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scavy131 posted:If it's anything like CoE4, the only safe way to dig down from Elysium to the Inferno is making sure the tunnel in Agartha is at least 4 tiles long and then you flood the tunnel the same turn you dig into the Inferno. That way you can only get to Inferno if you have an aquatic/amphibious unit, and demons can't get out because they'll drown when they end a turn underwater. I tried again with a dry tunnel and All the Storm Giants Ever with a fire resistant front line of magma warriors. It worked and I beat the demon lords up and took their lunch money. If anyone wants to muck about in the planes without the AI killing itself and ending the game I recommend at least one dwarf AI. One of their main commanders is immobile so you can pen them in their starting citadel without them suiciding.
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 15:29 |
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AmishSpecialForces posted:I tried again with a dry tunnel and All the Storm Giants Ever with a fire resistant front line of magma warriors. It worked and I beat the demon lords up and took their lunch money. If anyone wants to muck about in the planes without the AI killing itself and ending the game I recommend at least one dwarf AI. One of their main commanders is immobile so you can pen them in their starting citadel without them suiciding. I fully second having at least 1 designated dwarf AI in most games, particularly if you're interested in exploring some of the lategame content more fully. For pretty much any game they don't really get wiped out but won't themselves snowball insanely fast unless everyone completely drops the ball and lets the dwarves colonize every mine in Elysium.
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Or you could use the Bystander mod to have an AI which is both immobile/non-expanding and practically invincible. You won't get the victory screen, but once you've beaten everyone else and explored what you wanted to explore, that's mostly the same thing, I'd say.
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Bernicus Sanderius, part 14![]() Dang, that's some range on the demons. I'm not entirely sure how their AI works but hey, at least that's one stack someone else has to deal with. ![]() Of course, the same behavior means I have to chase these assholes down now. ![]() My newly recruited ballistae make a valiant attempt to hold the port, but they wind up a little bit short and the fiend kills them both before they can reload. That's fine, retaking it will give Lavinia an easy fight while she recovers. ![]() I'm not entirely sure what this sphinx does, but there's a nonzero chance it'll summon horrors so I'll leave it well alone for now. Besides, more kobolds are slipping in from the west to reclaim their hidey holes. ![]() Ouch. Those green kobold archers put in some work, and they've got an upgraded caster too. ![]() I start pushing in with reinforcements from the dark citadel and spot another big kobold stack incoming. This one's got a few new tricks. ![]() Dragonspawns are upgraded kobolds available once they tech up to their higher level casters. They get some extra survivability, wings, and a small breath weapon. They cost magic gems, but kobolds don't actually have a lot of rituals to spend gems on, and these guys are surprisingly legit. These ones are relatively unthreatening since their breath doesn't really do anything that their poison bows don't already do, though. ![]() The dragonspawn stack wanders off, so I redirect my forces towards a lightly defended kobold mine. ![]() I spot yet another hatchery mine down south, too. ![]() Whoops. Even with most of my big AoE spells turned off I still manage to lose twice as many troops to friendly fire as I do to the kobolds. Granted they're unupgraded kobolds so that's a low bar to clear, but still. ![]() It could be worse; I lose 12 troops to traps alone against the much weaker stack in the mine (there were about 40 kobolds here to begin with, but after ~60 ballistae shots before the battle not so much.) ![]() A combined wave of devils bounces off the port. I wish these things would slow down already. ![]() A newly recruited mercenary pyromancer takes some troops and reclaims the ruins of Ravenharbor. It looks like we may actually have a little bit of breathing room on the front against the demons, although it's hard to be sure because some of them are stealthy. ![]() I finally manage to get a reveler in to the unburnt ancient forest behind the western front. ![]() My wizard is rapidly running out of troops and these guys have a trap-filled stronghold with a dragon squatting on it, so I bring up some reinforcements while I wait for the dragon to vacate. ![]() Argh, they've already set up shop in the other mine behind me. ![]() You can do it, little fellas ![]() ![]() Finally manage to catch up to these assholes camped out in a jungle village. ![]() There are still a few other demon stacks running around the middle of the map, but there's enough of a break in the tide for Lavinia to fly across the channel and reach the gate. ![]() As an advocate for prison reform, Bernie does not approve of the attempt to imprison the entire population of Elysium in Hell. Punishment is swift. ![]() The lingering demon incursion is cleaned up from the imperial isle. ![]() These things have penetrated all the way to the kobold front. ![]() They do a fair bit of damage, but honestly not too shabby. Probably would have been a lot worse without mage & ballista support. ![]() This shows up for sale for only 57 gold. Sure, I'll take free money. ![]() With my forces depleted and the kobolds on the offensive I decide to join up my two wizard stacks. ![]() Meanwhile, the scourge lord has decided to take full advantage of my forces being tied up with kobolds and demons. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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So, is that the Gate shut down, then?
