|
 Cloud Lord playthrough start on the previous page!The in-universe writer for the Cloud Lord troop descriptions is incredibly thirsty for bird people, and also amazingly salty for obviously being rebuffed by at least one of them. It's a joy to read those unit cards.
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 21:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 19:09 |
|
|
God bless our adorable himbo commanders.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 22:31
|
|
|
Having a secure location that can be created in the clouds where you could keep your summoners safe from harm while they summon more and more flying units, and possibly commanders, to rain down onto Elysium seems like it'd be quite fun. I'm not entirely sure of all the summons available to the Cloud Lords, but if most have similar flying to their recruitable units then guaranteed safezones would be really useful depending on what other factions have spawned on this map.
|
|
#
?
Oct 12, 2021 22:42
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:The in-universe writer for the Cloud Lord troop descriptions is incredibly thirsty for bird people, and also amazingly salty for obviously being rebuffed by at least one of them. It's a joy to read those unit cards. Honestly, one of my favorite bits in Conquest of Elysium is when a faction’s descriptions are clearly written by someone with an agenda, like the Illusionist’s descriptions that rant about how illusions don’t count as real magic, or the Priest King’s descriptions explaining how that unit you just summoned doesn’t exist and is only a myth.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 00:46
|
|
|
Also kobolds, dryad queen, etc The descriptions are basically all great.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 07:31
|
|
|
The cultist unit descriptions are great as well. One of them specifically mentions reccomending not buying romantic or erotic literature from cities permeated with Cultists of the Deep.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 08:19
|
|
|
The real horror isn't the tentacles, it's NTR
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2021 05:05
|
|
|
God's Perfect Himbo, part 2 Exploring to the southwest, I find more hamlets and a troglodyte-occupied Abandoned Mine. The mine is only worth 1 ruby and no gold, so I'm not going to risk my depleted forces on it just yet, but I find a real prize a little further west: somehow this town has been emptied of defenders and is now overrun by 3-5 feral hogs. Not entirely sure what happened here; it's possible something really scary is lurking around.  My storm captain flies in with some reinforcements to take on the mine.  The troglodytes prove less scary than anticipated; they have no armor so the Dusk Guards shred them, and their attacks largely bounce off our armor.  The hogs have already vacated the town, leaving it free for the taking. I do see some bandits in the neighborhood; occasionally they'll join up to form roving bands of like 20, so it's conceivable they could have emptied a lightly defended town?  Hmm. A big stack of ants definitely could have done it, they can climb up walls and giant ants would absolutely massacre generic human troops. Luckily the ant hill doesn't seem to have a lot of swarms around yet, but who knows what could be wandering around.  My recruitment is humming along, and thanks to my superior mobility I can ferry them around super quickly. I notice that at some point our big ruby mine got recaptured by wandering indies, though.  Some bandits try ambushing God's Perfect Himbo, it does not go well. Dusk Guards are absolute blenders against weak troops.  The storm captain goes to save the mines from an ant invasion. Dusk Guards are less good against real threats, but still ok. Among the many, many advantages of flying is that it makes a lot easier to swarm tough targets, since flying units move something like three times faster in combat and can pass over other units.  I get a random hero in one of the newly taken hamlets. This is a rich cluster of settlements, so having an extra commander to hoover them up is nice.  Well, it was nice while it lasted.  Turns out there were not one but two brigand lairs in the neighborhood, one on either side of the town cluster. The poor hero didn't really stand a chance.  The storm captain is back with a batch of archers. Time to go get those diamonds!  Thankfully there aren't many archers here, but the storm drake just up and munches a dusk guard whole.  The storm drake doesn't live long, but attrition is starting to take its toll; even against 2 armor, 30+ attacks a turn add up.  By the time the kobolds are about done I've already lost half my troops (including all of the Dawn Guards.) I was hoping God's Perfect Himbo would thunderstrike the stone drake but luckily the troops are able to chip it down with surprising speed.  Even so, ouch. There goes 20 gems... but trading earth and fire gems for a permanent source of air income is a good trade for us.  Speaking of which, it's about time to see about making those gems work for us. So Bernie didn't really have to worry about traditional ritual casters, but most factions are going to have mages with a list that looks something like this. Most caster factions start with a level 2 mage who will start knowing one random (usually) ritual from levels 1 & 2. You can spend the appropriate magic resource on various rituals of mastery, which will let you promote them to the next level up (and unlock a random ritual) or for half cost unlock a random ritual from one of the tiers you've already reached. 150 air gems is a long ways off and there's no guarantees that I'd get anything useful right away from the next level, but for 25 I can roll for another 2nd tier ritual since my starting ritual was kind of a bust. (If I didn't already have level 2 magic, it would be 50 to promote to buy into the 2nd tier instead of 25; similarly, once I promote I'll be able to buy new level 3 rituals for "only" 75 gems.)    There are plenty of dud rituals left in the list but we get the best of the best. Even better, we still have enough gems left over to immediately cast it.  The number of guys you get per summoning is random and this isn't a particularly impressive roll, but who cares when you have the win button?  Meet the Mist Warrior. They're ethereal, immune to lightning and poison, half damage from cold, and have a decent amount of HP to soak whatever gets through their defenses. They've got 50% more HP and better resistances than the recruitable cloudfolk, but that's not the good part.  Cloudfolk get the "good" illusionary weapons, which means generic troops with average magic resistance will usually believe in them and take real damage. Mist Warriors have weapons that are 100% real, no resistance, extra damage and range compared to most bows, and the real cherry on top--every shot does guaranteed extra cold damage regardless of armor or shields. These things are absolute machineguns on a very sturdy chassis.  