|
I meant custom maps.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 05:12 |
|
|
Diogines posted:Not played in a while, starting up again, single player. we just want more people to play with 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:14
|
|
I know  .I have to hide the fact I only play single player, a mob of people will demand I play with them if I mention it.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:15
|
|
|
Diogines posted:I have to hide the fact I only play single player, a mob of people will demand I play with them if I mention it. You're not doing a very good hiding then. Sriously though, why don't you play multiplayer? It's like only playing chess against computer. It's a bit bizarre.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:41
|
|
|
The computer is way better at chess than it is at dominions though; the difference between the AI and a real player is incredibly stark. The AI really does just mash random units together.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:42
|
|
|
Neruz posted:
That includes the 3 Xibalbas and Nazca? Wow :P AmishSpecialForces posted:I enjoy it too. MP Dom tends to default to a smaller set of viable strategies whereas in SP you can do pretty much whatever and see what happens. A few days ago I was asking about Niefelheim. I played a game with them against Mighty AI, which I won previously at that level with other nations. I have to confess embarrassedly that I lost that game. Well, not lost real lost, but it reached a position where I gave up, they got well inside my territory and they were stronger than me. Maybe I could have turtled up hard and waited until I had level 8-9 magic, but that didn't sound fun to me. What it happened was I got in an early war with Ctis, I took his provinces, but Ur declared war and went hard to me. Like, every drat turn he threw a 100-300 unit army to a castle in a key position. Almost every - drat - turn, that meant I could barely recruit reinforcements in that castle. Sometimes with a dozen of mages as support, and by pure chance they cast good spells sometimes. And in the second part of the map where our territories made contact also threw some big armies. I had to slow down research and throw most of my gygias to battle. Even then, thanks to how dumb is the AI in comparison with human, I could contain him in the first chokepoint with some effort while I accumulated a critical mass of troops in the second point, attacking and having finally some good victories in two important battles, taking a fort and two provinces. I could see myself defeating him eventually, eating more territory as turns passed, him growing weaker and myself stronger. But I was playing with story events, and in one fort province some secret dyrad cult was causing unrest and spawning indie armies, and I had barely any extra troops to go and solve the problem. Then I had bad luck and a second province with fort (what are the chances?! 2 of 2! I had several unforted provinces where it could have happened!) happened the same event, raising the unrest and nullifying the province. And at the same time, Helheim said hi and declared war on me, throwing a 400 man army. One or two turns later Ur used a 350-man army with 14 mages and finally won the siege in the key checkpoint. And a few turns later even if I beat the first wave of Helheim sacrificing my big army who was pushing against Ur, a pair of smaller van armies got inside my territory while my only army left had done a bad move, and started taking the empty provinces, jumping from one to other. That's when I gave up. TLDR: I could beat one mighty AI, but two at the same time, some bad luck with random events and bad timing in key battles made me say "game over". Diogines posted:Not played in a while, starting up again, single player. Google Dom4 Maps:- Atha Avin - Biddyn - Peliwyr, they are 3 pleasing to the eye maps form the same guy
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:47
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:That includes the 3 Xibalbas and Nazca? Wow :P Literally the first thing I did when the patch hit was play each new nation  Havn't played Nazca since though, while I like the new gameplay concepts they introduce I'm not actually a fan of using them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 15:56
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:-After test-playing them a pair of days, Bandar is an advanced nation yeah, because it has a hard-ish start, Astral and Nature are pretty versatile but they don't have the straight-power-battlefield spells, and you really need to know when and in what priority use your gems, because they have lots of options in troops summons, mage summons that break you into Earth / Water / Air, and therefore lots of forging options through national and summoned mages, buff spells for your big but average armies, etc. It's a nation where you really have to know how make magic work, in every facet, but powerful if you know how. A nation like Bandar with great slaves and easy earth/astral access can really untap any magic it wants. On its own, nature wants to cast spells like Howl, Swarm, Storm of Thorns and Polymorph. Astral uses Soul Slay, Stellar Cascades, Paralyze, Mind Burn and Enslave Mind. Yaksha and Kinarra paths will be what shape big battles in the midgame, though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 18:36
|
|
|
Have Some Flowers! posted:Communion nations in general require an advanced understanding of battle magic because they can use so much. Speaking of communions... manual posted:Fatigue distribution: So if I cast a nature spell with a S1N0 mage as slave and a S2N1 master mage, that's 0 < 1/2 = fatigue *4 ? Does it round up or down? Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Dec 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 20:36
