/domg/ - Dominions General

>think it'll be cool to pretend to be straight up cthulhu
>having kind of a hard time because insanes aren't as cool as undead swarms
>summoning shit from the rift
>stupidly doing it with not-cthulhu himself
>fucking rift demon spawns out and beats my ass
>read up on it
>apparently they will always hunt you down again and again because they're soul bound
>think it's bullshit
>mfw the rest of the game this fucking douchebag will randomly show up to destroy not-cthulhu's shit and there's nothing I can do

>try any sort of thematic roleplay build
>get shit on even by AI

Well, you could make an RP house rules game where everyone is expected to play to that standard

So am I now.

How would you enforce it?

You don't, but I've played in RP house rules games in the past and player interactions worked out perfectly fine (and thematic builds and playstyle with varying degrees of success: I think that game was the first time tribless Ermor was played)

Is there any way to beat Ashen Empire Ermor after they've covered the world in complete darkness? Just how do you get through all those fucking skeletons?

Recruit more mundane infantry units. Since each one of them is statistically superior to their undead chaff, as long as you have enough of them you'll be sure to win.

t. Skeleton Shill.

If they have Utterdark up? No, not really. You're fucked unless you can get it dispelled. Unless you're playing a nation which already has a lot of darkvision/undead/demonic stuff.

Skeleton hordes can be dispensed with through simple application of battlefield-wide magic without needing to kill their global, though.

You'll lose the casters as well if they've got a B9 bless, but it cuts the skeleton chaff swarm right down, and from there you can start taking steps to counter the Lictors. It's the Lictors where things get tricky without the ability to fucking see anything. And better hope you already have the stuff you need to do that, because your income is now entirely spent on upkeep.

You start with defensive rain of stones x 3. This kills all of their chaff. All of it. Then you have lictors and spellcasters to deal with. I recommend something flying with magical weapons to deal with the casters, and some nasty undead-killing spells to deal with the lictors. Or you can just route them, they have a morale check after all.

firebrand and fireshield equipped thugs assisted by mages

Here's my full nation description stuff, I've put it in the steam comments as well, and when the final version of the mod goes up then it'll be linked to the units in the inspector, but for those curious, here it is:
pastebin.com/KvEWqx5C

Ye gods.

Final chance, good position La Ulm, previous owner had computer destroyed by the Illumernaty, inquire here or in chat.

Why is vampire queen so fucking overpriced
Seems like the perfect pretender for LA ULM otherwise

Can we change unit names for the domgen game?

Complete retard here. I was recommended several nations and decide to go with Helheim. What's a good pretender setup for this nation?

Has science gone too far?

Yeap, I renamed most of mine, actually I think ALL of them.

SOMEONE AI NEIFLHEIM REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I can if the admin wants me to

The admin is dead. Though if he continues being dead, I may hijack the game after asking llama.

We wouldn't want MemeII to happen again?

A major bless (W9, probably) + income scales.

Well, just post once you're the new admin if you need someone to set them AI

Second retard here, what are some major spells one should strive for regarding each magic path? Such as Air - Evocation + Conjuration, etc.

It depends on your nation. I know that's unhelpful, but it just depends way too much for me to give any more specific advice. Like, most nations that rely on death mages want Ench for skelly spam, but EA TC generally uses its mages to spam ancestors instead which is in Conjuration. Eriu is an air nation, but they often are run as a thug nation with alt and cons over evo as their early paths so that they can send their ponymans out raiding.

For an air+elves nation like Helheim, your major research goals are gonna be, presented in no particular order:
>Alt 3 - Mistform
>Alt 7 - Fog Warriors
>Evo 4 - Thunderstrike
>Ench 4 - Cloud Trapeze
>Ench 8 - Mass Flight
>Const 4 - Brands and Shields for your sacred ponyman thugs.

Plus a lot of spell choices aren't efficient unless you have specific paths.

Fireball spam is fairly efficient with a F2 mage, but on a F4 you'd want something more powerful because of the increased cost.

What about evo 5 for storm and conj3 for storm power?

You'll need that for thunderstrikes, unless you want to spend absurd amounts of gems on it.