The second town in the big cluster to the west is manned by a ballista, but I decide to chance it--flying troops are a huge edge when taking on fortifications. I send in the storm captain for this one though, I don't want God's Perfect Himbo getting a ballista in the face.  The ballista does some damage, but a few Dusk Guards actually manage to shrug off weak hits.  Unfortunately, while flying troops can simply bypass the walls and massacre the archers inside, they will still prioritize poking at the gates right in front of them instead of going around.  Sigh.  Once the gates are down a single Dusk Guard solos the rest of the defenders (his wingman got shot down before he could get into melee) and I shed a single tear as I think of what might have been if the himbo squad had not gotten hung up on the gates.  I've been steering clear of the one weird stone sphere because it's probably a horror site, but sometimes the horrors wander over to you anyhow. Maybe I would have been wiped out even if most of the Dusk Guards survived, but... probably not, honestly.  Luckily I'm able to hire a fresh storm captain the same turn, and the next turn I get an even better replacement. New cloud mages only starts out with level 1 spells and rituals. I was hoping I'd get to diversify my level 1 rituals without having to invest any gems, but unfortunately he starts with the same one God's Perfect Himbo did.  With the mist warriors in tow I'm strong enough to run two real expansion armies, so God's Perfect Himbo pushes eastward. They're merely levitating and not true flyers, so they travel a little slower (very noticeable in winter) but it's worth it for the kind of firepower they bring. I'm still not strong enough to comfortably take on the dracolion, although I'm pretty sure I do win if it bumps into the mist warriors.  I take advantage of the flying squad to hop over to the next cloud. I'm mostly interested in it as a stopover point on the way to the much juicier settlements down below, though.  GPH finds a well-fortified castle, along with a silver mine (1 emerald) and a coal mine (1 sapphire.) I'm not going to say no to more emeralds (the silver mine is quite lucrative, too) but I really really want those sapphires.  I've saved up enough for another batch of Mist Warriors. One of the upshots of being a magic-based faction is that you can summon up reinforcements right on the front line without being limited to specific recruitment sites. I roll pretty low for the number again, but 11 mist warriors is still absolutely murderous against indies. Those Cavern Guards have 2 armor and normally don't have much to fear from conventional bows, which typically do 1d3 damage. The mist warriors just laugh.  As an added bonus, just like fire damage tends to set things on fire cold damage inflicts its own "numbness" debuff, hence the blue tint in the previous shot. Numbness won't do damage over time but it's +1 damage to every attack that does at least 1 damage... and the mist bows are guaranteed to do at least 1 damage against anything that's not cold resistant. Fire is great for fire-and-forget AoEs where you can tag a bunch of stuff and leave it to burn, but numbness is way better for focus fire. Just in case having twice the DPS of regular bows wasn't good enough.  The kobold mine doesn't really stand a chance, either. Both of these were moderately heavily defended as far as coal mines go and I took 2 losses between the two of them.  The new guy finds a guard tower out west beyond the newly liberated towns, giving us nearby source of reinforcements for defense and exploration. Flight works a lot better against guard towers since the gate is much smaller.  It's still relatively expensive for the Dawn Guards, but taking a tower with 10 infantry (even elite infantry) and 5 archers isn't bad.  All in all this is a pretty huge income base, between this rich cluster of settlements and the mines in the middle and eastern parts of our territory. If you factor out Bernie's income boost GPH is keeping pace with Bernie's start on gold, and Bernie had a pretty strong start--and then GPH is pulling in 12 gems a turn on top of that.  Finally, GPH takes on the castle in the east despite the indies' siege advantage. Half his troops are ethereal and almost immune to siege weapons (but not quite--witness the hole in the back line.) The troops that aren't ethereal are flying, which has an undocumented interaction with catapults: while the ballista has no issues hitting them, flying negates most catapult attacks.  Unfortunately the mist warriors are not immune to getting distracted by the gates, which take no damage from the cold. But enough of them aim for the archers that the defenders will have no choice but to open the doors anyhow.  The mounted lord and his greatsword bodyguards do plenty of damage, but they're getting shredded by mist warriors.  All in all, positively cheap for this level of resistance. And I can recruit fresh meatshields here too now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2021 20:18
|
|
|
Good work, God's Perfect Himbo. "I attempted to explain how their magic works to them." is just perfect, Scribe.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2021 22:11
|
|
|
I guess the illusionist story is true though. Instead of flying over the walls they're just standing at the gates looking upwards at the arrows training down on them. Makes sense they would do it in the rain, too
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2021 22:24
|
|
|
God's Perfect Himbo, part 3 God's Perfect Himbo finds yet another mine out east. Dwarfs do have cold resistance, so they're not quite as vulnerable to being shot a million times by mist warriors, but this isn't a particularly tough batch.  Another cloud caster comes up on offer so I give him some troops and send out a third exploration party to check out the north coast. While sending him over by air I spot this juicy find: thunder clouds tend to murder anything that's not lightningproof and they're generally defended by magic elemental types, but hot drat two diamonds! I decide it's worth getting the entire stack lightninged to death.  Simply entering the thunder cloud kills half my army and leaves the other half almost dead, a good start.  Luckily, the sylph doesn't roll any attack spells; Shock Field could rip big holes in my mortally wounded front line. Even their wind attack is kind of scary when you have a bunch of 1-2 HP troops, although the Dusk Guards have enough armor they can probably shrug it off.  Most of the troops survive the fight, only to get wiped out by the ambient lightning between turns. But the thunder cloud and its gems are still mine, and there's not much to worry about wandering indies coming in and capturing it.  The Cloud Lord loves mines and has next to no use for iron, so there's not much reason to not buy defensive catapults in your land forts.  Reinforcements! There's a better summoning roll.  Like graveyards, ruined castles often tend to have stealthy ghost type defenders. The skeletons wouldn't even be a speedbump, but I'm wary of what they're probably backing up.  