/domg/ - Dominions General

here lies Ulm, he had a good try

>fortune teller
Bet he didn't see his death coming.

>sending fortune tellers to war
Ulm really got desperate in the last days.
Can you hire Ulm units if you take over their capitals?

nope

sadly his vampire queen wasn't there or was killed separating in action. I feel if she was there along with his hero the arrows might have taken a greater tool

has anyone played cataclysm mod in MP?
Is awake rainbow the way to go?

>has anyone played cataclysm mod in MP?
Yup.

>Is awake rainbow the way to go?
In the regular Cataclysm mod, blood is king.

There's an edited version that nerfs blood IIRC.

do you have any anecdote?
awake b4 (or something) and start blood summoning ASAP?

It's more about whoever finds the good sites with blood mages.

That said an N9 bless imo is still very strong and versatile, simple due to shrouds. Awake rainbow is, however, NEVER the way to go (other than Lemuria). Dormant for 150 extra points is always worth it, unless the awake is claiming provinces.

I don't remember the details since it was like a year ago, but the Cataclysm game I played in was completely cdominated by two guys throwing demonballs at eachother.

SansMemes Lanka, are you in here?

Take turns

no

...

>awake rainbow is never worth it
even for yomi? I thought yomi loves a turn 1 research boost/dom push, but not having such shitty scales sounds tempting

there is literally no reason ever to not go dormant instead awake if you are running a rainbow

...

If you go Awake, it takes expands.

Or you're Lemuria, since they kind of actually need a death mage to summon anything, and they don't start with one for some goddamn reason.

yomi awake expander is such a double edge sword but it's my own fault: I hate choosing erf snake so I go with the king oni instead, of course >awake expanding with a unit without regen or recup

erf snake is just so boring

Is Burden of Time even worth it any more? Last I heard it allowed MR which is pretty mediocre when you're hoping to kill off mages. I'm just considering a final fuckyou farewell to the world in my Ermor game.

Not really? It still kills population very slowly and is generally annoying for everyone else, which is the purpose of Ermor in most games anyway.

Not running an N9 Bless on Yomi is a bit self defeating, since lacking it cripples Dai Oni.

It's also pretty nice on Shikome too.

SansMeme Lanka, I hope you read this. I probably won't be back on until the next turn so there's no room for coordinating attacks, so I'm just going to tell you what to do and hope you listen.

I can't see where you are right now, but if you're planning on attacking #97 this turn, please don't. If you do, there will be a collision. Any other province is fine, but not that one.

N9 is a nice go to spell I suppose, but using dai oni as SC when they are much better spell casters seems just as silly. If you need a thug just use a oni general IMO. Plus Shiki's prefer W9 which makes them absolute killers

It's not really mutually exclusive. Sometimes one additional caster isn't as valuable as that same chassis re-purposed into acting as a thug. Spellcasters are typically high-offense units or force-multipliers, but SCs can add defensive layering effective enough to drastically cut casualties. One SC dai Oni can cut your casualties by more than a bunch of caster dai oni under a lot of different scenarios.

Also, the things dai oni can thug against and the things oni generals can thug against are entirely different.

Well he was AI tha's what AI's do

Well I did do it before going AI but I was truly desperate.

How does it cripple Dai Oni?

They have regen via soul vortex anyway, and you can always give them a ring of regen if you want more.

IIRC, True Regen reduces affliction chance.

At any rate afflicted Dai Oni are moved from SC duty to army caster duty, where things like "blind" and "crippled" aren't really relevant.

Fun fact: Ulmishmen are the most powerful men in the universe

He-men, masters of the universe.

>he
>not she
steel maidens unstoppable

ded game

its over

No comrade Pantokrator, it has only begun.

LOOK PAKOMAN, I DON'T GIVE A WOODEN CONSTRUCT ABOUT YOUR THRONE

You call them off. Pretender, you call them off. You know, we'll wish for genocide.

Hey Caelum, no clue why my commander attacked your province. He was kinda left behind from my plans to fort that province (which I abandoned when you threw up your fort first) and I meant to send him to my cap to sherpa some huskarls around and I guess I accidentally sent him to your province? Idk it happened on like Saturday, my bad.

don't be so sure of that mr. Prophet *sacrifices 166 slaves*

*strella do dia starts playing as devil thugs start droping from the skies*

Noob here, do mages casting spells in battle use up the gems you've equipped them with?

i.e. If the spell costs 2 gems and i give them 2, will they:

>use it up and I have to give them two gems again,
>take gems from my gem stockpile to refill their stocks to whatever I initially gave them, or
>will the gems just remain in their inventory and they can continue using the same two gems indefinitely?

