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 Hello friends, I am forums poster How are u and I am both thrilled and shaking my head at myself for presenting for your enjoyment another Dominions 5 Let’s Play.  You may remember me from my Dominions 4 LP Mo Money, Mo Problems, probably the greatest achievement of my life. Well, this is Dominions 5, an even better Dominions. First thing’s first: what is Dominions 5? I’m going to straight-up crib descriptive quotes from my old LP because they are literally ever-fresh and completely real. Baudin posted:Imagine a Total War game, but with magic and without the ability to control your units or real nation management or any semblance of balance whatsoever.    Roland Jones posted:For those unfamiliar with Dominions, it's a turn-based strategy game about gods fighting each other and quite frequently utterly ruining the world in the process.    ChickenWing posted:Suffice it to say that Dominions is a turn-based strategy game that shoehorns pretty much every recognizable belief system in the world into the guise of a fantasy nation and then attempts to settle the question of whether Jesus or Thor would win in a barfight.    TheDemon posted: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.   PurpleXVI posted:For those new to Dominions, it's a turn-based high-fantasy somewhat-dark strategy game where your galaxy brain strats are regularly upended because a turkey blew up an archangel's brain or a militaman with a katana cut off an extradimensional invader's kneecaps and made it run away while making GBS threads itself in terror. The only thing more dangerous than your enemies and their plots is the RNG and your own hubris. Most of the nations are themed around some real-world mythos or ethnicity, but usually with some sort of interesting twist. Winning is accomplished by killing your enemies, claiming a pre-set number of the Thrones scattered around the map or making the game go on for long enough that everyone else quits out of frustration.   So, What is Dominions to you? Simply put: I’ve been playing the Dominions games for years and years now. They are so stuffed full of nations, magical spells, bless effects, and pretender gods that there’s basically infinite replayability. That’s before modding. Steam says I put 1400 well-spent hours into Dominions 4, and I’ve got 900 so far in Dominions 5. It’s some loving fantasy/strategy/role-playing crack in a game. It’s also really fun. So, what’s with *this* Dominions 5 LP? Glad you asked. This is a disciples game of Dominions. Disciples are simply team games that involve a slightly modified game mechanic. A disciples team of any size will have 1 player designated as the Pretender God. This player will build the Pretender that designates the Bless and the Dominion Scales the entire team will use. Essentially: the Pretender player in a disciples game is the same as every player in a normal game of Dominions. The disciple players pick their own nations, but instead of designing a Pretender of their own they can only design a Disciple. Disciple’s are just all of the normal Pretender god choices but slightly restricted. They cannot be built from Pretender options with a base Dominion score higher than 3, for example. They also don’t pick their own scales or choose a Bless, because those are already chosen by the team leader who built the Pretender. Disciples function as Prophets (note: Disciple players in a disciples game lose the ability to declare a Prophet!), and can be called back from the dead by priests if they bite it. Disciples, thusly, usually end up built as nasty super combatants and hugely powerful mages. Ok, tell us about the game This particular game is called Disciples of Theme World, and it is not finished. Currently the game is on turn 62, and nobody knows who will win. You may have guessed that there’s a slight gimmick to this game, nice job! In the land of Theme World teams have been determined by ~national cultural and/or geographical themes~. I am playing as Lanka, and I am a Disciple on Team Blood. Teams of Themeworld Team Greece: Arcoscephale: Arcvasti  Pangaea: Lotham Mekone: Jack2142 Team Skyrim: Ulm: Warbeard Niefelheim: Nyarlathotep Rus: PurpleXVI Team Not-Africa: C'tis: Jonjoe Machaka: OOrochi Berytos: AfroSquirrel Team Mesopotamian Menace: Caelum: KhisanthMagus Hinnom: Mid Ur: Biggs Team Human Extermination Front: Abysia: Kremath Agartha: Torranor Fomoria: Cobra Lionfist Team Blood: Mictlan: Burgundy Samog Xibalba: Green Samog Lanka: Howareu Team Hitler: T'ir Na N'og: Weedzmin Vanheim: CrazyJazzyJ Helheim: Alex0080 Team Ermor[And Lackeys]: Marverni: Mukip  Sauromatia: Meksivik Ermor: Jerek The 'team leader' aka the player who designs the Pretender, scales, and bless, is indicated with a They’re all thematically grouped, get it? Excellent! How much are you going into depth in this LP? I’m not going to get too deep into the weeds on the mechanics of the game. There have been a pretty good number of Dominions 5 LPs on these forums so far, and I didn’t start documenting turns in this game with the intent of being extraordinarily thorough. I encourage you to check out these other excellent Dominions 5 LPs if you haven’t already! POOR UNFORTUANTE SOULS - by Ramc The New, The Bad, and the Monkeys – by Highwayleopard Less New, More Bad – by PurpleXVI Clown LP - by gonadic.io Team Blood Team Blood is made up of the nations of Lanka, Xibalba, and Mictlan. Mictlan is the team leader and has designed the team Pretender  And chose the team scales  Didn’t take a screen shot of the initial Bless, but it is: • Morale +1 • Attack Skill +4 • Cold Resistance +5 • Defense Skill +2 • Twist Fate • Strength +2 • Blood Surge A very solid bunch of minor blesses that should work with any of our national sacred demons. Twist fate will come online when our Sleeping Pretender god wakes up sometime in the 2nd year of the game. And the national descriptions    We are going to get into specific unit descriptions as they come along in the game. Long story short: Team Blood is 3 Early Age blood nations of various strength. What we have in common is all of us can summon sacred demons of various types and have powerful sacred mages. We’ll all struggle with income, especially in Turmoil scales, but hopefully our Bless and Luck scales will make up for it. Blood is a very powerful school of magic, but this game is being played using the SA Dominion community mod “JBBM”, created and maintained by our own Jbrereton. JBBM mod levels some pretty solid nerfs to Blood magic, including upping the summon costs for all of our team nations’ national sacred demons. Will Team Blood crush all their enemies before them and rule the world in darkness, or will they turn out to be a paper tiger? Read the whole dumb story in Team Work Makes the Theme Work!
