|
How are u posted:Before we end this turn let’s talk a little about diplomacy. Things are shaking up in a big way. Bogarus’ player, Morrow, has come into some real world issues that are taking up his time and wants to step away from this game. One of the SA community’s better Dom4 players, Ramc, will likely be taking over the nation. Morrow hasn’t exactly been a terror in this game despite having a huge and powerful nation plus amazing discount sites and other things. No offense to Morrow, but he could have very possibly been sealing up his victory in this game by now. Ramc is an aggressive and extremely competent player, and so I think Bogarus is about to become very, very dangerous. I want to try to reach out to Pangaea and start up that anti-Bogarus alliance once again. With this new information, and with the departure of Morrow, I don’t really consider the secret anti-Pangaea defensive pact that we’d made to be in effect any more. To add to that, before Ramc took over, I (Caelum) was in real fear of yet another player bowing out of the game just before I could attack them, which would have made my boring videos even more boring. Luckily Ramc saved my video-LP from this fate. Honestly, having to eat three AI-players in a row would have been ridiculous. Good for my chances of winning, but very boring to watch. Also, while all this is happening with Gath, Pangaea was supplying me with gear to support my planned invasion of Bogarus. So How are u is on his way to become the third member of the great Anti-Bogarus Pact. Will this triple alliance actually hold? Well, feel free to bet on the outcome.
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 09:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 18:20 |
|
Crazycryodude posted:Has Ramc ever lost a game? I remember reading about the meteoric rise and no fall I do lose games. Just winning sometimes in a 12~ player per map game is considered pretty good though. Lord Koth posted:Ramc tried playing MA Ermor in a recent game. It didn't work out for him.  Lord Koth and your Sea of Ice!
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 12:07
|
|
|
Honestly if I were playing in this game (or playing Dom4 at all, since I don't own it) the words "Ramc is subbing in" would fill me with dread. Regardless of how good he may or may not be, seeing him get gifted with a copy of Dom4 in one LP thread and then seeing posts a few weeks later saying "hey let me explain to you in breathtaking detail how I won this game that included people who have been playing for significantly longer than I have" sets him up in my mind as a horrifying monster of skill and tenacity.
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 14:23
|
|
|
There was also the excerpts from, err, radioactive materials containment failure after action reports edited to include dominions and ramc. "Chief engineer Nwabudike M. then used a fallen branch to push the dominions in a pothole and covered it using several stones." SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Mar 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 15:05
|
|
SIGSEGV posted:There was also the excerpts from, err, radioactive materials containment failure after action reports edited to include dominions and ramc. Decrepus posted:Being gifted a copy of dom4 is like finding a cursed item in dom4 irl. quote:At this time, the operator also notified the resident engineer of the contractor. They began to visit all of the personnel that had been working on the site that day. At 01:00 they arrived at Ramc's house. The survey meter they were using indicated high Dom4 levels as Ramc approached the door with Dom4 in his hands. Ramc was told to throw Dom4 into the street and then the radiographer put a stone over Dom4 and restricted access to the area. The resident engineer remained in the area to supervise Dom4 while the radiographer went to fetch equipment for recovering Dom4. I am in other games still though. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3568182&perpage=40&pagenumber=398#post470800781
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 30, 2017 15:16
|
|
|
Turn 77 Turn 77 does not begin with any research breakthroughs, but we did summon our third Demon Lord:  Large and In-Charge. Meet Belphegor, a big fucker with 4F4E4B who auto-generates 3 blood slaves per turn, and dom-summons a handful of generic heavy infantry as well. He’s a tough son of a bitch and a great platform for nasty spells. Eventually I want to give all of our Demon Lords Rings of Wizardry and other powerful magic items, then use them as ringers for big battles. For now Belphegor sits and waits. We do the normal; summoning goats, Vampires, and cast a few more Domes of Flaming Death. We summon our first Golem as well!  I’ve decided I’m going to name our Golems with Babylonian names, so here is Abdi-Ili, Servant of God. He’s teleporting across our empire to be closer to Bogarus, where he will wait until more Golems are created to form a powerful squad.  !! What’s this?? Our global was dispelled?  