Red_Rob wrote:Is the reflected damage considered the same as the damage dealt? So could a mage dropping Falling Fires grab a Ring of Fire Restistance to mitigate any blowback?
Fleur Bleu wrote:
Had a dude cast mass regen on the jags; 550 bandits against 145 jags, 160 died.
With antimagic for the archers; 480 against 145, 72 died.
Also I did this:
All damage the Hannyas do is fire and they have 33 fire resistance and 17 mr.
That's 11755 gold in dead jaguars and 13600 in dead mages, without the jags even doing anything.
Looks like you'll need to get clever to safely destroy them with mages, then. Fatigue damage would be good. IIRC, they nerfed reverse communion into oblivion, so buffing up terrible mages and having them drop AoEs is out. Massed archery is clearly the way to go for Blood9 jags. For, say, sacred giants it might not be a bad plan to use Soul Slay or Gifts From Heaven and pray you make the MR check.
I wonder if damage from auras trips blood vengence.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
Blood Vengeance doesn't go to the mage through skeletons he has summoned or damage from incidental temperature patches or poison clouds. Getting around it really isn't terribly difficult. It really just smacks you for using direct attacks.
I'm not sure that the Hanya test means that blood vengeance ignores elemental resistance. An area attack does a really huge amount of total damage. Even a 1 square Fireball does 48 damage if it hits a whole square full of jaguar warriors. A way better test would have involved Abyssians casting incinerate. But whatever. It's definitely true regardless that Blood Vengeance is a powerful ability for Jaguar Warriors.
Orion wrote:What about sulphur haze, freezing mist, or death cloud?
Last I checked, you don't gain kills when your Freezing Mist kills a dude, so you shouldn't get hit by Blood Vengeance either.
I'm completely fine with the change to Blood 9, especially now that it's so much easier to race to Falling Foo.
The enemy of Bless nations has always been the archer and the evoker, and it has gotten pretty easy to mass archers with non-castle recruitment and power up evokers with the faster research.
Avoraciopoctules wrote:Anyone have tips for playing MA T'ien Ch'i in Dom4? I notice some interesting new pretender options.
Well, basically you do most of your expansion with footmen and archers because they are awesome. You do most of your site searching by hand, using the Imperial Alchemist whenever possible. Covering your search holes with an Imperial Geomancer and a Minister of Rituals is in most cases cheaper and better than using a Celestial Master. Masters of the Way are really shitty now. In the long run you will eventually make enough Celestial Masters to get Water 3 and Astral 2 for forging purposes, but you won't like it. That's just a general issue where magepriests cost way too fucking much in the autocalc.
Ministers of Magic cost only 65 gold, are build everywhere, and have a base research of 11. You can afford Drain 1 or Drain 2 if you need the points. Ministry soldiers are good, but not necessary to your life. So Productivity 0 or 1 is probably what you want. Growth 3 is the standard for almost everyone in Dominions 4 because it is awesome.
As for Pretenders, I genuinely don't know what the eastern dragons do, because they don't have descriptions. Phoenixes are a lot better than they used to be, because not having hands doesn't disqualify you from being useful at forging. Having an Astral pretender means eventually getting rings going, and that's very cool. Having an Air 4 means that you'll be able to make a helmet and bag and bootstrap your imperial alchemists up to Air 4 as well. Having a lot of Earth isn't relevant unless you also have Air 4 and can make the Elemental Staff. Having Fire 4 gives you one Fire Booster, and you get a second if it comes with Water 4 or Death 1. Your sacreds are not terribly good, and even your sacred mages won't be made in much quantity, so there isn't much reason to concern yourself with your bless. Yes, you can make Celestial Soldiers and such, but that's late in the game, highly dependent on external source of air gems, and just all around not something you can count on.
I don't see the need for an early game expansion pretender. You can tool up a Nataraja pretty fast, but your army is wicked sweet and you don't need it. Your Pretender is pretty much there to give you access to higher ends of the paths you already get, so they should probably be Dormant. You could even make the case for an imprisoned pretender and running sweet scales and some decent magic. For fuck's sake, you can can roll with O3P1C1G3M1M0 with A4W4S6 for a Dominion 8 Imprisoned Celestial Emperor. That's pretty hard core.
But the basic level expansion is to put a couple tower shield footmen as arrow catchers with pikemen on the side to charge in and repel enemies while your composite bowmen in the rear fire on the enemy archers. That's real solid. You follow that with an Imperial Alchemist searching for magic sites and hoping for something good.
FrankTrollman wrote:Growth 3 is the standard for almost everyone in Dominions 4 because it is awesome.
Why is this moreso than in Dom3?
The base money multiplier for Growth is better in Dominions 4 than it was in Dominions 3. This means that the Growth payoff is partway through year 2 instead of a little bit into year 4.
If you don't need really huge piles of gold right now at the start of the game, Growth 3 is almost certainly in your future. Hell, even if you do.
