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PurpleXVI posted:Man, the Pangaea/Xibalba border looks like an absolute mess. The only way is looking at the Dominion effects, yep. Also, as y'all can see our Dominion score graph is showing that we're making gains, but our border with Xibalba looks about as bad as it has ever been. That means that we're making gains somewhere else.
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Nov 23, 2016 18:02
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| # ? May 10, 2024 08:59 |
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fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck spring hawks goddamn
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Nov 23, 2016 18:32
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ChickenWing posted:fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck spring hawks goddamn
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Nov 23, 2016 18:43
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How are u posted:Also, as y'all can see our Dominion score graph is showing that we're making gains, but our border with Xibalba looks about as bad as it has ever been. That means that we're making gains somewhere else. So someone else is getting a really good reason to attack Gath. 
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Nov 23, 2016 18:58
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jBrereton posted:Flaming Arrows goes through Ethereality and Mistform and is the primo way for MA Man to deal with that throne, but it probably? the roughest one in the game. There's also the level 3 Throne defense that is ~Spring Hawks~ plus an E and A Titan instead of an Annunaki of the Sky. You can probably guess what spell the Titan enjoys casting. The Monolith + Watchers Throne is also really rough to handle unless you have the right toolkit.
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Nov 23, 2016 19:06
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How are u posted:There's also the level 3 Throne defense that is ~Spring Hawks~ plus an E and A Titan instead of an Annunaki of the Sky. You can probably guess what spell the Titan enjoys casting.
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Nov 23, 2016 19:21
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Benly posted:I feel like there's got to be some use for a stealthy flying self-blesser with inv, awe and full slots but probably not a good enough one to bother with. In a regular game, he'd easily clear PD and cut retreats with a double bless. In a Mo' Money game, not so easy
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Nov 23, 2016 19:28
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jBrereton posted:Flaming Arrows goes through Ethereality and Mistform and is the primo way for MA Man to deal with that throne, but it probably? the roughest one in the game. The throne defender cast arrow fend as well as fog warriors, though. Also, fliers get right up in your grill first turn, so there was probably a lot of friendly fire as the rear archers tried to shoot the hawks that were zapping the guys in the front. That's rough (and humiliating) for Man, good to see it immortalized in the LP.
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Nov 23, 2016 20:27
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Yeah, that throne really wasn't a good one for Man to be attacking, especially given how he's been doing his army compositions. Defender having priority meant that with an Annunaki of the Sky as the throne leader, Arrow Fend and Fog Warriors were going up before Man could do much about it, and the main enemy troops being Spring Hawks means there's no way to stop them from engaging your troops on the first turn because they can't be grounded with Storm. You really want a melee focused army along with mass electrical resistance for that throne, not any sort of ranged army. And spells that give mass electrical resistance for the army are way up the research trees.
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Nov 23, 2016 21:13
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Or, alternatively, you could give a thug a frostbrand, a Ring of Tamed Lightning, and a Copper Plate and watch it solo the battle. For 15 gems you'd get enough lightning resist to be immune to both the Spring hawks and any Thunder Strikes from Zeus, while the AoE from the brand will let you get through the hawks at a decent rate.
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Nov 23, 2016 21:48
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The Fall Steam Sale just kicked off and Dominions 4 is  60% discount, now $13.99 until the sale ends on November 29th.
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Nov 23, 2016 22:30
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Tossing a single thug with massive lightning resist into the throne probably causes the Annunaki to start spamming Phantasmal Army actually, instead of thunder strikes. Still doable given a Lore Warden's base 13 MR, but that's a LOT of unbreakable troops to cut through, and at least some damage is probably going to sneak through, so you're potentially looking at an item for fatigue reduction, an item to increase MR, and possibly items to add regen and morale as well, since morale route is still a thing, and the unit you actually need to break is the Annunaki which has far higher morale than you do.
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Nov 23, 2016 23:08
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Whoa, flying raiders. There's a reason to spend on province defense.
