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Of all the broken poo poo Ragha has, you're talking about the temples? Not the high prot elephants, not the ridiculous sacreds, not the incredible mages, not the huge variety of summons? Please explain how they're not straight up better than both Abysia and Caelum in every way, and not because of the temples.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:31
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Eschatos posted:Of all the broken poo poo Ragha has, you're talking about the temples? Not the high prot elephants, not the ridiculous sacreds, not the incredible mages, not the huge variety of summons? Please explain how they're not straight up better than both Abysia and Caelum in every way, and not because of the temples. It's not hard to be better than Abysia and Caelum because Abysia and Caelum are loving terrible. If your line for 'overpowered' is 'better than Abysia and Caelum' then you're insane.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:41
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Eschatos posted:Of all the broken poo poo Ragha has, you're talking about the temples? Not the high prot elephants, not the ridiculous sacreds, not the incredible mages, not the huge variety of summons? Please explain how they're not straight up better than both Abysia and Caelum in every way, and not because of the temples. We were just trying to figure out if it was feasible to base your economy around building temples, but the payoff is too long. The elephants are carbon copies of other LA War Elephants, so I don't know why your panties are in a bunch about them. The other stuff is pretty broken but I'm not sure there's much to say about them besides "poo poo done broke". And I have to agree with Neruz, comparing them to 2 of the worst nations in the game isn't particularly helpful.
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Jun 27, 2014 07:12
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Neruz posted:It's not hard to be better than Abysia and Caelum because Abysia and Caelum are loving terrible. Caelum is particularly bad in LA. The recruit anywhere Airyan Seraph Ragha gets is comparable to the cap only Harab Seraph (who will generally have less air). Then for Aby the Turan guy is what they wish they could have. F3D1B1?1ADB?.1WS all on a single recruit anywhere mage for 225 gold. Compare that to the comical 220g Anathemant Salamander with his F2D1H2. And Ragha gets both easily enough. It's like saying "What if we made LA Aby and Caelum's mages good and put them on the same nation and recruit anywhere?". Even so, Once they fix Jahi I wouldn't call them terribly overpowered, just strong. Very strong. Also Zhayedan is kind of broke right now so their super sacred isn't the equivalent of an expensive flying jaguar warrior as the Gryphon has no 2nd shape. They are still strong as gently caress though. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 13:29
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The counterpoint to the mage issue, however, is that Ragha not only can't recruit both at the same time, but also that if taking neutral temp scales there'll be periods where neither can be recruited (during spring and fall). Alternatively, if you find a site or throne that alters temp of nearby provinces then surround it with labs and enjoy.
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Jun 27, 2014 13:33
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IthilionTheBrave posted:The counterpoint to the mage issue, however, is that Ragha can't recruit both at the same time and also that if you take neutral temp scales there'll be periods where you can recruit neither during spring and fall. Alternatively, if you find a site or throne that alters temp of nearby provinces then surround it with labs and enjoy. In tests taking either H1 or C1 seemed to work best for mage diversity. Since they are StR you can mostly recruit the awesome mages even during the odd neutral temp months (since they aren't cancelled when temp goes wrong if they are already started) and have access to the alternate mage for 3ish months out of the year. However if you are going bless you need H3 so you don't lose turns recruiting Zhayedan who require heat. Also since you are likely going to have other dude's dom in your poo poo due to 800g temples there are decent odds of being able to drop a fort/lab under their candles to get one or the other 12mos out of the year. Have heat and border Bogarus? Try to be bros and grab the cold mages in his dom. EDIT: If I were to play them (assuming they fix Jahi) I would probably go cold1 and use an awake SC (with S) with a touch of scales. Expand with elephants/SC and mass Airya Seraphs as fast as you can because they are incredible. The nation also has pretty decent chaff blockers in their cheapish abysian infantry and can access corpse constructs easily to block for them on Turan Sorcs. Kill people, take their things and gemgen with temples as possible to push into lategame. Obviously not tested in MP but it plays extremely strong in test. Basically you pay 800g for .5pearls a turn which Ragha can turn into good stuff. Y2 Early Spring looks like this generally. 20-24 provinces and 5 castles started. Evo4 usually comes by about mid summer year 2 with 6-7 tstrike casters already done by then and multiples coming every turn as all the fort/labs finish:  Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 13:37
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Jon Joe posted:aka will never be worth it disciple game with pan/asphodel for 200/100 gold temples.
