The Gaming Den

Ikeren wrote:Cool. Also, I bought the game through Desura...I'd better never lose this laptop, eh?

If you can discover your key, you can just enter it into Steam. I did that because I didn't want to mess with Desura for patches even though I bought it there.

Yeah, I'll do that now so I don't ever lose it.

Aaaaaand Desura is apparently back again. For how long? Who knows.

I really wish Illwinter would just get their own forums.

Dominions got a new update with a new nation for the Middle Age... Ys, Morgen Queens. Essentially an Underwater elf nation with Merrow and coastal humans, they get insane Cap-only amphibious sacred cavalry that costs 120 gold and 53 resources each...

Yeah, the glam-cav have Sailing, which allows them to tag along with their glam-cav commanders, who are only about to take a single size-3 unit (i.e. themselves) across the water. That's novel.

The UW footsoldiers are basically off-brand atlantians (extra hp, extra strength, 50% darkvision, poor precision) who cost a bit extra. With a coastal fort, they can recruit very cost-effective Marverni infantry, sacred S1E1H1 + 1xWESN, and dirt cheap, sacred Swanherds (really) which can summon two chaff swan a turn. Their top-tier mage is an A3W2E1H2 + 1.1xAEFW glamour caster.

An interesting nation, though I have little idea how to use them effectively. All their mages are sacred and their glam-cav can kick plenty of ass, but the gold and resource costs for this nation (cavalry especially) are really, really high.

Lots and lots of communion potential, though.

Strangely for an elfish nation they don't get a recruit-anywhere cavalry mage commander. In fact they are very cap-central in that regard, with no A2 recruit anywhere at all for their big air cap-only mages to boost. No T-strike spam for these guys!

Goddammit, the Fire Breath on those things is AoE 1. They basically come pre-built with a slotless Firebrand.

There's a bunch of tinkering with costs in other nations too. Vanara infantry drops from 10 to 9 gold for example.

Vanheres and Wot5E got price increases though. Is 35 gold really worth it for a lightly armored non-glamour humie?

K wrote:Goddammit, the Fire Breath on those things is AoE 1. They basically come pre-built with a slotless Firebrand.

It's only 6 AP damage though. In practice it makes them a terror against light troops, taking out a square each, but against armored troops it drops off fast. Some commanders ride Morvarc'h too, so they get the attack for free on top of whatever the rider is carrying.

It's a real pity everything nice is cap only though.

How they play is you find some way to weld your glamour heavy cavalry to your marverni heavy infantry and druids-lite, and use your vanadrott/ri-alike morgen sorceresses to drop fog warriors on the whole shemozzle. That said, someone was doing some theorycrafting, and it looks like they don't match up great UW. Weirdly, they kinda want someone else to rule the waves while they rule the land from a tiny part of the water. Spawning in a puddle is actually a really good thing for them.

And 35 gold is really worth it for a wot5e, at least for TC. The problem though is that the nation is not good enough to justify making one of it's major strong points weaker. Vanheim also, to a lesser extent. I also don't like the removal of the interesting trope of 'expensive, weak nation shored up by one amazing sacred' which helps make them dissimilar to others. And is the specific type of nation targeted by these changes.

Eeerrr, TC is neither weak nor expensive. They've got 10G composite bows in EA and solid medium infantry to hold the line, then flying super mages and lots of national summons. Besides Wot5E are one of the easiest sacreds to counter since they're shieldless squishy humies on foot. Aka insert arrows in their faces, or just lots of attacks in melee. They're good for expansion but against other nations I've seen non-sacred infantry like steel maidens and atlantean deep ones rip them apart.

Their infantry are either slow and resource heavy for how well they hold the line, or poorly armoured for mm2 infantry. They also have to choose between a shield and ever doing damage at all. The composite bows aren't crossbows, they do a shortbow job a bit better for a lot more resources than a 4r indie archer, which makes massing them a pain.