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May 21, 2020 02:55
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Reserved.
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May 21, 2020 02:55
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The entire nation rejoices! How are u, The Punished One, Chronicler of Tales, Beverage, has broken free!
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May 28, 2020 18:10
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Turn 2 What happened to turn 1? Nothing happens on turn 1 and also I hadn't decided to start recording turns until turn 2, so here we are! Not much going on. On turn 1 we put in a bid on the villainous mercenary Victor, who we have now hired to be our companion in wicked blood crimes for 3 whole months. Arcocephale sends an august and wise message to the entire Theme World.  ...  Anyway, welcome to Theme World! Here's our little slice of heaven. Elephants to the South of me, barbarians to the West; here I am stuck in the middle with you. Also a very solid looking Throne province stuffed full of centaur immediately adjacent to our cap in the East. The elephant province is farmland and we will want to get our ape paws on that grain ASAP, for Lanka is a gold-poor nation in the best of times.  Our glorious military This isn't much and I don't think it can take any of the indie provinces right now, at least not without way more risk than I'm willing to gamble on. We'll sit in Lanka and recruit a few more hitting demons.  Ah the freshness of Theme World And here's the neighborhood. Our great friends and compatriots in the worship of CASH 4 BLOOD DOT COM Xibalba are just to the North-West. They're sneaky bat-people who love blood, death, earth and fire magic. They're also a little frail, and JBBM mod which we are running in this game nerfs bats a little bit. Up to the North-East we have CASH 4 BLOOD DOT COM's overlord nation: Mictlan. Mictlan is basically Aztecs: The Nation, and they have some solid magic diversity, national sacred summons, and the curious and slightly racist inability to build forts made of stone. Dawn rises over Theme World, and the world is quiet. Perhaps too quiet.
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May 28, 2020 18:50
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PurpleXVI posted:I'm curious when you say that JBBM nerfs Xibalba, my impression was that JBBM buffed Xibalba, at least the EA version. I'm actually not sure how the JBBM changes to Zotz ends up working out in the end. For those reading along:  Here's three Zotz lancers from the vanilla game.  Here's the same three lancers except they've been 'merged' into one unit by the mod. When this unit takes damage it can 'reduce' to a two bat squad, and then to one bat. Over time, though, the squad can regenerate back up to it's full strength. Definitely arguments to be made for either option!
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May 29, 2020 00:35
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Turn 3 Not a lot going on Welcome back to Theme World, dear readers. Turn 3, like turn 2 before it, is generally not very exciting. Let's see what we can glean from what has happened. My illustrious teammates and co-conspirators in unpleasantness both sent their expansion armies out to conquer an adjacent province this turn. How did they do? I don't know! Apparently I didn't screen shot it. I'm going to guess that Mictlan did OK and Xibalba could have lost their whole force. A coin flip, probably. Also, we see that Victor, the leader of the thematically appropriately named mercenary band we hired, somehow gained enough XP to join the global Hall of Fame. He now has a bonus Heroic Ability, but that's not much comfort for him I'm sure since I intend for him to die catching spears and lances meant for my apes.  Mictlan, our team leader, sent a wonderful message to the entire world! It's kind of a silly message because we are not likely to end up with a lot of cash.  To boldly go... And we are setting out ourselves to attack the Bear Tribe warriors that occupy the province of Trisia. We recruited a couple more delightful demons and I expect to roll the province pretty hard. And that's turn 3! 
