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Posted a much more in-depth explanation of how my map generator works.
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Jun 2, 2017 23:01
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Thanks for the great work and interesting write up!
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Jun 8, 2017 17:59
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I hope you guys love blesses and real time strategy
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Jun 14, 2017 00:12
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At least half of that, yes.
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Jun 14, 2017 18:00
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Amuys posted:I hope you guys love blesses and real time strategy Tell me more.
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Jun 15, 2017 21:53
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Turin Turambar posted:Tell me more. It's more like an active argument than a debate now
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Jun 17, 2017 21:53
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Amuys posted:I hope you guys love blesses and real time strategy Even more than I love floorplan generation
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Jun 17, 2017 22:31
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40 HP jaguars (human form) with a correct bless 20 Precision Caelians with 50% more range...on spells Amuys fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 00:33
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Mapgoons EA another Summod with Magic Enhanced game I was a late addition since the mapgoons weren't able to fill up their roster, so I feel slightly guilty winning the thing. I brought EA C'tis to victory, which I picked primarily for trying out skelespam for the first time (spoilers - skeletons are pretty great). Here's my pretender -  There's no secret about the magic paths - with boosters this will give me access to Gift of Health and Arcane Nexus - so pretty much the wish list of Globals that are worth casting, and will pivot into being a Wish engine late game. In addition to a whopping 37rp, this chassi gives +2 research to ALL mages in her province too, which will be vital for getting to me the all important Enchantment 5 for Horde of Skeletons (before which C'tis is critically vulnerable) and then clawing myself up to higher levels to deal with anything that can't be skeletoned into the dirt. There were a lot of nature nations in the game so I didn't bother racing for Mother Oak and Gift of Health, but otherwise I followed a standard research plan.  Nestled in between these moutains lies the swamp of C’tis. Along with that river in the northeast I’m sitting very secure from invasion. Unfortunately, expansion went terribly! I have little experience with these troops and I got my rear end whooped by indies a few times. I was very worried that the hexmap system would give a hefty advantage to bless rush nations. But I was diligent in building forts and recruiting sauromancers, so I was able to make it to Ench5 before anyone decided to rush me. At that point I was able to clear out my borders, and grab a nearby three thrones, including the very tasty throne of death. That thing brought my scales down to death 3 - but it brought me delicious death gems and frankly having a rapidly depopulating kingdom can be quite handy in avoiding unwanted attention. This was about the point that MapGoons started going AI. Turns out they'd started a whole bunch of games at once an were rapidly burning out. My first AI neighbour was Niffleheim, and without a human to leverage my cold-blooded trait against me the jolly blue giants rapidly fatigued out chopping down one skeleton a turn while my mages churned out an endless supply of skeletons spurned on by a relief cast. I pushed them back to their cap and sat on it while the remaining giants crashed against my army. Maverni tried to get in on the deal and set up a cascade spam army, but they underestimated the giants and the army was shattered and they never really recovered. Kailasa had stalled a few times so I started pushing into their territory and started sieging a fort. Kailasa's player turned out to be having technical trouble, thought they were being hacked as they had no gold, and went ai. Unfortunately it turned out their gold had been going into a repeated monthly recruitment of troops, since an army of about 1000 monkey chaff started marching towards me. I had nowhere near enough sauromancers to deal in their territory, so I have to pull them out and start scrambling my mages to dismantle the horde. At pretty much this exact moment Abyssia decides to start attacking me. I had half an eye on Abyssia since they were in a fantastic place to take a huge chunk out of the now defenceless Niffleheim. With the rewards from that they would have been a serious threat for the late game. Instead, they started assassinating my capitol research mages and invaded with N9 blessed Burning One sacreds. The assassins were annoying since it took a few turns to summon up police wolves to chase them off, but losing a few research mages isn't a major concern. I did make a major mistake in sending an army of drakes (the mod made summoning them very cheap) which were absolutely chumped by the Burning Ones. That early success made Abyssia drunk on hubris, which I took advantage of by catching his armies with skelespam mages. Regenerating Burning Ones are fantastic against regular forces, but in the end they are basically Niffle Giants that fatigue out twice as fast. Abyssia lost thousands of gold worth of expensive cap only sacreds and mages, and were permanently on the backfoot after that. I tried to sue for peace since I was left in a position where the AI was starting to make grounds, but Abyssia would not relent and it took me reluctantly taking their cap and forcing them ai to end the war. During this time Maverni also went AI and an inexplicable army of 300 blood vengeance boars decided my low troop empire looked like a tasty treat. I had to pull away from my siege of Niffleheim to break the attack, but lost something like a dozen or more provinces to rampaging troops. Fomoria decides to try and kick me out of the water at this point, meaning that I am at this stage being attacked by every surviving empire except Tir na N'og and Therodos, and Tir na N’og was clearly massive and building up for a final throne push. It was looking extremely bad, but fortunately I'd been playing extremely safely with my sauromancers, and had only lost 1 in combat so far, so I had an excellent mage core to hold back