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BenRGamer posted:So I literally just bought Dominions 3 on Steam the other day because I'd read a couple interesting things about the game beforehand, mostly about Ermor, and now suddenly there's Dominions 4? Say what? Yeah Dom3 got greenlit on stream like day apart from the beta being available for Dom4.
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Sep 13, 2013 23:32
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NinjaDebugger posted:Gonna put in Natasha Kerensky leading Wolf's Dragoons. They will have absurd equipment and maximum XP and will cost like 5000 gold just to bid. A Scaramanga merc assassin that autocasts Aim and that's armed with a golden crossbow. 
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Sep 14, 2013 02:48
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Gonna stream a blitz against Yuri. I'm bad so come watch me fail http://www.twitch.tv/dickboss
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Sep 14, 2013 04:14
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Geokinesis posted:Ah thanks. This also allows you to give the AI Pretenders which make a reasonable amount of sense (on the first turn, you hit 'Become Computer Controlled').
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Sep 14, 2013 05:06
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WYA posted:Gonna stream a blitz against Yuri. I'm bad so come watch me fail You may want to get a mic because it is essentially impossible to hear what you're saying.
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Sep 14, 2013 07:13
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GG guys game was fun, also Wya has good taste in music.
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Sep 14, 2013 09:53
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Hey wya, PM me in IRC the specifications of the game you want and links to stuff like maps. I can host a thing but need to know a lot more.
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Sep 14, 2013 15:26
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jBrereton posted:Yep! Thanks! After playing a bit of single player and watched some lps to get used to it I have few other newbie questions if people don't mind answering: With creating a pretender what is the point of the non moving chassis? I was playing a game with EA pan and had a pretender that could be stealthy (Lord of the Wild maybe?), unfortunately when I sent him with another commander to attack a province he just snuck in whilst the commander fought. How would I get him to join in rather than sneak? Another thing is that when I made him attack from hidden I wanted him to cast those tunes spells (which I think are racial?) but he would never cast them despite them having no gem cost and him having the nature magic skills. Why would he not cast them? It seems you should be hiring researchers every turn right?
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Sep 14, 2013 15:30
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Geokinesis posted:Thanks! Ctrl + Click to move without stealthing. You should pretty much use that by default. Range is probably the issue, or possibly a problem with how they're implemented in Dom4. I note that the spells have no listed range, which means in theory they cast around the caster (which makes sense since they're tunes or whatever). But buff spells require someone to receive the buff in range or they won't be cast, and spells that affect the enemy need enemies in range or they won't be cast. 90% of "ignores the script" issues is a range problem. I note that all of the tune spells require enemies, so if enemies aren't in their range it won't cast. Additionally, if you're in melee range there's a very good chance that you attack in melee and don't cast. Yes, as a rule of thumb researchers every turn is good. Naturally, sometimes you need another thing. In addition, you want your mages to be useful out of just researching, or recognize that your research mages aren't useful and know how to compensate.
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Sep 14, 2013 15:36
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Geokinesis posted:Thanks! 1) The immobile chassis are cheap point-wise, and tend to come with a high dominion (saving more points). If you already have good expansion abilities in your native troops, and good magic abilities for the mid and lategame in your native mages, you can take an immobile with a 'scales' build and really good scales so you can make more units and more forts and so forth faster by focusing on economy, with maybe a little lategame magic. The oracle is a classic example of this - take maybe an S6-S7 oracle (depending if you can forge a crystal coin or not) and dom 6-8 and crazy high scales (lots of Order, productivity, luck, growth, and magic), imprison the oracle, and use your scales to win the game with a decent astral caster coming out lategame to cast wishes or whatever eventually and provide magic diversification. If your nation doesn't need/want help expanding or midgame fighting this can be a pretty decent choice. Some of the new immobile chasses may be decent for blesses as well; I haven't tested it fully, but the Earth/Astral guy could probably provide a really good sacred-spellcaster-blessing with maybe E6S6 for good reinvigoration/magic resist, quite cheaply points-wise, for example. 2) Stealthy commanders can be ordered to move using control+click when moving. If a commander has all stealthy troops and is stealthy themselves they will default to hiding while moving so won't attack the target. 3) Not sure. Check the ranges on the spells, though - if the targets of a spell (allied for buffs/heals etc, enemies for damaging/etc) on aren't within range, they will cast AI-determined other spells instead 4) You want to hire researchers as much as possible, yes. There is occasionally reason to build other things out of your forts once in a while (occasionally you might need a good priest, for example) but usually you want to focus on getting researchers as much as possible.
