The Gaming Den

Okay, I'm gonna pull up an EA game starring Niefelheim, EA Machaka, and the GLORIOUS nation of BURRITOS. Hang on.

Berytos has sacred "Colossi", powerful shamans recruitable outside forts, and bonus income and unit options along the coast.

"Magic: Blood, Air, Water, Earth, and some Astral"

Colossi Warriors are Gold 35, sacred, Enc 5.

22 HP, scale mail, 15 STR, 12s in most stats, mapmove 3.

Size 3 so you can cram 2 in a square, but they only have shortswords for a single Damage 20 attack per turn.

You don't have a good recruitable SC I can see, but Melqarts are a summon at Blood 6.

In other news, I'm going to copy something from Great Grey Shrike on the SA forums.

"Booster Changes in the Beta as far as I can tell (using the wiki as a baseline):

Air:
Winged Helmet: Cost from 25 air to 20 air.
Bag of Wind: Requirements from 4 air to 5 air.
Robe of the Magi: req from 5 air 5 blood to 6 air 6 blood.
Staff of Elemental Mastery: cost from A25/E25 to A20/E20.

Tome of High Power: Unchanged.

Astral:
Crystal Coin: unchanged
Starshine Skullcap: unchanged
Ring of Sorcery: cost from 40 astral to 55 astral, req. from 5 astral to 7 astral
Ring of Wizardry: cost from 65 astral to 70 astral, req. from 6 astral to 8 astral.

Tome of High Power: unchanged
Dimensional Rod: Unchanged
Forbidden Light: Cost 25 astral 25 fire to 30 astral 30 fire, req. from S4/F4 to S5/F5.
Atlas of Creation: NEW. Artifact. E5/A5 + 30 gems of each, gives +1 Earth, +1 Astral, +1 Nature. Also gives castable spell that reveals all sites in the province where the Atlas is located

Blood:

Blood thorn from 25 to 20 slaves.
Armor of Souls: Requirement from B5 to B6.
Armor of Twisting Thorns: Unchanged.
Brazen Vessel from B4 to B5, from 25 slaves to 30.
Robe of the Magi: req from 5 air 5 blood to 6 air 6 blood.

Flesh Ward: Requirement from B5 to B6.
Tome of the Lower Planes: Unchanged.
Black Book of Secrets: Unchanged.

Death:

Skull Staff: Unchanged.
Skull Face: From D4/25 gems to D5/30 gems.

Sun Slayer: Req. D5 to D6.
Flailing Hands: Unchanged.
Jade Mask: Cost from 65 to 55 death gems, path req from 6 to 7 death.
Scepter of Dark Regency: Death bonus +3 to Death Bonus +2. Req. from 5D to 6D.
Black Book of Secrets: Unchanged.

Earth:

Earth Boots: Unchanged.
Blood Stone: Unchanged - except for the free gem/turn into a temporary battle gem, which I think was fairly integral to the whole Blood Stone experience...
Staff of Elemental Mastery: cost from A25/E25 to A20/E20.

Pebble Skin Suit: Unchanged.
Boots of Antaeus: E4/25 gems to E5/30 gems.
Sword of Many Colors: Cost 25 earth gems to 20 earth gems
Atlas of Creation: NEW. Artifact. E5/A5 + 30 gems of each, gives +1 Earth, +1 Astral, +1 Nature. Also gives castable spell that reveals all sites in the province where the Atlas is located.

Fire:

Flame Helmet: Cost from 25 to 20.
Skull of Fire: Unchanged.
Staff of Elemental Mastery: cost from F25/W25 to F20/W20.

The Ruby Eye: Unchanged.
orbidden Light: Cost 25 astral 25 fire to 30 astral 30 fire, req. from S4/F4 to S5/F5.
The Staff From The Sun: NEW. Artifact. S5/F1 30 astral 5 fire. +1 fire magic, +1 fire ritual range, +5 fire resist, +1 temp. fire gem. 2 handed.

Nature:

Thistle Mace: Unchanged.
Treelord's Staff: Req from N5 to N6.
Moonvine Bracelet: Unchanged.
Armor of Twisting Thorns: Unchanged.

Atlas of Creation: NEW. Artifact. E5/A5 + 30 gems of each, gives +1 Earth, +1 Astral, +1 Nature. Also gives castable spell that reveals all sites in the province where the Atlas is located.

