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How dangerous heavy cav is depends also on how much space there is on the battlefield to maneuver. Many heavy cav units have a charge-bonus, which is what makes them the bane of many other chaff units. If you can immobilize them, they're suddenly a lot less scary. The worst thing an awake pretender can do is sitting around, waiting for the cavalry to come to it.
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Feb 27, 2017 02:19
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It'll be interesting to see who starts focusing you down with that massive siphon cast.
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Feb 27, 2017 04:25
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Veryslightlymad posted:Dominions feels like a computer game interpretation of Glen Cook's The Black Company. Cook took the man vs God theme to the next level with Tyranny of the Night. Worth reading if you miss Croaker, or if you just enjoy a fantasy version of the Middle Ages, it's pretty good.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:45
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Libluini posted:How dangerous heavy cav is depends also on how much space there is on the battlefield to maneuver. Many heavy cav units have a charge-bonus, which is what makes them the bane of many other chaff units. The last dom game I played (a long time ago, granted), I defeated the mighty ponymen with the humble Alt-2 spell earth meld and a bunch of cheap earth mages. Can't glamour your way out when the very ground rises against you! I ride bikes all day posted:Cook took the man vs God theme to the next level with Tyranny of the Night. Worth reading if you miss Croaker, or if you just enjoy a fantasy version of the Middle Ages, it's pretty good. I suppose I can give it another chance. Couldn't get into it the last time I tried reading it.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:50
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Veryslightlymad posted:Dominions feels like a computer game interpretation of Glen Cook's The Black Company. I mean yeah, you could probably put together a pretty convincing Dominions nation based off the Lady's Empire. The Black Company itself would work as a mercenary unit giving them three low level mages and some heavy infantry. You could maybe even sort of do a EA / MA / LA set with the Dominator and the Taken in the EA, the MA with the Lady & Taken in the main trilogy and a LA Empire for the Empire after the initial trilogy and in the Silver Spike. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 06:20
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sullat posted:The last dom game I played (a long time ago, granted), I defeated the mighty ponymen with the humble Alt-2 spell earth meld and a bunch of cheap earth mages. Can't glamour your way out when the very ground rises against you! Yeah, glamoured cav is a special case, especially when supported by a water-bless, like Elf-ponies often are. Normal cavalry is already dead when you have cheap guys with wings, no extra magic needed. 
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Feb 27, 2017 23:10
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I ride bikes all day posted:Cook took the man vs God theme to the next level with Tyranny of the Night. Worth reading if you miss Croaker, or if you just enjoy a fantasy version of the Middle Ages, it's pretty good. Did another book come out? Last I remember is he was sitting in a big old temple with the Lady getting used to his body and that was the end. Jack2142 posted:I mean yeah, you could probably put together a pretty convincing Dominions nation based off the Lady's Empire. The Black Company itself would work as a mercenary unit giving them three low level mages and some heavy infantry. There is a great Malazan Book of the Fallen mod for Dom 3 that someone kindly updated to Dom 4 me that was a lot of fun.
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Feb 27, 2017 23:42
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Donkringel posted:Did another book come out? Last I remember is he was sitting in a big old temple with the Lady getting used to his body and that was the end. He wrote another series, kind of a not-1300's europe/middle east thing. The Company is done, probably. There have been plans for 2 more books for a decade, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Feb 28, 2017 05:51
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I ride bikes all day posted:He wrote another series, kind of a not-1300's europe/middle east thing. The Company is done, probably. There have been plans for 2 more books for a decade, but I'm not holding my breath. I honestly am satisfied with the way the series ended, the final book was a good send off yet by the end legitimately everyone character involved in the story from before the last two books is dead, the story of the company itself is resolved for the most part. I can see why nothing has materialized, I wouldn't try to follow up Many Deaths of the Black Company, unless it was a new series completely unrelated to them at that point just write a different series like he did.
