Bay 12 Games Forum

Other Projects => Other Games => Play With Your Buddies => Topic started by: AlStar on August 05, 2014, 06:46:40 pm

Title: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: AlStar on August 05, 2014, 06:46:40 pm

Since it looks like my 4.06 game will be going into stasis for the next week, I got killed early in 4.07, and 4.08 filled up before I got a chance to join, I figured I'd try my hand at hosting my own game.

Game: Bay12GamesRound409 (http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound409)
Map: Catacombs of the Titans (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/catacombs-of-the-titans-88-land-27-sea)
Mods: Worthy Heroes v1.23 (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=2358)
Era: Early Era
Disciples: No
Time allowance: TBD
Special site frequency: 50
Random event frequency: Common
Research: Standard
Score graphs: no
Hall of Fame: 15
Artifact forging limit : limited
Thrones: 5 points of thrones needed. 10 level 1 thrones, 2 level 2 thrones.
Renaming: allowed

I'm currently open on number of players and map. I won't lie, I'd love to get the chance to try out either of the maps that I made (Catacombs of the Titans (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/catacombs-of-the-titans-88-land-27-sea) or Oram Dakon, The World of Omens (http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/oram-dakon-the-world-of-omens-df-tribute)), but I'm a mapmaking neophyte so I'm sure that my maps are probably flawed in any number of ways; we'd probably do better using one of the tried-and-true maps.

Currently Signed up:
Machaka - Alstar
Ermor - Shadowlord
Berytos - tompliss
Tir na n'Og - DarkerDark
R'lyeh - Bluerobin
Yomi - [Ars]Hellheart (Steam)

(Stolen from the previous Dom4 threads:)

Spoiler: How does PBEM work? (click to show/hide)

•First of all, you need to download any non-standard map and mod we're using (links will be provided if we decide to use one), and put the files into the map and mod folders of your dom4 installation respectively.
•Then go to the options menu and enable the mod.
•Next use the pretender creation tool in the game tools menu to create a pretender and send the file(to be found in your /dominions4/savedgames/newlords; named <your_nation_era_number.2h>, where number is most likely "0" if it's the only pretender you've created so far for this nation.) to "pretenders [at ] llamaserver [dot ] net" with the game name as the subject.
Game name will most likely be "Bay12GamesRound409".

You'll be receiving .trn files from llama server, which you should put into a {dom4dir}/savedgames/{whatevernameyouwant}/
After finishing your moves, a new .2h file will appear in that folder, which you should send to the same address from which you've received your .trn file.

Spoiler: Rules of conduct (click to show/hide)

•No exploits please. Examples of exploits are siegeing a fort infinitely with a string of scouts; sending other players crap items to fill their magic item pool and make them waste gems; anything else you can think of that doesn't feel like it was meant to be a feature. If not sure, ask.
•Trade agreements are sacred. Once you decided to exchange some gems/items/gold, you MUST fulfill your side of the agreement.
•No constrains on diplomacy. You can attack anyone you want, with or without warning. It would be, however, in good taste not to rush another player at the very begining of the game. We're all trying to have a good time playing this.
•Use forum PMs for diplomacy. The in-game messaging system is seriously flawed(unacceptably slow, and parts of messages tend to dissapear)
•If you want to boast/moan about your progress(or lack thereof) in game, feel free to use this thread to post your screenshots, stories and whatnot.
•It's bad etiquette to repeatedly stale/go AI without consulting other players. If you lose interest or ability to play, do try to get in touch with us. Usually a sub can be arranged and it's better than AI/inattentive player.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on August 05, 2014, 07:35:07 pm

Two games (even if one's not started yet) is quite enough for me, but you probably want to make sure there are pre-set starts or nostart provinces in your maps to make sure everyone gets a fair start in the game. You want to make sure that's the case even if this round won't use your map, a bit too many map makers forget or simply don't bother adding starts/nostarts.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: tompliss on August 06, 2014, 02:47:22 am

I would rather play on the DF map, but it's 284++43 provinces, so you'll need many players (12 would be the minimum, for a 20 province per player setting that's still high), and I don't know hether you'll gather that many, now that 4.08 is just beginning...

And, by the way, I don't know whether I'll play in this one...
I mean, I'm already in 4 games (but my role in one of them is currently ending...).
Anyway, if you go for Oram Dakon, I would love to try it with some fellow players...

PS: By the way, with what settings did you gen the DF map ?

EDIT: I would like to put an option on Berytos, anyway. It's not like I can not play in every game that get started here ! :D

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: E. Albright on August 06, 2014, 04:32:00 am

Don't forget to check to make sure that your starts/nostarts take into account richness of lands around the starting locations as well as the number of neighbors and terrain of the starting provinces/immediate neighbors. Of the last 4 games I've been in, 3 have put one or more nations at a preliminary disadvantage because they had less rich environs to expand into than their competitors.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 06, 2014, 06:08:27 am

Quote from: tompliss on August 06, 2014, 02:47:22 am

PS: By the way, with what settings did you gen the DF map ?

As I remember, it's default settings on a large map, year 0. I could've just generated a smaller map as it turned out, since I ended up cutting the map in half, anyway. (And, as you mention, even this is on the "too big" side of things.)

Quote from: E. Albright

Don't forget to check to make sure that your starts/nostarts take into account richness of lands around the starting locations as well as the number of neighbors and terrain of the starting provinces/immediate neighbors.

Well, it's a minimally-edited DF world, so I'm not going to say everyone's got perfectly the same expansion chances, but all the starting spots are roughly equal, and (unlike the southern continent I'm dealing with in 4.06) wastelands and swamps are fairly rare. There are some large stretches of woods and fields on some of the landmasses, which could mess with nations who are more gold/resource focused.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Il Palazzo on August 06, 2014, 06:21:12 am

I'll play.
But only if the map is reasonably small. That Catacombs one looks nice, but any other of ~100 provinces will do.
I'd like to try those Ur guys. There are swamps to be found on these maps, I presume?

If you'd rather have a large game, then I'll pass.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Shadowlord on August 06, 2014, 12:18:31 pm

EA Ur looks interesting. I'm considering trying them.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 06, 2014, 02:30:17 pm

Posting to watch. I may or may not join, depending on if I find a nation that yanks my crank. Though I'm not too sure about that since Ur is taken...

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Bluerobin on August 06, 2014, 05:52:23 pm

I'll join, assuming we end up on a smallish map as well. I don't have time (or desire, honestly) for a really big map/long game. Nation TBA, but I'll work around other people's choices.

Edit: I'm gonna say EA R'lyeh for now, but it's definitely still in flux.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 06, 2014, 06:37:22 pm

Well, if we do go with my catacombs map, we could  actually start the game with the players who have stated at least a possible interest, as that gives us 5 land nations and 1 water nation.

That said, we'll have to nail down both the numbers (Will USEC be playing? Will tompliss still be interested if we're just playing on a small map?) and the nations (Both Il Palazzo and Shadowlord have mentioned they'd like to try Ur. Since Il Palazzo posted first, I'm going to vote that he gets dibs.)

Still, we're looking like we could potentially get this game off the ground in the near future.

So the new question to everyone: It looks like the small map players have the vote. Does anyone have any other small maps they'd like to propose to play on, or shall we just see how well/poorly my map does?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Shadowlord on August 06, 2014, 07:08:08 pm

Ah, oops. Switch me to Ermor.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Il Palazzo on August 07, 2014, 01:58:22 am

I vote for yer mother. I mean, your map.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: tompliss on August 07, 2014, 02:07:29 am

I would vote for waiting 24h, to see whether there are other players interested :)
(and then use your map. I would like to warn the players, though : there is a cave network, connecting distant provinces)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: RexMundi on August 07, 2014, 06:58:12 am

me and brother (seems to) wanna join, jsut some questions.
Us playing in the same game, I'd assume we're less trusted then at the whole we're not allied at a time thing? (meaning, many would assume we're working together i think?) anyway,t he other thing, is what of people with valid, borrowed, copies of the game? Kinda like on the 4chan games there is the one allowed 'poorfag' copy someone shared

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 07, 2014, 07:07:24 am

Quote from: RexMundi on August 07, 2014, 06:58:12 am

me and brother (seems to) wanna join, jsut some questions.
Us playing in the same game, I'd assume we're less trusted then at the whole we're not allied at a time thing? (meaning, many would assume we're working together i think?) anyway,t he other thing, is what of people with valid, borrowed, copies of the game? Kinda like on the 4chan games there is the one allowed 'poorfag' copy someone shared

IMO, as long as you tell us that you're not working together, I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I don't really have an issue with the second either, as long as Dominions copy protection won't kick two players with the same serial # out of a multiplayer game (I have no idea if it does) and as long as the 'poorfag' buys a copy next time it goes on sale.

Edit: As a sidenote, I've been talking with some people looking over my map. They pointed out that in the current version, the seas are a little too powerful (many, many connections close to the default starting area) so, with a tear in my eye, I broke up the sea (a little)... which meant nuking province #1... which means that all my connections are fucked. Anyway, I've already recreated the seas, but work calls, so I'll probably have the new version sometime tonight.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: tompliss on August 07, 2014, 07:19:16 am

(can't you break #1 in #1 and #150, for example ?)

