Post by: Jilladilla on September 11, 2017, 02:11:48 pm
I'll post the basic new features list here, and post some commentary on some of the big features for those of you who don't want to or can't follow the link below it:
New Features! (Copy/Pasted from the site)
-Real time combat
-Per unit combat logs
-Design your pretender's bless effect
-Priest's banishment and smite spells will depend on what type of god he follows
-History playback when game is over, see how dominion spread and provinces changed owners
-New random maps with bridges and better looking terrains
-New resource system with recruitment points that encourages recruiting in highly populated areas
-Fortifications built by starting at the basic type, then upgrading it later
-New research queue, researching is now one school at a time
-New movement system
-Winter shown on map and affects movement
-Dominion overlay on map to clearly show its boundaries
-New retreat system, good leaders can prevent units from dispersing in all directions
-Updated user interface with information more clearly presented than before
-New 3d-engine with better looking terrain, huge performance increase for good graphics cards
-More reliable network, now works on less than perfect connections too
-New nations
-Some old nations have been reworked and updated
-More spells, magic items, special abilities, events, monsters, titles, thrones, ....
Real time combat!
The turn based system is gone! No longer do you have to fear advancing into Turn 1 Rain of Stones or Earthquake Spam!
Both sides go simultaneously, and unit attack order is based upon RNG. Also, spells now have a casting time, and there was mentions of being able to interupt a spell if you damage the caster too.
Oh right, you also get to see the glory of all your fireballs being launched. At the same time.
Finally, shields can be broken if hit really hard now. Minor, but a bit of a nerf to EA Ermor, Sceleria and Pythium isn't it?
Design your Bless!
No longer does a N9E4 Pretender mean your bless is 10% regen, +8 max hp, and -2 fatigue/turn!
It now operates under a point-buy system, with your points dependent on your magic paths! So a N9E4 pretender has 9 nature points and 4 earth points to spend. At least, that's what I interpreted from one of the screenshots anyway. Some bless effects are quite cheap, for instance said screenshot showed a 'Magic Weapons' bless effect for 2S, so Rainbow Pretenders just got more viable,
It also bears noting that the more powerful bless effects require your Pretender to be physically present in the world to take effect; if they're busy napping, being imprisoned, or just plain dead, your sacred units will not benefit from that bless effect! At the same time, some effects are passive, and will affect your sacred units even if they aren't blessed! Waterbreathing and 'Larger' were some examples presented of these.
With this system, you never know if that F9 god has one or two really big bless effects or a bunch of little ones, which makes things more fun!
Oh right, while technically not related to blessings, but your priests will get fun new spells based on your Pretenders magic paths. It'd make sense for a priest of a god of fire to be able to burn things yeah?
Recruitment and Command Points
Recruitment is a new resource attached to provinces just like income and resources, and will represent just how many people the province can spare to join your armies.
It's fairly simple, isn't it? A province with 50 iron mines but only 100 people just wouldn't be able to spare the manpower to join the army, in spite of being able to produce more than enough equipment to outfit an entire legion in just a month!
Forts can boost the recruitment points available, but no news on if it can pull it from adjacent provinces like they do for resources.
One last thing: Calvary will no longer cost as much gold, instead they will use up additional recruitment points!
With the introduction of Command Points, Slow to Recruit seems to be a thing of the past; and it seems to be technically possible to recruit multiple commanders per province per turn now, but no confirmation.
Scouts, normal commanders, and weak priests will only cost 1 command point, according to the preview info, but mages and stronger priests will cost 2 command points. Exceptionally strong mages, likely those that are currently StR, will cost 4.
That being said provinces will only have 1 command point by default, forts (not palisades apparently) can raise it to 2, with Citadels being able to give a province 3 Command Points per turn. The mention of mages that cost 4 Command Points implies that these will work like resources, so you'll be able to recruit your mages from a palisade even if they cost 2 or 3 points, you just have to accept only being able to recruit one every 2 or 3 turns.
And speaking of forts, you can't just start building a citadel now, you have to start from the bottom, and then upgrade the fort to the higher tier options.
Release Date? OMG JILLADILLA WHEN IS THE RELEASE DATE?!
They said that if everything goes as planned that they will release in the beginning of November on Steam, with PC, Mac, and Linux versions being released simultaneously. Oh, and they said that there is more information on changes that will be released in the days to come, so stay tuned!
RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED! NOVEMBER 27th (or 28th, time zone shenanigans I think)!
I'll try to stay on the ball with updates, but please, feel free to point things out if it seems like I've dropped the ball ok?
Post by: E. Albright on September 11, 2017, 02:23:28 pm
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 02:39:54 pm
Seems like this time it's actually getting an overhaul.
AND coming in November? Man.
Post by: Radsoc on September 11, 2017, 02:52:34 pm
RNG order is great, simulates simultaneity!
Post by: Trekkin on September 11, 2017, 03:00:27 pm
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 03:03:07 pm
The new fort mechanics look more sensible too; it always seemed weird to me that more technologically advanced nations forgot how to build cheap forts, and so were stuck building one-size-fits-all citadels on places they'd never be attacked.
I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.
Post by: Culise on September 11, 2017, 03:04:38 pm
I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.Personally, I rather hope roads at least remain, preferably shifted to build-anywhere.
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 03:09:46 pm
Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me though that roads will be baked in to the map. Like, is where roads exist going to dictate partly where you should build your fort?
Post by: Culise on September 11, 2017, 03:18:04 pm
Post by: Empty on September 11, 2017, 03:21:58 pm
Better ways of managing units and commanders would be nice as well.
Such a chore to add units to one of your 50 identical commanders in the troops list.
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 03:26:13 pm
Really I want a better F1 overview menu. It works but it's still a visual eyestrain to sort through when you've got 60+ province in your empire. Really needs tooltips and the ability to do things like upgrade province defense directly from the menu instead of having to go to the province itself.
Post by: Culise on September 11, 2017, 03:34:22 pm
Really I want a better F1 overview menu. It works but it's still a visual eyestrain to sort through when you've got 60+ province in your empire. Really needs tooltips and the ability to do things like upgrade province defense directly from the menu instead of having to go to the province itself.Next time you're in the F1 overview menu, click the number for the defense. You may be pleasantly surprised. :P
But seriously, it would really be nice to have more visual indicators, though, like something that makes it visually clear that the defense number alone of the available numbers can actually be clicked. Sorting by key information such as unrest, path searches, commander names, force strength, commander paths, or dominion strength (buried in the details option) would also be helpful, as would indicators for details like provinces you're actively besieging or that you are actively besieged in.
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 03:36:01 pm
Post by: Cruxador on September 11, 2017, 03:48:50 pm
I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.Is that actually confirmed to be gone? The system described doesn't preclude it, but I'm not in the beta so if you have more info than I do, by all means tell us.
Roads definitely remain, since I heard someone mentioning how they relate to the new movement system; they reduce the movement cost of terrain by 4.I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.Personally, I rather hope roads at least remain, preferably shifted to build-anywhere.
There is no interface improvements on that list sadly.Interface is totally redone, though I'm afraid I don't know the specifics.
Better ways of managing units and commanders would be nice as well.
Such a chore to add units to one of your 50 identical commanders in the troops list.
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 04:17:02 pm
I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.Is that actually confirmed to be gone? The system described doesn't preclude it, but I'm not in the beta so if you have more info than I do, by all means tell us.
It wasn't specifically mentioned and with roads no longer being a building option....I'm inferring though, it hasn't been 100% confirmed.
Post by: Culise on September 11, 2017, 04:30:03 pm
Hee, thanks. I noticed the thread linked both in the other thread and here after, which also added that they aren't build-anywhere; they're now map features. Ah well, it was never more than a forlorn hope to start with. ^_^Roads definitely remain, since I heard someone mentioning how they relate to the new movement system; they reduce the movement cost of terrain by 4.I will kind of miss building individual upgrades. I liked the sense that they and their upgrades were modular. Just upgrading a fort to the next level is certainly simpler though.Personally, I rather hope roads at least remain, preferably shifted to build-anywhere.
Post by: nenjin on September 11, 2017, 05:59:06 pm
Like, maybe I've just been using RanDom for too long and aren't used to vanilla Illwinter maps, but what they're showing is kind of on the fugly side, despite everything else in game that looks way nicer now. (Especially the battle maps.)
Unrelated, but I dig the way your Pretender subtitles are now display prominently under the main screen title bar.
Post by: E. Albright on September 11, 2017, 06:05:08 pm
Post by: Karlito on September 12, 2017, 12:43:50 pm
Post by: Frumple on September 12, 2017, 01:27:28 pm
... will say that performance improvement for better graphics card thing seems sketchy as all hell, though. As a person that has a fairly shitty one on a definitely shitty computer, experience tends to suggest that kind of statement means "It will now run like complete ass instead of just mostly ass for you, if it runs at all" for us poor bastards. Hopefully it doesn't end up like that.
Beyond that... anyone know if mention of modding has been made, yet? Still that one D3 mod I've been hoping will eventually bug me enough to port over, and I can't imagine that'll be easier from 3 to 5, ha.
Post by: E. Albright on September 12, 2017, 01:37:49 pm
Post by: Ametsala on September 12, 2017, 02:00:47 pm
Someone on reddit posted a recording of the new combat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1Zz2VwZDE)
Apparently, it isn't okay to post video material yet so the uploader removed the video.
Quote from: rmdw45 in dom4's reddit
Sorry, I just noticed that the devs have okayed screenshots and discussion but not video at this point. To respect their wishes I'm taking this video down. Besides, bigmcstrongmuscles' description above is accurate: you still give orders before the battle just like in Dom4, but now everyone's turn happens all at the same time. Among other things, it tends to make it easier for e.g. cavalry and tramplers to get in the first strike, and shooting arrows or fireballs at a moving target seems to be more difficult.
Post by: nenjin on September 12, 2017, 02:38:07 pm
Post by: Cruxador on September 12, 2017, 03:40:29 pm
The more I look at the new game map, the more it kind of seems like a visual downgrade. Sure we're going to get all these useful overlays but the blending between provinces is like....non-existent. Forests fill out to the very edge of the province and stick out visually like a sore thumb.I mean, who uses the default random maps anyway though? I can't remember the last time I've done so except for testing things in singleplayer.
Like, maybe I've just been using RanDom for too long and aren't used to vanilla Illwinter maps, but what they're showing is kind of on the fugly side, despite everything else in game that looks way nicer now. (Especially the battle maps.)
Unrelated, but I dig the way your Pretender subtitles are now display prominently under the main screen title bar.
Well, respecting their wishes is probably the best course of action, though if a re-upload were to surface I wouldn't be too angry about it.Someone on reddit posted a recording of the new combat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1Zz2VwZDE)
Apparently, it isn't okay to post video material yet so the uploader removed the video.Quote from: rmdw45 in dom4's redditSorry, I just noticed that the devs have okayed screenshots and discussion but not video at this point. To respect their wishes I'm taking this video down. Besides, bigmcstrongmuscles' description above is accurate: you still give orders before the battle just like in Dom4, but now everyone's turn happens all at the same time. Among other things, it tends to make it easier for e.g. cavalry and tramplers to get in the first strike, and shooting arrows or fireballs at a moving target seems to be more difficult.
Post by: Sindain on September 12, 2017, 03:53:50 pm
Post by: nenjin on September 12, 2017, 03:58:48 pm
Quote
I mean, who uses the default random maps anyway though? I can't remember the last time I've done so except for testing things in singleplayer.
To note, all I play is SP Dominions. So this is important to me on some level, especially because I'm wondering how long it will take a new version of RanDom to appear (think it took at least a month after the Dom4 release), and how important that will be for me to enjoy the game. It'd be nice if Illwinter completely adapted RanDom into their own map generator but if it hasn't happened yet....
Post by: Virtz on September 12, 2017, 05:09:04 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on September 12, 2017, 05:54:17 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: E. Albright on September 12, 2017, 06:17:51 pm
New retreat system, good leaders can prevent units from dispersing in all directions.
If instead you have a bad leader, if a province have 5 connection, and only one connected to an ally progince, you can easily lose 80% of the retreaters.
Leader get 75% odds of going to friendly provinces, 87.5% with terrain survival (speaking about retreating)
I wonder if this will finally be enough to sound a death knell on the predominance of indy commanders. I'd think so, but then I'd thought the squad and morale changes D3->D4 would have done more to draw it into question than they did, so we shall see...
Post by: nenjin on September 12, 2017, 06:37:03 pm
Quote
Vanheim
-20% cost to hammers.
I assume this means.....crafting magical hammers? So specific.
Also can someone explain to me (since I never play MP) why movement is so important? With fliers I can get maybe 3 provinces worth of moves but rarely will I ever have a foot army get more than, or less than, 1 move in a turn. So why does movement seem so important to non-cav, non-fliers? Or is that really who most of these changes are targeted at?
It's just reading all thees movement changes, to me in my head I'm going: "Ok so still one province for foot troops. Still one province. And that one...still one province."
Post by: etgfrog on September 12, 2017, 06:44:02 pm
Shields (even magical) can be damaged or broken. They are auto repaired after battle. And yes, magical shields can be lost permanently this way (they only can get damaged, if broken they dissappear). Magic shields get a bonus to resist this.Rip vineshields thugs.
Slash weapons have +75% break shields
Blunt weapons have +25%
Pierce weapons have +0%
Post by: nenjin on September 12, 2017, 07:01:54 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 12, 2017, 07:03:29 pm
Post by: nenjin on September 12, 2017, 07:10:08 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 12, 2017, 07:12:04 pm
Post by: etgfrog on September 12, 2017, 07:14:55 pm
Post by: Culise on September 12, 2017, 07:22:58 pm
Also also, I hope that the list of "snow walk" countries simply forgot to include Vanarus between Rus and Bogarus. Elsewise, things might get a bit odd in the snowy north. :P
Post by: etgfrog on September 12, 2017, 08:02:57 pm
Which makes sense, then slashing weapons would end up being death by a thousand cuts.
I also just realised, this is going to make slings pretty good.
Post by: Cruxador on September 12, 2017, 09:42:44 pm
I used the word testing for a reason. Even if you don't really play the game to its fullest extent*, if you do have a more in-depth singleplayer game you can still use a custom/premade map.QuoteI mean, who uses the default random maps anyway though? I can't remember the last time I've done so except for testing things in singleplayer.
To note, all I play is SP Dominions. So this is important to me on some level, especially because I'm wondering how long it will take a new version of RanDom to appear (think it took at least a month after the Dom4 release), and how important that will be for me to enjoy the game. It'd be nice if Illwinter completely adapted RanDom into their own map generator but if it hasn't happened yet....
I think I've seen like 4 posts of that data blub. Do they just keep updating it? Anyways that's a lot of info, thanks.Yeah, he's updating it with things that beta testers say in the Discord, and presumably anywhere else he happens to notice them talking.
Quote
Even more specific, it's dwarven hammers. This was an example Zonk gave of the new mechanic where certain nations can have a discount on specific items.QuoteVanheim
-20% cost to hammers.
I assume this means.....crafting magical hammers? So specific.
Quote
Also can someone explain to me (since I never play MP) why movement is so important? With fliers I can get maybe 3 provinces worth of moves but rarely will I ever have a foot army get more than, or less than, 1 move in a turn. So why does movement seem so important to non-cav, non-fliers? Or is that really who most of these changes are targeted at?The whole strategic movement system is changed. It's a lot more like most strategy games now, where there's a large number that terrain types then subtract from. That said, movement speed was always important. It's no good having a powerful army if they can't catch your enemy to kill them. Now cavalry can be the ones that don't get caught, where before it was only fliers or elves.
Quote
It's just reading all thees movement changes, to me in my head I'm going: "Ok so still one province for foot troops. Still one province. And that one...still one province."Well, if your foot troops take a one-province step, that means they're slow. So it goes. Fast troops would be meaningless if other troops weren't slow, it would just kill the need to plan ahead.
My gamer brains says Pierce should be better against shields than slash but I'm sure there's meta balance reasons for this.No, definitely not. It's based on the way real weapons work. Pierce is things like spears and arrows. they pretty much just get stuck in a shield. Blunt things have a chance to break them. But slashing things chop into the shield itself, reaving it from the edge. And it includes axes; there's a reason that the weapon most known for being specialized in breaking shield walls was the dane axe and not the dane spear or something. And a reason that lumberjacks don't typically carry spears.
But 0 versus 75%? Seems like shields would immediately disappear in melee and that's not exactly fitting either.Similarly, there's a reason that for the formal duels of holmgang, people brought three shields with them, not just one. Unlike certain SCs, they didn't have one shield for every hand but the one with the frost brand.
*I think a fair few people do now. With Desura long dead, it's hard for newer players to get into the active community because there's only the Steam forums (which suck) a discord (which require a certain degree of buy in), and a few places that mostly avoid outsiders.
Post by: Frumple on September 12, 2017, 09:46:37 pm
It's just reading all thees movement changes, to me in my head I'm going: "Ok so still one province for foot troops. Still one province. And that one...still one province."I still haven't actually looked at the changes being planned, but most map move 1 dom units (at least in 3 or 4) are either fairly specialized/elite or effectively garbage. There's sorta' exceptions with certain particularly heavy armored nations, but even those have a real nasty problem with getting ran around, out attritioned due to greater ease of reinforcement (mapmove 1 vs mapmove 2 generally means the latter gets where you need them in half the time, at the absolute least until pretty deep into some of the research trees), etc.
Having an army that can move even at two makes a helluva' difference when it comes to... most things. Expansion is about the closest to an exception, and depending on what you run into even for that, being able to redirect to a different front, pull back to defend, and so on, is still a major advantage. An army in transit functionally isn't an army save for purposes of posturing, heh. Also can make it a fair bit harder to get artillery'd on, depending on the situation. It's just a pretty major advantage all around.
Post by: Culise on September 12, 2017, 10:28:18 pm
Post by: Zonk on September 13, 2017, 07:24:37 am
Since I'm a beta tester I can answer a few quick questions but I suggest you check out other threads such as on the Invision forums, or the Discord severs.
As for shields: yes, piercing can break shields, it's just the worse weapon damage type for it.
The mechanic compares the attack damage to the shield's protection modified by various factors.
Shields don't have pseudo-HP counters, they are either damaged (-20% prot) or broken (-50%). So a shield can't be worn down by many small hits.
Shields are repaired post-battle using province resources - this is for regular, non-magic item shields.
Forged magical shields given to commanders behave somewhat differently: they auto-repair opostbattle if damaged, but if broken they are permanently lost (commander gets his default shield instead).
Magical shields however are harder to break, so it should be rare - except for vine shields, perhaps.
MA Ulm has magical shields (and armor!) on its troops.
I confirm roads are map feature and can't be built anymore. A full plain with no snow or roads costs 6 MM to fully move through. Standard light infanty & heavy cavalry are 14 MM, standard heavy is 8, light cavalry can be 20+.
Legionarie-style troops usually have +4 to represent their discipline and ability to march long distances.
You can also multimove through hostile provinces, but it's far harder especially if not stealthy.
Last but not least, you can move two or more caves or seas, but the cost is high, and flying in caves is slower too.
Post by: E. Albright on September 13, 2017, 10:53:05 am
Zonk, is the Formation Fighter command on phalanxes, etc. gone, or does it now merely affect double line/sparse line, or is it a morale (or something else) bonus in line formations, or...?
Post by: Zonk on September 13, 2017, 11:06:17 am
I'm still not sure 120/+2 commanders are worth it though, when they take the place of 2 80/+1s.
Formation fighter now changes troop density, effectively making unit count as smaller (or bigger) for purpose of fitting in a square.
Human hoplites with formation fighter are 4 to a square despite size 2.
Uruk has Moon Maidens: Enkidu (so size 3), but you can fit 3 to a square.
There are negative examples too: Therodian Dancers and Burning Ones are size 2 & 3 respectively, but 'bad formation fighter' makes them take the space of size 3 and 4 units.
Of course, this means formation fighter is no longer a 100% advantage (even if minor).
The troops get more attacks per square (and can share receiving attacks) and are easier to buff, but are also more vulnerable to enemy AOE attacks.
Also because the repel system is now much closer to Dom3 - only the attacked unit gets a repel attempt - it's not as useful with long weapons as you'd expect.
Post by: sprinkled chariot on September 13, 2017, 11:36:16 am
also what is the adress for dominions discord.
Post by: E. Albright on September 13, 2017, 11:44:14 am
I'm still not sure 120/+2 commanders are worth it though, when they take the place of 2 80/+1s.
I'd think that would depend on how awful the basic morale of the troops in question are. E.g. a Bandar Noble seems more likely to be worth the extra cost than a Legatus Legionus. It also might matter if (as per the question posed to you earlier elsewhere) you're using end-of-battle morale instead of out-of-battle morale.
Formation fighter now changes troop density, effectively making unit count as smaller (or bigger) for purpose of fitting in a square.
Do you recall if the the larger units communicating their larger size via the formation fighter icon? I basically ask this to try to make an indirect prediction of how likely it is that this command will be available to mod with...
Post by: Zonk on September 13, 2017, 02:49:43 pm
It's already moddable, it reuses the old #formationfighter command but obviously with different values: I experimented with it and was able to make size 2 units that were 4, 5 or even 6 to a square
Post by: E. Albright on September 13, 2017, 06:14:03 pm
Is the number of troops to a square (with Formation Fighter, Shrinking, Larger, etc. accounted for, ideally) accessible anywhere in the UI? I know size is there, but this would be a handy bit of info to have - or at a minimum it would be useful if the FF icon stated how much it was changing the default value.
This also seems like it might be worthwhile to look at with some of the edge cases for size transitions; size 1 vaettir and size 2 bakemonos are probably the unit types where this sticks out the most. Vaettir are definitely the "biggest" size 1 troops, and I could see them being 5 to a square instead of 6 - and likewise, I could see bakemonos (as probably the smallest size 2 humanoids; I am remembering correctly in thinking they long ago were size 1, right?) being 4 instead of 3...
(On a more NationGenerous note, I look forward to making hoburgbred and markatabred take up slightly more space.)
Post by: Zonk on September 14, 2017, 02:21:24 am
I'm not sure the mechanics currently allow to make size 1 units 5 to a square. Bakemono could be 4 to a square, but seeing them have 'formation fighting' would feel very unthematic.
I suggest you don't worry much about modding support right now; We have several modders in the beta team, not just me, and understand modding isn't the top priority right now but have already requested future support for fully modding events (#selectevent), poptypes & defenders, and new blesses (not creating new ones perhaps but changing paths, costs and passive/incarnate status).
Post by: E. Albright on September 14, 2017, 02:44:43 am
I'm not sure the mechanics currently allow to make size 1 units 5 to a square. Bakemono could be 4 to a square, but seeing them have 'formation fighting' would feel very unthematic.
I agree it would look weird enough that the result would not feel justified (though it might feel a little better if it was only the warriors - probably still not enough, though), and it's a pity that we can't get something finer-grained for the size-1 folk. Ah, well, 'twas an (over exuberant) thought...
Post by: ThtblovesDF on September 14, 2017, 06:24:54 am
I personally really like that there is no more "my units attacked first" advantage. I was always to lazy to look up unit movements and place units correctly anyway.
Might lead some more intresting battles, like both armys casting earthquake at exactlly the same time... - but - what about the defenders advantage? No more first turn... It's already quite hard to surive when you're on the losing end.
Post by: E. Albright on September 14, 2017, 04:44:38 pm
Post by: Frumple on September 14, 2017, 11:59:38 pm
What counters a dense square of really good units (imagine some blessed dudes with fire/death/ice pikes just waiting to poke you)?I'd imagine the same things that more or less always has? Debuffs and/or AoE damage they don't resist and/or enough chaff/spam they fatigue out and die, etc. Maybe tramplers, but I seem to recall repel actually being one of their counters.
Could always be room to add specific formation killing abilities, though. It'd be interesting to have a battle spell or unit ability that temporarily (or permanently, for that matter; new affliction, paranoia, giving the unit like a 10 point malus) messed with that formation fighter value. Could easily see pan's lot, some of the oni nations, r'lyeh gate spawn, horrors, etc., able to stop nearby units from bunching up. Stuff that causes it to fluctuate would be entirely too appropriate, too -- it'd be ideal for like a second stage berserk effect or somethin'.
Post by: Zonk on September 15, 2017, 02:22:21 am
(though I would like to see insanity do *something* on troop, but it could be just a chance to not act that round or target an ally)
Post by: Frumple on September 15, 2017, 08:47:48 am
'Course, if you were actually playing with the mechanic instead of just having it as a static effect sort of thing, spells that specifically target certain densities -- not necessarily low or high, mind, but varying depending on the spell -- would be another obvious step, there. That cornered rat spell could grant bonuses the more stacked up units are, heat/cold auras (or fear) could have an adjustment based on density (probably not generally enough to outperform larger units with higher bases, but enough it's notable, and possibly synergies for specific units, too), all sorts of stuff like that. Certain priests or song-using units having a choral effect when close enough to each other (with density adjustments letting you stack more into an area) or somethin' would be thematic enough I'm suddenly wondering why something like that isn't already in the game (auto-commune when close enough to someone or X number of someones with the same trait?).
Almost certainly not needed from a balance perspective, of course, but imo unit density would be a hella' neat mechanic to be able to explicitly play with rather than it just being there or something incidental to an effect's impact.
Post by: sprinkled chariot on September 15, 2017, 01:41:53 pm
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
* summons skeleton *
Post by: E. Albright on September 15, 2017, 02:40:53 pm
Post by: E. Albright on September 15, 2017, 03:00:56 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 15, 2017, 03:18:34 pm
Post by: Cruxador on September 15, 2017, 05:52:15 pm
Making them faster and enlarging them will let them kill more, but if you're just using them for blocking, which is what they're best for, they're made worse now since blood vengeance (which is the best thing for making evocations hurt) costs more.
Post by: E. Albright on September 15, 2017, 08:55:58 pm
Post by: Zonk on September 16, 2017, 07:06:36 am
Half dead is disease resistance 100% + needs not eat, it won't help in battle (except perhaps vs decay) by providing encumbranc 0 if that's what you expect.
Non-monkey animal units have their siege defence halved. Undisciplined also halves it.
Blood vengeance will have more through damage chekcs; apparently before you could trigger BV even if your attack was negated by ethereal (and thus no damage was done)
Post by: Cruxador on September 16, 2017, 10:57:42 am
Have fun breaching castles full of non-starving Str 15 freespawning boars.Not really worth the pretender design cost considering you can do the same with bags of wine.
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 16, 2017, 11:12:37 am
Post by: E. Albright on September 16, 2017, 01:13:16 pm
Non-monkey animal units have their siege defence halved. Undisciplined also halves it.
This is very welcome and frankly much-needed news, for all that I'll miss manning my walls with teeming hordes of wolves and hawks.
Not really worth the pretender design cost considering you can do the same with bags of wine.
Bags of wine use up emeralds that could be used for more Great Boars. Bags of wine also don't protect your garrison and druids against BVCs, which are always fun to use when you're under siege and the invaders are going to take a while to get in, if they even can.
If animals and the undisciplined are finally having their masonry nerfed, though, it's not that much of an issue since a boar will only be 0.56 siege defense. Not awful, but not the crazy 2.25 they are in Dom4.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on September 16, 2017, 08:38:26 pm
More options for more silly fun.
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on October 12, 2017, 11:14:59 pm
I'd really, really like them to stop putting "Cancel" or "Exit" buttons at the bottom of scrolling lists, though. Having to scroll through the whole list to reach the exit button is pretty annoying if you don't have a scrollwheel (i.e. playing on a tablet).
Post by: Frumple on October 13, 2017, 01:14:57 pm
Post by: E. Albright on October 13, 2017, 04:33:33 pm
Post by: Cruxador on October 13, 2017, 06:17:02 pm
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on October 14, 2017, 02:40:16 am
Playing on a tablet seems like it must be annoying in a lot of ways.It is, though mostly for stupid reasons like that. When you have a built-in digitizer to precisely click things (i.e. Surface tablets, Wacom tablets, or the Samsung ATIV series that I use), the biggest problems end up being things that force the use of the keyboard or the scrollwheel. The scrollwheel one is mostly just annoying. The occasional weird command that only exists as a keyboard shortcut can be solved with the onscreen keyboard. The Move command in the commander menu, on the other hand, just makes me want to bang my head against something. When you want a stealthy unit to attack a province, you need to Shift-click that province. If you just click, the unit sneaks. You can't shift-click with the onscreen keyboard. And the Move command in the commander menu exists only to pop up a message window saying that you need to use shift-click. Even though orders like move-patrol and raid use the exact same mechanic without issue.
Post by: IWishIWereSarah on October 14, 2017, 07:24:30 am
It seems like things the devs could do "easily", but haven't though about because they don't have the same use-cases.
Post by: Cruxador on October 14, 2017, 08:13:01 am
Have you tried to write about these button/shortcut issues on the official forum (whatever it is, now that Desura disappeared) ?The official forum is now Steam. Devs don't actually use it though. Your best bet is probably the UI thread on dom3mods. There's beta testers there who will relay the message. If nothing else, the shift-click thing seems like something they could fix, since that's something you outright can't do, although convenience for a non-standard control scheme may not be top priority given how much other stuff they have to worry about for the new iteration.
Post by: Zonk on October 14, 2017, 08:14:33 am
If you want more info on the game and screenshots, I suggest you check http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showforum=37 especially the Pictures thread.
Post by: E. Albright on October 14, 2017, 11:25:53 am
Post by: etgfrog on November 10, 2017, 11:52:58 am
Post by: Jilladilla on November 10, 2017, 12:10:06 pm
Post by: MCreeper on November 12, 2017, 04:46:32 am
1. I checked that llamaserver doesn't work on older versions and rather doesn't work on pirated version.
2. Dominions 5 is really only game i, man that never bought any game, really considered to buy, but even base dom4 price is "hell, no" for me.
3. By the time there will be christmas discount or something, i will surely go back to sanity and will NOT buy it. And dollar will rise again just to troll me, and it will be actually the same price. :P
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 12, 2017, 06:06:03 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Clearly steam should take Crypto-cash ; ) - I used to have american friends buy the game for me in $, cause something costing both 30 $ and 30 € is highly silly, when you can just gift it and safe like 6-8€
Post by: Radsoc on November 12, 2017, 07:04:58 am
Looking forward to Dom 5, but will most likely wait until a sale anyway (or at least that's what I'm telling myself).
Post by: Cruxador on November 12, 2017, 11:06:43 am
As for currencies, the dollar is actually one of the worst currencies to buy in, steam organizes things so it costs more for richer countries. Of course, that means that euro costs the most, but it's still likely to be the least as a portion of your monthly spending compared to other countries.
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on November 12, 2017, 12:31:35 pm
That said, I know Illwinter's prices are properly scaled to us, but I'll still be waiting for a sale, and maybe training offline on a pirated version in the meantime. There is simply no way for me to afford even a reasonably-priced game at this point. I've barely scraped together enough overhead to keep the internet access going this month. :|
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 25, 2017, 06:56:41 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=168365.0
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 26, 2017, 08:11:36 am
Post by: Radsoc on November 26, 2017, 08:20:05 am
Post by: etgfrog on November 26, 2017, 08:36:46 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 26, 2017, 09:30:23 am
RE: Etgfrogs video link - looking pretty good, especially finding out how your units died, what happend and all that.
Post by: etgfrog on November 26, 2017, 10:12:41 am
Interesting video that goes over quite a few of the generic changes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdRjM1L-1w
Post by: E. Albright on November 26, 2017, 03:04:11 pm
Post by: Cruxador on November 26, 2017, 03:34:14 pm
That's actually a quite major change, as it makes the combat AI harder to exploit (and as a result, stands to make expansion a lot more risky with non-elite troops).Yeah, there's actually tons of changes that are quite major like that but aren't getting much attention, mostly because Illwinter sucks at (or doesn't care about) marketing.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 26, 2017, 05:18:24 pm
Post by: Cruxador on November 26, 2017, 05:37:15 pm
So is the new Dominions more combat/conquest-centric than historically focused on what is essentially a race to construct magical superweapons?Dominions 4 was already a big change in that direction. 3 was the era of the supercombatant. 4 was the era of mage support. 5 weakens mage primacy with the new real time battles and casting times, but it remains to be seen how this will ultimately change the way people play. Assuming this is the kind of thing that you're talking about, it's not really clear since "magical superweapons" is pretty broad and "combat and conquest" have always been the focus of the game.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 26, 2017, 06:15:01 pm
Post by: etgfrog on November 26, 2017, 06:35:38 pm
Not actualy released yet :(
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 26, 2017, 06:38:30 pm
EDIT:
Quote from: Modding Manual
#enchrebate50 <enchantment number>
The monster will be 50 gold cheaper to recruit when this enchantment is active.
Hmmm. Does anybody know what this would be used for? I want to say it's for a new nation but nothing I've heard about jives with it. Maybe it's for a future, still in progress nation?
EDIT2:
Quote from: Modding Manual
#monpresentrec "<monster name>" | <monster nbr>
This monster can only be recruited if a unit of "monster name" type is present in the recruiting province. Montag numbers can be used.
#ownsmonrec "<monster name>" | <monster nbr>
This monster can only be recruited if a unit of "monster name" type is owned by the recruiting player. Montag numbers can be used.
#nowish
This monster cannot be wished for.
#addrandomage <years>
Makes the monster start 1 to years (a random die) older.
#mindslime <area>
Grants the mindslime ability.
#overcharged <dmg>
Grants the overcharged ability.
#addupkeep <gold>
Upkeep will be calculated as if the unit cost this much more to recruit.
#formationfighter <xsize>
A formation fighter is well drilled in using tight formations and can fit more units into one square. The xsize value indicates the extra size points that will fit in a square. Use a value of 2 for a normal formation fighting human.
#sneakunit <value>
The item will grant stealth to nonstealthy units.
More interesting modding commands. #addupkeep is really nice since you no longer have to flub that with taking away gold per unit.
Monpresentrec and ownsmonrec is really interesting to me. I wonder what it'd be used for.
Quote from: Modding Manual, 11 Monster Modding, New Abilities for Dominions 5
These Modding commands are new for Dominions 5 and do not have detailed descriptions yet.
#mason
#onisummon <-1000 - 1000>
#curseluckshield <-1000 - 1000>
#sunawe <-1000 - 1000>
#spiritsight
#invisible
#fastcast <-1000 - 1000>
#doheal
#undregen <-1000 - 1000>
#spellsinger
#magicstudy <-1000 - 1000>
#yearturn <-1000 - 1000>
#fortkill <-1000 - 1000>
#thronekill <-1000 - 1000>
#farthronekill <-1000 - 1000>
#reanimpriest
#norange
#polyimmune
#minprison <0 - 2>
#startmajoraff <0 - 100>
#triplegod <0 - 10>
#triplegodmag <-10 - 10>
#unify
#triple3mon
#indepmove <0 - 100>
#indepstay <0 - 10>
Most of these we can guess what they're for but some are more questionable.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 26, 2017, 07:16:46 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 26, 2017, 07:19:10 pm
Post by: BlackHeartKabal on November 26, 2017, 07:48:10 pm
Post by: Gigalith on November 26, 2017, 07:50:44 pm
So is the new Dominions more combat/conquest-centric than historically focused on what is essentially a race to construct magical superweapons?Dominions 4 was already a big change in that direction. 3 was the era of the supercombatant. 4 was the era of mage support. 5 weakens mage primacy with the new real time battles and casting times, but it remains to be seen how this will ultimately change the way people play. Assuming this is the kind of thing that you're talking about, it's not really clear since "magical superweapons" is pretty broad and "combat and conquest" have always been the focus of the game.
Out of curiosity: I keep hearing people say that Dom3 had a higher supercombatant power level than Dom4. What actually changed between titles to make this so?
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 26, 2017, 08:07:45 pm
Out of curiosity: I keep hearing people say that Dom3 had a higher supercombatant power level than Dom4. What actually changed between titles to make this so?
From what I've heard/read/whatever:
- Luck changing to 'Only triggers on fatal blows'. In Dom 3 it triggered on every hit, so it could migrate a ton of damage, especially if stacked with eternalness and the like.
- Common SC chassis were weakened, or made more difficult and expensive to acquire and use.
- Common SC equipment being weakened or made more difficult and expensive, along with Dwarven Hammers reducing item costs by a flat rate of 2 instead of 25% of the total cost.
- New spells being added, or existing spells being buffed and changed to make them more effective against single targets.
- Lack of non-artifact gemgens is an important one. SCs were never cheap but you were generating a ton of gems in Dom 3's late game, which made them a reasonable investment. Not as much in Dom 4.
Post by: Cruxador on November 26, 2017, 08:17:27 pm
The number one reason is that games are shorter now. Thrones mean you no longer need to conquer every capital, and therefore the game is decided as soon as one player is totally dominant. Because most games end before what Dom3 would call the late game, you only very rarely build up the research to make what would inevitably occur in Dom3, and because of this and the gemgen thing, you don't have the resources to pay for them anyway. In Dom3, it was all but mandatory to churn out Tartarians and heal their afflictions (which is also harder now than it used to be as fewer things can heal the undead) but now that's rarely viable before someone has won.
The other change is balance tweaks to army buffs making troops relevant longer, which pushes back the age of supercombatants further.
Oh, and it's harder to pump your MR through the roof I think, though I don't remember specific changes there.
Post by: E. Albright on November 26, 2017, 10:14:33 pm
EDIT2:Quote from: Modding Manual...
