Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

fool_of_sound posted:

Is there a way of boosting a commander's Holy magic level other than the late game artifacts? Do Communions/Sabbats work? I want to be able to run Sacred troops, but I don't seem to have any 3+ Holy priests except my Prophet.
You can totally run sacreds with H1 priests, you just have to be a tiny bit careful about your positioning and orders.

Communions and Sabbaths are actually the same thing and both kinds of mage/slave are in the same communion, but yes.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

M_Bison
Mar 15, 2014
What are the mechanics on seducing?
I failed 2 checks on MR13, Morale13 cultists and succeeded on this MR16/Morale16 Illithid. I guess squidmen love them some dryads. Fishmen not so much.

FnF
Apr 10, 2008

Jabarto posted:

As long as we're talking about nation strategies, how would people feel about using a Statue of Fertility for a N9E4 bless on MA Pythium? On paper it has some nice benefits but I'm not quite sure how well they would pan out in practice:

- Makes your fragile mages harder to kill.
- Extremely durable communions since mages will recover fatigue and regenerate damage if it goes above 200, meaning you can get away with fewer slaves.
- Possibly make Battle Vestals worth using for early expansion? If you can keep arrows off them they might just be cost-effective enough to work.
- Makes the angelic summons really fearsome if you can get that far.
- Can forge dwarven hammers.
- Still has points for Dom 9 and 5 positive scales if you imprison it.

Speaking as someone who's only victorious game was as an N9W9 Pythium (it was an AmesomeishGods game so it was affordable, but still), I think an N9 bless on Pythium is actually very strong, but I think it matters a lot on your play-style and what you want to aim for.

If you want even-more-durable Angels (inc. the non-commander ones you can get), and long-lasting communions, then N9E4 is probably a very efficient choice. It also makes Battle Vestals very cheap & good option for expansion. However, if there's a specific global or item you want to cast/forge then you might be happier catering to that instead.

I think it's worth asking : what else would you spend the points on? You could take an SC, but Pythium doesn't need any help expanding. You could take super-scales, but then you'll end up needing to recruit many more Communicants to make up for not having N9, if you're wanting go communion-heavy (Acolytes are a decent backup for communion slavery as you'll have plenty of them around for research, but they're twice as expensive and you might prefer them to be researching)

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
Are there any particular mods that most goons use that I should start familiarizing myself with?

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
Worthy Heroes.

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

Okay I'll try for a nation guide, having *finally* completed Noobs R Us and hopefully having gleaned a reasonable amount of knowledge:

EA T'ien Ch'i

Troops

Almost all of your troops are useful in some way, shape or form. The important part is knowing how to use them to best effect.

  • Pikes: Awesome Chaff Option. Use these as your frontline against anything that isn't undead/arrows/equal or greater length weapons. It cannot be overstated how huge of a deal repel is.
  • Tower Shield Footmen: Pretty Good Chaff Option. Use these when repel isn't going to save you from taking some hits and/or as arrowcatches. Lowest resource cost guys are good when you just need a bunch of chaff. Slightly higher resource cost guys are good when you want to use up more resources on the same number of dudes. Highest resource guys are *very* situational - MM1 means they should be used only in situations that explicitly call for them.
  • Archers: Good, spammable. Loves flaming arrows+wind guide. Recommended for midgame and to soften up anything your chaff is having trouble holding off. Composite bows are /really/ nice, and tend to beat most other ranged options in EA.
  • Regular Footmen: Stupid poo poo idiots. Avoid always. Glaives can go to hell.
  • Nobles: too expensive to really be useful. Maybe okay if you desperately need tramplers or high-def-high-prot frontline, but a whole bunch more of your other chaff options are probably better.
  • Warriors of the Five Elements: AKA Warriors of the Five Chainsaws, "Oh God Where Did All My Mans Go". These are your sacreds, and even without a bless they are drat Good(tm). There are a number of blesses that go really well with them. Their major weakness is a lack of prot - despite their high defense score, they go down fast if they get caught unsupported or below critical mass.

