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Apocron posted:Seems like things are snowballing since you break multiple research goals every turn. Keep in mind that for each branch of research, each successive level is much more expensive than the previous. So, when you switch to researching a branch you haven't touched before, you're gonna blow through those early levels very quickly. How are u probably still hasn't got a huge research machine going yet, he's just grabbing the first three levels in several things. Level 4 construction is a critical point to hit since that unlocks a big slew of craftable items. After that he might switch to another branch and blow through a few levels quickly there... the decision of whether to press on into more expensive level 5 or 6 of one branch vs. grabbing the first two or three levels of a handful of other branches is pretty important and there's probably good arguments for going either way.
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Nov 29, 2016 20:19
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How are u posted:Turn 29, perhaps a turn earlier. Turn 29 is when I noticed it and noted it down. But if you consistently go AI as soon as you have a serious setback, you're encouraging the other people you play with frequently to attack you, knowing that you'll usually fold. The meta-game thing to do is to be as consistently obstinate and annoying as possible as an enemy, but consistently faithful as a friend. This makes the other players think twice whenever they decide to target you. That said... it's pretty hard to dedicate an hour of your time every night to taking your turn in a game where your defeat is certain. So it's really understandable.
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Dec 1, 2016 20:38
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Lord Koth posted:Wishing for Armageddon is the better of those two options if you're just trying to drag everyone else down with you. Astral Corruption is more to gently caress over non-blood nations and give you the advantage in general - which may not be terribly useful if they're already stomping you into the ground. On the other hand, blowing up the population of the entire world, and thus dropping income into the gutter, is going to affect the rest of the game whether you survive or not. If you still have enough pearls to Wish, you weren't trying hard enough to win your war. And anyway the metagame tactic is most effective if "attack me and you, specifically the attacker, will suffer enough that you won't win" is far more effective than "attack me and everyone in the game will suffer." The former discourages an attacker: the latter encourages everyone to gang up and eliminate you as soon as possible.
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Dec 1, 2016 22:51
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Since this is a mo'money game, and you're presumably rolling in cash at all times, is there any reason not to pump PD in every province up to at least like 20?
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Dec 18, 2016 00:04
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How do demons compare to vampires? Like, who would win in a fight. And can a vampire turn a demon into a demon vampire?
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Dec 29, 2016 22:24
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Yeah, it's worth doing Bowl of Blood anyway for those occasional rare good blood sites, but if you skip it, you're not crippling yourself either. Mainly because your blood slave economy has no dependence on sites, whereas your gem economy is almost totally dependent on sites.
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Jan 2, 2017 22:03
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goatface posted:They can't go in the sea, and they're a bit weak to fire. The immortality being limited to within your domain matters a lot, too. Fantastic on defense, but when you're trying to attack a neighbor with decent dominion, they can start to take out your vamps in a permanent way, and that's a lot of slaves' worth of stuff to lose, not to mention whatever you kitted them with.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:35
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All that said, I found out recently that the AI is at least capable of fielding and using communions. When you're not expecting it, that can be tremendously lovely to just run into randomly.
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Jan 14, 2017 00:18
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Deceitful Penguin posted:The game is primarily about PvP, so having the AI be poo poo seems about right If the AI wasn't poo poo, the game would be a much better single-player experience, so it wouldn't have to be a game primarily about PvP.
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Jan 14, 2017 00:44
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Teledahn posted:...Does it work? Like most things in Dom4, I'm guessing the answer is yes* *significant drawbacks or complications may apply. Void where prohibited by enemy dominion. Do not attempt to hug Firebirds. May cause serious side effects including dry mouth, hives, bird flu, invasions by demons from beyond the veil of sanity, or immediate reprisal by every other player in the game as soon as they realize what you've done. No refunds. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Jan 14, 2017 |
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Jan 14, 2017 07:32
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Scripting 50 wizards sounds like a loving nightmare, though.
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Jan 18, 2017 20:08
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You can cut and paste scripts? How do you do that?
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Jan 18, 2017 20:16
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sebmojo posted:How did he manage to cast it so early? He's got a pretender who can cast it so it's a matter of getting enough gems, and beelining up the one magic school you need to cast it. If you do nothing but build your nation choice, pretender, and expansion strategy around getting together 70 death gems and researching up to Thaumaturgy 5, then there you go. Keep in mind you can alchemize pearls to any other gem at a cost of 2 pearls per gem, so if you focus on site searching for D and S, maybe trade for gems with a neighbor if you have to, use paths to maximize research (Magic 3, because that gives your mages research bonus), etc. It's funny, but also probably not a viable game-winning strat.
