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[ThtblovesDF]

I always thought I had low income compared to everyone else, so stuck to mostly mages and low-gold, high res-units, but looking at the graph the fort-spam and "all postive" scales really are strong, yet boring. I got very lucky with some ritual casts, twice actually with the "5 globals up, one will get replaced" casts thrown out in the wild. If I had gift of Health still I feel like I would've been able to win military victorys against bigger nations, too.

I like the graphs, it shows right where the undead plague was released on everyone, when Agartha lost a war - and Nazcas professional site-searching made a big difference in its income.

The strange income spikes and drops of Nazca are weird, are those big fights and suddenly not having to pay upkeep for 1 000 units? Falling stones is brutal btw.

I'm up for hosting another game, maybe small and fast or a little "hard research, but 60 for magice sites" thing.

I spent like 20 minutes preparing one area for a battle that never happend, I feel your burn out

[chaoticag]

I'll prolly drop something more in depth on Nazca, since well, honestly this was my first time playing something that I couldn't find a guide for and I sorta guessed my way into something resembling a strategy. I think it showed how burned out I was at the game given I had tartarians marching around by the end and couldn't manage a decent strategy however.

[Jilladilla]

There were a bunch of sentinels, you just can't see them in the screenshot - No mercuries, though. I used my water gems on olm conclaves instead. For one thing, it gives a bunch of mindblasters, and the olm sage can fire rear. For another, the olm sage can lead far more magic troops, meaning magma children and sentinels, than anyone else Agartha can get.

Good choice with the Olm Sages, even if I don't entirely agree with your no mercury whatsoever plan. The Sages having Map Move 2 and Amphibious is a huge help for logistics too. Them being relegated to summons is mostly why I feel that EA > MA Agartha. Well, that and the super focused Oracles...

But really, Olms or Mercuries is a question of Utility vs Brute Force.
But both are still very useful and that choice pains me... (But early/mid game Olms are undeniably the better choice, mercuries need to be buffed (not in the sense that they're underpowered, they need to have Marble Warriors or Army of Some Heavy Metal or even just Mass Protection or Wooden Warriors cast on them.))
Still, using the Sage to Mindblast rear is a choice I personally find questionable. Sure, he'll never miss his chosen target, but mages tend to have good MR, seems like a lot of investment for something that probably won't work. (And even that is assuming he even targets the right guy in the first place!) Even as EA Agartha where you can recruit the guys normally from any cave or your capital. They're not even slow to recruit!
Using them to cast Quickness (Quickening if you can spare gems) or Ice Strike (or they can cast Frost Fend or Warriors of Niefelheim with a booster) has always struck me as more tactically relevant... Although your tactic might work, especially for earlier on. I'll will have to test out how well it fares in the field.

But still, this is someone who specializes mostly with EA Agartha arguing over MA Agartha tactics, and while there's a lot of overlap, there's still some differences. That and it's been forever since I actually seriously played MA Agartha...

I spent like 20 minutes preparing one area for a battle that never happend, I feel your burn out

Buddy, that's nothing compared to some of the stuff I do with this game when sufficiently motivated. After all, the average turn for me takes like an hour to an hour and a half, unless there's nothing going on.
But then again I like planning and strategizing and what not. Really, I would get bored if I didn't have to double check and then triple check and then hunt down every obscure spell I can cast to see if I can do this slightly more efficiently and then double check again! (Slightly exaggerating but you get the point. And yes, I do triple check.)

[Gigalith]

It's been some time since I was Atlantis, but I can still remember what went wrong. Two words: wasted resources.

Let me give you a "small" example. When I discovered it was hilariously easy for me to cast Wolven Winter, and C'tis liked heat scales, I did so. Repeatedly. I had a mage casting Wolven Winter on repeat at C'tis's capital.

And for what?

I don't know if I even dented his production. I was spending a good portion of my water gems, just to, at most, annoy C'tis. Meanwhile, my armies of Reef Warriors (in retrospect, another waste) were dying in pointless swarms due to Foul Vapors.

And here's what I could have done. I could have recruited hordes of W2S1 mages at my land fort, and spent all those water gems on super-trampling, poison and acid resistant Gelatinous Cubes. Those mages could cast Cleansing Water while the cubes attacked, rolled over skelespam and crushed those feeble Marshmasters. Did I? Nope. I didn't even think of it.

