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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!

Elite posted:

*rolls*

*sighs*

"Devourax the Terrible - The Blighted One, Eater of Hope, Hatebringer, Keeper of Vileness and Lord of Despair - is smitten by your flirting attempt and pledges his dire brood to support your cause"

I once put the Amulet of the Doppelganger on the Eater of the Dead, a literal mountainous pile of rotting corpses, and used him to make seduction attempts against enemy commanders.

Somehow they all failed.

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Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

PurpleXVI posted:

I once put the Amulet of the Doppelganger on the Eater of the Dead, a literal mountainous pile of rotting corpses, and used him to make seduction attempts against enemy commanders.

Somehow they all failed.

Must be the aftershave.

Mr. Locke
Jul 28, 2010

PurpleXVI posted:

I once put the Amulet of the Doppelganger on the Eater of the Dead, a literal mountainous pile of rotting corpses, and used him to make seduction attempts against enemy commanders.

Somehow they all failed.

I can only imagine this working as the giant pile of corpses just chanting 'One of us! One of us!' at their enemies.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.

PurpleXVI posted:

I once put the Amulet of the Doppelganger on the Eater of the Dead, a literal mountainous pile of rotting corpses, and used him to make seduction attempts against enemy commanders.

Somehow they all failed.

Makes me wish he’d keep that ability if he went rogue. Imagine that running around totally uncontrolled.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Mr. Locke posted:

I can only imagine this working as the giant pile of corpses just chanting 'One of us! One of us!' at their enemies.

Nah, with all those bodies, there's got to be something for everyone! :v:


:vomarine:

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous

CommissarMega posted:

Nah, with all those bodies, there's got to be something for everyone somebody for everybody! :v:


:vomarine:

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!
Mictlan
Turn 32



People called me a madman for revealing my incarnate bless on an imprisoned pretender before it went live, well this shows them, because my God wakes up literally the turn after I made the announcement by starting up this thread. Fate wills my victory, or at least that my defeat be particularly cinematic.

Much belated, but I'm also starting to finally cash in enough blood slaves to be annoying with them.





My initial wave is just a fat stack of sacreds and some goons to bless them, since I'm way behind on my research and can't actually offer any noteworthy mage support yet. In this screenshot it looks like I'm going to attack, but I actually end up delaying it by one turn, primarily, if I remember right, because I wanted TC to attack first and take the brunt of the retaliation.

Turn 33




Late turn 32, Marignon realizes that he's facing a multi-front invasion. I make a plea to him that if he bribes me sufficiently with territory, I'll go away, but he was (literally) having a bad day and told me to go to hell. Considering that it'd be two games in a row that I extorted him, I can somewhat understand this.





I also swear, this is the unluckiest Luck 3 game I've ever had, what in God's name is going on here? Losing my cap temple also really sucks because I have good cap-only sacreds(Eagle Warriors) and all of my worthwhile mages(except as communion fodder) are also cap-only and sacred. Oh and of course it also forces me to take a turn off blood saccing, thus slowing my dom growth.



And this turn I'm actually attacking, while shipping some more goons up to the front. Jack is a pretty competent player, so I halfway expect him to dunk me pretty hard if I don't convince him to let me sell out quickly.

Turn 34





Pretty much the expected result.

Hitting Construction 4, I can also finally make Sanguine Dowsing Rods, thus actually engaging my blood economy. It'll still be a lot of dice rolls, but now they'll be loaded in my favour.



All my B1's get to make themselves some goon-finding sticks.

And after my win, I finally convince Jack to let me sneak a couple more provinces unopposed and in exchange I'll go away. Now I just need a good excuse so TC won't get too angry, how about... oh, yeah, ha ha, imagine if those big Pan stacks on my border were actually planning to attack me and I had to fall back in a panic to defend myself!

I hit up Pan and tell him I'll pay him some nature gems to march up and down my border and pretend like he's preparing for an attack so it'll fool TC.

He then tells me he's actually planning to attack.

gently caress.

I've got no image of my troop movements but they're basically "ALL YOU ASSHOLES GET BACK RIGHT NOW."

Turn 35

For Turn 35 I'm lacking an overview image to start things off with.



Ah, all-caps global messages, the sure sign of someone who's going down but wants to have fun with it.






So, let's analyze the Pangaean assault.

His main forces have pretty bad mage support, and really the only thing I fear is a mass attack by Stymphalian Bird swarms on my own back line somehow loving things up. He also did the very reasonable thing of trying to get in some dryads for assassinations/seductions, but against a blood nation that was kind of doomed to failure from the word go. It's a shame no one told him that.



I also got one of my frog bishops horror marked while trying to empower him in Blood, that's a thing that can happen with Blood empowers, which means that whoever you were buffing up to be a real sick badass might suddenly get eaten by a flying brain. Don't empower in blood, guys, just give them boosters instead if you can in any way help it.



So the bad news is that Pan has more or less cut me in half, but the good news is that the non-cap side he cut off holds more or less my entire army, so they should be able to fight their way back to safety. I expect to evacuate Dunheim, the farm province, entirely, since my goons aren't mobile enough to protect everything, I'm going to focus on just holding my core provinces. That way I should be able to keep my blood economy intact and gently caress his day up.