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Mar 1, 2017 08:35
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Turn 64 Look at that fantastic blood hunting! Turn 64 begins with some mighty magic:     We successfully cast Arcane Nexus!! First thing to do is check the global list and see what we bumped off:  Mother Oak, that’s OK. I’d have been very happy if we’d killed Vengeful Waters but I should just be glad that we didn’t bump our own Eyes of God, and I've grown very used to having it. OK, what does this mean? Well, I can’t remember if I went into the details of Arcane Nexus earlier in the LP, but to recap: Nexus takes 50% of every gem spent in the -world- and refunds them to you as Astral Pearls. Astral Pearls and Blood Slaves spent are -excluded- from this, but everything else counts. This also counts your own gem expenditures! So, in practice if Bogarus spends 10 E crafting a pair of Earth Boots then I get 5 Pearls from that action. If I spend 40 N summoning a Fairy Queen then I get 20 Pearls back, and so on. Even in a normal game of Dominions 4 Arcane Nexus can end up netting the caster a ridiculous number of Pearls a turn, but this is a Mo Money style game and people are spending gems left, right, and center. In the first Mo Money game Nexus reaped anywhere from 70-200+ Pearls a turn, which is just loving insane. Now, what happens in practice? The other nations of the world have a choice to make: they either continue with what they are doing now and choose to ignore this huge god drat gauntlet I’ve thrown down, or they all band together to murder us ASAP (smart!). I am really hoping that Pan and Bogarus don’t strike an alliance against us, but it could very well happen. I will have to chat with the players on IRC and see what they think. If the world does -not- band together to kill us then they have about 4 or 5 turns before I recover the entire 535 Pearl investment in the spell. They have maybe 7 or 8 turns before I save up enough pearls to recast the spell at 999 strength. It will be tempting to start spending pearls immediately, but the wise thing to do will be to wait until we recoup the cost of the spell. Then we will have -so- many things to spend them on, it will be loads of fun. So, what happened for the rest of the turn? It was actually a very quiet turn. Pan fought a few skirmishes with AI Ragha, our sieging forces on Mannish provinces got hit by a slew of tiny water elemental assassination attempts courtesy of Vengeful Waters, and tons of scouts were discovered and killed both of ours and of our enemies across the world. We have cracked the gate of Man’s fort in Solam, but we are going to send a scout in first to see what to expect. We’ll move a big squad of Vampires back onto Solam so that next turn, if we have candles, we can storm the fort. We need to continue to race towards Man’s last remaining Throne!  Fingers crossed we can storm that dumb fort next turn!  We've been empowering Cain in Earth so he can cast a new battlefield enchantment. Next turn: We begin to reap the rewards of the Arcane Nexus, and we see what the world has in store for us. How are u fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 23:46
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About the only thing that's a bigger deal than Arcane Nexus is Astral Corruption, which is like firing off biological weapons at every other player simultaneously. Well, maybe wishing for Armageddon.
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Mar 2, 2017 00:14
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What happens if you cast a global when you already have it up yourself? Do you just up the number of gems in the already existing global, or does it do the whole check and bump thing again anyway?
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Mar 2, 2017 00:30
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wiegieman posted:About the only thing that's a bigger deal than Arcane Nexus is Astral Corruption, which is like firing off biological weapons at every other player simultaneously. And presumably Burden of Time?
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Mar 2, 2017 00:31
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Some nations won't care about BoT, everyone cares about AC.
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Mar 2, 2017 01:04
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Vampires out the rear end, blood saccing, and Arcane Nexus. How the hell does the entire world not come for you before now, much less after Nexus?
