Dominions 4 Teasers

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:37 pm

Well, Agartha has options now. Are they good?

EDIT: This is a hero for LA Agartha

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:40 pm

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:42 pm

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 4:47 pm

http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/history.html

Changes to EA Agartha
Pretenders:
- Earth Made Flesh
- Pillar
Units:
- Ancient Wet Ones
- Olm Sage (in caves and womb of earth)
- Great Olm (in caves and womb of earth)
Heroes:
- Members of the Closed Council x3 (death, forests, water)
- Deepthought descr
Sites: (a one time event should add the new sites in ongoing games)
- Womb of the Earth
Spells:
- Release Imprisoned Ones.
- Barathrus & Rhuax needs site: Roots of the Earth.
- Living Mercury
- Cavern Wights (EA - no magic weapons) - altered cost and available EA
- Penumbral
- Umbral

Changes to MA Agartha
Pretenders:
- Earth Made Flesh
- Pillar
Units:
- Defender of the Halls
- Shard Guard
- Ancient One +1 att, +1def, throw rocks, descr fix, better armor, standard +1
- Ancient Lord +1 att (IIRC)
Sites: (a one time event should add the new sites in ongoing games)
- Halls of Oracles no longer gives gems
- Roots of the Earth
- Broken Seal
Spells:
- Attentive statues, sentinels lvl and cost
- Olm Conclave
- Umbral more efficient
- Penumbral more efficient
- Living Mercury
- Shard Wights - replaces cavern wights in MA and LA
- Hall of Statues (many sentinels)

Changes to LA Agartha
Pretenders:
- Pillar
- Master Alchemist
Units:
- Alchemists
- Sappers throw cave fire
- Blindlord ldr
Heroes:
- Master of Alchemical Secrets
Spells:
- Nightmare Reanimation
- Shard Wights
- Halls of the Dead
- Penumbral and Umbral efficient (like in MA)
- Iron Ancestor spell cost and unit statfix
- Iron corpse spell cost and numbers
Items:
- Nationrestricted Barrel of Mercury

I think some of these changes may have happened because of that thread on Agartha balance Frank started on Desura. Thanks for that!

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 5:04 pm

Screenshots and a by-nation breakdown of the changes. Thanks Avoraciopoctules! I look forward to trying all the fun new Agarthan toys later this week.

Also, I heard that they made Ogres cost more to summon. Do you have comprehensive lists for the non-Agarthan changes? Are you getting those lists from somewhere or are you compiling them yourself?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Wed Nov 13, 2013 7:24 pm

I mostly just copied from the Something Awful Dom4 thread, but I'm planning on doing some more intensive research on the summon differences once I download the patched game.

EDIT: The changelog comes from Illwinter's website, I put the link at the top of the post.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Nov 14, 2013 1:31 am

First notes: Wights no longer scale, and Ogres cost 10 gems per summon. Bane Lord is 12, Wraith Lord is 40, tartarian was 10 or 12 (don't remember exact number, but it was cheap).

EA Agartha has access to the more efficient summons of later ages, that's probably an error.

Agartha's titan pretender is interesting. 220 hit points, but awful attack and defense skill. Water/Earth, and other paths may be affordable at 50 points to start. Nature would be great for regen at that base HP. Built-in reinvig.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Nov 14, 2013 9:46 pm

Are these all the possible results for send lesser horror?

K · Post by K » Fri Nov 15, 2013 3:05 am

Mmmmm, maybe. There is a gore elemental thing that is either a Lesser or normal Horror.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Fri Nov 15, 2013 5:05 am

The latest patch lists "general rebalancing of summons" in the patch log so I went through the old and new summoning manuals looking for differences and found the following:

[] Bind Scorpion Beast WAS 6 gems for 1 NOW 2 gems for 1
[] Summon Fire Ants WAS 20 gems for 10+ NOW 10 gems for 10+
[] Summon Yetis WAS 20 gems for 5+ NOW 15 gems for 5+
[] Summon Ogres WAS 5 gems for 10+ NOW 10 gems for 10+
[] Summon Shades WAS 5 gems for 5+ NOW 8 gems for 5+
[] Revive Wights WAS 20 gems for 5+ NOW 20 gems for 4
[] Summon Crocodiles WAS 14 gems for 5+ NOW 4 gems for 5+
[] Pack of Wolves WAS 4 gems for 10+ NOW 2 gems for 10+
[] Summon Horned Serpents WAS 10 gems for 5+ NOW 4 gems for 5+
[] Summon Manticore WAS 6 gems for 1 NOW 5 gems for 1
[] Summon Kithaironic Lion WAS 8 gems for 1 NOW 3 gems for 1

None of the others seem to have changed, I haven't been through all the nationals but the ones I checked remain the same.

Some of the changes make the sub-par options a bit more exciting, but I was really hoping for more changes, particularly to national summons.

Shiritai · Post by **Shiritai** » Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:46 pm

Well, ethereal units can go through walls now. I thought that was pretty darn cool.

Edit: And by "now" I mean three months ago. Ah well.

koz · Post by **koz** » Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:46 pm

Does anyone here have any thoughts on LA C'tis? I recall that someone mentioned that Sauromancers were awesome, but them being StR kinda hurts. Also, from what I can see, LA C'tis has bad troops (low morale for everyone!), despite having pretty awesome-looking undead available. I guess I'm just not sure what you're meant to do for early expansion.

K · Post by K » Fri Nov 15, 2013 11:36 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote:Does anyone here have any thoughts on LA C'tis? I recall that someone mentioned that Sauromancers were awesome, but them being StR kinda hurts. Also, from what I can see, LA C'tis has bad troops (low morale for everyone!), despite having pretty awesome-looking undead available. I guess I'm just not sure what you're meant to do for early expansion.

The upshot is that Sauromancers can be recruited from any castle +lab +temple, so you potentially can run around with a lot of big Death mages after you get some castles up.

Since poison resistance has been changed, I think early expansion is supposed to be poison slingers + tomb guards or heavy infantry as blockers. The AoE 1 poison cloud should wreck most things and Ctis troops should be mostly immune (I think poison can crit, but don't quote me).

I know in Dom3 I went with a big dragon for expansion and had no regrets, and this tactic is even more viable in Dom4.

They also get the ability to animate Holy undead serpents, so I think that would synergize really well with the new Blesses (and the regular Holy Serpents seem ideal for B9/N9 backed by a Wooden Warriors caster).

Morale issues for nations with access to Astral and Nature like Ctis seems to be addressable with Crowns or Command, Horns of Valor, and an astral spear whose name escapes me. Ctis is light on Astral for that, but boosting to make the required items is not too bad.

Native H3 guys is also interesting in Thrones games, though they are StR.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Nov 17, 2013 9:12 am

None of the others seem to have changed, I haven't been through all the nationals but the ones I checked remain the same.

MA Agartha got a few bones thrown to it.

Attentive Statues went from 8 gems for 2 statues to 4 gems for 2 statues. Enliven Sentinel went from 4 gems for one sentinel to 3 gems for 1 sentinel. Granite Guards and Marble Oracles are just as shitty and overpriced as they always were. Also, Hall of Statues gives you 20+ Statues for 30 gems, which is pretty boss but requires Enchantment 8 and probably won't come up.

-Username17

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sun Nov 17, 2013 6:04 pm

LA Agartha got some real good boosts. Specifically, Iron Corpse Reanimation went from 4 earth gems for 3 to 2 earth gems for 5+. Haven't really memorized the others, but I'm pretty sure that the conjuration tree summons got shifted down a research level in places. There's also a flame corpse horse that I don't remember seeing before.

