Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

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


This thread is the exciting conclusion to the Newbad Trilogy

For those new to Dominions, it's a turn-based high-fantasy somewhat-dark strategy game where your galaxy brain strats are regularly upended because a turkey blew up an archangel's brain or a militaman with a katana cut off an extradimensional invader's kneecaps and made it run away while making GBS threads itself in terror. The only thing more dangerous than your enemies and their plots is the RNG and your own hubris. Most of the nations are themed around some real-world mythos or ethnicity, but usually with some sort of interesting twist. Winning is accomplished by killing your enemies, claiming a pre-set number of the Thrones scattered around the map or making the game go on for long enough that everyone else quits out of frustration.

The Newbad games were started up on the SA Dom 5 discord to accomodate new players, those who'd been in few games, and definitely hadn't won one before. The first Newbad was won by Arcvasti as Arcoscephale(the fantasy Greeks) because Kremath hosed up the game settings, the second Newbad was won by OOrochi as Agartha(cave incels carving animated realdolls from stone) because he was the least bad and everyone missed how close he was to grabbing the win.

Dominions is organized into three eras, in descending order of magic and ascending order of technology: the Early Age, Middle Age and Late Age. The three Newbad games are also arranged in that order. Generally most games are set in the Early and Middle Ages because the Late Age has less variety of nations, the nations are a tad more similar(on account of many fantastic beasts having died out or interbred with humans to the point of diluting their weirder attributes) and because the Late Age features a lot of Blood magic which in the vanilla game is a tad broken in places(for this reason, most SA games of Dominions 5 uses the JBBM balancing mod to fix the game a bit, I recommend it).

Since the game is a game of shitloads of unknowns, anything your scouts(or scryers) don't have eyes on you have only the vaguest of knowledge of, this thread will obviously be somewhat "behind" in terms of reporting the action, about 25 turns, because no one wants to give away their hyper-genius strats in time for anyone to counter them.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

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

Pretender Gods & Nations

franchise reboot no one wanted, the God of Mictlan
Θώθ, the God of Erytheia
30 - 50 Feral Hogs, the God of Marignon
Pissed Off Oprah, the God of Utgard
10 - 15 Flushes, the God of Agartha
Danger Noodle, the God of Pythium
Consequences of Global Warming, the God of Atlantis
Punished Master Asia, the God of T'ien Ch'i
"Horned Pony Enthusiast," the God of Gath

Ramc's Judgment of the Gods

Ramc Judges: Punished Master Asia, the God of T'ien Ch'i

Turns: Mictlan

Turn 01
Turn 02
Turn 03
Turn 04, Turn 05
Turn 06, Turn 07
Turn 08, Turn 09
Turn 10, Turn 11
Turn 12, Turn 13
Turn 14, Turn 15, 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, Turn 33, Turn 34, Turn 35, Turn 36
Turn 37, Turn 38, Turn 39, Turn 40, Turn 41
Turn 42, Turn 43, Turn 44, Turn 45, Turn 46
Turn 47, Turn 48, Turn 49, Turn 50, Turn 51
Turn 52, Turn 53, Turn 54, Turn 55, 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

Turns: T'ien Ch'i

Turn 01
Turn 02, Turn 03
Turn 04, Turn 05
Turn 06, Turn 07
Turn 08, Turn 09
Turn 10, Turn 11
Turn 12, Turn 13
Turn 14, Turn 15, Turn 16
Turn 17, Turn 18, Turn 19
Turn 20, Turn 21, Turn 22
Turn 23, Turn 24, Turn 25, Turn 26

Turns: Agartha

Turn 01
Turn 02
Turn 03
Turn 04, Turn 05
Turn 06, Turn 07
Turn 08, Turn 09
Turn 10, Turn 11
Turn 12, Turn 13
Turn 14, Turn 15, 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, Turn 33, Turn 34, Turn 35, Turn 36
Turn 37, Turn 38, Turn 39, Turn 40, Turn 41
Turn 42, Turn 43, Turn 44, Turn 45, Turn 46
Turn 47, Turn 48, Turn 49, Turn 50, Turn 51
Turn 52, Turn 53, Turn 54, Turn 55, Turn 56, Turn 57
Turn 58, Turn 59, Turn 60, Turn 61, Turn 62, Turn 63, Turn 64


Turns: Utgard

Turn 00/Nation Overview
Turn 02, Turn 03
Turn 04, Turn 05, Turn 06
Turn 07, Turn 08, Turn 09, Turn 10, Turn 11, Turn 12, Turn 13

Turns: Gath

Turn 01, Turn 02, Nation Overview
Turn 03
Turn 04?, Turn05?
Turn 9, Turn 10
Turn 13
Turn 22 - Turn 25
Turn 26 - Turn 33
Turn 35 - Turn 38

