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Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Hi everybody, I'm Tagichatn and this is my first LP. I've also played Dom4 for a few months at this point and still consider myself a newbie so this should be an interesting ride! Feel free to tell me how poo poo I am at LPing or Dom4 or both. Part of the reason I wanted to LP dom4 is to get some feedback on my strategy and improve my playing ability.

What is Dominions 4?
TheDemon describes it as:

quote:

Dominions is the best game ever because it is a cross between an old-school 4x and a fantasy adventure game, with lore based on real-world mythology, that has delivered literal years of multiplayer entertainment. Expect a game that takes cues from Master of Magic, space 4Xs like Master of Orion 2 and Stars!, or a tabletop RPG. Don't expect Fantasy Rome: Total War.

The breadth and depth of play in Dominions is insane. There are over 50 nations with a roster of Pretender gods to pick from. You customize your pretender by buying advantages and disadvantages. Once play begins there are 1000 unit types, 600 spells to research, and 700 magical sites to uncover. You can choose between 300 pieces of equipment to gear out heroes who can take down armies single-handedly. Eventually, you can cast game-altering global enchantments that cook the world, heal lost limbs, or blot out the sun.

That's breadth. Dominions has depth. You can sneak or teleport into lightly defended territories, burn the temple, destroy their roads, funnel their taxes to your own forts, and disappear. You can set up a self-fueling Wish chain where you wish for more wishes. You can wipe out your enemies not with armies but with faith, fueled by sacrificing hundreds of virgin maidens upon your altars. You can crack open the gates to Tartarus and summon dozens of insane dead pretenders to serve in conquering the world. You can order a sudden teleport attack on all your rivals' capitals simultaneously, cleaving the gates in one turn with teleported siege equipment and blitzing the garrison before they can react. These are all actual, game-winning endgame strategies.

Another huge asset in Dominions's longevity is its moddability. Unit and spell stats can be customized simply by pointing the game to a text file. Mods load automatically when you load a game that uses them. Maps are just an image file and accompanying text file listing province connections.

The game is batshit-insane and has taken over my gaming life. It also runs on my crappy laptop, otherwise this LP wouldn't be possible.

This is a SA game featuring some regulars from the community. A good group all in all and frankly, after a few games hosted on snek.earth and brainwrinkle, I wouldn't want to play Dom4 any other way. It's set in the Middle Age and the nations and players are:
Marignon - Mukip
Pythium - Purplebeard
Nazca - jsoh
T'ien Ch'i - VendoViper
Vanarus - Corbeau
Asphodel - How are u
Oceania - Tagichatn
Caelum - ubaten
Atlantis - Burnaboy
Pangaea -Naksu
Abysia - Shogeton
Pelagia - ThePlatypus

Dom4 players might notice something interesting about the nations here, there are actually 3 underwater nations in this game. I'm one of them, hence the title. Why are underwater nations Hitler? Well there's a few reasons for that, which I didn't really know about when I was starting out. First, water nations can be very uninteractive. Most nations can't go underwater at all without magical help and even when they can, their troops take heavy penalties. So land nations can't really effectively invade underwater nations unless they have overwhelming numbers and mages. Likewise, underwater nation troops either can't go on land at all, are worse on land or can't be recruited from land forts. Secondly, playing underwater kinda sucks. There's less varied terrain and all movement underwater is limited to a single province per turn while on land, most units go two provinces with fast ones going three. Maybe one day the balance will be there but you see most games ban underwater nations for this reason. It's become a meme to go Rlyeh and stay underwater while rushing burden of time.

So yeah, I'm playing an underwater nation which annoyed several of the players later in the game. I chose it in part because the map has a large enough ocean that the owner asked for 2 UW nations so I signed up and didn't notice the third dude also signing up. Multiple UW nations generally result in a thunderdome, two nations enter, one nation leaves. I found that out my first game as an UW nation, diplomacy doesn't really work. The three nations in this game should make it interesting though!

So my nation is Oceania which I'd never played before.

Nation Overview



Oceania is basically Pangaea but underwater. They have strong nature mages, decent water mages but only under water, good cavalry and some really heavily armored infantry and cavalry. They also get -1 order on the coast and +1 order elsewhere. That's great for an underwater nation since most of your provinces will get that extra order. They also get cheapo temples like Pan but no national spells or items. :effort: the nation. Let's take a look at their units.

