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[Frumple]

SPEAKING OF AAR, ahahahahahaha!

Have a thing. It's a zip file with three .html files, which contain a near-total* compilation of the PMs passed around our team during this game. Fair warning, it's kinda' lengthy -- ~3.5 megs of .html once unzipped (only ~.4 zipped up, so the download itself should be painless), split between a pre-game and two game PM threads. Counting extra stuff (poster names, reply buttons, quotes, sigs and whatnot), it comes out to 530 pages and 219,468 words in libreoffice. Well, all that before EA helpfully pointed out I was missing a bit, so now there's an extra file and more stuff.

... we apparently wrote a novel between the three of us >_>

I don't think I've seen something like this for a Dominions game before, and given that this whole thing was originally something of a new player's game, I figured there might be someone involved (and probably folks that weren't, too) that would be interested in seeing how we did our communication and planning and whatnot. And if nothing else, boggle at the monolithic majesty that is the burgeoning girth of the total communication of one team involved in a ~six months long Dominions disciple game.

*I didn't think to nab permission from the other folks we talked to to repost what they PMed, so they're (mostly -- I think one or two slipped through, so my apologies for that) not included, though I do have the diplo stuff I saw saved if the folks involved are alright with them being posted.

Late game was pretty hard for me as Jotun. I never managed to reasearch anything else than blood to a serious level. Having no real mages under 200 gold and no sacred mage hurts. And the only real mage outside the capital are slow to recruit.

Vaetti hags are totally real mages

Spoiler: Vaetti hag gushing (click to show/hide)

... seriously, for their cost they're actually pretty good. 40g for 3 research (more, with y'alls magic scales) isn't terrible and 1 (S/D/N/B) is pretty useful -- they're about as cost efficient researchers than R'lyeh's starkids, which was the most gold efficient research R'lyeh had (at least unless a game lasts 120 turns or something ridiculous like that). Actually, crunching the numbers at it, the goblin hags are Jotun's most cost efficient researcher (13, vs 15 (gygs) and 17 (skratti)), before randoms -- randoms would bring gygs either on par or slightly ahead, I think, but skratti would still be way behind cost wise -- which is... odd, but okay.

Then you can bring along a banner of the northern lights (or bring along a 2S gyg set to power of stars/northern lights/pass out) and have all those 1/4th 1S be 2S (stellar cascades!), pass around skull staffs for raise dead spam (or just have the huge hoard of D random ones do plain skelliespam) or do ruinous things to morale and/or fatigue with a dozen frighten/ghost grip spammers, throw imps everywhere with the blood randoms (or just have 'em summoning scout imps or whatever), do some alright buffing and debuffing with the nature random... there's a good handful of N1 spells that are darn solid en masse... all sorts of stuff, basically. Even a 1X caster can be frisky when there's twenty t'thirty of 'em, especially when half of 'em are communion capable via either astral or blood.

They are flimsy and old, but when you can get 5-6 of them for every giant caster you get, that's... not too bad. Doubly so if you can nab Gift of Health.

And yeah, if I haven't said it yet, I had a blast playing with y'all, team mates and opponents alike.

[E. Albright]

Ha! And unsurprisingly, all conversation is stopped by Frumple's Great Wall of Text!

But anywhey, it was a good game, and I really enjoyed playing with everyone. As the aforementioned Great Wall suggests, it was a higher commitment game than a non-disciple game, but still, I think this may have been my favorite MP Dominions game to date. Yes, out of all seven of them. I've always really enjoyed the collaborative and diplomatic aspects of Dominions - as is probably obvious to people who have been in games with me - so this just amplified that markedly. I'd definitely play disciple matches in the future, and honestly think I'd prefer them - a lot of the fun was scheming, plotting, and stratergizing with my teammates, so the extra engagement it took didn't feel like a burden at all.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Personally I'm a bit weary of the issues brought about by the generally higher playercount. Seems you had some too unless I'm mixing my Bay12 threads.

