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[E. Albright]

Atlantis is Cthulu Mythos deep ones. The Oceania/Pelagia comparison is a better parallel, though tritons have mythological analogues, unlike pale ones. But we're all starting to nitpick at this point, myself very much included. 

[Kagus]

Speaking of Oceania...  I'm having a really hard time figuring out what's good about them.  Seems mainly like an underwater nation that's bad at expanding underwater and is slightly-worse Pangaea on dry ground.

Pelagia has some pretty decent aquatic troops, plus general mermen for hitting the shores.  Plus they've got that 1-1 water gem-pearl conversion, which seems like it could be put to good use...  Hell, they've even got freespawn hippocampoi.  With the separation of Oceania/Pelagia it seems like Oceania should've gotten the animal freespawns instead.

[Culise]

Unfortunately, that pretty much matches my own thoughts on the matter.  For all that it was my favorite of the three, Oceania in Dom3 was already among the worst of the underwater nations, rivaling LA Rl'yeh.  The Oceania/Pelagia split in Dom4 was rather unkind to Oceania, and on top of that, gem generators were nerfed hard; I generally like that change, but it did mean that one of the few advantages Oceania had (easy access to Clams) was no longer relevant. 

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'd like to agree that blood has some neat stuff to forge even if you dip exactly 0 RP into blood. A few hunters on a single province is enough to net you some goodies that way. It's not a core strategy, of course not, but I'd say it's worth the minor cost in fielding a few blood hunters in some backwater province.

And you don't need much blood income to use Reinvigoration (only 50RP to get!) if you happen to sport communions.

[Kagus]

Motherf...  DON'T CAST TOUCH OF MADNESS ON MY RANGED FLYING SACREDS YOU TWAT.

Gah...  You'd think that celestial masters would be slightly smarter to have managed to live that long, but apparently not!  Was doing some testing, had a little flying party with a celestial master and some demons of heavenly fires...  And then that irritating old man would insist on making some of them go berserk and fly over to the enemy forces they were dealing with JUST FINE, in order to get slaughtered in melee.


Trying to decide on a decent bless for EA T'ien Ch'i...  Blood is actually quite helpful all round, as it even increases the damage of the fire wheels the heavenly demons throw.  Also means that damage done to ancestor spirits (generally quite a bit more than their 1 HP max health) has a chance to be reflected, which gives them some extra use.

Fire is awesome for WotFE's, hounds and spirits (no idea if flaming weapons also applies to the flaming wheels), water is even awesomer for WotFE's,  death is nice for most everyone, most notably the spirits...  I'm thinking air is worth looking at.  None of the sacreds have shields, and most don't have much in the way of armor.  Arrows hurt.  It also assists in both protecting your little old man-mages and making them all the more accurate with spells or stuff.  Most importantly, it really buffs the heavenly fire demons.  They'll get cross-battlefield range and sniper accuracy with those wheels.

However, trying to balance any of this stuff with nice scales is, naturally...  Tricky.


EDIT:  On another nation entirely, I've been wondering a bit about LA Gath.  Seen a couple discussions talking about trashing the Iassacharite sages entirely in favor of sibyls, since they provide slightly more RP, have 1S1N so can be communion slaves, and require a 500g lab to be made instead of an 800g temple, since they're not sacred.

They also have 5% fortune teller, which is pretty nice.  However, I've found that the sages are entirely unaffected by magic scales, either positive or negative.  So with Drain 3, sages and sibyls both provide only 6 rp.  Also, sages are still just as affected by research boosters, so you can beef up their research by slapping some items on them.  Only one that Gath has early access to is the imp familiar, but they do get the goodies like skulls and lightless lanterns later on.

[Vrky]

Hello all,
I have a question. Is there any good AAR you people can recommend me? I'm looking for something that explains some basic or advanced strategies, site searching strategies, combat orders etc., so that I learn by reading. Thanks

[Delta Foxtrot]

I can try to remember some of the stuff I've surely read so far and see if there's anything educational-ish there.