the endless hordes of ai. I'd also been able to use those mages to research like mad when they aren't needed to fight. This is about when I cast Arcane Nexus. Tir na N'og also begins their throne rush here, so Fomoria and I enter into an uneasy alliance. Fomoria loses about half of their thrones to thunderspamming elves, who get to within a few points of victory. I see Nog had been making heavy use of Fog Warriors, so I make heavy use of Legion of Wights due to them having in built magic weapons, and some Mechanical Men to hopefully attract and tank some thunderbolts about from the Wights and my mages. Still, TNN armies are pretty serious business, and I strongly suspect they've won the game. The elves mass on my border, with 2 queens of air and 1 king of earth, so it's fairly obvious an attack is imminent. I go on the magical offensive to try and blunt the assault. I wish for the king of earth - which causes him to teleport to my capitol and initiate a battle. He is greeted by a few shamans who unsuccessully try to magically control him, and is instead ignominiously clubbed to death by some trolls. The rest of the army is hit by 2 casts of Ghost Riders, which each summons an attack of 33 undead horsement with a beefy wraith lord commander. 68 guys in total, which had literally no chance to defeat the lightning spamming glamourous sparklemeisters, but they were never meant too. Whatever deep magic control dominion ai flipped a hidden switch, and Tir na N'ogs mages started throwing their precious gems at the horsemen, who were quickly wiped out by living clouds and many many lightning blasts. This happens again when the army actually hits my fort since I made sure to bump up the province defence to trigger gem use. After this, the doom stack is left nearly gemless and down its primary earth mage, depriving it of an entire branch of magical diversity. The next turn I wish for one of the queens of air (attempts to control her are unsuccessful, and she quickly succumbs to a gank), and keep hitting the stack with horsemen in case there was a hidden commander ferrying gems, rendering them utterly gemless. After these two very expensive wish assassinations, I have to forgo wishes for a couple of turns. I summon up an astral 5 national summon and start gearing him up for casting wish. The expense of all this in astral is eye watering, but if I can pull it off I expect to ride it to victory. I've got to cross my fingers that my throne defenders can defend against the upcoming TNN attack - if they can take this throne and one more of Fomoria's, then that's game. Tir na N'og managed to break into my fort, and we begin the pivotal battle of the game. TNN faces up against a strike team of 40 fog warriored wights backed up by shadow blasting sauromancers, a healthy supply of skelespammers to jam up the fort gates, plus a massive cascade spamming communion backline of shamans. On top of this I throw down every battlefield bless and buff I can muster, Howl, Rigor Mortis, Fields of the Dead, Battlefield Fortune, Mass Regeneration, Poison, Mass Shock Resistance. The battle is horrific, TNN fields a front line of glamorous regenerating elves, and a backline of mages spamming thunderstrike. The elves crash into the wights. The glamour of the elves and the mist form of the wights makes the first few rounds of combat fairly ineffective, but both defences eventually pop, and the elves take terrible losses from the bane blades, doing mininal damage to the high portection wights. Despite the shock protection lightning bolts start cutting into the wights. They can survive one extra strike thanks to a buffer from fog warriors, but are taking massive damage. Shadow blast tears great holes through the elves front lines, and cascade spam puts them to sleep, but the lightning blasts are the real enemy and I just can't reach the casters. Luckily, rigor mortis starts doing its job of fatiguing out the living, and the rate of lightning starts to slow down. My mages are affected too, but they are generally casting much less frightening spells (or have already gone to sleep after throwing down a bless), so it's a sacrifice I'm very willing to make. As more summoned chaff fills the field, Thunder blasts start being aimed at soulless or wolves, taking even more heat off the wights - who start to make some real progress towards the casters. At some point the damage to the Filborg warriors becomes too much, and the TNN mages start running. Tragically most of them are much too fast from the heavily armoured wights to catch, but almost all of the foot army is eliminated. They are technically just chaff, but without them standing between the mages and the enemy, TNN's mages aren't a series threat anymore. With the sacred troops slaughtered, I have breathing room to start building up troops with my double wish casters. Bizarrely, Fomoria also manages to turn the tide in one of the stupidest battle I've seen. His Gift of Health boosted regenerating giants got instantly paralyzed by elvish casters, then managed to tank about 50 turns of ghost dogs and lightning until friendly fire forced an TirNoggian retreat. Things are less exciting from here on. A double bless engine is more than ridiculous and I'm pulling somewhere between 4 and 5 hundred gems a turn. Tartarian factories are in full swing and I'm churning out hundreds of summoned troops. If any army sticks it's head up it gets hammed about 5-6 casts of ghost riders, which is enough to do damage to anything other than a major attack army and even then the army loses practically all their held gems. I nabbed Gift of Health and cast genocide to cut down on the number of elves and the ability to recruit more elves. Fomoria took GoH back, feeding the nexus even more gems. I build up enough nature gems to steal Gift of Health back permanently and enough astral from that to cast Genocide a few more times. Tir na N'og actually managed to chump me on a fort invasion, and then immediately afterwards took out a massive army thanks to a mass controlling spell throwing my ranks into chaos while thunder bolting me into oblivion. I saw it coming but forgot to do something about it (these turns get very long and tiring, so stupid mistakes happen). He then marched his triumphant army back to my throne. In any normal circumstances that would probably have won them the game, but thanks to the sheer number of troops I have summoned, the army couldn't even damage the walls. Cyclops powered earth attacks were whittling down his mages, ghost riders drained their gems and whittled down some chaff. Meanwhile my armies were built back up, and I managed to fight back against the remaining ai nations that had nabbed half my empire during