. Then, if they are hit, it has to get through ethereal (75% chance of a non-magic thing to miss ) and luck if the blow is fatal, which it will be because lol 5hp monkey (Luck is a 75% chance to ignore damage dealt by a killing blow).

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 17:22

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Tarandis posted:

As I only know you from EVE, when I first read this I assumed you were doing some sort of economy build, and as a result I was disappointed in the casual racism.

Sometime mid page 2 I realized that nope, you were in fact picking units that were actual jews or actual giants or both at the same time.

Discussion content: can someone explain how the heck magic works? The whole d9 e3 h1 nonsense is super confusing. If I had to guess, I'd say that you somehow loot these gem things and then give them to units, which makes them mages? And then those mages can cast spells using the gems (which may or may not be consumables). How terribly wrong is this?

There are 8 magical paths. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Nature, Death, Astral, Blood. Also holy which is for priests but it's not a real full path like the other ones as there are only a few limited holy spells and no holy gems.

Every mage is a dude with some combination of those paths. and the d9 e3 h1 is shorthand. For example

This dude is a2e1s1 (the cloud is air the hammer is earth the star is astral). Every spell has some path requirement, though they do not necessarily require gems. For example, lightning bolt requires that you have air 2 in order to cast it. Any dude with a2 or more can do it. More powerful spells generally require more powerful mages and lots of the big powerful spells require gems in addition to their path requirements. Out of combat strategic spell casting, magic item forging and rituals all require gems. You can also use gems to temporarily boost your magical power in an obscure and relatively complicated way which is detailed in the obscure and complicated manual.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Aug 6, 2015

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 21:38

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Also blood is the most powerful path and most games that go long end in the world being flooded with demons and horrors from beyond conjured with the power of pure virgin blood.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2015 21:49

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

fool_of_sound posted:

That's a hard question. Nuclearmonkee is definitely a particularly strong player. In my experience, he tends to pretend he's weaker than he is to his dangerous neighbors while gobbing up his weaker ones. Once he hits his research goals, he starts goose stepping all over everyone who bought into him being a non-threat.

Always be sandbagging. There are a bunch of good players and each one of us loses at least as often as we win simply because dom4 is like that. I'm currently in five games, two of which are guaranteed losses, one very likely a loss, one still too early to tell and one possible win. I am having the most fun in one that I subbed into which is in the guaranteed loss category.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 03:14

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Yeah it's extremely good how Abysia is really powerful and wrecks their neighbors in the fluff while generally being near bottom tier in the actual game.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 14:24

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Rotekian posted:

I don't know, they seemed pretty strong in that game that you won while playing Abysia.

I sandbagged till the end and won with blood. No one attacked me for the first 50ish turns and I was allowed to just quietly stab people who were already in wars in the butt and take resources from them while peacefully researching and getting blood.

This is true for each game I won with Abysia in EA, MA and LA :v:

# ¿ Aug 11, 2015 16:19

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Libluini posted:

I remember a guide where I poo poo you not, someone actually had the galls to suggest waiting for 10 turns before doing anything besides cap recruiting was a good idea. Translated into the game this would mean you start expansion around the time every other player has something like 9-12 provinces to your single one.

It's a bad idea even in single-player.

This guide is the best guide ever made. It was made for dom3 but still works.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=31148

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 14:15

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Feinne posted:

Ah ha ha Earthbound, oh lordy.

Let's take the only possible mitigating factor for the horrific encumbrance of Caelian troops and exchange it for EVEN MORE encumbrance.

They buffed them in Caelum patch so they have xbows and are basically thicker sacred tower guard instead of worthless now.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 14:50

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Libluini posted:

OK maybe I wasn't blunt enough but it can't be, since it doesn't work.

It does work though. All of my summons use unit id as do most mods I open up. Can just cheat and look at one of theirs to get the proper syntax. When I make a new modded summon I literally just paste one I did before and change the details to fit the new summon.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 21:12

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

TheDemon posted:

Flavahbeast.