The worse news is that I've only seen about half of his total forces invested so far. He might have a more competent troop of forest losers kept in reserve.







Looking more closely at his troops I also have no idea what he's doing with them. No boosters in sight, no nature gems on the Pans who could use them to Swarm, Creeping Doom and Howl to great effect, and tons of gems wasted on the Centaur Sages. Perhaps I'm missing some hyper-genius strat here.



He does at least seem to have realized the threat of an Attack Rear command to his commanders, however, so it won't be quite that easy.




His bless is unimpressive but effective, make his goons punchier, make them able to hit Ethereal enemies. Not sure how I feel about that last one, I'd probably have invested in that if Lemuria was in the game, but otherwise no one's likely to be able to mass a large force of Ethereal troops. If I had spare Astral points I'd likely have dropped them into MR instead.




His Dryad seducers make a bit more sense, but oddly enough none of them ever cast Swarm. I'm not sure if being patrolled out breaks scripting or what.

Turn 36



Let's put some of those blood slaves to use, shall we?

I've never bothered with Serpent Fiends before, but on paper they might be useful. Jaguar Fiends are, of course, Ozelotls which, being sacred, will be real spooky when they dunk in on Pan's loser troops.





Pan still sending in these swarms of, quite frankly, loser mooks that I'm completely unafraid of. Where's the real army, man?



The plan now is to spend another turn summoning as much bullshit as possible, let him drop on to the province and wipe out the PD, then break siege and crush his unified armies before evacuating everyone to safety. If it turns out that was really everything he had, then it would be a good time for a counterattack, but as cocky as he's been talking, I strongly doubt it.

One good thing about the basic Ozelotl-summoning spell is that Mictlan Priests can random into F1, and if they're F1B1 they can cast it, so it's very accessible and since it doesn't scale with skill, you have no reason not to let them cast it. Of course, once you can, you want to cast Rain of Jaguars instead, since it gives you a better return on Ozelotls for your blood slaves.



Another reason to lure in Pan's troops for a big battle is that next turn I'll have access to Howl, and long battles between big armies are exactly when Curse of Dog is a great spell for clogging up the battlefield, confusing enemy scripting and intercepting fleeing enemy commanders.



Up north, Marignon isn't getting much respite from my being forced out of the fight, TC is still going all-in on dunking him out of existence.

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

This does not seem to be best practices dryad use.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.
Atlantis Turns 32-36

Turn 32



No actual fights this turn, though I do get a good chunk of research done. Marignon didn’t leave any PD in Ebys, so I just took it.



I also got a solid chunk of gold from events. A slave collar (which automatically removes any magical abilities the wearer has) too, which is less useful.



In the west, I move my small force back to annoy Marignon proper. While they seem to have some good armies spread out, there doesn’t appear to be too much around the cap.



And in the east I keep going after more of Mari’s territory. I also have a small-ish group coming from Mag to defend the Cursed Land, in case Marignon decides to go south instead.



Here’s my current research situation. I still don’t have the greatest feel on research rates overall, but I feel like I’m doing pretty well right now. I’m running up the Alt tree to get some resistance spells since Mari has a lot of fire magic, then it’s up Ench to get my special remote assassin spell, and then back up Evo for my biggest battlefield spells.

Turn 33



Lots of spell casting this time. There’s also the message from Mari, making me think things aren’t going too well over on the other end either.



Also see a throne claim by Utgard. I believe that this was one they stole from Gath. Since Gath is a big scary blood nation, I’m all for more people fighting them.



And in even better news, my god wakes up! I don’t have particularly much for it to do just yet, but will soon be putting it to good use forging things.

The only battle isn’t even worth showing, just me crushing a few points of PD with no losses.



I’m a bit worried about losing my cold dominion over on this edge, so I have 2 indie priests pop over and start preaching. They obviously won’t stop anything big, but should at least help keep my cap circle my dom.



And I keep moving my main stack westward to grab Saborea, hopefully before Mari can get any sizable reinforcements into the area. I also move a force that I’d gathered near Bogarus to go siege down the fort in Glad Woods in a turn or 2.

Turn 34



I reach Ench 5, so I now have a solid, if a bit expensive, remote assassin in my back pocket. I also keep using wolven winter to keep the temp low on any of Mari’s nearby forts. I have ~13 gems a turn in income, so it’s not even making a dent in my stores either.

The only fight was just me crushing a single point of PD on the fort.



In the east, I move to storm Saborea and then besiege Glade Woods. In cold 3, I’m confident I can pretty easily deal with any troops that I’ve seen in the area.



In the west I’m probably being overcautious, but I move an army to Ligrea, to threaten Mari’s cap and the throne. This move is more to stall for a turn than anything though.



Because in the lake, I’m moving a bunch of Forgiving Fathers and my ice troops to be adjacent to the throne and hit it next turn. There’s also essentially no defense in Nardago, so I’m sending a random event Ichtyid lord with a few atlantian infantry to go annoy Marignon for a bit.

Turn 35

No overview this turn, since I missed the screenshot.



I did take Saborea with no trouble, and Glade Woods had only a few points of PD that were swept aside. I’m going to hold here a turn to cool down nearby provinces again. I still haven’t fought much of Mari’s troops, so I’m expecting them to be somewhere nearby and I do not want to risk accidentally fighting in H3 scales.



