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In this game I'm playing as Rus for Team Skyrim, you may know me from such exciting stories as "I joined this game just to cast a world-ruining combination of global spells, didn't really have a plan beyond that" and "In this game I chain-betrayed every neighbour, sometimes multiple times, until they got tired of my poo poo and dogpiled me." Rus is a nation that exists in all the ages, though they first become Vanarus in MA and then Bogarus in LA. This game is set in the Early Age, which is where there's the most weird poo poo going on, the most magic resources around and the least people to chop up into blood sacrifices. Early Age Rus has what is, in my opinion, the best selection of sacred units in the game, and absolutely some of the best summons as well. By and large everything they have is hard to kill, they have access to summoned Healers(and being able to cure afflictions is INCREDIBLY rare, I think less than a tenth of the game's nations have Healer access) and they can summon flying Holy 3 priests(important because only Pretender Gods, Disciples, Prophets and Holy 3+ units can capture thrones, so if you're trying to move to a fast win in the endgame, you need to be able to have throne-cappers in multiple places at once). So being a game with 20+ people, Disciples of Theme World took some months to fill up, and just about every day for like a solid week, me and my team-mates(or, well, mostly me and Warbeard, our Pretender, Nyarlathotep, the other Disciple, didn't disagree much, being a reasonable sort of person) were arguing about our PG choices. Scales vs bless, dormant vs incarnate, one chassis vs another. I think the only thing we never argued about was going with Cold3 scales. After much deliberation, and after Warbeard put his foot down on Pretender setup, I went with the Svartalf Mastersmith:  A PG/Disciple that won't screenshot properly in preview, because he's got two forms and I can't swap between them here. One is a big ol' angry Linnorm, a pop-kill deathgas serpent that's reasonably beefy, but loses a lot of casting paths, and the other is a dwarf that has all of the casting paths and a forge bonus. It felt like he'd be early-game useful for expanding and in case I needed some extra muscle, but also later-game useful for crafting. Of course this meant that a lucky indie werewolf got an insane crit against his dragon form the first time I deployed him in combat and literally punched his head off. Because that's how Dominions works, I didn't even know there was an affliction for stumbling around headless for several rounds until you keeled over dead.
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May 21, 2020 14:53
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Khisanth Magus posted:One fun thing about Caelum is that all of their best troops have Ice Armor and Ice Weapons. These things are stonger the colder a province is, and in a neutral temp province they are pretty meh. So I basically have to write off my best troops from the start and will be relying on my suckier troops. On the plus side my suckier troops still fly and are dirt cheap so I can at least recruit a lot of them! Caelum's basically got two rosters, the "oh you want to use Storm"-roster with Storm Immunity and Shock Res, and the "oh you like cold scales"-roster with Ice Armor, Ice Weapons and Frost Res. The frosty fellas are better expanders once your dominion gets spreading and/or it's winter season, but personally I found that by mid-game the shock boys are gonna matter way more since your bread and butter will be "here's a Storm Staff, Storm Power, LIVING CLOUDS, LIVING CLOUDS, LIVING CLOUDS" as a very effective solution to most problems the game can throw at you. Usually I always leaned heavily on the Shock side of the roster since the game incentivizes most nations to go Heat rather than Cold scales, so on the offense against another nation, the ice boys tend to be disadvantaged unless you can push dom on them.
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May 21, 2020 18:18
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Donkringel posted:Do disciples games have less external diplomacy, since you have to agree with teammates about foreign policy? In my experience with Disciple games, wars tend to happen earlier and everyone tends to get a helping, while in "normal" games it's standard for one or two nations to not be immediately attacked for whatever reason(not interesting territory, look scary, don't hold any thrones, sick diplomancy skills, etc.), but at the same time without clear coalition goals("oh this fucker put up Burden of Time, he's gotta go down") fights also tend to be much more one-on-one, with one disciple/PG cluster against another disciple/PG cluster with little outside interference. In my opinion, part of it is, perversely, the larger maps. By the time people run out of expansion room, it's usually been long enough that they also feel geared to fight, and there's generally more of a feeling of the game moving faster(in the sense that everyone's advancing and growing faster), so it feels like there's more of a pressure to maintain the expansion by getting into a war against a likely-looking neighbour as soon as possible. Another part is that, having allies that can't betray you or get rid of you, people generally feel more confident about picking fights. Also mostly in this game I've been trying to be a menace by trying to get my allies to agree to various Hellwars. It's not been particularly easy. 
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May 22, 2020 08:52
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I'm curious when you say that JBBM nerfs Xibalba, my impression was that JBBM buffed Xibalba, at least the EA version.