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Nov 24, 2016 06:55
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Flying raiders are potentially one of the most frustrating, difficult tactics to properly counter. They can bounce around your undefended core at their own whims; as demonstrated, though, a lot of fliers don't do well against even relatively simple troops as long as there's enough of them.
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Nov 24, 2016 07:52
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That was just a horde from hell casting wasn't it?
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Nov 24, 2016 16:58
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goatface posted:That was just a horde from hell casting wasn't it? Probably it was. It could have been a magic phase attack. Who would make a Horde from Hell attack unit on their own?
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Nov 24, 2016 18:56
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Well they do stick around if they win. Could have just been disposing of leftovers from a previous battle on a long shot province snipe.
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Nov 24, 2016 22:19
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Turn 29 Turn 29 begins with our researchers making breakthroughs in Construction and Blood magic. We are now at Construction 3 and should hit Construction 4 next turn, allowing us to forge a variety of useful magic booster items and also Sanguine Dowsing Rods (SDRs), which increase the effectiveness of our blood hunters substantially.  We found two magic sites this turn, one of which was merely a +1 pearl site. The other one is slightly more interesting:  Banes are very tough Undead units that wear heavy chain mail, wield magical Bane Blades that cause those struck to decay rapidly, and are surrounded by chill winds that fatigue their enemies. They’re good to have around, especially for free, so I will stick a Death mage on that site for the rest of the game.  You can actually summon these guys using a Conjuration spell. However, this magic site is the only way in the game to generate Banes as Troops instead of as Commanders. Battle reports for the turn are fairly uninteresting. We see more Xibalba / Pan back and forth as usual, and our own army moving deeper into bat territory along the coast.  Observe our glorious forces smash lovely Province Defense. We discover that Jomon has indeed invaded Caelum from the South, so Caelum won’t be joining in our bat crusade. That’s OK, though, because Xibalba will be easy to defeat, and I want to share the spoils with as few people as possible. This isn't bluster, or even an educated guess based on how well Pangaea has been pushing-in Xibalba's poo poo over the past few turns. No, we are confident because Xibalba has gone AI. The Dominions AI is legendarily lovely, and even the largest, most resource-rich AI nation doesn't stand a chance against a player who halfway knows what he or she is doing. Xibalba is done, and now it is only a question of who will grab the largest of the pieces. This turn brings a handful of events that give us 3 blood slaves, 10 nature gems, and a bit of turmoil and unrest in a province. That’s a lovely haul of nature gems, I’m very pleased. We also have recruited our first Enchantress from our Whispering Woods site! Lucky day, she turns out to be Air 2, so we can immediately start remote-searching for air sites. This is exactly the kind of magical diversity that I was hoping for from the Enchantresses, totally worth it.  Celebrate diversity  Our dominion graph shows our Dominion score climbing higher, which is just great. We are almost to the same level of Dominion strength that we had before Xibalba started his blood-saccing campaign.  We end the turn by issuing a few move orders to our armies. Our two armies in the East continue their march toward Xibalba’s capitol province and the Throne that lies nearby. In the South East we are moving our big ball of troops out of Old Man Mountains and onto the Xibalban province of Star Peaks. Hopefully, we can take it without too much of a hassle.   Next turn: the War continues!
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Nov 29, 2016 04:04
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How does a throne being on a cap province work, anyways? was this asked before
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Nov 29, 2016 04:11
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By default I'm (almost, due to Dominions code being Dominions code) certain the game cannot generate a cap and a throne on the same province. If someone sufficiently mods it for that to potentially happen, who the hell knows? There have been MP instances where someone has ended up with only like 2 connections out of their cap though, one to a dead end and the other to a level 2 throne. In cases like that... well, sucks to be that player. This is why people running games normally give the map at least a cursory look, to make sure cap points can't spawn like that.
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Nov 29, 2016 04:17
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resistentialism posted:How does a throne being on a cap province work, anyways? Thrones can't be on Capitol provinces. The Throne on the map above is in a province just north of Xibalba's capitol (the province border is kind of obscured by the forest art).