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May 31, 2020 01:35
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Turn 4 Welcome back to Theme World, friends. Let's look at what happened on turn 4! Looks like it's just a few battles. Both of our teammates fought another battle against indies, so it seems their expansion parties weren't wiped out last turn. What we're really interested in is how our first battle went! Since we're finally fighting it's time to review some of the units in the field. Our lovely starting army is made up of these fine animals:  Atavi infantry are not great! No armor to speak of, bad morale, etc. They are stealthy, so that can be useful occasionally. Markata seem even worse, but I find them to actually be far more useful. Markata are absolutely tiny, you can pack 6 of them into a combat square, and they have a fantastic Defense score for their cost. As long as you can keep their morale up and stop them from fleeing they make very fine blockers and arrow-catchers. Our mercenary, Victor, one of the great heroes of the world, brings a handful of Villains along:  They suck! Our little expansion army is led by a generic ape commander and is accompanied by our first and most basic mage-priest:  Blood 1, Holy 1, a simple cheap researcher and blood hunter. He's coming along so he can cast Bless on our cap-only recruitable sacreds!  Anusaras are beefy and very fast, but have very little in defense. I recruited a couple because I ran out of Resources to recruit....  Palankashas! Palankashas are certainly not the best recruitable sacreds in the game, but they're extremely solid and good. They're strong, have beefy HP, good protection and defense, and Chaos Power (1) will boost their Attack, Defense, and Strength by +1 point for each Turmoil scale in the province. Our mixed +stats bless will make them even better. For...uh, for blood!  Atavi infantry are out front to take the initial hits from the Bear Tribe barbarians. You can see Victor's Villains off on the North end of the battlefield where they're positioned to run into any enemies who may try to flank our apes and kill our commanders.    That was an rear end-load of barbarians, so I'm pretty pleased with the result. I didn't record the orders for next turn, so it will be a surprise!
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Jun 4, 2020 18:02
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Angry Lobster posted:Good ol' Palankhashas, I see they are still lean mean murder machines. That's a health bar! A very crude health bar. When you toggle the battle map option that displays combat squares + nation colors (so yellow under my guys, the color of Lanka, and grey for the indies) it will also display the health bar. The bigger the red bar the more HP a unit is missing. No red bar = uninjured. e: yes! vvvv How are u fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Jun 4, 2020 19:04
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Turn 5 Turn 5 opens with four battle reports, and nothing more. Let's take a look! First up is our own expansion battle:  We crush the independent defenders of Utonshire province, taking it for the glory of Lanka! (and our pretender-god overlord obviously)  Now that's how you expand! Mictlan and Xibalba each battle some indies, and again I didn't document it because who the hell knows why. The 4th battle is a scouted battle report from the first neighbor we've encountered: Hinnom!  Semitic giants based on Biblical myth. The Early Age precursors of the Late Age nation of Gath, which I played in my Dominions 4 LP.  Medium-size giants fight Deer Tribe barbarians. The Hinnomites even have enormous chariots which they use to great effect. They destroy the Deer Tribe, but do take significant casualties considering the army size.  The Deer Tribe don't stand a chance against those war machines. Since we've encountered our first neighbor, let's take a look at the neighborhood.  Hinnom is -far- too close for my own comfort. This seems like it's going to be a crowded map. Sad! This is the view to the South-East.  Up to the North-East, where Mictlan is expanding, we have bumped into Rus, a member of Team Skyrim. Looks like we have Skyrim to the East and Team Mesopotamian Menace to our South and South-East. OK. We have neighbors. Onward, blood!
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Jun 6, 2020 07:53
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Turn 6 Turn 6's report is no more than two Mictlan battle reports and one of our own. Let's take a look!  Mictlan utilizes cap-only Eagle Warriors in a battle against some generic indies.  They don't have any armor, but can fly when blessed and are pretty versatile troops to have available.  Another army made up of Mictlan warriors, definitely Mictlan's starting army, successfully conquers some Jade Amazons.  Mictlan will eventually be able to recruit these Jade Sorceresses from this province. They're very helpful if you don't have native access to Nature or Water magic. Mictlan has plenty of both, though. Great to see Mictlan expanding! We get word from Xibalba that their expansion army was destroyed this turn. The bats can be a little finnicky in expansion, but hopefully this isn't a big setback. In our own battle we face some generic indies with heavy cavalry.  It's not a small force. Heavy Cavalry and Barbarians are two of the most dangerous types of indies. Fortunately we are prepared.  We set our squad of Markata up front, intending to soak the Lance attacks that make Heavy Cavalry so dangerous.  A Lance is a melee weapon that gets 1 use per battle. It gives a huge damage bonus, and can really ruin the day of even elite troops and Sacreds. Here, they obliterate the Markata.  The Markata flee, but now our blessed Palankashas have engaged the front line. With the Lance attack spent the Heavy Cavalry are -far- less dangerous, and we smash em good. The world as we know it:  As you can see we took the province of Palame, and our starting army marches onward North-East towards Gemer! We're recruiting Palankasha for a second expansion army, and hopefully we'll be ready to send it out next turn.
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Jun 9, 2020 06:39
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PurpleXVI posted: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? wow spoilers! You're more than welcome to  about your nations. Fact of the matter is: in a game this large (both in players and in game "geography") it's ~very likely~ that there will be some nations and teams with which Team Blood will have little direct interaction.Plus, the fans demand content.