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Yep, the gate is destroyed and no new demons are coming. It was extremely lucky that the event only fired this late in the game, and on an island, since it meant only fliers really bothered coming through; if the gate had land access to the rest of the continent there would have been more and tougher invaders to deal with and even getting close to the gate would have been tough, even for the God-Empress.
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Please tell me there are more dragonesque kobold and the description has the scribe go into more and more denial.
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the holy poopacy posted:Yep, the gate is destroyed and no new demons are coming. It was extremely lucky that the event only fired this late in the game, and on an island, since it meant only fliers really bothered coming through; if the gate had land access to the rest of the continent there would have been more and tougher invaders to deal with and even getting close to the gate would have been tough, even for the God-Empress. Thinking about it, it also means that they probably weren't able to drag sinners back to the gate, since I don't think they have either flying or the ability to swim. That's nice because it means you don't have to worry about them reopening it either unless they can do it from the Inferno side?
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Zengetsu posted:Thinking about it, it also means that they probably weren't able to drag sinners back to the gate, since I don't think they have either flying or the ability to swim. That's nice because it means you don't have to worry about them reopening it either unless they can do it from the Inferno side? Huh, I suppose so. I've never really concerned myself much with the details of the demons' sinner-harvesting behavior since I've found the event to be so binary; either someone has forces capable of shutting it down (probably the player) or else demons murder everything in short order.
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Yeah, inferno units use a pathfinding algorithm to route to places with sinners, so only the flying units poured through because of the island location. After patch 1.02 fixed how interplanar portals worked and spawned in worldgen so they worked as intended, the pathfinding became a problem. Because Inferno always spawns with a open gate to Aztlan in it, the realm of the mesoamerican blood gods. Aztlan has portals to Hades and the Primal plane as well, and the Primal plane goes straight to the elemental plane, and there are a bunch of portals in elysium to the various parts of the elemental plane that spawn in every game, some permanent, some random. The pathfinding for inferno units started trying to trace a route through multiple planes of existence using the permanent portals to trickle into elysium, drowning underwater or falling afoul of other environmental effects along the way. This caused turns to take anywhere from several minutes to 20+ minutes to resolve. This was fixed in 1.03 so inferno ai just won't consider planes other than the underground, elysium, or sky when trying to find sinners.
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Telsa Cola posted:Please tell me there are more dragonesque kobold and the description has the scribe go into more and more denial. The scribe descriptions are low key some of the highlights of CoE 5.
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So the pathfinding algorithms give the AI perfect knowledge of the entire map in every plane?
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Can the demons move sinners over water? If not then the invasion should be over for good.
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the holy poopacy posted:Huh, I suppose so. I've never really concerned myself much with the details of the demons' sinner-harvesting behavior since I've found the event to be so binary; either someone has forces capable of shutting it down (probably the player) or else demons murder everything in short order. I didn't in previous versions, but I've had a real nasty surprise learning that they can reopen the gate using Sinners now. It means cleaning up the stragglers after closing the portal is a lot more important than it used to be. Got caught out with some demon reopening a gate in what I thought had been a secured are because he had been gathering up sinners around the AI's territory. From what I've heard, that's new to CoE5.
