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[E. Albright]

That sorta reminds me of the old Dom1 Elric scenario where AI Abysia took on the role of Melnibone and would eat your face if you weren't careful.

[Shadowlord]

I'm about to win a game (by dom-killing everyone else) where I have both the looming hell and enchanted forests active, and for a while also had the blood vortex up (it wasn't very useful, but killed a lot of people). Between that and the legions of blood hunting zotz, and the temples with blood sacrifices everywhere, ruled over by "the Ghost of Mr. Burns," it's probably not somewhere you would want to live.

[Culise]

I'd love to have more big spells - not just endgame. Maybe a 30 F spell with low requierments that drops a metor on a completly random province, adding a amazing magic-site but removing most population and troops?

Heh, it could even go one further and make it look "natural" like the Hurricane spell by utilizing the existing meteorite or comet events (for those not familiar, they create a Huge Crater - 1E1S - site; kill anywhere from 5%, 10%, or 75% of the population; and possibly destroy the lab or temple in the province depending on which particular event is triggered).  I would like to see some love to go to Water, Fire, and Air, though. ^_^

[Frumple]

It... would be kinda' interesting, thinking on it, to have something like that. Basically wreck a province in exchange for a magic site of some sort. I could totally see a death ritual that ate 50+% of the population and set up one of those disease wells, ferex (ermor would friggin' love that ), or one of the squiddies getting the ability to drop one of those illithid sites on a province for a similar cost. Bonus points if you could require a certain amount of population for the ritual to work, so you couldn't just turn your low value provinces into something more useful. Maybe something that eats all of a province's income/resources to drastically increase its resources/income. All sorts of stuff.

Custom sites would bring a lot more to that table so far as balance goes, too. I could see some really interesting stuff done with that... it'd be hella' neat to trade a province's population (or permanently damage its income and/or resources or whatev') for a PD granting site or somethin'.

E: What would be incredible would be to give one (or more) of the underwater nations a ritual spell that just straight up sinks the (coastal) province it's cast in. Kills the population outright and makes the province UW... maybe give it a new bit of seed pop to represent UW sentients moving in afterwards. I'd friggin' love something like that, it'd give an UW nation something rather incredibly annoying :V

[E. Albright]

Well, if there was ever a nation that it would be apropos to have that, it'd be Ys. I still wouldn't expect to see something like that in 4.24/4.25, though.

[Cruxador]

Modifying province types hasn't been in the game in a very long time, and will continue to not be in it for as long as maps use the current system.

(it wasn't very useful, but killed a lot of people).

That is useful. Astral Corruption is amazing for hamstringing the opposition's ability to use big magic, and big magic is what wins games.

[Kagus]

Modifying province types hasn't been in the game in a very long time, and will continue to not be in it for as long as maps use the current system.

(it wasn't very useful, but killed a lot of people).

That is useful. Astral Corruption is amazing for hamstringing the opposition's ability to use big magic, and big magic is what wins games.

Wrong spell. He was referring to Blood Vortex, which is blood's gem-generating spell, but eats population like nobody's business. So it killed a lot of people, but they weren't people-people.

And yeah, I really do miss the map-modifying aspects of Dom1... Seeing something like that come back would really be cool. It's the proper world-changing spells and rituals that make you feel like an actual proper divine entity.


Heh... Anyone done "RPG Dominions"? I've tried to get it to work/be fun a few times, but haven't exactly succeeded massively.

The basic idea is to take generic national recruit commanders, gear them up with whatever items you can find/make, and then have a party made exclusively of those commanders go around and try to take on low-level indies and deal with random events (I tended to set my dominion to misfortune and magic 3 to get the most frequent and interesting events).

One of the big problems is how the AI deals with parties like that... Namely, if a single person dies, all the commanders auto-rout because "all our army has been defeated".

The reason I bring it up is because Mis3/Mag3 is supposed to allow horrors to randomly spawn in your provinces and wreak havoc, which made me think of the apocalyptic scenario Frumple mentioned.


Oh, hey, I've got one... An anti-magic world. Have two effectively undispellable enchantments up: Arcane Corruption and The Kindly Ones.  Non-blood magic gets penalized by horrors eating the caster, blood magic gets penalized by erinyes flaying their soul.