I take the iron mine, and while flying in resources I spot a fourth mine in this cluster, and it's got air gems :whoop:  Flawless victory. Even the Dawn Guards can't manage to get themselves killed before the mist warriors demolish everything.  I make first contact out west. Just generic human troops so far, so probably some flavor of mage.  Something is wandering around uncapping the mines around our base   Second contact. Note that this is a different shade of yellow; I gave the AI teams similar colors for ease of identification.  You can even see the dark yellow player sharing a space with this stack. Looks like we're dealing with an enchanter here. This is, broadly speaking, good news; enchanter is one of the weakest factions in the game.  The big guy looks scary, and if enchanters could make them in any substantial numbers they would be. But the enchanter's whole gimmick is that their big stuff consumes an entire map tile's worth of resource in order to build. This guy costs an entire coal mine, permanently, on top of a catapult's worth of iron--which the Enchanter now gets less of. And while it's tough, it never recovers HP on its own so it's a temporary resource by nature. With no lightning resistance, it's going to be a very temporary resource if God's Perfect Himbo can make it back over to this side of the map.  It is, however, definitely plenty for squishing my expansion force. I fling myself into the sky to get out of the way; this costs 2 movement points and will leave my poor birds' arms tired, so there's a limit to how far away you can feasibly get, but luckily there's a conveniently placed cloud nearby.  The enchanter moves south and is getting dangerously close to my breadbasket territory, so instead of hiding in the sky I drop back down in the hopes of finding some softer targets in their backyard.  I pick up a couple farms up there, which seems to be enough to make yellow double back to deal with my raids. Meanwhile, another side rears its head; that's another illusionist mirror.  Their buddy pushes up a little further east.  They're using generic cloudfolk recruits from the sky, but it looks like it's the Pale One faction.  Up north I manage to get the jump on dark yellow's hero.  To my surprise they've got more troops up there and have pushed all the way in to the bay.  I recruit yet another cloud caster, but still get stuck with the same starting ritual!  I fly in some reinforcements. I'm a long ways from being able to deal with the golems, but I should at least be able to mop up these chump troops. There's also another castle ruin inhabited by a banshee. They're pretty bad news, with save-or-die AoEs every round, and she has a necromancy-casting vampire at her side. Having another recruitment site would be nice, but with the golems the banshees are probably going to be better at keeping it out of yellow's hands than I would.  First blood goes to the yellow team.  We have both quantity and quality on our side, though, and once the Dusk Guard gets going the losses are very one-sided.  Purple's cloudfolk squad gets murdered even harder, as the mist warriors don't care about ethereality and cloudfolk have no cold resist.  Brown's real army finally shows up on the frontier. We've got a warlock here. Warlocks are pure elemental mages; their magic is very similar to the Cloud Lord, except they get corresponding spellcasters for all four elements in parallel. Looks like their starter warlock was earth. Spamming the tiny elementals is... not a great use of warlocks. Compare to the Mist Warriors, which warlocks also get--obviously the earth warlock isn't going to summon them, but they do have corresponding earth themed para-elementals who are probably worse (what isn't?) but are still way better than mini-elementals. Even so, these things are still more than enough to be a pain. Every single one of those little fuckers has an AoE attack and burrows.  First I need to deal with purple on the way over.  With 20 mist warriors packing magic bows, illusions may as well not exist. Which, I guess they don't, in a sense.  They do have some zappy mirrors on their side, including a couple that are firing fear spells. These are kind of like pocket mages, although they have a finite number of shots and then they're spent forever. They're still only level 1 spells, though.  They don't really help, and I only lose a couple troops to wipe out the illusionist's main stack. As an added bonus, it looks like the illusionist was carrying some sweet loot. If I'm not mistaken, this can chop down ancient forests.  Some serpents wandered into one of the undefended towns and took it over. God's Perfect Himbo converges on it with my western commander and a fresh column of reinforcements. An army with 60 quality troops is preeeeetty good for this stage of the game; an army with 40 quality troops and 20 mist warriors is apocalyptic. Yellow team is fuuuuuucked. Granted, that was probably true as soon as they rolled enchanter. It's just not good, and while warlocks are strong they are kind of a slow starter (made slower by the AI's insistence on mass dumping gems into crappy starter summons.) It's a shame, because the enchanter has an extremely cool concept but it's married to a fundamentally broken economy. Unlike other mage factions, enchanters have no magic economy: they just run on gold and iron, like the Senator. But the Senator (and his similarly nonmagical cousin the Baron) gets big income bonuses and super-efficient recruits in order to make that work. The Enchanter does get a lot of income-boosting infrastructure, but it takes time (and resources and luck) to get it up and running, and these days a lot of other classes can get in on the infrastructure game and often do it better. It's not unplayable, and if you get really lucky enchanter can actually do well, but even with income bonuses the AI really is not up to the task.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 18:27
|
|
|
In a humans hands the enchanter is significantly better. They can make unlimited animated ballistas that are like the senators ballistas but not slow moving on the strategic map. They can also turn swamps into clay golems that regenerate for a durable front line. The trick is to never turn your mines into golems, raid the enemies territory and turn their resource sites into big stompy magical robits. They can also turn ancient forests into (lovely) special golems, denying factions like the dryad their main recruitment site. Another neat trick is to turn corpses into necrotods, weird undead snake things. They have a charm ability that means you can steal the enemies army as well as their resources. Last time I played enchanter I focused on getting a stack of wood golems and necrotods early and managed to charm the troll King. That let me survive long enough to poo poo out a huge stack of animated ballistas that just deleted anything the ai could throw at me. If nothing else the faction as a whole has a ton of different summons once the enchanter themselves are fully upgraded. Sure, some are defensive only, but at least there are a lot of options.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 21:20