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May 29, 2020 00:16
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Doomed to eternal middle management handling water gem production or longdead quality assurance.
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Jun 3, 2020 13:04
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How Are U: Should the rest of us explain some cool stuff about our nations or will you give people the rundown on the very cool nations you'll be failing to conquer(i.e. my team's) when you get there?
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Jun 10, 2020 00:22
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builds character posted:I would also be curious to see how you (and the various other players) view the other players in the game and if it changes any of your strategy. I mean, without considering who's behind the wheel of the various nations(since there are certainly people who have pantsed me more than once and whom I have extra respect for) and without considering what I know about how the game goes, this is how I'd rate the teams I'm not on: TEAM GREECE From personal experience I've been bullied by, and bullied with, Arcoscephale multiple times, I have a lot of respect for them. Everyone seems terrified of Pan, but they usually meet ignominous ends despite it. Mekone seems to strangely enough always be weaker than their stats would indicate and personally I can't play them at all without falling prey to the lure of MEGATHUG KRYPTES overruling all other strategy(no, no, two copper arms so he can DUAL WIELD Midget Mashers is genius, I won't hear any disagreement). 5/10 for one really strong member and two members I don't believe in. TEAM NOT-AFRICA EA C'tis can be somewhat scary, while Berytos and Machaka go in the "usually dead in the first stages of the game"-pile. Machaka in particular seems to really suffer in both EA and MA and seem to get picked even more rarely than loving Eriu, which should tell you a lot about how people perceive them as fun/powerful to play. 3/10 probably gonna be one of the first to die. TEAM MESOPOTAMIAN MENACE Caelum is incredibly scary as soon as they hit Evo 5 and Conj 7, sufficient air gems are the only limiter for their power levels as they spam Storm and Living Clouds in every battle(or, better yet, have someone craft them a Staff of Storms and then spam Thunderstrike instead). Hinnom is real goddamn cool, they've got powerful mages, healers, immensely strong troops and powerful blood. Their only real weakness is that their sacreds and best mages cause unrest and popkill. Ur is... ahahahah. Look. Ur and Uruk are just cursed nations. Maybe they were designed on a native american burial ground. I feel sorry for Biggs that he got stuck with them again, but everyone's gotta have a schtick. 8/10 two out of three members are really powerful. I believe in them. TEAM HUMAN EXTERMINATION FRONT Fomoria feels like another one of those "strong on paper, usually out of the fight early"-nations. Something unfortunate always tends to befall them. Aquatic giants could allow them some tactical maneuverability and options that might give them an advantage. I've never played Abysia in MP myself, but everyone seems to curse them out as a terrible nation to play. Their main weakness, to me, is being a bit one-note and confused about what to do if someone is fire resistant. Agartha just needs sufficient fire gems to spam Magma Children in Heat 3 dominion and they will own the early game until someone produces a good counter for it. 6/10 No clear super nations but also no clear loser nations. TEAM BLOOD Mictlan is real scary if they get the ball rolling on grey bat goo scenarios and are probably one of the best blood nations in EA and LA, to my mind. Xibalba has flying units, and the curse of Attack Rear will never not be scary, especially with JBBM buffs to their line troops. Their national summons and spells overlap a good deal with Mictlan's, but EA Xib can just straight up recruit Onaqui, which is loving rad. Lanka... I will never not respect sufficient volumes of Bandar Archers. Those fuckers are SCARY. Plus the monkey nations in general get some very cool national summons. 9/10 one of the biggest threats around. TEAM HITLER Elves are strong, real strong. This is why they won't win, because they're so obviously powerful they'll probably be dogpiled out of the game OR they'll diplomance themselves right into victory. In general elves feel very binary in that way, both playing as them and against them. They either get hard countered or they just scythe through everything zero challenge. 5/10 the halfway point between instant win and instant lose. TEAM ERMOR Now this... this is a decent alliance. I don't feel strongly about Sauro, but I've seen them do damage before. Marverni is limited only by the strength of their hellbless for their millions upon millions of pigs, and if they don't drown the world in pigs, I will be so, so disappointed. While they don't have great path access or ritual casting ability, they're extremely capable communion casters thanks to their very cheap sequani stargazers that also make for great research chumps in general. Ermor is, in my opinion, probably the strongest EA nation. Like, I never see them not at least make it to the midgame. I never see them not being at least a temporarily scary competitor. And their Equites means that even with the blandest of bless, or no bless at all, they can expand powerfully, and they don't need an awake expander to back that up, thus allowing them to have both a decent bless and decent scales. Also they've got healers and all sorts of other great poo poo. 10/10 most dangerous alliance.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:55
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How are u posted:You can see that we're also moving our expansion army down into Utonshire, moving South towards more indies. For some reason I didn't record it, but IIRC we've run out of expansion room to the North. It's a little crowded here in Theme World! Far as we could tell from our scouting, most teams generated in a roughly triangular shape, except there'd usually be another nation's "triangle" poking in through one of the sides and right into the middle. For instance, we had myself and Niefel on the western side of our triangle, Rus on the eastern, and Agartha in the middle, neatly pinned between us. Obviously the chants of "BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD." started up even before we finished clearing our indies.
