/domg/ - Dominions General

Those are some sizable lolis.

They get shorter, but also thicker and turn into oppai lolis.

>oppai lolis

I'm not at home, so I can't post graphs (hopefully someone else can oblige), but my pretender was an awake E3W4 wyrm, with Turmoil 1, Prod 3, Cold 3, Growth 3, Misf 1, Drain 1. I went with an awake snake specifically to expand UW quickly and start UW forts within the first few turns. My plan was to take over the sea, fill it with forts, and then have a ton of forgiving fathers, which are very capable mages, and have just enough land forts to cover important provinces and get a decent number of troops. I still had more labrat Tungaliks than I really needed, but they were still theoretically useful late game.

Most of this game, in terms of what the majority of the players were up to and so on, was actually World War Ghost, but I'm going to focus mostly on what I was up to instead. My early expansion went well, using mournfuls for the first two turns of recruitment and then swapping to ice armor dudes. Mournfuls have shields, making them much better against crossbows than assartuts, and they have a pretty modest res cost. My Wyrm led the way underwater, and while he got an affliction doing it, I was able to start 3 UW forts within the first year so as to be ready to rush R'lyeh. Atlantis doesn't generally have issues with heavy infantry expansion, since once winter rolls around your ice armor guys can just face tank cavalry.

I assumed that R'lyeh would take an Uttervast because it's just the best (and was right), so I wanted to fight them before it woke up. My initial attack went great because their mindblasters were elsewhere, and I even locked down their cap for a turn, but I hadn't gone all in - most of my troops were still expanding and I didn't have particularly research yet, so once they pulled their mindblasterballs back, they were able to recapture their cap. I made a series of like three incorrect guesses wrt predicting their army, which resulted in my losing a bit of gold and (more importantly) time to the mindblasters with only freespawn losses on his side

>Turmoil 1
Did you have any problems with Ice Guard recruitment? With neutral O/T and 3 prod I'm being often being capped by rec points on non-farm provinces.

I had invited Erythreia to join me in squid removal, but they went out of their way to avoid actually fighting the squid armies as far as I could tell. They vultured a land province first, and then eventually went underwater, but they basically pulled away whenever the blasterball went their direction (towards the end of the war, the event attacked an indy throne rather than siege R'lyeh's last open fort, which made me unhappy). Anyways, the Atlantis:R'lyeh matchup was definitely heavily sided in my favor once even a modicum of research came out, so needing to take them on myself wasn't really a problem.

I had gone Conjuration first and then Ench, since I figured that Water Elementals should have no problem pounding a vastness with their high base MR, but I really should have gone straight to Ench 5 instead, since antimagic-buffed, magic weapon Atlanteans can kill a vastness without too many issues too, and skelespam is extremely effective UW against R'lyeh's freespawn. The other spell that was surprisingly effective early game was Reanimation. 10 longdead for 3 D gems is pretty okay, and they worked well for giving me mindblast immune guys that I could put on a flank set to Attack - Archers so they'd run up and hit the illithids. If I had used them early on, I could have won some of those early battles even without perfect guesswork.

Anyways, eventually R'lyeh died to massed magery (he lost his Uttervast bumping Abysia in his cap circle for some weird reason, but my stack on his cap would've killed it anyways). By this point, I had 4 other UW forts pumping out fathers, and had to choose who to go for. I did a throne count and realized that I could win without fighting Lemuria if I beat Erytheia and either Ulm or Agartha. Since I was unhappy with Erytheia anyways, I decided to do that instead of ghostbusting.

Not at all; I was res capped just about everywhere.

>Tolkien said his elves were biologically human.
Well that's just ridiculous.

But they aged slowly I guess.

So... Now literally everyone is situated to just gobble up AIs, right?

His humans were biologically different from real people anyway.

Go on.

Thanks to sailing and having a wide border, I was able to blitz Erytheia extremely quickly. They staled the turn after I had attacked them, after which I had taken almost all of their provinces and sieged all but two of their forts (one of which was a fort they found from a site the other which I left for Pan after he sent me a message saying he wanted 'a piece'). After that, they went AI, but it was basically just cleanup, fort busting, and absorbing their infrastructure.

