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Ah, now comes the delicate game of guessing and counter-guessing about army destinations. It's like a tiny little Diplomacy!
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Jan 21, 2017 01:47
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The more Dominion LPs that are happening, the better. Then we get to read about more bullshit shenanigans and insane combos and dumb luck.
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Jan 21, 2017 01:54
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Preid posted:I don't know why but that one line inspired me to create a horrible MS paint... thing. I am terribly sorry for posting this. This guy gets it.
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Jan 21, 2017 02:00
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Decrepus posted:This guy gets it. Give him a copy of dom4 imo
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Jan 21, 2017 02:01
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Ramc posted:Give him a copy of dom4 imo So he can go on to miraculously win 95% of his games and (semi)brag about it in other people's LP's? Why does this sound so familiar...
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Jan 21, 2017 05:36
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Crazycryodude posted:So he can go on to miraculously win 95% of his games and (semi)brag about it in other people's LP's? Why does this sound so familiar... It's okay because the semibrags are also funny as gently caress and also informative. I think continuing this trend can only be for the good.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:29
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Crazycryodude posted:So he can go on to miraculously win 95% of his games and (semi)brag about it in other people's LP's? Why does this sound so familiar... Ramc can win fairly consistently in the Dwarf Fortress Arena Tournament. If you can do that, the world's your oyster.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:43
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Shady Amish Terror posted:"Yo what if I just mass Turkeys?" If lines 1, 3, and 5 are actual games with a thread I be really interested in a link to them.
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Jan 21, 2017 22:58
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Turn 50 Turn 50 begins with no research breakthroughs, we just cast a bunch of spells. We summon the requisite Vampire Lords (Irad and Japheth), loads of wolves, and a Mound King (very low level skeleton commander) to lead our demons in Javal Kish. A commander's Leadership score is broken down into 3 categories. There's Normal Leadership (normal, living troops), Magic Leadership (magical beings, most often summons of various types) and Undead + Demon Leadership. We don't actually have any recruitable commanders with appreciably useful amounts of Demon leadership, so a Mound King will do in a pinch.  He even rides an undead horsey. Our remote spells find no sites, woh woh  We catch a bunch of blood slaves and prepare to slaughter scores of them to summon more Vampire Lords. We’re using pretty much all of our remaining slaves to blood sacrifice. We are slowly pushing into Man’s Dominion, but it isn’t fast enough for my liking. We also need more slaves, so we are opening up a new hunting territory this turn and we’ll get an additional one started a few turns after that. Blood for our Blood God!We have battle reports! First things first: Man did -not- slam his 600+ strong army into our sieging force in Knobville. He’s got to realize what a lovely position he’s in, fighting wars on two fronts, and I think he’s wisely playing cautious. Pangaea suicides a lovely mercenary army into a Man force, probably just trying to get the Man army to waste gems:  why?? In Ragdan Pan wins a fairly decisive victory:  Ouch... It isn’t flawless by any means, but Pan has started placing his forces on the battlefield more thoughtfully, and he used Harpies to alpha-strike Man’s longbows on round 1, giving his Minotaurs just enough time to make it to Man’s lines. Once those Minotaurs get into melee they're devastating against human troops. One of our armies marched from Ashenton to Bahguloth and kicked Man’s PD in the teeth. The army isn’t filled with Vampires and Enchantresses, however, so we are going to retreat it and leave a single scout to siege the fort. Man should enjoy that, since that’s what he did in Camia! Here’s our glorious Vampire and Yeddeoni Earthquaker siege-breaking force:  Vampires acting as an expendable screen, with Yeddeoni 'quakers in the back. And here’s Man’s army:  ~All by myself~ Yep. He moved and we failed to catch him. I’m not 100% sure how army movements work in Dominions 4, but I think in this scenario we just got unlucky. Another time we may have caught the moving army before it shuffled away. [Ed. Note: It turns out that an army that is currently sieging a fort and is ordered to move away can never be caught by an intercepting enemy force attacking from outside the province. Yeah, it's kind of bullshit.] So where did the army go? It moved to Blackdale! Our border province North of Camia, the province I’d been hoping it would hit in the first place! Here’s Man’s army:  Critters of the Woodlands united against Gath's bloody death-cult! Our defense consists of a handful of PD and two E2 Yeddeoni wearing Earth Boots (+1 E) and Rings of Levitation:  E2 mage + Summon Earthpower + Boots = E4. Ready for quaking.  