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Jun 10, 2020 00:28
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LP dead? No! Just How are u going on a long camping trip. I'm going to post a turn a day for a few days to get us back into the ~Blood Groove~
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Jun 18, 2020 04:36
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Turn 7 Welcome to turn 7! Messages for the turn show that Xibalba scrapped up enough soldiers to make another go at expansion, and Mictlan continues to march along as well. As for ourselves, last turn we were sending the remnants of our initial expansion army into the province of Gemer. We also had two random events, but I didn't document them so they were inconsequential (a Witch curses a unit in a province, or you get 3 water gems, or +1 Misfortune because somebody angered something, etc).  Some Hoplite assholes used to rule Gemer. No longer! Our demons are shaded red because they are under the influence of the Blood Surge component of our Bless. Blood Surge gives a small stat bonus (+attack, +strength, +1 point of Reinvigoration) when the Blessed unit kills an enemy. It's a phenomenal and cheap expansion Bless, though it tends to lose its value as the game goes on.  We do very well, but lose the last of Victor's Villains. gently caress those cowardly bandits. Well, that wasn't very exciting. What's next?  We've finally recruited enough Palankasha in our capitol to safely (hopefully) march on the Elephant riding people who inhabit Holoma. Elephants can be very nasty to expansion parties, but our highly skilled and extremely strong Palankasha should mulch them. We will also 'ping' the Throne province in our cap circle, with Victor himself I believe. 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!
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Jun 18, 2020 04:37
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PurpleXVI posted: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. It heartens me that Team Skyrim was so excited to meet their friendly, virtuous neighbors.
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Jun 18, 2020 15:50
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Wow, must be nice to have such flawless and robust expansion. Team Blood could really have used some awake Disciples.
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Jun 19, 2020 04:30
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Turn 8 Oh boy, turn 8! Rejoice, friends, for Team Blood's Disciples have arrived! Jag You Wah the jaguar is the ruler of Xibalba, while No, Blood for Oil! is the wise and forthright leader of the Lankan apes.  The Most Important Follower  No, Blood for Oil! is a Raksharani, and pretty badass. She is pretty clearly not built to be a physical combatant, but rather an extremely potent battle mage who will -eventually- be able to drop some seriously nasty spells effortlessly. For now, however, her job is going to be making up the bulk of our Research and to sit in the Lab. For real though, we're struggling to find the gold to recruit expansion soldiers and hopefully build some infrastructure soon. No, Blood for Oil! is going to spend a good while reading books. We see that Xibalba has fought another battle against indies, but Mictlan has not. Mictlan has probably gotten boxed in by Rus from Team Skyrim, and needs to spend turns moving towards some other independent province. We have two battle reports, though, so let's take a look! First we 'pinged' the Throne province of Melma adjacent to our capitol.   eat poo poo Victor. Thus ends Victor's Villains.The Vine Men and various humans are immaterial, but 66 Centaur Warriors is a -very- solid fighting force at this stage of the game. We will not be attempting to take this province for a while yet.  Heavy Cavalry, but much better in about every way.  There's also a few of these guys, who are very flavorful indies that hardly ever appear in games. The final battle of the turn took place in Holoma, the province adjacent to our capitol that contained some lovely humans and a couple of elephants.  mother fucker  Yeah that's way more elephants than I would have expected. This may not go well...  The "good" part about elephants is they are much quicker than men, and thus can be counted on to rush across the field and engage whatever you've sent on their own without much backup.  Our Palankasha are super strong and elephants have very poor Defense, so our demons are just hacking elephants to death left and right. However, the elephants trample the hell out of us before their morale breaks and they flee, just in time for the human Heavy Infantry and Slingers to engage our broken and bleeding line.  The gods-damned humans put up just enough of a fight to break our own morale, and Lankan forces flee the field. Cowards!   We took a hard hit, and it's a lovely loss. Thankfully the elephants are almost all gone and we should -hopefully- take the province next turn. We pull the survivors of the battle together and send them back to Holoma.  Hope they're enough! How are u fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jun 19, 2020 |
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Jun 19, 2020 04:30
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OOrochi posted:Jeeeez, that is way too many elephants Like every Cool and Good Dominions player I watch the battle play out before looking at the final report, so I think I did IRL at the beginning of that one. Still, the Palankasha did real work.