A goddamn Dire Portent!  Cocksucker! Ramc (who took over Bogarus) bumped my Eyes of God off the list by casting loving Wrath of God!!   Wrath of God is not a game ending spell but it is a real loving annoyance, I am cheesed as heck!! As the description says Wrath of God causes lightning bolts to strike units all over the world at random every turn. I don’t know if they’re even full-strength lightning bolts or what, but as you can see in this report-  Every. Turn. We lost a bunch of units and even a commander. It’s really annoying! I think most of the units we lost were wolves, but even that hampers our blood hunting efforts. Our giant size mages should be relatively safe from the stupid bullshit lightning bolts, but our human size guys are vulnerable. I’m thinking about our Enchantresses, Vampires, and other commanders with < 15hp. So, Ramc takes over Bogarus and immediately throws up a middle finger to the world. I think he definitely did that on purpose and expects war. I’ve conferred with Pangaea and Caelum and we are all in agreement that war is what he’s going to get! Pan says he’s going to begin next turn, and we are now prepping to start our fight the turn after that. All of our Vampires that had been sieging Man’s cap, plus all of the Vampires I’d started massing in our East nearer to our large border with Pan, are flying stealthily towards our border with Bogarus. We’re making sure there is a blood saccer in every province with a fort, moving earthquaking Yeddeoni around, etc. I feel like I’ve been preparing for a real fight ever since we broke Man’s ability to contest our invasion. Now we’re about to get the chance to unleash our real strength against a much larger, more advanced foe. If we were going alone it’d be suicide, but with Pan and Caelum involved we should have a very good shot.  Massing armies on the Bogarussian border.  Movement across our empire. It doesn't look very big from way up here, does it? For a day [Ed note - The game is on a 2 day timer by this point. There are tons of variables to account for and if you're being autistic turns can easily take an hour.] I considered leveraging our vast supply of Pearls to Dispel Ramc’s Wrath of God. We definitely have enough gems to Dispel it twice or even thrice over. Dispelling, however, is not something I like to do. I don’t like spending gems just to tear something else down, I want to get something out of it for myself. Dispelling is also very imprecise. Recall my attitude as our 51 Pearl Eyes of God was torn down twice by 75F Fate of Oedipus spells. The Wrath of God is a minimum 70 Pearl spell to cast, but there could be hundreds of extra Pearls thrown into it. To dispel we’d have to guess, and we could end up wasting a lot. Instead I’m going to do something better. I am going to steal Gift of Health. Stealing Gift of Health does several things: First, it takes something that Ramc wants away from him. Second, it nets us a very useful global that (within our Dominion) gives our mans extra HP and heals their afflictions. Third, the effects of the spell quite conveniently negate the danger of the Wrath of God. We’re going to wait a turn or two to both save up some Nature gems and to see if Bogarus casts any other curveball globals, but that’s the plan for the moment. We’re also firing our first volley of Horror Seeds this turn. The target is the province of Nom, where Bogarus’ best two discount sites are located. The Heliophagi and Vampires sitting in Nom will hopefully become infected by the virulent, insidious Horror Seeds.  One of our Seeders cast this province enchantment in Bahguloth, extending our Horror Seed reach. I plan to drop seeds in various places across the world, and we will probably soon begin seeding our allies as well. Horror Seeds take many turns to gestate before they cause havoc, so we should be proactive and make sure Pangaea is good and soaked with them with an eye towards the future. Next turn: Pangaea should be going to war, and we prep for our imminent invasion.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:50
|
|
|
How are u posted:I’ve decided I’m going to name our Golems with Babylonian names, so here is Abdi-Ili, Servant of God. I prefer to think of him as Abdi-Ili, servant of God the Golem. Because that's how I read it when I glanced at the picture for the first time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:05
|
|
|
I actually have absolutely no idea how many pearls were used in the casting of that global. It was already slotted to cast when I got the turn. I didn't veto it of course...
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:13
|
|
|
Ramc posted:I actually have absolutely no idea how many pearls were used in the casting of that global. It was already slotted to cast when I got the turn. I didn't veto it of course... I was absolutely sure that it was a deliberate, throw caution to the wind and take-no-prisoners war-dec on the world. This is the kind of depth and nuance you get in a patented Something Awful Dominions 4 Let's Play, folks! 