In the west, I’m going to take the throne back, There look to be a solid number of troops between it and Boar Woods, but I’m feeling confident.

I also start building another fort in the Hungry Sea and then another one over in the lake by my other throne.



Diplo-wise, I get some confirmation from Erytheia that they will hit Marignon over this tick as well. they send me the map of what they’re looking to get (marked by the stars). I’m a little skeptical about wanting the throne and the other citadel too, but agree for now. I’d rather have another person to take some heat than fight for it right now.

Turn 36



Good chunk of battles this turn, including what look to be a few assassination/magic phase ones!



Also a message from Marignon. I’m taking it that they won’t just roll over, at least.



The first battle is a few horrors sent at where I’m building a fort. Thankfully, my boosted PD was able to fend them off without issue.



The besieging of the throne begins. I do love taking almost no casualties in fights like this.



Now, for an interesting thing, Marignon sent a disease demon to kill my Ichtyid Lord leading that small raiding party. That’s bad because it means they have both the research and mage to cast it, and they can be quite annoying. It also means that my little party has no leader in its force, so it doesn’t move back to the safety of the lake.



And thus my little raid is totally annihilated. However, there is one bright spot in this. Marignon has some demon knights, which are very powerful troops that can cause fear and initiate chain routs. They’re also very fast and have a bunch of attacks.



But my troops all had poison barb armor, and demon knights are not, in fact, resistant to poison. So, though my raid got destroyed I’m still very happy with it.



On the west, I see that there are quite a few troops in Boar Woods now. Even in cold temperatures, I doubt I’d be able to win a 2-1 odds fight. Especially with more than half of that being crossbowmen. I move some more reinforcements from Atlantis and my mountain fort to boost my numbers a bit.



And in the east, I’m glad I did not go stumbling around without thinking. Those are 2 armies that my scouting report says are nearly 300 troops each. My plan is to just sit here for a sec, upgrade the fort, and figure out how I can get them separated.



At least, that’s what I’m trying to do until Marignon posts this in the main chat and then reaches out to me. Apparently Erytheia joining in on the dogpile was enough to make him want to kill them on principle. He says that they’ll just go kill them instead, and will leave any provinces they do take from Ery undefended. Just asks for me to hold off attacking for a bit in exchange.

Considering that there are a lot of troops near me, I agree to hold off, on the condition that I keep the throne I’m currently sieging, which he is cool with. There’s no explicit turn limit, but in my head I’m thinking I’ll probably hold off for around 5 turns. That’s enough time for the big groups near me to clear out and will mean that it’ll probably be getting colder again if/when I have to fight a big force of Mari’s.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
I appreciate Mictlan's sudden difficulty in diplomancing

"Hey, pretend to attack me!" "No I'm just gonna attack you without pretending" "Wait that is not the plan I had in mind"

Hunt11
Jul 24, 2013

Grimey Drawer
They should have pretended to agree then attack Mictlan anyway.

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!

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I appreciate Mictlan's sudden difficulty in diplomancing

"Hey, pretend to attack me!" "No I'm just gonna attack you without pretending" "Wait that is not the plan I had in mind"

It's not funny when it happens to me. :(

Cobra Lionfist
Jun 4, 2013
I thought Mictlan was going to backstab me sooner or later, and Purple refused to confirm we had a NAP so felt like I had no choice.

But uh yeah, not the best uses of my resources in these attacks. I was swimming in nature gems so no idea why the pans didn't have any. Also didn't know swarm was a thing until later.

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!

Cobra Lionfist posted:

I thought Mictlan was going to backstab me sooner or later, and Purple refused to confirm we had a NAP so felt like I had no choice.

Well, I probably was. But I was going to backstab TC first.

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




NB: Somewhere I lost a turn and I'm not sure where. Starting with this post I should be on the same page as everyone else. Also, no editing because capitalism is the real blood economy.

Agartha

Turn 32


Not much happens this turn. I got confirmation of my peace deal with Patala overnight, but I was at work when the turn, er, turned, and didn't get a chance to rescind my orders. I vacate the province and leave only a token PD so Patala can take it back but it hopefully won't get hit by indies.


Patala claims the Outer Throne. This one is excellent for them, mainly due to the 3 astral pearls it brings each turn.


ALL HAIL!


My troops begin moving south so they can strike at Gath.

Turn 33

Short turn, short event list.


Begging is unbecoming, Marignon.


Ragha is very fun. Griffon blenders ftw



Ench 5 gets me 2 very important death spells:


This is not an important spell. Agartha's F/D summons are not very efficient since they only come 1 per cast and there's no higher level version to summon more. The only reason to use them is if you run out of E or D gems for other stuff. (Spoiler: I'm going to summon a lot more of these than I should)


Horde of Skeletons is a relatively low fatigue battle spell that summons a bunch of chaff skeletons. 2-3 D2 mages can be used as highly effective raiders against light PD with this spell.


Pale Riders summons a bunch of undead cavalry. They're not that powerful, but 2 units per gem is fantastically mage efficient. And it gets even better the more powerful the mage is.


