Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

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jsoh: Mar 24, 2007; O Muhammad, I seek your intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight

goatface posted:

You get even more dudes that require upkeep once the province provides no money?

That sounds dumb enough to be true.

i think the void freespawns are free actually.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 15:30

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# ? May 28, 2024 12:27

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

jsoh posted:

i think the void freespawns are free actually.

Yeah this. Once everyone dies the freespawn improves significantly.

Generally you have to get your aquatic only chaff killed off to the best of your ability continuously. So drop them all in a province to starve and disease. Pillage it until it's zero pop to increase the rate. You obviously have to take an awake god (Void Lord being the usual) to expand and are heavily reliant on managing to get onto land.

If you don't manage to get onto land you will stagnate and die. You have to get enough provinces early to be able to afford some rp. If allowed to get research rlyeh is actually very very annoying and difficult to fight. I would play them but the micro is incredibly terrible. Insane guys keep insanity orders after they stop acting insane so hitting N doesn't catch idlers. You need to check every province for freespawn or insane guys to herd them around. Every turn. Forever. Some of them are S1 so it is actually critically important to do this too. And different freespawn needs different orders/positioning. Elder things particularly are important to group up into a ball.

EDIT: And having a neighbor with good scales pushing onto some of your higher pop provinces is really nice to have if you can manage it. It acts as an income battery. Don't just spread your poo poo dom around early as it's counter productive and involves wasting gold you should be spending on getting more mages.

Nuclearmonkee fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jan 4, 2015

# ? Jan 4, 2015 20:37

Have Some Flowers!: Aug 27, 2004; Hey, I've got Navigate...

Time for an effort post! Today's subject:

What is it? A hellpower communion bomb uses a small communion of mages like bait. However instead of attracting fish, you're attracting man-eating Horrors that then devour both armies involved in the fight.

They're a great tool for Blood nations that are weaker in the early parts of the game. Nations like LA Marignon normally live in fear of being rushed by elite infantry. This technique gives them a way to repel the invaders and continue festering in their own bloody depravity. It only takes Blood 2 to make it work, which you can easily have online in the first year.

Here are some of the mechanics involved:

Hell Power is a Personal buff spell at Blood 2. It does 4 things. It increases the mage's paths by 2 levels. It gives the mage Reinvigoration 5. It heavily Horror Marks the caster - horrors love to attack targets that are Horror Marked. Lastly, it causes Lesser Horrors (common) and Horrors (uncommon) to randomly appear in subsequent turns.
Hell Power is easy to cast by any Blood Mage with even a small communion due to the path boosts Communions give.
When a Master in a communion casts a Personal spell, it affects all of the Slaves in that communion.
This includes personal buff spells like Hell Power, and spells like Returning which evacuate your mage(s) from a fight.
Horrors aren't on your team, or the other guy's team. Horrors are on their own team, and Team Horror does not play well with others. A fight will not conclude while Horrors are still busy eating people.

See where this is going? Basically your Blood Master gives himself and all the communion slaves "Hell Power", which starts to attract Horrors. After a bunch show up, the communion either teleports away, or sticks around and dies. Whatever works. The remaining Horrors mop up the other army doing your dirty work for you.

Here's a detailed example of a Hellpower Communion Bomb in practice. 8 Mages and 15 PD shall defend Faircliff. I don't think there is anything 'fair' about what's going to happen at Faircliff.

LA Marig has:

7 Diabloists, 65 gold mages that can be recruited at any fort with a lab. These guys are your basic Blood Hunters and communion slaves, and they're a researcher for you. You often have a bunch hanging around.
1 Royal Navigator, a 160 gold mage that is cap-only. LA Marig's costs could have been less - we could have used a Chartmaker instead of the Royal Navigator, but my test map doesn't have any coasts. I also had 2 extra slaves in the mix that my Blood Master wasn't interested in. Whoops.
15 points of PD, a 120 gold expense
12 blood slaves
2 pearls

Note: Our Astral Master set to cast Returning is positioned far away from where the horrors are going to show up. I've had comical failures where the master gets spooked by the horrors and makes a run for it, letting the communion get gobbled up instead of evacuating them. That's Dominions Four for you.

