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If you do get ganged up on at this point, do you have a plan to survive it? Like are you stocking slaves for a dom push if everyone turns on you. Might not win you the game but it could possibly take out some competition.
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Mar 3, 2017 04:20
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He has a shitload of Vampires and his Dom definitely isn't going down any time soon, so attacking into him is going to be an awful experience.
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Mar 3, 2017 04:48
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Gath seems to be the type of power that's slow to expand, but difficult to push back. I'll be curious to see how the other players handle it.
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Mar 3, 2017 05:03
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Haystack posted:Gath seems to be the type of power that's slow to expand, but difficult to push back. I'll be curious to see how the other players handle it. My bet is on "ignore the problem, hope it goes away, and get ground into dust by endless vampires."
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Mar 3, 2017 06:22
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Corbeau posted:My bet is on "ignore the problem, hope it goes away, and get ground into dust by endless vampires." Why fight the leader of the pack today when you can put it off until you're done eating AIs? (Because he's gonna snipe your thrones, that's why.) Also, there's a case to be made that it's Bogarus who's the largest threat, not Gath. LA Bogarus be scary.
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Mar 3, 2017 06:45
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The real answer is Bogarus puts up Astral Corruption, then starts launching horrors at Gath's provinces to shut down his slave collection, but they seem to be busy doing something of their own.
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Mar 3, 2017 07:43
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Yeah, the question of "what is Bogarus up to?" would be keeping me up at night.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:21
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twig1919 posted:If you do get ganged up on at this point, do you have a plan to survive it? Like are you stocking slaves for a dom push if everyone turns on you. Might not win you the game but it could possibly take out some competition.
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Mar 3, 2017 09:00
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All of his blood hunters are H2. That's nasty potentials for Dom push, if I understand the mechanics right.
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Mar 3, 2017 15:12
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Lord Koth posted:The real answer is Bogarus puts up Astral Corruption, then starts launching horrors at Gath's provinces to shut down his slave collection, but they seem to be busy doing something of their own. Even then, most of his mages are rather beefy. Assign a some guards, script for the inevitable horror attack, then use gems sparingly. Or use his gems on a dispel. Meanwhile other nations are pissed at Bogarus. Gath can just keep using blood slaves anyway and he is fine and dandy. Honestly I think Gath is the hardiest resisting AC at this point.
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Mar 3, 2017 15:33
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Lord Koth posted:The real answer is Bogarus puts up Astral Corruption, then starts launching horrors at Gath's provinces to shut down his slave collection, but they seem to be busy doing something of their own. If you watched my videos, you know part of that something is eating all the nations between him and me. If you follow the older turns back in time, you'll see Ulm slowly disappearing to my west and being replaced by more Bogarus, for example. This happened mostly while I was crushing Jomon. Now he is eating the west of Mictlan, while I'm eating the east. But this won't continue forever...
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Mar 3, 2017 15:42
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The other thing, at least in all Dom games I've read, is that no one wants to take the first blow in any coalition. So sure, everyone else will gang up, but will anyone really push a force towards him? cause that leaves them open to being eaten up by everyone else once that fight happens.
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Mar 3, 2017 22:38
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CNN presents: Caelum Turn 64 This turn: Several battles against Mictlan, I'm talking about my strategic goals in my race with Bogarus and my Pale Ones have a big surprise for you! Caelum Turn 65 This turn was never recorded, so there's no video. (Yes, again!  )Older turns
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Mar 5, 2017 11:13
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I ride bikes all day posted:All of his blood hunters are H2. That's nasty potentials for Dom push, if I understand the mechanics right.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:13
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jBrereton posted:Not really since they don't blood sac. What do blood slaves do in nations without blood sacrifice? Are they spent on spells and crafting like any other gem?
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Mar 5, 2017 18:34
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Pretty much. Vampire Lords are 77 a pop, call horror is 20, astral corruption is 166. That's your bread and butter rituals. Leech is the go to battle spell, and is 1 a pop. You now know everything you need to win dominion with a blood nations.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:40
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Cathode Raymond posted:What do blood slaves do in nations without blood sacrifice? Are they spent on spells and crafting like any other gem? Yep! You spend them on Blood ritual spells, Blood battle spells, and lots and lots of Blood summons.
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Mar 5, 2017 18:41
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Cathode Raymond posted:What do blood slaves do in nations without blood sacrifice? Are they spent on spells and crafting like any other gem? Yeah. Often blood spells require rather a lot of sacrifices, more than other spells require gems; I assume it's because it's much easier to get blood slaves in mass quantity. At least in Dom3, based on the LPs I've seen, unlike other gems they show up in battle. They can't attack, but can be killed, so watch out for your 'gems' getting murdered before you use them. Actually, I recently got a copy of Dom4 as my first Dominions game, I should really learn how to play it...
