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Turn 17 A decent amount going on this turn - we have the arena (too bad the messages spoil the outcome a bit, but oh well), our throne ping, and hey look - the first throne of ascension has been claimed! This is Machaka's prophet, making them the first to take a throne. While we don't know what was guarding it, it presumably didn't do well against fire shielded spider knights. The throne of the moon is pretty nice. Most thrones of ascension give a minor buff or maybe a single gem when you first take the province, but then if you "claim" it with either your pretender god or a priest of at least holy 3 then you unlock additional benefits. This throne provides 1W and 1S gem, grants higher precision to any blessed troops, spreads dominion like a temple, and also adds +1 growth scale to any lands under your dominion. That's a lot of stuff! Sometimes thrones get ignored because of the difficulty of taking the harder defender sets, but the benefits are often worth figuring out a way to take them out. Plus, you need to do so to actually win the game so... Moving on, let's see how we did in the arena! The arena is fought as a series of 1-on-1 bouts. The first two are randomly chosen, and then I *think* the next set is randomly chosen from everyone still alive. It's also possible the winner simply continues fighting until they lose since that's how this iteration works out. Either way, we're up first with our Lochos. He winds up squared off with an Eldest Cyclops that Phlegra's AI sent to fight. He doesn't have any special gear and has poor attack, but he does have a large maul and sometimes that's all you need. The contenders close ranks, and immediately land devastating hits on each other. Unfortunately for us, the hit with the maul also gives our Lochos profuse bleeding (the deeper red 2), which immediately ticks over and kills him before any more blows are exchanged. Next up, Machaka has sent in one of the commander versions of their black hunters. It's also ungeared, but has three attacks and a web between the spider and the rider. The cyclops misses this time and is immediately poisoned - like the bleeding from our fight, he immediately drops as a result. Will the spider rider manage to make it past a single victory? Asphodel has sent what I think is one of their national heroes - heroes are special units that have a low chance to arrive every turn. This one is quite nasty - tons of life, 4 attacks, a bunch of skills and riders. It has a low attack score though and is carrying... a fire bolt wand??? Excuse me, judges?!? This is supposed to be the *people's* arena - spells attached to magic items aren't technically cast by the unit though, so this guy can chuck firebolts. While the first firebolt misses, the next impacts directly and torches the rider in a single hit. Hunter spiders are "stupid" mounts though - while normal mounts will immediately flee the battle if their rider dies, stupid mounts will stick around and continue fighting. They, uh, might hit their friends instead, but they'll fight! This one doesn't for long though - it takes another hit or two and then heads for the hills. Unfortunately for it, the arena is do-or-die - routing units are auto killed if they exit the field. We're into the semi-finals now - just R'lyeh and Man to go. R'lyeh is up first against the Mandragora, sending one of their mind-blasting illithid lords with a little bit of protection gear. Mind blasting is quite literal, by the way - Illithids can temporarily paralyze their opponents, which this one does. Unfortunately, it only does a small amount of actual damage (and it can be resisted), meaning this is just delaying the inevitable. Once the Ettin manages to stay unparalyzed long enough to close to melee, the fight's over in a round or two. We also see one of Asphodel's fun mechanics here - most of their units have a "carrion seed" ability, meaning units killed by them will pop back up as a vine-ridden manikin. This being the arena it immediately disappears, but still cool to see. Final round. Man has sent... a generic commander. I appreciate the adherence to the spirit of combat, but yea - this ends exactly as you'd expect. And with that, Asphodel's Mandragora is crowned the inaugural champion of the arena. The rewards are pretty nice - a decent number of fire gems, a few hundred gold, and a pretty decent magic item (that is now permanently glued to the Mandragora's head). It also mandates that it must defend it's title whenever the next arena rolls around, assuming it hasn't met it's end in the meantime. We have one more fight - I'd forgotten, but we're pinging the other throne on our little peninsula. This one is a bit less thematic - just larger than usual indie squads, and a few mages. Something that's a little weird is some of the defenders have afflictions - I haven't seen that before. I'm not sure what happened here, maybe one of the water nations tried to attack the throne and failed? Either way, this should be very manageable for us - there's nothing overly threatening so we just need a decent number of troops. For movement this turn, the biggest action we're taking is an assault on the barbarian/sprite throne. We can also see a few new names on the map - Sceleria, Man, and Na'Ba have all popped up in the distance. And, actually - right next to Man is Asphodel, in the darker green. Briefly, these nations are: - Man: A human nation based on Arthurian legend. Emphasis on heavy cav sacreds in the Knights of Avalon, lots of sorceresses and glamor/nature magic. - Asphodel: The wrath of nature. One of the "pop-kill" nations, where their dominion will outright kill the population of provinces and turns them into various vine creates. Nature and Death focus. - Na'Ba: A semi-human, semi-Jinn nation based on Arabian Nights and preislamic Arabia. Lots of glamoured units and big summonable Jinn troops, along with fire and air magic. - Sceleria: Basically a splinter faction from Ermor, which was a roman-esque EA nation that experienced a cataclysm between ages. While Ermor is now full-skeleton, all the time, Sceleria is only partially skeletonized. While they don't outright kill population, they rely heavily on reanimating massive volumes of skeletons and drowning you in numbers. Death