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Jun 19, 2020 05:09
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I always admire folks who do epithet analysis, but I gotta admit that it's way too much powerful brain work for me. Much easier to Scout The World 
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Jun 19, 2020 22:26
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Catpetter1981 posted:What is Kitfox's rationale for heavy investment in PD everywhere? Why not? e: let's add more content than that! Here's some great indie poptypes to use in PD traps: - Barbarians are low morale but hit like loving dumptrucks  - Heavy Cav, as mentioned above. Can't go wrong! - Raptor Clan Caelans can be a nasty, alpha-striking surprise if you pump that PD up, baby! - Shark Tribe tritons, my personal favorite. These guys gently caress. How are u fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 07:43
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Turn 9 Plenty going on in the messages for turn 9, but not much of it recorded for posterity by your's truly!  First, we receive 400 beautiful pieces of gold from Mictlan, our liege. Mictlan has had some OK expansion, but more importantly Mictlan conquered a series of Farm provinces along the coast of Theme World's one big lake. Having several 10,000 - 20,000 population Farm provinces in the early game is super helpful, because you need so much gold to build vital infrastructure like forts, labs, and temples. Mictlan, in the true spirit of teamwork, has sent some gold to both Xibalba and ourselves to help get some poo poo built. Two Thrones were claimed this turn! I'm not paying much attention because we're busy thinking only about expansion. For battles: we see Mictlan fight two indie provinces and Xibalba fight one. Expansion is still happening for Team Blood, but it doesn't feel like we're doing super-well. A scout catches a glimpse of Marverni fighting some indies, down South. That's the cardinal direction that we, Lanka, are heading with our expansion armies, so we'll probably be establishing a border with the disgusting druids soon enough. How about our own battle? Round two against the elephant-tamers of Holoma!  Two elephants remain, along with a contingent of heavy infantry and a bunch of slingers.  One elephant outpaces the other, and is immediately hacked into pieces by Palankasha. The second elephant wisely routes, directly through the mass of slingers on it's way off the battlefield.  Much better, much better.  Here's where things stand this turn. We're taking the remnants of our original expansion army and the remnants of the army that just conquered Holoma and we'll send them both into the indie province of Oune, to the South. Looks like a bunch of heavy infantry, hopefully it'll be a walk in the park. We can see the province Xibalba captured this turn to our North. We, as Lanka, are going to focus on trying to expand South and East to the greatest extent possible, with the idea that Xibalba can expand into the remaining "interior" independent provinces as well as those to the West, towards the little land bridge between the Great Lake of Theme World to the North and the little lake to the South there. We are going to go South before going East because we're much better placed with troops to go South, and also you'll notice that fat barbarian province Tapanete, which would definitely require taking some casualties. We've already had more than enough expansion hiccups, so South we go! Hey, there's another Throne, right there to the West along the small lakeshore. It looks like it's defended by a shitload of Deer and Boars, which means we can probably think about taking it much sooner than that other Throne full of Centaur. Lastly, we have some commander start to build a fort in Holoma. Forts are built in stages, and it takes 4 turns to build the first stage (a measly palisade) plus 2 additional turns to upgrade into a lovely little fortress. You want to get forts started ASAP, so thank you Mictlan for subsidizing this first one!
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Jun 23, 2020 01:23
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Thanks for contributing your team turns and perspectives, friends! Turn 9 SC combat and hellwar is extremely on brand for Jon Joe, and the nations of the world give him credit for justly and righteously demanding wholesale elf-death 
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Jun 23, 2020 17:49
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Hey friends, so if the forums come out of this intact and under new management I will very enthusiastically be finishing this LP. If known serial-abuser Richard Kyanka pulls the plug and everything just disappears into the internet tubes then just know that I'm grateful for your company and participation in my dumb LPs and for being cool and nice people to post about games with on the internet. If you're a fan of Dominions LPs but have never tried the game I encourage you to join the goon Dom5 discord (linked in the Dom5 games thread) and throw the game on your steam wishlist because it goes on sale for like $12 all the time. Join our cool and relaxed community of idiots who like throwing pixel men against each other.
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Jun 24, 2020 18:25
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Donkringel posted:Hey How are u, with the news on the purchase, will you be working on the LP again? Or do you want to see the site firmly in Jeff's hands first? I'm super happy to see things are moving forward, and I'll be resuming regular updates this week! Thank you for patience, everybody.
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Jul 12, 2020 23:48
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 yeah, right. Well it's been an interesting 7 months since the last post. Now we've got a new government on the way, a vaccine, and everything feels just a tiny bit more hopeful. I've still got all these screen shots, so maybe let's finish this LP? I didn't exactly take detailed notes on each turn, so we may be piecing things back together. I suggest you, fine reader, may want to re-read the first 9 turns of the game to refresh. Turn 10  We hit a level of Conjuration research, probably level 3 at this point. Conjuration is very important for Lanka to dip into in the first game year because it offers a truly nice national summon. We fight a battle in Oune, which we'll take a look at in a moment, and our teammate Mictlan expanded into another province. Our other teammate, Xibalba, did *not* and that probably does not bode well.  Fighting in Oune.  That's what I like to see! We get a 'fun' unexpected event in the province of Gemer  god drat it  It's a whole tiny drat army! Now we have to find some drat troops to go and retake our province. Busy-work!  The forces that just took Oune are going to march West to the province of Grain Gate. We have no idea if Marverni has troops adjacent as well, so we will cross our fingers and hope for the best!  Back in our capitol we've been using several of our Holy 2 mage-priests to reanimate skeletal longdead. Lanka is able to do this with any priest, with the number of longdead raised each turn increasing with a Priest's Holy power level. This little army is comprised of a bunch of longdead up front to screen a huge chunk of Atavi archers in the rear. They're moving to attack the province full of Barbarians right next to our capitol. The londead are completely expendable, and the archers should pincushion the shieldless barbarians quite nicely.  Our world on turn 10. You can already see where we're getting boxed in by other teams. It's looking a little rough in terms of expanding much further than we have, unless it is to the West. Hey, I took a screen shot of a diplomacy update I gave to our team:  I engaged in some diplomancy with team Ermor, of whom Marverni is a member. If you scroll up to the map screen just above you can see that Knightmarsh is the swamp province just North of our South-Western-most Throne. We are going to go ahead and move our forces into Grain Gate regardless, because I think we can win in a bump and then owning it will make our negotiating position stronger.