|
|
|
AmishSpecialForces posted:In a humans hands the enchanter is significantly better. They can make unlimited animated ballistas that are like the senators ballistas but not slow moving on the strategic map. They can also turn swamps into clay golems that regenerate for a durable front line. The trick is to never turn your mines into golems, raid the enemies territory and turn their resource sites into big stompy magical robits. They can also turn ancient forests into (lovely) special golems, denying factions like the dryad their main recruitment site. Clay Golems are the premier clearing troops for Enchanters as they actually regenerate wounds. Plus you deny enemy witches and barons access to the swamp. But it is a real crapshoot as to whether or not you get access to them in a timely manner.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
Enchanters actually have another really good frontline option that's even easier to obtain than Clay Golems in the form of Flesh Golems. Which just need corpses (human ones, as opposed to necrotods needing animal corpses) and you can use a second ritual to heavily armor/arm them as well. They'd also be basically ideal vs. you, since they come with Shock Resist (100). Unlike most golems they actually heal naturally too.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2021 23:21
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Enchanters actually have another really good frontline option that's even easier to obtain than Clay Golems in the form of Flesh Golems. Which just need corpses (human ones, as opposed to necrotods needing animal corpses) and you can use a second ritual to heavily armor/arm them as well. They'd also be basically ideal vs. you, since they come with Shock Resist (100). Unlike most golems they actually heal naturally too. Necrotods actual use any form of corpses, human or animal. Flesh golems would be really good in this case because of shock resistance (they are frankensteins monster) and an upgraded flesh golem is something that can rip apart an armored knight as is.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2021 05:55
|
|
|
yeah, enchanters aren't exactly a top-tier class but they have enough tools to be mighty in the hands of a human player the ability to guarantee crummy-but-sufficient mind controllers is pretty respectable if that's what you pour your resources into; there's a reason "high priestess" and "witch that gets charm" are both top-tier starts Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Oct 16, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2021 06:01
|
|
|
Has anyone tried to make a tier list of the factions in Conquest of Elysium? Is there a consensus worst one? Or easiest?
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2021 15:35
|
|
|
I would put warlock up there with one of the best endgames. They can use all the gem types, can summon broken line troops like those archers poopacy is using, and can summon three elemental royalty for each of the four gem types. Each royal elemental can beat a small army on their own (maybe not the water ones) and are effectively immortal as long as they aren't killed on their home plane. They can also summon giants/titans for each gem type that can then upgrade themselves to a king in order to summon even more Giants/titans. And if that wasn't enough, they can use rituals to put permanent gem generators on the map, meaning that given enough time they have effectively unlimited resources. For easiest to play go troll King. Mash faces, gather mushrooms, get more troll buddies to mash more faces.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2021 07:55
|
|
|
On the opposite end, my guess would be the hoburgs. Vanilla, which has lovely regular troops that are slow, and has to rely on getting lucky with gems or herb sites. Or the undead version, which gets necromancy instead, but since most of your terrible infantry will die, you will get terrible undead from their corpses. And unlike the regular necromancer, you can't use iron or hands of glory (the necromancer special resource) to upgrade them They are very hard to play, I've found.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2021 08:37
|
|
|
Not the worst in terms of power, as they do have a very strong summons in general and an extremely strong endgame (assuming the following doesn't happen), but I'd put Demonologist up there as one of the most unpleasant factions to play. Any of their summons can fail and result in what they're summoning immediately going hostile on you, even at 200% sacrifice level, which means you're heavily playing the RNG game with them in a game where the map can already throw no-win scenarios at you. And early failures at each new ritual level can be devastating.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2021 10:14
|
|
|
While there are some factions that are generally agreed to be very strong and others that are generally agreed to be very weak, breaking it down more granularly gets difficult because different factions thrive under different ages and circumstances. The Druid and Dryad Queen flourish in the Dark Ages where Ancient Forests are abundant, but have to struggle for the one or two remaining on the map during the age of the Empire. Similarly, the Senator can’t reach their endgame without a Capital on the map - no way to crown themselves Emperor. There’s also the issue of speed - the aforementioned Warlock and Demonologists are two of the strongest factions if they’re allowed to reach their endgame, throwing out colossally powerful summons few other factions can hope to match, but that’s if they’re allowed to reach their endgame, and a faction with a faster startup like Illusionist or Baron doesn’t shut them down before they get there. Speaking of which, while the Enchanter is generally considered one of the weaker factions because of how much time and gold they require to get anything done, they thrive under almost any circumstance because they can utilize just about any and every resource the map throws their way. Ancient Forest in your way? Now it’s a giant oak golem. A patch of swamps the Witch was using as an income base? It’s an army of wood golems now. Necromancer running around raising the dead? Can’t do that when you’ve turned them all into Necrotods. Other factions have their tricks, but few of them can just straight-up delete stuff off the map like the Enchanter can.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2021 10:38
|
|
|