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Mar 5, 2017 18:42
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Is Blood the go-to power source, or are people just focusing on it because Gath is a nation that can use it well? Whenever Dominions comes up I hear a lot about blood slaves and sacrifices, to the point where it sounds like all other magic is secondary and you have a serious handicap if you pick a non-blood nation.
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Mar 5, 2017 23:04
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Blood is strong if you can get to the endgame and nobody has hosed the world to stop you.
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Mar 5, 2017 23:09
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Loxbourne posted:Is Blood the go-to power source, or are people just focusing on it because Gath is a nation that can use it well? Whenever Dominions comes up I hear a lot about blood slaves and sacrifices, to the point where it sounds like all other magic is secondary and you have a serious handicap if you pick a non-blood nation. Blood has a pair of strong advantages. It's a gem type that lets you trade gold for gems through hunting in more provinces, which is great because gold becomes significantly less useful in the lategame, since there are so many spells that destroy entire armies. And if you're in blood it's fairly common to be pulling in more blood slaves than you are of every other gem type combined. The second advantage is that all blood research is confined to the blood and construction schools. That makes it very easy to research good rituals, summons and battlemagic at the same time.
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Mar 5, 2017 23:11
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Loxbourne posted:Is Blood the go-to power source, or are people just focusing on it because Gath is a nation that can use it well? Whenever Dominions comes up I hear a lot about blood slaves and sacrifices, to the point where it sounds like all other magic is secondary and you have a serious handicap if you pick a non-blood nation. Like with a bit of research you have: - A way to make immortal units that are good as hell (vampires) - Battlefield summons - A nuke that makes assassinating blood mages a pain in the rear end, that any blood mage can cast on T1 of an assassination attempt and which never misses, instantly killing most living targets. To compound this there's no lifeless assassins without making an item that involves using blood magic to forge, and blood hunted provinces are also usually heavily patrolled because blood hunting causes unrest, and unrest makes you less likely to find slaves, so assassinations in general are less likely to happen. - All kinds of remote attacks that do egregiously bad stuff (assassination attempts/horror attacks/unrest/disease/depopulation) - A way to make mages probably die if they try to cast magic, including any attempt to dispel it (Astral Corruption - AC also costs quite a lot of slaves at base casting cost, which means you need a huge amount of pearls to even try to dispel it) - Various unit buffs and debuffs - A fort building spell that nobody uses often but they could - High quality mages of all kinds of paths No other tree but Blood really has that kind of efficiency in terms of getting a bit of everything from a single tree. The only thing that you can't do with Blood research that other trees can do is forge items. Blood sacrifice is a whole other thing that causes a really disproportionate amount of "temple checks" relative to how difficult it is to do - once a faction gets to a certain point, there is basically no way to reverse the damage if you don't have blood sacrifice and better priests, and the world will pretty quickly come under the control of the saccing pretender unless the thrones get rushed.
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Mar 5, 2017 23:21
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jBrereton posted:(Astral Corruption - AC also costs quite a lot of slaves at base casting cost, which means you need a huge amount of pearls to even try to dispel it) Assuming the manual is correct, base cost of a spell does not factor at all into the difficulty of dispelling it; only gems invested beyond the normal cost increase the difficulty. Of course, blood economies work on an entirely different scale than gems, so even without that it's pretty easy to AC for an near-arbitrary number of slaves (and then still be able to cast it again even if every gem in the world gets alchemized and pooled to bring down the first one).
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Mar 5, 2017 23:31
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As people have already mentioned, Blood is just super versatile, easy to research, and has a lot of legitimate threats in it. While you could say it's not required to use blood, if you're a nation with easy blood acess or you come across a way to branch into it as another nation, there's no reason to pass it up. And you'd be foolish to ignore another nation if you see evidence that they're seriously pushing into blood themselves.
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Mar 6, 2017 00:28
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Honestly, most nations, if they have the time and resources to do so, should consider bootstrapping themselves into Blood. Even with zero initial access, it's possible to just set bunches of random indy commanders/scouts to blood hunt - which they do absolutely terribly, but you will get some success - until you get enough slaves to empower someone. Even if you don't really feel like going after the actual Blood school spells, there are a fair number of really good magic items that need cross-Blood paths to forge. Blood Stones (misc. Con 6 item; gives +1E) are a good example.
