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 Welcome to Dominions 5: the game that is the most sagatious of sagas, the most epic (in the time sense) of epics (in the story sense), and the most confusing of confucianisms. This time we're doing something a bit different with a game full of modded nations! You may have heard that one of the strengths of Dominions 5 is how easy it is for anybody to make a mod and this is a showcase of 10 of them. The downside of dominions modding is how easy it is for anybody to make a mod. Balance? Tone? Theme? All entirely gone. I am playing the clown nation Kirkostaculis made by goon Mu and the other nations in the game are: praying mantises, trolls, frost ghosts, feet, rocks, djinn, Brits, ants, and illusions. We'll see them in more detail later. There have been a good number of Dominions 5 LPs (including two vanilla ones ongoing) so I won't retread too much ground here. In short it's a strategy game almost like Civilisation, if Civilisation was written by two Swedish teachers in their spare time over 15 years who threw every myth, religion, and quasi folktale in and made them all duke it out in an arena. Faux Vishna wrestling with Faux Queen Titania and a thousand skeletons while Faux Bat-Jesus sacrifices hundreds of virgins in a ritual which steals the sun.  Two massively geared lategame super experience super powerful thugs square off.  Rain down meteors to obliterate your foes. These elite troops are blessed to allow their friends to take some of the damage for them but that works less well vs 999 damage rocks. Previous LPs: - Newbad - Therodos - Ramc's Games thread Discord Please, no game spoilers in the thread and I'll be introducing the other nations as I meet them. The game is still ongoing and 50 turns in at the time of writing. Apart from the nation mods, there's also SILT which nerfs immortal summons and Pretenders Enhanced, which adds a bunch of new ones and gives recuperation to most vanilla ones so they don't just get crippled to poo poo over the course of the game. Table Of Contents Turn 1 Turn 2 Turn 3 Nation Overview: Fennoscandia Turn 4 Turn 5 Turn 6 Nation Overview: Anglia Turn 7 Nation Overview: U, part 1 (guest post by Xanrick) Nation Overview: Eljudnir Turn 8 Nation Overview: Karanaac Turn 9 Turn 10 Turn 11 Turn 12 Turn 13 Turn 14 Nation Overview: Myrmecos Turn 15 Nation Overview: EA Ssaon'raha Turn 16 Turn 17 Turn 18 Turn 19 Turn 20 Turn 21 Turn 22 Turn 23 Turn 24 Turn 25 Turn 26 Turn 27 Turn 28 Turn 29 Turn 30 Turn 31 Turn 32 Jokes Not Told: Shiny Red Nose Turn 33 Turn 34 Turn 35 Turn 36 Nation Overview: U, part 2 (guest post by Xanrick) Turn 37 Turn 38 Turn 39 Turn 40 Turn 41 Turn 42 Turn 43 Turn 44 Jokes Not Told: Gigantic Clown Head Turn 45 Turn 46 Turn 47 Turn 48 Turn 49 Turn 50 Turn 51 Turn 52 Turn 53 Turn 54 Turn 55 Jokes Not Told: Master of Seltzer Jokes Not Told: Master of Custard Turn 56 Turn 57 Turn 58 Turn 59 Turn 60 Turn 61 Turn 62 Turn 63 Turn 64 Turn 65 Turn 66 Turn 67 Turn 68 Turn 69 Turn 70 Turn 71 Turn 72 Turn 73 Turn 74 Turn 75 and wrapup Jokes Not Told: Clown Sublime and Joke Book Fan art BaronOhShi posted:
Ramc posted:Pinned discord images has you covered it seems Arcvasti posted:Imagine being a militiaman, proud to be defending your home against these false gods who want to sacrifice your daughters and feed all dissenters to wolves. "I can do this", you think, as you recall the long minutes spent drilling with your comrades in the traditional militia maneuvers of spear poking and routing. You're still a bit nervous of course, you've heard all sorts of grisly rumours about the forces stirring anew in the world. Dwarves leading herds of stoneskinned cats into battle to eviscerate their opponents, ever-smiling plant creatures who annihilate whole armies with solar-powered beams and hordes of rotting undead slavouring for blood. Thankfully, you're not up against any of them today. Instead, your foe is... large, bright and humanoid. You and your comrades stand fast, even in the face of their strange honking cries and baffling pre-battle calisthenics. Then, as you grit your teeth and ground the butt of your spear against the enemy charge, a pie thrown with the force of a small avalanche splats into you and reduces your whole upper body to a squishy mess of blood and delicious cream. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2019 21:49
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Turn 1: In the beginning there was chaos, now the wheel has turned once again. I don't think I've ever actually read these messages even though I've seen them probably a hundred times. Note also the map in the background which is not the usual fare. We are the nation of Kirkostaculis, an ancient society of noble clowns.  The clowns are led by the peerless pretender Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar  It starts imprisoned so it won't be available until about year 3 in game, so until then we'll have to rely only on its non-incarnate blesses which is all of them. Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar makes my clown troops absolute powerhouses dealing massive amounts of damage, with a good amount of HP and ability to survive magical retribution. I'll be explaining the units as I recruit them because there's too many to show all at once. To explain my pretender choice let's look at my first recruit: the Enormous Clown.  They, like all clowns, have chaos power so will get stronger in turmoil dominion and weaker in order. They have 20 strength base, but with +3 strength from larger, +4 from the blood bless, and +3 from chaos power they can get to 30 strength even before unit experience. Their weapons are: a kick which deals double damage to enemies that are smaller than the clown, and a rubber hose which has 2 attacks and deals untyped damage so is hard to resist. Also a 20+ damage pie that will totally one shot a human but is generally only used when closing in. They are also cap only, meaning I will only be able to get between 4-7 of them a turn and I will absolutely be getting the maximum number of them every turn I can. Sadly this turn I can only afford 2. The rest of my bless is to help keep them relevant in the late game with fire and magic resistances, magic weapons, and low light vision. Additionally my bless was tailored to deal with a certain other nation that's pretty hard to fight, but we'll get to them later. They're a solid nation that can stonewall you if you haven't prepared or are having a rocky start. My mage recruit this turn is a Thirteenth Clown:  These guys are good mages with the random path being one of fire/water/astral. Not a great leader but not too expensive gold-wise. Costing 3 commander points when I only get 2 per turn is a bit painful and they're also cap only at least until later on. The main reason I'm choosing this guy for my expansion armies is the clown national spell Coordinate Slapstick Display which gives a good amount of invulnerability in a decent area. Without it you tend to take too much attrition when expanding even with the insanely killy enormous clowns. With it however I have very strong expansion. There are plenty other national spells but we won't see them for a bit.  Finally we prophet our starting commander, So Intense In His Cuckoo Hostility. I won't spend too much time on these guys because they're not clowns and we will basically never recruit any more of them unless we really need some leadership. Let's end the turn having a quick look around us:  Not a bad start at all! We're on the bottom edge of the map and have some nice room to maneuver around. There's four thrones (north, west, underwater, caves) that could be within easy reach (although we don't have any underwater capacity) and we're also 2 provinces away from a small candle. These are important because they connect to large candles spaced outside the map proper to allow fast movement across different corners of the map. Unlike the other games you may have seen, this map is not wraparound at all. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Oct 31, 2019 21:49
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Night10194 posted:I adore that the clowns are written in the exact same style as normal Dominions fluff. Every single piece of text in the clown mod is wonderful and I urge everybody to read them. Some of the other mods, not so much.