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I hope we'll get to see some of the other Planes that're depicted in CoE5. While I love CoE4 one of the harder things to deal with is that it's almost impossible to have a faction that can reliably traverse most realms (if they can traverse them or reach them at all) so it's really neat to see some of the new stuff they've added. The world definitely seems more dynamic than CoE4. If the Burgemeisters are still a faction, when I inevitably buy CoE5 I really want to see a big match of just Kobolds, Hoburgs and Hoburg necromancers. Just the epic battle of trash armies as kobolds and hobbits and undead hobbits battle each other by the hundreds.
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All of the previous factions still exist so hoburg cage match is possible
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Bernicus Sanderius, part 15![]() Bernie has completely explored one wing of the Elemental Plane of Earth and found only the hard border of the Void. ![]() The joint mage stack is ready to tackle the remaining big mine, and runs into this stack in the way. Drakes are elite troops available to kobolds; they're much beefier than kobolds and have AoE breath weapons, but they're nothing especially scary. Particularly when your front line is fireproof and you're facing fire drakes. ![]() Lavinia goes to deal with a wandering phase spider stack and they take out over half her HP before she puts them down. ![]() Her husband takes on a big elemental stack. Earth elementals can burrow underground to pop out behind your lines, which makes things a little bit messy, but sheer numbers overwhelm them and the losses are only a handful of archers. ![]() Ugh. The kobolds are on the attack again and I haven't even made my way back down to the mine yet. ![]() My hastily assembled defenders do some work, but it's not nearly enough. Taking out all 20 of the melee dragon spawn will help, though. ![]() Bernie finds some more gold sites embedded in the walls. The geodes themselves are walkable, but they don't lead anywhere interesting. ![]() Meanwhile in Nexus I get a recruitment offer for the commander version of the Ether Warriors. This guy gets some neat spells including a charm, and more importantly, he's my first non-insane commander in the Elemental Planes. ![]() The wizard stack meets up with the black kobold prophet and his dragon spawns. ![]() His spell rolls are pretty easy for us. Most summons aren't that good, and while wide area weakness has its uses I'm still pretty much going to be killing one kobold per stab even with a strength penalty. ![]() I got another old wizard recruitment offer ![]() ![]() It looks like the Plane of Earth is a bust. There's definitely more to it than this, but there's no guarantee that every part of the plane will be connected. On the plus side the Ether Lord has met up with Bernie and takes charge of the whole stack, which means I can now move Bernie around without having to pause every few turns for Bernie to sit and be insane from void sickness. ![]() I finally reach the mine and most of the kobolds have already left on their counteroffensive. That's fine by me, since the dragon is still here and the less backup it has the better. ![]() It gets obliterated by a double volley of Call Lightning. The white kobolds are immune to lightning, but very vulnerable to being stabbed by legionaries. ![]() Burrowing earth elementals actually manage to kill Bernie's Renatus backup. Thankfully, this just means he respawns in Hades and needs to find his way back to Elysium. ![]() Unfortunately, Hades can be a pretty loving scary place. RIP x2. ![]() A giant pack of maenads bumps into a couple bears and tears them apart with their bare hands. Sisters doing it on their own! ![]() As soon as I leave the mine to go take out the next one the kobolds' pet dragon swoops in and recaptures it ![]() ![]() My stack of reinforcements moves in to reclaim the city, at least. ![]() Also, the dragon still sees its original mine as its home and on its way back there it helpfully rams itself headlong into my wizards, who kill it with only minor friendly fire casualties. ![]() With the dragon gone, I send the legions in to seize the practically defenseless kobold lairs in the south while the wizards move on to the slightly less defenseless mine. ![]() They don't have any traps up or anything yet, so in wizard terms it's still basically defenseless. ![]() I've finally got all 3 of the big mines under control. Having 2 iron mines and a gem deposit practically within a turn's movement from their home lair would have been a very strong start for the kobolds, it's no wonder they killed one AI by themselves and outlasted many others. ![]() Bernie and the void lords fight their way through the lightning-spitting guardian statues to one of the outer gates in Nexus. ![]() It leads out of the Elemental Planes, but not back to earth. Welcome to the Primal Lands. ![]() They're mostly populated by animals (who get a buff here) and the occasional primordial nature god, but there are some small settlements here populated by fir bolgs. ![]() They're only moderately beefier than human troops (not counting the experience they've accumulated for sitting here all game), but still pretty decent resistance for a mere farm. ![]() Especially since it turns out they have some stealthy backup. Sidhe warriors are considerably beefier than human troops, and they get mirror images too. ![]() Still, they are not much threat for a planewalking god. The void lord even grabs a new recruit for the legion.