More interesting modding commands. #addupkeep is really nice since you no longer have to flub that with taking away gold per unit.
Monpresentrec and ownsmonrec is really interesting to me. I wonder what it'd be used for.
All of the above (except the change to formationfighter) are actually late-stage Dom4 additions. #addrandomage is literally my fault, and #overcharge is very possibly my fault. The monpresentrec, etc. stuff was modding-focused, and there have already been some good examples released using it.
Oh, and it's harder to pump your MR through the roof I think, though I don't remember specific changes there.
I'm not sure what you're thinking of here - I definitely tooled around with upper-thirties MRs in a few Dom4 games, and I don't think unmodded Dom3 saw MR in the 40s. Are you thinking of the percentage-vs-numerical elemental damage reduction change so resistance-as-immunity gave way to resistance-as-resistance?
--
Another big change from Dom3 to Dom4 is that - either due to better balance or a shorter lifecycle - Dom4 never actually had a dominant rebalancing/content mod take root, although it seemed to be gradually lurching in that direction. When a lot of veteran players talk about Dom3, they're thinking of Dom3+CBM. CBM took most of the issues that made SCs so predominant in Dom3, fixed the gemgen one, and then "fixed" the others by raising the overall base power level and offering more diverse SC options to other paths.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 26, 2017, 10:18:46 pm
All of the above (except the change to formationfighter) are actually late-stage Dom4 additions. #addrandomage is literally my fault, and #overcharge is very possibly my fault. The monpresentrec, etc. stuff was modding-focused, and there have already been some good examples released using it.
Ah. The Dom 4 modding manual wasn't updated to reflect these changes so I knew nothing about that. Carry on then.
Post by: E. Albright on November 26, 2017, 11:36:13 pm
Quote from: llamabeast
The LlamaServer is now ready for Dominions 5! And even a day before release.
Post by: Culise on November 27, 2017, 02:19:10 am
Besides all that, there's two big changes that aren't directly related to SCs but still make a big difference.A corollary to the above note on the late game: Dominions 4 also rebalanced research costs significantly. In Dominions 3, research costs follow a Fibonacci-like pattern: 40, 60, 100, 160, etc. In Dominions 4, research costs follow a pattern that's much closer to exponential: 50, 100, 200, 400, 700, etc. Not only does the game end before you reach the "late game", it also takes much longer to reach the late game even in a pure-conquest Dominions 4 game, and you'll still have gaps in your research pattern compared to Dominions 3 if you beeline Construction and Conjuration for that delicious Tartarian-sauce-and-fishsticks.
The number one reason is that games are shorter now. Thrones mean you no longer need to conquer every capital, and therefore the game is decided as soon as one player is totally dominant. Because most games end before what Dom3 would call the late game, you only very rarely build up the research to make what would inevitably occur in Dom3, and because of this and the gemgen thing, you don't have the resources to pay for them anyway. In Dom3, it was all but mandatory to churn out Tartarians and heal their afflictions (which is also harder now than it used to be as fewer things can heal the undead) but now that's rarely viable before someone has won.
The other change is balance tweaks to army buffs making troops relevant longer, which pushes back the age of supercombatants further.
Oh, and it's harder to pump your MR through the roof I think, though I don't remember specific changes there.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 06:17:28 am
http://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/?snr=1_620_4_1401_45
Post by: Jilladilla on November 27, 2017, 06:35:00 am
Post by: Culise on November 27, 2017, 06:35:07 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 06:42:51 am
Post by: Shadowgandor on November 27, 2017, 06:52:39 am
Post by: Culise on November 27, 2017, 06:52:46 am
EDIT:
Any new nations introduced? Or interesting spells?New nations are EA Rus, MA Uruk, and LA Erytheia. Basically, the EA equivalent of Vanarus/Bogarus, the MA equivalent of Ur, and the LA equivalent of
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 06:59:52 am
Pan has a new summon spell, we'll see about the other stuff.
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 27, 2017, 07:11:31 am
Post by: Zonk on November 27, 2017, 07:45:20 am
Quote
Does anybody know what this would be used for? I want to say it's for a new nation but nothing I've heard about jives with it.It's a Dom4 command, Oceania had (and still does have this for Sirens when a global is up (Lure of the Deep?).
However the command sadly gives a fixed 50 gold rebate, not 50%, limiting it's usefulness for modding. I hope we can convince them to change this.
(Some of the other commands you list were already in Dom4 too, but they weren't in the manual, only on the webpage)
Three official maps only, for now, but the random mapgenerator is better than Dom4's.
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 07:58:30 am
Lovely. Nice to know my case of all-night-insommia wasn't a total wash.
Dammit, the one night I don't have this...
Post by: thvaz on November 27, 2017, 08:06:55 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 08:16:46 am
Winter and weather is more clearly there, more things interact...
I feel like one could do some silly things with priest spam, since you can work out some decent holy spells + bless combos... will test in detail later.
Post by: Karlito on November 27, 2017, 08:20:07 am
This game is great.
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 08:34:32 am
Does it feels very different from Dominions 4? I have Dominions 4 and played Dom 3 and felt the difference was very superficial. Things that are added in other games as free patches.
I'm not actually playing yet, but the changes to how combat work are going to be huge. IGOUGO -> more-or-less-simultaneous has balance implications that'll take a while to work out. The strategic movement changes look to be pretty dramatic as well.
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 27, 2017, 08:36:02 am
Post by: Culise on November 27, 2017, 09:06:33 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 09:09:41 am
Marigon Super knights (killed everything easily)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Jaguar Warriors of Mictalian with some Blood Buffs
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Exploitable?:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
_____
Daoine Sidhae with ... err... every buff basically:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 09:16:07 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 09:34:44 am
...
You can do the same thing with eagle warriors.
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on November 27, 2017, 09:35:40 am
By cosmic coincidence I just happened to check Illwinter's web page today to see just how out of date my Dom4 version is. "Holy cow, Dominions 5 released today!?". Not the best time for me to be spending 30€ on a videogame, so I'll wait 'n see for a bit. But consider my interest piqued for early 2018 PBEM funtimes.
Post by: MCreeper on November 27, 2017, 09:53:20 am
He~ey, I found something else interesting. The Titan of the Underworld now has a cursed helm that grants Invisibility. He also has Stealthy (40) and Assassin (3). Is this our first assassin-SC-pretender?Isn't he had helmet before?
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 09:56:40 am
You can have boars that never starve and explode when they die. I did a quick test of 240 Various troops (about 80 ranged) vs 15 suicide boars - they killed 24 real troops.
...
You can do the same thing with eagle warriors.
Yes, but the eagle warriors have social mores that prevent them from having a constant orgy in whatever fort (presumably festively draped in BVCs, since they're disease immune too) that they all live in.
Post by: etgfrog on November 27, 2017, 10:06:44 am
Post by: Culise on November 27, 2017, 10:36:55 am
Ah, it appears that is indeed correct, but it's not displayed on the pretender screen. His Stealthiness was more powerful in Dom4, though, so it's been nerfed.He~ey, I found something else interesting. The Titan of the Underworld now has a cursed helm that grants Invisibility. He also has Stealthy (40) and Assassin (3). Is this our first assassin-SC-pretender?Isn't he had helmet before?
Post by: Karlito on November 27, 2017, 10:45:28 am
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 11:53:07 am
That is all.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 12:51:24 pm
You can take heart companions and give them "larger" + "3x Attack skill increase" to have the most mighty of all mighty repell lance/spear things. The spare fire can be used to add Solar-Weapons.
Post by: nenjin on November 27, 2017, 12:52:29 pm
Post by: Karlito on November 27, 2017, 01:25:33 pm
Re: Stackable bless:
You can take heart companions and give them "larger" + "3x Attack skill increase" to have the most mighty of all mighty repell lance/spear things. The spare fire can be used to add Solar-Weapons.
I vaguely recall reading that repel was nerfed to be one check per square rather than one check per weapon.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 03:12:11 pm
So Chill Aura on Niefel Giants is extremly rough on any normal troops and even more so on anything amored.
You can combine it with heat aura, which claims to give fire resistance (5), but... doesn't, at least not if you also have chill aura.
______
Overall making whatever the unit already has even stronger works great - like giving the LA pan ladys double-awe (and if you feel kinky + fear) will result in a nice one-trick-pony that beats any human troops in melee by never letting them make there moral check.
Post by: Drakale on November 27, 2017, 03:24:28 pm
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 04:19:34 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 27, 2017, 04:34:28 pm
So most broken unit with the new bless is marigon, dear god - I didn't lose a single knight in the last 8 fights, always with more or equal enemys. Feels op in such a good way.
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 05:40:46 pm
Post by: Zonk on November 27, 2017, 06:58:07 pm
slave priests/mages have the slave tag (and thus half upkeep).The mindcontrolled/lobotomized troops got this now, too.
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2017, 07:03:43 pm
Post by: Karlito on November 27, 2017, 09:47:27 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 27, 2017, 09:49:33 pm
Post by: Karlito on November 27, 2017, 09:52:40 pm
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 27, 2017, 10:33:39 pm
EDIT: Fixed. In case anyone is wondering, you have to run the game in windowed mode. Add "-w" to your start options and you'll be fine.
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2017, 12:02:45 am
Post by: Kruniac on November 28, 2017, 12:28:56 am
I'm liking the soundtrack. Yeah, it's not medieval folk music anymore but the production quality is quite high and, as someone who listens to a lot of generic fantasy / video game music, this stuff is quite nice.
I'd rather stab my anus with a fork than listen to one more track from Dom3/4. Too overplayed.
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2017, 12:37:22 am
Post by: Cruxador on November 28, 2017, 12:44:27 am
Unrelated to that mental image....how do you get more commander points? Is it just flat tied to your fort type? Can't see any way to upgrade forts.Yep, just fort type, and your maximum fort level is based on nation. If you're in the early age, you probably can't upgrade your fort any further.
Post by: Kruniac on November 28, 2017, 01:59:32 am
That is all.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 28, 2017, 05:37:06 am
Ranting aside, Imprint souls creates some blessed units + priest, which can be used for some intresting effects, depending on your bless... Feels like it got upgraded.
_____
And the new pan summon ... i don't think its any good, even at "being high hp & protection + howl", you got better options.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Drakale on November 28, 2017, 09:54:01 am
Post by: Majestic7 on November 28, 2017, 10:57:30 am
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2017, 11:06:29 am
Unrelated to that mental image....how do you get more commander points? Is it just flat tied to your fort type? Can't see any way to upgrade forts.Yep, just fort type, and your maximum fort level is based on nation. If you're in the early age, you probably can't upgrade your fort any further.
I'm playing MA Sceleria. How the heck am I supposed to get 2 more commander points to by my highest level priests if my fortress can't be upgraded anymore?
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 28, 2017, 11:07:48 am
Post by: etgfrog on November 28, 2017, 11:08:54 am
I'm playing MA Sceleria. How the heck am I supposed to get 2 more commander points to by my highest level priests if my fortress can't be upgraded anymore?If you cant build a citadel, you cant get 3 commander points. You can queue up the priest and it will be like dominions 4 slow to recruit.
Also, that tree looks like it could be decent defense of a territory, would end up messing with any would be raiders. The cost might be a problem though.
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on November 28, 2017, 11:28:27 am
Post by: nenjin on November 28, 2017, 11:38:30 am
Post by: E. Albright on November 28, 2017, 12:03:18 pm
Ranting aside, Imprint souls creates some blessed units + priest, which can be used for some intresting effects, depending on your bless... Feels like it got upgraded.
Yep, it got upgraded... in Dominions 4. :p Don't you remember the composition of loonies I was summoning in your territory in 4.26?
The hamadryad isn't good in a "do your own thing" sort of way, but it's a tough, high-MR nature mage which could quite nicely bolster a defensive garrison. If there wasn't also the cheapo fort spell, I'd say it would be good to drop on unforted forested thrones... but the fort spell pretty much preempts (preents?) that usage.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 28, 2017, 12:24:37 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: MCreeper on November 28, 2017, 12:32:28 pm
please don't tell me it's a photo
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 28, 2017, 12:45:35 pm
And that picture represents the temple in that province. And it looks like a photo to me.
Post by: Radsoc on November 28, 2017, 12:51:29 pm
All I need now is to redesign my old pretender (old habits die hard) and a Dom 5 crash course for Dom 4 players. I like the switch to sim-turn battles, but formations seem to burst into swarms too easily at the moment.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 28, 2017, 01:08:33 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The Stampede is real...
Normal nations: I try a bless, it fails (early or late game)
Pan Bless: It works, no matter what i put on these guys.
Post by: ChairmanPoo on November 28, 2017, 04:06:00 pm
I think I'll wait for a discount or a consumerist fit. whichever comes first
Post by: Cruxador on November 28, 2017, 04:08:05 pm
What that picture near their castle is?That's how temples are now. I'm quite miffed that the old display isn't even an option.
please don't tell me it's a photo
Post by: MCreeper on November 28, 2017, 04:09:39 pm
Post by: Ametsala on November 28, 2017, 04:51:22 pm
What that picture near their castle is?That's how temples are now. I'm quite miffed that the old display isn't even an option.
please don't tell me it's a photo
Is there at least some variety or is it stave churches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church) for everyone?
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 28, 2017, 04:55:19 pm
Crazy centaurs. Stats before bless and stats after bless, please?
These are blesses without a single death, unluckyness or drain scale, if you want you can break these dudes wide open.
Vanilla stats
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
A battle
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
A defence buff stats
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The buff to the previous:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
High defence, low encumberance, very good hp and ok protection - you get through all that and just get a nope from the eternal 90% of the time - and if you do damage it, it'll berserk your face off.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
____________
Edit: I tried a full-commitment bless (well, softly commited - I'm not gonna take sloth for this, so you could add 1-2 more buffs if you care):
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Here is the bless:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
__________
Berserk removes any and all moral concerns, MR is high enough to be ok and the high default values even out any mistakes and bad rolls and then you recover the wound, ensuring a forever-elite...
For reference, I did a 5 player AI game and won, having roughly 150 white horsies at the end and having lost around 12 during the entire game... its silly.
_________
PSS:
Half-dead Maverni Boars still starve! Lies and bullshit man...
Post by: E. Albright on November 28, 2017, 08:37:14 pm
Is there at least some variety or is it stave churches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church) for everyone?
Icon varies per temple type. So yes, there are a number of variants. 15, I think? It's been a while since I've looked at temple types in the nation modding docs.
Post by: Cruxador on November 28, 2017, 09:17:21 pm
How did you even have casualties with defense like that? Penalties from surrounding?Crazy centaurs. Stats before bless and stats after bless, please?
These are blesses without a single death, unluckyness or drain scale, if you want you can break these dudes wide open.
Vanilla statsA blessSpoiler (click to show/hide)Spoiler (click to show/hide)
A battleSpoiler (click to show/hide)
Quote
Berserk removes any and all moral concernsThat's an interesting philosophical statement.
Quote
Half-dead Maverni Boars still starve! Lies and bullshit man...Out of the box they do, but now there's a relatively cheap death bless you can take to make them not starve.
Post by: Farce on November 28, 2017, 09:20:31 pm
Post by: E. Albright on November 28, 2017, 09:36:34 pm
Half-dead Maverni Boars still starve! Lies and bullshit man...Out of the box they do, but now there's a relatively cheap death bless you can take to make them not starve.
No, that's what they mean. Half Dead is either broken or has a very misleading description. Right now it just provides 100% disease resistance and does nothing to the unit's supply intake. So boars still starve, and get the various starvation penalties. Mind you, they never starve to death, as the disease resistance means they heal as normal as though they had no disease, but since they do become diseased, they gradually rack up afflictions from the monthly disease damage.
It's sorta entertaining to see Half Dead work like that, but it's almost certainly a bug, and has been reported as such.
Any fun changes for Ulm? They're my favorite nation in like every age, but I just haven't had time to look into anything yet.
Ulmish steel armor now is magic, so all their steel-clad troops get resistance to armor-damaging effects for everything from their helmets to their shields.
Post by: Farce on November 28, 2017, 10:26:26 pm
I'll have to check out the Japan nation too, I guess, and see if Chaos Power and no shields still makes them weird and unsynergistic or whatever.
Post by: etgfrog on November 28, 2017, 11:59:12 pm
Also, try playing with cataclysm set to turn 1, just to see the world burn due to horrors.
Post by: E. Albright on November 29, 2017, 01:23:41 am
Post by: etgfrog on November 29, 2017, 02:04:12 am
Spoiler: the dreams are real (click to show/hide)
Ok, things I've learned, even with a fort, if you lose the battle for the territory, you lose the throne. This is probably to counter balance the option of just holding in the fort forever. Doom horrors are not permenantly dead during the cataclysm, I killed the abomination of desecation, then it showed back up on the next turn to attack the throne again, which I lost because the previous time it killed 150 shambler thralls. Its also looks to be a global game over if all thrones are destroyed.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 29, 2017, 03:45:01 am
Also, the new crippeld units die is like the most annoying message in the world, so now I have to check every unit before we march and leave the cripples behind as pseudo PD?
Post by: E. Albright on November 29, 2017, 04:26:48 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 29, 2017, 04:59:38 am
Text of "half-dead"
-Do not need to eat
-Will neverbecome diseased
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Reality:
"There is a lack of supplies in [Region with only scared commanders and scared units (boar warriors and... boars)"
-Starving
-Diseased
Yes, they do have the half-dead bless:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And are starving anyways:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And are getting afflictions, without ever seeing combat:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Super Obvious bug, I thought there was beta testing?
Post by: E. Albright on November 29, 2017, 08:01:55 am
However, on reflection, it's pretty obvious that they hadn't thought thought through the precise mechanics of disease resistance because they hadn't considered affliction accumulation. So yes, the whole bless pretty much needs to be considered broken at this point, and the disease resistance part needs reported as well.
As to beta testing, I'd assume beta testers just weren't interested in the bless, and didn't bother testing it. Which is the problem with outside beta testers; you're a slave to their interests.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 29, 2017, 08:18:51 am
Ah well, thanks for reporting it.
Post by: alguLoD on November 29, 2017, 08:25:00 am
Post by: MCreeper on November 29, 2017, 12:08:44 pm
Post by: Farce on November 29, 2017, 12:38:36 pm
Flexible, but weak has always been my impression of them - lots of magic path variety, but they're spread out. Easy water access, but in like all three ages they tend to have kinda weak troops except for EA's oni (which will be less prevalent now, since they're freespawn now rather than hired?). I guess I've just never managed to figure out how to play them, am I missing something?
Post by: Karlito on November 29, 2017, 02:50:09 pm
I maybe lied a little bit. How's Yomi/Shinuyama/Jomon? I've never really been able to wrap my head around them. I see EA they don't hire their oni anymore, but built temples and get them as freespawn, which is an interesting change, and they still seem to have Chaos Power, which I've seen a lot of people say is actually a weakness. Turmoil hits gold production and they're really gold-heavy, and all that.Turmoil/Order has a much reduced impact on gold production compared to Dom4. You can offset Turmoil 3 with Growth 3 and come out with a small bonus to gold income.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on November 29, 2017, 03:19:49 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 30, 2017, 04:36:54 am
It's a bug, me thinks. Turn 1 Oceania will only have 1 commander point, but it fixes itself after a bit...
Post by: MCreeper on November 30, 2017, 06:57:12 am
1. How glamour ability works? Is commander under it is actually present somewhere, or it's chance to hit as with ethereal?
2. What pieces of non-blessed-by-RNG-god equipment give awe?
3. How much time it takes to hit and kill Bodhissatva of Mercy with ethereal chainmail (?) and whatever piexes of awe equipment, and fire bless (?) awe?
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on November 30, 2017, 07:45:43 am
Sweet jesus 35€. ???
Given the games market today this can be a hard sell. But so worth it if it's anything like dom4 multiplayer. Assuming you're into said multiplayer. It's ok in singleplayer too I suppose.
I'll be buying this first thing after temporary poverty passes, which shouldn't be long. To support the dev as someone said, and I know that even at full retail this will have a ridiculously good € per hour value.
I maybe lied a little bit. How's Yomi/Shinuyama/Jomon? I've never really been able to wrap my head around them. I see EA they don't hire their oni anymore, but built temples and get them as freespawn, which is an interesting change, and they still seem to have Chaos Power, which I've seen a lot of people say is actually a weakness. Turmoil hits gold production and they're really gold-heavy, and all that.
Flexible, but weak has always been my impression of them - lots of magic path variety, but they're spread out. Easy water access, but in like all three ages they tend to have kinda weak troops except for EA's oni (which will be less prevalent now, since they're freespawn now rather than hired?). I guess I've just never managed to figure out how to play them, am I missing something?
With LA Jomon... I seem to recall I just talked myself to barely survive till mid-late game and just rolled over everything with mage supported samurai armies from there. Can't remember whether I actually won or lost that match :P Seemed to follow a similar pattern with MA Shinuyama, based on my tests in singleplayer (or did I play them online at some point? Maybe?). MA just had more badass mages. And cheap goblin hordes as opposed to expensive samurai hordes. But basically mage supported armies and suicide earthquake/rain of stones/etc. mages is how I ran them MA/LA. Less suicide in MA with their ogre mages. Did ok. Fun if you enjoy that sort of play. I don't think they're near 'strongest' nations in their ages, but multiplayer Dominions is enough of a diplomatic mess anyway that it doesn't matter as much I don't think.
Flexible but weak sounds somewhat appropriate.
... now it's coming back to me. Huge samurai armies, cast 'flight' on everything and then spammed earthquake. Good times.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on November 30, 2017, 07:48:43 am
Example:
Earth Serpent has his own bless effects on map, while in battle he just doesn't have it...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Edmus on November 30, 2017, 08:19:12 am
Dealing with Helheim glamour was a challenge but bladewind provides.
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 30, 2017, 08:49:52 am
So many obvious bugs, sadly. Hoping for a patch soon....Was the battle outside the serpent's dominion?
Example:
Earth Serpent has his own bless effects on map, while in battle he just doesn't have it...Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: MCreeper on December 01, 2017, 05:48:10 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Heroic last stand in the fort.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That's how.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Now Atlantis attacked me with poison units and they all get killed with poison. Dammit.
Post by: E. Albright on December 01, 2017, 11:17:29 am
Post by: MCreeper on December 01, 2017, 11:38:18 am
Post by: E. Albright on December 01, 2017, 11:59:34 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 02, 2017, 05:58:58 am
-Combat Mages are far less important or useful, unless you scale into the (100+) unit area. They never account for troops stoping when meeting enemys, so there is always a high chance of one volly hitting your units. The casting is slower, too.
-Troops are better, flanking is MUCH better
-Speed is power - for flanking to rushing down a mage. Games never really get lategame enough where throwing fireballs would kill more then a fire elemental would.
-Either go full sacred, special scared (like magic lancing or a special resist) or ignore them.
-Most cheesy tactics are nerfed a bit.
-You should most likly be using more priests - the different anti-undead spells based on magic school make it harder for undead spam to deal with everything.
-Mounted Units op
Not much else I can really say, with some bugs going around and limited testing.
__________
So Acid Rain, does damage Armor, but ACID STORM does not. Weird, to me.
More testing, Acid Storm is pretty useless it seems - even if you combine it with Iron Bane and a Earthquake (to shake that armor lose) and a 160 Human-unit-enemy-army, 2 mages spamming fireballs get more kills, easily. Sure, it does scratch damage, but even that only rarly. Heat or Cold effects would kill the enemy faster by fatigue damage then this...
Post by: Cruxador on December 02, 2017, 10:46:59 am
-Either go full sacred, special scared (like magic lancing or a special resist) or ignore them.this doesn't reflect my findings. The simple workhorse blesses like blood surge and defense do pretty good work. Of course, they're not as potent as going heavily into bless, nor do they increase your tactical options like picking a niche bless that's chosen well for your nation, but they're often very affordable.
Post by: E. Albright on December 02, 2017, 10:56:02 am
So Acid Rain, does damage Armor, but ACID STORM does not. Weird, to me.
Sounds like an oversight. If you report it, it'll most likely get fixed.
Post by: MCreeper on December 02, 2017, 03:20:38 pm
Do i understand right that dancing shield have 50% chance to block all damage up to 20, and first shild's 50%/ is separated from second shield's 50%?
Eye of aiming have confusing description that states that user get better eyesight on remaiming eye. Will it work if you replace other eye with it? How much exactly precision blindness takes away?
Post by: Sinlessmoon on December 03, 2017, 08:34:23 pm
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on December 03, 2017, 09:12:20 pm
So, I just bought the game and having played only a tiny bit of dominions 4, where should I begin delving into this game? :P
EA Ermor. 2-3 bots. Conquest. Probably.
Post by: Karlito on December 04, 2017, 02:14:32 pm
Eye of aiming have confusing description that states that user get better eyesight on remaiming eye. Will it work if you replace other eye with it? How much exactly precision blindness takes away?
Being blind makes a unit have zero precision. Don't cut out both your eyes and replace them with magic rocks.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 04, 2017, 02:17:10 pm
Post by: Urist McScoopbeard on December 04, 2017, 02:31:39 pm
Unless you're a batperson or anyone else who doesn't use your eyes to see, in which case you have no downside to replacing your eyes with magic rocks. Absolutely none at all.
I'm... the eyehole man... get up outta here with my eyeholes!
Post by: Jilladilla on December 04, 2017, 04:26:09 pm
Post by: etgfrog on December 04, 2017, 06:06:16 pm
Post by: Jilladilla on December 04, 2017, 06:39:27 pm
How does it interact with spirit sight...
Spirit Sight only says it negates Darkness and removes any penalty against invisible stuff, so I'd guess they'd still suffer from eyeloss. I haven't tested this, though. However, Agartha's Great Olms both have the Blindsight tag and Spirit Sight.
Post by: Karlito on December 06, 2017, 04:21:49 pm
Post by: MCreeper on December 06, 2017, 04:40:44 pm
Post by: Karlito on December 06, 2017, 04:42:30 pm
Post by: Cruxador on December 06, 2017, 04:44:02 pm
Dom5 data inspector is up! (https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/) Only has units and items so far, and there may be bugs.Looks like weapons and armor are up too, if you tick the "advanced" box.
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 06, 2017, 11:09:21 pm
Post by: Cruxador on December 06, 2017, 11:40:29 pm
Anyone tried the new Rime Hammer? The inspector says it's secondary effect is 999 chill/cold damage mist in AOE 3. Isn't that 100% suicidal on use, regardless of cold resistance?Should be. Do weapon attacks include their own progenitors? I can't think of the last time I've seen AoE greater than one which wasn't from a spell. Or wait, I can – dragon fire. But that has a pretty specific trajectory that doesn't normally include friendlies, particularly since dragons are usually sent to the back row.
But yeah, there's no way you can get resistance even close to high enough to block that, so you'd have to hope that the random placement of the three AoE squares doesn't include you.
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 06, 2017, 11:48:26 pm
Do weapon attacks include their own progenitors? I can't think of the last time I've seen AoE greater than one which wasn't from a spell.The stone sword works like that. But it's doing a MR-negates petrification attack, so with 20+ you're mostly safe. This one looks like it's going to kill the user with 25% probability on each strike.
Post by: E. Albright on December 07, 2017, 12:13:01 am
Anyone tried the new Rime Hammer? The inspector says it's secondary effect is 999 chill/cold damage mist in AOE 3. Isn't that 100% suicidal on use, regardless of cold resistance?
One suspects the Mod Inspector is wrong, as Freezing Mist is listed as 1(cold/magic) AN nostrength AoE3 lingering 2 in-game.
[Edit: yep.]
Post by: Cruxador on December 07, 2017, 10:14:28 am
It would be an interesting mechanic were that not the case, though.Anyone tried the new Rime Hammer? The inspector says it's secondary effect is 999 chill/cold damage mist in AOE 3. Isn't that 100% suicidal on use, regardless of cold resistance?
One suspects the Mod Inspector is wrong, as Freezing Mist is listed as 1(cold/magic) AN nostrength AoE3 lingering 2 in-game.
[Edit: yep.]
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 08, 2017, 07:21:56 pm
Post by: Sirus on December 09, 2017, 06:01:10 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 09, 2017, 06:13:53 pm
Or are you referring to something completely different?
Post by: Sirus on December 09, 2017, 07:57:57 pm
I didn't realize the change was for lore reasons. I have very little idea what the Dominions lore actually is :P
Post by: Cruxador on December 09, 2017, 08:47:42 pm
https://cruxador.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/dominions-5-jumping-right-in/ (https://cruxador.wordpress.com/2017/12/10/dominions-5-jumping-right-in/)
It's a complete AAR of a multiplayer game.
It wasn't supposed to be complete this quickly but...
No, that was basically it. I tried to fire up a LA Ermor game in Dom4 the other day and the closest thing was the Lemura nation, which actually played rather different. Wasn't too fond of the changes.The old LA Ermor still exists though, it just got its age swapped. Ashen Empire is MA now, is all.
I didn't realize the change was for lore reasons. I have very little idea what the Dominions lore actually is :P
Post by: chaoticag on December 10, 2017, 07:31:43 am
I can see that I need to relearn the meta.
Post by: Zonk on December 10, 2017, 08:20:04 am
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=3561&view=findpost&p=40015961
You even have a sacred freespawn troop, but it's really rare.
Post by: Greenbane on December 11, 2017, 01:19:07 pm
I'm not very exprienced at all, having only played Dominions 3 ages ago, and buying but never really playing Dominions 4.
So with the fifth installment I intend to learn more of the game, and try to get more juice from it. It's not really a complex game, as its intricacy comes primarily from knowing how each of the many playable nations works, identifying its pros and cons, and last but certainly not least, famiiliarizing yourself with the many, many spells at your disposal.
And there's the bit of a problem I seem to have with the game right now, from my superficial level of understanding: it seems to be all about identifying the clearly overpowered spells, and discarding 80%+ of the list. Is this the way it's supposed to be or is it just a major balance issue? Is there real tactical depth or is it all about exploiting the 2-3 OP spells which are most compatible with your nation's playstyle and pretender?
Also, and this may be new to 5, is there any point to non-Sacred units? Clearly blessings can make a monumental difference, and turn Sacred units into unstoppable demigods. Seems like another huge balance issue, if they really render 90% of units irrelevant.
What am I missing?
Post by: nenjin on December 11, 2017, 01:24:06 pm
FWIW though, playing Dom single player against easy or medium AI is a very, very different game than playing against people.
Post by: Greenbane on December 11, 2017, 01:41:20 pm
Recruitment of Holy Units is limited. Not saying you're wrong, but there is a finite cap to Holy Unit recruitment per turn. Versus (functionally) unlimited recruitment of all other units in all other provinces.
FWIW though, playing Dom single player against easy or medium AI is a very, very different game than playing against people.
Limited per turn, yes, which helps but only to stem the flow to some extent. Is it really enough, if each can take on dozens of regular units on their own?
And yes, I'm sure singleplayer gives you a lot more leeway to experiment since the less-than-hardest AI won't necessarily go down the 100% optimal path. I'm just worried multi boils down to executing one of 2-3 optimal strategies, depending on nation, and forsaking most units (along with suboptimal spells) altogether. I suppose all competitive strategy multiplayer boils down to optimal paths, but I suppose I worry such paths are too few in a game with so much potential for variety.
Post by: E. Albright on December 11, 2017, 02:07:58 pm
It's actually a rather complex game because of the interaction between different troop rosters and spell lists. There are few spells that are optimal against everything, and there's counters for near to everything. And then there's counters for the counters, etc. In practice, if you try to do a one-trick-pony strategy against players rather than the AI, if you don't immediately win they'll find a counter and you'll either have to change your tactics or die.
Post by: nenjin on December 11, 2017, 02:30:31 pm
But players with a single mage and a few units, and the right spell selection, can shred forces 3x their size.
Dunno if the AI is any better in Dom 5. I'm kinda waiting for a new version of RanDOM before I get back in to it.
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 11, 2017, 07:01:30 pm
Is there real tactical depth or is it all about exploiting the 2-3 OP spells which are most compatible with your nation's playstyle and pretender?Think about the 'optimal' nation+spell+pretender combinations as the workhorse for your initial strategy. When you meet other players in battle, everybody has to adapt on the fly. Remember that the more less-obvious tactics you employ, the less predictable you are, and the harder it is to develop reliable counters.
(speaking of MP, of course)
Post by: E. Albright on December 11, 2017, 07:40:03 pm
Dunno if the AI is any better in Dom 5. I'm kinda waiting for a new version of RanDOM before I get back in to it.
General consensus is yes. I'd tend to agree.
Post by: chaoticag on December 11, 2017, 07:49:41 pm
-If you can do it, you can counter it.
-The most optimal army cannot stand up against a war on two fronts.
-Overcomitting to a build can cost you the flexibility a win needs.
Sometimes conflicts don't even tend to be mashing armies against each other. Last dominions I was playing as Nazca, and my main line of defense against Scaleria was maybe 3 mages, all decked to the teeth in magic items, whose entire point was to cast rain of storms then... retreat. Scaleria was trying pretty hard to push giant armies with mage support through provinces that may or may not be landmines capable of killing their mages, and since they attack defender goes first.
This is likely a strategy that only would have come up to me that game because of the specific pressures that I had to face, but my method of dealing with a bless strategy would likely be the same as the one I did last dominions for the most part. Tons of archers and fire arrows as an enchantment, with 100 slaves as blockers. It won't work all the time, and it shouldn't, but it works most the time, and should be able to crush most elite units that are about combat prowess above all.
Post by: Jilladilla on December 12, 2017, 12:33:57 am
Sometimes conflicts don't even tend to be mashing armies against each other. Last dominions I was playing as Nazca, and my main line of defense against Scaleria was maybe 3 mages, all decked to the teeth in magic items, whose entire point was to cast rain of storms then... retreat. Scaleria was trying pretty hard to push giant armies with mage support through provinces that may or may not be landmines capable of killing their mages, and since they attack defender goes first.
As the Sceleria player that game I can agree that this was an extraordinarily effective defense. But at the same time it was necessary, as my troop numbers more or less meant I could trade 10 of my troops for 1 of his and still come out ahead. (Longdead are cheap. Free, even.)
As another anecdote there is the tale of me fighting Marverni, they used a Blood Vengeance Bless, and with their freesspawning Great Boars, the Boarpocalypse was well underway, with human armies being trampled underfoot and larger armies swarmed and gored while taking the retribution damage from Blood Vengeance.. Trying to do what chaoticag did and doing a quick earthquake would be a suicide mission; as boars are actually durable; a Turn 1 Quake is not easy to do either, more or less mandating 10 turns of being knocked out and a Turn 2 quake would have the caster dealing with a few hundred instances of Blood Vengeance being directed at them... And the Boars are durable enough to mandate multiple quakes to kill...
What I did was simple: [REDACTED] (Ask me personally for details, if you really want to know). It was very successful. The moral of the story? If the situation seems dire, search the spell list; there might be a spell that addresses it perfectly.
Post by: Cruxador on December 12, 2017, 12:38:36 am
So with the fifth installment I intend to learn more of the game, and try to get more juice from it. It's not really a complex game, as its intricacy comes primarily from knowing how each of the many playable nations works, identifying its pros and cons, and last but certainly not least, famiiliarizing yourself with the many, many spells at your disposal.How is knowing seventy some nations and thousands of spells and units and using them effectively not complex?
Quote
And there's the bit of a problem I seem to have with the game right now, from my superficial level of understanding: it seems to be all about identifying the clearly overpowered spells, and discarding 80%+ of the list. Is this the way it's supposed to be or is it just a major balance issue? Is there real tactical depth or is it all about exploiting the 2-3 OP spells which are most compatible with your nation's playstyle and pretender?Well, you're playing singleplayer, so you can do it that way. The issue with that comes in multiplayer, when you use a single tactic (not necessarily based on a particular spell or spells) and get countered. If you're too ironbound in one "OP" setup, you'll get fleeced.
Quote
Also, and this may be new to 5, is there any point to non-Sacred units? Clearly blessings can make a monumental difference, and turn Sacred units into unstoppable demigods. Seems like another huge balance issue, if they really render 90% of units irrelevant.Well regarding the details of the balance, it's not totally clear yet since no serious game has been played to completion yet, and it'll take several before we really know anything for sure. But in general, the benefit to sacred units is that you can get a heck of a lot more of them – and blesses are nice, but for the most part they don't do anything you can't do with alteration and construction, and save on pretender points. They're only good because you can get them out early, but you pay for that in scales.
Quote
What am I missing?When people talk about Dominions using incredibly praising terms, they're not talking about the singleplayer experience. The AI is ordinary video game AI, and as such is not capable of imitating human creativity and response to novel situations. As such, the singleplayer gameis a decent strategy experience, but little more – it's mostly noted for its lore, and the pervasiveness of the lore's effects on mechanics.
I should note here, because a lot of people hear "multiplayer" and think "that isn't for me" that Dominions multiplayer is not really like video game multiplayer in general. It's more like the online play of chess or shogi, if you're familiar with that. There are lots of people who play Dominions MP that didn't play anything multiplayer before Dominions, and still don't play anything else in that context.
FWIW though, playing Dom single player against easy or medium AI is a very, very different game than playing against people.It is against high difficulties too. It's not necessarily super easy any more, because the AI gets to "cheat" with bonus to many things, but it's not like playing a competent human. You could talk to Wilson Max about it it you're interested, he's gone further down that rabbit hole than anyone else to my knowledge.
