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After playing the Seleucids in RTW2 a bunch i'm on an elephant binge. Are Behemoths worth using or am I better off by summoning Banes with my death gems?
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Oct 25, 2013 16:14
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Asehujiko posted:After playing the Seleucids in RTW2 a bunch i'm on an elephant binge. Are Behemoths worth using or am I better off by summoning Banes with my death gems? Depends what you need. Behemoths can be situationally useful if you require a big trampler with fear, particularly with buffs like body ethereal. Banes and Bane Lords can always make decent thugs if you need them.
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Oct 25, 2013 16:43
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What's the general strategy for underwater fort placement? Should I build along the coast near other nation's caps or isolated in deep water comfortably surrounded by friendly provinces? For reference, I'm middle age Atlantis, without any serious aquatic competition.
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Oct 25, 2013 17:14
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Search every province with a n1 mage and save your money. There's often n1 magic sites that give a free fort, other than that put them on high income provinces and near the coast. Just don't put them next to Vanarus, he'll mess you up.
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Oct 25, 2013 17:18
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Squalid posted:What's the general strategy for underwater fort placement? Should I build along the coast near other nation's caps or isolated in deep water comfortably surrounded by friendly provinces? For reference, I'm middle age Atlantis, without any serious aquatic competition. Don't put them next to Arco's cap, or his domspread will screw up your stuff. Everywhere else is probably fine.
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Oct 25, 2013 18:40
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Odd question, but down anyone have a sort of 'Khorne' build for a pretender and his realm? I know blood magic would need to be involved.
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Oct 25, 2013 20:37
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de_dust posted:Odd question, but down anyone have a sort of 'Khorne' build for a pretender and his realm? I know blood magic would need to be involved. You might look into LA Ulm, they're Gothic-themed and have blood magic.
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Oct 25, 2013 20:42
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Getting your pretender horror marked is basically a death sentence, right?
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Oct 25, 2013 20:47
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Only eventually. Everything dies though, even gods. Be philosophical about it.
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Oct 25, 2013 20:48
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Squalid posted:What's the general strategy for underwater fort placement?
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Oct 25, 2013 20:48
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Yeah lol I know they're bad. I thought I was signing up at late age Atlantis, whoops. Oh well.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:05
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I didn't notice this in the Dom4 manual, don't know if it's covered. Underwater forts won't pull in resources from adjacent land provinces. P.S. And vice versa LordSloth fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 21:37
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-Troika- posted:Getting your pretender horror marked is basically a death sentence, right? Depends on the god. Eventually they'll eat enough horror marks from horror attacks that they'll attract a big enough horror to eat them, but some gods last longer than others. If you've got a giant fuckoff dragon, for instance, it can easily eat a lot of horrors. If you've got a crone, on the other hand, she might just get eaten immediately the first time a lesser horror pops up.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:39
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Dirk the Average posted:Depends on the god. Eventually they'll eat enough horror marks from horror attacks that they'll attract a big enough horror to eat them, but some gods last longer than others. If you've got a giant fuckoff dragon, for instance, it can easily eat a lot of horrors. If you've got a crone, on the other hand, she might just get eaten immediately the first time a lesser horror pops up. How does that interact with pretenders like the phoenix? Will it get to the point that they will fight against horrors every single turn? And are horror marks wiped if you die "for real" and are brought back by your priests?
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Oct 25, 2013 21:42
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Torrannor posted:How does that interact with pretenders like the phoenix? Will it get to the point that they will fight against horrors every single turn? And are horror marks wiped if you die "for real" and are brought back by your priests? To my knowledge literally nothing removes horror marks, including dying and coming back.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:44
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Torrannor posted:How does that interact with pretenders like the phoenix? Will it get to the point that they will fight against horrors every single turn? And are horror marks wiped if you die "for real" and are brought back by your priests? Horror marks are never wiped, not even on death. Since horrors deal horror marks with their attacks, it does end up with the god resurrecting and then immediately killed by doom horrors.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:45
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Torrannor posted:How does that interact with pretenders like the phoenix? Will it get to the point that they will fight against horrors every single turn? In theory, maybe? I haven't done extensive testing on how exactly horror marks work. An immortal pretender like the phoenix will die, then come back in the capital immediately. The net effect is the phoenix is likely to get afflictions and is going to lose any gear/gems that it has been given. It's also unlikely to be able to really ever leave the capital. You could still use it to forge stuff or cast spells though.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:47
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Ok I've got the basic hang of moving round and winning basic battles and scripts etc, but I'm still lost on some of the more important details. If you want to use blood magic, how should you go about arranging a good influx of blood slaves? Do you have roving bands of blood hunters or what? The mages I can recruit all have low levels in their paths, I understand I should be sending out a few good mages and then lots of weaker ones to be slaves so that the main ones can cast better magic in battle right?