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Jun 27, 2014 14:00
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jsoh posted:disciple game with pan/asphodel for 200/100 gold temples. Yeah in a disciple game it could be powerful as gently caress. Have cheapo temples and relinquish away.
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Jun 27, 2014 14:05
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jsoh posted:disciple game with pan/asphodel for 200/100 gold temples. I think the temple thing is tied to the nation, and disciples would not receive it. We could test it, though.
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Jun 27, 2014 15:20
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Jon Joe posted:I think the temple thing is tied to the nation, and disciples would not receive it. We could test it, though. Disciple makes temple for 100 or 200, relinquishes province to Ragha teammate.
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Jun 27, 2014 15:51
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Jon Joe posted:I think the temple thing is tied to the nation, and disciples would not receive it. We could test it, though. jBrereton fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 15:51
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dis astranagant posted:We were just trying to figure out if it was feasible to base your economy around building temples, but the payoff is too long. My point with the elephants is that lets them easily expand even with a pure scales build and no bless. And I agree that being better than than one of the two worst nations in the game is no big deal, but two at the same time? That's a completely different story. I do like the attempt at balance with temparature-restricted recruitment, but that just makes wolven winter/the fire version necessities instead of nearly useless.
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Jun 27, 2014 15:59
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Eschatos posted:And I agree that being better than than one of the two worst nations in the game is no big deal, but two at the same time? That's a completely different story. I think you misspoke a bit here. If a nation is better than one bad nation, then it really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise when it's also better than another bad nation. I assume that what you meant is more along the lines of it being better than Abysia or Caelum at those two nations' specialties. After all, Abysia is the home of the fire dudes who fire fire fire fire fire fire, while Caelum should be the best around when it comes to air magic and flying dudes of death. It's a little silly when a new nation pops up that blows the mages from those two factions out of the water, especially when you start factoring in the powerful summons, great troop lineup, and great god chassis that the nation gets. Is the nation broken? Potentially - it looks incredibly strong and diverse, but time will tell on that front.
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Jun 27, 2014 16:32
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I want this new nation to be broken. Nothing like a nation whose weakness is "gangbang me" to add a new dynamic. Think of it as a domkill nation with actually useful rewards if you kill them.
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Jun 27, 2014 17:21
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Eschatos posted:My point with the elephants is that lets them easily expand even with a pure scales build and no bless. And I agree that being better than than one of the two worst nations in the game is no big deal, but two at the same time? That's a completely different story. I do like the attempt at balance with temparature-restricted recruitment, but that just makes wolven winter/the fire version necessities instead of nearly useless. The Heat tree is much more lategame-oriented, because it goes pretty heavy on Blood and Death, both really useful trees to have as a fallback in almost all circumstances, and can generally improve itself and do that whole Blood Recursion thing where suddenly there are just blood summons everywhere. It also has a big battlemagic advantage because its sabbath slaves are more available (non-StR heat-recruitable mages are always B1, only 25% of non-StR cold-recruitable mages are S1) and more resilient (by 3hp). The potential for D2+ sabbath mages to poo poo out a million billion skeletons is also worth noting. You have the logistical pain in the arse of blood slave management compared to the Cold side, but that's something you have to work around on all blood nations. It also synergises a bit better with the troops available. Your "mainstay" is likely to be your fire-resistant guys, at least early on, because they have a much easier time against crossbowmen, and very early fire evocation is generally better than early Air evocation - that changes as you progress in research and people cast Rain and so on, but you aren't Abysia or MA Marignon, you have other paths to fall back on when it starts to get countered. The Cold tree can eventually cast Storm/Wind Guide/Arrow Fend/Fog Warriors etc. and do some Water stuff, but the Caelan troops Ragha gets aren't Storm Fliers, and they aren't Lightning-resistant, so you can't use them as liberally alongside massive evocation, and it has the A3 problem where you can't boost them higher outside of battles without using artifacts or a pretender to do it (while the Heat guys can use a cheapo Skull of Fire into a Flaming Helmet to get to base F5 once they hit Constr-6). The StR AWS mage can summon quite a lot of stuff, and can cast some globals given a lot of boosters, but they don't synergise quite the same way with their troops, and they have an S1 (1/3 chance of S2)-shaped hole in their defences that a lot of LA nations can possibly exploit with way more plentiful guys. They also have much less health than their FDB counterparts, and that means even a single cast of RoS or Fire Storm or whatever else can kill them pretty easily.