Utgard claims a throne.



The Throne of Earth is a pretty decent throne. It would be better for a nation like mine that gets access to a lot of Earth magic, but at least it grants access to some decent, if not exciting, E/N mages.



I finally begin retaking my fort from Utgard.


Oh, hello. Circle Masters and Conjurers are Death/Blood crosspath mages. I should be able to use these to break into blood and begin summoning things like vampires.


Yeah, yeah, yeah, fire gems, whatever.




More troop movements south.


I also place some bids on mercs to bolster my forces.

Turn 34

I retake a province Erytheia took from me a while earlier.



Some relatively minor events.



I move my mercs to help siege down the fort Utgard took from me.



I begin my first aggressive moves against Gath.



In order to help with sieges, I have some of my mages start summoning cave grubs,

Turn 35

No event log. This is probably why I lost those turns, not snapping the event log and not being able to tell where one turn ends and another begins when I write these up later.


Surely a sign that everything's going well.


I retake the province with virtually no casualties. And no, don't ask me why I sent the powerful D/B caster with the army, I don't know.




Remember what I said about giving this province back to Patala?


I continue to my my stacks into Gath.

Turn 36

My first blood slaves start trickling (heh) in. It'll get better once I have enough to forge some Sanguine Dowsing Rods.


If you can't beat, ask politely and maybe they'll go away.




Turns out that Gath's god is now almost a full-fledged Super Combatant. His gear includes boots of quickness (doubles his number of actions), a regeneration ring (10%), and some decent low-level armor so that anything that does hit him doesn't hurt him much. Give him some hydra-skin armor, a brand, and a decent shield, and he should be able to solo most armies.


GIANT FIGHT! GIANT FIGHT! GIANT FIGHT!

Donkringel
Apr 22, 2008

Hunt11 posted:

They should have pretended to agree then attack Mictlan anyway.

"Due to cultural differences, us goat men and half men are very bad at pretending"

Smiling Knight
May 31, 2011

Late, but I have to say that the LA Atlantis fluff is appropriately metal. After two ages of all the underwater nations slowing getting destroyed by starspawn, having Atlantis decide we're taking back the oceans and we've learned to resist insanity from beyond the stars by never sleeping kicks rear end.

Donkringel
Apr 22, 2008

Smiling Knight posted:

Late, but I have to say that the LA Atlantis fluff is appropriately metal. After two ages of all the underwater nations slowing getting destroyed by starspawn, having Atlantis decide we're taking back the oceans and we've learned to resist insanity from beyond the stars by never sleeping kicks rear end.

For all the gameplay problems with UW nations, their lore building is usually top notch.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.

Smiling Knight posted:

Late, but I have to say that the LA Atlantis fluff is appropriately metal. After two ages of all the underwater nations slowing getting destroyed by starspawn, having Atlantis decide we're taking back the oceans and we've learned to resist insanity from beyond the stars by never sleeping kicks rear end.

Oh yeah, I think it’s so awesome. Especially because the Atlantans have essentially had their civilization destroyed twice by R’lyeh before figuring out how to fight back.

Buller
Nov 6, 2010
drat that pretender kicks rear end. Why doesnt he succumb to fatigue?

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

He's got a Girdle of Might, which gives Reinvig: 3. Given the paths, there's a good chance he's cast Earth Might or some other spell to add even more reinvig too.

Jack2142
Jul 17, 2014

Shitposting in Seattle

Around this time I started getting really stressed out at work because someone quit and our department got yelled at that we needed to do more reports because we didnt finish enough last year and I had lawyers digging through several of mine. Being dogpiled by multiple people did not help matters and I quit most of the dominions games I was in around this time.

Tuna-Fish
Sep 13, 2017

My updates will be a bit late, it's sort of hectic here for ~reasons~. Suffice to say, they will be juicy.

I promise I will do a better writeup later (I even have some turns saved that I intend to turn into battle videos), but as a teaser:

Who would win:
1. The giant army of giant giants, each being a berserker with a 40 damage attack.

2. One leafy boy



Technowolf posted:

Turns out that Gath's god is now almost a full-fledged Super Combatant. His gear includes boots of quickness (doubles his number of actions), a regeneration ring (10%), and some decent low-level armor so that anything that does hit him doesn't hurt him much. Give him some hydra-skin armor, a brand, and a decent shield, and he should be able to solo most armies.

Every piece of gear on him is deliberate. I have all three brands in my treasury, I pulled a fire brand off him to give him the sword of swiftness.

The method in this madness was to get all resists high, make him nigh unkillable, and then be able to whoop giant rear end. The area damage of brands is mostly worthless against giants, as there's only going to be one per square, and 10AP damage just doesn't do much against an opponent whose main defense is a gigantic pool of HP. The sword of swiftness has 2 attacks per turn, which makes it better. The reason for no shield is that he has a built-in vine shield, which keeps the amount attacks and thus the harassment malus low, so defense is very important, and the main gauche of parrying gives almost as much of that as the best shield, but also gives one more attack per turn. The blue dragon armor was the best way to add cold resistance to him, and I though that might be important, given that I was fighting against the actual frost giants. The helmet was just for a high-prot helmet + darkvision.