Old Growth was: +2% income +0,2 Population / scale
New Growth is: +3% income +0,2 Population / scale
Red_Rob wrote:
I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
I've been running tests on the Asphodel freespawn mechanic, specifically what you get from your undead priests using the "awaken manikins" action. Here are the results:
1) No environmental factors affect your freespawn quality (a priest taking the action gets the same results regardless of dominion, scales, province type, population, corpses, etc.)
2) The ONLY thing that affects your quantity is your holy level. You get Holy Level + 1 freespawn/turn.
3) 7/8ths of all freespawn will be evenly distributed among the following: wolf manikin, boar manikin, horse manikin, satyr manikin, human manikin, harpy manikin.
4) 1/8th of all freespawn will be evenly distributed among the following: madragora, bear manikin, minotaur manikin, elephant manikin, sagittarian carcass.
This means the Carrion Centaur is undeniably the best, most efficient, choice for freespawn spam.
Additionally, the Carrion Centaur can lead more troops (undead and otherwise). The Carrion Lady brings H2 (vs H1) and N1 to the table, but neither are very useful in the circumstances. If you need either of those things, recruit a Black Satyr instead and save your nature gems. The Carrion Lords justify themselves despite their terrible freespawn-to-cost ratio because they are powerful mages, excellent thugs, excellent leaders, H3 priests (which is all sorts of useful in Dom4), and an excellent choice for prophetizing/communioning because the H4 spell they unlock gives your entire undead army 10% regeneration.
I still can't find a justification for those Carrion Ladies...
Last edited by Shatner on Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Red_Rob wrote:
I mean, I'm pretty sure the Mayans had a prophecy about what would happen if Frank and PL ever agreed on something. PL will argue with Frank that the sky is blue or grass is green, so when they both separately piss on your idea that is definitely something to think about.
It has a bug where a hundred huskarls invade a quarter of your empire every single turn if you have Misfortune 2 in the early or middle era. That bug is supposed to be fixed with 3.99i, which has been uploaded.
So, given it is the 26th and they are still making changes that are introducing new gamebreaking bugs, what do you reckon are the chances of releasing on the 28th?
And related, how soon after release will the first patch be? Is it worth scheduling any multiplayer games soon after release or better to wait a few weeks for the first patch(es) to tidy things up?
Does the Nataraja's fire shield work in the new build? I tried using one as an SC in a game a few days ago and it died to massed light infantry when the ability never activated.
Avoraciopoctules wrote:Does the Nataraja's fire shield work in the new build? I tried using one as an SC in a game a few days ago and it died to massed light infantry when the ability never activated.
Seems to be online now.
If the other buffs are fixed, Dom4 might be in playable condition.
Lanka gets extra slaves in Turmoil, so that's weird. It seems to be +1 slave per Turmoil.
Chaos Power also powers up in Unrest. You can go into an Order 3 province and get full Chaos Power bonus if there is enough Unrest in the province.
I'm not convinced that the best tactic is still not doing Order 3, but at least you can do something about being crippled when attacking the overwhelming number of Order nations.
Globu wrote:It hasn't been mentioned here that I could find, so I thought I would pipe up on it to keep it on the radar:
Flaming Arrows didn't work on modded ranged weapons in Dom3. Has this or is this giong to change in Dom4? It was a saddening limitation that basically made modded ranged weapons fit poorly into the overall game framework. Could we perhaps get a tag like #battleenchantable or something to make it so flaming arrows can affect them?
Kristoffer.Osterman wrote:Hmm, not with the current mechanics. I'm not sure how much rework it would would mean to JK.
Currently a weapon is replaced by another weapon with a secondary effect, and that is done in a special function somewhere. (Come to think about it, there might be new weapons that will not be affected by flaming arrows). It is not just a tag on a weapon.
It might be possible to do something similar as blessed weapons, but I have no idea how much work it would mean.
I would like the feature myself. The current mechanic is somewhat clunky for me as well.
kasnavada wrote:Not to mention that changing this mechanic would enable ice arrows, piercing arrows, astral arrows, rainbow arrows, vine arrows, unicorn head arrows...
Kristoffer.Osterman wrote:JK seems to have liked the idea and did add something on these lines today it seems.
Available in modding as well.
Sounds interesting.
That's exciting; more of that will make for some exciting mod possibilities, as well as (I assume) more official tweaks to existing nations. Let's hope it actually makes the cut.
Somehow, I suspect that they won't make that one either, since it's not nearly far enough into the future to have padding on their estimates for how long it will take to fix everything.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
So, I've been playing around with EA Lanka and I've come across some new observations regarding that nation specifically and blood hunting in general.
1) You want indie priests badly. Every H1 you have can animate 4 longdead. Not just undead/demon priests. Every priest. So you sprinkle the countryside with temples and recruit those 60gp H1 mooks because they will animate monkey skeletons forever and ever, cheaply, while you dedicate your forts to churning out blood mages and demons.