this war. Tir's player peaced out and went ai after realising they were fighting the tide. They were fighting better than me, but in the end that many gems and the right mages to take advantage of them just can't be beaten. The dam broke at that point, and my hordes of summoned snakes, mechanical men, wights and children of Tiamat swept the world, finally wiping out the obnoxious ai empires. Fomoria made an attempt to grab gift of health back, throwing a fair bit into it based on my astral income that turn, but was unable to compete with the mountain of gems that I'd thrown into it. Realising that the jig was up, they conceded, and I finished cleaning up the remaining ai to grabs the thrones I need. Since this started as a fight back, there were a lot of them. Final turn count – 106. In the end, the magic enhanced stuff was pretty much a non-starter in this game. Berries of gaea proved to be great utility items giving me a useful leg up to the powerful buffs by creating communions masters in paths that ought not to have communion masters, and some of the cheap and cheerful globals got cast before being overwritten but the usual suspects. The only new spell I cast in any serious numbers was horde of tiamat, which was my primary outlet for water gems. They proved to be effective line fighters, and provided my eastern armies with the bulk that they needed to finally crack Kailasa. The normal game doesn't have much use for late game water gems other than bottles of living water, so they were a nice outlet. We didn't get a single arena event all game, which was disappointing as they were modded to provide a random artifact and my sauromancers would be extemely likely to win at any point from mid-game to very late. I suspect it was bugged, but who can tell with this stupid game. GRAPHS!  Provinces – These show what a terrible time I was having in the mid game when I was under constant assault. It was touch and go at a lot of stages. TNN has done very well throughout the game.  Forts – Sauromancers were my strength, and for sauromancers I needed forts. I was in the lead until TNN used their massive income to build, and their armies to start capturing.  Income – Not THIS one is interesting. Just look at what TNN’s income, more than twice mine at one stage. That’s what growth 3 will do for you. Doesn’t look quite so clever after 3 or 4 Armageddon’s though. If there had been a blood nation left in the game I probably would have cast it a lot more.  Gems – I keep a respectable distance behind TNN. I am very diligent in my searching, but they are simply bigger. What you aren’t seeing here is my income from arcane nexus (about 60 to 80 astral gems a turn), and my wish engine income (about 350 a turn). That’s probably between 5x and 10x more than the legitimate gems seen here.  Dominion – I think TNN started preaching heavily. My tartarians were tearing down a lot of temples, but it would have taken much too long to work. It did keep my liches and worm mages in check at least.  Army Size – I cast a silly global at the end that turned me into a freespawn nation, blowing the graph off it’s axes. 
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Jun 18, 2017 17:51
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Bug Squash posted:Mapgoons EA another Summod with Magic Enhanced game How were the Neters and the Neter Children?
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Jun 20, 2017 22:19
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Amuys posted:How were the Neters and the Neter Children? I only summoned Neter of the Moon to be a wish engine. No way was I going to spend nature gems on Neter Children when I could have an extra faery queen or worm mage.
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Jun 20, 2017 22:37
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This was a really fun game but just grew to be too much of a slog by the end. I really liked the summonable aos si, each one causes some unrest per turn so I ran a bunch of them around the map with stealthy commanders. Hopefully this caused some disruption to the other players but they never mentioned it. I had good gem income and a lot of gold income but I can't compete with arcane nexus. I couldn't just save my gems either since several armageddons destroyed my gold income. I still had plenty of territory by the time I went AI but I don't think I could've beaten C'tis. Maybe if Fomoria had allied against him but Kremath's short-term replacement signed a NAP.
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Jun 20, 2017 23:56
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The single greatest thing ME adds are more ways to teleport, which is why the ME/summod LA Mapgoods game from ages ago that I won also ages ago ended relatively quickly. Make solo faery trod boot for prophet, end game. (The way to win as LA Atlantis is to sandbag a lot, never fight fair, especially against people who get really pissed that you don't fight them, start pretty close to sailing range to people who use an inept vamp focused LA Ulm build and fail to expand as LA Marignon, and then cast plague while 'bumping' people's human armies with Angakoks behind a wall of blood slaves that your Lore Masters scrub up, bing bong very simple) e: a handy short guide to sandbagging/not losing to overconfidence:  Oh and I went a scales imprisoned Dom 7ish N9A1 statue guy like P3C3G3L0M3 I think? The prod is v. v. important as LA Atlantis so you can get a) your actually good troops and b) poo poo out a jillion 7r crossbows instantly provided you are not so profligate you spend all your money on castles constantly jBrereton fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jun 21, 2017 |
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Jun 21, 2017 15:57
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Sailing is incredibly powerful if you can leverage it on the map. Note that some nations which get sailing connect income over sail such as LA mari and MA Vanheim. Lots of times the other guy can't do a single loving thing about it and you can generally extort these neighbors if you care to, or just kill them out of the blue while they fight someone else.
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Jun 22, 2017 14:40
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Atlantis is p. strategically mobile to be honest. Not just Sailing but a lot of Teleport + options for Gateway on its Forgiving Fathers + the situationally useful Stygian Paths (you want a base D4 mage at some point for BoT threats/Lich summoning/the +H sword so an angakok can claim thrones on top of your bishop fish/national H4 hero/PG/prophet, which means they can Stygian Paths too!).