Turns: Atlantis

Turn 01, Turn 02, Turn 03
Turn 06, Turn 07(sort of)
Turn 08, Turn 09
Turn 10, Turn 11
Turn 12, Turn 13
Turn 14, Turn 15, 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, Turn 33, Turn 34, Turn 35, Turn 36
Turn 37, Turn 38, Turn 39, Turn 40, Turn 41
Turn 42, Turn 43, Turn 44, Turn 45, Turn 46
Turn 47, Turn 48, Turn 49, Turn 50, Turn 51
Turn 52, Turn 53, Turn 54, Turn 55, 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

Turns: Pangaea

Turn 01 through 11

PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Apr 21, 2020

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

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

The first part of joining a Dominions game is to pick your nation and design your Pretender. I played Mictlan in the first and second games, and I'll be picking up the mantle again in this game. Some nations exist in more than one era, as they undergo various historical events and cultural revolutions that change them. Mictlan... uh... doesn't really change much.

In the Early Age they're a bunch of fursuiters themed after the Aztecs who sacrifice blood slaves for holy power and have good usefully varied magic, their main fursuiters are cats. In the Middle Age, they're a bunch of fursuiters themed after the Aztecs who've gotten on the wagon and off the blood, and their main fursuiters are birds. In the Late Age, they're a bunch of fursuiters themed after the Aztecs who sacrifice blood slaves for holy power and have good and varied magic, their main fursuiters are once again cats, but this time they've also got a bunch of scaly frog fursuiters in in their ranks.

This low amount of variance is honestly extremely rare and I think Mictlan is the only one that remains this unchanged.



What we're seeing here is an overview of our recruitable troop options, a general idea of what Mictlan does, any special rules for them and what sites they start with in their capital(your cap sites provide your baseline gem income, gems are used to power ritual and combat spells, as well as forging magic items for commanders).

While most other nations start as cavemen/bronze age in the Early Era and advance to the middle ages by the Late Era, usually fielding crossbows and heavy cavalry, Mictlan fields the exact same shirtless angry dudes in the Early Era and Late Era, with a few small exceptions which we'll get to once the LP starts going properly.

In the Early Age, their strongest magic access is Fire, in the Middle Age it's Nature and Air, in the Late Age it's Water. In all three ages they have great access to Blood magic. The bit about blood sacrifices is also important, because one way to lose is to have no followers worshipping you at all, i.e. having your Dominion reduced to zero. Most nations have a prophet, a god and temples that spread them passively. Mictlan ONLY spreads it by sacrificing blood slaves. On the one hand this means they can spread it more aggressively than anyone else since a single temple can have multiple slaves getting chopped up at once, but on the other hand it means that a disruption to your blood sacrificing in some way, say if someone prevents you from gathering blood slaves for long enough, can put you at risk of getting killed simply due to loss of faith.

The bless bonuses are also nice, every nation gets to create a custom bless that affects their god, their prophet and any sacred units they have, and Mictlan gets bonuses to theirs(though the exact bonus varies by era). This is real good for Mictlan, since most nations can only recruit their sacred units in their capital province, putting a rather hard cap on them, but Mictlan in all three Ages can recruit sacred units in any province with a fort and a temple.

The real "gently caress you" for Late Age Mictlan is that while everyone else has learned to build advanced fortifications(and better fortifications give better economic advantages as well as making you harder to besiege), Mictlan still basically just makes a fence out of sticks and calls it a day, then goes back to getting bloody up to the elbows. On top of that, their forts are also extra expensive, 750 gold rather than the standard 600 gold.



Making your God is the next fun part. First you choose a "chassis," i.e. what the god is. Is it a giant ancient Titan? A weird-looking rock? A ghost? A wicker man that enough people believed in that it came alive and started stepping on people? The old Pantokrator's favourite mug that got delusions of grandeur and has escaped from the cupboard after his disappearance? There are a few universal chassis that almost everyone can pick, some that are split up by "pantheon"(i.e. available to all the vaguely Greek nations, for instance) and some nations have a few just for them.

Some pretenders are amazing warriors right out of the box, others have the advantage of being humanoid(meaning they can equip more boosting items in the late game), others are immobile(real hard to kill, not too expensive, but require magic to move around if you want to use them offensively) and yet others are no big deal themselves, being Just A Dude. Now, why would you pick Just A Dude when you can be a dragon? Because JAD is much cheaper than the dragon, meaning you can buy a stronger bless for your goons and better "scales" for your Dominion. Your scales basically determine your economic advantages and also to an extent what random events can affect you.

