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Turn 18 Turn 18 begins with a bunch of site searching notifications. We only found 1 site, a Grove of Fertility:  Not very exciting! Then we have two battle reports from the Man – Patala war. In the first report Patala tries to kick Man off of the fort of his that Man is sieging in the province of Cederwood Forest. Here’s the Patala army:  And the Mannish sieging army:  Man’s longbowmen are divided into groups and scripted to fire at both closest enemy and enemy archers, which was basic-level smart of Man’s player. However, he neglected to script anybody to fire at large enemy monsters, which allowed Patala’s elephants the time to get close enough to stomp one of Man’s units of lizard warriors dead. We’ll see if he learns that lesson in future battles.  Glorious pixel-combat Once the elephants are dead Patala’s Naga Warrior sacred units move into battle.  Looks like Patala has gone with a Blood 4 Earth 4 Nature 9 bless for his Naga. That gives them 2 points of reinvigoration (great for melee troops), 2 points of strength (great for melee again), and +9 hitpoints plus regeneration (excellent for any sacred unit). They’re not -amazing- sacreds but they’re pretty good with this bless. They make short work of Man’s second unit of lizard warriors and his handful of Tower Knights.  However, due to lovely Dominions AI, the Naga Warriors then decide to move up to Man’s archers just close enough to use their poison spit attack instead of engaging in melee and chopping them up. This allows Man’s archers to pour volley after volley of arrows into the Naga, eventually breaking them.  The little green balls are Naga 'Poison Spit' attacks. Man’s army begins to rout just after Patala, and it’s a race between the two to see who vacates the field first. Patala wins, so the remnant of Mannish troops remaining on the field at the end of the battle are still sieging the castle on the strategic map. Patala played well and killed a bunch of Mannish troops, but he lost a fair number of cap-only sacred Naga Warriors, hard to replace, and failed to decisively win. He’ll have to do better if he wants to win this war.  The second battle is just of Man sending another, larger army to try and take the province of The Curtain Wall again, the same province he failed to take due to PD last turn. This turn Patala reinforced the province with some crossbowmen and a handful of Guru mages, and considerably upped the province defense. Man ended up winning the battle, but he lost more units than he really should have. I think both Man and Patala are getting a feel for each other and learning which tactics will be required to win.   Sun TzuFinally, we have two events occur in our province of Bithayne. One is awesome:   Heck yes, I will take it. That’s a 500g value for the lab plus free gems and a goofy low-level magic item that isn’t ever worth crafting but hey it’s free. The other event just gives us more fire gems. We move two armies into our last two remaining indie provinces. Also, I talked with Xibalba on IRC hours after finishing this turn and we extended our NAP to turn 27. My NAP with Man expires a couple turns after that, so we will see what the world situation is at that time and plan accordingly. Next turn: expansion complete, building continues, more Man – Patala war updates!
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Oct 19, 2016 00:20
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Deceitful Penguin posted:So Patala is like, what, non-monkey Hindu? And Man is England or Wales? Throughout the three Eras of Dominions 4 Patala is always a nation of Monkeys and Apes inspired by Hindu mythology. In the Early Era the primate populace were ruled by Celestial beings that came down from Heaven to live on Mount Kailasa and set themselves up as Kings and Priests of the Ape people. In the Middle Era the Celestials were driven from the world, and the Apes rule themselves and form the Kingdom of Bandar Log. In the Late Era, in which we're playing, the Naga, snake-men who live under the earth in the Jeweled City of Patala, use their innate mesmerizing abilities and their mighty magical strength to seize control of the Apes. I think the Ape nations of all Eras are really cool and have great background and super interesting (and super strong and expensive) national summons based on Hindu mythology. Man is just a straight up 100 Year War Britain + King Arthur + bits of Anglo mythology mashup. I find it a fairly boring nation, conceptually.
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Oct 19, 2016 10:30
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Angry Lobster posted:Crashing the game with skeletons is just another "gently caress this gay earth" strategy. Oh no, no not at all. They are still very bad for many reasons. The monkey nations in Dominions 4 remain conceptually awesome but practically low to mid-tier in strength. I posit that the bless that Atlanton chose for Patala in this game is not meant primarily for the Naga Warriors, which for reasons you laid out are dog-poo poo compared to many other sacreds. The Bless is for all of the truly fantastic sacred troop and commander summons that Patala has access to, in both the Conjuration and Blood schools of magic. The Minor Blood (+ strength) portion of the bless indicates that Patala's god has Blood 4, which he 100% took just to be able to kick-start blood hunting and open the door to advancing in Blood Magic. In the Early Era there are actually two monkey nations. There is Kailasa, the previously mentioned nation of apes ruled by divine beings from the Celestial Sphere, and there is Lanka, an island nation of black-furred apes ruled by demonic Rakshasha in an orgy of blood and violence. Kailasa and Lanka each have access to national summons that reflect the tenor of each nation. Kailasa can summon various types of divine units, ranging from extremely powerful medium infantry to strong astral mages that teleport around the world at will to even the mighty Rudra, the ultimate harbingers of divine fury, bringers of war and thunder and fire and death that strike like a hurricane with all four of their arms. Lanka, on the other hand, can summon varieties of demonic ogres, ranging from extremely tough and hard-hitting infantry to lithe demonettes that strike with life-stealing daggers to powerful, spammable Air and Blood mages to, ultimately, the stupefying Mandeha, a titanic demon-ogre black as night with wings the size of a building whose singular goal in life is to eat the Sun itself and plunge the world into eternal night. The Middle Era and Late Era iterations of the monkey nations gain access to both sets of national spells, though they do not natively have any Blood magic on their mages. SO, I can tell you with certainty that Atlanton is planning to break into Blood ASAP so he can get to those drat fantastic summons. Basically, if one of the monkey nations can survive the first few years of the game they -can- become extremely dangerous and strong.