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Jun 22, 2017 17:10
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imgay AAR I took MA C'tis to victory in this fairly standard middle age game. Stipulations and mods: blood nerf, no indy zotz, ai no recruit and no earf snake. That last one was a bit of a pain since Earf Snake was the objective best pretender choice for my nation, so instead I went with: CHAOS SNAKE  So MA C'tis is an excellent nation, their power comes from the quite fabulous marshmasters https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/?page=unit&unitq=marshmaster which are capable of going toe-to-toe in magical combat with anything else, research like crazy, and a few lucky individuals will be capable of either casting outright with boosters, or helping me ratchet up to all of the Global Enchantments and Summoning spells I want to cast. However, until I get enough research for them to get their signature spells, they are relatively slow at expansions and very vulnerable to a rush. I reasoned an awake pretender was essential to see me through to the midgame where my strengths could shine. While not as overwhelmingly unkillable as an Earf Snake, I was actually quite happy with what I ended up designing. Let’s walk through it. A nice little bonus of MA C'tis is that their dominion causes disease in all non-coldblooded units. I didn't want my pretender dieing to their own dominion by the end of year 2, so this gives us the cold-blooded status we need (plus the heat to ensure it's never fighting in the cold). The combat prowess of this design somes from the interaction of Dominion Strength 9, and Death 6. Together these give us Awe 1, and Fear 16. Awe forces untils to pass a moral check to even attack the snake, while fear reduces the moral of all units nearby. Most independant troops will simply quake in fear before the mighty snake, before fleeing in terror. That high dominion strength will also help push my poisonous dominion around, making my empire very unappealing to invade. To double down on making people reluctant to attack, I avoid boosting growth and throw my design points into magic instead. Marshmasters are already the best researchers in the game, but why not double down on a good thing? The extra 2 points of research will give a nice little boost to my shaman researchers as well. EARLY GAME The first few expansions went nice and smoothly. Starting army went west and snake went east, until they bordered with Sceleria and Man. Sceleria could be a useful supporter if we decide to go for an early Burdon of Time, and Man is a relatively weak nation so I'm fairly happy at this point. My snake takes a heavy cavalry lance to the chest and takes a few nasty wounds, seriously reducing his combat effectiveness. He wins the fight, but I would not have risked it had cavalry been reported on the map screen. Another thing missing from the Earf Snake is recuperation, so those wounds are permanent unless I cast Gift of Health. Then the villainy begins. Propelled on wings of pure hate, a Nazcan strike team steals the province my snake had just left, leaving my pretender isolated and vulnerable to eradication. Invading other player's territory is fairly unusual before the end of the first year, but as you may have guessed, this is chief devilman Jsoh we're now dealing with. Jsoh was found wandering irradiated wastes a few years ago, and educated wrong as a running gag, They are known for a hyperaggressive playstyle and unorthodox strategies. I'm unwilling to risk my pretender this early, and any attempt at negotiation is going to be viewed as weakness and prompt further attacks. I ram up the province defence in my eastern provinces, send my pretender into the sea, and keep a strict radio silence. This seems to work, and Nazca begin their assault on Man instead. Meanwhile the underwater province I just took reveals something interesting - a surprisingly high income. My dominion has spread into neighbouring provinces so I can see that a fair few of them all have 100+ incomes. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of Corbeau's new map generator, or if I'm just extremely lucky, but I'm not tiring my nose up at a gift like this. I join these provinces up with the rest of my empire so I can actually profit off them, and set about conquering the rest of the lake. MID GAME I've hit Enchantment 5 about this time, so I start aggressively cleaning up indy provinces with Marshmasters spamming horde of skeletons. Sceleria goes ai after losing some significant battles to Pythium, who are using a massive communion to hammer their enemies from behind their roman troops. I move to grab some Scelerian territories, and manage a diplomatic blunder here thanks to colour blindness, and mistake Pythium's flag for Sceleria and accidentally invade one of their provinces. Pythium... takes this badly, and is a right dick about it, so I retool my research to tackle their strategies. The massive communions will be capable of blasting out massive banishments, so I stop summoning longdead horsemen and race for Howl - which will see packs of wolves hunting down any backline mages left undefended. Even still, I estimate that a war would result in massive causalities which would seriously hamper my long term chances. I hold back, recruit more troops, and cover the land in scouts to wait for an opportunity… During this time I gear up marshmasters to go underwater and sweep the seas. As expected, I get many very high income provinces out of this, as well as the very tasty throne of bureaucracy. This acts like a mini throne of the pantokrater, giving me a nice boost to dominion push, at the cost of -100 gold a turn. Thanks to my very healthy income, I'm very happy to take this trade off. I build a lab to start casting Voice of Tiamat on every underwater province (which combined with my diligent site searcher gives me my absurd gem income late game), and ratchet up to a queen of elemental water. At this stage I work up some globals. I go from Mother Oak to Gift of Health, and research up to be able to cast Burdon of Time and Vengeful Waters. I decide not to cast these yet - I'm