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It varies. I've gotten more than one of the rainbow gem events so far in Insanegoons, and it's only turn 20ish. It's a gamble, but that sort of goes by definition.
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Dec 18, 2013 19:12
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For nations whose national heroes provide useful diversity, taking luck can be useful. And again, fewer barbarians. And also, the occasional staff of elemental mastery.
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Dec 18, 2013 20:38
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Neruz posted:I'm told Earthquake works well against the undead hordes of Ermor too. I just played an SP game as LA Ulm where I was rushing evo while massing members of the 2nd tier in year 1 to get some early bloodhunters. Suddenly, I see that drat Lemuria flag creeping on my border, which, based on my Ermor experiences in dom3, usually means I'm about to have a hell of a time fighting giant midgame battles with tons of supply items and temple spam. Well it turns out that having a huge collection of S2 mages (they only require a lab to recruit) and year 1 access to solar rays makes for the easiest undead rush I've ever done. A few turns later, when it was time to siege his capitol without any supply items I was already switching over to black priest production, who all have inquisitor  . I literally converted the undead from their game ruining ways and I gotta say the 15 death gem income was almost worth totally stalling my expansion efforts.
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Dec 19, 2013 00:26
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I just had a random event in Spring of year 2, where an animist tried to take back a province from me. He showed up with this  
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Dec 19, 2013 00:35
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Penguingo posted:I just had a random event in Spring of year 2, where an animist tried to take back a province from me. 
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Dec 19, 2013 00:43
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There is nothing more irritating than having to leave a reserve force because barbarians and knights keeping hitting your farm provinces. Especially since the barbarians kill big chunks of the pop. Never EVER take Misfortune 3, especially if you don't have Order Scales. Misfortune 2 is the way to go.
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Dec 19, 2013 02:15
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amuayse posted:There is nothing more irritating than having to leave a reserve force because barbarians and knights keeping hitting your farm provinces.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:07
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jBrereton posted:Yeah man having one spare army in your heartlands is totally vexing when you've got +10% income overall the entire game when using those 80 points in Mis-2 for O2 (or more likely O3 and not doing another thing). That's kind of a false dichotomy, though, considering that o3 is essentially mandatory, so you're going to have it regardless. Those 80 extra design points are probably for something else, maybe a point of magic or balanced temp scales or something. If faced with a choice dropping 80 points in order to get o3, I'd probably go drain-1 and cold-1 before going into misfortune.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:13
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How many times does team turmoil need to kick everyone's' collective rear end before the "o3 is mandatory" idea dies? Because, I mean, we could totally keep doing it. If that would help.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:14
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Where's that mod, seriously. That's doable, right?
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Dec 19, 2013 05:17
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Irony.or.Death posted:How many times does team turmoil need to kick everyone's' collective rear end before the "o3 is mandatory" idea dies?
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Dec 19, 2013 05:23
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jBrereton posted:On the other hand, you can take Misfortune-2 and be mostly fine-ish, plus 200 design points richer than someone who took Luck 3 and got maybe a turn's worth of gem income in the midgame for it once. Actually based on my experience Luck 3 + Turmoil 3 will get you an event of similar value (1000 gold, a big blob of gems) every 2 - 3 turns on average at Rare events level.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:26
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amuayse posted:I never seen the bug get quite this bad. More a feature really.
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Dec 19, 2013 07:08
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jBrereton posted:Yeah man having one spare army in your heartlands is totally vexing when you've got +10% income overall the entire game when using those 80 points in Mis-2 for O2 (or more likely O3 and not doing another thing). Even with Misfortune 1 barbarians raid me constantly and the developer team's DnD group decides to LARP next to my capital. Luck 0-3 is the only way to be safe if you're unlucky in real life.
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Dec 19, 2013 10:40
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Luck also can give gold events in the early game, which can be hugely benifitual to early expantion and fort, which can snowball. Luck is essentualy a chance, as could be expected, sometimes providing huge benefits sometimes being nearly useless.
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Dec 19, 2013 11:37
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Penguingo posted:I just had a random event in Spring of year 2, where an animist tried to take back a province from me. now see, THIS is a job for Beast Mastery. Cast it quick, before the animist dies to poison aura and they all rout
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Dec 19, 2013 13:06
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Are those some kind of giant leopard toads?