Water:

Robe of the Sea: Unchanged.
Water Bracelet: Unchanged.
Staff of Elemental Mastery: cost from F25/W25 to F20/W20.

Orb of Atlantis: Unchanged.

Holy:

Biggest change: I actually care about boosters for this now that there are thrones to capture and not all nations have native H3 priesting.

Immaculate Shield. NEW. Artifact. F3/15 gems, S2/10 gems, +1 Holy, +2 Awe, 23 prot, -1 def, 9 parry, 1 enc.
Sword of Injustice from 25 gems to 20 gems.
Sword of Justice unchanged.


OTHER new items:

A set of Unique 'Dawn' Equipment with lore that it belonged to Enkidu. Sword, Shield, Helmet, and Armor. This actually seems to really suck right now except MAYBE as an anti-demon fighter if the enemy is using ONLY demons. It just doesn't provide the necessary level of offense and crowd damage to really do anything against swarms of opponents.
A unique Helmet of Perfection - W3A3 and 15 gems of each, 25 Prot and Awe +5.

A construction 6 Bow for D3/15 gems and A1/5 gems that does 3x14 armor piercing and anything it kills resurrects as a soulless.
Construction 2 Helmet for N1/5 gems with Luck and Poison Resist but no armor.
Construction 6 E4/20 gem helmet that onbattlespells ironskin.
Construction 4 shield F2/10 gems with 23 prot, -1 def, 9 parry, 1 enc, 15 fire resist.
Construction 2 armor A1/W1 5 water gems 5 air gems, gives 13 prot, 1 enc, -1 def, +3 Magic Resist.
Construction 2 misc. E1/5 gems for +2 Magic Resist.
Construction 4 misc. E1/N1 5 gems of each for luck and shock resist +5.
Construction 4 misc. N1 to make a non giant unit giant sized (size 4).
Construction 4 misc. N5/30 gems to cure wearer of disease.

A bunch of 5 gem artifacts that boost ritual range.
A bunch of misc slots for messing with people's passive scouting info:
- at Constr 2, A2/N1 + 10 air and 5 nature to make 25 units invisible to scouting.
- At Constr 2, D1/N1 + 5 of each gem to make an army appear +50 units bigger.
- At Constr 4, A2 + 10 Air gems to make an army +75 units bigger.
- At Constr 6, A4 to make an army appear to all be the same unit type.
A bunch of cheap items that give a lot of stealth.
A bunch of items now give wound prevention (prevents afflictions apparantly)"

Niefel Giants have both Cold Power AND Cold Protection. Plus 5-point Fire Vulnerability. Heat really messes them up.

Fleur Bleu wrote:also looks like the chalice doesn't work on tarts anymore.
http://i.imgur.com/uSsfYB4.png?1

Apparently Gift of Health still works?

EA Machaka has some interesting units. It'll take a bit before I can check on terrain-based/non-fort recruits, though.

Note: Furs provide head armor now. Does it stack with helmets?

Avoraciopoctules wrote:Berytos has sacred "Colossi", powerful shamans recruitable outside forts, and bonus income and unit options along the coast.

"Magic: Blood, Air, Water, Earth, and some Astral"

Where do you see those shamans?
Ur has powerful shamans outside forts.

Berytos wants forts on coastal provinces for their second best mage.

Maybe I mixed them up. Yeah, you're right I think. Sombre's LP gave me preconceptions about the wrong nation.

Note that a lot of the "changes" in those magic items are actually just that item creation costs scale more slowly than they do in Dominions 3. A whole lot of the change log would simply vanish if you noted that the cost of an X4 item is 20 X gems, while the cost of an X5 item is 30 X gems (instead of 25 and 40 as in Dominions 3).

A lot of magic items are more difficult to make now. But I note that the staff of elemental mastery is not. So there's that.

-Username17

Enkidus are recruit outside of Forts, the Enkidu Bone Reader is Swamp only.
















This one Counts as an H3 priest for calling back his god. And the Pretender (or Disciple) of Ur doesnt loose Magic if he dies...




No Archer in the Forts only outside.

Actually I'm not shure if he dies and the pretender is only a disciple, if he loses Magic paths or not (or if he is the pretender if his disciples die, do they lose Magic paths?)...

I played part way into an MA Ulm game.