Shortbow arrows will kill wot5e - if you don't arrow bait, which you should, always, be doing. Also if you don't buff them. With a w9 bless - the most common bless for wot5e - steel maidens will not kill them. Neither will deep one spearmen. Note that these two units are both so strong they are considered national strengths.

Those same units will absolutely tear apart non-wot5e TC troops. A steel maiden will kill 3, 4 TC troops before going down, more if buffed (with say, the easily researched and cast Strength of Giants). So will most other stuff players use. The mages that are good are cap only and have weak path depth, meaning they should be used sparingly and with a communion and research to support their use. If you lose a battle with say, 6 celestial masters there, that's a year's lost production. And given their paths, they are not more effective than 6 vanjarls or stormcallers or sidhe lords. Less effective, possibly.

Dominions 4 is on sale for under $10 at Gamersgate, with a key you can use on Steam:

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DOM4TA/dom ... -ascension

Not sure if this is exactly the right place to bring it up, but people are trying to set up an intercommunity team game over here if a couple'a you fvckers want to join in and represent the den.

More confidently on topic: Agartha got a bit of a boost in the last patch. Pale One troops of every variety got their gold cost reduced by 1, which is pretty nice, but the sacreds, most importantly the EA recruit anywhere Ancient Ones, got a more substantial cost decrease of 10 gold, iirc, so Blood/Nature bless shenanigans aren't nearly as dumb as they used to be. 48 decently armored hp for 40 gold at half upkeep and sporting blood vengeance, above average mr and morale, and 5 regen per round solves a lot of problems Agartha can have before they can mass summons and get good battle magic. Never really goes out of style, either, I'd say.

I guess being King of the Punching Bags means you're still a king.

I'll join the community game as a tgd member, since I used to post here way fucking back, if people want. I'm sorta okay at dom4, have won some games of it etc.

Balance mods are gross.

I must admit I'm surprised that they went with Summod for an inter-community event like this. If you are trying to get as many people on board as possible you want it to be as inclusive as possible, and modded games are already in a minority.

I get the feeling /domg/ are trying to push it into being a new CBM, but with Dom4 having less obvious big balance concerns than Dom3 I don't see it getting the same traction.

Yes, it's a glorified push of the mod. I've seen some dudes starting games with that mod explicitly claiming they wanted people to swallow and like it.

The host, from the name style, stating how many games they've adminned etc, is from /domg/.

Summod is seen as 'the only choice for competitive games' there. Overall, all it really does is make the game better for people with more experience with summod, as tracking all the minor changes is annoying, and doesn't really leave many nations that much better off, just needing to be doing different things.

CBM was ubiquitous because it was effectively a full-conversion mod. It added so much stuff it was like playing a different game in the same genre (the genre of grand strategy fantasy tbs that only dominions really occupies), and that different game was more fun, especially for vets and in the endgame.

I'll still play it if people want though, just because i'm enjoying the disciples game i'm currently in. Discord hits the threshold of ease of organization where I have a lot of fun just setting things up as a team.

1-Capture throne province in great strategic position.
2-Start building fort in said province.
3-"A band of murderhobos heroes decided to liberate this place of your oppressive rule!"
4-FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Oh, and the liberating heroes now have a griphon rider with big protection and 27 defense and Fear 15 that seems to also have the attack commanders script.

At least I hadn't set up a lab or temple there yet.

Bogus and his pals are a great feature of dominions and are based on the game designer's dnd group. When you kill them, you can recover some of their gear, and by charming or hellbinding them, you can copy their 'attack commander' orders (although this is considered a faux pas in online play).

Killing them is a matter of bringing enough damage to kill bogus, and enough warm bodies to drag down the dark knight.

So no interest in the summod disciples game?

I believe one of the recent patches mentioned that the commander targeting script copying is no longer possible.

Curious about what kind of homebrew they used to make a troll mage viable in TT.

No interest in learning hundreds of changes to have any shot at victory.