Floating or Flying units are immune to Earthquakes. Commence     Glorious! Glorious carnage! Oh, if we’d only had our 3rd Yeddeoni on the field we would have killed so many more, but this was great! If we’d had the 3rd Earthquake caster we may have been able to rout the army, but we didn’t, so Man did end up killing our two mages. Pretty good scoreboard, though:  A 3rd quake would have doubled or tripled the casualties. Half the Magisters, a quarter of the Lizard Shaman, and misc. other stuff. If we’d had that 3rd quake we could have polished off so much more, alas. Anyway, we are moving six Vampire Lords plus about 35 lesser Vampires to attack what remains of this army. We're also including two more Yeddeoni 'quakers. Hopefully this time we can catch them before the retreat (Man is surely going to try and pull them out) and we eliminate the entire force. [  not going to happen!]  Attempting to finish-off Man's bloodied army. On the other side of our kingdom, in Xibalba, we’re going to try something tricky. Xibalba’s god, the Blue Dragon, has been content to sit in Gemer for the past 3 turns recruiting indie crossbowmen. The AI seems to find this productive and enjoyable. We are going to take our entire huge sieging army and march from Xibalba to Gemer and try and take out the Dragon once and for all. We’ll lose some men, but it’ll be worth it to eliminate the Pretender. We’ll leave a single scout to maintain the siege of Xibalba’s capitol. Then, when we’ve killed the Dragon, we’ll turn around and march -back- to Xibalba proper. This should be just in time to catch all of Xibalba’s troops and mages inside the castle trying to break the siege, because the AI will only see a scout sieging the citadel. Ideally, we’ll meet their force on the field, slaughter them, and then be able to waltz into Xibalba’s fort unmolested. That’s the plan, anyway.  Let's go murder a god. Next turn: We’ll see if Man attacks with that doomstack! We’ll fight a Dragon! Vampire defense force?? How are u fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 23:05
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Slifter posted:If lines 1, 3, and 5 are actual games with a thread I be really interested in a link to them. If the first one is the one I think it is, it did have a thread but I don't know if it was ever archived off-site. I'll check and edit this post if I find it. E: praise the turkeys
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Jan 22, 2017 04:54
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Have fun storming the AI god castle!
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Jan 22, 2017 05:23
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They are all True Stories of Dominions, but I think the turkey strat is the only one that appeared in a completed LP. I think so anyways?
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Jan 22, 2017 05:32
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So what's the counter to your Stomp Wizard Barrage? Flying units? Does Man even have an appreciable amount of those?
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Jan 22, 2017 07:53
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PurpleXVI posted:So what's the counter to your Stomp Wizard Barrage? Flying units? Does Man even have an appreciable amount of those? Armies with tiny mans in them, most mages and blood slaves are inherently quite weak to earthquakes. That strike cost How are u 18 gems and two mages, in return for about a turn's worth of recruitment. A good return on investment but not fantastic in this case -- as he said, one or two more casts would've killed significantly more and possibly caused a rout. Answers include alpha striking the enemy casters with fliers or otherwise killing them before they can quake you, casting mass flight to make your army immune or using fewer, sturdier troops that can shrug off the damage. You don't necessarily need to neuter the earthquake entirely, just blunt the damage enough to make it a bad gem investment for your opponent to cover the front in defensive earthquake traps. E: I don't quite remember, does having high protection help against earthquake damage or was that rain of stones? Xerophyte fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jan 22, 2017 |
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Jan 22, 2017 08:16
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Xerophyte posted:Armies with tiny mans in them, most mages and blood slaves are inherently quite weak to earthquakes. That strike cost How are u 18 gems and two mages, in return for about a turn's worth of recruitment. A good return on investment but not fantastic in this case -- as he said, one or two more casts would've killed significantly more and possibly caused a rout. It helps against both. Earthquake generally hits for 8 armor piercing damage, with some units getting hit for significantly more, while Rain of Stones hits for 14 normal, but it has a fairly decent chance of hitting the head and is bludgeoning damage. So the mages of certain nations tend to shrug off Earthquake especially - it's just Man's mages aren't particularly hardy. Not touching the ground, either via flying or floating, also completely negates Earthquake - and a certain cheap item known as a Ring of Levitation exists. edit: Defense rolls are also allowed to avoid damage, which is why both spells technically hitting the entire battlefield doesn't result in uniform results to everything, even aside from damage/protection rolls. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Jan 22, 2017 |