Off the top of my head I don't have anything readable though. There's a set of videos by one of the MP vets which he's uploaded and voice over'd after the fact explaining how and why he played. Pretty good stuff if you don't mind the video format. Faction played is EA Mictlan but there's plenty of stuff that's just good play that you can use regardless of the nation. Link below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXa4InahZRZkqRrmqug0C4t1Zvgzo0vRm

Not AAR's, but there's guides on the official forum (check the non-nation specific ones at least):
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/board/the-council-of-sages-strategy-guides

This bit (for Dom3 but I think it's mostly applicable) gives some non-specific expansion help. Most useful in that it lists the various indie types and their usual counters:
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-3-the-awakening/forum/thread/expansion-101

There's also this Dom3 era expansion guide that goes a bit more into specific scripting:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42211

Regarding the last two expansion guides, the biggest relevant difference between Dom3 and 4 (in this area) is that Dom4 introduced soft squad limits. If you divide troops into more squads than the commander can handle, you get serious morale penalties. So the bits where they talk about using multiple (+3) squads, you might want to try and make things work with just two or three squads (as that's what most commanders let you play around with).

Also feel free to ask any questions that may crop up, there's usually enough folks here to write a page or two's worth of answers

[Kagus]

Didn't overall indie strength get buffed from Dom 3 to 4?  Still, most of the info should still be relevant.

The limiting your expansion thing was new to me, last guide I'd read said that from turn 2 on you should be taking at least one province per turn for the rest of the year+.  And one province was bare minimum.  Must've just been a SP guide or something.

I always find fort construction to be a tricky prospect, especially with stuff like Ur or in LA when forts take so much gold and so much time to build...  Getting 1 finished before year 2 and 2-3 going, preferably all in locations that are actually nice to have forts in, is a bit hard for me to work around sometimes...

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm having a bit of trouble enjoying this game.

I don't want to abandon my games, and I suspect that the lategame could be really fun once I get a grip on how to play.  But PBEM is a massive pain in the ass.  I've played asynchronous TBS games before, but most of them have this understanding that you start several games at once and then quickly play them as they come in.  As a result you generally have at least 5 days to submit turns.  Also I didn't realize how much the minute or so of fiddling with email would make each turn feel like a chore, but it does.

I dunno.  I'll keep playing to see if it clicks, but I'm not too impressed so far.  Also, SO MUCH useless variety for the sake of variety.  Niefelhiem's unit list could probably be simplified to 9 units with *zero* loss in meaningful decisions.  Scout, warrior hero, priest, mage, priest-mage, militia, javelineer, elite melee, sacred giant.  To say nothing of the endless variants of "x level summon", "x level magic attack" that are all basically interchangeable as far as I can tell.  Its like the game designers haven't realized yet that when you do this in a multiplayer game, experienced players will pick 10% of the content as worth using and ignore everything else.

[bluth]

To say nothing of the endless variants of "x level summon", "x level magic attack" that are all basically interchangeable as far as I can tell.

"as far as you can tell" indeed. I'm sure experienced player will find use in units you found useless.

Personally i'm not that good but so far in MP games i've used every unit that my nation had to offer and I played 4 differents nations.
And even if it is not useful  it is in no way a problem, just don't use them.

I understand what you mean with the email, my gaming group have a dedicated server so no need for email and everything can be done ingame, that make the game extra enjoyable.

That game hooked me harder than any other game but you have to multi, there is basically no solo.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The game designers entirely purposely made the game's content almost pointlessly varied. That much I could glean from playing it. Almost every "useless" unit occupies a tiny, insignificant niche, since no two national units are exactly the same.

I for once welcome a game not geared towards "experienced multiplayers", choosing flavor and storytelling capacity over hard-cut mechanical differences. Cybersports are a bane of the strategy game genres, RTS specifically but other types are affected as well.

