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Dragas posted:I am extremely cool with casual racism I recommend the Japanese goblins, or Indian monkeymen.
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Aug 4, 2015 02:33
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TheDemon posted:wtf is that draft lol Plug it into the inspector. They're all MA.
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Aug 4, 2015 02:54
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:the balance is still all over the loving place but a big thing in the change from 3 to 4 is that supercombatants aren't popular anymore and gemgens are gone. And I think Throne victory is new?
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Aug 4, 2015 03:15
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Hi, I'm foolofsound. I'm the guy who's running the draft because I like be shouted at on IRC. I'm watching the game through use of the master password, and will be doing yearly state of the world updates until OP inevitably gets killed by someone who drafted well, and will also be doing selection and mechanics chat for stuff Baudin doesn't cover. Today we're going to be talking about pretender design, and how to guess at what your opponent might have chosen. For this game, we have the special advantage of knowing which chassis all other players picked, but in most games you just have to make an educated guess.  The most obvious aspect to pretender construction is the chassis, the form that your god takes. Chassis does several important things: it determines starting paths, starting domscore, and of course, your god's stats and special abilities. The two former are particularly important, since purchasing new paths is expensive, and each point in a path or in domscore costs an exponential amount based on how many points you have already put into that score. To illustrate this, let's look at a pretender trying to reach 9 in the Fire path (9 being a highly desirable number for reasons I'll get into later). A pretender with a starting score of 3 in Fire would spend 168 points to reach Fire 9, while a pretender with a starting score of 1 would spend 288 points to reach the same level, and a pretender lacking the path altogether would pay not only the 288 point, but also a premium based on chassis. Starting domscore is also an important consideration: a pretender with a starting score of 1 would spend 147 points to reach a 'safe' dominion level, while a pretender with a 2 would spend 105, one with 3 would spend 70, and one with 4 (the highest) would only spend 42. Stats are primarily of importance to gods who expect to see early game combat, and a handful of chassis have unique and interesting abilities that I'm not going to go into unless they come up, but both are also lesser considerations. Pretenders can also purchase Scales, independent of their chassis. Scales provide either positive or negative effects in the player's controlled territory, with positive effects costing points, and negative effects refunding them. Pretenders start with 500 design points, and can gain an extra 150 be choosing to be Dormant (unavailable until the end of year 1), or 250 points by being Imprisoned (unavailable until the end of year 3). This choice is usually dictated by the strategy for the build, detailed below. There are a couple of different major strategies you can use with your pretender construction: ---Expander: Gods constructed as expanders are made to gain an early game advantage, and to be sacrificed if need be. They are always taken Awake. They need to be strong enough to clear independent defenses alone, and can also be used to stop early game rushes. They are not usually useful for rushes themselves, since all pretender are weakened inside of enemy dominions, are generally become easy prey if leading an invasion. They're quite powerful on the defense though, since friendly dominion empowers them. Many expanders take a DomScore of 9, since such a high score grants the Awe ability; an aura of protection against melee attacks. Others have sufficient armor to simply ignore most enemies. In either case, Expanders almost inevitably have Trample (able to charge over small units, damaging each one), Fear (forces morale checks every turn to keep fighting), or both, in order to break enemies before the god becomes exhausted. Expanders tend to be weak spellcasters, and only have mediocre Scales; most of their points have to be spent to keep them alive. Periodically, they will be taken with more powerful magic, but bad scales instead. Earth magic is popular on expanders, since each point in Earth improves the god's natural armor. ---Blesser: Each god provides a Bless effect; a special buff that can be used by units with the Sacred ability. Each Path has two separate buffs; a weaker one that appears at 4 levels in a path, then improves with additional points, and a more powerful non-scaling bless that appears at 9 levels in a path. It's generally these latter effects that Bless gods are after, since a number of them are very powerful. Most Bless gods are taken Imprisoned, to free up more points for their expensive path purchases. They are generally taken with one powerful bless effect and beneficial scales, or two powerful bless effects and negative scales. Only certain nations can take full advantage of blesses, so gods of this sort are often highly telegraphed. Fire, Water, Nature, Blood, and (to a lesser extent) Earth magic are the most common blesses. Death is taken occasionally, and Air and Astral blesses are rarely purchased. ---Scales: The single most important thing Scales affect is income. All nations appreciate additional income, and