IIRC the script was to have a friend cast body ethereal on him, and on himself do temper flesh, summon earthpower, strength of gaia(additional regen+strenght boost), ironskin, and something I forgot.

Because of the quickness he has 6 attacks a turn, and each does enough damage to put down most opponents. In my dominion he regens 30% a turn, and since he has all 3 physical resists, that 29 prot is actually more like 58 against normal attacks. In his reign of terror in these few turns, absolutely nothing put so much as a dent on him.

Buller posted:

drat that pretender kicks rear end. Why doesnt he succumb to fatigue?

Summon earthpower and the girdle of might.

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

i love your god

Khisanth Magus
Mar 31, 2011

Vae Victus

Ramc posted:

i love your god

I am pretty sure no one in the game feels this way about said God.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

It could be worse. It could ALWAYS be worse... it could be a Bronze Colossus. :v:

After all, with enough attempts and MR pen, you could eventually get a Soul Slay to stick on the Annunaki.

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




Lord Koth posted:

It could be worse. It could ALWAYS be worse... it could be a Bronze Colossus. :v:

After all, with enough attempts and MR pen, you could eventually get a Soul Slay to stick on the Annunaki.

Thankfully this game started way before the Ind/Na'ba update.

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!
Mictlan
Turn 37



Mictlan is on the defense, but what a defense it'll be! With every vital province forted, it'll be like defending Switzerland.



Looks like Dunheim only got hit by one of his scrub squads so far.




As mentioned, B1's can also make for caster slaves much like S1's, but the need to juggle around blood slaves for it makes it far more painful and I am not a fan of it in any way.



I figure that I might as well break the siege now, because if the army south of Dunheim marches west, then I'll be lacking the time to interfere and prevent him from hitting some of my less well-crewed forts.

Turn 38



The gems from Mari are in exchange for me whipping up a Thistle Mace for him. Heck, sure, buddy, go gently caress up TC.

At this point I'm expecting this to be a lost fight because surely, surely, Pan has greater, nastier forces in wait. Tons of N3 mages ready to spam Swarm, Creeping Doom, Polymorph and Howl in every fight.



Pan's army with actual mages eats one of my unforted provs, making an annoyance of themselves as they do so.



So Serpent Fiends turn out to be a huge disappointment, everyone else... more or less makes me proud.

Let's see what happened down there...






Obviously the fight starts with everything flying I've got piling on his back lines.



And then degenerates into a big ol' clusterfuck. First his guys turn around to fight the fliers, then they get distracted by the wolves from Howl, then bogged down in slaves and eventually sacreds. Along the way I learn that a drawback to this bless is, uh, two-fold.

Firstly, anyone not with Heat Aura and fire res eats poo poo(see, my poor Nahualli, my slaves and my goddamn blood slaves, gently caress) and secondly, with Blood Vengeance up, I, uh, can't really use any big combat evocations myself, since that would fry my own casters.

I have made a terrible mistake.



One advantage to my vast swarm of dudes is that many of my sacreds end up lapping around while looking for targets and penning in all of his goons, hence why Pan has such almost-100% losses for the fight.



If I was Pan, I'd head north with that big army and try for a decisive win against the only thing that's my actual big army. But I guess my actual force disposition is obfuscated by the vast amounts of slave chaff in all my provinces. I hope he'll go straight for the throat at Mictlan instead, so I can hit him with both Mictlan's defenses and my returning troops. That would be the ideal setup.

Pan's proximity does complicate my blood hunting somewhat, however. Blood Hunters are not at risk if the province they're in is invaded, but patrollers are, and those huge slave swarms I'm using for patrolling would be MUCH more useful defending a fort where they can clog up the gates while Howl wolves and flying sacreds ruin my enemy's day, so I'd rather not have them wiped out by invasions. So it slows down blood hunting a bit, as I shift patrollers and blood hunters to my rearmost provinces up against the TC/Patala border.

Turn 39




I turn on the diplomatic charm as I face the military pressure.



In my opinion, Blood has a dearth of particularly useful spells at the low levels. Mainly Reinvigoration and Summon Imps are the only ones I'd really make much use of most of the time. Most of the other spells aren't technically bad, but have a pretty poor return on effects vs mage turns wasted. Even a small amount of Storm or Frost Fiends can have a big effect, but usually I never find I have blood crosspath mages to waste for just summoning the one at a time. Mictlan does get access to its excellent Ozelotls at Blood 4, however.

At Blood 5 you get Hellbind Heart, which is the bane of non-mindless supercombatants everywhere because it's like Enslave Mind except that it maintains paths, gear and commander status for whoever it steals if it strikes true, and the wonderful harassment spell Rain of Toads that increases unrest in a province while also randomly diseasing units and commanders there. And even better you also get Bind Succubus. Succubi are like Dryads except flying, bigger, invisible and without mage levels, but also a better shot at actually pulling off their seductions. Not being able to give them armor does make them somewhat fragile against enemies, but with the right gear you can negate a lot of that.



Not really unexpected but hoo boy I am just BLEEDING chaff. Good thing it's just slaves.



oh yeah and some dogfucker snagged the Throne of Gaia which is displeasing.




That could have gone a lot worse. Thank you for your service, brave PD.

