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Going AI is boring, anyways. If you're losing just make the best effort you can to gently caress up everyone else in the process. It can be just as fun as playing the game normally.
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Jul 4, 2014 18:43
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I'd like to add a point: Plan on contesting at least one useful global, especially if you can favor a defensive global that hurts people for invading you. You don't have to rush for it, and honestly you shouldn't, but it's a very straightforward early-endgame plan that will help transition you into something viable assuming you make it through the early game. Find something your pretender or best mage can do easily, see if it's in a path you might already be going down, and plan accordingly. This shouldn't be some crappy gengem global no matter how tempting that might seem. These globals, while +value, don't technically do anything and if you're a new player you aren't going to know what to do with the gems anyway. You're going to shoot for something like Vengeful Water, or Dark Skies, or BoT, or AC, or even something weaker like Wrath of God or whatnot. Yes, you might not get it, you might have to fight someone else for it, but if you are able to stick it you have an actual shot of competing even against superior forces, at least for a while. This also means be prepared to spread your dominion from relatively early game. This is a good plan anyway but it helps to remember that at some point you are going to try to cast something to take advantage of it and keep people out of your territory.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:18
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It is also worth mentioning that if you decide to bring your research stacks in with gems in hand you may well win a battle but unless you know what you're doing winning the battle will probably cause you to lose the game. It is entirely possible to overspend resources in Dominions to the point where you're fine now but you will be totally hosed in 12 turns, especially if the resources in question are mages. Knowing when and where to bring mages with gems to a sword fight is one of the most important things you can learn in Dominions and the only way to learn it is to play lots of games with real people.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:11
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I know that I at least as a total newbie tended towards the opposite problem though: Having tons of mages sitting in a lab all game and never actually using any of the spells I'd researched in favor of just researching more stuff I've never used. Then I died, making it all pointless. I think it's better to err on the side of bringing mages, since a lot of new players natural tendencies are probably going to be towards caution.
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Jul 4, 2014 23:55
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The Sharmat posted:I know that I at least as a total newbie tended towards the opposite problem though: Having tons of mages sitting in a lab all game and never actually using any of the spells I'd researched in favor of just researching more stuff I've never used. Then I died, making it all pointless. Oh I know, I'm just saying that you should be aiming for a happy medium; there is such a thing as sending too many mages into battle. You don't want to leave all your mages researching all game, but neither do you want them all wandering around all the time.
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Jul 5, 2014 00:16
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I think the key is when you deploy your mages, you do so decisively. That means yes, you can throw around 20 mages to win a battle, but they need to actually fight the battle and win it with those mages. What you don't want is to take 20 mages and set them chasing an army around all over your territory, or staring down the other guy in a 8-turn stalemate while you both scramble to bring more stuff. That's what sets you behind. Prep the battlefield so when you do use mages, you can do so without the least turn expenditure. That means restricting the enemy's movements and movement options, allowing them to push deep and lengthen their reinforcement routes, not allowing them to split forces, gaining a flanking or other mobility advantage with smaller forces, and having a plan for what to do if you win (or even if you lose) the decisive battle. Plans for a decisive battle will often start the moment I see a large enemy army on the border, even though those plans will only come to fruition 10 turns later, and even though the planning stages won't involve forming large armies or moving mages around at all until t-minus 2 turns or so. And strategic planning won't start at the army vs army stage either, you figure out what you can afford to lose, what you want to contest, where you can gain things back, what attrition or expenditure to win these battles will cost you, whether it's worth fighting a decisive battle at all or instead using a counter-push or a territory-control strategy, etc.
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Jul 5, 2014 01:03
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So I decided to try and brought this game, currently watching some youtube tuts, anything that I should know? especially since this guys mouth is not connected to his brain and keeps getting off track trying to explain advanced tactics before basic ones
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Jul 5, 2014 04:30
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Big Sean posted:2014-06-20 14:40:03 +0200 Full credit to the awesome devs but BAM 2014-07-01 21:57:59 +0200 Performance improvements Stat fixes Spectral Shield protection 7 -> 15 Flying units never get more fatigue than for 20 squares New hero for Ragha Random artifacts removed from random events Temple gem income shown in temple info New spells known for independents Arm loss removel from Picus's axe didn't result in drop of magic weapons 'V' to pool blood slave to a commander Click pretender name to goto pretender Many new mod commands Automatic mod error check after enabling a mod Moloch can be chosen by Abysia Axes of rulership only 1 attack, but improved stats
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Jul 5, 2014 05:41
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RIP random artifacts. Artifacts are now totally useless instead of just mostly useless! Hurray.
