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To be entirely fair, they're playing a popkill nation, and might have boosted whatever effects Asphodel's popkill too (Presumably Death scales, over and above their normal effect? Don't recall for certain). So if they also had strong dominion, a catastrophic first expansion could leave them in a monetary death spiral before they can really recover and catch up, as their starting province dies off and their dominion expands and starts killing off nearby provinces too before they can even get their full benefits - especially if they dumped other income scales as well. So that's all stuff a normal nation that has a bad initial expansion doesn't have to deal with. Also, drat this LP for making me recall I haven't played an MP game in 2 years now, and tempting me to get onto the new Discord channel (as it seems the SA community eventually moved off IRC?) and getting into a new one.
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Mar 27, 2019 18:58
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 00:11 |
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Yeah, I've played against Asphodel (in Dom4), but I don't think I've played as them - certainly not in MP - so I'm just running off of vaguely recalled information and what I've seen playing against them. Being reminded that they like growth scales, for instance, though in retrospect it's obvious given their theme.Kitfox88 posted:this is my go to strategy in every dom game i've ever played And honestly, it's mine too.  edit: Kitfox88 posted:at least it's not ermor To be fair, Ashen Empire wouldn't care about a bad first expansion, what with them not really caring about gold in the first place. Of course, that would also mean the host allowed them to be in the game, in which case it's everyone's fault for agreeing to it. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Mar 27, 2019 |
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Mar 27, 2019 19:14
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Corbeau posted:Ys is fun, even batshit insane during expansion, but not as fun as you'd think in the long term. Their sacred cav is insane on land, but once people develop counters your chaff is pretty generic IIRC. Most amusing counter to any sacred in MA will always be Guardians. Who needs any specific magical counter when you can just quickly fatigue them out even if you can't actually hit them?
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Mar 28, 2019 04:46
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Clearly Nazca's the vampires.
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Mar 29, 2019 00:04
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ChickenWing posted:it's good to know W9 chainsaws still exist and are still Good and Balanced What nations get the extra water bless point to do this, as opposed to needing W10?
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Mar 29, 2019 23:53
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Honestly, I'm kind of interested in what nations get extra bless points in general.
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Mar 29, 2019 23:56
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How are u posted:There are a handful of "independent brigands/knights/peasants/etc" attack your province to remove your unjust rule type events. Putting IIRC 6 points of PD basically negates all but the very worst of them. Try and put PD down when you expand, friends. That's when the game glares at you and spawns one of the larger barbarian invasions instead. Or, if it really hates you, Mr. Troll Hero and his merry band.
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Mar 30, 2019 17:06
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The best one of these angry mob events (which I discovered last night) is probably the one where it actually makes a magic site instead of just giving you a handful of gems. And MA Ulm's great fun, if generally extremely straightforward. I wouldn't really describe those two spells as a magical shotgun though, more as "we brought an entire cold iron crossbow unit in one guy... and we brought more than one of him."
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Apr 1, 2019 15:46
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Unless the in-combat changes have significantly crippled this strategy in 5, one real good trick to midgame MA Ulm is Rain of Stones traps. You'll generally get enough A random Master Smiths (assuming you're doing decently in terms of expansion and mage building) to have an okay supply of them, and you get such easy construction that you just toss some E-booster boots, armor and helmets on them, then just script them to cast it once or twice before retreating. Use several to a province if you prefer safety against a large army. Most nation's mages do NOT take well to eating a stone to the head before they can even get off their defensive buffs or blesses. Technically you can use them offensively too, but then you are potentially running into them getting a buff up first which mitigates the damage.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:05
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That's... unfortunate. I hadn't tested so I wasn't sure if the RT change screwed up the strategy too much, but majorly nerfing the effects of Rain of Stones at the same time seems excessive. Especially given it's up at Evoc 7, and it's not like multiple other good battlefield killing spells around there got by basically unchanged as I understand it (Fire Storm, for instance).