Aphroi Lord

Decent leader with inspirational +1 and leads 80 guys, also sacred. I don't really build these too much since there are cheaper options.

Aphroi Hierophant

I prefer building these guys cause they're cheaper and can build temples and labs or research later on

Ichtysatyr Commander

The cheapo option. Only notable feature is their stealthiness. Normally I'd use indie commanders but UW indies are rarely amphibious like my own troops.

Siren

Our first mage and "best" researcher. Costing 130 gold for only 9rp is quite bad but the unit has some other interesting features. They get awe so they're somewhat protected against melee attacks but really, they shouldn't be in melee. On land, they lose 1 water and gain 1 air path and can fly. They also look like some hosed up bird with boobs but apparently that's enough to seduce desperate old man mages. Oh yeah, they can seduce people. In a coastal province, a siren can attempt to lure a commander into the ocean where they drown. If they can actually breathe underwater, then they move to the adjacent ocean province and fight. It's a cool ability that I will use at some point but mostly they're there for researching. 2W isn't great for combat and 1W1A is even worse.

Capricorn

This is our workhorse (workbull?) mage. 2W4N and 100% AWE is pretty drat good. On land they lose 1 water and gain 1 earth. Unfortunately, their research is also really inefficient, they are slow to recruit and not sacred meaning they have high upkeep. Still, they're pretty tough for a mage and a magic path of 4 is drat good. They're not cap-only either which is great. Most StR mages are.

Haliade

Looks like a siren on an underwater unicorn but they're mini-capricorns. 2W2N with the siren awe. They are sacred and build in one turn but I prefer capricorns because 2 extra nature really is that much better and haliades are aquatic, not amphibious. They're stuck underwater.

Aphroi

Our sacred units, just complete garbage. They cost 65 gold and for what? Poison barbs? Barbs only work on weapons of length 0 and 1 but most units have longer weapons. They have no helmet, I guess to make room for their hosed-up crabclaw heads. Their other stats are thoroughly mediocre, having even lower stats than the basic centaur despite costing twice as much. I never build these, ever. There's just no reason without a super bless and you don't take a giant bless for crap sacreds.

Ichtycentaur

Now this is what I'm talking about, I love these guys. Good stats all around including a high defense skill plus a lance and the movespeed to do some damage with it. I make a ton of these guys, they can easily take most enemies I run into.

Ichtycentaur Cataphract

Our heavy cavalry. Lots of protection but higher encumbrance. Their trident doesn't get a first strike bonus but it does 3 more damage than the bronze lance.

Ichtysatyr

Our basic garbage infantry. Undisciplined and low morale but they do cost only 9 gold and are stealthy. I only build them as chaff. There's also a lower resource variant but why bother when they already cost only 3.

Ichtysatyr Soldier

Your basic line infantry. Decent stats, only cost 10 gold. There's also a 17 resource variant with more protection.

Mermidon

Our elite infantry. 15 gold but they get a trident, can fight in formation and a whopping 18 protection. Their defense skill is 14 too so it's not like they're even super easy to hit. 28 resources is quite a bit though.

Ichtytaur

Last but not least, the ichtytaur. They are minotaurs with fish tails. Actually they are least too since they suck. Low protection and low defense is a real bad combination. They can berserk but that's not enough to make them useful. On land, they can trample but a size 3 trampler is also pretty crap.

Ok so that's Oceania. I don't know much about water nations but they seem pretty good. I'll show my pretender once he awakens.

Unfortunately the screenshots for turns 1-4 are lost to the sands of time but not much happens anyway. Also some of the turns were taken on my laptop so those screenshots will be of lower quality.
So here's our messages for turn 5:


Exciting, right? Well the first four turns weren't any more interesting. I made a prophet and expanded a few times. You can see here that I actually went for a land province early on. It's farmland and gives great income, definitely more than the majority of our ocean provinces.


There's also this land province with loving crazy connections, this map has a lot of stuff like that.


So let's look at that battle, it should be an easy win.

Ok, well we won but uh, my commander died? That's really weird since troops left without a commander rout immediately so normally you would lose the battle. It's also really lovely since he was my prophet. Prophets get holy 3 letting them cast some pretty nice spells and spread dominion.

Things proceed pretty normally.