and Astral magic for the most part. As it becomes relevant we'll dig more into the specifics of what each nation brings to the field. This is what we're sending in to try and take the fort guarded by the barbarians & sprites - no real special strategy here, basically just a big line of our heavies and guards, lights throwing javelins a rank back, and a bunch of lightning bolts from our captains. The hope is that the range fire will rout the barbarians quickly - if we have to grind it out then the high damage output of the barbarians could really sting. We're setting up at the back of the field to try and get as much ranged fire and bolts in as we can before the ranks close, and to hopefully prevent the sprites from immediately starting to fatigue us out. Finally, here's how the overall empire is looking. You can see that we have a total of 5 forts going up at once right now - they're all coastal, so once they're all done we're going to have a big surge in income. We also finished Construction 3 this turn so we're starting to make some owl quills - these will help accelerate our research as we start pumping out more and more mages. DarthRoblox fucked around with this message at 01:40 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 01:34
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DarthRoblox posted:Final round. Man has sent... a generic commander. I appreciate the adherence to the spirit of combat, but yea - this ends exactly as you'd expect. I feel like if you do that, you ought to at least give them a funny gimmick name of some sort.  I usually name mine stuff like Ritual Arena Sacrifice.DarthRoblox posted:Something that's a little weird is some of the defenders have afflictions - I haven't seen that before. I'm not sure what happened here, maybe one of the water nations tried to attack the throne and failed? Either way, this should be very manageable for us - there's nothing overly threatening so we just need a decent number of troops. As I understand it, indie provinces can still get events(though indie attacks, obviously being of the same faction, would just join up), but some events cause afflictions for commanders. It might be something like that.
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May 3, 2024 01:42
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DarthRoblox posted:Turn 17 
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May 3, 2024 01:59
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It's just a real fuckin' good spell! I'm pretty sure my captains are still mostly scripted to spam lightning bolt even 35 turns later.
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May 3, 2024 02:06
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Man player here: if only I could remember what exactly i was doing that long ago! I think the generic commander was because I had hired him to build a fort and then wanted to get rid of him to free up upkeep. Sadly I'm pretty sure I forget to send someone to the arena every time it comes up after this. IthilionTheBrave fucked around with this message at 02:59 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 02:12
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Things are looking good but I feel alarm bells at your territory *appearing* cut off from your cap and surrounded (I know you can sail but it's hard for me to visualize that) by what feels like some of the stronger nations in the game. At some point I think you are going to squeezed between Machacka and Pyrene. If Pyrene and Man could be convinced to go to war I think it might protect your West. Taking another players cap this early does put a target on your head though, since everyone knows how good cap provinces are. I think you have done a really good job taking an early victory I just hope you don't get pushed into a multi-sided war by jumping ahead in economy/territory. This is really making me want to pick up Dom6 but I know I won't have time to actually sit down and play it. Phrosphor fucked around with this message at 02:33 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 02:30
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Phrosphor posted:Things are looking good but I feel alarm bells at your territory *appearing* cut off from your cap and surrounded (I know you can sail but it's hard for me to visualize that) by what feels like some of the stronger nations in the game. At some point I think you are going to squeezed between Machacka and Pyrene. If Pyrene and Man could be convinced to go to war I think it might protect your West. Taking another players cap this early does put a target on your head though, since everyone knows how good cap provinces are. Yea - despite the success against Phlegra, and honestly partially because of it, my position is still pretty tenuous. We haven't seen it in game yet, but Pyréne has a pretty nasty bless with shock resistance and a bunch of other stuff, making our lightning bolts a lot less effective. Machaka I've covered, but the black hunters remain pretty nasty and I don't know how well we'd stack up with them. From what we can see, Pyréne is likely quite a bit larger than us and Machaka is probably around the same size or a bit bigger. Being "cut-off" does look a bit weird, but Phaeacia can basically ignore ocean provinces so I can reinforce and move troops pretty easily. It does take two turns to move troops from my capital to the mainland coast since sailing can only go through 2 ocean provinces, which is a bit annoying, but otherwise it's not a big issue. Still though, that extra turn to get troops to the mainland and then however many more to defend more inland provinces is a potentially big deal if an inland war starts up. Machaka has a lot of coastline so I'd be able to raid them effectively, but war with Pyrene would be really bad right now. This is a game with mostly newer players, so I'm trying to stay friendly with both players. I think newbies are generally a little more unsure or tentative about taking aggressive action, so simply being communicative can be a good way to stave off wars. tbh I'd have preferred not to invade another player as early as I did in this game, but the map kinda forced my hand and made for an interesting enough situation I decided it would be worth doing an LP on.