Oddly enough Pan hasn't moved on my cap yet, which worries me a bit. Hopefully he's just waiting for reinforcements and hasn't actually planned some sort of hyper-slick move.



Instead it looks like his armies have vanished from his throne without rejoining these. Then again, a lot of Pan's units are stealthy, so that may be contributing to my confusion.

Turn 40




Looks like the diplomatic ouvertures worked!

Kind of.

It occurs to me that I've legitimately zero idea of what Jomon's been doing all this game. They're the LA inheritor of Yomi and Shinuyama and actually pretty powerful with great path variety, decent recruitable sacreds and awesome summonable sacreds.



This King of Rain I blood-empowered a while back got horror marked by it, which is a random chance every time you blood empower, and now he got eaten. Which loving sucks, my economy is already under pressure from losing territory, so he's not super fast to replace.



Oh and there's a Death Match!









Unsurprisingly, the only guy to not send a joke combatant ends up winning. Grats to Gath.



I also get a Hero. He's basically just an Eagle Warrior with permanent Flight and A1B1 for blood paths. For EA and LA Mictlan I guess he's okay if you get him early so he can do some site searching, but otherwise he's thoroughly useless unless you wanted to employ him to rapidly ferry flying demons and ozelotls around to other commanders.



Meanwhile, what the hell is Pan playing at? Is someone else attacking them? Is this some sort of really clever plan? Whatever, it gives me a chance to charge up on blood slaves, do a bunch of research and generally be a much greater pain in the rear end than I'd otherwise have the capacity for.

Turn 41






Oh, right, Pan has Blood too. Horde from Hell is an... okay remote attack spell? It can flatten like 5 to 10 PD sometimes, but occasionally the Devil eats poo poo on round one and the imps scatter and it does nothing. It's the sort of spell I generally only cast if I have nothing better to do, but on the bright side the demons stay around after the spell is cast under your control, so it can also be used to rapidly generate a small raiding army.





loving Throne of Gaia, seriously.



So Remote Attacking Gintmark wasn't fundamentally a bad idea on Pan's part, he's just missing the follow-up where another army rushes in my main border while he harasses my back lines with those goons.



...ah.

Well, I guess this is probably where Dunheim eats poo poo. Shame I can't dismantle the fort before he gets to it and deny it to him, but at least it'll slow him down.

Looks like the calm is over and the war is able to resume full force! Real dramatic, huh?

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




Agartha

Turn 37


The invasion of Gath continues. I summon more forces to supplement my infantry.


My small raiding force retakes Histrya.


I aim my army at one of Gath's forts. Hopefully I can take this and get another reinforcement point closer to the front lines.

Turn 38


I take one of Gath's provinces, he takes one of mine. Such are the tides of war.


While this may seem like a good event, it's actually really bad, since for the foreseeable future any forest province can be attacked by random indie forces. This happens a few months after the Throne of Gaia is claimed.


This battle goes suspiciously well.


I begin forging Sanguine Dowsing Rods to speed up blood collection.

turn 39


Probably shouldn't have summoned this many Flame Corpses.


While Spartacus 2020 was a bad movie, Wonderful Life 2 was so boring it was actually painful to watch.


I begin moving some astral pearls down to my army so my astral randoms can cast stuff like Mind Duel, which should be effective against Gath's PG.


I also move some forces to retake Windsong Forest. Again. Why?


Turns out one of the more powerful Throne of Gaia attacks struck there. I think that province is just cursed.

Turn 40


Gonna be a lot happening this turn.



I begin shooting up the Thaumaturgy tree to get some of the more powerful astral spells.


Right now we get Mind Burn (powerful battle spell that does a ton of damage against a single target), Augury/Haruspex (fire and nature remote search spells, respectively), Iron Will (which boosts the caster's magic resistance), and Panic (a nature spell that drops a unit's morale and can cause morale checks)



So it looks like Gath's army was just holeing up in the fort. Their sally absolutely wrecks me.


During the battle Gath casts Fire Storm, a powerful spell that basically lights everyone on the battlefield on fire.


They also cast relief, which helps keep his mages's fatigue down.


About 2/3 of my survivors retreat successfully. I'm left with about 40 or so units out of 475.


I retake the woods, but at a high cost. If it weren't in my cap circle, I'd just leave it to rot.


At least I finally retake the fort from Utgard.




Events. Two bad and one that's nominally good but doesn't do anything for me. Luck 3, yay?


Gath actually sends a good commander to the arena instead of a thugged out scout or indie commander. Shame on them! Shame!


I dump some PD in Windsong Forest. COME TAKE IT NOW, YOU INDIE ASSHOLES!


Troops movements. I fall my survivors back to reinforce, and take another army south to continue the assault.


Erytheia looks like its building up forces in the lake next to me. Hopefully this doesn't presage an invasion again.

Turn 41
Another turn without a messages screenshot. You'd think I'd get better at this as the game goes on.


Oh joy. I'm pretty sure this means that there's a sneaking indie force there. Usually they're comprised of a variety of satyrs.


I begin patrolling so I can catch the forces before they become a problem.


Atlantis claims the crystal throne. I'm pretty sure they took it from someone else. Marignon, maybe?


I begin building a fort in my lavaborn province.