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Sep 14, 2013 15:47
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TheDemon posted:Ctrl + Click to move without stealthing. You should pretty much use that by default. Thanks! Ahh I'd set the guy to attack and get close then cast a few tunes but I guess he decided that melee was better than the spells. (Which seems to make those tune spells useless.) When you say useful outside of research, you mean for battle or is there anything else they should be doing? Great Gray Shrike posted:1) The immobile chassis are cheap point-wise, and tend to come with a high dominion (saving more points). If you already have good expansion abilities in your native troops, and good magic abilities for the mid and lategame in your native mages, you can take an immobile with a 'scales' build and really good scales so you can make more units and more forts and so forth faster by focusing on economy, with maybe a little lategame magic. The oracle is a classic example of this - take maybe an S6-S7 oracle (depending if you can forge a crystal coin or not) and dom 6-8 and crazy high scales (lots of Order, productivity, luck, growth, and magic), imprison the oracle, and use your scales to win the game with a decent astral caster coming out lategame to cast wishes or whatever eventually and provide magic diversification. If your nation doesn't need/want help expanding or midgame fighting this can be a pretty decent choice. Thanks! So there'd be little benefit to starting with an awake stationary pretender?
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Sep 14, 2013 15:57
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^Stationary pretenders don't do much early on. They can't really expand or sitesearch at all, ever, and you don't have the research early on to let them forge anything strong or cast any rituals. They present obvious problems with using them in early combat against other nations. I haven't even looked at every single nation's pretender gods in Dom4 and tried them all out yet, so I won't say that they are categorically useless, but in general they're probably better asleep/imprisoned and coming into the midgame/lategame so you have more points for scales etc. In general, you want to choose a pretender to accomplish certain goals - e.g., take 1 province a turn for the entire first two years, or forge/cast high astral spells when your nation only gets low astral to give you access to Rings of Sorcery/Wizardry and lategame rituals Arcane Nexus/Wish, or provide high death access and break into death, or provide a huge bless so you can make an expansion party from every fort every turn or two. Usually these goals don't include 'stand around researching about as well as decent cap-only mage for a year and a half'.
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Sep 14, 2013 16:08
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Geokinesis posted:Thanks! Non moving chassis are generally cheaper and very sturdy. They will typically be imprisoned and are selected by nations going for bless/scales. Depending on the type, you can still possibly get around with teleport. CTRL move to move a stealth unit without sneaking. You need to manually script spellcasting or the AI will do whatever which is probably "spam vine arrow forever". Regardless, having your lord of the wild spam tunes or other weak early game spells is probably a waste of him. Research something like protection (alt 3) so he can buff out your Maenads in a useful way or forge him some basic armor/weapons. With const 2 and only N you can forge an Eye shield, Birch Boots, Thorn Spear and a Horned Helm. Research personal regen and script him for (personal regen)attack and he can act as a decent anchor at the front of the army. Mercs are variable by nation. Some really need the extra expanding power while others are better off sinking the money into permanent armies.