RexMundi : In games hosted on llamaserver, the server only accepts one .2h file per cd-key. So you'd have to buy it a second time for you and your brother to play with us.

On a more general note, I wouldn't mind having both you and your brother playing in a game with the rest of us. I've seen people knowing each others playing in other games, or simply people playing in games in Desura/Dom4Mods knowing each other from other forums, and yet, diplomacy happens.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: RexMundi on August 07, 2014, 09:06:40 am

We have different cd keys, jsut gotta make sure the one who let him theirs isn't playing in the game, heh

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: sum1won on August 07, 2014, 09:27:52 am

tentative interest - perhaps with Lanka.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 07, 2014, 07:16:43 pm

Quote from: tompliss on August 07, 2014, 07:19:16 am

(can't you break #1 in #1 and #150, for example ?)

I don't know how much you've played around with the map maker, but it's very, very, touchy about adding or removing provinces. There are some in-game tools that are supposed to help, but they don't deal well with wrapped maps.

Anyway, I'm done with V4 of the map. I initially tried for a bone-themed name scheme for the provinces, but quickly tired of that, so ended up with only the special provinces (woods, swamp, farms, waste, cave, water) getting special names... and those started getting pretty lame by the end.

That said, we're still not locked into my map if someone else wants to put another one forward (especially if we end up with more than 5 normal nations + 1 water + 1 cave.)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Shadowlord on August 07, 2014, 09:23:56 pm

I think you had threads for your maps, but I'm not sure where, so, I'll just post this here:

I downloaded and started a game on the Catacombs of the Titans one, and it seems nice, except that I have two suggestions:

1. It seems too dark to me (but adjusting the luminance of the TGA in paint.net by +20 solved that).
2. It would be less confusing if the tunnels were marked in a different color (say, yellow) than the (land) borders, but that's not a major issue.

My income in my test game is much higher than I'm used to, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem with your map (especially considering in the only other Dom4 game I'm playing right now, my income is significantly reduced because of miasma).

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: DarkerDark on August 07, 2014, 11:43:03 pm

I'm interested! I'm not too familiar with the EA races, so at a quick glance I think I'll take Tir na n'Og.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: Il Palazzo on August 08, 2014, 04:03:25 am

And I'm backing off. Ur is free for the taking again.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 08, 2014, 05:36:17 am

Quote from: Il Palazzo on August 08, 2014, 04:03:25 am

And I'm backing off. Ur is free for the taking again.

That's fine. So where does that put us?
DarkerDark - Tir na n'Og
sum1won - Lanka
RexMundi - ?
Shadowlord - Ermor/Ur
Bluerobin - R'lyeh
tompliss - Berytos
AlStar - Machaka

Ok, that looks pretty good. I'm going to call the gates closed. We'll play on my map, because no one else has said anything.

Note: you're not actually locked into the nations that I've mentioned here, since I know some of you mentioned that you were still deciding. However, you've got first-pick on whatever nations I've put down. If you do decide to go with a different nation, please mention it, so others know they're up for grabs

edit: OK, we're up! Get your pretenders in! I've updated the first post with the information.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - We're up! Pretenders, to your marks!
Post by: Shadowlord on August 08, 2014, 08:18:44 am

I'm going with Ermor, so if anyone else wants Ur, they can have it.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - We're up! Pretenders, to your marks!
Post by: AlStar on August 08, 2014, 05:12:06 pm

Got a message from sum1won that he's not going to be able to play.

We can either go without him, or someone (RexMundi's brother, perhaps?) can take his place.

Edit: We've currently got Machaka, Ermor, and Berytos signed up.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - We're up! Pretenders, to your marks!
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on August 08, 2014, 05:12:57 pm

I'd volunteer, but have exactly 0% serious preparations, so... *shrug*

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - We're up! Pretenders, to your marks!
Post by: RexMundi on August 08, 2014, 08:19:19 pm

I have 0 preperation too, so does brother, who i jsut talked to, who is in if it's still allowed to join. I'll make sure we have pretenders in tonight, and in case anyone needs to get a hold of me, i'm rexmundi15 (the pony avatar) on steam which i'm always on

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - EAsy Come, EAsy Go...
Post by: AlStar on August 08, 2014, 08:35:37 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on August 07, 2014, 09:23:56 pm

I downloaded and started a game on the Catacombs of the Titans one, and it seems nice, except that I have two suggestions:

1. It seems too dark to me (but adjusting the luminance of the TGA in paint.net by +20 solved that).
2. It would be less confusing if the tunnels were marked in a different color (say, yellow) than the (land) borders, but that's not a major issue.

I can do that: Alternate Map Link (https://www.dropbox.com/s/z70i297cj2izy4t/Catacombs_of_the_Titans%282%29.tga) 20% brighter, yellow cave connections/borders. Just rename it to replace the main .tga.

Edit: 3 more spots need to be filled. Open season for anyone who's reasonably reliable. Getting 1 water nation and Agartha would be ideal, given the way the start locations are laid out, but we can go with anything (and just hope my nostarts are placed well enough.)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Looking for 3 more Pretenders!
Post by: Shadowlord on August 10, 2014, 12:01:18 am

I'm not sure I would recommend Agartha, since the caves are not in mountains, are fully surrounded by other provinces, and link to distant caves, resulting in the situation that any cave province is innately insecure unless you control everything surrounding it and everything connected to it far away, etc.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Looking for 3 more Pretenders!
Post by: AlStar on August 10, 2014, 07:51:25 am

Quote from: Shadowlord on August 10, 2014, 12:01:18 am

I'm not sure I would recommend Agartha, since the caves are not in mountains, are fully surrounded by other provinces, and link to distant caves, resulting in the situation that any cave province is innately insecure unless you control everything surrounding it and everything connected to it far away, etc.

Hmm, what do you think would be a good fix for that? Just removing the links between the farthest cave and the rest? Remove all the cave connections? Change the two provinces above the large cave into mountains?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Looking for 3 more Pretenders!
Post by: Bluerobin on August 10, 2014, 11:26:05 am

Oh, crap I forgot to set up notifications on this thread when I posted that I'd participate. I'll work on my pretender today and get it in soon.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Looking for 3 more Pretenders!
Post by: Shadowlord on August 10, 2014, 11:31:28 am

I think it's interesting and makes the map different from most of the other maps I've played, but I just wouldn't suggest it for Agartha. The lack of rivers and mountains to block or restrict movement by heat also means someone who needs or wants to turtle* will find it hard to build choke-point defenses, too, except on the caves. I've never made a Dom4 map so I won't assume that adding rivers and mountains is easy.

* Because they are weak early and get strong later in the game with research or whatnot, if they survive.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Looking for 3 more Pretenders!
Post by: Bluerobin on August 10, 2014, 04:18:35 pm

Alright, I've submitted my pretender. Sorry about the delay!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on August 12, 2014, 03:50:45 pm

I noticed on http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound409 that this started. Did Llamaserver forget to send the emails? I haven't received anything and everyone's status is showing as "Waiting for 2h file."

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on August 12, 2014, 03:51:31 pm

Uh !
There have been soem mail lost in other games, so the llamaserver may have forgotten, yeah.

PS mass resend done ! :p

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on August 12, 2014, 03:57:46 pm

Thanks for that, I didn't get my first turn the first time either. I have it now, though!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 12, 2014, 05:41:45 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on August 12, 2014, 03:50:45 pm

I noticed on http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound409 that this started.

Yeah, I started up just before I left for work this morning.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 13, 2014, 07:43:11 pm

The thrones seem to really love the little skull lakes. I find that a little annoying, not having any easy way to get down there.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the 4.06 thread, I'm going to be out Friday-Sunday, so come Thursday night (possibly Friday morning) I'm going to pause the game until Monday/whenever I get home.

Sorry about having to do so early on.

Edit: It's just been pointed out to me that I missed a couple of connections: 105 <-> 96 and 104 <-> 94 SHOULD be there, as can be seen by the map. That's my bad. Sorry for any confusion for whoever started there. I can't fix it for this game, but I'll update the map so any future play doesn't run into it.

Edit^2 (no need to spam my own topic):
Also, a list of the pretenders vying for the crown (for anyone playing at home, or who (like me until just recently) didn't know where the information was located):

Spoiler: Ermor (click to show/hide)

Marbled Orwell, Prince of Mountains, King of Kings, Guardian of the Tablets of Destiny.

Spoiler: Machaka (click to show/hide)

Dyn o Ser, Prince of the Heavenly Fires, the Burning Soul, Turner of the Flood.

Spoiler: Tir na n'Og (click to show/hide)

N'Og O'Gog Teth Shin, King of Hunting, the Armorer, the Fortifier.

Spoiler: Yomi (click to show/hide)

Konran-Oni, Emperor of the World, He who is at the Center, Emperor of Near and Close.

Spoiler: Berytos (click to show/hide)

Clarence, Master of Blood and Perfume, Lord of Plants and Trees, the Carpenter of the Insides, Patron of Herbalists, God of Courage.