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:I played a game with them against Mighty AI, Don't count on this being indicative of anything. The AI doesn't get better, it just cheats harder and spawns more random mans to mash stupidly together. (PS, you should play with us)
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 20:42
|
|
|
BurntCornMuffin posted:Don't count on this being indicative of anything. The AI doesn't get better, it just cheats harder and spawns more random mans to mash stupidly together. (PS, you should play with us) I know, I know, it's just more gold/res/research/gems for the AI. I don't delude myself with that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
Guys I bought this game what have I done? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 21:44
|
|
|
WMain00 posted:Guys I bought this game what have I done? Ditto. I have no idea what i am doing. I am paralyzed by the number of options. Tried looking for a basic newbie guide in the OP without much luck.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 21:55
|
|
|
malhavok posted:Ditto. I have no idea what i am doing. I am paralyzed by the number of options. Tried looking for a basic newbie guide in the OP without much luck. WMain00 posted:Guys I bought this game what have I done? Join a noobgame, get on irc, call everyone hitlers and lose hilariously! Come on, it'll be fun
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
WMain00 posted:Guys I bought this game what have I done? malhavok posted:Ditto. I have no idea what i am doing. I am paralyzed by the number of options. Tried looking for a basic newbie guide in the OP without much luck. Watch the first few episodes of this. It's how I learned the basic concepts and controls. Ignore his strategic musings, they are bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:12
|
|
|
Speaking of newbie guides, is there any resource out there that gives information about which spells are actually good and worth casting? I get that being able to use magic effectively is a huge deal but looking at that spell list makes my eyes glaze over. There's too much choice there for someone who has no idea what 90% of the spells even do. Like, what are some generally good battle spells to start out with for different paths? What schools of magic are worth researching and for what? I get that a lot of this is determined by your nation but there's got to be some baseline useful stuff to get started with, right?
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
Yakumo posted:Speaking of newbie guides, is there any resource out there that gives information about which spells are actually good and worth casting? I get that being able to use magic effectively is a huge deal but looking at that spell list makes my eyes glaze over. There's too much choice there for someone who has no idea what 90% of the spells even do. Like, what are some generally good battle spells to start out with for different paths? What schools of magic are worth researching and for what? I get that a lot of this is determined by your nation but there's got to be some baseline useful stuff to get started with, right? For that matter, I'd find a list of what each path is roughly good at to be handy. I know for instance that air has some pretty good evocation spells, notably Thunderstrike, and that Wind Guide can be a really big deal if you have an army to match it, but I'm not much sure of what else it can do beyond that. And I've got no real idea whatsoever what you're supposed to do with Water or Nature. Paths in general seems more important than schools, BTW - it seems like your strategic choices basically rely on what your mages are capable, so you can pare down the spell list to just what your mages can do. Saves some time that way. That said, schoolwise conjuration, evocation, and alteration are the most basic battle schools - conjuration summons up tough monsters to do battle, evocation throws straight damage, and alteration adjusts your army to make it awesome. Thaumaturgy 4 and Conjuration 4 are also useful since they unlock remote site-searching spells. And if you ever need your mages to be better at their paths than they are now or if you're planning to kit out a hero for battle, construction is always potentially handy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
malhavok posted:Ditto. I have no idea what i am doing. I am paralyzed by the number of options. Tried looking for a basic newbie guide in the OP without much luck. Play Middle Age Ulm. They have strong troops, no bless that can complicate things, and only one magic you should focus on, Earth, which is fairly straightforward (a pair of good combat spells, a decent range of spells to buff your troops). Pick Oracle as Pretender, take Dominion 8, order 3, production 3, growth 3, luck 3, drain 2. That way you minimize the complex stuff in your first game, like blesses, communions, blood magic, multiple magic paths, mobile pretender, etc.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 22:48
|
|
|
Turin Turambar posted:Pick Oracle as Pretender, take Dominion 8, order 3, production 3, growth 3, luck 3, drain 2. Please do not listen to this man, he doesn't know poo poo. You don't pair order with luck, ever. That is dumb as hell on its own right. And never, ever pick drain, especially as MA Ulm. Jesus christ man, you are literally a retard. Please stop giving advice to noobs. And everybody else while you're at it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:00
|
|
|
A lot of the 'ultimatums' you just issued are wrong. You're not any more qualified than he is, but you definitely seem like a jerk. So great, there!