Mages

T'ien Ch'i gets a whole ton of magical diversity, and ridiculously low upkeep due to all their mages being sacred.

  • Celestial Master: StR, your only reliable source of S, lots of cool path combos. Very random, rather expensive, never useless. Don't make these early game when you need the raw research power. Don't make these lategame when you need the raw numbers of battlecasters. Make just enough that you can cover your more esoteric path combos, summons and forging needs. They are extremely important for forging and summons, but for fighting you tend to prefer...
  • Master of the Five Elements: The Best loving Thing Ever. These guys want high evo research, and they want it fast. Guaranteed W1F1E1A1N1H1. One of the magic schools will get 2 instead of 1. Given boosters, combat pathboosts or gems, they can poo poo out pretty much any battlefield evocation they want. Given a crystal matrix and some communion slaves, they can cast pretty much any battlefield spell, period. They also serve as your primary early research corps. If your cap is ever not making either one of these or a CM, you've done something terribly wrong (except VERY early game).
  • Master of the Way: Ugh. Ughhhhhhhhhhh. The first of your any-fort mages. Guaranteed W1H1 and one of AWNS. W2 and W1S1 can be useful. AW and NW are essentially only useful for extremely basic forging and reading books forever, at least until you get frozen heart.
  • Master of the Dead: Okay admittedly I didn't use these guys much, but honestly there's not a hell of a lot of use for them. D1H1 gets you pretty much jack squat in terms of useful things. The only role these guys have is to cast TC's ancestor spells, Call Ancestor and Wrath of the Ancestors. These are also things that I didn't gently caress about with, but the concept of sacred goasts is kinda funny so idk? Use at own risk. CMs get D if you ask nicely anyways.

Commanders

You only get one option, the Noble Commander. Not really worth it unless you are desperately lacking in indy commanders. The one upside is that this guy leads your PD and he will gently caress small raiding parties up on his own. Hell, I saw him take out a bane lord once. For one gold, he makes a hell of a deterrent.

National Summons

  • Celestial Servant: The less said about this goony gently caress, the better. Pass.
  • Demon of Heavenly Rivers: Pretty much a sacred giant berserker. Expensive (12W for 3) but decent for raiding or breaking into the ocean. Very situational - they're berserkers, so if you gently caress up then you're not getting them back.
  • Demon of Heavenly Fires: You know how some people say that fire gems are useless and you can't get anything good from them? Take all their fire gems, summon these nasty fuckers, and proceed to laugh in their faces as you wreck their poo poo. Accurate, AP Flaming Wheels make these an awesome archer complement/replacement. Then, once you run out of ammo, their heat aura and flaming fists will ownzone the hell out of anyone who decides do come near them. Fragile - you'll probably lose them semi-frequently - but not as expensive as water demons, and what the hell else are you going to do with your F gems?
  • Celestial Hound: Another excellent summon. Flying plus two attacks and decent morale means that these guys pack one hell of an alphastrike. They're reasonably cheap, too, meaning that if you've got a decent A income you can pretty reasonably get enough to be effective. Good combined with a CM for max raiding prowess.
  • Celestial Soldier: A trap. Statswise, they look pretty excellent. Unfortunately, no shields mean they're not a great frontline and glaives mean they're not a great troop in general. Too expensive to use effectively, feel free to ignore them.
  • Huli Jing: A pretty wicked summonable mage, good at breaking into higher levels of N and getting nifty paths like S+N, which gets you the moonvine bracelet. Bring them along for high-N casts like relief and mass regen. I haven't tried using them as spies, but I feel like they're a little too expensive and useful in other areas to use as such.