And this happened throughout the whole game. I spent much research to get Cleansing Water and almost never used it. I spent much gold to buy an Earth Boots from Ulm (which I could have made myself), and then cast Earthquake like once. I spent plenty of astral pearls on mind hunting that throne site, only to help Ulm take it, I think. I attacked Nazca, rather than backstabbing Ulm (in retrospect, the far better move.) I spent gazillions of gold in temples to attempt to domkill C'tis--and it never happened. I've forgotten most of the wastes by now, but you get the point.

The truth about Dominions is that, unless you have one enemy left, it's not a game about winning a war. It's about winning a war efficiently. Last game, I had practically one foe for the majority of the game, and blood slaves were cheap. This game, I had wasted so much on C'tis that by the time I fought Ulm, it was too late.

Still thought the drowning of Ulm's army was one of my best moves--but here we see the wasted resources again. I had spent so much water gems that I could only afford one Dispell. Which I overcast, rather than making Astral boosters and slapping them on. And I stand by the Omnipus teleport--even if I had known about the Ethereal Crossbow, it was still literally less than 1% of failing. It's just I was too tired at that point to continue, and my RL had taken some turns of its own.

Speaking of the Omnipus, I think an Ancient Kraken is an incredibly good chassis. Not only is it a supercombatant by itself, but it has recuperation. Then you equip its four arms... I even mind hunted into astral territories, knowing the feeblemindness would be only temporary. But once again, wasted resources. I didn't have any Air access for Amulet of Fishes, so it was stuck underwater.



Funny story: At the end of the C'tis-Atlantis war, I bought a wasteland province off C'tis that had been mine prior to the war for like 76 gold (what I had left over at the end of my turn). It turned out that this "worthless" province actually had a five-gem site! Unfortunately, a bunch of knights attacked and took it, and I was never able to get it back. This is part of the reason I burned out--which you just lose five gems of income a turn because the RNG feels like it, it's hard to get enthusiasm back.

EDIT:

I'm up for hosting another game, maybe small and fast or a little "hard research, but 60 for magice sites" thing.

The hard research one sounds interesting. It's been enough time I might be able to get back into Dominions.

I spent like 20 minutes preparing one area for a battle that never happend, I feel your burn out

There were many battles that I prepared for, just never happened. There was one where the Omnipus and a King of the Deep with Earthquake could have smashed all kinds of Ulmian face, but nope, you didn't attack.

This is nothing compared to last game, where I never got to cast my way-cool Darkness+Earthquake combo or my communions.

[Mini]

Let me give you a "small" example. When I discovered it was hilariously easy for me to cast Wolven Winter, and C'tis liked heat scales, I did so. Repeatedly. I had a mage casting Wolven Winter on repeat at C'tis's capital.

Yeah, I didn't notice. It probably slightly hurt me in the long term, since my bottleneck was always gold (I had to stop making mages from one of my 4 forts because I didn't have enough) that was the only province I had that gave a decent amount of gold (my email is playing up again so I can't check right now, but I think it was between 1/2 and 1/4 of my total income, depending on whether I had the farmland to the north at the time or not), but Ulm was kinda overwhelming anyway so it would have been maybe a turn longer if you hadn't done that.

[Jilladilla]

Let me give you a "small" example. When I discovered it was hilariously easy for me to cast Wolven Winter, and C'tis liked heat scales, I did so. Repeatedly. I had a mage casting Wolven Winter on repeat at C'tis's capital.

Yeah, I didn't notice. It probably slightly hurt me in the long term, since my bottleneck was always gold (I had to stop making mages from one of my 4 forts because I didn't have enough) that was the only province I had that gave a decent amount of gold (my email is playing up again so I can't check right now, but I think it was between 1/2 and 1/4 of my total income, depending on whether I had the farmland to the north at the time or not), but Ulm was kinda overwhelming anyway so it would have been maybe a turn longer if you hadn't done that.

Really, the way to go there is to hit a province right before a major battle, cold-blooded units do not fare well at all in cold 3, we're talking a 14ish encumbrance penalty.

[chaoticag]

Alright, sorry for the long wait before I gave a recap or acknoledgement in some satisfying form. This was a very draining game on top of some draining circumstances over in my private life, but I should be good, so thanks for the patience.

Probably should start from the begining in this case, so main takeaway from this is wow can Nazca subvert this map. It was my number one reason for picking them but still; the amount of mobility I was afforded was probably a pretty deciding factor in taking down other players all things considered. This allows me a few things I would not have been able to pull off otherwise.