Limited per turn, yes, which helps but only to stem the flow to some extent. Is it really enough, if each can take on dozens of regular units on their own?If it can take down twenty four units but your enemy has twenty five, then yeah. But don't forget that your enemy (if you're not playing against AI) can also use magic and will have his own tactics in mind. Even if you somehow made an army that could kill any amount of non-sacreds, all they need to do then is survive long enough for his mages to kill your sacreds via non-troop means. Of course, if you can make him commit that many mages, then you can harry them with raiding parties, make them spend their gems, pick them off a few at a time (or many at once with spells like earthquake) using small armies that you don't mind losing, and only then hit them with your real army.
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I'm just worried multi boils down to executing one of 2-3 optimal strategies, depending on nation, and forsaking most units (along with suboptimal spells) altogether. I suppose all competitive strategy multiplayer boils down to optimal paths, but I suppose I worry such paths are too few in a game with so much potential for variety.This perception isn't entirely unfounded, but I think you're really overestimating the problem. Sure, each nation has a few optimal strategies, but there's a ton of nations. And each "strategy" has to be discovered, and people don't always agree what's good and what's totally foolish, and even when people broadly agree, the details differ – And after all that, it's invalidated when things change, whether that's a strategic situation within the specific game you're playing, or on a larger meta-defining scale like updates to Dominions itself. Because while Dominions, like any game, isn't perfectly balanced, it's close enough that updates do majorly swing meta, as people catch up to the changes.
To give an example that's less abstract, I've played a game as Marverni that readers of my AARs may remember. I looked at one of Marverni's very obvious strategies – use the unlimited amounts of sacred boars. The problem is, those boars are pretty mediocre units. Even with a bless, they're not going to do all that much against most opponents by themselves. So I thought to combine them with Marverni's other quite obvious advantage – the Sequani, very cheap astral mages. So my boars exist to protect my mages, and my mages, who were cheap but who I still needed scales to leverage in sufficient numbers, cast particular spells to support them – Stellar Cascades, which deals damage to fatigue instead of health, and thereby weakens my enemy enough for the pigs to properly kill them. The problem is, with my pretender points spent on the bless for the pigs and scales for the mages, I had hardly any adequate method of expanding, and no real assets for an early war. If I had been attacked early on, I'd have been wiped out. It was only thanks to luck and diplomacy that this didn't happen. But when I did get things on line, I got the kind of effect that you're seeing in singleplayer, where I was able to dominate by combining a few things. The only downside was that, in order to punish enemy evocation against my pigs and (relatively fragile) mages, I'd taken blood vengeance, which prevented me from using other high efficiency spells like Gifts from Heaven, which has very low accuracy but deals high damage to a single square. Normally, that's great for Marverni, since killing a few pigs is no big deal but killing a few of the enemy can really hurt them, depending on who you're fighting. But in this case, killing a few pigs also killed the mage. But it didn't matter too much, because I was winning every major battle – And then, for reasons pertaining to strategic deployment, I lost the game. If that hadn't happened, I very well might have won, because it was a relatively small game, but then again, I might fairly easily have been countered if someone had built an SC with regeneration, a lot of reinvigoration, and a small horde of backup dancers to draw away excessive evocations. If that was the case, I could fall back on the totally different mage strategy of using my sequani for communions and casting other spells – buffs targeted at countering the SC, most likely, but if I could get to really end-game research in time, I could spam master enslave in the hopes of capturing it. But then by that time, my opponent might have more SCs ready for me, or something else that could totally annihilate my army in some way that I haven't thought of yet. And in all those turns of tactical arms race, the strategic game could be won by one side or another at any point. Including the counter that Jilladilla just posted, which I never thought of, and which would effect my mages almost as well as it effects the boars.
Mages > sacreds once you hit a certain point, so most troops eventually become blockers moreso than force multipliers whether they're sacred or not. And not all nations have worthwhile sacreds in any case.Eh. Dominions 3 was the era of the supercombatant, and Dominions 4 was the era of mage support, but it's not yet clear what the dominant consideration of Dominions 5 will be. Sacreds may indeed matter more.
-The most optimal army cannot stand up against a war on two fronts.True of a single army, but a nation can (and, if it's to win, will) have multiple armies. To state the point slightly more directly, you can only have so many really good armies at a time. Battles are one on the back of tactics, but wars are won on logistics.
Post by: Radsoc on December 12, 2017, 04:48:53 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 12, 2017, 04:55:14 am
Post by: sprinkled chariot on December 12, 2017, 06:52:43 am
Also, what are death aligned priest spells
Post by: Jilladilla on December 12, 2017, 06:58:12 am
Did ma ermor and lemuria change a lot.
Also, what are death aligned priest spells
Don't remember the Banishment, but the Smite is 'Syllable of Death'.
10 AN Damage, MR Negates. No Effect on Inanimate or Undead.
If that hits, the target has to succeed a MR check or die.
Even if they succeed, they still get hit by a decent amount of Fatigue damage.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 12, 2017, 09:35:46 am
Did ma ermor and lemuria change a lot.
Also, what are death aligned priest spells
The biggest change to both is that they get Death Gems from their temples now, up to max dominion, but get less starting gems to compensate. Lemuria's mages are affected twice as much by Magic scales, so going 3 Magic is +6 RP to their national mages and not +3. Finally Lemuria's national summons got rebalanced slightly, with their weakest mage being noticably cheaper but lacking immortality.
I can't say if MA Ermor got similar changes, honestly. Most of this I just know from reading forum posts online, so I would double-check if I were you.
Eh. Dominions 3 was the era of the supercombatant, and Dominions 4 was the era of mage support, but it's not yet clear what the dominant consideration of Dominions 5 will be. Sacreds may indeed matter more.
To be honest I feel like this is a bit of a nerf to sacreds. Blesses were expanded and are customizable now, but it's harder to get quite as much out of them as you used to. Before you used to be able to take a great bless and then Imprision your Pretender for acceptable scales as well. Now you have to figure out whether to take them Awake or Dominant for Incarnate blesses, or go entirely with minor blesses and Imprision them for okay scales. Don't get me wrong. I think that this is a good balance change from before, especially since it breaks up the dominance of ExN9 blesses, but I don't think it's a straight buff to sacreds and bless strategies in general. Maybe to some, like sacred mages, but overall I think we're paying more for less with blesses.
Post by: etgfrog on December 12, 2017, 10:42:32 am
I'll correct myself, utility bless I think is any bless that doesn't require blessing to activate, like half dead, leadership or any of the survival skills.
Post by: E. Albright on December 12, 2017, 03:07:26 pm
Eh. Dominions 3 was the era of the supercombatant, and Dominions 4 was the era of mage support, but it's not yet clear what the dominant consideration of Dominions 5 will be. Sacreds may indeed matter more.
I agree that it's not clear what the overall consensus for Dom5 will be, and I tend to agree it probably won't be mage-blobs. Troops in general feel stronger than they have in a long time just because of how WeGo feels vs. UGoIGo, and even though there's some nasty new blesses out there, it's harder to get strong blesses early without wrecking your economy (although the blessed pretender part helps make that feel less painful). Basically, the only clear truth ATM is that we don't yet know with certainty how the meta has changed.
Post by: Micro102 on December 12, 2017, 04:39:37 pm
Also, it seems that flying units now can always reach the back row without fail. Anyone else feel that that requires you to now have a massive amount of back row defenders? Like if you have even a small gap, a flying unit can just slip in a deadly stab to one of your mages.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 12, 2017, 04:42:21 pm
So when selecting a god, what does that list of tiers mean? (Dominion 1,2,3,4)
Starting dominion. That's literally all it is.
Post by: Sirus on December 12, 2017, 04:42:32 pm
Post by: Cruxador on December 12, 2017, 08:31:33 pm
So when selecting a god, what does that list of tiers mean? (Dominion 1,2,3,4)It's technically just the starting Dominion score, which has strong implications for the cost of increasing your dominion score, but de facto it's a sorting metric so you've got immobiles, titans, monsters, and rainbows in their own categories.
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Also, it seems that flying units now can always reach the back row without fail. Anyone else feel that that requires you to now have a massive amount of back row defenders? Like if you have even a small gap, a flying unit can just slip in a deadly stab to one of your mages.Yeah, solid tactical positioning now means a line with no gaps, like it would have historically, rather than archer traps and whatnot.
Post by: Farce on December 12, 2017, 10:04:15 pm
WeGo feels vs. UGoIGoUhhh, could I get an explanation for these acronyms?
Post by: Il Palazzo on December 12, 2017, 10:12:05 pm
We Go (both sides simultaneously) vs You Go, I Go (each side in turn).WeGo feels vs. UGoIGoUhhh, could I get an explanation for these acronyms?
Post by: E. Albright on December 13, 2017, 01:50:23 am
So when selecting a god, what does that list of tiers mean? (Dominion 1,2,3,4)It's technically just the starting Dominion score, which has strong implications for the cost of increasing your dominion score, but de facto it's a sorting metric so you've got immobiles, titans, monsters, and rainbows in their own categories.
The only other thing to note besides that is that in disciples games, the pretender has to be a 3 or 4, and the disciples have to be 1 or 2.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 13, 2017, 04:40:43 am
There troops have spirit sight, stealthy, good map move, glamour... so the enemy never knows where it comes form. These sets of 1 commander and 4-5 Holy units can defeat any indies and PD (like up to 30 I think?) with ease.
Some examples in the picture.
You can compensate for the lack of researchers with your awake pretender and work your way up conj. to throw out more scareds.
Unlike most bless rushes, these guys are always useful - no PD can stop them and nothing can find them and you got X-1 of these Murder Squads, where X is the turns passed in the game. You don't have to tank your scales to much for them either, so its all good.
Once the normal riders lose utility, you can switch to valkerys (or just summon them), to hit the enemy backline hard, but mostly, in the spirit of the nation, you just steal every undefended province you can find.
If you count Tactical Utility as well as pure combat power, they are my fav. - Especially since the nation can do earthquake bombs (with the dwarfs) to destroy regular armys that would be to big for you.
(Big Image, beware)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Radsoc on December 13, 2017, 08:36:51 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 13, 2017, 09:15:35 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 13, 2017, 11:22:46 am
-snip-
I'm 95% certain that Helheim could do all of this in Dom 4 without Ethereal so I don't think that this is a case where Dom 5 has changed things. Not to imply that Ethereal is a bad bless, I think it's one of the better ones, but Helheim could probably be almost as effective without it. Also I feel like you're really overstating how great Earthquake is, seeing as it's only 8 armour piercing damage, is defence negates and has 200% casting time. Calling them Earthquake bombs is probably quite literal, as you probably need a couple Svartlf to make a sizable dent in the enemy army and give them enough support to prevent them from being focused down by enemy mages spamming Mind Burn or what have you. So if they can take out an army, they'll probably take themselves out too and you're out a sizable investment in earth gems and gold.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 13, 2017, 11:44:15 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 13, 2017, 11:45:31 am
Post by: Jilladilla on December 13, 2017, 11:47:59 am
Also I feel like you're really overstating how great Earthquake is, seeing as it's only 8 armour piercing damage, is defence negates and has 200% casting time. Calling them Earthquake bombs is probably quite literal, as you probably need a couple Svartlf to make a sizable dent in the enemy army and give them enough support to prevent them from being focused down by enemy mages spamming Mind Burn or what have you. So if they can take out an army, they'll probably take themselves out too and you're out a sizable investment in earth gems and gold.[/sub]
You know. You say this, but I've had an Ermorian (EA) army obliterated by a pair of Earthquakes in the past. Now, granted, now I'd be able to take actual measures against it, thankfully.
But a fair number of competent battlefield counters also have the very long cast time applied.. (And Ermor would still need to set up the Communion)
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 13, 2017, 12:31:51 pm
My point is that Earthquake is not something that Helheim can do often or consistently now that turns are simultaneous. It is very much a last resort kind of move.
Post by: Jilladilla on December 13, 2017, 12:45:32 pm
Post by: Endymion on December 13, 2017, 02:06:17 pm
Anyways, it isn't like the tactic only exists for earthquake. There are dozens of spells that turn a mage, 5 bodyguards and 5 points of pd into a slayer of 1000s of gold worth of resources.
Post by: E. Albright on December 13, 2017, 03:40:02 pm
High starting dominion does no longer bring awe to the pretender?
Presumably it's a tradeoff since the pretenders now get their blessing.
Post by: Gigalith on December 13, 2017, 05:35:55 pm
So here is a fun question: Does quake do its damage to specific body location? Because if it did favor legs then 8 AP damage to the legs would give most people an army that can't move without major attrition.
Anyways, it isn't like the tactic only exists for earthquake. There are dozens of spells that turn a mage, 5 bodyguards and 5 points of pd into a slayer of 1000s of gold worth of resources.
Bone Grinding is basically the death version of Earthquake, and works this way. Fail an MR check? Instantly crippled. Probably a bit more insane in Dom5.
Post by: Jilladilla on December 14, 2017, 03:21:45 am
So here is a fun question: Does quake do its damage to specific body location? Because if it did favor legs then 8 AP damage to the legs would give most people an army that can't move without major attrition.
Anyways, it isn't like the tactic only exists for earthquake. There are dozens of spells that turn a mage, 5 bodyguards and 5 points of pd into a slayer of 1000s of gold worth of resources.
Bone Grinding is basically the death version of Earthquake, and works this way. Fail an MR check? Instantly crippled. Probably a bit more insane in Dom5.
No no, it's like this:
ALL OF YOU LOT TAKE 3 AN DAMAGE! Good. Now, Half of you are now Limp! IS THAT A COMPLAINT I HEAR?! MR CHECK OR BE CRIPPLED!
With how crippled is now... A few castings can immobilize an army... Ethereality is the only defense against it. It's a good thing it's not exactly an easy spell to cast..
Post by: MCreeper on December 14, 2017, 03:30:55 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 14, 2017, 03:52:39 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 14, 2017, 04:13:40 pm
85 gold sacred communion slaves are pretty damn enticing so I get the feeling that this will make MA Man better than it is right now. I'm not 100% certain if it'll make them great or overpowered, but it's still a good improvement over being simply lackluster.
The patch also borked supply so that living creatures don't eat but undead do. I foresee that being fixed quickly but it is still extremely silly, especially since it was caused by a fix for Half-Dead.
Post by: E. Albright on December 14, 2017, 04:15:55 pm
Post by: Frumple on December 14, 2017, 04:53:18 pm
I'm not entirely sure what the exact sillinesses of inverted supply requirements would be, but I can only imagine they'd be interesting. Just don't ask how gluttony is producing supplies. Also maybe swap the N supply bonus over to D, I'unno. Part of me ponders the thought of negative supply starvation bomb squads roaming the countryside.
Post by: Gigalith on December 14, 2017, 05:11:21 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 14, 2017, 05:53:22 pm
They're definitely interesting though kinda unwieldy and full of exceptions and odd interactions. The Morrigna get -1 to their 'main' path and -2 to everything else. So a A4S4D4 on the design screen turns into a A3S2D2, A2S3D2, and A2S2D3. Extra paths are granted to all bodies of the Morrigna, though adding in anything less than 2 points in a magic path is completely pointless (except perhaps for path boosting) due to the innate -2 penalty. The Hooded Spirits are different. One body gets full Water and nothing else, one gets full Earth and nothing else, and the third gets full Nature and any additional paths. This means that Water/Earth, Nature/Earth, and (Earth or Water)/Anything crosspaths are not possible. So you could splash some Astral on to forge Moonvine bracelets but not Crystal Coins, since the Earth body won't get Astral.
Separating the Trinity gives them -2 to all paths which is almost crippling to the Morrigna, since they start out with some large penalties to begin with. At least the bless remains intact, so with some gear they could make good raiders in your domain. Keeping them together and casting some nasty Air, Astral or Death spells is probably a better use of them however, especially backed up by a communion. I'm not 100% certain how useful the Hooded Spirits are as combat casters, but at least they can react quickly to threats with their unify ability. Assuming you decide it's better to spread them out in peacetime instead of keeping them together for the extra research/dominion spread/whatever, of course.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 15, 2017, 04:56:52 am
Plus I'd personally prefer 3x Casters then one, since they can lob 3 times the spells.
It would be fun if they'd add another member to the trinity for each magic path. Like it starts with 0 paths, a new one is 50 and adds a aspect of the [many]-ity
Post by: MCreeper on December 17, 2017, 05:19:33 am
Post by: Majestic7 on December 18, 2017, 12:16:48 pm
Post by: Micro102 on December 18, 2017, 08:30:30 pm
Post by: Farce on December 18, 2017, 10:55:40 pm
I have no idea about the answer to your question, I just really really love the Stone Bird. It's hilarious - literally just a magic rock that some mage made look like a bird and was like, 'hey, you know what would be rad? If we magicked this so it would would automatically beat the crap out of people we hate that got close to it'
And then they did that. Like, most of these dudes are the super learned people amongst this whole nation, right? The scholars of Tien Chi, or the Master Smiths, knowers of the Riddle of Steel. They decided that the best way to utilize these rare and powerful gems of elemental earth and air were to make a violent, angry rock, which would violently rock people, but only if it has someone's shoulder to sit on.
MAGIC.
Post by: etgfrog on December 20, 2017, 04:29:28 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 20, 2017, 09:47:26 am
Post by: etgfrog on December 20, 2017, 10:09:12 am
I dislike it, limp-fellas always die, so after every battle you have to press "W", check for limps and leave them behind as semi-pd.no, just look at the army screen, hold tab, mouse over the wound icons, no need to right click, but its still annoying not being able to select all limp/crippled.
Spoiler: Ironic patch just now (click to show/hide)
Post by: Cruxador on December 20, 2017, 10:35:20 am
Especially since both are fairly common in nature magic.I dislike it, limp-fellas always die, so after every battle you have to press "W", check for limps and leave them behind as semi-pd.no, just look at the army screen, hold tab, mouse over the wound icons, no need to right click, but its still annoying not being able to select all limp/crippled.put people to sleep then poison them? that might end up working well.Spoiler: Ironic patch just now (click to show/hide)
Post by: chaoticag on December 20, 2017, 10:55:25 am
I dislike it, limp-fellas always die, so after every battle you have to press "W", check for limps and leave them behind as semi-pd.Do you mean limpers or cripples? You can hit L to select all units that are limping, and C to select all crippled units.
Post by: etgfrog on December 20, 2017, 10:57:41 am
Do you mean limpers or cripples? You can hit L to select all units that are limping, and C to select all crippled units.This was just barely added in the recent patch
Post by: Karlito on December 20, 2017, 11:57:28 am
Post by: E. Albright on December 20, 2017, 01:04:42 pm
I dislike it, limp-fellas always die, so after every battle you have to press "W", check for limps and leave them behind as semi-pd.
Limps cause crippling as of 5.08. Only crippling causes death.
Post by: Cruxador on December 20, 2017, 02:27:37 pm
I wonder what the new wish is.I don't know, but there was talk about wishing on the steam forums, based on which it may be a joke involving frogs and/or princes.
Post by: E. Albright on December 20, 2017, 05:26:29 pm
Post by: Endymion on December 20, 2017, 06:44:35 pm
That said, what is everyone's favorite wishes? I've personally always love the Armageddon wish which kills off 20% of the population and does a bunch of damage to units. Really works as a way for gem based late game nations to ruin the gold and the blood economies.
Post by: chaoticag on December 20, 2017, 07:25:42 pm
This was just barely added in the recent patchHuh. I could have sworn those worked before.
Post by: etgfrog on December 20, 2017, 07:33:24 pm
That said, what is everyone's favorite wishes? I've personally always love the Armageddon wish which kills off 20% of the population and does a bunch of damage to units. Really works as a way for gem based late game nations to ruin the gold and the blood economies.Wish for uttervast, it would be worth empowerment to let it autocast some nasty spells. Then again...200+ gems for an autocasting, hit anywhere on the map commander with whatever set of spells you want might not be the best thing, the main issue I could see is you cannot control what the autocasting does.
This is the first time I've seen mention of it, both in game hotkey list and in patch notes.This was just barely added in the recent patchHuh. I could have sworn those worked before.
Post by: E. Albright on December 20, 2017, 07:58:26 pm
Post by: Cruxador on December 20, 2017, 10:26:47 pm
Well considering curses are the one bad thing that you can never removeHow do you remove horror marks?
Post by: E. Albright on December 20, 2017, 11:42:47 pm
Post by: tnc on December 21, 2017, 06:50:44 am
Post by: chaoticag on December 21, 2017, 09:04:15 am
Post by: E. Albright on December 21, 2017, 11:14:26 am
Post by: Cruxador on December 21, 2017, 11:14:55 am
I know it is a multiplayer game but I can't help but wonder, are there any improvements with the AI?Yes, though it will never be as clever as a human so after a certain point it's a bit meaningless.
Post by: etgfrog on December 21, 2017, 11:44:43 am
That is the exact same thing that was said about AI and chess...yet here we are, with an AI that has developed an AI that managed to learn chess on par with grand masters within 4 hours.I know it is a multiplayer game but I can't help but wonder, are there any improvements with the AI?Yes, though it will never be as clever as a human so after a certain point it's a bit meaningless.
Post by: Cruxador on December 21, 2017, 12:07:38 pm
Chess has far fewer potential moves than Dominions. A Dominions AI built on the straightforward paradigm of a chess AI would need to consider every single possible unit and spell in every possible situation and would need to think ahead until the possible completion of the game. Way easier when combat resolution is just "one unit wins", new units are never added, and there are no spells. If an AI could be made which understands the game, you'd have to wait years between turns for it to play out every possible situation and figure out is moves.That is the exact same thing that was said about AI and chess...yet here we are, with an AI that has developed an AI that managed to learn chess on par with grand masters within 4 hours.I know it is a multiplayer game but I can't help but wonder, are there any improvements with the AI?Yes, though it will never be as clever as a human so after a certain point it's a bit meaningless.
Post by: RebelZhouYuWu on December 21, 2017, 12:54:51 pm
Post by: IWishIWereSarah on December 21, 2017, 01:16:23 pm
Chess has far fewer potential moves than Dominions. A Dominions AI built on the straightforward paradigm of a chess AI would need to consider every single possible unit and spell in every possible situation and would need to think ahead until the possible completion of the game. Way easier when combat resolution is just "one unit wins", new units are never added, and there are no spells. If an AI could be made which understands the game, you'd have to wait years between turns for it to play out every possible situation and figure out is moves.I know it isn't really the thread but there are objections to both your points :
1) "Dominions has more potential states than chess". Yes, but that was what was said when we managed to make AIs for checkers and said we couldn't because chess is multiple orders of magnitude above checkers.
2) "chess AI would need to consider every single possibility". Nope. The latest AIs in chess beat the previous ones (and the grand masters) because they don't try to consider every possibility, but try to solve their problem more humanly, going to a relatively better state in a few moves, without considering the end of the game.
This year's advances in Chess AI are basically putting usual RTS AIs considerations into a chess logic and improving it, which may be useful for the future of Strategic Games AIs ;)
How the hell am I suppose to assault this fortified outpost (https://imgur.com/a/ibPc1)?Use rituals ?
If you can, try to use the heat++ ritual (breath of the desert ?), the one that will put the temperature of the province in the positives.
Otherwise, try to use one of the spells (Locust Swarm, maybe another too) that consume their supply, so they all starve.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 21, 2017, 01:21:48 pm
A. Get summons/thugs with mountain survival, flying or floating, since they can all cross the mountain pass even if it's frozen. Use gate smashers and the like to break down the walls and then run in and slaughter everything. This will probably take a massive investment in gems though, so I wouldn't recommend it.
B. Aggressively push your dominion since they'll only have the one province to generate checks with. In the best case scenario you can push them back enough to get at least Heat 1 in either province, letting you shuffle your armies across it for a siege. In the worst case scenario you have to go in for a dom kill.
Basically it's going to be a pain in the ass to assault the place no matter what. Just pick the pain that you think you can handle the best.
Post by: etgfrog on December 21, 2017, 01:33:48 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 21, 2017, 04:05:55 pm
(Or a Harvester of Sorrows with a BVC if you're far enough along with your research, hehehe...)
Post by: Frumple on December 21, 2017, 08:11:36 pm
Post by: Micro102 on December 21, 2017, 11:32:43 pm
Post by: dennislp3 on December 22, 2017, 12:16:58 am
So I started a game as LA Ulm, and am surrounded by heavy cavalry. Should I just spam the ever loving shit out of my pikemen? Normally spearmen are good against cavalry in strategy games, but I don't know if dominions works that way. Maybe the tower shield guys are better?
Yes.
In Dominions there is no real magical "bonus vs cavalry" that most games sort of cram in to make spearmen make sense.
In Dominions it boils down to weapon length when dealing with cavalry. Being on a horse gives them +1 weapon length I believe and in a melee weapon length can make a huge difference as having a longer weapon (or stat at least) can prevent others from attacking. Cavalry are so strong partly because they have lots of armor (and other good stats) but also because their "weapon length" is almost ALWAYS longer than most infantry which means when infantry are fighting against them they get to attack far less than usual.
Spearmen/pikemen/etc. have a longer reach than most infantry which allows them to negate the weapon length difference and puts them on a more even playing field.
Even against spearmen they will generally still cause lots of damage but it helps a great deal. Also remember to keep your spearmen (or all infantry usually) in close formation so they can maximize space (3 human size (2) infantry can fit in 1 "square" while only 2 normal cavalry (size 3) can exist in one "square", a square being a total size of 6) which in turn means more attacks per round against the cavalry in question.
Another way to help prevent flanking is to make the spearmen target cavalry instead of "closest" or some other enemy
Same logic applies to giants.
Post by: Micro102 on December 22, 2017, 12:23:07 am
Post by: chaoticag on December 22, 2017, 12:25:13 am
Post by: Micro102 on December 22, 2017, 01:54:06 am
That's the first time I've seen the AI cast teleport of it's own volition. Actually, come to think of it, how is your research? One way to stop an AI from casting something like teleport is to have it have some other go to spell that it can uselessly cast instead. My guess though? Everything might have been out of range of your communion master so he wanted to get closer.
Yeah that's probably what happened, but they really need to address this "your mages may randomly cast a spell that will kill your own men for no benefit". Surely you should be able to tell your guys "don't cast this spell that will kill our mages".
Also, does anyone have a good counter to birds and horses? Since they don't seem to have morale checks anymore I find them running and flying past everything and straight to my commanders, usually killing a bunch of them. I've tried putting spearmen as bodyguards for every commander but it's just not enough at 5 spearman per commander. A small group of birds can kill a few mages.
And finally, can someone explain why my Vampire Queen will always stay after my army has routed and just repeatedly cast frighten and maybe an occasional reanimation until the enemy routes or she dies? (not complaining as this has won me a battle I should not have but it's odd)
Post by: etgfrog on December 22, 2017, 02:01:00 am
Also, does anyone have a good counter to birds and horses? Since they don't seem to have morale checks anymore I find them running and flying past everything and straight to my commanders, usually killing a bunch of them. I've tried putting spearmen as bodyguards for every commander but it's just not enough at 5 spearman per commander. A small group of birds can kill a few mages.
Take part of your forces and put them far in the back, then hold and attack fliers or calvary.
Post by: chaoticag on December 22, 2017, 02:29:02 am
Yeah that's probably what happened, but they really need to address this "your mages may randomly cast a spell that will kill your own men for no benefit". Surely you should be able to tell your guys "don't cast this spell that will kill our mages".It's unfortunately a low priority fix because the best way to fix it from happening is to improve your playstyle. But at the same time your mages didn't expose themselves to any danger when that happened. Your mages won't to cast teleport if there's anything else he can do, but if you're still worried they would try...
Have one mage be in the communion who is there to buff the slaves. At a bare minimum this would be body ethereal and luck. You can also add on mind shield since of course you can, it's an astral communion. If anyone can drop ironskin as well that could be decent, yes, it makes them more vulnerable to lightning, but if they got hit in the first place they're already dead.
Now if you don't mind killing everyone you can have a lot more fun with communions but that's for another time.
Post by: Micro102 on December 22, 2017, 02:44:38 am
Take part of your forces and put them far in the back, then hold and attack fliers or calvary.
So are you saying that if I have a group of spearman behind the mages, the AI will cause fliers and cavalry to go past the mages and attack the spearmen?
I don't see how "playing better" is going to stop your mages from deciding they want to catch up with the retreating army, and teleporting themselves and a bunch of slaves behind the retreating units which will most likely kill them. A very easy fix would be to allow us to forbid certain spells for certain mages.Yeah that's probably what happened, but they really need to address this "your mages may randomly cast a spell that will kill your own men for no benefit". Surely you should be able to tell your guys "don't cast this spell that will kill our mages".It's unfortunately a low priority fix because the best way to fix it from happening is to improve your playstyle. But at the same time your mages didn't expose themselves to any danger when that happened. Your mages won't to cast teleport if there's anything else he can do, but if you're still worried they would try...
Have one mage be in the communion who is there to buff the slaves. At a bare minimum this would be body ethereal and luck. You can also add on mind shield since of course you can, it's an astral communion. If anyone can drop ironskin as well that could be decent, yes, it makes them more vulnerable to lightning, but if they got hit in the first place they're already dead.
Now if you don't mind killing everyone you can have a lot more fun with communions but that's for another time.
Post by: chaoticag on December 22, 2017, 04:20:57 am
Post by: etgfrog on December 22, 2017, 08:57:52 am
So are you saying that if I have a group of spearman behind the mages, the AI will cause fliers and cavalry to go past the mages and attack the spearmen?Yes, the AI actually uses attack rear for fliers and cavalry.
Post by: E. Albright on December 22, 2017, 09:10:55 am
Take part of your forces and put them far in the back, then hold and attack fliers or calvary.
So are you saying that if I have a group of spearman behind the mages, the AI will cause fliers and cavalry to go past the mages and attack the spearmen?
Possibly. Otherwise, the reserve force will attack them, though. With cav rather than fliers, they may intercept them before they get to the rearguard.
Post by: Endymion on December 22, 2017, 10:17:25 am
Admittedly that strategy was made for back in dom3 when you could abuse reverse communions because the slaves would still get combat turns.
On the topic of flankers, do they still have to pass a morale roll for every troop they pass on the way to attack rear?
Post by: E. Albright on December 22, 2017, 02:12:57 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 22, 2017, 08:35:30 pm
So are you saying that if I have a group of spearman behind the mages, the AI will cause fliers and cavalry to go past the mages and attack the spearmen?Yes, the AI actually uses attack rear for fliers and cavalry.
A good thing to remember here (and which the manual likes to note) is that there is no 'target commander' command, either for you or an AI. In general, I think if your commander is a non-unique unit type in the army (e.g. not the only cavalry or flyer), and in the middle of the army, then they can't be specifically targeted by any of the available commands. Of course, being in the middle can be a little riskier than being in the back in other conditions.
Post by: Gigalith on December 23, 2017, 03:56:02 am
Post by: E. Albright on December 23, 2017, 05:21:23 am
Post by: Micro102 on December 23, 2017, 11:15:17 am
Yes, but contra that Guard Commander squads cannot be more than 5 (or 10 with a Ring of Warning), whereas Dom4 let you set nice strong bodyguard contingents. So in balance, troops on guard are less helpful than before.
That new feature about the ring of warning might actually be the solution to my problem. Thanks!
Post by: IWishIWereSarah on December 23, 2017, 11:26:23 am
It's not really new : previously, the ring of warning let you get more guys guarding your commander in case of an assassination attempt, instead of the "random 5 from the squad".Yes, but contra that Guard Commander squads cannot be more than 5 (or 10 with a Ring of Warning), whereas Dom4 let you set nice strong bodyguard contingents. So in balance, troops on guard are less helpful than before.
That new feature about the ring of warning might actually be the solution to my problem. Thanks!
Post by: Micro102 on December 23, 2017, 12:24:28 pm
It's not really new : previously, the ring of warning let you get more guys guarding your commander in case of an assassination attempt, instead of the "random 5 from the squad".Yes, but contra that Guard Commander squads cannot be more than 5 (or 10 with a Ring of Warning), whereas Dom4 let you set nice strong bodyguard contingents. So in balance, troops on guard are less helpful than before.
That new feature about the ring of warning might actually be the solution to my problem. Thanks!
But I don't want more guards during assassination, I want more guards during battle to block flyers.
Post by: Dostoevsky on December 23, 2017, 02:21:37 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 23, 2017, 03:21:27 pm
Post by: Micro102 on December 25, 2017, 10:56:19 am
Post by: MCreeper on December 25, 2017, 11:12:41 am
Can "fires from afar" spell be useful? Best i seen was grand total of 2 killed units.
Edit: oh, it gets more powerful with more fire levels.
Post by: Micro102 on December 25, 2017, 12:59:25 pm
Also, as a warning to others, do not set your cavalry to attack rear if your enemy may have flying units. They will run across the battlefield, then when the flying units move to your rear, they will turn around and run right back, into your own units, blocking both from moving. The dev(s) need to change this problem where rearmost/closest/etc meaning "choose a unit and singlemindedly chase it across the battlefield". It needs to be like rearmost means to attack whatever units are in the back at any time.
Post by: E. Albright on December 25, 2017, 02:20:10 pm
Can "fires from afar" spell be useful? Best i seen was grand total of 2 killed units.
Also not bad if you know there's e.g. a mage all by themself, so it's sure to hit something low-hp/low-prot.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 28, 2017, 05:22:03 am
Post by: MCreeper on December 29, 2017, 11:20:19 am
Some more: Is there a point in wearing stone boots if you already have protection to the skies? I heard that -skins just raise your protection to certain number, and if you have it already, it does nothing to you.
If yes, is there a point in wearing bot stone boots and robe of invulnerability?
Robe of invulnerability gives 25 protection agains mundane attacks. How about attacks with magic weapons? Same with armor of knights.
How much stamina average naked human restores per turn? Are stamina regen of non-humans and gods any diffirent?
Post by: E. Albright on December 29, 2017, 12:13:02 pm
Robe of Invulnerability gives prot 4 (up from prot 0 in Dom4) against magical attacks, so Boots of Stone are still potentially useful there. Less so if you have high non-invulnerability prot.
Unless a unit (human or titan or whatever) explicitly has Reinvigoration, they get -1 fatigue per turn.
Post by: Wysthric on December 31, 2017, 08:00:40 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on December 31, 2017, 10:46:37 am
Post by: Wysthric on December 31, 2017, 12:54:58 pm
Post by: etgfrog on December 31, 2017, 01:25:09 pm
Loads of their stuff is Sea - Only. The amphibious mages are W1?1, which even in large numbers, isn't strong enough. Research is going good, but when your only options seem to be "frost bolts and wave warriors" as a staple, I don't know how I'll ever win, unless I'm the only person with a growth dominion. Speaking of which, is Wolven Wintering the enemy Cap every turn a good idea?If you get up to casting maelstrom, you can cast wolven winter then murdering winter if the enemy army is still where its cold 3.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 31, 2017, 01:33:58 pm
Personally I would recruit a fuckton of Pelagian Mystics and forge amulets for your Titron Kings. Mermages are rather lackluster, Conquerors are only super useful if they roll Astral, and you probably don't have the gems to worry about your other aquatic mages. Titron Kings cast huge water spells and maybe lead communions, Mystics throw out lightning, E3 buffs or Frost Bolts depending on crosspaths, and you use your wave warriors and Champions of the Closed Realm to help you get a foothold on land. On land you're recruiting as many Mystics as you can simply because you don't have any other option. If they have good paths then they can throw out some acid spells or act as communion slaves. The addition of mermen hoplites to your army is great since their heavy armour and long spears can hold the line while your wave warriors and Champions flank. Apostates are just okay. They're flexible but you'll probably want to focus on your more specialized units instead of them. Similarly the regular mermen are pretty useless unless you really have some high defence units you want to trip up with nets.
To summarize: Built a ton of forts underwater and spam Mystics, wave warriors, Champions and eventually hoplites. That is the core of your armies, to which you can splash on other mages/troops as needed or desired.
Post by: E. Albright on December 31, 2017, 01:38:01 pm
Loads of their stuff is Sea - Only. The amphibious mages are W1?1
Since you have access to Air and Water, you can also forge amulets of the Fish to get some of your aquatic mages onto land too, though obviously not in very large numbers.
Eww. No. These aren't Aboleths; they have body slots. 1W gets you a Shambler Skin, which lets BOTH kinds of non-amphibians be amphibious. It's expensive for mage blobs, but for a handful of strong-ish ones it's good.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 31, 2017, 02:03:27 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 31, 2017, 02:53:24 pm
Post by: Wysthric on December 31, 2017, 09:02:41 pm
Edit : Both Mictlan and Ermor have been domkilled, and Nazca has gutted most of Vanheim's army, which is letting me take some stuff from them. I've just unlocked and am summoning the Elemental Water Queens, and I've empowered my pretender in air twice so when he gets onto land he can also get the Queens of Elemental Air.
It looks like it's going to be me, Caelum and Nazca going towards the end, but I'm pretty sure Nazca is going to take 70% of the Ascension Points without even stepping into my lake... unless I can get enough eco damage spam (e.g. hurricane, wolven winter) to ruin them.