STRATEGERY

This nations benefits EXTREMELY strongly from a decent bless. You don't want to lean *too* heavily on a bless, given your cap-only+summon sacreds, but it works as an excellent early expansion tool and force multiplier later on. W9 is probably my most heavily recommended bless, as it makes your already deadly troops into untouchable dervishes of death - your Wot5E and Celestial Hounds benefit especially well from this, given their multiple attacks and the former's already high defense score, and W9 sets you up for vengeful waters towards the lategame. A9 serves to address a major weakness of your sacreds - low protection means that arrows can take a nasty toll, and the precision buff helps out your fire demons. It's not as good a bless on its own, but Air is one of the hardest paths to bootstrap and a pretender with A9 unlocks a lot of options for your nation, as well as setting you up for globals like Fata Morgana, Perpetual Storm and Dark Skies in the later game. F9 might be useful, although I'd prefer W9 in a pinch. E4 is useful as a minor for your mages.

Scales are simple: you're gold starved more often than resource starved, especially given how expensive it is to make any mage-recruiting fort - resources only determine how much chaff you can pump out in an average turn. You want high order, neutral or one prod. Everything else is subject to your discretion - M1 and H1 are good dump scales, and EA has crap populations regardless so growth probably isn't going to help a whole lot. You can likely afford a point of drain, but I personally prefer something like O3 P1 H1 G0 Mi1 Ma0. Edit as per your bless and desired wakefulness.

Expansion is comically easy with a good bless. One turn's worth of A9 or W9 Wot5E can take any indy army in EA, short of a L2/3 throne. You should be pumping out a Mot5E, max Wot5E and as many high-prot tower shields as you can every turn, then immediatly sending them out the next turn. EA TC has excellent research, so you can take the early hit, and your mans don't care too much about the low morale of mage leadership. Be on the lookout for a high-resource location for your next fort - you want to be pumping out chaff as soon as possible to support your eventual AoE evocations and to take hits for your chainsaws. Pick your first war target carefully - especially early, you've got the strength to nip some of the nastier nations like mictlan in the bud while leaving your weaker neighbours as tasty treats later on.

Midgame is all about summons and bootstrapping. Your native paths, while various, are universally low - the highest native path you're going to get is W3 on a CM on occasion. Your major early research targets are high evo, const6 and conj6. Evo keeps you dominant on the battlefield with stuff like magma eruption, falling fires/frost, sleep cloud, and eventually ice strike/storm of thorns. Const 6 gets you the efficient boosters, which are important given your low paths. Look for stuff like the Skull of Fire (F1D1, +1F), Earth Boots(E2, +1E), Thistle Mace (N2, +1N), Water Bracelet(W1, +1W) and Robe of the Sea (W3, +1W). Conj 6 gets you bootstrap summons for the paths you can't get with construction, plus all your national summons. Important to get: Flame Spirit for nat F3, plus a Skull of Fire = max F boosting, Kothykiad for breaking into D boosters and summons, Huli Jing for high N plus other randoms, Sleepers for magic leadership and (very) entry-level thugging. By now, you should have enough S1-randomed Masters of the Way that you can toss up some basic communions. Give your Masters of the Five Elements a crystal matrix and have them whip out some of the more fun stuff like flaming arrows, relief, storm (so your A2 guys can stormpower to A3 for tstrike), or whatever else strikes your fancy. If you've got the gems, make some thugs for raiding - you've got the paths to make whatever thug gear you want.

Endgame I'm a little fuzzier on, but I played it out like an advanced midgame. Conj 8 gets you elemental royalty. Faerie Court gets you higher native A, so you can boost to access Air Queens. Your CMs can get the paths for F4W4 Elemental staves, which are The King Of All Bootstrap Items. All the F gems you took from unsuspecting trade partners have turned into legions of fire demons. Your vast reserves of pathboost items mean that you can cast whatever the gently caress battlefield evos you want. HOWEVER - you are not specialized. You're not going to be putting up stuff like master enslave or Arcane Nexus without some serious help from your pretender or extreme bootstrapping/empowering. You're essentially the Magical MacGuyver nation - reach into that gigantic toolbox of yours and slap together something that solves your current problem.

Lprsti99
Apr 7, 2011

Everything's coming up explodey!

