[Dom3] ANOTHER newbie game - MA, [5/5] - In progress

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:42 pm

I don't think Mictlan can normally recruit Enchantresses...

Someone has been getting good sites...

*is jealous*

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:58 pm

My gem income is absolutely terrible and not helping me one bit here, which is really hurting my endgame prospects no matter what else I'm going to be able to throw together. Which I'm not expecting to be all that much.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:39 pm

I have got to stop staling. I don't even have an excuse for this one, just a failure at math.

koz · Post by **koz** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:56 am

Do you want a rollback?

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:49 am

I would like to object to a roll back as it puts me at a significant disadvantage as the victor of 2 battles.

i.e. Mictlan and Ashdod would have forewarning of what is coming and act accordingly.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 4:43 pm

Given that as far as I know Ashdod is not fighting anyone, I think they can probably eat the stale. I staled a couple of times in my Mictlan game and still came out on top.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:00 pm

I think Sinister was joking. I would not actually ask for a rollback, because I am at war. But I can still eat the stale, and it's totally my fault anyway.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:34 pm

The great terrapin-diapsid war commences

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 6:33 am

3v1 now? Really? ...

Backstabbed by shinuyama...

Sigh, i get ganked on because i lead in research.

But fun fact: shinuyama leads in provinces, income, and massively in gem income. :/

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 3:09 pm

I thought Shinuyama was already attacking you. Huh. But yes, you are getting ganked exactly because you lead in research by a ridiculous and huge margin. The rest of the player's graphs are almost horizontal compared to your's. You have more than twice as much research as your nearest competitor. Shinuyama has managed to ridiculously increase his size in the interim, which is a whole 'nother threat entirely that will have to be dealt with, but we don't exactly have much of a choice. Your research is crazy, and if another war happens while you sit in the background that will potentially take years while you research away into end-game magics and conquer everything.

If you're tired of being ganged-up on, don't do things which make you an obvious threat to the entire world.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 5:02 pm

I was and I wasn't. For the last few turns I have been taking Ctis' water provinces because I can and to deny him the income to weaken him against other wars. However, Ctis agreed to let me have the water peacefully and so we hadn't fought, save for me destroying 3 longdeads he ha dleft lying around. Originally I had no plans to actually go to war with Ctis, but when he mentioned in thread that he was winning his other wars I figured I should do my part to make sure he goes down. I also figured that people would be more threatened by "shinuyama who has been sitting there not having to fight anyone for ages" than by "shinuyama who threw his armies into CTis". That said, I full expect to be public enemy #1 after this war is over.

EDIT: to clarify, last turn I attack Ctis with a land army and sieged one of his forts.

I don't have enough experience with this game to know which is more important to longterm victory, the kind of research lead ctis has or the kind of incomes that I have. However I think it's pretty clear that Ctis is a now threat and I'm a later threat. Even though I have more gold than them, we know ctis has ridiculous piles of mages who are each very dangerous, so I think the force they can field is comparable. more importantly, we cannot allow Ctis to sit alone because otherwise they will just put up a bunch of gem generating globals and have the most gems as well as the most research. I, on the other hand, do have a bunch of gems but I don't currently have anything good to do with them. I'm not close to any of the globals I want, I need more construction to make boosters before I can even cast them, and I don't have enough conjuration or enchantment to summon anything I would actually want to summon.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 6:13 pm

I expect I'll get ganked in Patience Problems so hard, when I get to the other nations. (Or I run over them)

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 6:52 pm

Re: Korwin

Well, you're expanding faster than the rest of us but whether you end up bigger is up to you. If you don't want to make a target of yourself you can always stop when you have just more than a fair share of the map and then sink your gold into forts and research. Those of us who expanded slower will probably prefer to keep fighting indies than to turn on you, especially since we probably are expanding slower in the first place because we're busy doing other things. (Like Ulm's mandatory blood hunting). If you don't want an early war you can probably avoid one. (Though I suspect you want one).

Re: DenNoobs 2

I should also mention that my income is high because of Growth scales. Anyone with major Luck scale will have much more gold than their income graph suggests.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 7:01 pm

Orion wrote:I was and I wasn't. For the last few turns I have been taking Ctis' water provinces because I can and to deny him the income to weaken him against other wars. However, Ctis agreed to let me have the water peacefully and so we hadn't fought, save for me destroying 3 longdeads he ha dleft lying around. Originally I had no plans to actually go to war with Ctis, but when he mentioned in thread that he was winning his other wars I figured I should do my part to make sure he goes down.

