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Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Baudin posted:


The Magister Arcane and Master Smith are pretty amazing since they ignore drain for research. I also like the synergy these units have - the master smith can forge boots that boost earth paths which I can use to forge hammers that reduce gem costs to create items, including quills which require the a2 provided by the magister.

Just thought I'd point out that you only need A1 for quills. As that is one of a Master Smith's randoms, they are perfectly capable of forging them on their own - for 1 air gem each once you get a hammer.:v: Admittedly not as reliable, since it's only a 5% chance per smith, but if you're massing them odds are you'll get some reasonably early. Almost certainly before you get access to boots or hammers, unless you're heavily rushing Construction, and at 5 air gems base it's not like you'll particularly want to make many quills before then anyways. Not building them until you can get them for 1 gem apiece is even in character. :cheeky:

Not that Magister Arcane aren't good of course, but you certainly don't need them for that or Rain of Stones, given aforementioned Master Smiths with A can also get off turn 1 Rain of Stones with a pair of boots, leaving no time for defensive spells by the enemy if you're using them for traps. Just slap armor and helmets on them(easy considering the good ones for this sort of thing require E alone), and have them lurk in provinces.

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Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

fool_of_sound posted:




Uh. Uh huh. God of War means Fire magic or Turmoil scales, King of Flowers and Spring is Nature magic, and Patron of Suicides is Blood magic. And considering that literally every unit in Kitfox' nation is Sacred, it's a pretty safe assumption that Kitfox has gone for the legendary TriBless. His troops have increased accuracy, increased damage, increased HP, flaming weapons, regeneration, and reflect damage taken on their attackers. This, on the other hand, means he's taken trash scales, and is going to rely on a powerful early game to win.

Didn't catch this earlier, but who is this and what have they done with the real Kitfox? Kitfox would never trash his scales!!:psyduck:

Related, but what did he take for PD? Considering the other draft game he's in he grabbed bloody Large Scorpions and Illithid Soldiers in the right slots for PD.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

fool_of_sound posted:


National Gimmick: Reanimation
This is the single biggest threat in Boing's nation: his priests can spend their turns summoning free undead units: Ghouls or Longdead, or for H2+ priests, Longdead Horsemen. Ghouls aren't really worth talking about because they kill your population when you summon them. I think they have a paralyze attack though, so maybe they'll see some use? Longdead are your basic skeletons: poo poo trash, useful only in that they're free and come in large numbers, often large enough to defeat otherwise superior armies. They can win basically any battle that doesn't contain on of their counters, of which there are a decent amount. Longdead Horsemen are better; not fantastic, but reasonable fighters and useful on the alpha strike; Boing will probably make a lot of these.

Ghouls can actually be extremely useful, as long as you're not depopulating your major income provinces. As they require no supplies, have decent strength AND are not actually mindless like most mass-produced undead, they make incredibly good troops to stuff your forts with. They also don't cost any upkeep like most similar troops, such as Ghoul Guardians. So depopulate your worthless provinces, and proceed to stuff all those ghouls into important forts you don't really want to lose - like thrones.

Also, I've got a question about the national gimmick in general - Is the ability pulled from Sceleria? Because however Sceleria' coded, their reanimation can also reanimate Longdead varieties of their basic troops while using the standard Longdead choice, which are actually really good. They all have at least Prot 10, with some significantly higher, along with some of them carrying javelins or longspears, which is really nice on your undead hordes, because it means common battlefield removal spells, like Earthquake or Rain of Stones, won't necessarily wipe them. If that ability was folded into the gimmick, whether accidentally or intentionally, it actually gives a decent reason to reanimate Longdead over Horsemen. Especially as for your basic H2 priest you're getting 5 longdead reanimated for every 1 horseman you would otherwise get. At H3 it moves to 7/2, which brings it back into the horsemen's favor a bit.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

I Love You! posted:

Yeah playing hardcore kingmaker/vassal state is one of the few things that will turn you into a pariah but consider this is like a board game that takes 3 months to play and if you were to spend an entire game of something like Settlers of Cataan handing your girlfriend every resource you got for free she would probably win and you'd get "2nd" but no one would ever want to be your friend again

Bingo. It's perfectly okay to set yourself whatever objectives you want, but if you go into a game from the beginning with the attitude of just helping the strongest player, you're going to piss everyone else off. Possibly even the person you're helping(See Kitfox giving Nuclearmonkee stuff during the last LP before even encountering him. Not quite the same as Kitfox actually did have another reasoning rather than playing kingmaker, but it irritated Nuclearmonkee).