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Apr 2, 2019 02:29
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The main issue with countering blood magic is that the best ways of crippling it tend to cripple everyone ELSE too. Blood nations are certainly not going to appreciate a year one BoT, but for some reason no one else is likely to sagaciously accept this reasoning and not quickly attack you as well. edit: Of course, if it is a year 1 BoT you're probably playing Ashen Empire or Lemuria, in which case the non-blood nations are kind of in a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario anyways.
Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 18:48
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Nuclearmonkee posted:
The Ashen Empire/Lemuria note was just that they're by far the most likely to manage to have the D income available in year 1 to put that global up. It's definitely something worth considering for any nation that has the D access and long-lived mages, but it'll probably not go up quite that fast. And it wrecking the gold economy too was the point - the most reliable way to cripple a blood nation also cripples any nation relying on actual bought troops too. Also those nations that mostly have old-age (or close to that) mages with normal ages.
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Apr 3, 2019 19:44
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Kitfox88 posted:only 10pd while you have like 1100 gold smdh didnt even fort the province what a weenie Yeah, they're an exclusively MA Ermor summon that they get 3 different spells to summon various numbers of them (1, 5, or 14). And as could be expected from being summonable in numbers, they're a troop rather than a commander.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:03
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PurpleXVI posted:It's also kind of fascinating watching how other people's tactics vary from what you do yourself, and you start wondering if you're the one doing something dumb, or whether it's just a difference based on your nation/preferences. I could be entirely wrong, but I seem to recall that candles have more difficulty propagating from land to sea (or vice versa) for one reason or another, so it's not quite as important. Also, if you're really templing up, it can be regarded as actively trying to push your dominion which people can view in a less than positive light - though it's not generally a huge concern unless it's a bloodsac nation. Ramc's scales aren't particularly great either, so it's not like there's any real incentive to spread it, outside just making sure you have a decent number of candles around. With that said, M2 and the number of good events Ramc's been getting is infuriating, and a good sign of why that scale's a goddamn lie. For reference, in a recent AI game I was fiddling around, to relearn various mechanics and experiment with certain nations, with I had L2... and lost 500+ gold on turn 3 due to multiple "floods" events, and the overall quality of the events hasn't gotten much better from there.
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Apr 10, 2019 18:52
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PurpleXVI posted:It was probably a few patches back, so possibly prior to whatever changes they made to dominion spread, because it was last year or so. But my nation was sandwiched between three others, I had a base Dominion score of 9 or 10, and even building temples in all of my(admittedly long and narrow with no territories that didn't border an enemy territory) territories, I was having trouble keeping my dominion solid. This sounds... extremely odd. There was indeed a patch that made passive domkill much harder going forward, but it was a change made in Dom 4 (and presumably carried over to 5) and was definitely longer ago than last year. Did you possibly have a bloodsac nation on your border?
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Apr 11, 2019 03:04
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I mean, "lost" in this context just means "Phaecia knocks out the forward armies somehow and a truce is called." Phaecia really doesn't have the means to actually prosecute an offensive war underwater against Pelagia - at least not this early. It'd hardly be the end of the LP if that's what happened (and it's probably not).
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Apr 14, 2019 04:16
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To be entirely fair, with multiple nations apparently having really bad expansions, those nations that didn't are probably only too happy to snap up all the extra territory they can. Though yes, Ulm and Nazca really should be booting Pelagia back into the fishbowl once they're through their initial expansion - with that much free UW territory Ramc already has, they really don't need to be giving them access to their land exclusive troops too.
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Apr 14, 2019 05:10
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Did they tweak BV in 5 to only work on an actual successful damaging hit? In 4 at least I recall it triggering on misses caused by post-hit roll misses such as those caused by Mirrror Image... or more relevantly for sacreds, Glamour. It could trigger on an Ethereal miss as well.