[Cruxador]

Stalewarriors, a six month game which I was in, has ended. I kept a blog of the turns, and if you like you can check that out here: https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/stalewarriors/

It ended up being a lot of relatively boring infrastructure building without a major war on my part, because it was on a huge map and my real life picked up and I had to step aside for 20 turns just as the midgame was transitioning to the lategame. But I avoid saying a lot when there's nothing to say so hopefully it'll be enjoyable to some folks anyway.

I have another game starting shortly, but it'll be different; it's nationgen.

[E. Albright]

It looks like 4.19 needs a sub. A mid-sized nation has racked up a bunch of stales, a whole lot of them are consecutive, and the player is someone who's had trouble with this in the past. I'm making the admin call and looking for a sub.

So, anyone want to step into a mid-to-early-late-game hashed hoburg NationGen game as Kundorf in the above link?

[symonthewise]

Stalewarriors, a six month game which I was in, has ended. I kept a blog of the turns, and if you like you can check that out here: https://cruxador.wordpress.com/category/stalewarriors/

It ended up being a lot of relatively boring infrastructure building without a major war on my part, because it was on a huge map and my real life picked up and I had to step aside for 20 turns just as the midgame was transitioning to the lategame. But I avoid saying a lot when there's nothing to say so hopefully it'll be enjoyable to some folks anyway.

I have another game starting shortly, but it'll be different; it's nationgen.

Reading your blog and enjoying it.

How did you guys get in to dom4? Did you play previous iterations of the game?

I've done a couple ai games and am pretty overwhelmed by the mechanics.

[Frumple]

Mmhmm. I started playing Dom 3, iirc after seeing some AAR type things in gaming magazines, like... y'know, a decade ago. Somewhere in that range, not too terribly long after it was first released. Looked really bloody interesting, so I checked it out. Finally actually bought it sometime after Illwinter dumped shrapnel and started actually selling the game at a price I could justify buying it at, heh. Got into dom 4 just as soon as it got enough of a discount I could justify it to myself, at a higher price than I'll buy most games these days, heh.

Mechanics wise, y'just tool around till you get used to it, really. I played a lot of AI games -- I don't think I ever actually played a Dom 3 multiplayer game, despite playing the game itself for years -- messed around with mods, etc., etc. Eventually got around to playing a few MP games in Dom 4, still tool around with neat mods when they show up, et al.

Outside of just playing, I'd totally recommend checking out LPs (there's one or two over on the LP archive), looking around the net for after-action-reports and whatnot, just kinda' seeing how other people play and how they explain things to folks. You can learn a lot that way, heh, and even if you don't they're often fun to read :V

[Delta Foxtrot]

Signed up for Bay12's first Dom4 game. Bought the game a week before it started. It was rough going into MP so early. I had lurked in several Dom3 game threads here and elsewhere so I didn't go in completely blind.

Nothing much to it really. Play around, goof around, ask questions as they pop up. Consider browsing through the manual if you're into that. Though it might be a bit out of date.

There's a handy database too:
http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/

Items, spells, units. It lists a ton of stuff you can filter based on various criteria. Handy way to look stuff up that would be slow and clumsy in-game. Maybe not something you should delve into so early, but it's there when you need it.

[symonthewise]

I will definitely check out those lps.

With strategy games there's a period where I know how to do stuff and vaguely where everything is, but have no idea how to wield any of that knowledge strategically. That's probably the misty area in which I am currently. But as you said dominions is interesting, seems worth the effort of figure out.

I messed up a few of my games by randomly picking nations and pretenders. I think one time my guy couldnt move and also possibly couldn't make a prophet for some reason? So, yes, could be a while before I venture into multiplayer. I commend your bravery delta.

Thanks for that inspector link, I'll stow it away for later use.

Oh another question, do you fellows usually play random maps if you're going to do an ai game, or are there preferred premade ones? Seems the map generator can't make stuff as gigantic as cruxador's so I'm assuming that was handmade.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'm a big fan of Pymous myself (links to his maps in this post). Elmokki is probably my second favourite map maker. There's some good stuff in the map making forums:

http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/board/undiscovered-door-maps-cartography
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showforum=22

Interesting game, even if the interface is a bit uncooperative at times.

[symonthewise]

Excellent! Thank you.

Interesting game, even if the interface is a bit uncooperative at times.

Hehe, good to know that isn't just me.