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May 3, 2024 02:54
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So does the appearance of Eremor/other pop-kill nations still make everyone else team up to smother them before they all drown in undead?
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May 3, 2024 03:03
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Breadmaster posted:So does the appearance of Eremor/other pop-kill nations still make everyone else team up to smother them before they all drown in undead? Theoretically yes, because it's to everyone's benefit for them to die. Practically, not always, because killing them is usually weakening work which, if their popkilliness has done its thing, rewards poorly due to their dominion having stripped their territory bare. So even if every single neighbour jumps them, the people who aren't their neighbours may then backstab them, which means that it's either a very early strangling in the crib, or everyone sort of dances around the issue without really wanting to commit since being the one who makes that decision is often a losing proposition towards other players. They also have varying levels of popkillitude. MA Ermor and LA Lemuria are the killiest, they can strip 30% pop from a province per turn easy, while MA Aspho, LA R'lyeh and EA Therodos do it somewhat slower, but still eventually strangle things. EA Therodos and MA Ermor also have a mechanic where forted provinces retain up to a few thousand population, meaning they're not COMPLETELY miserable.
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May 3, 2024 03:27
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Asphodel also has a reputation, persisting from dominions five, of being a weak and ineffectual popkill, so people don't swarm them nearly as often. While there's still a lot to be discovered about dominions six, what I have seen so far indicates that Asphodel is very dangerous now and should be killed with fire before they get out of hand(or banned in nation selection).
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May 3, 2024 06:26
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This game is always so amazing. 
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May 3, 2024 07:41
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Arcvasti posted:Asphodel also has a reputation, persisting from dominions five, of being a weak and ineffectual popkill, so people don't swarm them nearly as often. Probably the biggest change to them, more than anything else, is that they can now start at Growth 4(the new cap for scales is 5, though most nations are capped at 2, some pretenders and nations can shove this up to 3, Asphodel can have Growth 4, the other popkills can usually have Death 4), which slowly and by a poorly understood mechanic changes farms and plains to forests, which makes them less reliant on starting in, and fully taking, a big forest cluster(only forests provide their good freespawn, and allows them to summon relatively cheap forts that are decent rather than having to build very expensive forts that suck poo poo), plus it means that if they hit their obvious eventual goal of Enchanted Forests, that's suddenly going to have a lot more real estate to play in. The change to Well of Misery also benefits them a lot, it provides a global +2 to Growth(and +5 in the province it's cast in), so anyone who picked Growth 2 or 3 for some nice income and supply scales, is going to find their nation suddenly turning into forests if Aspho pops Well of Misery.
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May 3, 2024 10:31
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Phrosphor posted:Taking another players cap this early does put a target on your head though, since everyone knows how good cap provinces are. My experience is the opposite. So long as you are not seen having Pyrrhic victories when you took out the other player, someone who eats a player early will seem scary to other players and most people will be easy to convince into a NAP. When I want to do a research-heavy game where my nation really pops off in the lategame, the safest way to get there is to eat a weak neighbor before all indies are even cleared.
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May 3, 2024 10:34
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There is a change point counter which accumulates if the province has dominion/scales that can cause it to change its type. The tl;dr of it is that it involves some random rolls, but they tend to average out at a province changing roughly 20 turns after it entered the required scales. Which is why, for example, MA C'Tis won't have swamps for a longass time and then suddenly just turn half its empire into swamps.
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May 3, 2024 12:33
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A minor correction, Stompy the spider enjoyer is my PG, not my prophet. I think my prophet was leading troops against left over indies at this point since its the easiest way to bless all the spiders in each battle, I was starting to field the giant spiders in numbers too big for lesser priests to bless properly. From my side, I'd watched darth dismantle an admittedly weak phlegra and felt I had nothing to gain by getting into a protracted war against a player I knew to be resourceful and good at not dying, so I decided not to take any of phlegra as a sign of goodwill.
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May 3, 2024 15:47
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PurpleXVI posted:Theoretically yes, because it's to everyone's benefit for them to die. Practically, not always, because killing them is usually weakening work which, if their popkilliness has done its thing, rewards poorly due to their dominion having stripped their territory bare. So even if every single neighbour jumps them, the people who aren't their neighbours may then backstab them, which means that it's either a very early strangling in the crib, or everyone sort of dances around the issue without really wanting to commit since being the one who makes that decision is often a losing proposition towards other players. Also, fighting popkill nations is a pain in the rear end because their core territories are low supply zones due to all the dead pop. You have to bust out supply generators to support your army if you want to actually invade into there. Which, if you don't have Nature, are pretty hard to get ahold of. On the other side, popkill nations are a pain to play *as* because you need to keep collecting your hordes of freespawn, and you don't necessarily freespawn a lot of commanders.