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Sep 14, 2013 16:13
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Yeah, tunes are kind of crap. There are some units (pretenders, mainly) with innate casting that can cast and attack or cast twice in one turn, though. And the rest is about positioning, it's certainly possible to use something like the thin line formation plus your guy behind it to song.Geokinesis posted:When you say useful outside of research, you mean for battle or is there anything else they should be doing? Battle, or ritual paths, or item paths. A good chunk of deciding which mage to buy is knowing how to turn its paths into something useful if you need it. For example, you need to memorize the battle boosting spells (earthpower et al), you need to estimate how much communion boost you can expect out of what you'd typically take to battle, you need to know what boosters you can get easily so you know which rituals you can cast, you need think about what harder-to-get boosters will allow you to reach the spells on the edge of the your mages capabilities. Like, in the duel I streamed, I decided to use the D1 H1 researcher instead of the W1 H1 100% AWSN researcher. That's because I knew, for W2 there was nothing in my research plan and no water battle booster, for A1 W1 there's nothing, same for W1 N1, and W1 S1 I won't have enough to communion to W3 consistently for falling frost. On the other hand, I needed H1 for blessing, even if D1 isn't very useful, but overall the D1 mage was half price for -2 rp, and all the extra paths on the water mage weren't useful to my research plan.
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Sep 14, 2013 16:14
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TheDemon posted:Like, in the duel I streamed, I decided to use the D1 H1 researcher instead of the W1 H1 100% AWSN researcher. That's because I knew, for W2 there was nothing in my research plan and no water battle booster, for A1 W1 there's nothing, same for W1 N1, and W1 S1 I won't have enough to communion to W3 consistently for falling frost. On the other hand, I needed H1 for blessing, even if D1 isn't very useful, but overall the D1 mage was half price for -2 rp, and all the extra paths on the water mage weren't useful to my research plan. I just want to interject here and say that while efficiency is great, there is something to be said for research speed. If you have an early game research goal that you need/want to get to early, its still sometimes worth recruiting inefficient mages that maximize your research per turn instead of efficient ones.
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Sep 14, 2013 16:23
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Yes, one of the reasons I picked TC was they have very high research speed with cap-only mages. 17 RP without slow to recruit for only 255 gold; not efficient compared to a non-cap mage, but about double speed compared to any nation which has only slow-to-recruit or noncap choices, possibly faster than double since the Master of the Five Elements has so many paths. I only switched to the slow-to-recruit but more useful Celestial Master when I was confident I'd reach my research goals in time.
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Sep 14, 2013 16:55
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Okay, everyone keeps talking about 'scales'. What the heck is that?
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Sep 14, 2013 17:04
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Ah, there's no Scales heading in Dom4, so I can see where you'd miss that. Scales are the things under Dominion in pretender creation. They refer to Order/Turmoil, Prod/Sloth, Heat/Cold, Growth/Death, Luck/Misfortune, and Magic/Drain. Provinces in your dominion will slowly move closer to the scales you picked. Since many of the scales give +gold if you take them positive, a "scales" build is one that focuses on gold, usually Order 3, maybe some production or at the very least not Sloth 3, and maybe some Growth while keeping the temperature scale neutral. Dominion strength is not a scale but affects how much of your lands are under your scales and how quickly your candles and therefore your scales spread.
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Sep 14, 2013 17:11
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http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Scale Since you're a god you can make your land more orderly/chaotic, hardworking/lazy, hot/cold, growing/dying, lucky/unlucky, magica/mundane.
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Sep 14, 2013 17:12
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Lilli posted:I just want to interject here and say that while efficiency is great, there is something to be said for research speed. If you have an early game research goal that you need/want to get to early, its still sometimes worth recruiting inefficient mages that maximize your research per turn instead of efficient ones. That's more or less the situation I have with LA Ulm. The efficient choice is probably their 180 gold h2e1x1 Black Priests, but that's a whole lot of investment in a bunch of weird crosspaths that aren't going to do much and any battlemagic they might do is way off. They do have one particular ace up their sleeve with their 75 gold s1s and 150 gold s2b1s that don't need a fort or temple to recruit, dramatically reducing the time and initial expense of setting up a place to recruit them (1900 gold and 6 months is a pretty hefty investment for the Black Priests). The capital has 105 gold s1x1s but really only one of the path combos is all that interesting and they compete with the only way I'm going to get a blood economy off the ground.