But some enemies slip past our lines, this must be how our commander dies.


My prophet actually does some damage and routs the guys attacking him. So uh, how does he die?


Oh ok.

You see that green line near his hp? That means he's poisoned and poison keeps going regardless of anything. The battle could have no enemies left and it'll extend it to proc the poison damage. So he dies from poison, very sad.

Fortunately I have a second expansion army and a third on the way to pick up the pieces of my prophet's army. I haven't encountered any players yet but I reach out to the other underwater nations since I know it's going to be a thunderdome. Pelagia wants a 4 turn NAP to think about it which isn't the best idea. I mean, I either ally with Pelagia or Atlantis although I guess I could do both and let them fight it out. That's not my plan however. Atlantis is a little more amenable to working together but was initially reluctant. I convinced him that we'd be in a thunderdome though and he agreed to an alliance. Our NAP would end at the beginning of the third year, turn 24. Let's hope I live that long, eh?

My plan is to update once a day or so but we'll see. I joined too many dom4 games and now they're taking up a ton of time. Ask me about how fun it is micromanaging midgame Sceleria!

Join us next turn for an exciting unexpected event!

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How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
I play the glorious nation of Asphodel in this game and I am very interested to see how the 3-way undersea knife fight goes. I'm sure it will be fun!

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Ramc suggested I add in the pretenders of the other nations. Their titles can sometimes give you an idea of their magic paths and dominion strength.

Abysia here, I wonder if he's going blood? Yes, yes he is. Titles back that up too.


Asphodel, took water and luck scales.


Atlantis, took water and luck as well.


Caelum, dominion of at least 8, death and astral.


Marignon, took fire and female pretender.


Nazca, took fire and water plus dominion of at least 7.


Oceania, a secret :ssh:


Pangaea, judging from the name, the pretender is a volla with nature.


Pelagia, took death and very high astral. Also called the afterthought, pretty rude imo.


Pythium, took nature and earth.


T'ien Ch'i, took death, nature and likes rice? :confused:


Vanarus, very high astral. Vanarus is also a blood nation. Astral + blood = bad news.

Corbeau
Sep 13, 2010

Jack of All Trades
I'll show my (Vanarus') pretender later, possibly when Things Start Happening, but I made some very good and some very bad decisions in pretender creation.

"Director of the World" is a pretty sick title though.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves
gently caress yes more Dom4.

I really should go sign up for another game. Preff one where I don't side with R'yleh and gently caress over the only person who was capable of teaming up with me to defend against them (sorry Pan). Or roll with Niffelheim and start next to two fire nations who immediately tear my face off because my pure existence next to them is an affront to nature (got wrekd by super blessed WOTFE's)

Lol you're playing Oceania. I hope your ready to get ruined by most other water nations, also most land nations. Disclaimer: I don't actually know how well Oceania scales up against other water nations but I remember them being unpopular, with lackluster magic access and expensive-but-not-really-good unit. I always preferred R'yleh for the gimicky BS or Atlantas

Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Mar 30, 2017

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Even this far in the game, I'm not sure how good Oceania is compared to other water nations. I'll probably never know firsthand since I don't plan on playing water nations again.

Well, maybe Ys in a badnations game. I love their ridiculously expensive sacreds.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves

Tagichatn posted:

Even this far in the game, I'm not sure how good Oceania is compared to other water nations. I'll probably never know firsthand since I don't plan on playing water nations again.

Well, maybe Ys in a badnations game. I love their ridiculously expensive sacreds.

As you summised earlier it's a thrown-together nation of underwater Pan-a-likes basically there to support a few units whose flavour is neat (Capricorns) but doesn't really gel with other nations, and for some reason isn't just a straight up Pan uwater summon (probs because making pan MORE powerful is a bad idea)

Torrannor
Apr 27, 2013

---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE
I love Dom4 LPs, and have a fondness for UW nations (and even more for land nations that also have an underwater roster, like Jomon). Looking forward to you hopefully winning the game? Is this an ongoing or a finished game?

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
I feel like I hardly ever see anyone choose underwater nations. This'll be interesting.

senrath
Nov 4, 2009

Look Professor, a destruct switch!


PurpleXVI posted:

I feel like I hardly ever see anyone choose underwater nations. This'll be interesting.