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
Friendly Tumour posted:Please do not listen to this man, he doesn't know poo poo. You don't pair order with luck, ever. That is dumb as hell on its own right. And never, ever pick drain, especially as MA Ulm. Jesus christ man, you are literally a retard. Please stop giving advice to noobs. And everybody else while you're at it. /rolleyes The idea isn't doing it efficiently, not even well, but using it because it minimizes the game's depth as a first game to learn to move troops around, using spells, summoning some dudes, searching some magic places, maybe doing some items.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
Yakumo posted:Speaking of newbie guides, is there any resource out there that gives information about which spells are actually good and worth casting? I get that being able to use magic effectively is a huge deal but looking at that spell list makes my eyes glaze over. There's too much choice there for someone who has no idea what 90% of the spells even do. Like, what are some generally good battle spells to start out with for different paths? What schools of magic are worth researching and for what? I get that a lot of this is determined by your nation but there's got to be some baseline useful stuff to get started with, right? Some useful battle magic: Fire: Fireball (Evo 3, F2); Phoenix Pyre (Alt 7, F2); Phoenix Power (Conj 3, F2); Falling Fires (Evo 5, F3); Solar Eclipse (Alt 4, F3S1); Prison of Fire (Thau 4, F3); Flaming Arrows (Ench 4, F4); Heat From Hell (Ench 6, F4); Firestorm (Evo 7, F5) Air: Summon Storm Power (Conj 2, A1); Lightning Bolt (Evo 2, A2); Wind Guide (Alt 4, A2); Mist (Evo 3, A3); Thunder Strike (Evo 4, A3); Summon Air Elemental (Conj 5, A3); Arrow Fend (Ench 6, A4); Storm (Evo 5, A4); Phantasmal Army (Alt 5, A4); Living Clouds (Conj 7, A4); Mass Flight (Ench 7, A4); Fog Warriors (Alt 7, A5) Water: Rain (Evo 2, W2); Ice Strike (Evo 7, W2); Quickening (Alt 8, W2); Falling Frost (Evo 5, W3); Prison of Sedna (Alt 7, W3); Acid Storm (Evo 7, W4F1); Quagmire (Ench 5, W4); Grip of Winter (Ench 6, Water 4) Earth: Earth Meld (Alt 2, E2); Summon Earthpower (Conj 3, E2); Blade Wind (Evo 4, E3); Magma Eruption (Evo 6, E3F1); Rain of Stones (Evo 7; E3A1); Destruction (Alt 4, E3); Curse of Stones (Alt 4, E3); Maw of the Earth (Alt 5, E3); Iron Bane (Alt 6, E3); Summon Earth Elemental (Conj 5, E3); Legions of Steel (Const 3, E3); Earthquake (Evo 5, E4); Living Earth (Conj 7, E4) Astral: Nether Darts (Evo 7, S1D1); Power of the Spheres (Conj 3, S1); Communion Master/Slave (Thau 1, S1); Stellar Cascades (Evo 5, S2); Astral Fires (Evo 6, S3F1); Light of the Northern Star (Conj 4, S3); Antimagic (Ench 4, S3); Doom (Thau 7, S4); Will of the Fates (Thau 8, S4); Solar Brilliance (Ench 7, S5); Master Enslave (Thau 9, S8) Death: Shadow Blast (Evo 5, D2); Raise Skeletons (Ench 3, D2); Horde of Skeletons (Ench 5, D2); Blast of Unlife (Evo 6, D3); Bane Fire (Evo 6; D3F1); Terror (Thau 4, D3); Wailing Winds (Evo 6, D4A1); Wind of Death (Evo 7, D4A1); Darkness (Alt 6, D4); Rigor Mortis (Ench 6, D4) Nature: Storm of Thorns (Evo 7, N2); Panic (Thau 3, N2); Creeping Doom (Alt 7, N3); Polymorph (Alt 8, N3); Strength of Gaia (Conj 4, N3E1); Howl (Conj 5, N3) Blood: Sabbath Master/Slave (Blood 1, B1); Reinvigoration (Blood 1, B1); Agony (Blood 2, B2); Blood Rain (Blood 7, B3) Note that virtually all spells are situational. This list also omits spells that are primarily useful on or against thugs, since they're a secondary strategy at best. I'm also poo poo At Dominions so my opinions may be wrong.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:25
|
|
|
Friendly Tumour posted:Please do not listen to this man, he doesn't know poo poo. You don't pair order with luck, ever. That is dumb as hell on its own right. And never, ever pick drain, especially as MA Ulm. Jesus christ man, you are literally a retard. Please stop giving advice to noobs. And everybody else while you're at it. Are you an idiot? The whole point of Ulm is that all their mages are immune to drain when it comes to magical research. So in other words they have a free 120 points to spend on a god because the only difference between neutral magic and drain 3 for Ulm is increased magic resistance.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:41
|
|
|