some all but require it. More rarely they are used to increase the number of resources generated (the cap on per-province recruitment), faster research, or protection from bad events (and a better chance at good ones). It's uncommon for a god to be used for nothing but scales, but it does happen periodically. Scale heavy gods are often combined with global casters or single blessers. ---Global Caster: Global spells are powerful, game-wide effects, and many of them feature into winning strategies. The generally have high path requirements, though, and for many nations, their god is their only shot at getting many of them. Because of the high path cost, this strategy often coincides with a Blesser, but can be applied to any god. It's occasionally used as a primary strategy, on nations with both powerful expansion and weak bless potential. At the beginning of each game, each pretender receives a random number of epitaphs based on paths, scales, domscore, and occasionally other things. These are always available to all players, and can be indicative of strategy with some understanding of the nation the god is attached to. Let's take a look at Baudin's opponents:  Sea Mother and Princess of Water are clearly indicative of Water magic, while Queen of Animals indicates Nature. Patron of Herbalists can mean Nature magic, Growth scales (income increases over time), or both. Since this is a draft game, and we know his chassis:  This doesn't come as much of a surprise. The Volla was traditionally a fairly good choice, but with a pretender rebalance a few months back, humanoid pretenders are considered a bit overcosted and are less popular. The Volla does generate free gems though, which is nice. Because of the specifics of his nation (that I'll go into in a future post), we can assume he's invested heavily in Luck scales and potentially Turmoil scales (to spam positive events). The epitaphs could either mean a Water/Nature bless (a powerful, but expensive bless; probably not worth it on his nation), or else a global caster, since Nature has several powerful globals, and Water has one very useful defensive global that is generally fought over. If this is the case, we can probably assume his pretender is Dormant (if a caster), or Imprisoned (if a blesser).  These are some pretty useful epitaphs. God of Metal means Earth magic, Vessel of Might means high DomScore, God of Order means Order scales (better income), and Teacher of Philosophy means probably Magic or Sloth scales (better research, or worse resources). The high DomScore epitaphs almost always mean an awake Expander, which Earth magic is pretty common on as well. I'm going to guess at Sloth from Teacher of Philosophy, since DomScore 9 is expensive, and he probably didn't have enough points for both Order and Magic scales. As for his chassis:  Yup, awake expander. The Devourer isn't the most popular Expander, but it's still a pretty good choice. It's bite attack is an irresistable instakill on anything, which means it will win a fight with nearly any other expander it runs into. Both Death and Earth magic are useful on expanders too. We can probably assume Boing is going to have a pretty strong start.  He Who Seals the Gates of Death and God of Darkness are both Death magic titles, with He Who Seals being restricted to high Death magic, I believe. God of Famine means Death scales (income is reduced over time), an uncommon choice, but one that can be helpful with specific strategies. He may have a Death bless (not common, but not terrible), but most likely plan to use his god to rush the powerful Death globals, two of which can be game winning strategies on their own. I expect that his god is Dormant.  Yeah, that's a global caster, and probably also a defensive battlemage (defense goes hand-in-hand with Death globals). His god is Immortal, which means that whenever he is killed inside his own territory, he instantly resurrects at his capital without penalty.  He Who is at the Center is another high DomScore epitaph, and I think the others are all Earth magic. I'm less certain on that though. So another awake expander, but that's really all we know.  Oh look it's Pigod. Pigod is one of the most popular Awake expanders because he both Tramples and has Berserk, which means he powers up the first time he takes damage, and will never retreat from battle. He's risks injury, but can capture provinces that no other expander can hope to. He's got useful paths too, if SpookyDanger decided to go for globals (not always a good plan on a suicidal boar).  Princess of the Afterlife and Gatherer of the Dead mean Death magic, of course, while Lady of Celestial Bodies means Astral magic. Probably not an expander or a blesser (since those paths aren't conducive to those strategies), so globals and scales is most likely.  Despite being a monster, the Sphinx is actually a pretty poor expander, since she lacks a decent Protection score or any sort of other defense. Flying+Fear can clear weaker provinces, but it's more likely that she was taken Dormant for use in globals.  Uh. Uh huh. God of War means Fire magic or Turmoil scales, King of Flowers and Spring is Nature magic, and Patron of Suicides is Blood magic. And considering that literally every unit in Kitfox' nation is Sacred, it's a pretty safe assumption that Kitfox has gone for the legendary TriBless. His troops have increased accuracy, increased damage, increased HP, flaming weapons, regeneration, and reflect damage taken on their attackers. This, on the other hand, means he's taken trash scales, and is going to rely on a powerful early game to win.  