Pillbug

ChickenWing posted:

EA T'ien Ch'i

Welp, now I want to play EA TC

akulanization
Dec 21, 2013

Just bringing back the MA Agartha stuff from a few pages back.

Neruz posted:

MA Agartha is wierd; their dominion provides +10% HP per candle to stone beings like living statues and earth elementals but it applies to all stone beings in their dom, enemy and ally. They can summon some really powerful statues including an amazing Thug chassis with the Marble Oracle and their unique summonable statues are quite potent, especially the sacred ones. An N9 bless would probably not be a bad idea at all as the sacred statues are extremely tough and nearly unkillable by conventional tactics if they are regenerating as well.
It isn't the stonebeing tag that gets the bonus. It's the lifeless tag. That means that earth elementals have 70ish hp at dom 10 and mercury elementals have about 100. So MA Agartha is the best age to spam the national summons.

quote:

MA Agartha is probably the least used of the 3 eras of Agartha, but that may just be because no-one is quite sure how to use their dominion and statues properly. They do get access to Olms (though they have to summon them) and a bunch of Olms behind a line of regenerating Sentinels and Granite Guardians is extremely powerful, especially when the statues are getting +10% hp per dom candle and if you can find air access somewhere you can kit out Marble Oracles with basic thug gear and flyboots and raid the poo poo out of everyone because no PD in the game can touch an N9 blessed Marble Oracle with basic thug gear.
It is worth noting that if you want widespread darkness access without burning 100 death gems on empowerment then you need a D4+ god that isn't imprisoned. It is pretty much impossible to reconcile that with the scales that golem crafters want and also an N9 bless, so something has to give.

Eschatos
Apr 10, 2013


pictured: Big Cum's Most Monstrous Ambassador
TC's glaives are actually awesome if you're up against giants or nations with high prot units like MA Ulm.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

akulanization posted:

It isn't the stonebeing tag that gets the bonus. It's the lifeless tag. That means that earth elementals have 70ish hp at dom 10 and mercury elementals have about 100. So MA Agartha is the best age to spam the national summons.

You sure it's lifeless? Because if so wouldn't that mean it also works on longdead?

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx
Inanimate+Mindless non-undeads.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
God this game is programmed wierdly.

dis astranagant
Dec 14, 2006

Stonebeing is only used to resist petrification.

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

Hey, the Agartha bonus HP for constructs looks like it stacks with Gift of Health!



I've got a N9 bless, too :q:

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

Eschatos posted:

TC's glaives are actually awesome if you're up against giants or nations with high prot units like MA Ulm.

In EA you're not going to be facing a lot of high-prot troops, though - honestly, any problem solved by glaives is likely going to be solvable by pikes.

I don't know about MA or LA though.

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

scalded schlong posted:

Hey, the Agartha bonus HP for constructs looks like it stacks with Gift of Health!



I've got a N9 bless, too :q:
Nice. 31hp/turn regen. Excuse me while I throw up.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
Ok, after playing around with some different EA nations, I've decided try an actual game with Agartha. I was thinking something like this for a pretender:

Imprisoned Annunaki of Sweet Waters; W9 E4 N9; Dom 7; Sloth 3, Misfortune 1, Drain 1

The plan is to use a core of Ancient Ones/Ancient Stone Hurlers backed up hordes of summons. The main problem I see is expensive mages to lead them, but I'm hoping I'll be able to cover it with alchemized Earth and Fire gems.

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer
That's an awfully big bless for a not especially great sacred unit. They can tank pretty well with W9N9, but with Attack 9, they're literally less talented in melee than indie light infantry. Might work better in practice than I'm giving it credit for, mind.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


jBrereton posted:

Might work better in practice than I'm giving it credit for, mind.

It doesn't. Your guys can't hit a god drat thing because they are 1 per square with 9 or 10 attack. If you run into someone else who's bringing real troops with a bless to the table you will get utterly destroyed.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

jBrereton posted:

That's an awfully big bless for a not especially great sacred unit. They can tank pretty well with W9N9, but with Attack 9, they're literally less talented in melee than indie light infantry. Might work better in practice than I'm giving it credit for, mind.