He has an astral-death prince of death supercombatant who is, for at least a little bit longer, almost impossible for me to beat. Our border is also a little choke-pointed. But he hasn't really done any damage to me that I've genuinely cared about; yeah, lost some sacred giants, got plenty more, lost some chaff, easily replaceable. It's mostly just that we can't gain any ground because he has that flying SC and everywhere we'd attack is within striking range of everywhere else we'd attack. But eventually someone will get their counters (I have mine planned out), and then we'll have to deal with the mages.

Somewhat amusingly, I think I can solve those two problems in very similar ways.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 11:39 pm

Orion wrote: Originally I had no plans to actually go to war with Ctis, but when he mentioned in thread that he was winning his other wars I figured I should do my part to make sure he goes down.

Just for clarification, I said I had won 2 battles, it doesn't mean I was winning the war.

DSMatticus wrote:If you're tired of being ganged-up on, don't do things which make you an obvious threat to the entire world.

Also for clarification, is the first time I've been ganked in a game for being a 'threat'. Last game as C'tis I had the highest research (and shit gem income... I'm seeing a pattern...), but wasn't targeted for that, as you should know DSM.

When C'tis troops suck, your god expands for you, and you have a bunch of gold, what else are you going to do with it? Its just C'tis being C'tis.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 12:19 am

Drago wrote:Just for clarification, I said I had won 2 battles, it doesn't mean I was winning the war.

Yeah, he jumped the gun there when you declared yourself the victor of two battles.

Not that I'm complaining. Happy to have you on board, Shinuyama. A lot of this war is going to be about overwhelming his awesome mage and SC advantage with multi-front attacks, so having more people to throw stuff at him is good.

Drago wrote:When C'tis troops suck, your god expands for you, and you have a bunch of gold, what else are you going to do with it? Its just C'tis being C'tis.

The fact that it's a good way for you to spend a bunch of excess gold does not make it any less threatening to the other players, which is what actually matters. People don't not declare war on you because your decision turns out to be totally reasonable from your perspective; they declare war on you for being a threat. If anything, the better your decisions are for you (in a vacuum) the worse they are for your diplomacy.

I'm not recommending sitting there with thousands of gold lying around, but yeah; the better you're doing, the more jealous your neighbors will get, and then they will come and try to set your stuff on fire. You have to prepare for that contingency. Apparently Korwin is the only one who can pull off sitting there and doing nothing until he wins the game out of nowhere. He's done it at least twice and he's probably going to do it a third time in our unitgen game. I have trouble caring about that one, though; I'm just experimenting with abysia-style battle evocations, which is not something I've done before and it is awesome.

Drago0661 · Post by **Drago0661** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 4:11 am

Well on the diplomacy side of things he's how they were:

I made an NAP-3 with Ashdod - that's cool, no problems there.

Mictlan didn't respond, to my public replay to his PM about negotiating borders. Soon after he is at war with Shinuyama.

Shinuyama was at war with Mictlan, but I was in no position to help, so any agreements couldn't be made as Mictlan was gobbling up Shinuyama provinces.

Then their war stopped for whatever reason.

Then there were threats from Mictlan to Machaka, with Mictlan being seen as the aggressor I needed to pump research hard in order for my mages to actually be useful. As I feared he would be coming after me with his aggressions next.

I also saw this as a chance to pump research hard as Mictlan was taking the spotlight for the 'Villian' (much like Caelum was in the last MA game i played). I was hoping that the spotlight would be enough to draw the attention away from me so i could do whatever i wanted.

But then that didn't last long. DSM pointed his finger at me, ended the NAP-3 turned to spotlight onto me as the threat, Mictlan didn't advance onto Machaka.

I didn't want to face a 3rd nation so tried to make a deal with Shinuyama who had already decided to take my water provinces. Deal: stay out of war, for no resistance in taking all the underwater provinces.