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Sep 14, 2013 17:22
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Ah, I see. I know how those work, I just wasn't aware that they were referred to as scales. I thought it was some super-secret lizardman strat or something v v
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Sep 14, 2013 17:29
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Dirk the Average posted:The easy way to fix it is to just make them intentional - either add in a different version of communion master that doesn't restrict casting from slaves, or a different version of communion slave that doesn't have the master restrict them. Hell, I'd like to see a similar console for melee and archery as well: Who took a swing at whom, why didn't it connect, what were the odds of scoring a hit and so on.
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Sep 14, 2013 17:29
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So, I've finally got a chance to actually sit down and play my first game of Dominions 3, Single Player, and I went with a medium map 3 Faction game as Late Age Ermor for the whole Roman Zombie Apocalypse shtick. It's fun. So far in the few turns I've played I started almost right next to Atlantis and have been promptly curbstomping them, I took their capital province on my first attempt and then a couple of turns later (during which they attempted to retake the capital, and failed) I took the fort in the capital while simultaneously launching two other offenses at provinces that intel told me had only sparse resistance--I assumed they threw most of their army into their attempt to retake the capital. I took one province, but the intel proved faulty on another, it said there was 10 enemies, there were 40, which would have been an even match for my army of 40 (which was mostly legionnaires/velites/principes) and but it also had all of the commanders that could banish undead, so I lost that fight--still, like I said, I took the other province and took the fort, killing the Atlantean Pretender while I did. In short, it's fun so far, though I wish it was easier to distinguish some of the unit types--legionnaires and velites look absolutely identical, and I want to separate main infantry and ranged units into different squads. DMW45 fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 18:26
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BenRGamer posted:So, I've finally got a chance to actually sit down and play my first game of Dominions 3, Single Player, and I went with a medium map 3 Faction game as Late Age Ermor for the whole Roman Zombie Apocalypse shtick. It's fun. So far in the few turns I've played I started almost right next to Atlantis and have been promptly curbstomping them, I took their capital province on my first attempt and then a couple of turns later (during which they attempted to retake the capital, and failed) I took the fort in the capital while simultaneously launching two other offenses at provinces that intel told me had only sparse populated--I assumed they threw most of their army into their attempt to retake the capital. I took one province, but the intel proved faulty on another, it said there was 10 enemies, there were 40, which would have been an even match for my army of 40 (which was mostly legionnaires/velites/principes) and but it also had all of the commanders that could banish undead, so I lost that fight--still took the other province and took the fort, killing the Atlantean Pretender while I did. Double click a unit in the army setup screen to select all units of that type.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:28
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immolationsex posted:I've never understood why they haven't fixed communions by simply explaining them. Have an in-battle console that explains, blow by blow, who cast what, what boosts that gave them/others in the communion, who got how much fatigue and why, etc. Press 3 when you're watching a battle and you'll have so much information you don't want.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:31
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Army Setup Hotkeys: You can double-click troops in the army screen ('t' key), and it will select all troops with the same name that were recruited from the same province. You can also shift-click to select multiple units or mouse-over and press 'w' to select wounded units. For setting battle orders quickly, you can mouse-over non-commanders' orders and type h to set them to 'Hold an attack'. To specify even more detail, subsequently type shift+R to set them to 'Hold and attack rear.' You can press delete to delete a unit or commander's selected battle orders, and you can press CTRL+1 to copy a commander's orders and then 1 to paste them where your mouse is.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:42
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OBi posted:Double click a unit in the army setup screen to select all units of that type. Thanks. Is there a way to send troops to different provinces without having to send a Commander back there to pick them up? I'm expanding now and don't have enough commanders to have one in every province.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:43
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You could recruit an indie commander in the province if there's one available.