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Jan 22, 2017 10:16
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Lord Koth posted:It helps against both. Earthquake generally hits for 8 armor piercing damage, with some units getting hit for significantly more, while Rain of Stones hits for 14 normal, but it has a fairly decent chance of hitting the head and is bludgeoning damage. So the mages of certain nations tend to shrug off Earthquake especially - it's just Man's mages aren't particularly hardy. Not touching the ground, either via flying or floating, also completely negates Earthquake - and a certain cheap item known as a Ring of Levitation exists. Earthquake is actually one of the least consistent damage spells; even if your enemy's mages all had 1hp and no armour, the fact it only hits half the battlefield and is resistible by defence (which is extremely rare!) means that you're probably going to kill more like 40% of those mages per cast rather than the 100% an RoS would get for 1/3 the gem cost.
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Jan 22, 2017 12:28
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E4 is easier to get than A4E1 or whatever RoS is, though.
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Jan 22, 2017 15:26
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Cast endless gifts from heaven.
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Jan 22, 2017 15:34
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sullat posted:E4 is easier to get than A4E1 or whatever RoS is, though.
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Jan 22, 2017 17:04
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goatface posted:Cast endless gifts from heaven. If only it was like in conquest of elysium when having level 3 in a magic path allows you to cast 2 level 2 spells or 3 level 1 spells instead of a level 3 spell then it would be more easily doable.
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Jan 22, 2017 17:22
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SIGSEGV posted:If only it was like in conquest of elysium when having level 3 in a magic path allows you to cast 2 level 2 spells or 3 level 1 spells instead of a level 3 spell then it would be more easily doable. I'm pretty sure Dom4 already works like this: Lower-level spells get fatigue reduction, so the caster can hork out more of them.
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Jan 22, 2017 17:43
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goatface posted:Cast endless gifts from heaven. Nerfing elder druids was a crime. What else did Marverni have besides boars going for them?
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Jan 22, 2017 17:51
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SIGSEGV posted:If only it was like in conquest of elysium when having level 3 in a magic path allows you to cast 2 level 2 spells or 3 level 1 spells instead of a level 3 spell then it would be more easily doable. MA Tien C'hi can manage it with their geomancers. They are S1/E1 mages that are way cheap and you can hire them in any fort. Once you have enough you can set up a communion to make them all S3/E3 and drop rocks all day. It's good. Slifter posted:If lines 1, 3, and 5 are actual games with a thread I be really interested in a link to them. 3 has an commemorative image by its perpetrator famed hellfucker Nuclearmonkee: Also looking for that image I found this possibly soon to be relevant image in Nuclearmonkee's post history:
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Jan 22, 2017 19:14
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How did he manage to cast it so early?
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Jan 22, 2017 19:41
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Turn... 14? Jesus Christ, the fuckery is strong with that one.
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Jan 22, 2017 19:45
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sebmojo posted:How did he manage to cast it so early? He's got a pretender who can cast it so it's a matter of getting enough gems, and beelining up the one magic school you need to cast it. If you do nothing but build your nation choice, pretender, and expansion strategy around getting together 70 death gems and researching up to Thaumaturgy 5, then there you go. Keep in mind you can alchemize pearls to any other gem at a cost of 2 pearls per gem, so if you focus on site searching for D and S, maybe trade for gems with a neighbor if you have to, use paths to maximize research (Magic 3, because that gives your mages research bonus), etc. It's funny, but also probably not a viable game-winning strat.