[E. Albright]

To say nothing of the endless variants of "x level summon", "x level magic attack" that are all basically interchangeable as far as I can tell.  Its like the game designers haven't realized yet that when you do this in a multiplayer game, experienced players will pick 10% of the content as worth using and ignore everything else.

Actually, a lot of the tuning between Dom3 and Dom4 was to avoid that last bit, which was kinda happening in Dom3.

There are spells (and summons) that are better than others. However, not every nation has the paths to use every spell. And some spells are better than others but deeper into the research tree. And some spells are better than others in circumstances A, B, and C, but worse in X, Y, or Y. There's a lot of variables in play, so most things have some use sometimes. Not everything, and never always. But most, in the right circumstances, will be useful. And the right circumstances may well be "I can't afford/haven't researched optimal spell Q but I need to cast/summon something RIGHT NOW", or "my opponent just completely countered optimal unit P, so I need an unexpected curveball RIGHT NOW".

A lot of the value in some of the less obviously powerful stuff is just about trying to adapt what you have to what you can do with it. And since what you can do varies by nation, and two people can't play the same nation, it's really hard to find one optimal "10%" strategy.

Also, like Sean said, the devs have no compunctions whatsoever to have flavorful but low-value units. You might only ever use some of them after an event gives you a pile and you have nothing else to do with them, but given how much complexity the game has even barring "redundant" units, there's not really much of a downside to them being there.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I don't want to abandon my games, and I suspect that the lategame could be really fun once I get a grip on how to play.  But PBEM is a massive pain in the ass.  I've played asynchronous TBS games before, but most of them have this understanding that you start several games at once and then quickly play them as they come in.  As a result you generally have at least 5 days to submit turns.  Also I didn't realize how much the minute or so of fiddling with email would make each turn feel like a chore, but it does.

Turns do come in quicker than with games that have the file pass on from player to player. As a result I limit myself to at most two games at once, helps maintain my sanity if both hit lategame phase.

And there is a direct connect option if email bothers you, though Bay12 doesn't use a server (nor do most folks at desura/official forum). I know Something Awful forum has one, but they're behind a paywall. Steam has at least one group, their FAQ here:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/clockworkforest/discussions/5/617321352366980945/
It's an invite only group but all you need to do is post here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/259060/discussions/1/558751812782623916/

I don't play there myself but they seem to be a good bunch. Presumably there are others with a server too if you dig around.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I don't know if you guys have realized it yet, but the latest patch is out. The highlights are changes to pretender costs and the addition of 100-150 more design points, though for titans and the like those points are swallowed up by increased costs. But this should make rainbows much more viable than before since they have more points to sink into low-level magic. A ton of new monster pretenders were also added, and some of them look pretty awesome. They're generally cheap and strong, for good early expansion, but lack most slots. Still, I have my eye on a few of them. The Serpent of Chaos has 170 HP, 10% regen, 15 protection and fear. He also has only one attack, but fear routes most indies quickly, and awe + regen + protection keeps him alive quite nicely. Plus that still leaves 194 points left over for scales. Obviously you aren't going to get much magic out of it, but if your national mages are good that shouldn't be much of a problem. Mind you, the underwater nations still have only a small selection of pretenders, but that'll be fixed in the Underwater patch and the few stuff they have has been fiddled with a little bit.

Also some minor things were changed too. Shapechanging units can be killed if hit with enough damage, instead of surviving in their other form with 1 HP. So Nahuallis are no longer capable of spamming a Mind Duel so easily. A Death Bless now properly affects arrows and something about Demonic Locusts were added. Supaya spam is now much harder to do since they only arrive one at a time now, but Nazca also gets a new 10-gem item that lets you summon 3 per turn instead.

In other words, there's nothing groundbreaking in this patch but it still adds a few new stuff and makes the game slightly better overall. So I guess we'll have to set up a few more games to celebrate? Or at least wait for the inevitable minor patches to be rolled out?

[Kagus]

So, death bless affects arrows now, eh?  That's gonna make things interesting for folks like Caelum/Man and whatnot with sacred archers, as AN missile attacks can be rather terrifying...