Irminsul is a fantastic pretender. He's immobile, but he's got a high Nature score for the powerful Nature bless, and enough HP in his own dominion to effectively defend the capital single handedly with a simple regeneration spell. He's almost certainly Imprisoned though, which means that he won't show up in person for a while.  Unmoving Master means another immobile pretender, Tamer of Demons means Blood magic, and Armorer and Lord of Soil mean Earth magic; a powerful combination for several reasons. Based on his nation, I'm willing to bet that Xanrick went for a Blood bless and high Scales.  Yeah, that's probably all right. The head will probably help Xanrick bootstrap into Blood magic later in the game, and is able to summon powerful demons on his own, including the excellent Demon Knights. It's not as useful as Irminsul on the defense, but it's still going to be a challenge to take the capital.  Great. Literally all of those epitaphs mean high DomScore. I'm going to go ahead and spoil here: JonJoe took a joke-y gimmicky custom pretender made for Kitfox88 that only has once viable build: DomScore 10, all scales max positive, no magic, Imprisoned, Immobile. It's safe to assume that's what he took.  Another not very useful collection of titles. All of those mean Astral magic, meaning that Fleur's god is probably a Wish Engine in the later game, or possibly a Master Enslave caster (a spell that has a chance of converting every enemy unit to your side). It's probably dormant at minimum  Yeah, because of Fleurs' nation gimmick, I know exactly what he's going to do with this. Basically, he can resurrect his god quickly and without the usual penalties, and thus is going to use a teleporting Astral 9 Oracle to be an absolute fucker as soon as he hits high research, defeating entire armies with a single spell. So yeah, looks like OP's got his work cut out for him. If anyone has mechanics questions, I'm sure a lot of us would be happy to answer them. I'm also announcing a  Thread ContestWe in the world of goon Dominions 4 have no taste, and love memes. If you submit hilarious memes based on this particular game of Dominions 4, you could win your very own Steam copy of the game! You submissions will be judged by a profession panel (Samog) at the end of the LP, and I'm going to try to harass some of the other regulars into submitting second and third prizes as well.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:47
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Samog posted:imo decrepus, as the world's foremost dominions meme expert, should also be a judge ok
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Aug 4, 2015 19:55
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CongoJack posted:Wait so that one guys pretender is just a statue of Hitler? ya
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Aug 4, 2015 21:05
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We have s second prize for the meme contest:
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Aug 5, 2015 03:13
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Lord Koth posted:Didn't catch this earlier, but who is this and what have they done with the real Kitfox? Kitfox would never trash his scales!! C'tis Sacred Serpents and the recruit anywhere Kailasa sacreds. Guyhaka maybe?
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Aug 5, 2015 05:37
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Pierzak posted:Can you elaborate on what exactly gets drafted and what's the pool to choose from? This mode is news to me, especially if things like kinds of PD get drafted too. The rules we used are here. The pools in question were any recruitable national troops and commanders.
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Aug 5, 2015 17:20
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I am going to do big explanatory writeups for the other nations' draft choices as we encounter them, so don't worry about that.
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Aug 5, 2015 17:22
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So let's talk about New Alfheim, the nation Baudin is currently scouting, played by The Spooky Danger. I'm going to go through each of his selections, what they do, and what he probably plans to do with them. ---Capital Only Mage: Tuatha Sorceress  The capital mage of EA Tir Na Nog, and a pretty standard pick. She has a lot going for her: glamour (super stealth and defensive mirror images in battle), sacred, good defensive stats, and strong magic paths. Air 3 is her big selling point: it allows easy access to the Storm spell, vital for the powerful Air offense, a combination of the Thunderstrike spell and summoned Air Elementals that can counter most threats. I expect to see these being produced non-stop as soon as the expansion phase ends. ---Anywhere Mages: Ah Itz and Vanjarl  EA Xibalba is probably the strongest or second strongest nation in the game, and the Ah Itz has something to do with that. It's an effective blood hunter (the method by which you gather resources for blood magic), and has all fantastic paths, though admittedly at low level. It's also fairly cheap and a good researcher. A pretty solid choice all around, and a strong indication that Thespo is planning on running heavy Blood magic with this nation.  