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While I'm pretty sure that actually trying to play Dom4 would make my head explode, I love reading about it. I am psyched for this LP, especially as it looks like it won't default to the usual "and then I had to maneuver my sole remaining army really skillfully for three turns until I could bring the gently caress You I Win spell online" midgame.
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Sep 20, 2016 06:56
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Yeah, from what little I know of Dominions, "horror-marking your Pretender God" is basically one of the game's premiere gently caress yous. Right up there with killing them with a turkey.
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Nov 16, 2016 01:45
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Libluini posted:Also always nice is the rare classic "getting hit with a sharp stick and bleeding out in your first battle". I've never seen a huge monster dying like a chump like that before and after. Wait, I think I missed this story!
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Nov 16, 2016 02:00
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Libluini posted:I was dumb once and used a Raven pumped up on death (and therefore fear) as an awake pretender. In his first battle he first got hit by a tiny projectile from a bunch of indeps and started bleeding, then the army panicked and ran away. My victorious pretender got a tiny scratch and something called "bleeding". He started to lose tiny amounts of HP constantly. Cue my surprise when the battle ended and the game calculated like a thousand turns of bleeding. That's... impressive! The odds on that sort of thing have got to be pretty low, don't they? Grizzwold posted:So what happens to Pangaea's lands if he gets domkilled? Do they go to the bat guys or are they suddenly unoccupied and everyone is scrambling to take a piece? I have also never played a Dominions game, but I've read some LPs; IIRC the result of a player dying is that any provinces that are still "theirs" become unowned independent provinces again. When a player dies because they got attacked to death, that's usually not an issue, but a domkill can potentially mean a suddenly-gaping mass of indep provinces where everyone scrambles to rush in and grab everything they can. The dead player's armies are still there, but now they're AI-controlled and thus significantly less difficult to steamroll, so the territory is usually all claimed in a few turns unless there were any serious doomstacks sitting around. People who actually know what they're talking about may correct me on any of the above.
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Nov 16, 2016 18:10
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AfroSquirrel posted:If you have goats, there is a chance of them attracting a dragon. I have no idea if you're being serious or not. Because Dominions.
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Nov 20, 2016 08:06
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Leperflesh posted:And anyway the metagame tactic is most effective if "attack me and you, specifically the attacker, will suffer enough that you won't win" is far more effective than "attack me and everyone in the game will suffer." The former discourages an attacker: the latter encourages everyone to gang up and eliminate you as soon as possible. This. I still remember the LP where TheDemon had a terrible nation with terrible placement and terrible routes for expansion and terrible resources and went through something like thirty turns of nation after nation saying "Hey Lanka looks small and beatable, let's crush them for early war gains." To which his response was, essentially, "I am a stabbing robot made of knives and when you attack me I will stab you." He fought off army after army after army from something like three nations - and, IIRC, none of those three nations that kept throwing waves of soldiers to die against the wall of TheDemon ended up winning the game.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:28
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Coolguye posted:and the entire reason that worked was because TheDemon's nation, while terrible, had an outsized alpha strike for his size that none of the places looking to whack him were in a position to counter effectively. the reason his threat was effective was because his specific threat of really angry blessed demons was because the people who couldn't deal with that trivially early on were the ones surrounding him. certainly, an alliance could have knocked TheDemon out of the game very quickly, but he specifically said the first person to throw a punch was getting bled dry. the people surrounding him did not have very strong blessed troops or an appropriate supercombattant pretender to counter that strategy, so nobody wanted to throw that punch. Oh, it's certainly not a universal cure-all - even with Lanka's advantages the biggest factor to TheDemon hanging on as long as he did was the fact that he was really very good at battlefield scripting and using formations and moving his armies where his opponents were going to force battles on his terms - but it's still something to keep in mind, that sometimes your most effective way to avoid an early war before you're ready for it is simply the demonstrated ability to say "if you gently caress with me I will bleed you dry." Dominions' metagame is endlessly fascinating to me despite the fact that I have very little interest in actually playing the game.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:11
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Ramc posted:What... is a (giant) man? A miserable... really pretty big, I guess... pile of secrets!