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Nov 1, 2019 19:30
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Turn 2 Time for the traditional turn 2 ritual: picking apart prophet names. This also gives us a chance to peek at what each of the other nations and their starting commanders are like, or at least most of them. If you need a refresher on which blesses are which then ramc's LP had excellent guides: Ramc posted:
We have: quote:A proclamation from Fennoscandia! Their starting prophet is just one of their starting humans:  quote:A proclamation from Ssaon'raha! Their titles don't give much information only a female pretender with turmoil.  quote:A proclamation from Anglia! Before the game they were talking about the barkskin bless as a way to turn mediumly armoured humans into heavily armoured humans and it sounds like they have pretty decent scales otherwise. Thunder weapons is great on ranged sacreds since the stun helps prevent enemies from moving into range but barkskin AND thunder weapons AND those scales would be pretty pricey.  quote:A proclamation from Myrmecos!  quote:A proclamation from Karanaac! I'm less worried about them since I specifically gave my troops fire resistance to beat the fire shield, lots of strength to punch through the rock protection, and magic resistance/weapons to bypass sneaky astral buffs. Honestly I hope I'm near them because they have a slow start and I'm pretty confident I could walk all over them early. The titles here inform us of a fire and earth pretender, as well as a little turmoil. Turmoil is interesting because it reduces income and Karanaac needs a lot of gold to buy its tough and powerful mages. I would think that they must have an awake expensive pretender or have gone heavier than normal on the bless. Karanaac itself has earth/nature/astral mages with a bit of death and they can field very powerful communions once they've researched some decent spells.  Since, as mentioned, Karanaac is a nation mostly of immobile rocks they don't start with a scout but instead with an immobile rock. quote:A proclamation from Eljudnir! Their titles show strong death magic, and fire. I can only assume they've taken a decent amount of fire resistance but the death could be a few things - decay weapons, undead regeneration, lots of undying for free extra HP on undead troops spring to mind. Maybe even something really spicy like reanimators or fear!  quote:A proclamation from Chasos! No wait, that's right it's the ILLUSION nation. Massive amounts of air and astral with a very heavy focus on phantasms and illusions. Their titles are air and strong astral. Since their phantasms have only 1 hp and mostly rely on not getting hit, I would assume they've taken luck or twist fate which help prevent that fatal blow. Not sure what the air is, it could be shock resistances to protect from the shock waves of their own thunderstrikes, or thunder weapons to give their sacred illusions some serious offense? None of the other air blesses seem likely to me.  quote:A proclamation from U! The titles here show us blood and earth magic. Honestly I have absolutely no idea what this could be, U can suit a lot of different strategies depending on which units you focus on.  quote:A proclamation from Kirkostaculis!  Right, as for my actual turn there's not a massive amount to say. My scout, or mime rather, is heading east since that area is a bit tighter and I'd like to secure some chokepoints (and prepare for neighbours) asap. Mimes, of course, start with the mute affliction which halves their magic skills. Normally this doesn't matter but let's just say that in a test game I found out the hard way that you shouldn't make one your prophet.  Looking around there's a lizard province, Greevil's Bog, across a mountain from my cap which is an extremely nice source of nature/astral mages but they can be a bit annoying to expand into. The province my prophet and starting army is going to take though is Plains of the Blood Turkey which somehow has an very strong 144 income. This is pretty important because with my scales and expensive large adult sons I'm going to be hurting for gold most of the game. There's a lot of troops there but these amphibious independents are notoriously poor quality so while I'm a bit worried I take the gamble. I hope it goes well! My expansion force is still not ready due to the 3 commander point mages I've previously mentioned. Since you get 2 commander points per turn I could queue up another mage this turn with the leftover point but I don't have the money so all my clown mages are effectively 4 commander points for now. I can afford however 3 more giant clowns giving me a total of 5 next turn which is an effective force of expanders. I still have absolutely no research. Also I forgot to mention it last turn but the first mercenaries were the Ship Wreckers AKA the best early game mercenaries and they're always heavily contested. Since I absolutely could not afford to place a bid on them myself I settled for pointing them out in chat in hopes of driving the price up and they went to Ejludnor in the end. All in all I'm pretty happy with this start! Who do people think has the best prophet/pretender name combo? I like Fenno's myself. 
gonadic io fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2019 01:01
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Blessing Chat
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Added to the OP!
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Nov 2, 2019 20:40
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Turn 3gonadic io posted:There's a lot of troops there but these amphibious independents are notoriously poor quality so while I'm a bit worried I take the gamble. I hope it goes well! Let's watch as I lose my starting army and am put out of the game instantly! Here's my brave boys, 20 Unicyclists  and 20 jugglers  Note their universally low protection and this is not the force that will have the invulnerability buff. Thanks to my awesome scripting the unicyclists charge far ahead of the jugglers and fight the enemy force without backup  ...  and the enemy force then routes instantly and I take zero casualties. Those amphibian independent troops are bad. Maxing out my luck scales is already paying off as I get my first hero this turn! This is a 6% chance per turn with luck 3 I believe. The Emerald Impaler the World Champion is a fantastic leader providing a plus SEVEN bonus to morale to units under him, and gets awe and a pretty big 19 defense. Even more interestingly he starts with a heroic ability, in this case strength, but isn't allowed into the hall of fame proper. The committee is biased against professional jousting and keeps saying that it's not a real sport.  In terms of movement, the starting expansion force is moving further east to try and secure more land and the Emerald Impaler is joining them. Not one of them will route and risk looking weak in front of him. My clown force is moving onto the farmland to the east, scripted to buff with both bless and invulnerability. By far the weakest part of this force is Candy the clown leading them as he's much more fragile than the size 5 clowns alongside him. As such he's just tucked right into the corner and they're positioned to try and minimise the chance that somebody will zoom past and take him out.  In terms of recruitment my other scales are also coming into effect which means I can recruit another Thirteenth Clown and a grand total of one (1) giant clown. One! Part of why I'm going for the farm province instead of the lizards is that I just absolutely need the cash ASAP. The lizard province will only start producing nature mages after I get a lab and temple up so that's a further away concern. Looking at the world map, what's this?  That's the flag of Fennoscandia the norse/troll nation. I'll do a followup post with more details but their scariest troops are limited recruitment so I'm willing to risk a bump with them at this stage. They seem like an okay nation to have as a neighbour, certainly their dominion doesn't spread poo poo. Their trolls can be a bit scary but I can get a lot more giant clowns than they have trolls at this stage and I'm not at all worried about their human troops. Later on they get access to the classic combo of Foul Vapours and Horde of Skeletons which is going to be very annoying to fight. I am not planning to rush them or anything but I start giving serious thought to them being my first war - if I can kill them before the combo gets online it'll be a lot easier. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Nov 4, 2019 |
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Nov 4, 2019 23:15
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Fennoscandia At first glance Fennoscandia looks like a cool troll nation but actually you don't get many trolls. Instead you get about 30 types of human with slightly different coloured shields. The trolls are great - first you have the Tussar who is cap only and also limited to 3 per month but is an absolute house. I love these guys as they hit so hard, are very tough, and have built-in regeneration. If they were sacred they'd be incredible but sadly as is they're an expansion boost and don't seem that relevant otherwise. They hold buffs pretty nicely later on though.  The other troll troops that you can get are 3 per month from any forest. Only medium armour but they don't need a fort and if you can get a clutch of forests you can build pretty nice mid-game forces with these guys.  The other troops are all instantly forgettable humans. Even their sacreds are cap only and totally uninteresting. These guys just don't cut it in a mods game.  All the non sacreds are just nearly 10 gold for size 2 and roughly 10 in every stat. Some have sailing, some have bows, and some even have berserk 2 - those guys do at least hit pretty hard. They're like vanilla Chud Warriors but without the coolest part.  Now mages are where things start to get interesting! Trollfolk Shaman are a nice start and don't require a fort, just a forest. D1N1 with E/D/N as well as built-in regen 10 on 26 hit points make them decently able to make nuisances out of themselves. The D2 ones can skelespam of course, and the others can thug reasonably well with personal regen, the earth buffs, skeletal body etc. The N2 ones are potential howl casters. At 150 gold for 11 research they're decent value too.  Like about 50% of mod nations they get disease healers which is normally a very rare trait in vanilla. The Tietäjät are very nice cheap mages with N1W1 and E/N/W. These will be your main casters of foul vapours even if they are disappointingly human otherwise. Hitting enemy thugs with surprise frozen heart spam works the first time every time since nobody bothers to put cold resistance on their thugs. No spoilers, but I know I won't!  There's also a D1 magepriest for 80 gold and 7 RP which would be forgettable except that it can cast some of the national spells, has spellsinger, and is the best gold to research cost mage we have.  Getting into the pricier (but still not cap only) categories you have the Naejttie with W2D1 and 1.1xAWDN. These guys seem great to me since they're sacred spellsingers meaning the D2 ones can skelespam like nobody's business. The air ones seem like great thugs and the nature ones can also stink the place up with vapours. Since they're old and expensive I probably wouldn't recruit infinity of these but it's certainly nice to have a few around at all times. The previously mentioned disease healers also make old age much easier to deal with.  Your cap-only slow-to-recruit mages are suitably powerful with D2N2 and 2.1xAWDN. They're also sacred spellsingers but not even old so once I could afford it I would be recruiting them every turn I could. They're not even that pricey as mages go, you're going to see a lot of several hundred gold mages from other mods.  They can do all of the tricks previously mentioned but since they're holy 2 mages they also get access to Fenno's national holy spell Bless Ancestors which, like Divine Blessing, applies your bless to all your sacred units on the battlefield at once. It costs zero fatigue and is supposed to only affect undead units but, uh, actually just affects all sacreds and so is a strict upgrade to regular divine blessing.  Now you might ask, why would Fenno want to bless undead units when we haven't seen any? Well they get access to the vanilla spell Call Ancestor which summons lovely little ghosts. The trick to them is that they're sacred and you can actually summon quite a lot of them in battle. Later on they also get Wrath of the Ancestors where each D1 mage can summon twenty lovely ghosts for 100 (50 while singing) fatigue. This is at conjuration 7 but might be worth beelining for especially if your bless is something funny like death explosion or thunder weapons.  Another cool national spell is Summon Stallo at conjuration 4 which summons a Stallo, who is a bigger troll. Not actually that remarkable but it costs only 3 nature gems and requires a level 2 nature mage. You can easily crank out a lot of these guys who get a swallow attack and a 40 damage club. They seem pretty scary with some amount of human (or ghost) chaff to prevent them from taking too many hits.  Finally at conjuration 6 Fenno also get a rather nasty remote attack spell for only 5 death gems and a level 4 death caster you can send ethereal, chill aura, life drainers to attack an enemy commander that turn. They don't stick around but could be quite nasty if you weren't a clown with magic weapons and a big ol' boot.  Fennoscandia don't get any national items at all which is always the sign of a subpar mod nation. In short they have powerful mages with powerful path combinations but never get enough trolls. They can probably do pretty well with an all-mage strategy with a bless of poison resistance and reinvigoration using human troops only as needed. They're probably quite good in a vanilla context but compared to some of the other modded nations don't really hold up in my opinion. This early in the game my ultra-blessed giant clowns will be able to walk all over Fennoscandia so I'm not at all worried about applying pressure to them early. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Nov 6, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 23:02
