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TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

WYA posted:

Gonna stream a blitz against Yuri. I'm bad so come watch me fail

http://www.twitch.tv/dickboss

Watched the first half of this up to the battle on the Berytos fort, here's comments on the first half:

You went F3 A2 E1 S4 D4 N1 Great Sage with Dom7, T3, S1, L2 on Yomi. 51 RP. That's not a bad pretender. Fire is kind of redundant with your mage base though, and Yomi's only sacreds to speak of are the big fat Dai Oni which don't fit a D4 bless. For D4 magic, that's available on the Dai Oni. You can cast Flaming Arrows with F2 on a Hannya, Phoenix Power, and one extra gem (2 gems total), or with F3 on a Dai Oni and one extra gem (2 gems total). F3 S1 does get you Solar Eclipse though, which is a pretty synergistic spell with Yomi. Overall I'm not sure I would have taken F3 D4 but the paths are fine.

I think I have to be most critical of your scales choices. Yes, Yomi gets Turmoil discount and has Chaos Power, but unfortunately the turmoil discount is pretty lovely because it returns the gold upon recruitment, which means you have to have the gold in the first place. It's basically a useless ability. Chaos Power on the other hand is handy defensively, but on the offense unless you know you'll be attacking into a Turmoil nation it's actually a penalty to stats vs most nations, since most nations take Order. Those two abilities are probably the worst new abilities in Dom4, unfortunately. Building around them, unless they're changed in a later patch, is probably a mistake.

On the other hand, the highest resource unit in your roster are the armored Bandits are rarely used, and most of your units are less than 10 resources. So why not take Sloth 2 or 3? It's pretty much a default for Yomi to go S3. Yes, Dai Oni are 43 res, but that's only once ever 2 turns and you'll still have plenty of res for your r4 shortbows or your r11/10 big demons anyway. Heat 1 so your Hannyas are never in cold in your own dominion is also common.

Your research plan is just fine, and exactly the kind of thing a great sage should be used for in a blitz.

The Demon General is a fine recruit turn 1. However you didn't make any demons to use him with, AND since you planned on a Dai Oni turn 2, you wouldn't have been able to afford any demons turn 2 either. So even if things had gone according to plan, you'd have queued up some demons turn 3 and had them available turn 4, which is kind of wasteful if you ask me. The 40g demons aren't bad, some people including me like the 20g Ao-Oni though, they're 3/square and their Cold stun damage attack kicks the crap out of elite units like cavalry and things players will recruit against you.. plus you can afford twice as many. In a game with a great sage, especially a blitz, you can sometimes skip mage recruitment for troops early to give you a leg up. That's especially relevant in Dom4 because you no longer have the 150% boost turn 2 so it's much harder to afford mage + troops early.

Yomi's starting army is actually fairly good. The Yari weapon on the cheaper bandit is Length 5, which means you want to put them against low-morale indeps to take advantage of their superior repel. Tribals are led by a barb chief, so they have lower morale by default; I'm pretty sure you could have taken them, although Deer tribe with their javelin + short bow comp isn't ideal.

You want your sneaky prophet to stick near your own territory to claim thrones.

The Berytos player took F4 D5, the D5 gives the pretender fear, but they didn't take Domstr 9 or 10 for the fear+awe combo, which I see as a bit of a mistake.

You seem to have pressed w to turn off terrain in battle, if it wasn't intentional press w to get it back. If it was ignore me.

I think + and - to adjust research when you hover over still works. Easier than using the mouse.

Goblins as a frontline aren't great, they're the same size as your bandits and lower morale and you didn't have the gold to spam them.

The gems return shortcut is click on the gems where your income/stockpile is up top, then click pool. Or alternately, right click over each mage's gems in the transfer window instead of left clicking on the gem pool.

The Dai Oni pretty much wants a shield and regen. The sword he comes with is better than a lot of forged swords at any level and certainly better than anything you make level 0. As far as thugging him goes, self-buffs are much more important than gear on the Dai Oni chassis. Summon Earthpower is critical, and then one or two buffs that fit his paths. Storm Power only works in a Storm, as you may have found out. You got off Mistform anyway thanks to using an Air Gem.

The big battle on the Berytos fort: You're carrying all your gems on your big commanders, which isn't really ideal, where you really want them are on commanders with a good chance to retreat like a magicless Commander. High hp guys are actually more likely to be targeted by mages and can be specifically targeted with army scripting. Didn't matter in this battle because you didn't have a retreat province, but it's always a consideration. As for why your Dai Oni ended up in melee, he didn't have any after-script orders like Cast Spells. So he defaulted to his Throw Flames ranged attack, and then once he was out of ammo ran in. Without after script orders Dom4 seems to try to interpret based on the unit, so you really need to set such things, especially as compared to Dom3 where scriptless commanders are more predictable.