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Jan 4, 2017 07:25
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Crazycryodude posted:So he can go on to miraculously win 95% of his games and (semi)brag about it in other people's LP's? Why does this sound so familiar... It's okay because the semibrags are also funny as gently caress and also informative. I think continuing this trend can only be for the good.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:29
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Crazycryodude posted:The world might have trouble deciding which Big Bad is the Biggest Bad, I think is the point. And while everyone argues about who's most dangerous, the vampire swarms grow. Admittedly, so does the bird economy.
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Feb 1, 2017 02:11
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Lord Koth posted:It's not so much the vampires alone, as it is that Gath also has blood saccing. Either on their own are regarded as extremely dangerous, but now Gath is using both. Heavy blood saccing means vampires can be used far more offensively than normal. Even more than the vampire hordes, it's the BLOOD SACCING that should be getting a posse together, the vampires are just the cherry on top. All of the above is true, which is why I find it so amusing that Gath didn't start Blood Saccing until their OWN Dominion was threatened by (IIRC) someone else's Saccing. Which might explain the lack of posse, come to think on it.
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Feb 1, 2017 10:01
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Eeepies posted:By the way, can someone explain blood sac to me? I understand that you need a temple, some slaves, and a priest to sacrifice those slaves, but what does it do in Dom 4? How strong is it compared to normal preaching? Is it affected by the strength of the priest or whether the priest knows blood? From what I understand from googling (and if I get any of it wrong, please, actual Dom4 players, correct me): Dominion is spread through a mechanic called a "temple check" - a calculation to determine whether or not a given source of dominion will "push" more dom out into the world. Each successful temple check increases your total Dominion out in the map by a candle (I think). Most nations have four sources of temple checks - the presence of their God, who generates a temple check just by hanging around, the presence of their Prophet, who also is assumed to be preaching whenever they're not doing something else, priests who are set to preach, and the check's namesake, a temple. More temples, more temple checks. If you have an awake God, an active Prophet, and six temples, you're generating 8 temple checks per turn; each check has a chance to increase your Dominion with a strength based on your Dominion score (to quote a thread I found: "Temple checks from temples are based on starting dominion. Temple checks based on the presence of your god and prophet are based on current dominion (start plus (temples/5).") Blood Sacrifice is such a Big Deal because it lets you rev this process up to an amazing speed. Each priest assigned to sacrifice blood slaves can sacrifice a certain number per turn - one per rank of Holy, I believe, with certain items like the Jade Knife adding more (2/turn in the case of the Jade Knife). Each blood slave sacrificed in this fashion is worth - again, according to some message board posts, I could be wrong - two temple checks apiece. So an H3 priest with a Jade Knife brings some slaves to a temple, cuts the hearts out of five of them, and now he's causing ten temple checks that turn, plus one for the Temple itself. Two or three priests start sacrificing, and, well... In effect, you're using up some non-renewable resources (blood slaves) to get multiple turns' worth of temple checks made in a single turn. This has been brought to you by four minutes with Google and some page-skimming, so again, I apologize if there are any misconceptions in here, but this seems to be the gist of it.
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Feb 2, 2017 11:31
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Yeah, "Liches aren't as good as Vampires" seems basically like "chocolate cake isn't as good as devil's food cake" because even if you're right it's still cake
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Feb 14, 2017 21:40
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That's because vampires are non-lovely bat men, obviously.
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Feb 15, 2017 07:26
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Burden of Time would be my bet for biggest threat; hard to spread your dominion by sacrificing virgins when they've all died. But that's a hunch based on zero practical experience.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:40
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I'm betting Man had the Golems kitted out as siege units, but when it rapidly became apparent that he wasn't gonna be sieging poo poo, he said "gently caress it" and sent them out as (ineffectual) raiders rather than letting them sit around collecting dust. An incredibly profligate waste, if so, but if they were already a sunk cost I guess he could have figured that the distraction might be worthwhile.
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Feb 19, 2017 09:32
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Yeah, the question of "what is Bogarus up to?" would be keeping me up at night.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:21
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Lord Koth posted:That is the real issue with the hidden holy sites - there aren't many, and more than a few nations don't even have access to recruitable H3 priests, only their prophet who usually has better things to do. And there's no sitesearch spell other than the incredibly expensive Akashic Knowledge (which reveals ALL sites, but costs 25 pearls) that hits holy sites. As you mentioned, even those nations that do have recruitable H3s normally also have far better things to do with them - any H sites found will normally be incidental. This makes me wonder if now that How are u is getting basically all the pearls if casting Akashic Knowledge wouldn't be a bad idea from time to time.