Spoiler: R'lyeh (click to show/hide)

Ms. Screams, Director of the World, Princess of the Sacred Eye, Mistress of the Celestial Bodies, the Evening Star.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on August 21, 2014, 08:46:08 am

Just waiting on Yomi again, it seems.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on August 21, 2014, 08:51:14 am

(why isn't the player-nation list in the first post anymore, by the way ?)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 21, 2014, 05:06:51 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on August 21, 2014, 08:46:08 am

Just waiting on Yomi again, it seems.

Blame that on llamaserver - it's last update time is 23:11 GMT on Wednesday August 20th. Yomi turned in his turn and was going to try to be the first player on the next one, but nothing's coming back currently.

I'll update the first post with a player list when I get a chance.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on August 22, 2014, 04:00:03 pm

Yeah, I just realized that with the confusion of people leaving after the last nation/player list I don't actually know who's playing in this game.

I'm in as R'lyeh. I think this is accurate for the other nations, but I don't know who's Yomi.
Machaka - Alstar
Ermor - Shadowlord
Berytos - tompliss
Tir na n'Og - DarkerDark
R'lyeh - Bluerobin
Yomi -

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on August 22, 2014, 04:14:39 pm

I think Yomi is USEC_OFFICER ;)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 22, 2014, 07:48:23 pm

Nah, Yomi is my friend from another board, Ars Technica - Hellheart. I don't know if he's gotten around to making an account here.

I know him from playing many years of Bloodbowl at Ars, so he should be pretty reliable. If you want to engage in diplomacy with him, your best bet is probably going through Steam - he's [Ars]Hellheart. (And if he didn't want me giving that information away, he should've made an account here and posted something.)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on August 24, 2014, 03:25:05 pm

llamaserver is comign back online, and nobody stalled the last turn : everything is perfect ! :D

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on August 25, 2014, 02:12:38 pm

Looks like I'm just barely going to squeak in, but two others still haven't submitted turn. Might be worth extending the turn time.

Edit: Yup, this time we ended up with two stales. Might want to roll back, although it may or may not matter at this point in the game.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 25, 2014, 05:25:16 pm

I'm willing to take it to a vote - I assume that no-one is fighting other players yet, so no issues with that...

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on August 25, 2014, 05:46:10 pm

I've no issue with roll-backing now, as it's a quite weird time, with the llamaserver oming back and only a day to realise and play ... :/

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 25, 2014, 06:32:39 pm

Ok, that looks like a majority - I'll turn back now. I've already bugged Hellheart to send in his turn. If anyone knows a way to slap DarkerDark upside the head, that'd be good (he hasn't been online in a couple days, says Bay12Forum.)

I'd appreciate it if those of us who originally sent in turns did not replay the turn to try and game the outcome.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on August 25, 2014, 07:35:22 pm

Who staled? There was plenty of time to send turns in while llamaserver was down... :o

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on August 25, 2014, 08:32:39 pm

It wasn't that turn, it's the turn that we got yesterday at 4 pm (my time) with no notice and only had 24 hours, most of which was Sunday night or Monday workday time, to submit.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on August 25, 2014, 08:50:39 pm

Ohh.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on August 26, 2014, 06:46:07 am

Thanks for the rollback! Didn't even realize I staled!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on August 29, 2014, 11:44:22 am

Whoops I staled. Definitely not worth worrying about, though.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on August 30, 2014, 09:10:27 am

According to the staling log, folks keep staling. Perhaps the autohost time should be increased?

http://www.llamaserver.net/doAdminAction.cgi?game=Bay12GamesRound409&action=showstales

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on August 30, 2014, 09:26:47 am

Switched it to 28 hours. Tell me if we need longer.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Ragnoff on August 31, 2014, 09:22:57 am

Sub needed for TC in 4.07 if anyone is interested. I am another player in the game (Ulm)

Holds important territory and has good research, turtled much of the game. Not a dominate power but should be something there to play with. Sitting on the only lvl 3 throne, so important even if it would be hard to win.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 04, 2014, 06:19:15 am

Got to love how archers without a commander will charge the enemy with their daggers. Oh, you brave, brave fools.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on September 04, 2014, 11:11:00 pm

Yo! Alstar, can you tell Hellheart to accept Reshig's friend request on Steam? It's a family steam account too, so when he does accept, it may not be me at the helm. Still, I'd love to have a chat with him! If he doesn't feel comfortable with the friend request, can you prod him into signing up on the forum?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 04, 2014, 11:31:02 pm

So told.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 11:34:36 am

Dear Machaka: You have So! Many! Troops! I can't train enough to get rid of you (despite an overabundance of gold - this map seems to shower everyone with gold). Did you just start summoning lions now too? You should just march into my capital and get it over with.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on September 05, 2014, 06:39:37 pm

When does claiming a throne take place in the turn order? Before or after battles?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 05, 2014, 06:45:32 pm

Not sure about claiming -you can probably look that up in the manual- but I'm pretty sure that as of few patches ago, throne ownership and victory related to that is checked after battles.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 07:18:42 pm

Yeah. You claim before battles but as of the latest patches, if someone takes the province from you before the end of the turn, you will fail to win the game now even if at some point during the turn you had enough thrones claimed. (IIRC 403 ended prior to this change, with just enough thrones being taken by tompliss, and then he lost one the same turn, but got the win anyways because it didn't care that he lost the province after meeting the win condition)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 05, 2014, 09:26:26 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 11:34:36 am

Dear Machaka: You have So! Many! Troops! I can't train enough to get rid of you (despite an overabundance of gold - this map seems to shower everyone with gold). Did you just start summoning lions now too? You should just march into my capital and get it over with.

I actually get lions as a regular recruit for 20 gold 1 resource, same as I get elephants for 100 gold and 20 resources - I just don't use them that often due to the fact that their lack of any armor makes them rather susceptible to sharp and/or pointy things.

And you can blame yourself for slowing down my offensive - that assassination really messed with my plans.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 10:41:51 pm

Yeah, but they're much easier to mass-produce and use as chaff if you summon them. 'Course you have to be at a lab to do that.

I was hoping to kill all your commanders and then just mop up, but alas, your prophet resisted assassination and that was enough to hold your forces together against two assaults.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on September 06, 2014, 02:21:10 am

Quote from: Shadowlord on September 05, 2014, 07:18:42 pm

Yeah. You claim before battles but as of the latest patches, if someone takes the province from you before the end of the turn, you will fail to win the game now even if at some point during the turn you had enough thrones claimed. (IIRC 403 ended prior to this change, with just enough thrones being taken by tompliss, and then he lost one the same turn, but got the win anyways because it didn't care that he lost the province after meeting the win condition)

Exactly that.
So now, if you want to win by getting all the thrones in one turn, you'll have to deal with the fact that the thread will be flooded by messages telling to attack you if we do not want to loose :D

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 11, 2014, 10:47:50 am

With all the PD we've bought, we could be here for a good long time.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 13, 2014, 06:07:34 am

Guards, setting them on fire, magma bolts - will nothing stop your assassins?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 13, 2014, 08:40:41 am

They are very determined.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on September 13, 2014, 06:25:07 pm

Suddenly, Berytos spearmen. Berytos spearmen everywhere. Hundreds of them.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 13, 2014, 11:34:11 pm

I'm assuming that hundreds of everything everywhere and several times normal PD levels are par for the course on this map. (I don't think AIs in SP know what to do with the gold, though, since they were pushovers and I never met any effective resistance, which led to me assuming I could similarly faceroll the world in MP too. Silly me. :P)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on September 14, 2014, 01:37:02 am

Quote from: DarkerDark on September 13, 2014, 06:25:07 pm

Suddenly, Berytos spearmen. Berytos spearmen everywhere. Hundreds of them.

You cost me a fort and me best mage.
I'll take those back from your income.

Best wishes, clarence, Ruler of Berytos. :)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on September 14, 2014, 08:35:02 am

Just out of interest, what kind of PD levels are you guys talking about?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 15, 2014, 09:41:54 am

The kind of PD levels that enable battles like this:

Spoiler: battle summary (click to show/hide)

(http://puu.sh/bA2Bd/fbc88a0d1e.jpg)

(There isn't a castle there, either.)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 15, 2014, 10:32:40 am

Having a random rainstorm show up right on the turn your fire mages go to war is not a good thing.

I doubt I would've won, but at least the fires wouldn't have been immediately extinguished.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 16, 2014, 12:41:10 am

Congratulations on getting all my assassins that time, Al. ;)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 16, 2014, 12:50:22 am

I'm pretty sure you're still ahead, gold-wise.

Edit: That's quite the kitted-out assassin you've got there. I was just about to complain how he managed to take on a fire elemental and two bodyguards without breaking a sweat, but given his gear, the flames never touched him at all.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on September 22, 2014, 11:40:32 pm

Having vision of the whole map just made me realize that a someone might actually be really close to victory right now. If one of those four thrones is a level 2 throne, then this could be over fairly quickly. The main problem for them is probably that they'll have to take their prophet around to claim the thrones. Hmm, having H3 recruitable priests is huge in thrones victory.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 22, 2014, 11:58:28 pm

Quote from: AlStar on September 16, 2014, 12:50:22 am

Edit: That's quite the kitted-out assassin you've got there. I was just about to complain how he managed to take on a fire elemental and two bodyguards without breaking a sweat, but given his gear, the flames never touched him at all.