The Vanjarl is native to EA and MA Vanheim, and is a powerful choice. Despite it's Blood path, Vanheim itself isn't primarily a Blood nation, since it's blood hunters are very expensive and better used for other things. Combined with the Ah Itz, however, it unlocks their potential as Storm Demon summoners in the mid and late game. Storm Demons are absolutely devastating, and could easily propel Thespo to victory if he can start spamming them. To make matters worse, Vanjarls are pretty solid air mages, and will be able to help support the Storm strategy the Sorceresses are using. Further, Vanjarls are one of the handful of out-of-the-box effective thugs (solo units used to make raiding attacks), thanks to glamour, high stats, and powerful paths. Unfortunately, all of this comes at a price; the Vanjarl costs as much as many cap-only mages, while having far less magical potency. While they are versatile and powerful, Thespo can't exactly spam these guys. ---Other Commanders: Storm General, Friar, and Enkidu Scout  The purpose of the otherwise very Resource intensive MA/LA Caelum Storm General is pretty obvious: at some point, Thespo plans to cast the global Perpetual Storm (stops flying worldwide, summons an automatic storm every battle, reduces global income) in order to further his Air offense. Storm Demons and a handful of other flying units are immune to being grounded by Storms, and the Storm General is one of them, as are one of his troop choices. This means that Thespo can still make Flying raids once Perpetual Storm goes up; a major advantage.   The MA Marignon Friar and the EA Ur Enkidu Scout were chosen for the same reasons: they're both foreign-recruit, which means that they can be produced outside of forts (though in the case of the friar, a temple is still required). They're unexciting, but pretty good, choices ---Capital-Only Troops: Tuatha Warriors  The EA Tir Na Nog Tuatha Warriors were probably a weaker choice. While the Tuatha Warriors themselves are very powerful, and excellent sacred units, I strongly doubt that Thespo took a serious bless, and so as they stand they're basically just overpriced versions of the Sidhe Warrior, which he also took. I don't expect that he'll recruit many of these. ---Anywhere Troops: Sidhe Warriors, Markata, Spire Horn Warriors, Pale One Militia, Crossbow, Hoplite  Thespo made his troop choices well; each one has a specific role to play. The EA Tir Na Nog Sidhe Warriors are powerful expanders and raiders, with glamour, close and long range attacks, and high stats. They can also be used as effective, if expensive, protection for mages.  MA/LA Arcoscephale Hoplites are Thespo primary blockers; absorbing attacks so his Air mages can do their thing. High armor and a long weapon (useful because the the Repel rules) make them ideal blockers, even in small numbers. Their major disadvantage is their high resource cost, but he probably won't need that many.  MA Man Crossbowmen are cheap, accurate, powerful ranged units. Crossbows are, in general, the preferred ranged weapon in Dominions, and any of their number are solid choices.  EA Caelum Spire Horn Warriors are going to be used as part of Thespo's flying raiding parties, led by Storm Generals. Flying units equipped with spears are pretty good, since they will almost always have the advantage of the charge bonus. It pays to be careful about how you use such units; they tend to rely on their alpha strike, and are pretty vulnerable to counterattacks if it fails to rout the enemy.  Markata are common to the various Indian nations, and are poo poo. Utterly trash bad in combat, barring somewhat silly strategies. However, they are the cheapest units in the game, and are likely to be used primarily as patrollers, to support blood hunters, since only the number of troops matters for patrolling, usually.  Pale One Militia are also trash, but are cheap and allow Thespo to spam another useful property: Siege Bonus. Each Pale One counts as three units for the purposes of sieging, and thus are cheap and easy ways to break down enemy forts. ---National Gimmick: MA Bandar Log's National Spells Ugh. Bandar Log has a living fuckton of national summons of various spirits from Hindu (and other Indian faith) mythology. They're more or less devided into two categories: Astral and Blood. I don't think we're likely to see the Astral summons unless Thespo lucks into a powerful Astral mage from an event or magic site, so I'll focus on the Blood summons. Most of the Blood summons are various flavors of sacred Demons; very powerful and useful if you have a bless, but I doubt Thespo does. Knowing that, I think we're mostly likely the see the following:  The Dakini are incredibly powerful mages, excellent even at their high cost. Flying, Fear, powerful paths, and above all, Damage Reversal. Damage Reversal not only reflects damage taken back on opponents, but has a chance to negate the damage inflicted on the Dakini altogether. They're powerful enough to easily act as solo raiders, and are useful for a variety of other things as well. Expect to see many of these.  Asrapas are powerful and fairly cheap elite troops. They die quickly to missle weapons, but can do serious damage if properly screened. We may or may not actually see these; it mostly depends on how early Thespo gets his Blood economy going. Let me know if anyone wants more clarification on strategies or units: I know I'm skipping over a lot, since Dominions is such a dense game that I'd be here all day if I tried to explain how everything worked up front. fool of sound fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Aug 5, 2015 |
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Aug 5, 2015 19:25
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Gaghskull posted:I just noticed that he picked no astral? Why go blood if you have no astral mages? That takes away half of the standard blood late game strategy of just spamming demons and horrors everywhere. Blood is plenty powerful even sans Astral, and nothing is going to make people bumrush you like taking Blood/Astral. There's also a mod in effect raising the research level on Astral Corruption.