Quickness also grants +3 attack and defense, according to the manual, which should bring them up to at least passable.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
Quickness from water bless isn't real quickness, I don't think you get the attack buff and you only get a double turn every second turn.

I wouldn't take a heavy bless with EA Agartha; an earth or nature bless maybe for their mages but a water bless is a complete waste.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


Neruz posted:

Quickness from water bless isn't real quickness, I don't think you get the attack buff and you only get a double turn every second turn.

I wouldn't take a heavy bless with EA Agartha; an earth or nature bless maybe for their mages but a water bless is a complete waste.

They can function perfectly fine with no bless at all now along with scales and maybe an awake SC. Olms with your goony and terrible melee in front of them work very well.

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

fool_of_sound posted:

Quickness also grants +3 attack and defense, according to the manual, which should bring them up to at least passable.
I'm pretty sure that the blessing version of Quickness is just 1.5x actions (plus the +4def from the bless), although I could be wrong on that.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Neruz posted:

Quickness from water bless isn't real quickness, I don't think you get the attack buff and you only get a double turn every second turn.

I wouldn't take a heavy bless with EA Agartha; an earth or nature bless maybe for their mages but a water bless is a complete waste.

jBrereton posted:

I'm pretty sure that the blessing version of Quickness is just 1.5x actions (plus the +4def from the bless), although I could be wrong on that.

Yeah, that sucks. What would you suggest? Should I go awake SC for early expansion and only use mages, scouts, and summons?

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer

fool_of_sound posted:

Yeah, that sucks. What would you suggest? Should I go awake SC for early expansion and only use mages, scouts, and summons?
I honestly don't know much about Agartha, but I'd be tempted to go for something like an awake Dom 9 F6 Dragon, O3S2H3G3L1D2.

You need the income, you have cold-blooded units so the heat is kind of useful, and nearly everything you have is amphibious, so rivers pretty much always staying unfrozen while mountains are open is a net gain for you. Their mages are relatively cost-efficient with the Engravers, but you could trade the drain/luck for magic/misfortune, I guess, which would help their sacreds at the expense of other scales.

Chairman Pow!
Apr 23, 2010
As a new player those guides are super useful, thanks a lot for taking the time to create them. I am also posting to register for the goon game service, hope to see you in some newbie games soon.

GenericOverusedName
Nov 24, 2009

KUVA TEAM EPIC
I know it sounds like a broken record, but getting on the IRC really does help. Even if it's just people discussing or arguing about mechanics, seeing the way people reason out how good or bad something is helps. Part of the game is learning how to learn as weird as that sounds. It's one thing to look at a dude and see that it has this many numbers but just how good IS having 15 attack? What's the difference between pikes and spears, flails and maces, stuff like that? And when would one be better than the other?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

GenericOverusedName posted:

I know it sounds like a broken record, but getting on the IRC really does help. Even if it's just people discussing or arguing about mechanics, seeing the way people reason out how good or bad something is helps. Part of the game is learning how to learn as weird as that sounds. It's one thing to look at a dude and see that it has this many numbers but just how good IS having 15 attack? What's the difference between pikes and spears, flails and maces, stuff like that? And when would one be better than the other?

Yeah, but if you're stupid, like me, even being on IRC doesn't always help. For example, I have no idea in what situations non-spears could be good, so I always decide like this: Compromise of high morale and cheapness is bodyguard, Compromise of morale and weapon length is standard infantry, best available archer is standard shooter. Mages are whatever is part of my overall strategy.

Sometimes I waste money on cavalry, forever trying to get them to sneak by the enemy army and strike at the mages behind.

The rest goes like this: Archers shoot, infantry repells and mages nuke. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And yes, I know this is probably a really horrible tactic, but at least it's simple and easy to understand. Which means the chance of the AI loving up your battleplans is minimized.