Post by: bulborbish on January 05, 2018, 11:34:09 pm
Post by: etgfrog on January 05, 2018, 11:56:20 pm
Out of curiosity, how effective are Priest Banishes against undead? I'm having some issues right now with them, and really only have those as an option to deal with the horde in the short run. If it helps, I currently have the Death variant of the spell.The death banish spell acts just like normal banish, except after a second MR check it will confuse the target, potentially causing it to attack allies. Banishment in general scales very well with priest levels, but in a pinch large amounts of level 1 priests can work but it gets harder the higher the mr of the undead. To get into more specific numbers, a level 1 priest will hit up to 4 tiles of undead(3 human sized units per tile usually), higher chance to hit with large undead numbers, now lets say the undead your facing has 13 mr, each undead hit has a 24% chance of resisting it, if it fails the undead unit takes 4+DRN-DRN damage(This looks wierd, but the undead gets a protection roll against the banish damage). It also has a 5% chance of confusing each undead unit when hit.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on January 06, 2018, 12:05:50 am
Out of curiosity, how effective are Priest Banishes against undead? I'm having some issues right now with them, and really only have those as an option to deal with the horde in the short run. If it helps, I currently have the Death variant of the spell.
It depends on what kind of undead you're facing, honestly. If it's non-mindless undead then you're in luck, because Death Banishment has a chance to make them bewildered (and presumably attack their allies or meander aimlessly). That's the only advantage that it has over generic Banishment, unfortunately. If you're up against longdead or soulless then Banishment should work well if you can amass enough priests. Ideally they'd be H2s but H1s will work fine too. Longdead have low HP and average MR, so they can resist banishment better but will die in one or two hits. Soulless have low MR but good HP, so they'll resist less often but can take a handful of hits to kill. Thankfully Banishment has a pretty large AoE compared to other spells and costs 0 fatigue so you can get pretty good coverage with your priests, especially since banishment is going to be a high priority for them once they go off-script. You just have to figure out what the critical mass of priests is for the situation.
If you're up against undead that aren't longdead or soulless you'll have to tell us, because that definitely changes almost everything, but otherwise I'd say that priestly banishment is definitely effective against the basic types of undead. That's what it's meant for after all.
It also has a 5% chance of confusing each undead unit when hit.
The confusion effect only affects undead without mindless and they get an MR roll to resist. So it's really not that great except against certain units, but at least the Death Banishment is comparable to the generic kind in all other respects.
EDIT: As an aside, I think that Fire Banishment is the best Banishment spell since it's useful in all situations, due to setting undead on fire if they take damage from the spell. Air and Astral both have the biggest AoEs but lowered damage and a secondary effect that only targets non-mindless undead with an MR negate effect. Water is good mostly if you have the H2s or H3s to make the most of its secondary effect and larger AoE, which isn't true for all nations. Earth has a secondary earth grip effect but it's MR negates which limits its usefulness quite a bit, especially against higher MR undead which you probably want it to affect. Death is only an upgrade if you're up against non-mindless undead which is a pretty niche case and again suffers from the extra MR resist check. Nature has a reduced AoE and is MR easily negates but does 999 damage and will pretty much kill any kind of undead. If it hits, that is. Blood only gets the generic kind of Banishment, meaning it can never do better than 4th place and is probably even worse than that. At least it does have a banishment spell though, unlike what the Pretender creation screen might lead you to believe.
Post by: etgfrog on January 06, 2018, 12:30:58 am
Mainly taking advantage of ethereal troops being able to walk through walls of a fort. Speaking of, why does an army of ethereal troops need to siege a fort anyways, why not just walk inside?
Post by: Cruxador on January 06, 2018, 02:53:20 am
Mainly taking advantage of ethereal troops being able to walk through walls of a fort. Speaking of, why does an army of ethereal troops need to siege a fort anyways, why not just walk inside?I don't think there's any lore reason, I think it's purely for reasons of gameplay.
Post by: Frumple on January 06, 2018, 10:37:10 am
...
... though, y'know, I suddenly wonder why there isn't a strategic level passwall buff. Something like a hell-travel check to jump directly into the fort battle, maybe even right past the walls. Probably be expensive and/or pretty risky, to balance it out, but... still. Feels like it's a gap in dom's magic.
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 06, 2018, 11:29:46 am
Post by: E. Albright on January 06, 2018, 11:38:08 am
Post by: Cruxador on January 07, 2018, 01:01:36 am
There's also the mess with most armies being mixed; the ethereals might be able to go through, but the rest of the army (and their mage support, unless that's ethereal AND going in with the forlorn hope) are still blocked by the walls.That's not a mess mechanically, that's as simple as saying commanders who have the trait and have no troops which lack it can assault the fort, those to whom these criteria don't apply lack the option.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on January 07, 2018, 10:57:05 am
Post by: MCreeper on January 07, 2018, 01:04:20 pm
Wondered if it possible to get enough reinvirogation to abuse it. Get max 19 reinvirogation - 10 from artifact nature boots, 8 from simple earth-nature misc items and 1 natural. Than i remembered that items are dropped as loot for enemies on death... :(
Post by: etgfrog on January 07, 2018, 01:10:14 pm
When you set troops formation, right side of the square is always closer to the enemy, both in attack and defence? I'm not sure why i'm so unsure.Its both.
As for the fort thing. Yes that is fair enough that its there for game balance reasons and fliers/ethereal already get the bonus of being able to just pass by the fort walls during the attack itself.
Post by: Cruxador on January 07, 2018, 01:10:22 pm
When you set troops formation, right side of the square is always closer to the enemy, both in attack and defence? I'm not sure why i'm so unsure.That's how it is, yes.
Post by: a1s on January 09, 2018, 10:17:30 am
Astral mages could cast a spell that teleports their army into a castle. Everyone (including the mage) needs to make an MR check or take damage. If the mage dies so does his squad, automatically. Plus there'd be a gem cost. !!Fun!!
Post by: Wysthric on January 09, 2018, 10:49:00 am
Post by: etgfrog on January 09, 2018, 11:16:55 am
When it comes to longer games, how much income is lost due to pop death?Longer games depends on who has growth dominion, but you can be dropped to 0 income. There is a rare immigration event that can jump population of a territory up from 0.
Post by: Wysthric on January 09, 2018, 01:09:05 pm
When it comes to longer games, how much income is lost due to pop death?Longer games depends on who has growth dominion, but you can be dropped to 0 income. There is a rare immigration event that can jump population of a territory up from 0.
Is lategame just summon - o - rama then?
Post by: Cruxador on January 09, 2018, 01:13:09 pm
When it comes to longer games, how much income is lost due to pop death?Over a long period of time, loads. There's a reason growth was considered the best gold scale even before it was buffed for Dom 5.
Well kind of, but not because of that. Growth scales generally outpace loss of population from other sources outside of popkill nations. Summoned stuff only dominates because it tends to be stronger, but it never dominates enough to invalidate mages from other sources.When it comes to longer games, how much income is lost due to pop death?Longer games depends on who has growth dominion, but you can be dropped to 0 income. There is a rare immigration event that can jump population of a territory up from 0.
Is lategame just summon - o - rama then?
Post by: Caz on January 10, 2018, 07:44:26 am
How's the 'real time combat'? Does it make things a lot different? For better or worse?
Post by: Gigalith on January 10, 2018, 08:52:11 am
Woah, totally missed that Dom5 was out (or even being worked on)
How's the 'real time combat'? Does it make things a lot different? For better or worse?
I'd say the real time combat is overall for the better. The big thing is that there's no more "first strike" advantage to the defender, which makes battles feel much more fair. It also probably slightly encourages battles, I'd think, because there's advantage to being on the defense.
The battles look cooler, if they're somewhat harder to follow. Much more disorganized chaotic melee rather than the orderly formations of previous versions. Rather than have twenty mages throw fireballs one at a time, you have twenty mages throwing a salvo of twenty fireballs.
There's a bunch of minor improvements, too. Like "towers" are now actual troops hanging out on the walls, which I personally think is really rad.
Post by: MCreeper on January 10, 2018, 09:10:56 am
Post by: a1s on January 10, 2018, 11:14:41 am
Also there are still unfixed glitch - archers take into account enemy movement speed, but not changes in that speed. So, first shot always misses intended target, and shot just before all-out melee is likely to damage your troops instead.That's sort of realistic- archers don't know what cunning plans the enemy is hatching, so all they can do is fire at the place the enemy seems to be heading. This only seems weird, because armies are spawned into existence within an arrow's flight of each other.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 10, 2018, 05:28:29 pm
Mages suffer under the same issue, hitting your own troops when casting is timed in a unlucky way.
Also "realistic", show me one army where they shot there own troops and said "Oh we thought they might phase right past you, so we shot your position".
Its unlogical gameplay and suboptimal gamedesign imo. Your own troops shouldn't default to hitting your own troops (once per battle).
Post by: Micro102 on January 11, 2018, 07:37:10 am
Post by: a1s on January 11, 2018, 04:54:27 pm
If it's going to be realistic, then they should shoot their arrows and cast their spells where you would. It's an annoying bug.You have a birds eye view of the situation, can pause and are in 0 danger, they are none of those things.
Also "realistic", show me one army where they shot there own troops and said "Oh we thought they might phase right past you, so we shot your position".Arrows fell short all the time, actually. Hell, we now have satellites and computers doing the aiming and people still manage to get shot by their own side. But, of course, the correct response to the situation is to stop shooting into the middle of the melee, if anything is a bug, it's this.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 11, 2018, 06:12:30 pm
Post by: a1s on January 11, 2018, 06:20:38 pm
Has someone tried this disciples mode? If so, what are your impressions? And if not, does anyone want to do a multiplayer of one?
Post by: Micro102 on January 11, 2018, 08:04:47 pm
If it's going to be realistic, then they should shoot their arrows and cast their spells where you would. It's an annoying bug.You have a birds eye view of the situation, can pause and are in 0 danger, they are none of those things.Also "realistic", show me one army where they shot there own troops and said "Oh we thought they might phase right past you, so we shot your position".Arrows fell short all the time, actually. Hell, we now have satellites and computers doing the aiming and people still manage to get shot by their own side. But, of course, the correct response to the situation is to stop shooting into the middle of the melee, if anything is a bug, it's this.
You JUST tried to dismiss the bug by saying they fire where the enemy seems to be heading. So you are saying they have enough accuracy to fire at a specific spot. They have enough ability to fire at specific targets too, so I fail to see how they don't have enough ability to shoot where I would shoot (Ex: 10 feet in front of the front line)
I also don't think he was talking about arrows falling short, but archers literally targeting the area your soldiers are standing in because the enemy soldiers are traveling in that direction. As in they don't take into considerations that your units are going to be int he way.
Post by: E. Albright on January 11, 2018, 08:17:39 pm
So, I've been meaning to ask:
Has someone tried this disciples mode? If so, what are your impressions? And if not, does anyone want to do a multiplayer of one?
Iz fun, but a lot higher maintenance; victory leans towards the most chatty team. Look at the threads for 404 and 417 for past examples. Look here if you want a serious AAR (it's an archive of all the messages I, Frumple, and Shadowlord exchanged over the course of 404; it's long but possibly enlightening): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=137631.msg5683829#msg5683829
Post by: Karlito on January 11, 2018, 08:56:45 pm
Iz fun, but a lot higher maintenance; victory leans towards the most chatty team. Look at the threads for 404 and 417 for past examples.4.16, not 17.
I have enjoyed those two disciples games, but as E. Albright said it's much more work than a regular game, and teams are only as strong as their weakest member. I'd play in one again, but as I have two games going right now, check back in a couple months maybe?
Post by: namad on January 12, 2018, 01:36:46 am
Post by: a1s on January 12, 2018, 02:23:48 am
Do bay12'ers regularly play this game?
Yes. Have been since 3, in fact:
Spoiler: List of Threads (click to show/hide)
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 12, 2018, 03:38:33 am
Post by: MCreeper on January 12, 2018, 04:21:05 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 14, 2018, 11:51:18 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169134.0
Post by: MCreeper on January 15, 2018, 11:20:16 am
What decay actually does? How much time it takes to start damaging average human unit?
How big chance there is of Spirit Curse getting trough MR 15? Same for Holy Word.
For how much turns Holy Word actually stuns?
Does powering up a priest with communion still works?
Post by: Zonk on January 15, 2018, 11:23:09 am
Spirit Curse/Holy Word: by default, spells have penetration 11, so assuming the caster does not have extra paths or penetration modifiers, it's penetration 11 vs MR 15. You can look at the DRN table.
Stun, as far as I'm aware, always lasts 1 roud.
Don't remember how priest communions work right now.
Post by: MCreeper on January 15, 2018, 12:05:32 pm
Post by: MCreeper on January 17, 2018, 08:49:01 am
Post by: MCreeper on January 18, 2018, 03:49:29 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on January 18, 2018, 03:51:21 pm
Post by: a1s on January 18, 2018, 04:30:11 pm
Your Capital, while frequently has unique recruits and excellent gold/gem income, isn't critical to your existence as a nation.It is also where your immortal commanders respawn (should you have any.) and heroes appear (free commanders with better stats, though they only spawn once.)
In general, while your capital is not literally vital to your nation, you should still try extra hard to keep it. Just like an IRL nation, really.
Post by: a1s on January 18, 2018, 04:33:05 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on January 18, 2018, 04:42:22 pm
It is also where your immortal commanders respawn (should you have any.) and heroes appear (free commanders with better stats, though they only spawn once.)
In general, while your capital is not literally vital to your nation, you should still try extra hard to keep it. Just like an IRL nation, really.
Immortal commanders respawn in the province where they were recruited/summoned, I'm pretty certain. Which may or may not be your capital, especially if you have an immortal pretender. You are definitely right about the heroes, but again. Capital is not critical to your nation but definitely worth keeping.
So, I was reading the manual (http://www.illwinter.com/dom5/dom5manual.pdf) and noticed some items were restricted to certain nations. How long has that been in? Also, I'm guessing the restriction is only on creation of said items and not their use? (The "cold dead hands clause")
I want to say since at least Dom 3, where Mictlan got their Jade Knives to help with the whole 'Dying Dominion' thing they have going on. It might have even been before that, but I'm much less confident on that point. The national-only items only became more common in Dom 4 however, where several more were added (especially later on in development).
The restrictions are on the creation of items and not their use, though obviously not all of them are useful to all nations. I don't think that anyone outside of MA Ermor has a use for the Black Laurels after all.
Post by: a1s on January 18, 2018, 04:49:24 pm
Post by: Gigalith on January 18, 2018, 05:07:31 pm
Is there a way to find out what the "story event location" (red book thing) is a about? Other than on the turn it happened, if you were the one it happened to, I mean.
"i" will give you all kinds of information on a province, specifically the entire history of events that happened to it.
Post by: Karlito on January 18, 2018, 11:11:02 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/g4rZXP4.png)
Post by: Cruxador on January 21, 2018, 12:15:33 pm
MEKONE RELEASED
I haven't tested them myself yet, but word on the street is they suck. Not much magic outside the capital, no sacred troops, and everything is expensive. Also the humans get xp-shape but get only small bonuses and lose the slave tag, so it's arguably a downgrade even ignoring the afflictions they'll have by then.
However, Mekone does get pretty good ranged units, and giants with formation fighter.
Post by: E. Albright on January 21, 2018, 12:46:31 pm
The helot phalanxes are dirt cheap and really quite decent for EA when lead by the crazy-good giant leadership-plus-inspirational-plus-taskmaster combination. I think the idea that everything is expensive is fixating on just the Giant Spartans and ignoring the very existence of the helotes. Which ironically feels correct for a Spartan nation, but still.
Also, two size-4 giants per square in full magic-better-than-bronze plate is not pleasant in EA.
There's a lot of interesting mechanics at play here. I like that they finally added a skirmisher tag (which EA Ulm has as well, eep), and the giant assassins are cute, even if they are spawned by annual events rather than recruitment. It seems like a thug nation, which doesn't feel totally out-of-place for Giant Sparta...
(Also, between their inquisitors, national +1 dom conflict bonus, and +2 dom conflict global, they seem like potential domkillers even without bloodsac.)
Post by: MCreeper on January 21, 2018, 01:01:55 pm
Post by: E. Albright on January 21, 2018, 01:03:37 pm
Post by: Cruxador on January 21, 2018, 05:23:49 pm
The loss of the slave tag for Neodamodes is offset by +4 morale (and +2 mapmove), when the best taskmaster bonus is +2, so it's an upgrade, even though you then have to pay full upkeep (3/y->6/y). Note that I'm just looking at hoplites, but I assume the other types are comparable.Full list:
heavy hoplite
+4 morale
+2 map move
-slave tag
light hoplite
+4 morale
-slave tag
+2 map move
+skirmisher tag
peltast
+3 morale
-slave tag
+2 map move
+8 head protection (leather cap -> bronze cap)
Yeah, they're better. The only case where the lose morale is if you've forged the whip for your commanders. But I think it's questionable whether they're better enough to be worth the double upkeep.
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Also, two size-4 giants per square in full magic-better-than-bronze plate is not pleasant in EA.Yeah, that's pretty much the flagship feature of the nation. If they were sacred, they'd be amazing. As they are, they're good but a one-trick pony, which makes them a one-counter pony. And given their encumbrance values, many nations should have an option to knock them out and make them irrelevant. If you could mass them, maybe that wouldn't be the case, but all gigantes have limited recruitment. Wasn't the whole point of recruitment points that we wouldn't need hard caps like that any more? Well apparently we still do.
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It seems like a thug nation, which doesn't feel totally out-of-place for Giant Sparta...A Polemarch is a pretty good thug out of the box, but I think you're going to have a hard time scaling it up to an SC, meaning it's potentially useful but not enough to make Mekone a nation revolving entirely around this. And the paths are okay for thugging, but not excellent. An elder cyclops is better, but you're going to want that A2 random for mistform, and besides that what he's got going for him is the same - E2 for some protection buffs, F2 for phoenix pyre (but no great source of regen) and you need to forge him a full set of equipment. And he's not sacred, so unlike the Polemarch, won't benefit from a thug bless. And his attack/defense suck.
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 21, 2018, 05:30:39 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 22, 2018, 04:27:29 am
Works ok with indi archer spam btw.
I would love some more mid-tier-legendarys. Like a "Ring of Element X" and there can only ever be one for each element and it is cursed, costs 20 of the element to be made and 5 in the path.
What does the Elder Cyclop even want to craft? Nothing up to construction 4 looks all that interesting.
Post by: Endymion on January 22, 2018, 10:23:07 am
What does the Elder Cyclop even want to craft? Nothing up to construction 4 looks all that interesting.
Well in general nothing all that interesting exists until const 6. Useful, sure, but nothing interesting. As far as I see it, and this is without any testing, Elder Cyclopses (Cyclopi? Cycloxen? Cyclopodes?) would only be used early for their resource bonus, as the troop line up available could use as much as they can get. A quarter of them will have A2, so with their master smith bonus they're effectively A3.... Any way to boost them one more rank in air magic opens up a ton of stuff, namely the air boosters, staves of elemental mastery, etc. Of course they also have easy access to a rather massive number of artifacts when they hit const 8.
Oh, but they do have air and earth, so they can make those flying stone birds everyone loves.
The problem is the cyclops is they each compete with 2 archons in terms of recruitment slots.
Post by: E. Albright on January 22, 2018, 10:57:09 am
Post by: E. Albright on January 23, 2018, 12:33:09 pm
These growing pains are harsh. It needed done, but eeeesh, some of these bugs...
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 23, 2018, 05:01:05 pm
Post by: E. Albright on January 23, 2018, 05:07:10 pm
Post by: Cruxador on January 23, 2018, 05:51:25 pm
I'm not really bothered much, but the range and severity of bugs consistently being reported at 5.11 is, uh, impressive (since I report bugs myself I've been subscribed to every bug report thread on Steam so far, and thus don't even have to try to see what's vexing others). JK's doing a good job of quashing them as they're reported, but there's been (and continue to be) so many when the old archaic engine had largely lulled us into a sense of complacency. It's been easy to forget how complex and interlaced the underlying system is...Honestly though, this level of bugs seems completely normal to me for an indy game with such a small team. I don't think it's exceptional at all in that regard.
Post by: E. Albright on January 23, 2018, 06:40:24 pm
Post by: Wysthric on January 23, 2018, 06:55:09 pm
It's significant compared to Dom4, both in terms of quantity and type. However, Dom4 was just a major expansion of a mature system migrated to a new developer, so it's not surprising it was a lot more stable. Again, I'm not complaining; it was just something that struck me recently given how many people had complained early on that Dom5 was nothing but a big, overpriced patch for Dom4. It's definitely more than that, even if the best evidence is evidence no one should want to have. :P
You could argue all of the games are a "big, overpriced patch" for the previous, but they aren't even really that overpriced when you consider all the free shit they add in.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 24, 2018, 10:00:46 am
So next Bay503 round, can we spice it up with something really stupid? Like, indi strength = 9 and only 1 lvl 3 Throne per player and half of them needed to win? Or Cataclysm timer 50 (seems long enough really) + 20x lvl 1 thrones?
What about played turn 1, then x10 Force host, then the real game starts (at turn 11 with a big ol stack for everyone)?
Or just to get that retro-Dom4 feel, recruitment numbers x3.
Realistically, we could just have a Disciple game, team max size = 25% of players, solo players allowed.
Post by: a1s on January 24, 2018, 07:24:46 pm
Frequent events, All.
Fast Research.
3x recruitment.
10x forces.
Day 1 cataclysm.
(All thrones required, except for 3 points, just to keep you guessing)
Post by: E. Albright on January 24, 2018, 08:20:31 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 30, 2018, 01:59:52 am
Post by: Karlito on January 30, 2018, 02:09:43 am
It's turn 48 and they have cast Forge of the Ancients. For more details enquire within the thread.
Post by: MCreeper on January 31, 2018, 10:00:21 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 31, 2018, 10:02:36 am
How weapons with multiple attacks on single targets (like gloves of gladiator) work? If it says that they deal 50 damage divided on four attacks, or four attacks that deal 50 damage each? Because in my SP game i have lemur consul that deals more 50 damage with them, and wonder if it's enough to kill in one turn anything bot can possibly have, or enough to kill in one turn almost everything in the game?The damage value listed is for each attack separately.
Post by: etgfrog on January 31, 2018, 10:27:29 am
Post by: MCreeper on February 01, 2018, 08:10:10 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 01, 2018, 09:53:52 am
Post by: chaoticag on February 01, 2018, 10:35:03 am
Though it also sounds like your SC had an Achilles heel regarding mundane attacks. Regen 15 is impressive but sounds like on it's own it would be subject to something as simple as a cold aura. It's important to remember that SCs are usually meant to be a series of great defenses with a good offense (I can't quite say that with confidence yet, I've been too busy to join in games until later this year, hopefully, go figure).
Actually, come to think of it what have people been thinking about the multiplayer for dominions 5? I've not heard too much talk about it so far. Because I might as well be living under a rock.
Post by: etgfrog on February 01, 2018, 10:55:14 am
Post by: Cruxador on February 01, 2018, 11:04:29 am
Choice of bless is important, before there wasn't much of a caster bless, now there is. It might be just because I'm new to the multiplayer scene and the only multiplayer game in dom 4 was round 428, I would have to say things are far more aggressive because the army wipe spells have been nerfed due to the cast time or just overall effectiveness.It's not just those nerfs but perhaps more crucially, the elimination of the defense trap. Before, when you were the defender you could get a whole round of spells off before your opponent could do anything besides the automatic spells from powerful items.
Post by: Kagus on February 01, 2018, 11:06:50 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 01, 2018, 11:17:40 am
MP feels surprisingly balanced, with no specific Tactic being the clear winner (SC/Bless spam) - you can build your nation to be good early on (bless), but pay the price for it later.
I feel like the defenders lost a bit of there old advantage and there is no more "we hit the entire enemy army for free" moments we had before, which could help the side that is losing.
You should join us for the next match chaoticag
Post by: etgfrog on February 01, 2018, 12:09:46 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 01, 2018, 12:15:27 pm
It might be just because I'm new to the multiplayer scene and the only multiplayer game in dom 4 was round 428, I would have to say things are far more aggressive because the army wipe spells have been nerfed due to the cast time or just overall effectiveness.
What Cruxador says about the switch to simultaneous and thge end of UGoIGo is a big change, but it also can't be underscored enough that 428 had VERY ABNORMAL diplomacy. That game was/is definitely much more... passive, shall we say... than is normal.
(428 operating under UGoIGo also made it more passive; I for one would have been a lot more aggressive had turns been simultaneous...)
Post by: chaoticag on February 01, 2018, 09:32:44 pm
You should join us for the next match chaoticagWell, I know for sure I can't join in on games unless people are fine potentially waiting several weeks. Otherwise I should be fine once april or may rolls in.
Post by: MCreeper on February 06, 2018, 11:08:58 am
Question 2 - can mage spend two gems on casting a spell, if he already can cast it with his base levels?
I think answer to both is "no", but i just want to be sure.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 06, 2018, 11:13:40 am
A mage can spend gems casting a spell if they can already cast it with their base levels. Basically every extra gem used increases their base level by 1, increasing the spells effects and (most importantly) cutting down on the fatigue they experience. Generally if you give a mage gems they'll do this to reduce fatigue, unless you tick 'Conservative Gem Usage' on their orders.
So as far as I am aware, the answer to both is yes.
Post by: MCreeper on February 06, 2018, 11:21:14 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 06, 2018, 11:27:42 am
It's a roll against defence of all units, excluding floaters and fliers, and mostly cancelled by etherealness. Caves add a second roll against defence to 10% of the battlefield squares, which does not exclude floaters/fliers.
As a rule of thumb, low defence <10 units get good chance to be hit, high defence >15 get low chance, and high armour units can survive hits better.
Post by: MCreeper on February 06, 2018, 11:37:51 am
Post by: Karlito on February 06, 2018, 12:02:45 pm
Question 2 - can mage spend two gems on casting a spell, if he already can cast it with his base levels?The answer to this question is actually "no". Or maybe "yes," depending on what you're asking exactly. There are two ways mages can spend gems on a spell. The first is to boost their effective path level for casting a spell. A mage can only spend 1 gem per spell to boost their path level, allowing them to cast spells at 1 level higher. The second way to spend gems is by paying the cost of a spell that costs gems (most battlefield summons and many battlewide enchantments or other big spells). Every mage has a per battle limit of how many gems they can spend, which is the level they have in the path of the gem. This limit will also be increased by anything that boosts the mage's paths for the duration of the battle (summon x power, crystal shield, communion, etc). There's no limit on bloodslaves.
For example, giving an E1 can spend an earth gem to cast Summon Earth Power(E2), boosting them to E2 (and also boosting their gem spending limit) for the rest of the battle, which then allows them to cast Strength of Giants(E3) by spending another gem, but then they're back to casting only E2 spells.
As another example, an A2 mage with 2 air gems can cast Arrow Fend. They spend 1 gem to temporarily boost their path to A3, allowing them to cast the spell, and the second gem is used to pay the cost of the spell.
Lastly, an F2 mage can spend 1 gem to cast Fireball as an F3, but can't spend 2 gems to cast Fireball as an F4, because gems can only boost path once per spell.
Post by: MCreeper on February 06, 2018, 12:17:13 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 06, 2018, 12:30:04 pm
Every mage has a per battle limit of how many gems they can spend, which is the level they have in the path of the gem. This limit will also be increased by anything that boosts the mage's paths for the duration of the battle (summon x power, crystal shield, communion, etc). There's no limit on bloodslaves.
That's new, significant, and not something I'd heard discussed. In Dom4 it was a per-cast limit, not a per-battle limit. And it was worth noting that it got weird with communions; IIRC communion levels wouldn't let you use more gems, unlike other means of boosting.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 06, 2018, 12:35:56 pm
Post by: Karlito on February 06, 2018, 01:03:06 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 08, 2018, 06:02:41 pm
Spoiler: Conj6/D2/9d for 3 (click to show/hide)
I can't decide if that's impractical fluff, or something really nasty since it's an invisible ethereal frightening flier. Leaning towards really nasty, though.
Post by: etgfrog on February 08, 2018, 06:32:53 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 08, 2018, 08:19:17 pm
One minor problem with them is that invisibility only affects melee attacks and ethernalness affects mundane ones. If you can get around those then 5 Protection and 17 hitpoints won't be worth much. I was going to mention something about banishment spam until I realized that it doesn't affect devils anymore but... Smite Demon is still a thing, for anyone with H2 or better priests. Battlemagic is still a possible option too, though not as finely targeted against them.
In other words, my impression is that the Keres will smash through anyone unprepared for them but crumble against armies that are. An excellent surprise weapon and, if you can find someone stealthy to lead them, they should make top notch raiders too. Definitely worth it at 3 gems apiece, and Conj 6 isn't horribly late game either. Not something you can rush for either but still.
Post by: E. Albright on February 08, 2018, 09:00:29 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 08, 2018, 09:20:48 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 11, 2018, 12:42:04 am
Some of the people that have dug into game files to peek at some in-development stuff observed that the descriptions for later eras of Mekone sounds like they'll be able to cast it natively, FWIW.
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 12, 2018, 04:27:20 am
Round 428 might technically also be looking for a replacement, but it's complicated. Inquire within.
Post by: Micro102 on February 13, 2018, 08:05:18 am
EDIT: Also, if two nations declare war on me before year 2 should I just give up and restart? Because I don't see winning this unless they in turn get attacked by someone from behind.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 13, 2018, 10:04:53 am
Post by: Micro102 on February 13, 2018, 10:12:13 am
Post by: E. Albright on February 13, 2018, 11:45:12 am
Post by: Karlito on February 13, 2018, 12:57:44 pm
Or to clarify, there are certain effects like say, poison damage, that occur at a larger time interval, roughly that of a normal spell cast (i.e. the length of time in a Dominions 4 combat turn). I assume morale checks occur at that interval, which is also when the game looks to see if leadership requirements are fulfilled.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 15, 2018, 03:43:02 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169134.0 (http://Text)
One of the biggest nations in the game currently.
Post by: E. Albright on February 15, 2018, 11:12:56 am
Post by: Kagus on February 15, 2018, 11:34:57 am
I remember the Zhayedan immortals were absolutely terrifying in 4, but they were hysterically expensive to actually produce. Don't know what changes they might have gone through for Dom5.
Post by: E. Albright on February 15, 2018, 11:59:15 am
Post by: Cruxador on February 15, 2018, 05:46:51 pm
Post by: Micro102 on February 16, 2018, 04:28:28 am
Post by: E. Albright on February 16, 2018, 05:37:29 am
It really helped that only one of the 3-4 (I think it was 4) wholeheartedly committed to war; the rest picked a few provinces off my borders and made a few strong but unreinforced incursions. The midgame was a lot of holding out until they got their flanks attacked, then clawing back and consolidating my lost territory.
Post by: Micro102 on February 16, 2018, 01:44:49 pm
Post by: PrimusRibbus on February 16, 2018, 02:59:37 pm
If two nations declare war on me before year 2 should I just give up and restart? Because I don't see winning this unless they in turn get attacked by someone from behind, and even then, I would probably be so crippled that I wouldn't be able to beat the remaining nations. Has anyone won games like this?
That's a multiplayer game isn't it? I'm talking about single player vs AI. Nor did I get to take over another nation early on.
Declarations of war mean nothing in single-player. There is no diplomacy and you are effectively at war with everyone from turn 1.
I'd go as far as saying that AI declarations of war are pure fluff; the vast majority of the time an AI has declared war on me I haven't seen the slightest change in aggression from how they were treating me before the declaration.
Post by: E. Albright on February 16, 2018, 04:48:06 pm
In single player I've certainly come back from multiple declarations of war to win. As long as you can keep an AI at bay and don't kill their pretender and aren't actively invading them, they will eventually go back to not-at-war with you if there's an easier target for them to attack.
Post by: etgfrog on February 16, 2018, 07:46:35 pm
Post by: Micro102 on February 17, 2018, 01:15:36 pm
How long does it take and what are the conditions? Does each side have to not conquer any territory for 3 years or something?
Post by: E. Albright on February 17, 2018, 03:21:53 pm
Post by: Cruxador on February 18, 2018, 12:41:38 am
That's a multiplayer game isn't it? I'm talking about single player vs AI. Nor did I get to take over another nation early on.Anything you can do in multiplayer you can do more easily in singleplayer.
Post by: E. Albright on February 18, 2018, 03:05:03 am
Post by: Kagus on February 18, 2018, 05:09:14 am
Sure, the AI is worse at using any of those assets than a player would be (broadly speaking...), but if they manage to carve out a decent territory for themselves it can be terribly annoying to deal with.
Post by: Micro102 on February 18, 2018, 02:36:13 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 18, 2018, 03:21:44 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 26, 2018, 09:42:10 am
501 is most likly done in 10-12 more turns, its a lot less messy then 428.
Are Heat/Cold Auras ever worth it? Units spend so "little" time in actual contact/combat before dieing/being replaced, the 7+ rounds of standing next to each other for the fatigue to be relevant is not going to happen a lot (besides SCs and Giants and all that).
Post by: Cruxador on February 26, 2018, 10:48:36 am
Are Heat/Cold Auras ever worth it? Units spend so "little" time in actual contact/combat before dieing/being replaced, the 7+ rounds of standing next to each other for the fatigue to be relevant is not going to happen a lot (besides SCs and Giants and all that).It's hard to say never, but for that cost, I really can't think of any case where it would be worth it. Same problem as a lot of the new blesses really.
Post by: Kagus on February 26, 2018, 01:23:34 pm
Was it worth it? Ehh... It's more just icing on the cake of whatever unit you'd gone for, rather than the *reason* you'd picked them up.
Post by: Micro102 on February 27, 2018, 12:07:14 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 27, 2018, 03:29:00 am
No real solution, but as a general tip if a commander has 3 slots for inf (+1 for body guards), feel free to use them all, on all the commands, as long as there is no moral disadvantage, to spread your troops into more squads, which you can give different orders if you desire.
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2018, 03:37:51 am
Heat auras used to be able to occasionally set people on fire, same for cold auras and getting the chilled debuff. Don't know if that got carried over from Dom4, but it could potentially take out a few extra dudes. The cold aura was nice for leveling a playing field and letting your dudes punch above their weight, while heat auras could potentially be "fire and forget" (if you'll forgive the pun) by setting human-sized enemies alight and letting them just burn to death regardless of how dead your aura carrier happened to be.Yeah, it's works the same and it's a nice little ability, I was assuming "worth it" meant "worth the cost of the bless" since that's the only context you'd talk about the auras independently of the units they come on. And unfortunately the blesses are priced really highly compared to the utility of the effect. It's five bless points, barely less than fire weapons. Considering it's barely more useful than +2 attack when it comes to killing things, it's not at all worth two more bless points and incarnate. And chill aura's in the same situation too, except that frost weapons are the same price (but take a scale) and defense is an excellent choice with even more units than attack.
Was it worth it? Ehh... It's more just icing on the cake of whatever unit you'd gone for, rather than the *reason* you'd picked them up.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 27, 2018, 05:43:20 am
27. Februar - johan
This update has two new middle age nations Phlegra, Deformed Giants and Phaeacia, Isle of the Dark Ships. There are also new spells and tweaks mainly for the greekish nations.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Coffeespoons on February 27, 2018, 07:59:25 am
Post by: Kagus on February 27, 2018, 08:26:29 am
Heat auras used to be able to occasionally set people on fire, same for cold auras and getting the chilled debuff. Don't know if that got carried over from Dom4, but it could potentially take out a few extra dudes. The cold aura was nice for leveling a playing field and letting your dudes punch above their weight, while heat auras could potentially be "fire and forget" (if you'll forgive the pun) by setting human-sized enemies alight and letting them just burn to death regardless of how dead your aura carrier happened to be.Yeah, it's works the same and it's a nice little ability, I was assuming "worth it" meant "worth the cost of the bless" since that's the only context you'd talk about the auras independently of the units they come on. And unfortunately the blesses are priced really highly compared to the utility of the effect. It's five bless points, barely less than fire weapons. Considering it's barely more useful than +2 attack when it comes to killing things, it's not at all worth two more bless points and incarnate. And chill aura's in the same situation too, except that frost weapons are the same price (but take a scale) and defense is an excellent choice with even more units than attack.
Was it worth it? Ehh... It's more just icing on the cake of whatever unit you'd gone for, rather than the *reason* you'd picked them up.
Ahh, derp, yeah. I still don't know the actual changes done to the bless system. Honestly not really sure why I keep posting in here, as I don't know diddly about Dom5...
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 27, 2018, 09:20:19 am
Also the changes to Mekone are welcome but arguably not far enough. Gernotes and Ephors are only marginally cheaper and the Gigantes still don't feel special enough to justify the reclimit. Oh well. At least they got buffed a little bit.
EDIT: Phlegan's Cyclops Shamans get to summon goddamn war sheep. If that's not the greatest thing ever I'm not sure what is. More seriously the sheep are kinda trash, with all of the problems you expect from an animal. Low protection, low morale, okay attack, low defense, terrible MR and so on. However they are also upkeep free, have great HP and generate enough supply to feed themselves and a single human soldier. You get 2 per turn per Shaman which isn't the worst in the world but not the greatest either. If you want to recruit enough Shamans to get a sizable chunk of sheep chaff I won't stop you but Phlegan can probably recruit better stuff.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 27, 2018, 11:02:23 am
The otherones are intresting, especially since your dominion is quite relevant, getting that 1 point of contact and then invading is great, but one really should play them with some UW-friendly pretender. To bad they don't have a "Sail-move and pillage the same turn" ability, but that might be a bit op, too.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 27, 2018, 11:14:55 am
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2018, 11:17:11 am
I've still not dipped on this yet despite being a huge fan of two earlier iterations. What's the consensus on an upgrade for SP/MP?It's a big upgrade in general. Not a lot of the change is specific to either mode of play, though improved AI matters more in SP, and all the MP community has moved to the new version, which obviously is a big deal for MP. As far as the general gameplay and usability upgrades, what you could find by googling will probably be better than any list that I could make off the top of my head.