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Jun 27, 2014 17:48
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jBrereton posted:They're not super necessary. Their elephants are vastly superior to their fire resistant guys for expansion. Decoy the xbows and you can steamroll heavy cav/xbows with zero losses. You aren't going to get 20-24 provinces by end of Y1 with heavy infantry that will attrition, but you can easily do it with their elephants and one of their many bullshit pretender options. For general purpose casting and early->midgame combat ability the seraphs are far superior to the turan sorcs. Thunderstrike can be online by mid year 2 easily as Airyan Seraphs can tstrike perfectly fine without storm or gems. 7 precision turan sorcs throwing fireballs are less than impressive. You need lots of casters to make fireball spam effective and evo5 for falling fires is harder to get than evo4. You could go flaming arrows but it is not the most effective thing vs a lot of nations in LA. And yeah magic duel is something that a bunch of nations could exploit in the midgame if you are massing seraphs, which you should be if you are cold. Zaotars are less than impressive and I wouldn't recruit many of them at all when you have the similarly priced and far better Seraph available. You should just spam as many forts as you can so you can mass them well, something that is easy enough to do with their strong early expansion. Though Seraphs do have low HP, properly scripted AS mages really don't have a problem with RoS traps unless they stupidly walk into one and give the other guy first turn. Their superb chaff can also take RoS and EQs pretty well. Having chaff eat the odd tstrike is hardly a major concern with proper positioning. You shouldn't particularly care even when it does happen as Ragha gets very affordable and easily replaced chaff. If I blow up a dozen or two of my paighan that are stuck in front of the heavy infantry line (and probably trying to route through them) I really don't mind. 1/3 of Turan Sorcs and 1/4 of Dasturs can also make corpse constructs. Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 17:51
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Their elephants are vastly superior to their fire resistant guys for expansion. Decoy the xbows and you can steamroll heavy cav/xbows like it's nothing.
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Jun 27, 2014 17:56
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Will 360noscope A10 blessed Agarthan Boulder throwers be new meta?
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Jun 27, 2014 18:11
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jBrereton posted:Personally I get a bit worried using elephants in LA just because of how easy they are to wreck with Frighten, which nearly everyone has, but you're probably right. They are only elephants yes. They go obsolete quickly but they can do their job expanding. Shouldn't be leaning on them beyond Y1. I stopped recruiting them and started on chaff screens by around fall Y1. And later you can do the whole flying elephant thing. amuayse posted:Will 360noscope A10 blessed Agarthan Boulder throwers be new meta? They are hilarious and kind of effective. I hope to see an a9b4 agartha for maximum stone thrower.
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Jun 27, 2014 18:13
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Speaking of elephants what's a good counter for them as wrou? False fetters gets me squished most of the time
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Jun 29, 2014 13:52
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fishhooked posted:Speaking of elephants what's a good counter for them as wrou? False fetters gets me squished most of the time Elephants weak points are their morale and their MR; use spells that target those. Frighten and any sort of fear effect is of course your bread and butter against Elephants but if you can't find a death caster stuff like sleep or paralysis that targets MR can work almost as well.
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Jun 29, 2014 14:00
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Anybody been playing around with Caelum's sacred archers? What seems to be the best way to use them?