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Mar 6, 2017 01:04
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Turn 66 Turn 66 begins with hitting the next level in Blood research: level 8. We now have the chance to summon Heliophagi, dark demon lords skilled in Death and Blood magics. We prepare to summon one right away. Our mages did the usual wolf summoning, summoned 5(!) Vampire Lords, and a bunch of goats. We dispatch 4 of the new Vampire Lords to the East to set up camp nearer to our border with Pangaea. They are going to sit and summon Vampires until they’re needed in the coming war with Pan. Ah good, another Dire Portent message. What could it be?   Looks like Pangaea has joined the Global club and knocked Bogarus’ Gift of Health out at the same time. Pan has cast Haunted Forest, which is not a terribly impressive spell. Haunted Forest works by reanimating the corpse of any living unit that dies in battle as an undead manikin that will fight for Pangaea until the battle ends. It’s kind of just a way to give Pan’s armies a bit of an edge when fighting within his Dominion, but, since we’ll be pushing our own Dominion as hard as humanly possible when we go to war with Pan, I don’t think it will weigh the scales much in his favor. We capture a metric poo poo-load of blood slaves this turn. We have so many that we can afford to summon 4 more Vampire Lords -plus- a Heliophagus, and we’re only bringing more blood hunting provinces online in turns to come. Our Blood-Engine is humming along and functioning perfectly! The Arcane Nexus brought us 94 Pearls this turn, a great haul. We’re readjusting our Research into Conjuration magic in order to get some of our national Astral summon spells. It may be fun to spend some of these Pearls gearing up some Angelic thugs. There were a couple scouted battles we saw this turn, mainly Pan stomping over Mannish defenses with no losses to speak of. AI Jomon attempted to invade Caelum from the Sea once again and got smacked down, I doubt Jomon is long for this world at this point purely due to having no temples. Bogarus, interestingly, sent a Thug to reconquer a province he lost to an indie event:  This is pretty much the Platonic Ideal of a Thug in Dominions 4. The Bane Lord is a classic chassis, not too expensive to summon and very tough for the price. He has a simple Fire Brand, Vine Shield, and Flying Shoes that allow him to clear tons of chaff and beat just about any level of Province Defense. Good to note for when we go to war with Bogarus. We also stormed the fort in Solam:  Our Vampire Lords, Lesser Vampires, and other mages outside Man's gates.  We buff with spells to protect our troops from Fire damage and from Arrows.  Man's Knights charge out to meet our grounded Vampires (thanks to Storm), and Man casts Wrathful Skies!  Man forgets that Wrathful Skies hits -all- units on the battlefield, including your own.  Lesser Vampires all die, but skeleton spam slowly wins the day.  Carnage! Somehow, I am not sure exactly, but somehow we lost a ton of lesser Vampires and 3 Vampire Lords. I really don’t know what happened because we show 2 positive candles on Solam, but it did and we lost a lot of vamps. That sucks. Two things really worked to our advantage in this battle: Fields of the Dead and a spell that Man cast called Wrathful Skies. Fields of the Dead summoned skeletons all up in Man’s rear-line business the entire battle, causing his longbows to spend a bunch of time prioritizing shooting at one or two nearby longdead instead of at our hordes of reanimated skeletons from our Vampire Lords. Wrathful Skies, the spell Man cast, is a really strong battlefield ‘pulse’ spell that randomly selects units to throw lightning bolts at every other round. However, it does not just target enemy units but -all- units, so Man ended up fragging a lot of his own mages and longbows over the course of the battle. Eventually his armies break and everything dies. I’m a little bit miffed about losing so many lesser Vampires and Lords, but to be honest it is all very recoverable. I’m just glad that we didn’t lose Cain, the Vampire Lord that I empowered in Earth to be able to cast Fields of the Dead. Man is coming close to being killed, and now there is an unspoken race between ourselves and Pangaea to get to Man’s final Throne in Cacevic Highlands. We are moving the big army we had sieging in Solam to attack Man’s province of Northanion, which is adjacent to Cacevic Highlands. Pan is merely a couple of turns away from getting to that Throne, so we may have to act a little bit recklessly to beat him to it.  Racing for Man's remaining Throne! I’m feeling very confident right now because our Blood engine is running so strong. If we can consistently summon 4 Vampire Lords a turn then we’re really in great shape. On the other hand, if Bogarus and Pangaea both attack us we’ll need every single ounce of strength to avoid defeat. Next turn: reckless movement!
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Mar 6, 2017 01:48
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jBrereton posted:Not really since they don't blood sac. Really? I thought blood guys could sacrifice slaves equal to their priest level per turn. I mean, clearly they aren't now, but couldn't they if it became relevant?
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Mar 6, 2017 01:59
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I ride bikes all day posted:Really? I thought blood guys could sacrifice slaves equal to their priest level per turn. I mean, clearly they aren't now, but couldn't they if it became relevant? Only certain nations get the ability. If your nation doesn't have the tag, they can't do it.