General observations:

1) I'm finding the mountain pass/rivers thing a bit confusing at first. The mountains at least offer a different color of line connecting it so you know something is going on, but I was never actually able to get anything through the mountain pass, regardless of the season. Are they only traversable for Mountain Survival troops? I had neutral temperature scales so there should have been heat in summer and cold in winter, in case that matters.

2) You don't get taxes from a province unless there is an unbroken line of friendly provinces to a castle. Raiding is now a bit less profitable, and the loss of a choke point can turn a swath of seized territory into so much lost income.

3) Lots of new abilities to be aware of. For example, the Great Sage pretender now grants +1 research to every other researcher in his province. For a key portion of the game, that's basically a free +1 to your magic scale.

4) Spies are a bigger deal now because you don't get chart intel without spies in the enemy capital.



Ulm observations

1) Ulm can recruit war dogs. Size-1, 7 gold, 7 resources, map move-3, 11 attack, 11 morale, 8 defense, 15 head and body protection (barding). Given their size and the fact that they're fairly well armored (by non-Ulmic standards) these aren't a terrible addition in case you want to swarm non-tramplers to death... any time you see size-1 you should pay attention because it's a big deal for a melee unit.

2) Siege Engineers are now +40 siege bonus (from +25). Sappers are unchanged, but map move-1. Didn't they used to be move-2? This means war dogs (move 3), black knight and all commanders (move 2), everything else (move 1).

3) I'm not seeing any new skills, equipment or stat changes to the Ulm troops. All are unchanged from Dom3.

4a) There don't appear to be any percentage forging bonuses like in Dom3. Instead, it's a straight linear reduction in the price (a Master Smith has a forge bonus of +2, the dwarven hammer gives a forge bonus of +2). This means forging for Ulm is actually more expensive than it used to be except when a Master Smith is forging a 5-gem item with a dwarven hammer (in Dom3 that'd be 2 gems, now it's 1). Forging Earth Boots? 6 gems, not 5. Forging a Dwarven Hammer? 11 gems, not 7.

4b) Forging reductions aren't applied separately against each path. It used to be a 50% forge discount meant that a Fire Brand (5 earth, 5 fire) would cost 2 fire and 2 earth. Now the discount is applied against the total gem cost, and distributed evenly across paths. Master Smith w/Dwarven Hammer forges a Fire Brand for 3 earth and 3 fire (forge bonus of +4 is split to be -2 gems for Earth and -2 gems for Fire). Forging a Charcoal Shield (10 earth, 5 fire) would cost 8 earth and 3 fire (vs the old 5 and 2).

5) The resource bonus from the smiths are also raw bonuses, not percentages. A province with 200 resources and 1 Master Smith (+10 resource bonus) will have 210 resources. If you have some low-resource province that you offers some high-resource indie you REALLY want to recruit, stacking a bunch of smiths in there will allow you to do that. If you have a bunch of high-resource troops you want to recruit more of (like Ulm does), each Master Smith will let you... upgrade a standard infantry to it's blacksteel counterpart. Since your cheapest non-hound infantry costs 24 resources, I am much less impressed with the resource bonus from smiths than I was.


So... it looks like Ulm is slightly (although only very slightly) better at churning out more Ulmish troops. They are, however, MUCH better at churning out low-to-mid-resource indie troops, provided you don't mind wasting the mage-actions moving your smiths there.

Also, Ulm is worse at forging. By a lot, actually.

Oh! But you get armored hounds...

sigh...

Shatner wrote:1) I'm finding the mountain pass/rivers thing a bit confusing at first. The mountains at least offer a different color of line connecting it so you know something is going on, but I was never actually able to get anything through the mountain pass, regardless of the season. Are they only traversable for Mountain Survival troops? I had neutral temperature scales so there should have been heat in summer and cold in winter, in case that matters.

Rivers can be crossed during winter, mountain passes in summer. I think. Flying works to cross at least rivers.

Shatner wrote:4a) There don't appear to be any percentage forging bonuses like in Dom3. Instead, it's a straight linear reduction in the price (a Master Smith has a forge bonus of +2, the dwarven hammer gives a forge bonus of +2). This means forging for Ulm is actually more expensive than it used to be except when a Master Smith is forging a 5-gem item with a dwarven hammer (in Dom3 that'd be 2 gems, now it's 1). Forging Earth Boots? 6 gems, not 5. Forging a Dwarven Hammer? 11 gems, not 7.