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Oct 21, 2016 23:04
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Turn 19 The turn begins with a message that we have achieved another breakthrough in Thaumaturgy research. That’s excellent, just a few more turns and we will hit level 3 and will be able to begin remote site-searching for nature and fire sites. Then there are two global announcements that Thrones have been claimed. First we see that Patala claimed the Throne of Gaia, which is very similar to the Throne of Life except it gives you +2 to growth scales and only 2 nature gems a turn. I think the Throne of Gaia is one of my favorite Thrones in the game.  We also see that Bogarus has taken the Crystal Throne, and can now recruit Crystal Mages in addition to the Iron Mages from The Iron Throne. Man, he’s getting all of the magic diversity Thrones, and he doesn’t even need them! At this point I am feeling kind of jealous about my lovely Throne of Misfortune that I haven’t even claimed yet    We do see that one of our manual site-searchers found a site in Blackdale:  It's just a low-level Astral site, but gems are gems. Then there are two battle reports for the last two indie battles we are likely to have in this game. First the bountiful farmlands of Florien and their well-equipped defenders:  Then the cave province of Stalagmia and its massive population of Cavemen:  We take both easily, but the cavemen of Stalagmia actually kill more of our men than the Heavy Cavalry of Florien. That is because cavemen, while wearing only furs and with terrible attack and defense stats, are massively strong and wield a 2 hand club that does 21 damage. They can kill a human in one swing, and they manage to bring down 5 Gibborim before they rout.  Anyway, we are now fully, 100% expanded. We have 21 provinces including our capitol, not a terribly bad haul all things considered. We’re at peace for the moment, so we will continue to focus on building up our hideously expensive infrastructure and recruiting more mages to up our research. We desperately need more forts and mages. There are a couple of events, one of which is a +10 to province income from the opening of trade routes and the other a bunch of free fire, air, water, and earth gems. Additionally, one of our scouts in Xibalban territory got caught by patrollers and murdered. Next turn: More boring site-searching and building of infrastructure, but I will also write a turn 20 reflection of how I feel we are doing and what I wish I could have changed or done better!
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Oct 22, 2016 17:05
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PurpleXVI posted:But yeah, what's the plan, ultimately? Does Gath benefit from a long, slow turtling for some awesome national summons and superspells? Or do they have good enough starting dudes that it's just about learning a few spells/grabbing a few artifacts for commanders, and then murdering other nations before they can get their own super-stuff online? I didn't start this game with any sort of ultimate plan, I rarely do in any game of Dominions 4. The initial goal is to survive the first two years of the game, and to establish yourself with forts and research so that you won't be a pushover and lose your first war. You'll want to have some research goals, but those are very dependent on the paths your mages possess. At this stage of the game I think that our troops (more specifically our sacred Gibborim) are good enough that our neighbors aren't interested in invading us. That would probably end up being a long and costly war that wouldn't benefit either side, and it is much more productive to take a bite out of somebody else who is already engaged in a war, or to find an ally and go gently caress up a 3rd party as a team. That said, there are precious few troops in Dominions that remain elite and relevant and powerful enough on their own to last you an entire game. Eventually, battlefield magic advances to the point that even the most elite troops will put up the resistance of a wet paper towel. Because I feel we have a little breathing room at this time (Man is at war with Patala, we have a cordial relationship with Caelum, we have an NAP with Xibalba) I am focusing research into Thaumaturgy so we can get some of those great remote site-searching spells. Magic gems and Research are the two pillars of ultimate strength in Dominions, and the earlier we discover all of the sites in our kingdom the stronger we will be down the line. In the first Mo Money Mo Problems game I ended up turtling and researching for quite some time just because that's how things shook out, and I felt that it really benefited my nation in the end. So, at this point in the game, I am inclined to do the same thing with Gath. Speaking of Gath, the nation does have national summons and spells (not super-spells), and they are of varying usefulness! National summons can range from loving incredible to pieces of poo poo, and this is true of most nations in Dominions 4. Often times I find that national summons are a bit too expensive to really utilize thoroughly, but because this is a Mo Money game price becomes less of an issue. Here are a few examples of Gath national summons:  The Malakh here is our lowest level Conjuration national summon. It's dumb. It's an H1 priest for 9 Pearls. Sure, it's also an Angelic chassis (Invulnerability, resistances, Awe, flying, etc), but it's still a loving H1 priest for 9 Pearls. Pearls are invaluable, Pearls are Life, never waste Pearls! I cannot think of a scenario where I'd ever summon one of these guys. They also sit in Conjuration 4, so they're not even something you could leverage in the very early game where they could be even slightly useful.  The Hashmal is the next level up from the Malakh, and it's still not great. It's far more expensive, but it is more useful (for what that's worth). Somebody on IRC once told me that they found success thugging out Hashmal and using them as raiders, which I can see working fair enough yet not so well that I'd want to spend 21 Pearls + gems for gear on them. They are Inquisitors, however, which gives them a niche purpose in preaching away enemy Dominion. They sit at Conjuration 6, which is starting to get deep in the School.  Alright, this is some weird poo poo here. The Ophan is a huge step up from the Hashmal in terms of price, coming in at 49 loving Pearls for an (admittedly robust) H3 priest. It's big, its extremely mobile, but it is ultimately a 49 Pearl H3 priest. Many nations would be overjoyed to be able to summon a H3 priest! H3 priests are very important in Dominions 4 because only Pretender Gods and H3 priests can claim Thrones. Gath, however, can recruit H3 priests from its capitol!! The Ophan doesn't even have decent item slots so you can't (stupidly) try to make it some kind of Super Combatant or just even give it more survivability. Could there be anything dumber than this???   Amazingly cool, amazingly stupidly priced.
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Oct 22, 2016 19:31
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senrath posted:Yeah, I believe the way the game handles different paths across forms is that they all have the same base paths with each form applying different modifiers to the levels. Correct. The -6 to various paths is part of the background mechanics that the game requires so that in the first form the Chayot has S4, second form A4, third form F4, and E4 in the fourth form. The_Final_Stand posted:Granted, a Wish won't summon the 4 Ophanim as well, but I think (I've never actually used that spell) that the extra Ophanim summoned are units, not commanders, which robs them of a great deal of what makes them good not entirely overpriced garbage. Correct! The 4 Ophanim that accompany the Chayot are troops, meaning that you get the privilege of spending either 20 Nature or 25 Pearls to transform them into commanders i.e. make them even the tiniest bit useful. Dominions!  Shady Amish Terror posted:That is really stupidly expensive. Global spells, massive remote assassination campaigns, and, yes, the power to literally just Wish things into existence all cost less. That is a neat unit, for all its bizarre faults, but I have no idea what the intended niche for such a unit is (other than flavor, which has long been an excuse for a lot of Dominions periphery fluff). I also love the whopping 1 research strength, which I suspect is a victim of the bizarre shape-changing gimmick and the massive magic path anti-boosters used for it. It's nuts, I think it is one of the single most expensive spells in the game if not the most. If I even survive this game long enough to make it to the point where I can afford to cast (and have a mage capable of casting!) Call Merkavah I may have to do it and then set the Chayot in the Lab, researching away. If I ever did that it would be fine, because honestly if you are in the position to waste 222 Pearls for fun you are already winning the loving game. How are u fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Oct 22, 2016 |
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Oct 22, 2016 22:10
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Thread Art! I love it! Hopefully I'll live long enough to make good on that promise, we'll see how the game goes! Now I need to make a spot in the OP for art.