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Jun 29, 2014 15:37
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Dadparty is over on Turn 16, with Burton of Tim the Fountain of Blood ascending on a throne win. This game was silly. It was JonJoe's new balance mod with mostly lategame balance changes (Burden of Time and AC being pushed back), but the game settings were very against it ever seeing the late game. There were 9 level 1 thrones and only 4 points were required for victory - this wasn't disclosed to anyone until the game had already begun. I was fortunate to have thrones:
This was my build:  I was planning on going hard on Soul Contracts as soon as my god awoke and empowered with Fire. The growth was to sustain a blood economy later on. However once the game began (and we saw that the throne victory condition was so low), I knew that my build was the wrong one. An awake dragon or even a strong bless would have been better. Even if the throne count would have been reasonable, the map would not have worked for what I wanted to do. Only one of my (noncap) provinces had more than 5,000 people, and my expansion paths were all snaking and away from each other because of all the mountains and poo poo that I was nestled in. I could not have kept a blood economy from being disrupted by raids and thugs since my territory was already like 11+ mapmoves across and Abysia has awful map movement. Still, Level 1 Thrones are easy to claim and Abysia can StR H3's to claim them. My neighbors let me take all the the thrones without discussing it between them. I did have them pretty well defended, though, and the score graphs show that I was among the top in most categories (except research, because I was pumping out StR mages/h3's for the thrones). There were many times where my neighbors had huge armies sitting next to the thrones I was on, so it probably could have been stopped if people were paying attention and working together. Here are the score graphs for anyone who wants them: http://imgur.com/a/RDOuP Moral of the story: games need to have good settings AND a good map to be worthwhile, but I'll take a turn 16 FFA win as EA Abysia in any event. Have Some Flowers! fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 17:00
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Moral of the story: STOP USING ONLY LEVEL ONE THRONES. Jesus gently caress people I know that level two thrones means throne of gaia which is broken atm and I know that level three thrones means throne of splendour which is overpowered as gently caress but if you only have level one thrones then this poo poo happens; level one thrones can be taken easily by one or two expansion armies and if you only have level one thrones then you leave yourself wide open to blitzkrieg wins by early game powerhouses.
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Jun 29, 2014 17:05
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No, the moral of the story is "don't let the other players win if you want to win yourself, that's the prostrat".
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Jun 29, 2014 17:10
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jBrereton posted:No, the moral of the story is "don't let the other players win if you want to win yourself, that's the prostrat". I'm not 100% sure that Abysia could have been stopped even if anyone had noticed what was going on; only one of the four thrones they needed to win was ever really in contested territory; the other 3 were within easy early expansion range and the opportunities to contest them were very few and far between. If even one of those four thrones had been level 2 or 3 then Abysia wouldn't have been able to win so quickly.
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Jun 29, 2014 17:12
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I did fail to take the throne closest to Flame earlier in the game, and he came in and picked it up a turn or two later - that hurt a bit. There were also 2 or 3 turns where Neruz, Kitfox and Flame were next to thrones where a fight could have happened, and I don't think I could have dealt with everyone even though I had the thrones pretty well defended.
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Jun 29, 2014 17:19
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Neruz posted:Moral of the story: STOP USING ONLY LEVEL ONE THRONES. The problem was the setting of winning with 4 of 9. A setting of 6 of 9 would have been different (and more if people would have prepared for it!)
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Jun 29, 2014 17:28
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Turin Turambar posted:The problem was the setting of winning with 4 of 9. A setting of 6 of 9 would have been different (and more if people would have prepared for it!) Did you guys learn anything about the implications of the balance patch?
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Jun 29, 2014 17:29
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Turin Turambar posted:The problem was the setting of winning with 4 of 9. A setting of 6 of 9 would have been different (and more if people would have prepared for it!) jBrereton posted:Would probably have taken about 5 months, as well. 6 of 9 might have been overdoing it, 5 of 9 would have been better. Seriously what is wrong with 50%+1 it's a perfectly good measurement. 9 points was probably just too little, we could have stood to have less level 1 thrones, a couple of level 2 thrones and a level 3 throne for a total of around 12 points.