Although all that gear (on the other two) wasn't able to protect them from your patrolling armies, and Yomi's coming in the back door which I wasn't able to keep closed, but I don't think it matters because someone else will probably be winning Real Soon Now via thrones.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on September 23, 2014, 06:18:51 pm

I'm going to need a 24h delay, for this game :/

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 23, 2014, 06:44:54 pm

Quote from: tompliss on September 23, 2014, 06:18:51 pm

I'm going to need a 24h delay, for this game :/

done.

Edit: That was a lot of javelins.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on September 30, 2014, 05:19:27 pm

Seriously, Ermor? Seriously?! 99% of your army is fleeing the field (again!) and it's my morale that breaks?!

Stupid blind mages, casting magma eruptions right in the middle of my own troops. But even so! Just... ARG!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on September 30, 2014, 09:03:32 pm

Heh heh heh, yep.

It looked like the only troops I had who weren't running at the end were a couple decaying PD troops still fighting a corpse candle, along with both a non-PD mage, a PD mage, and a priest. Of course the rest of the running PD probably only ran because of squad morale.

Just FYI, I have 57 province defense there. I mathed it, and unless I'm mistaken, it was cheaper to buy PD than the equivalent troops, even before accounting for their miraculous resurrection after every near-defeat.

Spoiler: My math (click to show/hide)

PD Cost: sum(1..57) = 1653 (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+(1..57)&incTime=true)
I counted 44 rorari, 56 accensi, 56 leves, 38 hastati, 1 pontifex, and 1 centurion. I was having trouble counting them, so I don't know if it's perfectly accurate, but it should be accurate enough.
Gold cost to hire the same troops+commanders: 44*10+56*8+56*10+38*11+100+70 = 2036 (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=44*10%2B56*8%2B56*10%2B38*11%2B100%2B70)

Of course I wouldn't necessarily claim that ~194 troops are better than a dozen good mages... That was as much luck as anything else.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 01, 2014, 04:30:12 am

Besides the mage argument, the problem with PD is that it's there. Need to defend something else? Tough luck. Getting attacked by something that WILL slaughter the whole province and prevent PD resurrection? Better luck next time.

Of course if you know that you will get attacked somewhere and pumping the PD will help you repulse an attack, it's worth it. But arguably that's a crutch for poor play, as in an ideal situation the ideal player will have recruited more mobile troops beforehand and use them to defend the province, then move them onwards and attack more provinces.

Of course nobody's an ideal player playing ideal games all the time, so there's that.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 01, 2014, 04:39:10 am

In dominion, I feel like I only play my worst game everytime :/
And this one isn't an exception.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 01, 2014, 09:52:09 am

Quote from: Delta Foxtrot on October 01, 2014, 04:30:12 am

Of course if you know that you will get attacked somewhere and pumping the PD will help you repulse an attack, it's worth it. But arguably that's a crutch for poor play, as in an ideal situation the ideal player will have recruited more mobile troops beforehand and use them to defend the province, then move them onwards and attack more provinces.

That would be ideal, to be sure, but I have 3 provinces left and can't make troops fast enough or support enough of them with my income for that to be viable. I'm just trying to make the cost to AlStar to take my provinces as high as possible.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 01, 2014, 03:20:08 pm

Well in that case you're probably not getting back up and it's not like AlStar has a lot of options when it comes to prioritizing your provinces at this point :P
Spitefully going down is the name of the game.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 01, 2014, 03:34:59 pm

Never going to give up ! :D

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 01, 2014, 08:46:57 pm

Yomi staled and would like a rollback - I'm not against it, but would definitely like support from the other players first - we're definitely not in the stage of the game were such things have no impact on other players any more.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 01, 2014, 10:13:04 pm

I was wondering why you hadn't commented on your latest attack yet.

The RNG might decide things should change, but *shrugs*. I don't object, as long as nobody else is changing their orders. (That said, I already submitted my orders for the new turn several hours ago.)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 02, 2014, 01:21:51 am

I don't mind and I don't really care : that won't change things for me :p

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 02, 2014, 04:42:44 am

Ok, sorry for taking so long about it - I literally went to bed and fell asleep a couple of minutes after posting - but I'll do the rollback.

Who knows - maybe my magma eruptions will strike a little more true this time around? I think I'm like one big mage short at that battle - one more guy throwing around falling fires or magma eruptions would let me take the field, but all these minor mages really aren't accomplishing anything.

On the other hand, I just know that with my luck that those two assassins who got killed will totally kill my commanders this time around.

Anyway, normal rules apply: No one except Yomi send in a turn please.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 02, 2014, 06:38:56 am

You know what's always demoralizing? Losing an entire mage corps to independents.  :'(

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 02:02:28 pm

Considering how late this turn is, I figured I should register to apologize. Normally I'd just let things ride if I stale (heck, that's exactly what I did on two early turns), but I can't just ignore the sheer amount of movement and adjustments that I had set up before I got too tired and passed out for 14 hours.

Because the movement's only the half of it at this point. A lot of it is about The Maths, and then double-checking everything, and that's not something I can do when I'm tired.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 02, 2014, 08:33:21 pm

So, I've been working on a remastered version of the map that we're currently playing on, based on my experiences playing an actual game on it.
(https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/515x463q90/901/JALlVa.png)
Notable features: replaced the nose lakes with caves, which connect to the (expanded) cave system.
Added another way off of (Ermor's) skull to the south.
Doubled up all the forests, both to increase resources and decrease gold.
Added some border mountain provinces (the brown/green provinces) for nations that like mountains, and also to again increase resources/decrease gold.
Cave connections in yellow, to increase visibility.
Moved (Berytos') start location so that it's not right next to the cave system (to make it more equal to the other starts.)
Little trees in the forests! Little bushes in the marshes!

You guys have all been playing too (obviously), any suggestion/disagreements with the changes I made?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 02, 2014, 09:31:15 pm

Do you have the provinces surrounding the mountains flagged as mountain provinces, and connections across the mountains set for summertime/heat only?

Some of that, plus some rivers that freeze in the more open parts of the map (blocking crossings except when frozen) could change things up - anyone with forest survival will move through those forests like they're plains.

Are the cave networks being as powerful for those of you who have control of them as they were for me in singleplayer? I haven't had any vision on any of the caves since the beginning of the game.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:25:58 pm

I'd like to see a connection from the broken skull on the left to one of the provinces to the S/SE of it, just to add another point of contention. You could also do that by changing one of those provinces to a cave and connecting it to 23 and maybe 64.

I think Ermor's nose cave should connect to 62 instead of 50; otherwise it might be a little redundant. I think a connection between 26 and 48 would solve a lot of logistics problems, although that could have a huge impact on map movement and balance so I'd need to see how that works in practice.

I like that the addition of that land province S of Ermor will also help immensely with the balance of underwater/sailing because it creates another water pocket, cutting off a good half-dozen provinces that are currently exposed to instant invasion from pretty much anywhere on the map.

EDIT: I think cave control is only really powerful if they're in one long link. If a lot of caves have 3 or even 4 links, then the low supply value of Cave provinces will create some really interesting situations. You simply can't maintain a large defensive force in a cave without a huge investment.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:33:09 pm

R'lyeh, any particular reason for the 70 Shambler Thralls that are now sitting in the water province that's two hops away from my lake throne?

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 02, 2014, 11:37:33 pm

Yup, but not one you have to worry about. If I want to move troops basically anywhere in my territory I have to go through the middle, which is near you unfortunately. It's also near berytos, tir na nog, ermor, and machaka though, so don't feel too special. :P

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 02, 2014, 11:50:42 pm

Quote from: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:25:58 pm

EDIT: I think cave control is only really powerful if they're in one long link. If a lot of caves have 3 or even 4 links, then the low supply value of Cave provinces will create some really interesting situations. You simply can't maintain a large defensive force in a cave without a huge investment.

If you're certain nations, you can use mostly non-eating troops. Or if you have nature mages and enough gems, you can make supply items to feed your army, assuming you don't have anything more important to be using them for (which you certainly might). I don't recall the giant cauldrons of soup being particularly expensive, but I seem to have closed the inspector tab I had open the entire time I was playing 404.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:57:19 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on October 02, 2014, 11:50:42 pm

Quote from: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:25:58 pm

EDIT: I think cave control is only really powerful if they're in one long link. If a lot of caves have 3 or even 4 links, then the low supply value of Cave provinces will create some really interesting situations. You simply can't maintain a large defensive force in a cave without a huge investment.

If you're certain nations, you can use mostly non-eating troops. Or if you have nature mages and enough gems, you can make supply items to feed your army, assuming you don't have anything more important to be using them for (which you certainly might). I don't recall the giant cauldrons of soup being particularly expensive, but I seem to have closed the inspector tab I had open the entire time I was playing 404.