One turn Sieges: I can effectively crach almost any fortress in one turn given enough troops, and my troops are cheap and can count as two sieging units.
Redeployment: It took about two turns to get from my capital to my eastern front fortress during the Scalerian war, and it took much longer for Scaleria to cross a much shorter distance
Reactive defense: Scaleria's plague with dealing with my defense couldn't be possible without flying units. Thtb says rain of stones was terrifying but, well, lemme break down what it took to make sure my rain of stones casters effective

• 1 earth booster, preferably the blood stone
• 1 source of ethereal
• 1 luck amulet
• 1 source of protection, in this case ironskin equipment

and they need to be able to cast before a communion goes online.

The costs were offset by me finding a construction bonus magic site early on, but still, this is a lot to ask for. Would my units be anything other than flying units, this would not be feasible to gear them out in. Not to mention that, USUALLY, these were fairly assassin proof, and tended to retreat after casting, so scaleria had no real hard counters to them. (oh, and skimping out on this equipment lead to the caster killing themselves even though the numbers were in their favor, usually on their first cast, so don't do it)

So anyway, opening moves was about spreading as fast as I could, so while I did start in a corner with a little less options to spread, I could kit out an expansion party and send them to my frontiers for most of the expansion phase. This worked well with a scales and minor bless focus. (which I feel I never really capitalized on, welp). I also had my sights on breaking into blood from the get go because no one else would be able to manage it better.

Anyway, the efficient site searching was interesting, since I had two aces up my sleeves. Good mobility and a royal malqui (yes, lemme search in all the main paths your nation uses up to level 2).

... I still kinda feel it's funny that I ran into a some strategies after I put all this together and a lot seem to be disappointed in Nazca because they toned the ghost bird strategy down. The key to playing Nazca is making the most of their flexibility, and you can figure their sacreds in to it if you would like, but they do not live or die by those sacreds alone. It's not too shabby when you score an elimination, a technical KO, and then fight the leading power to a standstill somehow.

So anyway, what went wrong?

I probably should have crushed Ulm soon as I was done with Pangaea to be honest... but maybe if I did that I would turn around and said I should have taken Scaleria on when I had the chance. The other thing issue was running into a kinda choice paralysis and trying to figure out what to best recruit and deploy. My armies could get anywhere fast but they ended up disorganized and managing logistics over 50 provinces was hellish. I was routinely managing 60-110 commanders per turn for the last 50 turns more or less. I just could not manage this problem of plenty. By the end I had collected all the elemental royaly besides the water queens and I had some idea of how to use them, but I also could have used them better. And if it was not quite clear, part of this problem of plenty was figuring out what to do with a tripple digit gem income, at least I swear it was tripple digits.

I also think I might have been able to squeeze more out of the late game with different scales but god damn, I might have crumpled if I had to put out a major fire from bad luck, and I wanted to get the national heroes as soon as I could. Pachacuti and the first mummy were integral to getting more magic diversity.

Anyway, I do feel like I wasn't up to the task of making the decisions I needed to make on a strategic level, and it cost me bad enough that it feels I threw the game.

...anyway, can we agree 15 or more provinces a player is a little too much? Because it's a little too much.

I also wanna acknowledge Ulm, Scaleria, Pangaea and Pythium. The game would have been a lot less interesting for me without the 4 of you, and as each slowly dropped off I lost a lot of motivation for this game. Oh, and once again sorry for knocking you out Pangaea, as while it was a victory, I feel I kinda stole your thunder and I didn't even have the decency to win the game.

[ThtblovesDF]

Ah thats harsh, how was it with Gift of Health, didn't that put your casters out of the danger-zone? The late-game Fatigue is real, but I had countless turns of "peace" to prepare my plans and somehow a actually oppertunity opend up and I lucked out - littarly one turn later and the various thrones would've been gone.

I was very much ready to just play king-maker and as all my scouts died on the right side of the map I just assumed you crushed AI-Death-lands and with the stolen/dominated global spells.

[chaoticag]

Most my fighting was in enemy dominion and it still would not put my casters out the danger zone because of one liiiitle thing I did nopt wanna take chances with. Rain of stones deals blunt damage, which is doubled if it hits your head. It takes half max hp damage to the head to destroy the head, which, given my casters are not yet dead, would outright kill them. They would also still need at least one booster, so that would set me back a minimum of 10 earth gems when it happens, unless they happen to be coyas, which can summon earth power if they have air as a bonus path. Now, when a coya is killed she's also mummified alongside some randomly picked Inca, and you mix their paths to get a royal mallqui. This can wreck hell on my organization, and doubles the upkeep oif both units which took a total of 4 cap only recruitment turns to get one admittedly great unit. That I can recruit one a turn of if I really hated my income and wanted to have upkeep instead.