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Turn 4 Iram's prophet declaration finally arrived! quote:A proclamation from Iram! Iram are a mostly human nation themed after Arabian desert nomads. They have strong air and fire magic as well as lots of jinni summons. They seem like a cool nation but like Fennoscandia are included in Dominions Enhanced which has a lower power level than these more grab-bag mods games. I'm not sure why Iram waited until turn 4 to prophet since it's just a regular commander - usually anybody who waits this long does it to prophet one of the more powerful slow-to-recruit mages.  As for our two expansion forces, neither took any losses at all! The unicyclists in Iseenu Beforest once again proved their high defense and long weapons are better than armour:  We did not bump with Fennoscandia unfortunately, I would have liked to potentially take out one of their expansion forces. The clown fight in Jessinka's Oasis started off in a classic way, with 4 out of 5 of the clowns being hit by the invulnerability buff even though there was more than enough area to go around:  Luckily I had considered this during testing and make sure that the buff got cast twice.  The same thing happened with the two casts of blessing, with the first one hitting only half the guys but the second getting them all.  The clowns crashed into the lines of melee troops and it was a total massacre, this clown instantly killed two militia in a single round. Thirty eight damage!  Some troops passed by the clowns and started heading towards the mage who would not stand up in the same way. This could actually have been bad but luckily the losses from the rest of their squad caused them to turn around to flee while only half way towards their target.  So we won with zero casualties and probably close to zero damage taken. Giant clowns with this bless are one of the scariest units in the game this early. As I said, only Edjuldnir can effectively fight them during the expansion phase.  Our plans for this turn are short: we move our clown force out to the west into Saquenay's Vista and our unicyclist/juggler force to take the candle province Bloax Laboratories to the east. I'll give a full overview of the candle system when it becomes relevant but suffice to say that it's an important choke point to hold. Our scout (mime) has found Fennoscandia's cap which is looks closer than it actually is - 4 moves away is reasonably average in dominions. I'm still hoping for a bump with Fennoscandia's expansion forces as they could try for Bloax Laboratories this turn too. No sign of any other nations or even their dominion. Thanks to the farm province and the fact that we are still recruiting the thirteenth clown from before we are flush with cash this turn so I recruit 4 enormous clowns to finish off the expansion force and actually place a bid on the fish-people mercenaries. Apart from Karanaac, no other nation in this game has good amphibian troops so if I could start grabbing underwater provinces they'd be a real nice source of income. 
gonadic io fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Nov 8, 2019 |
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Nov 8, 2019 20:16
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Ramc posted:What is with this province names on this map though Does this answer your question? 
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Nov 8, 2019 21:34
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Ramc posted:am i famous enough to have a province Sorry, no. Here's all the names: https://pastebin.com/yY7YxNhU There is "Lilli Heights", "Jb's Jaunt", and "Baalz' Haunt" though.
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Nov 8, 2019 22:49
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Squalid posted:presumably you have to play with the guy who made the map to get a province named after you They of course named one for themselves too, and in fact (minor spoiler) it will actually be one of the last unconquered provinces left on the map
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Nov 8, 2019 23:40
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Turn 5 Unfortunately I failed to save this turn so no screenshots. We'll just move on and pretend this isn't a problem (especially not one that happens more than once). At least this update won't break any tables and we'll be back to normal next turn. Still no bump with Fennoscandia, dammit! I want to paste their troops without the hassle of committing to a war. My clown expansion force lost one of the giant clowns when he got slightly ahead of the others and got hit by a charge from 5 heavy cavalry at once. The mage and 4 remaining troops just continue heading west into Arco's Folly. I also renamed the thirteenth clown in case he made it into the hall of fame, he's now Febrile And Wiry. My unicyclist force takes the small candle province losing only 1-2 unicyclists and a juggler. They're being so effective at expansion in fact that I'm going to split them into two squads - one heads north back into Iseenu Beforest since there's no indie province they can reach this turn and one heads south into Land Of Milk And Honey. I did win the contract of Shu'guu the Ichtyid mercenaries, that lake is going to be all mine! Underwater provinces aren't the best but there's roughly 10 of them in that lake so it'll add up. Since I wasn't actually next to the lake I hired them in a province that was 1 away meaning that this turn they'll take a shortcut through a province that's reporting a measly 30 militia. I know I've previously decried how bad generic amphibious troops are but there's 25 of these bad boys who also have nets and they'll easily cut through their number in militia. As an added bonus the province that they're taking further boxes Fennoscandia in. I also have a new expansion force leaving Kirkostaculis: 5 giant clowns lead by the thirteenth clown Blood Curdling. They're also heading west into Nile of Al'Nook. Finally we have news from discord! quote:[10:37 PM] Xanrick: Well a horrifying truth has reared its head in mods 3, Karanaac is my neighbour, right next door. I'm U, and possibly able to rush them down to save us all. Do I go for it? gonadic io fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2019 00:29
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Turn 6 And we're back in business! gonadic io posted:I know I've previously decried how bad generic amphibious troops are but there's 25 of these bad boys who also have nets and they'll easily cut through their number in militia. Good news I did win this fight with the amphibious mercenaries and gained access to the lake. Bad news:  Are you loving kidding me. They were militia! At least my other expansion went well, taking 3 provinces this turn with minimal losses    I'm not going to go so detailed into these battles as I did before but note the druid friendly firing one of his guys and two militia making it all the way to the thirteenth clown Febrile And Wiry, only to have this happen:  Turns out that even small clowns are pretty good against humans! One reason that the larger bless is so nice is that it makes regular ol' clowns size 3 so that their comically large kicks work on size 2 people i.e. most troops. We also got to see Fennoscandia's troops in action this turn including their bless. Looks like they've got a decent sized force and those trolls are one shotting militia too. Their bless is 15 shock res, 15 poison res, poison weapons, 4 defense, and 4 strength. The poison resistance is great for their foul vapour mages, the shock resistance is never bad but the defense and poison weapons and strength looks like they're trying to make their cap sacreds work. I do NOT think that's a good idea for reasons I've spoken about previously. We can see some more of their dominion too, they are running order, sloth, death, luck, and magic. Just imagine if they didn't have water or earth bless, or only 4 nature, and instead had growth scales! Earth is nice to have on a pretender when you don't have access to it but the water seems wasted to me.    On our west side we've found U's capital as discussed in the chatlogs last turn. Our clown force is actually going to take one of their cap circle provinces, Haerdalas' Grove, this turn again hoping for a bump. As soon as we kill one of the expansion parties of our neighbours we'll be free to take their cap mostly without resistance (or at least that's the theory). I'm a little less inclined to do it to U since they're already fighting Karanaac but I'll take a cap if I can. You can also see a throne province with 130 bear tribe (Marj's Timberland) and another one with 60 cynocephali in (Dragon Dreamcatcher). These dog-people actually berserk (unlike barbarians) and I'm not keen to go into either one of these with just 5 clowns.  Over on the east side the lone merc leader is coming back. I'm only keeping him alive to maybe get somebody else to bid on him but I think actually they just disband so I probably should have suicided him as punishment for being so poo poo. Our force of unicyclists lead by the Emerald Impaler are heading north into Maybe Mountains since I can't go any more east.  You can see we've also met Anglia the other side of Fennocandia, and I start discussing plans to kill Fenno immediately. Anglia are a mostly human nation so will get absolutely wrecked by foul vapours and we agree that Fenno needs to be taken out before they can become a real threat. Luckily they are restricted to just their cap circle so it looks like they've had some pretty poor expansion. I'm actually feeling pretty hemmed in with some of these huge provinces and thrones that I don't want to risk trying for. Just look at that southern throne in the caves! Killing a neighbour would be easier honestly. On the other hand all this trying for clashes with other expansion parties is making me feel like a bit of a bully 
gonadic io fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Nov 10, 2019 |
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Nov 10, 2019 22:04