Big Soup IIRC only requires N1, but is 15 Nature Gems. Wine is 2N and another Construction tier up but is only 5 (and only 50 supply).

Both of those solutions require quite a bit of investment, though, especially when Nature gems are in super-high demand because Recuperation is essential for Thugs, SC's, and even the mages for a few nations.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 03, 2014, 05:01:02 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 02, 2014, 11:57:19 pm

Big Soup IIRC only requires N1, but is 15 Nature Gems. Wine is 2N and another Construction tier up but is only 5 (and only 50 supply).

It's actually N3 15 gems for the 100 supply Enormous Cauldron of Broth and N1 5 gems for the 50 supply Endless Bag of Wine. Generally speaking, as long as you don't mind having a scout or two tagging along with the army to hold some extra bags (basically, unless there's a good reason that you absolutely need a single commander to be able to support 100 extra troops by himself), you'll always want to choose bags over cauldrons.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 03, 2014, 05:07:14 am

Especially if you can get dwarven hammers or any forge bonus.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 03, 2014, 07:57:34 pm

Quote from: tompliss on October 03, 2014, 05:07:14 am

Especially if you can get dwarven hammers or any forge bonus.

I haven't made one all game. I really should have, but my only Earth access comes from Dai Oni and I need Dai Oni for so many other things that I never had a chance to forge one.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 03, 2014, 09:37:28 pm

The descriptions on some of the spells - and I'm talking about between the game, the manual, dom4 inspector, AND Google search results - are frustratingly vague. I'm going to be testing some of them enough times to suss out the likely effects/formulas through the law of large numbers.

If you have the right setup it's not terribly difficult, although AFAICT I'll need to get the Debug mod for anything involving a lot of gems (eg, casting Transformation several hundred times with boosted 1N, 2N, 2N with max in another path, mixed paths if the last test shows a difference, and then with 9N). I can't see any way to add gems to commanders using the map commands.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 04, 2014, 02:29:15 am

Casting any spell several hundred times sounds like an awful lot of effort. I don't think there's any way to do that easily or quickly, even with debug mod.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 04, 2014, 04:46:24 am

Quote from: Shadowlord on October 04, 2014, 02:29:15 am

Casting any spell several hundred times sounds like an awful lot of effort. I don't think there's any way to do that easily or quickly, even with debug mod.

It's a lot of clicking to actually set up the rituals (had my first test run earlier today with 100 Apothecaries)...but then it's a matter of copying the save, ending the turn, then scumming the save. Recording is still annoying depending on how much detail I want, but I'm going to have at least 500 results for this bunch. Then I'm going to see if I can trash my Luck scale in the province for another 500 tests.

Switching mages is annoying, though, since the fastest way to do that is to adjust the #commander numbers and start a new game, which means I need to cast the 1 pearl Wish spell another 32 times and then choose Transformation for another 100 mages. I have 10 astral mages in there to speed up the Wishing, but you can't bulk-choose any ritual so the biggest time investment is that choice.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 04, 2014, 09:53:11 am

Transformation seems to be a bit bugged in the current version. I've heard it has crashed at least one llamaserver game. I wouldn't advise on casting it in MP just yet.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 04, 2014, 10:45:32 pm

So, AlStar, we've demolished your attacking armies over and over and over again, and now most of your mages in that army are dead as well. Are you ready to surrender yet?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Last turn (44) - because there was no attack this turn (45))
(http://puu.sh/bYkoX/7525958e76.jpg)

(That's only what was left after throwing his armies back into the meat grinder again and again (and etc) after each defeat cut them in half)

Aaaand send...
(http://puu.sh/bZJri/21a321bbd3.jpg)

Not that I actually expect you to surrender just because you dashed your army to pieces against my capital's defenses...  :P

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 05, 2014, 11:29:17 pm

Not to alarm anyone, but Tir wins this turn unless he loses a throne province or two.

Oh, and HA! Suck it, Ermor!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/23966391844580141/941B47453BB4D3DCAB4F8A4BFAEF0B9ACEDA78E1/)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 05, 2014, 11:44:49 pm

R'lyeh, Tir just took the Throne province at 82 with his God. We can't really do much of anything to underwater provinces, so if you have a way to stop the whole winning thing by hitting one or more underwater thrones, or hitting a coast throne, that would help.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 12:06:04 am

I'm pretty sure I have less mobility than you guys do at this point. It takes me a turn to move each province and I only have 5 commanders that can even leave the water. Sailing or flying (with items) would be way more likely to actually do anything in time.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 06, 2014, 01:04:31 am

Nice. Spammed to death by thousands of undead. 8)

Well, you've won the battle, but it sounds like you may have lost the war! Good luck with that!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 06, 2014, 04:54:33 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 05, 2014, 11:44:49 pm

R'lyeh, Tir just took the Throne province at 82 with his God. We can't really do much of anything to underwater provinces, so if you have a way to stop the whole winning thing by hitting one or more underwater thrones, or hitting a coast throne, that would help.

Relax guys, I'm just keeping the old thing warm until, you know, if the Pantokrator ever decides to come back, or something. Yeah.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y139/DarkC1oak/Dom409-thronecap.png)

You can trust me guys, I'm Sidhe!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 06, 2014, 06:49:23 am

Bluerobin, if you insist on playing gimped UW nations in the future, you might want to take a look at this mod:
UW Expanded (http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=2113&st=0)
As always, balance can be questioned but it tries to reasonably buff up the land-UW interactions and the worse aspects of UW nations.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 08:01:19 am

Oh, I'm not in any danger of losing the normal way, it's just my first time playing with thrones and the throne settings we have make for a short game. You guys would have a hard killing me before I start summoning mind bending terrors from beyond and teleporting behind your front lines to mass enslave.

Plus I'm kind of allied with the guy who's winning.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 06, 2014, 08:04:25 am

Quote from: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 08:01:19 am

Plus I'm kind of allied with the guy who's winning.

The First rule of Dominions is : "There is only one winner" ;)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 09:03:13 am

You two should take your turns so we can see if he manages to win  :P

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: tompliss on October 06, 2014, 09:12:15 am

Well, tell that to my bosses :P
I'm home in 2 hours, and will send it earlier than usually :)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 09:40:21 am

If the turn processes after about 11:30pm EDT I'm probably not going to get to it until about 6pm EDT (about 7.5 hours from now) because of work. I'll do it if I get a chance on my lunch break, though.

Edit: Ok, got time on my break and got a turn in.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 06, 2014, 01:25:36 pm

Oh ho! Well played, Yomi. Well played.

I was not expecting your immobile pretender to teleport into that underwater throne at all. Well guys, it seems the tables have turned and Yomi now holds enough thrones to win. I'm not sure I can do anything about it unless Yomi delays the claiming process for a few turns (which I don't think is going to happen).

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 08:05:34 pm

Quote from: DarkerDark on October 06, 2014, 01:25:36 pm

Oh ho! Well played, Yomi. Well played.

I was not expecting your immobile pretender to teleport into that underwater throne at all. Well guys, it seems the tables have turned and Yomi now holds enough thrones to win. I'm not sure I can do anything about it unless Yomi delays the claiming process for a few turns (which I don't think is going to happen).

So yeah, my statue went for a little swim last turn

(http://i.imgur.com/6XdK0fl.png)

...Okay, so it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but you should have seen it BEFORE it got into the water. Imagine how much muck, crud, poop, blood, and possibly semen would collect on a statue over 4 long years of turmoil. A few Tritons objected, but they kind of...well, they just melted really quickly, probably from the toxic mass of crud that came off of this statue.

The whole teleporting God thing was a long time in the making. Win or lose, I'll enjoy telling the story of the past 15 turns or so.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 08:59:16 pm

Will we be able to see the graphs for all the nations at the end of the game? Would make it way easier for me to explain how shafted I was early.

If that can't happen, Alstar's up for rolling the turn back after somebody wins, solely so R'lyeh can cast Eyes of God and post the graphs. I think that's an amazing idea.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: USEC_OFFICER on October 06, 2014, 09:02:14 pm

If the game ends due to someone winning/claiming all of the thrones, then yeah. You get to see all of the graphs and territories in the game, though annoyingly only the winner's armies stick around on the map. Everyone else's vanish, so you can't see where their forces were concentrated when the game ended. Still, better than nothing I suppose.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 09:05:50 pm

Quote from: USEC_OFFICER on October 06, 2014, 09:02:14 pm

If the game ends due to someone winning/claiming all of the thrones, then yeah. You get to see all of the graphs and territories in the game, though annoyingly only the winner's armies stick around on the map. Everyone else's vanish, so you can't see where their forces were concentrated when the game ended. Still, better than nothing I suppose.

Much better than nothing. It's fairly easy to point out where your guys were at the end of the game. It's much harder to describe how shafted you were in terms of income/lands/army strength/forts without that tool for comparison.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 09:07:11 pm

And yeah, it's way better than I can muster at this point, with my god and my best astral mages all... temporarily on break.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 06, 2014, 10:41:05 pm

Quote from: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 09:07:11 pm

And yeah, it's way better than I can muster at this point, with my god and my best astral mages all... temporarily on break.