As to why you actually lost the battle, you were badly outnumbered in troop gold value. He had a bunch of sacreds to go with his mages and infantry. In particular, you had barely any archers for a flaming arrows tactic. Another 40 archers at the low cost of 320 gold would have put the battle into the winnable column.

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TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Slaan posted:

Great, Dom4 comes out while I still have a year of crappy, no downloads internet left for me. :argh:


So my favorite Dom3 nations was Marverni and Agartha. You already went over how Agartha has been made even more terrible. But I heard Marverni's druids are now slow recruit and capital only? Did they get any buffs to make up for this? Their troops are decent enough, but certainly can't hold up the nation on their own.

The huge thing to note is that everyone's mages are now slow to recruit and cap only. Getting a fantastic communion mage like the lower tier Druid in compensation is infinitely more compensation than most other nations got. So it's very difficult to judge a nation by comparing it to their Dom3 peers, because in Dom4 things are very different.

I've actually warmed considerably to Slow To Recruit because I like what it does to my gold income: you can now afford cap mages much more easily while having bursty gold income to stick down poo poo tons of forts every other turn.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Yeah, but it's balanced in Dom4 because I'm not setting myself behind other nations when I build a slow to rec mage, because they're in the same boat with their slow-to-rec.

e: And I DID skip mage recruitment for forts in Dom3 all the time. But in particular there's a neat rhythm to getting the gold for your first str mage, then the next turn being able to afford your first fort, then subsequent turns similar things with the lab and temple. It's not really a "this is better" but more "this feels right" because everything just clicks into place early game.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
If no one's bothered to fort them or defend them in any way, yeah, but you could do that with Victory Points in Dom3 and there wouldn't even be opportunity for a counterstrike.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

LordLeckie posted:

I thought the animal siege penalty was that they dont contribute/reduced contribute to fort defence

Roland Jones posted:

Yeah, animals (and things like lobo guards) can't defend well. They can still smash things, and that includes walls and gates.

Anyway, I'm going to see something on this topic soon, so I'll report my findings when, well, I find them.

Animal siege penalty is literally bullshit that people made up and you should feel bad for spreading it. It doesn't exist.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Well, that's fine and all, hell I don't know all the mechanics. But if you then erroneously correct someone else who's right, I kind of have to correct you back or next time there'll be four people piping up that hey monkeys are bad at sieges because animals (false).

jBrereton posted:

Does anyone know of a way to mod starting forts other than giving the nation in question a universal #fortera number?

Nope! I asked this one on another forum and got a dev response. Currently not possible.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

amuayse posted:

http://jaffa.illwinter.com/dom4/manual_modding.pdf
#animal
Indicates that the monster is an animal. Animals
are affected by the Animal Awe power. Animals
have a penalty when besieging castles, but
receive a morale bonus when led to combat by a
beast master.

How big is the penalty?

I doublechecked it in a human vs human game and the penalty is non-existent.

Four Elephants (20 str) and one 13 str commander did 17 damage to an empty fort.
The formula says they should do:
(20^2 * 4 + 13^2 * 1) / 100 = 17.69

10 hydra hatchlings (12 str) and one 11 str commander did 15 damage to an empty fort.
The formula says they should do:
(12^2 * 10 + 11^2 *1) / 100 = 15.61



I'll re-report the error in the mod manual, but this has been a manual error since Dom3.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Nuclearmonkee posted:

Zero. It should read when defending castles. Other than black hawks, who are specifically nerfed for sieges, animals have normal siege values.

I also just tested defending forts and the results with animals were consistent with the str^2/100 formula. There is no siege defense penalty in Dom4 for animals, just like there was none in Dom3.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Dropbear posted:

Is there a list of actually worthwhile spells that you can build your strategy around somewhere? As in, which offensive spells are actually worth aiming for etc? Seems like there's a ton of useless fodder-spells that are either just rubbish or so niche you very, very rarely see a reason for them.

It's a shame they still haven't had anyone with a functioning brain take a look at the UI. The design decisions in it are still just baffling - for example, why can't I see the nations' details when I'm choosing a nation, only AFTER that at the start of the game when it's too late to change anything? It'd be handy to see the spell lists when making a pretender, as well. A lot of the nation flags are also very similar looking, so it'd be nice to have some kind of a distinct border around your lands (like in Civ V, for example). The first Dominions had a nice colored gradient overlay that showed your dominion, which sort-of did the trick.