While I was doing that, I had scried all the other thrones, and decided that Ulm's would be the easiest to take since while he had a bit more stuff than Agartha, he also had taken the thrones only recently and hadn't forted them and his armies were reliant on stuff that my magic could wipe out. I blitzed a bunch of his provinces basically just to have the thrones+all the provinces bordering them so I could reduce the amount of stuff he could hit them with and see what he was bringing. I attacked even more of Lemuria's provinces that same turn, for basically the exact same reason. I had scouts scattered throughout the map, so I had an idea of where most of his big mages were, so I felt pretty safe, but I included a bunch of safeguards on my thrones anyways to fight off magic phase shenanigans.

Both of the final fights were on the same throne, but I had massively overprepared for them. To fight magic phase grand lemurs, I had forward-deployed a few Solar Rays casters and had a spread out stack of Tungilaks set to Advance & Cast. If any unarmored lemurs had dropped, they'd have been zapped right away, and if they had been armored they still could have had any big spells interrupted while the D1 guys got into range to Dust them. Since I wound up fighting only an army, those guys basically just ran in and died. I also used Firestorm as my anti-Lemuria thing, which killed a bunch of my own guys, but since it was a final battle I was fine with any losses that ended up with my holding the province.

I'm a little disappointed that Ulm didn't also attack the other throne I'd grabbed, since he had an army bordering it and I had set up this neat Enslave spam + stalling spells + Wailing Winds thing, but I guess he was really confident in his capital force for some reason and didn't try the other one.

Should I just pull the plug and end this abomination?

Yes.

This game was literally never good.

>needing magic to bully R'lyeh
then again my R'lyeh is a retard who took an illithid pretender and a huge rainbow bless for his shitty RNG sacreds

The R'lyeh in my game played the early game okay. He went all in on mindblasters, basically, which while it set him behind in tech, meant that doing just heavy infantry wasn't going to cut it

probably

I think mine gave up on MB after I splattered his illithid ball (screen is from that fight). ArseNtits become a hard counter to his entire ball with 14MR and a little +defense that essentially requires madmen to explode dice to land a hit.

He doesn't mean that they were the same species, but that they were still living beings that had all the normal organs and everything. They just had more magic soul power than humans which manifests as them being better in all sorts of ways.

>Dominos admin has given himself two delays without even bothering to ask anyone

Shitters shouldn´t admin games.

Delaying the game for himself isn't even close to the worst he's done in this game. He's a classic badmin.

>admins aren't allowed extensions

Repeatedly giving yourself extensions without even informing anyone is bad form. But like I said, it's not bad compared to some of the other shit he's pulled like replacing players without reason or rolling back the game to fix his own mistakes.

They are if at least they fucking mention it.

You can´t just delay the timer 24 hours, then another 15, and just expect everyone to be happy with that.

Much less if a few days before you rolled back the game just because you wanted to.

Shitters get zero tolerance policy.

>not emailing llama, becoming new admin and AIing him

>playing in a game you admin

>admins aren't allowed rollbacks to fix mistakes

>admins should be able to rollback to redo big fights they lost
wtf I wanna be admin now

>tfw repeatedly rolling back the game to make sure you get a perfect expansion

Shitters shouldn´t admin games

It's a strategy game where you do everything in your power to win.
Rollbacks are a tool in the Admin's arsenal and thus a legitimate strategy.
If you don't like it then go back to /r/dominions.

This.
Redditors sm.h

>/domg/ meta becomes Malakaling llama into making you the new admin and squeezing out as many rollbacks as possible before another player usurps you

It already was. The new meta is hosting your own games to avoid usurpation

Truly cut throat.
>/domg/ meta evolves into doxxing other players and performing real blackmail, kidnapping and murder

Actually this would explain all the vanishing players lately...