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Mar 14, 2017 06:47
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twig1919 posted:Holy gently caress. I didn't realize that stellar cascades was so deadly. I don't think that even counts as a doomstack anymore. They were all but annihilated. Eh. That's still a big ol' hunk of Hoburg Crossbows.
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Mar 19, 2017 03:51
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sullat posted:Nah, Hinnom eventually wore down the Demon and went on to win the game. The Demon had a brief reprieve when everyone banded together to take down the Queen of Turkeys, but builds character came back to finish the job. Yeah, I was wrong about this sequence of events too; what happened was that three different nations teamed up against TheDemon and he fought them off for ages and ages - unable to expand but able to survive, which in Dominions ain't nothin' - and builds character was able to convince three consecutive Sauromatia players to just keep on pouring their resources into the meat grinder while he ate easier meals until he got big enough to bring out the big guns. It was actually a really good example of how diplomancy is the most powerful school of Dominions Magic, because if any of the people who subbed in for Sauro had said "mmm, nah, I have better things to do" I'm pretty sure builds' Hinnom would have had a pretty hard time keeping TheDemon from breaking out, especially after TC said "gently caress the meatgrinder I'mma go do my own thing" and was promptly branded a traitor.
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Mar 29, 2017 03:01
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Honestly if I were playing in this game (or playing Dom4 at all, since I don't own it) the words "Ramc is subbing in" would fill me with dread. Regardless of how good he may or may not be, seeing him get gifted with a copy of Dom4 in one LP thread and then seeing posts a few weeks later saying "hey let me explain to you in breathtaking detail how I won this game that included people who have been playing for significantly longer than I have" sets him up in my mind as a horrifying monster of skill and tenacity.
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Mar 30, 2017 14:23
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My prediction: Ramc manages to turn Pan against Howareu, but still gets eaten by Gath and Caelum. Caelum gets more of the spoils from the war since Gath is busy fending off Pan, and winds up clowning Gath and Pan to win the game. It's secretly been Libuini's LP all along!
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Apr 12, 2017 02:43
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Dr. Snark posted:There is something absolutely beautiful about Armageddon failing because it would break the game. See, I picture it more like... "Oh Great Ones, bring forth your divine judgement and lay waste to this realm!" "Mmmmm.... nah." "....wait, what?" "Have you seen how many people there are in the world? And not just them but also the horrifying misshapen beasts and undead and demons and poo poo?" "Well... well yeah, that's why I want them to all go away." "Not gonna happen. Too much stuff. That's way too much work." "But... but Astral Pearls!" "Yeah, they're sweet and all, but honestly, I can't be bothered." "But it's the rules!" "The rules also have a suspiciously non-random RNG, pal, I don't know what to tell you. Dealing with this kind of crap is half the reason the old Pantokrator hosed off to Oblivion. Anyway, good luck with the vampire hordes." "....man, divine beings suck."
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May 15, 2017 07:12
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If enough units worldwide desert due to Utterdark, maybe Armageddon can happen again!
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May 21, 2017 01:35
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Ramc posted:This guy gets it. That was seriously the first thing I thought when I saw the number of dudes Howareu lost to desertion. "Hmm, Armaggeddon couldn't happen because there were too many units, so clearly the plan is to make there be fewer units, then Armaggeddon Howareu's blood economy into oblivion." I am a little concerned that this is not an entirely ridiculous idea.
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May 21, 2017 03:44
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How are u posted:When the description for Arcane Nexus talks about how it pulls in 50% of all gems used per turn as Pearls: it is a lie. Does it pull half of all used gems and then transmute those gems to pearls at a 2:1 ratio like alchemy would, then? E: some googling seems to indicate that this is the case, at least if you can trust the Google translation of some random Japanese Dom4 wiki. DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 05:32 on May 22, 2017 |
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May 22, 2017 05:30
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"Hmm. Still too many units for an Armageddon. Let's see if I can send this giant-rear end doomstack into a meatgrinder and... drat! Howareu didn't attack there. Hmm. Maybe I can get him to attack it with a doomstack of his own and get the unit totals closer to the Armageddon Point." --Ramc, probably
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Jun 4, 2017 00:22
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Corbeau posted:The real winners are us, who didn't have to play this game at all. not an emptyquote
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Jun 4, 2017 05:54
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the Orb of Zot posted:
I do, but it banks on the number of units now being small enough to Wish for Armageddon without the engine making GBS threads the bed. Even that wouldn't be enough - there'd need to be some Shenanigans involved - but without that Wish I think that might be game right there.