I suppose that for me the golden middle is the occasional disciple-duel. 2-6 player teams, two teams. You get your team chatter but the player count tends to not be too high, which tends to mean less stales, postponements and the like. There's also the generally fast paced duel game play that's quite enjoyable every once in a while.

[E. Albright]

Actually, no, I disagree. I quite dislike duels, as they pretty much forgo diplomacy altogether - even a team game lacks diplomacy (and sneaky tricks) if there's only two teams. I'd say 12 players is about the smallest I'd want for a disciple game, unless we were doing 2-person teams - and that'd be a very different sort of game than 3+ teams.

We did have some of the typical issue of burnout or distraction, mostly from the inexperienced players who probably didn't know what they were getting into, but that can be "solved" by playing with more experienced players. You can still get plenty of burnouts, delays, and stales with 2-6 players, you've just reduced the odds by having fewer candidates to do it. In the end, it all comes down to the players.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I play the odds as best I can

True enough I suppose. Of course I'm biased by having a recent bad experience with a big game and being in a place in life where I can't probably commit to another long, big game. I don't mind the idea of a 16 player FFA or disciple, I just haven't seen any play out with the kind of success rate I'd enjoy myself. But that's probably something that needs a little time. Get a bit more non-newbie players into the community, make sure everyone knows what they're getting into. I'd like to think it's not impossible to get a good large-ish MP going.

Either way, for now I'm going with small and safe. 7-10 players, nice mix of diplomacy and expedient gameplay. Fits my mood and circumstances.

[Twiggie]

I actually would like to hear some opinions on the starting positions.

I (Sceleria (oh, remember them?)), was not a huge fan of my starting position, though I think most of that came down to me being new to the game. I had a lot of trouble getting any money since the closest plains were cut off by a t3 throne and a knights province, which I had a bit of trouble getting through. The other side (the enemy side, which I was more focused on) was entirely swamp, forest and hills, so I had a lot of trouble moving my troops around.

I suspect I should have put a lot less effort into grand thaumaturgs, and more into more castles. I'm also not sure what I was supposed to do against Ulm's armies, as their line infantry were just better than mine and they have units that go through undead like butter.

[chaoticag]

Running up against ulm tends to be especially bad as Scaleria. Their most useful units tend to be their shadow vestals, especially with a nature bless. Which Ulm's Sorta Sacred units cut through like butter. Ulm's weakness comes from their low magic resistance though, so enough mages might have turned the tide if they had any kind of battle magic.

It also looks like lately, having non-ideal terrain is becoming more a norm than an exception.

Another thing Scaleria should keep in mind is their vestals are sneaky units. That's pretty powerful, since they can bypass armies and wreck havok behind enemy lines.

[Delta Foxtrot]

It does take some research to get stealthy commanders or stealth gear for your existing commanders. Good thing to keep in mind from midgame onwards though. People probably don't expect Sceleria to pull off stealthy manoeuvres. And yeah, answer to Ulm's armies is to throw some MR negate spells at them. Sceleria can pull off plenty of such D evocations to make short work of low MR armies. Ulm certainly has the advantage if you lacked those spells.

As for terrain, from what I've read it seems to be a bigger problem in older maps since the movement rules apparently got changed somewhat in the dom3->4 transition. Most of my games have been pretty manageable as far as terrain types go, but then I've played mostly newer maps and I've never played Dom3 so I don't specifically know what, if anything, I'm missing. I just know that there's a very real difference between MM1 and MM2+.

[Twiggie]

I'm looking to do some more SP practice, does anyone know how I can set up an autosave so I can savescum? losing large forces unexpectedly in the early game because I don't know what I'm doing kinda sucks...

and thanks for the tips :p

[Delta Foxtrot]

Since you've played MP you should know where your .trn/.2h files are. I would assume that copying those somewhere else and later pasting them back would let you savescum, can't verify as I've never tried it myself.