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Oct 23, 2016 01:02
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tankfish posted:I thought Gath had some type of synergy with the horrible wasteland provinces any chance of seeing any of that? Unfortunately, there is not a single Wasteland type province in our entire nation.
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Oct 23, 2016 15:18
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Turn 20 Turn 20 begins with a whole bunch of site-searching reports, and we found several! First we found this on our Throne province, a free fort! Unfortunately we don’t get a refund for the citadel we were building there, but at least we don’t have to wait 5 more turns for the fort.   Another downside that I didn't become aware of until much later: our in-construction fortress did not get overwritten, it got "frozen" in limbo. Thus, when I try to get a commander in the province to construct a defensive fortification upgrade to our Firbolg Fortress it is impossible, because the original fort is still "under construction".  Then there’s this Pyramid of Life with a death gem and astral pearl. Not spectacular but not bad.  Finally we found two sites in Boar Woods and they are great:   4 earth gems just from Boar Woods! This turn we actually quadrupled our earth gem income from 2 to 8, really great stuff. The rest of the messages for the turn consist of: - A couple scouted battles of little interest. - Random events: some increasing growth in provinces as a result of the Throne of Gaia being claimed last turn, some +gold and some +gem events. - A whole poo poo-load of our scouts being caught and killed by Xibalban patrollers. Other than site discoveries the messages for the turn are uneventful. However, there are two things I noticed other than messages that concern me. First is that our Dominion is being pushed, and hard.  We have lost dominion in most of our eastern provinces, bordering Xibalba. This is because Xibalba, who has 24-26 provinces, has seemingly put a temple in every last one of them. His dom-spread power is much, much higher than mine and that is bad, because if you lose all your dominion you simply cease to exist. This is actually something to really be concerned about, so I am building several new temples this turn and will build several more next turn. I’m also going to start sacrificing the blood slaves that I got from random events. Additionally, I will take a group of Kohen priest-mages and begin blood hunting. I wasn’t planning to start blood hunting until a little bit later, but we will need slaves to sacrifice to push our dom ASAP. The second thing is this army:  That’s a big stack of Caelum’s Mammoths, it looks like an army, and it could be heading towards me. I really don’t want to fight Caelum, but hopefully if I had to I could count on Pangaea to join me, as he told me he was planning to invade Caelum anyway. I send an IRC PM to Caelum letting them know that Pan is going to invade them, hoping that that knowledge will keep him from invading me. We’ll find out more later. Turn 20 Retrospective: Well the first thing to acknowledge is that we are alive, that’s great. We’ve made it this far and are not currently in a war, which is also great. The previous Mo Money game I played taught me that early wars are very bad, and turtling for a little bit to research is really helpful. Hopefully we’ll be ready for our first war in 7 turns or so. The thing I regret so far are the scales I took. Since I haven’t been in a war yet I am not sure how useful my double-bless has really been. I do know for sure that the absolutely terrible scales I took have been a huge hindrance in building up my infrastructure, and I feel very weak for it. I feel vulnerable with so many provinces unforted and without temples, and I fear that that will put me behind the curb in terms of research and power compared to other nations. I am feeling that this turn with the aggressive Xibalba dom push. I really hope I can counter-act that, or I will be in serious trouble. Basically at this point in the game I feel a little bit hamstrung. Things are moving too slowly, I want to be running a full capacity yesterday and that is feeding into what I call the Dominions Paranoia. Hopefully things break my way soon.
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Oct 26, 2016 01:46
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Phrosphor posted:As for the LP in progress, that Dom crash is really scary, I wouldn't be surprised if he was preaching all your borders. Do the batman get any stealthy priests? It's worse. I don't want to give the game away, but I will say it has something to do with all of the scouts of ours that bit the dust this turn.
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Oct 26, 2016 02:26
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When I built The Might of Zionism I never intended to use the double-major Bless for an early war. Sure, if one of our neighbors got jumped on turn 12 or something and was losing badly I would have taken the opportunity to seize a handful of free provinces, but the lesson I learned from the first Mo Money game was that nobody who jumped into an early war ended up in the end-game. The merits of early aggression are worth debating, but it certainly was never part of my plan for this game. Another lesson I learned from the first Mo Money is that recruit anywhere sacreds are useful, even lovely ones like our Levite Zealots. One of the nations in that game was LA Agartha, and in the early end-game he had thousands of his recruit anywhere sacred Blindfighters running around. However, they didn't have a bless of any significance, so it was kind of a wasted opportunity in that regard. My strategy is to get to the point where I can have thousands of Levite Zealots running around with our double bless. The end-game is going to be full of battlefield-clearing evocations and other powerful spells, but the B9 component of the bless can really punish enemy mages. Say an expensive, powerful mage wearing forged magic boosting items casts Earthquake or Shadow Blast or Shimmering Fields and wipes out 10, 20, or 40 Levite Zealots. The B9 bless will reflect some of that damage back on the mage, probably killing him straight dead. Ideally, this bless will remove a tactical choice from our enemies' arsenal, that's the purpose.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:02
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Turn 21 Turn 21 begins with an announcement that our Prophet, A Bulldozer for Palestinian Homes, has claimed the Throne of Misfortune. I didn’t want to take the +misfortune hit but we are in panic-mode regarding our dwindling dominion. This entire turn is basically a frantic reaction to impending dom-death. Next we see a failed site-search attempt, which sucks but is no biggy. Update on the Man – Patala war. Man has Patala’s capitol under siege now, things are not looking good for the apes. Patala isn’t out just yet, though, they still have a bunch of castles, so I hope to see them hit back and deal Man a bloody nose.  We also see a scouted battle where some independents attack Bogarus. A couple of Earth Gnomes and an Earth Elemental rise up and attack his province defense! I believe they're part of a handful of attacks that are triggered when the Throne of Gaia is claimed, something about forces of nature fighting back or whatever.   Weird, useless creatures. Then we have four events: - Fertility festival! Yay!  - Poorly trained militia in Grey Mountain, Province Defense reduced by 5  - Earthquake struck and knocked down our temple in Boar Woods?! Fuuuuck! This is the worst kind of thing to happen right now, we need every temple we can get! - +6 nature gems, great, I’m still salty about the temple. Speaking of temples, we spend every last bit of gold we have constructing four new temples, and next turn we will replace the one that just got knocked down by that loving earthquake. We are scrambling hard to do everything we can to boost our dominion. Take a look at this turn’s dominion score graph:  Still going down, gently caress me. I am officially panicked. We set our Prophet to perform sacrifices and we move two more Kohen Gadol out of our capitol and towards templed provinces so that they can begin to sacrifice as well. Only one priest can make sacrifices per temple, so only one per province. We also set a dozen of our Kohen priests in two provinces to begin blood hunting. This is going to cause unrest which we will have to patrol down, but we need slaves. We need lots of slaves so we can do lots of sacrifices to save our skin. I now suspect that Xibalba is aggressively blood sacrificing with the hope of dom-killing people. I’m going to reach out to Pangaea and see if he would go to war with Xibalba, because that poo poo is a threat to every one of his neighbors.  Time to grab some virgins  Also, look at those Black Candles, that's Xibalba's Dominion deep in our territory!Finally, we lose 3 scouts to Xibalban patrols. Those patrols, they’re Xibalba patrolling down unrest while he blood hunts. This is bad, this could be fatal. Next turn: we try to build a coalition, lots of temples, and sacrifice a lot of virgins. How are u fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 20:56
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Viking_Helmet posted:Does blood hunting with a bunch of units in one province actually work? I always thought it was limited to 1 hunter/province, or that there was severe diminishing returns or something like that. Oh, friend, if you want to maximize your blood slave income you have to hunt with more than one hunter! Somebody who actually knows the meat of the mechanics will have to elaborate, but as far as I am aware the best blood hunting practices are to hunting with 4-5 mages at a time. The higher the level of Blood Magic each mage has the more slaves you'll pull in, though I think you start to get diminishing returns if their level is higher than 3B.