I mean, the OP has a good explanation of why you hardly ever see anyone choose them.

koolkevz666
Aug 22, 2015
Yes, another Dom 4 game maybe I'll learn more about this game and not continue sucking against the AI....hahaha no, no I won't. Still Dom 4 LPs are always fun to read so looking forward to more updates.

Ramc
May 4, 2008

Bringing your thread to a screeching halt, guaranteed.

Oceania does better on land than most underwater nations from my experience. They can mass really large amounts of their satyr troops who are actually pretty okay and give them Nature and Earth buffs with the Capricorns. Cheap temples mean you can usually temple the sea up pretty well and push your dom from the sea, hopefully with some sort of globals to capitalize on that.

Burden of Time doesn't really hurt them that much for the same reason it doesn't bother normal Pan that much- everything important lives a very long time. Setting it up yourself is an uphill slog though because you have to set your god up for it and then bootstrap the Death gems without native D casters.

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Torrannor posted:

I love Dom4 LPs, and have a fondness for UW nations (and even more for land nations that also have an underwater roster, like Jomon). Looking forward to you hopefully winning the game? Is this an ongoing or a finished game?

It's an ongoing game at turn 55 although it might be ending soon. But yeah, I imagine most people don't LP water nations because it would be 30 turns of being stuck underwater with nobody to fight then casting burden of time and going AI. At least in this game there's a 3 way underwater thunderdome!

I ride bikes all day
Sep 10, 2007

I shitposted in the same thread for 2 years and all I got was this red text av. Ask me about my autism!



College Slice
You would think a game that allows you to conjure worldwide storms, turn armies to mist, or rain frogs across a large region would have more options to make the land/water transition less significant.

Gath/Himnon need a national spell, Part the Waters, that turns the battlefield into dry land for 1 battle.

jBrereton
May 30, 2013
Grimey Drawer
Oh there's plenty ways for land guys to get into the water.

All kinds of items from barrels of air to special pills, to globals that allow everyone to travel and breathe underwater (just uh be careful it doesn't get dispelled while you're under there). It's the other end of the spectrum that's the problem for some factions (not really Oceania, though!)

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves

Ramc posted:

Oceania does better on land than most underwater nations from my experience. They can mass really large amounts of their satyr troops who are actually pretty okay and give them Nature and Earth buffs with the Capricorns. Cheap temples mean you can usually temple the sea up pretty well and push your dom from the sea, hopefully with some sort of globals to capitalize on that.

Burden of Time doesn't really hurt them that much for the same reason it doesn't bother normal Pan that much- everything important lives a very long time. Setting it up yourself is an uphill slog though because you have to set your god up for it and then bootstrap the Death gems without native D casters.

No Ramcs

I love you ramc

Tagichatn posted:

It's an ongoing game at turn 55 although it might be ending soon. But yeah, I imagine most people don't LP water nations because it would be 30 turns of being stuck underwater with nobody to fight then casting burden of time and going AI. At least in this game there's a 3 way underwater thunderdome!


You've hit the niche of Dom4 LPs though in this case. Dom4 LPs have typically been split between Draft's (my favorite) and between land nations purely because the majority of LPers are reasonably experienced (or are ModPud and cheat) and ergo they generally steer away from the nations lacking any real umph. As UW only spells go undisclosed while set of units doesn't exist as far as people know.

Gridlocked fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Mar 31, 2017

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Turn 6

Not much happened this turn. We completed research on evocation 1 which is where we’ll stay for now. Most spells don’t work underwater so I did evo1 just to get water strike which is an ok spell that only works under water. If we do go on land, then they can cold bolt instead. Next I’m researching conjuration for water elementals since those are always effective, doubly so underwater. Nature mages can summon random nature crap I guess.



As you can see, the battle went off without minimal losses and now we have all the water provinces in our cap circle. Only two, which sucks so our cap resources will always be a bit low. Fortunately I’m not relying on any cap only troops. This can really gently caress you over if you are actually relying on sacreds with a high resource cost. editor's note: use Corbeau maps!

Also had a really cool event that spawned a bunch of free units, even though they are just ichtysatyrs which are the garbage undisciplined units that got our prophet killed. So let’s take a look.


Holy poo poo, that’s a lot of units! 73 to be exact. They’re not that great but quantity has a quality all of it’s own. I was already building a second expansion army so this expedites things considerably.