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:26
|
|
|
He didn't veto it, so it p much was. Still not as much as yours were though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:28
|
|
|
My first turn wasn't even complete too. Dominions 4 has a very interesting 'feature' where if you have a partial turn, and are the last dude with a partial turn, then log in to your turn it submits your turn as if it was done. I was kind of doing it piecemeal because I was, if I remember correctly, in the endgame of another game and also more or less on vacation with intermittent internet at the time. Extremely good game.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:36
|
|
|
Sounds like Ramc is trying to downplay his upcoming crushing victory.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:14
|
|
|
Actually using the horror seeds against allies is a good idea. Not like they can figure out you are doing it, it weakens them for your final push.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:31
|
|
|
Would it make sense to horror seed yourself, too, to have plausible deniability? Or even frame someone by seeding everyone (including yourself) except them? You know it's coming so just hit some worthless units and quarantine them. Just in general, I mean, not this specific game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:40
|
|
|
I'm wondering with all the Horrors flying around how that interacts with all the vampires you've got going. Since horrors kind of just go at anyone nearby, could it end up blowing back on the vampires and get them stuck with a horror mark that has them dying and respawning eternally gaining more marks? It seems like it could almost lead to an epidemic, but I also don't know this game that well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:49
|
|
Crazycryodude posted:Would it make sense to horror seed yourself, too, to have plausible deniability? Or even frame someone by seeding everyone (including yourself) except them? You know it's coming so just hit some worthless units and quarantine them. Not really. Other people wouldn't really be able to tell.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:57
|
|
|
Mootiman posted:I'm wondering with all the Horrors flying around how that interacts with all the vampires you've got going. Since horrors kind of just go at anyone nearby, could it end up blowing back on the vampires and get them stuck with a horror mark that has them dying and respawning eternally gaining more marks? It seems like it could almost lead to an epidemic, but I also don't know this game that well. Horror marks take a really long time to do anything. Also, when triggered, they fire as an assassination event, not an attack on the province.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 02:45
|
|
|
Um, are you aware that you just sold The Might of Zionism's soul? 
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 04:08
|
|
|
What. The HEck. Are you gonna do with all those goats.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 04:08
|
|
|
Flavius Belisarius posted:Um, are you aware that you just sold The Might of Zionism's soul? True, but possession is passed upon death. I don't think he plans on dying.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 04:36
|
|
Flavius Belisarius posted:Um, are you aware that you just sold The Might of Zionism's soul? I like to imagine would-be Pantokrators doing all of these terrible short sighted things- selling their soul, casting burden of time, raining lightning down on the world in an increasingly panicked and desperate fit. "I'LL FIX IT LATER." "sir all our troops are frozen beneath the sea-" IT WILL BE OKAY WHEN I AM GOD." "sir the extra sun is killing all of our cro-" "SHUTTT UPPPPP"
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:25
|
|
|
Ramc posted:I like to imagine would-be Pantokrators doing all of these terrible short sighted things- selling their soul, casting burden of time, raining lightning down on the world in an increasingly panicked and desperate fit. "I'LL FIX IT LATER." "sir all our troops are frozen beneath the sea-" IT WILL BE OKAY WHEN I AM GOD." Dominions in a nutshell
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:53
|
|
|
Ramc posted:I like to imagine would-be Pantokrators doing all of these terrible short sighted things- selling their soul, casting burden of time, raining lightning down on the world in an increasingly panicked and desperate fit. "I'LL FIX IT LATER." "sir all our troops are frozen beneath the sea-" IT WILL BE OKAY WHEN I AM GOD." Dominions gets cosmic horror, and not in the "staple on some tentacles and give it a coat of ichor" sense most works settle for. Hypersimulationism creates a universe which is alien to human sensibilities precisely because of its underlying rationality. Moral costs are insignificant when the object is omnipotence, and it would be insane to not acquire a stockpile of world ending doom horrors when the Bogarussians are also interested in acquiring one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 07:34
|
|
|
Microcline posted:Moral costs are insignificant when the object is omnipotence, and it would be insane to not acquire a stockpile of world ending doom horrors when the Bogarussians are also interested in acquiring one. Mr. Pantokrator, we must not allow a horror gap! EDIT: Also does the Wrath of God murdery give any sort of rundown on what you lost? Or is it on you to be omniscient and figure out whether you lost some irrelevant wolves or important defensive lynchpins? PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 07:50