Still like the game a lot, mind you, but drat. It could be so much more approachable with relatively small changes.

For battle spells specifically, here's a list.

All: Conj: xpower spells like Summon Earthpower, some of which have prerequisite battle conditions

Air: Evo: Thunder Strike, Alt: Fog Warriors, Ench: Mass Flight
Water: Evo: Falling Frost
Fire: Evo: Falling Fires, Flaming Arrows
Earth: Evo: Blade Wind, Alt: Destruction, Earth Meld, Maws of the Earth
Death: Evo: Shadow Blast, Alt: Darkness, Ench: Horde of Skeletons and lesser equivs
Astral: lol gently caress you astral nations (Evo: Stellar Cascades, Thau: Soul Slay)
Nature: lol gently caress you nature nations

Path Combos: Evo: Freezing Mists, Acid Rain, Bane Fire, Magma Eruption, Rain of Stones, Nether Darts

Not all of that are blasting spells but I included some game-changers that get used on the battlefield a lot. There are lesser and situational spells in all paths, nature for example has quite a few that can be good sometimes maybe.


Out of battle, it's even more situational and it would be really hard to make a list. No one actually knows what's good yet.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Sep 16, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Kenlon posted:

Nature isn't quite that badly off:
Evo 4: Breath of the Dragon is decent, for it's large AOE and low fatigue.
Thaum 3: Panic isn't half bad either.

You also get a whole stack of buff spells for your troops, including things like Relief.


Breath of the Dragon is ok, I personally prefer Poison Cloud, but the poison spells just don't have the punch other paths do and are far more situational. The mr-resist transform-into-things like frogs or whatever spells are actually good in Dom4 too, but high research and whatnot.


nothing to seehere posted:

You missed out Gifts from Heaven.

Oh yeah, that one too.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.


TheDemon posted:

Path Combos: Evo: Freezing Mists, Acid Rain, Bane Fire, Magma Eruption, Rain of Stones, Nether Darts



One summon I find quite good in Dom4 are Ogres. They're size 3 and good hitpoints and their attack doesn't suck, AND the spell is extremely efficient.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
For Ur:

The Sirrush isn't that bad, really. 100g a turn is actually a small price for a unit that's very useful in the midgame. Your mages have really drat good buff paths for them in the midgame. That said the Sirrush isn't an early-game unit. It's spell bait in the midgame and counters to specific things like elephants.

The giant sacreds aren't terrible but I can't see basing a strategy around them, given that they're cap-only and outclassed by most other sacreds of their type stat-wise. That said, you have really good potential for N9 + shrouds on your mages, some of which have great buff paths and other abilities like Stealth. If you don't go this route, you need a regen item which costs a lot more. I wouldn't build the cap sacreds unless I was gold starved and had extra resources even with a bless.

Entu and Ensei are way too expensive for their hitpoints, paths, stats, etc. That said you want them anyway once they're affordable, but I wouldn't bother prioritizing affording them going early. Water Bracelet is an extremely key item for Falling Frost and Freezing Mists. The Gudu reminds me of Hinnom's research mage in that both A2 and E2 are quite handy in battle. The A2 can self bless & mistform, another synergy with N9, but 9 morale on a thug is questionable. Even so, I'd keep that as an option.

All your giant troops are fantastically cheap for size 3. Compare with Hinnoms which are 28 to 30 gold. I think the insanely low prices on your size 3 giants is the nation's main strength.

You have stealth giants in swamps (and D mages). This is great. 17g Long Bow archers everywhere nonfort are actually fairly good, and I do not agree that they're hard to mass because they are res-cheap. Enkidu Shaman are ok utility mages and they are not bad at research effectiveness even if they're not very efficient. As far as troops go, I would actually use the Hatchets as they are +2 attack score up on most of your other giants. Repel has been changed in the unreleased next version to add unit size, so you won't be at much of a disadvantage. And your swamp hatchet troops are also good because berserk, but you'll still need shields from your forts.

You have late-age equivalent forts. I can't see this as much of an advantage as they're still only 25 and 30 admin but are more expensive and longer to construct.