Conj 5 for air elementals is pretty nice too.

Have some more, friend.
>Evo 5 Storm
>Conj 2 Summon Storm Power
>Const 1 Corpse Man Construction (needs higher for lightning rods + storm spools)
>Conj 3 Call of the winds (Best fort filler ever)

The Desura forums are currently down, I remember there being a good magic guide pointing out the sort of best spells along each tree, regardless of the path. Anyone got it or feeling of writing it down briefly?

There was... an attempt. It was worse than no information because it was so filled with bad information

Rejakor made one. Surprisingly, it's pretty good.
dom4archive.kermodebear.org/www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/basic-magic-a-primer.html

That was very good, thank you.

That's the one, perhaps it should be included in the pastebin? It's really helpful to newbies.

Hey Caelum - I posted in the last thread to this effect, but I'd like to get the chance to chat about our borders.

NO DEAL WITH THE BURDS

Just because Pan CAN rush Caelum doesn't mean that they always should.

It's only missing the Blood path, do you have that too by any chance?

Yup.
dom4archive.kermodebear.org/www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/blood-magic-a-primer.html

>3 threads ago

>peace and harmony Hinnom confess he is a noob and has no idea why Abysia took a Blood/fire pretender

>now
>Peace and harmony Hinnom wants to teach Rlyeh how to make good thugs

>he's an anonymous player

Geez. i wonder what's going on here.

Fantastic, thank you.

I'd like to learn the game against the AI, but it seems to be retarded. Anyway mods to male the AI a worthy opponent or a good learning tool?

He's Malakal.

I may have made a feeble attempt to hide my identity in order to avoid... erm.. unjust aggression.

If it was malakal he'd just ask him if he was here and either sweet-talk honor shittalk incessantly, depending how Russian he was feeling.

no.
AInorec mod decrease the number of worthless units the AI will recruit. people say it makes a big difference, but it's still bad.
Perhaps some expdert single player can suggest you what are the best performing AI nations.

The real deal is play-by-email multiplayer, don't fear, just jump into it.

It's never gonna be great, but there are a few recruitment-priority mods that make it marginally less retarded.

In general I would say you're fine to join multiplayer as soon as you've got expansion down to the point you're ending year one with 12+ provinces and a fort underway.

now...that's just mean spoiling.

They freespawn vampire units, iirc. Immortal, invulnerable, regenerating, life draining, flying flankers are quite nice.

There's actually a story behind that.

Short version: cheater mains VQ, creates an idea it's op.
Long version: Google "norfleet cheater dominions ermor vampire queen"

...

So how do you deal with stupid strong thugs? Like how do you neutralize a Dai Oni SC?

Depending on your nation - counterthug, AN magic of an element they're not immune to, spammed kill spells

There's quite a lot of spells that can fuck up thugs if they fail an MR roll like soul slay, petrify, blindness to a lesser extent, that kind of thing
blood mages can just life for a life or banish things to hell
Lots of air elementals can work depending on the thug
Antithugs with specific weapons like flesh eaters, eyecatchers, duskdaggers and mage bane

Find something it's not sufficiently resistant to and cast that at it. 100 precision is preferable, 100 range is nice too.

If it's resistant to everything, try using troops with high damage or AP weapons, or buff your troops with Weapons of Sharpness. There's also a few spells which are near-impossible to resist like gifts/banefire/horror marks

Well, depends on what you have at your disposal and how they are equipped. For example, Life for a Life is an extremely hard counter and cannot be defended against while spamming Soul Slay in sufficiently high numbers is a soft counter. Even some very standard tactics can counter SCs unless they've been specifically designed to survive this type of threat: for example, lightning spells and Frozen Heart negate protection so they'll go through unless the SC has heavy frost or lightning resistance, and if there isn't reflected damage at play, mere Stellar Cascades spam will cause the unit to fall unconscious and can then be slowly hacked down.