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Nov 29, 2016 04:20
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Lord Koth posted:By default I'm (almost, due to Dominions code being Dominions code) certain the game cannot generate a cap and a throne on the same province. If someone sufficiently mods it for that to potentially happen, who the hell knows? I don't see the issue. Optimal play is to spend a couple of years recruiting Niefel Giants before invading your first neutral province, so a level 2 throne should be no problem.
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Nov 29, 2016 05:32
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Seems like things are snowballing since you break multiple research goals every turn. Who were you thinking about attacking next after the bats went AI? It's a shame he dropped out and we didn't get to see any more interesting scripted battles.
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Nov 29, 2016 07:38
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Dirk the Average posted:I don't see the issue. Optimal play is to spend a couple of years recruiting Niefel Giants before invading your first neutral province, so a level 2 throne should be no problem. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a reference to that hilarious 'strategy guide' someone wrote up for Dominions single-player, yeah? I mean, I've got no room to make fun of how other people spend their time, but that thing was just...charmingly naive of the depth of the system.
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Nov 29, 2016 09:32
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Technically, Jomon is AI and therefore not really doing anything anymore, except being annoying.. (Not technically, I'm (Caelum) invading Jomon, not the other way around.)
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Nov 29, 2016 11:36
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a reference to that hilarious 'strategy guide' someone wrote up for Dominions single-player, yeah? I mean, I've got no room to make fun of how other people spend their time, but that thing was just...charmingly naive of the depth of the system. Yep. It was a very silly guide.
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Nov 29, 2016 14:02
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Apocron posted:Seems like things are snowballing since you break multiple research goals every turn. Who were you thinking about attacking next after the bats went AI? It's a shame he dropped out and we didn't get to see any more interesting scripted battles. Oh there will be plenty of battles, don't worry friend. As for what's next, well I don't want to spoil the narrative but it shouldn't be too hard to guess considering we still only have 3 neighbors. It's not like we could attack Mictlan or Ragha or some other nation on the opposite side of the world (as much as I dearly would want to be a part of an anti-Ragha coalition, that nation is loving scary).
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Nov 29, 2016 19:41
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Dirk the Average posted:Yep. It was a very silly guide. Do you have a link to it? I vaguely remember reading it and them getting very annoyed when people suggested it was not the perfect strategy.
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Nov 29, 2016 19:52
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tombom posted:Do you have a link to it? I vaguely remember reading it and them getting very annoyed when people suggested it was not the perfect strategy. Highlight: "I [then] do absolutely nothing for the first 10-20 turns and save up my gold until I have at least 4,000 on hand. Then I queue up 20 Niefel Giants and 1 Niefel Jarl leader."
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Nov 29, 2016 20:10
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Apocron posted:Seems like things are snowballing since you break multiple research goals every turn. Keep in mind that for each branch of research, each successive level is much more expensive than the previous. So, when you switch to researching a branch you haven't touched before, you're gonna blow through those early levels very quickly. How are u probably still hasn't got a huge research machine going yet, he's just grabbing the first three levels in several things. Level 4 construction is a critical point to hit since that unlocks a big slew of craftable items. After that he might switch to another branch and blow through a few levels quickly there... the decision of whether to press on into more expensive level 5 or 6 of one branch vs. grabbing the first two or three levels of a handful of other branches is pretty important and there's probably good arguments for going either way.
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Nov 29, 2016 20:19
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Yeah. Construction only gives you new craftables every even level (the odd levels mostly unlock oddball spells and summons, a few of which are pretty decent, if niche), and each even level is loads more powerful than the last. Level two is fairly vital for charms, level four gives you a slew of gear, and if memory serves level six starts unlocking some of the better end-game boosters. Meanwhile, it's still good to diversify your research because when you're at the point that you're reaching for levels seven and eight in research you can grab a couple levels in something else in a single turn, unlocking a bevy of new goodies. The meta might have changed, but this was A Thing in Dom 3 for many nations' endgame plans, because you could follow a normal research curve throughout most of the game, and then dump the collective might of your research engine into Blood at the end-game in order to rapidly unlock that toolset in a pinch.