Ur's battlemagic isn't very strong, but nations with size 3 giants don't need that. What they do need is good buffing to make their troops more effective in the midgame, and Ur has that in spades. I think the nation is quite good early and mid, and if they fall off late that's acceptable because you can sitesearch everything but fire, astral and blood with national mages and go for a D endgame built off of the pretender.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Sep 17, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
It has too much stuff AND a gold income steroid for coastal provinces (which include their cap). You can see 600+ gold income first turn. I think the units are fine, kind of along the lines of Hinnom-fine, but the mages are Bogarus-quality or old-LA-Marignon-quality and the income boost kind of puts the nation over the top. That said if the income bonus is toned it's not like the nation doesn't have exploitable weaknesses, notably a MA/LA style human troop roster in EA.

New sailing is also powerful but that's a different discussion really.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
And this is in an age where pretty much all the EA nations have had their good noncaps stripped or never had any in the first place, AND you are guaranteed a coastal start so you WILL have coastal provinces.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
You'll need to about double the price of the mages vs normal to compensate for not having to spend gold on troops.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

jBrereton posted:

Mmmmm. I actually really like EA Atlantis.

Very decent set of mages and priests, handily bitey set of Shambler units to really lay the hurt into any other factions, and plenty of magic/poisonous weapons.

MA Atlantis: loving garbage, though.



On Pelagia: very decent underwater triton troops with up to 3 attacks, and their ambibious soldiers are actually pretty good. They get, in effect, underwater cavalry, but they aren't sacred (their sacreds are their Pearl Guards, basically triton phalanx types).

In the base game, Oceania is lumbered with a totally worthless Kelp Palisade as its 'home fort', so that might go some way to reducing their power. They also still can't really expand on land, although that's been somewhat reduced by the addition of Icthytaurs (ambibious minotaurs).

UW factions are still pretty much gubbed in terms of a mass air breathing item, which makes playing Dreamlands very, very grating past a certain point.

Same reason you'd buy Lizardmen, except moreso (in terms of Shamblers/Warriors of the Deep, skeptical about the less cool sort other than as a way to get a province underwater For Reasons).

I can't in good conscience recommend Triton Riders when Oceania gets Ictycentaurs for 2/3 the price aka the best underwater recruit in the game. Shark Tribe Tritons are nice, but they won't carry an underwater war. Other than them all the tritons are worthless, including the Pearl Guard. Ictycentaurs on the other hand are good enough to carry a land war sometimes. Overall I'd give the Early Age troop lineup to Oceania with Pelagia troops getting the "worthless" monkier.

Dreamlands is pretty good as a disciple since you can just play them like MA R'lyeh.

Knights of the Deeps are now a MA unit, so anyone going on about blessed knights is in the wrong age.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
You certainly don't need an SC on C'tis, but any nation can get a boost from one. I'd personally go with a dormant lab mage.

As for newbie checklist:
1. Don't recruit indep troops, you want nationals from your forts in 99% of situations.
2. Do recruit indep commanders and scouts, especially in Dom3, you want mages from your forts in 99% of situations.
3. Spend gold order is usually mages > troops = forts, but of course there are exceptions especially in early game when you might skip a mage for expansion parties or skip mages/troops to start fort #1 or #2. What I mean though is you don't have to recruit troops all the time especially after turn 12 or so.
4. A strong and directed research plan is the best thing but it's hard when you have no idea what anything does. Still, try. You want battlemagic your mages can use, thug chassis and equipments, sitesearching spells in your paths, and an endgame plan involving army buffs or supercombatants or both. Sometimes you'll rush a particular "nuclear weapons" spell like Flaming Arrows or Darkness, if it works for your nation.
5. In the unmodded game there are in fact literally worthless troops, so take a good hard look at the stats of your troops and their weapons and armors so you don't get fooled into thinking pikes do something special (dom3 advice, dom4 is different).


C'tis for example, you basically want a shielded and an unshielded troop; unshielded you don't want anything but the Elite Warrior or possibly Slave Warrior if you have no res. 6 attacks per square, both at 12 att, and the trident + strength does 18 damage, and they have good morale. Shielded there's not much to choose between the units, because shields in dom3 deflect arrows entirely, however the Heavy Infantry is mapmove 1 which'll hamstring your armies. I'd personally buy City Guard, but not in large quantities.

As for what's worthless, the Falchioneer looks nice but he takes a 2-weapon penalty that isn't offset by his ambidextrous, so he can't hit poo poo.