His response was:

I'm actually still retaking land from Mictlan that I gave up during the war. It'll be about 2 more turns before i restore my original borders, at which point I can see whether there's more easily-accessible Mictlan to be had. In the meantime, I can assure that I have no plans to invade your country in the immediate future. I have only one field army even near you and it's being used to retake land and put up some forts. In the immediate future I expect to be turtling and trying to overcome my crippling research shortfall.

That said, I don't really want to make a peace deal with you, because I don't see what you have to offer me. You want a promise of peace in exchange for... conceding ownership of provinces I already intend to take and which you have no realistic chance of protecting. And given that you're being about to be invaded, threatening to invade me isn't very convincing. So I'm going to keep my options open and decline to go NAP unless you want to pay for the privilege.

I had nothing to give Shinuyama - Marshmasters have a high upkeep + was losing gold for him taking my underwater provinces, and my gem income sucks, but said to leave the kept fortress i had, and that i would and could defend it.

I have no ability or desire to siege your forts

So I left it at that.

Apparently immediate future is about 4 turns.

Then well, you know the rest.

Well there's my story of diplomacy. Now its pretty clear how diplomacy will be in this game from now on ("KILL C'TIS!!!"). So I'm throwing this out there because it no longer matters, and maybe see where i went wrong diplomacy wise.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 4:55 am

Drago wrote:I was hoping that the spotlight would be enough to draw the attention away from me so i could do whatever i wanted.

There's a limited number of times people will fall for that.

Mister_Sinister and I both did just come from that MA game with you and Korwin, who won exactly because that happened. But note: Korwin's villain was a lot scarier. Caelum in a close #2 spot, not Mictlan fighting and only half-winning some wars. You are out there in the lead (an impressive one) all by your lonesome. Mictlan was fighting, but he wasn't dominating in any particularly impressive way.

But yeah, I'm not suggesting that you conducted diplomacy wrong. I mean that "I'm going to hit my lategame possibly a year before everyone else" is inherently incompatible with friendly relationships in a game with only one winner. If you're going to build that kind of absolutely massive research-lead, there's the very high chance that unless everyone else is totally incompetent you're going to draw wardecs. It's exactly the same as being a few VP's short of victory; it makes it impossible to have friends.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:04 am

There ARE things you can sink money into that are relatively invisible from a distance. You can build a ton of forts. People can see your forts graph of course but if your *research* isn't through the roof you aren't that scary and are hard to invade. You can stack up PD everywhere. You can hire mercenary mages for diversity. You can make a ton of mages but have them spend mage-turns on summoning spells that are gem-efficient but mage-time costly.

Incidnetally, if "having a ton of research" is jsut Ctis beign Ctis, then "having a ton of gems is just shinu being shinu. My native mages can remote search FWEDN and it's easy to get indies to search S. That's sixth paths of searching before I bring in my Air god.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 2:40 pm

How can it be that people don't have counter-measure yet? Ashdod has big death and big astral, so you should be able to just script your astral mages to Magic Duel on turn one and your Zamzummim to spam Dust to Dust

EDIT: Mictlan has cheap build-anywhere flying S2 mages. Ctis god should be terrified to go anywhere near you due to magic duel.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 5:54 pm

Huh. I actually totally forgot dust to dust existed (or rather, I thought it was a bullshit melee spell you'd never actually use since it is level 1), because I've never had to deal with big undead before.

Magic duel would be a fantastic way to kill a lot of our own mages. I believe he had S4, and magic duel isn't affected by boosters, unless I'm mistaken. It'd happen eventually, but every mage that fails is a dead mage and I don't exactly have a lot to spare. Mictlan can try that if he wants, he has decent astral recruit everywheres apparently.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 6:41 pm

He has S5. Yes, it's a strategy I can try; I'm not sure it's a good one and expect to lose a lot of mages. Cheap/recruit-anywheres or not, that's still a sacrifice I may or may not end up being able to make.

Edit: Or a motherfucking fire could burn down one of my labs. That's the second time this has happened this game!

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 7:34 pm

Isn't it just astral score +1d6 (no boosters apply)?

He rolls 1 (1/6th), you win on 5-6 (1/3rd).
He rolls 2 (1/6th), you win on 6 (1/6th).
He rolls 3, you lose.
(I assumed defender wins ties, which seems about right.)