I haven't looked at the new nations in the patch yet but I'm honestly surprised that they're out already. I was honestly expecting it to take another month or so before they showed up. In before everyone on Steam complains about more Greek civs.rather than just Greek, it's annoying that so many of the nations are Mediterranean, West Asian, and Scandinavian. Those three areas make up like a tenth of the earth and more than half of the nations. There's tons of unexploited mythology in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, India, and China, which mostly have at best one token nation. And all of the southeast Asian and pacific island cultures including Australian and Maori groups are represented by in total zero nations. It's not like the Greeks don't have enough myths to squeeze a few more nations out of, but is the rest of the world ever going to get this thorough of a treatment?
Quote
Also the changes to Mekone are welcome but arguably not far enough. Gernotes and Ephors are only marginally cheaper and the Gigantes still don't feel special enough to justify the reclimit. Oh well. At least they got buffed a little bit.Every little bit helps, but when they were solidly in the running for worst land nation before...
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 27, 2018, 12:09:45 pm
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2018, 01:13:09 pm
Tyrant and Elder Cyclops are very niche. You might want one cyclops for forge duty and a tyrant is your only D access for hounds of twilight, but you're not likely to go for them in combat. The tyrant doesn't really have great paths for thugging (E is good but not really enough by itself, so they're only decent at phoenix pyre if you pump them full of reinvig and accompany an army or at least mouflon blockers) and the cyclops has even worse stats and no gear, despite a chance at A2 for mistform, and they're too expensive to compete with your other mages, not least because oppressors are communion masters so you'll never need another high path unit, just send some shackled mages along with them for less cost, less fatigue per actual caster, and more versatility.
You'll also recruit a few shepherds to get sheep, whose supply bonus is nice and they're free of upkeep and a decent distraction + evo-catcher and the shepherd is already decently priced for a mage, even if it's just N1. But the big guys aren't nearly worth 300+ gold.
The main weakness of the nation, aside from the giants being a trap, is that your troops are terrible. I think you'll want an awake expander for that reason alone. But at least they're not hard to spam. And if you go the mouflon route, those are decent blockers for a short time, they can even do a bit of damage, which makes them well worth it if you consider that all they cost is the shepherd's upkeep as he generates them. Hounds of Twilight would solve the problem a bit if only they were more spammable. But requiring four gems and one Tyrant's turn per each, their role is gonna be very niche. Mix them with your mouflons (sheepdogs!) for the fear effect, maybe.
tl;dr: Basically Marverni with elemental paths instead of astral, except worse because your mages and forts cost more and your freespawn blockers aren't sacred.
I am well aware that plenty of other myths and legends can and should be turned into nations. I just remember a bunch of people complaining on Steam about how Greek-orientated the recent nations were when Mekone was released and they are definitely going to start complaining again. That was meant to be a little joke, sorry.All good, I ain't mad at you, only mildly annoyed at Illwinter's approach.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 27, 2018, 01:35:05 pm
All good, I ain't mad at you, only mildly annoyed at Illwinter's approach.
As far as I'm aware, Illwinter treats Dominions as more of a passion project than anything else. Then you combine the fact that their head designer is a Swedish professor focusing on classical mythology and hings start to make a lot more sense. Unfortunately there's no real or good way to change the way they design their games. We just have to accept that they'll make what inspires them, which is obviously heavily focused around the Mediterranean. Besides. I think most of us would take a MA Phlegra over another MA Machaka, no matter how representative it is.
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2018, 02:02:30 pm
MA Machaka, no matter how representative it is.Machaka isn't really a very good representation of African cultures. It's unapolagetically Lion King in EA with some spiders thrown in because people like the Anansi stories in MA and I guess it pretends a bit at representing the epic of Sundiata and Mandé culture but really there's nothing much there, it's mostly a bunch of dark continent memes of pygmies and stuff. Which, I mean, that is what you expect from a Swede I guess. I should do some more work on my Yoruba mod, but I've been busy lately.
Post by: E. Albright on February 27, 2018, 02:04:09 pm
The main reason we just got a pile of nations for Club Med is because they're re-using art assets - and name assets, too; the latter is easy to forget, but potentially a pile of tedious and under-appreciated work. It's also why we got these so fast. They're distinct, flavorful nations (good or bad remains to be seen, and they're not as deep as some others, but they still clearly have individual flavor)... but the new content requirements are really low. Lots of resize-n-tweak, recolor-n-tweak, tweak-n-tweak. Also, they have comparatively small recruitment rosters. I'm not criticizing, mind you - as the current main graphics producer for NationGen I'd be a glaring hypocrite if I did. But doing clustered nations like this and/or expanding from what you already have is a lot less intensive/time-consuming than creating entirely new nations, especially if you're not a dedicated graphic artist...
(Also, unrelatedly, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Syncretism for LA Arco. That potentially seems like a rather drastic change...)
Post by: Kagus on February 27, 2018, 02:47:09 pm
And I know from CoE how much he likes totem poles, so there's that too.
Post by: Cruxador on February 27, 2018, 03:32:57 pm
KO is a prof of comparative religion, not classics, IIRC.I think the main reason is just because this is an area that's on their mind right now. The cyclopes are totally new, for example, and one thing that came up in discussion some months ago was that he was reconceptualizing them in part because of how terrible their old sprite was, but he couldn't come up with a better notion within that original concept.
The main reason we just got a pile of nations for Club Med is because they're re-using art assets - and name assets, too; the latter is easy to forget, but potentially a pile of tedious and under-appreciated work. It's also why we got these so fast. They're distinct, flavorful nations (good or bad remains to be seen, and they're not as deep as some others, but they still clearly have individual flavor)... but the new content requirements are really low. Lots of resize-n-tweak, recolor-n-tweak, tweak-n-tweak. Also, they have comparatively small recruitment rosters. I'm not criticizing, mind you - as the current main graphics producer for NationGen I'd be a glaring hypocrite if I did. But doing clustered nations like this and/or expanding from what you already have is a lot less intensive/time-consuming than creating entirely new nations, especially if you're not a dedicated graphic artist...
Quote
(Also, unrelatedly, I'm surprised no one has mentioned Syncretism for LA Arco. That potentially seems like a rather drastic change...)How so? It seems pretty straightforward to me; just a way to save some gold.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 27, 2018, 04:41:17 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 27, 2018, 05:54:19 pm
I think the main reason is just because this is an area that's on their mind right now. The cyclopes are totally new, for example, and one thing that came up in discussion some months ago was that he was reconceptualizing them in part because of how terrible their old sprite was, but he couldn't come up with a better notion within that original concept.
Well, yeah. And aside from a small number of new units, this let them crank out a handful of nations quickly because the rest was existing assets. The reason we got the particular nations we did was the age of the cyclops pretender graphic, but the speed and quantity of nations is pretty much all about efficient use and re-use of resources.
How so? It seems pretty straightforward to me; just a way to save some gold.
Actually, come to think of it there aren't any super-cheap temple-spam nations in LA that I can think of off the top of my head, so I do suppose it'd generally be more a bonus for capping a fort in practice than anything else.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on February 28, 2018, 11:22:28 am
Post by: Kagus on February 28, 2018, 11:28:21 am
Everyone should expierence the beauty of a battle full of giant hurlers, with prec. 8In Dom4, I once made (out of desperation and curiosity) a minor blood/major air bless for EA Agartha and just pumped out a bunch of hurlers.
Why the full major bless? Because even with the +prec, they were still so prone to hitting each other/themselves that I had to give them air shield to stop some of the bloodshed.
Agarthans are allergic to efficacy, however, and once they figured out that they were actually killing people with thrown boulders, the hurlers decided to stop all that nonsense and just rush the enemy in melee, where they could fail in peace.
Post by: Jilladilla on February 28, 2018, 07:54:41 pm
Post by: Micro102 on February 28, 2018, 10:26:49 pm
Post by: E. Albright on March 01, 2018, 12:11:16 am
Post by: Cruxador on March 01, 2018, 02:22:05 am
as the current main graphics producer for NationGenDo you want stuff? I have a few Agarthan bits and bobs from the Dominions D&D game that should only need positioning, and I bet CoolStory does too, and I'm also about to embark on a modding journey which should see some new African (black/sub-saharran, but not Mandé like Machaka) stuff, it wouldn't be too hard to frame it in the NationGen format as I go along. A lot of it might be redundant to what NG already has, though, and you shouldn't expect a high productivity quickly.
Post by: E. Albright on March 01, 2018, 02:58:58 am
Post by: Cruxador on March 01, 2018, 01:38:36 pm
Bits and pieces never hurt. As you said, there's no guarantee they'll be useful, but if it's not too much work for you, I'll certainly not say no.Well don't expect anything too soon, unless you just want a slow trickle, but there'll be bits for mounted Africans, a bunch of robes and colorful cloth hats, and machetes.
Post by: Kagus on March 01, 2018, 01:42:55 pm
That, and a trickster who got a couple men into a bloody fight with each other by wearing a two-tone hat.
Post by: Majestic7 on March 01, 2018, 02:05:12 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 01, 2018, 02:22:34 pm
That said, Berytos is described as "the Phoenix Empire", so eh... And considering the colossi are still around, it's effectively the same people anyways.
Post by: Majestic7 on March 01, 2018, 02:31:41 pm
A true Carthage should get war elephants, though... but maybe they get them as LA version.
Post by: E. Albright on March 01, 2018, 02:51:48 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 01, 2018, 03:07:29 pm
Well, Carthage started as a Phoenician colony that became independent after Cyrus the Great conquered the mother nation. They had a mythical queen-founder (though no matriarchy like in Dominions.) Tyre, the original Phoenician capital, worshipped Melqart that is the god-thing of Berythos.
A true Carthage should get war elephants, though... but maybe they get them as LA version.
Well, Berytos does have war elephants, so I guess that's a point in their direction. That said, I think Albright's explanation ("shit's mixed up, yo") is the most accurate.
EDIT: Speaking of Berytos, what are people's thoughts on the Melqart spell? Blood 6, 99 blood slaves for another nation's national commander (with a couple modifications), and you still have to pay an exorbitant amount of upkeep on them. Much as I love the fluff, I'm... Not really seeing it.
Post by: Majestic7 on March 01, 2018, 03:15:48 pm
I understand that balancing a game this complicated is difficult, though and it doesn't affect those who prefer playing single player.
Post by: Cruxador on March 01, 2018, 03:52:14 pm
That is unfortunately common for many summons and late game options in general, some are just plain better than others instead of being situationally better. I haven't really played Dom5 in real multiplayer yet, but in Olden Times you had to get the conceptual balance mod for the best experience. Otherwise there was always one optimal choice that was simply better in cost-effectiveness than the rest, regardless of !fun!.In Dominions 4, it was sum1won's balance mod, after an initial year or two with a different balance mod for each community. Right now I know Zonk is taking a go at a balance mod already and I don't know if he's the only one but there's no widely spread mod yet and won't be for a while - even the mainstays like Worthy Heroes and Better Arena are only now retaking their place as every game go-tos.
I understand that balancing a game this complicated is difficult, though and it doesn't affect those who prefer playing single player.
Post by: E. Albright on March 01, 2018, 09:22:10 pm
EDIT: Speaking of Berytos, what are people's thoughts on the Melqart spell? Blood 6, 99 blood slaves for another nation's national commander (with a couple modifications), and you still have to pay an exorbitant amount of upkeep on them. Much as I love the fluff, I'm... Not really seeing it.
I've actually usually heard them touted as a superior version of Hinnom's Melqarts because they're not limited to slow-recruit cap-only.
I've never seriously played either nation, though, so I don't have a personal opinion.
Post by: Cruxador on March 01, 2018, 11:41:37 pm
I've heard this as well, and it makes sense to me. Sure, Hinnom's version is better in the early game, but in the late game a blood economy can pump out a ton of blood slaves. The upkeep isn't great but by the time you can summon melquarts and se'irim, there's not all that much to use gold on anyway. And Berytos may not have the best blood hunter, but Hinnom doesn't have the best gold situation either.EDIT: Speaking of Berytos, what are people's thoughts on the Melqart spell? Blood 6, 99 blood slaves for another nation's national commander (with a couple modifications), and you still have to pay an exorbitant amount of upkeep on them. Much as I love the fluff, I'm... Not really seeing it.
I've actually usually heard them touted as a superior version of Hinnom's Melqarts because they're not limited to slow-recruit cap-only.
I've never seriously played either nation, though, so I don't have a personal opinion.
Post by: Micro102 on March 05, 2018, 03:34:52 am
Post by: Kagus on March 05, 2018, 05:04:03 am
I've heard this as well, and it makes sense to me. Sure, Hinnom's version is better in the early game, but in the late game a blood economy can pump out a ton of blood slaves. The upkeep isn't great but by the time you can summon melquarts and se'irim, there's not all that much to use gold on anyway. And Berytos may not have the best blood hunter, but Hinnom doesn't have the best gold situation either.
So, according to the inspector, the only differences between the two (aside from recruitment and availability) are the fact that the Berytian summon has a chance of 2A instead of 2S for its random pick, the Berytian has 3H instead of 1H (arguably useful, as it's the only national 3H Berytos has access to outside of the beefy hero melqart), and it actually costs 35 more gold (resulting only in slightly higher upkeep).
Potentially useful? Sure. But remember that it's Blood 6 and 99 slaves. At the same level, you could cast Five Gates three times, and have enough slaves leftover to cast Infernal Disease three times as well before you'd used up 99 slaves. Even the ice devils cost less, at 88 a piece. And none of those options cost gold upkeep.
...heck, I think you can empower a bloodless mage from 0-3 with 95 slaves, giving you all the potential combinations and uses that that provides.
Post by: MCreeper on March 05, 2018, 06:09:05 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 05, 2018, 06:36:55 am
Does bane venom charm works on troops in besieged castles?yes, but you would still have to wait 6 months for the army to die off.
Post by: Karlito on March 05, 2018, 12:28:07 pm
...heck, I think you can empower a bloodless mage from 0-3 with 95 slaves, giving you all the potential combinations and uses that that provides.
Empowering in blood can cause pretty sever horror marking now, so it's not great for getting long term use out of a mage.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 05, 2018, 01:03:26 pm
Now, if there was a Ry'leh spell that "Thins the barrier between the void and reality" so that even one horror mark is relevant, that would be great.
Post by: Kagus on March 05, 2018, 01:39:10 pm
And yeah, I'd also like to see something like that. I'd actually thought a bit about a nation designed around dealing with increased horror presence/attacks in their dominion, but giving them better national tools for dealing with horrors (even just high-morale bodyguards with magic weapons).
Post by: Karlito on March 05, 2018, 01:44:17 pm
Post by: E. Albright on March 05, 2018, 01:45:56 pm
Post by: etgfrog on March 05, 2018, 04:26:10 pm
Now, if there was a Ry'leh spell that "Thins the barrier between the void and reality" so that even one horror mark is relevant, that would be great.There is, its called astral corruption, although that does far more then just amp up horror attacks. Also it ry'leh doesn't get easy access to it.
Lightless lanterns give very little horror marking. Blood empowerment can give like 20 or 30 in one go.In round 501, I've had 4 researchers get killed by horrors. Then again I've had misfortune 1 for quite a while.
Post by: Kagus on March 05, 2018, 04:46:07 pm
There was a Dom4 mod nation that was horror cultists, to the point of being oozing theme but possibly annoying to play as - which seems about right. I can't remember the name, though...Was it called... Horrorlando, FL? Possibly Horroregon? Lots of cultists there.
I think the idea was to make it more useful on an offensive scale, or to give R'lyeh at least SOME form of agreement with the horrors, considering... Y'know, the everything.Now, if there was a Ry'leh spell that "Thins the barrier between the void and reality" so that even one horror mark is relevant, that would be great.There is, its called astral corruption, although that does far more then just amp up horror attacks. Also it ry'leh doesn't get easy access to it.
Post by: E. Albright on March 05, 2018, 04:58:41 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 05, 2018, 05:19:07 pm
R'lyeh isn't really about horrors, though. They're about all the other weirdness in the Void, but not horrors. Hence their lack of blood, or much of anything relating to horrors. Saying R'lyeh needs to have features relating to horrors because they're a Void-oriented nation is a bit like saying Oceania needs to have features relating to Atlantians because they're an ocean-dwelling nation.Thing is, when the horrors got expanded beyond just Lesser/Normal, a lot of the designs were inspired by Lovecraftian mythos. They're also some of the things that can come out of the summoning portal to attack failed rolls, and the only things to attack people lost in the Void. There just seems to be this bizarre, unclear split between kosher voidlings and the off-limit voidies that a bunch of other nations get to play with.
In other stories... Uttervast as a pretender chassis. For those who don't want to risk not getting a lucky vastness freespawn in the first year.
Post by: Cruxador on March 05, 2018, 06:06:59 pm
Post by: E. Albright on March 05, 2018, 09:34:28 pm
They're also some of the things that can come out of the summoning portal to attack failed rolls, and the only things to attack people lost in the Void.
My many Otherness-crushed former portal-tenders wish that was true. The last time I lost someone into the Void (MA R'lyeh, Dom5) I was attacked by a Great Otherness. Anything that can attack you at the Void Gate can attack you in the void.
Horrors have their own agenda and creep into the world when it catches their eye. The other void beings are generally off minding their weird tentacular business until something with more tentacles than them persuades them to come drive fleshlings mad.
Post by: Micro102 on March 05, 2018, 10:56:59 pm
Post by: Karlito on March 05, 2018, 11:13:41 pm
Quote
Mindless units
Mindless units need to be under the control of a commander. If there are no unrouted commanders on the battlefield eligible to command mindless units, remaining mindless units on the field are automatically subject to mindless dissolution.
If all eligible commanders (i.e. commanders who can command mindless units) have been killed or routed, the mindless beings become immobile and have a 33% chance each turn of dissolving and vanishing from the battle. They will not move, but will attack adjacent units.
Post by: E. Albright on March 06, 2018, 12:34:34 am
Post by: Micro102 on March 06, 2018, 07:19:02 am
Post by: Kagus on March 06, 2018, 07:49:13 am
Well the acorns give 1 magic command, but the thing is a golem has astral magic so it already has magic command.But does the astral magic command boost get "applied" before or after mindless removes it?
...actually, does mindless even remove leadership? Ivy Kings are still mindless, aren't they?
Also, huh. Don't think I've ever actually seen normal void summons show up in "lost" events. And between the belly maw, mind slime and potentially also float cat horrors, I'd say that the "horror" voidies are at least as tentacly as the non-horrors. They're just less prone to cooperation, apparently.
It's strange. I mean, elder things are supposed to actually be fairly civilized (they were also somewhat hilarious with a fire bless in Dom4), so one could imagine a pact-like agreement between them and the starspawn, but that doesn't really work for any of the other ones. Hell, the horrors seem to have more of a communal civilization than many of the void summons, which again could make sense if you were venturing into the aether as a tentacled lion tamer and binding the wild beasts to your will, instead of trying to deal with a "neighboring" civilization that really doesn't like you very much.
But that doesn't exactly work either, because how the heck are you supposed to "tame" an otherness? You can't even mentally dominate it, because it doesn't have a mind to begin with. And what about the immobile ones? "Behold! I have journeyed into the weird mists and braved many horrifying challenges in order to present you with... this moderately-aggressive houseplant!"
For someone who just doesn't "get" it, the line of distinction isn't very clearly drawn.
Also, since blood empowerment is horror-marking now... That still leaves mindless/inanimate commanders as good targets for blood empowerment, because horror marking doesn't work on them. Neat.
Post by: E. Albright on March 06, 2018, 04:10:05 pm
Although hmm, test this. The bit about Inspirational Leadership not giving command to scouts in 5.16 is probably just the bless, but it could have been more general.
Were Ivy Kings ever mindless? Other ivy things were and are, but Kings aren't and weren't in Dom4...
Post by: Kagus on March 06, 2018, 04:46:59 pm
Were Ivy Kings ever mindless? Other ivy things were and are, but Kings aren't and weren't in Dom4......y'know, of all things, I think that may actually have been something from Dom1. That's the only other time I remember having summoned them. Either that or I'm just getting confused with ancient memories of GoR'ing a vogre, giving him two vine whips and a crown, and pretending he was a king.
Post by: E. Albright on March 06, 2018, 05:38:10 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 06, 2018, 06:39:00 pm
And yeah, haha... Good lord, Dom1's UI was... Painful. Both to look at and to actually try and use. Remember having to type in the province code for every targeted ritual? And having to assign individual researchers to different projects, since they weren't managed by the research screen? And having to manually assign tax rates in each province, especially if you took Turmoil scales which just added unrest every turn instead of directly affecting income?
The one singular thing I liked about Dom1's interface was actually the way the map was handled. Yes, it looked like a somewhat moldy orange peel, but the pixellated display let it do those fun things with representing a province's climate, and how things changed over the course of a game.
Dom1 was also the "bad old days" of clamspam. I think they only cost something like 10-15 water gems, and *every* nation could use pearls from the get-go because you could use them to directly boost research.
Post by: E. Albright on March 06, 2018, 06:49:07 pm
(Random !FUN! fact: you could bypass the can't-research-past-lvl-4 limit in the Dom1 demo by spewing out enough pearls to go from lvl 3 to lvl 9 in one turn. Clamspam beyond compare...)
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 07, 2018, 11:03:35 am
Looking forward to Dom6, maybe in full 3d or something.
Post by: Wysthric on March 08, 2018, 07:32:37 pm
Sounds funky...
Looking forward to Dom6, maybe in full 3d or something.
Still with ~50 sprites from Dom 2
Post by: Micro102 on March 11, 2018, 11:29:30 pm
Also, fuck ravens of the underworld who attack rear and instantly route all commanders wiping out 55 PD.
Post by: Karlito on March 12, 2018, 12:54:19 am
Well I just got dominion crushed by master AI, but I don't quite know how. I still had 2 provinces with 3 dominion candles and had my god, prophet, and about a dozen tier 2 preachers all preaching. How is it possible to lose 6 candles with all that prayer behind it? I was up against marignon, pythium, and erytheia.
Doesn't seem too unusual. Death by dominion is always going to be a sudden death spiral- as dominion in provinces decreases they're less able to defend themselves against enemy dominion spread which means dominion will decrease further. It's worth noting that preaching happens at step 6 of the turn resolution, while other dominion spread happens at step 39, so if your first two preachers raised the dominion up to the limit then the next 10 would have done nothing. And then later on in the turn all the sources of enemy dominion spread would have come and snuffed out your belief. What was your maximum dominion score, incidentally?
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2018, 03:26:26 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 12, 2018, 04:23:09 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 12, 2018, 01:59:26 pm
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2018, 07:45:27 pm
Post by: Zonk on March 12, 2018, 07:48:40 pm
LA Pythium Taurobolium, on the other, gives +2 Fire and +1 Nature to the Heliodromus casting it, but also raises his heretic trait for 12 month.
(Mentioning it because they were added together and it's a limited time, unit-specific buff)
Post by: Kagus on March 12, 2018, 08:03:23 pm
LA Pythium Taurobolium, on the other, gives +2 Fire and +1 Nature to the Heliodromus casting it, but also raises his heretic trait for 12 month.
(Mentioning it because they were added together and it's a limited time, unit-specific buff)
Which, really, just makes him better for leading the charge into enemy territory. Also that's a heck of a buff for how cheap that spell is. Gotta say, I really do love the flavor of LA Pythium's cult-wars, and it's nice to see more spells that play into that.
These are also the kinds of things where the mod inspector (hallowed be its name) falls a bit short... There's not a whole lot of sense you can make out of "Unknown: Unknown Effect 511 (654)?", hehe.
In other news, I'm digging the work being done on specific Twiceborn wight results. I had no idea Enkidu and Ashdod necromancers turned into special units, or Panic Apostates came back as carrions.
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2018, 08:48:06 pm
In other news, I'm digging the work being done on specific Twiceborn wight results. I had no idea Enkidu and Ashdod necromancers turned into special units, or Panic Apostates came back as carrions.
That sounds epic.
Post by: E. Albright on March 12, 2018, 08:52:49 pm
LA Pythium Taurobolium, on the other, gives +2 Fire and +1 Nature to the Heliodromus casting it, but also raises his heretic trait for 12 month.
(Mentioning it because they were added together and it's a limited time, unit-specific buff)
Worth mentioning that there can only be one of these at once, so you can't have a horde of buffed Heliodromi...
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2018, 11:29:58 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 12, 2018, 11:55:45 pm
Post by: Kagus on March 13, 2018, 05:55:24 am
Universal immortality with the move to Dom 5, though I believe it's far more rare than the dominion version. Dom 5 also added a turn timer to reform, instead of it happening immediately, and removed innate Recuperation from immortals. They can recover from afflictions by reforming, though since that involves them dying they can easily pick up more afflictions than they lose this way.
Huh, that's a pretty big change. Neat.
Also, anyone used Hell Power with a bunch of keledones yet? Biggest and most ridiculous defensive position ever! Sure, you'll lose all of them, but think of the mayhem!
And does anyone know if the Phlegran tyrant's combat casting trait goes through berserking? If it doesn't, that seems like kind of a waste.
EDIT: Hey... Soul Vortex uses the same rules as regular life drain, right? So it doesn't attempt to leech from inanimates? Theoretically then, you could just pile up a wall of keledones and get a communion master to cast Vortex. They all get the buff, and anyone approaching them gets hit by a wall of stacked life drain.
Post by: E. Albright on March 13, 2018, 11:07:22 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 17, 2018, 10:45:36 am
Github download page: https://github.com/elmokki/nationgen/releases/tag/0.7.0-RC2
Dom3Mods thread: http://s7.zetaboards.com/Dom3mods/topic/11057263/
Post by: etgfrog on March 17, 2018, 12:12:20 pm
Spoiler: This looks promising (click to show/hide)
Got some errors thrown at me while trying to filter for specific units, settings code 0:
- Generating nation 1/1 (seed 1624059300)... !!! full ring on slot armor tried to link to bronze_trousers on list legs, but such item was not found. Check your definitions! Pose [mounted], race Boreal human
!!! full ring on slot armor tried to link to bronze_trousers on list legs, but such item was not found. Check your definitions! Pose [mounted], race Boreal human
!!! full ring on slot armor tried to link to bronze_trousers on list legs, but such item was not found. Check your definitions! Pose [mounted], race Boreal human
Post by: Wysthric on March 17, 2018, 05:52:53 pm
(Or whatever name it generates.)
Post by: E. Albright on March 17, 2018, 06:06:48 pm
Wysthric: that sounds like there's no mods folder. Add a new folder called mods under the base directory. (I swear this happens every 2 or 3 releases, and both I and Elmokki are guilty of doing it, sigh...)
Post by: Wysthric on March 17, 2018, 07:03:30 pm
Edit : Just got a random huge lizard sacred called a Metal Master. lml
Post by: etgfrog on March 17, 2018, 07:40:35 pm
Spoiler: Found one (click to show/hide)
Also, another bug, also setting code 0:
- Generating nation 1/1 (seed -1248370852)... #needs for armor, item jomonpants and item nanban hauberk on slot legs failed. Roles [mounted], race Oriental human
#needs for armor, item jomonpants and item nanban hauberk on slot legs failed. Roles [mounted], race Oriental human
I just genned the nation I linked earlier to see what you mean, except...
Spoiler: Nothing Flashy?! (click to show/hide)
Post by: E. Albright on March 17, 2018, 11:57:52 pm
As to the bronze astral freaks (for whom I had no problem seeing/getting all the commanders?!?), I didn't say they were bad - they're certainly not... just not flashy.
Spoiler: E.g. moderately flashy (click to show/hide)
Post by: Kagus on March 18, 2018, 05:07:29 am
Also, was that a 170g spellcaster with gem generation? Or is that just pearl cultivation? Either way, neat. And yeah, that 4random blood mage does look pretty beastly... Fairly young, too.
But obviously, nothing comes close to the supreme domination of the almighty Frogherd!
Post by: MCreeper on March 18, 2018, 05:28:08 am
Postigmar, era of the supreme mages. Everyone is swallow on trample ichtyids with gluttony.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Mynria, Glory of the Ancient Degenrate Geomancers. Have hilarious name, old age earth-blood with some astral mages, most godawful leadership ever (no one has more than 40) and pretty cool sacreds. :P
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
EDIT: Aye, very cool sacreds. Encumbrance 10... :X.Their other infantry is not much better - 5 to 8 encumbrance. Any idea for pretender on this ones?
Also, goddamit.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: etgfrog on March 18, 2018, 07:43:39 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 11:27:39 am
I've tried to make better leadership more common over the year or so, w/o entirely eliminating the possibility of awful leadership; the problem is NG is random, so sometimes you'll have a pure-garbage-leaders nation. It's possible some of those might have better squads/formations/bonuses even if their numbers are parred down to 40, though; I have done that to mix things up a little.
How are the numbers of ranged units seeming? I need to do a walkthrough of all vanilla nations and see how many have no missile troops; I suspect the answer will be "EA/MA Abysians & EA/MA Atlantians", in which case we may need to add an almost-mandatory failsafe ranged unit generation test so walls don't go without ranged weapons.
Post by: Frumple on March 18, 2018, 11:52:19 am
Going too deep would be too silly, but it feels like thing riding thing riding thing is something needed yet apparently lacking. We must have horseman riding horse riding horse, like dream of fire emblem mounted units made manifest.
Post by: Kagus on March 18, 2018, 11:59:40 am
I imagine boulder-flinging walls would be reasonably painful, at least if the 2-ammo limit was ignored.
Probably either a dragon, a gorgon, or maybe even a teotl of the night. The main issue with doing that is you will end up with no magic and base dominion of 1 after a dozen deaths or so.Hmm, so there's dominion strength reduction involved now, too? Interesting. Does Ur's national bonus prevent that as well, or just magic path loss?
Speaking of, wahey! Ur's got another pretender chassis with recuperation! Didn't have the bull before, used to just be solar eagle and the rumbleturd earth serpent. Was something that always bothered me, you've got a bonus to recalling dead gods, but those gods were either immortal to begin with or came back with nothing more than a few spare parts and an Ikea instruction pamphlet.
Couple of them had blood magic to patch themselves up if they were lucky to not be feebleminded or such, but good luck with your blood economy and spending RPs on Blood 3 as Ur.
I can't help but wonder. Is person riding skeleton giant riding chariot a thing, yet? If not, why not?
Going too deep would be too silly, but it feels like thing riding thing riding thing is something needed yet apparently lacking. We must have horseman riding horse riding horse, like dream of fire emblem mounted units made manifest.
Vaetti riding a troll riding a moose... Or just an acrobatic tower of dudes all sitting on the next one's shoulders. The ultimate weapon in the fight against giants and monsters!
Post by: MCreeper on March 18, 2018, 12:05:42 pm
Was something that always bothered me, you've got a bonus to recalling dead gods, but those gods were either immortal to begin with or came back with nothing more than a few spare parts and an Ikea instruction pamphlet.I know that it's not the best one, but i'm still sigging this.
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 12:28:01 pm
S'pose that kinda depends on how you define missile weapons. One thing is the usual batch of slings/bows/crossbows, but are javelins, large rocks and mind blasts included in that distinction for this purpose?
I imagine boulder-flinging walls would be reasonably painful, at least if the 2-ammo limit was ignored.
Current priority queue is dedicated ranged troops > skirmishers or other troops with secondary/thrown weapons > infantry > anything else, with siege defense bonus adding priority w/in any given category. I wanna say elites and sacreds don't get checked, though, as it's basically modified PD generation code and NG excludes those from PD (even though it would be nice if every once in a while it didn't).
My current temptation wavers between "add a mandatory ranged unit to almost all nations if none exist" and "add a T1 or T2 mage to the wall if there's nothing ranged"; both would be fairly in keeping with vanilla. In fact, vanilla also has "add a wall-only ranged unit if the nation has none" for EA Vanheim and Helheim...
And yes, if you check your manual, wall defenders get unlimited ammo in addition to +20% range, so the couple of vanilla nations with boulder/discus throwers hurt... and those wacky illithids are apparently slurping down cranial fluids between rounds to refresh their mind blasting...
Frumple: obviously, the answer is for me to add caveman cavalry units, with the corollary being hoburgs can ride cavemen riding bears. And hoburgbred can ride fossilized cavemen riding fossilized bear skeletons.
That, or just mounting howdahs on the giant hoburgs so hoburgs can ride them - and so the giant hoburgs have a snack handy in case they get hungry, ofc.
Post by: Kagus on March 18, 2018, 02:54:57 pm
That, or just mounting howdahs on the giant hoburgs so hoburgs can ride them - and so the giant hoburgs have a snack handy in case they get hungry, ofc.Gotta remember to pack a lunch! Reminds me of a webcomic strip detailing why they didn't use the eagles to fly everywhere in Lord of the Rings...
I feel like humanoid-mounted howdahs (or even just howdahs in general) are a criminally underused concept in fantasy tomfoolery. And I'd still like to see manned siege engines for Dominions... Something with a nice big attack but human-level HP to simulate the engineer crew working it, which when killed reverts the thing to its base state: Incapable of attack, immobile, inanimate, but with big prot and HP. So you can easily lose its deadliness in a fight, but it can be recrewed afterwards.
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 03:01:59 pm
Gotta remember to pack a lunch! Reminds me of a webcomic strip detailing why they didn't use the eagles to fly everywhere in Lord of the Rings...
As I have no truck with such filth, I certainly have no idea what you're talking about. Uh, or that what you're talking about is filth. Wait, let me start over...
It would be pretty easy to do the crewed siege engine as a #secondshape/#firstshape combo. There's been a bit more movement in that direction with Dominions between Ragha's griffons and Uruk's Mushussu chariots.
Post by: Frumple on March 18, 2018, 03:25:14 pm
I wanna say elites and sacreds don't get checked, though, as it's basically modified PD generation code and NG excludes those from PD (even though it would be nice if every once in a while it didn't).Idle thought and probably pointless to mention in practice, but it might be neat if a temple in the province would randomly bless a handful of PD regardless of sacred status, or throw out a spell or two based on pretender paths.
Could do something similar with mage labs, now that I think about it; small number (like 1 or 2 per 10 pd past a threshold or somethin') of random summons and/or a few start-of-battle enchants tossed out, stuff like that. X% chance based on amount of PD for PD commanders to have a random low tier item?
Can't recall if there's anything like that currently in game or not...
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 03:54:05 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 18, 2018, 08:28:48 pm
Regarding ranged units, after several batches of roughly a dozen nations there were on average 1-2 nations per batch with no ranged units. That seems acceptable enough to me, I guess.
(In one case there was a nation whose only ranged troop was their sacred - flying samurai who could also throw a single lightning bolt. Unfortunately, the fort defenders were only normal spearmen of the nation.)
I'm also encountering more nations than I'd expect with regular recruitable troops suffering from old age. Intended? It is an interesting wrinkle (pun slightly intended).
It's been a while since I ran nationgen on Dominions 4, so perhaps a fair bit of the 'new' I'm seeing is from the later Dom4 version, but on the whole I'm quite impressed with what this is putting out.
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 08:35:10 pm
Also, oh god, I hadn't considered what happens when you have tengu eligible as wall defenders...
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 18, 2018, 08:49:31 pm
In the case of the lightning-throwing sacred being the only ranged unit, the main race was Sobek.
Though I think I may have found one better: a nation with illithids as their generic ranged troop. In this case the walls were indeed manned with ranks of illithid mind-blasters. No illithid PD in that case, at least...
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 09:13:55 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 18, 2018, 09:27:58 pm
In this case the nation only had a few token illithid tossed in amongst decently-equipped lizard troops, which made kind of an interesting 'normal troops, but with mind-blasters manning the walls' situation. Also cheap ranged sacreds, which slightly mitigated not having other ranged options. But I guess that's more luck of the draw than anything else.
Post by: E. Albright on March 18, 2018, 09:29:18 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 18, 2018, 11:05:49 pm
340171066 with settings integer 1. Ugwatbal has the elderly Bandar.
-838800082 with settings integer 1. Nikale has the elderly halfmen.
Post by: E. Albright on March 19, 2018, 04:17:56 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 19, 2018, 05:59:30 am
Also...
Spoiler: I'm pretty sure this nation has very few similarities to EA Lanka (click to show/hide)
Post by: Micro102 on March 19, 2018, 06:33:56 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 19, 2018, 06:43:14 am
This whole nation generation things looks interesting. Would someone with no knowledge of coding be able to set up an all random nations single player game?Yes, download: https://github.com/elmokki/nationgen/releases
unzip somewhere, run the nationgen.jar
If you don't have java run time environment installed, it wont work. Link to get it: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html (bit of an IT warning, uncheck most of the boxes that says to install things, you only want the runtime environment installed, not bloatware)
After you run it, set the nation amount to 10 or something then hit start.
It will create a mod in the mods folder of nationgen, copy the .dm and the folder in there to the mods folder of the game. If your not sure where the dominion's mod folder is, in game under tools is the option to open user data directory.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 19, 2018, 08:19:57 am
Post by: bulborbish on March 19, 2018, 08:51:16 am
Round 503 nationgen wackyness?I would be up for it, since 501 is winding down and I want more dominions games for my fix.