The first. Gems are used up, and restocking doesn't occur automatically (even if you're in a province with a lab).

There are some items which give 'temporary gems' which are refilled every turn, which is pretty close to your third option. Fire in a Jar, Clam of Pearls, Water Lens, and Blood Stone are the ones I remember.

So does that mean that after each battle if I want my mages to continue casting, say, Bone Grinding for future battles, I should just load them up with Death gems and keep track of whether they have any left or else they won't be able to cast it until I give the more gems?

That... explains quite a bit. Thanks!

>So does that mean that after each battle if I want my mages to continue casting, say, Bone Grinding for future battles, I should just load them up with Death gems and keep track of whether they have any left or else they won't be able to cast it until I give the more gems?
Pretty much, yeah. Remember to turn on 'conserve gem usage' otherwise your mages will try to use all the gems they have in one battle. Conserve gem usage tells the mage not to use gems for any spell you haven't scripted (and to minimize gem usage on scripted spells).

One useful tactic is to have a couple of scouts holding the gems for your army (and sneaking around), and leave your mages with enough gems for two battles. Between turns you restock your mages from the scouts. That way if you lose a battle or one of your mages gets unlucky you don't lose many gems, because your scouts were sneaking and didn't participate in the fight.

The reason why you want enough gems for two fights, not one, is that it's easy for an enemy player to cause your army to fight two different battles in the same turn. If your mages only have enough gems for one battle, they use them up in the first fight and don't have gems for the second fight. It's possible to trigger more than two battles in a turn, but that's not a common occurrence and you shouldn't worry about it.

Also, if you're using blood slaves conserve gem usage doesn't work very well because mages can use blood slaves from other commanders' inventories.

The best way to deal with it is just bringing a ton of blood slaves. You could set every blood mage in your army to conserve gem usage, but since practically every blood spell needs blood slaves that makes them useless once offscript.

Don't die thread

...

Whitey keeping the black man down once again.

Alright, so going back to that example of Bone Grinding, I should just give my battle mages a shitton of gems (well, at least 15+) and set the first five commands as [Cast bone Grinding], then Spells with Conserve Gem Usage on? (Just using Bone Grinding in this case to make it easy for my noob-ish mind to handle.)

This means they'll use 5 gems for the Bone Grindings, then they'll switch over to gemless spells if they're not fatigued, right?

Also, you can't just give your mages the gems from a menu? You have to have an allied unit physically in the same province to hand them the gems if you want to restock them on the go? I guess it makes sense since your capital is probably where you keep your gems.

Furthermore, is there a limit on the number of gems you can give to any single unit?

You saved yourself by moving off my cap last turn.

It would've been very painful for you had you stayed.

So it seems. I don't know where the hell all those armies appeared from.

You can restock at any lab, actually, but same idea

Play your turns

>so going back to that example of Bone Grinding, I should just give my battle mages a shitton of gems (well, at least 15+) and set the first five commands as [Cast bone Grinding], then Spells with Conserve Gem Usage on? (Just using Bone Grinding in this case to make it easy for my noob-ish mind to handle.)
>This means they'll use 5 gems for the Bone Grindings, then they'll switch over to gemless spells if they're not fatigued, right?
Assuming your mages are able to manage 5 back-to-back casts of Bone Grinding without falling asleep, that's correct.

>Also, you can't just give your mages the gems from a menu? You have to have an allied unit physically in the same province to hand them the gems if you want to restock them on the go? I guess it makes sense since your capital is probably where you keep your gems.
You can grab gems from any province you own which contains a lab, but often you'll be sieging an enemy castle or otherwise away from your labs. In that case having extra gems on scouts is important, because your army doesn't need to retreat and resupply.

>Furthermore, is there a limit on the number of gems you can give to any single unit?
30 gems total is the maximum.

Take your turns.

Did already

Then take the next.

Why would you want to become a sectoid?

>mistaking sectoids and thin men
Do you even XCOM?

It's new Sectoids senpai. Isn't there a Dominions XCOM mod somewhere?

No need for a mod, there's R'lyeth.

Teach me how to LA R'lyeh /domg/.