Breadmaster posted:On the opposite end, my guess would be the hoburgs. Vanilla, which has lovely regular troops that are slow, and has to rely on getting lucky with gems or herb sites. Or the undead version, which gets necromancy instead, but since most of your terrible infantry will die, you will get terrible undead from their corpses. And unlike the regular necromancer, you can't use iron or hands of glory (the necromancer special resource) to upgrade them Vanilla hoburgs have a lot of raw power. Their troops are better than generic in some respects, they get two magic economies, their gold economy is better than average... but everything being slow is absolutely miserable. Markgraf (the evil hoburg) is definitely on the weak end; they get worse troops, worse economy, only one magic resource, and they don't get enough necromancers to make necromancy really work. And they're still slow.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2021 15:33
|
|
|
God's Perfect Himbo, part 4 Another day, another Cloud Caster recruit who comes with lesser sky summoning.  Last update I said that 20 mist warriors was an apocalyptic force for this stage of the game, so I summon two more batches of them for good measure.  Unfortunately, at some point the warlock decided to bypass all our undefended towns, slipped through the forest, and emerged behind our lines next to all our home mines. Letting him have those gems would probably be a pretty bad idea, but I'm not really in position to do much about it. I suicide bomb the garrison he left behind just for the sake of distracting him from wandering up the mountain spire (which wouldn't be fatal since we still own a tower and a castle, but would be a pain in the rear end.)  RIP. I probably should have kept some of these guys in reserve instead of sending them all on a suicide mission.  I was hoping that they could at least thin the ranks a bit, but with the earth elementals popping in and out of the ground all the time they can't reliable focus anything down.  Meanwhile, God's Perfect Himbo confronts the enchanter out west.  The big golems punch some decent holes in our front line, but the enchanter's human sized troops just disintegrate.  Wood golems really don't have the defenses to deal with being swarmed by swordsbirds.  The stone golem has enough armor and resists that the mist arrows mostly bounce off, but once the enchanter and his retinue go down getting focused by 30 arrows a turn is going to do something. The Dawn Guards are actually pretty useful here too since they have bigger damage dice, and the stone golem can only punch one per turn so they don't die off too quickly.  God's Perfect Himbo is helping too   That's probably more or less the enchanter's entire output for ~5 years, plus the enchanter himself, taken out for like... 4 months' worth of recruits.  Just in time, too; the warlock's still acting frisky, and the pale ones have brought out the King of the Deep, their one-of-a-kind giant commander.  I lose another batch of raiders trying to keep the warlock occupied. At least the losses are somewhat more reasonable this time.  The warlock didn't blow all his earth gems on lovely elementals, he did manage to get an earth champion out. We saw these in Bernie's run on the Elemental Planes, a beefy spellcaster that can summon his own elementals. Between him and both purple factions pushing in I'd really like to be able to secure my population centers but I need my main army to deal with the warlock.  By the time I get over to the warlock the champion has followed me over anyhow.  First things first, the warlock himself. Most of the elementals immediately burrow down.  In some ways this is for the best; it drastically cuts down the amount of elementals I have to fight at once. Flight is not a defense against their attacks and getting hit by a ton of overlapping AoEs adds up quickly.  Eventually they do pop up and start harassing my backline. But their attack is not magical, so the mist warriors don't really care.  The fight quickly turns into a protracted mop-up as my forces play whack-a-mole with earth elementals.  Eventually it ends. My conventional troops are almost wiped out, but the mist warriors didn't take a single casualty. They're not unbeatable, but for a lot of enemies at this point in the game they're pretty close.  With yellow's leaders and main armies dead purple has had free reign in the town cluster. It's a really drat good thing my forces all fly (or at least hover) because otherwise I would have no hope of being able to make it back and forth in any reasonable amount of time.  It looks like the pale ones have been going whole hog on the cloudfolk recruits. How cute.  The illusionist's forces are piddly by comparison. I'm not terribly surprised.  The champion of mountains escaped westward again and has been rebuilding his forces, although they're still a fraction of what the warlock was packing.  After the 4th or 5th cloud caster, I finally get one with the ritual I was looking for. Diamond Alchemy costs 10 of each non-air gem and gives you 25 air gems in return. Air gems are a lot more valuable than the other types so this is an extremely worthwhile trade, although water gems in particular still have their uses. So you generally will still tend to accumulate some fire/earth gems to spend on your "elite" fodder.  I've replenished my front line since the big warlock fight.  The champion of earth packs a beefy 4 armor, but with no cold resistance the mist warriors don't care.  This time I only lose half the front line and a couple lovely archers.  A giant wave of bandits overruns the castle out east. Whoops, probably should have kept more of a garrison there.  Now that God's Perfect Himbo isn't running around putting out fires, I alchemize a batch of gems...  Give me enough gems to promote God's Perfect Himbo to his ultimate form, and with it, level 3 spells. Hello, Call Lightning.  The promotion comes with a new ritual, and it's... pretty good? Most of the Cloud Lord's level 3 rituals are very long-term sorts of plans; the Solar Eagle isn't that strong, but it's not too shabby while being much faster to deploy and also a good gem sink for a less desirable gem type. At this point I'm basically done recruiting Dawn Guards, from here on out it's all Dusk Guards all the time.  The pale ones' western army has picked up a couple of the big ancient ones.  God's Perfect Himbo manages to not murder any of our troops with Lightning Storm, a rare feat.  The pale ones are doing plenty of work without his help, though.  Once again, the fight comes down to the mist warriors effortlessly murdering everything after the front line is basically dead. Theoretically the dusk guards are a useful ablative shield; those cloudfolk archers could hurt the mist warriors if they didn't have other targets distracting them.  Guess the illusionist isn't done after all.  Neither is the enchanter, although they look a lot closer to it.  The illusionist's stack is almost entirely mundane troops, so I say gently caress it and send the mist warriors in without bothering to get a new front line.  I do wind up losing a couple to confusion; apparently the frontliners might have been good for something after all. The illusionist did me a solid and immediately routed the storm captain with a fear spell, keeping him safely off the battlefield while the mist warriors murdered everything.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2021 15:52
|
|
|
