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I'm still getting the hang of setting up the DI. Whenever I do it the world seems to send its armies right to it to dismantle it.
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Apr 13, 2024 23:30
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| # ? May 2, 2024 08:46 |
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I'm pretty sure the only things that would make other nations particularly motivated to attack the Dark Empire are either being in the Alliance or having high-menace locations inside the Dark Empire. If you're making the Dark Empire with Vinerva, you might want to make sure you're placing your Hearts of the Forest outside your target's territory.
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Apr 14, 2024 01:58
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Ramping up to Seal 2 (Turns 35-69) Due to popular demand, our new agent will be The Courtier.  Like all unique agents, the courtier gives us a choice between three special starting traits which are: Man of Means - Start with 150 gold. Familiar Face - When in his home city the location's security is decreased by 3 (to a minimum of 0). Noble Connections - When in any city that location's security is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0). I'm going to have him start right in Ming, the Capital of Nghuai, and take the Familiar Face perk to offset that nasty security bonus that Capitals get.  Despite this bonus, I'm going to take an approach similar to the one The Supplicant is taking, rather than just grinding out the infiltration of Ming.  This will make future infiltration of Chendu and Dashan easier, and get The Courtier at least one levelup before tackling Ming. As The Courtier gets started on conquering Nghuai, Beng travels to complete some feats of gallantry and derring-do   Sometime later, The Supplicant finishes up in Liao Village and can finally start infiltrating The City of Xinjianm.  Before we get to the infiltration, let's use another tool in our kit- cold, hard cash.  The bribery knocks another two points off of the security of a location, which in our case takes it all the way down to 1- just as easy as the very first village we infiltrated.  A few turns and some more Tireless Labor later, The Courtier infiltrates his Gzhou Castle and moves on to Jinen Village.  And Beng fights more bandits. I'm starting to think he's some sort of cop.  Also, the Orcs have their leader killed in battle. I'm just amazed that The Forces of Good™ haven't wiped them off the map completely at this point.  Next, we're given an opportunity to shape the Ophanimic Faith.   Throughout the game, if you have influence over a holy order by way of Shadow or infiltration, you can change the central tenets of the faith. In our case, since we ARE Ophanim, we don't need shadow or infiltration to gain influence. The changed tenets can mean anything from making them more likely to build temples to making them more likely to start crusades against other holy orders. However, since no one is actually worshiping us yet, none of these choices will have any effect yet. I'm gonna go with fighting awareness since The Supplicant can already handle doubt, though the next tenet I grab will most likely be inquisitors as well. After we make our choice, Beng goes and takes a nap.  While Beng is sleeping, The Supplicant completes his first step in infiltrating Xinjianm.  Since it's a city, it has multiple locations to infiltrate. After placing a network of spies in the sewers, we'll place one in the market as well.  You might be noticing that our Profile and Menace are getting a little high. The Profile of 21 just means people can see what we are doing up to two spaces away. The Menace of 24 is the thing that is actually starting to get worrisome. Once that number gets above 40, armies and heroes will be much more likely to interfere. We won't let it get that far though. As the Supplicant continues infiltrating Xinjianm, The Courtier finishes his infiltration of Jinen and moves to bribe the guards and then infiltrate Ming.   We wait a few more turns and get a really lucky break with The Supplicant's random event  The Imply our involvement option here allows us to gain a huge chunk of challenge progress in exchange for a little profile gain, so we take it to almost complete the challenge outright. We knock out our second city location in Xinjianm and it's time for The Supplicant to Lay Low until the heat has died down.  The good news is that since we've infiltrated half of the locations in Xinjianm, Laying Low is twice as effective.  Meanwhile... Beng fights more bandits. And The Orcs lose another Upstart leader.   I also realize that I haven't been paying attention to the Shadow pouring out of the Elder Tomb.   Apparently this guy hates shadow so much that he is just sitting in Danjiao spamming Drive Back Shadow  We're probably gonna have to do something about this guy later, but we're a little occupied at the moment. Beng, on the other hand, is occupied with bandits  And this self-hating elf is still punishing people for stealing her haircut.  Eventually, The Courtier finishes infiltrating the sewers and moves on to infiltrate the docks. He's also going to want to take advantage of Laying Low in a 50% infiltrated city later before he starts causing scandals.  Just a single turn later, we hit turn 70 and break our second seal.  We gain one more max power and two powers that will be extremely useful in the future: Theocracy is basically our win condition. We can cast it on a city location with more than 150% faith to declare a theocracy. Any cities in the nation with more than 100% faith will join them in a civil war against any cities that remain below 100% faith. Then we'll have additional ways to influence the theocracy in the future. Declare Heretic lets us sacrifice an agent who has taken too much menace without laying low (and then gained the infamous trait) to remove all doubt and awareness in a location and its neighbors. I like to take an orc warlord on a murder spree and then sacrifice them with this if awareness pops up in an inconvenient location. So what did we accomplish since breaking the last seal? The infiltration map doesn't look like much, but this is the foundation of our game plan going forward. We're about to have two safe-houses on opposite sides of the map, and a good foothold for spreading infiltration.  There's not a whole lot to vote on at the moment, since we're just continuing with the plans established earlier, but I did just realize that we can rename our agents. Let me know what we should be calling them instead of The Supplicant and The Courtier.