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Apr 21, 2019 02:46
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my dad posted:
Presumably due to them being a blood/astral nation that's somewhat weak at the beginning (moreso than several other LA blood nations, at least), and thus tend to get dogpiled by their neighbors? Or is it something else?
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Apr 22, 2019 23:45
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You could probably do some gimmick bless with it as one of the nations that actually get spells that summon sacred troops with trample, but yeah it's overall not a very good choice. Incidentally, all of those summonable sacreds with trample are either toads or boars of some description. The toads are basically exclusive to C'tis and Mictlan, who have MUCH better things to be doing with their points, so that leaves boars. Which is basically EA Marverni, who I guess could put together some sort of strategy of size 4 boars (so they can actually trample cavalry too!), and Jotunheim with their special EVIL boars (with heat aura too) who could probably do similar. Both reach their multi-summon boar spells at Conj 3, so it's certainly a doable gimmick.
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Apr 28, 2019 01:46
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Looking at their roster, oh wow is helote morale bad. Using them with any commander other than a Tyrant seems like a huge dice roll.
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Apr 28, 2019 18:50
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Ah, yeah, given that the Trophimos Commander would definitely be the better choice. I'd missed they had Taskmaster 2, instead of 1 like everything else other than the Tyrants, so was dismissing them, and wasn't aware the Tyrants didn't get the 80 ld bonus either. I wasn't even thinking the Tyrants were ideal in the first place, given their huge cost, being cap-only and StR, and not even being sacred to reduce the upkeep, but wasn't seeing anything else to get what were effectively some combination of chaff/line troops to even morale 10. On another matter... PurpleXVI posted:What kind of spooky horror is that Marignon has for a neighbour? Is it one of the really nasty ones? Since this wasn't answered, it's "merely" a regular Horror (which still massacres most basic armies/pd). I'm more interested in HOW it got there this early. Is there some super rare event that can spawn one, or is this just some spectacular misfortune involving a horror mark? Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Apr 28, 2019 |
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Apr 28, 2019 19:30
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Going back to one of the reasons this game has been so easy for Ramc, the real annoying thing about all UW thrones having utter crap defenders is that there are normal throne compositions that would work fine underwater, it's not like you even need new ones. Someone should just mod it so that all UW thrones use the Monolith/Watcher comp (with appropriate UW chaff) - make anyone going after them suffer.
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May 4, 2019 20:38
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gonadic io posted:Talking of misfortune usually being free points, I'd like to take the time to remind everybody to never be an UW: What does starting UW have to do with the game randomly deciding to screw you over, regardless of scales? Was playing around with MA Agartha, with positive luck scales no less, and had not one but two massive dominion down (and something else, maybe gold loss? It was one of the protest at your temple events or whatever) events on my cap within the first 5 turns, and then had the loving Demon Gate event on my cap too at ~turn 14. You know, the one that hits the province with roughly 50 Fiends of Darkness and some imps. In a cave province. Took an enormous amount of time to clear. As SP that can be dealt with of course, but it'd likely be crippling in MP. PurpleXVI posted:Do specific thrones have specific defenders? For instance, is Zeus always gonna have a sky/storm-themed Throne he's guarding? Or is it just a random assortment of Level X throne guardian setups? There are specific defender compositions, but they're not linked to a specific throne. Zeus and the Annunaki of the Sky pretender chassis guardians come with a boatload of Spring Hawks, and a Monolith comes with a horde of Watchers (this is, incidentally, probably the nastiest comp you can possibly run across), for examples.
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May 5, 2019 22:03
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For anyone new to Dominions picking this up to join MP matches and seeing the Mind Hunting going on, the absolute best way of dealing with it on defense is to have a stealthed Astral mage or two traveling along with your army. Seeing one in the army will just cause them to not Mind Hunt, after all, and you want to actually catch and feeblemind the hunting mage. Not many nations get access to natively stealthy ones, but there are fairly cheap items that accomplish the task.