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Jan 22, 2017 19:52
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Cerebral Bore posted:Unless I'm mistaken that only works if the other player is dumb and keeps his lords bunched up. If you can bring a dozen mages who can cast a spell to a fight and script them to cast it three or four times each, you can overcome your enemy's dispersal of their guys. I doubt this is a foolproof approach, but most things in Dom4 can be countered in some way or another. The game is about reacting to your enemy's reaction to your previous reaction to their previous action, ad nauseum, until it's over because someone grabbed enough thrones the end.
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Feb 3, 2017 20:23
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You catch the vamp swarm by noticing which of your provinces now has his candles in it, and scripting the mages there to spam astral geyser. Worst case scenario, they're in the wrong place, but eventually they'll be in the right place and if he's using a sizeable percentage of his vamps in that fight, you might horror mark all of them.
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Feb 3, 2017 20:37
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Ultiville posted:"Plan it out in advance and see how it goes wrong" is an under-used conceit in traditional games, IMO, and is part of what makes Galaxy Trucker fun. See also: Robo Rally. e. oh and also the way combat works in Kemet! You have a handful of cards with various combinations of attack and defense values, and when you fight you pick one to play and one to discard. When your hand empties you get your full set back. So you pick a card, and you can secretly add enhancements to it if you have any. Then you and your opponent play each of your cards face-down, and simultaneously reveal them and any enhancements you added. The cards modify the values of the troops you had on the table and you can immediately determine losses, and a winner of the battle. It's a really quick and elegant way to have both the relative sizes of the armies, and the blind strategic decision-making ("scripting") matter, while also adding in an element of resource management (use your best card now, or save it for later?). And it takes like one minute to resolve a battle so it doesn't take over the game. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 08:16
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SIGSEGV posted:There's a cureable insanity? In Dominions, any unit (a troop or a commander) can take damage during a battle, by losing some hit points. But after a battle, all the hit points are restored. The way the game models permanent damage is with "afflictions." An affliction might be something like "permanent chest wound" which reduces the unit's hit points by 20%, or "Lost an arm" which prevents the unit from using both a weapon and a shield, or any two-handed thing. One of the afflictions is "Feebleminded" which causes mages to lose all their paths, so they can't cast spells any more. A bad one is becoming "Diseased" - such a unit will lose 10% of his hitpoints each turn, until he dies. Afflictions are curable, though. There are units in the game that can (magically or via divine power or something) automatically cure afflictions of other units in the same province as them, and there is also an item or two that can cure afflictions. Insanity is different. Instead of being an affliction, it's an attribute - like some units are Amphibious, so they can go onto land or water provinces, and some units are Magical Beings, so they can only be led by a commander with some magic paths. There are various ways to interact with various attributes: for example, you can forge an item that grants a commander holding it the ability to breathe underwater, or a crown that lets any commander lead Magical Beings. As I understand it, insanity is difficult to interact with. Units can get it from various sources - for example, Rl'yeh's domain automatically spreads insanity. I believe the percentage of a unit's insanity represents the odds, each turn, that they will refuse to be given a command and instead will do something of their own volition. Things like muttering to themselves, attending a funeral, staring at the stars... or more harmful things, like plundering your province, trying to become your nation's prophet, or even destroying your lab in that province. Gift of Health is a global enchantment which I think can cure unit's insanity, in addition to curing afflictions and providing units in your dominion with health buffs. Tartarians however have an attribute called "shattered soul" which is definitely uncurable even by Gift of Health or any other means. You can cure stuff like their feeblemindedness and other afflictions, and you can make them commanders with the Gift of Reason ritual, but you are always stuck with the fact that 1 out of 4 times you tell them to do something they will ignore you and gently caress around doing something possibly stupid or bad. All of this info is based on some reading, I have never actually dealt with insanity or tarts. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 21:51
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Ah OK. I wonder why they bother with a different attribute, then? Does Shattered Soul do something different than Insanity?
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Feb 15, 2017 22:07
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I would guess at this point nobody would hope to actually eliminate howareu. But you don't have to eliminate everyone to win the game, you just need to claim enough throne points.
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Feb 15, 2017 23:39
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Speaking of. It's an annoying lore inconsistency that several rituals limit how many undeads you can make in a province to the number of corpses available, but in combat there is no limit. I realize "skeletons" are from older bones than the fresh dead, but you can raise unlimited zombies etc. in combat too, if the combat lasted long enough.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:05
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They've literally turned the swords to plowshares.