LA Marig's total investment here is 735 gold, 12 blood slaves and 2 pearls.

LA Pythium has:

69 Comitatense, 15 gold elite infantry. Comitatense are known for their great equipment, above average stats, good morale and high map movement.
6 Standards, 30 gold morale boosters for the infantry
3 Magister Militums, 110 gold each, but most LA Pythium players use the foreign recruit Centurions that are 70 gold. These guys just provide more morale. For the purposes of cost, let's pretend they were the worse 70 gold Centurions.

(Note: A normal army would have a few guys guarding the commanders, especially while invading a nation with assassins. This is just to illustrate that even with everything thrown at the horrors, it doesn't go well for the infantry.)

LA Pythium's total investment here should have been 1425 gold.

Here's what happens. The armies line up.

The communion does its thing. The horrors show up.

There's some detail here that's worth pointing out. Our Astral Master is set to cast several spells before he casts Returning. The reason is because with each subsequent turn, more and more Horrors show up for our Communion. The longer we can hang in there, the more Horrors we'll leave in our wake. Casting spells like "Twist Fate" "Luck" and "Mirror Image" are going to buy us a little time before we jet.

I'd say it's about a 20-25% chance per turn per Hellpowered slave for a Lesser Horror to show up. Big Horrors seem to show up about 10% of the time instead of a Lesser Horror.

Next, the communion peaces out.

The horrors clean up. They have great combat stats, good protection, good base HP, life stealing and they're ethereal. They also have a Fear 10 aura, which is usually more than most armies can deal with if they don't have mage support to kill them quickly.

Roll credits.

Note something interesting: the battle says we (LA Marignon) lost, and that an army is still sieging our fortress. However, upon further inspection...

Since Pythium's army was wiped out and routed, we immediately reclaim the province and can go back to recruiting and/or add Province Defense back to it. If there was no fort here, the province would go "indy", at which point we could reclaim it by moving any commander to it. Our commanders who Retreated are in our fort or neighboring provinces, and our Communion Slaves were successfully Returning'd back to our base.

Next up: Suicide Hellpower Communions. If you don't care about the lives of your slaves and want something truly traumatic, you can get a lot more Horrors by letting the slaves sit around until they're killed off. They attract a lot more horrors this way. Here are the results of the same mages scripted without the evacuation included:

(We kept the province, Pythium's army fled)

A few last points to keep in mind:

Your slaves will be massively horror marked after this. Horrors will come for them eventually, and they will die. I've had some get claimed immediately, and others have lived for years. It's just random.
Mindless casters and slaves do not receive horror marks. Horrors show up and ignore them completely until the end of the fight, and mindless mages do exist oddly enough.
Super sacreds often have magic weapons or the necessary resilience to withstand small groups of horrors. I was still able to use hellpower communions to stop N9 B9 Jags for example, but it took a much larger investment on my part.
Once the other armies begin having mage support with real spells researched, this strategy falls off in usefulness. Spells like Frozen Heart can make short work of Horrors.
Flyers can tackle your communion before it gets much done. Use with caution against flyers, and make sure you have enough chaff to block them.
Mindless chaff can help you with some more time to block Horrors, like Bone Fiends or something similarly inexpensive.
The Astral piece isn't necessary, but pretty much any nation can find Indy Sages, Crystal Sorcs or Lizard Shaman to give them the ability to cast Returning if you really want to hold on to those slaves.

Have Some Flowers! fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jan 4, 2015

# ? Jan 4, 2015 22:28

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

Cool... going AI in piggypoopballs.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 22:41

jsoh: Mar 24, 2007; O Muhammad, I seek your intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight

you forgot that hellpower boosts your physical stats a bunch. also my testing seemed to show that horrors in fact will kill mindless mages that have hellpower on them via a communion and dont really target anything else preferentially unless it shorror marked, so your dumb golem slaves will still get punched

# ? Jan 4, 2015 23:33

Samog: Dec 13, 2006; At least I'm not an 07.