And your research plan sounds good, raise skeleton spam, then banes or bane lords with frost brand+vine shield. E3 on the pretender for a few Dwarven Hammer is a pretty normal choice. You have paths for Clam of Pearls, but it's completely unnecessary against AI and against humans it's modded out, and removed entirely in Dom4. I personally like N4 on most Dom3 nations for the option of a regen bless through Shroud of the Battle Saint, but it's really a personal pick and not optimal for C'tis at all.

You do know about the "n" key to go to next idle commander, right?

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Sep 19, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
I think it was Diabl0's pic, maybe, or Flavahbeast's. They're our pros at finding broken poo poo.


So! Muspelheim version 03, with Rzal's sprites:



http://www.mediafire.com/?w6c600u196nhld7

This version is what I call "playable". I've commented out the things that aren't finished yet.



HUGE thanks to Rzal for bringing this nation to life. I'm still working on the descriptions, the national spells, and a version for non-DE. Starting with Surtr as a starting scout is a bit unbalanced in the unmodded game.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Sep 21, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Hryme posted:

Way late on this, but thank you. I enjoyed it a lot. Please do more.

If you look at my past broadcasts, I have two other games saved there, if you're interested.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Turmoil/Luck in Dom3 was a gimmick strategy that was either for double 9 or better blesses, or specific to a few nations, or played by people who chose to run non-optimally. It's the same in Dom4, except events are much worse; you will get a lot less gold and fewer gems. That said if you want double 9 or better blesses it's still pretty much necessary.

You still run Mictlan basically the same as Dom3. Blood 9 or Death 9 are now viable blesses alongside W9, F9, and S9. Forts take longer to build, blood is less plentiful, but generally speaking it's the same old Mictlan.

The unrest reduction from Order is only really a big deal for blood nations, because every nation gets % unrest reduction by default and PD unrest reduction and can patrol. For blood nations, it means your blood hunting provinces will be operating at a lower unrest = either more hunters or higher income.

Related, for blood hunting the "default" is to use a small number of hunters which will stabilize at a certain level of unrest; two B2 or two B1+sdr normally, or with O3 and PD you can hover around 0 unrest with one B1 no sdr. You can try patrolling but that will annihilate your population quite quickly; that is to say, there's only a small popkill in the blood formula and no popkill just for having unrest, but a large popkill for patrolling. You basically need Growth 3 to make patrol blood hunting viable, and even then it hurts and since blood hunting unrest is applied sequentially it doesn't actually benefit you that much.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Thunder Strike. Disrupt with stormfliers like Air Elementals or Spring Hawks or Yazads/yazata/whateverthey'recalled. If you are using storm then send in the troops once the enemy is disrupted. If you are not, you want lots and lots of your archers with minimal blockers.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
3.99h is on the way once it goes through desura's approval process
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/version-399h

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

LordLeckie posted:

"GAME C'tis miasma do not affect sacred troops or pretender"

Where was this when i needed it :(.

after I heard that this happened to you and also others in #dom4goons I bug reported it and got a dev response that they'll look at it, so the change is a direct result of you getting screwed by it before :)

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Last I checked, cubes were tramplers with 2 AP, and as such can barely move to trample, unfortunately. Cool but useless, so to speak.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Run dom4 with -h to output a list of commands.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
For dom4, another strategy is to put forts on forests so you can build Roads there to improve your mapmove.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
The AI in Dom4 does very rudimentary battle placement and in theory is supposed to be better at designing pretenders and picking recruits (in a brute force kind of way, because troops that suck have been given #ainorec tags). It still isn't much of a challenge, unfortunately.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
The main part is overtaxing, really. Castle spam and castle defending with bonuses is kind of stupid and a waste of resources. Overtax -> conquer works.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

tooterfish posted:

Maerland does a lets play with EA R'lyeh in D3

His strategy centres around using polypal mothers to freespawn aboleths gibothingys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnjw6zbecE

And also lulling people with that hypnotic voice. The guy should read children's audiobooks for a living.

Maer's strategy only works in CBM, a mod that we don't have for Dom4. That said I'm sure his videos contain good info for EA R'lyeh, but you can't use that strat in Dom4 or unmodded Dom3.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

nessin posted:

I kept trying Dom3 and failing miserably at getting into it despite loving the concept. I'm having better luck with Dom4, enough to the point where I'm thinking joining some multiplayer games wouldn't be a bad idea once it's "officially" released, but I have a few questions:

1) What does it take to claim a throne? Does it have to be a pretender or can a high level priest/mage do it?

2) Is there a movement queue system? I don't remember one being in 3 but I'd hoped that would have come with the improvements in 4.