I attach them to our haliade but she ends up maxed out with 80 units. Leaving a few behind is ok though, the next commander can pick them up. I’m bringing the remnants of the prophet’s army to meet her and building another indie commander since each one can only hold 40 dudes. I’m actually going to search sites with the haliade. This is a pretty big waste of a 300+ gold unit when she could be researching but I want to get some quick site searches in.

My last UW thunderdome ran into a lot of trouble because I neglected to built early UW forts. However, there is a common nature magic site called kelp fortress that just gives you a free fort. Atlantis gets no nature mages at all and Pelagia doesn’t get guaranteed nature. Finding one would give me a huge leg up in the coming war although I’m still planning to start building one soon and it would be pretty embarrassing to build a fort in a province with a free one.

I’m building another siren for research plus my usual uw cavalry and a few heavy infantry with my leftover resources. In a couple turns, I will probably build another commander but we’ll see, I might need the gold for a good fort location. We have yet to encounter an enemy but I can see a few provinces with black candles, presumably from my fellow uw nations.


My scout did find Abysia which appears to have done a terrible job expanding. I might move on some of the land provinces and get some extra gold depending on how the uw war goes.


Scouting also really sucks as an underwater nation since there are no indie provinces that can produce UW scouts afaik.

Also for some reason, Marignon has bought most of the mercenaries, they must be expanding like crazy.


Join us next turn when we finally find a neighbor! Will they be friend or foe? everyone in dom4 is a foe

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

gently caress the ocean. Also as an ocean nation, it is extra important to negotiate with land-dwellers for fort locations on the surface.

Talking with neighbours - the secret god strat in Dom.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Veloxyll posted:

gently caress the ocean. Also as an ocean nation, it is extra important to negotiate with land-dwellers for fort locations on the surface.

Talking with neighbours - the secret god strat in Dom.

It is equally important for the land nations not to let those slippery bastard from the depths get a finhold on a land fort from which to cast magic.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves

wiegieman posted:

It is equally important for the land nations not to let those slippery bastard from the depths get a finhold on a land fort from which to cast magic.

Yeah man I let R'yleh get a hold of so land forts when playing as Ulm (not that I could stop him, loving mind blasters ruined my slow moving doods) and it didn't end well.

AmishSpecialForces
Jul 1, 2008
I haven't played Dom3/4 multiplayer in a while but I always loved playing as the fish dudes. There is something freeing about not worrying about trying to win and just casting poo poo/forging poo poo in your own pond while the rest of the world burns. Sometimes I even got lucky and was able to play kingmaker by sniping a dudes coastal provinces while the eventual winner hit him on land. It helps that most people are happy to ignore you since they know you basically have no chance to win the game.
It was a bit easier in Dom 3 since supercombatants were still a thing. Spending 50 turns minding your own business and then unleashing hordes of hideously powerful amphibian monstrosities on an unsuspecting world was fun.

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp

Gridlocked posted:

Yeah man I let R'yleh get a hold of so land forts when playing as Ulm (not that I could stop him, loving mind blasters ruined my slow moving doods) and it didn't end well.

Doesn't Tagichatn have a island they can take over with minimal fuss right next to the captiol or am I just reading the map wrong? Also, I own this loving game but I can't for the life of me wrap my head around all the strategies and things you need to know to play on a bad-rear end level.

Gridlocked
Aug 2, 2014

MR. STUPID MORON
WITH AN UGLY FACE
AND A BIG BUTT
AND HIS BUTT SMELLS
AND HE LIKES TO KISS
HIS OWN BUTT
by Roger Hargreaves

Nice piece of fish posted:

Doesn't Tagichatn have a island they can take over with minimal fuss right next to the captiol or am I just reading the map wrong? Also, I own this loving game but I can't for the life of me wrap my head around all the strategies and things you need to know to play on a bad-rear end level.

There is an island right there he could grab, the issue there though is that its just an island in the middle of the sea. It's not a beach head to advance his hold on the land. It is prob more income than his sea tiles though.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth
That island is actually connected to land provinces on both sides of the sea, so it will be a great beachhead.

Shogeton
Apr 26, 2007

"Little by little the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him"

Yeah, my early expansion went terribly bad. I'm pretty new at Dominions myself so for a alrge part it was 'I think this will work, maybe?'