>/domg/'s final form is EVE
what the fuck is it with scandinavian devs

That was the original /domg/ meta, what with the hobo stabbings and all.

how is that for Nazca pretender?

Being stabbed by a methhead is a dom4 meta development

It's shit, but you already knew that so I'm not sure why you're asking.

mind explaining why? It has good scales and bless that fits on everything they have, while fixing the shortcomings of shitty commanders

Men of Numenor were living hundreds of years and standing seven feet tall and all that.

There's enough new people here that someone might actually believe you're being serious.

M A G E S U P P O R T

>taking a D pretender when the only D you've got worth paying for is undead command
>inspiration and reinvig on a nation of the dead
It's complete nonsense.

You don't need undead command because your primary mage for leading supayas has D2.

You don't need Inspirational Presence because if you're expanding with sacreds their morale is fine and if you're doing the expand with mountain-rec human garbage while you get supaya builders, then you're not leading your low morale guys with sacreds anyways. After expansion, your armies are either high morale sacreds / supayas, corpse constructs, or hordes of skeletons / elementals, none of which need the morale bonus.

Reinvig is fine for a mage bless, Blood Surge would be fine for a troop bless but you don't have anything else to help your sacreds. Undying is kinda okay, but not particularly transformative

>nation of the dead
yeah, good luck expanding and not getting raped in early game with all your 5 supayas
inspirational presence and undead command are there so my labrats can be commanders too, so i dont have to hire any commanders at all.

You should buy very, very few of the A1F1 mages. The D2 mages are actually useful in battle, and having a fort stuffed with mostly useless lab rats as a scaling nation leaves you very vulnerable.

That's a pretty expensive bless just to make sure your most useless mages are slightly less useless.

Your Hurin mages are way more useful and can lead undead just fine. For non-undead, saving yourself the cost of a few indie/foreignrec commanders is not worth a four-point bless.

indie commanders cant fly tho, so you are not utilizing your fantastic mobility at all

Which nations have the best research output in general?

I mean, I'm marching to the thrones now, and I don't really think the combination of AIs and remaining players can really stop me at all.

Biggest pita will actually be dealing with all the crap AI R'yleh has left lying around, cause 3 of the thrones are UW.

Loli prince and princesses have amazing research with Daduchos.

how to expand as Erythreia? The units are absolutely shitty and expensive.

Your armies fit into three categories -

HoS/supaya raiding parties, where you use a D2 mage.

Sacred hit squads, where you're lancing the commanders (in which case morale doesn't matter, or may even be better if it's low so that they rout if you fuck up instead of die)

Big ol balls, where you are moving slow mages for big, innate caster mage support (not flying). You can combine the 1/2 type parties with your big ball to collect raiders with additional mage support.

If you're ever in a situation where morale REALLY matters, then you're using an inca with +inspirational gear or somesuch, not a base -1 morale burd that you're trying to make up for with an otherwise unnecessary bless.

Imprisoned rainbow stat bless with great scales including prod 3

Summon great hawks lol

better?

Do you feel as though archers should get a free attack against flying units that are coming down in a square near them? I feel like that archers should be an innate counter to flying units and using attack-rear against them should go badly for the fliers, not the archers.

Way better, yeah. You should be able to expand much more easily with lancers with that bless than your first one

I'm guessing that you took S4 for eventual ring access for soul drain coms and so on, and far caster + 3x precision might be the right spend for that, but I'm not 100% sure. The only real spell that uses it that you'll be spamming shadowblast, which might appreciate the penetration bless instead. While I think that between that and other mrn stuff that you'll want to use, I'm leaning to thinking that arcane finesse is better, but Far Caster is probably just fine too

I was gonna point out the difference in army value til I saw those cave knights
wew

farcaster + precision seems like a strong combination for blade wind too

yeah, but blade wind is a highly situational spell that you don't want to cast against the vast majority of things that players send against you

Is it ever a good idea to pillage your own provinces for emergency gold?

no. Pillaging is done almost exclusively to devalue the province or increase unrest for chaospower units in extreme emergencies

"Never" is a strong word, but it doesn't seem like something you'd ever do to win, only to delay a loss and make the opponent gain less (which could also be loss in just one of the theaters, not the entire game). It's probably not something you should consider an option: I think you should play to win even when losing because a lot of things can happen in a game of Dominions, especially considering cost of pillaging (ie. upkeep cost of units from that turn) and the opportunity cost (such as moving them to grab an enemy province instead, which also accomplishes gaining gold and denying it from the opponent) are rather sizable.

