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We declare war on your unholy nation.
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Apr 23, 2014 20:01
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Smerdyakov posted:Everyone else who has put their hours into dom4 has a pretty informed opinion as well. I can definitely see how a particular battle/game can provide strong evidence for one position or another. The reason we love the game is because it's so complex and infinitely variable, so every example has a counter-example. There are so many interactions it's hard to get clear valuations on things, but all of this stems from the fact that the guys at Illwinter don't use formulas to determine costs and they never have. When it comes to modding, the best we can do is to tweak the balance issues that make correct gameplay more about metagame knowledge than tactical thought and/or tweak nations that appear to be underpowered/underplayed. You know that you can cloud trapeze or defensive move rain of stones casters in the way of big communions and murder all of them without them getting to cast anything, right? Or any of the battlefield wide damage spells I suppose, but rain of stones is what is best in life. Also, turtling is a terrible strategy and you should never just leave someone alone for a long time because duh, they're going to use that time to kidder you. Even pelagia.
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Apr 23, 2014 20:35
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For the record, I wasn't turtling, I was invading Ulm and even took his capital. My dai onis weren't invincible, when you went AI the AI took over and killed 2 dai onis in a group of 3 by summoning a dozen earth elementals. In IRC you mentioned you didnt have the research to use things like petrify or blood magic against my dai oni, but remember you can always hide inside your forts and research alt 6 or blood 5 in not too much time. Il take your undefended provinces in the mean time but because they arent forts you can easily use your vanjarls to snatch them all back.
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Apr 23, 2014 21:04
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Diabl0658 posted:For the record, I wasn't turtling, I was invading Ulm and even took his capital. My dai onis weren't invincible, when you went AI the AI took over and killed 2 dai onis in a group of 3 by summoning a dozen earth elementals. In IRC you mentioned you didnt have the research to use things like petrify or blood magic against my dai oni, but remember you can always hide inside your forts and research alt 6 or blood 5 in not too much time. Il take your undefended provinces in the mean time but because they arent forts you can easily use your vanjarls to snatch them all back. Yeah, I'm not saying my strategy wasn't flawed and going AI was definitely a bit impulsive on my part, but a player who better understood the late gameplay of our nations better would've played very differently for at least the last 10-20 turns and would've beaten you handily. I don't get frustrated by losing battles, but I do get frustrated when I get totally massacred with superior forces over and over again. At that point, I feel helpless and like I don't understand the game well enough to continue. I still feel the hand of metagame knowledge too heavily on my shoulder sometimes, because most of the biggest improvements I've made as a player have come from reading old threads and MP LPs rather than from game experience. builds character posted:You know that you can cloud trapeze or defensive move rain of stones casters in the way of big communions and murder all of them without them getting to cast anything, right? Or any of the battlefield wide damage spells I suppose, but rain of stones is what is best in life. I take your point that there are possible counters to everything, but if a nation doesn't have A or E paths (for example) does that mean they're not worth playing past the mid-game? Obviously not, but hindsight is where you start looking for possible counters but usually it's too late for the game in question. To cut to the heart of the matter, this sort of reminds me of the (raging!) debates about pretender chasses with s1. Magic duel is an interesting spell and I don't have a problem with it, but giving a pretender chassis s1 has the effect of giving players fewer options instead of more. If there's always a right answer to a tactical decision in dom4, then the mechanic should be reevaluated. Then again, all of this comes from what I think would make dom4 more fun/interesting, but it can be really hard to separate "more fun" and "the way I like to play winning more." Smerdyakov fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 22:26
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Dominions Are Dumb v 0.04, the first official testing release, is now out. Get it here.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:45
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It would be interesting if S could be special cased to cost less to buy than other paths, thus making it easier to add if you wanted it.
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Apr 24, 2014 00:54
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Speleothing posted:It would be interesting if S could be special cased to cost less to buy than other paths, thus making it easier to add if you wanted it. The problem is that S is a super super strong path on pretenders especially so this wouldn't work at all.
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Apr 24, 2014 01:14
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I Love You! posted:The problem is that S is a super super strong path on pretenders especially so this wouldn't work at all. Perhaps just removing magic duel would be better, I see no real reason for that spell to exist except to gently caress with S<7 pretenders.
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Apr 24, 2014 01:28
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Hm, I should look at spell effects, while it's probably not possible, it may be possible to remove the instant death component in favor of say, many rounds of paralysis or feebleminding. Doubt it's possible but this is spell modding, there are a lot of tricks.