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Jun 18, 2020 11:55
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ousire posted:How good is province defense in Dominions 5? In previous LPs of 3 and 4, it seemed like PD generally ranged from "utterly worthless" to "mildly inconveniencing" and basically was just for dealing with unrest and random event attacks, and to make sure the enemy couldn't capture the province with, like, just a single scout. So in my opinion there are really four factors to it. Firstly you always want at least 1 point, so you know what just took your prov, for when you hit back. Secondly, you usually want ten points, since that's where it passively reduces unrest, keeping your income beneficial since even if nothing else does it, rando events will always give you a bit of unrest. Eleven points also prevents a semi-common event where the pop just goes "we're tired of your poo poo!" and instantly rebels. One rando actual unit or 11 points of PD prevents it happening. Thirdly, if the pop type is good, you may want up to fifteen points. There are a lot of garbo PD types, like most of the something-tribes, slingers, etc. but if the pop has cataphracts, heavy cav, heavy inf or war elephants, fifteen points is usually the point where they can ward off a lot of indie attacks on their own. If it's an early war, or your enemy is using a bunch of "light" thugs to hit you(like a single elf commander with some simple gear, etc.), it may be worth investing up to 20, because at that point your PD gets a second commander, preventing them from getting insta-routed if the first one gets owned by a stray arrow, and on occasion it's sufficient to embarrass an attacking enemy. 15+ points is also where the PD starts auto-patrolling and has a small chance of catching enemy sneakers. Fourthly, while indie attacks are usually rare, some globals, like Niefel's Illwinter, make them a lot more common, and at that point PD starts becoming more worthwhile since it prevents you having to race around armies to recap provinces who, at that stage of the game, usually have better work to do actually killing enemies. This is my extremely pro analysis.
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Jun 20, 2020 08:12
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Having Mictlan show up right at the start of the game and cut me off from the lake was a rude surprise, especially considering that there was a throne there, just two provinces from my cap. Sometimes expansion vectors just end up heading towards each other.
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Jun 23, 2020 02:02
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Oh poo poo, first good event of 2021. I think I've still got a few gloating screenshots from once things get spicy and otherwise a pretty decent memory of what went down.
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Jan 10, 2021 05:41
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So we got hit by the Throne of Beasts as well. Bunch of werewolves pop up in the prov adjacent to my cap pretty much just as my Linnorm disciple wakes up. I believe they arrive while he's showing up to go site searching and not even as a purposeful counterattack by me. "ah, yes, what can a bunch of furries do against a giant angry worm with poison breath?  "The very first punch from a werewolf is some sort of superlucky crit bullshit that literally punches his head off. An affliction I've never seen before or since.My disciple staggers around for a couple of combat rounds doing nothing then falls over, dead. loving werewolves.
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Jan 12, 2021 11:14
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At this point, an in fact for a good bit of year 1, Mictlan is just two provinces west of my cap circle as Rus and sitting on a lakeshore that I really wanted to reach. I spend the rest of the game wondering if what he's got in that province is blood hunters and attendant patrollers or an army about to strike, and being very suspicious when I'm told its the former.
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Jan 12, 2021 20:24
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To the east of TEAM BLUD, Niefelheim, Ulm and Rus find out that the rough triangle we've been spawned in has Agartha sort of in the middle of it and begin making dastardly plans to dunk on some cave folks and their allies
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Jan 14, 2021 10:36
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Oh man that reminds me. After those loving werewolves that killed my disciple were finally evicted, barbs showed up in the same drat province, and kept doing so. loving things.
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Jan 25, 2021 21:47
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I'll note that I kept trying to convince my team we should attack team blood, I can't remember why I kept getting pushback on that, but I think there was always someone else who looked like a weaker, juicer target.
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Jan 29, 2021 09:18
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 18:07 |
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That free barb event sucks so much when the friendly barbs don't win.
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Feb 1, 2021 06:22
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