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Anglia A large lower class working in the mines and factories for the profit of the landlords and propertied nobles huh, good thing times have changed since then! The nation of Anglia are based on the British in the Victorian era, so 1880-1900 pretty much. This is when the sherlock holmes novels were written, with wars in the colonies (including soon-to-be colonies like Zululand) abroad and with the prospect of WW1 still many years off. Mass production of rifles is well underway. All of the nations from this modpack, Firepower, seem a little not-quite-there-yet but the creator Enjoy (who I believe has an account here) has moved on from dominions so I guess we get what we get. Anglia get no national spells or items whatsoever, no summons no nothing. Anglia's defining unit is the humble Foot Guard. Any nation that can recruit sacred troops from every fort gets a decent boost by default and these guys aren't awful. They're relatively cheap with a 10-ammo rifle that deals piercing damage (although less than many bows???) and has the armour-piercing trait on top of that. Sadly in dominions ranged weapons are in a sorry state since any nation with air mages can cast Arrow Fend to cause 80% of shots to just vanish however these guys still have their piercing bayonets and with formation fighter they're no slouch in melee either. Once arrow fend is involved they usually get more effective when they have fired their 10 shots and then charge into battle.  They also get some okay cavalry both heavy and light but there's not much to say about these guys. They're good for attack-rear surprise squads but in general I would prefer to recruit foot guards if I can. The light cavalry get lances for the charge bonus and also you can get 4 other types of light cavalry without lances if you want. Why are there so many horse rider recruitables again?   There's also some camel cavalry for some reason?? These guys get a camel cavalry officer commander too but I honestly see no reason why you would ever recruit them except maybe if you were somehow on some desert themed map? Who knows.  Finally we get Anglia's last troop that they can recruit at any fort: the Maxim Gun. These are great and are like Foot Guard++ (but not sacred). Their gun is effectively 10 rifles at once and with a longer range. Getting two sword attacks makes them still a presence in melee and although it looks like they have 10 hp they actually have 30 since there's two secondshapes that represent the crew members dying off. If any of the shapes survive until the end of the battle then the crew members get replenished to full. You can only get one of these per turn from forts but they're cheaper than a single enormous clown so definitely worth getting every one of these you can.  Anglia also gets some cap-only sacreds in the Household Cavalry which are heavy cav. Sacred heavy cav are always pretty good in dominions because they get both a hitpoint and defense boost as well as the horse's hoof getting the benefits of whatever thunder/fire weapon bless you pick in addition to the rider's attacks. I'm not sure I'd place too much of a focus on these guys but they're worth recruiting even if you won't be able to mass them due to how expensive they are in recruitment points.  The troops I would say are at the lower end of good in the context of mods games, certainly much better than Fennoscandia's. They've got some neat tricks and the fact that they can mass sacreds makes up for a lot of other shortcomings. When it comes to mages Anglia have some very solid options with an okay amount of variety. First off the humble Engineer. These guys have 1E with 2.1 picks from FAWE. This means that 1/16 will have their two picks be in the same path and one in 640 will get +3 in a path. Useful crosspaths too with earth/fire, fire/water, probably others idk. Drain researcher and resource bonus on the mage you'll be massing (which these guys certainly are) are both very nice because it lets you take drain 3 for sure and some amount of sloth. Probably you wouldn't want to go all the way to sloth 3 without an expander since it'd mess up your early game but this explains why they've (presumably) been able to afford barkskin, thunder weapons, and money scales.  Your secondary mage is the medium, with 1xS, 1xD, and a 1.1xSD random. These women are nice to have for some diversity (including the protection against mind hunts) but you probably won't mass them due to your drain scales so you won't be skelespamming that often. Sadly there's no earth/astral cross path in the nation so it'll be difficult to forge crystal coins to get them up to astral 4 for mind hunt. It's unlikely you'll hit the 1 in 40 change of astral 3 too often but the astral 2s can get together and with one casting light of the northern star the rest can soul slay pretty well. Even the S1s can join in by spending a pearl on power of the spheres. They would be efficient gold cost researchers without drain and also have fortune teller so maybe there's an Anglia build without drain in there too.  The cap-only mage is a real nice one, he costs only 3 recruitment points and comes with mason which means you can recruit 1 every turn. He has F1A1E1 and then a +2 pick to FAWE (and another 10% of the same). This means that instead of the scattered randoms of the regular engineer, the great engineer will very often hit A3 for thunderstriking or E3 for legions of steel/strength of giants or F3 for, presumably, throwing fire at people better than a lesser fire mage could. They can also bladewind but with your troops that just seems like more of the same and is not that interesting. He's also less than 200 gold! This guy is definitely undercosted and is what moves the nation from passable to not actually bad.  All the other commanders are just random leaders of your troop types (admittedly with good leadership) except for the detective which seems to mostly be a Sherlock Holmes reference which is weird when there's a hero who is even more of a reference so who knows. I mean victorian brits also had lots of actual spies so I don't know why they made a detective the spy. Whatever.  The only non-mage commander that's interesting is the Light Artillery. These guys are pricey at 200 gold but get an AOE 5 cannon shot (firing every other round) which I believe also ignores arrow fend. They get a secondshape just like the Maxim guns and three melee attacks. For some unknown reason they have full slots so you can even put a shroud on them! I have absolutely no idea how the cannon blasts interact with thunder weapons but probably pretty well. They have 40 leadership, a huge siege bonus of 30, and are only 1 recruitment point to round it all off.  In short Anglia isn't doing any crazy poo poo but having 1) a recruit anyfort sacred, 2) solid drain mages, 3) a good cap mage means they pass the test that Fennoscandia failed. Not to mention the wacky poo poo you can get up to with thugging out light artilleries. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Feb 7, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2019 21:31
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atelier morgan posted:
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Nov 11, 2019 22:20
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atelier morgan posted:I've done this accidentally already, one of them picked up a bow of war as loot and it didn't disable the cannon At least they don't have strength added *cough* pokemon *cough*
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Nov 11, 2019 22:42
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Turn 7gonadic io posted:My unicyclist force takes the small candle province losing only 1-2 unicyclists and a juggler. They're being so effective at expansion in fact that I'm going to split them into two squads The good idea fairy is coming home to roost with this one. The split squads have taken a lot more attrition than they would have together and they've still only been able to average 1 province every other turn each anyway! Case in point was their battle this turn in Maybe Mountains where almost all of the unicyclists died and now I'll have to recombine the blobs anyway.   In Haerdalas' Grove, U's cap circle province, we cleared out some more druids and dark vines for them. Aren't we such a good neighbour! We lost a clown due to a bleeding spell from the druids unfortunately, now I was kind of wishing I'd taken regeneration bless. N10 for larger and regeneration would have been incredibly pricey (but pretty funny). We also got some cool events this turn! 500 gold and some nature gems is not bad at all. Finally we were successful on our bid for Obscuro The Illusionist, the mercenary mage. Obscuro 1) sounds like he would fit in at a circus, and 2) gives us our first research points in the game, on turn 7. Our research has been literally 0 so far, and will continue to be dogshit for a while. Every mage that we produce (every 2 turns) immediately gets given a posse of giant clowns and sent out into the world.  Talking of sending clowns out into the world, Brazenly Breathtaking the Thirteenth Clown is once again taking an extra big squad of 8 clowns and is heading north into the lizard province, Greevil's Bog. Since lizard warriors can be scary he's going to take along one of the unicyclist squads to use as chaff. "But Gonadic IO" you say, "since you have your prophet is there anyway wouldn't it have been better to use Divine Blessing on him instead of wasting the Thirteenth Clown's script on it?" Yes. Yes it would have.  On the east side we're pretty much expanded out already. We can't go any further without going via Fennoscandia's cap circle which admittedly is certainly an option. Our route into the caves is blocked by the hefty throne on Shattered Nap. I certainly don't want to take this any time soon as each enormous clown is very precious to me and I'd lose too many.   On the west side it's a pretty similar story. There's another of U's cap circle provinces we could take, or a province with 60 angry dog-people in, or there's a throne with 200 fire snakes. We meet both U and Eljudinar in that direction. I had really hoped not to be next to the cold ghosts but there you go. At least our dominion is pretty pushed out in that direction so we don't have to worry about their cold/death scales just yet. The only place that we can still expand is north past the lizards so our forces regather to head in that direction. Maybe we can get a bump with Ejudijnar although I'm much less confident that it'd go well for me.  Talking of U, we have one of their cap circle provinces. In general it's a declaration of war to be holding onto opponent cap circles so I agree to give it back to them - I get 60 gold per turn that I hold it so I sneakily put 1 PD in to stop U from sending just a single scout to claim it back. Thanks to the gold event we are even able to 1) start a fort in Jessica's Oasis which has a nice high amount of recruitment points so I can afford maximum clownage, and 2) start to recruit one of these big boys:  Ancient Clowns are what really rounds off this nation. Their randoms are two picks of A/W/S, and one pick of F/A/W/S which in practice means they roughly average out to A2W2S3. A 7 path mage with holy 3 and also decent stats for 550 gold is a pretty good rate! Normally they're a pitiful size 5 but larger works well on them too giving them a total of 72 hp! Great thug chassis, great casters, good randoms - they are top notch. Every one of these I lose will be very painful. The high astral gives them another use that's not immediately obvious: magic dueling rocks. Karanaac are pretty vulnerable to magic duel because even the boosted elder stones actually count as just S1 and an S3 or S4 can sweep them away easily. It is, of course, high risk high reward since there's still a pretty good chance to draw or lose the duel. In summary I'm feeling pretty happy about my position so far. The map feels much tighter than I was expecting but my two immediate neighbours are both pushed up to their cap circles and I have a decent chunk of the bottom of the map. Between me no longer needing mages for expansion and my second fort coming online I'm hoping my research will start to pick up. I head to evocation 1 immediately which makes clown mages at least a presence in combat and then construction 2. With my plentiful air mages I plan to have several Air Quills (cheap research boosters) on production for pretty much the entirety of the game. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Nov 13, 2019 21:20
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PurpleXVI posted:So I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what U is about, but what about Eljudnir? They seem to be like a slightly different-flavoured Lemuria, as far as I can tell. Next post will be a nation summary for them
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Nov 13, 2019 22:04