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Jul 9, 2017 07:52
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the other players
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Ramc posted:Let me assure you that something terrible is fated to happen to the entire nation of Gath and the entire nation of Caelum. They'll have to keep playing this game for months and months, micro-ing vast amounts of units in a soul-killing exercise long after you've gone to the beach?
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Jul 9, 2017 23:06
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McGavin posted:They will be forced to live under a socialist government? He said "terrible," bougie scum
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Jul 10, 2017 02:18
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Leperflesh posted:plus undead can see in the eternal darkness, so at least you can see. And you can stop worrying about the skyrocketing cost of health care in this economy! Actually in this economy I imagine all the researchers who no longer have magic to research are trying to make ends meet by doing a bit of medical work on the side, and with the mass die-offs the population has already seen the cost should actually be quite reasonable. The real question is why anyone would want health care instead of longing for the sweet release of death.
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Aug 4, 2017 01:23
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Araganzar posted:Still not as bad as that one Pantokrator that held off the other players with threats of Armageddon spam, put up massive PD in his border provinces, converted his economy over to blood hunting and fire/earth gem alchemization, started sending nasty messages to the other players every turn including his allies, then won by tanking his heat scales so badly that people all over the planet were dying of heatstroke in shade with water but died when he tried to ascend because he'd filled the sky with so much garbage that not even space was safe anymore. If they couldn't ascend then they weren't a Pantokrator sorry your joke is broken 
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Aug 5, 2017 09:21
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Pantokrator, in a Dominions context, is "the Pretender that wins a game of Dominions and becomes Capital G God until they vanish and set off a new game of Dominions."
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Aug 6, 2017 00:43
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Turn 109: "eh, gently caress it, let's send some of our remote assassination spells elsewhere." Turn 110: "HOLY poo poo IT ACTUALLY WORKED"
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Aug 17, 2017 23:39
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Green Intern posted:Congratulations to every player who stuck it out to the end. Seconding this. Extra congratulations to Ramc who took over for a dropped player and didn't just look at the situation and say "nope, we're screwed, why bother."
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Aug 18, 2017 18:38
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Pharnakes posted:I admit I've been hopping that Ramc would pull an upset with Bogarus ever since he subbed in, but congrats man. That is some serious effort you have put in for our entertainment, you absolutely deserve this. A shame libluini doesn't share in the spoils but I suppose that what happens to you if you play dominions whilst not being a psychopathic paranoiac. You just up being the dupes of those who are apparently. WhyIDon'tPlayDom4.txt
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Aug 29, 2017 23:47
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How are u posted:Turn 113 How are u : great at Dom4, less so at Dom4 LPs. Entertaining as gently caress regardless, man, this was great and congrats on the well-earned win!
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Aug 31, 2017 10:29
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Lord Koth posted:Well, point one would be that gold tends to be massively less valuable as a game goes on anyways, as even nations that haven't bothered to get into blood (and any nation can with some effort), will generally switch over to a gem economy - especially as things like Armageddon and Utterdark hit. To be fair, by the point in the game where it was painfully obvious that Gath was winning (after Arcane Nexus was inexplicably ignored for a dozen turns or so) I can easily imagine many players saying "If I attack him, I can keep him from winning! And then... then the game won't end... maybe... maybe I'll just leave him be..."
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Sep 4, 2017 17:40
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Leperflesh posted:Keep in mind like 99% of those filthy bandits are people who are angry about the blood hunting. You know, the dudes wandering around the province grabbing every virgin they can find, to use in blood sacrifice to create vampires and summon demons constantly. "You bastards took my daughter!" "National security, sir. She was necessary to the war effort." "She was seven!" "Yeah, I was surprised. Usually we get them by five." "You son of a bitch! I'm going to the capital, I'll take my case to the government!" *steps outside, is promptly eaten by wolves* "Third one today. If we get two more we get a bonus."
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Sep 5, 2017 19:47
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