I go for a pretender chassis unique to EA and LA Mictlan: The Smoking Mirror. You only see one of his forms here, but he's Just A Dude who can also turn into a giant jaguar. He's also reasonably cheap.

When making him, there are a few things I keep in mind: I want decent scales, I don't expect him to do any fighting, my bless is important, and I need him to unlock some of the magic paths I'd normally have poo poo access to. For instance, I have zero Death or Earth on my normal dudes, so unlocking it here gives me some more options. I also make sure to get him good Blood access since most of the worthwhile Blood spells would require some powerful buffing items to cast with my recruitable mages. Death and Blood is also an important crosspath for Mictlan.

The candle represents my starting Dominion strength, it can go from 1 to 10 and determines how many positive candles you can have in a province, how well your own dominion spreads and also how many Sacred units you can recruit per turn in a province(assuming you have the money, recruitment points and resources for it), and the following symbols are my "scales," determining how idyllic or awful life under the God of Mictlan is.

Order goes up, it helps passively reduce unrest and gives me an income bonus. This is mostly to balance out the Sloth that's next, it reduces my income and how many resources I get. I don't care about resources since they get spent on heavy armor and weapons. My dudes barely have shirts!

Temperature scales? Jacking them up all the way. This is the usual Dominions meta, excepting some nations who do their best in either cold or heat, the economic penalties of maxing it out in either direction are the same. But for most nations, Heat is preferable since it doesn't slow their troops down the way snowy provinces do. Some nations are natively snowfaring or have primarily flying units(like Xibalba, Caelum and Nazca), so they may as well benefit from throwing up barriers to other nations. Mictlan suffers a bit less from heat than from cold, and maxing out the heat prevents winter cold from snowing my provinces up(since the game has passing seasons that can affect the map and some events).

Growth is another +economy scale, and if you maintain it for long enough over the game, provinces you control and have Dominion in slowly get better populated and yield more money and resources.

Luck is because I've gotten burned enough times. Ask people and most will probably go Misfortune 1, either direction means more random events, but obviously the direction it's scaled in determines if those events are primarily good or bad. Good events can range from beneficial temporary scales to huge windfalls of money and gems, while negative events can, at worst, near-halve a province's population while spawning AI attackers that go berserk on your capital.

Magic primarily gives your researchers a bonus, but also affects some events and interacts with magic resistance.

To afford all those, I choose to make my God "Imprisoned." He can either be free, meaning he arrives on turn 1. Dormant, meaning he wakes up on or around turn 12. Or Imprisoned, which means he busts out on or around Turn 36. This is somewhat of a gamble since two of my bless options are "Incarnate Only," meaning that until Turn 36 they're inactive(they'll also become inactive again if my God gets killed and hangs around in limbo waiting to get resummoned).

My sacrificial goons hit harder than usual, are harder to hit than usual, have Undying(which means they can go some distance into the negative HP before dying, though if the battle ends while they're in negative HP they'll die for real if there are no regeneration effects active on them), radiate immense heat that gives enemies heatstroke(and possibly sets them on fire) and they have a Blood Vengeance effect. Any time a unit affected by Blood Vengeance takes damage, their attacker must pass an MR12 check(their MR, Magic Resistance, plus 2d6 vs 12 plus 2d6.), if they fail it, they eat just as much damage as they inflicted, untyped and armor-ignoring. In man vs man combat this likely won't matter that much, but say an expensive enemy mage hits 50 of my holy goons with a "kill ur rear end dead lol"-spell. He has to pass 50 MR checks or he gets pasted in return.

The late game has a decent number of those sorts of shenanigans, so I look forward to that screwing someone over who isn't me.

PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jan 14, 2020

Arcvasti
Jun 12, 2019

Never trust a bird.
This is an extremely powerful pretender name.

If only the pretender himself were as powerful...

Khisanth Magus
Mar 31, 2011

Vae Victus
I have the worst gimmick, I will post it and my nation overview later tonight.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Late Age is probably the least played Age in SAs Dominions community. It'll be fun to see some of those nations showcased.

Snipee
Mar 27, 2010
I look forward to everyone’s gimmicky pretender names.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

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

I am excited for more godly idiocy.

AfroSquirrel
Sep 3, 2011

Pretender Design: Erytheia

Convinced by newbad1 and newbad2 to pick up Dominions 5, I am new to this trilogy. I have previously played 3 and 4 though, with a fair number of losses under my belt including one in howareu's Dom4 MoMoney LP. I picked Erytheia, after first assuming someone had made a mod nation based on Disney's The Little Mermaid and only later realizing that it was an official nation. Just like the lore below says, they're a mix of Arcoscephale and Pelegia. Though they're a nation that starts on land, they are equally at home underwater and generally fare better there by virtue of everyone else being terrible underwater unless they're native to it. Since no true underwater nations are allowed in this game, this will give me some safe refuges in case I get overwhelmed on land.