Post by: etgfrog on March 19, 2018, 09:43:13 am
Round 503 nationgen wackyness?I would be up for it, I am worried about people with tons of free time finding the most op nation possible...then again, if there is a need for testing, this would do it.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 19, 2018, 10:20:34 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 19, 2018, 10:40:23 am
In a test game I got pigmen riding a size 2 elephant, with like 6 strenght to it. Once dismounted its just a lil angry elephant with near 0 combat value, but are they ever just the cutes baby elephants.
Now we just need to find some willing fool to do all the hard work for a new round.
Post by: E. Albright on March 19, 2018, 11:24:30 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 19, 2018, 02:36:31 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 19, 2018, 05:28:17 pm
That's really weird because their troops' ages look fine to me.
Upon further fiddling, looks like the old age troops was an odd interaction with the "Sites Improved" mod I was also running. Updating that mod changed the problem caused (added additional troops instead of making them old), so I'm guessing there's an ID issue there or the like.
At any rate, sorry for the false alarm.
Post by: Micro102 on March 20, 2018, 05:47:18 am
Post by: Grek on March 20, 2018, 07:42:53 am
Post by: etgfrog on March 20, 2018, 08:07:19 am
Hmmmmm. I tried the nation gen and basically got an army of centaurs with different weapons, fire resistance, and recuperation. Seemed pretty boring. Was I unlucky or does the generator tend to give very unvaried units?Quite a few nations that are generated are and will be boring because you have seen that sort of thing before. However...that nation does still sound interesting if you was to take the heat aura bless and cast heat from hell in every fight but that would require either the nation to have fire access or to use the pretender for it.
The differences between each unit wont be much in a single race nation, what I would recommend doing if you want a bunch of unique units is to generate a foul spawn nation. You can do this by selecting the nation restriction tab, select primary race, press the add button, click on it below the remove button, then scroll down and add foul spawn. After doing this you can go back to main then generate a nation. You can also narrow things down with the other restrictions, but do try to remember that some filter options will result in no nations possible to generate, so it will just attempt to generate nations forever. If you see it go above 5000 nations filtered out, you may want to abort generating, which the only current way of doing so is to close it.
The usual way to balance it is to generate N nations per player and let each player choose only from their own pool.I would be fine with giving it a try.
Post by: E. Albright on March 20, 2018, 12:46:37 pm
Hmmmmm. I tried the nation gen and basically got an army of centaurs with different weapons, fire resistance, and recuperation. Seemed pretty boring. Was I unlucky or does the generator tend to give very unvaried units?
The individual troops for a given nation will be drawn from two races, tending more - sometimes exclusively - towards the primary. Generate a batch (I like 10 or 40 for various reasons); you'll see more variety.
I also recommend clicking the "generate preview images" checkbox on the second tab, though if it slows generation down too much for you, the wonderful in-game "Create a Pretender" tool in Dom5 lets you visually preview nations even better, albeit not quite as quickly.
Post by: Micro102 on March 22, 2018, 02:56:57 am
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 22, 2018, 05:53:20 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 22, 2018, 07:57:45 am
I just noticed, the nationgen mod used BYOND code/engine.... What does this mean? Does this have any potential for SS13 crossovers?
All it means that Java looks like BYOND, but is not. Or rather, that BYOND looks like C/C++ and Java, so one might mistake the former for one of the latter. Trust me, NG is written in Java, not BYOND.
Post by: Micro102 on March 22, 2018, 01:20:49 pm
Post by: Cruxador on March 22, 2018, 01:23:27 pm
So something in my computer is recognizing the Java code as BYOND and labeling it as such?That "something" will be your operating system. You probably have java files associated with BYOND, meaning your OS thinks this is the program to open them with.
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 22, 2018, 07:49:16 pm
In one batch I had two nations with ranged sacreds, one using an "exceptional long bow" and the other using an "exceptional composite bow." In each case, the ranged weapon received no strength bonus (as opposed to the 1/3 from their normal equivalents). Is this intended?
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 22, 2018, 07:53:34 pm
Post by: E. Albright on March 22, 2018, 08:10:33 pm
Post by: Dostoevsky on March 22, 2018, 09:13:22 pm
Post by: Frumple on March 22, 2018, 10:41:07 pm
It's probably a hold-over from Dom 4, which obviously didn't have a strength bonus on its ranged weapons. So not so much of a bug as an oversight?Eh? Some of them definitely had some strength interactions. Might have just been range, but I could swear there was some (grotesquely gem inefficient) hilarity with high strength >2 arm critters and fire bolas or somethin' like that. Maybe I'm remembering D3?
Though the standard bows definitely didn't, so holdover could still be accurate.
Post by: Kagus on March 23, 2018, 05:04:10 am
Yeah, there were definitely ranged weapons with strength bonuses, even outside of skirmishing weapons like boulders and javelins. Don't think there were any strength-bonus standard bows, but the lightning bow and that mighty/strongarm bow that may have even been an artifact definitely had the boost. Although I suppose the lightning bow isn't technically a "bow" when you get down to it...It's probably a hold-over from Dom 4, which obviously didn't have a strength bonus on its ranged weapons. So not so much of a bug as an oversight?Eh? Some of them definitely had some strength interactions. Might have just been range, but I could swear there was some (grotesquely gem inefficient) hilarity with high strength >2 arm critters and fire bolas or somethin' like that. Maybe I'm remembering D3?
Though the standard bows definitely didn't, so holdover could still be accurate.
It's all terribly frustrating for wannabe medieval historians who read an article somewhere about lopsided longbowmen, and who have since dedicated their lives to protesting Gygax's influence.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 23, 2018, 07:24:24 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 23, 2018, 07:45:24 am
Post by: MCreeper on March 25, 2018, 12:46:51 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 25, 2018, 01:06:57 pm
Post by: MCreeper on March 25, 2018, 01:15:17 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 25, 2018, 01:21:40 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 25, 2018, 05:19:51 pm
Post by: Cruxador on March 25, 2018, 10:12:41 pm
Getting a big, strong longdead giant is pretty dang nice, if only when compared to the regular kind.Horde of skeletons is a great spell largely due to the quantity of longdead it produces, not the quality. Going from small to large may not improve the quality that much, except in HP, but HP is mostly what you want from them so it's actually a pretty significant boon... Or it would be if you had a more cost-effective skelespammer to actually make use of it.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 25, 2018, 10:30:59 pm
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 26, 2018, 03:46:50 am
Post by: Kagus on March 26, 2018, 05:34:47 am
Also, MA Jotunheim also gets the immensely economic D1 vaetti hags for low-level spamming, and the astral randoms make for decent slaves to a gygja if you really want to invest in some spammery.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 26, 2018, 07:13:45 am
A Fort with 0 PD, but troops in the garrison + horror seed commanders (also inside the fort) will dump the horrors outside the door, slowly creating a stack of horrors. So if you want to do some silly things, get some free spawners that produce living units, horror seed a handful of commanders in that same fort and turn your free spawn units into horrors 1:1 - maybe you realllllly want to block a throne or something.
A sneaking horror-seeded unit will also never mark enemy units in the province it is in.
Post by: etgfrog on March 26, 2018, 07:43:26 am
Post by: Kagus on March 26, 2018, 08:13:35 am
Presumably also works for turn-summoned units like swans, wolves and muflons. Miflons? Muffins. They're muffins. They even have a supply bonus, just like real muffins.
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 26, 2018, 08:30:07 am
Swans to Horrors would be extremly effective however.
You just have to endure the "X has turned into a horror, fighting nothing" spam every turn.
Post by: Kagus on March 26, 2018, 08:57:24 am
So, yeah... polypal mothers, pans, a few pretender chassis... what else?
Post by: ThtblovesDF on March 26, 2018, 09:31:18 am
And while we are in Blood, one could use the soul-bound contracts to turn imps into horrors.
Been playing a little CoE 3 - i adore horrors there, they hardly ever show up where you want them and then they roam all over the place and kick ass.
Post by: Micro102 on March 28, 2018, 12:15:39 am
Post by: Cruxador on March 28, 2018, 12:23:05 am
Anyone know the relation between the frost weapon bless on sacred archers and the fire arrows spell? Do you get both?I don't see why not, but maybe test it if you're concerned. If it's magical bows, you won't.
Post by: etgfrog on March 29, 2018, 08:07:52 am
Spoiler: patch notes (click to show/hide)
Quote
AI can sailI don't know why I laughed at this.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 29, 2018, 09:10:19 am
Quote from: Patch Notes
Smaller less likely to be hit than larger if in same square.
MA Jotunheim weeps. Not by a lot though.
Post by: E. Albright on March 29, 2018, 09:21:50 am
Post by: Jilladilla on March 29, 2018, 03:55:53 pm
I'm here to request a sub in for a Dom 4 game; Round 28. MA Agartha. Very late game. At war with Arcoscephale.
Post by: ChairmanPoo on March 30, 2018, 02:51:52 am
Its kind of welcome btw. Compared to 3 and 4 I've found that 5 is lacking in the music department... a shame you cannot import/export tracks
Post by: Zonk on March 30, 2018, 02:26:20 pm
By the way, for those who didn't notice, the map workshop on Steam now actually works. Should fill up pretty soon.
Post by: Micro102 on April 02, 2018, 06:48:46 pm
My pretender was at 9 health and was diseased in a province without my dominion. I set a bunch of priests to preach and a nature mage to cast cure disease on them. The next turn the province turned to mine, the spell cast, and my pretender still died. My first guess is that disease triggers before dominion calculates and before spells are cast, and that somehow my pretender loses at least 9 health per turn while diseased.
Post by: E. Albright on April 02, 2018, 07:08:08 pm
Post by: Micro102 on April 02, 2018, 08:23:24 pm
Also, just retried curing a diseased unit on 1 health. It worked and they didn't die... Maybe... My pretender contracted another disease immediately upon being cured? I found a well of pestilence in that province.
Post by: Culise on April 02, 2018, 08:26:44 pm
Quote
6. Preach Priests preach the word of their god, and dominion is adjusted accordingly....Cure Disease should have gone off before disease calculations.
10. Magic rituals All mages cast their rituals in a random order.
45. Heal / Disease All units regain lost hit points, unless they are diseased, in which case they suffer more damage instead and may incur more afflictions.
Ah, a Well of Pestilence would do that. Site effects are step 41, after rituals and before disease calculations.
Post by: Kagus on April 03, 2018, 06:16:05 am
I think the only ways of dealing with it were Arcosephalian priestesses and maybe the holy grail, if it even existed back then. Potentially also just being pangaean, though I don't recall the details of recuperation's evolution.
Regardless, it wasn't very accessible. Nice to have a few more options, even if it has kinda taken some of the bite out of disease warfare.
Post by: ChairmanPoo on April 03, 2018, 07:38:20 am
Edit there might be a way: The tracks are avaiable online.
But yeah Dom3 and 4 music was better than Dom5, hands down
Post by: Kagus on April 03, 2018, 07:48:22 am
Post by: ChairmanPoo on April 03, 2018, 11:56:19 am
Post by: E. Albright on April 03, 2018, 12:42:42 pm
I think the only ways of dealing with it were Arcosephalian priestesses and maybe the holy grail, if it even existed back then.
Standard go-tos were GoH, Grail, and casting Fairy Court, which got you a full healer prior to Dom4. A Ring of Regen would essentially let you live forever so long as you periodically went into combat, though.
Post by: Cruxador on April 03, 2018, 01:01:33 pm
Regardless, it wasn't very accessible. Nice to have a few more options, even if it has kinda taken some of the bite out of disease warfare.disease warfare is still situationally useful. It may be more possible for someone to mitigate, but that costs resources, usually gems. It'll hardly win you the game, but shades with bane venom charms are good ways to soften up an enemy (especially his research base) before a war. And not everyone has ready access to disease healers now, either.
Post by: Micro102 on April 04, 2018, 03:37:05 am
Does anyone know of a mod that let's me redo a turn? I like the ironman thing but holy shit the number of crippling mistakes you can make is too high. It's pissing me off.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 04, 2018, 08:32:53 am
There's no mod that lets you redo turns that have already happened. That behaviour is well beyond the capability of any modder. The turn files should be unencrypted and easy to swap in and out though. If you have a back-up somewhere or can manage to restore the old turn file through a utility then that's good. Otherwise you're kinda out of luck.
Post by: Micro102 on April 05, 2018, 12:08:05 am
How many misc slots did your pretender have and where they all occupied by other items? If everything was filled or they had just the one then it's understandable what happened. If they had free slots then that should undoubtedly be reported as a bug.
There's no mod that lets you redo turns that have already happened. That behaviour is well beyond the capability of any modder. The turn files should be unencrypted and easy to swap in and out though. If you have a back-up somewhere or can manage to restore the old turn file through a utility then that's good. Otherwise you're kinda out of luck.
Yes the pretender slots were full, but why not just send it to the lab? Why not give a warning? Why not have the items of the deceased commander go into a lab when they are right next to a lab with plenty of our men next to it? Why not have the spell replace a non-essential item? Why not have the spell fail if it would remove a previous item?... So many things could be done to stop this.
And if it's a simple matter to back it up then i think it would be a simple matter to write a mod that makes a backup and sends it to the save folder under a different save name. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of coding.
Post by: Kagus on April 05, 2018, 04:57:58 am
And the game can't define what is an essential or non-essential item, there are far too many variables to consider that the game doesn't even really keep track of. But I agree, it's weird that researchers and other lab monkeys manage to catastrophically drop all their items in their death throes after passing away peacefully from old age.
Post by: Zonk on April 05, 2018, 07:35:36 am
Quote from: Kagus
it's weird that researchers and other lab monkeys manage to catastrophically drop all their items in their death throes after passing away peacefully from old age.
When a mage dies from disease/old age, items are sent to the laboratory if there is one in the province.
Post by: etgfrog on April 05, 2018, 08:42:40 am
Spoiler: Patch 5.20 (click to show/hide)
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 05, 2018, 09:23:08 am
Yes the pretender slots were full, but why not just send it to the lab? Why not give a warning? Why not have the items of the deceased commander go into a lab when they are right next to a lab with plenty of our men next to it? Why not have the spell replace a non-essential item? Why not have the spell fail if it would remove a previous item?... So many things could be done to stop this.
It's Dominions. At some point you just have to throw up your hands and accept that that is how the devs have made the game. Heck, in 3 and possibly beyond people could send you a ton of trash items in a turn to fill up your magic item treasury. Any items you forged in the same turn would thus be lost to the aether because forging happened after trading and so you'd lack the space to put them anywhere. Edge cases and quirks abound in Dominions, past, present and probably future.
And if it's a simple matter to back it up then i think it would be a simple matter to write a mod that makes a backup and sends it to the save folder under a different save name. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of coding.
That would be a third-party utility, not a mod. You are correct that it would be relatively easy to make, since it just a bunch of file checking/copying. Bugger if I know if anything like that exists though.
Post by: Shadowlord on April 05, 2018, 03:59:50 pm
(I do not have Dom5, mind you)
Post by: Micro102 on April 10, 2018, 05:49:24 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 10, 2018, 07:39:46 am
Post by: Micro102 on April 10, 2018, 08:40:31 am
Post by: Karlito on April 10, 2018, 11:32:07 am
Post by: Micro102 on April 10, 2018, 05:41:36 pm
Post by: etgfrog on April 10, 2018, 06:42:05 pm
Post by: Micro102 on April 13, 2018, 09:23:13 pm
Post by: Culise on April 13, 2018, 10:00:32 pm
Post by: Micro102 on April 13, 2018, 10:12:17 pm
Post by: Kagus on April 14, 2018, 05:25:28 am
Post by: etgfrog on April 14, 2018, 06:46:33 am
Overall...I'm leaning to that your right, your not going to be needing to bless a bunch of units and your not going to be wanting a front line high death that you cant already get from a few vampires in communion.
Post by: Micro102 on April 16, 2018, 12:42:29 am
I also read a guide that made a really good point. The vampire queen can help with early wars. Since LA Ulm is strongest lategame, the worst thing that can happen is an early war, in which your god can make the most difference.
Post by: E. Albright on April 20, 2018, 12:08:00 pm
Post by: Grek on April 20, 2018, 11:15:59 pm
Post by: Micro102 on April 21, 2018, 01:49:28 am
Post by: E. Albright on April 22, 2018, 02:02:07 pm
https://github.com/elmokki/nationgen/releases/tag/0.7.0-RC5
Added encouragement/discouragement:
(https://image.ibb.co/hUKuoc/dantih.png)
Post by: E. Albright on April 24, 2018, 01:09:54 pm
Post by: ArKFallen on April 24, 2018, 05:59:47 pm
I need a favor from someone with Dom5: round 502 needs a non-player to step in and set one of our Ragha to AI. If someone would be willing to do this relatively simple thing, it would be greatly appreciated.Will do. Please PM basic instructions. I have used Llamaserver but never subbed in any capacity.
Post by: Micro102 on April 24, 2018, 09:43:37 pm
Post by: Micro102 on May 05, 2018, 01:13:28 pm
Post by: Zonk on May 05, 2018, 01:15:56 pm
So Soul Slay (Astral 3) cast by an Astral 4 mage will have a penetration value of 12 before any special bonuses from items or blesses.
You can look at the DRN table in the manual to see what the % to affect a specific MR is.
Post by: Edmus on May 05, 2018, 06:27:56 pm
https://winkit.se/dominions/calc.html#spellpenetration
Post by: Micro102 on May 06, 2018, 12:01:19 am
This is an excellent tool for penetration calculations. It does communion fatigue, to hits and sieges too.
https://winkit.se/dominions/calc.html#spellpenetration
Well I found a new tab to keep permanently open :)
Now, I'm going to try out EA Ulm, and given the number of earth mages I will be pumping out and how badly I will need them, I was wondering if it would be worth it to throw some blood onto my pretender so I can forge some blood stones. The problem being that EA Ulm has no blood mages and it seems to be a nation meant to succeed early, quite the opposite of blood. Does anyone think it's worth it, or should I just go full scales or super-combatant?
Post by: Karlito on May 06, 2018, 12:42:06 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 06, 2018, 09:55:15 am
But if you do have a reliable source of bloodslaves without searching with random commanders then you should definitely start making Bloodstones. They are excellent magic items to have, even if it's only one guy making them on and off.
Post by: Micro102 on May 11, 2018, 02:41:24 pm
EDIT: Also, is there a default population increase value, or do I need growth to get more population? If there is a default, how many death scales can i take without nuking my population?
EDIT 2: Also also, what do you guys think about celestial rainbow + misfortune scales?
Post by: Karlito on May 11, 2018, 06:57:30 pm
Misfortune is a good dump scale, particularly if you're playing with rare random events. You just have to have an easy way to deal with barbarian attacks.
Post by: Micro102 on May 12, 2018, 11:40:25 pm
With no growth/death scales population is constant, aside from random events that change things up.
I.....Need to go restart a game.
Post by: Cruxador on May 13, 2018, 01:08:16 am
Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with killing everyone in the world as long as you win. Just expand fast enough to outpace your death scales and you'll be fine.With no growth/death scales population is constant, aside from random events that change things up.
I.....Need to go restart a game.
Post by: E. Albright on May 30, 2018, 11:33:21 am
Spoiler: Dominions 5.22 (click to show/hide)
It's not mentioned, but looking over the pretender lists a bunch of the older graphics look A LOT shrarper, so it seems KO did some cleaning of old low-res stuff on the sly...
Post by: George_Chickens on May 31, 2018, 12:59:06 am
Post by: E. Albright on May 31, 2018, 01:16:11 am
IMO. I was a day-one buyer who's been mucking about with this since Dom1.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 31, 2018, 09:57:38 am
Would everyone say the game is worth 50 Australian dollars, or is it best to wait for more content patches and fixes?
I would watch some let's plays first and/or read some after action reports first. (The LPArchive has two for Dom 3 which are horribly outdated but are enjoyable to read and give you a basic understanding of what the game is like). As much as I love Dominions, and I fucking love Dominions, I know that it is very much a niche product. Make sure you know what you're getting into before you buy it full price.
But if you do think that the game is for you, then you definitely should get it. The only reason to wait would be to get it on sale. The game already has a massive list of nations, units and spells to play with and is very much stable and complete. If you don't think you would enjoy the game then further patches won't change anything. If you would enjoy the game then further patches are just icing on the cake and you can easily wait for them while already owning the game.
Post by: George_Chickens on May 31, 2018, 10:17:20 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 31, 2018, 10:29:10 am
Post by: nenjin on May 31, 2018, 10:31:45 am
Quote
Can no longer seduce over unfrozen river
Apparently love does know some bounds.
Quote
I'm a short term Dominions player, I've been playing for 4 or 5 years now. It's just that the small map selection turned me off, and I was wondering if I should keep playing 4 and wait for a price drop.
I've always generated random maps to play so this has never been an issue for me. It's a slightly more of an issue in Dom 5 because no one remade the 3rd party map generator that I used in 3 and 4, and the one Dom4 and 5 has just never quickly produced maps I enjoy.
Anyways, I think Dom5 is worth the price.
Post by: Cruxador on May 31, 2018, 10:34:15 am
I'd recommend reading AARs as the most effective way to get a feel for the game. I don't consider video to be a great medium for Dominions, although although YouTube has them most plentifully. There are a handful of good Dominions 4 AARs that I could recommend, but since Desura doesn't exist any more, I can't find the links to any but my own (https://cruxador.wordpress.com/about/). Still, some should turn up in Google.
Edit: took so long on this that I got triple ninjaed.
I'm a short term Dominions player, I've been playing for 4 or 5 years now. It's just that the small map selection turned me off, and I was wondering if I should keep playing 4 and wait for a price drop.The small map selection isnt as big an issue as it might seem. All the old maps still work fine, there's just some new graphical features that they don't have. And there's now Steam workshop support for maps so it should become easier over time to find lots of good maps.
Post by: E. Albright on May 31, 2018, 11:35:27 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 31, 2018, 11:41:44 am
Also 'Gift of the Moon' making wolves invulnerable amuses me for some reason, even if it is probably useless.
Post by: Kagus on May 31, 2018, 03:00:28 pm
Post by: E. Albright on May 31, 2018, 04:16:19 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on May 31, 2018, 04:39:16 pm
Post by: Kagus on May 31, 2018, 04:46:09 pm
Post by: MCreeper on August 29, 2018, 08:15:14 am
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on August 29, 2018, 11:28:04 am
Post by: a1s on August 29, 2018, 11:41:58 am
Post by: Karlito on August 29, 2018, 04:21:29 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 29, 2018, 05:01:23 pm
Involving mods and/or nationgen with Disciples might be a bit much though.
Post by: Kagus on August 29, 2018, 05:23:02 pm
And as the chief god of your disciples, you're being helpful just by being the dom daddy everybody needs, which can be achieved with pretty much any nation. Well... That's slightly ignoring the topic of sacreds, but hey.
Post by: a1s on August 29, 2018, 05:35:28 pm
MA <...> NationgenWait, how can it be both?
Post by: MCreeper on August 29, 2018, 05:39:05 pm
Not both, of course. I just listed possibilities. :PMA <...> NationgenWait, how can it be both?
Post by: Frumple on August 29, 2018, 05:51:41 pm
... actually, that sounds vaguely interesting. Disciples game, either nation gen vs. vanilla or one gets gods and the other gets disciples. Could be neat.
E: Hell, as theme games go, all the gods having to be a vanilla nation rolling with the Mother of Monsters (or similarly natured pretender) and all the disciples being natgen creations (probably heavily tilted towards weirder stuff) would be like way too on point. Someone should do that.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 29, 2018, 06:13:29 pm
Post by: E. Albright on August 29, 2018, 07:22:23 pm
I would love to say I'd organize this or even play in it, but I can't in good conscience ATM. I'd even love to say that at least I'd like to push out 0.7.0 RC8 to fix RC7's bugs and add a whole bunch more fishmen and imperials, but I can't commit really doing much of anything until mid-September because of 3D issues.
Post by: MCreeper on August 30, 2018, 05:50:22 am
I'd like to play, but I still don't have the game. Thanks to the political shenanigans it still costs about three times as much as I'm capable of spending on a game nowadays. Even with Steam's generous regional discount. :\:(
So, mixed MA\Nationgen disciples, then? Who is, ugh, going to organize\host it? Me, i guess?
EDIT: Genned a batch of 20 nations, as fine as any, i guess? Will probably make a thread later today\tommorow, if no one objects.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/mi8cs3lcn0zylzi/vale_of_flowing_magma.rar/file
I'm kinda tempted to claim dibs on Tissith already, although if i do, i may heavily regret this. Troops are nearing (Magic 0 :P ) Lemur Consul level powerful, but even with order 3, tops you can get is 7 units per turn. Well, it's commander is appropriate, so it's close to lemuria disciple i wanted to try for long time, but did not get\seeked for opportunity.
Post by: Frumple on August 30, 2018, 09:17:37 am
That said, you can have allies build things (and then cede the province (back) to you, if d5 didn't simplify that), allowing you to sidestep extra costs or take advantage of discounts. It just takes a bit of sometimes-fiddly micromanagement.
Post by: Kagus on August 30, 2018, 10:02:18 am
It just takes a bit of sometimes-fiddly micromanagement.And really, isn't that what Dominions is all about?
Post by: E. Albright on August 30, 2018, 10:47:18 am
And the beauty of NG is that you don't need to upload the mod, just the seed and your settings - to include restrictions used, if any - and everyone else can generate their own copy. Once you have all the nations picked, you can regen a smaller mod with just those national seeds specified for the sake of brevity.
I'd recommend doing some sort of ordered draft to pick both normal and NG nations (and I'd also recommend more than 20 - I usually did 100 with NG games in the past; if that's too big of a search space, I'd say go with number of teams x10) to create a less admin-biased setup. But I'd also make sure you had a fixed player list before you jump into generation, especially if that will impact how big the nation search space ends up being. You can re-use that same seed/settings combo with a larger number of nations if you really are enamored with the idea of being/fighting ( :P) one of those nations you already generated...
However, it's not my game, nor do I want to get entangled in it. :-X If first-come-first-served is what everyone wants, my fussy love of order, symmetry. and structure need not be considered.
Post by: Cruxador on August 30, 2018, 11:24:19 am
And the beauty of NG is that you don't need to upload the mod, just the seed and your settings - to include restrictions used, if any - and everyone else can generate their own copy. Once you have all the nations picked, you can regen a smaller mod with just those national seeds specified for the sake of brevity.With modern data transfer technology, uploading the mod will usually be more convenient, since there's far less possibility for error. Especially since it lets you join mods together and do stuff like write custom descriptions, which I feel is a direly underutilized area of potential role play.
Post by: MCreeper on August 30, 2018, 12:42:00 pm
Don't forget to screen the output too. There was a Dom4 NG game where an icthyid nation got cheap recruit anywhere D2 assassins.Noob question: any (convenient) way to see if unit is recruitable anywhere without making new game and checking if there are recruitables in unforted provinces?
Post by: Micro102 on August 30, 2018, 12:48:09 pm
Don't forget to screen the output too. There was a Dom4 NG game where an icthyid nation got cheap recruit anywhere D2 assassins.Noob question: any (covenient) way to see if unit is recruitable anywhere without making new game and checking if there are recruitables in unforted provinces?
I believe you can scan the nations form nation gen with the Dom 5 inspector.
Post by: E. Albright on August 30, 2018, 01:16:41 pm
Especially since it lets you join mods together and do stuff like write custom descriptions, which I feel is a direly underutilized area of potential role play.
Joining NG mods together manually is dangerous due to numbering and some other reference issues; it's far safer to generate a specific mod with those nations' seeds defined and let NG handle the messy bits of joining them (like custom items and spells).
I completely agree about custom descriptions, though. I was really happy when we did Round 4.10 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144007.msg5680284#msg5680284) here that we had every nation customized and described. It really added something.
Post by: MCreeper on August 30, 2018, 01:23:05 pm
Oh, forgot about that.Don't forget to screen the output too. There was a Dom4 NG game where an icthyid nation got cheap recruit anywhere D2 assassins.Noob question: any (covenient) way to see if unit is recruitable anywhere without making new game and checking if there are recruitables in unforted provinces?
I believe you can scan the nations form nation gen with the Dom 5 inspector.
...the best Dom5 way to review nations for things like recruit anywhere is to load the mod in the mod menu and then use Create Pretender - the nation overview will show all recruitables as well as sites. If something is not tied to a specific site, it's recruit-anywhere.Gobbledegook. I thought about foreign for some reason. Yeah. Got it about checking for truly obscene things. :P
Post by: E. Albright on August 30, 2018, 01:29:17 pm
Post by: MCreeper on August 30, 2018, 02:34:19 pm
E: Hell, as theme games go, all the gods having to be a vanilla nation rolling with the Mother of Monsters (or similarly natured pretender) and all the disciples being natgen creations (probably heavily tilted towards weirder stuff) would be like way too on point. Someone should do that.And how exactly i can do
some sort of ordered draft to pick both normal and NG nations?
Post by: E. Albright on August 30, 2018, 03:43:10 pm
Post by: Karlito on August 30, 2018, 07:58:46 pm
Post by: a1s on August 30, 2018, 08:30:37 pm
write custom descriptionsYou mean for players to write descriptions of their troops and nation?
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 30, 2018, 09:52:06 pm
Post by: MCreeper on August 31, 2018, 04:14:10 am
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on September 12, 2018, 05:22:45 am
(https://i.imgur.com/AEyChVg.jpg?1)
It's also got a couple minor tweaks, like a few removed winter crossings over channels that seem too wide, an extra province in the large lake on the big continent, and some warmer scales in the northeastern deserts.
Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mZjd_nWERg8WaFXuY-u8Dqt1lKWEuHh5
Post by: MCreeper on September 13, 2018, 06:40:02 am
1. In first year (may be random) - "mountain is shaking", +25 unrest in capital.
2. Later (fired at turn 19 for me) laestrigonians break free, one of the capital sites shifts from fire 3 to fire\death, freaking 6000 of populace in capital die and you get this guy:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
His abilities:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
You then able to recruit toned down versions of him in the capital (3 turns to recruit one. :o ).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Frumple on September 13, 2018, 07:23:52 am
Post by: George_Chickens on September 13, 2018, 07:45:47 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 13, 2018, 05:01:46 pm
Post by: Karlito on September 13, 2018, 06:03:25 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 13, 2018, 06:07:13 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on September 13, 2018, 09:22:49 pm
Post by: Cruxador on September 13, 2018, 09:49:46 pm
Anyway, my hot take:
Oppressor archons and generals are great additions, but replacing the elder cyclops with a cyclops smith means forging will be harder, and Phlegra still needs N on the pretender for rings of regeneration, your SC gets more attacks but still needs to carry D gems, and you have no access to human-sized rainbow pretender chassis so if you want to actually overcome these weaknesses in the proper way, you'll be taking an immobile, probably Demilich if you really want to rainbow or Statue of Fertility if you want to just get your N cheap and spend on scales, relying on Enchiladas for forging in D and archons otherwise.
It's also a pretty significant nerf that you can no longer freespawn mouflons for unlimited supplies and chaff, and don't have N site searchers in the age with the least N indies.
And your expansion is a bit weak as well, because your starting army isn't good, and your good units have huge resource costs, and you don't get your SC chasses right away (In my trial run just now, they popped on turn 31) and you can't really afford an expander because you need so many scales and you need someone who can patch up the paths you're missing.
Post by: Micro102 on January 12, 2019, 06:40:33 am
Am I missing something here? Is there more than forts and PD that decides who the AI attacks?
Post by: Frumple on January 12, 2019, 05:40:10 pm
Post by: E. Albright on January 12, 2019, 09:15:39 pm
AI is still pretty spammy, but it's better with tactical setup and doesn't seem any more lobotomized than it was in Dom4.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 01, 2019, 12:52:13 pm
Post by: Sirus on September 01, 2019, 01:24:23 pm
Post by: a1s on September 01, 2019, 04:15:36 pm
Post by: Coffeespoons on September 01, 2019, 05:30:07 pm
Post by: Cruxador on September 01, 2019, 10:39:39 pm
So it's been a while since the last Dominions game on Bay12 and I've caught a hankering to play another round of multiplayer. If I made a thread and got Llamaserver setup would anyone be interested in joining? I'm open to suggestions about settings and so on if anyone is.I've actually been thinking of getting back into it – I've barely played since 5 came out.
Post by: MCreeper on September 02, 2019, 06:14:38 am
Post by: Jilladilla on September 02, 2019, 07:56:22 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on September 02, 2019, 10:30:39 am
Post by: Sirus on September 02, 2019, 03:50:47 pm
Post by: chaoticag on September 03, 2019, 04:49:35 am
Post by: MCreeper on October 01, 2019, 10:13:43 am
Unfortunately I just remembered that I'm a dolt will be away for the latter half of September. Once I come back I'll definitely get round 4 going, however. Just have to be patient until then.Still too busy?
Post by: Knave on October 01, 2019, 10:39:29 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/)
Post by: Sirus on October 01, 2019, 02:42:03 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on October 01, 2019, 04:58:05 pm
Unfortunately I just remembered that I'm a dolt will be away for the latter half of September. Once I come back I'll definitely get round 4 going, however. Just have to be patient until then.Still too busy?
Not anymore. Given the sale that's a pretty good time to get things up and running too. Any further comments before I make the thread? I was going to pick MA, given that 1/2 were EA/LA and 3 involved nationgen, but I'm open to suggestions.
Post by: MCreeper on October 01, 2019, 05:34:34 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Karlito on October 01, 2019, 07:02:02 pm
Post by: Frumple on October 01, 2019, 08:45:02 pm
Post by: feelotraveller on October 02, 2019, 04:42:03 am
Just a heads up that it looks to be 40% off currently until the 7th if anyone was looking to give it a shot!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/)
Even cheaper on Gamersgate for the next day and half @ 55% off... :)
https://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOMINIONS-5/dominions-5-wariors-of-the-faith (https://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOMINIONS-5/dominions-5-wariors-of-the-faith)
Post by: Frumple on October 02, 2019, 05:08:12 am
Post by: Kagus on October 02, 2019, 05:59:14 am
Calling down GfH on your own position is certainly a tactic I haven't seen before."Artillery salvo on my coordinates!"
Also, ouch.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on October 02, 2019, 08:11:38 pm
Post by: Cruxador on November 04, 2019, 01:12:24 am
The first post of the blog is here: https://cruxador.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/fire-and-cancer/ (https://cruxador.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/fire-and-cancer/)
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 13, 2019, 12:33:28 am
Post by: Karlito on November 13, 2019, 12:07:56 pm
What happens to a fort upgrade construction if it gets besieged? Does it get cancelled(investment refunded/lost?), paused until siege is lifted, or finishes normally despite the siege?
My recollection is that it is paused until the siege is lifted, and lost if the besiegers take the fort.
Post by: MCreeper on November 13, 2019, 01:23:33 pm
Post by: Karlito on November 13, 2019, 06:07:54 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 16, 2019, 12:32:52 am
Post by: Jilladilla on November 16, 2019, 10:18:02 am
There's a free spot for a player in round 504. MA Phaeacia. 30th turn. I'm not sure what state they are in - probably not great, not terrible. It'd be best for anyone interested to load the turn and have a look before committing. Contact USEC_OFFICER and he'll arrange for the file to be sent.
It's decent. Not the best, but certainly workable... Can give more details to whoever actually takes over...
Post by: Endymion on November 17, 2019, 12:16:16 pm
Especially the talk a page back about Gifts from Heavens casting at point blank. Back in dom4 it was a legitimate strategy because the spell just had -5 precision and not the inherent inaccuracy tag, so if you threw an eye of aiming on your spare 2E marverni druids they could accurately hit anything that was within 3 tiles or so. Give them a ~10 man bodyguard unit they stood a decent chance at killing any super-combatants that flew into the province. It was a rather fun game when I discovered that.
Sadly, dom5 nerfed the spell so you can't do that anymore.
Post by: E. Albright on November 19, 2019, 11:24:51 pm
Post by: Kagus on November 20, 2019, 03:31:26 am
Post by: MCreeper on November 27, 2019, 08:11:07 am
EDIT: Full sacred autoblessed fort PD!? :o I take 100. And blood vengeance.
EDIT2: Cap only. Damn.
EDIT3: Or in swamp, but you can't rectruit any national troops there.
Post by: Cruxador on November 27, 2019, 04:27:20 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 27, 2019, 08:27:36 pm
Ind seems harder to play effectively, what with having to manage those myriads of kingdoms troops. Some of the fluff is borderline-overdone, like yearly bird attacks on the warrior-hoburg provinces or the frankly useless homesick giants. Other than that, the Feminie troops are of very high-quality (19 def knights, 15 def infantry, with good armour). Cynoscephalians have good potential for sneak attacks and branching into blood. Orionde is average. Levying cannibals doesn't seem to be worth the commander cost, or the accumulating unrest.
Post by: E. Albright on November 27, 2019, 09:41:23 pm
I dearly want to love the Lost Tribe giants - they're such handsome boys! Very dashing! - but 30% homesick is brutal, yeah.
[And of course, since no one else mentioned it, another nation that can release Lords of Civilization is always !FUN!...]
Post by: E. Albright on November 28, 2019, 11:37:32 am
EDIT3: Or in swamp, but you can't rectruit any national troops there.
Bug, fixed in 5.39. The PD part, not the recruitment. Alas. It did seem like it was off, though.
It sounds like Na'Ba summons are getting nerfed a bit too.