Are they held up by Berytos? I noticed he capped that throne province and took your castle, did either of you take a lot of losses from that? I can't imagine Berytos has much left besides his mercenaries.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 11:40:44 pm

Nah, I went pretty heavy on the Mind Hunt offensive and all three of them hit what must have either been a very lucky or very powerful astral mage in the same turn. I do have ways of de-feebleminding them, but it's probably not going to happen in the short term. *shrug*

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 11:43:50 pm

I'm going to be taking my turn sometime in the next couple hours, most likely. I have most of the map orders setup, but I need to do some extensive scripting for my main army.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 07, 2014, 12:17:14 am

Quote from: Bluerobin on October 06, 2014, 11:40:44 pm

Nah, I went pretty heavy on the Mind Hunt offensive and all three of them hit what must have either been a very lucky or very powerful astral mage in the same turn. I do have ways of de-feebleminding them, but it's probably not going to happen in the short term. *shrug*

This seems like a dangerous game to be casting mind hunt - I know there's at least 4 pretenders (including your own) with high astral... well, there were, at least - Ermor's god isn't going to get a chance to come back.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 07, 2014, 12:31:38 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 11:43:50 pm

I'm going to be taking my turn sometime in the next couple hours, most likely. I have most of the map orders setup, but I need to do some extensive scripting for my main army.

So I guess that means you're NOT going to be claiming those thrones right away then? :P

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Hellheart on October 07, 2014, 12:47:37 am

Quote from: DarkerDark on October 07, 2014, 12:31:38 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 06, 2014, 11:43:50 pm

I'm going to be taking my turn sometime in the next couple hours, most likely. I have most of the map orders setup, but I need to do some extensive scripting for my main army.

So I guess that means you're NOT going to be claiming those thrones right away then? :P

Even if I were claiming both thrones this turn, I'd still have to defend against potentially multiple attacks on my major Throne locations.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 07, 2014, 12:53:18 am

So here's the latest version of the Remastered map:
(https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/515x463q90/745/kJuQ1r.png)
The files are available HERE (https://www.dropbox.com/s/shrzu8v3xod5g8h/Catacombs_of_the_Titans_Remastered.rar?dl=0) if you'd like to take a look, see if I've missed anything stupid or suggest further changes.

I'd like to thank Hellheart for his fist pass while I was working on it.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 07, 2014, 04:12:12 pm

Ugh. I'm sick, but I tried to do my turn. I literally went to submit it and saw a new turn. I guess I'm probably not going to decide anything at this point so it's probably not worth rolling back, it's just ridiculously frustrating to see that happen.

Edit: At least it doesn't matter. :P

Congratulations Mr. Winner!

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 07, 2014, 05:01:33 pm

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 07, 2014, 05:07:58 pm

Honestly I think the thrones needed for victory was too low for a normal-length Dominions game. If I had a little more experience I would have picked an entirely different nation and sprinted for victory like Yomi and Tir na N'og did. I guess that's on me though! It was totally the 2 point thrones that tipped it from medium-length to short-length.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: AlStar on October 07, 2014, 05:41:44 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on October 07, 2014, 05:01:33 pm

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

Oh, absolutely, by the end there I'll freely admit that it was more about crushing you than any material gain I could get out of it. Biggest problem is that I was half-assing it for far too long, trying to deal with you with my minor mages. If I'd moved my big mages over 10 or 20 turns earlier, I could have taken your capital and the gems and gold that went with it, and leveraged that into more power, instead of frittering away my armies against you for so long.

Quote

Honestly I think the thrones needed for victory was too low for a normal-length Dominions game. If I had a little more experience I would have picked an entirely different nation and sprinted for victory like Yomi and Tir na N'og did. I guess that's on me though! It was totally the 2 point thrones that tipped it from medium-length to short-length.

Yeah, if I had it to do over, I would probably make it so that we needed 1 more point and probably replace one or both 2 point thrones with 1 point thrones.

edit: looking over the research graphs, I love how you can tell exactly when I went "duh! I've got an Amazon province right next to my capital - air/astral mages for just the cost of a lab!" and started mass-producing owl quills.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Bluerobin on October 07, 2014, 05:45:29 pm

I actually really, really love the shorter game length. I just wish I knew it would be this short, but the only way to know that is experience.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 07, 2014, 05:59:19 pm

Personally I feel that mixing high and low point thrones really flips the game around in a way I don't like. Using only 1's or 2's lets everyone know how many are needed for victory and how close to it people are. With a mix of them people are left guessing, it makes prioritizing targets a pain. It also adds in additional luck due to the chance of someone starting near multiple high level thrones.

Yeah, looking at the OP it seems you only need 3 out of 12 thrones to win. Admittedly that requires some luck, but that's a very low number of thrones regardless. The general chatter seems to be that 50% throne claimage is a bit low for many people who want to avoid a short match. I can see how a 25% match would end too fast then :P

At least there were (presumably) no burn outs during this. That's always a nice end result to a dom match.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Shadowlord on October 07, 2014, 07:18:18 pm

I like some of the things the level 3 thrones do, and their guards are also not easy to knock over, so there's something to be said for including them in a big game - but I think they're more suited for disciple games than regular games, and I probably wouldn't object too much to removing the level 2 thrones from regular games either.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: Delta Foxtrot on October 07, 2014, 07:24:08 pm

I wrote this bit in the 408 thread when we were setting it up. It's mostly factual (super domspread throne works now), but my personal bias against lvl 3's shines pretty brightly. There's still some good info if you want to make an informed decision about throne settings:

Quote

Anyway, I came here to post about throne stuff. I'm fairly lax about what types and how many we have except for few things.
I'd prefer if we avoided lvl3 thrones. Either they just don't work (super dom spread) or are a bit too good for a fun game all around (awe and crazy gem thrones).
Likewise I would strongly advise for 50% or less throne points to win. Any more and you're effectively fighting for total map control. Might as well ditch the thrones as a victory condition at that point.

But beyond that, level 1's, level 2's, one per player, half a dozen per player. It's all good. A few good-to-know bits however:
Most (all?) thrones that give mage recruits are lvl 2. Some of these mages are simply superb (metal adepts) while everyone is good for diversity for a lot of nations. If we go with lvl 1 thrones the effect of an individual throne will be lessened as none of them really expand magic paths available to a player. I see this as a taste thing. I don't really have a strong opinion either way, but it's something we should be aware of.
Then there's the matter absolute throne numbers. The more thrones we have, the bigger handicap we are putting on nations that lack
A) recruitable H3's
B) summonable H3's
C) mobile pretenders
Since I'm playing a nation with both A and B (and I'll be damned if I know my pretender build at this point), it doesn't concern me as much. But in general I would advocate for less thrones due to fairness. I wouldn't call any of the H3 nations exactly bad, so this is not a critical buff that they're losing.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: DarkerDark on October 07, 2014, 10:39:53 pm

Quote from: Shadowlord on October 07, 2014, 05:01:33 pm

Congratulations indeed.

P.S. AlStar: I think after you took most of my land and bought a bunch of PD, you could have just taken your armies and gone after the thrones. I wasn't really a threat and you didn't have much to gain by trying to take my remaining provinces (The lost gold in (dead) unit costs must have far exceeded the income you could have gained from the last few provinces). Of course, you probably didn't know just how hard it was going to be, but now you have the tactic you used in the last couple battles, which should make things much easier in future games where you can use it (except for sieging)...

This is what I did with Berytos. Once I defeated his armies and saw the death of his mage corps, I figured I wouldn't have much to gain by engaging in a prolonged battle to take his capital, especially as Machaka was showing signs of army buildup on my newly expanded borders. Of course, that left Berytos' capital to be gobbled up by R'lyeh, but I had paid for R'lyeh's friendship early in the game and I guessed that Bluerobin probably wasn't going to engage in any hostilities with me any time in the near future.

I did have some unfortunate luck of starting close to a level 2 throne that was guarded by a Titan with 7 air and 5 earth. He was backed up by about a 250 unit flying army that he would buff with Fog Warriors. I made the mistake of thinking that Spring Hawks were simply those silly crows that were usually unable to defeat even sparse Militia PD, I had no idea that in reality they were flying ethereal ghost hawks from Mount Olympus that shot lightning from their flesh rending beaks! This cost me an army that would have been put to use against Yomi if he ever decided to invade. And so, Yomi was able to take that throne with his massive stack of doom, pretty much unopposed on my end. Actually, I think that Titan and his Springhawks killed more of my men and mages than all other engagements combined.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 12:34:20 am

So, the graphs. I'm grey, Ermor is purple, Machaka is orange, Tir is green, Berytos is dark red, and R'lyeh is dark blue.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i.imgur.com/jbcnXc2.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/VE62smL.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/4E3qHpi.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/KeJaI7d.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/9msT0Su.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/GLP96ND.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/CPCIjS5.png)

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 12:58:57 am

Yomi is seen as an underpowered nation, especially since they need more gold than practically any other nation in EA (no Sacred research mages, expensive unarmored non-Giant troops) and Turmoil-3 is a requirement. Yomi is also seriously underpowered early because they're incredibly vulnerable to a Bless rush; the only units that can stand against Sacreds are the exact same units that die horribly to mass Banish. Yomi is very powerful in the midgame because they can mix and match several powerful strategies (Flaming Arrows, Ghost Generals, Darkness, and Dai Oni Caster-Thugs or SC's) and their researchers aren't terrible; they're just really expensive. We didn't get into the endgame here, but I think that Yomi needs to make some serious moves because the mage upkeep eventually spirals out of control.

