Bay 12 Games Forum

Turn 19

(but it should be essentially impossible that they aren't finished this turn)

With the annoyance caused by Tir na n'Og now resolv-


This is quite funny to me. What happened is exactly the "two armies slip past each other" scenario I mentioned just two turns ago, and back then I even acted on this possibility by carefully evacuating a Namanari out of the danger zone. And yet, last turn, with the stakes lowered I immediately just thought "bleh, they're surely finished by now, nothing to worry about". Dominions is certainly a game that forces the player to be meticulous.

This is the sort of nightmare we will need to deal with regularly if Vanheim starts showing up on our shores, so perhaps it's good to have a reminder of just how annoying these small raiding forces can be to eliminate if we aren't careful enough.

Well, not that it needed to be this annoying. This could have been prevented easily last turn by instead moving the detachment in Ephesibor to Temiglia, defending Baccar with a Dai Oni, and attacking Ferran Mountains with the second Dai Oni. This turn we now need to defend 3 provinces instead of two, while only having 3 "armies" (and it's also necessary for one of these "armies" to go on the attack and finish this). The regrettable but necessary solution is to spend a bunch of money on province defense to cover one of the provinces (while defending the other two and attacking with a Dai Oni).

If this wasn't enough, I also hastily sent our newly-summoned second Mound King down to Temiglia on a mission to return OwO's boots (after lending them to the evacuating Namanari). They thankfully retreated, but less thankfully vanished into thin air just like our last Mound King (boots and all). This tells me there is very likely some horrific bug at play here that prevents Mound Kings in particular from retreating, and I don't plan on summoning any more until something promising shows up in the patch notes.

For gathering up our freespawn Oni we'll need to rely on slower and more expensive commanders (and hope they don't also have this problem retreating; Tir na n'Og's commander sure hasn't). A "Bane" can be summoned for 7 death gems at Conjuration 3, who is also a better general (though they have less map move and are over twice the cost of a Mound King).

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While I was reading up on bugs in Dom6 I also came across something saying that units are currently not dying of disease over time. I've been keeping an eye on the scout reports for that throne by our capital to see if the dragon defending it has died yet, but that will probably never happen. This is slightly concerning if only because that dragon was stacked with water gems (meaning it can summon massive and deadly water elementals), which is another "no go" for a lone Dai Oni (I would have happily sent UwU in there alone now that we have Fire Shield).
 

Turn 17

As expected, Tir na n'Og attacks Baccar (into the arms of our waiting Dai Oni):


Routing them like this will allow us a clean finish next turn, eliminating what's left of the army and the provinces they took with our two Dai Oni in Baccar:


Well, I say "clean", but there are still a couple weird things that could happen. The enemy commander wasn't killed in the battle and probably survived the retreat; it's possible they could attack Baccar again (dumb as it seems), or attack Ephesibor (note that their best troops are invisible on the map due to having "glamour"). Attacking Baccar would either result in their army slipping past the Dai Oni moving in the opposite direction, or the game picking which army successfully moves based on an obscure "army size" calculation. This would be particularly annoying because there's a stranded Namanari in Baccar who I had blood hunting (for lack of anything better to do), and wouldn't you know it: they found 11 blood slaves. I'm not about to waste money on high province defense just to hedge this weird possibility, but we can evacuate the Namanari by giving her OwO's boots and having her slip through the Fur Zone back to the capital (a Mound King can ferry the boots back to OwO later, now that mounted Mound Kings have feet in Dom6).

Meanwhile, we can hedge against them attacking Ephesibor easily by splitting a small detachment off the army that just cleared Barme. Moving a small force to Ephesibor is fine anyway, because I'd like to clear the moderately high unrest caused by it changing hands twice (and this lovely event):


The tax collector's disappearance in our richest province means we can't afford both a temple and a water mage this turn; I prioritize the water mage, though our lack of freespawn Oni from temples is going to be felt acutely soon (especially given that we can't afford to rely on our ruinously expensive 5g goblins either, despite them being perhaps the most cost-effective unit in the entire game).

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Thinking more about our research priorities, I did end up diverting into Enchantment 3. The 100+ ghouls and soulless guarding our entrance to the mushroom kingdom may not seem like a threat compared to UwU's capabilities, but what still nags at my mind is the special fatigue effect that ghouls have on their attacks:


It might not seem like a big deal, but I've 100% lost Dai Oni to this in the past. UwU would almost certainly be fine, but the stakes are bit high for "almost" (whereas fire shield will trivialize all encounters with basic undead forevermore, even for lesser Dai Oni than UwU).

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And finally, our goblin scouts (which literally cost more than their weight in gold) have revealed some information about Helheim, who looks like they're having a bad time with Muspelheim in the east:

Darn elves. GL taking them on.