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Dec 19, 2013 13:18
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Neruz posted:Are those some kind of giant leopard toads? It's the Monster Toad. After you cast that Beast Mastery make sure you Gift of Reason one and prophetize it.
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Dec 19, 2013 13:44
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AtomikKrab posted:More a feature really. Imagine 400 elephants on the edge of a cliff.
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Dec 19, 2013 18:48
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Outscripting a fool: the best feeling? (plus a hundred or so chaff troops of 600) This battle also made me question if/when Gift of Health'd troops in unfriendly dominion lose their bonus HP? Pan's stuff came into this battle at double their base HP despite it being unfriendly dominion even before the battle (it flipped over the turn before and remained my dominion after this battle). The province they came out of was solidly in their dominion, does that have an effect? jBrereton fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 21:43
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jBrereton posted:Outscripting a fool: the best feeling? As a new player I'm boggled by the kind of results the more experienced players get, like this battle report. Can you explain a little more about what happened here for educational purposes?
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Dec 19, 2013 21:50
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jBrereton posted:This battle also made me question if/when Gift of Health'd troops in unfriendly dominion lose their bonus HP? Current HP carries over into the battle for next turn. Its much like gods in the way poo poo work. Your maximum HP is determined by the province you're in that turn, but your HP carries over from the province you were in last turn.
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Dec 19, 2013 22:50
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MagnumOpus posted:As a new player I'm boggled by the kind of results the more experienced players get, like this battle report. Can you explain a little more about what happened here for educational purposes? *loving Wordy Post Ahead* In short, I used all of the battlemagic I had at my disposal, and my opponent didn't. I had a huge advantage by being on the defensive, meaning I got a round of casting and shooting before they were able to do anything. This is the reason I didn't storm the fort on the first turn I could, because I knew there was about to be a Götterdämmerung, and I was going to win it if I prepared. Now this whole thing also hinged on my Pretender, due to his ability to cast a whole bunch of army-wide buffs and forge helmets which give +1 Fire Magic to MA Man's Logrian Wise Men, which they can get outside of forts (25% chance at F1, which becomes F2 with a Flame Helmet, which then becomes F3 with Phoenix Power, which makes them able to cast Flaming Arrows with an extra gem). Otherwise, he'd have knackered himself out just buffing the army, which would've been no good. On Turn 1 I cast: - Arrow Fend, because Pan had been using a lot of Centaurs with Longbows, as well as their Pans casting a lot of Blade Winds (Man's ranged troops have low Protection but massive damage output, so it's important to protect them from this kind of attrition), and it's cheap enough to use whenever past a certain point. - Wind Guide, to make my Longbowmen, Vanara Chakram Throwers (pretty excellent mercenaries), Foresters and various other troops better at shooting. - Serpent's Blessing, so all of my troops were safe from poison. Pan uses a lot of Manticores due to having had Mother Oak (+20 Nature Gems per turn) up for ages and ages, and them being a generally useful summon (Fear, a poison missile attack, lot of HP, lots of strength, generally a decent summon for sieges and on the battlefield alike) - Mass Flight, which gives all of your troops Flight (absolutely 100% crucial for the next turn) And quite a lot of buffs like Summon Earthpower / Phoenix Power / Strength of Gaia on mages that needed it for the next turn. Then on Turn 2, cast: - Earthquake with two mages. This does a bunch of damage to all non-Flying targets. If my troops weren't flying, many of them would probably be killed by this, which is why you have to be extremely careful when casting it. - Relief, meaning my now-flying troops could get some effective reinvigoration, which they need due to flying troops taking a lot of fatigue, and the likelihood of them fighting almost all of the time against hundreds of skirmishing, berzerking troops. - Flaming Arrows, the go-to buff Man really needs for its archer squads. Under Flaming Arrows, a couple of hundred archers will tear most things a new arsehole. Even if they're under Arrow Fend, your opponent is going to have a bad time. - Foul Vapours, which eventually covers the battlefield in poison to help mop low-HP targets up and hopefully give afflictions to higher-HP units like Pans themselves. - Scads of Storm of Thorns, which breaks up an opponent's formation and is generally vexing because it reduces their defence a lot and holds them in place, as well as doing some damage. And from then on it was just a matter of my longbowmen clearing about 100 Maenads a turn while the Pans at the back tired themselves out. Honestly it was probably for the best that the troops coming into the province had extra health, or they'd have HP-routed when all the Maenads got killed off by Earthquakes, instead of getting knackered out and then shot to pieces at the end. Here's a picture of what double-casting Earthquake does. Red number fans take note:  And then what happens when about 400 bowmen follow it up with Flaming Arrows:  My opponent made some critical mistakes here, though. The two biggies: - Didn't bring any gems for their mages, so they had almost no army-wide buffs. The Caelan Seraphs they acquired by seducing Caelum's stuff had been using Arrow Fend in every major battle, which meant my archers were underperforming. But because they hadn't brought any gems, they were stuck casting Mirror Image before getting killed (I specifically set a number of archers to Fire Flying Units to try to snipe them on the first turn, which turned out to be unnecessary, but is always worth doing if a specific kind of unit quite unlike most of your opponent's stuff is causing trouble). - For some reason his Dragon cast Fire Shield and then Fireball (which is total garbage). Now if his Dragon wades into combat, the thought of my chaff taking 8AP damage if they get through its Awe is not that worrying to me. What's worrying to me is the Dragon in my face (until it gets killed by mass bowfire, which it excellently did in a single round, so quickly that I have no idea if it racked up any more afflictions, but I'm guessing the answer to that is 'yes').