Now you can tell me when flails are the best. :v:

GenericOverusedName
Nov 24, 2009

KUVA TEAM EPIC
I have no idea, I'll ask the IRC for you.

quote:

<GONwork> guys when / why / ever should i use flails
<jsoh> flails hit twice
<jsoh> use flails vs agartha
<ChickenWingWork> oh son of a bitch they do
<samog> flails have bonuses against shields
<jsoh> bc they have lots of hp and no def
<AXE_COP> flails beat shields too dont they
<ChickenWingWork> and they get +2 vs shields
<jsoh> use flails if you can boost troop strong.
<ChickenWingWork> stronk
<GONwork> 2stronk
<ChickenWingWork> I kinda want to try a troop buff strat one day
<jsoh> flails are alos good vs spears. because more attacks = less repel
<jsoh> probably not acutally good vs spears

There you go!

GenericOverusedName fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Aug 22, 2014

tooterfish
Jul 13, 2013

Libluini posted:

Sometimes I waste money on cavalry, forever trying to get them to sneak by the enemy army and strike at the mages behind.
You could try drawing the frontline to the side with some troops on guard commander (like an archer draw basically), that might give your cavalry room to charge past.

From what I've seen of lets plays, most people seem pretty good at guarding against flank attacks though.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

tooterfish posted:

You could try drawing the frontline to the side with some troops on guard commander (like an archer draw basically), that might give your cavalry room to charge past.

From what I've seen of lets plays, most people seem pretty good at guarding against flank attacks though.

I know, I'm doing it myself by blocking the way to my mages with large formations of infantry everywhere! Now, if more nations had good or reliable cavalry commanders, I could script them for five turns to wait around and the actual troops to guard them, which kind of works if the armies have moved around enough. At least the few times I could try it out in test games.

It would be nice to be able to script something like "attack rear, but not if you can't find a path around other forces in the way".

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer
The reason cavalry often doesn't do what you say (and the same's true of fliers) is because apparently because units need to make a bunch of morale checks to get right to the back of the battlefield.

That would suggest to me that Scelaria (BOO) would be good at actually successful attack rear missions on its Longdead Horseman legions, but I've never really tested it.

tooterfish
Jul 13, 2013

There must be more to it than morale checks, because even longdeads will veer off course the vast majority of the time, even if there's a clear path to the rear.

The Gentleman
Jun 21, 2012
Its usually a question what you are facing. Spears are like the safe bet against most things sans archers. Shield + weapon is a default good choice as well. Axes are generally more damage than swords, but less attack. Are you going to face someone with lower defence and lots of hp? If you are facing large creatures(giants) without readily available archers? Two handed weapons are usually better.

TheresNoThyme
Nov 23, 2012

tooterfish posted:

There must be more to it than morale checks, because even longdeads will veer off course the vast majority of the time, even if there's a clear path to the rear.

I kinda figure that the formula scales exponentially on how many troops you're trying to get past while scaling linearly based on unit morale. I have (anecdotally) noticed that devils and flying undead seem to have a better shot at attacking rear in general, but a certain critical mass of line-infantry guarantees that nothing will jump into your back ranks no matter what morale it has.

The Gentleman
Jun 21, 2012
It appears the 4chan community of dominions 4 has started a Wiki for it. Now personally I love wikis, so it might be cool to add stuff like those strategies people have been posting, so they don't just get buried in the thread?

Ilanin
May 31, 2009

Smarter than the average Blair.
On the strength of my one ever MP game (well, I did win it...), I guess I'll try my hand at one of these. My notes on pretender design are very much not what I did, but what I'd do now; I don't think my Pretender did much in Saxophone:

LA Midgard

Midgard is an excellent nation for a new player to play, since it does a few things very well, and those things are things that you should learn about in order to become a good Dominions player.

Troops

Basically, you have a fairly small number of these which are worth recruiting.