Turin Turambar posted:

And in the "worthless items" category, today we have this level 8 bad dude

Is there any super unit of size 1 which would be good enough to use in combat with this? Or is this just a "lore" item taken from a rpg campaign of the creators?

look at the stats on that thing it's great

# ? Jan 4, 2015 23:35

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

Hmm, I know that the Jewish giant nations can do some really batshit insane stuff with hellpower since all their sacreds are ridiculously robust guys with magic weapons and their mages are also really tough.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 01:12

Have Some Flowers!: Aug 27, 2004; Hey, I've got Navigate...

jsoh posted:

you forgot that hellpower boosts your physical stats a bunch. also my testing seemed to show that horrors in fact will kill mindless mages that have hellpower on them via a communion and dont really target anything else preferentially unless it shorror marked, so your dumb golem slaves will still get punched

That's a good point, the physical stat boost may help the master/slaves survive the incoming horrors slightly better as a result.

Re: the horror marks and mindless mages, I found that casting Hell Power did not mark mindless targets, but they could still be temporarily horror marked by Horror's attacks. If they survived the fight, those marks would disappear. I didn't mean to give the impression that horrors completely ignore mindless mages. They just don't seem to give them any special preference like a horror marked target has. Horrors come for everything eventually, and it's just that mindless mages sit around attracting horrors longer than ones that get horror marked and certainly attacked/killed.

amuayse posted:

Hmm, I know that the Jewish giant nations can do some really batshit insane stuff with hellpower since all their sacreds are ridiculously robust guys with magic weapons and their mages are also really tough.

If you thought your Master and Slaves were beefy enough to take blows from horrors for a bit longer, you could have them build up more Horrors before they punched out of the fight.

One way to cast a 'late' Returning (after the normal 5 turns of scripting) would be to intentionally fatigue your Astral master past 100 before he casts Communion Master, so he wakes up later in the fight and then casts Returning. I find that your own armies quickly rout to either Horror Fear or HP loss though, so this may be tough to judge.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 05:29

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

ATTENTION

Big rule change:

quote:

2015-01-04 19:43:22 +0100
Adding thrones to .map files automatically adds ascension points too
Indep wizards got more spells

2015-01-04 18:20:15 +0100
New poptype mod commands: #defunit1, #defmult1, #defcom1, etc.
New mod commands: #disableoldnations, #clearallevents
Can select players with only 1 nation in era

2015-01-04 14:11:20 +0100
Merge branch 'master' of ssh://jaffa.illwinter.com/home/jk/gitrepos/dom4

2015-01-03 18:16:16 +0100
Dominion spread chance changed to 50% + dom str*5%
Pretender cost finetuning
Pretender stat changes
New throne effect 'Dominion conflict bonus'
Mercenaries no longer drown when unhired
Siren's lure didn't work, fixed
Monolith could blink and use stygian paths
Wish fix
Site fixes
Nicer handling of corrupted turn files
Typos
Geoglyph didn't reduce MR properly

In other words, Dom strength has been nerfed, as now it isn't as important to buy high scores likes 8-9-10 to survive Dom pushing. Before Dom 1 gave you 10% chance of increasing your Dominion for every temple check, now Dom 1 gives you 55% chance.

A good change, imo. Before it didn't make sense to have a scale of the score going from 1 to 10 if in practical terms 5 or 6 was the minimum. Particularly it was a trap for noobs. Now the new 1 is like the previous minimum, 5.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 09:57

Kitfox88: Aug 21, 2007; Anybody lose their glasses?

oshi

more points for scales

edit: stealth buff for human scale pretenders

# ? Jan 5, 2015 10:25

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

...
...

that's actually really cool

# ? Jan 5, 2015 10:47

Culka: May 20, 2007; Nothing

Having low dom score would still be pretty dangerous, since it determines the max candles per province. But something like 5 could be doable now I guess.

Or just flood the world with temples.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 11:11

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

It also determines the number of holy troops you can recruit, so nations with good sacreds will still want to have a high dominion score. It's a step in the right direction at least.