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Dec 19, 2013 23:10
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nice script. fireball sounds like a default on some gem spell the dragon was scripted for. archaeo fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 23:24
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archaeo posted:nice script. Not many F buff spells worth casting really besides flaming arrows. A high F dragon can tear poo poo up all by himself though. One cast of firestorm followed by a couple living fires could have killed man's entire army. The dragon and a couple of thugs in front of him geared for arrow immunity is all that was needed (sleepers with arrow protection amulet, a decent shield, red dragon armor, with some regen scripted to stand around like idiots in range of the longbows would have soaked all of the arrows), particularly if pan was moving in from GoH. Moving a giant stack of unbuffed Maenads into longbows looks like an error to me though. Pan probably forgot to move some gems around before the battle and paid the price for it. The Maenads don't matter but the loss of the other stuff does, particularly the stolen A mage and dragon.
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Dec 20, 2013 00:01
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Not many F buff spells worth casting really besides flaming arrows. A high F dragon can tear poo poo up all by himself though. One cast of firestorm followed by a couple living fires could have killed man's entire army. He only took an F4 dragon to start with, and it got really badly mauled with literally all of the afflictions possible quite early in the war before it spent about a year healing most of them up (as happens when you get your SC pretender cursed early on), so was acting at F2 as it still hadn't healed its Mute (and was also carrying no gems, so ho hum). Also, I have no idea how Pan is doing in terms of research, but it can't be that well. They only hold a handful of forts, one of which is on permanent lockdown due to Rain of Toads (2 Slave Markets, )/Hurricane/Locust Swarm/etc. spam, another of which is their capital, which has been under siege almost every turn for about 2 years but was filled with Maenads and Pans producing more loving Maenads under T3, and as such was basically unbreakable before this sally and rapid retake, and the other one which is always being fought over by Marignon and Pan. The only 'free' fort is Mictlan's old capital, but that gets interrupted every now and then.quote:The dragon and a couple of thugs in front of him geared for arrow immunity is all that was needed (sleepers with arrow protection amulet, a decent shield, red dragon armor, with some regen scripted to stand around like idiots in range of the longbows would have soaked all of the arrows), particularly if pan was moving in from GoH. 
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Dec 20, 2013 00:35
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They will still happily fire on the soakers if the dragon is out of range though, which he would be in the back corner unless the squad is literally on the front of the field. Even so, he didn't have the F for firestorm plus elemental spam so it's moot 
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Dec 20, 2013 00:43
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jBrereton posted:*loving Awesome Wordy Post* Thanks for the awesome breakdown, it really drives home how much I have to learn. I'm amazed at how much depth there is to this game and how a few well-considered plans can totally stomp an enemy. I'm just finishing up my first real SP game as MA Arco, which I'd chosen to try to get a handle on the magic options with their Mystic diversity. I went with a Dormant Titan of War and Wisdom E4A4S6, 6 Dom, and O3P1Cold1M1. I think I did pretty well in the expansion phase, had some problems balancing PD with my fort goals and had to waste some turns re-capturing border territory from Eriu, but started stalling out after that. My problem is that while I had followed through on a plan to get gem economy going with radar spells and construction research up, I had not fully understood what I needed to consider about breaking into 3-4 in elemental magic. I guess I had this idea that I'd be pumping out staves of Elemental Mastery and individual path boosters to become a magical powerhouse but it's not working out how I thought it would and moreover I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be aiming for. I feel like I should be using a lot of summonable troops but I'm not sure what is good, and I have really no idea what I should be looking at for thugs. Now Ermor is knocking hard on my door after wiping out Agartha and I'm not sure how I'm going to fend off the increasingly huge stacks they are throwing. It's definitely been a great learning experience but I think I am missing something about how to get the midgame to come together.