As for agreements, I generally agree with Absum that concrete agreements are the way to go. Not that they should be set indefinitely, but if both players have an assured border for some number of turns, they can plan around that and bring more advantageous force elsewhere. And a reputation of upholding your agreements, even if you ended up invading them the moment it expired, is pretty valuable. You just need to use, and listen to when other players say them, exact words, and not do, or expect, anything more than them unless it's advantageous.

For example, I won my first newbie game as MA Ulm by simply both expanding well initially, as well as talking with everyone around me quite a bit - finishing with setting up NAPs with most of my border other than the person I decided to go after. In that game, after initial expansion, I made NAPs with Man to my south, T'ien C'hi to my west, and Pangaea to my north. Agartha to my north east was embroiled in a war already, but I was talking with him and generally assuring him that I wouldn't add to his problems. As I knew very well that he was already having difficulties(he'd been sieged in his cap by an awake Dragon on turn 3), it both gave me a friendly buffer if he survived, while not requiring any real effort by me. This left me free to go after Vanheim on my eastern border without having to worry about maintaining large garrisons against other aggression, and vice versa. I also scouted out Van's own eastern neighbor, which happened to by Jotunheim, and arranged a joint attack on Van. Similarly, a few turns after we finished dividing Van, I got into talks with what was now both my own and Jotun's northern neighbor(Bandar Log) and, since my armies were already there, proceeded to march right into Jotunheim. By the time Man and Pangaea decided to attack me, I'd both grown quite large, and also got forewarning since they'd tried to bring Agartha in too, and I'd been being helpful to him all game in his wars, both with informal assurances I wouldn't attack him - and I could have - along with some forging work. Also, Pangaea had pissed him off by immediately invading him after he'd just finished the war he'd been in since the beginning of the game.

Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Aug 15, 2015

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

While I wasn't present at the time, people have discussed it on IRC. If I remember correctly, it was cheating in the form of - She was hosting the games. And proceeding to use the master password to look at what other people were doing. Possibly changing some orders too, but I'm not certain on that last part, as that could simply be on my mind since it has happened more recently when people have forgotten to set passwords.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

For those following this thread who may have never, or nearly never, played before and are interested in trying, a new beginner game has gone up. Check the Dominions 4 thread in the Private Game Servers section for more details.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

To be fair, it still kills fair amounts of other things - either directly or indirectly. Maybe not as well as before, but they can still luck into crits, or just jump something with no real defenses or paths. Hell, for mages I've found those with A access have a tendency to cast Shock Wave a decent amount of the time when the elemental moves next to them. Despite the fact that they likely take damage too. In a recent game, Spooky was losing a decent number of Vanjarls and Vanadrotts over time simply due to them killing themselves. And if someone has a clump of researchers that end up under your dominion for whatever reason, water elementals can wreck havoc.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Just going to point out that Blind Fighters are absolutely horrible, and I have no idea why one would take them. They also have that same issue that Earthbound do of having Enc 10, but lack the reinvig that helps the former out.

Blindlords have that magic leadership, which can make them valuable - I took them in the other draft game - but generally that's only in specific circumstances. Like my special is MA Agartha's spells, so I needed someone to lead Magma Children and statues around even early on. Generally there's nothing in the base spell list you really need a basic commander with magic leadership for though, and if they were taken for Blind Fighters, I repeat that Blind Fighters are absolute trash. If you want high prot, go for MA Ulm stuff, or knights, or anything but dudes that have Enc 10. Especially since they're only wielding bloody short swords.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

What was your Thaumaturgy already at, Baudin? I'd have thought, given your mage selection, that pushing Evocation for Earthquake, Magma Eruption and Rain of Stones would have been more effective than trying to reach Wither Bones. Especially considering Master Smiths are much cheaper to spam than Marshmasters. And the single pair of boots most need are generally something you'll want a number of anyways. Unless he's really summoning the Roman undead, some of which have decent Prot values.

Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Nov 3, 2015

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Incidentally, if you ever kill an AI player's Pretender God, for whatever reason even if it's their fault, they will forever war you and get extremely suicidal in trying to kill you. As in they will completely ignore other nations taking their provinces if it means throwing more troops at you. This can have rather annoying consequences in multiplayer.

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Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

In a game that just ended, when I took AI Nazca's cap they had no forts left and precious few troops. Before I finally eliminated them though I was having their PG land on their cap literally every other turn. Ended up killing it something like 6-7 times. Given they maybe had 5 or so priests left, they were recalling far faster than any human player could possibly have done.

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