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Mar 6, 2017 02:09
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How are u posted:Somehow, I am not sure exactly, but somehow we lost a ton of lesser Vampires and 3 Vampire Lords. I really don’t know what happened because we show 2 positive candles on Solam, but it did and we lost a lot of vamps. That sucks. Oh I know this one. It's a turn order thing. Before any fights happen the game adjudicates units preaching up candles, THEN the fights happen THEN the game checks normal domspread. He probably had some dudes preaching in there that opened the window for FINAL DEATH.
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Mar 6, 2017 02:50
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Just how many regular vampires are these lords able to summon per turn? Is the ratio we saw in the battle representative of the ratio of normal to lords or were the regular ones over represented because you didn't want to risk lords in battle?
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Mar 6, 2017 02:55
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Belatedly, re: Blood Chat, when speaking in the context of national strategies, Blood isn't necessary, but it's definitely one of the big end-game strategies for all of the reasons mentioned before and more. There are only going to be a few premier strategies of roughly equivalent power for the endgame in a game like Dominions, because while there's a glut of options they're not all created equal. Blood's power and versatility put it way, way up on that list, and it helps that blood can, in a pinch, be broken into by pretty much any nation that has the desire to, simply by doing lovely virgin-hunting with lovely commanders until you've finally got enough blood sacrifices to empower somebody. Blood also seems to be proportionally slightly more powerful than it already was in Dominions 3 because a couple of the other late-game strategies worth a drat were centered around cheap and/or nigh-invulnerable super-combatants, and super-combatants appear to be a less viable strategy in Dom4 in general what with the resistance changes. Basically to summarize, Blood is potent, and it's not the ONLY end-game strategy or necessarily the strongest one, it's just that you can probably count the most efficient end-game strategic goals on one hand.
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Mar 6, 2017 02:55
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Cathode Raymond posted:Just how many regular vampires are these lords able to summon per turn? Is the ratio we saw in the battle representative of the ratio of normal to lords or were the regular ones over represented because you didn't want to risk lords in battle? Each Vampire Lord can summon 1 (one) lesser Vampire. Per turn. We lost a substantial percentage of our Vampire host this turn.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:10
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Ramc posted:Oh I know this one.
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Mar 6, 2017 03:57
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For breaking into blood, what is the next step after empowering a commander? What is the summon that gets you an easy peasy blood magi, or are you just stuck empowering peeps in blood and hoping they don't die?
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Mar 6, 2017 06:43
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Which throne is the one in the Cacevic Highlands, anyway? Anything particularly useful?
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Mar 6, 2017 08:51
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Donkringel posted:For breaking into blood, what is the next step after empowering a commander? What is the summon that gets you an easy peasy blood magi, or are you just stuck empowering peeps in blood and hoping they don't die? I would empower up a death mage straight to lv.3 for vampires, making a sanguine dowsing rod along to way. Vampires can then do more hunting, summoning more vampires. I've never boosted blood from literally nothing before, and I don't think it's a good idea based on the time and income cost.
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Mar 6, 2017 09:14
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Bug Squash posted:I've never boosted blood from literally nothing before, and I don't think it's a good idea based on the time and income cost. I did it as LA Jomon in the very first Mo Money game. We'd reached a point in the game where every school of magic was fully researched, so I had scores of mages sitting in forts deep inside my territory with nothing better to do than Blood Hunt. With probably 100+ commanders hunting it still took well over 10 turns to scrape up enough slaves to empower a couple of mages in Blood, and it was probably like 15+ turns before I was able to summon a single Vampire Lord. Using dudes with no Blood Magic to Blood Hunt is severely inefficient.
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Mar 6, 2017 16:45
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How are u posted:I did it as LA Jomon in the very first Mo Money game. We'd reached a point in the game where every school of magic was fully researched, so I had scores of mages sitting in forts deep inside my territory with nothing better to do than Blood Hunt. With probably 100+ commanders hunting it still took well over 10 turns to scrape up enough slaves to empower a couple of mages in Blood, and it was probably like 15+ turns before I was able to summon a single Vampire Lord. Would that make blood magic the only path into which a theoretical completely non-magical nation could break in without finding any magical sites?
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Mar 6, 2017 16:48
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my dad posted:Would that make blood magic the only path into which a theoretical completely non-magical nation could break in without finding any magical sites? Any path might be possible, empowering with gems from events. See Luck 3 Magic 3.
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Mar 6, 2017 17:31
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my dad posted:Would that make blood magic the only path into which a theoretical completely non-magical nation could break in without finding any magical sites? Some common magic sites are always visible, as are thrones. It is also possible to trade gems with other players or alchemize gems from other gem types.
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Mar 6, 2017 18:30
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