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May 3, 2024 19:09
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namehereguy posted:Also, fighting popkill nations is a pain in the rear end because their core territories are low supply zones due to all the dead pop. You have to bust out supply generators to support your army if you want to actually invade into there. Which, if you don't have Nature, are pretty hard to get ahold of. Ermor definitely produces a ton more commanders in 6, when I won as them in Basic_Bishops(primarily because diplomatic wheeling and dealing and a very unusual PG with N, empowered in a dash of W, allowing me to add Foul Vapors to armies), I had so many idiot loving Tomb Kings I had to tell to "Wait" every turn. It was worse than LA R'lyeh. MA Aspho doesn't get a completely absurd number of commanders, but I've still never really had an issue getting enough commanders for my troops.
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May 3, 2024 19:44
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Sadly, R'lyeh clearly didn't take the right pretender or get the right luck yet to truly cheese the People's Arena. See, as mentioned the People's Arena bans spellcasting, and it does so by giving everyone a Slave Collar (inflicts Feebleminded, which locks out magic paths... and also gives -4 MR, more on that momentarily). Meet the Vastness, a very nasty monster R'lyeh can randomly get by delving in their Void Gate (and it's not unique, you can get more than one).  You might notice that there are no item slots listed there, not even miscellaneous slots. Which means the game can't give it a slave collar. Which means it will cheerfully wander into the People's Arena with its full magic paths, and shooting 4 mind blasts a turn against opponents who've had their MR nuked. Oh, and Damage Reversal, which is exactly what it sounds like and also rolls against MR. There's also a Pretender God version, the Uttervast, which is only available to the R'lyeh line of nations and is also missing all item slots.
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May 3, 2024 23:03
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The vastness is supposed to be some cosmic unknowable but I can only ever see a chemistry model. Like that's clearly a H2O molecule flying off on the right.
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May 3, 2024 23:08
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Turn 18 Fairly light on events this turn, but the one battle is a big one since it's our assault on the throne. On our side, I believe this is our largest army to date - 135 troops and 5 storm captains. We're very spread out, to hopefully wrap around the side of the barbarian horde a bit and keep them from enveloping us in return. The defenders are still laid out the same - big block of barbs up front, sprites and mages backing. The horde closes quickly, and a small group gets a bit out in front. It eats a lot of javelin fire and some lightning rains down, but we're going to need more than that to rout this many. It also causes our army to blob up a bit in trying to hit the few front runners - having everyone set to target closest probably wasn't the best play here. As the clash continues, we start to see some... large bugs? This is from the enchanters in the back - they're decided to do a few casts of swarm - an actually quite good nature spell that summons up a few dozen assorted giant bugs. They're not particularly dangerous, but can be fairly hard to hit and can be very effective in taking down single targets due to some having poison attacks. We can see a lot more bugs in the backfield - only a few out of what was summoned can fly and the rest have to slowly march over to us. The fight will probably be over by the time they actually make it to the front lines. The lines continue beating on each other for a bit but the barbs start to ball up and then spill around to the south. This isn't ideal - you really don't want enemies turning the corner on you, since it means they have a lot better attack density vs your more exposed troops on the edges. The guard are holding up pretty well, but the heavies are starting to suffer. Taking a closer look, and we can see part of the reason why - all of the units with blue bars under them have been hit with an elf shot, temporarily taking them out of commission. Our troops are more magic resistant than normal humans and only get effected about half the time, but it's still reducing our effectiveness. We can see some barbarians starting to rout, but the bulk of the force is still holding strong. Eventually though, the barbs decide to split and run. One of the weaknesses of barbarians is that their morale is only so-so and they're unarmored, so they tend to break and run relatively quickly even if a lot of them are still alive. It's not something you want to count on though - it comes down to random chance, so sometimes they'll stick it out to the bitter end. The summary shows the butcher's bill - ouch. The loss of 14 Orichalcum Guard especially hurts - that's two full turns of recruitment from our cap at this point, so we really don't want to be attritioning this many regularly. To take a throne I'm ok with these losses, but it's definitely more than we want to be losing on a regular basis. Speaking of the throne, here's our prize. The throne of knowledge is actually quite nice, especially this early on. The dominion spread is nice, but the real prize is the two recruits it allows. The sage is nice, but not super special - they're a cost efficient S1 researcher with 15RP for 120 gold - but the real prize is the lore master: Lore masters are very expensive at 400 gold and are slow to recruit (meaning even with a fort we can only get 1 every other turn), but they're special because: They get 3 rolls at *any* path in the game (except blood). This has enormous strategic potential and with some luck they can break you into any path in the game. Of course, they also might just roll a bunch of paths you already have - it's all up to chance. With the way the math works out, about 3-in-4 will have a single point in three different paths, and 1-in-4 will have two points in one path and then one point in another. Getting three points all in the same path is quite unlikely at ~1.5% chance or so. We want to be rolling the dice a lot on these guys, so we'll be claiming this throne and getting a fort and lab up ASAP. Other than that, there's not a lot going on this turn. We're going to move our troops back to the coast and regroup for a bit, and then try to go hit the other throne in 2 turns or so. DarthRoblox fucked around with this message at 05:25 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 05:08
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Looks like you're in a pretty strong position to me, which leads to the question of 'what's the diplomatic situation like'?
