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Re-registered on the GGS. steamid: http://steamcommunity.com/id/mrasputin
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Jan 11, 2014 11:02
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Neruz posted:Immortality on a mage isn't all that handy unless you're expecting a shitton of SC assassins, on an SC pretender though it's pretty nice when used carefully; helps them avoid wounds amongst other things. Nah, immortality on a mage is much better than immortality on an SC. The reason being if an immortal SC dies you lose the gear, but if an immortal mage dies you lose basically nothing. So what you do is you give your immortal mage the paths for one or more nasty spells like Magic Duel, Rain of Stones, Earthquake, Bloodletting, etc. Then whenever the enemy shows up in your own dominion you can teleport the immortal mage on top of them and spam a nasty army-destroying (or astral mage assassinating) spell at them. If it fails you can repeat the next turn. And the next. And the next. And the next. Can also add various things to help you cast for more rounds, like Perpetual Storm, Call of Winds casts as escorts, etc.
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Jan 11, 2014 12:28
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Played a few rounds of Dominions 3 a couple years back and just picked up Dominions 4 at a sale. Looking forward to playing with you goons again! It seems most of the guides available (and the wiki) are still keyed to Dominions 3. I'm already familiar with the basics of the game but I've only ever had a faint grasp on the sophisticated strategies involving magic, pretender design, thugs, supercombatants and so on - and the big shakeup with the magic research trees and so on only makes my rusty knowledge even less useful. Where would you recommend looking to learn more about what to research, build, summon and do? For example, I hear communions don't work the same way?
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Jan 11, 2014 16:02
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Communions work exactly the same way, just some of the more esoteric use cases have been curbed. From my understanding, reverse communions were something a new player would never stumble across by accident anyway, since they relied on knowledge of the game engine's quirks to work, not knowledge of the game per se. For that reason I'm not particularly mourning their loss. For what it's worth, as a new player I've found a lot of the old guides still relevant. Even if certain particulars have changed (and not that much has changed), the general strategies haven't.
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Jan 11, 2014 16:31
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Reverse communions were a common use case that relied on a esoteric mechanic. I would say that if you looked at all the times communions were used purposely in multiplayer Dom3, reverse communions would make up more than half. That said honestly there aren't too many changes. Old strategy guides generally work, insofar as they have always worked or not worked anyway. In terms of strategy, I would begin by trying out formulaic tactics like W9 F9 jags, thunder strike spam, N9 + mistform + brand + vine/gold shield pony thugs, flaming arrows with low-res bow spam, Gift of Health -> full kit Tartarian endgame SC, low-gear Bane Lord thugs, skellyspam that develops to Rigor Mortis + Mass Regen, etc. Once you can deploy these kinds of things without much trouble, then work on figuring out why those tactics work. What in particular about a unit's stats makes it good in certain situations? Why is the tartarian considered the only efficient summonable SC chassis? Why are vine/gold/eye shields superior to every other type for thugs? Once you can answer those kinds questions, you can start looking at edge cases, and at other units and spells that have similar properties and experimenting. e: This kind of thing basically helps your memorization and battle-fighting, but for grand strategy and economy management its basically like every strategy game where you want more resources and to use them more efficiently. You can win games purely on having more stuff and never letting the other player fight you decisively with their superior single-battle capabilities. Great macro-econ is one of the primary things that distinguishes an experienced player from an expert. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 16:39
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It'd be great if there was some kind of "workshop" included in the game where you could be free to make up a battle from whatever you wanted to see how it plays out. It'd be a lot easier to see how different stats, items and spells worked if you could just play around with custom battles and tweak things here or there rather than having to wait until you get a chance to test them in the field. I guess playing against an easy computer opponent gives plenty of time to test things out but it's still not as convenient.
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Jan 11, 2014 17:35
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The biggest change overall I think is the fact that since higher level research is harder and top-tier mages are harder to come by, you probably won't be seeing as much end game stuff like tarts. On the other hand, stuff like sacred rushes and flaming arrows are much more viable.
