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I find it slightly ironic that you call Xibalba "lovely bat-men" when you're rolling vampires.
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Feb 15, 2017 07:11
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That's because vampires are non-lovely bat men, obviously.
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Feb 15, 2017 07:26
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And vampires don't need lovely bat wings to fly, because they are fabulous.
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Feb 15, 2017 14:26
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The problem with Liches is esssentially that if you're a big D nation you're probably going to have recruitable D4 casters (or at least D3 and enough D income to empower one to D4), so why would you need them? On the other hand, if you're not a big D nation it doesn't really make sense to research all the way up to Ench 8 just for Liches. They can be useful if you're planning on going deep into Enchantment anyway as they let you bootstrap yourself to D6 casters from recruitable D2 casters, but that's more of a bonus than anything else.
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Feb 15, 2017 14:46
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Cerebral Bore posted:The problem with Liches is esssentially that if you're a big D nation you're probably going to have recruitable D4 casters (or at least D3 and enough D income to empower one to D4), so why would you need them? On the other hand, if you're not a big D nation it doesn't really make sense to research all the way up to Ench 8 just for Liches. Is Lichcraft Enchantment or Thaumaturgy? Anyway whenever liches show up they seem to be an afterthought to some other scheme, yeah.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:24
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Ramc posted:Is Lichcraft Enchantment or Thaumaturgy? It's Enchantment, if the mod inspector is to be believed.
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Feb 15, 2017 16:39
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Cerebral Bore posted:The problem with Liches is esssentially that if you're a big D nation you're probably going to have recruitable D4 casters (or at least D3 and enough D income to empower one to D4), so why would you need them?
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Feb 15, 2017 16:50
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I feel like liches were more important in one of the earlier Dominions iterations, but being all the way at the top of Enchantment does sort of put them into 'nice bonus' territory instead of 'critical strategy' territory. Actually undead in general may have been over-emphasized in earlier editions between Tartarians, their near-immunity to 'gently caress everyone' spells, Tartarians, the various Ermors, and Tartarians, but that may have also generally been from a lack of better options. E: Hey, Bane Lords still exist. Thugs aren't as meta-critical now as several years ago, though, it seems. Shady Amish Terror fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 18:30
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You forgot to mention the Tartarians, LA Ermor, and the Tartarians.
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Feb 15, 2017 18:32
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my dad posted:You forgot to mention the Tartarians, LA Ermor, and the Tartarians. Ah, yes, thank you.
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Feb 15, 2017 18:33
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Did Tartarians get done away with entirely or did they just get cheese proofed in some way (presumably by making their afflictions uncurable by any means?)
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Feb 15, 2017 18:51
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I feel like Dominions 4 went just a little bit too far in de-emphasizing things like Tartarians and late game SCs. They went from Very Viable to Not Viable at All, which I think is a shame.
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Feb 15, 2017 18:52
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RabidWeasel posted:Did Tartarians get done away with entirely or did they just get cheese proofed in some way (presumably by making their afflictions uncurable by any means?) They appear to still exist, but I think their insanity was curable before? Like, it's a little weird to dump gems into getting a random unit that may or may not be a commander and may or may not be feebleminded (apparently about a 1/16 chance of being a commander with magic?) and then may or may not have five or so levels of magic that are actually useful and will EVEN AFTER ALL OF THAT still spend about 1/5 turns knocking over your temples or attending funerals. They don't seem to be the most useless thing in the game by far (haha, wishing for an arena to appear, or trying to corral Doom Horrors, among many, many, MANY other things), but they seem shockingly unreliable for the research investment. Shady Amish Terror fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 19:25
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RabidWeasel posted:Did Tartarians get done away with entirely or did they just get cheese proofed in some way (presumably by making their afflictions uncurable by any means?) I believe the only way to cure them is via the global Gift of Health, which obviously only one nation can have. It's also high up in a completely different magic type than tartarians. Further, as far as I can tell they're summoned as troops, so you have to use one of the spells to turn them into leaders if you want them to really do much. They're also just less powerful in general, due to the changes in resistances/immunities. I mean, it's still an incredibly beefy combatant, with multiple magic paths, that only costs 10 D gems to summon, but they're nowhere near unstoppable.
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Feb 15, 2017 19:29
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It's also worth to mention that Dom4 changes in how resistances work means that is not that easy to have complete inmunity to nearly everything anymore.
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Feb 15, 2017 19:33
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Tartarians now have a incurable insanity unique to them, but they're still insanely powerful.