3) Another missing improvement, is searching for sites still a one by one by one manual deal, or is there some way to automate it?

4) What all does the Dominion value represent for Pretender choice? Is the higher ranks just faster spread of your scales, or does it actually affect your pretenders stats when on different values of friendly dominion?

1) Pretender or H3 priest (usually prophet)
2) Nope.
4) The Dominion value represents the chance for a candle to be generated and the max dominion of a province, and apparently you can up both by temples in Dom4. Dom 9 and Dom 10 give the pretender Awe of varying levels. Scale spread is dependent on the number of candles in a province.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
When up against either Supercombatants or in this case an immobile with ridic buffs (which is essentially an SC for one province) army size basically is irrelevant. You need to specifically target areas they don't have covered. A statue of war will get destroyed by 4 flying thugs with dual dusksdaggers and mr+defensive items. Possibly you might have trouble if it leads with skellyspam. Also you can preach out the cap to lower its stats, then go after it with MR resists save-or-die spells.

e: Army is often a liability in such situations. Don't bring what won't be effective.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Oct 9, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
We use network games, not PBEM. See this thread http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3498140

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Everything will get chewed to poo poo by W9 warriors, including your "heavy" infantry and your dragon. You want indep archers, preferably tribal like Lion Tribe. It's also possible to fatigue them pretty hard using skeleton spam, since W9 means they accumulate fatigue 1.5x as fast.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

amuayse posted:

Just curious. What mages did you recruit for what purpose for EA C'tis? I haven't really played them outside of single player. I know that Sauromancers being StR is a big deal though.

That basically means you just need to recruit more of them. STR means a lot less on a noncap. They cost half the gold-turns, which means you can put the extra gold into forts, which means you end up with more forts so mages per turn eventually equals out.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
SC Wishes are basically vanity items. Unless you only Wish for an SC once it's better to Wish up ways to get SCs by, like a Tart Gate caster or the gems to overwrite Gift of Health.

You want to Wish for:
Gems
Path Access
Gems
Armageddon vs blood
Gems
Blood Slaves sometimes
more Gems

The reason you Wish for gems is because it converts pearls to gems of all types at a ratio better than 1:1. You then spend the gems of the types you can use, alch the rest back to pearls, and recast Wish. This is what is called Wish Alchemy.

Let's say you spend 75 of the gems you get from a casting of Wish. You got 6x25 gems of the 6 types and 25 pearls. You alch the remaining 75 gems back to pearls, that gives you 62.5 pearls including the 25. So you spent 37.5 pearls for 75 gems worth of stuff.

Pelagia is especially good at this because their water gems convert to pearls 1:1. So even if you spend zero gems you get from wishing, you make a 25 pearl profit each Wish.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Oct 18, 2013

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

Irony.or.Death posted:

I'm going to laugh and laugh the first time someone wishes for a hammer of the forge lord in Dom 4.

I'll also laugh if someone wishes for The Chalice because it no longer heals afflictions of undead.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
Speaking of, I'm thinking of authoring a balance mod focusing on avoiding power creep and keeping gameplay similar to the base game, as much as possible anyway. I think national balance has to be first on the agenda, given that Dom4 changes, even global ones, mostly affect that. And also that it's easy to mod all national stuff without a dom4db or mod inspector. Any ideas for what to look at first?





AmishSpecialForces posted:

I love and miss you modders. The new path SC's in (Awesome Endgame?) were great. Grendles for water, Asynja for air, etc. I miss all them in vanilla Dom 4. On the other hand, it is certainly a significant improvement on Dom 3. I'll dick around in single player a bit more then jump back into multiplayer. I even won a game once in dom 3! Out of a dozen plus...

EDM by llamabeast (from the official forums / dom3mods) was the basis of AE, and EDM was also phased into CBM. AE's main innovations were drastic improvement of unique summons and the less-used EDM summons.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.
I was thinking just upping the chaosrec to approach the difference between O3 and T3.

I mean, Yomi has absolutely zero reason to take Prod anyway.

TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

de_dust posted:

I may have gotten in a bit over my head. Be kind... but do you guys recommend any totally noob LPs?

The two LPs on the LP Archive site are pretty good.

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TheDemon
Dec 11, 2006

...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.

de_dust posted:

So I was having a mediocre albeit fun game, when suddenly I get the notice that my god had been permanently vanquished and those all-seeing-eye icons popped up everywhere in my nation. What happened?

Probably either you lost all your dominion (white candles, as opposed to enemy dominion or black candles) or someone claimed enough thrones to win the game.

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