I'm still no expert but I'll do my best. There are a lot of approaches to magic, but you're right in that there are also a lot of bad options that usually aren't worth focusing on. To start with, you can use the mod inspector to look up different spells and their requirements, or the manual, which has a bit more details on the actual mechanics of how most spells work. Battle magic is about destroying your enemy with spells, buffing your own troops to overcome the enemy troops, altering the battlefield to give your troops an advantage, or summoning new troops. Evocation is the "destroying your enemy with spells" school. If you have a lot of elemental mages (air, fire, earth), Evocation is often your first research priority, paired with Conjuration 3 for the combat boost spells. If you have a lot of Air access on your national mages, the usual plan is to research Evocation 5 (for Storm and Thunder Strike) and Conjuration 3 (for Summon Storm Power). An A3 or A4 mage can cast Storm using gems, allowing your A2 mages to Summon Storm Power to become A3, and then they can all cast Thunder Strike - this is the king of evocations due to its big AN damage and generous AoE. This alone will get you a long way in most battles, and rarely goes obsolete. Fire magic can be strong because any F2 mage can boost to F3 using Phoenix Power (Conjuration 3), and can then casting Falling Fires (Evocation 5), a big armour piercing AoE nuke that is good against armoured and unarmoured troops both. Before Evo5, Flare and Fireball (Evo2 and 3) are okay at helping out in fights but you really want to get Evo5 as soon as possible for your mages to do any serious damage. Later on, you can cast Fire Storm (Evocation 7) to gradually burn the whole battlefield to death, which works extremely well if your own troops have fire resistance (like Abysia or Heat Ragha) - or you can cast Fire Fend (Enchantment 8) once you're there. Unfortunately Fire magic is easily shut down because of a spell called Rain (Evocation 2), which increases the fatigue cost on casting Fire spells significantly, and makes Fire mages very upset. Fire magic is considered somewhat poor because of this. Earth magic has Summon Earthpower at Conjuration 3, which not only boosts an E2 mage to E3 but grants 4 Reinvigoration as well, which considerably helps battle mages spam their spells. At E3, your mages can cast Blade Wind, a kind of scattershot spell that does big damage to unprotected targets like skeletons or jaguar warriors but quickly falls off as enemies become more armoured. You can, however, pair it with other Earth spells like Destruction or Iron Bane (Alteration 4 or 6) which destroy armour and make your Blade Winds get through. Evocation 5 also gives you access to Earthquake (which takes E4, or an E3 casting Earthpower), a battlewide evocation that cripples low-prot armies (and probably your mages as well, if you aren't careful). Earth Meld (Alteration 2) does no damage but holds troops in place and makes them defenseless, which can be really effective against something like a bless rush. Maws of the Earth (Alteration 5) is like a really big Earth Meld that also does huge damage - it owns, but it costs gems to cast each time. Earth also has some strong crosspaths. Mages with E2 and F1 like Ulm's Priest-Smiths or Machaka's Boudas can Summon Earthpower into casting Magma Eruption (Evocation 6), an awesome battle spell that does big damage in a big AoE and can be spammed for a while. Mages with E2 and S1 like some of Marverni's Druids or Arco's Mystics can Summon Earthpower into casting Gifts of Heaven (Evocation 5), an unwieldy meteor spell that does massive damage but can't be aimed for poo poo - good against large crowds, or highly armoured targets. Mages with E2 and A1 like some of Vanheim's Dwarven Smiths or Midgard's Galdermen can cast Rain of Stones, a battlewide spell that is like Earthquake but cheaper to cast and considerably more powerful. Astral magic is interesting because of a spell called Light of the Northern Star (Conjuration 4), which boosts the Astral power of all of your mages by 1. This allows hordes of S1s (like you see in Pythium, Kailasa, or LA Ulm) to easily become hordes of S2s, and spam Stellar Cascades (Evocation 5) to knock out enemy troops, or Mind Burn/Paralyze (Thaumaturgy 2/4) to take out individual strong targets like dragons or elephants. Hordes of S1s are useful for another reason - communions. Communions