[Frumple]

Autosave, no, but you can manually copy the turn file off somewhere else and replace the active one if something too terrible screws up, as per delta's ninjaing. I guess you could theoretically automate it if you were some kind of coding guru, but there's nothing I'm aware of in the game itself that allows for that sort of thing.

I guess alternatively you could make something like a two player disciple game on llamaserver where both players are you and rollback as necessary. I have no idea what llamaserver's opinion on that sort of thing is, though.

As for something like sceleria vs ulm, I'd personally probably be aiming for something along the lines of drowning them in undead. Early-ish second fort set to monthly recruit reanimators, splash enchantment to pick up your base 1d animation spells, bring along plenty of plain thaums. Ulm's troops two biggest weaknesses are their MR and their encumbrance, and if you can keep them fighting until they all fatigue out, you win.

Alternately, aim for conj 5 and ghost grip -- as noted, Ulm's junk has relatively terrible encumbrance, so a half dozen plain thaums spamming ghost grip is a good way to neuter their troops. Can do the same thing with stellar cascades with a bit more research -- 5-6 thaums following around a grand thaum set to power of the stars/northern lights/pass out. Bit gem heavy, but if you've got the construction for it, banner of northern lights works even better. Can also do something similar with tiny communions... actually, little five thaum communions set to spam raise dead could put out a lot of chaff, especially with a minor earth bless. They can even self bless...

Also sceleria has cheap assassins and plenty of 1D :V

[gman8181]

Interesting read Frumple, thanks for that.

Twiggie, I honestly think a lot of the advice I gave initially could have helped you play the nation more effective and should be explored a bit more even in single player if you're interested in the nation. As was mentioned shadow vestals are very good in almost all situations (although admittedly Ulm's units seemed a more than effective counter against them). Additionally, I really think having devoted more of your priests to "reanimate" (shift a; I think) longdead horsemen would have made a very significant tactical difference against the enemy. They don't cost any gold barring the initial investment in the reanimating priest and give lots of upkeep free, good moral, decent fighting units that probably would have allowed you to push off an enemy more effectively.

Also, I'm not sure how your evo, thaug research was doing towards the end but some castings of nether darts would have been quite effective against low magic resistance Ulm and communions followed by clouds of death would have been even more powerful as they would have synergy with your undead (cloud of death doesn't affect undead units). I really wasn't sure why even up until the end you didn't at least reanimate some longdead warriors, soulless or ghouls to hold the fortresses.

Admittedly I didn't keep pushing the point after initially suggesting it but it might have been a more effective use of gold until more provinces and forts were acquired to pump out legionnaires.

[Frumple]

... actually, starting up a quick test game showed that sceleria skelliespam assassins are actually better at it than most would be. They occasionally pop out the national longdead, which is... pretty nice. I guess you'd see similar advantages with other nations with unique longdead... can only guess C'tis was putting out bone lizards. Which is nice, the abnormal longdead tend to be straight up upgrades.

N1's also really easy to find. Go go mighty boning assassins, now with extra vine tentacles!

[E. Albright]

... actually, starting up a quick test game showed that sceleria skelliespam assassins are actually better at it than most would be. They occasionally pop out the national longdead, which is... pretty nice. I guess you'd see similar advantages with other nations with unique longdead... can only guess C'tis was putting out bone lizards.

Yup, I got lizards. Scelaria's would have been better in a couple other senses as well: mine were cap only, and were casters. So I had to put my capital on full-time assassin recruitment (which isn't bad for MA C'tis in terms of opportunity cost, as those assassins are their only cap-only mage), and once my assassins went off-script they'd cast a lot of more-fatiguing spells - usually still just undead summons, but 1 soulless for 20+ fatigue < 1 longdead for 5 fatigue flat. (OTOH, I could have mixed it up and given them nature gems to cast Swarm when I thought they'd fight harsher foes, so there is that...)

[Vrky]

Looking forward to reading AAR. Game is fun but also hard to master, especially magic system and research. I always get lost in it and just research randomly which is a shame.