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Mar 2, 2017 01:14
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 diplomacy OP diplomacy OP diplomacy OP
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Mar 2, 2017 01:51
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ousire posted:What happens if you cast a global when you already have it up yourself? Do you just up the number of gems in the already existing global, or does it do the whole check and bump thing again anyway? What's it should do is check against how many pearls the original global has versus the new one being cast. If the new one has more gems/more powerful caster, then the old gets bumped. Some games will have nations try to steal globals from each other. So right now there are 4 main options. 1) Ignore the problem. Hope pearls don't make that much a difference. 2) Create an alliance to murder how or the caster the did the global. The vampires suggest you leave immediately. 3) Create a spellcaster alliance. There is a dispel spell that can be cast that knocks globals off their rear end. For serious spells this usually requires someone to be trusted with a poo poo load of gems. Side question; what is the meta for taking the alliance gems and loving off with them. Is the bad diplo or do you get blacklisted like not doing trades? 4) If you feel your stones are big enough you try to cast your own global to take it over as mentioned above. Risky but hilarious. Lot of things need to line up perfectly though.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:05
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Donkringel posted:3) Create a spellcaster alliance. There is a dispel spell that can be cast that knocks globals off their rear end. For serious spells this usually requires someone to be trusted with a poo poo load of gems. Side question; what is the meta for taking the alliance gems and loving off with them. Is the bad diplo or do you get blacklisted like not doing trades? Firstly: shuttling a poo poo-load of Pearls to a third party to cast Dispel requires an immense amount of trust. In my limited experience this trust deficit is not often overcome. Secondly: If a player advertised him or herself as the Dispel person, convinced their neighbors to dump untold numbers of Pearls upon them, and then reneged upon it entirely and lied about failing to dispel while keeping the Pearls...well I figure most people would applaud that as very well played subterfuge..
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Mar 2, 2017 02:12
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How are u posted:Firstly: shuttling a poo poo-load of Pearls to a third party to cast Dispel requires an immense amount of trust. In my limited experience this trust deficit is not often overcome. But also remember not to trust them ever again.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:14
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Hunt11 posted:But also remember not to trust them ever again. The magic is that you'll never know if they were lying or not. Thus :dominions: (fun emote here).
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Mar 2, 2017 02:15
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How are u posted:Secondly: If a player advertised him or herself as the Dispel person, convinced their neighbors to dump untold numbers of Pearls upon them, and then reneged upon it entirely and lied about failing to dispel while keeping the Pearls...well I figure most people would applaud that as very well played subterfuge..  That's... an interesting point of view to hold.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:20
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How are u posted:The magic is that you'll never know if they were lying or not. Thus :dominions: (fun emote here). That's why the safest option is to go hunt them down your self. That or cast Astral corruption and laugh as all those astral gems become useless.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:20
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Corbeau posted:
If I'd donated to that particular dispel cause I'd be pissed as all hell, but how could I prove I was wronged? This truly is the best game.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:27
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The death of the caster also ends the spell, but tracking him/her/it doen can be hard. Beelining the capital to storm it is a bold, but risky option.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:29
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Far more easily than a reniged-on trade, yet that kind of poo poo can still get people diplo-blacklisted when there's a pattern. Trust is a big thing in diplomacy; betraying that trust carries a cost beyond whatever immediate game you're in. IMO much more expensive than any benefit in any single game.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:30
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Corbeau posted:Far more easily than a reniged-on trade, yet that kind of poo poo can still get people diplo-blacklisted when there's a pattern. Trust is a big thing in diplomacy; betraying that trust carries a cost beyond whatever immediate game you're in. IMO much more expensive than any benefit in any single game. This is absolutely true, context is key and personal relationships between players mean a lot in this game (and this small community). That said, it's almost impossible to accurately guess (within reason) a Pearl number for a Dispel. You're either going to way over-shoot the global or you're going to fail miserably. Regarding Diplo-Blacklisting; how could anybody in this game know I just sunk 500+ Pearls into the spell? Every player knows its's a Mo'Money game, that's for sure, but that in and of itself does not give enough of a measure of how many gems somebody might spend on a global. It's a crapshoot!