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Gridlocked posted:

Yeah man I let R'yleh get a hold of so land forts when playing as Ulm (not that I could stop him, loving mind blasters ruined my slow moving doods) and it didn't end well.

Illithids are magic beings. MA Ulm has Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard. Get a decent number of smiths behind a bunch of infantry and just tear them apart. Illithids are also not cheap or sacred, so the upkeep stacks up fast.

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Gridlocked posted:

There is an island right there he could grab, the issue there though is that its just an island in the middle of the sea. It's not a beach head to advance his hold on the land. It is prob more income than his sea tiles though.

The island is actually a waste so it has pretty low income. It also makes it hard to move through since roads don't remove the movement restriction for some reason. The other two adjacent territories are both farmland though so I prioritized those. The second has a bunch of heavy cav unfortunately, I wanted to wait until my army was large enough to guarantee a win.

I ride bikes all day
Sep 10, 2007

I shitposted in the same thread for 2 years and all I got was this red text av. Ask me about my autism!



College Slice
Water cap circles don't pull resources from land provinces?

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

I ride bikes all day posted:

Water cap circles don't pull resources from land provinces?

Nope!

Turn 7




Nothing exciting this turn really, we won the battle easily losing only a few centaurs.


The event is really bad though, that province has really low income now plus our units are hosed. The misfortune means that even more bad stuff is going to happen.


Anyway, I’m moving that army onto those two land provinces since they should both provide a great income. My third army that is building will likely also move onto land to secure that high income province then the waste with the crazy connections.

We also meet our neighbor but it is Atlantis with whom we have a NAP. Let’s see if we can agree on borders here.


You can see Pelagia up north actually, sorry I didn't get a better screenshot. Oh and by Pelagia, I mean it's actually their capital, the province Pelagia. Very useful information to have! Our short NAP still isn't up but it's not like we have units in position to attack anyway.

The two indie commanders take 40 dudes each and split up while our haliade searches for magic sites. It’d be great to find one here since there’s plenty of adjacent provinces for resources and it’s close to our atlantis border. I’ll search all the provinces near here and will build a fort if I don’t find a free kelp fort. We will be at war with Atlantis eventually so it helps to have a fort near one of our borders. Water is always map move 1 so it can take a while for armies to move around.

Tune in next turn to see some actual battle screenshots! How will our brave ponies and bullpeople fare above the water?

unwantedplatypus
Sep 6, 2012
Ah yes, this underwater thunderdome. My money's on Pelagia personally :v:

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Pelagia's a smart bet!


Turn 8

Not too much this turn although we do have three battles.


We get a greeting from Atlantis along with an agreement to keep the borders here. I would've preferred allying with Pelagia but I didn't want to wait 4 turns for Pelagia to make up their mind. Too bad buddy, Atlantis it is.



Two good events, I try to take luck if I can spare it cause it's nice having turn after turn of free gems and money.


Our mage searched and found nothing. Get used to seeing this message a lot!

We also get a notification that conjuration research is done, bringing us up to level 1. Nothing interesting in this tier, we can summon sea dogs I guess since we don’t have much else to use our nature gems on.




Two of the battles go great, you can see the battle report and how few units we lost.


The third looks like we did well, losing only 10 out of 40 of the lovely units. But we lost anyway. Why? The poo poo units routed because they had poo poo morale despite winning the battle overall. I probably could’ve won if I had them in two squads and maybe only one squad would’ve routed. Oh well, they were free units anyway and gaining two provinces in a turn this early is still quite good.

Shameful routing satyrs.


Here are some pictures of the land battle so you can see how we do above the water.


Still pretty good it turns out, you can see the militia routing. This province is also a farm province and nets us 157 gold per turn which is great, 3 times the usual amount from a sea province. The other province on the island is also farmland so we’ll get that next.


Ok now we have our target. Pelagia is north-east of us and seemingly hasn’t expanded south. We have some armies moving south of us and will likely meet Pelagia’s army moving north at some point. My plan is to keep the aphroi army in that area and continue capping to deny them to Atlantis while I make another army to move on Pelagia. This army will be lead by the haliade so she can build a lab/temple and possibly a fort. It’d probably be a good idea to do a site search first but I’d really like to have the fort going up earlier, generally you want a fort building by the start of year 2. My sirens are at home researching still. I want conjuration 3 before I actually use them in battle since my battle magic is very weak at this point. Water strike is ok but quicker water elementals would be way better.