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Oct 29, 2016 21:21
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PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I've always been a BIT vague on the Dominion mechanics. But is it at all possible for hostile dominion to sweep into a province that has one of your temples? Or are they entirely safeguarded? 100% possible. If your Dominion is stronger and you are making a ton more Temple checks each turn you can steamroll your Dom right over a neighbor's provinces, temples or no. e: that's a great explanation, thanks! vvvvvv How are u fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 21:36
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Since I started this game with a domstrength of 6 y'all can see how vulnerable we are to a neighbor with a (probable) domstrength of 9 or 10 who is aggressively pushing it via sacrifice. People are losing faith in The Might of Zionism 
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Oct 30, 2016 22:30
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Turn 22 Not much happens here on turn 22. Our roving band of site-searchers finds two new sites:   Nothing special, oh well. Our new blood hunting mages capture a bunch of blood slaves, we now have plenty of fuel for sacrificing, and next turn we will have two more Holy 3 priests ripping the hearts from virgins for the glory of The Might of Zionism. We have two scouted battle reports, one of which is just a Mannish army killing Patala PD and besieging a fort. The other is of what looks to be Patala’s grand army, or at least the largest Patalan force we have seen in the field. Here it is killing a tiny Mannish siege force:  The apes march to war! Pretty big bunch of apes! A Mannish army would likely still ruin it unless all those war elephants are placed just right and are able to rampage through Man’s lines. If I were Man I’d be concerned, but not terrified, of that doom stack. Speaking of being terrified, how is our Dominion doing?  A sign of life!  Hell yes! An uptick! Our mass temple-building and blood sacrificing has started to work. Next turn we will have even more sacrificing and more temples, I think we can turn this around. And I think we can turn it around for another reason as well; it looks like we have a coalition against the bats. Pangaea is on-board, Caelum is on the fence, and, most importantly, this turn we learned that Xibalba has invaded Patala as well. There are at least two Patalan forts being sieged by bats that I can see, which means that the bulk of his armies are going to be occupied far to the East! When Pangaea and I attack he is going to be involved in a 3-front war, a situation that even the most pro of Dominions 4 vets would struggle to overcome. We are moving our armies in the West towards the East, but because of the rugged mountainous and forested terrain it is slow going. We’re also bigly increasing our production of crossbowmen, with which we will turn bats into pincushions. In several turns should be ready for war!
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Nov 3, 2016 04:26
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Shady Amish Terror posted:That is so many monkeys. I can already see the potential for those tiny elephant stacks routing through the mass and forcing an HP-route, though. Dominions can be really harsh to large armies sometimes. That is a lot of monkeys, but it is also a pretty vulnerable army as you seem to have clued in on. Patala is, unfortunately, pretty uniquely unprepared to fight Man. Man, as we've seen, is an archer nation, utilizing longbows and crossbows in huge numbers screened by Knights or heavy infantry. Patala has access to super cheap, easily massed archers, but they're shortbow archers, and thus they are dogshit in the Late Age. Patala also does not have -any- recruitable troops with which they can screen their archers! The largest shield you can get on an ape is a Buckler, which is barely technically a shield it is so small. Not to mention Patala has no troops outside of it's blessed Naga Warriors who can take on a squad of Man's knights. The odds are stacked pretty hard against the monkeys here.
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Nov 3, 2016 16:22
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Lord Koth posted:Out of idle curiosity, what has Ragha been doing so far, if any of the players commenting in this thread have run into them at this point in the game? From experience they tend to be monstrously powerful with large money/resource boosts due to their primary limiting factor normally being just how expensive their units and temples are. We have no scouting on Ragha so we're in the dark, but I can tell you that I am very unenthused at the thought of bumping into them in the future. Did you play Ragha in the first Mo Money game? I can't remember who was playing them. They are indeed massively OP and hosed up bullshit strong with Mo Money game settings. I can state right now that, other than imminent dom-death, Ragha is the single thing in this game that I'm most afraid of. As for Dominion score, taking 6 is, as others have said, pretty much the lowest you'd want to take without loving yourself. A score of 6, under normal circumstances, means that your weak Dominion will hardly ever be pushing into your neighbors' provinces, and in fact you'll likely have small amounts of their Dominion seeping into yours.