Most of my commanders are pretty straightforward and some version of them has been seen before, so I'll just give an overview here. You've got your scouts, your troop leaders, some slightly-inferior licensed-for-export mystics and mermages, and some priests (not insane). The interesting commanders are the Daduchos (black robe and torch), super-mystics that are also sacred, Pearl Mages (split-tailed merman), aquatic mages that can convert water gems to pearls at a 1:1 rate instead of the usual 2:1, and finally Prince and Princesses of the Setting Sun (the pair in a semi-Egyptian getup), who are part of an incestuous royal family, sometimes cursed with afflications and always with insanity. Princes and Princesses also have a highly-variable degree of magic talent. For example, the Prince always has at least 1 Astral and 1 Fire, but can also get:


...yeah. Not all royal heirs will be created equal.

The troops are mostly hoplites with varying degrees of amphibiousness which I'll go over later. The notable ones are the Erytheian Crossbowman and the Soldier of the Setting Sun. The first is a soldier with a special crossbow that fires a mere 25 units away on land (very sad), but he has the same performance underwater. Being the only unit with ranged capabilities underwater makes conquering the oceans (or more likely lakes and ponds) an easy feat. The Soldier of the Setting Sun is my sacred unit, statwise a decent heavy infantry on land and a better heavy infantry in water. However, they wield magic weapons (making them a threat to a greater range of targets) and have Sun Awe, an Awe effect that is active whenever they are under sunlight (so not underwater, not in caves, not outside if someone has stolen the sun, etc).

Now it's god time.

Θώθ is one of the 'titan' chassis, full of slots for gear and with a few flavorful traits, but generally not useful for early expansion and being costly enough to usually require sacrifices in terms of scales or bless. However, aside from the pleasant aesthetics of having an Egyptian god for Ptolemaic-Egypt-but-with-Mermaids, he was a pretty good fit for my goals with Erytheia. His traits allow him to prevent a portion of bad events in the province where he sits, increase his own research by 10RP/turn, and increase the research of everyone else in the same province as him by 2RP/turn.

For my scales, I decided to embrace the randomness of my mages with Turmoil 3 and Luck 3. Luck 3 combined with my god's ability to negate bad events should also have the pleasant side effect of reducing the national events Erytheia gets where royal siblings murder each other. Production 3 helps gain back some of the income lost with Turmoil 3 and ensures that I can recruit plenty of hoplites and crossbows. Heat 3 was chosen over Cold 3 because snow is terrible in Dominions, and because it will act as a slight deterrent against the other semi-water nation in this game, which prefers Cold 3. Growth 2 is another boost to income. Drain 1 is normally something I would avoid as it penalizes research and can lead to some very bad negative events. However, easy access to mystics and my god's ability to inspire nearby researchers should counteract the research penalty, and my scales and god's fortune-telling ability will fend off the worst of the events.

Θώθ's magic is Nature 5 and Astral 6, which will ensure access to a variety of summoning spells and forging options I would otherwise not have. In particular, Astral 6 on a human chassis ensures that I can for Rings of Sorcery and Wizardry as well as cast any Astral spell in the game with the right gear equipped. Nature 5 provides access to most Nature magic, though acquiring the gem income to use those spells will depend on good luck with independent mages. With these paths, I bought a bless of Twist Fate and Recuperation. Twist Fate is probably the most generally useful bless in the game for its cost, and in my case will protect my more-expensive frail human mages from at least one hit. It will also give my sacred soldiers a useful boost, as enemies wishing to hit them must beat a decent defense score, a morale check against awe, and then do it all over again next turn because the first hit that passes the first two tests will be automatically negated. The Nature half of my bless is Recuperation, the ability for my sacreds to heal afflictions. This is primarily for the benefit of my Princes and Princesses as the power of my god can now cure their incest-induced afflictions, but it will also help my other mages and sacred troops last longer in the field, as lost arms, legs, and eyes regrow between battles. However, these blessings are both incarnate and require my god to exist in the world, and in order to afford them Θώθ must sleep for a year before waking up.

I'll be extremely weak for my first year in the game, with mostly unremarkable troops and no awake monster-god to fend off threats. However, once that year is up I hope to rapidly advance and use the power of my best and brightest mages to win the day. Due to when this game started, I wasn't able to record all my early turns. So while there will be some commentary, I'll join the LP proper when Θώθ wakes up and surveys his dominion.

AfroSquirrel fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jan 15, 2020

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves
It's good to see Goon Dom5 community still alive. Is Nuclearmonkee still going, was so sad when he stopped uploading his vids.