Step 1 : Praise Cathulhu.
Step 2 : Never write His name.
Step 3 : Sacrifice your sister to the Old Gods.
Step 4 : I̵̗̪̙͈̟̺a͏̙̲͖̣ͅ!̵̷̡͔̩̟̘ ̜́́I̶̵̮͔̱͍̤͎a̡҉̘̜͍͇͇͉͉͘!̴̶̞̻̗͍̥̫ ͜͏̠͡P̵̯̙̰̮̀h̨͓̳͎̰̟̪͜'̷̧̖̳̞̭̺̱̗̫͈͡n̡̰̹̮̝̰͚ͅg̨̛͏͕̯̱̘̗̰͈ļ̭͙̭͍͈͉u̴͞҉͚̣̟̪i̡̟̭̲̠͔̮̠̞̕͝ ̧̗̲̙̩͎̦͎͞m̱̹̹͠g̮̬͓͖ͅl̷̹̮̜͡ͅw͉̻̯̙'̶̜̳͔̳̯̝͢ņ̴̴̞͖̰̪̣̤a͚̣̯f̛͉̫̫̜̣̩͟ḥ̶̙̥͕̜ ́̕͏̫̫C̵̸̳ͅt̶͓̖̭̤̬̬͜͜h̶̛͖̞̩̺͔͝u̧͟҉̟ḷ͖̱̗̙h̘̱̦̤͓͈̥͟͢͝u̴̲͕̘̩ ҉̥͙̭̘͕R̕҉̵̣͇̫̟͙̖͚'̷͖̲̞̣͍̯͟l̵͏̷̻̱͕̹̭̥y̶̛͙̰̯̯̖̲̺̭̙ȩ̴̳͔̣̣̭ͅẖ̬̣͡ ͏̡҉͚̭̣͖ẁ̲̟g̶̼̜̻̩͜a̦̱̖̖̦͇͚̗̣h̨͍̫̗'̶̳͇͓̹n̼̗̗̱a͏̧̦̲̩g̞͇̪͓̖͉̤͘̕͢l̸̛̛̻̲ ͉͇͓̩̳͔͜f̵̧̙̯̻̣̲͖ḩ̞̪̤͠t͖̞͟a̢̠͜g̤̣͓̗̤ͅn̨͍͡͡.̡̩̘̮̻̦̖̩

Pray that Atlantis nor Jomon is playing. That's about it.

Why Jomon?

Nah, shrimp people have hilariously low MR, even if they are crazy strong (in both ways)

Why not Jomon?

Life after Death

Because until they get (and hold) underwater territory, Jomon is just another land nation.

Even if they somehow managed to grab some underwater territory their troops are horribly suited to fight R'lyeh.

Great. Now I want to see Glorious nippon fighting against lovecraftian horrors with their glorious folded katanas.

deder than my hopes and dreams

Rlyeth.

Even the best of humans are inferior to satyrs and other non-humans.

How do I thug out my Grigori?
He already has invulnerability so He doesn't really need much armor. Magic resistance is probably something I want.

Give him a better name because all people I met named Grégori were asshole and/or drunkards.

Definitely don't pay attention to the fact that magic weapons completely ignore invulnerability.

>mfw just lost a game against AI with my pretender
Okay, so how do I use my pretender? When I use it for combat, it get rekt, wounded, feeble-minded, and loses three of its four arms.
When it stays in my capital, it only researches spells, which is a waste of its talents.
I tried forging items, but it's expensive, and when I give them to a commander and tell him to go fight, he get killed because magical items are no match for 4 morons with looong sticks.

Say "it depends" and I'll find you and kick your ass so hard your breath will smell like my socks.

Depends on what the enemy has and which Grigori we're talking about (ie. which self-buff paths you have available, Azazel and Shamsiel would probably work the best without Phoenix Pyre and high reinvigoration because they have fire). For example, magic weapons ignore Invulnerability (and Ethereality and Mistform for that matter) so, if the enemy has any of those, you really need to build around that fact.

Also, remember that there's always the option of using them as a casters. If you know exactly what the enemy has, you can sometimes build a custom counter, teleport/cloud trapeze the SC on top of their army and hopefully defeat it, but Grigori are too expensive for PD raiding kind of stuff and as army support they might do better as casters.

I know he kept one healthy army outside my cap for a good 6-8 turns. Machaka was an okay goyim all along

Hmmm that seems like something I should keep in mind.
Alright thanks I will see into these things.

And thus Xibalba claims his first victim.

What's your pretender's paths and scales, and what nation are you playing as?

I don't get why EA Xibalba is even allowed in giant games like this. If they're played by someone even halfway competent they either get rushed the fuck out early on (which is obviously not happening) or they win. Simple as that. It's just as game-ruining as MA Ermor is.