making mad gold from populations so I didn't want to hurt that and antagonise everyone else, and throwing out a Venegful Water wouldn't be helpful yet as all combat was well outside of my dominion. I was quite happy to have that in reserve however. Pythium dispels my globals (I was very happy for them to waste their astrals on that rather than do something combat related with them), but then makes the catastrophic mistake I'd been waiting for. During their storming of Sceleria's cap, they set their mages to cast flashy spells, killing every communicant they had by dumping excessive fatigue into them. They lose an absurd amount of the suckers, costing them thousands of gold and neutering their communicant artillery. They were also fighting with Tien Chi for some reason, leaving them massively overextended as well as weakened. This was as clear an invitation as I was ever going to get, so I march into Pythium lands backed up with mages casting army wide buffs on a hundreds of elite warriors. Pythium's scattered armies destroy themselves trying to attack these groups, and the raiding parties they try to compensate with break against high province defence set in a few key provinces. Eventually, with their Pretender trapped under siege in Sceleria's capitol, Pythium goes ai and I sweep the majority of the rest of their lands. At the end of the conquest, I border the devil Jsoh on both my East and West borders. LATE GAME Mother Oak and Gift of Health come back up, and I throw down a Well of Misery. With my income the incidental 20% worldwide gold boost is actually substantial, and C'tis always has use for extra death gems. I craft a skull mask for my pretender and begin summoning Tartarians. These are a nice to have things, but not game winners. For the game winner, I set high death marshmasters to produce 4 liches, along with a set of skull staffs and skull masks - bringing them up to the critical death 6 for the astounding Ghost Riders attack spell. The nature gems are turned into faerie queens (one of which is boosted up to Air 4 to manufacture air crowns). For good measure I throw out a Worm Mage too. The boost and crowns for the faerie queens is exceedingly expensive, but with my wide Voice of Tiamat air income I'm able to afford it. The benefit that it gives if more than worth the expense. An air 4 mage can cast Fog Warriors on turn 1, protecting the entire army from battlefield wide attack spells - most notably Rain of Stone. By this stage I have a good feel for the Nazcan gimmick. Their summonable sacred unit is the Supuya, an excellent troop in general, an ethereal ghost with magical weaponry. Jsoh has taken the very unusual bless of Astral 9, Blood 9 (giving Magic Restistance +3, Twist Fate, Strength +4 and Blood Vengeance) to compliment them. I was confused by this choice at first, but once I think it through I realise it's obnoxiousness. In general the best counter most people would have to ethereal troops would be mages casting attack spells. Unfortunately this would trigger blood vengeance - killing an expensive mage in exchange for free troops. Even worse, if I understand the Dom4 mechanics correctly, the first killing hit would be ignored due to Twist Fate, Blood Vengeance would still be triggered, and you would be out a mage and the Supuya would still be alive. I've dealt with similar situations before, and my go-to was to bring in astral mages to cast paralyse and mind control. The usually irrelevant boost of Magic Resistance would actually come into its own here, and protect the Supayas from this. Against high magic res I would try to throw down a massive cascade spam - but the fact that the Supuyas are undead protects them from the worst of the effects of fatigue stacking. And twist fate and blood vengance then protects them from banishment, my usual counter to undead. All in all, it's a major pickle, and I'm in no doubt how Nazca has managed to sweep Man and Tien Chi from the board at this stage. So how do I deal with this? Well, frankly you don't, there's no clean solution. I've got to rely on my gem and gold income to win a war of attrition. Opening skirmishes took place on a throne province on our border. It was in my dominion, and the throne defenders had been dieing off from disease so I kind of considered it mine. I had to mass on the border for a turn, so Nazca had the opportunity to fly a Rain of Stones caster into it. I had gotten lazy with my faery queens, so the one accompanying my army had been scripted to cast Storm>Summon Air Power>Fog Warriors, resulting in my army taking massive damage. Luckily I had a turn 1 Life After Feath cast, so most of my mages were saved (lost the faery queen, who apparently doesn't resurrect). At the end of the battle I route, with moderate losses and most of the Marshmasters transformed into nice upkeep-free undead mages. Not a great start, but I had only thrown minimal forces at the problem then. Since there's no point going loud if you don't go big, I qued up four casts of ghost riders to start taking out Nazca's unforted temples and lucrative farmlands. I had scouts everywhere, so these magic attacks could be followed up with a scout attack to conquer the now undefended province. I pulled this trick the next turn on the throne, clearing out the defenders. I moved a Rain of Stones capable Tartarian in as a defensive move the next turn, scripted to cast Rain of Stones on turns one and two before retreating. This turned out extremely well, and the Nazcan reclamation force took massive casualties. A Tartarian Cyclops lets me summon up a pair of King of Earth, and I use these to start assassinating Nazcan priests with Earth Attack that were being used to ferry sacred flying undead armies around. On the Western front I manage to make some progress. There's an awkward stalemate formed around Pythium's capitol which was under Nazcan siege, where a forted throne is held by Nazca and I have a fort adjacent to it. I launch a probing attack at the sieging forces, mostly to try and delay its capture. As before these took massive damage and eventually retreated, but managed to take most of the Supuya's out with them. I had decided