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Jul 5, 2014 15:07
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Stevefin posted:So I decided to try and brought this game, currently watching some youtube tuts, anything that I should know? especially since this guys mouth is not connected to his brain and keeps getting off track trying to explain advanced tactics before basic ones Check out some of these videos if you like: http://www.twitch.tv/thedemonstream/profile/pastBroadcasts For really basic poo poo, you want to recruit scouts whenever you can and run them all over the loving place, and try to get a second fort+lab up as soon as possible to begin pooping out mages (and national troops). e: picking what nation you feel like playing is the most important part though. It would be easier to give ideas about pretender design, which units to recruit, paths to research, etc Decrepus fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 20:48
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I Love You! posted:RIP random artifacts. Artifacts are now totally useless instead of just mostly useless! Hurray. This is very disappointing. Not just that Construct 8 is too late game to really matter as much anymore, but because it is a lot of fun to get a random artifact that no one would ever forge, but now that you have it you come up with some way interesting and effective to use it.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:18
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Sounds like its time for a mod that boosts the ever-loving poo poo out of artifacts now... I mean, if you want Construction to be at all competitive.
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Jul 5, 2014 22:20
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Just making a lot of items cheaper would help Construction a lot; having item cost tied to 5 gems per path level of the item is super dumb.
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Jul 5, 2014 23:19
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Decrepus posted:Check out some of these videos if you like: http://www.twitch.tv/thedemonstream/profile/pastBroadcasts Sadly twitch video system hates me and takes half a day to view one video. I have been trying to build more scouts but I keep forgetting where I place them, and such never touched again. As for nations. I seem to be doing rather well as the Agartha Golem Cult in the middle ages
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Jul 6, 2014 06:03
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Stevefin posted:Sadly twitch video system hates me and takes half a day to view one video. You can hit 'j' to cycle through units without orders for the turn, which should help with your scouts.
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Jul 6, 2014 06:06
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Neruz posted:Just making a lot of items cheaper would help Construction a lot; having item cost tied to 5 gems per path level of the item is super dumb. Yeah its pretty stupid that its easier and cheaper to just wish for stuff like the gate stone.
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Jul 6, 2014 07:56
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After spending some time on making random maps for Dom4, I've noticed winter-maps sometimes turning up. Is there a setting in the RMG influencing the chance of cold canadian maps showing up, or is it just happening whenever the generator feels like it? Also are there settings which more reliably produce islands? I think I got only one good island map out of like a hundred tries.
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Jul 6, 2014 15:08
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How is your guys preferred invasion strategy of other people? Do you tend to bunch up into one big army and siege down his critical forts, spread out to capture several provinces at once, or beeline for a capital? When do you split up your army to try to keep forces bottled up in a fort and take the land around him? Storming forts is always scary because they tend to have terrifying number of mages in them
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Jul 6, 2014 15:45
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The Gentleman posted:How is your guys preferred invasion strategy of other people? Do you tend to bunch up into one big army and siege down his critical forts, spread out to capture several provinces at once, or beeline for a capital? When do you split up your army to try to keep forces bottled up in a fort and take the land around him? Not always, I like building cheaper forts in border regions as some sort of speed bump, to give my armies more reaction time. Also, as some people invading found out the hard way, beelining for the capital is sometimes a recipe for a catastrophal defeat. Personally, I like slowly and systematically reducing an enemy one province at a time. But I'm not above sending in smaller armies to speed up the process if it turns out my main army is superior to everything an enemy can throw at me. (Because then I won't need those small armies as reinforcements for my main army.) As a direct answer to your last question, only split up forces from your main army if you're sure the force you're besieging can't crack the rest. In some cases (if you siege a barely defended fort, for example), the opposite of this tactic works, too: Split up a small force to continue the siege (and prevent the enemy from recruiting from there) and continue marching with your main army.