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Bernie has had one very familiar sounding character arc: Mortal becomes a god and then fucks off somewhere hidden and the world instantly falls apart afterwards...
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Banemaster posted:Bernie has had one very familiar sounding character arc: Mortal becomes a god and then fucks off somewhere hidden and the world instantly falls apart afterwards... Sigmar got godknapped it wasn't his fault.
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Banemaster posted:Bernie has had one very familiar sounding character arc: Mortal becomes a god and then fucks off somewhere hidden and the world instantly falls apart afterwards... He also went senile at some point.
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Noticed you got a Heliodromus and didn't post its description. quote:One of the more important cults in the imperial army and legal courts is the Cult of the Conquering Sun. Initially it was a cult whose adherents were clerks, judges and other scribes who need daylight for their work, but lately it has won more and more influence in the Senatorial armies. Today their priests claim that the sun and the presence of its priests will lead to unprecedented victories. They started their rise to prominence in the armies a few decades ago during the wars against the rebellious Necromancer Solidorus, against whom the powers of the Heliodromi were exceedingly efficacious. Any connection between Solidorus and a local chapter of the Sun Cult has been deemed by a legal court to be unwarranted rumors bordering on slander. The order is still struggling to construct a good theological solution to why there is night if the sun is invincible. So yeah, the clerks and bureaucrats engineered a way into the military hierarchy by having one of their own become a necromancer weak against their magic. And those same bureaucrats have wild orgies in the woods that attract satyrs and turn women into maenads.
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Caracalla did IX/XI solar flame can't melt animated bones
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Pharohman777 posted:Noticed you got a Heliodromus and didn't post its description. I guess they couldn't find a wild necromancer to deal with? I mean, it's not like 'light/fire beats undead' wouldn't be unknown thanks to the other sun guys in the military.
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Bloodly posted:I guess they couldn't find a wild necromancer to deal with? I mean, it's not like 'light/fire beats undead' wouldn't be unknown thanks to the other sun guys in the military. Eh, Solidorius being a secret member of the sun cult means that the cult can ask him to attack with undead in ways that make a purely senatorial military look weak or incompetent while the army associated with the sun cult gets attacked in the same ways and obliterates the undead forces.
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Bernicus Sanderius, part 16![]() Lavinia blunders into an ambush in a hamlet. ![]() ...which turns out to be an entire dragon. ![]() God vs. dragon is not a very fair fight, for the dragon. But this does mean there must be yet another kobold stronghold nearby, the dragons don't stray far from home. ![]() Bernie has no trouble knocking over a larger fir bolg settlement, even with more sidhe to contend with. ![]() The kobolds aren't yielding their home turf without a fight. ![]() I mean, it's not much of one. But it is, technically, a fight. ![]() So here's that hidden kobold lair. Ugh, it's all green kobolds. ![]() The god-empress isn't immune to poison, so I'll hold off and let the wizards take care of that. But she can definitely knock over this tower. ![]() Unfortunately we aren't the only ones with this idea. Another scourge lord stack is attacking our northern line. ![]() The ballistae pick off some chaff, but there's not nearly enough firepower for the scourge lord's elites. ![]() The recently taken lake port falls next. ![]() Bernie and the void lord continue to explore the Primal Plane. It follows the same weather pattern as Elysium, but it has some mystic columns with the same temperature inverting properties. They don't seem to attract as many horrors here as the one on the main map does, or else I'd be up to my eyeballs in phase spiders. ![]() Lavinia joins the main army to evict the kobolds from another mine. ![]() Irritatingly, another kobold stack has slipped past so Lavinia has to play whack-a-mole with the cleared mines ![]() ![]() Lavinia picks up some reinforcements and chases down the intruders. ![]() The Primal Lands aren't shaping up to be terribly interesting. There aren't that many settlements, mostly just a bunch of super dense forests and snow. Bernie heads back to see what else Nexus has to offer, but a kraken has crawled up