Flavahbeast is a monster at many things, but the three I've noticed that define his style are:
1. Finding the exact thing that is powerful in the current patch / modset / game rules and exploiting it in a way that gives him an inescapable advantage even after it can be countered.
2. Macromanagement. His resource use is extremely good and rarely does he waste anything.
3. The right kind of diplomacy to actually win games - pacts with all but one neighbor, somehow despite that being a bad idea for his neighbors, and with minimal effort expended. Very little alliance-building as that tends to strengthen other players.

He is great at everything else, but those three areas mean games where he gains any advantage snowball out of control extremely quickly.

Flavahbeast was by far the winningest Dom3 player ever, even accounting for other sites, and in the time he still played Dom4 continued to dominate games. I haven't seen any evidence that anyone has or ever will surpass him.

He still leverages an economy better than anyone else I've ever seen.

And yeah diplomatic wizard.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 14:55

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Feinne posted:

Whoever did the nation with EA Sauromancers goofed, you could have had a whole nation of sacreds if you'd taken the LA ones since they're also priests. Not that there's much of a REASON to but might as well square that circle.

I'm also biased towards LA Sauros because of the unholy allure of banefire.

LAs are 285g instead of 210 and require a temple to make too though.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2015 15:06

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

I Love You! posted:

Find a buddy. Buddies make it to the late game.

However paying someone for future favors is super at-your-own-risk

As a newbie you should probably try to be friends with as many people as you can manage and play crabs in the bucket if you want to see the late game. However keep in mind that you can also learn a lot by being expertly destroyed by another player which you can take into a new game.

First lesson is usually "you made a poor God choice and are being murdered in the first couple years." Definitely ask in irc if you feel like bothering with it as your God decision is very important and you need to have a lot of knowledge to make a good one, knowledge a newbie will not have.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 15, 2015

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 16:37

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

my dad posted:

It's worth pointing out that you shouldn't listen to all advice given to you by experienced players, since some are being rather meta and giving you an idea they can exploit later. Notable example: Mr "I play Ermor in Dominions 3" Neruz constantly saying that coalitions never work.

Coalitions usually stick until the target is weakened or killed. If you see a member of your coalition getting too strong, turning on him either covertly (start helping the coalition target and quietly stop attacking) or overtly (peace out with the original target and stab the other guy in the butt) is a good idea. Peacing out of a stalemate or for big picture reasons is a good idea.

There can only be one Pantokrator and its going to be the biggest meanest fucker not the nice ehonorable guy more often than not. If you see an advantage, take it.

Most totally failed coalitions are a failure on someone's part to realize which threat is actually bigger. Unless someone its sharing graphs this can be difficult to identify. Always be scouting.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Aug 15, 2015

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 16:45

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Absum posted:

I would like to add that if you are dealing with Nuclearmonkee or Iloveyou, please pretend you are dealing with the devil and need to triplecheck everything for possible fuckery and misdirection.

I haven't had anything happen to me that I remember but I have seen it happen to others often enough, the latest example being Chickenwing sending Ilu gems in dank memes.

I will betray you in the end unless you do not have a throne I need to win :v:

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 17:00

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Decrepus posted:

It is cool being forced into peace with nuclearmonkee and Hatwer because you are sandwiched between both of them .

E: I have been forced into peace with nuclearmonkee in every game except one and in thst I had my revenge (and died).

To be fair I also lost. We both died. On the bright side we got good stupid poo poo out of it.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Aug 15, 2015

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 19:36

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Shoeless posted:

Huh? Oh no no no, I didn't mean just giving someone else everything! No, that would be boring. I just meant in having an agreement to be buddies and not necessarily breaking it as soon as is convenient. Like, hypothetically if me, the person I've been peaceful with and 2 others are in the end game and the guy I've been friendly with manages to get the last throne he needs before I do, even though I didn't win according to the game I'd still find that fulfilling. I'm definitely not trying to suggest rolling over and just giving all your stuff to another player. That just sounds dull.

You can do this sure. If you are doing well it may not be possible to win without killing one another since you usually need 60%+ of thrones to win.

