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[Frumple]

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's possible to get unusual longdead with generic (scelarian or something) reanimators if they're in a proper province. Probably need to get around to testing... fairly easy to find lizard provinces, and they'd be a potential target. Plain underwater would be fine, too, really. But I could swear I've ended up with monkey longdead (as an example) as a non-monkey nation before, and my memory is wanting to tell me it's because I plopped reanimations on top of a monkey province.

Still, the lemurian spirit calling (for shadows specifically, anyway) definitely changes based on water/underwater, and the latter results are strictly better. Presumably if any other nation gets a hold of the effect (apostasy or enslave or somethin', I'unno), it'd be the same. Just a good thing to remember, particularly if it's actually a unique effect.

[E. Albright]

And if you're tanking all of your scales to do this, including the frankly terrifying misfortune+drain combination, then you'd damn well better have a good reason for it.

To be frank, I think Death3 + Misfortune3 on a non-domkill nation scares me more, regardless of the bad rep attached to Drain3.

Yeah, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's possible to get unusual longdead with generic (scelarian or something) reanimators if they're in a proper province.

Longdead, soulless, and ghouls are nation-specific, not poptype specific. I'm actually very surprised to hear Lemuria gets any change underwater for their spectral reanimations, but those are an entirely different command than the corporeal reanimations.

[Edit: as a sanity check, I did a debug game with BL and Ermor. Ermor reanimated longdead legions in monkey provinces and UW; BL reanimated monkeys everywhere, to include UW.]

[Frumple]

Fair enough. Must've been misremembering something... maybe some odd event or another? Another one of those things were I could swear I remember something with markata longdead

And yeah, I can only guess the call shadows in particular is some kind of generic command rather than nation specific, which is why it changes in UW provinces. Kinda' neat, though... almost like it's a pseudo-callback to theowhatsit. Though that would have been a retcon of some sort, heh, as the behavior's been there longer than t-etc. has been.

[E. Albright]

Lanka is the most likely source of your recollection, but in any case, all four of the monkey nations can reanimate markata, so it's not like you're inventing that woeful outcome from whole cloth.

[Frumple]

Oh aye, aware of lanka and whatnot. Just seem to remember having them as a non-monkey nation for some reason that didn't involve enslave or whatev'. Entirely likely it's just my memory being shot, though.

[Kagus]

Sometimes I wonder how bad I must be if I have difficulty fighting the AI...

Just in the process of mopping up a 1-on-1 that's been pretty much one-sided in my favor, and I've just broken down the gates of Mictlan's capital and have stormed the keep. Therein I see the mighty god of Mictlan, who is...

Uh... A great sage. An awake great sage with F6A4W1E3S9D5N1B6.  Now, not gonna lie, 92 research points is indeed pretty sexy...  But I'm not sure how much that's actually, y'know, helped them.  They've got pretty nasty scales, but I have no idea just how many points they actually needed in order to pull that off.

Was just trying to do a Helhirding bless to see what all the fuss was about. Been working out reasonably well so far.

[Frumple]

Hey, it's not just 92 research points -- the critters have inspiring researcher, too.

But the answer to your question is, without adjusting anything else and assuming they've done no empowering or anything, that path layout would put a mictlan great sage at -512. So 622 points total.

... looks like you'd have to take 13 hits of negative scales to afford that with an awake one. You'd have enough left over to put one pip in your dominion, bringing it up to... two.

[Kagus]

Or take even more hits so you can get it up to 4.  ...yeah, dominion was never a problem in that game, even though my build had a comparitively low strength of 5. Not even sure the AI knows how to blood sacrifice.

Honestly kind of surprised how he managed to do as much as he did... Was a truckload of vinemen and gelatinous cubes in the main army.  But, even so, nothing they could throw at me was enough to take down a bunch of W9E9 Helhirds and an incomprehensible spam of corpse constructs.  And my scales were kinda shitty too.

Also, I apparently have no idea how movement works... I thought if you threw a raiding spell at an enemy army, it would cancel their move orders for that turn. Clearly that's not the case, as I sent a flock of hawks at a roaming enemy force and then when my actual troops arrived, they'd already skedaddled and attacked another one of my provinces.

[ThtblovesDF]

Uuaargh, I tried the throne capture thing again with a Hooded Spirit - and It actually worked pretty well, I took my time, did construction 3 for some items and gave him a shield & sword and sometimes stoped to upgrade - taking the last throne, the turn I claim It I get attacked by Ahiman anakite from Ashdod and there pretender - A handful of berserked sacreds managed to kill it - to bad, to bad. Anyway, Eternal seems to be a very high value for these things and longdead are often the issue for the otherwise OP Fear + Awe combo.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Micro102]

So how does everyone treat PD? I usually set mine to 10 as soon as I get the province, eventually cranking it up to 15, and after that to whatever my gobs of money allow me to.

