I've played Pyth a bit in singleplayer so I know about the gladiatiors, I just found it strange that you'd spammed them in that fort and wasn't sure if you'd invested in a flying ship.
My own thugs and supercombatants should be with you in a few turns.
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If y'all want to check out some of the various mods here is a download page with most of them:
http://www.proactiveapathy.com/dom3/mods/mods.html
We could use Forbidden Friendship (combination AwesomeGods, AwesomeEndgame and CBM) if we really want to change things up. There are some patchnotes at the top of the mod files, but I don't think they go back all the way.
To install a mod just copy the files from the download into the mods directory (in the same folder as the savedgames directory) and then choose to enable it from preferences->mod preferences. Mods come into effect at pretender creation so any previous games will not be touched and you can turn them off again without messing up your modded games.
I wouldn't mind something insane like a 2v2v2v2 with 6-8 ai spacing us out using Forbidden Friendship or whatever the latest Ninja-Debugger compilation pack is (awesome-mods always sound better than CBM in LPs). We could even make our own magical custom map, and to prevent the teams being too overpowered do race selection from a hat. And also save me from having to redraw the thing for my personal, annotated copy.
... this is really just an excuse to say I've spent three hours on a ten mile journey and am thus in no fit state to submit my turn tonight. I've got most of the recruitment done and half the orders, but the rituals, equipement and other half of the orders require more brainpower than I can muster tonight. Should be in fairly early tomorrow night I hope.
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OK so wow:
In the North, that was one hell of a battle. The attack ALMOST worked. It was a coin toss on the morale with both of us sustaining so many losses and I think the RNG went easy on me. I never get to use Orb Lightning myself because nobody comes close enough to my vandrotts, and it turns out to be even more hideously effective than my first experiments indicated. Fortunately I'd planned for the Draconians and scripted storm to prevent too many distractions getting into the back whilst the bless/orb spam occured. I'll need a cunning plan to kill all those mages, I guess.
In the South, again that ALMOST worked. The Angel of Fury was doing a real number on individual units but fortunately only landed in the middle of summon spam. With the Gladiators I know you have running around (I saw you raise a new bunch in the Yellow Mountains earlier, then they disappeared - I presumed south as part of the trap you tried this turn, but they didn't turn up; was there a battle event that took them away from you?) it probably would have worked. Still, the Fury wasn't quite ready to take on entire armies yet and my own SuperCombatants just started popping up this turn.
The immortal Wraith Lords don't count, they're busy eating Man (which is a bad idea for various reasons, but we'll see how well it works out in the end).
AI R'lyeh is going to annoy me but I should have enough gold after all these losses to prepare some proper PD to keep him out of the game now.
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Those orb mages all cast eagle eye and increased their air level (courtesy of the storm spell I knew you'd cast to counter my archers.)
I killed Rain of Heaven. I'm not sure that I get a head to mount for this one, though...
PS that is a lot of Hydras. Please hold and the god of ROCK will be with you shortly. Love, AIRWOLF.
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Urgh - another terrible turn for my troops. I really don't have the time to learn this game properly. I make what i think are good tactical decisions and they just don't work. The battle orders system appears woeful. For example, my flying guys were supposed to get stuck in to your magic dudes null, but your gargoyles got to me before they took off. I didn't know that would happen. Kinda ruined my whole strategy there. The game just never gives you enough information to figure these things out on your own without diving headifrst into arcance forums somewhere. The battles are awful in this, I just can't make my guys do the right thing. I don't mind giving the orders in advance, there just doesn't seem to be enough orders, or you can't force your own orders through. Too many times my great counter has just not appeared to work at all, whilst your guys seem to be hitting exactly the right person at will. Can you target individuals? Because my mages are getting locked far too frequently.
Plus the fact that those earth elementals are assassinating my mages and i have no answer to that. Apparently even if i set them all to magic duel whatever appears, that doesn't work. I'm pretty close to giving up. All my strategies have failed and I just don't have the time or the patience to learn why, there's too many options in the system for me to manage it all, and none of my cool stuff ever works. The randomness of the battles is really killing the game for me, which is a shame after so long in the game. :-(.
Benevolent dictator of the RPS Blood Bowl Divisions of Death - Join us!
Attack Rear requires you to pass morale checks for every unit you pass. I keep a unit of troops near the back in most battles specifically to draw out such attempts in the event of a successful series of checks as you can only target units. You can't target commanders explicitly without cheating (i.e. copying unique orders from special, random event units you have to use a hell of a lot of specialised magic to capture).
The defender moves first and I like to cast storm as soon as my troops have moved, as that prevents enemy fliers from moving.
The Earth Elementals have no magic and thus can't be harmed by magic duel, which only works on enemy mages with astral magic. You could script returning, which would teleport them out of the assassination and back to your cap, but otherwise you're kind of out of luck, as I can't remember any good spells for killing elementals. Maybe a lucky paralysis? Size six summons/bodyguards?
I really want to play another game after this, maybe a team-based one would work better so we can discuss strategies more freely?
(Now to dive into the turn myself.)
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A team game sounds like it could be good.