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Jan 11, 2014 21:30
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Dolash posted:It'd be great if there was some kind of "workshop" included in the game where you could be free to make up a battle from whatever you wanted to see how it plays out. It'd be a lot easier to see how different stats, items and spells worked if you could just play around with custom battles and tweak things here or there rather than having to wait until you get a chance to test them in the field. I guess playing against an easy computer opponent gives plenty of time to test things out but it's still not as convenient. In Dominions you learn by getting hosed.
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Jan 11, 2014 22:11
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Dolash posted:It'd be great if there was some kind of "workshop" included in the game where you could be free to make up a battle from whatever you wanted to see how it plays out. It'd be a lot easier to see how different stats, items and spells worked if you could just play around with custom battles and tweak things here or there rather than having to wait until you get a chance to test them in the field. I guess playing against an easy computer opponent gives plenty of time to test things out but it's still not as convenient.
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Jan 11, 2014 22:20
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jBrereton posted:The Debug mod and judicious use of multiple sides played by yourself on a small map is a close analogue of this. Interesting! I might look into it, then, since experimenting with various spells, magic items and units to see what happens would be a lot more fun if you don't have to spend hours setting things up just right to make it happen.
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Jan 11, 2014 23:25
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Hmm, well, after spending about an hour last night just looking through a bunch of the early-age nation and pretender details, I've realised that I'll probably need a nudge in the right direction, in addition to all the information available in-game. So, if I plan on having a support/combat mage (preferably immortal I guess, just to be safe) going around with an army rather than sitting back researching in my capital, what sort should I get? Should I go for one of the titan-sized gods/goddesses who are more expensive, or should I go for one of the regular humans like a sage or enchanter, who are cheaper and can have more magical skills for a smaller cost? But yeah, seeing as not all of the pretenders are available in each of the nations, which nations have the sort of pretender you'd recommend, and are hopefully fairly newbie-friendly? (oh also, what sort of magic would you recommend giving my pretender? I'm thinking fire or air, since those two - particularly the lightning strikes - were really annoying when used against me during my stint in Dom3) Thanks for the help! EDIT: Oh, as for nations, I was originally angling for Pangaea, so that I could get curb-stomping Minotaurs leading the charge, but I understand that might not be possible, if they don't have access to the kind of pretender you'd recommend to me for what I have in mind. Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 00:37
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Well, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of this (also, it's awesome - I'm definitely going to spend ages and ages playing this). After a bunch of false starts (mostly being over-aggressive with my pretender and taking about a day to realise that something with F4 that's going into battles where it'll be outnumbered should be casting fire shield...) my MA Man is now making a relatively smooth transition to a mid-game nation (especially now I've found a bunch of F3 indie mages to cast Flaming Arrows for me). Shiunyama on my eastern flank (this is an SP game, so they're not going to do anything intelligent) are being contained at the expense of most of my nature gem income, as I'm summoning enough Hamadryads to keep their ever-larger numbers of troops away from my Longbowmen. Figuring out what to use as blocking troops has been something of a conundrum for me - Hamadryads seem to be mostly surviving, so that's what I've settled on for now, but feel free to tell me I ought to be using something else. On my right flank Arcoscephale have mostly collapsed, but finishing them off is proving very annoying. I breached their capital fort a couple of turns back, and in the ensuing battle I killed 116 of the 117 units, with only the Pretender surviving. I'd have thought a Crone would be easy enough to kill, but after she's cast her buffs and I've cast mine, Flaming Arrows seem to bounce off. I'm thinking an A2 death squad of mages to hit her with multiple lightning bolts before she can cast more than one buff, but I don't have the air gems to cloud trapeze everybody over so they'll have to walk, and now Jotunheim have broken through my lines and it's all getting rather complicated. I guess I'm at the point where I need to be transitioning to an end-game army which can kill close to arbitrary numbers of enemy troops and only has to worry about magic. My question is, how? I could cast Gift of Health in five turns if I saved my Nature Gems, but I don't have any Death access, so Tartarians are out, also Bane Lords. I don't have Astral, either, so I can't just throw huge communions together and throw Master Enslave or whatever around. What can I do, with Nature and Fire, and possibly Air if I can figure out a way to sensibly boost Air?