onto land and is squatting on the portal. ![]() Animals receive the "Primal" modifier from hanging out here, which gives them some vague sort of buff. It's still not very threatening at all. ![]() The old wizard pushes on into the frontier in the hopes of finding the kobolds' hidey hole, but runs into more scourge troops. That's somewhat alarming; he apparently controls the entire west coast of the map. (I mean, we control something like 2/3 of the continent. But still.) ![]() Beyond the towers he does find some mines, but no kobolds. Not entirely sure what's been going on back here, the kobold-owned properties suggest the scourge lord only recently moved in but the pillar has been there long enough to desertify most of the ring around itself? Although some of that desert was clearly there to begin with, and it does seem like the damage gets more concentrated if there are fewer green and growing spaces to spread out around. ![]() I originally recruited these guys to mop up stray devils, and now they've finally trudged back to the front to retake the port. ![]() Even with the loss of their homeland the kobolds are still on the advance in the north, harassing the border on both sides. ![]() They're even pressuring our holdings, taking the lightly defended castle ruin near the old demonologist citadel. ![]() Ants! ![]() Anthills are monster spawners, just like graveyards or brigand lairs or spider thickets. But unlike those, anthills spread. Anthills make ant queens; ant queens make anthills. And meanwhile each anthill is pumping out stacks of ants that are relatively dangerous for wandering indies. Left to their own devices they can take over large swathes of the map. Normally capturing an indie anthill just stops it from spawning, but the Scourge Lord actually gets his own unique factional ants. I'm pretty sure these weren't there before, so presumably he plopped down one of his ant queens and the nearby spiders eventually unflagged it. ![]() Bernie breaks through another pair of elemental wheels and finds himself in the Plane of Air. ![]() Almost everything around here is lightning resistant, and most of it is ethereal too. Bernie's Arcane Tempest and sun spells would do a number on them, but they'd chew up my remaining troops pretty quickly. ![]() I'm hoping to find more kobold holdouts behind the scourge lord's lines, and my faith is rewarded. They don't have a mine so there's no freespawn coming, but they can still use the ruined castle to recruit. ![]() Lavinia goes to reclaim the ruined castle on our own turf as well, although really having her there is pretty much overkill. Hell, most of the ballistae are overkill. ![]() My second old wizard finishes his trip and makes landfall at the front. ![]() The scourge lord reclaims the ruined castle in his territory after I clean out the kobolds. I'd just as soon have the fort for myself. ![]() It looks like they've improved their bless since the last time we fought. That's, uh, quite a buff. ![]() So the really dangerous part of regeneration in CoE is that dead units can actually come back if they regenerate long enough, just like D&D trolls. ![]() Call Lightning does its usual thing in the end, but yikes. ![]() The other wizard's assault goes better. ![]() Another scourge lord stack shows up to reinforce his anthills. ![]() Only one scourge herald, but he's got a couple sellsouls in front that also get his bless buffs and are almost as tough as the heralds. No spells, but with stats like these who cares? ![]() It turns out conventional troops with some light mage support can still do work against megablessed scourge troops, given enough numbers. The front line should be stable for now.
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the holy poopacy posted:Although some of that desert was clearly there to begin with, and it does seem like the damage gets more concentrated if there are fewer green and growing spaces to spread out around. That is 100% the case. Most of the tile types have a life force per turn they provide, and Obelisks can drain up to 15 points of life force value per month. They have other rituals that have a higher cap. If you plop one down in a heavy wooded or populated area, that can easily overwhelm life force drain cap of an obelisk and in those situations, it will take longer for it turn its surrounding tiles into savanna or desert (assuming they are not one of the tile types that have no life force value or do not change). I'm also not sure what the process is for how the game determines when to convert it (hidden life force reserve pool? Dice rolls? Random offset timers? It's doesn't appear to be fixed is all I can tell) and it can definitely pass through stages like going from a forest, to a dead forest, to a savanna, to a desert. Also gently caress ants. Acid damage is a freaking nightmare. Little fucks can punch well above their weight.