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Eljudnir Unlike the previous nations we've looked at, Eljudnir is much more representative of the "typical" dominions mod nation. There's a good amount of national spells and items, some broken mechanics, some dumb mechanics, and some powerful (-ly underpriced) mages. The Wraith is the "default" Eljudnir troop. They have low protection and fire vulnerability but also cold protection and cold power. They're pretty scary to fight in cold 3 and aren't even too pricy - getting even cheaper in death dominion. Their stats in general are nothing special but it's their weapons that are the important part. First off is your standard life drain attack which takes HP from the target and gives it back to the Wraith. Secondly though is Blade of Woe which is part of a class of weapons that Eljudnir has which all apply the effect Touch of the Netherrealm on hit. Touch of the Netherrealm means that in addition to the weapon's normal damage, it also deals a bunch of armour piercing magic damage with has a chance to raise killed enemies and has strength added to its damage so it's actually just a double damage modifier. It can be negated with a hard magic resistance check but this mechanic catapults Eljudnir from having reasonable troops to having some very scary ones. If they had some massable sacreds that could get double effect from a strength bless they'd be terrifying but luckily that's not the case.   There's also a few variants of these guys that get shields instead of the lifedrain, all with slightly different weapons but that apply Touch of the Netherrealm  There are recruitable ghost troops, the Sanctified Dead but I'm not sure I'd recommend them. Like most ghosts they're ethereal and floating and can't actually directly hurt people, instead causing fatigue and fear in enemy soldiers.  Finally for non-cap troops there's the Nighthaunt but I don't see much use in these guys either. They are stealthy which is nice but assassin doesn't do anything for troops. Instead of having Touch of the Netherrealm they cause disease so I guess you could use them as "assassin" squads that try to strike if your opponents are moving vulnerable mages around without troop support?  Their cap only sacreds are a real house with high defense and both cold and death power. In province with cold 3 and death 3 they have twenty four defense! In contrast Vanheim's Vans have a "mere" 19 (but have glamour admittedly).  Overall Eljudnir's troops are deceptively good. If you try to fight them in their cold dominion and don't bring a bunch of fire mages you're going to have a real bad time. Thankfully with their sacreds being cap only (or there is a conj 7 summon) I wouldn't put them into the crazy strong category. The Shadow is Eljudnir's "scout". They're very scary assassins because they have 2 weapons and each applies Touch of the Netherrealm which once again has strength added so they effectively are attacking for 4x12 damage per round. Add this to their cold power for +3 attack and defense and flying to bypass defenders and you have a pretty lethal assassin if it's cold. They were actually only 1 recruitment point in the base mod but our mods game tend to make all assassins a 2 rec point minimum.   Next is the Unholy Announcer. At first these look just like generic commanders with 80 undead leadership and they can also summon allies to get a few skeleton troops a round including horses and bone horrors. Then you look at their ranged weapon. Yes that is a 100 damage AoE 5 weapon that has magic resistance negates easily and raises killed units as skeletons, what the gently caress! These guys expand really well with just a few of them and are great supporters to regular troops since their weapon can't even friendly fire fellow undead. They certainly drop off against players pretty quickly since there are ways to boost magic resistance but holy poo poo.   You can see what one single fire of their weapon can do:  The Revenant is a pretty standard dominions mage by comparison with 1 water 1 death and then a random of 1x water or death. Cold power, cheaper in death, you've seen this before but in death 3 they cost only 95 gold for 11 RP! That's a really good rate and gives Eljudnir some pretty strong research. The ones that get the death random are pretty good in a fight too with the classic horde of skeletons and they're not affected by rigor mortis either.  The Ancient Lich is the pricier option but is accordingly more powerful - for only 180 gold in death 3 scales you get water 2, death 2, and a random of air/water/death. The air magic is key for this nation because it means you can cast arrow fend later on and then your troops won't just get invalidated by, say, a hail of thunder weapon rifle bullets or strength 30 pies.  In the cap you get the Dread Lord who is notable for actually having decent armour (22 in cold 3) and also causes fear but is honestly seems a bit useless to me. Their weapon causes a fear effect instead of Touch of the Netherrealm which is worse because it doesn't have strength added. As an aside this proves that the modder knows that you don't have to add strength to weapon effects so Touch being so good is an intentional choice.   The cap mage is the terrifying Dread Lich who has 1A 3W 3D and a random of one more of those for a mere 320 gold in death 3. They passively summon some chaff too but it's reasonably rare so not a huge deal. These guys are terrifying thugs with a built-in banefire shield (2 AP damage every time you take a swing at them) and access to mist form, soul vortex, and liquid body/skeletal body.  The items aren't really anything special: a few start of battle spells, an armour that gives +3 cold protection and cold power that stacks, one which turns living commanders into undead ones (by killing them and summoning the commander). The spells seem cool though! In addition to the anti-thug affliction causing one posted previously there's also Blizzard at only evocation 3 that deals 3+DRN cold damage in AoE 15, with fear damage and doesn't affect undead either.  There's a fairly forgettable remote attack spell that summons 20 of these guys:  You can summon these guys with banefire decay bows 20 at a time for 10 death gems:  You can (and should) spend 25 death gems on one of these per province. They have inspiring research 1 (which doesn't stack with multiple), spread dominion and also summon skeletons a few per turn.  They start with a hero that at first is fairly poor but has about 30 promotions and after a few years in game becomes this beast if you can manage to avoid getting them killed:  To summarise Eljudnir are great and probably better than the modder actually intended them to be. They have some pronounced weakness in that their troops become fairly poo poo if you managed to push back their dominion with your hot one but once they start spamming battles with horde of skeletons and rigor mortis even that becomes a tricky proposition. They're not as great offensively for this reason too but I would not like to be the one trying to storm that capital. They actually also can summon some homesick cap only troops to make taking it even harder but they're not massively relevant so I haven't shown them here. Eljudnir and Anglia are both examples of how undercosted mages can take nations up a tier even when their troops are a little tired. Also just like how Light Artillery should not have full slots, Touch of the Netherrealm really should not have strength added. Luckily there's not too much in the way of sacreds to break this in half but even as-is it's very powerful. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Nov 16, 2019 |
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Nov 16, 2019 21:41
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PurpleXVI posted:I don't get the cheaper-in-Death for Eljudnir, would they ever NOT want to have Death 3? I wasn't clear - it doesn't actually turn that commander undead it kills them and summons a generic undead commander in their place
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Nov 16, 2019 23:05
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Enjoy posted:Having armies of Stormtroopers and Victorian Redcoats shooting at each other is fun Watching a sith spam Horde of Lightsabers was an eye opener for sure
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Nov 18, 2019 00:20
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Turn 8 We're in the last few turns of expansion now. Giant clowns once again rip through a few indies  although this time something slightly interesting happens. After taking the militia apart the clowns decide to, instead of just running at the archers, engage in a ranged duel with them. A barrage of pies vs arrows follows and, well, let's just say it didn't go well for the archers. I can only assume that a magically enlarged pie thrown by a size 5 clown is roughly the size of a size 2 adult human.I looked in the manual and this was the only reference I could find on what sizes meant: quote:1 = hoburg  This squad heads back south to finish off some of the smaller provinces we've previously skipped. We also finally take our cap circle province with the lizards in. I would like to place a lab and temple here at some point to pick up that sweet sweet nature access but am spending so much on enormous clowns that I don't have the cash just yet.  Last turn we agreed to give U back their cap circle province but recall that it gave 60 gold a turn so it would be nice if we kept it a few more turns if we could. As hoped for, U tried to take it back with just a scout and I messaged them saying "oops when I said empty I meant that I just put 1 PD in it reflexively". That's a 59 gold gain right there. Hopefully they won't have forces in place to take it back this next turn either.  We got to see Eljudnir fight this turn! As expected they're massing the life drain wraiths and have their starting hero that needs as much XP as possible.   We get to see their bless too: 5 shock res, 15 fire res, swiftness (1 defense, faster combat speed), 20 undead leadership. What doesn't make sense there is they have only 2 death bless points and 4 is the minimum - they must have an incarnate component and a god that hasn't woken up yet. It's probably decay weapons or undead regen but there's always the chance of something more leftfield. I wonder if reanimator bless stacks with Touch of the Netherrealm?  It's worth noting that they took a barb province with zero losses. It was only 20 barbs, but they're considered one of the harder indie types to take. 3x life drain attacks per square is a hell of a thing.  No real advancements on the east side, we can see Anglia's troops moving around taking all that juicy land that Fennoscandia is selfishly blocking us from.  In the north-west, there's an interesting situation: there's a nice looking province that is 1) equidistant from mine and Eljudnir's cap and 2) both of us have forces next to it. Could we finally be getting that bump that we've been craving? The province is in our hot/turmoil dominion so I'm feeling even better about our chances compared to if it were cold.  Down in the south-west, what's this flag that I see? That's right it's Karanaac. Absolutely the favourite to win going in and U are already gearing up to make a move on them before they can secure a critical base. Karanaac are very hard to kill with huge, tough, powerful, and immobile mages. Literally just giant rocks that can cast spells at you.  We've met all our immediate neighbours now. I'm not scared of Fennoscandia or Anglia, and U isn't a threat until really late game. Eljudnir would be annoying to invade until we had some fire magic online. Karanaac is definitely a midgame threat but with my bless I probably have the edge early on. I'm in chats with U talking about war with Karanaac and one with Anglia talking war on Fennoscandia but I don't know which one I'll commit to yet. 
gonadic io fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Nov 20, 2019 |
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Nov 20, 2019 14:31
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BaronOh posted:Food 200 gold
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Nov 20, 2019 15:24
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I forgot a screenshot from the update sorry, I've edited it in nowquote:It's worth noting that they took a barb province with zero losses. It was only 20 barbs, but they're considered one of the harder indie types to take. 3x life drain attacks per square is a hell of a thing.