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

I am Marignon I keep forgetting to save screenshots.

Hello my name is Jack, I was Pythium in Newbad 2, but someone took them before I cleared up if it was okay to register for Newbad 3. Last game about 40 turns in I moved, and after an embarrassing loss on Abysia's cap went into a death spiral. We are on turn 30 and I have some S S but not a lot atm

I suicided into Van gave all my gems and equipment to Lotham and built an underwater fort and went AI role-playing Rapture.

Now my plan is to spread the word of Thirty to Fifty Feral Hogs to the world of Dominions.


Also despite the lies Marignon is not a blood nation it is peaceful and pure. Just ask the friendly inquisitors with their friendly demon bodyguards.

Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Jan 15, 2020

Arcvasti
Jun 12, 2019

Never trust a bird.

Gridlocked posted:

It's good to see Goon Dom5 community still alive. Is Nuclearmonkee still going, was so sad when he stopped uploading his vids.

He's still around, just hasn't gotten around to doing much video stuff lately. He whupped my rear end as Erytheia a couple months ago, even.

Worth noting that your cool sacred Daduchoi start in old age and thus unable to recuperate. Also that the Neter of the Moon doesn't actually have a head slot, so can only get up to Astral 8 without artifact boosters. Which is still a lot, but is not quite Wish levels, which is relevant on Erytheia because they can set up a pretty strong Wish engine if they want to.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

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

Jack2142 posted:

I am Marignon I keep forgetting to save screenshots.

C'mon, Jack, how's Ramc going to judge us harshly, yet hilariously, without a screenshot of your pretender? Do it for the e-fame.

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=

Arcvasti posted:

He's still around, just hasn't gotten around to doing much video stuff lately. He whupped my rear end as Erytheia a couple months ago, even.

Worth noting that your cool sacred Daduchoi start in old age and thus unable to recuperate. Also that the Neter of the Moon doesn't actually have a head slot, so can only get up to Astral 8 without artifact boosters. Which is still a lot, but is not quite Wish levels, which is relevant on Erytheia because they can set up a pretty strong Wish engine if they want to.

Time to cast Transformation until you get something with a head slot!

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

PurpleXVI posted:

C'mon, Jack, how's Ramc going to judge us harshly, yet hilariously, without a screenshot of your pretender? Do it for the e-fame.

Fine



This is a throwback to a more innocent age when Marignon were the Marvenni of EA and worshipped boars and poo poo instead of demons and zombie jesus. I took an awake expander, because I couldn't figure out a good bless to expand early as Marignon in Late Age, and wanted to get as much land as possible as early as possible rather than wait for a stronger bless in Late or Middle game. Also while a lot of people are new, some people have experience and blood nations are usually an early game target so a big monster pretender provides some early game cover against an unexpected rush. (FML this happened in another game and I was out in four turns). This allowed me to expand quickly out of my borders and get plenty of territory to build on which is very important.

As for scales... luck is good in Late Age because reduced gem sites, mean random gem events firing more often are a big bonus. Unrest can generate bad events, but also increased the frequency of events which are weighted by luck scales to be good. So the hope is with luck scales the good events outweigh the bad. Production is here because outside of crossbows all of Marignons troops wear heavy plate armor, Growth 1 will help increase my population a little, I was debating between it & magic or even taking reduced production instead. In retrospect I think I made 2 boars, where one had Prod 3 and the other Prod 2 Growth and Magic 1 and I grabbed this one. Unrest from turmoil is also not as big of a deal imo as I am already going to be doing a lot of patrolling.

For the bless, I took a pretty mild bless to make Flagellants slightly better at eating fire, shock & poison attacks. You can make pretty blessed Marignons troops, but personally I don't think Flagellants are worth a hell bless unless your doing Blood Vengeance fuckery and the Inquisitorial Cap Only troops are not as good as the MA Paladins/Knights at killing stuff. Marignons Crossbows & Pikeneers/Swords/Halbrediers are decent troops, but take some time too mass.

Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jan 15, 2020

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

The boar is good but oh my those other two gods.

Donkringel
Apr 22, 2008

Does heat aura need fire resist to be paired with it to make sure your sacreds don't fatigue each other out?

Also taking your god imprisoned when you have a very scary blood nation... You don't have your incarnate bless and you'll be relying on shirtless dudes who can fight a tiny bit better for 3 years.

I'm glad to see the third LP running!

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer
As the game mod who's been keeping tabs on this one occasionally, poo poo's gonna be wild*.

*ly bad

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

PurpleXVI posted:

C'mon, Jack, how's Ramc going to judge us harshly, yet hilariously, without a screenshot of your pretender? Do it for the e-fame.