Post by: Karlito on November 28, 2019, 01:10:07 pm
[And of course, since no one else mentioned it, another nation that can release Lords of Civilization is always !FUN!...]Lords of civilization in the middle age is kind of nuts, and they've got those lovely 90g B1?1 Cannibal Shamans to make it happen.
Post by: Trolldefender99 on November 28, 2019, 01:46:15 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on November 28, 2019, 04:52:55 pm
It sounds like Na'Ba summons are getting nerfed a bit too.How so?
Post by: E. Albright on November 29, 2019, 04:55:56 am
Post by: MCreeper on February 26, 2020, 01:37:47 pm
Still shit at this game (at least in dom4 you could cheese with who goes first in combat) but if anyone pms me when the next one starts, I am in.Just freed up 1-2 game slots, :P so i can join too. I planned to start a game with dom enhanced elsewhere, but not really much.
Also, Naba is absolutely amazing, especially with scales to near top and the kind of resistance Marignon got in last round. :P Suddenly sulphur haze is very useful and spammable enough thing, if bless allows.
Post by: MCreeper on March 06, 2020, 10:10:31 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 06, 2020, 06:26:50 pm
Also something of note: LA Marignon got a Plague Doctor. Immune to disease and Disease Healer 2. They also have Stealth 40 and Plague Doctor 3, which lets them spread the plague. I haven't tested them yet but I suspect that they could be really annoying in any research centres. Disease takes a long time to kill but if you can infect enough labrats that should put a dent in anyone's research. We'll see how that actually works in practice though.
Post by: Frumple on March 06, 2020, 09:09:38 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 06, 2020, 09:33:28 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 07, 2020, 05:15:41 am
Something else to test. Given all of the other edge cases in Dominions, I wouldn't be surprised if the Bane Venom Charm ignored any disease resistance a living unit had. Theoretically nothing stops you from rotating out Plague Doctors out though, since the charms aren't cursed. The movements would be kinda predictable but you could always retreat back to a friendly lab, remove the charm, and use disease healer to recover.Or just send a scout with the plague doctor to pick up the charm in-situ.
Post by: nenjin on March 22, 2020, 01:07:44 am
The Gog Reavers specifically are, IMO, insanely good. Tough, strong, berzerking, they rip through stuff and just seem to keep going fight to fight. Back them up with a Bitch Mother to buff them up....they make excellent shock troops, as long as there's someone to sweep up the doo-doo droppings afterwards. With Mountain and Waste survival they can fend for themselves pretty well.
I feel like Viceroys are there to sit on recruitment centers to keep things tamped down. They're pretty crap leaders out of the box. Sorta like bureaucracy except as with everything else in Ind, you expect them to do everything.
The Giants of the Lost Tribe are similarly really beast. But only when their doorstep is the frontline.
Picoyne's seem almost completely useless.
All in all if you like geography REALLY mattering to your gameplay, Ind adds another level of consideration where you build things. I regret not making the most of my blessing on this playthrough, as the sacred troops are pretty solid.
Post by: Cthulhu on March 22, 2020, 02:47:59 pm
Post by: oldark on March 24, 2020, 05:57:49 pm
Post by: E. Albright on April 19, 2020, 12:04:41 pm
Spoiler: Proposed Aes stats (click to show/hide)
Post by: Karlito on April 19, 2020, 02:50:46 pm
Post by: E. Albright on April 19, 2020, 03:58:17 pm
And yeah, I'm basically looking for "does this seem unreasonable" levels of precision for feedback. I have a pretty awful time sussing what reasonable looks like for this sort of thing.
Post by: EuchreJack on April 21, 2020, 09:40:10 am
Protection 3, size 5 means that those hitpoints won't last long without bless or spells, as every little guy is going to be swiping away at it. Trying to give your hobbits something to crush, eh?
MR 15 might be a bit high, maybe 14 would be better. Then again, I haven't played Dominions 5, so maybe they nerfed MR or made more boosters/units available that could penetrate MR.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2020, 09:57:45 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on April 21, 2020, 11:15:23 am
MR 15 on a sacred or commander isn't unprecedented but for regular units it is. R'lyeh is the only nation that gets regular units with MR that high (and Ur's Mushussus but who uses those?).Your dominions-fu is weak ;)
Fomorian Giants, Rephaite Warriors, Shadow Vestals, and most pertinently - Niefel Giants, all have 15 mr. Niefel Giants (together with R'lyeh units) are the only ones that can be recruited outside capital, though. 15 mr seems more fitting lore-wise, since the Aesir would then match the other giants drawn from the mythology, 14 mr being reserved for the more human-like Vanir.
But then again, 14 might be better from the balance standpoint. Kinda depends on how many a player can be expected to field in their army mix.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2020, 11:33:56 am
MR 15 on a sacred or commander isn't unprecedented but for regular units it is.
Fomorian Giants, Rephaite Warriors, Shadow Vestals and Niefel Giants are all sacreds. I explicitly mentioned that MR 15 is fine on a sacred unit because I saw how all of those units were sacred. But you mentioned that the Aesir could be non-sacred troops as well which is why I brought it up. Only R'lyeh goes above MR 14 on regular, non-sacred, non-commander units. Of course nothing stops you from setting things however you want. I'm just seconding EuchreJack here. MR 15 seems a little too high as a base unless the unit is limited somehow, either by being cap-only, sacred or a per turn recruitment limit.
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2020, 11:42:06 am
That's the bigger issue - they'd going to be comparatively slow to kill their opponents and be very vulnerable to swarming. Walls, not tanks. These will play more like harder-to-hit Reaphim, not plus-size vanir. Of course, their commanders will be ideal for thugging and might even pass for pocket SCs, but that's something that happens with all giant commanders once you can start fiddling with what their gear is.
[Also, if we're nitpicking, Laestrogonian troops are non-sacred recruitables that get mr 18, but those nightmares really shouldn't be compared to ANYTHING...]
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on April 21, 2020, 11:55:11 am
Post by: EuchreJack on April 21, 2020, 01:15:54 pm
Also, the commanders will definitely pass for pocket SCs, the only reason I didn't mention it prior is because I didn't know that phrase. Unlike Dominions 3, there are now item(s) to boost the hitpoints, which puts these guys into the pocket SCs territory. I'd probably even consider a Gift of Reason* on these guys if I only had them as troops and not commanders.
And I agree with Il Palazzo that the question of MR 14 vs. 15 is a question of balance vs. lore. Lorewise, MR 15 probably makes sense, but balance wise MR 14 makes more sense. I will also add that, while they are vulnerable to swarming, that is just part of being a giant.
I will reiterate that the elites are way too cheap goldwise. I would say the right number would be between 150 and 180.
*Not that anyone else should. I just like Gift of Reason.
Post by: E. Albright on April 21, 2020, 03:37:37 pm
The reclimit is going to be removed, actually. The recpoints will have a pretty similar effect, though. For recpoint calculation, they'll start as though they cost 133% more than their "racial baseline" even before any further abilities increase their gcost - and their maxage of 1000 increases that more. 120+80000+1000 by itself leads to 47 recpoints. That's a lot, and most would have 40-80 res cost as well. Still... I might want to slap an extra flat 20 recpoints on top of that. Test generation will decide, I suppose.
Post by: EuchreJack on April 21, 2020, 04:03:31 pm
Post by: E. Albright on May 09, 2020, 10:36:03 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lots of new content, as befits a release 16 months or so after the last one. *hangs head in shame* In principle, it should run w/o a JDK or JRE. In practice, this has only been tested on Windows, as no devs have access to linux/OSX boxes.
Post by: Radsoc on May 10, 2020, 12:03:59 am
Post by: Kagus on May 10, 2020, 01:51:01 am
-snip-Kangasharkman up in the corner there is looking particularly bitey today... And I love how those crab nobles (crabnobs?) turned out.
Post by: E. Albright on May 10, 2020, 02:34:29 am
Any thoughts on the current state of Dom5 vs Dom4?
Well, there's... 8 or so new nations versus Dom4 at this point, some of which have fairly significant new mechanics involved. Jotun nations finally got their graphics and stats reworked too. It's pretty much the same old incremental grinding along - new modding and new nations periodically dropping, and it's been long enough that there's plenty on offer. But then I never needed sold on it, so my opinion is somewhat untrustworthy... ;p
(The biggest differences are still the Day-0 ones: simultaneous turns, recruitment points in addition to resources and gold, winter...)
Post by: MCreeper on May 10, 2020, 08:13:14 am
Post by: Cruxador on May 11, 2020, 11:50:21 am
https://cruxador.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/skeleton-war/
This one... Well, the end of the link there should give a bit of an intro.
Post by: E. Albright on May 11, 2020, 11:56:42 am
Post by: Cruxador on May 12, 2020, 08:26:58 am
I've had half a mind to try to organize an MP not wholly unlike what your setup is, though my idea was a gaggle of imperial-themed NationGen nations of various races fighting coop against an OP AI Ermor. For that to happen I'd need to finish imperial humans properly and probably add imperial themes to a couple more additional races (like lizards), though.I think it would be pretty difficult to make an AI Ermor challenging. Skeleton War already negates Ermor's substantial advantage that you can likely grow early while everyone else fights more profitable wars. You can get rid of a lot of the early game weakness by giving the cap site some ridiculous number of free gems I guess, but that doesn't sound fun to fight. Honestly, playing against AI is kind of boring to begin with in terms of tactics and strategies employed, and playing against Ermor can feel like pulling teeth. Playing against AI Ermor seems like a bad combination.
Post by: RexMundi on May 28, 2020, 07:27:40 am
Post by: MCreeper on May 28, 2020, 07:39:24 am
Post by: Cruxador on May 28, 2020, 09:16:39 am
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 10:53:22 am
We should have another patch out this weekend or next week fixing the bugs from the last one. It might also have modernized Atlantians (we found some 6-8yo bugs that necessitate some adjustments) and/or Enkidu.
Post by: Cruxador on May 28, 2020, 12:07:15 pm
Has there been much consideration of balance in general, or primarily focused on expansion of content?
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 12:50:28 pm
Overall, my main focus has been on content. The other active contributor's main focus has been on data integrity, which has been hugely beneficial - though we have talked about functionality enhancement (e.g., UW nations). Balance is a moving target in NG - some effort is put in to curb the worst abuses and I try to make additions reasonable, but if people are playing "bring your own seed" NG it's largely futile - given time and CPU cycles, players mining for cheese will find it. The best balance for NG as it now exists is ensuring randomness to force most nations to have both good and bad points. Outright balancing nations would for starters require a very clear notion of what is and is not balanced, as well as a dedicated post-generation module that went through completed nations and enforced those standards.
Post by: Micro102 on May 28, 2020, 01:17:50 pm
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 01:47:40 pm
It may be more cohesive than it was when you tried it (depending on how long it had been), but it's fair to say that it would be worthwhile for us to work on national cohesion at a greater depth than mechanical and visual thematic cohesion, even if it's meaningfully difficult to expand in that direction.
Post by: Micro102 on May 28, 2020, 01:56:24 pm
I wonder if it's possible to design a tool to easily let people make their own sprites too. Run the tool, alt-click the sprite you want to edit, it pops up in an editor, you edit and save it, and it overwrites the proper file.
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 02:14:13 pm
SpriteGen got a UI overhaul in the last release, and while it's not as freeform as what you're asking for, it's easier to use than it was.
Post by: Cruxador on May 28, 2020, 04:58:20 pm
Assassins can't get magic paths. However, #assassin can crop up on mages. That's always been a thing, and no provisions are made to exclude paths that are most readily exploitable owing to cheesy battle summons - it would be bizarre to do so when skelispam amulets are still a thing in vanilla. I suppose I could make assassin-mages be cap-only, but it would be rather odd to eliminate them entirely given the vanilla examples of mage-assassins.Yeah, wasn't trying to say "fix this specific thing that happened", just wondering about general process since I don't really follow it closely. It came up in discussion elsewhere whether it's better to give everyone three nations to choose from, meaning some can have three good options and some can have three bad ones, or to let everyone pick from a shared list, meaning that nobody will get totally screwed out of good choices by randomness, but unavoidably conferring an advantage based on timezone and availability. Since the underlying problem is heterogeneity of balance, that's why I asked if there had been anything done in this regard.
Overall, you hit the crux of where NG (or any procedural content) falls short: the tradeoff between cohesion and variety is the key one, and finding a balance can be hard. I've tried over the last several years to shift the balance in the direction of cohesion, but it's hard to produce a large number of procedural nations because at a certain point increasing cohesion requires increasing semantic depth. In this context, that goes from a mechanical problem (producing varied units) to a natural language processing problem (articulating sufficient coherent thematic and semantic relationships between the units and the nation), and that's a rather harder one.I think NationGen is pretty good at this, honestly. It establishes core conceits in race and mechanics, and then iterates and diverges from there in systematic ways, which is, I reckon, the most you can ask for.
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It may be more cohesive than it was when you tried it (depending on how long it had been), but it's fair to say that it would be worthwhile for us to work on national cohesion at a greater depth than mechanical and visual thematic cohesion, even if it's meaningfully difficult to expand in that direction.What, like constructing a dynamic narrative for the descriptions? Sounds like a big job. If you do intend to do something like this, I think a lot can be done with a relatively small amount of random text strings, allowing people to connect the dots on their own. OSR type tabletop games which have big tables for random setting elements would be a good source for inspiration there.
What about the ability to tweak the nation after nationgen? If I could iron out the oddities and add some custom spells then I think not only would it make nationgen more enjoyable, but some actual nations that could be shared with others could come out of it.Editing descriptions in the mod files that nationgen creates is very easy. It should be very easy (though I'm also not volunteering) to make those editable in an application, if you wanted to, but there's not really any point. The amount of technical knowledge required is opening the file in a text editor and using ctrl+f to find the unit name, then looking where it says "descr". Sprites can also be replaced just by replacing the file, and you can make a new one with spritegen or pretty much any image editor. You can also make these changes (or any that only change images and strings, as far as I'm aware) after a game has already started without causing any problems. At least in PBEM, I never tried it on direct connect.
I wonder if it's possible to design a tool to easily let people make their own sprites too. Run the tool, alt-click the sprite you want to edit, it pops up in an editor, you edit and save it, and it overwrites the proper file.
There's no tool to do that, but it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult to code one (note: I'm not volunteering :p). We had everyone write fluff for NG nations in the round 4.10 game (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=144007.msg5680284), and that was fun IMO; not only did we get to exercise our creativity, we were forced to fit it to NG's random nonsense rather than letting ourselves excessive creative freedom.Seems like it would be good to encourage that kind of thing for nationgen games as a general rule. Only caveat I can think of is if someone wants to be sneaky by obfuscating how a unit works, making your weak things look strong, your strong things look weak, implying a unit has special abilities (for which there aren't icons) when it doesn't, or removing reference to abilities it does have. Since this level of deception is possible, but tedious and inconvenient, to circumvent, naturally there should be a gentleman's agreement not to do such things.
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 07:44:34 pm
It came up in discussion elsewhere whether it's better to give everyone three nations to choose from, meaning some can have three good options and some can have three bad ones, or to let everyone pick from a shared list, meaning that nobody will get totally screwed out of good choices by randomness, but unavoidably conferring an advantage based on timezone and availability.
The general balances here IMO are to make decisions more collectively and more measuredly. If each person gets three nations, let another player ban one of the three. That cuts down on the worst cheese, even though you may end up with two tepid choices. If it's all from one pool, don't make it a free-for-all, make it a draft with random order. My preferred option is to combine these two: each player picks two nations from a reasonably large pool via a round-robin draft, then bans one of another player's nations. There's an argument in favor of doing the banning pass first and then letting the player pick from their two drafted nations. There's also one in favor of doing a first banning pass so the cheesiest cheese is rooted out ahead AND the remaining cheese being homogenized by a banning pass afterwards as well.
Spoiler: That seems clear enough to me, but just in case, an example (click to show/hide)
Seems like it would be good to encourage that kind of thing for nationgen games as a general rule. Only caveat I can think of is if someone wants to be sneaky by obfuscating how a unit works, making your weak things look strong, your strong things look weak, implying a unit has special abilities (for which there aren't icons) when it doesn't, or removing reference to abilities it does have. Since this level of deception is possible, but tedious and inconvenient, to circumvent, naturally there should be a gentleman's agreement not to do such things.
The best solution for this IMO is to forbid/limit renaming unit types and then just make sure everyone has the original seeds and Advanced Description files. If you are renaming units, though, then agreeing ahead of time to always be unambiguously descritpive would be best, yes.
Post by: Cruxador on May 28, 2020, 09:36:23 pm
These methods which increase the complexity are a good idea with respect to the factors mentioned, but have the potential to cause other problems. First of all, they require a non-trivial degree of coordination, the complete lack of which is why I often see the first-come-first-served approach treated as a default. Although it can work well for some groups, others may find their interest in the game greatly impeded by the necessity to undergo tedious bureaucratic measures before even getting to play. After all, how many people forgo diplomacy entirely (or nearly so) because it's not a part of the game that they enjoy?It came up in discussion elsewhere whether it's better to give everyone three nations to choose from, meaning some can have three good options and some can have three bad ones, or to let everyone pick from a shared list, meaning that nobody will get totally screwed out of good choices by randomness, but unavoidably conferring an advantage based on timezone and availability.
The general balances here IMO are to make decisions more collectively and more measuredly. If each person gets three nations, let another player ban one of the three. That cuts down on the worst cheese, even though you may end up with two tepid choices. If it's all from one pool, don't make it a free-for-all, make it a draft with random order. My preferred option is to combine these two: each player picks two nations from a reasonably large pool via a round-robin draft, then bans one of another player's nations. There's an argument in favor of doing the banning pass first and then letting the player pick from their two drafted nations. There's also one in favor of doing a first banning pass so the cheesiest cheese is rooted out ahead AND the remaining cheese being homogenized by a banning pass afterwards as well.Spoiler: That seems clear enough to me, but just in case, an example (click to show/hide)
Furthermore, I think the issue of tepid choices that you touch on is very significant. If someone has a nation that they're excited to play, and then are banned from doing so, where does their enthusiasm for the game go?
Obviously, the exact point on the spectrum that you want to aim at depends on the group you play with, but I think these systems sacrifice too much of the fun and uniqueness of the experience for the sake of the balance; in order to maintain appeal with a wider array of players, improvements to balance should prioritize methods with minimal impact on player enthusiasm.
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I think names are less recognizable than sprites. If you're just glancing at battle summaries this isn't the case, but when watching a battle proper, the sprites are the thing you see and you've got to examine to see the names, at which point you'll see the stats anyway. There's no perfect solution, and I'm not concerned about the very obvious cases of abuse anyway, since those are easy to notice and as long as you say not to, nobody is going to do something too cheeky like making their units all identical. It's more like those small deceptions that are a bit borderline that will be an inevitable temptation. Of course, to a certain degree it's an acceptable hazard I suppose.Seems like it would be good to encourage that kind of thing for nationgen games as a general rule. Only caveat I can think of is if someone wants to be sneaky by obfuscating how a unit works, making your weak things look strong, your strong things look weak, implying a unit has special abilities (for which there aren't icons) when it doesn't, or removing reference to abilities it does have. Since this level of deception is possible, but tedious and inconvenient, to circumvent, naturally there should be a gentleman's agreement not to do such things.
The best solution for this IMO is to forbid/limit renaming unit types and then just make sure everyone has the original seeds and Advanced Description files. If you are renaming units, though, then agreeing ahead of time to always be unambiguously descritpive would be best, yes.
Post by: E. Albright on May 28, 2020, 10:52:54 pm
Furthermore, I think the issue of tepid choices that you touch on is very significant. If someone has a nation that they're excited to play, and then are banned from doing so, where does their enthusiasm for the game go?
This comes down to a matter of expectations. If they go into the game knowing there will be drafts and/or bans, they should realistically not be excited to play a specific nation upon seeing the 20/50/100/etc that are in the pool; they should be looking to find a set of nations they'd like to play. This is no worse than being excited to play a particular nation (vanilla, NG, or whatever) but then having someone else pick it before you can; if you can't maintain your enthusiasm at that point, I'd worry you'll not maintain enthusiasm for long enough to finish a game unless you're winning. That's not an entirely fair assumption, but it's not an entirely unfair one either.
YMMV, but drafting processes can be fun in and of themselves if you're into that sort of thing. Admittedly, I've played to completion two or three MP NG games where everyone took whatever trash a random hash of their name or somesuch gave them, so I may have more fascination with exploring mechanics and/or squeezing blood from stone than the average player.
BTW, did you ever do anything with the African (I think?) sprites you mentioned thinking about fiddling with for NG a year or three ago?
Post by: EuchreJack on May 29, 2020, 08:42:44 am
Post by: Cruxador on May 29, 2020, 10:39:47 pm
Also, it looks like the capital generated sites are all using the same graphics, on my end; all a picture of volcanoes. I didn't test this thoroughly.
Although it's not entirely unfair, it doesn't take into account the feeling of investment. When you see a cool nation and get excited by it, you're getting invested in that, so when you're told you can't play it after all, that's a problem. On the other hand, when you've been playing the game for a week or two, by that point you're invested even if you start losing.Furthermore, I think the issue of tepid choices that you touch on is very significant. If someone has a nation that they're excited to play, and then are banned from doing so, where does their enthusiasm for the game go?
This comes down to a matter of expectations. If they go into the game knowing there will be drafts and/or bans, they should realistically not be excited to play a specific nation upon seeing the 20/50/100/etc that are in the pool; they should be looking to find a set of nations they'd like to play. This is no worse than being excited to play a particular nation (vanilla, NG, or whatever) but then having someone else pick it before you can; if you can't maintain your enthusiasm at that point, I'd worry you'll not maintain enthusiasm for long enough to finish a game unless you're winning. That's not an entirely fair assumption, but it's not an entirely unfair one either.
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BTW, did you ever do anything with the African (I think?) sprites you mentioned thinking about fiddling with for NG a year or three ago?Nah, not yet. It wound up on the backburner in favor of other projects. I'll get around to it eventually I'm sure, but no ETA. I do have some other stuff that I could separate into its layers for you, although I still don't have a very comprehensive understanding of how the format is supposed to work.
Post by: MCreeper on June 05, 2020, 03:18:52 am
Post by: MCreeper on July 08, 2020, 02:21:07 am
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on July 08, 2020, 07:55:47 am
Post by: Cruxador on July 08, 2020, 06:14:52 pm
Post by: MCreeper on July 10, 2020, 04:08:28 am
This is an artifact of either non-standard game settings or players that are consistently not very aggressive. Maybe very excessive numbers of throne points required. The typical meta in both Dominions 4 and 5 has the game ending far before the point where SCs dominate, most of the time. It hasn't been since Dom3 that the game was routinely like that on default settings (or nearly so).For some reason i thought we were playing on standart half+1 throne, but i actually checked ongoing games from out most frequent host now and lo! 9 out of 12 by 1's all over. Which did lead to hilarious results in one case - 112 turns long 4 team disciples game, no team fully eliminated yet (although ours is on a slow but steady way to it since beggining), no end in sight. So yeah, slogs supreme. Besides those, there is 80 turn "should have ended early" game with "one 3, two 2, five 1, 8 for win" thrones. Not really SC domination, but there already were at least 5 golems - two from me-MA Rlyeh, three from Tien Chi. :P And in other game, stupidly overfed MA Ermor ::) with a golem on turn 45. Along with enchantment 6. Yep. ::) Gang up on Ermor fast and don't get distracted by "free" castles that Jotunheim loser left behind.
Post by: E. Albright on July 10, 2020, 11:01:00 am
Post by: Cruxador on July 11, 2020, 05:22:45 pm
Re: the development of predictable metas in Dominions, NationGen in the past has had pretensions (and even some dev work) towards randomized new spells and items. It's something that was dropped to the wayside, though - unsurprisingly, given how hard of a problem doing that right is.I think it depends on what counts as "right". I would think that making some random summonable units and the spells to summon them would be a pretty straighforward extension of what the engine already does, even if it's only touching a tiny portion of what random spells could potentially do. But even for vanilla nations, national summons are often the most defining spells.
Post by: Cruxador on August 02, 2020, 10:19:22 pm
Full list of posts (start from the bottom): https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/skeleton_war/
Post by: Micro102 on August 07, 2020, 01:14:03 pm
Post by: Karlito on August 07, 2020, 03:11:51 pm
I've completed my Skeleton War AAR.
Full list of posts (start from the bottom): https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/skeleton_war/
I really enjoyed reading this, shame about all the stales.
Speaking of skeletons, it reminds me of something interesting I learned. Some nations have special skeletons, making their skeleton summoning spells extra powerful. I forget specifically what they were but the info should be googlable.Giant nations often get giant skeletons. Ulm has greatsword wielding longdead, which is a neat way for EA to get some extra oomph out of their small death access.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 07, 2020, 04:22:11 pm
Post by: Frumple on August 07, 2020, 04:49:15 pm
Though I guess that might not be nation specific, exactly, I'unno. But place of summoning might factor in, too.
Post by: Cruxador on August 07, 2020, 07:16:04 pm
Speaking of skeletons, it reminds me of something interesting I learned. Some nations have special skeletons, making their skeleton summoning spells extra powerful. I forget specifically what they were but the info should be googlable.I believe a recentish update expanded on this, so old info may be obsolete.
It's hard to avoid at the best of times. And Ermor is known for being incredibly tiresome to play both as and against, so it's pretty understandable.I've completed my Skeleton War AAR.
Full list of posts (start from the bottom): https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/skeleton_war/
I really enjoyed reading this, shame about all the stales.
Post by: Micro102 on November 12, 2020, 04:18:23 am
Post by: MCreeper on November 12, 2020, 06:10:04 am
Post by: Micro102 on November 12, 2020, 06:48:38 am
Post by: MCreeper on November 12, 2020, 06:55:42 am
Good to hear. I'm getting the urge to play again. Any suggestions on what nation and style to play as?Try out new nations, maybe? MA Ind, MA Naba, EA Ubar, LA Vaettiheim. Ind is most unusual of the bunch.
EDIT: Ah yes, it wasn't that long while.
Post by: Micro102 on November 30, 2020, 07:42:39 pm
EDIT: And while I'm asking, is there a way to skip a commander for just one turn? I either have to cycle through 5 spies until I'm sure I didn't miss anyone, or set them to hide and forget they exist.
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on December 01, 2020, 05:11:13 pm
As for archers, there's several possibilities. "Fire at archers" can target your commanders if they have bows, for instance. If they have bodyguards, the bodyguard squad is a valid target for any attack or fire order, and the commanders will be attacked along with them. If you have any long rows of infantry or archers spanning the width of the battle map, any arrows sent their way will mostly congregate towards the center, which can easily get your mages killed by the spread of fire if they're standing behind them, which is why my mages are usually off to the side. And of course either just "fire" or "attack" without specifying a target, or just giving no orders and letting the unit do whatever, can easily result in the unit choosing to attack a commander in range, among other useful behaviors.
Post by: Micro102 on December 02, 2020, 02:00:02 am
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on December 02, 2020, 02:18:04 am
Post by: lemon10 on December 02, 2020, 06:30:34 pm
I've completed my Skeleton War AAR.Very nice read, congrats on the skelepocalypse.
Full list of posts (start from the bottom): https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/skeleton_war/
Post by: Karlito on December 03, 2020, 04:02:59 pm
So it sounds like by making 10 tiny squads of archers/fliers instead of 1 big one, I get to up the chance that I randomly kill a enemy mage? Seems..... abusive.
I made use of this when storming a fortress that had many dangerous enemy mages but few regular troops. Got all my archers killed/routed, but it worked well to spread out my damage and clear the fort for a followup assault.
Post by: Micro102 on December 03, 2020, 05:00:29 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 03, 2020, 06:27:16 pm
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on December 04, 2020, 12:44:03 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 04, 2020, 12:55:09 pm
Post by: Karlito on December 04, 2020, 05:26:54 pm
I can understand the routing, but why the killing? If anything, the routing should make the squishy archers die less as they get to run away.
Mostly in that it was intended as a sacrificial attack- sending in squishy archers unsupported got them targeted by fort towers, but I was still able to clear a bunch of Gygjas by dividing them into small squads.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 31, 2020, 10:03:55 pm
*If need be I can replace the Spritegen stuff with more recolours. I looked around and didn't see any warnings against using it in mods, but I didn't see explicit permission given either. Maybe my Googling skills just suck though.
Post by: E. Albright on December 31, 2020, 10:41:11 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on December 31, 2020, 10:50:14 pm
Post by: E. Albright on December 31, 2020, 11:39:07 pm
Post by: Duuvian on January 03, 2021, 06:18:53 pm
I already am using the Earth resistance bless that gives +fire and +shock; thinking I'm going to try Fire resistance bless to try and make sure they are hugging the enemy lines when they explode.
I tried the Blood bless that shares damage among nearby holy units, but that just causes clumps of them to all blow up at once before they are all in range. It might be slightly better than without but not too much of a difference.
EDIT: The Blood Bless seems to keep them alive until they are in melee, but then once they start taking hard hits in melee they explode too many rows backwards instead of more towards their flanks. It does seem like a few explode from a single hit a bit earlier than one would expect from spread damage on a hard hit but maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe it's the pain share plus the explosion from the dead guy setting off the others? Dunno.
If, say, a giant pummels a 10hp blessed unit for 50 damage, and if there are four of the pain share blood blessed units with 10 hp around it, does it kill all 5 blessed units or do they all share 2 damage as that was their share of the saved dead guy's health pool?
Post by: ThtblovesDF on January 08, 2021, 03:15:37 am
I want it to work, but heat aura on trash is just as effective as exploding trash... and far more consistent.
Damage is limited by the limp hit, so for example you take 999 damage to your arm, its gone and you take like 17 actual damage. So for your question, I am giving a uneducated: There is no way to ensure they all take the full damage
Post by: Micro102 on January 08, 2021, 03:22:09 am
Post by: Cruxador on January 08, 2021, 03:44:01 am
Post by: Duuvian on January 11, 2021, 05:37:13 am
LA Bogarus Khlysti
The pain transfer gets them through the arrows, but once one goes up the lack of Fire Res sends a whole clump up at once.
With Fire Res, they are more susceptible to individual casualties as they take ranged fire but are less likely to have a chain explosion.
I think long term once you get Fire Ward and whatnot it would be enough, but that's mid to late game.
I considered Air Shield but the goal is only to have them make contact with enemy toops before exploding, not actual survival. Plus my capital mages shoot fireballs and have the -prec from aging due to being octogenarians with fire path.
The nice thing about Bogarus is that it doesn't have to rely on the bless, but if you can make Khlysti deadly they are CHEAP and in non-capital fortresses. A hero slowly freespawns them too without taking an action, though because of their unrest increasing ability that's not so useful most of the time unless you taxi them away. It's great though if the Patriarch is part of your army and not just blood huntng / researching / preaching with his really high priest level. He summons more mad bombers every turn, so you'll generally have at least a handful.
EDIT: Figured it out
Spoiler: steam screenshot (click to show/hide)
That's the Latus map from the Steam workshop. It's a Dom 3 map that was never finished, which is too bad. It's great for an all nations single player game.
Post by: Duuvian on March 02, 2021, 07:50:47 am
Spoiler: spoilers are large images (click to show/hide)
Those were good LA Agartha units they killed too, Cave Knights and heavy infantry and such.
RIP Dispossessed Spirits, I think mostly dead due to my own priests' area undead nuke spam on a lone Agartha tomb ghost or whatnot they had been blocking
This is an SP game with the longest research setting on Latus, all LA nations active.
This time I made it to Aeris Gate before Caelum. Having pushed through, Ragha was just North and Lemuria just South. Lemuria was easy due to the above mentioned area undead nuke (air) but Ragha put up more of a fight. I bottled up Lemuria with priests and pushed Ragha back to it's capital, where my siege failed due to an immobile pretender tanking until my army ran away (long research made self-buffing immobile difficult to destroy as I had crap items and low level spells).
Almost immediately afterwards, Agartha barrels out of the West (the underground earth based planar thing) with a huge army and captures everything except my fort on the planar side of Aeris Gate (I had built forts on both sides of the gate). I moved everything I could to that fort, including the pretender which was a gamble, and summoned everything I could. I even mobilized the research mages from the capital and marched them about 4 or 5 provinces the the "Latus" side of the gate where I was assembling everything I could once the other side was blocked by the siege army. I managed to fight off several very large siege attacks as Agartha had Cave Grubs and other excellent siege units that breached my walls in two days even with the flying things I was summoning and siege defense peshti I build when a fort seems at risk. After a few attacks and rounds of summoning, I attacked with the Latus army and broke siege with the fortress army; then pushed out a bit before going back to the fortress when a big Agartha army appeared in scouted territory. This happened a few times, with Agartha losing huge amounts of troops and creatures each siege, while I was bringing in reinforcements from the Latus side every time the siege was broken.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
While this happened I was skirmishing with Midgard. Aeris was blasted to low population by Lemuria's dominion, so it's not worth much gold income. However, my dominion and Midgard both have growth scales, so the area we are fighting over has a lot of income. I pushed too far into neutral after beating Midgard around and they retook some 200+ income provinces and now they have a 700+ army sitting the province next to my lightly defended fort and my army is three provinces away and smaller. Might be trouble; I should have smashed them when I had the chance and held that income from them instead of going for a neutral throne and pushing my border up against the Zotz nation and someother before they could take and fortify it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The biggest annoyance right now is that some jerk called in the Wild Hunt. They killed my unique Patriarch Prophet dang and a bunch of 15 pearl Alkonosts.
I'm pushing for Conj 7 for nice things my Pretender can summon, but all my research mages died as magic batteries in a long battle. It will be a bit before I can rebuild those too, though my income has gone way up now that I'm expanding underwater, since I fought over low or dead population because of Lemuria dom for most of the early game.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 27, 2021, 07:53:40 pm
The game is called Epin Game. Link here:
https://blitzserver.net/game/233/status
To join, make an Early Age pretender, open "Network" in the Dominions 5 main menu, type "blitzserver.net" for the IP address and "10008" for the port. Then, select your pretender. From there, you just go into network menu to take your turns. You can check in on the game page for status of the game.
Post by: RexMundi on May 28, 2021, 09:03:31 pm
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 29, 2021, 08:54:19 am
So while I'm waiting for a response for him I will say that you'd have to do something weird to get around (like run multiple instances of Dominions) because once you connect to a network game with a pretender, that's it. When you join this game, you'll see what I mean.
As long as nothing in blitzserver, itself, prevents it then running multiple instances of the game should work. Especially if your housemates have it installed on separate computers. I'll get back to you when I know for sure.
Post by: RexMundi on May 29, 2021, 01:11:21 pm
In the mean time while I hope for a sale, at this rate I may just buy the 2/3 more copies if this itch to play doesn't go away. Dom3/4/5 have given me enough enjoyment and I sure as fuck want Dom6 one day
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 29, 2021, 06:29:34 pm
If you do own Dom 5, I urge you to join epin game. We're trying to hold out for 9-10 players. Almost there.
Post by: RexMundi on May 31, 2021, 03:40:14 pm
edit: Also I love the option to dl map/worthy heroes right from the game page
Post by: Hamsmagoo on May 31, 2021, 09:57:32 pm
Thanks for joining, I'll wait another 20 hours or see to see if we can get a tenth and I'll post here when it's begun.
Post by: Hamsmagoo on June 01, 2021, 04:56:54 pm
Post by: RexMundi on June 03, 2021, 01:19:12 am
Post by: a1s on July 27, 2021, 01:36:12 pm
Post by: The_Explorer on September 01, 2021, 04:55:26 pm
Got Conquest of Elysium 5 and despite it being so soon to release, I already racked up 102 hours out of it.
So before I get into it, I actually like CoE5...with one condition...I only like to play it co-op with my friend and thats why so many hours. Otherwise, I actually don't really like the game very much when its just by myself and to me, obviously multiplayer makes almost any game better anyway especially when played with close friend(s).
I actually think Dominions 5 is a vastly superior singleplayer game. I tried multiplayer, tried co-op with my friend (that was a bit better but too complicated for us to work out our games together), and I vastly prefer singleplayer. I guess I'm odd one out because everyone loves the multiplayer in Dominions and doesn't like singleplayer (at least nearly as much), but say CoE is a vastly better singleplayer game and not that great for multiplayer compared to Dominions...
In Dominions its so much more involved. I have been playing a map (THE SAME CAMPAIGN/MAP) for ages (no idea how long, but its been on going for months, but don't play it 24/7, but not even barely in), a near 1500 province map. Its massive. Looks beautiful too. But it isn't that why I think the game is good at all. You got population, building, can semi-control your army (at least control how its setup), a very indepth magic system...POPULATION! I never see population barely in games these days. It reminds me of victoria 2 pops...like I always see stupid "1-100" or whatever number to represent a stupid pop. DOMINIONS HAS REAL POP (or real as it can be I guess)! Or I guess there is that space 4x game and Aurora that has pop, kudos to those. You can build too and all kinds of things. Its just so more involved. And I find the AI fine, I mean its far better than warcraft/starcraft AI and I enjoyed playing singleplayer classic warcraft 3 and the new starcraft for ages lol. Never even touched multiplayer in those and the AI was pretty jank, but was just tons of fun. Dominions is the same for me, but with AI thats actually fun to play against.