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Nov 30, 2016 01:53
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Echoing what others have said: Construction is extremely important because we need to be able to forge boosters. For those unfamiliar with Dominions, boosters are diverse assortment of magical items that, when given to a mage, "boost" one or more of his magic paths. Boosting is important, because very few nations have mages with high enough levels of magic to cast important Global spells or vitally important Summons or forge the most powerful items. 90% of the time you're also going to need boosters to allow your mages to cast the most powerful battlefield spells, the ones that decisively win the big fight and change the course of a War. Let's take a look at a couple of boosters:  The Earth Boots here are an example of an extremely useful, low-level booster item. They're unlocked at Construction 4, and are very easy to forge with a required magic level of E2. They're also super-useful for battlefield magic, because an E2 mage wearing boots can cast "Summon Earthpower", further boosting his Earth level up to E4. You can cast some nasty battle-spells at E4! Earth Boots have no real downsides, so if your strategy benefits from a lot of Earth go hog-wild and forge dozens!  The Flame Helmet is an example of a booster that you may only end up forging a handful of times. It too is unlocked at Construction 4, but you can see that it's way more expensive to forge than Earth Boots, coming in at 20(!) Fire gems a pop. It also requires a level 4 Fire mage to forge! On top of that, wearing the helm actually adds fatigue to the bearer each battle-round.  The Staff of Elemental Mastery is a much more advanced item, unlocked at Construction 6. It's really expensive to forge, requires really high and very rare magical crosspaths to forge, but the reward is a booster for each of the elements that can be held in a mage's hands! The Staff is another example of a niche, but potentially very powerful, booster.  The Ring of Sorcery is another Construction 6 booster, and boy is it powerful. While the Staff of Elemental Mastery provides boosts to all of the Elemental paths of magic, the Ring of Sorcery does the same for the sorcerous paths. It's expensive as all hell to forge and just building a mage capable of forging it in the first place requires forging boosters and probably empowering Astral to higher levels. However, the sorcerous paths of magic are probably more powerful (and have a lot of spells that scale upward really well) compared to Elemental magic. This is an item you want, but you probably can't afford to forge more than a few. There are many other boosters, but these are just a few examples to show how they can range from usefully mundane to extraordinarily powerful. How are u fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 02:32
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A Good and Cool thing to point out, yeah. Another useful application of Construction tech is actually in Research boosting items. If you're making use of big piles of middling power researchers or unimportant magicians for your magical research, one way to boost the effectiveness of your research program is to forge items like the Owl Quill that give a bonus to research instead of magical paths. Knowing when and how much to do this is just another part of the gigantic, sprawling optimization problem that is Dominions, but I'm going to hazard the guess that it depends HEAVILY on what kind of gems you can afford to spend and whether the cost-benefit is better than just buying up more cheap researchers; if you have access to some kind of cheap sage unit that does research extraordinarily well and nothing else, and you're not relying heavily on gold, it would probably be cheaper to buy more researchers than to buff the existing ones (which also requires the time of at least one mage FORGING those items).
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Nov 30, 2016 05:33
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Shady Amish Terror posted:A Good and Cool thing to point out, yeah. Of note in regards to the cost efficiency of forging boosters, MA Ulm is notable in that regard. Their Master Smiths have a trait that reduces forging costs by 2. They all get 2E by default and can, via Earth Boots, easily reach the requirements for forging a dwarven hammer (which reduces forging costs by 2). These 2 stack. Master Smiths can get A1, which is required to create the first research booster (Owl Quills). Combining the forge bonus trait with the dwarven hammer means a Master Smith can crank out an Owl Quill for a mere 1 Air gem. They can produce Lightless Lanterns (another research booster, albeit one that can Horror Mark) for a single fire gem (Master Smiths natively get 2F, I believe). MA Ulm can very easily crank out research boosters super cheap. The only real problem is getting a smith with A1 and using him to find a site that provides the appropriate gem early on so you can start with Owl Quills, as the Lightless Lantern requires Con 6, if I'm not mistaken.