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Apr 15, 2024 03:49
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I like to check our agents' Family tab and give them surnames matching any family they might have, personally. It's especially fitting for the Courtier, I think.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:52
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So, how does actually spreading the religion work?
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Apr 15, 2024 12:21
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Servetus posted:So, how does actually spreading the religion work? Religions will have acolytes who have special actions to spread the faith they worship Notably some of our agents who are members of human society can be faithful, and they can spread faith for us if so desired. Courtier for example can be faithful if you spawn him in a city with a faith attached. This can be useful to bring a faith you are corrupting to places you have already infilitrated, or to causes holy wars between different faiths!
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Apr 15, 2024 13:00
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Beng heroically grabbing some snacks and taking a nap. Anyway some name suggestions: Supplicant: Professional Cloak Enthusiast Courtier: Monsiuer de Pompadour
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Apr 15, 2024 13:47
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Voting to Keep their names as they are and to only rename someone if it becomes really necessary, like if we hire a second agent with the same name, for example.
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Apr 15, 2024 15:55
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AtomikKrab posted:Religions will have acolytes who have special actions to spread the faith they worship There’s also a God Power to start a new faith in any location with even partial infiltration. The current game plan is to try for a point of infiltration in every city in Gfen before starting faith everywhere at once. If one location has less Faith than its neighbors, there’s a chance of Doubt cropping up.
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Apr 15, 2024 15:57
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Name for the Courtier: William Wigsworth
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Apr 15, 2024 16:31
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Kanthulhu posted:Voting to Keep their names as they are and to only rename someone if it becomes really necessary, like if we hire a second agent with the same name, for example. I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, but the supplicant and the courtier are both unique agents, meaning if they die you can’t recruit them again. That’s why managing profile and menace is so important (I am still pretty bad at it).
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Apr 15, 2024 16:42
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I almost always take the trait that applies to all cities, but this is the sort of situation where I might think twice.
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Apr 15, 2024 16:44
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One thing I like to do is having some generic agents around just to do the "loud" stuff like murdering troublesome kings and politicians, letting them run around with maxed menace and profile to lead the heroes on a merry chase while everyone else who isn't an idiot gets on with doing subtle stuff. Eventually they'll burn out, but since they're generics, they can be replaced.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:14
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Some cultist: "After all this time, proving my dedication, my skill, my ruthlessness have paid off. Now, I will be in the Inner Circle, and be one of the hidden puppetmasters of the world, moving things discreetly into place for our Dread Master!" The Supplicant: "Oh hey, the replacement. Good! here is your top hat and your moustache for twirling. Here's a list of people that you should kill. Make it nice and showy. Maybe kick some kittens or burn down an orphanage, time permitting. Hope you kept up on your fitness, you'll be doing a lot of running. When the heroes are all hunting you down, if you could lead them to that continent. And when you make your last stand, make sure to lament all your plans falling through, so they think they got all of us. Wow, you're even weeping bitter, frustrated tears of ambition denied. Exactly that energy I want you to bring to bear. You're such a team player!"
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Apr 16, 2024 09:40
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The game actively encouraging you to create a series of escalating comic book villains for the hero to fight is one of the things I love about it.
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Apr 16, 2024 09:53
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Shogeton posted:Some cultist: "After all this time, proving my dedication, my skill, my ruthlessness have paid off. Now, I will be in the Inner Circle, and be one of the hidden puppetmasters of the world, moving things discreetly into place for our Dread Master!" Generally it is an orc warlord. So its more "here is your big loving axe, 120 gold to hire some lads with, go crush the skulls of these people for me." One of the later uniques, who needs some requirements for locations to be corrupted, she is exceptional as a durable villianess for later game distraction. I had her up to... 500 menace in one game before she got popped
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Apr 16, 2024 11:22
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AtomikKrab posted:Generally it is an orc warlord. So its more "here is your big loving axe, 120 gold to hire some lads with, go crush the skulls of these people for me." Do new heroes respawn when you put one under? Because jeez what's 500 menace, 20 kills? 25? That looks like a significant fraction of the good guys' heroforce.
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Apr 16, 2024 11:55
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Omobono posted:Do new heroes respawn when you put one under? Yup. You can't permanently put the forces of good down. It's one of the reasons why I like this game thematically. Yeah you're an eldritch abomination of unspeakable evil, but you are the underdog of this story.