Then again, do I play competively? Nope. I suck at games. Maybe thats why I enjoy so much playing against AI and with my friend :P Maybe sucking at games makes them more enjoyable :P
Post by: Criptfeind on September 01, 2021, 09:18:13 pm
That said, man, 1500 provinces is a absurdly huge map. Most games I see play on maps of about 15-20 provinces per player, and have about 10 players. Your map is like an order of magnitude larger. I don't think I'd ever have the fortitude to actually chew though that much of a map, but more power to you if you can.
Post by: E. Albright on September 01, 2021, 10:01:57 pm
Post by: Cthulhu on September 02, 2021, 01:20:37 pm
I'm bad and have no idea what I'm doing, but I have played before, I started the original Dom3 game way back when. I'd try starting one myself but it's been so long.
Post by: Micro102 on September 26, 2021, 07:17:51 pm
Is there some mechanic I'm not aware of that lets your priests target the largest unit or something?
Post by: Karlito on September 26, 2021, 07:43:26 pm
Post by: Micro102 on September 26, 2021, 07:55:26 pm
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on September 27, 2021, 02:10:36 am
I find it curious that setting the orders to "do whatever" is the only way to get some advanced behavior out of your units. Like getting your Wardens to move up a few paces to get better shots with the crossbows, or to have your javelin-hurling warriors of all kinds to actually use their javelins without forgetting to get up close and smash their enemies' faces in.
Post by: E. Albright on September 27, 2021, 01:57:56 pm
Post by: Micro102 on October 05, 2021, 01:46:56 am
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on October 05, 2021, 02:30:55 am
Any mods out there that will let me redo the previous turn? Too many times do I forget to make something attack instead of stealth into a province and it REALLY fucks with my game.I assume you mean in singleplayer.
I don't know about mods, like game mods, but you could use something like Dropbox to automatically preserve your previous turns. You would have to symlink (or hardlink, I don't remember which I used) a folder inside your Dropbox to the saves directory of Dominions - this way Dominions would put its saves directly into Dropbox, which would immediately sync them. Then if you messed up, you go to the dropbox website and download one of the previous versions of the .trn file.
There are probably better automatic cloud backup services than Dropbox nowadays, but it's the only one I'm familiar with.
Post by: Micro102 on October 05, 2021, 05:06:50 pm
Post by: Chosrau on October 06, 2021, 01:53:09 am
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mru8mslvxto4war/Dom5TurnArchiver_v2.zip?dl=0
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on October 06, 2021, 03:25:10 am
Ooo, I like that idea. I've never used something like Dropbox before. Is it easy?After a brief check, I think I would rather recommend MEGASync, the MEGA Desktop app. The setup is simpler compared to Dropbox, at least the way I used it. You can directly set your Dominions saved games folder as a "sync" folder through the desktop client, and then when you need to come back a turn or three you just find the .trn file on your MEGA cloud drive and pick a version to revert to.
I've never used the turn archiver though. It might be a better option if you just need the save-backup and don't necessarily want to have the entire cloud-backup service thing that's intended for more general usage.
Post by: Moddan on October 06, 2021, 09:55:57 am
You could also try this automated turn archiver
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mru8mslvxto4war/Dom5TurnArchiver_v2.zip?dl=0
Thanks, this seems great for testing stuff.
Post by: nenjin on October 06, 2021, 02:14:57 pm
Tedious and I could probably write a batch script to handle it, but savescumming is as savescumming does.
Post by: Karlito on October 06, 2021, 04:44:40 pm
Post by: Micro102 on October 06, 2021, 05:26:06 pm
Post by: Sean Mirrsen on October 07, 2021, 10:21:07 am
I tried downloading that automated turn archiver from dropbox, but it's not working. It says you just need to run the .jar file, but it gives me a JNI error.You need Java set up in order to run .jar's. And possibly updated to the latest version.
Post by: Micro102 on October 07, 2021, 04:28:27 pm
I tried downloading that automated turn archiver from dropbox, but it's not working. It says you just need to run the .jar file, but it gives me a JNI error.You need Java set up in order to run .jar's. And possibly updated to the latest version.
Wait a minute... I doublechecked and while it said it automatically updated 2 days ago, the update number doesn't match the website. So I manually updated it and.... I'm still getting the error.
Post by: Micro102 on October 10, 2021, 07:13:56 pm
Post by: E. Albright on October 10, 2021, 09:46:23 pm
Post by: Micro102 on October 10, 2021, 10:17:46 pm
Post by: MCreeper on February 02, 2022, 10:55:17 am
Post by: a1s on February 02, 2022, 11:01:12 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 02, 2022, 11:32:51 am
Post by: RexMundi on February 02, 2022, 04:19:36 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on February 02, 2022, 05:14:24 pm
I probably don't have the time, but maybe I could try "half-ass" mode.
Post by: E. Albright on February 02, 2022, 07:47:57 pm
[I don't think I'm in the right headspace to join a game myself, so as much as I might like to join in, I shan't.]
Post by: EuchreJack on February 02, 2022, 09:36:09 pm
It's a bit faster in D5 since making combat WeGo instead of IGoYouGo - or rather, MySpellsIGoYourSpellsYouGo - made watching replays A LOT faster. Planning still takes time, but planning to plan has been sped up.What, no Obligatory Atlantis?
[I don't think I'm in the right headspace to join a game myself, so as much as I might like to join in, I shan't.]
Oh well, we'll just have to run another one later!
Post by: Criptfeind on February 02, 2022, 09:55:21 pm
Post by: MCreeper on February 03, 2022, 01:22:46 am
If I join a game again now, It'll probably last till just after my camping trip in june. Didn't think I'd last in the other one I did but there I was phone uploading saves on lappy in forest lol. Consider this as low/medium interest from a shitty player who forgets turns about 1/10. Llamaserver or blitzserver?Llama. If i wanted to play by discord i would have went to discord. :P
Well, looks like there are maybe six players. Will create a thread sometime soonish.
EDIT: And done. Which era are we playing? I gravitate towards middle, as i don't like early for all these supermen stomping around, and late is nice, but samey.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 03, 2022, 04:49:13 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on February 03, 2022, 06:56:50 pm
Pretty much the only real loss is blood Mictlan. But they get my favorite guy, Quetzalcouatl!
Post by: E. Albright on February 03, 2022, 09:02:08 pm
Post by: Karlito on February 03, 2022, 09:49:42 pm
Post by: MCreeper on February 04, 2022, 03:18:19 am
Post by: Criptfeind on February 04, 2022, 07:58:23 am
I'm leaning towards Na'Ba myself, trying out different expansion strategies. It's easy to expand with their sacreds, they can stomp indies, but they sorta suck vs national troops so I'm not sure if it's worth doing it.
As for the other game settings, I read the opening post (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=179517.0) (wasn't sure if I should post this here or there but it seems like people are talking about it here.). Most look cool to me, although I got 2 comments. I'd prefer something other then the base games default generation, the base game maps are, to me at least both ugly and poorly made. Although I can certainly live with it if that's what people want or we can't find something better for our number of players. Second for score graphs is there a particular reason to go with No Info on Other Nations instead of Off? I don't think Eyes of God is a problematic spell. Both of these are pretty minor concerns for me though, if that's what people want.
Post by: MCreeper on February 04, 2022, 10:32:10 am
How about Snerdryn (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1492119021&searchtext=) for a map? Should be fine for now maybe eight players.
Post by: ndkid on February 04, 2022, 10:35:28 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 05, 2022, 08:17:28 am
Post by: Criptfeind on February 05, 2022, 08:45:03 am
DE (if you play with it) adds a couple of spells that let water mages spray salt evocations as well, but I'm unsure if the base game has any other sources of salt damage.
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 14, 2022, 07:29:04 pm
Q2: was anyone successful in creating a viable bless/light gear build for turning Jotunheim's scouts into thugs? They seem like a prime subject, what with recruit-anywhere, stealth, large size, and being sacred. But so far everything I tried has them die way too quickly to even light province defences.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 14, 2022, 07:46:15 pm
I could have sworn that there was a blood site that increased death as well but I can't see anything like that. Weird.
Post by: E. Albright on February 14, 2022, 07:57:10 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on February 14, 2022, 08:19:09 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 14, 2022, 08:25:41 pm
Post by: Karlito on February 14, 2022, 09:36:25 pm
Q2: was anyone successful in creating a viable bless/light gear build for turning Jotunheim's scouts into thugs? They seem like a prime subject, what with recruit-anywhere, stealth, large size, and being sacred. But so far everything I tried has them die way too quickly to even light province defences.
Just theory-crafting here, but the problem is they aren't very killy and despite the 36 hp, not that tough either. Maybe the best you can do is give them water bottles and let the elementals take on the pd. A Jarl is more than twice the cost but at least can self-bless and comes with a shield and actual armor.
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 14, 2022, 09:45:40 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on February 14, 2022, 10:04:21 pm
Post by: E. Albright on February 14, 2022, 10:15:46 pm
Post by: Karlito on February 14, 2022, 10:43:25 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on February 15, 2022, 10:11:49 am
https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/ (https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/)
Wish it was on sale when I had to purchase it to play multiplayer, but whatever.
Post by: E. Albright on March 07, 2022, 08:56:28 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/15o3GMo.png)
Post by: MCreeper on March 08, 2022, 01:54:41 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on March 12, 2022, 01:08:13 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 12, 2022, 01:24:33 pm
Post by: Criptfeind on March 12, 2022, 10:02:47 pm
Edit: I guess I should say to make clear, it's not that Ermor has a weak mid game, their mid game is actually super strong, just that they can get there later then other nations, and that can be a huge deal if say, someone comes at you with thuam 6 when you're still on enchantment 5.
Post by: EuchreJack on March 13, 2022, 01:53:28 pm
I've seen a least a couple Ermor mega fails.
Their expansion needs to be timed out perfectly, and I personally think they need to lean on Indy mages more than others, yet they don't have the gold for it.
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on March 14, 2022, 07:20:44 am
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 15, 2022, 02:43:05 pm
I see it on Phlegran gigantes, and they certainly do stay mostly healthy despite heavy fighting. But what does the number by the perk signify? Is affliction resistance 3 a bit better than 2, or a whole lot better?
And how does it interact with curses?
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on March 15, 2022, 02:54:35 pm
Quote from: Dominions 5 Modding Manual
The monster is less likely to suffer an affliction when taking damage. A value of 1 makes it half as likely, a value of 2 makes it one third as likely, etc. Air Elementals and similar have a value of 99, making it almost impossible to get an affliction.
If the modding manual is correct, then each point of affliction resistance provides less of a bonus than the one before it. I can't find anything about how they interact with curses, but I assume they stack multiplicatively.
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 15, 2022, 04:56:36 pm
I found this on the illwiki (should have looked there first), in case anyone's interested:
Quote
The chance is simply the percentage of its total maximum points a unit suffers on that strike (E.g. an infantry unit with a maximum of 10 hp will have a 20% chance of suffering an affliction upon taking 2 hp damage). This is further modified by other factors: being cursed increases affliction chance by a flat 15% every time damage is taken1), and regeneration reduces affliction rate to 500/(regeneration percentage) percent (E.g. 10% regeneration reduces afflictions by 50%). Additionally, affliction resistance has a 100% x (affliction resistance)/(affliction resistance + 1) chance to reduce the chance to 0.5%, regardless of the size of the original damage (E.g. affliction resistance 3 reduces afflictions by ~74.5%).referring to this code diving bit:
Quote
Gaining Afflictions when Damaged
Calculate (damage done*1000)/unit's max hp. Call this Value 1 and keep it for later.
Calc value 2: Multiply value 1 by the value of unknown unit effect 0x12d (I have no idea what this does). Then divide this by 100.
Final affliction value: Add 1 and 2 together
If cursed, add 150 to this sum
If active regen percentage is greater than 5, the value instead becomes (value * 100)/(regen percentage * 20)
Get affliction resistance. If liquid body is active, add 1 to this.
If (100/(affliction res + 1)) < random 0-99, set the value to 5.
If the final value is 5 or less, set it to 5.
First random roll: if the final value is not greater than a random number 0-999, do nothing. Otherwise, you get some kind of affliction (of which there are two different applying functions I don't yet know the difference between)
Post by: E. Albright on March 15, 2022, 06:15:10 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 15, 2022, 06:30:05 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on March 21, 2022, 04:42:59 am
Post by: Criptfeind on March 21, 2022, 08:21:32 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 21, 2022, 04:00:53 pm
(The biggest downside of this would be the max dominion cost - a large part of the appeal of titans is their relatively high starting dominion, which Ermor definitely needs. Still, if you want a rainbow titan...)
Post by: EuchreJack on March 21, 2022, 04:10:26 pm
Post by: Criptfeind on March 21, 2022, 04:29:19 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 21, 2022, 04:38:32 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on March 21, 2022, 05:05:57 pm
Is there a titan of five-dimensional chess?I didn't know they made a titan based upon you...
Post by: EuchreJack on March 21, 2022, 06:30:01 pm
Spoiler: Smart Guy (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Bless for Smart Guy (click to show/hide)
Post by: Criptfeind on March 21, 2022, 07:18:25 pm
Post by: EuchreJack on March 21, 2022, 07:36:54 pm
MR +2 maybe solves the mystery? Or I just didn't bother to maximize.
Post by: Karlito on March 22, 2022, 09:56:21 am
Spoiler: Smart Guy (click to show/hide)Spoiler: Bless for Smart Guy (click to show/hide)
No death? Now that's forethought!
Post by: Frumple on March 22, 2022, 01:17:48 pm
Post by: E. Albright on March 22, 2022, 01:49:21 pm
Post by: Il Palazzo on June 20, 2022, 10:22:04 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=180009.0
Post by: ThtblovesDF on June 23, 2022, 02:48:19 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Those alternative bless effects look like fun, seems you can mod around with them.
Unrelated, there is a Dom5 MP Game (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=180009.0) starting up.
Post by: E. Albright on July 03, 2022, 07:05:42 pm
(https://i.ibb.co/z5hZ7PB/vanara-base-fat.png)
(I'm not saying I'm up to going back to working on NationGen, but the last couple of CoE updates are certainly tempting me...)
(Would it be... excessive to add, erm... "gourmand" vanara as a theme alongside the current standard, alpine, vanarabred, and winged varieties? Co-occurring most frequently with elephantmen, hoburgs, and ogres?)
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 03, 2022, 08:27:13 pm
Post by: E. Albright on July 03, 2022, 08:57:45 pm
(https://i.ibb.co/cbSLGXY/colossi-base-fat.png) (https://i.ibb.co/RpkM05W/colossi-base-fat.png)
Post by: ThtblovesDF on July 04, 2022, 01:56:49 am
Post by: EuchreJack on July 14, 2022, 12:46:52 pm
If you do I'll figure out someway to use them in my halfling mod. Still might be excessive, but the effort won't go to waste.Now THAT is how you tempt E. Albright back into modding.
Post by: MCreeper on July 14, 2022, 04:16:51 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: EuchreJack on July 14, 2022, 05:06:08 pm
ÆtherNomad is a king of OPness. When you think mods just can't get any more stupid, he cackles and unrolls something like this:And if you don't kill off the nation by Year 5, they get to trade it in for Vast Teleporters.Because its mighty fun when people make their capitals completely unconquareble except by domkill, right? ::) Ah yes, base dominion 5... Elemental resistances are all 50, by the way. And regen is 1.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Criptfeind on July 14, 2022, 07:02:14 pm
Spoiler: It's still sorta killable if you have the right stuff. (click to show/hide)
Post by: E. Albright on July 14, 2022, 07:08:48 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 14, 2022, 07:27:56 pm
"Damage reversal 20" okay lol.And 5 years is so long it seems sorta pointless since certainly anyone can scrap together a way to kill it by then, but it's sorta just dumb lol. Standard Hellenika things though tbh :PSpoiler: It's still sorta killable if you have the right stuff. (click to show/hide)
I am genuinely curious how a single Sauromancer managed to take the gate out.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 14, 2022, 07:33:37 pm
Can see at some point he woke up long enough to cast horde of skeletons once.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 14, 2022, 07:46:25 pm
Post by: Criptfeind on July 14, 2022, 07:47:49 pm
Post by: a1s on July 15, 2022, 03:55:40 am
Because its mighty fun when people make their capitals completely unconquareble except by domkill, right?Just siege it with, like, a scout- the game isn't won by conquering enemies, it's won by taking thrones (usually).
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 08:53:18 am
It doesn't matter. The gate never does anything but kill people who try to hit it. It can't have any magic. Only thing that mattered is that the sauromancer didn't try to hit it and didn't run away.
This strategy doesn't work, you know. Anyone who's willing to pick an indestructible immobile lump as their pretender will commit to the bit and spend the first 50 matching gems they get to empower the dumb thing.
Just siege it with, like, a scout- the game isn't won by conquering enemies, it's won by taking thrones (usually).
Immobiles can't lift sieges, but they can patrol provinces. If the whole conceit of my pretender is that I have something that's basically worthless for anything but not ever dying, I can assure you it'll be on patrol any turn I'm not empowering it.
Post by: Frumple on July 15, 2022, 09:12:29 am
Y'know, I may be misremembering here, but isn't there a way to prevent that from really working? Could swear you could set a critter's paths to like, heavily negative or something, and empowerment... well, works, but it costs a lot more than just that first 50 gems.It doesn't matter. The gate never does anything but kill people who try to hit it. It can't have any magic. Only thing that mattered is that the sauromancer didn't try to hit it and didn't run away.This strategy doesn't work, you know. Anyone who's willing to pick an indestructible immobile lump as their pretender will commit to the bit and spend the first 50 matching gems they get to empower the dumb thing.
Doesn't sound like the designer in this case would actually do something like that, but still.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 15, 2022, 09:21:21 am
This strategy doesn't work, you know. Anyone who's willing to pick an indestructible immobile lump as their pretender will commit to the bit and spend the first 50 matching gems they get to empower the dumb thing.
Doesn't sound like the designer in this case would actually do something like that, but still.
They did.
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 09:23:59 am
Aside: dear lord Hellenika is bloated. I do not have a weak PC but the delay when I loaded the mod was very, very noticeable.
Post by: The_Explorer on July 15, 2022, 11:24:04 am
With that said, I have an epic game going on the Bozmos map. Its a lot of fun, been going at it a whole month now (not 24/7, but a bit every day). Its probably the biggest map out there, but it looks cool with all the planets and stuff
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 11:59:11 am
This strategy doesn't work, you know.I guess techhhhnically you could do that, especially in blood. It has -10 to all paths, so it takes 1025 gems to empower it to magic level 1.
If we're going to be silly and really take this seriously, you can do it with a "mere" 315 gems/slaves by tanking your scales and putting 9 points into a path at the start, which also lets you have a bless... albeit at the cost of scales that'll doom you to die well before your imprisoned pretender gets loose. On the plus side, if you somehow last until 5y, your Uttervast will be e.g. 5S11B instead of just 5S.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 15, 2022, 12:16:58 pm
God imprisoned ✅
Bless only consisting of 9+ bless points in one path ✅
Honestly I think this sounds like you have made the ultimate build. But what nation to pick? I'm not familiar enough with Hellenika nations to know if any of them would do particularly okay like this. Acadeia could fix their scales I guess?
Post by: MCreeper on July 15, 2022, 12:29:07 pm
All scales dumped ✅And all you recruit are recruit anywhere stealthy priests, to be as much of a nuisance as possible. :P Too bad they won't be actually able to preach much away. Does Hellenica have any nations with stealthy H2 priests and a gate available?
EDIT: Tir na Nog's Sidhe Lords, although they will cost a pretty penny. Alternatively, Caelum's seraphines.
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 12:53:07 pm
That, or play w/the nation the dumb thing is intended to be played with, Ylthule. You can take 9 points in a path on an awake Gate with one scale at -3 and all the rest at 0, and you get 5 bonus bless points in whatever path you pick anyway. That's with 9 Dom as well, mind you. They also have stealthy H2 priests, for that matter. If you want to start at 10 path points, you can tank another scale to -3 and get 10 candles.
Post by: MCreeper on July 15, 2022, 12:58:10 pm
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 01:21:52 pm
Post by: MCreeper on July 15, 2022, 01:26:35 pm
Post by: E. Albright on July 15, 2022, 01:44:48 pm
Spoiler: Sure, why not? (click to show/hide)
(Note the BV is from the Gate's bless)
Post by: MCreeper on July 15, 2022, 02:37:52 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: EuchreJack on July 15, 2022, 04:50:37 pm
With that said, I have an epic game going on the Bozmos map. Its a lot of fun, been going at it a whole month now (not 24/7, but a bit every day). Its probably the biggest map out there, but it looks cool with all the planets and stuff
It needs a 40K mod, like in Dominions 3. But looks cool.
Nevermind, found it (http://dominionsmods.com/index.php?showtopic=4038).
Now to figure out how to install mods in Dominions these days.
COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE LINK TO THE MAP?! Google seems to think it doesn't exist.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 15, 2022, 05:22:39 pm
COULD SOMEBODY PLEASE LINK TO THE MAP?! Google seems to think it doesn't exist.
Bozmos? (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ve7KcIZEnyzryK2c6DcCLURaTE5AZHz1/view) I think this is the latest one. Not sure though.
Edit: Also you install mods by clicking tools and manuals on the main menu, then open user data directory, then putting the mod files in the mods folder. Same with maps.
Post by: MCreeper on July 15, 2022, 05:27:19 pm
A bunch of crude copypasted sprites and jpgs is cool for you? ??? Well, whatever you say.With that said, I have an epic game going on the Bozmos map. Its a lot of fun, been going at it a whole month now (not 24/7, but a bit every day). Its probably the biggest map out there, but it looks cool with all the planets and stuff
It needs a 40K mod, like in Dominions 3. But looks cool.
Nevermind, found it (http://dominionsmods.com/index.php?showtopic=4038).
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 18, 2022, 12:19:26 pm
E.g. look at the indie amazon vs the atavi archer. Is the amazon's 12 prc vs atavi's 10 really worth the extra 5gp and 11 recruitment points?
Did anyone maybe do some testing w/r to the varying effectiveness of low vs high precision archers?
Post by: Criptfeind on July 18, 2022, 07:44:48 pm
Here's my take on it though:
Precision, except for very high amounts of it, doesn't matter too too much. It sets a range where you have perfect (not actually perfect because there's a DRN roll) accuracy, which is where archers and mages are very deadly, but this range starts out very short and you need a lot of +precision to make it large enough to get an extra volley/cast an extra spell as the enemies close most of the time. Theoretically if you have ways to slow the enemy or otherwise keep them in or near this area, +precision might matter more, and there's theoretically break points vs specific combat speeds where precision gives you an extra "perfect" accuracy volley. But I have no idea where those break points are.
Outside of this perfect accuracy zone precision will lower the amount of deviation your shot will throw, but that deviation is on a bell curve anyway, not a hard number. So the actual gain in precision is... Hard to tell? If you're trying to hit a small target it will help more, but you're also likely using the wrong tool, if you're trying to hit a fairly wide area of squares, it'll help less and I think is, as you sorta said, matters less, firing into 200 dudes isn't going to be helped enough by +2 precision to make it worth paying more for it for the most part.
My ultimate take away is pretty much what you started with. Use archers in massed battles (or, often, not, since a lot of times archers suck) Use mages on advance and cast spells :P
Post by: Il Palazzo on July 30, 2022, 05:40:25 pm
Post by: E. Albright on July 30, 2022, 06:15:08 pm
Quote from: Dom5 manual pg 75
Each unit in combat has combat speed. A move of one square on the battlefield costs roughly one point of combat speed, unless it is diagonal in which case it costs 50% more.
When units move adjacent to an enemy, they become locked in a “zone of control” which remains as long as the enemy persists.
Each unit moves individually, and has a cooldown at the end of each action. After a unit moves one step or strikes, it must cool down a while before it can perform its next action. A long cooldown is one round (after a strike) and a short cooldown comes after a move. There is some small amount of randomness to this cooldown value, but when moving it is mostly determined by the unit’s combat move, so faster units will wait a shorter time before taking the next action. If two units are adjacent, the unit that finishes its cooldown first will get to strike next
Post by: MCreeper on January 22, 2023, 03:07:37 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Duuvian on March 31, 2023, 01:56:10 am
http://dominionsmods.com/index.php?showtopic=4240
(https://i.ibb.co/T1WfFT2/unitroster-FR.jpg)
It sounds impressive, though I haven't tried it yet. The author said it hasn't been balanced for multiplayer.
Post by: MCreeper on March 31, 2023, 02:20:14 am
Post by: E. Albright on March 31, 2023, 05:27:29 am
It's also possible that none of that is true, and it's just overrated.
Post by: Criptfeind on March 31, 2023, 07:14:26 am
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on March 31, 2023, 07:45:16 am
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 13, 2023, 03:46:56 pm
We'll be getting more information eventually, but for now the announcement is just that they've been working on it and they're expecting to be finished by the end of the year. Maybe this will push me to finish Vanlaw/Mahinda. Not bloody likely.
Post by: E. Albright on July 13, 2023, 07:01:35 pm
Post by: Radsoc on July 14, 2023, 02:41:56 am
Post by: Coffeespoons on July 20, 2023, 03:54:36 am
That'll probably tempt me to come back to NationGen to help update it to the new version, but I really had better not try to make the time. It will be tempting though...
I've spent dozens and dozens of hours with NationGen. So appreciative of the hard work you put into it and stoked that you'll be updating it. Thanks!
Post by: E. Albright on July 20, 2023, 08:47:40 am
Post by: Frumple on July 20, 2023, 11:36:43 am
Post by: EuchreJack on July 21, 2023, 07:18:40 pm
NationGen for Dominions 8 better be perfect, LOL.
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 22, 2023, 10:00:35 am
Most notably, we're getting an entirely new magical path: Glamour. It's picking up 'illusions, phantasms, dreams and the stuff of forgotten legends' from Air magic, so we'll have to see how its inclusion works on the battlefield and what Air gets in compensation. Scales also seem to be more dynamic, with your choice of nation and pretender affecting their limits. Riders and mounts are also going to be separate entities, though I'm not sure how much that'll affect battles. Speaking of battles, unit sizes seem to be tweaked as well to be more granular, though I don't see the point that change. The only reason I can think of it's to make hoburgs no longer as small as bugs.
Obviously we're getting new nations as well, and one is even shown off in the store images. Pyrène is a nation obviously based on the Basques, that has gone from dwelling in caves to blood sacrifices to goat-demons, so Marignon is going to have a fun time with them. Pyrène also gets sacred Mouflon cavalry, which is awesome.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 22, 2023, 10:27:26 am
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on July 22, 2023, 10:31:17 am
Post by: Criptfeind on July 22, 2023, 11:00:24 am
I'm interested to see if glamour thematically replaces blood as the 4th sorcery school and blood gets kicked out to be its own thing, or if it's going to be the fifth sorcery school.
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on July 22, 2023, 11:19:28 am
Post by: Criptfeind on July 22, 2023, 11:32:27 am
Edit: Reading the store page more closely and the rumors, apparently Glamour isn't just going to be an illusion school, but rather has all the various weird/tricky/old power spells in it. Things like luck from astral, and apparently spellsinger communions are becoming a spell instead of a trait and they'll be in glamour. (Elf Communions, here we come? Maybe? Unless it's still nation restricted.) So certainly not worried about the spell school lacking stuff in it.
Post by: E. Albright on July 26, 2023, 12:07:23 pm
Yeah, I'm gonna need to stay FAR away from NG and might be better off staying away from Dom6 to protect me from temptation. Which is a shame, because...
It's nice to see Air being taken down a peg. It's been far too strong over the last two iterations with both the strongest combat evocations (and combat summons) and some of the most devastating battlefield enchantments. There will be more than a few nations that will still have both air and glamour, but I suspect a lot of elves, forex, will not be slinging lightning any more. And when you do have nations that do both, the casters will have their skills split between two paths now - what once was a mighty slinger of thunderbolts and weaver of illusions may become a mighty weaver of illusions who can make a tiny spark jump from one finger to another. Nations like Berytos will just become storm factories with no particular tricksieness up their sleeves. I am rather curious if "fate" is going to be lumped in with Glamour; I could see that going either way thematically. It would be a move to make Astral more "pure" and alien, but given how much overlap you have between fate and the stars in myth I feel like it'd be a hard sell.
Re: adjusting unit sizes, this is a change that was unexpected but welcome. Having spent way too much time fussing over these particular mechanics, the 1-6 size scale is wonkier than it might seem and some more granularity will be welcome. At the moment, size 1 covers everything from single spiders and scorpions up to 4-5' goblins. Size 2 is arguably more consistent, as it's mostly "human-sized". Size 3 is a mess again - there's very "short" size 3 humanoids, but it also includes lesser giants, some (but not all) trolls, reasonably-large animals, knights on barded steeds, etc. 4-6 are all a bit subjective; they're all "1 per square", but exactly how big they are is mostly just a subjective measure to determine who can trample who. If we're increasing square size (which it sounds like we are if normal unit numbers are going up), it makes good sense to stretch out the size scale. Likewise, if we're differentiating b/tw mount and rider, some more granularity can't hurt. I'm wondering if AoE spells and effects are going to get adjusted as well; otherwise, this will end up being a buff to evokers even as the descriptions say that the new version is increasing the importance of armies and making battles less dependent on mages.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what other changes get announced even if I need to stay away from it. More Late nations means we'll probably finally see some nations like Ur and Machaka coming to the degenerate era of men and steel, which should be interesting.
Post by: Criptfeind on July 26, 2023, 12:21:05 pm
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on July 26, 2023, 08:36:37 pm
Quote
Attacker: DRN + (Size points in the square) +2 if magic weapon
Defender: 2 + DRN + (shield parry value x2) – (Fatigue / 20)
But those rolls don't show up in the combat logs so I'm not sure. If it is being rolled then I wouldn't be surprised if they halved the bonus to keep things relatively balanced. Something to wait and see how it works, I guess. Assuming that those rolls still exist and they're added to the combat logs, of course.
Post by: MCreeper on December 31, 2023, 02:06:20 pm
Never even seen Larignon being used to any actual effect. First I seen it played was somebody in Bay12 round trying to play through hellbless and blood and flopping it entirely. Next was my own attempt at mixed approach, which mostly resulted in me learning a lesson - if you want to play through blood, go all in. And the last was a blitzer that seemingly played through troops and navigators, but let all mages stay in the capital like lemons for all 50 turns. Apparently, he also spent crapton of cash trying to domkill someone with temples and missionaries.
Post by: E. Albright on December 31, 2023, 02:31:11 pm
It looks like LA Mari is getting some love in three weeks when Dom6 releases. It remains to be seen if that'll be relevant here, though - since it appears to be summons, that seems unlikely...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Criptfeind on December 31, 2023, 05:09:49 pm
Post by: Micro102 on December 31, 2023, 05:21:24 pm
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on December 31, 2023, 11:31:11 pm
Heavy reliance on bless strategies for human nations are almost always memes, and recruit anywhere Flagellants don't change that, it's still a meme. But LA Mari is still a classic blood nation, and thus pretty strong and perfectly capable of winning games just based on that alone.It does depend on whether or not the human nation in question has good blessable summons as well as troops.
Post by: Criptfeind on January 03, 2024, 04:03:34 am
Although off the top of my head I can't think of too many summonable sacreds for human nations that I'd say are worth taking a hell bless, big issue with hell blessing summons is you are investing so much into something you don't get right away. It's rough spending all your points on something that doesn't help you early game. The fact that most summoned units are hard and expensive to mass in great numbers as well hurts too. Mictland has Ozies, but then again they are an exception to the first point about human sacreds not being worth a hell bless as well :P
I guess some people like doing quite heavy pig blesses for Marverni, I'm not sure it's not a meme, but at least it's some level of popular sometimes :P
If we allow near human nations, specifically with wings, I've seen it done to good effect for Condors with Nazca, although I feel like that's sorta a greedy build on top of a greedy nation. I've also done close to a hell bless with Xibalba... I mean, if your troops are bad enough, no need for money right? (I've lost every game I tried it with soooo.... take it with a grain of salt)
Ah! MA Ermor and LA Lemuria always take hellblesses for their (technically) summoned troops... And they still count as human... right?
Any more sacreds summons worth a hellbless for alone? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I could easily be forgetting some... Maybe Se'ir (although most of those nations are not doing it for them alone) and I think Jotun Wolfs are sorta close, especially if you can expect a reasonable chance to control mother oak. Do people hellbless Sentinels? I've always sorta gone for a more moderate bless on them, but I could see it.
Post by: EuchreJack on January 05, 2024, 08:24:20 pm
Ah! MA Ermor and LA Lemuria always take hellblesses for their (technically) summoned troops... And they still count as human... right?For them, the hellbless is part of their strategy to pollute their lands and the lands of their neighbors.
Mictlan are fairly typical hellbless nation, since in EA and LA, they're a blood nation, so they can control where their dominion has dominance. Dump their hostile neighbor into hell, while they keep relatively neutral dominion over a friendly border region.
Flagellants suck. Best not to put them in the same category as pretty much any other sacred troops.
it's still a meme....I thought all nations in Dominions were a meme. :P
Post by: MCreeper on January 05, 2024, 08:34:19 pm
If we allow near human nations, specifically with wings, I've seen it done to good effect for Condors with Nazca, although I feel like that's sorta a greedy build on top of a greedy nation. I've also done close to a hell bless with Xibalba... I mean, if your troops are bad enough, no need for money right? (I've lost every game I tried it with soooo.... take it with a grain of salt.Condors? I thought the supayas were all the rage with Nazca. And even the reason it is considered borderline OP, though I don't quite see why. Though, if one takes hellbless for those, one may not have money to actually summon them.
Definitely seen EA Xibalba's freespawned hellblessed beast bats being used decently effectively, with combination of Death Explosion+Charged Bodies+Blood Vengeance+some other stuff, of all things.
Post by: Criptfeind on January 06, 2024, 09:23:43 am
I think they are sometimes considered opop for a lot of reasons... They sure do have a lot of amazing stuff, great magic access, flying, recruitable innate caster 2 is sorta insane, and of course spammable ghost sacreds.
The "kill me" bless on EA Xibalba is a interesting one to me, I've never tried it. I pretty much always go with a very killy bless. +strength +bloodsurge sometimes +attack ect. To turn the Ozies into blenders and make the recruitable sacreds into decent can openers if I need them to hit elites that my bats can't otherwise kill. It's also a decent bless on beast bats, improving their attack to make sure they get that fatigue in vs giants or be able to trade with medium tier troops. I'd be interested to see how it works out, although my first thought is that any sorta death explosion bless tends to be in the more "meme" category :P
Post by: Duuvian on January 11, 2024, 09:58:24 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
With the bats you wouldn't need some of the other blesses foot troops need, so you might have to take less 4s in certain paths to open up the low level blesses. I can't remember which has the fast movement speed blessing for example, but if it's water you could cut that out of the build entirely with cheap flying sacreds.
I was trying to make Bogarus's awful sacreds useful so after trying a half dozen or so attempts at making them offensively powerful I tried using the pain reflection bless similar to the five-fold angel's ability. That was far too costly in points so I tried the death explosion bless and found it too vulnerable to arrows. I tried adding air shield but that didn't work as well as what I came up with later: adding to the death explosion bless the fire/electricity resist in earth blesses, charge bodies, and finally the battle map movespeed increase in either air or water, I forget which. The fire/electricity resists are to slightly lessen self-damage; I haven't done the math but I figured the electricity resist is less useful than fire resist to prevent a chain explosion from the fire damage, however with too much fire resist they tend to persist long enough for other friendly units to stack up behind them and the electricy resist might allow the enemy to step forward and fill the gap if the charge body drops an attacker but the friendly sacred unit survives the hit and electricity damage. I suppose that happens on rare occasion, so that way when another sacred friendly explodes next to them for their last few hp they have a better chance of exploding right next to a full square of enemy units.
I set them up in a long line in the front and have them attack closest. Behind them I put expendable chaff like Dispossesed Spirits, though if I have fire resistant things I put those there as well. Behind them go infantry and monsters then archers with mages mixed in where I want buffs to land. If there are flyers on the other side I usually make a trap for attack rear flyers behind everything else with non-exploding units (an exception would be a super explosive blessed commander with the amulet of vengeance; I'm not sure how that stacks or if so with the bless) . If I have enough cheap sacreds, I set up a few smaller groups to attack archers, rear, large monsters, and cavalry instead of only attack closest in a big line. Don't assign any of them to attack flyers, since you want them running forward and not back into your lines. Try not to let valuable units near a line of unexploded blessed units since they can blow up half your army if it queues up behind them before they've all exploded, so put everything on hold for two rounds that can take commands. I place expensive things that don't take commands behind a line of holding infantry that helps delay it from rushing straight ahead and queueing up behind the blessed units before they've exploded.
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on January 13, 2024, 12:02:10 am
Post by: MCreeper on January 13, 2024, 12:34:29 am
Post by: ZebioLizard2 on January 13, 2024, 11:11:41 am
Which was out on steam since Dec 12. :PNow in Youtube format then. ;D
But here's some more stuff from Lucid on Dom6. https://youtu.be/4d8fRkHp-FQ?si=doNhAc2CeY1U85N3 (https://youtu.be/4d8fRkHp-FQ?si=doNhAc2CeY1U85N3)
Sombre has some discussion on the new modding ability of the system as well.
Post by: MCreeper on January 14, 2024, 12:06:08 am
The exploding bless is amazing in single player for cheap bad sacred units like flagellants... I was hoping to keep it under wraps in case it's still viable in Dom6 so I could eventually use it in an LA game on this very forum.Also, you actually posted that same thing on page 57. :D