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Jun 29, 2014 17:36
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Neruz posted:Seriously what is wrong with 50%+1 it's a perfectly good measurement. You start a game where you only need a little over a third of the thrones, and you can win or lose fairly early on, and have to orient yourself a lot more around that objective. Even if someone only has two thrones, that puts them in contention for the win, so it's time to do as much as you can to drive them back. 50%+1 games are functionally the same as the old Conquer All objective, except your troops' blessings and your dominion scales can change. Sounds like between three of you all quite able to cut into his lead at once, you totally failed to deal with the winning player. Kinda fair to lose at that point.
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Jun 29, 2014 18:04
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How are u posted:Anybody been playing around with Caelum's sacred archers? What seems to be the best way to use them? Considering how a strong airbless gives your archers a bonus to range, I would say make a strong bless pretender, recruit as many of them as you can, slaughter infidels by the hundreds.
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Jun 29, 2014 21:38
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Libluini posted:Considering how a strong airbless gives your archers a bonus to range, I would say make a strong bless pretender, recruit as many of them as you can, slaughter infidels by the hundreds. Air blessed caelum Iron Hail Archers and Blizzard Warriors (sorry EA Caelum you don't get sacred archers) are pretty great; the ~40% range boost + precision + air shield means they tear the poo poo out of enemy archers and then plink away at enemy infantry with ease. I'm not sure how useful they are in a real game but they work real good vs the AI
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Jun 29, 2014 21:41
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Target Guy Worth 9 Pounds of Gold
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Jun 29, 2014 21:48
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jBrereton posted:The number of drop-outs across all Dominions matchmaking forums in games that go on for more than about a month or two suggests that no, it probably isn't. Maybe people shouldn't be such ADD little bitches and stop signing up for games they don't have the time or effort for 
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Jun 29, 2014 22:17
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Yeah I don't see how "Well a lot of people AI out early" is a good reason to have a stupidly low throne points required victory condition.
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Jun 29, 2014 22:19
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Neruz posted:Yeah I don't see how "Well a lot of people AI out early" is a good reason to have a stupidly low throne points required victory condition. Some people like 12 player 50%+1 games, other people like one on ones that get done in an evening, other people like games where you are going to win or lose over the course of a couple of weeks. That's just their scene. I think if the majority of games are suffering at least a couple of people dropping out before the end, something is wrong with the standard settings. As I asked, did you actually gain any knowledge from this test? Axes considerably better or people still not using them?
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Jun 29, 2014 23:12
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jBrereton posted:As I asked, did you actually gain any knowledge from this test? Axes considerably better or people still not using them? Not really, I learned that the dad mod has inconsistant amounts for the chaosrecruit value aaand that's about it. Size 1 bakemono are nice but I have no clue if they're overpowered or not because the game ended before I had any wars with anyone. The issue with short games with low throne requirements is that they cater to tribless Mictlan and similar hyperbless rushes; there's no point whatsoever in playing say LA Ulm if the game isn't going to last more than 20 turns. The only reason that didn't happen in dadparty is because nobody knew the throne count was going to be so low. Neruz fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jun 29, 2014 |
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Jun 29, 2014 23:15
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Neruz posted:Not really, I learned that the dad mod has inconsistant amounts for the chaosrecruit value aaand that's about it. Size 1 bakemono are nice but I have no clue if they're overpowered or not because the game ended before I had any wars with anyone. Basically this. Bless rushes and awedragons are already the strongest overall strats: small maps with poo poo income and/or gems and small amounts of thrones only make them even better compared to the field. People need to make sure maps offer actual longterm options and aren't just stupid rushdownfests.
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Jun 30, 2014 00:43
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Neruz posted:The issue with short games with low throne requirements is that they cater to tribless Mictlan and similar hyperbless rushes; there's no point whatsoever in playing say LA Ulm if the game isn't going to last more than 20 turns. The only reason that didn't happen in dadparty is because nobody knew the throne count was going to be so low. Feel dirty, agreeing with Neruz. Also I care so much about winning that I didn't even look at the thrones required to win. 
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Jun 30, 2014 01:23
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