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Sep 14, 2013 18:45
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amuayse posted:You could recruit an indie commander in the province if there's one available. Thanks. A few more turns in and Atlantis finally went belly-up. I didn't even conquer any more provinces, they just ran out of dominion. Also the other faction turned up, the one I can't really spell but is based off of china, I think. I just had a horde of roman zombies fight a horde of chinese pirates. This game, man.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:11
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There's an Enc 2 Spell: Revive King that will give you a commander with 80 undead & 40 regular leadership for 5 gems. Slightly more useful is Revive Bane, in Conj, since they have more HP and are thus less likely to take one arrow to the face and have your forces route. Censors are the Achen Empire's cheaper national version of the Bane. Both require a D2 mage to summon.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:22
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Finally won a game vs the AI. Used the Frost Giant pretender. The learning curve on this game seems crazy steep, but I'm enjoying it. There's so much to do, I don't know if what I'm doing is actually optimal. The first two games I thought I was doing really well and then I lost because everyone believed in the other pretender god more. HOW DO GET BETTER AT THIS GAME?!
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Sep 14, 2013 19:34
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amuayse posted:You could recruit an indie commander in the province if there's one available. Won't work for dom3 late ermor, they need undead leadership. Revive King is the best bet for troop ferry. allroy posted:Finally won a game vs the AI. Used the Frost Giant pretender. The learning curve on this game seems crazy steep, but I'm enjoying it. There's so much to do, I don't know if what I'm doing is actually optimal. The first two games I thought I was doing really well and then I lost because everyone believed in the other pretender god more. Play a lot and ask a lot of questions.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:35
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Thanks. I'm actually just reading over some of the "Let's play" threads. I figure this will help quite a bit.
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Sep 14, 2013 19:49
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I won my first multiplayer game as LA Lemuria. I set my dominion to 10 and had all negative scales (except for luck), and set my two buddies to bickering while I made a run for the thrones. Good times.
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Sep 14, 2013 20:19
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allroy posted:Finally won a game vs the AI. Used the Frost Giant pretender. The learning curve on this game seems crazy steep, but I'm enjoying it. There's so much to do, I don't know if what I'm doing is actually optimal. The first two games I thought I was doing really well and then I lost because everyone believed in the other pretender god more. Huh. Apparently Late Age Ermor is kinda overpowered against the AI, then. I just won the first game I played. I never even figured out how to do magic research, it stayed at 0 the whole game. I just wound up plowing through the last faction through sheer numbers, in the end it got a little tedious so I was just throwing masses of both high and low level undeads under random commanders and throwing them at people. It showed some crazy things happening sometimes. Like 15 enemies beating my army of 182 undead or something along those lines. But eventually I got the correct combination somewhere (or it was just due to me throwing 300+ mooks at people) and eventually conquered every single province on the map
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Sep 14, 2013 21:25
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Unless something has changed since I last played LA Ermor, it's the most overpowered nation in the game. You just set your dominion on your pretender to max and roll over everyone in a massive tidal wave of free undead.
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Sep 14, 2013 21:41
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If there aren't humans in your game to form a coalition to immediately wipe LA Ermor out, a 10-domain Ermor will win close to 100% of the time. I remember that much from Dominions 3 at least. I mean, you didn't even do any loving research. If you had done the typical Burden of Time/Foul Air (or whatever it's called) combo, the AI would have probably died out on its own. If the map is small enough, 10-Dom Ermor might be able to win without ever starting a fight with the AI. boho fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Sep 14, 2013 |
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Sep 14, 2013 22:25
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My experience with 10-Dom Lemuria was that ghosts actually get their rear end kicked by similar numbers of troops. It wasn't as easy as the tales of LA Ermor in D3 lead me to believe, and I only really won by one of the players being an idiot and thinking the other player had his throne appropriately defended while he shuffled his troops around. 
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Sep 14, 2013 22:40
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As far as troop quality and sheer freespawn quantity goes lemuria is a pretty different nation than late ermor, which is now mid ermor. that said both nations are pretty much kill on sight in multiplayer.
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Sep 14, 2013 22:42
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Anticheese posted:My experience with 10-Dom Lemuria was that ghosts actually get their rear end kicked by similar numbers of troops. The same was true of LA Ermor. The secret was that you had 20 times the number of troops as anyone else.
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Sep 14, 2013 22:46
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