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So, what is Bernie trying to accomplish in the various planes? It kinda seems like there's a huge hellwar going on where another God might be useful, after all.
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Night10194 posted:So, what is Bernie trying to accomplish in the various planes? It kinda seems like there's a huge hellwar going on where another God might be useful, after all. He's working on it! The only spot that Bernie could ascend to godhood from was on an island that he had no way off of (his god form can't fit on a boat and no swimming/flying items have shown up on the market) so the entire extraplanar adventure is largely one extended detour to try to get back to the mainland back on Elysium.
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Oddly enough, there's one class that was in COE2 (which is free and ancient. If you think this game or dominions is a little janky, good god you have seen nothing) that had a resource called life force. It worked differently: the elf king/queen were sidhe/unseelie respectively. Life force was a constant value, but modified based on season. It was based on how many forests you owned and what season it was, with spring and summer being a positive modifier for the queen and the opposite for the king. Your total amount of life force determined what freespawn forests put out and how many.
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Could we get a combat/stats mechanics post? I have vague knowledge of Dominion stats, but they don't quite translate to CoE.
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quote:Anthills are monster spawners, just like graveyards or brigand lairs or spider thickets. But unlike those, anthills spread. Anthills make ant queens; ant queens make anthills. And meanwhile each anthill is pumping out stacks of ants that are relatively dangerous for wandering indies. Left to their own devices they can take over large swathes of the map. I'll say it again: It sounds like the ants should be a faction in their own right.
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They are. It's called dwarves
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They could well be, their acid damage attacks alone would make them serious contenders, resistance to it is extremely rare, and virtually doesn't exist among any other factions' core units and commanders, and it doesn't give a drat about ethereal either. Plus the random generation of attack stacks will grind away everyone's will to live pretty fast.
SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Sep 30, 2021 |
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They're not kidding about them taking over the map. Example: ![]() And I've seen worse scenarios.
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the holy poopacy posted:He's working on it! The only spot that Bernie could ascend to godhood from was on an island that he had no way off of (his god form can't fit on a boat and no swimming/flying items have shown up on the market) so the entire extraplanar adventure is largely one extended detour to try to get back to the mainland back on Elysium. He's currently on the Elemental Plane of Deer IIRC, which must have a portal to Elysium or else where do they keep coming from?
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NewMars posted:They're not kidding about them taking over the map. A lot of times, I've found it useful to counter invade into the Scourge Lord's territory when the Ants start really going off. As far as I can tell, Scourge Ant Queens won't build new ant mounds on a desert tile, so if he hasn't eaten every single town, diving into the desert is a good way to give yourself some territory that has a buffer between you and the ant spawners. Even that is more just a strategy for trying to outlast the AI against them though.
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There's nothing wrong with simply outlasting your opponents through the world ending mob spawning event. Demons? Apocalypse? Wave of Ants? Find as many citadels as possible and just keep recruiting. Hopefully the neutral mobs will swarm over all those AI armies that keep trying to explore and conquer. Basically the only faction that just waiting out doesn't really work against are the Dwarves, because they basically have the exact same strategy with one of their commanders being both immobile and also constantly spawning more dwarves.
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When the unthinkable void creatures grow out of control we unleash the apocalypse. When the angelic armies begin to siege our own gates we open a portal to hell. When the demon hordes grow out of control, we release wave after wave of giant ants. And when the winter comes, the giant ants simply freeze to death!
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I really wish they did. Lacking that I really wish I had a way to destroy those anthills permanently.
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 15:29 |
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Someone just needs to make a mod to remove them, they just seem like a game ruining pain in the rear end that isn't even interesting
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