to use a few sacrificial marshmasters to cast Ice Strike to whittle down their numbers. I don't hear it getting used very much, but in my experience Ice Strike works very well for dealing damage to low protection ethereal undead. Despite its name it doesn't do ice damage so the undead ice defence is useless, but it still counts as a magical attack so it goes straight through ethereal. Life After Death of course lets me get double use out the mages when blood vengeance kills them. An expensive counter, but I had money to burn, and Nazca didn’t. Nazca casts Stellar Focus and dispels Well of Misery. Gift of Health gets overridden by Bandar Log casting Eternal Pyre, and Nazca starts mind hunting my Tartarians. Purely to deny them Pearls, I override the Stellar Focus and steal it for myself (dispelling it would have cost about the same, and left the door open for someone casting something I wouldn't like. In the hole left by Well of Misery I throw my Water gem stockpile into a massive Vengeful Water. I give up on recasting Gift of Health since I've now got a high level mage of every path, and I need the N for churning out Faery Queens. Eventually the event that I'm waiting on happens, Nazca deploys their strategy undead force.  JSOH.png This is a maneurer I've seen Jsoh deploy before - a force of thousands of chaff undead sitting in their capitol to intimidate opposition as a fleet in waiting, or thrown at an opponent as a battering ram to force them to back off. I'd been waiting for this. The blob could go in two directions, so I made sure they would be welcome in either. To the West, I put a D5 Tartarian with equipment boosted to D7 set to cast Undead Mastery. To the South I put a Flame Spirit with equipment boosting them to F5 set to cast Fire Storm. The undead went South.  Beautiful. This was an expenditure of 60 fire gems, but I'm not spending them on anything else so it's gems well spent imo. Another thorn in my side - a treelord sitting in a very inconvenient place gets taken down by communion casting mind control. I consider Gift of Reasoning it, but decide again wasting the gems on a vanity project. Jsoh had used it as a summoning bomb on Pythium, a use of treelords I’m always delighted to see. Nazca start to crumble from here on out. Raiding parties get wiped out by Earth Attack and Ghost Riders. Tartarians cloud trapeze into random provinces as Rain of Stones traps. I manage to surround the army besieging Pythium's cap and attack them on mass, wiping them out. Forts start popping with minimal losses thanks to Fog Warriors. Nazcan mages generally require a turn to cast earth power to get up to a high enough level to cast Rain of Stones, giving my forces enough time to cast defensive buffs. I expected a mage with earth boots to cast a turn one suicide rain of stones with every storming, but in the end I believe Nazca just didn't have the earth income to manage it. In a final huzzah a defending force tried to use Fire Storm against me. I'd been expecting a Parthian shot, and a combination of Fire Fend from a mercenary mage and regeneration saved my army. Nazca then went ai. Thanks to the massive size of the Nazcan empire, I was left within striking distance of the last few throne points I needed. Bandar Log decided to invade then in fairly disastrous campaign for them. They lose 8 mages a turn to Vengeful Water and bounce of an army of gold and fire storm combo. A massive force of ai Nazcans finally run into my D7 Tartarians!  I was so glad I got to see this finally happen. Expecting shenanigans at any seconds since Ramc was in the game (doing okish as notorious bad nation Machaka), I had triple the gems I needed on all my mages, plus extra faery queens ready to decloak if one supporting the army was killed. Nothing like that happened however - Bandor Log desperately retreated, and my Fort storms went off without a hitch. I claimed five thrones in one turn to secure the win. Graphs  Provinces – I stay competitive throughout, although start off slow. Once I start conquering the seas I get a nice buffer.  Forts – What the Christ is Bandor Log doing???  Income - I guess this explains where BL got the forts from. They must have had amazing scales  Gems – Source of victory. This is half Voice of Tiamat spam, and half the extreme site search effectiveness of Marshmasters. Gems win games friends.  Research – Marshmasters again. I had mages casting battle winning spells well before anyone else, and had the gems to take advantage.  Dominion – Machaka started temple spamming like crazy in the late game, and I have no idea why. They would have popped like grapes to Ghost Riders if I needed them to go.  Army size – My defensive buffs keep my armies alive and fighting fit, leading to the cascade of forts being cracked at the end of the game. Bandar Log and Ulm clearly had an epic battle at some point.
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Jul 2, 2017 12:44
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Bug Squash posted:Pythium dispels my globals (I was very happy for them to waste their astrals on that rather than do something combat related with them), but then makes the catastrophic mistake I'd been waiting for. During their storming of Sceleria's cap, they set their mages to cast flashy spells, killing every communicant they had by dumping excessive fatigue into them. They lose an absurd amount of the suckers, costing them thousands of gold and neutering their communicant artillery. This is the problem I always have with communions, something as small as a single body ethereal buffed tanky unit stuck in the corner of the map (such as a body ethereal cave drake) surrounded by chaff it cant kill and that cant kill it, can be the difference between the battle ending on turn 20 and lasting until turn 40 killing off thousands of golds worth of communion slaves as the masters cast max range evocations that keep missing, and useless buffs/summons. To me the best way to beat a big communion seems to be to make some tanky thugs/summons, get mages to buff them and have them sit in the corners of the map, you have a good chance to kill a tonne of communion slaves that way!