are pretty complicated and deserve their own guide, but allow mages to hold hands and cast more powerful spells than they're otherwise able by dividing fatigue evenly amongst themselves. Poorly-managed communions can kill your mages, though, so they take some practice. Good nations for communions include Arcoscephale, Pythium, and Sceleria, since they have Astral crosspaths on almost every mage they recruit. Water isn't quite as good as the others for battle magic, but if you have a lot of W3 mages like Atlantis you can cast Falling Frost (Evocation 5), a very serviceable cold counterpart to Falling Fires. Water/Fire crosspaths can do Acid Rain (Evocation 4), and its battlefield-wide counterpart Acid Storm (Evocation 7), which can't be resisted and burns through even heavily armoured troops. Nature magic isn't particularly good at killing troops, but Tangle Vines (Conjuration 1) and Sleep Cloud (Evocation 3) have situational uses in battle. The only really good Nature evocation is probably Storm of Thorns (Evocation 7), which can be really good but comes into play rather late. Death magic has a few evocations like Shadow Bolt (Evocation 3) and Blast of Unlife (Evocation 6) but I've always found them an inefficient way of getting things done - if you have death mages, they're probably summoning skeletons (see below). Blood magic has some serviceable battle spells like Leech or Agony but they all cost blood slaves to use, which I find cumbersome, and they're not significantly better. I honestly don't know much about using Blood effectively, so I hope someone can fill in the gaps. Blood does have access to Sabbaths, though, which are functionally identical to communions but cost blood slaves for every mage. Nice if you really want to add in some communions but your mages don't have S access. Nature magic has some really good battlefield spells like Howl (Conjuration 5) and Relief (Enchantment 6), which are small effects but can turn the tide sometimes. Low-N mages can spam Swarm (Alteration 4) using nature gems to serve as chaff and distractions for your more important troops. If you have a lot of Death mages in your nation, you'll almost certainly want to be making hundreds of skeletons in each battle using Horde of Skeletons (Enchantment 5) - this is the mainstay of nations like C'tis or Yomi, where you can get D2 mages or better out of every fort. C'tis in particular is quite weak before Enchantment 5 and hits a strong peak immediately once they acquire it. Horde of Skeletons synergises really well with Rigor Mortis (Enchantment 6), which comes in at the very next research level and acts as a force multiplier for your skeletons by tiring out the enemy flesh troops and making them fall over. If you have Water too, you can stack Quagmire and Grip of Winter (Enchantment 5 and 6) on top which does a very similar thing. This combo will get you a long way, and although it can be countered to some degree, the counter to the counter is itself often "more skeletons", so Death can be a really hard path to deal with. Other battlefield enchants that give skeletons an edge are Darkness (Alteration 6), Life After Death (Enchantment 7), and Foul Vapors (Enchantment 5, but N3W1). All are worth using - play around with them. There are also the very strong in-battle Summon Elemental spells (all at Conjuration 5), though the Air elementals are probably the strongest of these due to being flying ethereal tramplers that are really hard to deal with. At Conjuration 7, you can cast Living Earth, Living Clouds, etc., which summon 4 lesser versions of those elementals, which are excellent for dealing with hordes of low quality chaff like skeletons. Buff magic is less flashy but can act as a serious force multiplier if applied well. Earth magic gets some big AoE buffs like Legions of Steel (Construction 3), Weapons of Sharpness (Construction 7), and Strength of Giants (Enchantment 3), which make your troops tougher and hit harder. Fire has one of the best battlefield buffs in the game, Flaming Arrows (Enchantment 4), which scales extremely well as you throw more archers into your armies and can also be buffed by Air's Wind Guide (Alteration 4). Air has some powerful buffs later in the game, like Fog Warriors (Alteration 7) and Mass Flight (Enchantment 7), as well as Arrow Fend (Enchantment 6) which is practically a requirement against any nation that