I agree.

Horse archers need a lot of thought, too. They were fucking brutal in ancient battlefields, but due to engine limitations they´re absurdly bad in the game.

There´s gotta be some way to make them work. Maybe make them able to shoot while moving and give them more precision to compensate for the inability to actually get up close to the enemy.

Or just make the fucking battlefield bigger so that they actually have space to work. I think the battlefield is a little too small for big battles and should adapt to the size of the armies that are going to fight.

Can't you already set them to fire and keep distance?

Yeah, but they're slow enough that melee stuff can catch up, and there's a hard back line to the battlefield, which means they can't keep going even if they're faster.

>25 range crossbows
>with half range underwater
Are these shits even worth anything?

That's 12 more range than anything that isn't a caster gets underwater.

Set them to Fire - Archer to tag illithids because the mindblast attack counts for it

>set 12 range units to fire at 100 range units at the back of the field
why not just get fast fish to attack rear at that point

because of their life drain attack

This guy sums it up But thing is, archers can already do that. They´re faster than heavily armed infantry.

The advantage of doing it on a horse is that
-you can move MUCH faster (which is pointless with the current size of the battlefield, because there´s simply nowhere to run to)
-you can shoot while moving, even if you get a penalization to precision.
-you can run behind enemy lines to shoot at them from their flanks or backs at close range and still retreat before they can engage with you in melee

The switch to real time battles is a first step towards making horse archers work, but they still need a couple more tweaks.

The problem is that most of them would require a rebalance of the whole game. Making the battlefield bigger, for example, would make ranged in general and battlefield-wide magic much more effective. And honestly, I was a little bored of the constant Earthquake and RoS spam in Dom4, so I´d rather not go back to that era.

But making the fucking horse archers able to shoot and move at the same time (or some roughly equivalent trick like free extra shots, in case the engine can´t allow that) would already do wonders.

Dominion 7 will get it right lad

bitchcraft

I can spare you the pain, unless someone is against it, which so far no one has been, I'll pull the plug in a few hours.

So unless someone contests the title of king of the AIs, you win, congrats

Are undisciplined, mindless, undead, animals worse at patrolling? It feels like it takes more to get unrest numbers down comparatively to Dom4.

I checked the manual, but couldn't find anything saying anything to the such.

>opportunity cost (such as moving them to grab an enemy province instead, which also accomplishes gaining gold and denying it from the opponent)
You can move and pillage, though.

>Making the battlefield bigger, for example, would make ranged in general and battlefield-wide magic much more effective.
Not really. If you just move the back line further but don't place units there when the battle starts, the only other effect it has besides with horse archers is that it increases the amount of casualties you can receive while routing.

>MA Ermor wins yet another game.

>people didn´t pile up on Ermor in yet another game

It´s everyone else´s fault. MA Ermor is built to be a cancer on the whole world.
Everyone else is fighting to rule the world

If you don´t want to rule a dead world, then you should be fighting Ermor first.

>Play MA Man
>Recruits tons of Mothers of Avalon, use them as researchers
>Get Alteration 6
>Take all the Mothers of Avalon that got 2 Nature (most of them) and transform them all
>Move out with army of Sacred, spellcaster, monster thugs

Is this a retarded strategy? Sounds kind of fun.

Almost like EVE online

Transformation is very unreliable

I'd rather recruit mostly Daughters of Avalon and a few Mothers and throw out buffs and Thunder Strikes via communion

>Is this a retarded strategy?
I mean, you're already playing MA Man

Man isnt that bad after they got their nature communion.