New update, some of the patch notes are interesting for this game

• Oni phantasmal weapons -> spectral weapons
• Oni spirit forms have their item slots back
• Arena didn’t give gold and gems, fixed

I was glad to see these fixed/reverted (there is still the change preventing Oni spirits from benefiting from stoneskin etc, which seems strange to me given that Yomi has a unique spell giving barkskin to all its demons, but at least our Dai Oni will keep their crafted armor and weapons if they die). I'll copy the full patch notes here:

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Turn 15

Tir na n'Og diverts to the east rather than attacking UwU in the north, meaning UwU can return to the capital next turn to pick up some equipment before fighting the wolves. Our second Dai Oni (named OwO) returned from the sea (someone else can go build the underwater lab) and while in the capital he picks up some new equipment of his own:


The "Fire Plate" armor piece reduces protection by 2 compared to the Dai Oni's default "heavy samurai armor", but more than makes up for this with its much lesser defense, encumbrance, and map move penalties (the default armor gives a massive -3 defense, +4 encumbrance, and -6 map move for its +18 protection). The other effects like +2 morale, +4 HP (new to Dom5), +5 fire resistance, and the fact that it'll stay equipped if the Dai Oni dies and turns into a ghost (as of today, if the patch notes didn't lie) are nice extra things as well. There's also very little else we can use our fire gems for beyond crafting basic equipment like this; at the moment I'd also certainly rather spend fire gems than our more precious earth gems, which last turn were all used to craft our first "Dwarven Hammer" (an item that reduces the gem cost of forging items by a flat -2).

The "Boots of Long Strides" meanwhile are a trinket-level item that's in my opinion the single most useful piece of equipment for Dai Oni that lack some other combat speed increase. Without something boosting their combat speed a Dai Oni is often unlikely to contribute much when fighting alongside an army, as the battle will otherwise be effectively over by the time they finish their script and reach the front. However, they should be somewhat more effective at reaching the front in general now, due to a change in Dom6 that allows "giant" units to displace smaller friendly units when moving forward (though I haven't yet seen this in action).

These two piece of equipment also increase map move, allowing OwO to skip two provinces and try to take back our rich southern port province this turn:


We also now border Pyrene in the northwest; if we hadn't withdrawn an army, we would have gotten in an accidental fight with them over Midria this turn (a shame we didn't, I'm curious what the diplomatic outcome of that would've been).

I think that chaos power goes to 5 because scales can go to 5 now, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.

Chaos Power definitely had a maximum of +3 in 5, so I also think that in 6 it goes up to +5 due to the scales changes. Something to check out when you get enough turmoil in a province, I suppose.

This does seem more likely than the insane possibility of it being uncapped (though a man can dream). Still, an extra +2 att/def/speed for all of our Oni is very significant for Yomi (it particularly complements another beneficial change that I'll hopefully be able to show later).

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Turn 13



In this version of the tournament the participants are allowed to cast spells, creating possibilities for all sorts of things happening.
Our champion UwU didn't get the memo, and the only possibility that'll be happening is walking up to people and hitting them in the face (I scripted him to cast nothing, not even wasting time on a self-bless).



Honestly, not bad! I know I talked smack about the rewards, but I'm happy with this (it helps that UwU is freakishly tall, making head protection less important as most units will not be able to reach their head in melee). I think(?) luck is useless on demons, we already get awe from our bless, and commander buffs aren't particularly attractive on a Dai Oni, but just getting "quickness" early is worth it.

And hey, Dom6 now sweetening the pot with money and gems certainly doesn't go amiss, right!


Hmm. You know, it says I got 433 gold and 19 fire gems, but it sure doesn't feel like I got 433 gold and 19 fire gems.
I'm sure we can trust it. The check's in the mail, I'm sure.

In addition to the headgear, UwU also gained a massive amount of experience for winning.


With this, I think the Chosen One who will liberate us from those freaking wolves in Strong Port has finally been found. Frankly, at this point I think UwU is basically unkillable by ordinary combat (even with our paltry spell selection and lack of crafted equipment). They could probably solo that enormous throne next to our capital with just a little more equipment and magic research.

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Since all of the other nations sent priests in (and blessed themselves, unlike us) we got to see every nation's bless.


Unfortunately, the AI is still terrible at creating blesses, and none of them are worth even sharing. They're all just random collections of garbage, if anything at all (granted, I suspect some may be missing "incarnate" effects that will require their god awakening).

The diplomacy view also shows Helheim now having an opinion of us, suggesting we now share a border.


I even spent a ruinous 60g on a bad goblin scout, which can we now send out there.

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Some other stuff happened. We now have two out of our three national heroes (a ghost and a cannibal):


(Masatora arrived last turn, but I forgot to mention it, while Tsunekage arrived this turn.)