God's Perfect Himbo, part 5 With the front stabilizing, I hand the Oaksbane Axe off to one of the apprentices and send them off with a few bodyguards to take care of some ancient forests.  I recruit a fresh cloud caster with another small squad to chase down the enchanter's raiding troops.  I've run into assassins a couple times but haven't really shown them in action, mainly because they've never really been in action. When an assassin is in an attacking army, they get a single assassination strike before the battle starts (even before siege engines go off), generally pointed at the back line. Getting a shot at sniping a back line spellcaster is generally worthwhile even if it often doesn't work, but the AI is not very good at using them since it doesn't like to attack unless it detects a steamroll. At any rate, it's certainly not going to do anything useful here.  First ancient forest down.  The cleanup squad gets jumped by bandits trying to recapture some hamlets. They're almost more of a threat than the enchanter's assassin team was.  I've been buying up rubies to try to get enough to summon a Solar Eagle, and now I'm there. Back to buying diamonds.  Solar Eagles are a pretty sweet deal for 75 gems (most of which are a type you don't particularly care about) but still somewhat lacking. They're beefy spellcasters but even with Awe they're quite killable in melee and as level 2 casters they're nice but nothing earth-shattering. I find them useful more as a utility piece, with a built-in siege attack (albeit very slow, so they don't get many shots before siege phase ends) and acute senses to spot stealthy units. They're commanders so you can send them out as solo raiders but again, their survivability is not as impressive as you might think. Overall, in the long run most fire gems are probably going into alchemy, but since you also need water gems for alchemy and you actually have uses for water gems you will probably wind up with spare fire gems to burn on these guys.  With God's Perfect Himbo tied up on the front lines I decide to promote a new Cloud Lord to see if I can get another useful summon. It turns out I cannot.  With the Solar Eagle's help I move in to take on the King of the Deep.  The KotD is another example of Illwinter writing metagame commentary into unit descriptions. It's the starting commander for the Pale Ones and it's absolutely unique; once it dies, you don't get another one. And it is almost guaranteed to die, because the king's impressive bulk still won't last in a real fight and the pale ones aren't strong enough that you can afford to leave him benched. (Also, the King is capable of moving faster than most of Agartha's troops due to his sheer size, which encourages using him to explore solo, but without some extremely lucky magic item finds he's not really able to solo much.)  Let's help out the prophecy a bit. While the king may be an early game powerhouse, there's not a lot he can do here; 1v1 he might be a match for the eagle, but he's not going to win a damage race against a level 3 caster and 30 mist warriors, even if he wasn't wasting swings trying to hit the ethereal mist warriors with his weapon. The cloudfolk actually manage to pick off 3 mist warriors due to the magic nature of their weapon, but they don't like long enough to inflict real casualties.  Goddammit, the mist event kicks in again. Live by the mist, die by the mist?  The newly promoted Cloud Lord might have poo poo for rituals but he's still a decent combat caster. The warlock's got some lovely human troops to evict from one of our towns.  God's Perfect Himbo mops up another batch of pale ones. The advantage of not having a front line is that it means I can't kill them with Lightning Storm; the mist warriors are immune and the solar eagle is too beefy. Of course, the chain effect still manages to find its way to the back line to blow up one of the airya archers, but they're expendable.  I spot even more pale ones moving up. This stack actually looks like trouble.  Olms are the pale ones' answer to mist warriors (and a lot of other things.) They don't have the incredible defenses that mist warriors do, but they do have twice the HP. They also have extreme range that allows them to stay out of harm's way while they blast enemies with armor-negating damage and paralysis. They are subject to magic resistance, but still, these things can threaten a ton of magic damage to the ethereal mist warriors before they ever get in range to return fire.  I've lost most of my eastern mines while focusing on the western front, so after chopping the other ancient forest I continue eastward to deal with the problem.  Another cleanup crew runs afoul of a giant bandit ambush. This could have gone ugly, but thankfully both cloud casters survive somehow.  Further west, GPH runs spots a tower manned by a warlock's apprentice with a few more elementals.  They stand no chance, of course.  Thus ends the yellow team. Had the enchanter not sent a 5-man squad into enemy territory they would both still be alive and presumably able to continue recruiting from their home citadels; while they'd have a very hard time coming back, it's not like I can afford to go search for their base while the pale ones are running amok, so they would have had some time to rebuild. Thanks to the AI's lack of preservation instincts, I don't have to worry.  Another summon of mist warriors tops off some of the losses I've been taking lately.  There's not much I can do about the olms, but their stacks of cloudfolk and pale ones are fair game. At 75 gold a pop they are going through a lot of money recruiting the cloud guys; their home territory must be loaded.  In the east not only do I retake my mines, I also find another 1 diamond coal mine.  Without thunderstrike in my pocket the troll is a lot tougher to take down, but we manage.  Oh poo poo, maybe yellow was in more trouble than I'd thought--the pale ones are already deeper into their territory than me. Maybe those home citadels weren't quite as secure as I'd thought.  The new army is another doozy, too. No big stack of olms, but it has piles of all their other summons. In front, all their low level undead summons. In the middle, fire elementals. In the back, acid-spitting cave cows. Almost everything here does magic or elemental damage and would cut through the mist warriors like butter. The ethereal undead and cold-vulnerable fire elementals would take a lot of damage in return, but this would be a Pyrrhic victory for us at best.  Luckily, it's winter and I have the mobility advantage. I turn the army around and pick on some softer targets instead.  Here's a bird's-eye view (so to speak) of the campaign so far. Yellow and purple have kept me pinned in pretty well; I've barely been able to push any further out into the fog over the past several game years. I was hoping that taking out yellow would give me some breathing room, but so far no dice.
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2021 22:24
|
|
|
Woulda thought there'd be more action in the sky
|
|
#
?