[Frumple]

Always one. Zero exceptions, even a pop 0 ermor province can and should do that -- I don't think there's anything in this game you can better spend a single gold on. This is probably one of the easier things to miss, and while it is hilarious for the other side to start a conflict by capping half your empire with scouts, it's not something you want to be on the receiving end of :V

Everything depends on where the province is, what you expect to happen to it, and available resources. I do tend to prefer around 5-10 as a baseline, cash allowing, though. Enough to fend off bird attacks and the occasional small invasion event, that sort of thing. Think it's actually something like 6-11 'cause somewhere in there's the breakpoints for scout reports, but in that range.

... at least versus humans. Against AI I usually end up with one or more provinces with 100 PD, ahaha.

[Kagus]

There's a relatively common event where a group of bandits will attempt to take over the province. This event is prevented from happening if you have a PD of 4 or higher.

1 is definitely the minimum, but popping it up to 4 costs just 10 gold and will prevent that event from happening, even if the resulting bandit horde could potentially have knocked over the PD.  Furthermore, things like heavy cav provinces will get their first cavalryman PD at about 4 points, which can help out in certain situations.


Also, eunuchs. Oh my god, eunuchs. They deserve their own goddamn shrine in the pantheon, right next to MA Man's monks.


EDIT: Lately I've been messing around with LA R'lyeh, and I've gotten to thinking about some things...  Personally, I think the nation could do with pretty much a full-scale rework.

We see nations that enforce or at least recommend certain negative scales when playing as them. Things like Lanka or to a lesser extent Pangaea push for Turmoil scales, low-resource nations and EA Arco do well with Sloth, Ulm and Man dig Drain scales, and pretty much all the popkill nations are a death scale no-brainer (except for Asphodel, because they're a special little snowflake), not to mention several nations that can make good use of heavy temperature scales one way or the other.

...but no nation has any use for Misfortune, or anything that really counteracts just how nasty a scale dump that is.

LA R'lyeh is in effect "just another popkill nation" in its current incarnation, but with the added problem of having the freespawn require both upkeep and supplies (note: DO NOT build coastal castles as LA R'lyeh... You still get the freespawn hybrids as MA, but these cost 6-8 times as much upkeep as the regular dreamers and madmen), something that's doubly problematic not only because the population and thus income+supply base is steadily going down as your demand steadily increases, but also because death scales are kind of a necessity as their population reduction effect is a drop in the bucket compared to just your basic dominion.

What if, instead of a straight up popkill, R'lyeh's dominion tied more heavily in with Misfortune rather than Death? Random cataclysms, horror attacks, suicide cults, it all still plays into the apocalyptic situation of the dreamlands, but without just being "Oi, the stars is right, innit? Guess I'm gonna catch the void-flu and drop dead, so I will". This also opens up the possibility of taking growth scales to help offset the supply/income issues (and MAYBE even just open it up for a little bit o' the old blood magic, because I feel this Ftaghn hasn't got nearly enough human sacrifice going on). Give the freespawn insane cultists 3% fortune teller or something so you can help offset the dangers to a couple prime provinces and then basically just hold on for the ride as everything else eventually tears itself apart through the madness of the eternal void.

You still get a pretty dangerous dominion, it's still not exactly great for your pockets or your people, but I personally think it would tie in better with the insanity of the dreamlands, and also make the nation a bit more unique and stand out from the ranks of Ermor/Lemuria.

[Neonivek]

Also, eunuchs. Oh my god, eunuchs. They deserve their own goddamn shrine in the pantheon, right next to MA Man's monks.

Ming knows where it is at!

[AlStar]

Just adding my voice to the crowd here, but always at least 1, and I personally think that 4 is an excellent place for non-critical provinces - the 10g you spend is usually tough enough to kill at least a single enemy who's worth 10g (paying for itself), and, every once in a while, you'll get lucky - like that time my PD defeated 100 corpse constructs... due to a single arrow taking out the necromancer commanding them.

I like to get any province with heavy cavalry up to at least 14, since that's when they get horseman number (4? 5?), and that's actually a decent enough force that it can occasionally fend off raiding parties on its own - especially if the enemy isn't expecting it.

[E. Albright]

I like 6 as a lower bound in MP games - that way you can't tell if that's 6 or 18. Also, 6 is a lot harder than 4 to knock over with 3-4 bored scouts, not least because they can't say for sure if it IS 6...


Round 22 needs a sub. Unlike usual, this is not a call for a sub for someone who's bowing out 'cause they're in a bad position, but rather for the leading nation who's been beset by inconvenient three-dimensional objects.