Right, bloody earth elementals are the perfect counter to me then. Hmm. There must be another counter-spell somewhere. There's one spell somewhere that is very bad for magical beings, I'm sure. I'm not sure I've unlocked it though. There's just too much for me to track. I think it is a game that would benefit from having a little bit more focus, rather than a mix of 500 different spells. Or just a bit more transparency about how they ACTUALLY work.
It IS my first ever game, and I've done better than expected, but there isn't enough tactics in it for me to feel like I'm actually making a difference. If I had the time to learn everything in the game maybe it'd seem better, but hings like morale check for attacking rear is... just deliberately obscure :-). And I swore I had left some guys back for your gargoyles to feed on this time, but obviously not. I'm just being grumpy, I guess, as I'm getting thoroughly kicked now and can't come up with a counter (I don't have time to find one by trawling forums, either). I think I'll be done in 2 more turns without some luck in a battle. And that seems to hard to come by.
Benevolent dictator of the RPS Blood Bowl Divisions of Death - Join us!
I think you've done fantastically Groovy. I'm not 100% but I think the "ward" shields should stop most of the attacks against the province they are cast in. I believe that should stop the spell Earth Attack (Although I could well be wrong perhaps Nullk knows best as our resident expert) (I double checked and I mean the "Dome" spells which you hit at enchantment 6)
Steam: Sarigs Origin: Sarisan
Waraura
Wards/Domes might work, but I'm not sure if they'll stop elementals as I've never tried it myself. They have a high chance of stopping stuff like Fires from Afar (by the way, my guy who was casting it made it into the hall of fame somehow).
However, Wards/Domes do not stop 100% of spells, and they fizzle out after being pounded on enough. I can send four or five elementals your way each turn and I'll shortly have my third elemental royal up and running, with Tartarians only two turns away.
At least you've made it to second place, Groovy. Think of poor Bandar Log!
Mumble :: Thread :: Click to Join
bleagle.jpg
Also you could assign your mages body guards if you have enough troops sitting about that can take an elemental and feel like your life doesn't have enough micromanagement in it already.
You've a cap of 5 bodyguards in the "mini" battle, a ring of warning doubles that.
On the topic of a new, modded game I think the biggest change i'd like to see would be to strip all of the gem producing sites barring your national starting ones and swap the generation method to something that all mages have as an option to do.
Option - generate gems, and the mage that used it would get a gem for each actual level in a magic path they had (excluding item granted increases)
It'd remove all of the randomness and luck involved in site searching and hoping what you need is there - In noob reloaded I found just about nothing and I searched everywhere I owned with all the paths I could but in my current game i'm rolling around in gems.
With the ability to make your own gems spells will fly thicker which I reckon is probably a good thing and yet it's still a sacrifice since it takes them away from other activities.
Ironically that's the opposite stance to most vets - who prefer to remove gemgens and other dependable incomes to restrict optimal pathing and make contesting territory important.
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Perhaps when i've played more I might see things that'll change my mind but at the moment I'm actually trying to optimal path on spell research a̶n̶d̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶d̶u̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶e̶n̶d̶a̶n̶c̶y̶.̶
I'm looking at costs, getting access to low level stuff and skipping it or using minimal amounts of it due to having little gem stock and needing to save what I do have to both build the items I need to cast higher level spells and stockpiling to afford their cost.
Knowing I've an increasing ability to generate gems via having more mages frees me to cast lower level spells more often, yet you've still got to balance buying mages against buying troops since they'll still just die on their own.
EDIT:
I'm wrong there people would still optimal path, but I'd still like to see a way to increase the utility of the lower levels and reduce the sheer luck factor of the sites to make things more tactical.
Last edited by Jarvis; 31-07-2012 at 08:21 PM.
I think most of the mods you will find try to address the same issue by making more stuff viable. So if you get stuck with only water gems, great make a bunch of kraken and their crazy cross-paths will help you break into other schools. If you have a ton of fire gems, summon the new fancy zmey and start raiding. You still might end up with crappy sites, but hopefully whatever you do get will let you do something and maybe break into a path you didn't have access to previously.
The main issue seems to be that the relative cost of high level vs low level spells is heavily weighted toward the high level ones. Why summon a bunch of shades when you can wait a few months and start summoning dead gods?
By the way Nulkigan are you still doing your AAR for this game.
I stopped around turn 15 or so when I moved, as I didn't have enough spare time to continue and I'd been doing it straight into a blog. There was a fair amount of content including speculations on what all your builds were so it might still be an interesting read after I've proofed it a little.
I'm half-heartedly planning on putting together a summary gif of about ~60 frames once Groovy and yourself have finally surrendered. I know all my province captures from turn 0 (and we have an archive of all the turns) so THE RED TIDE can be animated quite well. And I can finally point out all my conj/ench/const/blood druid/iron sage sites.
It'll take me at least another three or four turns to beat enough shades of hell out of R'lyeh to land troops on your last island (boats have a range of one). However, I summoned my first Tart this turn so I guess the fat lady is warming up those chords...
Mumble :: Thread :: Click to Join
Actually it looks like I only wrote nine turns up, guessed a lot of pretenders incorrectly, and forgot to proof anything. So if you're really that interested in my early-game craziness you can look at this now I guess.
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