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Jan 12, 2014 01:17
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Ilanin posted:Well, I think I'm slowly getting the hang of this (also, it's awesome - I'm definitely going to spend ages and ages playing this). After a bunch of false starts (mostly being over-aggressive with my pretender and taking about a day to realise that something with F4 that's going into battles where it'll be outnumbered should be casting fire shield...) my MA Man is now making a relatively smooth transition to a mid-game nation (especially now I've found a bunch of F3 indie mages to cast Flaming Arrows for me). Shiunyama on my eastern flank (this is an SP game, so they're not going to do anything intelligent) are being contained at the expense of most of my nature gem income, as I'm summoning enough Hamadryads to keep their ever-larger numbers of troops away from my Longbowmen. Figuring out what to use as blocking troops has been something of a conundrum for me - Hamadryads seem to be mostly surviving, so that's what I've settled on for now, but feel free to tell me I ought to be using something else. On my right flank Arcoscephale have mostly collapsed, but finishing them off is proving very annoying. Killing arbitrary numbers of troops, especially in single player, is either about using the stronger aoe evocations or building some SC's. Based on your gems and the fact that you have multiple fronts open, I'd suggest starting on some SC's using firebrands and the usual nature items (vine shields, hyrda armor, amulets of regen and amulets of reinvigoration). If you have some progress in conjuration, you can get an endgame SC chasis from the kings of elemental fire or by using the nature spell gift of reason on other dudes. Also, you don't mention earth but you should have earth access as MA man using logrian wiseman. 1/4 of them have E2 which will let you forge boots -> E3, which will let you summon a troll king who gives you higher earth access and can do the SC thing against AI fairly well. Also gift of health is a really good enchantment even without tartarians so I'd definitely consider picking it up.
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Jan 12, 2014 01:36
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Also to cast Flaming Arrows you only need F2. An F2 mage casts Phoenix Power to get to F3, then uses an extra gem to simulate F4. So all you need is 2 gems and F2.
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Jan 12, 2014 01:39
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You can just use those cheap shielded spear infantry units Man gets and stick them in a line in front of the longbows instead of spending gems on dryads. Even if they route a big blob of longbows preventing them from escaping will let them fulfill their role of getting in the way. Blockers can die, as that's part of their job so just keep making lots to replace them. You need A4 to boost air so if you don't have that just empower an A3 to make boosters and other high A items. For that crone, a few flying units to interrupt the buff cycle and kill her should work. A couple of casts of Summon Swarm/Creeping Doom or any of the Air Elemental spells will do this on the cheap. You can make thugs utilizing your N gems with awaken sleeper. Instead of going for SCs you can just use thugs, magic, and the lategame buffs like fog warriors instead. You can also use comedy options like Tarrasques with gift of reason, which I would expect the AI will die to even though a competent human will kill them easily. You can also break into D with Forest Troll Tribe (conjuration 6) and you should definitely do that if you don't have any other easy way of getting it.
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Jan 12, 2014 01:46
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TheDemon posted:Also to cast Flaming Arrows you only need F2. An F2 mage casts Phoenix Power to get to F3, then uses an extra gem to simulate F4. So all you need is 2 gems and F2. And the extremely cheap and easy to make Fire in a Bottle misc item provides you with one free fire gem per battle so you can make that 1 gem. Fight 5 battles and its paid for itself.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:10
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Major Isoor posted:EDIT: Oh, as for nations, I was originally angling for Pangaea, so that I could get curb-stomping Minotaurs leading the charge, but I understand that might not be possible, if they don't have access to the kind of pretender you'd recommend to me for what I have in mind. Play EA Pangaea with an awake E4N4 Gorgon, with Dom9, Turmoil 3, Sloth 2, Growth 1, Luck 3, Magic 1. First turn, have your gorgon make a hide shield to protect from archers, then have it follow your main army around set to Attack Rear. Leave it behind if you're fighting undead/demons. It will act as a glass cannon supercombatant, as it has serious Fear, Awe from its dominion, and will petrify attackers. It recuperates, too, although it has not much in the way of HP so is best used inside your own dominion. You'll basically have very little money, which should go on mages, your cheap temples and forts, but you will have good army-buffing mages that freespawn troops for you. Look into Alteration and Enchantment to see what nature and earth spells you can cast on your troops, and Conjuration for spells to make your mages cast better in battle (Summon Earthpower, Strength of Gaia). There are not really any newbie-friendly nations in Dominions.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:18
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Penguingo posted:
I would argue that Man is a good newbie friendly nation. The units are easy to understand their purpose, plus with the retooling of the late game to not be as quick to reach, their weaknesses are not as fast to show.