Ramc posted:

The boar is good but oh my those other two gods.

:smug:

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012


You forgot to mention that there are unique events for Erytheia where your expensive StR Prince/Princesses attempt to assassinate each other. :v:


Also, uh, not sure Heat 3's really going to deter Atlantis(?) from attacking you underwater, given Heat scales are virtually irrelevant there. For those not versed in Dominions, or those who might have read the manual but haven't done much experimenting in the water (because screw the water AND this isn't actually ever mentioned anywhere), normal UW provinces never go beyond Heat/Cold 1 (at least due to scales), and deep water provinces just stay neutral temperature. Yes, this does mean true UW nations basically get no economic penalty whatsoever for maxing the scale until they get on land.

I'm guessing Atlantis because I'm assuming Lemuria was banned.


Donkringel posted:

Does heat aura need fire resist to be paired with it to make sure your sacreds don't fatigue each other out?

Also taking your god imprisoned when you have a very scary blood nation... You don't have your incarnate bless and you'll be relying on shirtless dudes who can fight a tiny bit better for 3 years.

I'm glad to see the third LP running!

No, Heat Aura comes with built-in Fire Resistance 10. Death Explosion is the Fire bless that doesn't, that you REALLY don't want to forget to add a lot of Fire Resist in too. Heat Aura on a Blood nation does come with the hilarity of your sacred mages occasionally setting their own blood slaves on fire though.

Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jan 15, 2020

Arcvasti
Jun 12, 2019

Never trust a bird.

Donkringel posted:

Does heat aura need fire resist to be paired with it to make sure your sacreds don't fatigue each other out?

Also taking your god imprisoned when you have a very scary blood nation... You don't have your incarnate bless and you'll be relying on shirtless dudes who can fight a tiny bit better for 3 years.

I'm glad to see the third LP running!

It does come with fire resistance ten. And yeah uh that bless is just asking to be invaded and dunked on. The +str and undying are actually sort of substantial on jaguars since their wereform has three attacks and the wereform double-dips undying, but jaguars really need more then that to be good, since everyone else has moved on to crossbows and heavy plate while they're still playing with kitties in the woods.

Khisanth Magus
Mar 31, 2011

Vae Victus
Utgard Overview

I am the person who took over Jotunheim in the middle of a hellwar against Argatha that I was losing. I wasn't sure if the original player of Jotun was going to want to be in newbad3, so I took over their successor in Late Age, Utgard.



Utgard is very similar to Jotun in most ways. They are still a giant nation and their troops are still mostly the same as they were in MA. Their biggest differences are in the area of their mages. I will cover the details of the mages in greater detail once I start doing turns, but in general they have similar paths access as Jotun did, but now they have cheap non-cap mages that make pretty good researchers and also really good communion slaves since they will always have 1 level of astral. They also have good blood access if I want it.

This is Pissed Off Oprah, who is out for revenge for the humiliating defeat at the hands of the dirty cave people of Argatha in Newbad 2.



I could have gone a lot of ways with my pretender. I would be reliant upon my sacred giants for my expansion and a lot of my muscle until I could start summoning troops. I decided to go with the same pretender chassis as the Jotun player in Newbad2. She is a great expander since she has a good hp tool, regen, decent protection, and trample. For a bless I went with something that is absolutely a silly gimmick that is worth mocking me for, but it sounded funny and it would have some interesting practical effects: I went with a Larger bless with my troops who were already giants.



Larger is kind of a weird bless. Unlock other bless effects it doesn't require the spell Bless to make it active, it is always active. It makes your units beefier and hit harder although with slightly worse defence. In my case my giants are normally size 5, so the sacred giants are now size 6 and have 30% more health and +3 strength and the -1 defence doesn't matter much because their defense was poo poo anyways.

The poison resistance is just because I needed something to spend the 2 nature on. It was mainly just in case I happened to need to fight Ctis or another nation that likes to rely on poison.

I took her awake so she will be with me at the start of the game and help speed up my expansion to help make sure I get off to a good start. I don't

Arcvasti
Jun 12, 2019

Never trust a bird.

Lord Koth posted:

I'm guessing Atlantis because I'm assuming Lemuria was banned.

You assumed wrong, but miraculously no one actually picked them anyways. This is a highly virtuous group of players here.

Also huh that's certainly an Utgard pretender. The bless isn't bad per se, but also isn't very strong considering that they have real cool sacreds. Might also not be strong enough to let the big lady expand with, especially in the Age of Cavalry Everywhere. Larger is a really underrated bless in general, but is especially good on Utgard because they lose no attack density going from size 5 to size 6 now that the Vaetti have left. I would personally have paired it with Regen and worse scales though. E4N10 is surprisingly cheap because there are so many affordable E/N chassis', and it's often useful to have a real high nature caster too.