The game wants you to kill everyone to win, though you can play in a team format with one player being the god and others being their disciple.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2015 19:41

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Dwarven hammers are construction two but you need Earth 3 to craft them. :shobon:

Dwarven hammers are a craftable item that cost 15 earth gems and require earth 3 to forge. A person wielding a dwarven hammer will receive a 2 gem discount on any item they forge, making them really nice if you are planning on forging tons of items, particularly cheap ones. Owl quills cost 5 air gems and require air 1. They grant +6 research points to the mage holding them and are really good if you can spam a few early on.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 18:21

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

ChickenWing posted:

Yes.

A good change.

Not really imo. The other gemgen, resistance, affliction and regeneration changes are enough to get rid of the uber-thug meta of dom3. All the removal of the large discount did is make the hammer less useful overall and take longer to pay for itself, to the point that I do not generally craft them beyond the third year unless I specifically want to spend Earth gems in order to save another type. This is rare because I have no difficulty finding good places to sink E gems.

Forging in general is less good in dom4, probably by a little too much. Generally you want to just forge boosters of various varieties, research items and maybe some gear for specific SCs (god or prophet generally). If you can afford to forge gear to make line thugs you have such a large income that you are probably winning already or are playing a disciple game.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 18:38

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

ChickenWing posted:

On the other hand, it makes hammers less *necessary* - from everything I've heard, it seems like in dom3 either you had hammers or you were literally a second-class pantokrator.

You generally wanted hammers yes because you need it for your clam farm and slamming out gear for your thug factory. But there are no more clam farms and thugs are far less effective.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 18:41

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Axolotl should be obese

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 15:05

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

ChickenWing posted:

Yeah uh I make a lot of researchers in Y1. Yes, some of them get sent out for bless duty but for the most part they stay at home reading books while indy commanders shuffle people around.

Yeah you prioritize expansion while using as few capital commander recruitment turns as possible, and then immediately switch over to a research mage ASAP, which should happen sometime in the first year.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 21:23

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

I Love You! posted:

New patch owns, new god owns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UZF2hQeMOM

Was expecting turn one drowning death of giant head but jelly god failing to harm trolls is also v good

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 13:43

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

If you are fighting skeletons just templing indie priests and spamming them is optimal so you can still make mages in forts. You are too small and poor to do this though :v:

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 08:35

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Ramc posted:

Well, trip report from when the forums were down. I made up a ghost wizard or w/e Pretender for the goth Norse faction (Helheim?) and futzed around. I probably did everything wrong building him. I secured my cap and eventually got into a little war with my neighbor, (Maravi?) and dunked his Solar Eagle pretender, though I have like no idea how to siege and he still has some big stacks wandering. Also some other guy with a white flag and a ton of giants is kind of rolling in.

Without any obvious 'at war' statuses gauging what they are up to isn't easy.

The AI is usually focused on furiously building enormous piles of poo poo for you to kill with magic. Until you learn to kill poo poo with magic it will probably kill you because it's good at building a poo poo tsunami bigger than yours.

It will randomly declare war on you, then also stop randomly without telling you. Then if you attack it after it decides it is not at war it will defend against what it perceives to be a new war waged by you :v:

Who am I mailing the "Good luck I'm behind 7000 longdead" coffee cup to.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Dec 4, 2015

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 21:39

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

It's 50 + or - a little bit. The AI cheats like a motherfucker.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2015 15:21

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Diabl0658 posted:

Great Olms are loving scary and I was bluffing my pants off because I was thinking "oh my god if he invades me right now im hosed".

Also you got my bless wrong, I had earth 9, not death 9. Earth 9 gives my guys +5 protection and +4 reinvigoration, basically their armor is better and they dont get tired as quickly

I assumed you would have Air elementals and some crossbows to fire archers to go with Vanhere but I guess not!

# ¿ Jan 28, 2016 15:51

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

V. Illych L. posted:

honestly this actually sounds like a pretty clever idea if you're under siege imo

Intentionally triggering gem use is definitely a thing you should do.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 23:38

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:15

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Ramc posted:

What does set it off? I've sort of assumed the relative hitpoint totals of the respective armies.

That's only one piece. It also values mage paths, gems and items.

I had a Pan named "gently caress Your Gems" with equipment in every slot and a handful of harpies scripted to retreat triggering gem use in a large enemy army.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 16:45

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