Of course, in the PBEM game this just had to hit after I blew all my earth gems summoning Iron Corpses.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Nov 17, 2013 6:43 pm

The big boost for LA Agartha is that they went from a low magic diversity faction to a medium magic diversity faction because they got a Water mage. But yeah, the extra summons are nice too. Also, the Sappers got a one-shot short range magic javelin which is weird. Makes them less completely worthless.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Nov 18, 2013 7:33 pm

I saw some more nice-looking maps on the Desura forums.
http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4 ... wraparound

http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4 ... wraparound

Apparently, they had cave forests added after the latest patch.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:48 pm

Here's the unit entries for full horrors, including gore tide

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Nov 19, 2013 11:12 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The big boost for LA Agartha is that they went from a low magic diversity faction to a medium magic diversity faction because they got a Water mage.
-Username17

You know, I've never actually managed to make much from magic diversity. Like, what do you actually do with mages who provide you with a single level in a path you don't otherwise have? I mean, assuming you can't stick them in a communion and start casting higher-end spells.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Wed Nov 20, 2013 4:16 am

name_here wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:The big boost for LA Agartha is that they went from a low magic diversity faction to a medium magic diversity faction because they got a Water mage.
-Username17
You know, I've never actually managed to make much from magic diversity. Like, what do you actually do with mages who provide you with a single level in a path you don't otherwise have? I mean, assuming you can't stick them in a communion and start casting higher-end spells.

Forge items, trade for boosters, site search, empower, profit????

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:03 am

Each path is of course different. For most paths, getting a single point gives you the ability to find sites and use those gems to either empower to more potent magics or make items and augment your armies with summoned units. In addition of course, when you find sites in one path, they will often enough have gems in other paths, meaning that your finding a nature site might give you air gems or fire gems from a water site or whatever. So even if you "only care about death gems," or whatever, you're still going to have more death gems if you can find Astral sites and uncover the pyramid of whatever the fuck that gives you an astral and a death.

Also, there are a lot of really quite powerful spells that require a splash of something else. Death mages are a lot scarier when they have a splash of Fire because Banefire is way better than shadow bolt. Astral mages are a lot scarier when they have a splash of Death because nether darts is way harder hitting than stellar cascades. And a lot of super combatant gear only requires 1 or 2 picks in 1 or 2 paths. That frost brand is unlocked at Water 1. That Horned Helmet comes only at Nature 1. And so on.

But the bottom line is that your late game battles are likely to be decided by who can pull off the weirdest bullshit. And the more options you have, the more likely that is to be you.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Fri Nov 22, 2013 3:49 am

Each path has a couple of "gem sink" items -- items a level 1 mage can make that you can never have too many of.

Fire: Throw down a Sceptre of Authority, Fire Bola, or Just Man's Cross for all of your non-mage commanders. Lightless Lanterns for research.
Air: Bow of War and Bow of Accuracy. Owl Quills.
Death: Skull Talisman and Black bow of Botulf
Water: Water Bracelet, and then water bottles.
Nature: Boots of the Messenger for all your battle mages.
Earth: Girdle of Might for all your mages.

Blood is already supposed to be a pyramid scheme and Astral interacts with whatever other magic you have.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Nov 22, 2013 8:56 am

Orion wrote:Each path has a couple of "gem sink" items -- items a level 1 mage can make that you can never have too many of.

Fire: Throw down a Sceptre of Authority, Fire Bola, or Just Man's Cross for all of your non-mage commanders. Lightless Lanterns for research.
Air: Bow of War and Bow of Accuracy. Owl Quills.
Death: Skull Talisman and Black bow of Botulf
Water: Water Bracelet, and then water bottles.
Nature: Boots of the Messenger for all your battle mages.
Earth: Girdle of Might for all your mages.

Blood is already supposed to be a pyramid scheme and Astral interacts with whatever other magic you have.

Let's continue that a little bit.

I would add:
Water: Frost Brand
Fire and Earth: Fire Brand
Astral: (IF you have an good bless*) Shroud of the Saints
Nature: Amulett of Resilience, Ring of Regeneration

*Like an E9N9 bless and recruitable Thugs (ie. Skratti)

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Fri Nov 22, 2013 9:15 pm

Why aren't pendants of luck/pendants of anti-magic notable?

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Fri Nov 22, 2013 10:09 pm

Luck works differently in Dom4. It only works for living units, who have a 75% chance not to be affected by stuff that would kill them. So the thugs that can use luck are probably going to pick up afflictions whether they have it or not.