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Nov 4, 2016 16:30
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Turn 23 Turn 23 begins with hitting research goals. We’ve completed level 3 in Thaumaturgy and level 2 in Conjuration. We set three of our N2 Abba mages to cast Haruspex, the Nature remote site-searching spell. [We found a magic site in Blackdale, but apparently it wasn't very impressive because I didn't record what it was, probably a +1N or +1S site.]  If there are high-level nature sites in our territory, we are going to find them. We put all of our research points into Conjuration so we can get to Conj 3, where we’ll be able to use the Death remote site-searching spell: Dark Knowledge.  Next there’s a Throne announcement, and it appears that Xibalba has claimed the Throne of the Elements:  It is a really good throne that gives a great number of gems and has an Evocation discount. All Evocation spells cast from the province this throne is in get a 20% discount. Evocation is not the greatest spell school to have a discount for, but it can be supremely useful in certain circumstances. I’d really love to have that Throne. We have a bunch of scouted battle reports of which several are tit-for-tat moves between Patala and Mannish doomstacks, one of which is Bogarus killing those Earth-friend independents who stole his province the other turn The last two reports are of interest to us in that they show Pangaea attacking Xibalba. We officially have a war on! Here is one of Pangaea's armies stomping Xibalban province defense:  The Centaur Cataphract is like a knight but better in every way with more Hit Points and better combat stats. The Recuperation ability (which IIRC every single Pangaean unit has) allows them to gain a lot of combat XP while avoiding picking up all of the afflictions that most veteran troops wrack up over time.   The Stymphalian Bird doesn’t look impressive initially because it is just an armored Harpy, though one with 3 attacks. However, that first attack is a single-use AOE 1 ability. Cheap, armored, flying, and with AOE attacks; Stymphalian Birds have the opportunity to jump behind your lines on the first turn and potentially gently caress up a lot of vulnerable archers or mages.  We next see a bunch of reports of our patrolling troops catching and killing scouts from various nations hiding in our territory. This is normal and no cause for alarm, but it’s always nice to kill other people’s scouts. Bad intel means you have a better chance of convincing somebody to do what you want them to do. The last report is of our scout being killed by a Xibalba army in one of our border provinces. However, this report also shows that there are 8 Xibalban Wayob mages in the army. Wayob are blood mages, and this is a blood hunting force. I look forward to killing them all.   Blood hunting bats are the backbone of the Xibalban nations in every Era. Finally we’ll take a look at our dom score graph:  We can see that while we didn’t maintain the dominion growth that we had the turn before we have at least managed to maintain that gain. This turn two additional Kohen Gadol will lend their H3 priestly power to the blood sac effort. With Xibalba now having to pivot to face an invasion I am hoping to regain the dominion that he has so rudely taken from us. e: Editing this into the Turn post. Here is a map roughly approximating the state of our corner of the world at this time: 
How are u fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 01:24
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PurpleXVI posted:Any chance of a zoomed-out map with the borders painted in? Just to get an impression of who's where, I lose track a bit sometimes. I'm doing all of this with screen shots and in Paint, and I have no idea how to do fancy photo stuff so here you go. A rough approximation of the world right now: e: the Grey provinces with an Orange dot are unclaimed Thrones, the ones with the extremely powerful defenders.
How are u fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 16:25
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Turn 24 The turn begins with a message indicating that we have hit Conjuration 3, which gives us access to the Death remote site-search spell Dark Knowledge. I immediately set two Geddeoni mages to cast it each month. Next we see that two of our Haruspex casters found sites!  Which turn out to be utter poo poo:   What a loving let-down. I am feeling a little bummed about the magic sites we’ve discovered so far. No gems, and now I have a site that lets me recruit cavemen from a province that already let me recruit cavemen. Swell! On top of that none of our band of roving site-searching mages found anything either, so this turn was a wash. Fingers crossed for next turn. We refocus our magic research on the school of Evocation, where another remote searching spell, Arcane Probing, waits at level 3. There are several scouted battle reports we get to see this turn. The first is of Patala attacking a Mannish army:  Did not go well for the apes. Simply put; Man’s crossbows and longbows devastate the poorly armored ape infantry and archers. Patala is likely toast. Then we see a Pangaea army devastate a Xibalban force:  And then another Pangaea army smash a Xiba-  What? That can’t be right. Pan lost this battle?!   Looks like Pan got unlucky and failed a moral check, routing from a battle that was closer than I expected but Pan should have won. Well, I don’t mind, I am happy to see Pan stumble a little in their effort. The more Pan and Xibalba beat themselves against each other the stronger we will end up in comparison. Speaking of strength, our Dom-score continues to drop, even with two additional Holy 3 blood sacrificers contributing. I am really hoping that this new war forces Xibalba to stop his own saccing. At minimum, the war is going to destroy a bunch of his temples and weaken his Dom strength.  We will shortly be joining the war! Next turn we'll have enough troops in Range of Light to feel comfortable crossing the border into the Xibalban province of Urd. Look at all of those happy Levite Zealots and crossbowmen:  Our other armies continue to slowly trudge toward the Xibalban border. I discover that crossbowmen and our Asherite soldiers have a map-move of 1, which is as slow as it gets and is really hampering our ability to join in on the action. Next turn: more site searching, more scout reports, and we finally launch an invasion!
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Nov 11, 2016 00:43
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PurpleXVI posted:Man, yeah, those temples on your borders need to DIE. There aren't any spells that directly destroy Temples as far as I am aware. If they existed I suspect they would be terribly difficult to balance (as much as Dominions is a balanced game in any regard), because if the spell was too cheap to cast or too low in research level it would be spammed to devastating effect. Also, the type of magic required for the spell (Astral, Death, Nature, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, or Blood) would suddenly become incredibly more powerful. Yeah this Dom-pushing is awful. Take a look at how many Black Candles are in our territory in the last screen shot! I think it is becoming pretty apparent that Xibalba's strategy for the game was to expand like mad and then Blood Sacrifice like a motherfucker, overwhelming his neighbors before they realized what was happening. The thing is; it's working.
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Nov 11, 2016 01:14
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Phrosphor posted:Is there not a spell that causes the earthquake event in a province? I am sure I remember reading about it in the past. Not as far as I know. Earthquakes that destroy Temples are entirely random events.