I saw percentage discounts on some sites. Maybe Steel Ovens still work the old way? There's a random global event that makes Construction cheaper, but I don't know how.

Oh, I figured out my river problem... it wasn't a river problem. A map move-2 unit can't move through a plains and end their turn in a forest, like they used to. You now have to have forest survival OR move into the plain and then move into the forest. Note that the messenger boots now give all four types of survival in addition to their old benefit.

The healing ability is now an automatic process. Healing-1 will simply heal 1 affliction at random from wherever it ends it's turn. I think afflictions still have a healing-difficulty, however, because I'd get that message sometimes and NOT see any afflictions healed. Or maybe it's just a bug. Not sure... You even get a nice little message saying "X afflictions were healed".

I took a quick peek at MA T'ien Ch'i and found them pretty much unchanged. I did discover that the Eunuch now has the Defense Organizer ability and the Tax Collector ability. The former raises the province defense of it's province by one each turn, to a maximum of 19 (note, does not stack with other Eunuchs, so it'll take 19 turns to go from 0pd to 19 through this ability). The latter means you can collect taxes without requiring an unbroken path to a castle. Cute, if minor, abilities.

Being in anything other than the default formation causes your troops to have -1 morale. The exception are certain specially trained troops (mostly Hoplites) which are able to fight in line formation without a moral penalty.

MA Marignon has Troubadours and they have seduction along with Spy.

MA Ermor is what LA Ermor was (no recruitable troops, auto-spawn undead, summon commanders with death gems).

MA Sceleria is what MA Ermor was. Now you can have Ermor vs. Sceleria vs. Pythium and see who can out-Roman the others.

MA Pelagia's capstone mage, the Triton King, has an ability called Pearl Cultivator(4), which lets them spend an action to turn 4 water gems into 4 astral pearls. Whether or not it's wise to use a unit that costs 395gp to convert water gems to astral pearls at double efficiency is another matter...

MA Asphodel is what LA Pangaea was. Now you can have Pangaea vs Asphodel and see whether hordes of vine-zombies or hordes of fan girls win.

Asphodel plays really differently from Late Pangaea. You don't get melee troops with awe, centaurs with lances, or any of that other LA military goodness. You do get a dominion that kills population and freespawns carrion. So you're a swarm faction from day 1, instead of starting as an elite faction and switching over in the late game.

EDIT: Re: Ulm, A Master Smith builds anywhere for 135 gold. With Summon Earthpower, he can throw down earth meld (now only 60f), blade wind, magma spells, and all the various Earth buffs, which are better and more numerous now. I think in the new regime that puts them in a good place when it comes to battle magic. Marshmasters are 245 gold, Bakemono Sorcerers are 400 gold slow recruits, T'ien Ch'i's capital mages are slow recruit and their recruit anywheres don't have good combat options. It's a very different world out there.

The only radically more efficient build-anywhere combat mages I've found so far in MA are Caelian Seraphs at 125.

I think MA Mictlan, Caelum, and Ulm will all be at least decent nations in Dom4 based on what I've seen so far.

Marignon played very effectively against the AI, and forest survival was really nice on Mictlan's infantry when I was playing Silent Seas.

Preliminary modding manual
http://jaffa.illwinter.com/dom4/manual_modding.pdf

Vanheim is screwed. Dwarves and Vanadrott are both slow-build cap-only.

Korwin wrote:Man still has cheap temples (and Monks, like Logrian Wise Man) dont need forts to recruit)

Now there's a potential research powerhouse. Man may very well be one of the few nations that will want Magic scales now; or perhaps even take a Sage to further magnify the dirt-cheap research advantage.

I kinda feel that their actual fighty mages still suck though.

===

Also, re: Ulm

Is the Master Smith Recruit everywhere even without a fort? The no-fort reruits are a pretty big deal.

That said, Summon Ogres is showing up in a lot of playthroughs as one of the key cheap early summons; which will really help Ulm out. If their troops are still wiping themselves out due to fatigue however they're still problematic :/

Ulm's war dogs are actually really good for an undisciplined unit. Fairly cheap to mass, too. The skirmish foundation tightens up when they actually get into melee, and that six attacks per round is nice.