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May 5, 2024 05:27
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Tulip posted:Looks like you're in a pretty strong position to me, which leads to the question of 'what's the diplomatic situation like'? Machaka has been fairly friendly and I'd like to remain on good terms with them, since they're both large and have a solid bless and troops that I don't want to tangle with right now. I think there's some mutually recognized potential for destruction between all of their exposed coastline and my relative difficulty in defending my inland territory at this point, so we're both happy enough turning attention elsewhere. Pyréne has been amicable enough, we've chatted a little bit and they seem fairly nervous about being both relatively big and smack dab in the center of the main landmass. They border something like 6 nations - 7 including Agartha in the caves - so I think they're feeling very exposed at this point and unlikely to start a war unless they have to. I don't want a conflict with them when there's still a lot of coastal territory available and when I have to march across quite a few inland provinces to even get to them. Ys seems occupied with the ocean after our initial conflict, and I'm happy enough to leave that as-is for now. I haven't spoken with R'lyeh, but we only have a single border so I'm guessing they're going to try and conquer the ocean before tackling land. T'ien Ch'i I'm going to attack them next - we haven't spoken, but they're the smallest of my neighbors and I'm also the least intimidated by their bless and composition. The Orichalcum Guard are actually a near-perfect counter to most of what they have, and even my barely-there bless will come in handy. I'll cover my thinking & strategy in more detail in a few turns.
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May 5, 2024 07:07
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Turn 19 No images this time because I forgot to make a backup of the turn, whoops! According to my notes though, there's not a whole lot going on in this turn. We claim the throne of knowledge with Richy Rich, the prophet and get a lab started so we can start recruitment, with a fort to follow. Construction continues, with more mages producing owl quills. These things pay for themselves in terms of RP in 2 turns (if a 11 RP mage takes a turn to make a +6 RP item, then the turn of lost research is paid off in 2 turns) and since we can make 'em cheap we'll be cranking them out for a bit. We're not going to go totally hog wild here since there's even better discounts on the horizon, but it's worth it to make a consistent low volume for now. We also unlocked the astral site searching spell, which allows us to spend a few pearls to search a province for any astral sites. It's not free like manual site searching with a mage is, but it is fool-proof and you don't have to walk troops over there, so it can be a good trade off. We'll fire off a search at the throne since thrones have a higher chance to have other magic sites than most provinces. Finally, we're moving our troops into position to attack the peninsula throne next turn. We're not doing too much unique in our strategy, but we did recruit a handful of low-cost troops to try and position in front of the heavy cavalry and "catch" their lances - good luck fellas! Other than that, that was pretty much it for Turn 19. Since this update is fairly short though, let's take a look at our other recruitable mages and a few of the better summons: First up, Wind Callers. These mages are recruitable from any coastal fort, and in practice function kinda like souped-up storm captains. They're slow to recruit so we only produce one every other turn, but they can sail just as well as storm captains and also come with an extra path in A/W/S. They do tend to come out Old, which annoying - old slowly reduces a unit's stats and gives them a good chance of catching afflictions at the end of each game year, especially disease. Disease slowly kills a unit over time and rolls additional affliction chances, some of which remove or reduce a mage's paths. It's more of a minor annoyance than a deal breaker, especially since we can summon some disease healers later on. The A3s especially are very useful - they can cast some higher level evocations and cast some battlefield effects that the storm captains can't, and they can also cast Seeking Arrow. Seeking Arrow is a remote attack, meaning it's cast from the strategic map and takes effect before movement. It sends an arrow into the chest of an enemy commander in the target province, which stands a good chance at killing human-scale mages. We'll eventually want quite a few of these guys for both general utility as well as being a great defense against raiders. Next up, we have one of our big capital-only mages. The Prince Consort is almost like a super wind caller - higher A/W paths to start, and then an additional random from A/W/E/G. We especially want to get one of the A4s here. Air has the distinction of being one of the hardest magic paths to boost, and A4 is the minimum requirement to forge boosting items. Later in the game we'll likely want very strong air magic, so we'll want to recruit princes until at least one A4. It's a 25% chance per recruit, so hopefully shouldn't take too long. Our final mage is also a slow to recruit capital mage, the colossi queen. She has more diverse paths than the prince, and will get a bonus path level in one of them. These are your big communion leaders in battles - they can boost up to cast the really big spells in Air, Water, or Glamor (there's better options for astral). They don't really do anything your weavers can't, they're just a bit better at it. We'll want a few, but they're lower priority until we get our A4 prince. While that's the end of recruitable mages, Phaeacia also gets quite a few national spells and summons. I'm not going to cover all of them right now, but there's 3 in particular I think are worth mentioning: First up, the Hesperide. These ladies are really great - we have no other national access to nature