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Aug 5, 2015 19:49
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jBrereton posted:You didn't call your nation Rephalmania?
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Aug 5, 2015 20:13
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TravelLog posted:Would it be possible to get an explanation of EA, LA, etc? There are three eras of play in standard Dominions, each of which have difference playstyles. EA, or Early Age, is a time of powerful magic, warring giants and monsters, and humans wearing buttflaps. Most equipment is primitive and lovely, so good troops are mostly monsters or summoned creatures. Mages in this era are very powerful, but tend to be focused on a limited number of paths. Powerful sacred units are common, and thus so are early game rushes. Province populations are small, and thus so are income and production. but magical gems are common. This means that nations tend to have to find magical ways to supplement their powerful mages. MA is Middle Age. Humans are more widespread and most of the more powerful monster races have died back. Mages are still powerful, but less so, and a lot of nations are reliant on communions; using mages to co-cooperatively cast spells. Money and resources are more common, and troops are stronger, meaning that you can conserve more magic gems, and thus not feel their rarity increase. Most nations in this era have a decent balance of troops and magic, and thus it's probably the easiest age for new players to learn. Weaker early game rushes and minimal blood magic also help. This game is taking place using Middle Age settings. LA is Late Age, probably the least played age on SA. Troops have gotten more powerful again, and mages weaker, but more diversified and better researchers. Money and resources are common now, but gems are rare. In general, goons avoid LA because it strongly centralizes the game on Blood magic; unlike other paths, blood slaves income is based on performing blood hunts, which become easier and more effective in high population provinces patrolled by large numbers of troops, both of which LA is strongly conducive towards. It's a shame, because LA has a lot of very interesting nations and units, and you'll see a lot of them in the draft.
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Aug 5, 2015 20:24
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Elric posted:How does Fluers revive his god without penalty? All gods can be resurrected by having priests spend turns reviving them. This normally has a penalty of reducing all of the god's magic paths by 1. EA Ur has a unique national property called God Rebirth that removed the penalty, and units with a property called Elegist that makes the unit count as 2 priest levels higher for the purpose of resurrection, greatly speeding the process. I modded all of Fleurs' priests to have Elegist and his nation to have God Rebirth.
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Aug 5, 2015 21:03
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I Love You! posted:I just want to point out that Markata are not poo poo and are extremely effective late game troops if you play your cards correctly. "Powering up tiny monkeys with a million buffs" counts as a silly strategy, I Love You.
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Aug 5, 2015 21:33
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Also reminder that there is a meme thread contest!
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Aug 5, 2015 21:33
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I Love You! posted:Sorry but there's lots of ways to abuse markata that are Actually Good and not just Silly Good, markata own post a monkey meme
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Aug 6, 2015 00:07
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Absum posted:Baudin isnt scouting these guys. Thespo did make a post of his turn 3 perspective though. It's good that his nation was explained though cause I think he's gonna make posts for more turns. Whoops, oh well. He will be encountering him shortly.
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Aug 6, 2015 00:46
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uguu posted:Ah itz are amazing, think they got banned in the other draftgame even All of three or four of the Zotz blood mages got banned in the other draft. They're just that good.
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Aug 6, 2015 00:51
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Feinne posted:Yeah Mandeha can be pretty sweet if you've got a lot of demons that don't give a poo poo about darkness. He has Vanjarls, which have A2B1. He can just pay 30 blood slaves to get a Storm Demon summoner.
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Aug 6, 2015 06:00
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Nuclearmonkee posted:Monkey nations have really good spells to make markata incredible easily. A single square of lucky ethereal markata takes ~100 hits in melee combat to clear. One. Hundred. And you have to hit 14 defense. I was just playing a game where I was blocking blessed black centaur with a handful of appropriately buffed markata to give my cascade casters time to put them to sleep and allow the markata to kill all of them. They can also be used as really good ablative melee armor in a normal battle with battle fortune. And in dom4 morale issues are not a problem now that rage of the cornered rat exists. 