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Nov 20, 2019 20:47
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, Barbarians will usually get at least one kill against any non-overwhelming force because even though they rout easy and aren't super-great at hitting things, what hits they actually land will hurt and will flatten many not-heavily-armoured humans in one whack. Ironically if you're facing down karanaac, recruiting some indie barbs with mauls (which are usually considered fairly useless) can be a relatively effective desperation play. Astral shield hurts due to only 9 magic resistance but 3 heavy blunt weapons a square is very real.
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Nov 20, 2019 21:08
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Karanaac Another mod by the same creator as U, AetherNomad, Karanaac also rivals U for how unusual it are to play compared to a normal nation. Unlike U however they're not actually all that complicated to play. I played Karanaac in the first mod nation game (the first one made with Domingler anyway, but more on that at some future time) and won it handily. We'll start talking about the rocks since that's what the nation is focused on but there are also some non-rock options I'll talk about at the end. To explain Karanaac let's just look at the most common "mage".  You'll notice a few things quite quickly: 1) It has 21 protection, which is about as much as the most heavily armoured Ulm knights. 2) It has 3 paths: 1 earth, 1 astral, and 1 nature. Also a 10% chance of a choice from earth, astral, nature, or death. 175 gold for a 3.1 path human mage is about the going rate. Also it has spell singer AND innate caster. Spell singer means it takes half fatigue but takes twice as long to cast, and innate caster means it will continue casting when in combat, when paralysed, when routing, whenever. It's really good. 3) It has 85 hp. 175 gold for a size 6 spell-singer innate caster with 3.1 paths and 85 hp is absolutely not the going rate. 4) It's a rock. It has no attacks and no map move at all. A feebleminded rock has absolutely no way to kill anybody (other than its bless). You need a lab to move. If a rock is in a province with no lab it is stuck there until you pony up the 5) It's a rock. It can be underwater, isn't really affected by poison, swords and spears do half damage against it. 6) Seriously it can't kill anybody without casting and for a lot of the game will mostly just cast poison touch over and over. 7) It costs 2 commander points and Karanaac get only level 1 forts, so takes two turns to recruit. How do you play a nation where almost all your guys can't move? You teleport, a LOT. Karanaac gets national versions of teleport with a 2 province range and costing only one gem - one version exists for earth, nature, and astral. You will be casting this ritual dozens of times every turn and it's incredibly annoying that features like having arrows on the map or being able to press 'Y' to script all mages moving to the province just don't work. Going back to the Arcane Menhir specifically, they're definitely your workhorse rock. They're reasonably cheap and have a good smattering of paths. The "typical" script is to boost your protection even more with iron skin and temper flesh, make it hard to hit you at all with astral shield and body ethereal, and then buff up with blessing. Then sit there and don't die, with the combat AI spamming poison touch until the enemy decides they've had enough and rout. With a pearl you can cast power of the spheres and summon earth power, then spam gifts from heaven. Be very careful with this however as I had multiple rocks kill themselves with it in an otherwise easy fight. Incidentally this spell is why I don't like the Blood Vengeance bless on Karanaac. Next up is the other defining rock:  200 gold for 24 research is both a very good ratio and also an efficient use of commander points. They also get double the effects of the magic scale, so in magic 3 research for incredible rates. The drawback is that you can only research with a number of these equal to your dominion points in a province. They also can't attack or move or do anything at all. In practice these guys are forced to be spread out due to the divine insights limit so they can be vulnerable to raiding. You max them out in your forts of course but then it's often good to get some underwater research farms which are much harder for most land nations to raid. The other non-cap rocks seem kind of unimpressive to me, I didn't really use them much. You have a 100g H1 priest Dolmen, the 150g E1+1xE/S/D/N Wise Figure (this guy is an inspiring researcher so you want at least one in most research farms), and then the pricey Speaking Stone with 3 in earth/nature/astral/death for 250g and 3 commander points. The Speaking Stone is good but not enough better than Arcane Menhirs to justify the cost for most of the game and also bear in mind that the death ones can't teleport and so are completely stuck. It also has drain research if for some reason you hated the idea of using the built-for-purpose research rocks??? I guess they are pretty powerful mages and it's possible I should have paid more attention to them. Having easy petrify spammers in the mid-late game for example is actually quite nice.    Next up are the cap rocks. These are really powerful but you'll be limited on capital recruitment points for absolutely 100% of the game as both of them cost 3 commander rec points so that's three whole turns to get each one. Even on turn 50 I did not have more than 1 research rock in my cap because I didn't want to delay these guys one bit although that was probably a mistake in retrospect. The Elder Stone has 1E1S1D1N base for 400g and some slightly complicated randoms that amount to having +1 to E/S/N, +0.1 D, and then ALSO they become specialised in one of the paths - E/S/N specialised rocks get +3 in that path, and D specialised ones get +1 to all paths as shown on the one below. The main important point is that you often get 4 in one of the non-death paths, and rarely get 5. Death 3 is also pretty rare and valuable - on 1 in 40. You want to recruit enough of these early, maybe 3 or 4, until you get a good spread of the paths, then only pick these guys up again in the late game when you have spells that'll win battles by themselves (although you have to be careful with Rigor Mortis because you can easily gently caress yourself up with a draw). Also note that due to the special magic boost mechanics, Elder Stones count has having only S1 (or 1/3 have S2) for the purposes of magic duel.  The other cap only Rock is the Astral Megalith. These are designed less for direct combat and are more for utility. They produce a pearl per turn and spread your dominion as well as being incredible mind hunters (with a booster) but pay for it by costing a massive 700 gold. Karanaac is incredibly desperate for pearls because it costs one per turn to move any of your rocks so even the starting cap income of 6 doesn't go as far as you'd think. They can also teleport into claiming thrones as well as Divine Blessing everybody in a fight. They're too expensive to really make effective Enslave Mind spammers unfortunately so IMO you'll mostly want them sitting in their cap using their meager research when they're not mind hunting.  Karanaac get two "troops", both rocks. They're broadly similar in that they sit there doing absolutely nothing except being communion slaves. You get a non-sacred one for 20g and a tougher sacred for 50g. 20 gold for a communion slave is an incredibly good rate and it's very easy to max out on 64 slaves giving all mages 6 to all paths. It's worth noting that neither of these troops are "true" immobile and while they have a map move of zero (the blesses don't help) they are allowed to storm forts and break sieges. They also have a bit of fortune teller (the sacred more) but won't often be recruiting enough of them for this to matter. A big line of the sacred troops with fire shield, FSR, and then having communion buffs giving them massive protection, astral shield, and even soul vortex to heal them can actually be really scary. Reverse communions are back! Finally they have death curse which is surprisingly relevant because even if your opponent puts together a smasher thug or two they'll swiftly end up afflicted to all hell.   However recall that all the commanders we've seen so far can't do that, or even move with troops - only teleport on their own. This makes Karanaac really vulnerable to enemies just sitting on top of their forts. If you can get a siege on Karanaac's cap early it can be very difficult for them to break out. How might you use these troop rocks then? The answer is Karanaac's first summon, the Ageless Cromlech. A S3N3H2 mage that's an auto communion master these are also not true immobile and so can actually take troops to kick your enemies off your forts using the national research 0 gateway for 3 nature gems. They cost 30 pearls and S3 to summon and it's worth noting that even just getting an S3 as Karanaac is not at all guaranteed - you need a 1/4 Elder Stone (average cost 1600 gold), or a 1/4 Speaking Stone (average cost 1000 gold) or an Astral Megalith (700g). Early on you really won't want to be spending hundreds of gold fishing for an S3 so often just have to rely on patrolling on your cap on the right turn if an enemy force approaches. Once you get an Ageless Cromlech though they're the main way you'll take enemy forts - load one up with a shitload of slaves and summons (Ogres and Cave Grubs are great for this), and then storm a fort with only one mage. It can be rough, Karanaac much prefer the open field. Also the spell which teleports an Ageless Cromlech with its troops onto an enemy province is unlocked at Thau 5 so before then you pretty much cannot siege down a fort ever. At one point in my game I had rocks sitting secure on upwards of 10 enemy forts that I couldn't really take. A pretty funny thing about the Cromlech is that it has zero item slots so if they turn up to a people's arena they can't be giving a slave collar and cast as normal while everybody else is unable to. Unfortunately they also can't take any winnings home but it's really funny when people forget about this and their champion gets soul slain instantly. I picture the tournament organisers carefully trying to balance these items on top of one of the slabs but they keep just falling off.  The next summon is Karanaac's ace in the hole, the World Shard. For 30 earth gems and an E3 mage you can send one of these into a province. They cast one spell every turn in a fight and that spell is earthquake except 1) only hits half the battlefield at a time, and 2) causes a lot more damage to inanimates. Like the rest of Karanaac they're a bit all or nothing - if the enemy has flying or enough armour on everybody then the World Shard will just kill itself and if they don't they can't hope to ever beat it. In the game where I played Karanaac I put one on the clown cap and after failing to kill it for a few turns they paid the wasps to send one single commander over to deal with it. A wasp extermination service indeed! I found that you want to whip one of these out early to secure a choke point and get everybody scared of them but then hope that the threat is enough to protect you since 30 earth gems is not something that you can afford to throw away very often at all.  If you really need some extra defense there's the Ancient Tumulus. Earth 3, death 3, and immobile even to teleports. These guys sit producing corpse candles and you probably want them only in provinces that are under high threat from your opponents. They're only 15 earth or death gems so you can afford a few of these if you want.  