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Nov 11, 2016 16:20
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Turn 25 The turn begins with advances made in Evocation research. We will hit Evocation 3 next turn and start remote-searching for Astral sites. We see that Ragha has taken a Throne, the Throne of the Sun:  It's a very good Throne, I’d love to have it. It has good scales, good gem income, and excellent Dominion spread. Ragha is a terrifyingly strong nation in general, so of course he gets such a great Throne. Such is life! Our remote site-searching found one site:  Not great, not terrible, extra Nature gems are always welcome, and we'll want Earth gems in the future. Our scouts bring us a few battle reports from far away, the first of which is what looks to be Patala’s last stand in the province of Nethermark:  The ape army is numerous, but so too are the Knights and longbows of Man.  Volleys of longbow arrows and crossbow bolts tear through lightly armored Patalan archers.  Even War Elephants can’t stand up to heavily massed archers.  The little red numbers are where a handful of War Elephants used to be.  Too little, too late. The battle quickly becomes a Patalan rout, and what I can only imagine to be the largest Patalan army in the field is soon broken.  Other reports are uninteresting, more of Man taking lightly defended Patala provinces or of Pangaea taking the same from Xibalba. However, there is an interesting report of Pangaea attempting to storm a Xibalban Palisade fort:  That’s a lot of dead Pangaen troops, far more than I’d ever expect considering the weak defense. Let’s take a look at the battle:  Yeah, very strong Pan force. Tough Centaur and also a bunch of Pan’s cap-only Dryad Hoplites, sacred heavy infantry all of which have the Awe ability, which makes enemy units pass a moral check before they can hit the Dryad Hoplite in combat. They are probably one of the better line-holding infantry units in the game.  Pan’s forces massacre the Xibalban bats that fly out to meet them:  Ah what is this? The bat mages are forming a blood communion!  Communions are magical, battlefield "networks" in which certain mages become ‘Slaves’ and others become ‘Masters’. The Masters get boosted magical power while the Slaves sit dormant for the entire battle. The Masters also get to pass on all spell fatigue onto the Slaves. Communions are powerful, difficult to execute perfectly, and very easy to mess-up. If you have too many Masters passing too much Fatigue onto the Slaves you can push the Slaves over the 200 Fatigue threshold after which they start to take damage. Players will often end up with dozens of dead Communion Slaves after a big battle or a scripting error. Normal Communions require Astral magic to create, but Blood mages can join a Communion by sacrificing a blood slave. Xibalba has created a Communion here, and I think I know what he plans to do with it...  Yep, Xibalba scripted his Masters to cast Hell Power. Hell Power is a very dangerous Blood battlefield spell. The caster gets +2(!) to magic paths but is also horror marked, and horrors periodically appear during the battle. It is almost always a death sentence, but what Xibalba is doing is using it as a final act of revenge against Pangaea.   Horrors are nasty loving business, having great stats, huge amounts of Fear, life-draining attacks, ethereal, and the ability to teleport around the battlefield at will. Horrors are impossible* to control by the player, they do what they want. They’ll usually attack the units with the most horror marks, but they are ultimately equal opportunity murderers. They also stay on the battlefield until either they die or everything else is dead.  The horrors that Xibalba summons in his last stand in this palisade quickly kill every last bat mage before moving onto the Pangaean forces. The rout the otherwise victorious Pan army and inflict substantial casualties while doing it.  Observe Pangaea's troops fleeing in the background. The Centaur Cataphracts are trapped by the Horrors and ripped to pieces. Well, I am really glad that I got to see the Hell Power Communion before it was used on me, and I am sure it will be used on me before this is over. Let’s check our Dominion graph for this turn:  OK, great, small uptick. That should only get better from here on out. We are moving our first great army across the border and into the Xibalban province of Urd. Fingers crossed that things go as planned.   Next turn: War! Addendum: I spoke with Pangaea after I finished this turn and he indicated to me that he only had 4 candles of dominion left. He’s been hit even harder than I have by the bats’ awful blood sacrificing. It is very possible that he might die soon, leaving us alone to deal with the bats. That is some hosed up poo poo! How are u fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 14, 2016 |
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Nov 14, 2016 22:40
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Turn 26 Turn 26 begins with a message indicating we have hit Evocation 3, which is great. I set four mages to cast the ‘Arcane Probing’ spell each month, we’ll soon find all of the Astral sites in our territory. Astral magic is probably my favorite type of magic. Astral is just so incredibly useful, a toolbox of spells that I find I sorely miss when playing a nation with poor Astral access. Hopefully we can find a lot of sites! Speaking of site-searching; we found 3 sites this turn:    None of them ground-breaking but all of them welcome additions to our gem income. Our scouts bring us reports of a whole bunch of battles from around the world. Xibalba manages to put up a spirited resistance, but on the whole Pangaea is winning more battles and winning them pretty decisively.   Our own siege of the Xibalban fort of Urd has gone well. We waltzed into the province and killed the PD, and because palisade forts are about as sturdy as wet paper bags we are ready to storm it next turn. I give the ‘storm fort’ orders and we will hope for the best.  A mighty army, full of Righteousness and Zeal!  We are moving reinforcements into Summerbay, soon we'll have two armies in the field. Pangaea has indicated that he will vacate the Copper Woods province next turn, leaving us a path up the coast towards Xibalba’s capitol province. I am glad that Pan isn’t dead just yet, but I am also glad that he is kind of on the line. Once again: the more damage that Pan and Xibalba do to each other the better for us! A random event that occurred in Range of Light gave us some goats:  They're almost cute. Finally, we'll check our Dominion score graph again:   Next turn: Storming a fort!
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Nov 20, 2016 03:25
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Glazius posted:Of course there's an event that depends on goats. Why did I even doubt? If there was a  emoji but for Dominions this is where I'd use it.e: You know what, since the Thanksgiving Holidays are coming up it might be OK to do another update tonight! How are u fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Nov 20, 2016 |
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Nov 20, 2016 22:49
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Turn 27 Turn 27 begins with a whole bunch of remote site-searching messages. Turns out that we only found two sites this turn:  The Garden of Pearls is great, I love astral pearls, and the second site is a real bonus:  The Whispering Woods lets us recruit Enchantresses, which is absolutely excellent, and I couldn't ask for a better site to get this early in the game. This will hopefully help diversify our magic greatly.   Enchantresses, as you can see, come with N1 but have the potential for a very diverse combination of other magical paths. If we are lucky Enchantresses will give us Air 2 and Water 2, allowing us to search for Air and Water sites in time. They are slow to recruit, however, so it may take some time before we get what we want. Regardless, the fort in Boar Woods province will be recruiting Enchantresses for the foreseeable future. We see a few scouted battle reports of little interest. It looks like Ulm has attacked Bogarus with a tiny force of pikemen that get instantly annihilated by the much larger Bogarussian army. Either Ulm made a stupid misclick the previous turn or Bogarus and Ulm are at war. We have poor scouting in that part of the world, so we’ll have to wait to see how that shakes out. Our only battle of the turn is the storming of the Xibalban fort in the province of Urd. Our grand army of sacred Levite Warriors, Gibborim, and crossbowmen look mighty indeed.  Xibalba has 9 blood hunting mages, some lovely infantry, and a couple dozen Beast Bats. Beast Bats are summoned with Blood magic by a select group of nations, Xibalba among them, but are not particularly threatening. They only have a single attack, and even though Xibalba took a Water 9 bless to give his sacreds Quickness (extra attack) they don’t really have the power to punch through our sacred infantry.  Dangerous with a Bless, and only because they're so easily spammable.  While the bats are ineffective Xibalba did however utilize some clever spell scripting on his mages. He set his blood hunters to spam a low level Death spell: Frighten. Frighten lowers the moral score of units that it hits, and 9 mages chain-casting Frighten actually managed to rout an entire block of our infantry.  Turn and fight, you cowards Once our Sacred infantry breach the gate, however, Xibalban resistance is shattered.   We didn’t take real casualties, but if this had been a battle against a real Xibalban army that strategy would have been seriously effective. We’d better keep this in mind for the future. The province of Urd contained a Hidden Gold Mine, an Arena, and a death site giving us a total of 2 death gems and 125 gold a turn. That’s a great haul considering how starved for gold we have been for the past year. We're moving the army at Urd into Copper Woods, a province currently held by Pangaea but he told us that he is going to vacate to give us a path into Xibalban territory. Pangaea is winning against the bats, but not so much that he doesn't want our help. Our plan right now is to march along the coast and smash and grab every Xibalban province we can lay our hands on. Call it a Gathite March to the Sea. Hopefully we'll do well enough to get a shot at taking their valuable capitol province!  Finally, here's our Dominion graph for the turn:  Next turn: more war!