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Aug 6, 2015 14:18
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:if they're trying to make cool poo poo then they've probably failed because legit like 90% of the spells in the game are functionally useless and are thus not fun at all That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but yeah, at least half of the stuff in the game you will never use outside of edge cases, if at all. One of the most egregious examples is MA Ashdod, a different nation of Jewish giants. They have about 7-8 kinds of giant toops, of which you will ever recruit exactly one of in a serious game, and the rest of the time you'll use nothing but indies and human slaves, with the giants relegated to being mages. Basically, the devs have long stated they're more concerned about the fluff than the mechanics. It's still fun because of all the insane poo poo you can do.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:11
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Samog posted:please post more funny pictures so that i dont have to give a prize to the troll face legion of gods the mug will be mine, samog
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Aug 6, 2015 20:52
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Tarandis posted:Discussion content: can someone explain how the heck magic works? The whole d9 e3 h1 nonsense is super confusing. If I had to guess, I'd say that you somehow loot these gem things and then give them to units, which makes them mages? And then those mages can cast spells using the gems (which may or may not be consumables). How terribly wrong is this? There are 8 paths of magic: Fire (F), Water (W), Air (A), Earth (E), Astral (S), Nature (N), Death (D), and Blood (B). There are also special Holy (H) paths, that only priests get, and which behave somewhat differently. Mages, priests, and mage-priests come with certian preset paths, and most of them also get one or more random path from a pool determined by the unit. For example, the Tuatha Sorceress that Thespo chose always gets Air 3, Nature 2, and Holy 2, and have a 100% chance of getting a random +1 to any of the following: Air, Nature, Water, or Earth. There are also 8 schools of magic which act as your research trees: Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Construction, Enchantment, Thaumaturgy, Blood, and Divine. Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Enchantment, and Thaumaturgy all unlock spells from across all the paths except Blood as you level them. Construction instead mostly unlock magic items that mages can construct using magic gems, and which can be permanently equipped to commander/mage/priest/scout units. Divine starts fully researched, but has limited spells that only require Holy paths. Unlocked spells/items require a minimum path score, and many scale with additional levels in the path. Some spells also consume magic gems, which are attuned to any of the paths except Blood or Holy. Gems are collected automatically from magic sites that are randomly hidden in provinces, and require a mage of the same path as the site to uncover. Blood magic is a bit special: all spells that require a Blood path are contained in the Blood school, and instead of gaining gems through magic sites, you have to perform blood hunts; literally having your Blood mages and troops kick down doors and kidnap virgins. For some reason this upsets your people, so you have to have massive piles of units to patrol out unrest so your Blood mages can continue hunting. Almost all blood magic requires blood slaves to cast (unlike other paths, where most spells only cost fatigue), but blood slaves can be collected in greater numbers that any other gems. e: You get research by recruiting mages, then having them sit on their asses in your labs.
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Aug 6, 2015 21:47
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So now Baudin actually is scouting Jonjoe's nation: The Mongler Horder This is probably the most dangerous nation in the game, but unfortunately it's dangerous in a very obvious way, which means that someone is probably going to try to kill him the second they think they can. Jonjoe's central gimmick is that almost all of his units can be recruited outside of his forts, either in a particular terrain type, or just in general. ---Capital Only Mage: Bride-In-Waiting   EA Berytos' Bride-In-Waiting is the game's premier demon summoner; able to summon Devils and the mighty Storm Demons out of the box, and the powerful Demon Knights with a single pathboost magic item or 25% random path. She's also an extremely powerful and versatile battle caster, and is tough enough to withstand a hit or two or most of the field-clearing effects humans tend to be vulnerable to. She is one of the major reasons Berytos rarely survives the early game, and is one the first in the Monglers' line of horrors.---Anywhere Mages: Member of the Second Tier, Way, Oni General, Mystes  The first two are top tier blood mages, either of which is cause to try to rush a nation. LA Ulm's Member of the Second Tier is recruitable outside of fortresses, is a decent researcher and powerful mage, and has extremely high stealth, meaning the can strike from anywhere. They also have the dubious honor of being one of the easiest mages to turn into a Horror caster, probably the single strongest endgame strategy; once it's online, it's almost impossible to stop or even survive.  LA Xibalba's Way is recruitable both in fortresses, and in any forest province. They're naturally excellent blood hunters, and have a decent level of Nature magic; a strong path throughout the game. Mostly, however, expect to see these sitting in high population provinces capturing blood slaves.  EA Yomi's Oni General is one of a number of oni units, whose major gimmick is turning into a ghost on defeat, and coming back to life at the end of the battle if not destroyed. The Oni General has a fairly high Undead/Demon leadership score, courtesy of his Death magic paths. If the Monglers survive long enough to start producing demons, expect these tough mages to be leading them.  