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Jan 22, 2017 19:52
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jBrereton posted:RoS is a 1 gem E3A1 spell which means any E1A1 mage can cast it by spending a gem to Summon Earthpower and 2 to cast it from E1+1A1. Earth + Air is not a very common path combination! Any of our E2 Yeddeoni mages is, with a little bit of gear, a potential Earthquake trap. And "trap" is one of the key words here, because the sheer killing-potential of these spells is, IMO, much less important than the strategic advantages they provide. As far as an enemy is concerned we could have Earthquake traps anywhere, and now he has to plan for and spend resources countering and mitigating those traps, taking away resources, time, and energy from defending against our own offensive moves.
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Jan 22, 2017 22:44
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goatface posted:Cast endless gifts from heaven. This is a surprisingly solid strategy for EA Kailasa. Yakshas are expensive and cap-only, but they're not STR and have a 25% chance of E3N1A1 (N1 for eagle eyes). Gifts from heaven costs 50 fatigue, but summon earthpower and earth boots both give additional levels of earth magic (so 25/17 fatigue). With a cheap monkey communion you can effectively spam it forever. 150 damage AoE meteors are one of those "many problems, one solution" kind of things.
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Jan 23, 2017 02:43
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That is beautiful. I'm still new to all this Dominions stuff so I'm not sure about the differences between 3 and 4 but I gotta ask, is Magic Duel still a thing? From the way that LP explains things it seems busted even by Dominion standards and I haven't noticed it mentioned at all here.
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Jan 23, 2017 07:38
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Slifter posted:That is beautiful. Magic Duel is still a thing and is still extremely powerful. However, it's situational as it requires access to astral and only counters astral. It means that a nation with cheap rear end mages (such as Gath's 65 gold sibyl) can both completely shut down another nation's access to combat astral and prevent them from deploying any expensive mages that dabble in rear end magic. We haven't seen it yet because Xibalba doesn't have astral and How are u hasn't needed it yet against Man, but we'll almost certainly see it against Bogarus. Why you should never do astral: code:
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Jan 23, 2017 08:17
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An incredible exchange.
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Jan 23, 2017 12:02
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Turn 51 Turn 51 begins with our research advancing to Thaumaturgy 6. Thaum 6 has some interesting spells that don’t get cast very often. There are three or four overpriced remote attack spells that cost too many gems for what amount to mediocre attacks on enemy provinces. There’s also a D3 spell, Wither Bones, that will chew through undead like a lawnmower. We’re not facing any undead, however, so we won’t be using it anytime soon. Two more turns to Thaum 7!  Several Thaumaturgy 6 spells. Most of them are over-priced junk. We summon two new Vampire Lords (Mehujael and Methushael, I love these names), a couple dozen wolves, and capture a bunch of blood slaves. Two more Lords scheduled for next turn, like clockwork. We are actually up to a total of 20 (!) Vampire Lords as of this turn. Hopefully with the opening of a couple new blood hunting provinces we’ll soon have the income to summon three a turn. Eventually we will have other things to spend blood slaves on, but for now we just want as many Vampires as we can get our hands on. This was a pretty quiet turn in terms of combat. Man’s army sieging Blackdale retreated back into Mannish territory as I expected. I got on IRC and asked one of the resident Dominions 4 experts about the odds of catching a retreating army in this type of scenario and I was informed that, lamely, a sieging army that retreats to a different province will get away every time.  The Man – Gath battlefront is gripped by an uneasy calm this turn. Somebody has to make the next big move. We will be making a move as soon as we can pump just a smidge more Dominion into the bordering Mannish provinces. We actually lost candles in Knobville this turn, going from 4 to 1. We set two or three more priests to blood sacrifice. Right now we are trying to gently push our Dominion. We could obliterate Man’s Dominion if we claimed the Throne of the Pantokrator, but we’d also do even worse damage to Caelum’s Dominion and put a dent in Pangaea’s Dominion and that would be a very Rude (and dangerous) thing to do. So, the Throne is a sledgehammer of last resort that I’d like to try and avoid using in this particular War. If we can get a couple more candles on the border then we’ll send in a Vampire squad post-haste! The one bit of action took place in the East, in Gemer, where Xibalba’s stupid Dragon was sitting recruiting crossbows:  Remnants of a once-mighty Bat empire. Our giant sieging army dwarfs Xibalba’s lovely little force of frog men and indie crossbows, but there’s still a giant W9 blue Dragon leading it. Who knows what damage it could do?  