The most pressing issue is nerfing blood though.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 11:15

Samog: Dec 13, 2006; At least I'm not an 07.

cool marignon buff

# ? Jan 5, 2015 11:19

Archenteron: Nov 3, 2006

Ok what the hell hidden site fires off a +30 unrest event every turn because this is the start of a game and the same province has gotten hit by it three turns running?

# ? Jan 5, 2015 11:28

Samog: Dec 13, 2006; At least I'm not an 07.

Turin Turambar posted:

ATTENTION

Big rule change:

In other words, Dom strength has been nerfed, as now it isn't as important to buy high scores likes 8-9-10 to survive Dom pushing. Before Dom 1 gave you 10% chance of increasing your Dominion for every temple check, now Dom 1 gives you 55% chance.

A good change, imo. Before it didn't make sense to have a scale of the score going from 1 to 10 if in practical terms 5 or 6 was the minimum. Particularly it was a trap for noobs. Now the new 1 is like the previous minimum, 5.

the power of your candles to destroy established enemy candles and (indirectly, through the per-province dominion cap) defend against the same pressure from enemy candles is still based on your domstrength, so 1 domstrength will still get you killed very quickly

# ? Jan 5, 2015 11:37

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

Samog posted:

the power of your candles to destroy established enemy candles and (indirectly, through the per-province dominion cap) defend against the same pressure from enemy candles is still based on your domstrength, so 1 domstrength will still get you killed very quickly

You are right, I had forgotten that rule. In fact I see now that the new scaling is more or less baed on the same value of 50%+5%*maxDom:
50% + yourMaxDom*5% - enemyDomProvince*5% .

So against a province with 4 enemy candles:
with Dom 4: 50 + 20 - 40 = 30% chance.
with Dom 8: 50 + 40 - 40 = 50% chance.

Still it's a decent buff for rainbow humans pretenders which maybe have Dom 6 instead of Dom8.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 12:51

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

Turin Turambar posted:

ATTENTION

Big rule change:

The actual thing that matters in that thing you quoted is the #clearallevents tag and #defcom PD changes.

Using that plus everything including sound and graphics modding, you can genuinely at this point make a proper total conversion of dominions.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 14:24

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Still need 9 on your Dragon.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 15:05

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

Samog posted:

cool marignon buff

Dom 2 Marignon will be interesting to see.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 16:01

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

Finally I can start using the Shrapnel guides that talk about using a dominion strength 4 pretender.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 16:02

JoshTheStampede: Sep 8, 2004; come at me bro

How will that affect existing games?

# ? Jan 5, 2015 16:19

Nuclearmonkee: Jun 10, 2009

Blood sac will be even better if low Dom becomes more popular. Low candles are super easy to roll back with even a little blood sac.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 16:21

Kitfox88: Aug 21, 2007; Anybody lose their glasses?

blood sac should just fail some of the time

oh poo poo your priest dropped the dagger into the chest of the slave now he's gotta fish it out and everyone's really bummed but they're trying super hard not to show it but really they're embarassed for the guy

# ? Jan 5, 2015 18:00

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Kitfox88 posted:

blood sac should just fail some of the time

oh poo poo your priest dropped the dagger into the chest of the slave now he's gotta fish it out and everyone's really bummed but they're trying super hard not to show it but really they're embarassed for the guy

quote:

Now you hosed up! You have hosed up now!

# ? Jan 5, 2015 19:18

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

I've been checking Pymou's nation mods, Ledan and Plavendel, and the guy has real teal. Great art, cool imaginative theme, unique ideas, full-fledged complete nations with lots of options including unique Pretenders and summons.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 22:11

Jester Mcgee: Mar 28, 2010; A lot of things have happened to me over my life.

I just started my first war ever. I have no idea if I will win or not because I have never fought against a person, but even if I don't win I am reasonably sure that, because it is so early in the game, I can ensure that we both lose. :thumbsup:

# ? Jan 7, 2015 21:14

I Love You!: Dec 6, 2002

Jester Mcgee posted:

I just started my first war ever. I have no idea if I will win or not because I have never fought against a person, but even if I don't win I am reasonably sure that, because it is so early in the game, I can ensure that we both lose.

Ah yes, another jerk player has been born.

Always start early wars

# ? Jan 7, 2015 21:30