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Jul 6, 2014 16:28
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The Gentleman posted:How is your guys preferred invasion strategy of other people? Do you tend to bunch up into one big army and siege down his critical forts, spread out to capture several provinces at once, or beeline for a capital? When do you split up your army to try to keep forces bottled up in a fort and take the land around him? It completely depends on the situation, though under most circumstances beelining for the capital is a sure recipe for disaster. There's very little to be gained from it and if you lose it will be disastrous. In general you want to sack poorly-defended provinces and cut off outlying forts from reinforcements. You may or may not want to siege those forts down depending on your plan and numbers but in general you want to stop them from producing, usually by sieging them with a token force of leftover mans. The goal is to anticipate the counter-offensive and do as much damage in response while taking the least amount yourself, right up until the point where you are certain you can crush it all at once. Simply invading with a big deathball is almost never the correct option UNLESS your only goal is to capture a specific fort/throne and you've scouted out the defenses and know they can't be gathered in time. Even then you should consider alternate ways to get that army there undetected if you can.
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Jul 6, 2014 16:35
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I Love You! posted:Simply invading with a big deathball is almost never the correct option UNLESS your only goal is to capture a specific fort/throne and you've scouted out the defenses and know they can't be gathered in time. Even then you should consider alternate ways to get that army there undetected if you can. To expand on this, you can forge magic items to make your army appear greater/smaller then it really is. Just use the one kind to make your undefended forts look like they're defended by a huge army and give your main army the other kind, so it looks like a small raiding force. Then imagine the face of the other player when you invade with that "raiding force". Bonus points if the huge pseudo-buildup on your fake-forts caused him to move most of his forces to the wrong side of the map. 
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Jul 6, 2014 16:51
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e: ^^^ I love the new items, too. If you properly menace with it, invading in a death-ball mandates an enemy response. That means you need high-value targets that your death-ball can take for you quickly, like valuable thrones or the cap, and you also need to be completely assured that you'll win against the enemy all-in, and you can't waste any time because the whole point is to pressure the opponent. It's a viable strategy if you are overwhelmingly ahead of the opponent but they still have forces that can defeat you in detail. Works best the more support you can give it. That said, my preferred war strategy is the "take everything" one: invade everywhere at once with co-supporting micro-armies. Thugs are sometimes necessary for the deeper provinces, since they can be stealth or flying or teleporting, but I've tended to shy away from them for this lately; micro-armies that can beat up ~20 PD are so cheap and easy to make that even if the enemy hard-counters you by spending gems you still come out on top. Obviously nations with stealth troops or fliers or decent mapmove and survivals have an edge here. Then once your armies and thugs are out in the field creating havoc, you push a large army through the conquered territory, or form one by merging raiders. It's friendly mapmove, so it goes fast, and you use it to siege down forts that are well behind your frontlines one by one. If the enemy is using a large army too, it'll be movement restricted, will need to constantly take provinces and therefore give up battle reports, and you have a lot of time and movement flexibility to redesign one of your siege armies to kill it.
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Jul 6, 2014 17:01
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TheDemon posted:That said, my preferred war strategy is the "take everything" one: invade everywhere at once with co-supporting micro-armies. Thugs are sometimes necessary for the deeper provinces, since they can be stealth or flying or teleporting, but I've tended to shy away from them for this lately; micro-armies that can beat up ~20 PD are so cheap and easy to make that even if the enemy hard-counters you by spending gems you still come out on top. Obviously nations with stealth troops or fliers or decent mapmove and survivals have an edge here. The invasion of Jomon by both me and TheDemon in the game tetanus shot is a perfect demonstration of both TheDemons and my favourite strategy: TheDemon invaded exactly like he described above and I, too went in practially text-book like: I had my slow main deathball, several smaller armies to take/retake provinces near enemy strongholds and I even had time to set up a fort far, far away from the main front as a distraction. Neruz for some reason saw nothing wrong with sending 100+ units into nowhere to take it, so it worked like a charm. The army I had waiting for him was perfect for the task, even though I didn't have any of the fance new items: Small and cheap but numerous enough to make besieging the fake fort a pain. And then Neruz' army just sat there, completely neutralized, until Jomon went AI and the AI just marched off and commited suicide. That was just precious. 