Our massive army takes the field.  The Se'irim appear on the battlefield for the first time. Hope they're worth it.   Oops! Guess not! Our army had two S1 Kohen whom I’d given Starshine Skullcaps, which allowed them to cast the spell Paralyze. Paralyze is an insanely good spell for taking down giant monsters. It, unsurprisingly, paralyzes the unit for usually a huge number of turns. I’m a little bit surprised that the first spell made it through the Dragon’s 20 Magic Resistance, but there you have it: paralyzed for 28 turns.  Paralyze is perhaps the very best spell in the game for murdering Pretender Gods.  Holy poo poo look at that damage! Punched to death by demonic goat-men.   Dead Dragon. That feels good, doesn’t it? Our big blob of a siege army now turns around and marches back to Xibalba to relieve the single scout who was left maintaining the siege. Ideally we will march directly into Xibalba’s entire remaining capitol army attempting to break the siege and kill them all, leaving the fort undefended.  Back to Xibalba. Let's finish this dead nation. That’s about it for this turn. We will continue to hold fast on the Man Invasion front until we can push more Dominion. Hopefully we’ll wrap up Xibalba for good in the next 3 or 4 turns!
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Jan 24, 2017 04:52
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Thaum 6 has a lot of chaff, situationally-useful stuff, and things that exist purely for flavor, just like most of Dominions. I dunno, maybe there's some way to pair Leprosy with some other remote attack to cripple large conventional armies? Enslave Mind at least is a spell particularly known for its use in Shenanigans of The Highest Order, but since it is MR-resistable and only targets one unit at a time, it has very limited applications outside of comedy.
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Jan 24, 2017 06:20
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Imprint Souls sounds like the sort of spell that's only useful against someone who forgets their Province Defense in some backwater location and puts the entirety of their military on the border.
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Jan 24, 2017 11:24
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Are you paying any kind of upkeep on your wampire hordes?
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Jan 24, 2017 11:29
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Usually, if its summoned with gems or slaves it doesn't have a gold upkeep. Some exceptions exist, mostly stuff that could also be grabbed with gold like the Yaksha of the monkey nations. Kailasa can recruit them at their capital, so if you summon them you would have to pay the normal gold upkeep.
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Jan 24, 2017 12:36
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Orv posted:Are you paying any kind of upkeep on your wampire hordes? Like the guy above said: zero gold upkeep for Vampires, Demons, and most gem summons. We are slowly (very slowly) transitioning from a gold-based economy to a blood-based economy. Our income scales are such poo poo that, in the past ten turns or so, we've had to cut mage recruitment drastically across our kingdom, so the more strength we can draw from non-gold resources the better!
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Jan 24, 2017 17:27
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How are u posted:Like the guy above said: zero gold upkeep for Vampires, Demons, and most gem summons. We are slowly (very slowly) transitioning from a gold-based economy to a blood-based economy. Our income scales are such poo poo that, in the past ten turns or so, we've had to cut mage recruitment drastically across our kingdom, so the more strength we can draw from non-gold resources the better! Clearly the blood standard is superior to the gold standard, since it gives the government more fiscal control. Too much blood in circulation? It's easy, if upsetting, to take some out of the system!
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Jan 24, 2017 17:40
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...bleed the beast? Also looking forward to 'Wither Bones' inevitably getting shown off against the Transylvanian hordes, because it wouldn't really feel like Dominions if several or all current plans weren't going catastrophically wrong.
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Jan 24, 2017 17:50
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Honestly, that's another reason (hell, it's the main reason for many nations) people tend not to like Burden of Time - especially if it's cast early it tends to shut down blood economies before they can really grow out of control. This isn't so relevant in LA with its generally high population provinces all over, but in EA and MA 5k+* pop. provinces aren't necessarily all over the place, and losing the lower pop. ones before you can really set up operations, along with having the amount of time you can hunt in the higher pop. ones significantly cut, really hurts those strategies. *: 5k is the magic number because trying to blood hunt provinces below that population amount takes a massive hit in effectiveness.
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Jan 24, 2017 18:01
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