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Jan 10, 2021 01:57
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The lovely part about Team Ermor demanding the swamp province of Knightmarsh is that it means all of that land to the West that we have no info on is probably occupied.
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Jan 10, 2021 06:08
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OOrochi posted:Woo, glad to see this is back. I don't necessarily remember that much now, so it'll be fun to re-experience things. Same! Turn 11  Look at all those battles! Xibalba continues their meagre expansion, Mictlan does -not- take another province, and we have two indie battles of our own. We can also immediately tell that we beat Marverni to the province of Grain Gate, hell yeah. gently caress...wizards! Grain Gate has a couple of wizards sprinkled into the indie army. Not a big deal for what we're bringing, though.  Water/Ice Elementals and Earth Elementals only, thank goodness. Those are no match for our angry Palankasha, but size 6 Fire Elementals could have hurt us.  Slingers have about 10hp. Using *~my imagination~* it seems our Palankasha are pretty much tearing these poor fucks apart literally limb from limb.  We also fought in Muspel, the barbarian province adjacent to our Capitol. Last turn we sent this army:    Love it when things work 100% exactly as planned.  Muspel has a revealed magic site! We have no Fire magic whatsoever, but we'll gladly send the gems to our teammates who can use them for all sorts of things. The other battles took place later in a later game phase, after Events, which means they were triggered by events. Somebody claimed the Throne of Beasts this turn, and in doing so triggered several turns worth of random beast attacks all over the world. Xibalba got hit several times by packs of wolves.  Even a small amount of province defense will protect you from a pack of wolves. Poor Mictlan, however, got hit by something rather more tough.  Werewolves have some limited Invulnerability as well as Regeneration, and a couple nasty attacks. Look at how many kills they make!  Team Blood has had some really good luck so far That's the turn. Looks like we are pretty well drat boxed in at this point. Can you spot the new nation to appear in the neighborhood? 
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Jan 10, 2021 22:36
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Turn 12 Not a lot going on this turn, but let's go over it. We gain a level of research in Blood magic, which is good because we've been summoning longdead to use as patrol chaff for blood hunting for a while now. We need to get our Blood Slave factories going ASAP, because we are very gold-poor and can barely afford to recruit mages and build infrastructure much less recruit extremely expensive Palankasha demons! Xibalba and Mictlan each take an indie province. We're boxed in by our neighbors, but there are still a couple of indie provs internal to our own borders that need to be brought into the fold. Several unexpected events and event announcements this turn. I wonder what could have happened...  god drat it. the bonus 'magic' site doesn't even give gems, just some lovely barbarian recruitment. Great, so there's a barbarian attack coming up in Muspel some time soon.  motherFUCK And our god damned Disciple herself gets a chest wound via the second random event. Recall that our Disciple is pretty much meant to function as a huge Nature & Death battlemage. Chest Wounds give a huge Encumbrance penalty, and there are few other Injuries that could have been worse than this.  Well, at least the Throne of War events are ending. That's what that little indie 'army' that took our province Gemer was from.  Hopefully a strong enough force to fend off the barbarian attack headed to Muspel.  Here we are. We're sending a few troops to Muspel to beat the barbarian attack sure to come soon. We're sending our Southern force up North to Gemer, to retake the province from the indie attack. We've negotiated a peace with Team Ermor, and we're going to give up the swamp province of Knightsmarsh to Sauromatia, a member of Team Ermor, who exists to the West just across the little land bridge. At least we have a tentative peace with Hinnom to our East, and with team Mesopotamian Menace as a whole.
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Jan 11, 2021 23:09
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Werewolves do -not- gently caress around, especially in the early game. It always surprises me when I remember that there's no Summon Werewolves spell up in the mid-high Conjuration tree or whatever.
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Jan 12, 2021 18:32
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Oh wow its so bad that even I, noted Dominions super star and incredibly talented player how are u, forgot about it
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Jan 12, 2021 19:02
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Turn 13 Ok, turn 13! What's on the big board of announcements? Manual site searching continues, but hasn't paid off with bounteous gems just yet. We get a big announcement: our Pretender God woke up! Our lovely Oracle fountain is now sitting in Mictlan's capitol, probably researching. The Incarnate portion of our Team Bless is now active: Twist Fate! Now, when blessed, each of our Sacred units get to fully ignore the first damaging attack against them. It's pretty useful! Our teammates fight a few battles. Xibalba takes out two indie provinces, which at this point have to be the last provinces available to them, right? Let's take a look:  They take out a province of skeletal horsemen, which can be very dangerous if massed properly but are very much glass cannons. The lovely thing is that skeletal indies always indicate a very low population province, so Xibalba isn't going to get great gold income from it.  Xibalba also attacks a much more well-defended province. Knights and mounted archers, not a joke! Xibalba's Disciple, a massive gently caress-off Jaguar with a few low level elemental magic paths, has joined the party. It spawns d6 sacred smaller jaguars in battle, and you can see those unscripted and undisciplined jags charging forward in the screen above.  With our full Bless the jags can now ignore the first hit from the Knights, which makes them actually pretty useful. They tear through a few knights while big Jaguar buffs and then joins in.  And the bats land in the rear to murder everybody. That's how flying nations are supposed to work, baby! Mictlan attacked a Hinnom province, and I didn't take any screens or make any notes, so it must be the result of trading or negotiating with Hinnom player because we're definitely not going to war with those guys. A couple of event messages:  Thank GOD. Give me the sweet sweet gold.  yay  And good timing, too. Mictlan has their very strong national hero outside of a fort, probably site searching, and it nearly gets killed by a pack of dogs! Research check-in:  Next turn we hit Blood 2,  You can see the Chest Wound on our poor Disciple  We continue to march a little army up towards Gemer, we're coming for you, lovely indie army! Sauromatia has yet to take Knightsmarsh, but I'm sure they will soon and we will be neighbors. We are starting to build a fort in Grain Gate, our most wealthy province. Basically we're scrounging gold to build infrastructure to allow us to Blood Hunt our black little hearts out. Our team is clearly out of expansion room, now, and we're starting to decide what to do next. That's war, obviously, but with whom and allied to whom is up for debate! I hope I took some more notes on diplomancy as we move forward, or I'll be piecing it together along with you, dear reader!