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Oct 25, 2013 23:10
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blood hunting is complicated, here is a basic guide http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Land_of_Demons/K%27s_guide_and_Blood_mini-guide#Mini-Blood_Guide blood hunting has changed a bit in dominions 4 because PD decreases unrest and you can't set taxation to 0 anymore, but the basics are the same probably, I haven't really tested it
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Oct 25, 2013 23:15
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Basically, you want roughly two blood hunters (your cheapest B mage equipped with a Sanguine Dowsing Rod [const4]) per province and some scouts or something to ferry the slaves back to a lab. It's the happy middle ground between too many hunters which makes hunting impossible and too few. Unrest should stabilize at ~130 assuming O3. Any province with more than 5k population will still grant the max blood income with smaller ones granting proportionally less slaves.
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Oct 25, 2013 23:20
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Only one of the lesser horrors has a horror mark attack (astral claw) so if you get marked once, it usually isn't too bad.
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Oct 26, 2013 02:50
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horrors kill everything eventually, even an absurdly geared berserk regenerating tartarian or pretender in +10 gift of health dominion will eventually get cursed by kurgi and then drop their magebane because scabiel or umor knocked their arms off, or they'll fail a MR-vs-death and die even with 35+ MR, horrors bad (and yeah it's actually pretty easy to get your pretender so horror marked that they just get owned every time they're recalled) the only sure way to escape horror death is to cast returning whenever you're attacked, but you need astral 2 and 2 pearls to do that and you can't cast returning in your capital
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Oct 26, 2013 03:07
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Flavahbeast posted:horrors kill everything eventually, even an absurdly geared berserk regenerating tartarian or pretender in +10 gift of health dominion will eventually get cursed by kurgi and then drop their magebane because scabiel or umor knocked their arms off, or they'll fail a MR-vs-death and die even with 35+ MR, horrors bad (and yeah it's actually pretty easy to get your pretender so horror marked that they just get owned every time they're recalled) I think I heard returning had a slight chance of killing you now, too.
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Oct 26, 2013 03:18
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The New pretender chassis for c'tis might be able to crunchamuncha some doom horrors.
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Oct 26, 2013 03:20
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against doom horrors you really want to kill or incapacitate the horror in the first round: the Devourer of Souls' Devour Soul always kills any (non-mindless?) unit it hits, but first it has to hit, and a lot of doom horrors have more than enough defense skill to reliably dodge a ATT 14 attack. Also, Devour Soul only hits one target. The eater of gods has 3 forms so it has to be killed 3 times, and you have to fight a bunch of lesser horrors too if you get attacked by this guy: (this is all dom3 info but I'm assuming these dudes haven't changed too much) Flavahbeast fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Oct 26, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 03:40
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amuayse posted:Only one of the lesser horrors has a horror mark attack (astral claw) so if you get marked once, it usually isn't too bad. Someone Sent Lesser Horror against my Shedu pretender one game and by the time he finally trampled the fucker to death he was so marked that he was immediately eaten by a Doom Horror the following turn. I was still killing independents. 
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Oct 26, 2013 03:57
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Flavahbeast posted:against doom horrors you really want to kill or incapacitate the horror in the first round: the Devourer of Souls' Devour Soul always kills any (non-mindless?) unit it hits, but first it has to hit, and a lot of doom horrors have more than enough defense skill to reliably dodge a ATT 14 attack. Also, Devour Soul only hits one target. The eater of gods has 3 forms so it has to be killed 3 times, and you have to fight a bunch of lesser horrors too if you get attacked by this guy: You can always just banish/claws too, and in dom3 that guy's extra horrors bugged him so he didn't attack until they were dead and they all attacked one at a time.
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Oct 26, 2013 04:22
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Is MA Ermor even more powerful in Dominions 4 than LA Ermor was in Dominions 3? StR means nothing to them, major death bless is now fantastic on Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre, most of their units can do formations for free morale-wise, their high map-move is even stronger now that everyone is slowed down - it just seems like a straight up buff on a lot of fronts, for an already very powerful nation.
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Oct 26, 2013 11:49
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I've read the general consensus that LA Ermor was "very" powerful. But then, I've read some very knowledgeable players say that they're weren't actually all that. They certainly had some acute weaknesses that are were easily exploitable by pretty much everyone, and those weaknesses haven't gone anywhere in Dom 4. They look more of a late bloomer to my (admittedly inexperienced) eyes. Looking at the stats for Dusk Elders, the new ones do seem much better. They can all cast banefire and nether darts, and all of them can join communions. If you get a fire random, they can cast solar eclipse pretty easily (and for free with a fire in a jar). So there is a buff there. I wouldn't say knights are worth blessing. They never heal and don't seem to spawn in any great numbers.
