The Gaming Den

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I may need to roll twice more. Or you resolve this some other way before I dig out the d6s and sketchy laptop camera again.

Didn't I just explain this? There is no reason to take out a camera. None. Your picture means nothing. Just tell us the result, or make it up, those are equally as trustable as you taking a picture.

All right, back from throwing myself into a pool of heated water and ready to generate some random numbers.

Kaelik wrote:Av... that's dumb.

Like, really dumb.

You are playing in the game, you are not impartial, and posting a screen shot of some dice on a sheet of paper doesn't mean anything, because you could have just put them there.

Kaelik wrote:Didn't I just explain this? There is no reason to take out a camera. None. Your picture means nothing. Just tell us the result, or make it up, those are equally as trustable as you taking a picture.

Sorry dude, missed your first post. You are right. The fact that I am playing in the game is almost as likely to create potential bias as the fact that I spend a bunch of time chattering on the phone with another of the players in the game. Cheating could be so easy that I could quite conceivably do it accidentally. And the pictures mean nothing proof-wise.

But you overlooked one key thing. Taking pictures with my lame laptop camera and laughing at the poor quality and mirrored image is fun. I get to share my line paper with boxes drawn on it in a different shade of blue and show off my quasi-shmancy black-and-gold dice. Then I get to look for the opportunity to one-up myself with something zanier next time I take a picture. Speaking of which:

Akula wrote:Why does he hate SC pretenders so much though?

And I guess I'm in unless we get more players.

My nation preferences:

Abbysia
Vanheim
Ry'leh

I also think that including the worthy heros mod might not be hugely objectionable. Most heros in the base game aren't worth the time, I like having heros that can kinda matter to my nation.

As far as setting go, I agree with everything Frank posted last page. With the caveat that I want commander renaming enabled.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Is it too late to get in?

Preferences:

• Marignon
• Ashdod
• Vanheim

• Existing selections
  Frank - Player 1: Choice II - Pangaea
  Av - Player 2: Choice I - Arcoscephale
  namehere - Player 3: Choice II - R'lyeh
  Orca - Player 4: Choice III - Man
  Akula - Player 5: Choice II - Vanheim
  angelfromanotherpin - Player 6: Choice III - Vanheim

Let's roll. Since the paper got recycled, I'm just grabbing 2d6 off the table at random and snapping a pic. The computer screen gets less shaken up that way.



R'lyeh is taken



Vanheim and... dammit


There we go. Choice 2 and Choice 2 means Ashdod up in the hizzouse if I remember correctly. Put on a silly enough hat and the dice will surely relent.

So, if I am not mistaken, we now have:
- Frank - Player 1: Choice II - Pangaea
- Av - Player 2: Choice I - Arcoscephale
- namehere - Player 3: Choice II - R'lyeh
- Orca - Player 4: Choice III - Man
- Akula - Player 5: Choice II - Vanheim
- angelfromanotherpin - Player 6: Choice III - Ashdod

As a reminder, please send your 2h pretender files to dom3pbemav@lavabit.com. The pretender file making should be accessible from the main menu under "tools" if I remember correctly.
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Anything cool Arco can do in MA? If Akula's correct about my cap-only recruits, I should get heaps-o astral mages. Those guys are good at being a jerk nation and doing psychic assassinations, but I don't remember much else.

Best mindhunters in the game bar none? Healer priests and S3 minimum mages mean any upfront cost to hunt of 7 pearls for every mage, they can also forge both runesmashers and void eyes+spell foci. I would take a good scales rainbow with some D and enough N and W to summon Naiads. Maybe splashing E3 to get a dwarven hammer out early. You have good remote searching and just need to prime the pump to get started on forging. But you want Alteration early. Because you need to plan on leaning on your elephants if a rush comes your way (or you rush someone else) and lucky, ethereal elephants are much more effective. I would make the god awake so you can summon thugs with the gems you scrape up, because you have no recruitable ones. Then clam like a bastard. Because that is your late game.

I am perfectly content with that map.

I wouldn't recommend a Pretender SC anyway. They aid in early game expansion, but that's it. And lots of nations don't really have expansion issues anyway - such as Midgard with its Skinshifters.

And some do have expansion issues but nutcase magic.

And you can often leverage the extra 6-20 provinces that an awake SC can give you into more gems, more gold, and more power. An SC also acts as a nice deterrent in early warfare.

Deterence is certainly something that would be very good for the early game. But even for nations with good national mages, I'm still a bit leery with using a non-Rainbow.

From what I've seen (which admittedly is not much), having lots of gems of any type is the key to powering your end game. Having a Rainbow out and searching gems lets you get those sites producing early, so you can have a fairly big stockpile down the road. Moreover, since your Rainbow is good at all magic (and you can boost specific types with the right items), you don't really have to worry what kind of sites you find - you'll always have something deadly to cast.