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Jan 12, 2014 02:29
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Pythium has  roman infantries, access to Air for blowing up guys, access to astral for doing all sorts of whacky bullshit, and has national angel summons for thugging. You can play around with communions too later if you want (to kill all of your slaves).
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Jan 12, 2014 02:37
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Registered on the GGS http://steamcommunity.com/id/goastt
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Jan 12, 2014 12:42
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Communions don't seem nearly as great as they were back in Dom3 due to the fact you can't reach the BIG spells that easily, and the slaves can't do anything. About the only nations that I can see using communions a lot (from tests) are MA Pythium and LA Ulm. Or if you stumble across a library. amuayse fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 16:11
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amuayse posted:Communions don't seem nearly as great as they were back in Dom3 due to the fact you can't reach the BIG spells that easily, and the slaves can't do anything. About the only nations that I can see using communions a lot (from tests) are MA Pythium and LA Ulm. Anyone with cheap accessible S or B1s can easily pull out communions to boost for appropriate battle magic. That's a lot more nations than Pythium and Ulm! The monkey nations for example all have 65g sacred S1s which are extremely economical to use and if you have enough forts they can be nearly instantly replaced.
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Jan 12, 2014 16:54
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Pavlov posted:I was going to post here about getting GGS approval, but looks like someone already gave it. You guys are fast. Nations that get something worthwhile from the points, nations with strong expansion, mages with loooong life spans (or are demons, hi Lanka) or nations that can switch entirely to blood. Taking death incentivizes going and taking other folks stuff and makes attacking you a pain. I've seen death be successful (dom3) with Lanka, niefel and la Atlantis. I would guess it'd work fine with some other nations as well. You generally want to stay away from it if your mages don't live long or if you don't have sacreds that can benefit from a bless as generally you'll be using the points to get either a decent bless and an awake SC or an absurd bless.
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Jan 12, 2014 17:24
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I'd never realised how much I missed the score graphs until casting The Eyes Of God.
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Jan 12, 2014 17:38
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Went ahead and re-upped for the Goon Game Service as Dolash. Looking forward to playing a couple more rounds!
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Jan 12, 2014 17:46
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Registered on the GGS, definitely want to get in on the 99 player royal rumble steamid: http://steamcommunity.com/id/youkilledourgod
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Jan 12, 2014 20:01
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Is there a way to search the DB for all units that Generate Gems? A basic search doesn't seem to work.
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Jan 13, 2014 00:28
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Search by property "gemgen". Sea King is the only non-unique, I think.
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Jan 13, 2014 00:43
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Penguingo posted:Search by property "gemgen". Sea King is the only non-unique, I think. http://dom4editor.googlecode.com/sv...&unitkey=gemgen Oops, but yeah I think that's the only way.