Utgard also just has good normal troops and mages though, so somewhat mediocre sacreds and an expander that likely dies on turn 3 should still allow you to make a good showing if you play your cards right.

Khisanth Magus
Mar 31, 2011

Vae Victus

Arcvasti posted:

You assumed wrong, but miraculously no one actually picked them anyways. This is a highly virtuous group of players here.

Also huh that's certainly an Utgard pretender. The bless isn't bad per se, but also isn't very strong considering that they have real cool sacreds. Might also not be strong enough to let the big lady expand with, especially in the Age of Cavalry Everywhere. Larger is a really underrated bless in general, but is especially good on Utgard because they lose no attack density going from size 5 to size 6 now that the Vaetti have left. I would personally have paired it with Regen and worse scales though. E4N10 is surprisingly cheap because there are so many affordable E/N chassis', and it's often useful to have a real high nature caster too.

Utgard also just has good normal troops and mages though, so somewhat mediocre sacreds and an expander that likely dies on turn 3 should still allow you to make a good showing if you play your cards right.

In all 5 test games I did she survived just fine expanding as long as I didn't send her against any obviously dumb groups of Indies or knights.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

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

What I lack in galaxy brain pretender design, I make up for in galaxy brain game strategies.

Arcvasti posted:

You assumed wrong, but miraculously no one actually picked them anyways. This is a highly virtuous group of players here.

A good number of the players were the same crowd from Newbad1 and 2, and by more-or-less unanimous agreement, people tended to pick successor nations to the ones they played in Newbad2 if they had any Late Age descendants. Since no one played Sceleria, Lemuria wasn't first in line as anyone's pick.

Donkringel posted:

Also taking your god imprisoned when you have a very scary blood nation...

The meta aspect that you're missing here is that almost everyone in this game has played with me before, so I could play one of the Pokemon mod nations in an otherwise Vanilla game and no one would be scared of me. :v:

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




Agartha, Ktonian Dead

Hello! You may remember me as the person who played Pangaea terribly in the first two Newbads. (un)Fortunately someone else grabbed LA Pan before I could destroy them with my terrible decisions again, so I did the next best thing: take the nation of the previous winner and plan to destroy them through terrible decisionshope some of their mojo rubs off on me.

My pretender is nothing really interesting:


Taking a fairly cheap pretender so I could go MEGA SCALES, my plan is to basically use my good summons and decent troops to overwhelm any opposition. I went with cold instead of heat for two reasons: my troops are fairly slow anyway, and a few of my national summons have cold auras that get better in cold scales. The bless, such as it is, is mostly for my old man mages, because LA Agartha's sacreds, while recruit anywhere, are not very good.

Overview:


Agartha has variations on the standard commanders: scout, ok general, good general. They also have three flavors of swordsmen and three flavors of crossbowmen: light, medium, and heavy. Of special interest are the light crossbows, since they only cost 10g 11r 9r, my scales should allow me to poo poo them out like no tomorrow.


Agartha's sacreds are...ok-ish. Decent prot and skills combined with recruit anywhere would make a good sacred, except for three things: high encumberance (so they fatigue out faster), high cost, and they're magic beings (so they can only be lead by mages or their commander version). Needless to say I won't be recruiting these at all.


We also have the Entrance Guards. Same prot, only slightly worse skills, cheaper, and without the annoying magic being tag, they'll eventually fill the roll of mage bodyguard when the time comes.


The real elites of Agartha are these bad boys. High prot and defense, two attacks, and the drake stays after the rider is slain, the only downside to Cave Knights is how bloody expensive they are.


Lastly, we have sappers. I may or may not recruit these to help break forts, but I think that some cave grub summons would probably be more economical.


Starting off out mages, we have the non-sacred alchemists. With FSE and 100% FSED, Alchemists are our main source of the impressive acid spells with are Fire/Water crosspath spells that do damage that doesn't have a corresponding resistance.


Our other non-sacred mages are Ktonian Reanimators. Besides having decent paths for summoning our national undead, they also provide 10 resource each to the province they're in.


Our first sacred mage is the Attendant of the Dead, a simple mage whose main purposes are to be a cheap researchers and to summon some of our national undead.


A step above Attendants are the Servants of the Oracles, who gain +1H and a 100% random of FESD. This means that they can be parts of communions and do some light battle magic or summon some of our better summons.


Lastly, we have our StR cap-only mages: the Ktonian Necromancers. With 1F2E2D1H and 110%FESD, these are our best battle mages, summoners, and communion leaders.