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Jul 2, 2017 13:50
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I believe MA Ctis was patched to always protect it's pretender against it's dominion effect.
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Jul 2, 2017 15:15
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Applebee123 posted:This is the problem I always have with communions, something as small as a single body ethereal buffed tanky unit stuck in the corner of the map (such as a body ethereal cave drake) surrounded by chaff it cant kill and that cant kill it, can be the difference between the battle ending on turn 20 and lasting until turn 40 killing off thousands of golds worth of communion slaves as the masters cast max range evocations that keep missing, and useless buffs/summons. Big communions are their own worst enemy. It gives the mages in them access to huge fatigue spells, which they then cast and kill all their communion slaves. In general I'd never use more than 4 communion slaves (although I'd have some more following after the army to replace loses). The three kinds of communions I've used successfully are: 1. Cascade spam Used with 4 slaves and about 12 masters (usually all S1 mages). The two masters at the top of the casting order cast power of the spheres and light of the northern star. This combination means that the masters are effectively S4, but out-leveled by the slaves according to the arcane wizardry of communion maths. This means that each cast of stellar cascades only adds a few points of fatigue to the slaves. This is enough to put entire armies to sleep and last an entire battle. 2. Paralyze/Mind Control/Soul Slay Starts out pretty much the same as cascade spam, but with single target spells. These are 100% accurate so you don't wind up fatigue killing your communion trying to kill the last few enemies. It will eventually kill the slaves if you bring it into a enormous battle. 3. Suicide communion The communion slaves will die, but they are used to cast a spell that will win a critical battle (eg. master enslave). It doesn't matter if they don't have the paths to cast the spell and take double fatigue, they're there to die. You can add some extra survivability to the slaves by having a master cast enlarge or regenerate if you find indy shamans, but in general you should always be prepared to lose every communion slave you commit to a battle, and plan around that.
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Jul 2, 2017 15:40
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Applebee123 posted:This is the problem I always have with communions, something as small as a single body ethereal buffed tanky unit stuck in the corner of the map (such as a body ethereal cave drake) surrounded by chaff it cant kill and that cant kill it, can be the difference between the battle ending on turn 20 and lasting until turn 40 killing off thousands of golds worth of communion slaves as the masters cast max range evocations that keep missing, and useless buffs/summons. A defensive earthquake/rain of stones is feared for a reason.
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Jul 2, 2017 15:48
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Speleothing posted:I believe MA Ctis was patched to always protect it's pretender against it's dominion effect. My experience has borne this out. I ran a human PG for them once and was fine. I was in the game as Machaka and basically was always kind of crippled compared to everyone else from a bad start. Alas.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:07
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Ramc posted:My experience has borne this out. I ran a human PG for them once and was fine. Is there such a thing as a good start as Machaka?
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Jul 2, 2017 16:25
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Bug Squash posted:Is there such a thing as a good start as Machaka? I am not sure.
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Jul 2, 2017 16:56
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Was the bad start indie related or what? If it's map related, that's relevant to my interests.
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Jul 3, 2017 02:45
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Bug Squash posted:While not as overwhelmingly unkillable as an Earf Snake, I was actually quite happy with what I ended up designing. Let’s walk through it. Since dom4 sacreds and your god are always immune to fart dom
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Jul 4, 2017 04:52
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I was Pythium in that game! The main problem was that I was suffering from gigantic Dominions burnout after playing with some newer members of the community with all kinds of mods on, recording one of the games for the internet, plus personal life stuff getting in the way, which contributed to running my communion around as a giant doomstack (literally always a bad idea) and generally acting like a huge dickhead because I knew I was leaving the game alone for a while after. So although MA Pythium is quite a good faction in general (albeit as my first time playing as them), excellent at fighting undead, hence the early Scelaria KO, very solid against large armies using evocation, and capable of using luck/ethereality-based stuff to defend against RoS on the defensive, they are super not well positioned to fight Foul Vapors without lucking into a Lizard Shaman province, or somehow obtaining a huge earth income so you can empower a guy to make crystal matrices for tribal rando N1 mages to cast Serpent's Blessing, which I did not end up doing despite getting an E2 mage from an event. The defence against Foul Vapors is also quite a bit further up the tech tree than the original spell, and if you're an overly aggressive idiot who is using their mages to dunk on Scelaria your research is not going to be great, which is a Big Problem (MA Pythium's sacreds don't have magic weapons in the base game, which means you really need to take your Theurgs with you to Solar Rays the enemy Shadow Vestals if you want to stand a chance), especially since MA Ctis has famously good research off the back of its recruit-anywhere Marshmasters. Also instead of picking a more game-winning N9 build that would have kept my mages and communicants 100% fine wrt fatigue damage, I went for The Most Qualified PG in History, a Dormant Divine Emperor F4S6N1B1 O0P1H1G3L2M1 (Just Horrible), but C'tis played the game well, and deserved the win for sure. jBrereton fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Jul 4, 2017 |
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Jul 4, 2017 13:36
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Corbeau posted:Was the bad start indie related or what? If it's map related, that's relevant to my interests. It does feel like there are a lot of terrain chokepoints that make nations without special terrain movement rules effectively MM1 when it counts. My northern cap circle was basically wastes, and the east past my cap circle was the giant lake. I didn't pick an earth snake so I didn't get to play in it. The giant like dozen+ province lake was probably a mistake because it gave an outsize benefit to anyone who lucked into a water-accessible PG.