I think it's around now that I make peace with Gath, considering that my main force had just been trashed and I was growing concerned with Erytheia and random indie attacks.

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!
Holy poo poo that's a nasty loss to Gath there. I'm surprised he got away with so few losses even so, considering what a limited force he had to screen his mages.

Technowolf
Nov 4, 2009




PurpleXVI posted:

Holy poo poo that's a nasty loss to Gath there. I'm surprised he got away with so few losses even so, considering what a limited force he had to screen his mages.

72 regen-blessed Gibbors is a limited screen?

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

PurpleXVI posted:

Holy poo poo that's a nasty loss to Gath there. I'm surprised he got away with so few losses even so, considering what a limited force he had to screen his mages.

gruesome poo poo

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!

Technowolf posted:

72 regen-blessed Gibbors is a limited screen?

In terms of how much space they take up, I mean. I would have expected that at least SOME of Agartha's numerically superior force would have been able to get around them before getting roasted by fire storm.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.
Dang, that's a lot of Gibbors.

Also, lol at the bless that self-owns. Auras seem to do that quite often compared to any other bless

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

OOrochi posted:

Dang, that's a lot of Gibbors.

Also, lol at the bless that self-owns. Auras seem to do that quite often compared to any other bless

Cold auras aren't generally too bad for friendly fire, as the real issue with heat auras isn't so much the fatigue but rather that it can set things on fire. So if they're mixed in with unprotected troops they'll eventually start setting them on fire and they'll burn to death. And as Purple discovered, this kills off your blood slaves too since they're in close proximity to the sacred mages.

Hell, Abysia doesn't even need the bless for it to screw around with their in-battle blood slaves, since their major mages just have heat auras innately. Just another reason why Abysia struggles.


There's one recent caveat to cold auras not being as dangerous, in that Vaettiheim's Rimvaetti come 6 to a square and thus make so many cold aura checks that they'll fatigue out anything near them that's not resistant to cold VERY fast - which means be very careful what they're near on your side.

OOrochi
Jan 19, 2017

On my honor as the Dawnspear.
Atlantis Turns 37-41
Overall a bit of a slow period as I hold off on attacking Mari for a bit.

Turn 37


A small turn, no interesting events or anything.



I do get incredibly lucky with one of my Angakoks. Due to their randoms, getting D4 on one is only about a 0.625 % chance. And this is great because it makes it a lot easier for me to unlock the immortal D summons since they only require D5. I make sure to immediately rename him to “I have D4, Very Important”.




On my northern edge I just have my army sit there and preach, while in the south I send a few extra reinforcements down to take the throne as I ping it. I know Mari said I could take it, but I still don’t know what’s actually in it right now.



Speaking of Mari, their vengeance against Erytheia seems to be off to a solid start, as they beat back a solid bunch of hoplites.



Meanwhile, my scouts managed to catch part of the monkey-giant war going on. Patala had their mages spam paralyze and got all of Gath’s big guys including both their Divine Blessing Caster and their Firestorm caster. So their otherwise absurd Se’irs just melted under a hail of archer fire.

Turn 38





The only notable thing that happens this turn is that I get an event for a free Siren. They’re a neat mage who have a unique method of assassinating coastal commanders by luring them into the sea to drown. There’s no fight if they fail, so it’s a pretty safe method of harassing people.



My ping of the throne shows that it’s essentially empty so I set to storm it.



And I also get to see Bandar kill a bunch more of Gath’s mages and research monkeys.

Turn 39





We have Mictlan begging for gems and things. I don’t send them anything, but I do hope that they do as well as possible. A weaker or distracted Pan is one more neighbor I don’t have to worry about.



I take the fort with 0 trouble, as expected. Since it’s so close to my capital, I have Mother Hydra move to claim it for me next turn.


I also get lucky and have my fort PD fight off an attack from the Throne of Gaia. Even the basic snow warriors are head and shoulders above your average indie on cold 3, so I shouldn’t have too much to worry about from the Gaia attacks overall.



Mari had been sieging Pythium’s cap, but abandoned it to go after Erytheia. So instead TC goes after it. We’d been talking and I’d sort of considered trying to press for it on my own, but it only gives 3 N gems and 1 S, which I don’t really need. So I didn’t offer any objection to letting TC have it, especially since it’s one more neighbor I’m not in immediate conflict with.



In the north, I’m going to be storming the fort in Glade Woods. There were only a few basic troops of Marignon’s in it before I started the siege, so it shouldn’t be too bad.



And finally, we can see 2 of Marignon’s very large armies that I am quite glad I didn’t have to deal with. If nothing else, that’s a lot of crossbow bolts that would be headed down-field during each fight. You can also see Erytheia’s flag in the lake. After seeing all of Marignon’s forces closing in on one of their armies, Erytheia performed what they called a Dunkrik Maneuver and tactically maneuvered what they had to safety underwater.

Turn 40




A lot of relatively disappointing magic searching on my new throne, and a spate of assassinations. Also the arena, which Gath unsurprisingly won with one of their giant leaders. (To my shame, I forgot to send anything)




I think Marignon might’ve gone AI right about here, which would explain the random assassinations. Thankfully, they were both in cold 3, so my captains did not care about their weapons whatsoever.