2) It seems like THE MOST IMPORTANT early research goal for Lanka is Enchantment-2 so you can cast Revive King. With Lanka, you want to lead around a lot of undead/demons AND you want something with holy levels to bless stuff. The only unit that does both well (the Raksharaja) is cap-only and expensive... your prophet does it too but you've only got the one. A better choice is to have a Mound King or two (because Mound Kings are cheap as dirt for Lanka) lead the troops while a couple of those cheapo H1s you've been accumulating tag along and spam Bless. Also, eventually you'll have 150+ longdead being animated each turn (and who knows how many demons), and Mound Kings are just about the only way for you to actually lead that much undead chaff around. Heck, they're cheaper than Rods of the Leper King, and more than twice as effective.
3) When I've played as EA/LA Mictlan, I've sprinkled my blood hunters across the countryside, bringing in a steady trick of blood slaves from every corner of my demon-haunted empire. With Lanka, I find I consolidate my blood hunting to 3-4 provinces with large populations and squeeze those provinces until they scream. A province with 10+ blood hunters, 2 or 3 Mound Kings patrolling with 200+ longdead, along with Lanka's Turmoil-bonus to blood hunting, means you are getting 80 to 125 blood slaves/turn from those provinces. Patrolling reduces the unrest to 0 about 80% of the time, and with Growth-3 and a large initial population you can squeeze the province like this for a full year without adverse affects. This has the advantage of being MUCH less micro intensive, and safer from raiding since you have a lot of hunters, patrollers, and PD present. Also, this tactic generates a lot of corpses, which can be used to create undead chaff at an even higher rate with Soulless (since each H1 can make about 8 of those, given sufficient corpses) or used with Raven Feast to give you an extra source of death gems.
4) I've yet to find a truly satisfactory combination of scales and bless. It took me a while to realize that the protection boost from an earth bless is now a stand-alone boost rather than an enhancement to each piece of armor. That means that naked sacreds CAN benefit from it, while the days of stacking bracers of protection/cat charms on sacred commanders is over. Anyway, an N9 + S9 bless seems to work well, though your naked demons will still get chopped up in a long melee, and it's an expensive bless even for a Monolith. E9 + B9 makes everything you have a lot deadlier, and your Raksharaja thugs will love it, but without regeneration and the astral boost to MR you go from laughing off banishment spam to dreading it. B9 on an imprisoned Fountain of Blood is cheap. No matter what, I find myself missing the raw effectiveness of B9N9 Jaguar Warriors. Man those things are good!
5) No matter what, Turmoil = Broke. Even with Growth-3, even with Production. You will be relying on luck and zero-upkeep units to give you enough money to afford forts/labs/temples. Most of my sacred troops come from summons simply because paying 60gp for your non-cap sacred is too much to afford. By the end of year 1, the majority of my forces are longdead, because monkeys are expensive and die like flies. A thin archer screen to confuse the enemy (size-3 gorillas w/longbows set to "fire and maintain distance" will confuse "attack closest", "attack archers", and "attack large monsters") and then nothing but demons and undead because those guys work for cheap.
6) Events still don't seem to be scaling with empire size, because I'm usually capping out at about 5 events/turn even when my empire covers a third of the map. Now, Turmoil-3 + Luck-3 does give you a LOT of good events. If you can somehow squeeze in high magic then you will be getting tons of gems and magic items (I got the True Dragon Corpse event an average of 4 times a year). Also, I got the "a fissure of lava has opened up in the province" event in my capital in every game (+3 fire gems) and once I got an astral site in my capital that gave 2 astral gems, 20% thaumaturgy discount, and +2 ritual distance. Pretty dang nifty.
7) Remote site searching is not, Not, NOT worth it. As Lanka, I'd have every province manually searched by a Yogini (D1N2B1), and I would try to search with an A2 cap-only mage as often as was feasible. Then later in the game I would remote search my empire for nature, blood, death, and air. I found scouring forests and mountains for nature sites paid off big enough, often enough to probably be worth it. Everything else was a big waste. Especially blood. I've scoured three large empires this way and each time I've wasted hundreds of gems/slaves and hundreds of mage-turns for only the tiniest of returns. Don't do it.
8) If you are going with a large force of cheap Lanka demons, make sure to either bring a lot of supply items, or have the only living units be your commanders. The reason is because all of your spammable sacred demons have gluttony and a force of them is very difficult to keep fed. However, while demons can starve (and the -4 morale penalty does suck), they cannot get diseased from starvation. Even the ones that don't have "need not eat" can starve turn after turn and not get diseased. So an army of demons and undead can walk around with empty stomachs just fine. Commanders seem to get fed before troops, so even the smallest number of supplies is enough to keep your leadership fed.
9) Does anyone know of a way for Lanka to project turmoil or unrest on to enemy provinces? Fighting in Order-3, low-unrest dominion is a big setback... which is fine. But lacking spies, stealthy unrest-causing troops, or even a very good Rain of Toads caster, I can't see anyway to ready the enemy's provinces for your invasion. Chaos power being effectively a defensive bonus is head-scratchingly unthematic. Having something markata tricksters (5gp, 1 resource stealthy monkeys that cause .5 unrest each) would help solve the problem. Two or three atavi commanders leading them could sneak into a province the turn before you invade, racking up at least enough unrest to negate the Order-3 penalty.
Last edited by Shatner on Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