Finally for an incredible 60 pearls you can summon Anu, the Ubiquitous Crystal. You can get other copies of Anu other ways too - it's Karanaac's only hero and you can get multiple copies, you can get it as a pretender, and you can also get a trinity of it as a non-awake pretender. Astral 5 base, teleports anywhere, can storm/break sieges - Anu is great. The lack of earth magic means it can be a bit vulnerable in combat unless it's your pretender though. It even has healer (presumably due to being a crystal) EXCEPT that healer doesn't work on rocks and it took me an embarassingly long amount of time to figure that out.  Karanaac get a few important items too, all at const 6 - some +2 (rocks only) boosters for N, S, D, or E to make up for not being able to use the arm/head based ones, and then the incredible Geodetic Rune which allows a rock to cast Teleport even without a lab. If you take a rock pretender (more on that later) you want to get one of these on them ASAP since it prevents them from being stuck without a lab.   Let's talk about not-rocks for a moment. Karanaac get two sources of not-rocks - faeries and marverni tribesmen. The faeries you can recruit normally and get an okay mage and some lovely troops however they all have homesickness 20 meaning they'll die if they spend 5 turns away from the province they were recruited in. I did not bother getting a single one of these but I suppose they can be useful if you need to defend yourself from sieges early or for some site searching.   If having 100% rocks is not your style and you don't want to bother with homesickness than Karanaac can also summon up some sites to let you recruit from Marverni. Both spells require N5 to cast which is not trivial to get, as well as draining some gold per turn and granting resources. The smaller site requires only enchantment 2 and 12 nature gems and lets you recruit the non-cap marverni stuff at the cost of 35 gold per turn - regular human troops, and some cool mages while the bigger site takes enchantment 5, another 48 nature gems, and another 35/turn gold drain but lets you recruit the cap guys including the sacred Boar Warriors.   In theory there's a Karanaac build that uses the bigger site to get Marverni's cap-only troop from anywhere (that you have paid 60 nature gems) and floods the world in Boar Warriors but I don't see why you'd bother personally. IMO the main use of this is to get only the smaller site for some nice mage diversity - the druids (S1E1 with 1xWESN) have mostly the same paths as your rocks but can hold Dwarven Hammers for crafting, the Gutuaters (1N with 1xWESN) can cast foul vapours and the humble Stargazer (just S1) is one of Karanaac's best late game tools since you can really get a lot of them and can fairly reliably have 50+ communion slaves backing them up. One nice thing about the site is that it doesn't require a fort, just a lab, and you end up building a bunch of labs just to be able to move around so putting the smaller site in all those meant that for the cost of 115 gold every other turn you can really pump out the stargazers.    Karanaac's pretender choice is also really essential - some of the pretenders (including the Tirwaz of War and the Morrigna trinity) start off with both marverni sites for a more "typical" early game as long as you don't mind reducing your already strained income by 70/turn. Both 1 and 3 Anus are some devastatingly effective rocks since you'll take earth on them which gets rid of the usual low protection issues that most other Anus will have. Karanaac are dying for early expansion so you might say "let's just take the boar then or what's this Rock Of Ages" and well that's been "balanced" by most typical awake expanders gaining special events with destroy your cap temple and large amounts of your cap's pop. In my opinion the best pretender (and the one that I won with) is the First Dolmen who has mason giving you DOUBLE rocks and is a very scary thing to fight later on. Really your pretender choice depends on how vulnerable you want to be early on so against more experienced players the mason guy is quite possibly too risky, and then also if you want to expand with Boar Warriors or not. If you don't go with Boar Warriors then IMO the fire shield bless is 100% mandatory because otherwise you will really struggle to expand and just forget about fighting barbs at all. Additionally you basically always want fire/shock resistances to prevent the easiest ways of rock-killing (note that Frozen Heart can't be cast on rocks) and also the reconstruction bless so that rocks will heal at the end of the turn.    In summary Karanaac are a nation where either you don't counter them and they stomp all over you with invincible rocks, or you do counter them with high MR to beat astral shield, high strength to punch through stone, and by taking out their labs/forts - then Karanaac feel like they're totally helpless and unable to stop this from happening. Later on even nations with weak troops can use weapons of sharpness, forge smashers, and soul slay/magic duel to counter rocks although Karanaac should have their own tools by then. The vast majority of their fights will be with just a few rock commanders and the troops are generally saved for defense or for having 1 large fort-busting doomstack. Later on having your fort busters be accompanied by 15 stargazers all boosted up to S5 is incredibly hard for people to deal with and mind hunt is an absolutely essential Karanaac tool. This also should explain 1) why I picked the clown bless that I did, and 2) why I'm itching to bring the nation with an OP reputation down a peg. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2019 20:59
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Night10194 posted:Rocks only make sense if led by the Colossal Stone Head. The Colossal Head is an interesting choice of rock pretender. There are two blood blesses worth noting - Blood Vengeance and Blood Bond. However the former is not great when you have precision 5 rocks spamming gifts (and earthquake) plus apparently the creator was scared enough of it that Karanaac actually get -1 bless points so BV requires blood nine. Blood Bond is really interesting since you can get lots of very tough sacreds but I found in practice you rarely got enough of them together to matter plus rocks can't regenerate except for Soul Vortex anyway. During testing I did encounter some weirdness around bond not actually sharing damage fully - when just two rocks were together one took 50% damage as normal and the other took only 25%. It looked like one "share" of the damage just got lost, with 3 rocks one would take 50% and each of the other two would take only 17% each. So maybe there's some strat involving pairs of rocks only taking 75% of damage on average but even then it doesn't seem great - a lot of the time either they can kill your rocks or they can't, it seemed like there's not too many close small battles as karanaac. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 23, 2019 23:35
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V. Illych L. posted:i adore the fact that one of the rock gods is just a *really* big rock. the biggest rock! Being massive, there is nothing left to obtain but godhood.
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Nov 24, 2019 03:47
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I don't know about those books for nerds but this is a real epic reference
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Nov 25, 2019 00:33
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Turn 9 (we return to your regularly scheduled clowns) Once again no "accidental" clashes with Eljudnir (or anybody else) to report. Looks like they're going to be our third neighbour pushed right up to their cap circle which is really nice to see. First up, we stomp all over some indies in Darwin's End. Once again 5 enormous clowns kill 60+ humans with zero losses. They're so good, I'm feeling very vindicated in my bless choice right now. Look at all those numbers!  In our second indie stomp in Dragon Dreamcatcher there's fewer enemies and we have both more clowns and some of the unicyclists too. Surely this would be even easier?  Here's our brave boys - the clowns will fight the militia and the unicyclists fight the heavy inf. No problem at all.  Hmm the unicyclists were on attack rear and have gone zooming off, looks like I'm going to lose some jugglers unfortunately. Luckily some of the clowns have gone after them too and will clean them right up.  Oh...oh no...  god loving drat it  A nearly flawless victory! Clowns: 37 kills, humans: 1. It really sucks when you get random troops snaking through your blocks right into your back line and that really puts the dampener on fishing for bumps with the undead especially since winter has arrived now. We'll go for it anyway into Dikankan since there's still 8 enormous clowns, as well as 15 assorted humans, and I can't actually see any of the undead forces nearby. Maybe they moved back to the cap. It would be really nice if we got this province too as it would cut Eljudnir off from that little peninsula to the east.  U did actually take their cap circle province back this turn, but still was 119 gold so it was well worth it. Their force was a priest and a small amount of sacreds. I was actually pretty tempted to increase the PD again but that'd be grounds for hell-war for sure and 1) I want to maintain my reputation as an honest neighbour, 2) I don't want to discourage U from fighting the real enemy, Karanaac.  We did however get to see their bless:  That's hilarious, just +10 strength! This makes it pretty clear that U is going for the strat with just hordes of blessed freespawn feet (but more on that later). Their attack and defense is still pretty lovely though not to mention that they die in droves so I'm not sure I rate this especially highly. It's especially poor against the fire shield that Karanaac has almost certainly taken. As a matter of fact U saw Karanaac's bless this turn and informs us that it is: shock resist 15, fire resist 20, heat aura, charged bodies, and reconstruction. That's...not good. Fire/shock resistance and reconstruction sure, everybody needs those. Heat aura is pretty suspect as it's surprisingly easy to get draws when your rock is surrounded by sleeping people that it just can't kill quickly enough. Charged bodies is just right out. You often have only one rock per fight and charged bodies triggers only once per unit. It is just a terrible choice. The lack of fire shield makes expansion pretty difficult and We got our first Ancient Clown this turn! Pongy didn't roll fire but A3 is real nice for storm and thunder strike which will be a lot of my mid game battle magic. He doesn't actually have all that much research but we don't need/want to risk him in fights just yet so he's off site searching. First up will be the wastes (Land of Milk and Honey) south of my cap since they have many more magic sites than normal provinces. Plus it's an auspicious name for finding sites.   The Emerald Impaler also heads north out of the cap bringing another 10 enormous clowns and the other unicyclist force with him to reinforce in case of war with Eljudnir. The lack of mage support is annoying but not too bad this early on. We can't afford to buy another Ancient Clown this turn and we don't need any more Thirteenth Clowns for expansion so despite our unfortunate loss we get started on a First Clown instead. Air 1, aStral 1, and then one more of air/astral/fire makes them my main choice for evocation casters. The air 2 ones can storm power/thunderstrike, the astral 2 ones can soul slay, and then fire is a bit unfortunate honestly but has its uses (site searching mostly) or will come in real handy if we fight the frost skeletons. 