LA Pythium's Mystes is a terrible mage (though I guess they can cast the useful Swarm spell if you give them a gem), but like many of JonJoe's mages, she is recruitable in any province with a lab. Depsite her descriptions she was chosen as a researcher, since she's extremely cost efficient, and turn efficiency isn't such a problem when forts aren't necessary to unlock your units. ---Other Commanders: Warrior Chief, Missionary, Black Harpy   EA Ulm's Warrior Chief and LA Marignon's Missionary both have the same purposed; non-fort recruitable general and priest, respectively. The warrior chief is recruitable in any mountain or forest, and the missionary in any non-fort province with a temple.  The Pangaea/Asphodel's Black Harpy is the hands-down best scout in the game. Cheap, recruitable in any forest, very stealthy, and flying. Whoever has these has will almost certainly have near perfect intel on their opponents. ---Capital Only Troop: Ghoul Guardians  LA Ulm's tough, brave, high armor units who can knock out enemy sacreds on hits. They're high resources, but since we know JonJoe took Productivity 3 scales, he can afford them. They can effectively shut down many kinds of rushes on their own. ---Anywhere Troops: Barbarian Heavy Horsemen, Xibalban Warrior, Limitane, Axe Warrior, Limitane Standard, Harpy All of JonJoe's troops are first and foremost recruitable outside fortresses, so I'll just hit the highlights:   LA T'ien Ch'i's Barbarian Heavy Horsemen and EA Ulm's Axe Warriors are both pretty powerful and effective offensive units that are characterized by having decent stats and a lot of attacks.   LA Xibalba's Xibalban Warrior and Pangaea/Asphodel's Harpy are both cheap and dangerous flying alpha strikers.   LA Pythium's Limitane are cheap and tanky blockers, and their Limitane Standards increase the morale of all other units in their squad. Jonjoe took extra mage picks as his gimmick, so no national spells or anything this time. JonJoe's basic strategy is pretty simple: use Ghoul Guardians to survive long enough to start summoning hordes of demons, and to eventually transition into Horrors, the Astral/Blood strategy. The Horror strategy involves casting the infamous Astral Corruption spell, which has a chance to kill any mage who casts a non-Blood magic spell, and Send Horror, which calls a bunch of hideous Lovecraftian monster to invade an enemy province. Everything is going to rely on his ability to fend off the inevitable aggression he's going to suffer in the early game.
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Aug 7, 2015 01:17
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 Meme contest! Win a copy of Dominions 4 or a hilarious mug!
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Aug 7, 2015 21:42
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Samog posted:also, the entire magic system is a loose adaptation of ars magica except not really, at all
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Aug 9, 2015 18:21
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Samog posted:it's im convinced
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Aug 9, 2015 18:30
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fleurs what are you doing you're stealing my gimmick no and yeah i plan to go through all the other nations in time
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Aug 10, 2015 15:35
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Glazius posted:Oh wow, you're all just on that one supercontinent? Oh boy there's gonna be blood shortly. Sailing is only available to certain nations, and traversing troops across the seabed is resource intensive and retarded, so virtually all Dominions games are on a supercontinent.
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Aug 10, 2015 18:05
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TravelLog posted:Out of curiosity, who would you guys say is the best goon Dom player? What is their strategy/in-game personality like? That's a hard question. Nuclearmonkee is definitely a particularly strong player. In my experience, he tends to pretend he's weaker than he is to his dangerous neighbors while gobbing up his weaker ones. Once he hits his research goals, he starts goose stepping all over everyone who bought into him being a non-threat.
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Aug 11, 2015 01:43
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TravelLog posted:Is there any particular civilization, magic, or pretender he prefers? I just got interested in the game from the Dominion LPs so I"m curious as to what is considered best of the best. Most goons tend to bounce around different nations just for variety's sake. As for pretenders, the Earth Snake is the single most popular one; it's a very powerful awake expander, and is undercosted enough that you can take decent scales with it, or a major Earth bless if you want. Neruz posted:Just sign an alliance with him and help him win the game: You'll have way more fun that way than if you try and fight his inevitable victory and he probably won't break the alliance. Don't actually do this because it's lovely to all the other players.
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Aug 11, 2015 03:11
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Gridlocked posted:Also is there a place I can find a coherent story of how the various ages fit together? Like I know a few basic things like the Roman dudes being taught necromancy by the Egyptian Snakes and then misusing it for EEEEVIIIL. The manual has decent blurbs for each of the nations, and dev commentary on what inspired most of them. Other than that, you can poke through the Mod Inspector to read about hero units, which often have more backstory.
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Aug 11, 2015 03:13
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TravelLog posted:All I can say is that as someone who hasn't played his first game yet, I think the most fun thing available would be to play as the RNG for other players and decide who gets what events, gem sites, etc. You should enter the
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Aug 11, 2015 23:57
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Feinne posted:Don't do this it's a trap. It's actually not too bad for the most part. The biggest difficulties I have are with spell modding, which does utterly unpredictable things for no apparent reason, and requires you to fiddle around a lot to get all but the simplest effects to work.