Besides scripting your armies differently, there are also counters such as counter-thugs (equipped to go through defender's defences and kill or disable them during their buff cycle, most preferably used with Teleportation or Cloud Trapeze to catch unprepared enemy SC off guard), Send Horror (many types of Horror are difficult for SCs to deal with so, if they are in a province without army support, a few casts is enough to kill almost any SC or at least Horror Mark them so badly the big boys like Hunter of Heroes will come next) or very SC-specific counters (for example, if it's undead and there's no other undead in the province, Ravenous Swarm actually does very well).

What mods make single player the most fun it can be?
I know you all think sp sucks and is pointless but just humor me for a moment.

One option is playing against yourself

1). Play against yourself.
2). Roleplay
3.) Ainorec helps you face stronger and more thematic armies. Nothing more disappointing than fighting a Jotunheim fielding a horde of deer tribe, militia, and shambles.
4.) Mods like summod, chocolate whatever, and magic enhanced go a long way to making more magic fun to play with

You could play against yourself. I mean, arguably it's actually a good way to learn the game as long as you can maintain the level of dissociation necessary to not favour any specific nation, since you'll still be learning to counter things and counter the counters. That said, I suspect you would need to be literally, as in 'one bad day from being sectioned', insane to find this fun.

There is no way to make the AI good. It will always use unlimited blob warfare, and you will always shit on it with dedicated mage support. In theory you could give the AI some events which make national equivalent mages except with no research to force them to actually do things with magic, but they're never going to cast battlefield buffs or create SCs that aren't just a random mess of items.

>Dai oni
>stupid strong
Between penalties they take in order and demon tag they really aren't very good.
What you need is a few counter thugs with demonbanes/flamebeu and flying boots.

Demonbane can easily hit dai oni for his entire hp through prot.

Dai Oni are great, shutcho mouf.

They're not game winners like seraphim or grigori or the like, but they're strong SC options with great paths.

Honestly, the bigger problem with dai oni is that they don't have built in mobility or stealth, so you need to sort out flying boots or a shademail or something if they can't just walk at stuff.

That said, you're dead-on that their paths are great for SCing, and the fact that counters exist (demonbane being a big one) doesn't make them useless or bad.

>but they're strong SC options
They are bottomfeeders of recruitable scs.
Extremely vulnerable and i'd much prefer elven thugs or any of the giant scs.
Any giant SCs specifically rip them apart.

I like Dai Oni's paths over Niefel Jarl paths for SCing.

I love their paths, i don't like the rest of the package.

What up. People want Nefil set AI?

Flick me some Emails sluts

I have to go back to work in half an hour

He's stalled so many times now so duh.

...

...

How could you have hundreds of virgins in your dungeon and not fuck 'em?

Unlimited Cosmic Power

but you have hundreds of virgins. fucking one would not result in significant reduction in your chance of obtaining unlimited cosmic power.

>Squeeze every last drop of blood from your provinces.
Why don't you just wait, it's not like they care where you take the bodies when you clean the lab.

UNLIMITED
COSMIC
POWER

it's not warm anymore and it doesn't make a sound

How could you have hundreds of pearls in your treasure box and not wish for virgins?

Virgins are annoying. Gotta take things slow, isn't as much fun, they don't know what to do.

This just in. The bats are struggling

Good on you sunny

t. chad

What are the most common dangers for communions? I know RoS is one of them but what else?

If you're a high-ranking mage in charge of keeping the virgins in the lab, you probably already have enough political power to just rape some peasant women and get away with it.

Or even better, either summon or build a waifu for yourself, why stop at some boring human woman?

Playing against AI is as good as stretching your legs is to competitive running.

I play singleplayer when I'm rusty, and/or I want to test a strat I pick up from humans either from a previous game or from here or something. And I mean test to the degree that I can feel what to input in a game.

Is 18 provinces by early spring in year 2 considered good expansion?

Sure. If it's in a real game, it's great. If it's in testing, it's okay, since your expansion will usually be cut off by other players.

What number should I aim for in testing to make it actual good year 1 expansion, instead of just "okay"?

It depends.

Some nations can expand crazy fast while others have a lot more trouble with it. The bless you chose and whether or not you have a good awake expansion pretender also have a big impact.

How about 24 provinces?