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Mar 2, 2017 02:38
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Dominions: Nothing Was Ever True
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Mar 2, 2017 02:52
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Turn 65 Turn 65 begins as normal, with all of the regular spells cast: goats, Vampire Lords, wolves, etc. The Arcane Nexus is still up, which means that the other nations of the world were are either choosing to ignore it for the moment or were unable to organize together to pool resources to dispel it. Bad news for them. We reaped a bountiful harvest of Pearls:  I expect more in the turns to come, but this is a great start! There were a couple of battles this turn. Pangaea attacked Ragha’s capitol and has begun sieging it. We attacked Man’s capitol province with Vampires and killed the PD + 40~ Knights that were out patrolling:  No PD can stand up to Vampires. We also pinged the fort in Solam with a scout:  A serious defense force.  Yikes. That’s a -lot- of Magisters. Also there are a few Flame Spirits to cast flaming arrows on the longbows, plus that Troll King who I am reasonably sure Man has rescripted to -not- cast Earthquake on his own army. I’m guessing the Troll King will cast a powerful army buff like Army of Gold or something. We are storming the fort next turn with Vampires, an Arch Devil, and an Enchantress. We’ll see how that goes! We get hit by a wave (ho ho ho) of water elemental attacks again, and this time one of them kills one of our Howl caster Abbas sieging the fort in Thorn Woods. We lose a Thistle Mace, really aggravating! Man needs to pay for this. Also, an army appears suddenly on our South-Western border with Caelum:  Armies appearing on borders is always concerning, and given the timing of our Arcane Nexus my first thought is that we’re about to be invaded. I manage to chat with Caelum on IRC, however, and he assures me that the army is just passing through on its way to the South where it will be used against AI Jomon and AI Mictlan. I’m inclined to believe him, both because 1) eating the AI is almost always preferable to fighting a nasty war against a human and 2) Caelum’s player (forums poster Libluini) has never acted particularly deceptively towards me in this game or any others we’ve played together. Because of the good communication we've had I am inclined to trust him. I’d planned to divert a big squad of Vampires to the border, but instead they are going to fly up to Man and continue the siege of the capitol. We’ll see if Man tries to break out, I doubt he will. Speaking of diplomacy: Pangaea is upset about the Arcane Nexus. We talked briefly on IRC and I have a sinking feeling that he is going to ignore the greater problem of a massive Bogarus and decide to attack me. He stated that his current priority is to finish off Man and eat the rest of AI Ragha, but I am going to assume that war between us is inevitable and prepare accordingly. Thus, we are leveraging the massive amount of blood slaves we’re now pulling in thanks to investing in a lot more blood hunting squads to summon a poo poo load more Vampires. We’re going to summon up a couple more defensive squads worth of them to go and hang out on our Eastern border with Pangaea. When he inevitably attacks we will immediately claim the Throne of the Pantokrator and start what is sure to be a very bloody war. I’m also going to have to start talking to Bogarus’ player more often. Diplomancy wins games, and I can’t afford to be at war with both Bogarus and Pan at the same time.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:55
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What're the maths for globals bumping each other? Is it just straight-up, if more gems are spent, the old Global gets knocked off the peg? Or is there a roll which is weighted based on the # of gems spent, but requires more than the original number to have any chance of success?
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Mar 2, 2017 07:27
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PurpleXVI posted:What're the maths for globals bumping each other? Is it just straight-up, if more gems are spent, the old Global gets knocked off the peg? Or is there a roll which is weighted based on the # of gems spent, but requires more than the original number to have any chance of success? When a global is cast and there are no empty global slots, it will attempt to dispel and replace one of the existing global spells. If there is a copy of the same spell already up, it will attempt to replace that. If not, the target will be chosen at random (and there is no protection for any of your own globals you may have up!). After the target is chosen, it makes a dispel check with the ordinary mechanics; both spells roll a single exploding* D6 + 1 per gem spent beyond the casting cost + 5 per path the caster has beyond what is necessary to cast the spell. The manual doesn't say what happens in a tie because :illwinter: In ordinary games, the random roll and caster levels can be pretty relevant. In situations like this, it's basically a gem-dumping contest. *Dominions exploding dice mechanics: whenever a d6 comes up a 6, you roll it again and add the new result -1. This can continue indefinitely.
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Mar 2, 2017 07:43
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Does anyone have that graph of the Dominions RNG? drat thing looks like a quilt.