I ran with an Awake Idol of Man (1F, 2A, 2N) with 8 Dominion, 3 Tur, 2 Prod, 3 Growth, 3 Luck, 1 Magic; Awake was for a strong early Dominion spread. I think this was a terrible Pretender choice; Yomi needs to either have an awake Pretender that can beat an early Bless rush or have an awake Sage to accelerate early research and get some summons that can stop the rush.

So, here's what happened in the early game, which was mostly terrible as illustrated by the Province, Forts, and Income graphs. Remember how I said that Yomi was gold-dependent and runs Turmoil 3? Yeah, being near the bottom of those graphs as Yomi is pretty much the worst thing ever.

My very early game was strong because I won Dante's Stingers, but I lost them on Turn 5 to Ermor. Over the next 5 turns, Ermor also took my main army (w/ prophet) and 3 provinces including the farmland chokepoint province. I staled twice around this time period, which didn't help at all, but Machaka attacked Ermor soon afterwards and the expected crushing army never came. I took back my 2 provinces, but Ermor got a Fort on that farmland. At this point Tir had become visible to the North. I took a couple provinces to the West and ran into Berytos near the Amazon throne.

If Machaka doesn't attack Ermor there, I almost certainly die. I had no answer for a bless rush with high-morale troops that had cool things like shields and armor.

Stalling on provinces here really hurt me. I threw a bunch of guys against the Amazon throne simply because I couldn't deal with their upkeep, and Berytos ended up taking it and building a Fort on the cave province that lead to his Capitol. Then Tir took out my other expansion army by expanding to the same location. On that turn, he contacted me and we agreed to go after Berytos and leave each other alone. I build up a massive force over the next few turns, and move out with Hannaya to take the cave fort from Berytos.

If Tir attacks me instead of making a truce, I almost certainly die. He was set up for heavy Javelin spam backed by his Sidhe commanders, who just happen to have a Holy level so they can Banish my Oni.

I invade Berytos' cave fort, and he invades my two coastal provinces with Temples with groups of 60+ Spearmen. He takes my other two coastal provinces on the following turn, when I'm storming the Fort. I take out one of those groups with a Hannaya that fell back with a bunch of Oni to keep my Capitol alive (and stop starving my Bakemano); on the same turn, I move to the adjacent Cave province where I run into his Pretender and a bunch of elephants. I lose practically every melee Bandit, but my Bakemano Archers and Hannaya end up taking out the Elephants and his Pretender. Berytos contacted me at this point, probably expecting to gloat. I needed to retreat regardless and said as much, but I offered to back off and leave him be if he pulled his Spearmen away and let me take back my core provinces and the provinces around the Amazon throne. I knew Tir was being a huge PITA for him and he probably couldn't afford to fight a war on two fronts.

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income. I also have no recruitable Thug chassis and a force large enough to repel his Spearmen costs way too much in terms of Upkeep to feasibly use.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: tompliss on October 08, 2014, 01:26:35 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 12:58:57 am

my Bakemano Archers and Hannaya end up taking out the Elephants and his Pretender. Berytos contacted me at this point, probably expecting to gloat.

Guilty.

Quote from: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 12:58:57 am

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income.

Mutual Assured Destruction. :D
With Tir loosing much less than you in his invasion of my lands and me being much less efficient with sailors raiding him (wasn't as easy to attack him from the back and I didn't scout him as much), I couldn't keep my capital if I didn't retreat my troops from your lands.
Anyway, it's pretty clear in the graphs when you and Tir attacked me, and I couldn't get back in the competition afterwards. My lack of experience with Berytos failed me there, with me not summoning sacred goats early and not recruiting enough sacred units. I should also have inspected both Tir and your units to understand how my "mass javelins" could not stand a real chance agaisnt Tir (he simply let me attack then assassinated the commander more than once) nor against your biggest armies (cause you had, you know, spell-casters).

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Six Contenders for the Throne
Post by: E. Albright on October 08, 2014, 01:53:41 am

Quote from: Delta Foxtrot on October 07, 2014, 07:24:08 pm

Most (all?) thrones that give mage recruits are lvl 2. Some of these mages are simply superb (metal adepts) while everyone is good for diversity for a lot of nations. If we go with lvl 1 thrones the effect of an individual throne will be lessened as none of them really expand magic paths available to a player.

To touch back to this (quite old) point, 4/13 mage-recruitment thrones are level 1 (the seasonal thrones); all grant a 2X1X mage with one elemental path and one (non-astral/non-blood) sorcery path. They actually can increase path diversity quite a bit (in 404, my team would have been beside ourselves had we started next to Spring). They may seem to do it less since they're not 2S2X thrones like half the level 2s are, but the seasonals can make a fairly significant difference even if they don't give a quite so devastating set of mages as the level 2s do. Only picking level 1s mitigates the semi-random path-expansion-from-thrones issue, but it doesn't eliminate it.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: DarkerDark on October 08, 2014, 03:03:39 am

Quote from: tompliss on October 08, 2014, 01:26:35 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 12:58:57 am

If Berytos decides to keep pushing, I'm not sure I recover at all. Sailing is insanely powerful on this map, and losing provinces like that wrecks my income.

Mutual Assured Destruction. :D
With Tir loosing much less than you in his invasion of my lands and me being much less efficient with sailors raiding him (wasn't as easy to attack him from the back and I didn't scout him as much), I couldn't keep my capital if I didn't retreat my troops from your lands.
Anyway, it's pretty clear in the graphs when you and Tir attacked me, and I couldn't get back in the competition afterwards. My lack of experience with Berytos failed me there, with me not summoning sacred goats early and not recruiting enough sacred units. I should also have inspected both Tir and your units to understand how my "mass javelins" could not stand a real chance agaisnt Tir (he simply let me attack then assassinated the commander more than once) nor against your biggest armies (cause you had, you know, spell-casters).

Yeah, the moment your first raiding group made landfall on the shores of my nation, I immediately dispatched assassins to provinces that I suspected of being targets for raiding. It may have seemed like I had assassins everywhere, but really I think I only had 4. I would simply make an assessment on where your next target would be and sent an assassin over there to intercept your raiding group. I would assassinate the commander and attack with a small skirmish group on the same turn and watch as all those commanderless spearmen would flee back into the sea. I think buying at least 1 PD in the provinces you raided would have made this much more costly for me, since I would then have to actually fight all those spearmen, which would have resulted in casualties on my side.

Once I captured your fort on my frontier and you counter-attacked with what seemed like everything you had (research mages included?), I just held up in my newly captured fort and rounded up the assassins. So those 4 assassins sallied forth from the fort each turn to assassinate one of your commanders/mages until the walls finally fell and I simply marched out to fight your army that was seriously depleted of magical support. I think putting a few soldiers on "Guard commander" for your mages might have helped you a lot, as my assassins weren't kitted out very heavily, they had a handful of acorns and that was it. Those same assassins ended up meeting sticky ends at the hands of Machaka (who had actually assigned guards to some of the 'less-fighty' commanders)

When I made the run for Machaka's water throne I actually had a rather small task force of necromancers and lords equipped with Shambler skins for water breathing and supported by dispensable mercenaries to fight their way into Machaka's lands. Unfortunately the resistance I met managed to knock out a couple of my Sidhe Lords who were crucial in protecting the necromancers for the upcoming underwater fight. This wouldn't have been a big problem as I had plenty of Sidhe Lords accompanying that group. The problem was, those Shambler skins I needed for underwater breathing were picked up by the mercenary captains and they stubbornly refused to give them back. So I sent my necromancers into that water province without any thugs to tank for them. Still, I expected a handful of necromancers firing off a shadowblast and then summoning skeletons to fight would be able to take on a bunch of wimpy mermen. I completely underestimated how fast Shark Tribe warriors could move. It didn't end well, and it set me back a few turns as I had to recruit a few more necromancers. In the meantime I just gave my surviving assassins some shambler skins and sent them in to assassinate the mermen commanders (I should have done that to start with).

All this delay allowed Yomi to come in and take the level 2 throne from that Sidhe-murdering Titan. This didn't matter to me much since I gave him my blessings in the first place and I was expecting to win the game a few turns before he was able to do anything with that throne anyways. One teleporting totem later and Yomi wins. Yikes! Serves me right for not making sufficient preparations. I originally planned to send a bunch of Tuatha down into that province for defense against R'lyeh early in the game, but somewhere between the birth of that thought and the war with Berytos I completely forgot about it.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 03:10:26 am

So I owe my early-game survival mainly to diplomacy and luck. My turnaround during the mid-game transition came from a combination of better focus, heavy research, and smart limited aggression.