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Dec 20, 2013 02:20
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MagnumOpus posted:Thanks for the awesome breakdown, it really drives home how much I have to learn. I'm amazed at how much depth there is to this game and how a few well-considered plans can totally stomp an enemy. OK, well Eriu/TNN in EA is likely to be one of your most annoying opponents in most games as Arco. The AI doesn't usually, but players can and will cast Arrow Fend/Wind Guide etc. with their Sidhe Lords to make your slingers even worse, and theirs much better. Eriu also has the big advantage of quite high MR everywhere (although they lack Astral magic to buff it up higher with Antimagic), so the usual go-to of Mystics casting a bunch of Soul Slay/Enslave Mind is less easy to pull off just because of that fact, and Serpent's Blessing, which Tuathas are quite capable of casting, negates your ability to cast poison spells with Priestesses to strip Glamour off their commanders. Your Mystics with F1 are always going to be able to cast Flaming Arrows, which affects slingers just fine (Communion Master with 2+ slaves, Power of the Spheres, Phoenix Power, then Flaming Arrows, so you'll need 2 Fire gems and a Pearl). Try that, see if it helps. As to Ermor, ehhh. If they're getting super huge, Solar Brilliance at Enchantment 7 will absolutely ruin an entire army of Undead by itself, but it will also blind most of your units by the time a battle is over, including the mage who cast it. Getting an Astrologer or even Mystic to S5 to cast it shouldn't be a problem, but don't use it near your God. jBrereton fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Dec 20, 2013 |
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Dec 20, 2013 02:51
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MagnumOpus posted:Thanks for the awesome breakdown, it really drives home how much I have to learn. I'm amazed at how much depth there is to this game and how a few well-considered plans can totally stomp an enemy. MA Arco is all about the communions, which are rather complicated to learn and finnicky for a newbie. Basically, you need to put in a pile of mages with a chaff screen and watch them melt everything. 4 or 8 slaves with a few masters at the head can inflict quite a bit of damage and a mega communion can kill literally anything, though you must be extremely careful with them in multiplayer if the enemy can set Earthquake/Rain of Stones traps. I generally used the following as a rule of thumb when playing with arco communions: Astral only mystics are communion slaves. Earth mystics are masters. Always bring an E master scripted to summon earthpower as all self targeted spells that a master casts will affect the slaves and you need the reinvigoration. They also have access to Gifts From Heaven which will drop 3 low precision meteors that insta-kill anything they hit. Spamming them into an army will generally inflict heavy damage and due to their inaccuracy, they will often accidentally hit commanders and mages. They will also hit your chaff but that's what it's for. Maws of the Earth is also a good option if you can handle the fatigue and blade wind is good if facing low prot hordes. Water mystics as masters can be used to spam falling frost or frozen heart to take out units without cold resist. Fire mystics can be used to spam fireballs/falling fires to kill things that don't resist fire. They can also buff slingers with flaming arrows if needed. Fire+Water mystics can cast the powerful line of acid spells, which on top of doing good damage will also break armor which can be handy against tougher high prot units. Fire+Earth mystics can cast magma eruption which does significant amounts of damage on top of leaving a heat after effect to fatigue things and set them on fire. You can also build generic soul slay/enslave mind spam communions as well if there is a need. Arco has easy access to forging rune smasher+eye of the void+spell focus so you can make your enslave communions very annoying. Look out for lizard shamans and crystal/garnet amazons as they can also be plugged into your communions. Shamans are great for providing personal regen on your slaves which allows you to go over on fatigue more without risking death. The bonus on getting crystal amazons explains itself as communioned air is extremely powerful, highly accurate and difficult to resist along with providing access to some of the best battlefield magic/buffs in the game (fog warriors, arrow fend, storm). Garnets are even more tricky to use for a newbie as you also have to figure out blood magic Basically, a single Garnet Sorceress scripted for (sabbath master)(hold as needed)(reinvigoration) can reset the fatigue on all of your slaves.And that's just for regular battle spells! You can also do some rather evil poo poo with specialized high powered small communions. In your Ermor example, firestorm, earthquake or solar brilliance communions with appropriate guards could destroy basically any sized undead force. Always fun to see a battle report with 30 guys on one side with zero losses vs 500 killed. TheDemon made some excellent posts on desura about communions: communions, how do they work? http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=1316 Ignore anything that mentions reverse/double/linebacker communions as those no longer work. fatigue calculation http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=692 EDIT: Oh and get mind hunt for your astrologers. +5 pen mind hunters are beastly. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Dec 20, 2013 |