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Oct 26, 2013 12:58
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tooterfish posted:I've read the general consensus that LA Ermor was "very" powerful. But then, I've read some very knowledgeable players say that they're weren't actually all that. A while ago someone posted statistics culled from from games over on the main Dominions 3 forums -- LA Ermor won more games that they were in than any other nation in the game, and by a massive gap over the next-highest (which I think was MA Pythium or something -- this back when clams were still a thing.) I realize this isn't a definitive answer since it doesn't take player skill level into account (which is basically impossible without some kind of centralized matchmaking) and free-for-alls make measuring balance difficult anyways, but I've never felt unjustified in banning them either.
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Oct 26, 2013 14:08
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tooterfish posted:I wouldn't say knights are worth blessing. They never heal and don't seem to spawn in any great numbers.
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Oct 26, 2013 14:31
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Hah, well there's a thing. Probably still not worth building a bless around though. When I tried Ermor against the AI, I used bishops with amulets of the dead to summon hordes of undead horsemen. The 4 knights a turn that spawned just had to suck up their pride and slum it with those. tooterfish fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Oct 26, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 14:36
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jBrereton posted:Knights of the Sepulchre totally heal if you get them into negative health with a D Bless. I'm sure this is a bug. Will it be fixed? Probably not. Its a feature not a bug, undead units don't die after the battle if they hit negative HP from having a D bless. That being said, they're still awfully rare units that are pretty fragile.
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Oct 26, 2013 14:38
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Lictors are pretty good. If they have a good bless, they're on par with or even better than wights.
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Oct 26, 2013 14:49
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Lilli posted:Its a feature not a bug, undead units don't die after the battle if they hit negative HP from having a D bless. That being said, they're still awfully rare units that are pretty fragile.
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Oct 26, 2013 15:28
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I played MA Ermor/Ashen Empire a bit in SP, here's how they're different from dom3: +Knights of the Unholy Sepulcher can heal after battles now if you give them a death bless, previously all of your KotUS would eventually fall apart regardless of bless. Depending on your bless a group of 5 KotUS with some chaff can clear a whole lot of indie provinces, they have great defense and never get tired so indies have a really hard time hitting them -No more overtaxing, this is actually a HUGE hit to Ermor's gold income, in your dominion there was really no penalty for setting taxes to 200 everywhere because the unrest/poploss from 200% tax was nothing compared to the lost income from even a single turn's worth of ermor domkill, especially in higher dominion -Ermor's capital now starts at ~500 population instead of the usual 30k. Again, huge loss of income in the early game, which makes it much harder to build the keeps and temples you need to reach critical mass +800 gold keeps can now be built everywhere (previously it was 800 gold keeps in forests, 1000 gold keeps elsewhere, with no apparent different in troop quality) -800 gold keeps now take 5 turns to build instead of 3, this is a huge deal since that's 2 more turns of getting ghouls and zombies from a province instead of the cool skeletal legionaries and knights you need to win -Luck 3/Turmoil 3 seems to give less income than it did in dom3 (I haven't tried luck 3/turm 3 since the patch that improved events to maybe this isn't true anymore?) Ermor is still really strong but they're definitely weaker than they were in dom3. The biggest problem I have with Ermor, and the reason I didn't play them in the LP, is that killing Ermor still doesn't get you very much: the 15 death gems from the capital is very nice but for the most part you're just getting a bunch of empty provinces that will maybe, eventually become worthwhile later on in the game if you site search them, and site searching magic is way more of a hassle than it was in dom3 (almost all site searching is more expensive and the range of the rituals is limited.) Basically starting next to MA/LA Ermor or LA R'lyeh is a death sentence 99% of the time, even if you beat them, which I think is dumb. Flavahbeast fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Oct 27, 2013 |
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Oct 26, 2013 17:05
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Well with a D10 mage, you get 13 wights for 20 death gems when you cast revive wights. Might be useful for an early rush.
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Oct 26, 2013 18:21
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amuayse posted:Well with a D10 mage, you get 13 wights for 20 death gems when you cast revive wights. Might be useful for an early rush. That sounds like it might make for a pretty fun gimmick build. Let's say I'm playing Sceleria, with a dormant Prince of Death. I take Death 10, Dom 7, and then 120 points worth of scales. In year 2, the god will wake up and you'll have enough death gems for 2-3 castings of the spell, and you can supplement the wights with shadow vestals and skeletons. Is this powerful enough to be worth the versatility you are giving up?
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Oct 27, 2013 07:41
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No, but you're playing Sceleria so you probably don't care that much about power or efficiency anyway.
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Oct 27, 2013 08:09
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Also keep in mind the stats from Dom3 on Shrap are super skewed because a) gemgens, which let them transition to gem-heavy economy much easier (you usually went pretender -> naiads -> clams) and b) LA Ermor made a name for itself because it was played by someone who was later caught cheating, as in hex editing turn files to give himself free stuff. This is also why the Vamp Queen in base Dom3 was so horribly nerfed. The changes to taxation and events are also a massive issue for MA Ermor. I personally think they're somewhat less powerful than in Dom3.
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Oct 27, 2013 08:17
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