They're both very effective leaders (though our third national hero is more useful); Masatora is an improved version of a ghostly commander that can be summoned by Yomi, and Tsunekage is an improved version of our "Demon General" commanders. I'll keep them both in the capital until I can recruit enough goblins to do something with them.

This is also the turn we should break into the underwater, using our second Dai Oni that finished this turn:

Administration just increases the income of the province that the fort is placed in, so luckily we're not missing out on income increases across all our nearby provinces, just our forts. Which can be rough enough I suppose. (although 7.5% income in a province isn't that much really, it takes quite a bit to pay back the cost of the fort even for decently wealthy provinces)

Oops, my mistake. I'll need to go through and edit in notes correcting all my wrong information later. Speaking of...

the manual

I forgot a manual even existed! No wonder I'm wrong all the time. While skimming it, I came across an extremely interesting change to a certain underused mechanic that will be quite... something... later. (It turns out not all of the changes in Dom6 have been bad for Yomi.)

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Turn 11

Finally, 4 agonizing turns after the massacre at Strong Port, we can attack the last province needed to link up our lands:


There are fewer soulless than expected from the reports, though quite a few horsemen (along with a wight mage full of death gems). There are few enough soulless that the prophet actually targets the horsemen (saving the precious lives of countless ungrateful goblins), and these horsemen were also put in a big dumb square in the middle that can't flank our commanders, thankfully.

Taking that province more than doubles our income. The werewolf disaster in Port Strong has set us way back, but things are looking up. By this point in the lower-priced Dom5 economy I would have expected perhaps 2 Dai Oni (merrily expanding a 3 provinces per turn along with an army), 3 temples outside he capital, and at least one additional lab, but instead we have one Dai Oni and no constructions.

Still, we're getting lucky on site searching:


-- and getting the air sorcerer early is letting me start on the Dai Oni we'll hopefully send to secure the underwater province next to our capital (how nice of our underwater friends to sign that NAP!). The province is in Atlantis' cap circle as well, and I'll be curious to see if they break the pact over it. This is a priority mainly because the "amber clan" tritons in this province are an indicator that excellent recruitable water mages may be present, if Dom5 is anything to go by. We have no water gems to craft the Ring of Water Breathing needed to send a Dai Oni underwater, but it's worth alchemizing gems and diverting a turn of our pretender's time for.

A Mound King is ready, whose first assignment is scoping out the army defending that horrible throne next to our capital that's Seriously In The Way (as my mother was fond of saying):

Quote from: WealthyRadish on January 18, 2024, 08:55:43 pm

3 whole turns of non-aggression!

NAP-3 means that you're at peace until someone ends the nap, at which point there's a 3 turn cool down before you can attack each other (and I think that'll be enforced by the game, given diplomacy is binding is selected.) So basically a three turn warning before any attacks.

Ah, that makes much more sense.

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Turn 9

After looking over our sad army that needs to capture the last undead province needed to connect our provinces, I decided it was too risky to try it this turn. Maybe it could have been taken with that force, but the margins are too thin and there are too many unknowns (we lucked out on having no necromancers in the last province, for instance). Before submitting the last turn, I switched to recruiting a second demon general with more goblins to reinforce before the attack, making this an uneventful turn. This effectively means giving up on a second Dai Oni for quite a while, as I need to also start recruiting Yomi's "sorcerer" mages for crafting (I'll need to land a 1/4 chance at an air path to get Owl Quills, at the very least):


The random '?' magic path is one level in either fire, death, earth, or air. All of these are useful to have around, though Dai Onis can have all these paths as well if need be. Sorcerers with level 2 earth are our most economical casters for alteration buffs (stoneskin, ironskin, etc), the level 2 death ones can be used for spamming skeletons in a pinch, and the air and fire ones are useful for crafting certain important items.

Speaking of which, we did get Construction 3, unlocking the second tier of craftable items. Looking them over, there are some interesting changes (though not as many new items as I would have hoped). It looks like basically all magical armor now increases maximum hitpoints (on top of their prior other effects), for instance. I also spotted a new glamour weapon that might help with our "useless Oni spirit" problem:


Throw that on a commander and the "Glamour Manipulator" effect should allow our Oni spirits' "false damage" to stick (as if the wielder were a glamour mage).

I also revised research slightly, going for Enchantment 2 before Construction 5. Enchantment 2 allows summoning Mound Kings, a mounted skeleton commander for a mere 3 death gems. They can lead a significant number of both living and demon/undead troops, have great map move, are amphibious, and cost no upkeep. For Yomi in particular, they're by far the most economical way to shuffle our freespawn Oni and goblins around. It's painful that I was forced to recruit any Demon Generals at all, as I'd much rather stick to zero-upkeep summoned commanders (especially with the Dom6 mage/commander price increases).