I continued my non-aggression pact with Tir and focused on research and building Hannaya out of both forts. I tried to time things so that I'd hit Enchantment 4 when I created a large new army at my Capitol. The goal: to hit Ermor's farmland fort with Flaming Arrows and some Hannaya, both to get me a 3rd fort and to increase my (still extremely low) income. I also began to set up multiple screens of 3-5 Ao-Oni in front and on the flanks to eat any Banish spam I may encounter. Flaming Arrows (from a Hannaya using Phoenix Power, then gem-empowering to 4F to cast it) worked incredibly well, allowing me to take out massive PD backed by some priests with virtually no losses on two consecutive provinces. I then found myself flanked by THREE Ermor forts, which brought me to a dead halt for a few turns. During this time, I finally hit Enchantment-6 and switched to Dai Oni at my Capitol, then began researching Conjuration-4 (I had stopped at Conj-3 much earlier, which was a terrible choice).

Machaka took one of the adjacent Ermor forts, and then R'lyeh made the post about a player possibly winning in a couple of turns. Machaka mentioned this, and I kind of freaked out and collaborated with him in making a map of projected Tir provinces. We ended up with what looked like a sea of green covering 4 Thrones, so I pulled my large army back to my Capitol and further reinforced it with a bunch of Oni and a couple of Dai Oni. My first Dai Oni cast Ghost General twice before he left, though. I equipped one with Gloves of the Gladiator + Horror Helmet, and the other with Frost Brand (from Tir via trade) + Shield of Valor + Horror Helmet. I gave both of them charms that gave them Water Breathing and attacked an underwater Throne with 60+ Triton defenders.

This is where I got extremely lucky. Subsequent tests show that I had no business actually winning that fight. Between the underwater Attack and Defense loss and the Defense penalty for multiple attackers, it's entirely possible that my Shura die within the first 2 turns. Instead, they survived about 5 turns before the Tritons finally started to rout. I pull the Shura out of the water and name a Hannaya as my prophet so I can claim the Throne. The Shura move towards the Amazon throne, as I never took the provinces around there and I needed the income. My upkeep at this point is around 800, but my income is only slightly over 1100. I move my main army north with the intention of taking the cave (something that I had discussed earlier with Tir) and moving from there into Tir's heartland towards a Throne far to the East of his capitol.

Then I looked at the provinces again, and I realized that if Machaka took the lake thrones near his capitol and Ermor's capitol, he would also be at 4 Thrones. In this situation, attacking Tir will simply allow Machaka to win. After checking some links, I realized that I could path my way through some border provinces at minimal threat to Tir and end up at the cave Throne that divided Machaka and Tir. This would allow me to play spoiler and hopefully extend the game. This became my new plan going forward.

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: DarkerDark on October 08, 2014, 03:46:30 am

Quote from: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 03:10:26 am

So I owe my early-game survival mainly to diplomacy and luck. My turnaround during the mid-game transition came from a combination of better focus, heavy research, and smart limited aggression.

Yeah, It made perfect strategic sense to invade you immediately after I beat your expansion force. With my armies already in position on a broad front and with you standing to lose some border temples and a few site searching mages, it was sooo tempting. But with you being the only neighbour I hadn't sent a message to, I thought it might be a little unfair to just help myself to your provinces uninvited. So we had a friendly little chat via Steam. Your willingness to engage in diplomacy was what set my sights on Berytos instead, since he was the only one who hadn't replied to my generic elf-boasting diplomatic inquiry. Sorry, tom, but your silence made me paranoid, and ultimately it's what killed you. :P

Title: Re: Dominions 4 Round 4.09 - Yomi wins!
Post by: Hellheart on October 08, 2014, 04:23:55 am

Which leads me into the last 15 turns. In order to understand The Plan, you first need to know about my Mercenaries. I overpaid massively for every mage that came up to compensate for my relatively low mage production because of fort count. First there was Dagan, who I got fairly early and kept for 12 or 15 turns before I missed his renewal and he left forever. Then there was Ferrus, the Iron Wizard, who I kept until nearly the end of the game where Berytos paid more than 350 gold to take him away from me. I don't know if this happens every time, but Ferrus came with a Soul Contract, so I started amassing Devils starting from 3 turns before I took that fort from Ermor. I also got a Soul Contract from a random event about 10 turns before the end of the game, so I was getting 2 Devils a month for awhile as well. I ended the game with 30 Devils as part of my main force. That would be absolutely devastating on defense, and they were the main reason I took the Titan throne and only lost 60 troops in the process.

Ferrus happens to be 2S2E, and after spending most of my free Astral gems finding nothing with Arcane Probing, I transmuted some Fire gems to Astral and made a Crystal Coin. I thought I could use it to add 1S to a Site-Searcher, but obviously that doesn't work so it sat in my stash.

I knew that Tir had a massive number of provinces, and thus a massive amount of income, for much of the game. Once I saw that Machaka had the Cave fort, I figured he had an equally high income at this point. It stands to reason that if I got 3 Ascension points, I'd be squashed like a bug by superior forces. So if I was going to win at all, it would have to be through trickery. The Plan was originally to get to Construction-8 and Conjuration-5 to cast Contact Dai Tengu and equip him with the Sword of Injustice. That would give me a second H3 commander so I could take 2 thrones at once. I knew that would take a whole bunch of turns but figured there was really no other option. Right around the time I took the cave Throne, I remembered that Pretenders can also take Thrones. The Plan then took definite form with a clear timetable. At this point, I had a much more stable income because my two Shura had taken over a huge swath of provinces to my West and my main army had taken 4 provinces to my North. I turned my Shura around and sent over a bunch of Oni and all of my diseased troops to support them in taking the Amazon throne.

The Plan would start after I claimed that throne and moved the Hannaya to the adjacent fort. At that point, my Hannaya would equip Winged Shoes and move to the Cave throne while my Pretender would Teleport to the nearby Level 2 Throne. Then I'd claim both for the win.

Few snags, though. For one thing, Hannaya can't equip boots. Thankfully, I'd learned how to set up maps to run tests and discovered this myself. I also forgot where my Prophet was and moved her 2 turns later than I should have, delaying the execution. Oh, and there's that thing where Teleport is cast first, so my God would warp in before my troops and die horribly if I didn't have the province already. And oh look, Tir took that Level 2 Throne with his Pretender (claiming brought him to 4 points), and it's Order-3 with a ton of Tir troops. Tir of course has both Air and Water access, so he probably has Fun spells like Cleansing Waters, Storm, and Arrow Fend. So I despaired for a couple of turns, and sent my army back to ensure that Tir didn't just take it with a bunch of stealthy Thugs. And then I remembered the nearby Titan throne that Tir had lost a bunch of guys to.

The Final Plan: Empower my Pretender to Air-3 and Astral-2. Forge Flying Carpet and equip him with the Crystal Coin. Fly the Hannaya to one throne and Teleport to the other for the claim and eventual win. Since I had so few provinces for so long, this was only possible because Turmoil-3, Luck-3, and Magic-1 leads to a hell of a lot of free gems. I began massively reinforcing my existing Thrones and I moved all of my Hannaya to my Capitol and then to the Swamp province adjoining the main one, with a lot of gems in tow.

I also forged a Shademail Haubergeon for my Prophet because Tir made a habit of assassinating them. This let me move my timetable up one turn because the Hannaya could Sneak into the Titan province at the same time that I attacked it. I set up 3 Dai Oni in the Cave province with very little in the way of support, but all three had Earth Boots and were set to cast Earthquake. I figured out the Cave Collapse formula (12 + DRN vs. Defense + DRN, if hit then 8 + DRN vs. Prot/2 + DRN, plus an additional hit on a random % of troops already hit) and knew that two Earthquakes would kill almost every mage and almost all of his non-Rhino troops, while the 3rd would pretty much finish the job.

Unfortunately, the turn I took the Titan province was the same turn that Tir took Machaka's underwater throne province. My two main Shura - who both got the Winged Shoes I couldn't give to the Hannaya - were more than 3 hops away from every overland Tir throne, and the same with the rest of my army. I didn't really have any good Rituals either. The only thing I could do was Teleport my Pretender to one of the two UW thrones and pray that he could beat whatever Tir had there. I ran a bunch of tests and found that my best bet was to equip him with a Storm Spool, then cast Body Ethereal - Astral Shield - Shock Wave x 3. It worked, and then I immediately added 37 PD and recruited a bunch of Tritons with the gold I had saved up for just that purpose.

My Amazon throne was defended by 6 Mages, a Shura, some Oni, a rag-tag group of summons, 12 Amazons and 30 PD. My lake throne had 26 PD, two Triton Commanders, and something like 40 Triton Guards. Nothing was attacked on the winning turn, although R'lyeh could have hit me with a Shambler Thrall army that would've failed horribly against ~400 troops backed by nearly 20 mages, all scripted specifically to wreck that particular army.