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Jan 13, 2014 00:46
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Registered on the GGS: http://steamcommunity.com/id/contestwinner I haven't played since Dom3 a while ago, but with the Gamersgate sale I figure I might as well get back into it.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:02
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Any pointers on how to judge the strength of enemy units? Even against the enemy AI my battles tend to end very one-sided. Either I send too few men or I send a force that's way to strong and could probably have been used better, like for research. I find it especially hard to judge the various giants and lose even when I expect to win over them.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:08
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Registered on GGS.. http://steamcommunity.com/id/Rabbi-Dan
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Jan 13, 2014 02:28
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builds character posted:Nations that get something worthwhile from the points, nations with strong expansion, mages with loooong life spans (or are demons, hi Lanka) or nations that can switch entirely to blood. Taking death incentivizes going and taking other folks stuff and makes attacking you a pain. I've seen death be successful (dom3) with Lanka, niefel and la Atlantis. I would guess it'd work fine with some other nations as well. You generally want to stay away from it if your mages don't live long or if you don't have sacreds that can benefit from a bless as generally you'll be using the points to get either a decent bless and an awake SC or an absurd bless. Wouldn't taking death scales on Lanka be a terrible idea? What with them being so dependent on blood economy, especially with new Lanka. Nifel I can kind of believe, but they want to do some blood hunting too, and death really doesn't help with that, plus it makes their pricy giants harder and harder to pay for as the game goes on, which together kind of shoots you in the foot I think.
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Jan 13, 2014 03:36
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People are too afraid of death scales. If you want to play Lanka as a quick expander, going for a heavy bless necessitates tanking some scales. Insofar as blood is now more difficult anyways, going death is now less harmful overall, as there is reduced relative opportunity cost. Mind you, I almost always go death w/ a bless nation, so take that as you may. Any losses due to pop decline should be made up by conquering a few more territories.
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Jan 13, 2014 16:51
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Are there any good mods folks would recommend? I forgot how much I miss the Awesome mods.
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Jan 13, 2014 20:00
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Posting to confirm identity, signed up on the GGS. Looking forward to the next chance to get obliterated. http://steamcommunity.com/id/vendoviper/games/
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Jan 13, 2014 21:44
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archaeo posted:People are too afraid of death scales. If you want to play Lanka as a quick expander, going for a heavy bless necessitates tanking some scales. Insofar as blood is now more difficult anyways, going death is now less harmful overall, as there is reduced relative opportunity cost. Mind you, I almost always go death w/ a bless nation, so take that as you may. Any losses due to pop decline should be made up by conquering a few more territories. But isn't Lanka better off tanking pretty much any other scale besides growth? Hell, they're one of the few nations that can function well under turmoil 3. They also get the free point in heat and don't need much production. Truthfully, unless you're maybe going for a triple 9 bless, I don't see why you'd want or need to take heavy death scales, and even then. Granted, I don't play Lanka, so I'm mostly theorycrafting here. Donkringel posted:Are there any good mods folks would recommend? I forgot how much I miss the Awesome mods. Worthy Heroes is always good, and I hear the Mobility mod makes the new map move system less of a drag. I don't think any big enhancement or balancing mods are out yet though.
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Jan 13, 2014 21:58
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Pavlov posted:But isn't Lanka better off tanking pretty much any other scale besides growth? Hell, they're one of the few nations that can function well under turmoil 3. They also get the free point in heat and don't need much production. Truthfully, unless you're maybe going for a triple 9 bless, I don't see why you'd want or need to take heavy death scales, and even then. Granted, I don't play Lanka, so I'm mostly theorycrafting here. The free point in heat is no longer worth any design points as of Dom4; factions gain points for moving away from their preferred temperature instead of from neutral temperature.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:15
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Neruz posted:The free point in heat is no longer worth any design points as of Dom4; factions gain points for moving away from their preferred temperature instead of from neutral temperature. Going from Heat 2 (their preference) to Heat 3 is basically free. The drawbacks are negligible, I think.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:26
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Victor Vermis posted:Going from Heat 2 (their preference) to Heat 3 is basically free. The drawbacks are negligible, I think. The drawbacks are exactly the same as going from neutral to heat 1: -5% income, -10% supplies, +2 encumberance for units. The seasonal temperature variations will mess about with it and it's not huge, but it's by no means 'free' anymore. In Dom3 heat\cold preference was literally free points.
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Jan 13, 2014 22:34
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