Huskarls are chaff. They're not particularly good chaff, nor are they particularly cheap chaff, but they're what you have. :dealwithit:

Skinshifters are excellent light infantry and good for initial expansion. They mow through most independent troops like they're not there. Or at least, they do so once they close to melee. They're also very squishy - despite their regeneration and their #secondshape (that means they turn into werewolves when they die the first time), they die like flies when hit with arrows; and in the late age almost everyone has some kind of Crossbow troop.

Einheres are your heavy infantry. They're...middling, by the standards of the Late Age. Hit like a goddamn train though, since they get multiple attacks per round. On the flip side, lack shields. Potentially worth bothering with if you've got the resources and have run into something your Skinshifters can't really hurt, though definitely limited.

Vans are your sacreds. They're great units - glamored stealthy cavalry with light lances which means they have a first strike that can kill most things and a lot of staying power - but as capital only and at 70 gold a pop, they're tricky to mass. Worth recruiting from your cap if you can afford it, which you usually can't (I'll be getting on to why in a bit).

Mages

You only have two, plus two cap-only units. What they lack in choice, they make up for in being awesome.

Völva are your probable researchers. 9RP for 105 gold isn't fantastic but it's not bad, and S2 certainly has its uses (though that's certainly pricey for a Communion Slave, it does mean you can spam Stellar Cascades, one of the better Astral battle spells, like anything)

Galdermen are Midgard's MVP, and one of the best units in the entire late age. All of them have A2, which means they can cast a lot of important buffs (and Lightning Bolt, which is useful if you need single things dead) straight off. 25% of them have A3, which means that with a couple of air gems (which you can trivially sitesearch for) they can cast Storm, allowing all the A2 mages to cast Summon Storm Power, which boosts them to A3 so they can cast Thunderstrike. Massed thunderstrikes are one of the best mid-game tactics around, and make Midgard very dangerous once you hit Evocation 5. It's even possible to get an A4 Galderman, who can then forge air boosters to promote other mages, but it's a less than 1% chance so don't rely on it. If that wasn't enough, they've got fantastic diversity. You'll get D2, B2 and E2 Galdermen, which gives you ways into several strong magic paths, solid blood hunters, and means you can communion 50% of them together with your Völva in a pinch (cast Sabbath Master and Communion Slave). Oh, and if that wasn't enough they have second shape and regneration as well, making them less squishy than your average mage and fairly decent at surviving the effects of entire-battlefield spells - as dis astranagant points out, this means you can merrily cloud trapeze (A2) an E2 Galderman onto an army and have him cast Rain of Stones (spending an additional E gem to do so). They do, however, cost 190 gold and aren't sacred, so be careful with the upkeep costs. In order to get this level of power and diversity in the late age, most nations are paying more gold than this, or the mages are slow to recruit, or both. Midgard can (if the economy supports it) mass powerful battlemages in a way that a great many LA nations just can't.

Vanherse are OK, but I rarely used them. What they are is stealthy glamoured light cavalry priest commanders. But they're only H1A1, and it's pretty questionable whether that's worth a turn of capital recruitment, largely because you also have

Vanjarls are part of a class of units known as "ponymen"; that is, glamoured stealthy units with A2 (also B1 H2, in this case) meaning they can cast a variety of useful buffs, notably Mistform and the teleportation spell Cloud Trapeze, and they can sneak in to enemy territory, optionally with an escort of Vans. In the MA, when they're recruit-anywhere, entire strategies revolve around these guys. In the Late Age they're still pretty useful stealth raiders, especially if geared up a bit, though 285 gold is a lot of gold so you may not wish to recruit them every turn.

Other commanders
To be honest, you'll rarely recruit these. In general you want to be recruiting mages from forted provinces until you have no money left. Still, there's one reason you might want to grab a Herse or a Jarl occasionally (probably a Herse, they're cheaper) - sailing. All of Midgard's national commanders, including the Vanherse and Vanjarls but not the pure mages, have sailing. What sailing means is that you can travel from one coastal province to any other coastal province provided you travel over no more than two water spaces to get there. This gives you pretty amazing strategic mobility (depending, of course, on the map and your starting position - expand towards the water!) and allows you to pull off raiding or interdiction moves many players don't even think of. Their use is obviously situational, but if your map has a lot of coastline, you probably want a commander with sailing leading at least your major armies.