Libluini fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 17:24
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TheDemon posted:
The active gaining of battlereports is something that a lot of newer players undervalue. You should never, NEVER let the enemy take an undefended territory. Always put 1 PD in it. ALWAYS. Being able to watch a battle and see exactly what troops, gems, items, formations, spell paths, and orders the opponent is using is valuable beyond words. I will often raid territories that I do not want SPECIFICALLY to get a battlereport from the retaking army. I will sometimes send single priests or commanders at an army that I'm stalemating for the battlereport. Hell, I sometimes throw away perfectly useful mages because the battle report is worth more than the living wizard. This becomes more and more important the more flexible and mobile you make your army. But that should be the goal, anyway. As a counterpoint, you should put real effort into giving up misleading battle reports. Don't use your deathball to take a poorly-defended territory if you don't need your deathball to be all together at that time. Split off 2 indy commanders and 30 troops, then meet back up with your boys the next turn. Don't show them your mages and formations if you don't have to.
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Jul 6, 2014 17:26
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The Gentleman posted:How is your guys preferred invasion strategy of other people? Do you tend to bunch up into one big army and siege down his critical forts, spread out to capture several provinces at once, or beeline for a capital? When do you split up your army to try to keep forces bottled up in a fort and take the land around him? When you're invading it's usually more important to reduce their income than to increase your own because their supply lines are shorter. So, pillaging, raiding, destroying forts/labs, and cutting off provinces are key. Send lots of cheap armies that are easily crushed but can beat PD will make them waste lots of time. Basically, you want them to send a deathball deep into your territory, then cut it off and weaken it with ritual spells and/or suicide battlemages. Smerdyakov fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 18:25
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Signed up for the brainwrinkle site as Sil. Don't have desura, so I linked to my steam profile. Used to play Dom3 a few years back. Is there a wiki/forum resource to summarize the big balance changes in 4? I noticed research seems to be more expensive and you can't tweak tax sliders anymore. And someone earlier in this thread was saying artifacts are bad now?
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Jul 6, 2014 18:59
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Libluini posted:The invasion of Jomon by both me and TheDemon in the game tetanus shot is a perfect demonstration of both TheDemons and my favourite strategy: TheDemon invaded exactly like he described above and I, too went in practially text-book like: I had my slow main deathball, several smaller armies to take/retake provinces near enemy strongholds and I even had time to set up a fort far, far away from the main front as a distraction. Neruz for some reason saw nothing wrong with sending 100+ units into nowhere to take it, so it worked like a charm. The army I had waiting for him was perfect for the task, even though I didn't have any of the fance new items: Small and cheap but numerous enough to make besieging the fake fort a pain. Actually that army was too far away to get back in time to do anything useful; as soon as I saw thedemon was waving around 80+ gamhirdings I realised that I was dead and figured I'd at least try and take that fort. But my guys spent about 10 turns 'destroying the gate' so it ended up doing nothing except ensuring you couldn't get any use out of it. As soon as thedemon hit me I was screwed, I just flat out did not have the ability to fight both of you at the same time, I'm actually kind of surprised you got him into the battle since he gained way more out of that than you did and now you're surrounded on three sides by him.
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Jul 6, 2014 21:45
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Neruz posted:Actually that army was too far away to get back in time to do anything useful; as soon as I saw thedemon was waving around 80+ gamhirdings I realised that I was dead and figured I'd at least try and take that fort. But my guys spent about 10 turns 'destroying the gate' so it ended up doing nothing except ensuring you couldn't get any use out of it. Your guys spend 10 turns destroying the gate (you had still about 10 turns left, even with the defenders slowly starving, by the way) because I spend the turns of you marching to the fort with recruiting the cheapest units I could, just so you would have to spend more time sieging the fort. And that fort was so far away because the first thing I did with the small expansion army cut off after your invasion, was making them march westward until I could build a fort without you reaching it before it finished construction. The only purpose it had was luring one of your armies away. Well, now it's my base for westward expansion. On the diplomatic front: I got TheDemon into the battle because having one ally beats having zero. (Or allies far away where they can't really help you.) Besides, diplomatically it looked like you expected TheDemon to backstab me, so I made sure we were allies, just in case. See it like this: With Dershid being right in the middle between our caps and with both of us not willing to give up that province, peace between us was just not possible. After I realized that, I invoked my defensive pact with TheDemon and you know the rest. (I even warned him I was still negotiating with you, but after that went to poo poo, I gave him the go-ahead for a full-scale invasion.) Maybe in the next game we meet each other, we are blessed with less annoying borders.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:06
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Also on the diplomatic front: I, the glorious nation of Atlantis and representing the most exalted diety who cares, extend the golden bough of friendship to all my Tetanus Shot friends and offer peace and unity across all our earthy and watery borders. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 22:14
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Libluini posted:Also are there settings which more reliably produce islands? I think I got only one good island map out of like a hundred tries. Set ruggedness to 0; this has some other effects as well but it does reliably generate archipelago maps.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:21
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Sil posted:Signed up for the brainwrinkle site as Sil. Don't have desura, so I linked to my steam profile.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:23
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Neruz posted:Set ruggedness to 0; this has some other effects as well but it does reliably generate archipelago maps. That was one of the first things I tried, but I hoped for a method producing less circular results.
