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[Delta Foxtrot]

Most tramplers seem to be animals (elephants) or very stupid things (trogs?). Playable giant races seem to be human in all respects, save physical. It makes sense that they'd rather swing a giant spear rather than trample whatever it is they're fighting. Minotaurs make an exception here, sort of. But Pangaea's shtick is that they're closer to nature (ie. animals) so it makes sense for their big minotaurs to be able to 'zerk and trample all who oppose the leafy lord.

That's how I reason it anyhow.

Did you watch the battlereplay nenjin? Maybe the trolls soaked enough damage to allow mermen to get some free hits in. Or maybe the trolls hit so hard as to one-shot tritons. 50 divided by 15 doesn't take many rounds to kill them all.

[Tnx]

Does upping the magic site make provinces more interesting?  I found a province with independent archers who wear plate cuirasses.  Note that this is EA era, where everyone seems to charge in bare chested.  They cost 22 resources though,  but have a nice 14 protection.

[nenjin]

Does upping the magic site make provinces more interesting?  I found a province with independent archers who wear plate cuirasses.  Note that this is EA era, where everyone seems to charge in bare chested.  They cost 22 resources though,  but have a nice 14 protection.

By upping do you mean discover? Only if a magic site enables troop recruitment. And it will say it on the site if it does. Maybe you just got lucky with world generation. (I kinda wish MA/LA flavored province recruits were a lot less common than they feel in EA.) If you're talking Dominion, no, Dominion has no effects like that, that I'm aware of.

Did you watch the battlereplay nenjin? Maybe the trolls soaked enough damage to allow mermen to get some free hits in. Or maybe the trolls hit so hard as to one-shot tritons. 50 divided by 15 doesn't take many rounds to kill them all.

I think it had to do with the main merman force taking the first attack in the face, and the Sea Trolls rolling along the side in Attack Rear. Sometimes they get to the leaders, sometimes they get entangled in the main force. But I imagine Sea Trolls mauling the Tritons in their flank and them being blocked in on all sides crushes their morale and causes them to flee. When I say minimal losses, I tend to consider Merman highly expendable. So losing 50/230 and 0 Sea Trolls to me is minimal losses Really I should just stop using Mermen but they're the most expedient way to conquer interior oceans and lakes as I see it. Shamblers aren't much better and eat waaaayyy too much for how many of them you need to bring to be effective. Atlantians seem comparable to Merman in how many times MORE you need to beat dedicated sea units.

Troglodytes oh how have i misjudged you

Trogs are great. Get 40 of them and watch them mow down human-sized opponents not in Heavy Armor. I really like putting heavy hitters like Trolls and Trogs on Attack Rear at the flanks. As I said above, either they flank into the soft underbelly of an enemy, or they get to the commanders and proceed to dismember them, spells, bodyguards or no.

Question: is there some kind of magical mathematical formula to use when determining the # of units to Storm Castle? In my current game, armies of 400+ were being defeated literally by 20 or 30 troops worth of defenders because of all the dog piling at the gate. Maybe it was just because of the magic site (Jervallen Wall or w/e), but it was getting really frustrated until I took about 150 soldiers out of the equation.

[SharpKris]

using Abyssian atm getting blood/fire mix of spells with revealing spells to reveal magic sites faster.
is there a Dwarf civ by any chance?

[Delta Foxtrot]

using Abyssian atm getting blood/fire mix of spells with revealing spells to reveal magic sites faster.
is there a Dwarf civ by any chance?

Dominions doesn't really do traditional fantasy races as much as you might expect. That said, Vanheim (EA and/or MA) has cap only Dwarf commander that's good at earth magic and forging.
There is however a mod nation modeled after the dwarves of Warhammer Fantasy:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=1628&st=0

[Frumple]

is there a Dwarf civ by any chance?

Nah. There's a few dwarves recruitable in some of the norse-et-al influenced nations (Niefal, etc., I think.), but no non-mod pure dwarf civs. There were a couple mod nations for D3, but no clue about for D4.

Question: is there some kind of magical mathematical formula to use when determining the # of units to Storm Castle?

The short answer is "no", iirc. The big thing with storming castles is precisely the bottleneck you've noticed allowing a small force of the right sort of critter to hold off much, much more than they should be able to.

There's a few things you can do. The big one is magic and flyers, which can bypass the natural bottleneck and wreck all sorts of havoc. Tramplers can also help with the gate area, providing there's nothing larger than them holding said gate. An elite core force (capable of going toe-to-toe -- and then some, because you've got tower arrows and whatever else the enemy has for ranged options -- with whatever is plugging the gap) can break into the stopgap and let loose the dogs of chaff. Iirc, you might be able to do some things with placement (put all your crap way back, so the stuff inside the garrison will come out and face you, allowing you to surround and dogpile a lot easier). Basically, the issue of castle breaking usually has a lot more to do with quality (and composition) than it does with quantity. If they're not up to snuff, all the units in the world isn't going to break through a wall of high HP, high defense/etc regening troops before the turn limit hits, and more chaff is often just more chances for the tower attacks or w/e to trigger moral checks (and eventually failures, resulting in routing).