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Apr 24, 2014 01:31
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I Love You! posted:Yeah unlike some people I don't give a poo poo if you play vs. the AI. Then why the hell did you get all smarmy when I said I did? I Love You! posted:Against the AI it's really a matter of "make good troop/SC, attack provinces, guard against flanks" and that's it, and nothing else really matters or works. How is this at all relevant to the assertion that The Gentleman posted:I see no real reason for that spell to exist except to gently caress with S<7 pretenders. (not my quote but it's more succinct than I could have put it). I admit that some of my complaints were poorly thought out, but to simply claim that "you don't play multiplayer, you wouldn't understand", with no regard to what you're actually arguing against just makes you look snobby.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:20
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The Gentleman posted:Perhaps just removing magic duel would be better, I see no real reason for that spell to exist except to gently caress with S<7 pretenders. Except it's a well-balanced spell that creates a good weakness for an otherwise great self-buff path? Astral shield and body ethereal are really effective. Throwing away 10 S1 mages for a good chance to kill an S5 pretender is a pretty fair trade. That's nearly a year's worth of mage recruitment. It's not like there's a shortage of good titan-type pretender chassis. If you're not willing to take S7 on an SC pretender chassis, take a different one. Why even take a titan pretender with low magic? The whole point is that you get two strong magic paths cheaply and still have good combat potential with gear. Even an S5 pretender gets killed by less than 10% of magic duel attempts by an S1. Bring more S mages to back up your pretender if he is that valuable. Magic duel is cool, unique, and useful spell, and I don't think removing valid tactics is a good way to "balance" the game. I think the thug/SC counter spells create interesting research goals and allow creative players to find a counter to any SC. The days of strong SCs are gone with the Dom4 changes anyway - you can barely gear well enough to be resistant to a single elemental damage type. Even with all "resist or die" spells were removed from the game, you can still easily kill SCs with creative applications of Leech or duskdaggers. If someone can list cool pretenders that no one takes simply because they come with S1 I will agree that magic duel deserves to be slightly higher in the research tree, but I see no reason to remove it entirely.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:30
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Jabarto posted:Then why the hell did you get all smarmy when I said I did? It was less smarmy and more me realizing that you were making balance/gameplay wishlists based on singleplayer and not multiplayer and thus we were talking about completely disparate games essentially, so basically neither of our arguments should really matter much to the other person. Many of the things some of the people here are arguing in favor (or against) are completely nonfactors in SP but matter a lot in Mplayer, either to balance the game or enable/fight against certain important strategies. I can see if you're coming from a SP-only point of view there are going to be a vastly different set of priorities in play for where you'd like to see the game go. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 02:48
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I Love You! posted:It was less smarmy and more me realizing that you were making balance/gameplay wishlists based on singleplayer and not multiplayer and thus we were talking about completely disparate games essentially, so basically neither of our arguments should really matter much to the other person. That's...actually reasonable and a pretty big misunderstanding on my part. Maybe I should just stop arguing about videogames for a bit. 
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Apr 24, 2014 02:56
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Really stupid, but how well would a teleporting astral mage to cast soul slay/magic duel then returning work? Assuming I'm playing the R'lyehs.
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Apr 24, 2014 02:58
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amuayse posted:Really stupid, but how well would a teleporting astral mage to cast soul slay/magic duel then returning work? Assuming I'm playing the R'lyehs. Soul Slay can be cast remotely with the spell Mind Hunt. Generally magic duel is done with astral 1 and 2 mages but you could certainly try some trickery like that if you have pearls to burn.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:07
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If you just want to soul slay then Mind Hunt would be a lot cheaper and effective.
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Apr 24, 2014 03:14
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The real answer is that its excellent if you are lemuria. because you dont even have to script the returning! just throw down another duel
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Apr 24, 2014 04:04
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We continue with the lovely adventures of Magikarp! Now healed of that terrible disease, we easily stomp indies with the huge flapping fish.  This province should be easy, lots of troops that will flee quickly!  That's a lot of mages over there, and is that skeletons coming my way?  The skeletons are unimpressed by Magikarps awe and fear.  Well poo poo.
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Apr 24, 2014 04:22
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The most important thing is to always and only play blood sac nations
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Apr 24, 2014 06:16
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If he's thinking Magic Duel, then clearly Mind Hunting will just end in severed chords.
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Apr 24, 2014 06:18
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If it's possible, making the effects of Magic Duel vary depending on by how much the winner beats the loser by would be pretty cool. Someone could still throw like 10 S1 mages at a S6-7 pretender or some poo poo but if they win the duel at worst they're probably only going to stun the thing or whatever unless they make a really lucky roll somehow. A higher-level astral mage could still pop the brains of the lower ones if it wanted to, as well.