It'll take an average of 12 mages, I think?

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:31 pm

Archmage wrote:He has S5. Yes, it's a strategy I can try; I'm not sure it's a good one and expect to lose a lot of mages. Cheap/recruit-anywheres or not, that's still a sacrifice I may or may not end up being able to make.

Edit: Or a motherfucking fire could burn down one of my labs. That's the second time this has happened this game!

What? You don't know the Turkey Death Squad?

Source

Lilli wrote:

The real Turn 20

[snip]
Remember how I said I thought Rainbow Dash would teleport on top of one of my two stacks of sacreds? Well she did. However, since I scripted my jaguars and eagles to retreat, none of them die. The battle ends with a full route on my side and Rainbow Dash not getting any kills.

However, I laid a trap for Rainbow Dash. After I got into a war with Arcoscephale I redirected my research, my top priority became getting a way to kill her. This is primarily because she is capable of fairly easily killing groups of jaguars.

One of the often talked about/theorized points in Dom3 LPs is why players never want or take astral on an super combatant or a pretender god SC. This is because there is a low level spell called Magic Duel. The way this works is each mage rolls a 1d6 and adds their base astral level. If the mages tie then both of them die, otherwise the one who gets a higher number survives and the lower number dies. Rainbow Dash here appears to have S6. This would be very hard for me to magic duel without having a lot of S2 or S3 to throw at her. However, virtues in Awesome Gods have Magic Boost +2, this means that all their paths appear 2 levels higher than they actually are. Magic duel only adds your base astral level. No communions, no magic boost, no gear, nothing. Just your base level. This means Rainbow Dash actually has S4.

Do you know what happens when you fly a turkey death squad in to magic duel a pony?

She dies.

There are a few more aspects of this in terms of mechanics that I'll go into. This wouldn't have been possible for me to do if I weren't Mictlan. Rainbow Dash teleported in on the magic phase. This happens before regular movement, if you move commanders into a target province that they're not adjacent to (using defensive movement to move multiple provinces), but someone takes the province in the magic phase, it will cease your commanders movement to the province. This is because you cannot offensively move multiple provinces into enemy territory.

However! Turkeys can fly, flying is not restricted by this limitation, they can move over multiple provinces regardless of whether they're friendly or not.

The second aspect that made this possible is that Turkeys have two forms. Their human form and turkey form. When a unit with two forms is hit by enough damage to kill their first form, they will transform into their second form 'healing' enough damage to put them back at full health. However, damage carries over, so if you hit a jaguar warrior at full health with 16 points of damage (12 health in the first form, 18 in the second), they will transform into a werejaguar with 14 health. However, a unit with multiple forms can never be killed in a single hit. If the same jaguar took 35 damage, they would transform into a werejaguar with 1 health left.

This applies to turkeys. Their second shape counts as a second form for something that will kill them in one shot. This includes magic duels (even if you cast the magic duel). So for example with Thanksgiving here, he lost the first magic duel against Rainbow Dash, and he was transformed back into his human shape with 1 health left over (since magic duel technically does 999 damage). This means that each of my turkeys can do up to two magic duels if necessary. So me flying 5 turkeys in there was actually a total of 10 potential magic duels. This means I just need one of ten 1d6+1 vs 1d6+4 rolls to tie or come out in my favor for Rainbow Dash to die. Each die roll is a 1/6 chance she'll tie/lose, so I am fairly confident this will work. (and it does)

It did work…

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 13, 2012 9:15 pm

EDIT: I just read the rainbow dash thing. I didn't think Turkeys had a human secondshape, so maybe that was some weird CBM thing. But if it's true then you only need to use 6 Nahualli which is an amazing deal.

I also thought he had S4. S5 does indeed make it harder. I also thought Mictlan's Nahualli were S2 when in fact they are S1. Even so you'd be surprised how easy it is.

S1 vs S5 means your odds of killing the target on each Magic Duel are 3/36, meaning that you expect to lsoe 12 mages before bringing him down. If you have a small number of forts that could be a crippling loss of mage recruitment but if you have a pile of forts already that's only costing you ~1300 gold which is a pretty good deal to kill a god wearing dozens of gems. If you can capture a couple forts you'll get the mages back eventually.

If you have S2s, you only need to use 6.