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Dec 20, 2013 17:10
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Nuclearmonkee posted:communions, how do they work? http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=1316 Ignore anything that mentions reverse/double/linebacker communions as those no longer work.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:18
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Jon Joe posted:Wait, which part of reverse communions no longer work? Do the master's buffs no longer apply to slaves or something? They no longer work period. Slaves can't do anything after entering the communion. You can still buff them but all they can do is stand there.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:23
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Jon Joe posted:Wait, which part of reverse communions no longer work? Do the master's buffs no longer apply to slaves or something? Slaves are now literally just fatigue absorbing meat blobs.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:25
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Ah. Well at least you can still cast Summon Earthpower to make sure they don't fatigue out as quickly.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:33
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Is phoenix pyre no longer the best buff spell then? I'm a little out the loop on the dom4 buffer game.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:33
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Incy posted:Is phoenix pyre no longer the best buff spell then? I'm a little out the loop on the dom4 buffer game. Off script phoenix pyre on communion slaves is still the best.
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Dec 20, 2013 18:38
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As LA Man I took the suggestions given to me and have been doing very well so far. I'm up to 2 forts with a 3rd on the way. I have a green dragon with 4 nature and he has been doing great. The only problem is he took a wound and I can 't shake it. I tried shape shifting and that doesn't work reliably enough. Do I have to wait for the chalice? Also I randomly acquired a stalker assassin. How would I go about equipping him? I assume MR items and the best melee weapons I can afford? Would air shoes be useful or would he drop from fatigue before he gets to his target? Excelsiortothemax fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 20, 2013 |
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Dec 20, 2013 21:00
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Excelsiortothemax posted:As LA Man I took the suggestions given to me and have been doing very well so far. I'm up to 2 forts with a 3rd on the way. I have a green dragon with 4 nature and he has been doing great. The only problem is he took a wound and I can 't shake it. I tried shape shifting and that doesn't work reliably enough. Do I have to wait for the chalice? quote:Also I randomly acquired a stalker assassin. How would I go about equipping him? I assume MR items and the best melee weapons I can afford? Would air shoes be useful or would he drop from fatigue before he gets to his target?
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Dec 20, 2013 21:23
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^If you can put up the Gift of Health (enchantment 5, N5) global you can heal most wounds with it for your dragon - if you can get +1 N on your dragon you should be able to cast it (forge a thistle mace, etc). There are also specialized healer units which I don't think are by default available to LA Man but you could theoretically come up with a magic site allowing recruitment of one of them. Assuming your stalker assassin is the Eludian stalker, you should probably equip it based heavily on what you want to assassinate - you probably want to put it in an enemy capital and kill a high-end cap-only slow to recruit mage every turn, under ideal circumstances. It depends what that unit will be - if its a high astral but frail and weak human with lowish combat stats, you can probably get away with only giving it some magic resist items. If it's something that could spam Raise Skeleton (D2+), you might want to give it something like a vine shield and a frost/fire brand so it can actually clear that and go kill the mage. Etc. Assassin units are sort of hard to make profitable use of, though.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:27
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Great Gray Shrike posted:you probably want to put it in an enemy capital and kill a high-end cap-only slow to recruit mage every turn, under ideal circumstances. If you have them skulking around and taking out lone, non-mage commanders who are moving stuff, that's amazingly annoying to deal with, and usually happens in places with much less PD, and less chance of additional commanders being around to patrol.
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Dec 20, 2013 21:35
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