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Apr 16, 2024 12:15
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Omobono posted:Do new heroes respawn when you put one under? About 8 kills, significant amount of that was from surviving the conga line of heros coming to kill her while she was in areas that buffed her while she just ran as soon as possible, she went down to chip damage from high attack heros at the end. I had set her up with a stack of defensive items and she started with a full roster of minons as well. Cythereal posted:Yup. You can't permanently put the forces of good down. But as here, heroes not only respond, once an agents menace is high enough they will be attacked constantly, and this will be upgraded to "hero gets a goddamn army with them to hunt you down with," if they survive those initial hunts. You cannot constantly win those battles. Nor should you try to keep every agent alive forever, that will just waste your time and recruitment points.
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Apr 16, 2024 12:30
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Cythereal posted:Yup. You can't permanently put the forces of good down. Reminds me of the Practical Guide to Evil. Heroes always win. You can defeat them in the short term, extend your reign of terror, but in the end good always wins. (and Evil always comes back.)
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Apr 16, 2024 12:47
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The Lone Badger posted:Reminds me of the Practical Guide to Evil. Heroes always win. You can defeat them in the short term, extend your reign of terror, but in the end good always wins. But conversely, the first stage of a plan will always succeed. So an ideal plot consists of a series of unconnected stage 1s. That book was absolutely filled with quotable lines, I recommend it heavily to everyone, it's not especially deep but it's very entertaining. Still only in online format though, they've moved onto their next series, but didn't publish the website into any actual book version yet; so they probably won't.
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Apr 16, 2024 13:10
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AtomikKrab posted:About 8 kills, significant amount of that was from surviving the conga line of heros coming to kill her while she was in areas that buffed her while she just ran as soon as possible, she went down to chip damage from high attack heros at the end. ... Does defeating them not cause any negative consequences to whoever sent them? Thematically it makes sense, but if you can lure their army to chase your agent then have a puppet kingdom invade, it seems like a fantastic mustache twirling moment.
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Apr 17, 2024 04:30
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Killing a hero usually means that the partner/sibling/parent/best friend of that hero swears vengeance on your agent. Which, coincidentally, if you enshadow a hero 100%, you could recruit them as an agent, and then start blood feuds and revenge killings very easily...
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Apr 17, 2024 06:46
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Volmarias posted:... Does defeating them not cause any negative consequences to whoever sent them? Thematically it makes sense, but if you can lure their army to chase your agent then have a puppet kingdom invade, it seems like a fantastic mustache twirling moment. So based off personal relationships it can cause all sorts of things. One big thing is that close family will mourn the lost hero, this can cause various things to happen via random events that potentially the elder god can change as well. So it can do things New heros will often spawn at a lower level with less stat boosts, no attached minions or gear, they will have to stock up to get things going which costs time. New heros also won't always spawn in the same country meaning that country could end up being out of heros to do hero stuff.
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Apr 17, 2024 11:25
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Shadows of Forbidden Gods is one of my favorite games that I'm just absolutely terrible at. I've managed to beat the game once with She who Thirsts. My current favorite thing to do is: Create the Cursed asap and kill her target Have the Cursed help infiltrate some places while beefing up her Might (ideally focusing on a religious group's seat of power) When I get another Agent point, have the Cursed go on a murdering spree, and when she dies, bring in The Harvester Let the Harvester eat a few souls then sit on the religious group's seat of power while preaching about Keep influencing the religion because HOLY HELL PEOPLE KEEP LISTENING TO HIM! Eventually when he dies, promote one of the dozen or so acolytes of the religion to keep singing my praises, because no one tries to stop him for so long and they. Keep. Coming. Back. Is it effective? Probably not. Is it funny? Hell yeah! Now if only I knew how to actually use the religious mechanics to my advantage...
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Apr 18, 2024 18:11
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Randalor posted:Shadows of Forbidden Gods is one of my favorite games that I'm just absolutely terrible at. I've managed to beat the game once with She who Thirsts. Have the harvester lay low to keep him alive longer, make sure you infiltrate the holy order and surroundings, and get music of the spheres on, it turns the temples of the holy order into power generating machines that also provide madness.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:22
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I do have him lay low after awhile, but it takes a surprisingly long time for people to actually notice the crazy old man even when he's performing "miracles" and the church is  along with what he's saying. Also, what's Music of the Spheres? I don't think I've seen that yet.If this is considered inappropriate for the LP because OP hasn't covered religious stuff in-depth yet, just let me know and I'll erase my posts.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:40
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Randalor posted:I do have him lay low after awhile, but it takes a surprisingly long time for people to actually notice the crazy old man even when he's performing "miracles" and the church is Lay low early with him, preferably taking a moment to pop over to an infiltrated place with good reduction. The spheres one is a moral tenant you can adjust once you get the overall balance in favor of elder powers.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:45
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Do we have a general thread for Shadows? I have questions about other mechanics but don't want to clog up this LP with.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:25
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We don't, but someone who is good at making threads should do that... not me, I'm not good at that.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:22
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I thought we did actually, might have fallen into myth and dark rumor
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Apr 19, 2024 00:12
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