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Nov 21, 2016 00:10
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PurpleXVI posted:What's the spell scripting on your mages like? Well, the army that took Urd has a single mage; the Kohen Gadol. His job is to 1) cast Divine Blessing and Bless every one of our Sacred troops on round 1...and 2) stay alive. Our strategy right now requires no more finesse than Throw Sacreds At The Enemy Until Dead. Fancy spell-scripting need not apply.
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Nov 21, 2016 00:35
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Zernach posted:Btw, what is that worldwide event thing in the events list? It's probably something regarding a Throne that was recently claimed. IIRC it was the Throne of the Sun so it would be something like "worldwide Heat increased". Sometimes you get random stuff like "the stars are right for conjuration magic" and all Conjuration spells get a small discount.
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Nov 21, 2016 16:16
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jBrereton posted:
 Love it, excellent. e: maybe slow it down a tiny bit, but otherwise perfect. How are u fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Nov 22, 2016 |
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Nov 22, 2016 03:03
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Sloober posted:They're really poorly balanced, although it is neat seeing strategies attempt to overcome how lovely a nations troop or mages are. The complete lack of balance is half of the fun and all of the charm, as far as I'm concerned. "Balance" has never been something the Dominions creators have seemed particularly interested in, and the fact that some nations are kind of straight up dog-poo poo offers a somewhat fun way to handicap great players. Can you take one the worst nations in an Age and win against all odds? If your name is Nuclearmonkee then you probably can and will! I've always held the opinion that to try to bring all of the nations into parity would remove a lot of what makes the game special to me.
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Nov 22, 2016 20:47
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One more update coming shortly, then there will likely not be any until next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday times in the US. Dominions is actually a very appropriate game for a holiday celebrating genocide! 
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Nov 23, 2016 17:04
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Turn 28 Turn 28 begins with hitting a few new levels of research. We have reached Thaumaturgy 4, which allows us to remote-search for Earth and Air sites. We set one Kohen Gadol to search for Earth, and others will join in the future. We do not currently have any Air mages, but hopefully soon we’ll recruit an Enchantress with A2 who can do that for us! I'm keen to diversify our magical repertoire. We are also beginning to research in the Construction school. Construction is one of the most important schools of magic for many nations because there are so many invaluable items to forge.  All of our remote searching spells find only one site this turn: another Garden of Pearls with +2 Astral like we found a turn or two ago. Sucks to only find one site, but at least it isn’t a bad one. Next there are a bunch of battle reports. Xibalba attacked our rich farmland province of Vath with a Devil leading a bunch of Imps. Vath does not sit adjacent to any Xibalban provinces, so this was a flying raid into our territory:   Imps are pure chaff, but Devils are dangerous in numbers. Only a debased and Unholy nation would summon Demons. This attack confirms the righteousness of our war against these wicked Bats. The Demonic raiders fall quickly to Province Defense steel. Then there are some scouted reports of Pangaea stomping Xibalba, and of Xibalba breaking a Pannish siege. I'm glad to see Xibalba putting up spirited resistance, because Pangaea is clearly going to win this war. Our grand army advanced into Copper Woods without incident, slaughtering an amphibious Xibalban force of Muuch frog-men who must have been ordered to re-take the province from Pangaea this turn.  These underwater-only recruits of Xibalba's are hilarious jokes of units. Our scouts did pick up a great report from Man, however. It looks like Man decided to attempt to take one of the high level Thrones in his territory, a Throne guarded by an Annunaki of the Sky and Spring Hawks. Here is the mighty Mannish army, over 500 strong:  We've come to the point where the Mo'Money game settings are enabling seriously big armies! And here again are the Throne defenders:  Spring Hawks are very nasty to fight unless you have lightning resistant troops, but if you have them they are a piece of cake. They’re ethereal (hard to hit), have an AOE1 lightning attack, and a fair amount of HP.  The Annunaki of the Sky guarding the Throne is a massively powerful Air mage. He also gets a couple dozen air gems in every battle with which to cast spells. He starts the battle putting up a little air shield on himself, but on turn 2 he casts the high-level extremely powerful Air spells “Fog Warriors”, which gives his entire army a buff that reduces all damage each unit takes to 1 unless the damage is over a certain threshold that can break the enchantment.  Somebody's about to have a bad day.  The Throne Guardians loving clobber Man’s army, embarrassingly so. I’m pretty sure that Man’s Prophet dies in the battle as well. So far this game is giving us some hilarious Throne battles.     The rest of the turn is uneventful. We experienced some special events that, among other things; stole gems, gave gems, and gave us an Earth Gnome commander unit, who is useless and bad. The Throne of Misfortune continues to spread Misfortune scales across the globe, so I am sure that all the other nations are very grateful for me for claiming it. Our Dominion score is rebounding in a very robust manner, I’m super pleased. We will keep sacrificing until we have our full Dominion back, and we may continue after that.  We move troops to Old Man Mountains so that next turn we can move an army onto the Xibalban fort in Star Peaks, and half of our army in Copper Woods moves north along the coast, creeping closer to Xibalba’s capitol province. I want to take the capitol, and more importantly the Throne adjacent to it. If we can take that Throne, then we will be able to start exploiting our double-Bless to a much more full extent. We’ll see if we can even get there.  Next turn: Conquest continues! 