I will also build another army that’s strong enough to take the adjacent farmland province. Heavy cavalry and heavy infantry will be a tough nut to crack, even with only 20 troops but it has 180 income so it’s well worth it. After that, I might move the army along the land provinces toward Pelagia but we will see if Abysia has expanded yet. Also our NAP with Pelagia expires next turn so we are free to attack although any contact at this point would be a bump and all the plausible deniability that comes with it.

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

Turn 9

Not too many messages this turn. Tom Waits claims the Lower Throne. You can see what it does here.


It’s not too impressive, just one dominion spread and some blood slaves per turn. Good for blood nations but I’m not sure it’s enough to break into blood.



We won both battles, even the one I was unsure about with the ichtysatyrs. They’re down to 10 units which I would normally consider too few but look who we found! It’s Pelagia and they only have four mermen in that province, should be no problem to take them out. My other army will be right behind them and I have a shambler commander building to start building a fort. It’s a deep sea province so it won’t spawn a kelp fortress site.

Our haliade is searching this turn even though we found a free site in her province, a kelp forest which gives 1 nature gem. She will continue searching in that area but with a fort building next turn, it’s not too important to find a free kelp fort. I’ll want to build another to the east though so I can have forts on both sides of Atlantis.

I also have a scout near Pelagia and I’m not sure what he’s doing. His expansion seems to be pretty bad since he doesn’t look to have moved on that large island southeast of Pelagia or even controls all of his cap circle. The land west of him looks great too, there’s a ton of farmland for some easy gold income. Our island with two farmlands is making us 300 gold per turn and you can see my gold income is pretty decent.

Two causes of concern this turn are meeting Abysia and Caelum on land. Our scout caught the Abysia battle and now he’s adjacent to our nice farmland province.


I haven’t been able to contact him so I’m a bit worried. I could pump up PD but it’ll be expensive to make it high enough to actually repel Abysia since this province is just lovely militia and light infantry. I sent him an ingame message but he’ll only get it next turn which might be too late.


I was able to talk to Caelum though and we agreed on borders and a 12 turn NAP. I’ll stay on my island and he can have that peninsula.


You can see my units moving into position here. Next turn will kick off the underwater war and we’ll get a better idea of Pelagia’s holdings.

Tune in next turn to see how everything changed when the water nation attacked.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Tagichatn posted:



It’s not too impressive, just one dominion spread and some blood slaves per turn. Good for blood nations but I’m not sure it’s enough to break into blood.

Uh, no, this is an incredibly good throne to get for anyone (bar possibly a water nation due to difficulties of using blood magic underwater. Or Ashen Empire/Lemuria). Even without any independent blood hunting or events, he'll have enough blood slaves to empower a mage into it by turn 19, which is still really early. Most non-blood nations trying to bootstrap into blood will only just barely be getting a mass of scouts/priests together at that point to start blindly hunting a province, let alone already having enough slaves for empowerment to really get the ball rolling.

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

Plus it's free.

Also, the OP is an underwater nation.

But worrst case, you can trade slaves to a friendly blood power for something
Maybe Abyssia or is it the wrong age for them to be blood magicing?

Shogeton
Apr 26, 2007

"Little by little the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him"

Oh no. I mean, the name of my Pretender is 'Some Like It Blood' I am all ABOUT those blood slaves.

I ride bikes all day
Sep 10, 2007

I shitposted in the same thread for 2 years and all I got was this red text av. Ask me about my autism!



College Slice
Can the magic fountain pretenders be taken for UW nations. You would imagine half-shark dudes would go wild for a blood fountain.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.
That's not the OP's prophet.

Lord Koth
Jan 8, 2012

Specifically, it's Nazca's prophet.

Tagichatn
Jun 7, 2009

I ride bikes all day posted:

Can the magic fountain pretenders be taken for UW nations. You would imagine half-shark dudes would go wild for a blood fountain.

No, it doesn't look like any of the water nations can pick up a fountain. Makes sense, being underwater and all. I don't think they can choose any pretenders with blood either, does blood hunting work underwater?

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Flavius Aetass
Mar 30, 2011
Which age is this?

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