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Feb 15, 2017 19:43
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How are tartarians as non-commanders that you just summon and throw into battle?
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Feb 15, 2017 19:48
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You could probably do a lot worse for 10 death gems? I mean, they're big undead things still. For the research costs and summoning time I feel like there's probably better uses of most peoples' time though (like skellyspam or attack magic). They're just not the reliably near-immune ten-gem panacea they were before which I guess puts them at about the level of most non-unique summonables, which is to say they have a niche but you're not guaranteed to see them like you were before.
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Feb 15, 2017 19:58
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wiegieman posted:Tartarians now have a incurable insanity unique to them, but they're still insanely powerful. There's a cureable insanity?
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Feb 15, 2017 20:25
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How about the Eater of the Dead? I always felt like it was kind of underwhelming in power, but SUPER rad in concept. Someone let me know if I'm missing some sort of SICK PRO STRAT there.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:02
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The problem with big summons, is that they never seen to be given a way to kill more than one or maybe two square of troops a turn, while dieing from one turns worth of several mages casting frozen heart/incinerate/life for a life/thunderstrike/etc. In dom 3 you would try and make them almost invunerable so they could very slowly work their way through 50 squares of troops before retreating, in dom4 you throw one or two items on a high hp chasis and hope it provides some damage/distraction during a few fights before dieing at some point.
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Feb 15, 2017 21:41
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SIGSEGV posted:There's a cureable insanity? In Dominions, any unit (a troop or a commander) can take damage during a battle, by losing some hit points. But after a battle, all the hit points are restored. The way the game models permanent damage is with "afflictions." An affliction might be something like "permanent chest wound" which reduces the unit's hit points by 20%, or "Lost an arm" which prevents the unit from using both a weapon and a shield, or any two-handed thing. One of the afflictions is "Feebleminded" which causes mages to lose all their paths, so they can't cast spells any more. A bad one is becoming "Diseased" - such a unit will lose 10% of his hitpoints each turn, until he dies. Afflictions are curable, though. There are units in the game that can (magically or via divine power or something) automatically cure afflictions of other units in the same province as them, and there is also an item or two that can cure afflictions. Insanity is different. Instead of being an affliction, it's an attribute - like some units are Amphibious, so they can go onto land or water provinces, and some units are Magical Beings, so they can only be led by a commander with some magic paths. There are various ways to interact with various attributes: for example, you can forge an item that grants a commander holding it the ability to breathe underwater, or a crown that lets any commander lead Magical Beings. As I understand it, insanity is difficult to interact with. Units can get it from various sources - for example, Rl'yeh's domain automatically spreads insanity. I believe the percentage of a unit's insanity represents the odds, each turn, that they will refuse to be given a command and instead will do something of their own volition. Things like muttering to themselves, attending a funeral, staring at the stars... or more harmful things, like plundering your province, trying to become your nation's prophet, or even destroying your lab in that province. Gift of Health is a global enchantment which I think can cure unit's insanity, in addition to curing afflictions and providing units in your dominion with health buffs. Tartarians however have an attribute called "shattered soul" which is definitely uncurable even by Gift of Health or any other means. You can cure stuff like their feeblemindedness and other afflictions, and you can make them commanders with the Gift of Reason ritual, but you are always stuck with the fact that 1 out of 4 times you tell them to do something they will ignore you and gently caress around doing something possibly stupid or bad. All of this info is based on some reading, I have never actually dealt with insanity or tarts. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 21:51
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wiegieman posted:Tartarians now have a incurable insanity unique to them, but they're still insanely powerful.
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Feb 15, 2017 22:05
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Ah OK. I wonder why they bother with a different attribute, then? Does Shattered Soul do something different than Insanity?
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Feb 15, 2017 22:07
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jBrereton posted:They always had Shattered Soul, and no, Insanity is not cureable even with Gift of Health up. IIRC Shattered Soul was introduced in a Dominions 3 patch, before that you could get them 100% functional with GoH
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Feb 15, 2017 22:15
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Leperflesh posted:Ah OK. I wonder why they bother with a different attribute, then? Does Shattered Soul do something different than Insanity? Supposedly it DOES have a slightly different 'wrong command' list, if mutterings online are to be believed; it can cause them to shove over temples, but they won't kick labs. Jeb Bush 2012 posted:IIRC Shattered Soul was introduced in a Dominions 3 patch, before that you could get them 100% functional with GoH And yeah, I didn't realize it was patched in Dom3 if that was the case, I just knew that in some revision of the older engines Tartarians could be GoH (and, I think, Chalice'd) up to full functionality, which is when they were completely ridiculous at 10 death gems a pop or whatever.