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Feb 17, 2017 01:50
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curse of blood turns a whole lot of blood slaves into a vampire lord. bowl of blood searches one province for blood sites. They're rare, but useful when you find them. several more of the spells you're seeing cast routinely are site searching. For example, Dark Knowledge searches one province for Death sites, Arcane Probing searches for Astral sites, Gnome Lore searches for Earth sites, and I think Augury is Air sites. Pack of Wolves makes a pack of wolves. It's good because it's a very cheap summon spell and you can use wolves as troops for patrolling, which you need to do in any province you're blood hunting to quell the unrest that blood hunting causes.
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Mar 13, 2017 17:49
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Cathode Raymond posted:Man's god died from a disease it caught from a dead toad? drat. Yeah pretender gods typically have high Magic Resistance, but I don't think that helps prevent you from catching diseases. And in this game if you catch a disease and don't have a magic or holy cure of some kind, your unit will lose HP every month until they die, period. I don't think there's any mechanism for a diseased unit to naturally get over the disease.
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Mar 14, 2017 20:06
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SIGSEGV posted:I really wish there were more ways to heal afflictions in general, it's an interesting mechanic but it can get majorly annoying / extremely funny a bit too often. They could just make healer commanders a bit more available. It would make more sense if afflictions weren't all treated the same, as far as healing goes. It'd be cool if you have a natural ability to recover (partially or fully) to something like a disease or a limp, but obviously most units should not recover from having an arm cut off.
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Mar 14, 2017 21:26
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50 Magister Arcanes is... not easy to deal with. That is a whole loving lot of mages.
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Mar 19, 2017 07:53
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wiegieman posted:Stellar Cascades is remarkably good in a fort situation because it makes the fatigued out troops clog up the gates. Then you just pile on more fatigue and the damage it does kills them off. There's really no good way to fight 50 mages other than to use big battlefield killing spells of your own. Well I mean, you can bring flyers. Flyers completely bypass the gate chokepoint so that's a big advantage in a siege fight. Or give the enemy mages a distraction. Howl is great not because wolves are so amazing in a fight, but because they come from random directions and cause enemy mages to waste their spells on them instead of your important guys.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:08
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Also when you're on the map screen, click the army (all the dudes you've multiselected) so they're highlighted. Switch to the orders screen, and those guys are still highlighted, so you can give orders just to them and not to the dudes not selected.
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Apr 13, 2017 21:31
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When you Wish for a unique item (or unit), it gets taken from whoever has it. Yoink! Also yes, magic rituals (which Wish is) happen fairly early in the turn resolution, before any battles take place. So if you steal a unique item that an opponent is relying on for their scripting, right before a battle with that guy, he is going to not be able to cast his spell. However. You can cast a spell one level higher than you are by spending an extra gem.
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Apr 16, 2017 00:39
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Unless it's the master of a communion large enough to pass off all that fatigue. Which is the normal way of getting enough astral to cast it in the first place, of course. But it takes a round to set up the communion. Unless you use items to do it.
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Apr 16, 2017 03:29
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Also usually nobody wants to be the only one attacking an obviously strong nation, so a lot comes down to trying to convince everyone else to team up against that guy. In fact that's so important that I think this turn How are u is missing an important cue; if Pan is about to attack him, he ought to assume that everyone is about to attack him until he's certain they're not.
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Apr 17, 2017 05:25
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Coolguye posted:because getting someone to the point of being able to cast it is really, really hard. it took a mo money game just to see it happen ONCE, forget the idea of having it happen multiple times in normal games. it's also very vulnerable in many situations, high magic resistance would have it burning it's One Weird Trick and wasting all of that mammoth investment. a couple of bane lords with magic resist gear would be able to plow through many vanguard armies and would disassemble that golem. Just to be clear. Any mage with astral can cast this spell in combat, if you have a large enough communion behind them. Nations with lots of cheap astral mages, or any nation that gets a magic site that lets them recruit (say) Sages early in the game, can get to Mass Enslave. The real issue is that the spell itself is very high level, so you're not casting it early or midgame anyway, and it's not strong against magic resist so it's easy for enemy commanders to counter, and the caster of the spell is often pretty vulnerable (sages are old men in robes, for example). But you don't have to get a guy to S9 or whatever just to use the spell, because communions. e. Oops I didn't notice another page of posts, but I'll leave this here anyway. In a recent game I was able to mass 32+ s1 and s2 casters into an army to run a communion and boost an S3 guy with a hat and a coin high enough to cast mass enslave. But they died without ever getting the spell off because my opponent cast rain of stones on turn one and murdered them. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Apr 24, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 02:30
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I didn't know I'd get two turns, didn't know body ethereal worked (I assumed RoS were magic attacks), and would have had to re-script every single mage in like turn 75 of a game I'd lost on turn one. Anyway that's all beside the point I'm making here, which is: you can cast Mass Enslave with a big communion even without piling on lots of expensive items, but there are still ways to counter it, it's not a panacea. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Apr 24, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 02:44
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Empowering is also useful for a forger/ritual caster who you're not going to risk in combat, to hit path levels that let you forge important stuff or cast an important global. For example air is notoriously hard because the air boosters require fairly high paths in air so empowering one guy up to a point where he can forge air boosters is a thing.