Alteration is prioritized for the many useful defensive buffs along to the way to Alteration 6, which unlocks Soul Vortex (a Death 3 spell that steals health from surrounding units) and Darkness (a Death 4 spell that creates a massive -6 attack/defense penalty for units without darkvision).

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This turn's map shows the walking fishsticks taking a neighboring swamp province. It sucks, because it's both a cave entrance and a swamp province we could have used later for summoning a special water/nature/death "Nushi" mage that's useful for climbing other paths (though with our rainbow pretender this is less of an issue). There's another swamp to the southwest, however:

Turn 7 - Disaster!

First, the good news. The battles went fine.


Well, except one of them. Remember the wolves?


Well...


I expected a few big dumb animals, maybe led by one or two werewolves. 34 Werewolves though? Oh god.

Almost as if to make up for his less-than-satisfactory leadership decisions at this same province earlier, uwu fights to the end. Well, after trying and failing to retreat. In addition to liberating himself of any stain on his character (and liberating me of his upkeep), he also liberated me of some ignorance I've carried over from Dom5 about Oni spirit forms.


There are a few important changes here. One is that Oni Shugo (and presumably Dai Oni) commanders lose all their equipment slots in ghost form (except the two misc items). The next is that the "spirit form" attribute now negates most useful self-buffs they can cast, leaving them locked at 0 protection with no resistances. The third is that their "phantasmal weapon" (that they are now stuck with exclusively due to having no equipment slots) appears to be completely useless (rather than mostly useless in Dom5) due to dealing the new glamour-focused "false damage".

The description of "false damage" implies it vanishes when you no longer have a glamour mage on the battlefield. Most of the units that deal this are summoned by glamour mages (phantasmal wolves/warriors/etc), so this makes sense. But Yomi has no glamour mages. Amazing!

I'll need to pour over the detailed combat logs later to see if "false damage" works as the description implies, but for now it appears that spirit form Oni are now both nearly completely defenseless and incapable of dealing damage under ordinary circumstances.

Granted, if a Dai Oni or Oni Shugo reached spirit form in Dom5 it was usually doomed anyway, so this isn't necessarily a big deal.

While we're looking over new mechanics, the battle with the cavalry independents also revealed some things about the new mount system in Dominions 6.


The mounted commander can now equip boots, and their horse also has a "barding" equipment slot (which is indeed a new magical item category to craft, though I can't see any "trinket" level examples).

In the fight itself, the Dai Oni often killed the rider (causing the horse to immediately run away in this case) or sometimes killed the mount (leaving a foot soldier behind to continue fighting). A nice change.

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Back to our disaster with the wolves...

We lost the 300g temple we just built there, a 90g Namanari site-searching (they found a basic nature site before dying at least) and an Oni Shugo with a nominal value of 275g (not that I'll likely pay that, this is the one we started with). All this is a cruel reminder that it's often worse to half-ass something than do nothing at all.

Because Strong Port provided our only land connection to our two provinces in the south, we also effectively lost the income from our 3 best provinces outside the capital, leaving us at turn 7 with just two provinces generating income (the capital and our new forest).


This is needless to say a total disaster, and there are basically two ways to address it. One would be to try to retake Strong Port, either by moving our army back from the Grey Mirks or with the Dai Oni in the south. The other would be to push through the undead-infested provinces to the west and reconnect our most valuable provinces that way.

At first I thought the first option was the "safe" choice and the latter the "greedy" option, but reflecting more on it I actually have no confidence that any of our forces could fight those wolves. A big enough blob of goblins could take it, but would take very heavy losses and could easily retreat prematurely without morale-boosters.


These things have regeneration, 20 hp, 3 attacks per turn, and invulnerability 15 (protection against mundane attacks). Two can fit in a square vs 5 goblins. With a big enough blob of goblins we could win by enveloping and flanking them, but I don't think we have the morale for it. A few Dai Oni with better self-buffs and equipment could do it, but even with top-tier stuff I wouldn't chance it with just one (not that we'll have those spells or equipment for a while yet).

So, despite the apparent greediness of setting up a gross 1 province-wide snake empire, I actually think it's the safer move than trying to fight the wolves right now.

To complicate things further, the provinces we need to clear are all full of undead, which is a no-go for a lone Dai Oni at this stage. The Dai Oni will thus have to clear out other garbage that we won't immediately benefit from while the army clears a path through the undead.

And speaking of undead, we get our first access to the underground plane!


Our access through the Grey Mirks is guarded by yet more undead (figures). I'd like to set up shop there quickly; it's prime real estate for our temples (caves and mountains generate the best types of Oni in Dom5, and the underground should be safe from coastal harassment). I'm also assuming we're likely to find some lucrative magic sites, complemented by Yomi's "gold bonus" from cave forts. Expansion through this particular province may end up being blocked by that throne, however.