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Feb 15, 2017 22:44
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PurpleXVI posted:How about the Eater of the Dead? I always felt like it was kind of underwhelming in power, but SUPER rad in concept. Someone let me know if I'm missing some sort of SICK PRO STRAT there. 4B for a 3/4 with a lukewarm ability? Pass.
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Feb 15, 2017 22:51
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I think the main thing that did in Tartarians in this edition was the same thing that did in all other SCs. Basically its way easier to counter them now with summons and battlefield magic. I don't think the insanity thing did it, although they could have changed how often it happens or something.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:24
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I love this lp. so what are the biggest threats to how are u at this part of the game? it sounds like he's made a defensive powerhouse that can just splurge its hideous baby sacrificing vampire dominion over everything: what are the likely counters at thus stage if the game, without any spoilers on what actually happens?
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Feb 15, 2017 23:37
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I would guess at this point nobody would hope to actually eliminate howareu. But you don't have to eliminate everyone to win the game, you just need to claim enough throne points.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:39
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Burden of Time would be my bet for biggest threat; hard to spread your dominion by sacrificing virgins when they've all died. But that's a hunch based on zero practical experience.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:40
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PurpleXVI posted:How about the Eater of the Dead? I always felt like it was kind of underwhelming in power, but SUPER rad in concept. Someone let me know if I'm missing some sort of SICK PRO STRAT there. The first Dom2 LP I read here featured the Eater of the Dead slipping its leash and going on a rampage through the player's territory, and they just kind of gave up trying to corral it.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:44
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It's undead. There are methods.
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Feb 16, 2017 00:07
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Eater of the Dead really isn't a wise choice for a number of reasons, but the comedy option of empowering it into Astral, then letting it eat a huge number of corpses before teleporting it somewhere very far away would be fun. Let someone else deal with the rampaging out-of-control monstrosity. Something of a lesser version of the God Vessels EA Agartha can release.
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Feb 16, 2017 01:32
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sebmojo posted:I love this lp. Armageddon wishes would hurt him a lot, they'd damage population and bring him down below the 5k limit for worthwhile blood hunting. They'd damage everybody though, that's why it's one of the things that gets you dogpiled. Raiders like the ones he's receiving right now are the more likely problem. A blood nation who keeps getting their blood hunters killed is a nation that can't use any of he blood magic they sunk a whole bunch of research into.
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Feb 16, 2017 03:03
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It feels like they didn't just nerf Tartarians, but using super units in general. It's cool to summon some really fancy high end unit and bling them out with gear and Gift of Reason them into a commander, but it's too easy for other players to just counter them and bam there goes all your gems and cool toys. In general, when given the choice between building a few really powerful units, and a bunch of simply okay units, the quantity over quality approach is better. And involves less micromanaging.
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Feb 16, 2017 08:36
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If you want to win with hordes of mediocre-but-buffed units and mages it involves way way more micromanagement than a handful of SCs with a couple of spells and Attack orders. I'm sure I'm not alone as a dominions player in thinking quite a lot of the appeal of a handful of flying thugs going about wrecking the place comes from a midgame spent optimising squad placements and casting orders for your mages which is insanely tedious but important.
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Feb 16, 2017 14:15
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High-level Dominions play isn't about fighting other players, it's about fighting the god-awful Dominions interface. There's no sorting method for mages/units in general, no way of really controlling what they do past the first few turns. If you don't want your mages to get pulped by a few AOE spells you have to spread them out by hand, and if you don't want your armies to lose on the field you need to craft hopeful orders sight unseen. That's why I like to play nations like Sceleria, which solves its problems with More Skeletons.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:59
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Speaking of. It's an annoying lore inconsistency that several rituals limit how many undeads you can make in a province to the number of corpses available, but in combat there is no limit. I realize "skeletons" are from older bones than the fresh dead, but you can raise unlimited zombies etc. in combat too, if the combat lasted long enough.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:05
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You could maybe try to handwave it as the difference between durable constructions with rituals that you get to keep around and 'hey let's just animate whatever poo poo's laying around from centuries of ascendance wars oh look it fell apart after about twenty minutes, whoops', but I agree that for as much as the game loves its big goofy mythology, it's a curious inconsistency. Dominions doesn't make too many concessions to gameplay or user-friendliness, but I guess that's just one of them.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:24
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