National summons
Don't. You have one, it's not really worth the 12 Death gems it costs. If you want to summon stuff, I'd suggest Storm Demons once you've got the blood economy up and running.

Pretender Design and overall strategy

Tricky. Not sure there's a single good answer here. We're probably looking at a scales build, since Midgard doesn't really have the sacreds to support a heavy bless - Vans are great, but they're also too expensive and too capital-only to really mass. If you've not already noticed, Midgard is extremely gold-hungry, so the Order 3 scale is a must. Growth 3 is useful too - there's the income boost and it'll also help out with blood hunting. You natively prefer Cold 1; it may be worth going further into Cold just to make your dominion less hospitable to other nations and besides, the points are useful. You don't need that many resources, so Sloth won't hurt too much, and similarly Misfortune 1 doesn't hurt that much. On the other hand, your best units are mages, so Magic scales to boost T-strike casting, research etc are definitely a plan. In terms of what you want out of a pretender, Skinshifters can largely handle initial expansion so you don't need an awake SC to help with that, but they never hurt. You could get something like an awake W4 Blue Dragon with Order 3 Sloth 1 Cold3 Growth 3 Misfortune 1 if you wanted to go that way.

Personally I'd rather use my pretender to fill in some of the magic slots we're missing, and help with my long-term strategy. For initial expansion we've got skinshifters, and then in the mid-game we're going to rely on our air battlemagic to carry the day, but what about the end game? That's where the Pretender's going to have to pitch in. There's a few good choices here; Midgard's got no native W access (also no F, but frankly Fire is terrible so who cares) and water's highly useful for a variety of things; notably the global Vengeful Water and the items Frost Brand and Bottle of Living Water (particularly great since you've got fantastic raiding troops in your Vanjarls already - use Vengeful Waters to hold off attacks on your own dominion, and then infiltrate the enemy with large numbers of geared stealth raiding thugs to annex swathes of territory in a single turn, cutting retreats and generally making a total nuisance of yourself). One of the most powerful spell combinations in the current metagame is the global Astral Corruption and Send Horror, and Midgard's perfectly capable of setting up a strong blood economy in the end game to run with that. In theory you could blood-empower Völva up to B3, but you'd still need boosters to reach S4, and the easiest way to do that would be to have something with the paths S2E2 to forge Crystal Coins, and you don't. Another global you might want to consider is Perpetual Storm; that has upsides and downsides for Midgard. The upside is that it auto-casts Storm at the start of every battle, something you would otherwise be wanting to do - both in order to power up your Galdermen and because most of your troops are vulnerable to missile fire. The downsides are that it prevents sailing and provides a global income malus, and you want to sail in order to raid and need all the gold you can get. But anyway, the point is you want to have a plan which, probably, involves casting and exploting a global, and your Pretender should support that. For going heavily into Blood and winding up at Astral Corruption/Send Horror, for example, you could try something like S6B6 on an Imprisoned Dom9 Fountain of Blood, which would allow Order 3 Sloth 1 Cold 1 Growth 3 Misfortune 1 Magic 2 (or E3S6B6 if you want Crystal Coins too; you'd have to drop to Cold 2 and Magic 1 for the extra E).

Ilanin fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Aug 23, 2014

Excelsiortothemax
Sep 9, 2006
Can someone do a LA Argatha write up? These are fantastic.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
4chan community probably all play MA Ermor :jerkbag:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

amuayse
Jul 20, 2013

by exmarx

Excelsiortothemax posted:

Can someone do a LA Argatha write up? These are fantastic.

Recruit reanimators for skeletons and resources. Recruit crossbows with said resources. Use Ktonian Alchemist to light crossbows on fire.

  • Locked thread