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Mar 2, 2017 08:24
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I posted the heat-plot someone made earlier, yeah. With attendant explanation:Shady Amish Terror posted:I'm having trouble placing the figure on the left, but dude on the right is some caveman or other indie trash mob with a spear critting for 999. Dominions actually does dice rolls for combat actions and has exploding crits, so technically that should be possible on any attack, but uh, the random number generation in Dom 3 wasn't very good, leading to this famous image being created (I think for one of the earlier LP's?): The short version is that Dom3 was really sketchy for 'random' numbers, and I don't know whether Dom4 fixed it or not. E: I should add that while having better pseudo-random numbers would be a nice touch I wouldn't be surprised to learn was in Dom4, in practical terms it really doesn't matter that much. Even the extraordinarily deterministic and patterned output of the Dom3 pseudo-RNG was filtered through player inputs, so generally no one would ever be able to abuse it regardless. The only thing it negatively impacted was creating some situations the devs claimed were possible but were not, and generally those were such mathematically-improbable scenarios that they didn't functionally exist anyways. Shady Amish Terror fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 08:42
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Turn 65 shows why it can be so awkward if you have another nation's borders too close to your capital. Every army movement from your cap looks like a threat to the other guy. In this case it's even worse because my capital has some bad low-supply provinces to the south, so I have to split my armies into multiple stacks and route them through multiple provinces at once. This is why that army suddenly showed up next to How are u. And yet, still every second Caelumian army spends a month or two starving on their way to the front.
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Mar 2, 2017 11:37
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Admittedly, regardless of its original reason for being there, it should be preparing to invade you due to, well, Arcane Nexus. Also, Man has apparently still not figured out that it doesn't take much effort for them to forge some Staffs of Storms and seriously mitigate the vampire issue. Or, hell, skip the staff and just flat out cast Storm first turn, given the only thing they've needed it for is defensive battles. LA Man has innate A2s and is going to get a decent number of A3s, all they need to do is empower an A3 once and they can do either of the above. The gems should not be a problem at this point in a max site game for a nation with Air on every single one of their mages.
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Mar 2, 2017 15:17
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Libluini posted:Turn 65 shows why it can be so awkward if you have another nation's borders too close to your capital. Every army movement from your cap looks like a threat to the other guy. Get some endless bags of wine or something. Granted, supply isn't a huge deal, because starvation recovers as soon as you are in supply, but this way you don't have to worry about morale losses due to lack of supply. I reckon in one of these mo money games, army sizes are bigger, so you will run into supply problems more often.
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Mar 2, 2017 15:52
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sullat posted:Get some endless bags of wine or something. Granted, supply isn't a huge deal, because starvation recovers as soon as you are in supply, but this way you don't have to worry about morale losses due to lack of supply. I reckon in one of these mo money games, army sizes are bigger, so you will run into supply problems more often. At some point I started forging tons of them, just not enough to deal with my supply problems. Most of Caelum's units are rather cheap, so my army sizes spiralled out of control pretty drat fast. The really funny thing is right down south below my belt of lovely forest and swamp provinces, there are incredibly fertile lands, capable of sustaining loving huge armies. But to get there, my cap forces have to first break through this retarded hunger belt between Old Caelum and what once was Jomon.
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Mar 2, 2017 16:58
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Lord Koth posted:Also, Man has apparently still not figured out that it doesn't take much effort for them to forge some Staffs of Storms and seriously mitigate the vampire issue. Or, hell, skip the staff and just flat out cast Storm first turn, given the only thing they've needed it for is defensive battles. LA Man has innate A2s and is going to get a decent number of A3s, all they need to do is empower an A3 once and they can do either of the above. The gems should not be a problem at this point in a max site game for a nation with Air on every single one of their mages. A3s can cast storm with some gems; no empowerment needed.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:12
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Fucks up his longbowswarm though.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:25
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goatface posted:Fucks up his longbowswarm though. Not as bad as an Alpha Strike of vamps does, though.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:44
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goatface posted:Fucks up his longbowswarm though. So do vampire swarms. At this point, Man should be trying to cause as much damage to Gath as possible, out of spite, but it's hard to do versus a dominion push vamp swarm.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:59
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