Technowolf fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jan 15, 2020

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
I'm honestly surprised you say LA Agartha's recruit-anywhere sacreds aren't good, my brief experience with them is that with even a mediocre bless and the small amount their commander version can lead, they'll absolutely blender most LA indies and make your initial expansion very painless.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
LA Agartha used to be a skelespam powerhouse nation to be feared, until Dom4 came along and made the Ktonian Necromancer cap only. :cryingpaleone:

e: and nations with recruit-anywhere sacreds are always worth a long think about how you could use them. Some light stat boost minor blesses and one major (say, blood vengeance) with slightly lower scales could be super worth it.

How are u fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jan 15, 2020

Hellioning
Jun 27, 2008

Pythium, Serpent Cult
Hello! I am in this game. I am playing Late age Pythium.


Pythium are a splinter of Ermor (It's Rome backwards and with an extra r), which managed to get out before it collapsed into zombies. Late Age Pythium is is focused on the titular Serpent Cult, meaning I have lots of nature magic. However, we also have many other cults, meaning I get basically every magic path at low levels somewhere. This honestly isn't all that great. Sure, I have a 25% chance of getting blood 1 on a single one of my mages that I can't recruit in forts, but that isn't all that exciting. Do you know what is exciting though? Hydras.


These things are beautiful and I love them. We only get one per turn, only in my capital, and they are very expensive, but they are still big, strong, and have five attacks and a poison aura that just passively kills things near them. They also have regeneration, which is nice. However, their heads can get cut off, and it takes a while for them to grow back. That makes them useful and cool, but not something that people would build their entire strategy around. Except for me. Did I mention this was my first multiplayer Dominions game?


So here's my god. It is a snake, both because A) I wanted to keep on theme (what kind of serpent cult doesn't worship a serpent?) and B) I wanted water/nature crosspath, and the other two options were a human mage and a titan that doesn't really do much. Still, he's a pretty okay giant snake. Big, scary, has venomous fangs, and fully amphibious, so it can go underwater without penalty. It is nowhere near the top of the heap of giant monsters that want to expand, but you could probably do it okay.

But I didn't take it awake to expand, mainly because I needed the points for my blessing. I have quickness and regeneration. Quickness means that my sacred units (read: hydras) move and attack twice as quick. This means that in the same space a regular human (or my god) attacks once, my hydras can attack 10 times, and they are far faster than a giant snake-lizard monster has any right to be. Regeneration stacks with their natural regeneration, and hydras have a bunch of hit points, so that's even more nice.

That being said, having to take water 10 nature 7 costs a lot of points, so I needed to dump my scales. Only dom 4, order 1 (because I had extra points and wanted to have money), sloth 3 (because hydras don't need resources anyway), heat 3 (hydras and my god are cold blooded, so cold is extra bad for them), growth 3 (because money), misfortune 3 (because I needed the points), and magic 1 (because quickness needs magic one). These are no good, terrible, awful, very bad scales. They are not fun.

Khisanth Magus
Mar 31, 2011

Vae Victus
In dom3 the concept of "limited recruitment" didn't exist, so you could recruit as many Hydras as you wanted and could afford. This made them much more feasible as an LA Pythium strat. The JBBM mod removes the limited recruitment at least for MA, not sure about LA, but since we are playing vanilla here you are stuck with the poor 1 per turn.

Hellioning
Jun 27, 2008

Just checked, it is also removed from LA Pythium.

Now I just need to wait for someone to make a LA game with JBBM...

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
Oh my that is a bold Pythium build. Rooting for Pythium now.

Dance Officer
May 4, 2017

It would be awesome if we could dance!
misfortune 3 is always nice to see.

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

Hellioning posted:

Just checked, it is also removed from LA Pythium.

Now I just need to wait for someone to make a LA game with JBBM...

Yeah but you should be picking the other cults in JBBM pythium

Snipee
Mar 27, 2010

Hellioning posted:

These are no good, terrible, awful, very bad scales. They are not fun.

:allears:

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=

sounds like the voice of somebody who has experienced 25 turns of those scales

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe
Pythium is going to die very horribly, but I so want to believe.

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

I, too, love the hydra

Vauron
Aug 7, 2016

Take your stance
I will give you one fair chance
So let's make this dance a bloody masquerade
I see only incarnate blesses there. I'm not sure if your snek was sleeping or imprisoned, but that is not ideal if you wanna rely on your sacreds. I suspect you've learnt a painful lesson for this. I'm certainly rooting for you, but I see lots of red flags.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe
Snek seems to be sleeping, which isn't a horrible choice since it's gonna take a while to mass up hydras and Pythium has solid line troops for expanding.

Or at least they would have if somebody hadn't completely tanked their scales.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply