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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 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.  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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Mar 30, 2017 02:12
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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   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?   Vanarus, very high astral. Vanarus is also a blood nation. Astral + blood = bad news.
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Mar 30, 2017 02:57
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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.
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Mar 30, 2017 04:56
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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!
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Mar 30, 2017 17:02
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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
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Mar 31, 2017 02:18
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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.
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Mar 31, 2017 21:11
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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?
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Apr 1, 2017 06:31
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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.
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Apr 3, 2017 01:06
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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.
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Apr 6, 2017 06:10
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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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Apr 6, 2017 21:48
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Flavius Belisarius posted:Which age is this? Middle Age. I ride bikes all day posted:Other than pure UW combat, is there anything UW nations do better than land nations? I don't think so. Pelagia is the one exception in that they can get a wish engine online with their alchemy bonus. They can wish for gems then alchemize those gems to get more pearls than they started with. Given Pelagia's pretender titles, this is what they're shooting for. We can confirm this once we get a look at their bless. If Pelagia took astral 9, well, we know what that means. edit: I guess Rlyeh has some weird void and sanity stuff too. I dunno, I've never played them. Tagichatn fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 22:13
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Gridlocked posted:It's a huge stretch to try to game around that though considering that Ryleh are the only nation capable of getting them on a big rng, and Ryleh isn't a bless-nation as a rule. I didn't have an endgame in mind since I was a newbie (still am) and had never played Oceania or any nature heavy nation before. Nature has some good buffs though and good evocations although not game-ending ones. Turn 10  Let’s take a look at the messages.  We get a friendly message from Caelum but we already chatted on IRC and negotiated a NAP. Nothing from Abysia unfortunately but he didn’t attack us which is a good sign. With our scout we can see he doesn’t have PD in one of his provinces so we can at least retaliate if he does do something. Conjuration 2 complete which doesn’t net us much beyond summon water power.  We found a magic site, not a fort but I’m not going to turn my nose up at nature gems. It’s been six turns since our prophet died so now we can make a new one. The aphroi lord is our best bet because he is just a regular commander. Making a mage the prophet means they are spending valuable scriptable turns on blessings and whatnot when they could be casting spells. I renamed him prophet to make him easier to find. Prophetizing him loses a turn but the domspread is worth it.   We win one battle and lose the other. Turns out Pelagia had moved more units into that province so our force of 10 dudes routed although we only lost a few. It’s not much of a problem though, they routed into a province with commanders who are duly picking them up. Also Pelagia messaged me on IRC, looking for the alliance I offered earlier. I figured this battle is a good enough answer.  Well, not every event is good but at least this bad event has an upside. Sometimes the bad events give a ton of negative scales and like, 3 death gems. Unfortunately, magic increases do nothing unless it's a province with researchers which, of course, that province doesn't have. I guess our mages get less fatigue if we happen to fight there? Oh well. So, what's going on next?  Our shambler chief is building a fort and once my mage gets there, she can build a temple and lab and finish up our staging area. I’m also buying some mercs in that province to punch up our offensive army. 50 ichtyid warriors is nothing to sneeze at.  Our northern army forges ahead into independent territory and we can see that Pelagia doesn’t own most of the surrounding provinces so we should be safe from a bump. I wouldn’t be worried if we did but still. I think I will site search for the fort just in case. I can also put down a temple and a lab so my mage can pick up some water gems. By then I should be able to summon lesser water elementals. Atlantis is moving up but I’m not sure how much steam his army has. I definitely have the upper hand in terms of water provinces and possibly land provinces but Pelagia itself is a big prize, you get great gold and gem income plus a fort and lab. Oceania is nice in that only two of my units are cap only. I’m not building aphroi at all since they are way overcosted but aphroi commanders are nice. The 80 leadership is twice that of the other inspirational commander but they do lose the holy levels.
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Apr 8, 2017 00:01
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By popular request, I'll talk about my god before this turn. Pretender Spotlight  So uh, here he is. Swimming in Fish and Crab poo poo, the Father of Monsters. I mean, that's what aquatic people do all day. You know how birds poo poo everywhere? Imagine if you had to breathe that in all the time too. That's another reason why underwater nations suck. I actually didn't have much of a plan with this guy. People in IRC said he was cool so I took him. They also said he was good at expanding, which he's not. His innate weapon is really good but he doesn't have enough protection to get through battles unharmed, even with fear. He also doesn't have recuperation so I definitely didn't want him taking hits. I went water because hey, water is good underwater and death because it's a magic path that my nation lacks. With water and death, I can summon evil naiads that come with w3d3 which is pretty good and it only costs water gems. Death 5 lets me cast some cool stuff too, like burden of time if it comes to that. Turn 11  New turn, new messages. Oh look, a proclamation from us! What could it be?  Yes, it’s our Prophet becoming a prophet. I've gotten in the habit of renaming my prophets to something catchy, even later in the game, because you can lose track of which commander is your prophet pretty easily when you're up to hundreds of mages. Pretty boring turn this time unfortunately but we’ll take a look.  Our scout catches a battle of Abysia vs some indies, he wins handily.  Hopefully he doesn’t move towards Coast Haven since I sent a message saying I would take that myself but he also didn’t message me back. It’d be a better idea for him to finish off his cap circle but players can be unpredictable. If he doesn’t take it, I will send an army to grab it next turn with the aphroi lord building this turn.  Our expansion army won pretty handily, the commander is going to search while I build an indie commander to start a fort if she doesn’t find one. Even if she does, he can start building the fort upgrades.   The next message is an unexpected event in our land province.We gained...a sage? He’s a good researcher which is nice but we also don’t have a lab in that territory. I’m not sure it’s worth building one just so he can research. Lastly, we had some commanders patrolling and the province is now safe and orderly. Our bid for the mercenaries has failed, they got picked up by Atlantis. Better than Pelagia getting them but it would’ve been nice to have them.  Our prophet will move north into more friendly territory but then he’ll be able to take over the island adjacent to Pelagia. Our commanders in the south will link up while we build a few shamblers.  My scout has found out something interesting, Pelagia forgot to buy PD in this province. That means that a scout can easily grab it which I will do the same turn I attack his other province. Also his scales are terrible, 3 turmoil and 2 sloth? I don’t see how he could afford to build any units like that. I assume he has a crazy bless but I’m not too worried since he won’t be able to actually produce many sacreds. Pelagia sacreds are loving scary too but they're not amphibious and therefore stuck underwater. Join us next turn for the start of year 2!
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Apr 10, 2017 05:23
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PurpleXVI posted:What scales and what dominion power did you go for yourself? I went order 2, production 1, heat 2, growth 2, luck 2 and magic 1 with dominion 7. Going without a major bless left me a lot of room to take some good scales. Haha, this is amazing! Nice art Ramc.
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Apr 10, 2017 05:59
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Torrannor posted:They lied to Tagichatn in order to sabotage his game! Don't worry, people were just joking around about how awesome he is, I guess because he has a torch. It wasn't like I went in there asking what the best pretender was. Earth snake is definitely better but I really don't like using earth snake. It feels so blah because of how good it is plus my expansion is good even without it. It'd be nice if other pretenders were improved so they could expand awake but most stuff besides earth snake can either just outright lose and die or picks up so many afflictions it becomes useless in combat.
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Apr 10, 2017 23:14
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Wolfsbane posted:This event doesn't just give you a sage, it also tells you that the library of time is somewhere near that province. It lets you recruit S3 dudes, gives you four pearls a turn, and gives you full access to the score graphs of every player in the game. It's an amazing site, and well worth astral searching the surroundings (assuming you weren't going to do that anyway). drat, that's good. Unfortunately I get zero astral so even if I did know that, I couldn't do any searching.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:44
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Hey, we'll take all the webcomics we can get. Turn 12  An auspicious turn to kick off year 2! 3 site searches, 2 of which turned up nothing. One of those was our free sage so now I don’t know what to do with him. He can’t move out of that province so I guess he’ll just patrol. Let’s see what the successful site search found.  gently caress yeah, free kelp fortress! That saved us a cool 800 gold. I’m real glad I searched with my mage instead of moving on or building a fort. This is also because Pelagia has a decent sized force right next door so it’s nice to have a fort to hide in. I’m building a lab this turn so I can start building capricorns. Capricorns have great nature and can go on land so I want to start building them now since they’re slow to recruit.  You can see the location of our fort here, nice and close to Pelagia. Next message is that dormant pretender gods are awakening!  The one after that shows that my god is awakening, right on schedule. He must've known I got that kelp fort.  We get an event in one of our provinces, it’s not too great. Less unrest is good but we already have 3 order from our dominion anyway.  We also catch an Atlantis scout, maybe he should be scouting our enemy instead of me eh?  Now for troop movements. We have a sizeable force in our capital that is moving out to take the adjacent farmland.  You can see I arranged the squads so that the lovely troops are in front to catch lances with the good cavalry behind. Our god is moving out as well, not real sure what I should do with him actually. Probably just site search since Pelagia is so weak right now. His battle magic is pretty weak still and while he is tough, I don’t want to throw him into battle and possibly gain some afflictions. Being nearby will spread our dominion though. Our prophet is reinforcing the fortress with his army. Our troops in the south move out to attack the Pelagian army. It’s mostly shamblers so we should do well but we’ll see. That province has enough PD to be fairly safe.  We can see Atlantis’ army, mostly war lobsters and shield bearers. Shield bearers are kinda crappy but war lobsters are a bit scary.  These guys are bruisers. With the dude on top, they don't have very good prot or hitpoints but the lobster claw still does 20 damage. That's more than enough to kill most size 2 dudes. Not only that, but the guy riding the lobster dies and leaves the lobster behind. THAT lobster gets 20 prot, 34 hitpoints but also goes crazy and attacks whoever. That's good cause sometimes it takes a lobster to kill a lobster. Oh and both versions trample just to make them even better.  We put a bid in for the wet ones, going decently higher over the base price because last time we bid, Atlantis stole the troops. He even picked up some heavy cavalry so he must be expanding on land. I don't expect that to last, most land nations don't take kindly to water nations getting a foothold on dry ground near them. Anyway, the wet ones also get a siege bonus which will be great when we’re sieging Pelagia. Join us next turn for some good magic, maybe!
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Apr 13, 2017 05:47
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Torrannor posted:Now I know why Ramc wanted you to post your pretender before this turn. That's quite the coincidence. No, no agreement. I wanted to wait until I had a better idea of what Pelagia and Atlantis had. I wish I had taken some large scale screenshots! It's hard to see from what I posted but the ocean in this map is basically a cross, wrapping around vertically and horizontally. Atlantis and I are on the horizontal axis while Pelagia is on the vertical, north of us. I got lucky in that my cap is at the crossroads so I can expand in all four directions, which I'm currently doing.
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Apr 13, 2017 21:52
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50~ turns behind when I started so probably a month and a half later?
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Apr 13, 2017 22:10
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Turn 13 A few messages this turn, research in conjuration is completed.  We can summon a few different things but the main thing is the water elementals. Even the lesser ones are decent and gives us a reason to use up some water gems. I think instead of going to conj5 for the big elementals we’ll switch to alteration since it has some good underwater spells that match the paths of our mages.  Our army fought on land this turn, winning pretty handily.  You can see the layout with the heavy cavalry there  Our satyrs do an excellent job of catching lances.  The heavy cavalry have high protection and defense skill so the battle goes pretty slowly but we were never in danger of losing. Our cavalry, the ichthycentaurs, are pretty drat good.  Next was our battle against Pelagia.  You can see he boosted his PD pretty high and has a lot of units. I turned on unit colors to help make sense of the battle. Now you can see why I lost so many satyrs, besides them being garbage. Fortunately none of Pelagia’s units were very good, just basic indies and atlantian militia. I didn’t see any actual Pelagian unique units at all so I’m curious where his army is. The most dangerous ones are shamblers since they have two attacks that do decent damage.  Fortunately, my satyrs have good defense skill and a much longer weapon. You can see the shamblers get repelled like crazy.  I actually came close to losing this battle but my redesign of my forces kept me in it. All my squads with satyrs routed but my squads with centaurs and satyr soldiers stayed behind until the whole Pelagian force routed.   A couple of positive events, nice for us. I really like having luck! Too bad Oceania doesn’t have any heroes and I don’t think this game is running the worthy heroes mod.  Also we won our bid for the mercenaries so I will push hard to get them sieging Pelagia. As I said last update, the wet ones get a siege bonus of +2. This doesn’t sound like a lot but a unit’s siege strength is it’s strength squared and divided by 100. So a 10 strength unit (pretty average for your basic unit) has 1 siege strength. Flying units also get a bonus of 1 and wet ones get 2 for some reason so they’re three times as effective as most of my units. Our large army moves towards Pelagia with the mercs, my mage stays behind to build a temple while my pretender catches up. Depending on what’s in Pelagia, I might wait for them both to help the battle with some elementals.  North of Pelagia, my mage is building another temple, our indie shambler is continuing the fortress, the other indie commander picks up the routed units from this turn’s battle and the last commander moves on another Pelagian province. If he builds any pd or adds any more units, this fight will probably fail but fortune favors the bold. The fortress will be done in a few turns anyway to reinforce if we need it. At this rate, we’ll be sieging Pelagia before Atlantis gets here which is good, we want Pelagia. Owning a cap is a huge income and gem boost.  One cause for concern is that Caelum has taken that island next to our cap right as we grab the farmland province. I will talk to him in IRC and hopefully get him to relenquish it. Generally players avoid taking provinces in the cap circle of another player unless they’re at war.  Also take a look at the land province I captured. It’s giving us a cool 245 gold per turn so I think I made the right choice in prioritizing it. Vanarus looks to be taking that island next to Pelagia, they might be our first war target but perhaps Abysia would be easier. They also have 2 thrones near them which would be a nice bonus. We also agreed to a NAP with TC and with Nazca, agreed to leave each other alone. That’s fine by me, we have no plans for major land incursions at this point. After Pelagia is done, I’ll be gearing up for the war with Atlantis and then I’ll consider going on land. If I feel like I can easily handle Atlantis then maybe I would start a small land war.  He does have at least one additional fort that I can see though. It’d help if I could find a land nation being attacked already so I’m pumping out scouts on every province that can build them to get more info. I only have the one aquatic scout because commander builds are too precious to waste on a scout. Unfortunately, afaik there are no indie provinces underwater that can build scouts. Join us next turn for another actual battle against a player!
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Apr 15, 2017 06:46
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Turn 14 Here are our messages.  Alteration 1 complete which doesn’t do anything for us.  Some nature self-buffs but nothing in water. Really we need alteration 3 for anything good which is numbness. Our researchers are pretty crap but level 3 doesn’t take too long. edit: numbness is not actually good but it can be cast underwater Pissbitch playing Marignon has capped a throne.  It’s not great but level 1 thrones usually aren’t. I wouldn’t turn down 2 nature gems but I don’t know if Marignon has any use for them. Then we took Baan Kaal or whatever. Caelum ceded it to us with no PD since it was in our cap circle. So far Caelum has been very friendly and available on IRC. Compare that to Abysia who hasn’t said anything at all and hasn’t even responded to our ingame message. Still, he hasn’t take the two adjacent farm provinces so I assume he isn’t hostile but I’m much more inclined to attack someone like that than someone who’s willing to communicate.  It's in our cap circle but it also has really nice connections to both sides of the continent.  Next we have our two battles in Pelagian territory. Green sea was just 4 shamblers, not worth showing. Broken ocean actually had a decent sized force with actual Pelagian units! Let’s see how they were arrayed for battle. These are our forces.   And the enemy. My lines are much more pleasing but that’s just one man’s opinion. His prophet is in this battle as you can see.  Turns out, it is poorly scripted since he doesn’t cast divine blessing and his sacreds don’t receive the blesses. I figured he had a beastly bless since his scales were trash and I was right. His prophet is blessed and it turns out to be s9d9 which gives magic resistance, undying, twist fate and death weapons. Those would be scary on his sacreds but he only has 4 in this battle and they’re not even blessed.   The first clash. My infantry take the first hits, some of them are mermidons so they can shrug off any low damage attacks.  His mermen toss out nets which is annoying but we can break out of them.  His sacreds get surrounded and the ichtyids get to the front. He would’ve been better off having them at the sides and holding attack or just putting his chaff infantry in front. Getting hit multiple times a turn lowers their defense skill although I don’t know if centaurs get the mounted bonus for that or not.  Our front lines struggle against each other but I eventually kill more of his chaff and surround the rest. The ichtyid warriors finally route en mass leaving behind the poor sacred knights to get hosed on retreat.  The final result, pretty good win for us.   A few events here, one good, one bad. I mean come on, no poo poo there's war.  Now for our movements. Our shambler continues construction, now he’s 1 turn away and we have a temple there. Our army moves off of the tiny island to move towards Pelagia and help in the war effort. Our two armies are now adjacent to Pelagia so they’ll just move in and siege it. Our mages and pretender will follow up with a hefty amount of water gems to spawn some elementals.  Having troops adjacent to Pelagia means we can see what he has there which appears to be 40 units and his pretender, a floating mind. 40 units is not much, even if it’s a low scouting report. It doesn’t even mention any knights of the deep which are the only units to be scared of. I doubt he can even build many by next turn given his bad scales. At this point, I'm not very scared of Pelagia. His scales are bad and he has no provinces so I doubt he can do anything to even remotely hurt us. You can see in a screenshot further up that Atlantis is also expanding slowly, at least in water, and won't reach any Pelagian territory before we gobble it up. Tune in next turn as we attempt to siege our very first capital!
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Apr 18, 2017 23:23
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Veloxyll posted:gently caress the ocean, basically. Oddly enough, you will see that exact sentiment expressed later in the game!
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Apr 19, 2017 05:08
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Beautiful.
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Apr 20, 2017 05:06
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Water nations either have troops that are weaker on land or can't go on land at all. Mages can wear air breathing items but there's nothing that lets a regular aquatic unit on land. Pelagia has great sacreds but they're aquatic only. This makes it a lot harder for them to fight a land nation. My dudes generally lose a few stats on land but it's not a huge loss. The bigger problem is that my best units can only be built underwater. Underwater being map move 1 means that it takes a lot longer for my guys to get to the front lines. Also 5 nations are weaker than a single nation with the same territory since the research and gems are spread out.
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Apr 21, 2017 06:53
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Sorry for the slow updates, I was travelling but now I'm back with another turn! Turn 15  Should be an interesting turn this time, did we beat the forces in Pelagia? Well, it’s kinda spoiled by that last message but we’ll go through them anyway. Alteration 2 is done, just some buffs which aren’t terribly useful on a non-thug.  Vanarus declares another prophet, their first must have died at some point. The prophet is actually a scout, maybe Vanarus intends to do some stealthy preaching?  We took the Pelagian province, just four shamblers so not worth showing.  We fought in Pelagia which just had PD, you can see we took some losses but not a huge amount.  An interesting but good event and then a bad event! Villains took our land province, what assholes. Our kelp fortress is complete! Hooray. Now we have two extra forts which is pretty good for this early, they will make good staging areas to assault Atlantis.  Our armies are breaking down Pelagia’s walls as is to be expected. My other army, mage and pretender move in to assist.   Our fort in Mu begins pumping out centaurs, the fort is right next to a throne so hopefully we can take it but it looks like just a level 1 throne. Our other fort is also producing some dudes but I’m focusing on mages for now.  I started building a fort in that waste because it has really good connections so that ate up a chunk of my income. That lovely sage is finally good for something, I’ll have him build a lab at some point too.  We can also see Marignon’s pretender, Pissbitch the Virtue.  Air and fire are decent paths but Marignon already gets those from their regular mages and summons. I guess A4 is good to have since the air boosters require such high paths. Since she’s leading an army that just took a throne, I assume she’s awake but who knows. Abysia finally responded accepting our NAP so Marignon is high on my list to attack. They’ve expanded like crazy so hopefully that means they are overextended. With luck they will attack Abysia and we can snatch up some Marignon territory while they’re distracted. Tune in next turn to see some amazing summons!
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Apr 26, 2017 18:21
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Ramc posted:Oceania is very good at blitzing its UW neighbors because cheap satyrs I barely build any since I had plenty of cash to make centaurs. Guess I didn't need them for Pelagia at least!
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Apr 27, 2017 19:34
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Turn 16 Not too many messages this turn.  A proclamation from Nazca! Pretty funny if true. We got 14 sea lions, hooray! They’re ok but I’m summoning them to help in the Atlantis war since I don’t have much use for nature gems in combat.     Pretty cool event, we like water gems and the armor is pretty good. Some earth gems and a bad event. 40 unrest is a lot but our army in that province is better used to take back our lost land province rather than patrolling. I’ll bump up the pd to 10 but our order will reduce unrest naturally.   Siege of Pelagia is progressing but we don’t know how fast exactly. We may not even need to storm the castle, Pelagia is losing candles like crazy here. They went from 6 last turn to 2 this turn, thanks to my prophet preaching and my god just being here. I think my dominion score is higher than Pelagia. If he loses all of his dominion, then *poof* he’s gone. We can take the cap without a fight even. Also I’m curious what happened with Marignon and Abysia last turn. Pissbitch was in this province and now she’s not and Abysia took the adjacent indie province. What I hope happened is a bump and their pretender died but who knows.  Ok so not much to do here. My capricorn is summoning more sea lions, the other one is researching. My forts are building more centaurs and cataphracts. I think I can afford to make some land incursions actually but I don’t know exactly what Atlantis is doing. I still only have a single amphibious scout but I’m making another one. I’ll keep sieging Pelagia but I think a domkill strategy would be faster and easier. Tune in next turn for another boring turn! Something interesting will happen eventually, right?
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Apr 30, 2017 06:19
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Turn 17 Not a lot of messages again. More sea lions, failed site search.  There was a battle in Anphalia, that farmland province that indies took from us. Took it back, no problem. Not even a single casualty as you can see.  An unexpected event! A single earth gem? Well that’s ok I guess. Then our scout was discovered and killed, we’ll have a harder time seeing what Marignon is up to now. Siege continues in Pelagia. Our domkill strategy might not work here. Pelagia gained a few candles in their cap so maybe they have guys preaching now. Well, we’ll build some temples nearby anyway, Pelagia’s scales suck so I want their dominion out asap anyway. I guess I forgot to take a screenshot of this, sorry! At least a battle is more exciting than domkill, right?  No exciting new strategies unfortunate. Our aquatic scout moves overland to where I assume Atlantis’ capital is. We are building more scouts to get a better idea of the situation on land although planning for that might be premature. Our forts are all building more fighting units and capricorns. I’d really love a nature 5 one but it’s a 2.5% chance unfortunately. Our cap is actually building a bunch of regular satyrs. They’re crap so why am I doing this? Well they are stealthy and we have a stealthy commander so my plan is to have several armies invade Atlantis’ territory before our NAP runs out.. With luck, I can cut off his capital although I don’t actually know where it is yet. Tune in next turn for a sneak peak at graphs! Well, I got the sneak peek, I think I forgot to save the link to them
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May 2, 2017 20:29
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PurpleXVI posted:Got any big "global" maps yet so we can have an idea of how much of the oceans you own? Sorry, I forgot to take screenshots of the larger map. I'll look through and see if I can stitch some together. If not, maybe I can find an empty map and MS paint it up. It's really not a very good map though imo. Corbeau maps are my jam now Also crabs are good but they have abysmal magic resistance. There are actually a few spells and abilities that specifically target animals but I doubt anyone would use those just for a few crabs. Either way, this map has no underwater cave provinces. Kraken are cool but in practice, their large size and low defensive stats mean they get surrounded and killed easily. They still take down a bunch of dudes but it's not worth it imo.
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May 3, 2017 22:53
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The problem with underwater nations being good is that it's really hard to invade them as a land nation. Most of your spells won't work underwater and your troops are going to be poor amphibians which gives you pretty hefty penalties to several stats. If they were good, they'd be too annoying to deal with. That's even with the numerous ways of loving over underwater nations while underwater nations have much fewer options for going on land.
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May 4, 2017 00:37
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vyelkin posted:Can thrones even spawn in underwater provinces though? It seems to me that even if there was an underwater player who was really difficult to uproot with poor land units, you could still win the game by just ignoring them. As Gridlocked said, they can spawn underwater but this map has no UW thrones. Bad news for us, it would've been nice to have an easy throne! Also here is the map:  Oceania in light green, Atlantis in light blue and Pelagia in pink. If you're thinking Pelagia is in a bad position, you're right! There's basically nothing that can save Pelagia at this point. My economy is so overpowering he can't fight me on his own and I have NAP with Atlantis. No land nation is going to give a poo poo about helping an UW nation so yeah, Pelagia is done for. Atlantis is probably aware of this and should be preparing for a war with me.
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May 4, 2017 23:31
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I actually left a corridor for him to attack Pelagia like an actual good ally that isn't planning on backstabbing someone but he didn't take it. If Pelagia had been a tough opponent, I would've wanted the help but so far there's been little resistance. Maybe Atlantis was counting on Pelagia to put up a good fight while he expanded on land, I dunno.
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May 5, 2017 00:01
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Corbeau posted:This is probably around the time that I, as Vanarus, started getting diplo messages from Atlantis... Hah! I assume you told him to pound sand? Turn 18  Another boring turn, sorry!  More sea lions and we easily take a province from indies. Atlantis doesn’t seem to be moving down so I’m taking the indies to the east of Pelagia.  You can see the situation here.  Atlantis’ holdings are here. Worryingly close to our cap but some new information has come to light! Another player grabbed a throne or site or something that lets him view score graphs. Turns out Marignon is running away with the game. They have the most provinces, roughly tied with Asphodel and way more income than anyone else, like almost twice as much. Yours truly is a distant second in income but followed closely by Pan. The good news is that we have quite a bit more income and provinces than Atlantis so we should be in good shape for the upcoming war. edit: Unfortunately I didn't save the link to the graphs, I believe it was Abysia who had the site.  The first 40 satyrs are done and awaiting a commander, I’m not sure how many of these stealth armies I’m going to make but at least two.  Another army is done and ready to go attack that adjacent throne. Marignon is also moving that way and I’m assuming they will attack it. The army has 10 knights of the chalice which are really beastly, I don’t have any chaff to absorb hits so hopefully centaur’s defence will avoid some of the lance charges. Every fort is building more dudes and we have a siren building a lab in the fort that was missing one. All of our commanders require a lab, some require a temple so I’m probably going to prioritize those labs in the future. I built a few amphibious scouts from the that one before it got a lab so it wasn’t wasting a ton of commander build turns at least.  The army that took Grandfather is moving on another indie province. I’m surprised Atlantis isn’t even pretending to be interested, he hasn’t taken those adjacent provinces and I don’t think he ever even fought Pelagia. That’s fine, we had no trouble with Pelagia so it’s more provinces for us. Still, I have no idea when Pelagia’s fort will fall. I do have a mage building temples nearby so maybe we will be able to do the domkill eventually. Join us next turn for our first throne battle!
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May 5, 2017 18:50
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Corbeau posted:Not at all; it was a quite beneficial proposal. I may already have been moving on it beforehand. Oh, was it just land stuff then? I don't think he got any help for the UW war but I guess I wouldn't know if it were gems or gold being traded.
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May 6, 2017 04:07
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Turn 19 More sea lions, whee! I’m not sure how good they actually are but we’ll see at some point.  They're decent units but suffer from shambler syndrome where they get two attacks with short length and low protection. I imagine they'd get repelled and take a lot of damage from most hits but their hp is good and hey, no upkeep! Having chaff is pretty important as I'd much rather have some lovely sea lions die than my 30g centaurs.  None of them died in the indie battle at least. We only lost one centaur, not too shabby. The second battle also went well, which if you remember is a throne province. I’ll show off what they got but it’s basically a big indie province, meaning the throne must be level 1.  Their army.  Our centaurs charge in, taking minimal damage from arrows. The mage is just casting tangle vines , not too scary but it does gently caress over the guy getting hit. My centaurs really rely on their defense skill and spells like tangle vines are bad for them. But it’s not a large area of effect so the centaur that got tangled, isn’t actually being attacked.  The melee units quickly rout and our centaurs clean up.  Here’s the throne, 1 domspread and order +1. That’s nice for our coastal provinces at least. Oceania has a special ability where non-coastal provinces get order +1 and coastal provinces get -1 order. So all of our underwater provinces are already order 3 because my dominion is order 2. I do have a lot of coastal farmland though so this will definitely help but it’ll take a few turns for my prophet to get there. He’s not storming Pelagia because there’s not much point. There’s nothing to bless plus my god is there anyway and my god gives more of a morale bonus to troops anyway.   Two events, one good, one bad. A handful of death gems are nice but that’s a lot of unrest. It’s going to kill the income in that province but I don’t care enough about it to patrol it down. Last but certainly not least, Pelagia’s fort has been breached! It’s happening! Normally I would send in a scout or something to see what he has, but honestly I’m not too worried about Pelagia given how little fight he’s put up. I’m just gonna storm the fort next turn.   Now for manuevering. Our 40 satyrs now have a stealthy commander and are moving to Atlantian territory. A second stealthy army is in the works. Our first scout reaches Atlantis, some units and a small PD. We’ll be able to see more next turn with multiple scouts moving in. I thought about building a fort in the throne province. Marignon actually did not attack even though they could’ve taken it easily, opting for an adjacent indie province. Now it turns out Pangaea is to the west. Either nation could be hostile to me since people don’t like underwater nations getting on land, much less owning a throne. Pan wouldn’t commit to peace so I think it’s too risky to start a fort at this time. Honestly I didn’t lose much taking the province and it’s making 140g per turn so it already paid for the units I lost. If someone grabs it from us, then we can just siren the poo poo out of any commander trying to build a fort. Tune in next turn to see a conquered Pelagia! Or see my army completely destroyed in an embarrassing manner!
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May 9, 2017 04:35
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I...I didn't know! Not sure if I'm worried about the horrors or memes.
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May 9, 2017 19:53
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Turn 20 A momentous turn! Well, there’s a bunch of messages at least. We finished conjuration 4. I think I said I was going alteration earlier but people in IRC said conjuration is better for underwater stuff. This turn at least we got school of sharks which seems like a cool spell, I can’t wait to try it out.  More sea lions. They aren’t great but they don’t cost upkeep and my upkeep is super high at this point. None of my good mages are sacred so they have full upkeep.  Then a battle that...we lost? Well poo poo. Not a ton of PD but a decent amount.   My shamblers just poo poo the bed basically. They just get torn to pieces. Not much protection or defense plus a length 0 attack means they lose badly. We didn’t even kill the knight of the deep. At least our mage survived. Maybe she would have won if had cast shark attack?  At least our indie battle went off without a hitch, only a single loss. Our sea lions get some kills, they’re not great but do good damage if they can hit. They have the same problem as shamblers though with two attacks but both are length 0. This also means they get hit by poison barbs although I don’t know if Atlantis or Pelagia has any units with those.   Two events, both bad. Misfortune is always in effect while magic is only useful in provinces with researchers so that province is just gonna generate worse events I guess. We caught a Marignon scout in our throne province and killed him. There are friendly provinces nearby so he could’ve retreated safely but I guess he wasn’t scripted. Our patrollers also reduced some unrest. Ok now the event we’ve all been waiting for! I was a little worried Pelagia would have some bullshit in his fort but we’ll see.  Here are my troops  And his troops. Nice shamecube bud. Not too scary imo. Most of the troops are chaff although he has a number of mermages and kraken.  No sacreds which I was worried about. His god is here of course, a giant jellyfish.  So yeah, that’s why his scales are garbage. Double bless but not enough scales to actually build any sacreds plus the jellyfish doesn't even get death naturally so he had to spend a shitton of points to get it to 9. It's a big reason why he’s doing so poorly. He could have some devastating magic but really, there’s only so much you can do underwater not to mention he doesn't have a single extra fort. It does have some gems though.  Lots of summon water power, that means he does have some conjuration.  And a baby water elemental! The pretender cast that one so that’s probably the most I have to worry about. He does have a mind blast attack but only one isn’t too scary. 100+ ilithids are a lot scarier and harder to counter. Their water strikes take out a few of my guys and cast another small elemental.  Troops get jammed up in the entrance, Unlike a land fort, I don’t have to worry about any arrows from the towers. This goes on for a few turns, the water elementals can’t even squeeze in there. My poo poo satyrs rout of course.  We grind away at the units in the entrance while their mages do most of the damage. Our pretender goes off script and casts school of sharks. You can see a bunch around the battlefield but they’re pretty poo poo. A far cry from the sharks ridden by shark knights that have a loving length 5 bite for 20 damage.  Some of them spawned on the other side though so that’s pretty cool. If they can do a little damage then it’s probably worth it. In a non-fort battle, they’ll be more useful since an attack on a shark is one that isn’t hitting my units. edit: free summon spells like this are actually super good even if the units suck because they can spawn behind and attack mages. A mage in melee is a mage that's not casting spells and even a lovely bug can kill a mage. My mages are pretty tough but many of them are old men wearing robes.  Eventually Pelagia takes too many losses and starts routing. I guess a shark in your butt can hurry you along. That still leaves the water elementals gumming up the entrance and they don’t rout. I didn’t know this but water elementals get regeneration underwater.  Our units finally break through while sharks nip at their merbutts.  His pretender takes a ton of damage. Turns out jellyfish aren’t that tough! Who would’ve thought? It dies a turn later and we clean up, taking Pelagia!  You can see our losses here, not too bad for killing a pretender and taking his cap.  You can see our new gem income plus gold income. It’ll take a few turns to clear out his lovely scales but a new temple will speed that along.  Our sieging army moves to take Pelagia’s last province. Sneaky armies move out towards Atlantis.  Our sage finally finished the fortress, I guess he was useful after all? I think it is actually worth building a lab there since it has good land connections and hey, a new fort means more mages.  We can also see a bit more of Atlantis’ territory including his capital. Not much PD in his provinces on this side either so our sneaky armies should do ok. Join us next turn for the end of the Pelagian menace!
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May 13, 2017 07:06
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At least Corbeau's map generator doesn't do a water start by default.
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May 14, 2017 00:05
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:I've only played Dominions 3 so I don't know anything about Pelagia but isn't death 9 a pretty poor choice for a bless? At least I remember it being pretty underwhelming in 3. Plus it's on a pretender that doesn't start with death like the op pointed out so it cost a ton of design points. I guess the 3 water was there to summon the water/death mages that were mentioned in this thread earlier? So he wanted both a bless and a strategy to get onto land (skeleton spam?) but it seems like he made too many compromises to get that in the pretender design. What kind of sacreds does Pelagia have? I think f9 has a better major/minor bless but maybe they wanted the death for something special although I don't know what that would be. There's only a single spell that needs d9 and that's utterdark, there aren't even many at d8 or d7. Maybe casting utterdark and whatever bullshit astral stuff would've worked if they could've had the seas uncontested but those scales meant they lost the UW war before it even began.
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May 15, 2017 03:19
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:30 |
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 Love the smug smile on the mer-rear end in a top hat with the banner, now Oceania's victory will never be forgotten!
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May 15, 2017 20:54
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