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May 2, 2017 20:37
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wiegieman posted:We're talking 50 gems per level No. It's 50 gems to break into a path for level 1. Subsequently it's 15 times the level in gems. So going from level 1 to level 2 is 30, level 3 costs 45, level 4 costs 60, level 5 costs 75, level 6 costs 90, level 7 costs 105, level 8 costs 120, and level 9 costs 135 gems. Most of the time you are either breaking into a path for 50 gems which is super super expensive, or you're pushing someone up from maybe 3 to 4 or something so you can forge the right path booster or cast the right ritual. The super high levels are generally really rare because no mage starts at level 7 or whatever, and if you have someone whose native path is 7 you can get them to 9 with boosters for far less gems. For example in a recent endgame I pushed an S5 guy to S6 for 90 astral gems, so that with boosters he could cast the S9 spell Wish. It was the only way, because someone else had already forged the only unique astral boosters in the game. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 21:37
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Hunt11 posted:There is already the reverse global which allows everyone to go into the water. Which you'd never ever rely on because if the water nation dispels that global or it gets replaced, whoops every airbreather currently underwater dies. Don't bother with modding in the opposite global because it'd be equally dumb.
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May 3, 2017 17:42
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Gems can be handed out to your dudes only in your own labs. So when you send an army out to go fight, you need to give all your mages a supply of gems so they can cast spells they're scripted to cast. If they might fight two times, you need double the gems. Three fights? Three times the gems. Unfortunately, because Dominions, mages have a nasty habit of using extra gems you give them to do stupid poo poo. Like, they can waste a gem just to reduce the fatigue of a spell they're already casting. Which OK if you really needed that, but usually you accounted for fatigue when you wrote their script! You can tell each mage to be conservative with gem use and that improves things, but they can still waste their gems. So one way around that is to accompany the army with someone whose job is to just schlep gems. Any commander can carry gems, so give a big stockpile to (say) a scout who isn't even going to attack and whose script is to just hide in the back and run away, and then after each battle, redistribute the gems using Dominions' incredibly, fantastically, just mind-blowingly stupid gem-transfer system it uses when you're not in a lab province (select one commander in your army and select his gems and the game picks one other commander in that army to whom you can hand the gems. It's always the same one, but it's not a 1:1 ratio, so first Bob hands his gems to Joe, then Joe hands his gems to Amy, then maybe Amy has Joe as her trading partner even though you're trying to get the loving gems to Sally? Arrrgh So yeah temporary gems are fabulous. Script your mage to cast one spell that needs a gem, he'll use that temporary gem and you never need to equip him with more gems. e. In this game, HowAreU has the advantage of having fuckloads of flying commanders who he can easily send out from nearby labs to deliver piles of gems if an army runs low on something. So the above is mitigated somewhat by that. But only a little. And doing this is still yet more loving micromanagement.
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May 5, 2017 05:27
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Cimbri posted:Wait, you can do that? ...gently caress agghh at least I've only wasted maybe 10 hours of my life doing this since I've only played 3 mp games so far.
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May 5, 2017 19:15
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Haha I love those tweets. "To be good at war, be the one in charge. That way, nobody can give you orders that will cause you to lose." "When you march against the enemy, have faster, better fed troops with plenty of horses. When the enemy marches against you, he should have slower, starving troops with no horses." "Try not to be the General of the weaker side. The stronger side will usually win." -- Sun Tzu "Do not do what your enemy expects you to do. Except, uhhh, except if he expects you to defeat him, you should still do that."
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May 14, 2017 16:22
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Xarn posted:I'd kinda expect that once I stop pressing modifier keys, they stop... modifying the presses (yes, I found out that I can group by shift, I ran into problem breaking the groups) After you've selected a group of commanders, you can de-select individual commanders from the group by control-clicking them again. You can then select the commander you just "removed from the group" and that one commander will no longer be in the group. Note that you can also select-group commanders with shift-click, which selects a range from the one currently selected through to the one you shift-clicked, and all between. Similar to working with shift and control clicking to select ranges of text, or multiple objects in a Windows folder. Similar, but not quite the same, because Illwinter.
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May 15, 2017 23:11
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Could Sabba just Wish for another two-handed item?
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May 22, 2017 07:54
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