gonadic io fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 25, 2019 23:57
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Arcturas posted:Who are your best researchers again? When do you plan to divert mages from expansion and towards research? There's 2 months left on my first fort, I'll go over the options then. In short it's a tie between Fire Eaters at 80g for 7 rp, and Bearded Ladies at 105g for 9 rp. The ladies have the better paths and fortune teller besides so I mostly use them. There's no more expansion but I still value keeping my cap pumping out the 3 or 4 rec point clown mages even if it hurts my research in the short term - they're just too valuable not to. e: but yes my research is still the absolute worst, Obscuro's 11/turn is the only amount I have. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Nov 26, 2019 |
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Nov 26, 2019 00:12
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Ramc posted:it says right in the description that it is paid to the familial hives and ancestor shrines "Look mum! I'm spending money in a store just like a real human!"
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Nov 26, 2019 03:18
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Sage Grimm posted:"terrifyingly funny" as part of the Ancient Clown description has a lot more connotations here, where you it's not uncommon to be surrounded by cosmic horrors that are lured by a weird lantern that whispers knowledge from beyond. Just wait until you see some of the later clown summons.
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Nov 26, 2019 11:40
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That sounds like a half-dead/shroud/Bee Venom Charm time to me! Especially since mods games don't run jbbm
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Nov 26, 2019 20:36
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Heads up: Dominions 5 is 40% off currently for the 2 year anniversary
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Nov 26, 2019 21:52
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Tulip posted:Has anybody made a dogs nation? Like just dogs. Normal dogs like terriers and labradors. Nearly 
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Nov 27, 2019 23:10
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Turn 10 I don't like showing the turn summary normally, I find it quite samey. However this once I'll make an exception:  We finally got that bump we were hoping for! Although it was in a province that was very cold, and only slightly chaotic. Hmm. Well first we get to see Eljudnir's army fight some lovely indies, hopefully it'll soften them up a bit.   Nope, never mind they didn't lose anybody. From the battle report we see that they have 26 wraiths, 1 generic commander, and 1 Demiwrath who is Eolian the irreplaceable starting hero we discussed previously. It's turn 10 so Eolian has a reasonable amount of XP now and certainly isn't the pushover he starts as. So the fight! We see the 28 enemy lined up and facing them are 8 giant clowns, 9 jugglers, 7 unicyclists, and So Intense In His Cuckoo Hostility the lion tamer prophet. Additionally I hadn't noticed last turn but this is a cave province so it's dark. The undead aren't affected by that but I am incredibly glad that I went with lowlight vision instead of poison resistance (I'm sure absolutely no way will that bite me later).   The province is cold 3 and turmoil 1 which means that the average wraith has attack 13 and defence 17 while the average enormous clown has attack 14 and defence 13. 1 on 1 sure a clown would slaughter the wraiths but here in the cold and dark I'm suddenly not at all convinced that 8 clowns can simply land enough hits.   The battle starts as you'd expect with both sides blessing up - undead only have sacred commanders note, their troops are not.  The fight starts with the unicyclists rushing forward trying to get to the back but actually running right into the mass of wraiths. They do not last long at all. RIP those brave boys, they served me well. The undead commander has actually rushed forward into the large mass of large clowns though that's really good for me.  The unicyclists all die quickly, then the wraiths and giant clowns close with each other. The undead generic commander is still managing to hold off the clowns with his 19 defence. Our prophet starts to banish the undead too which don't really kill any but it does stun them.  The generic undead commander is finally killed and you can see some unicyclist skeletons have risen from the corpses and are buffing out the undead numbers. I actually think they help me because it spreads out the wraiths a little  The fight does not go well for me, 1 enormous clown is dead and I killed only 3 wraiths. You can also see that an enormous clown leaves behind an enormous corpse to reanimate BUT since it's not sacred it's a puny size 4 and we can actually still stomp on it comically.   But what's this? Two enormous clowns have broken away from the pack!  Oh...oh YES   Get owned, irreplacable hero and the last undead commander on the battlefield! With all their leadership gone the wraiths file off the battlefield although those hero clowns find themselves unfortunately right in the way  They do not make it out  The final results:  I really thought we were going to lose that for a moment there. I repeat, gonadic io posted:It really sucks when you get random troops snaking through your blocks right into your back line For all my talk about using a bump as an opportunity for war given how easily we could have lost there I immediately talk to Eljudnir's player and agree our current borders. I would be throwing away all my forces if I tried to push the advantage into the cold dominion. Having said that though we do get access to the peninsular and to cut the undead off from it  Our fort in Jessinka's Oasis is finishing this turn and so we construct a lab too - from next turn we'll be able to start recruiting research mages.  It's a good thing too, because Ssason'raha the mantis nation has outbid us for Obscuro and so we're back down to an incredible 0 research on turn 10. At this point I regret recruiting only the slow(ish) to recruit clown mages but I mean what else am I playing Kirkostaculis for? Pongy is site searching now and while I had previously dismissed his research as less important than the gems we still haven't finished one single level of research, not one! I really hope he finds lots of gems that we can turn into research boosters to make it worth it.  Finally we're sending a scout over to Karanaac's lands this turn. How are we doing that when they're half way across the map you ask? That's right it's time to talk about this map's gimmick, the candles. Not dominion candles although that ambiguity did come up several times when talking to the other players. This map is surrounded by 4 large candles which all connect to each other, so that once you get onto one you can very quickly cross the whole map in just 1 or 2 provinces. Although they do look pretty sickly when parts of them are in "snow" and parts of them aren't.  The most important candle right now though is the southmost one, Wax of Waywinkle. It joins mine and Karanaac's lands directly with just two moves! There's a boosted force of Troglodytes and earth gnomes (i.e. earth elementals) and this would be pretty scary to your average human nation who would literally get trampled all over. However it's actually a piece of cake for giant clowns - their size 5 against the trog's size 4 means we even get double damage kicks against them! Karanaac could also just teleport past them but it would be a real galaxy brain play for Karanaac to have predicted that I would potentially fight them like this. Plus I'd much rather fight them in my chaotic dominion than in their presumably order one (they need the gold).  So our scout is just going to see what's what, we're not committing any forces yet. U has said they're going to attack the rocks this turn, we'll see how that goes. Finally we've been quietly recruiting a nice little lake force. It's cost a reasonable amount of our valuable valuable gold on troops that I've previously described as "lovely" and "absolutely not worth spending any gold at all on", not to mention "loving useless". I just have to hope that once we take the first lake province we'll be able to recruit some better ones. They start their march to the lake this turn (they don't even start next to it).  update from discord: quote:[12:31 AM] gonadic io: @weedzmin do you remember if you knew my clown force was there and a potential bump? gonadic io fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Nov 17, 2020 |
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Nov 28, 2019 00:06
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Reminder that this is what he would have eventually turned into:
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Nov 28, 2019 01:02
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Update:quote:[12:31 AM] gonadic io: @weedzmin do you remember if you knew my clown force was there and a potential bump?
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Nov 28, 2019 01:33
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Ramc posted:I think you are deffo on the right track to the greatest joke of all here. Yeah I'm really happy about how this game is going. U, Eljudnir, and Fenno are all pushed up to their cap circle and I have all their land. I'm pretty confident that soon I'll have either Fenno or Karanaac's cap. Hellblessed size 5 giants with good attacks and cool buffs (when the mages are alive anyway) are a hell of a thing. All I need now is some good gold events to make up for my poo poo scales and I'll be golden! gonadic io fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Nov 28, 2019 12:39
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