How are u fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 19:33
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The map is definitely way cramped, but that seems to be meta for the SA Dominions community.
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Jan 12, 2021 22:49
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Turn 14 Welcome to turn 13, let's see what went down: We get to level 2 in Blood Magic, wonderful! Ermor claims a Throne, not so wonderful! We fail to find magic sites with our one searching mage, shucks! Looks like Xibalba fought two indie provinces this turn, which surprises me. Xibalba's expansion has been the weakest of our team so far (which isn't saying much at all, I feel we're cramped and small) but yikes! Let's look at the battles:  The bats kill a bunch of savage dog-men who live in a cave.  Jaguar Disciple is able to solo a moderate-sized province. It seems like quite a formidable combatant! Mictlan attacks a province defended by Bloodhenge Druids and their cross-bred experiments:  The Bloodhenge Druids are fellow practitioners of Blood magic, but it doesn't spare them the wrath of Mictlan!  Mictlan's slave troops do the brunt of the dying. Certain Mictlan commanders can spend turns summoning these naked slaves to use as patrollers and chaff.  Eagle Warriors, which gain the power of flight when blessed in battle, drop into the rear and murder the indie commanders quite efficiently.  We got several random events this turn, but the only one I saved was this:    I'm more than happy to accept some free armor (good prot, low encumbrance, decent bonus) and sword (+hp, great for any battle commander).   And that's the turn. I definitely take screen shots of more than just Lanka's little chunk of the map in future updates, don't worry. Looks like Sauromatia finally got around to taking Knightmarsh. Our army that has been slowly marching towards Gemer is ready to fight the indies that took the province from us. The fort we started constructing in Holoma finished and is now a Palisade. We've got a lot of infrastructure to build, Labs and Temples and at least one more fort in addition to the one being built in Grain Gate. Once these forts are up, running, and hosting blood hunting parties, we will be in as solid a position as we can be in these circumstances. How are u fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 04:19
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Well I hope you all had a wonderful Inauguration and such. Let's get back to the game (if Imgur doesn't gently caress me over by being poo poo! All of my screens for this LP are saved in Imgur galleries so if that site is eating poo poo it makes editing a real pain!) Turn 15  We gain a level in Enchantment research. We're dipping our toes into Enchantment in order to summon Mound Kings to lead our masses of skeleton chaff in patrolling our lands and in battle abroad. They're cheap, extremely fragile, but they can lead a huge chunk of undead! Mictlan fights a battle against the last of the Werewolves courtesy of the Throne of Beasts. Xibalba clears another indie province (christ, Xibalba has had some awful expansion). Our little army that's spent the last 3 turns marching up North to our province of Gemer, the province that was seized by a lovely little indie event army, has finally arrived. So what exactly did we send up to Gemer to re-take our rightful territory?  gently caress these assholes!  Not like this! Welp. I was complete idiot and for some reason thought that a bunch of naked monkey archers without screening soldiers would clear a bunch of heavy infantry. Our archers get massacred and I am thoroughly embarrassed. Now we get to be humiliated AND we have to scramble to get another drat army up to Gemer! MOVING ON  Looks like Sauromatia may be planning to jump on this Throne? The Throne is tucked neatly into our territory, and I really would rather have it myself. We're going to mass forces to try and get it as soon as is reasonable, so let's cross our fingers that Sauro doesn't try first.  We've been sending some scouts into Marverni's territory. They're kind of large, at least larger than I like to see.  We start to formulate a war plan.  And here's the whole neighborhood. Look! We can see a tiny Berytos flag way off to the South East. Oh my god, Xibalba is going to have 11 provinces when they clear that last indie one near their cap. Yikes. We only have 9!! This game is cramped!
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Jan 25, 2021 20:47
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Misfortune scales are for fools! Seriously tho that's pretty much my main reason for never going Misfortune. I hate having to do the busy work of defending against endless, endless indie attacks.