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Mr. Pantokrator, we must not allow a horror gap! This is dominions. What does you heart tell you?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 08:33
|
|
|
Willie Tomg posted:What. The HEck. Are you gonna do with all those goats. I imagine goats as a mass produced unit make pretty good meat shields for soaking up hostile spells. Just how many goats ARE there now?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 09:58
|
|
|
Flavius Belisarius posted:Um, are you aware that you just sold The Might of Zionism's soul? Yeah but he's managed to sell it to like 3 different devils, so even if he dies the custody suit could take literally forever.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 10:44
|
|
|
GunnerJ posted:Yeah but he's managed to sell it to like 3 different devils, so even if he dies the custody suit could take literally forever. The Constantine maneuver.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:16
|
|
GunnerJ posted:Yeah but he's managed to sell it to like 3 different devils, so even if he dies the custody suit could take literally forever. Want to see that episode of People's Divorce Court.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:45
|
|
|
ousire posted:I imagine goats as a mass produced unit make pretty good meat shields for soaking up hostile spells. From waay back when the first goats showed up as an event AfroSquirrel posted:If you have goats, there is a chance of them attracting a dragon. Between that and the Horror Seeds, I'm detecting a pattern of indirect summoning of neutral units to mess with other peoples provences. Not sure it's payed off though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:07
|
|
|
You sure you're not confusing normal goats with the goat demons there?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:39
|
|
|
Can we get a clarification as to the nature of these goats? Are they normal, everyday eat-a-can goats or are they the goat demons that punch things?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 22:48
|
|
Cathode Raymond posted:Can we get a clarification as to the nature of these goats? Are they normal, everyday eat-a-can goats or are they the goat demons that punch things? Gath has a variety pack.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 22:54
|
|
|
They're the badass, hard motherfucker demon goats. There is no way to summon regular, normal goats.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 23:42
|
|
|
How are u posted:They're the badass, hard motherfucker demon goats. There is no way to summon regular, normal goats. I am relieved but also disappointed. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 23:43
|
|
|
You can always wish for goats.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 23:47
|
|
|
How are u posted:They're the badass, hard motherfucker demon goats. There is no way to summon regular, normal goats. Summon all the animals.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 23:54
|
|
|
Turn 78 Two messages greet us at the top of the turn. First we see Ramc officially announce the change of management of Bogarus:  Ramc enjoys theatrics, which I like too. Then we see Pangaea sent a message to the world as well:  Afrosquirrel has chosen to start his war against the nation based upon Russian myth (Bogarus) by quoting Hitler, which is appropriate but also technically makes him Hitler here.  Anyway, these messages signify that something big is happening: a new phase of the game has begun.We hit Alteration 7 and we’re slogging our way up towards Alt 9. Level 7 gives us some good army buffs, but we really want to get to Wish as soon as possible. Three of our very well kitted out Kohen Gadol cast Horror Seed at Nom. One was resisted, two stuck the landing. It’s important to give your Horror Seed caster a lot of +penetration items because it really sucks to have one of those expensive, hard to cast spells get resisted. We’re going to not cast Horror Seed again this turn because those three guys are casting something else that I’ll explain shortly. Here’s the Demon Lord we summoned:    Avatar material right here folks. Ashmedai is pretty nuts! He’s an extremely powerful mage, whom we immediately kit out with boosters to get him to Blood 8. He’s going to summon the final two Demon Lords for us, freeing The Might of Zionism up to do some other things. We summon two Golems this turn, and we’ve started forging enough gear to kit both of them out like so:  You can see that our Golems will be wielding Frost Brands for the +Cold Resist, Charcoal Shields for the Fire Shield, Shrouds to make them sacred and give them our powerful double-bless, Flying Shoes to fly, a Starshine Skullcap for the extra magic resistance and +1 to their Astral magic, an Amulet of Anti-Magic for even more magic resistance, and finally a very cool Blood item: Lifelong Protection.    