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Aug 12, 2015 00:06
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Gridlocked posted:Please tell us about how Modpud forced you into retirement. It was her feminine wiles.
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Aug 12, 2015 01:06
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Gridlocked posted:Oh so EA, MA and LA are relative to their nation not to a collective time zone? Only by lore standards. Gameplay wise, they're still divided by EA/MA/LA
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Aug 12, 2015 01:09
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So let's talk about Baudin's biggest immediate threat: Boing and his nation Boingladaesh.fool_of_sound posted:
Capital Only Mage: Camazotz  Presumably taken for their Blood/Death and Blood/Earth crosspath (both useful, for different reasons), the Camazotz are somewhat weak for a capital mage. Still, they make useful blood hunters, and can potentially summon both Vampire Lords (useful for leading the hordes of undead Boing will inevitably be wielding), and Demon Knights (ever useful and powerful summons). Anywhere Mages: High Seraph and Mystic  The High Seraph is ludicrously powerful for a recruit anywhere. Air 3 means that he can cast Storm without boosters, and can twice as much damage as the average Air mage in an Air strategy. Unfortunately, they're slow to recruit and expensive, so boing probably won't make many of them immeditately.  The Mystics are fantastic mages. Excellent, efficient researchers and useful both as Communion masters and slaves (Nuclearmonkee will explain communions is a bit). Boing will probably build swarms of these to get him into full offensive modebefore switching to High Seraphs. Other Commanders: Apu, High Priest of C'tis, and Bakemono Scout   The Apu is a flying commander. He does flying commander things like lead raiding parties. His only interesting feature is that, when he dies, he is turned into a Mallqui, which loses the ability to fly but is a better general. Unfortunately the Mallqi also costs more upkeep.  Boing took the High Priest of C'tis because it is one of the few cheap, recruit anywhere Holy 2s, which Boing desperately wants because his priests can summon free undead every turn, and Holy 2s can summon the much more powerful Longdead Horsemen, rather than just the purely chaff Longdead.  The Bakemono scount can be recruited outside of forts, always useful in a scout. It's otherwise unremarkable. Capital Only Troop: Ancestor Vessels  I love these guys. Powerful even without a bless (important, since Boing didn't take one) thanks to their Howling Bows, which inflict a fear attack with ever shot. They're also pretty potent in terms of mundane offense as well, like upgraded Barbarian Heavy Horsemen from JonJoe's nation. Anywhere Troops: Skinshifters, Airya Archers, Illithids, War Elephants, Crossbowmen, Hastatus   Skinshifters are elite troops who regenerate 10% of their HP ever turn. This wouldn't be all that useful if not for their ability to turn into a nasty werewolf the first time they're killed. They're tanky and very powerful, though not as powerful as Boing though, cause he got his first stack of them this game wiped by indie cavalry.  Flying archers are useful as skirmishers since it's very difficult to approach them. Except to see raiding parties of these at some point.  A piece of stolen intellectual property in a snazzy robe, the Illithids are for the most part pretty poor soldiers except for their ability to Mind Blast, which has 100% accuracy and paralyzes enemies hit for several turns. They're hard to mass, but a decent team of them can turn the tide on most battles.  A lot of nations have access to elephants; they're ostensibly very useful for expansion, though only a handful of players seem to be able to use them successfully. They have Trample and Size 6, which means they can potentially make a lot of attacks every round. Boing commited the sin of choosing the Machakan elephant over the one ridden by monkeys because the Machakan one has one higher Morale.  We've talked about these guys before. Stable ranged combatant. Cheap and always useful.  We've seen units similar to these; they're cheap blockers and arrow catchers with big shields National Gimmick: Reanimation This is the single biggest threat in Boing's nation: his priests can spend their turns summoning free undead units: Ghouls or Longdead, or for H2+ priests, Longdead Horsemen. Ghouls aren't really worth talking about because they kill your population when you summon them. I think they have a paralyze attack though, so maybe they'll see some use? Longdead are your basic skeletons: poo poo trash, useful only in that they're free and come in large numbers, often large enough to defeat otherwise superior armies. They can win basically any battle that doesn't contain on of their counters, of which there are a decent amount. Longdead Horsemen are better; not fantastic, but reasonable fighters and useful on the alpha strike; Boing will probably make a lot of these.
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Aug 12, 2015 02:02
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 06:18 |
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Gridlocked posted:fool of sound please teach me how to not bad bad at this game T_T i cant im really bad ask nuclearmonkee
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Aug 12, 2015 02:13
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