relies heavily on archers or archer-like things (like MA/LA Ulm and their national Iron Blizzard). Ritual magic is about a lot of things, from summoning units and commanders to casting global enchantments that give you a strategic edge. The best unit summoning spell are almost always national - see Agartha's Olms, Niefelheim's Jotun Wolves, Fomoria's Morrigans, Mictlan's Jaguar Fiends, and many others - though there are a few situational exceptions, like Black Hawks from Call of the Winds (Conjuration 3), which make excellent patrollers, or Awaken Vine Ogres (Conjuration 4) if you have an Irminsul, which are good meaty chaff (but only if you have an Irminsul). Blood magic has some decent summons, especially the Storm Demons and Demon Knights (both Blood 4), though they require crosspaths that may be hard to get. National commander summons also tend to be very strong and are a good source of magic power and diversity, like Caelum's Yazads and Daeva's, LA Ulm's Vampire Counts, and so on. Some generic commanders are also very good mages, though most of these are at Conjuration 8 - the Faerie Court, and the Elemental Kings and Queens. These can help bootstrap you into higher levels of your national paths, or act as powerful combat mages in their own right. You can use ritual magic to harass enemy armies and provinces - there are a lot of options here, some remote assassination spells like Seeking Arrow (A3, Enchantment 3), Mind Hunt (S4, Evocation 6), Vengeance of the Dead (S3D1, Thaumaturgy 4) Earth Attack (E5, Conjuration 8), and so on - these work very differently to each other and situational but can be used to good effect. Spells like Blight (E2D1, Alteration 4), Plague (D4, Thaumaturgy 7), or Hurricane (A3, Evocation 4) can kill population and raise unrest, which can ruin an enemy's economy, but are likewise a situational use of gems. The capstone of this type of warfare, though, is Send Horror (S4B3, Blood 8), an extremely powerful remote summon that can kill entire armies, though it takes some time to boost up to and requires a strong blood economy to keep going. Once a nation gets access to any significant amount of Horror spam, though, they will often win the game on the back of that alone. There is a remote sitesearch spell for every path, though they crop up in different research trees - Haruspex, Gnome Lore, Voice of Apsu, and so on. These aren't bad, but it's usually more efficient to have a couple mages with diverse paths go around manually sitesearching. People will probably disagree with me on this though, and the spells can certainly be worth using in certain circumstances. There are 5 global enchantment slots in each game, and players will normally fight for them. We had a brief discussion about globals recently, and there's usually only a small group that get cast in any game. There is a gemgen global for every element (Mother Oak, Earth Blood Deep Well, Stellar Focus, Gale Gate, etc.) - some of these give better returns than others. Mother Oak (Alteration 5) is often seen because it gives you a nice leadup into casting Gift of Health (Enchantment 7) later in the game, a big buff to your troops in your dominion and one of the only ways to cure afflictions for most nations (and the only way to cure afflictions from lifeless units or undead, which you want if you're pursuing a Tartarian-based lategame). Vengeful Water (Thaumaturgy 7) is really oppressive and hard to deal with, and is a natural choice for anyone who took a pretender with high Water magic - it makes you pretty much impossible to attack by most nations, unless the enchantment is dealt with. Burden of Time (Thaumaturgy 5) and Astral Corruption (Blood 7) are powerful globals that may win you the game if you can play around them (if you have young or undead mages for BoT, or if you can rely primarily on blood magic for AC), but do so by antagonising every other player in the game, so you have to be prepared to fight the world once they're up. I'm almost certainly missing something, but I hope this is a useful resource to start out with. Boing fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Dec 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2014 23:49
|
|
|
That's a longer post than I believed anyone would do. Good job! Now someone put it in the OP.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Boing posted:I'm still no expert but I'll [...]