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May 6, 2019 15:18
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Spirit Sight is for saying "screw you" to the jerk that casts Utterdark. Alternatively, you can be that jerk yourself, and cast it from a totally unexpected nation. Also for shanking someone who takes a Titan of the Underworld and tries to park him on your cap to go assassinating.
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May 10, 2019 03:51
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Kobal2 posted:Didn't Ramc say that the patch that made soul slay permadeath happened mid-game ? Before that, they were perfectly safe. Of course, to maximize the confusion of those not comprehensively reading patch notes, the "Soul Slay increases how long it takes Immortals to return" loading screen tip is still in the game. Whoops.
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May 10, 2019 18:54
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tarbrush posted:Are there any "equaliser" style globals? The kind that you only cast when your armies all got murdered or you're just generally behind on resources? I loosely assumed Burden of Time is like that, but wondered if there's a more "rocks fall everyone dies" style thing? Aside from Utterdark, there's also there's also Astral Corruption - though Pelagia can't cast that due to the high Blood requirements. Or, since Ramc's playing Pelagia with their utterly stupid pearl income, casting Wish to cause the apocalypse (repeatedly) is another "fun" spell to be casting. It just flat out kills 1/4 of the world's population, along with the chance of a decently powerful hit on every unit in the game, every time it's cast.
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May 13, 2019 14:07
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Tollymain posted:arent the new ulm vamps actually on the whole really strong and good For the most part they're not THAT different, so it's definitely a nerf since the nation is now hard capped on how many they can have total, but there are some nice abilities scattered around, along with some changes to the normal D2B2. One has seduction, another has innate blood hunter(2), one has adept researcher and another really deviates from the normal paths with some Earth along with Death and Blood (he's also heavily armed and armored, so he's essentially an additional version of one of LA Ulm's preexisting national vampire hero).
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May 15, 2019 07:28
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Ramc posted:
Already suspected it from that "less deadly" comment, but double-checking the inspector they got their Reaper value cut from 10 to 5. Might just be worth summoning harvesters now if you still want to pull this annoyance.
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May 15, 2019 14:37
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I mean by that logic it might actually be beneficial for them to have died, because it takes them less time to respawn than it likely would to actually move them out of the ocean and back to core territories.
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May 18, 2019 23:08
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If C'tis has got multiple E5 casters, and the gem income to bring in at least one earth king, I'm surprised you haven't had any incoming Earth Attacks yet. Unless C'tis is tossing them elsewhere I guess, but trying to disjoint that attack last turn seems like if would have been a good idea.
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May 23, 2019 16:29
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Barono posted:Deletes the "eyes of God" global and blinds whoever held it. Usually not worth doing as it's more expensive than the eyes are I mean, if you're playing a nation with F access but no Astral, and you REALLY want Eyes down now (or are feeling particularly spiteful), then it's not exactly a terrible option. And if you're in a war with said global holder, you probably do want it down now. Or just not wanting to play "guess how many extra gems they stuffed into the global" that you'd need to do with Dispel.
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May 23, 2019 23:14
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Ramc posted:
This is... actually more of neutral thing than bad (if C'tis has acquired any blood mages), because it's an event that spawns a Demon Gate site in the province that allows a blood mage to enter and start freespawning Fiends of Darkness. Which are actually fairly okay chaff if you can give them Darkness support on the battlefield.
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May 24, 2019 15:29
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 00:11 |
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Shackled Mages may be somewhat cheap and expendable, but that's still a LOT to lose in one fight, especially considering the negligible mage losses in that fight by Ulm, to say nothing of the loss of a cap-only mage too. They still take time to actually build and mass, after all. Gold losses by Phlegra were significantly higher, and they're losses harder to quickly replace as well. Unless there's something I'm missing, I dunno why Ulm's burning gems and mage turns on giants though (unless they were free from something?). Even if they can eat tyrants - and I have no clue if they can - that's really niche given the huge amounts of chaff.
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May 26, 2019 19:17
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