Oct 20, 2021 23:56
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:Woulda thought there'd be more action in the sky Ultimately, there's just not a lot of interest there. The Cloud Lord wants gems, and outside of the occasional thunder cloud or rare cloud castle there's not many gems in the sky. The various cloud settlements are a source of gold income that doesn't care about seasons and doesn't have to worry much about bandits or raiders, but Cloud Lord is not very money hungry since all your infantry costs gems. The Pale Ones definitely have some kind of foothold in the sky judging by their cloudfolk auxiliaries, so we will have to deal with them up there one way or another.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 00:58
|
|
|
The wall of Olms that pale ones can summon are really deadly, and the ones seen so far aren't even the most powerful version. It's possible to have an Old mage commander with a ritual that let's them summon more olms along with another Olm mage commander. They're incredibly water gem hungry for olm summons in particular but the pale ones have rituals that use all types of gems so it's going to be a slog to take their resources. Pale ones can also use tunneling troops and can unfortunately tunnel into Fun Stuff because the AI is not clever, essentially damning the whole world.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 01:37
|
|
|
Pale Ones are amusing because the big, beefy giant that's supposedly your faction leader is basically worthless and good for nothing outside early expansion, while it's the second commander you start with that's actually useful and has your rituals.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 01:46
|
|
|
the holy poopacy posted:Ultimately, there's just not a lot of interest there. The Cloud Lord wants gems, and outside of the occasional thunder cloud or rare cloud castle there's not many gems in the sky. The various cloud settlements are a source of gold income that doesn't care about seasons and doesn't have to worry much about bandits or raiders, but Cloud Lord is not very money hungry since all your infantry costs gems.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 02:05
|
|
|
I can see you aren't familiar with the illwinter school of design, the idea is to stick to theme and add complexity in the mechanics.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 02:31
|
|
|
It's also because they're a new faction and didn't really exist before the CoE5, which added the Sky Plane to the game. The fundamentals of a mage faction, IE things costing gems and mines giving gems, were already pretty firmly established by CoE4, so a new mage faction is going to either need a whole lot of new independent systems just for itself that works with the current system, or, well, can just be made to use the current system. As such the Cloud People care mostly about going to war on the ground. The other reason is that the ground level is where most of the game happens, so making anyone able to just bypass the ground game entirely means they bypass most of the gameplay. This applies for both the sky dwellers and the pale ones, who dwell beneath the earth.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 06:12
|
|
|
Someone has probably mentioned it before, but the planes are a good idea with bad implementation. Having your dudes duking it out on several planes at once and jumping in and out of the "normal" plane would be cool, but so far they seem disconnected and basically empty.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 11:05
|
|
|
They are very hard to reach and in general are extremely lethal not just if you wander thee but from the things that wander in from there. They are interesting but could use a little work. (I'd also like it if portals could explicitly indicate where they go after you go through them, it sucks to have to remember every little thing.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 15:31
|
|
|
CoE4 was the first to really have ANYthing to do with the planes with hades and inferno and agartha added. CoE5 is expanding that and improved access maybe in CoE6 will it be good and workable with the planes Also the King of the Deep doesn't SUCK per say, but he is meant to die. Pale ones canonically in both Dominions and CoE are fated to have their poo poo wrecked. Pale ones are even able see that fate, see how they have likely no chance against that, and they still choose to fight against it. Pale ones are fairly metal for a race spawned by a giant cave lady shagging a hot sexy olm.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 19:40
|
|
|
They eventually become the Robots faction and the Necromancers but Nice and Have Dogs faction, too. Agartha is the best 
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 19:54
|
|
|
God's Perfect Himbo, part 6 I finish mopping up the pale ones' leftover garrisons in our towns. Cave grubs are kind of an odd choice here: they're an early pale one summon that are useful primarily for their ability to build tunnels into and through the underground layer, which is important since it's basically the only way to get around down there. I'm not sure the AI really knows how to use them so much, though; mostly they get summoned and dragged around by their armies for a bit before getting parked on garrison duty because they have the Slow tag and the AI thinks that makes it a good defensive troop (it usually does, but not so much here.)  For the moment there's no immediate threat, but the olms and the big elemental/undead stack are still lurking around somewhere off the edges.  Out east I spot a brigand lair I had missed earlier; no wonder everything keeps getting unflagged. I capture it without issue but by now there are a probably a million lovely bandits sneaking around.  I find yet another 1-diamond coal mine, guarded by multiple green oozes. I also get my first glimpse of the blue team's territory, with two very juicy looking mines sitting undefended across a bay.  Alchemizing a bunch of gems. That sure is a lot of diamonds.  Blue team's mines are worth a whopping 2 air gems and 3 fire gems, plus a mess of gold. I decide to risk scouting forward a bit and spot a hoburg settlement, which is... not the best news for us. Hoburgs are surprisingly powerful, balanced primarily around being obnoxiously slow. In a FFA game we would be able to run rings around them and cap out all their forts, but due to the team settings I'm not sure that's going to be feasible, so we will probably have to face them in a direct fight. That can get very painful quickly.  Dark blue appears to be some sort of caster class with generic troops. I'm not really equipped to fight, so I prepare to bail.  Some sweet magic armor comes up for sale at a bargain price. The Robe of Shadows grants ethereal and floating, which lets flyers stay aloft indefinitely. I stick it on one of my secondary casters so that I have someone that can explore the sky freely.  The warlock's tower didn't stay empty for very long. Right next door is the enchanter's tower, also occupied. I admit I haven't tried the "clustered starts" team game option before. I had assumed that it would distribute starting spots normally, but like, with teammates at adjoining positions. I didn't think it would actually drop both team members adjacent to each other. This does somewhat explain how we were able to claim so much rich territory before running into opposition, as the 5 team starting positions are spread out considerably more than an 8 player FFA map would have been.  I decide to get spicy and nab another ruby mine.  Can't catch me now, suckers!  Oh poo poo, demonologists. I still haven't seen any sign of the green team, but blue is likely to be the team to beat.  God's Perfect Himbo tackles yellow's former base, leading to an unconventional siege battle. The pale ones' Ancient Hurlers get a boulder toss attack that doesn't quite have the punch of a catapult, but fires at a decent rate even after siege phase is over. They're really good! However, like catapults they can't really hit flying units effectively.  