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Jul 4, 2017 17:23
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Ramc posted:It does feel like there are a lot of terrain chokepoints that make nations without special terrain movement rules effectively MM1 when it counts. My northern cap circle was basically wastes, and the east past my cap circle was the giant lake. I didn't pick an earth snake so I didn't get to play in it. The giant like dozen+ province lake was probably a mistake because it gave an outsize benefit to anyone who lucked into a water-accessible PG.
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Jul 4, 2017 17:37
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there was more under water provinces in that game because only 11 people signed up and the map maker cant make a 11 player map, so it had 1 unused water start :)
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Jul 4, 2017 22:31
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I had a bunch of half finished propaganda pictures in case diplomacy didn't go my way, this here is the only one I actually bothered completing.
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Jul 5, 2017 17:38
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Jul 6, 2017 17:54
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The latest version of JBBM is out! Click the image to download it  New stuff: Admiral Torgrin's Ghost Ship Is Now Ghostlier: - The crew is ethereal + the man himself and the commanders spread cold and are spooky. Blood changes: - Leech and send to hell/cold hell can miss, but send to hell/cold hell are now AoE to make up for it a bit - The cost of things is generally a bit higher, including most national summons (esp Mictlan and Lanka) - AC and The Looming Hell swapped around in terms of research level, TRILLWINTER moved up from 6 to 7 - Casting AC will mark your S4/B4+ mages every turn. Astral changes: - The spells for killing/controlling magic beings now aren't as bad. Oppsition works like Soul Slay, Control now doesn't require a gem and has 35+5/level at S3 range. - Divine Name + GoR are much cheaper (5 gems instead of Loads). Kailasa/BL/Patala buffs: - A ~new misc item~ at Constr 2 E1S1 which gives +6 res, because their research was pretty bad - Hypnotize now works in close combat (once). Minor Marshmaster nerf: - They're 25 gold more expensive. Yomi Slothpower instead of Chaos power - It's good. Stuff that was already in: MM2 indies, cheaper/faster domes, costlier hoburgs, mortal vampires, no indie zotz, stat nerfs for van + pan, stat buffs for pale ones, repop, UW nations getting land recruits, snek nerfs, and other well-labelled features jBrereton fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Jul 10, 2017 |
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Jul 10, 2017 10:47
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Dominions4/comments/6mf7is/a_tiny_story_i_needed_to_share/
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Jul 11, 2017 06:54
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I desperately want a version of this game that doesn't bog down in endgame micro. It would be incredible, but it's so hard to keep up with in any enjoyable fashion. 
Corbeau fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jul 23, 2017 |
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Jul 23, 2017 20:27
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Corbeau posted:I desperately want a version of this game that doesn't bog down in endgame micro. It would be incredible, but it's so hard to keep up with in any enjoyable fashion. Are there ANY 4x games that don't get bogged down with micro?
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Jul 23, 2017 22:21
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Yes, that's a problem with every 4x, and the reason I generally dislike 4x games despite usually liking the concept behind them. I'm pretty sure it's a solvable design issue, just not an easy one, and 4x as a genre is not one known for innovation.
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Jul 23, 2017 22:22
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The problem is caused by success, leading to larger quantities of things to manage. Solium Infernum can't really be called a 4x, but it did fix the issue but putting a limit on the number of actions per turn. The downside is that growing in size just makes you a bigger target, without necessarily granting you more power. Distant Worlds tries to handle things by giving control to AI and letting the player interfere as much or as little as they like. Unfortunately, AI is always worse than a player, so people who care about optimization end up trying to manage everything anyway. If defeat resulted in the defeated player joining the winner, then you could have successful multiplayer games where the winners do expand and grow more powerful without massively increasing the load on an individual player. That would require a defeated player to actually support the winner rather than sabotage them, which can be difficult to incentivise.
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Jul 23, 2017 22:40
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Here is probably the fourth or fifth best mod ever made for Dominions: It's the mortal vamps mod but a Vampire Lord can turn into a misty cloud if it doesn't die too much, and then turn back later. They eat pop and cause unrest, more when they are being misty + healing afflictions. It's Good (tm).
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Aug 3, 2017 16:57
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O god I give up in 30yearwar, Ermor broke me  I need two more points to win, I have Ermor's fort under siege with the last throne I need, I have for several turns now. I'm utterly dependent on communions and he just never stops raining remote attacks on me, then I watch the communion fall apart because the master that was supposed to cast Army of Gold or Relief or Fog Warriors got assassinated during the magic attack phase. I've thrown almost half my army into this grinder and now I give up, scripting these things takes forever and watching it all fall apart before the battle even starts is killing me inside. I'd attack another throne but underwater movement takes forever and I am trying to defend all my other thrones at the same time and all I have to do it with are Mind Lords, lobos and slave mage communions  .
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Aug 12, 2017 03:37
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| # ? May 10, 2024 10:26 |
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Oh no you don't, not again. You already hosed me in nowinners, I need you to stay in 30years long enough to ensure Arco doesn't profit from their brutal imperialism.
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Aug 12, 2017 09:14
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