or fire, and they're also our best astral mages. They're kinda pricey at 35 fire gems, but well worth it. They're one of the major reasons we took Fire on our PG - without that, it would be very tough to summon any of these. Affording them will be tricky unless we get lucky with a lot of fire-path lore masters, but once we scrape up the gems for one they can help search for more sites and then summon more of themselves. Since they're also good astral mages, they can join our communions and unlock lots of good army buffs, especially in nature. We'll need to be careful with them due to how expensive and relatively fragile they are, but they absolutely win us fights and open up a lot of strategic options. They also heal disease and reduce unrest passively, which are nice bonuses. The Hesperides are also able to turn around and summon up this large boy, the Drakon Hesperios. He's a unique summon and is a fairly strong unit on his own, with good stats, three attacks, and natural regen & fear. However, the line in his lore about being the guardian of golden apples isn't just for show - once we summon him the golden apple tree is left unguarded, and our nation will organize a yearly trip to retrieve one. The retrieved golden apple gives a morale bonus and a commander can eat it to become 10 years younger, so it's not a massive effect, but it is pretty fun and flavorful. Finally, for the lowly cost of one earth gem any E2 mage can summon up 10 Spartae in combat. Spartae are pretty great - high protection, decent stats, magic weapons, pierce and cold resistant, tireless... they make a really solid emergency front line. Having mages summon up 40 or 50 of these can present quite a surprise to an unprepared enemy. I believe their representation here is at least partially drawn from Jason and the Argonauts, and specifically this scene. There's a lot we can do with these guys and they can definitely win fights for us pretty much by themselves. DarthRoblox fucked around with this message at 17:24 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 17:17
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Yeah from Ys perspective the diplomatic situation around this point was me ignoring the land almost entirely and focusing on the beginning of the knife fight with Rl'yeh. I think my inexperience was a big help for phaecia and machaka at this point because I wasn't immediately under existential threat from Rl'yeh and wasnt familiar with how amphibious Ys is, I passed up on a few opportunities to fight for coastal provinces because I was 100% focused on securing UW stuff. No idea if I could have held anything but I could've probably been skirmishing and maybe gotten one or two more land-ys forts to recruit kernou druids up.
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May 5, 2024 17:34
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Ys's sacreds are nasty and you could probably have held ground if you made a committed effort at it.
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May 5, 2024 18:37
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They're pretty good, but I think Phaeacia in particular stacks up well against them. Here's what's being referenced: The Morcarc'h knights (typing this whole LP out I'm really noticing how much the Dominions creators love their excessive apostrophes) have a bunch of stuff going for them: - A very accurate and strong magical lance attack on the sea-elf knight, hitting up to 34(?) damage on the first attack due to the charge bonus - A decently strong and accurate hoof attack from the horse - A low damage but AOE and armor-piercing fire breath from the horse. So all up, these guys are going to be pretty good offensively against most things - the first strike on the lance will do some damage to nearly anything and three attacks after that is good sustained output. The AOE fire helps clean up any chaff or blocking troops. Then, defensively we've got: - OK protection on the sea elf, but very high defense with a shield, helping them against arrows. They're also glamored, which basically works like a 2xmirror image - attacks have a 66% chance of hitting one of the mirrors, which is then cancelled out. - Good protection on the horse, who is also glamored. I'm not actually sure if the glamor is tracked separately for mount and rider, I don't think so? And then of course, they're also sacred so can be blessed with a whole array of powerful things. In this game, Ys went with a Quickness (double movement and attacks) and True Sight (negates glamor and some related spell buffs). So, OK - why do I think they're only OK? First - cost. 135 gold for a single troop is a poo poo ton, and while these guys are pretty good at killing stuff they're actually fairly fragile if you can get around their buffs. Compare the knight to our sacred, the Orichalcum Guard: The guard: - Does enough damage to get through protection and will hit the horse very reliably. Once the knight is dismounted, hit chance is roughly 30% since they lose a +3 to defense from being mounted. - Has enough armor and defense to mostly shrug off everything except the lance on a shield hit, and take (on average) like 1-3 damage on a clean miss. My bless also gives the fire resistance to make the fire breath useless. - Costs less than 1/3 of a Morvac'h. That last one is big - underwater provinces tend to be fairly income-poor a lot of the time, so I can tend to put together a lot more troops than Ys in general. Now, the glamor is still an issue and gives the knights much better staying power, but there's various buffs in the glamor path that grant the same True Sight buff that Ys has on their bless, and we get plenty of glamor mages from our weavers. That said, all of this definitely takes some prep and actually having forces in place. One of the most annoying things about glamored troops is they're invisible on the strategic map (barring certain countermeasures that we don't have right now), so they can raid extremely effectively. Ys could certainly be a nuisance, but I don't think they'd have a lot of ability to hold land if I was determined to kick them off.