The fortifications prove to be a hazard for the pale one soldiers as they get focus fired down in the gap. Pale ones do have some weak sling and thrown rock attacks available but all the rock throwers are stuck at the back behind the melee-only armored guards.  The second citadel is occupied by a more sensible ranged unit contingent, but ultimately it doesn't matter against a giant bloc of mist warriors.  Whoops, here comes that hellstack back this way. It's a lucky thing the AI is dumb enough to keep a random olm or two around to slow the whole army down.  In the east I can't stay in the air for long, but I have enough movement to land on the other side of the mountains.  I decide I've got enough air gems socked away to roll the dice on another level 3 ritual. I think I made the right decision.  Another turn and a few batches of gem alchemy, and there we go. I'm not thrilled with her starting spell selection, but being in an army with a bunch of mist warriors is basically the best case scenario for a lot of these; the buffs from Guide Arrows makes them even more murderous, and while Gale does not distinguish friend from foe it's nonmagical physical damage so the mist warriors can mostly ignore it.  I decide that that's good enough for me to try my luck on the doomstack.  The cave grubs have basically no defenses and are not long for this world. By the time the second volley of lightning spells come out the front line is pretty ragged and the elementals are starting to take some damage.  Once the undead in front go down the mist warriors quickly machinegun down the fire elementals, who are tough to kill with mundane weapons and not at all tough to kill with magic ice bows.  The cave cows' acid attack is legitimately threatening, but by the time they're in range they're already rapidly dying.  The west coast seems basically secure for now, so God's Perfect Himbo starts searching out more pale one territory. There are a ton of ancient forests over here and my woodcutting axe is on the other side of the map; getting through the animal-infested forest isn't exactly risky at this stage, but it's likely to be slow going.  I send the solar eagle out to scout on its own and find the region isn't quite as secure as I thought. The cave grubs may not be very strong, but they're still a pretty solid wall of meat for small raiding forces (or solo eagles.)  A small raiding force and a single solar eagle, though, is probably enough to handle them.  Although they're a utility unit cave grubs are still noticeably stronger than like, a human troop. But they cost 10 earth gems a pop, and compared to a squad of Dusk Guard they're like nothing. Granted, it's like 1 squad of Dusk Guards vs. 4 of these guys, but with no armor or shield they're going to get pincushioned by archers while they try to munch the front line.  Apropos enough, whatever Dusk Guards survive the initial onslaught immediately get incinierated by the Solar Eagle. As does everything else.  While I go exploring further into the pale ones' lines a big squad manages to slip by and get at my towns again.  Nothing super scary in here, but as far as conventional troops go this is a pretty legit army.  Amazingly, the illusionist still isn't done either.  I split off Nephele to explore solo and find a nice diamond mine to take off the pale ones.  I also summon another Solar Eagle to help explore the frontier faster. There seems to be a horror infestation hereabouts, so the eagle's superior senses will be useful.  Gold and iron is starting to pile up, so I go on a recruitment spree.  The pale ones feel confident enough in their incursion to attack my fairly well defended tower. The catapults take out the big guy in front and thin out the front line considerably, but something tells me this is too much left for 10 archers to handle.  Yeah, not much of a surprise.  The hoburgs finally get around to recapturing their mines. Pity, I was getting used to the income.  So here's the big reason I dread having to fight the hoburgs head on. Completely immune to drat near all elemental damage, enough armor to be almost immune to human sized weapons, big AoE breath weapon and trampling. It's... a problem. Backing up for a higher level view on the hoburgs, part of what makes hoburgs a big deal is that they get two magic economies. (Presumably they stole one from the Enchanter. Filthy hoburgses! We hates them!) Their horticulturists collect "hoburg weed" that they can use for simple nature rituals, but they also get horologists that collect gems to make magic clockwork constructs. The dragons are the biggest and baddest of the bunch, but they can also make mechanical bugs and clockwork soldiers that have a similar slate of resistances. In some ways the smaller clockwork summons are actually even nastier; their results are pretty random, but you'll still easily wind up with more total HP and more attacks than the dragons for the same amount of gems. It's a lot easier to chip armies of smaller clockworks down by attrition, though, whereas the dragon basically fights at full strength right up until it dies. On top of that, their gold economy is also quite good: they can convert smaller settlements into those hoburg farms that produce extra gold and also weed, and their recruitable troops are surprisingly decent in a quantity-over-quality sort of way. Their frontliners are weak but they tend to have good armor (their shield troops all count as large shields, because the hoburgs are such small targets behind them) and you get a ton of them for relatively little gold/iron cost. They also get like 15 tiny crossbow hobbits for 50 gold, which is noticeably more firepower than 5 conventional human archers for the same cost. Crossbows are generally very bad in CoE unlike Dominions, since they have half the rate of fire and no armor piercing ability beyond their somewhat higher damage, but when you get three times as many hoburgs you still wind up with 1.5x as many arrows in the air and even after the damage penalty for their tiny size they're still hitting harder than regular humans with shortbows. Their conventional economy and armies are still distinctly weaker than, say, the Senator, but they're better off than most of the mage factions, which is good because they don't start with any spellcasters and need to wait a bit for their dual magic economies to get off the ground. The one catch is that almost every single hoburg unit is slooooooooow. Playing as hoburgs is dreadfully boring because it takes forever to do anything but when you finally meet up with AI forces you just effortlessly crush them (moreso than usual.) Playing against hoburgs is also dreadfully boring because taking them head on is so disadvantageous that you just spend a lot of time running back and forth avoiding the doomstacks while you trade over the same territory until you either get something that can handle the mechs or you back-cap all their citadels. But that's not likely to be an option here, which leaves us to try to find a way to kill a robot dragon that's immune to most of our tricks. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Oct 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
from your comment on promoting a new cloudlord to roll for new summons: you can just buy new rituals on your existing caster by re-doing the now-discounted promotion ritual of the appropriate level
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2021 23:20
|
|
|
Basically Hoburgs are the Hobbits from Tolkien but entering the industrial revolution. So now all the smoke and smog from making all those constructs is mitigated with the smoke from magic weed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2021 00:24
|
|
|
If we play Hoburgs gotta name the Burgmeister to Sharkey
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2021 03:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 2, 2024 19:09 |
|
|
E: NM
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2021 04:59
|
|