OTOH, if you rely on national mages, you'll have to hope that you get lucky and get the right kind of site gems for your nationals.

Essentially, I think the game is primarily about switching as fast as possible from a gold-based economy to a gem-based one. Not having an SC Pretender may give you fewer provinces during early expansion, but a Rainbow SC lets you start producing gems very early, which I think is ultimately more important.

On the other hand, I was very charmed by the forging system, and you can't really forge well unless you have a Rainbow, so I may be a bit biased .

Rainbows are great, and if you know you will not be rushed, or have the tools to fight off a rush while expanding comfortably, you certainly have good reason to take one. There are exceptions however.

Really, two cases come to mind; shit military and weak mages. If you cannot take that first province without an awake SC, you need an awake SC. This really happens because your army is, on average, weaker than indies or hard to mass. Mages that have many paths, but low skill, scream for a powerful astral god. Boosters generally will get them what they need, and with a RoW, those boosters are easier to make.

Then you have the edge case. Blessings, everyone has sacreds, but some are better than others. Some merit a pretender that does nothing to help diversity. Sometimes they are all a nation has got. But you can game a *lot* of early or midgame power with the right bless.

The point of a pretender is to put you in a dominant position. While it is nice to have a pretender that allows you to avoid being shafted, that will not win the game for you. You need a pretender that can make your nation's strengths more formidable. Or at least covers for a weakness you know exists, not one you think could exist.

You really can never make the transition from gold to gems fully. The exception is blood summons and magic, as those are somewhat reliable.

There are a number of nations that can make the transition to a gold-free lifestyle - to the point of voluntarily shutting off the Sun so that gold does not happen any more. Ashen Empire and Lanka are so biased towards that strategy that it mentions it in their unit flavor text, but there are a handful of other nations that can pull it off to one degree or another.

Still, the relatively small number of nations that can live without gold shows how important a resource it is even in the end game. Indeed, shutting off the river of money is one of the premier endgame strategies.

-Username17

Having been totally charmed by this, I'm totally going to keep a game journal. If other people want to, we could compare notes for the lulz when the curtain comes down.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Having been totally charmed by this, I'm totally going to keep a game journal. If other people want to, we could compare notes for the lulz when the curtain comes down.

I'm down with that. I was planing on saving the .trn files and writing up every five turns on some schedule. (Presumably safely behind the game, though if I get defeated before turn 20 I would start posting then.)

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Having been totally charmed by this, I'm totally going to keep a game journal. If other people want to, we could compare notes for the lulz when the curtain comes down.

I love you so much right now.

Akula wrote:Really, two cases come to mind; shit military and weak mages. If you cannot take that first province without an awake SC, you need an awake SC. This really happens because your army is, on average, weaker than indies or hard to mass. Mages that have many paths, but low skill, scream for a powerful astral god. Boosters generally will get them what they need, and with a RoW, those boosters are easier to make.

Here's a thing I'd like to ask though: Does Ulm really have shit military?

Stat-wise they seem decent enough.

Also, why would you go for high Astral for a diverse magic country.

Zinegata wrote:Here's a thing I'd like to ask though: Does Ulm really have shit military?

Stat-wise they seem decent enough.

They cost heaps-o resources, so they are hard to mass. Try comparing three turns of capital recruitment of them vs. the Elite Slave Warriors of C'tis (which also have mapmove 2 and 2-3 attacks if I remember right).

As far as I can tell, MA Ulm has no ability to respond to shit: It can't quickly build units, it can't quickly redeploy the ones it has, and it's suck at magic which might help with either.

I'm sure their basic concept could probably be made viable, but they really need a certain amount of conceptual upgrading. Instead of poor lunkies staggering under the weight of extra-heavy nonsense, they need to be making 16th-century-style thin but super-well designed stuff.

How about LA Ulm with the Rangers? Or does LA just suck ass?

Their problems are numerous:

• An Ulm unit is expensive. Not in gold, but in resources. You simply cannot make a large number of them, even at productivity 3.
• An Ulm unit does not hit very hard. There is nothing wrong with hammers and morningstars exactly, it's just that these guys have an attack skill of 10 and a strength of 11. That's no better than an unwashed independent tribesman. Their weapons don't cut through powerful armor and they don't hit very often. It's not unusual to have a line of Ulm Infantrymen take their swings and have no one die.
• Ulm units cannot fight for very long. With encumbrance values of six to nine, Ulm Infantry has to end the fight fast or they'll start passing out and getting ganked by daggers.
• Ulm units aren't actually all that tough. They walk in with protections of 17 or more, but that's not really that special. Jotun Spearmen have that and a bag of chips (the bag of chips in this case is represented by having 30 hit points instead of 12). When Bandar Log blesses their White Ones, those have a Protection of 17 as well (and regenerate). Coupled with an abysmal defense skill and movement rate, Ulm soldiers actually get torn to pieces by anything that seems like it is intended to be used against hard targets - from Jotun Swords on down to crossbows.
• Ulmites are inherently vulnerable to magic. Everyone else blessed with terribad magicians walks in with high MR. But Ulmites are only slightly more mentally resilient than an animal.
• Ulm's army is very one dimensional. It is entirely composed of guys in moderately heavy armor who are otherwise not particularly exceptional who lumber towards you slowly. Anything that can handle that, whether through fatigue exploits like Curse of Stones/Grip of Winter, artillery bombardment like Falling Fires, Fear Spamming, or even just massed Crossbows/Longbows will beat your armies. Not just one army, but every army you have ever built or can ever build.
• Ulm's stuff isn't even particularly synergistic. Their only archery unit is so inaccurate and so good at penetrating armor that you don't want to shoot it into melee even with your admittedly well armored troops. Yes, you can keep a line standing for a while, but so what? It's not like you have Javeliners or archers or even especially impressive battle mages.