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May 5, 2024 19:58
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Some quick notes: -Max damage before DRN rolls for the lance is 23 on the charge. 17 base, and max of +6 from the charge itself - weapons with mounted charge bonuses cap at half the rider's strength unless they've got the heavy keyword, which Golden Lances do not. As a piercing weapon it also naturally applies a -15% reduction in Prot values, so your armor's actually only giving ~13-14 prot vs. their attacks. -Aside from doubled attacks and movement, Quickness also gives +2 Atk/Def, so the horses are actually sitting at Def 15 when blessed - you'll still hit reasonably often but it's not extremely likely on any individual attack. Conversely, the Atk of the knights is actually higher than your baseline Def due to that, so they'll be hitting more often than not. Additionally - and actually kind of important - Orchalcum Guard being Size 4 (Size 4 is NOT good in Dom 6 unless you're a Formation Fighter) means that line vs. line fights are actually 2 Morvarc'h Knights vs. 2 Orichalcum Guards... which means 6 (12 due to Quickness) incoming attacks a round as opposed to 2 outgoing, meaning a whole hell of a lot of incoming DRN damage randomness alongside the harassment penalties. You'll hopefully have a longer line that wraps around, but that's really not good for the initial impact. -I haven't specifically checked glamoured, but the game absolutely tracks buffs on mounts separately from the riders for a bunch of spells, so I suspect they are in fact getting a separate glamour from the riders. Anyways the main tool of UW nations - particularly Ys - in this context is more bullying some coastal provinces out of a player or two under threat of just raiding them constantly if they refuse, rather than trying to beat their main land army in a straight up fight. So in that context, "I can put together a notably larger, similarly costed force that can likely beat theirs" isn't particularly relevant, as it's not something they're likely seeking anyways. Like, if they can straight out beat someone's main army then they might as well just cap them and take everything rather than simply settling for a few coastal provinces.
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May 5, 2024 20:56
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Well sure, but that wasn't the scenario being presented. I've already given Ys two coastal provinces in this game precisely for that reason - I don't want to be constantly harassed by glamored raiders and I'd much prefer the two UW nations keep each other occupied instead of trying to claw their way up onto dry land. namehereguy's argument was that Ys could hold land if they wanted to, and I don't think that's the case here (at least without extorting it under threat of constant raids). I threw together a quick test because I was curious, and the guard convincingly defeat their equivalent gold cost in Morvac'hs even without magic assistance: edit: for what it's worth though, 50-against-15 returns a big victory to the knights so it's definitely not set in stone. If we're bringing that much force to the fight though I'm definitely bringing some mages, and good ol' lightning bolt will easily wreck a knight's day. DarthRoblox fucked around with this message at 21:50 on May 5, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 21:46
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To be fair, lightning bolt can ruin anyone's day.
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May 5, 2024 21:56
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Gold equivalent comparisons between cap only sacreds can be misleading. Sometimes it's about sheer throughput. And yeah, defense based cavalry benefits from having an actual line. Obviously, the right magic still ruins them, which is a big weakspot of that sacred due to its price.
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May 5, 2024 21:57
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Hey folks, are cavern system"s new to dominion 6? I saw a few LP of 5 and don't remember caves. Apart from that question, great LP so far, even noobs like me can understand what's going on, and on such early kill got the hostilities rolling. Can't wait to see how wonky things will get.