The Lifelong Protection is neat because, in battle, it summons 2 Imps every battle round that immediately fly across the field and attack your enemies. Imps are weak, but getting two every round is useful. If you have 8 Golems that’s 16 Imps each round, which can really start to add up! One of the downsides of the item is that it is “Tainted”, which means it will apply Horror Marks over time to whoever is wearing it. Golems, being Lifeless, cannot accrue Horror Marks. They’re immune. I am envisioning a line of tanky Golems auto-summoning hordes of Imps to clog up enemy lines while they spam Astral spells. We’ll see how that works in practice soon enough. We captured Man's capitol this turn. When a nation is dom-killed the remaining units stick around in the game for one additional turn, then disappear. We strolled right in. The legendary Forest of Avalon becomes just another jewel in the crown of The Might of Zionism.  The Wrath of God continues to batter the weary populace of the world. We lost one of our Enchantresses this turn, exemplifying the danger this global spell poses to some of our important magic-diversity units!  There were some interesting battles this turn! Pan puts AI Ragha’s last Throne province back under siege. Pan attacks us with a single crippled, diseased Magister who is given an honorable death by our Province Defense:  Pan also goes to war with Bogarus:  Adios, PD.  Mainly we see a few battles of Pan stomping Bogarus PD, nothing interesting. What will actually be interesting is what we can scout next turn, when Bogarus will throw his counter-punch. We also see Pangaea disasterously attempt to storm Ragha’s capitol fortress:  Here’s Pan’s storming force:  Same old army composition. And here’s Ragha’s defense, plus his Pretender God:   Curious Pretender design. I wonder what MF_James was going for with this guy. Pan is playing sloppy, there’s no real way to avoid saying that. The Pan mages appear to be basically unscripted (or just scripted to cast a bunch of self buffs), carry no gems, and don’t even cast marginally useful stuff like Howl or summon Earth Elementals or something. Pangaea’s host of Grove Guardians just rush the gate and immediately get clogged by skeletons summoned by Ragha’s horde of mages:    Welcome to skeleton town. Ragha has tons of Fire mages that pour Fire Flies and Flame Bolts and Fireballs and Falling Fires into Minotaur flesh for dozens of rounds. Ragha also has dozens of elite heavy cavalry with composite bows that fire volleys of arrows into the beast-men, whittling them down.   Meanwhile Pangaea’s mages do stuff like throw poison at skeletons, turn a couple of elephants into frogs, uselessly buff their own troops, and other pointless things. Hilariously, one Pan seems to decide that melee combat is more interesting than casting spells, and slowly works his way through the melee scrum to the front line where he casts mass-entanglement spells at skeletons (something that was actually really useful oddly enough).  This Pan decided to be proactive.  One of Ragha's very flavorful Heroes was in the battle as well.  Run away! Eventually Pan’s forces are whittled down by arrows and spells and they rout. Pan didn’t lose many of his mages, just a lot of very replaceable troops, but it was still a real debacle. I don’t mean any offense, but so far in this game Afrosquirrel has pretty much been playing like a very good AI. That’s OK though, because it has been working for him! Now, however, the game has changed, and the human-wave tactics that saw him through the early and mid game are not going to work. I expect to see some serious beast-man death next turn. A couple of other interesting things happened this turn. Patrolling troops caught a Pangaean Dryad in one of our border provinces:   Trust no one. And we got a message that one of our Fortune Telling Sybls prevented a future bad event:  So, next turn. We are joining in the War next turn. We’re going to hit 3 Bogarussian provinces on our Western border. We’re going to do it with Vampires, and we’re going to try and be sneaky so that Ramc won’t be able to see what our armies are like right away. The three Kohen Gadol we’ve kitted to Horror Seed are instead going to Send Horror at the Bogarus provinces of Fas Dir, Falgoth, and the Throne province of Gryphon Rock.  In Dominions 3 Greater Horrors were infamous as army killers on their own. In Dominions 4, and especially in Mo Money, they’re not going to be taking out armies on their own. What they’re still great at, though, is killing province defense. We’ll send a Horror to each province to hopefully remove the PD, allowing the Vampire armies that follow to begin to siege without a fight. That’ll buy us an extra turn if Ramc wants to ‘ping’ the armies to see what they are, or if he doesn’t and immediately counter-attacks we could possibly win some battles outright.    Invasion forces. Because we’re using Vampires offensively we need to push Dom, it is vital now. The Might of Zionism is going to claim the Throne of the Pantokrator this turn, giving us 7 more temple checks and a powerful bonus to our Dominion strength. I’m not sure how the world is going to react to that, but we’ll find out! In the spirit of beginning a War and of entering a new phase in the game I compose a thematic global message to send to the remaining players. Well, friends, here goes nothing…
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2017 01:12
|
|
|
I suppose it's necessary, but claiming that throne ain't gonna make you many friends.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2017 01:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 18:20 |
|
|
The Throne of the Pantokrator is a lonely one. Maybe 's part of why they keep loving off.
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2017 01:49
|
|