Re: The J. Wall, insofar as I'm aware the only thing up with that is it's a free castle. You can check in-battle in the upper right (usually, anyway) for a little pentagram thing that'll tell you if there's any persistent battlefield-wide spells going. Least that was how it was in D3... fairly sure it still is in D4. Think I've seen it (few pretenders have it natural, nowadays), even...

[Tnx]

Sorry, when I said "upping the magic site" I meant the frequency of magic sites option before starting a game.

[Puzzlemaker]

So I finally got the Mongol Horde idea I had been bouncing around in my head working.  Basically go Late Era Tian Chi, then build their sacred horsebowman, Ancestor Vessel.  They are Capital only production, sadly.  I went Lich with death 9 and a bunch of dominion.  Take your first Khan and make him your prophet, and set him to do Divine Blessing first thing to bless all the units, then to fire at closest enemy but keep at a distance.  Then set your Ancestor Vessels to form a line (this is important) and to fire on closest and keep at a distance as well.  If they aren't a line, they tend to get gummed up and let the enemy close on them.

Against ground infantry, it's amazing.  Since Ancestor Vessel's bows also do morale damage the enemy often routs before they even are able to push them to the edge of the map.  The Death Weapon lets them punch through armor, and the game of keep away lets you pepper the enemy with attacks until you can't move back any more.

It's pretty effective but was annoying to find the right combinations. 

I also discovered  something called the Ivory Bow (Yay mod inspector), which is at construction 6 and does 14 "Unlife Damage", and fires three arrows per attack.  If you kill someone with it, they become an undead minion!  I was thinking of trying to make a build built around this item, because it seems like it would be really funny/interesting to use.  I do have a question though, since it fires three arrows per attack, does it use up three ammo per attack as well?

[dennislp3]

I know there is one bow that "splits each arrow into 13" so i suppose it really depends on the verbage...I would assume it will split one arrow into 3...if it does that the ammo count will likely be slightly less than normal. If not the ammo will probably be a slight bit more than average.

[Frumple]

If it's anything like the bow of war, then no.

[Bluerobin]

I think ammo is less "number of arrows shot" and more "number of shots".

[nenjin]

Sorry, when I said "upping the magic site" I meant the frequency of magic sites option before starting a game.

I never run above 55%, and that gives me on average 3 hidden sites per province. Does it increase the frequency of interesting sites which affect provinces? As I posted above, I feel like there are fewer unique sites, but it's entirely anecdotal. Thrones probably replaced at least some sites.

That said, province affecting sites are highly dominion dependent in whether they're helping or hurting you, because that's usually how they do their work. Some just outright screw you, like Pestilence Well. Others tweak temperatures or something which almost always takes it out of the alignment you want it in. It's always kind of a kick in the balls to find a nice 15k pop province with good recruits, deck it out, make it a recruiting center.....and then find out there's a pestilence well on it.

[E. Albright]

*Actually, the only native-underwater critter I can remember with trample is Asp Turtles (which are gloriously brutal monstrosities that can take most indie water provinces either solo or in groups of two or three and do horrible things to armies in general.) and... probably Leviathans, which are those but undead (and amphibious). Both really high up in terms of research, though. Conj or Ench 7.

What? The turtles the only underwater tramplers? For shame, Frumple, for shame! How could you forget the majestic glory of the proud Atlantian War Lobsters?!?!?

[Frumple]

By making the statement while I was staring at the research list in game instead of looking at unit lists or whatev'

I do remember those things, now, though. They're also pretty nasty, but I think there was something about them being easy to get knocked into a second form or somethin'?

[E. Albright]

Most tramplers seem to be animals (elephants) or very stupid things (trogs?). Playable giant races seem to be human in all respects, save physical. It makes sense that they'd rather swing a giant spear rather than trample whatever it is they're fighting. Minotaurs make an exception here, sort of. But Pangaea's shtick is that they're closer to nature (ie. animals) so it makes sense for their big minotaurs to be able to 'zerk and trample all who oppose the leafy lord.

Actually if you're looking for a unified theory of tramplers, it's "animals". Trogs are considered animals, as are elephants, leviathans, the undead versions of both... and boars, and lobsters once their riders die. The minotaurs are tramplers only so long as they retain their wildness; once you get to LA, only the Grove Guards still have it.

The real exception to this is the various chariots, but they're "trampling" in an entirely different way than the animal tramplers; it's scythed wheels and such rather than stomping on their victims...