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 00:39
|
|
|
WMain00 posted:Guys I bought this game what have I done? Just remember to put in lots of PD OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 01:02
|
|
|
i for one am glad that my informative post about globals helped accentuate such a good post about magic
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 01:10
|
|
|
MA Tien Chi is a really cool communion nation imho. Their 65g S1E1 geomancers can all forge crystal matrices, and the nation has access to every single path except blood and death on their mages. Wind Guided Gifts are the best.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 01:18
|
|
|
Oh and about blood spells, they're unique in that they have extremely damaging, no MR-save spells in leech and life for life. I've had instances of lone Mictlan priests with some PD be able to beat back an elven raiding part lead by a thug by just spamming leech. Even the MR-checking spells like Harm and Hellbind heart are extrodinarily powerful. Reinvigoration removes all fatigue up to 200, which is incredibly powerful in communions and sabbaths. There's even the extremely powerful blood feast healing spell and the rain of toads spell that diseases and causes unrest. An unintentional side-effect that the devs made through the removal of gemgens and less sites in Dom4 is that the blood economy is much more profitable than a gem economy in the late game. That's why nations like Mictlan are so feared once they can consistently start pouring out summons every turn.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 02:45
|
|
|
Those videos helped quite a bit i think.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 02:54
|
|
|
I picked this up after it went on sale, and jumped into a singleplayer game to get a feel for how it worked. I'm 99% sure after reviewing options that I was Lanka vs Yomi on the Merrowmoor map and that the victory condition was controlling the 3 thrones of ascension. Game went well enough with me maxing death magic and then proceeding to just unleash demon lords and resurrected soldier spammage against the ai. Things were going pretty well, and I had actually pushed them back about a 3rd of the map and then all of a sudden, game over, I lost. I know I held one of the thrones because I pushed my way to it fairly early, and I also know it was well-defended and untaken by virtue of it being deep within my lines. All this to ask, are there alternate victory conditions, or does anyone have any idea what happened to me? (watching those LP videos now, thanks fool_of_sound)
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:26
|
|
|
Senturion posted:All this to ask, are there alternate victory conditions, or does anyone have any idea what happened to me? You instantly lose if you have no candles of dominion left anywhere in the world, but more likely your opponent captured three thrones. By default, maps have more thrones than are required to win. Level 1 thrones in particular are very easy to capture, even for the AI.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:33
|
|
|
fool_of_sound posted:You instantly lose if you have no candles of dominion left anywhere in the world, but more likely your opponent captured three thrones. By default, maps have more thrones than are required to win. Level 1 thrones in particular are very easy to capture, even for the AI. I tweaked it down to just hold the 3 level 1 thrones. I guess it's possible I lost all of my candles, I kind of stopped paying attention to them and was trying to just push down the ai. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:37
|
|
|
Senturion posted:I guess it's possible I lost all of my candles, I kind of stopped paying attention to them and was trying to just push down the ai. Thanks! If the game went that long, that is probably what happened. The AI loves to put temples everywhere and candles add up over time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:56
|
|
|
Decrepus posted:If the game went that long, that is probably what happened. The AI loves to put temples everywhere and candles add up over time. Towards the start of the 6th year relatively long (granted it's a small map)? I definitely noticed tons of AI candles in the territory I was taking over, assumed most of my territory was fine, but I'm kind of thinking that must have been what happened.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 04:58
|
|
|
Senturion posted:I tweaked it down to just hold the 3 level 1 thrones. I guess it's possible I lost all of my candles, I kind of stopped paying attention to them and was trying to just push down the ai. Thanks! Heh, the same happened to me in my second game. The problem is the dominions score isn't intuitive. People see a scale that goes from 0 to 10, and think 5 is a normal, valid score. But you really want to have Dom8, 9 or 10, with only a few specific nations being allowed to have a lower Dominion score (because they can spam cheap temples or sacblood). Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Dec 28, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 09:54
|
|
|
Agent Kool-Aid posted:there's only a couple categories for globals Arcane Nexus nowhere to be found on this list? Fail!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 13:03
|
|
|
Friendly Tumour posted:Please do not listen to this man, he doesn't know poo poo. You don't pair order with luck, ever. That is dumb as hell on its own right. And never, ever pick drain, especially as MA Ulm. Jesus christ man, you are literally a retard. Please stop giving advice to noobs. And everybody else while you're at it. Luck has also Events which only fire with Order or Production scales where you get ~1000 Gold or an Fort.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 19:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 2, 2024 05:12 |
|
|
Torrannor posted:Arcane Nexus nowhere to be found on this list? Fail! Speaking of which, is Forge of the Ancients still a big deal in Dom4? With the reduced importance of thugs/SCs, it feels like it's not as strong. On the other hand, boosters are still incredibly important, gems are rarer, and some battlefield-wide items are amazing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2014 19:17
|
|