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Apr 24, 2014 06:23
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You literally cannot win with S1 against S7 and will almost never win against S6, even if they're on their own.
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Apr 24, 2014 10:31
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Then pretend I wrote S4-5 or some poo poo instead when I wrote that while half-asleep. 
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Apr 24, 2014 16:09
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S1s are very cool once you unlock Lights of the Northern Star and Stellar Cascade. I was meaning the whole teleport+duel thing because S1 mages have a 40% chance of finding your cord. S2 80% and more that is guaranteed I think.
amuayse fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 24, 2014 |
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Apr 24, 2014 17:52
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amuayse posted:S1s are very cool once you unlock Lights of the Northern Star and Stellar Cascade. I was meaning the whole teleport+duel thing because S1 mages have a 40% chance of finding your cord. S2 80% and more that is guaranteed I think.
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Apr 24, 2014 18:27
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Are mages just dicks or is there a reason they won't do what I've scripted them for? In my latest game I'm playing MA Abysia and have my fire mage set to cast Inner Furnace at the start of the battle, I gave him Fire in a Jar so he doesn't need the fire gems but half the time he just runs around like an idiot casting priest spells. Been playing for a while but am still a complete newbie when it comes to magic, trying to force myself to use it more and more so I can learn what spells are good and what not.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:07
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The casting ai doesn't know the difference between real gems and fake ones and will decide fights aren't big enough to blow gems on. This is to counter an old strat of attacking armies with scouts to get them to waste all their gems before the real fight.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:11
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dis astranagant posted:The casting ai doesn't know the difference between real gems and fake ones and will decide fights aren't big enough to blow gems on. This is to counter an old strat of attacking armies with scouts to get them to waste all their gems before the real fight. Ah, I guess my fights just weren't big enough then, I just wanted to test out spells and such while taking some land for myself. Another newbie question then, friend of mine in the same game has been getting crushed in his home nation, every time he creates a commander he gets an "Arrow from the sky" that straight up murders the guy. Anyway to protect your commander from this?
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Apr 24, 2014 22:24
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Cainer posted:Ah, I guess my fights just weren't big enough then, I just wanted to test out spells and such while taking some land for myself. You need missile protection. Robe or amulet of missile protection will stop 80% of those. Or you can just recruit a shitload of commanders everywhere and move them into a blob so they waste gems killing generic 40g guys.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:25
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Cainer posted:Ah, I guess my fights just weren't big enough then, I just wanted to test out spells and such while taking some land for myself.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:25
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Cainer posted:Ah, I guess my fights just weren't big enough then, I just wanted to test out spells and such while taking some land for myself. Some rear end in a top hat is casting seeking arrow (I think that's the name of the spell) every turn. If he is able to, he can put up a dome in the province that will block some of the shots. If he's really crafty, he can put up the fire version that sends back retaliatory bolts, and flood that province with cheap indie commanders named to look like mages. That way his opponent will bleed mages, while he'll just be losing chaff.
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Apr 24, 2014 22:56
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Thanks much, we're playing god/disiple game and I kinda don't want him to die. Only nation close enough looks like Caelum, time to crush some birdies then.
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Apr 24, 2014 23:10
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Cainer posted:Thanks much, we're playing god/disiple game and I kinda don't want him to die. Only nation close enough looks like Caelum, time to crush some birdies then.
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Apr 24, 2014 23:13
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Is it right to assume that "your demon and undead troops are hit with holy fire" is from a similar spell?
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Apr 24, 2014 23:51
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Flython posted:Is it right to assume that "your demon and undead troops are hit with holy fire" is from a similar spell? There are sites that do that. Get them away from that province and don't bring any undead/demons back into it.
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Apr 25, 2014 00:01
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Two commands I wish you could give troops. Hold, Fire, then Attack. It seems Hold and Attack will cause Javelins to not be thrown. Charge and harass. I'd like my cavalry to run up, kill some guys, then disengage. That would be lovely.
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Apr 25, 2014 02:18
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Try Fire and Keep At Range for javelin use.
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Apr 25, 2014 02:24
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I just leave javelins unscripted and they happily run up, throw, and engage in melee.
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Apr 25, 2014 02:26
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Nuclearmonkee posted:I just leave javelins unscripted and they happily run up, throw, and engage in melee. I've found that the only reliable way to get units with a range of less than 20 or so to use their ranged attacks is to leave them unscripted; any form of scripting seems to introduce even more chaos than just leaving them alone does.
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Apr 25, 2014 05:10
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I've always found that with javelins you can just script the dudes to "fire". They charge up to get into range, toss a couple javs, and then they're right there for the melee.
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Apr 25, 2014 16:47
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