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Nov 30, 2016 06:44
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Turn 30 Turn 30 begins with a research breakthrough in Construction. We now have Construction 4, which allows us to construct Sanguine Dowsing Rods for our blood hunters. Sanguine Dowsing Rods (SDRs) boost the effective blood hunting level of a blood mage by +1, so all of our B1 Kohen blood hunters will search as if they were B2 with an SDR. They’re a great way to maximize the number of slaves you can pull in with low level hunters. Now that we can forge SDRs we are putting our research into Blood Magic. Yes, I know that we are a Holy and Just nation dedicated to the betterment of all men, but Xibalba has demonstrated the power of Blood Magic, so we are going to ramp up our blood hunting and dip our toes into the Blood, so to speak. Don't fret, we'll maintain our Pure and Holy disposition and certainly won't become corrupted by dark magics.  Heh, leet. Next we see a bunch of remote site searching spells that paid off pretty well this turn:        That’s what I’m talking about! Three sites with one spell is just about the best outcome you could ask for from remote hunting. The sites we found give us a total of +2 Earth, +1 Death, and +4 (!) Pearls. Our Astral Pearl income is now +20 a turn, which is pretty fantastic. There are a bunch of scouted battle reports that don’t amount to much. We notice that Jomon went AI for some reason and the computer is now throwing itself against Caelum. Caelum should eventually win that war, but fighting the AI in Mo Money games can be a real slog. Our own armies smashed onto Xibalba’s capitol province, crushing the province defense and putting their capitol under siege. That army is moving on, however, to secure the Throne in the adjacent wasteland province of Javal Kish. This Throne, or more accurately the province in which the Throne sits, will unlock a powerful new strategic option for us, so I am not even going to wait to siege Xibalba's capitol down before advancing on it. We can also see that there is a Pangaean army adjacent to Javal Kish, and we definitely don't want to let Pan take it. Our fresh, new second army is moving onto Xibalba’s cap to continue the siege.  AI Xibalba did what the AI does best and counter-attacked us in Pirenna:  AI dumb In the South East the army that we sent into the Xibalban province of Star Peaks crushed the PD and put the fort under siege. The puny palisade fort cracked immediately, and our army there is going to storm the fort next turn.  See if you can spot the goats! Our dominion graph shows a small dip this turn, but it doesn’t worry me, as we have numerous priests blood-sacrificing away to keep us strong.  I am hoping that we can stay out of a new war long enough to consolidate our gains and begin serious blood hunting. If we can capture the Throne in Javal Kish and generate a real blood income, we can potentially become extremely dangerous. I hope to properly leverage diplomacy to make this happen. Next turn: storming a fort, attacking a Throne!
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Nov 30, 2016 18:54
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As Conquest of Elysium 4 says of goats, "...a Dragon hatchling and a goat were placed in the same room, each on its own pile of gold coins. This resulted in the goat charging the dragon in an attempt to take his gold and thus ruining the demonstration. Note, never use goats for demonstrations."
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Nov 30, 2016 20:07
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Waiting for those Goat Marks to do their evil.
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Nov 30, 2016 20:54
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Do we know which throne it is in Javal Kish?
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Nov 30, 2016 21:38
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PurpleXVI posted:Do we know which throne it is in Javal Kish? We do not. At this point in time all we know is that Xibalba has claimed two Thrones: the Throne of Death and the Throne of The Elements. It's probably one of those two, though it is also possible that Xibalba was sitting on an unclaimed Throne. That happens occasionally, when you're sitting on a particularly lovely Throne (Misfortune, looking at you here) or if you want to keep people guessing at how many Throne victory points you truly control. How are u fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 22:16
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| # ? May 10, 2024 08:59 |
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Here is a map I whipped up showing approximately what we know of the world as of now. 
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Dec 1, 2016 00:36
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