How are u fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Nov 23, 2016 |
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Nov 23, 2016 17:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Man, the Pangaea/Xibalba border looks like an absolute mess. The only way is looking at the Dominion effects, yep. Also, as y'all can see our Dominion score graph is showing that we're making gains, but our border with Xibalba looks about as bad as it has ever been. That means that we're making gains somewhere else.
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Nov 23, 2016 18:02
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jBrereton posted:Flaming Arrows goes through Ethereality and Mistform and is the primo way for MA Man to deal with that throne, but it probably? the roughest one in the game. There's also the level 3 Throne defense that is ~Spring Hawks~ plus an E and A Titan instead of an Annunaki of the Sky. You can probably guess what spell the Titan enjoys casting. The Monolith + Watchers Throne is also really rough to handle unless you have the right toolkit.
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Nov 23, 2016 19:06
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The Fall Steam Sale just kicked off and Dominions 4 is  60% discount, now $13.99 until the sale ends on November 29th.
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Nov 23, 2016 22:30
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Turn 29 Turn 29 begins with our researchers making breakthroughs in Construction and Blood magic. We are now at Construction 3 and should hit Construction 4 next turn, allowing us to forge a variety of useful magic booster items and also Sanguine Dowsing Rods (SDRs), which increase the effectiveness of our blood hunters substantially.  We found two magic sites this turn, one of which was merely a +1 pearl site. The other one is slightly more interesting:  Banes are very tough Undead units that wear heavy chain mail, wield magical Bane Blades that cause those struck to decay rapidly, and are surrounded by chill winds that fatigue their enemies. They’re good to have around, especially for free, so I will stick a Death mage on that site for the rest of the game.  You can actually summon these guys using a Conjuration spell. However, this magic site is the only way in the game to generate Banes as Troops instead of as Commanders. Battle reports for the turn are fairly uninteresting. We see more Xibalba / Pan back and forth as usual, and our own army moving deeper into bat territory along the coast.  Observe our glorious forces smash lovely Province Defense. We discover that Jomon has indeed invaded Caelum from the South, so Caelum won’t be joining in our bat crusade. That’s OK, though, because Xibalba will be easy to defeat, and I want to share the spoils with as few people as possible. This isn't bluster, or even an educated guess based on how well Pangaea has been pushing-in Xibalba's poo poo over the past few turns. No, we are confident because Xibalba has gone AI. The Dominions AI is legendarily lovely, and even the largest, most resource-rich AI nation doesn't stand a chance against a player who halfway knows what he or she is doing. Xibalba is done, and now it is only a question of who will grab the largest of the pieces. This turn brings a handful of events that give us 3 blood slaves, 10 nature gems, and a bit of turmoil and unrest in a province. That’s a lovely haul of nature gems, I’m very pleased. We also have recruited our first Enchantress from our Whispering Woods site! Lucky day, she turns out to be Air 2, so we can immediately start remote-searching for air sites. This is exactly the kind of magical diversity that I was hoping for from the Enchantresses, totally worth it.  Celebrate diversity  Our dominion graph shows our Dominion score climbing higher, which is just great. We are almost to the same level of Dominion strength that we had before Xibalba started his blood-saccing campaign.  We end the turn by issuing a few move orders to our armies. Our two armies in the East continue their march toward Xibalba’s capitol province and the Throne that lies nearby. In the South East we are moving our big ball of troops out of Old Man Mountains and onto the Xibalban province of Star Peaks. Hopefully, we can take it without too much of a hassle.   Next turn: the War continues!
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Nov 29, 2016 04:04
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resistentialism posted:How does a throne being on a cap province work, anyways? Thrones can't be on Capitol provinces. The Throne on the map above is in a province just north of Xibalba's capitol (the province border is kind of obscured by the forest art).
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Nov 29, 2016 04:20
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Apocron posted:Seems like things are snowballing since you break multiple research goals every turn. Who were you thinking about attacking next after the bats went AI? It's a shame he dropped out and we didn't get to see any more interesting scripted battles. Oh there will be plenty of battles, don't worry friend. As for what's next, well I don't want to spoil the narrative but it shouldn't be too hard to guess considering we still only have 3 neighbors. It's not like we could attack Mictlan or Ragha or some other nation on the opposite side of the world (as much as I dearly would want to be a part of an anti-Ragha coalition, that nation is loving scary).
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Nov 29, 2016 19:41
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Echoing what others have said: Construction is extremely important because we need to be able to forge boosters. For those unfamiliar with Dominions, boosters are diverse assortment of magical items that, when given to a mage, "boost" one or more of his magic paths. Boosting is important, because very few nations have mages with high enough levels of magic to cast important Global spells or vitally important Summons or forge the most powerful items. 90% of the time you're also going to need boosters to allow your mages to cast the most powerful battlefield spells, the ones that decisively win the big fight and change the course of a War. Let's take a look at a couple of boosters:  The Earth Boots here are an example of an extremely useful, low-level booster item. They're unlocked at Construction 4, and are very easy to forge with a required magic level of E2. They're also super-useful for battlefield magic, because an E2 mage wearing boots can cast "Summon Earthpower", further boosting his Earth level up to E4. You can cast some nasty battle-spells at E4! Earth Boots have no real downsides, so if your strategy benefits from a lot of Earth go hog-wild and forge dozens!  The Flame Helmet is an example of a booster that you may only end up forging a handful of times. It too is unlocked at Construction 4, but you can see that it's way more expensive to forge than Earth Boots, coming in at 20(!) Fire gems a pop. It also requires a level 4 Fire mage to forge! On top of that, wearing the helm actually adds fatigue to the bearer each battle-round.  The Staff of Elemental Mastery is a much more advanced item, unlocked at Construction 6. It's really expensive to forge, requires really high and very rare magical crosspaths to forge, but the reward is a booster for each of the elements that can be held in a mage's hands! The Staff is another example of a niche, but potentially very powerful, booster.  The Ring of Sorcery is another Construction 6 booster, and boy is it powerful. While the Staff of Elemental Mastery provides boosts to all of the Elemental paths of magic, the Ring of Sorcery does the same for the sorcerous paths. It's expensive as all hell to forge and just building a mage capable of forging it in the first place requires forging boosters and probably empowering Astral to higher levels. However, the sorcerous paths of magic are probably more powerful (and have a lot of spells that scale upward really well) compared to Elemental magic. This is an item you want, but you probably can't afford to forge more than a few. There are many other boosters, but these are just a few examples to show how they can range from usefully mundane to extraordinarily powerful. How are u fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Nov 30, 2016 |
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Nov 30, 2016 02:32
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