The long and the short of it is that Ulm's only real talent is that they can keep butting chests with enemy troops for a long time. But the thing is, they don't cause fear, they aren't fast, and their troops don't have a lot of endurance. If the enemy breaks, the enemy gets away. If Ulm breaks, they get slaughtered. If the battle continues for more than 10 turns, the forward Ulm troopers get too fatigued to fight and they get torn apart.

There are a lot of countries that would love to get Ulm's black plate infantryman with a hammer and a tower shield. But... that's just a unit. It's an offensively anemic arrow catcher. It has its uses, but it's not a complete army. It's not a complete anything. If you threw it into another nation, you'd only build a couple to run as a forward screen against enemies who got archers in their PD or who routinely forgot to script their archery units. And no, the Black Knights do not kiss it and make it better.

-Username17

Frank shot me an email that you were setting up a game. I'd come in as Mictlan or Bandar Log if yous till have slots.

A bigger map is always a possibility. Flip a coin for yo nation and send yo 2h file in.

Given Avor's plans, I'm suddenly glad i picked an astral nation. Mmm, feebleminded cap-only mages.

EDIT: on the other hand, I am in desperate need of a way to counter Pangea. That is going to hurt

EDIT EDIT: so, are we including the worthy heros mod mentioned earlier?

name_here wrote:Given Avor's plans, I'm suddenly glad i picked an astral nation. Mmm, feebleminded cap-only mages.

EDIT: on the other hand, I am in desperate need of a way to counter Pangea. That is going to hurt,

Which plans? The Mictlan strategy of setting all my gems on fire to bribe people into not attacking me with magic items and not blessing my jaguar warriors or the Arcoscephale scheme where I flail around trying to solicit a strategy from others that doesn't involve psychically assassinating enemy commanders and/or feeling like one of the "jerk nations".

Because both of those feel pretty to me. Currently, I'm trying to figure out whether communions will be worth the trouble setting up and whether I can get away with just using my S3+ mages as evokers or something in the early to mid game. Maybe a rainbow mage going into battle with a handful of other dudes in the early game to get that sweet, sweet, veterancy bonus to research would be worthwhile.
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EDIT:

EDIT EDIT: so, are we including the worthy heros mod mentioned earlier?

We could, but I'm inclined not to bother with mods in our first game. Anyone else have an opinion? I count 2 votes for WH.

I was talking about the mind hunt plan. Also, you are a communion nation with human infantry in archaic armor and normal elephants. Communion all the way. You're much better at it than either other arco, but not quite so good as T'ien.

Yeah, that does sound like it could be pretty effective. I'm looking at my normal recruitables and thinking that I'll try grouping my sacred infantry with elephants (morale boost) for initial expansion. Once things stabilize, I'll start checking out this "half-reversal evocation communion" business some people on the Shrapnel forums seem so into. Get a baseline of 2 or so in various magical paths, maybe see if there's any nifty astral goons I can summon. My prospects for summoned prophets are less delicious than Mictlan's but I could still end up with something amusing and/or effective.

I vote against Worthy Heroes, but it's certainly not a deal-breaker.

Been running a test single player game. DIE GIANTS DIE!

ahem, sorry.

I'd like to squeeze in if I could.

Disclaimer: I am terrible at Dominions 3. I only just worked out today that you could buy provience defence forces, I don't understand how summons work (really) and I've never played MP.

So with that in mind I was wondering if I could use the wisdom of the crowd to select a race that is not shitty, and likely to be successful (as possible). Also avoids accusations that I've deliberately selecting a counter race.

The races left that no-one else have selected (with a few omissions, mostly on the grounds that frank said they were shit) are:


* Ermor (-)

* Pythium (+)

* Marignon (-)

* Tei Chien (-)

* Agartha (-)

* Abysia (+)

* Caelum (?)

* C'tis (+)

* Shinuyama: (+)

* Atlantis: (?)