There's several types of pretenders.

Monsters like dragons and Earth Snake can reliably expand if you observe some caution (for example, the lance charge of knights tends to go through their defences, and lizard provinces might have a lizard shaman that can curse them, significantly increasing their chance of gaining battle afflictions) although they might need awe from 9 dominion or some extra earth magic for protection (E6 snake for example doesn't really need awe). They can still act as battle and ritual casters in mid/lategame (some spells, like most global enchantments, require high paths to be cast, and some summoning or combat spells scale with high paths) but their combat potency is limited against real armies. However, the value of good expansion shouldn't be underestimated.

Then you have immobile and "titan" pretenders that tend to have high starting dominion and magic paths. They are typically taken as imprisoned for maximum scales and/or high magic paths (used for the most powerful bless effects or casting specific rituals or constructing specific items: for example, W9 bless is very good on some sacred units and once the imprisoned pretender finally wakes up on turn 36, they can cast rituals like Vengeful Water or do respectable damage spamming spells like Falling Frost: both the AoE and damage scale so Falling Frost cast by W9 caster would be thrice as powerful as one cast by W3 mage, and W9 can cast it pretty much infinitely due to lowered fatigue) but you can sometimes take them just dormant in order to cast specific rituals early (for example, Mother Oak, a nature gem generation spell, is available quite early, and it might be a good idea to snatch it with your pretender) or help at early wars in a pinch (by crafting them magic equipment, having them cast self-buff spells and possibly casting buff spells on them with your other mages: you're not expected to send most pretenders to melee and expect them to win naked).

What's the difference between EA and LA Xib? Both have bats and the summons, yet LA Xib is having tremondous issues in Flatus actually winning (though one of his opponents is the MA Ermor of the LA)

And then there are so-called "rainbow pretenders", most typically low dominion human chassis like Crone or Archmage but some titans can also do the job. The idea is to increase your magical diversity and allow them to find pretty much every magical site for maximum gem income. However, while the idea might seem lucrative, it tends to be a Bad Idea and should only be used on a few specific nations or if you know exactly what you're doing (and if you want to give them a try, you should take them dormant, they're not going to do much of anything during the first year besides research, unless you have a game plan built around reaching a specific spell early).

What exactly you need from pretender depends on your faction, and some factions can effectively be played in a variety of ways. What nation are you playing as?

It's the same problem as LA Mictlan.

They have more or less the same strengths as they did in EA, but they're no longer up against enemies with the same weaknesses.

As for equipping commanders, the idea is to layer defences for maximum sustainability. For example, you want high defence to avoid being hit, high protection to survive the hits that go through and high HP to soak the remaining damage, as well as various magical defences gained from equipment or buff spells, like Ethereality (75% of non-magical attacks are negated), Mistform (all damage is reduced to 1, until the effect is broken by magical weapons or exceptionally hard blow) and Phoenix Pyre (any attack that kills the caster instead causes them to explode in a shower of fire, but is exhausting and can only take place if the caster has below 100 fatigue). Fatigue is also one of the key points: you tend to need enough reinvigoration to be fatigue-neutral: in addition to avoid being critically hit, it allows the commander to keep fighting forever (and, as long as they cannot be killed, that's the secret to taking out large forces, not offensive abilities). You also need to survive whatever magical effects the enemy can bring upon you, so depending on the opponent you tend to need a mix of magic resistance and elemental resistances, although it's worth noting there's no catch-all solution and you're always left vulnerable to something.

It's worth noting that you can't throw equipment on just about any commander, they need to have some defences natively, otherwise the investment required to make them effective is simply not worth it. For example, "elves" (Tuatha and Vanir) have high defence, glamour and ability to cast Mistform and bless themselves. Giants like Niefel Jarls and Adonim have high HP and can cast a variety of self-buffs depending on their paths (such as Summon Earthpower+Temper Flesh+Ironskin+Iron Will for Adonim with earth magic randoms, or Soul Vortex for Fomorian Kings and some Niefel Jarls).

Yeah, Jaguar Warriors (or Ozelotls) don't pack nearly as big of a punch as they did in EA. For example, W9F9 could be thought of as the premier dual-bless in EA (although not necessarily the most cost-efficient) but I tested it once and double-blessed Jags actually failed to trade cost-effectively (in terms of gold cost) against Zweihanders because they simply couldn't punch through their armour. B9N9 had far superior performance, enough to be cost-effective, but while +4str allowed them to do damage, blood vengeance did about as much as Jags themselves did.

Just...one...more...