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Jul 6, 2014 22:34
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Also thugs are mostly worse, blood is better, SCs are basically nonexistent outside of dragons, blesses are retooled (no more berserk on Nature, N9 for regen is now needed), globals are more significant as a consequence, sailing was improved I think, gemgens are gone more or less, ummmmm....
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Jul 6, 2014 22:36
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I Love You! posted:Also thugs are mostly worse, blood is better, SCs are basically nonexistent outside of dragons, blesses are retooled (no more berserk on Nature, N9 for regen is now needed), globals are more significant as a consequence, sailing was improved I think, gemgens are gone more or less, ummmmm.... What made thugs/SCs worse? The lack of cheap regen? I'm looking to get the debug mod running so I can check out spells/items. I think I've got it in the right folder on my Macbook, but it doesn't seem to work. Any tips on debugging(heh) why mods don't work? e. Does the game still not have a decently complete wiki/text dump of creatures and spells? e2. Mod thing was fixed. Guess I need to put the files straight into the mod folder rather than in a subfolder. Sil fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 23:23
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Libluini posted:That was one of the first things I tried, but I hoped for a method producing less circular results. Ruggedness at 100 will usually generate 1 major landmass and 1 - 5 small islands but there's no reliable way to generate island chains that aren't rather, uh, rounded.
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Jul 6, 2014 23:30
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Neruz posted:Ruggedness at 100 will usually generate 1 major landmass and 1 - 5 small islands but there's no reliable way to generate island chains that aren't rather, uh, rounded. With something like ruggedness 60 I once got a huge island surrounded by water, since then I unsuccesfully try to get another one. I got close several times, but always one or two edges of the land touched the borders of the map, so I had to discard them. In other cases I had to trash nice looking maps, because they were something odd like 50% swamp provinces. The RNG really hates me.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:08
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Sil posted:What made thugs/SCs worse? The lack of cheap regen? str made thugs worse, SCs remain SCs, one game I managed to defeat by using my pretender as a SC and gearing him against dragon disciple rush. Then I cast BoT and other terrible spells like a skellington and wrecked the world.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:18
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SCs are significantly worse due to the MR changes - it's very, very difficult to make a SC that can shrug off one-hit-KO spell for very long, and on top of that the higher research requirements for everything make it a lot more taxing to throw down SCs before there are hundreds of mages all around the map. Pretender SCs are still a thing, other SCs not so much.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:07
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The changes to Luck were big as well. More than Dom3, you really have to custom tailor SCs to what they're going to be up against. You can still kit out Thugs/SCs that can roll through PD or troops-in-transit (i.e. without mages), but that's usually a big investment of gems for small amounts of payoff. Most thugs will die to 1 or 2 properly scripted chump mages behind some chump PD. If they're overgeared, they may still die to 3-4 properly scripted chump mages behind some chump PD. The risk/reward just isn't there vs. a good player. Raiding is important, but thugs and SCs aren't the only way to raid. As MA Shinuyama for instance, I could send two stealthy 2D Ubas and accomplish more than a Shura could with a Fire Brand, Vine Shield, Boots of Quickness, Ring of Regen and Amulet of Antimagic (55 gems). I'm also not risking handing all those nice things over to my enemy. Those are the exact same tools the enemy might use to carve through Shinuyama skelly spam, or to allow their casters to survive through Shinu Tengu flight-diving his casters at the start of a fight. Screw that.
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Jul 7, 2014 08:09
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| # ? May 25, 2024 15:48 |
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The summoned thug is dead (and was honestly a bit overrated in vanilla Dom3) but recruitable ones are still strong with a good bless. The new n9 bless even makes more chassis viable if you're willing to invest the points.
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