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Jan 25, 2021 22:04
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Turn 16 A new turn! Pretty quiet! One of our mage-priests summons a Mound King to lead our undead chaff. Xibalba clears their final, for real this time final, indie province of werewolves.  Big Jaguar could have cleared this on its own, but why not let the bats have some fun?  Our new Mound King, Simith here, is going to lead all these shambling skeletons in patrolling our capitol Lanka, rooting out all those who oppose our bloodthirsty ways.   Here's our research as of this turn. We'll hit Conjuration 3 next turn, which will give us a spell to summon Water Buffalo (of all things). It will also give us the Death magic site-searching spell. Then we're going all the way to Construction 4, which will let us forge a variety of useful magical items, of which one in particular we are interested in above all.  That's the turn. You can see we've finished construction a Palisade fort in Grain Gate, on the border with Marverni. We'll upgrade that to a Fortress, and then we'll have 3 forts including our capitol. That's a pretty OK number of forts for us having like 9 goddamn provinces! Speaking of provinces, Gemer still sits up in the North, independent, mocking me. With our Mound King leading a patrol we can now start blood hunting our capitol. We've got 3 Blood 2 hunters on the hunt now, which leaves a pitiful research corps of 3 regular mages and our super-charged Disciple. I wasn't joking when I said our Disciple was basically carrying our research burden   Lastly, we start to put into motion diplomacy to set the stage for war!
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Jan 27, 2021 02:59
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Turn 17 Welcome to turn 17! What wonders await us? We summon another Mound King, our captiol blood hunters capture 16 blood slaves (wow!), and there's a bunch of events.  Stupid bullshit, there might be a wolf attack coming soon.  Desperately needed!! We hit Conjuration 3, huzzah! Now we have access to our national buffalo summoning spell. Incredible!  This is type of magic that really feels viscerally powerful. We engaged in a single battle, but it was actually just pinging our Southern Throne with a generic commander.  The Throne defenders are just a shitload of crappy animals (deer, boars, etc) and some stupid Druids. We will be able to take this Throne pretty easily as long as Sauromatia doesn't take it first. And if they do take it first well we're planning a war anyway, so whatever! We scrounge up some of our last remaining Palankasha demons to start the slow march to Gemer, where they will finally re-take our loving province  Since we're so gold-poor, and trying to save cash for infrastructure, I'm using our Southernmost fort to recruit 2 Markata scouts a turn. We will try to get a better idea of Marverni's size.  Gosh they're looking much bigger than me already... And here's the neighborhood.  We've officially entered into a 12 turn Non-Aggression Pact with team Mesopotamian Menace (Hinnom, Caelum, and Ur to our East and South). This gives us some breathing room to spend the next several turns building armies, and then we're going to start a dang war.
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Jan 29, 2021 05:05
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Arcvasti posted:Loving the 12-turn NAP with the all-blood team that had an ultra-weak expansion. What, you're not looking at the splendor and might of Team Blood and quaking in your boots?
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Jan 29, 2021 05:57
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Barono posted:That's probably because of weird positioning there was another nation (Agartha) literally between all three of us (team skyrim) us whom we could all attack. Marching Ulmish armies over to Blood wasn't really possible and would have left us horribly exposed. The semi-random team placement can definitely be a big deal in Disciple games, it seems. Team Blood doesn't really have a neighbor that multiple team members could gang-up on with ease. No matter who we choose, multiple team members need to march their troops through their own teams lands to get to the fighting, and that's a heck of a 'supply line' so to speak considering that you can't use your teammates Labs to restock gems or transfer magic items. If your team is placed that all 3 of you can attack a single target without long marches then that's a big advantage.
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Jan 29, 2021 17:24
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Turn 18 Turn 18 is pretty quiet, let's see what happened. An Arch Bishop of the Sacred Shroud has claimed a Throne. This is notable because Arch Bishops of the Sacred Shroud are Ermorian units, and Ermor is a member of...Team Ermor, whom we're plotting to attack. Maybe it would be worth our time to check out just how many Thrones Team Ermor possesses.  Looks like Team Ermor and Team Greece each have 2 Thrones. Let's look more closlier at Ermor's Thrones:  whatever  poo poo, this one is good. The Throne of Bureaucracy is a solid Throne, and I wish we had it. The +1 Dominion conflict bonus is actually really helpful, especially against us specifically. As Lanka, the sweet-rear end demons we'll be summoning all have Chaos Power, which gives stat bonuses for being in a province with lots of Turmoil scales. This Throne will help Team Ermor to keep our Dominion at bay, and lessen the effectiveness of our troops. Boo! There were a couple interesting events this turn:  Solid haul of Death gems! We'll be turning them into helpful soldiers soon.  What's this now??  It's the barbarian attack that was hinted at many turns ago! poo poo, I'm glad I pumped up the PD in this province.   Well poo poo, I will absolutely take 33 free barbarians, sure! These guys could even be useful in a fight, if deployed properly.  Our free barbarians will do a little patrolling, while we continue to build blood hunting infrastructure. We're hunting our Capitol with gusto now, and we're getting another blood hunting party set up in Holoma. Eventually we'll be hunting in every fort, because we have no other options, really.
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Feb 1, 2021 02:40
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