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May 5, 2024 22:56
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Mindopali posted:Hey folks, are cavern system"s new to dominion 6? I saw a few LP of 5 and don't remember caves. Yeah, different layers are new to Dominions 6. The cave layer is the most obvious one, but there's actually one more by default (that you'll only be able to access via one specific level 9 spell). I want to say people found that you can add more too, but haven't actually seen any mods or maps that have done so yet. VVV edit: mcclay posted:The Forgotten Realms mod has a surface map and 3 layers of Underdark Yeah, that'd be why then. I have seen that in the Workshop, but I checked it out in 5 and was really not a fan of how they loved tossing popkill all over the place, and so hadn't checked it out in 6 yet since I wasn't sure I wanted to. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 00:08 on May 6, 2024 |
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May 5, 2024 23:14
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Lord Koth posted:Yeah, different layers are new to Dominions 6. The cave layer is the most obvious one, but there's actually one more by default (that you'll only be able to access via one specific level 9 spell). I want to say people found that you can add more too, but haven't actually seen any mods or maps that have done so yet. The Forgotten Realms mod has a surface map and 3 layers of Underdark
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May 5, 2024 23:22
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Lord Koth posted:but there's actually one more by default (that you'll only be able to access via one specific level 9 spell). I would love to know how often this mysterious extra layer ever matters. How many games aren't basically decided before players reach level 9 in whatever type of research and build up enough surplus forces to go through a portal to go start fighting over a whole new type of province? (but I also kinda love how many weird little corners that almost never matter there are in Dominions)
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May 6, 2024 02:10
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Akratic Method posted:I would love to know how often this mysterious extra layer ever matters. How many games aren't basically decided before players reach level 9 in whatever type of research and build up enough surplus forces to go through a portal to go start fighting over a whole new type of province? So, in dominions 6 there's actually a change to how the highest level of research works. In levels 1 through 8, research costs roughly double per level - so 50RP to level 1, 100 to level 2, 200 to level 3, etc., until you reach 4400 for level 8 (the doubling evens off a bit at higher levels). The big difference then is in level 9 - in previous games, level 9 was more or less the same as all the prior levels and required 8,100RP to unlock. Expensive, but pretty doable. In Dominions 6, each level 9 spell is researched individually. Technically it's a configurable game setting, but the default is individual spell research. So yea - that kinda fun but not that useful spell to create a portal to the Nexus? You'd have to choose to do that instead of researching say... Wish, which literally lets you more or less wish for anything in the game, or Master Enslave, which simply attempts to permanently convert all units in an enemy army to be your units instead. So, since you have to heavily prioritize your research at that point since even an absurdly powerful nation would struggle to reach >8k RP per turn outside of long-term gimmick games, it's very unlikely the quirkier spells will ever be cast. I'm personally not a fan of this, and would maybe prefer to see a handful of the most powerful spells put into their own special class, and move everything else into a general level 9 bucket. If you could either get Wish, or get 5-6 spells of lesser but still potent use, then it might be more of a real decision.
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May 6, 2024 02:57
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The Wind Callers aren't bad mages by any means, but I feel like they're often outclassed by Weavers/Captains. Weavers are really good communion mages, and Captains have the same sailing ability and their paths aren't *that* much worse. Them being 2 turns to recruit is what really hurts though: That could have been two other mages!DarthRoblox posted:The A3s especially are very useful - they can cast some higher level evocations and cast some battlefield effects that the storm captains can't, and they can also cast Seeking Arrow. Seeking Arrow is a remote attack, meaning it's cast from the strategic map and takes effect before movement. It sends an arrow into the chest of an enemy commander in the target province, which stands a good chance at killing human-scale mages. We'll eventually want quite a few of these guys for both general utility as well as being a great defense against raiders. Seeking arrow works on larger then human-scale mages too! You just need to have a *lot* of A3 casters, which Phaeacia is great at.
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May 6, 2024 04:51
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Akratic Method posted:I would love to know how often this mysterious extra layer ever matters. How many games aren't basically decided before players reach level 9 in whatever type of research and build up enough surplus forces to go through a portal to go start fighting over a whole new type of province? The third layer only consists of a single province, the Nexus. Basically the point of the spell is making a gate to that one province, but any gate made to it is both permanent and accessible to everyone. So the spell's usage is to drastically shorten move distances between two points (both in the direct movement sense, and in that map rituals can now track through the new pathway instead of whatever distance they'd normally have to go), but it also means that if someone else captures one of your gated provinces - or casts it themselves - they now have that shortened route to wherever your other gates are as well. And vice versa. In any normal game of Dominions you're generally correct in it just being an impractical tool, given just how late game and requiring of setup it is, but there have been hellgames run on gargantuan maps in the past that could have genuinely gotten great use out of the spell... as will similar ones in the future. The Nexus also has a guaranteed site that allows recruitment of Shadow Seers (ethereal S3 mages) and Grey Knights/Lords (ethereal heavy cavalry), but by the point of the game where you'd be able to reach it those are just an expensive flex.
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May 6, 2024 06:15
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to be fair to the swedes, morvarc'h is just how the breton word morvarc'h is written
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May 6, 2024 10:04
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DarthRoblox posted:So, in dominions 6 there's actually a change to how the highest level of research works. In levels 1 through 8, research costs roughly double per level - so 50RP to level 1, 100 to level 2, 200 to level 3, etc., until you reach 4400 for level 8 (the doubling evens off a bit at higher levels). A good number of level 9 spells, for instance stuff like Summon Tarrasque, the nexus doors spell, and a few other gimmicky ones could easily be moved down to level 8. Even stuff like Lost Land, because with an 100 gem casting cost, that's never going to get cast more than once, or at most twice, outside of some truly eternal hellgame.
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May 6, 2024 11:16
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I would not put the "sink a throne, fort and all" spell at anything less than a 9. It's already sad that any barrier can be brute forced with remote scrying items to make way for the actual cast of a spell, so you can't truly protect a province from it.
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May 6, 2024 11:24
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