And continuing the assassinations, I have a random skeleton attack one of my Angakoks because they found a specific D site. Thankfully, it’s still just a basic longdead so he dispatches it pretty easily.



The fort storming goes well, which is always good to see.



Because my eastern border with Erytheia is pretty secure, I move the guys out of the fort to go reinforce my stationary army, since I plan to attack Marignon next turn.

Turn 41



No fights of my own this time.



Though I did get to see Gath lose a few more research monkey mages to a Gaia attack.



And continuing on Gath, I can see that Patala’s big monkey blob is currently sieging Gath’s fort that borders my lake. I would absolutely love for them to take it, because I feel like they would have a much harder time blocking me from the throne on the other side than Gath would.



Up north I finally get things moving again and move to attack Marignon. I made sure to chill multiple provinces of theirs, just so it wouldn’t be totally obvious which province I’d be attacking. The plan right now is to ignore their big army on the throne and race up north to get the provinces near their capital. I’ll also be moving troops in south from my capital, so they should be able to meet up before too long.



And finally, here’s a quick overview of my lands. I’m definitely not the biggest right now, but I feel like I’m probably near the top. I’m also quite happy that I’m either touching or nearly touching so many thrones, since that will come in handy if I try to make a lunge for the win.

Tuna-Fish
Sep 13, 2017

Gath
Turn 26

As I left you last turn, I'm feeling good and smug about my position here. All my neighbours are clearly weaker than me, and having put a palisade on the throne of earth and promised Biggs to invade the guys who ganked on him, I start slowly moving my main army west. I decide to replace it in the east with my god, but also to send said god on a lake-clearing trip on the way, taking both boat eater and the throne of death that is in the velvet ocean. (There is a low-level water spell that lets you scry provinces, it's great for figuring out if a throne is something you want to take now or can save for later.)

Turn 29

My god is about to take the throne of death. Paying attention to my neighbors, Patala and Agartha seem to be in a hellwar but dancing around each other's armies, I'm just hoping to catch the eventual big battle with my scouts. Utgård appears to invade Agartha. I'm stocking up on popcorn, researching things and setting up blood hunting. Everything is peaceful.

Turn 31 (Maybe, not actually perfectly sure about chronology here).

Everything is peaceful, I'm just chilling and ... fffuuuuuccckkk. Not only did Utgård invade, looking at the Patala-Agartha border, both their armies are heading away from each other and towards my borders. As the fort in Panuonia is not yet properly upgraded, and there is a horde of giants outside it, it will definitely fall next turn. I have nothing I can get there in time. Luckily there isn't much to lose in it, but I'd love to keep the throne claim bonus while I fight, and the province makes tons of gems too.

In Dominions it's generally a bad idea for a bunch of weaker players to gang up and attack a stronger one. This is because it's very hard for small armies of different players to meaningfully support each other in battle. If the stronger one combines his forces and takes on the invaders one at a time, he can usually destroy their armies in sequence and still have most of his own force left. Since the weaker guys know they can't win battles, it makes them all skittish, resulting in not much damage to the stronger guy. The only exceptions are when the stronger guy can't combine their forces, such as throne lunges and if he's ulm or something else with armies that are really, really slow. It's also usually bad for the stronger guy too, because while he can defeat the invasions it will be hard to follow up and take provinces when he must move his armies to fight the next one. Because of this, coalitions to attack a stronger guy usually only help third parties, who get to watch the fireworks and eat up the now even weaker invaders.

I decide that I'm fighting Utgård first, because the position of his provinces means that I don't really want to invade and take his stuff, as it would pull my armies far from my borders and make my empire hard to defend. I also decide that if someone from the west joins the pileup I'll just let that part fall and clear it later, as it's not yet economically very significant for me. I start pulling everything east, leaving behind only a handful of giants in a fort on the theory that in scout reports they and the mages in the fort make it look like there's an actual army there.

Luckily, Utgård's army is really weak, consisting of just troops without proper mage support. They are really nice troops, being beefy giants that are made even bigger and beefier by his passive bless, but past a certain point in the game troops without mages, no matter how good the troops are, stop being armies and become xp pinatas. A single well-kitted out thug should be able to clear it. My god can't quite make it there in one turn, and I don't trust his current equipment to kill a lot of giants regardless. I move him to omicria and forge the best giant-killing set of gear I can come up with.

Design explained in this post.

Turn 33

This is what it looks like when a bunch of expensive, sacred giants try to attack a literal god. (how do I embed gfycat links? halp)
Having blunted the first attack, I am under no illusion that Utgård is done yet. More than half of his troops got away, and he's moving up some more, and I think I can even see some mages there. So I keep moving up my actual army, while my god raids around trying to catch some more unsupported troops. He even does a lunge at the big Agarthan stack, clearing it.

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!
The attack animation makes it, like he's just swatting them away with an open palm.

gonadic io
Feb 16, 2011

>>=


It's hidden away under "more share options" (the icon that looks like a paper plane) and then there's a gifs button at the bottom of the image now. God I hate textless icons so much especially when there's like 10 of then.

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Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.
What's with the bunch of white animals who rush off towards the enemy in the opening seconds? Wolves? Killer sheep?

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