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[Frumple]

I know I fixate on the blobs a bit -- pretty willing to raid with thugs/SCs or whatev', but moving a relatively small army into enemy territory is just... hard.

The biggest issue t'me is being able to figure out what's big enough -- being able to take five provinces a turn doesn't matter if five turns later your entire force has been defeated piecemeal and it takes 5+ more to recuperate your losses, all while whatever offered up your defeat in detail rampages around unchecked. Especially given that while a 100 troop 3 mage army may be able to take a province (often easily, depending on PD and defending forces), whatever's left behind probably won't be able to keep it. And while constant raiding is a very, very good thing to be doing (both for the economic effect and how demoralizing it can be for an opponent), it's not, in itself, necessarily going to win the game for you. And the economic effect of it can become very diluted if you're constantly losing your raid groups (of course, that makes the reanimating or domsum nations very attractive for multi-group attacks, since they don't really pay much for their junk).

What's actually nice about the end game is by that point you should (hopefully, and contingent to your nation) have a lot of options for dealing with enemy armies off the main battlefield. Assassins, remote attack spells of both the direct (damaging/assassinating) and indirect (weather/supply targeting/disease, etc) sorts, the as-noted bypassing (if giant army barrels into your nation, hop flying SC/thug(s) a province or two behind them and just clean up after the mess), globals such as vengeful waters, etc., etc. Short of nasty stuff like an SC trapezing in and setting up a lab for an incoming gateway(s), large armies are very... inflexible. Slow, and vulnerable to said defeat in detail if they split up to deal with multi-pronged attacks.

... but yeah, as for actual formations, if it's reached the point the blob is battlefield wide I tend to just say screw it and let it blob. Put casters where they can hit stuff with gift of flight or somethin' or just let the non-caster/unimportant troops get chewed up while the other stuff do their work. At that point I don't really seem them as means of offense so much as ablative HP shields for my actually important stuff, and at that point their placement becomes... less important. _{I have, however, played a disproportionate amount of chaff heavy nations in SP games, which definitely influences that tendency.}

[Mindmaker]

Well, I'm mainly asking because I have like 640+ troops marching towards an enemy capital and only 3 flavours (Longbowmen, Defenders and some powerful undead I get from throne summoning), which is just one huge mess.
I used to have them in lines with a bit of space in between, but that's no longer possible, especially since when lines get to long they turn into double lines anyway. I'm just worried that they'll be to vulnerable to area spells.

It's not much better with my mage support, which is 18 communion slaves and maybe 15 masters and a couple of regular casters. It's really hard not to bunch them up in the rear.

[Frumple]

... yeah, when they get large enough the single lines become de-facto double ones, I tend to just leave them that way -- they're still going to be less vulnerable to AoE than if they were boxed, and they render flanking attacks that much more difficult, so...

Also harder to just punch through at that point, too, so it's sort of a good thing. Presumably if you're still worried about AoE you could try the skirmish formation. Don't think I've ever actually used it, m'self, and I have no idea how it reacts to buggeroff huge squads, but...

Though... is there a way to see what your formation looks like in combat without actually starting a fight? That would be intensely helpful, but I couldn't seem to find a command for it browsing the ? lists.

[Karlito]

Though... is there a way to see what your formation looks like in combat without actually starting a fight? That would be intensely helpful, but I couldn't seem to find a command for it browsing the ? lists.

Man I wish. We could maybe get range indicators for spells and ranged attacks too, with the enemy's deployment area highlighted. Despite the huge improvement over Dominions 3, there's still a lot of QoL stuff like this that's missing from Dom4.

[Mindmaker]

If the enemy uses an immobile, regenerating pretender either bring Soul Slay with penetration or just domkill him.
Otherwise it's going to be very painful.

[Frumple]

One of the instant kill spells, anyway. Massed mind duel if they've got astral. Maybe just one of the send-on-trip spells or somethin' -- in hell's as good as dead if it lets you take their last province. Could also stack hilarious amounts of horror marks on 'em, maybe. Throw on that curse, get that never healing wound in.

If they don't have a meaningful way to attack, you might try earth attack (or some other means of assassination, if you can acquire it* -- send in a non-caster with a skellie amulet set to cast spells) and laugh when/if the turn limit gets hit and insta-kills 'em. Similarly, if they're killing, throw in a bunch of chaff and then VotD them into end-fight auto-kill, heh.

*Actually, I've been meaning to ask about that. How does the assassin's heart thingy react to shademail?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Just thought I'd chime in, I'd like to see a warhammer 40k imperium nation added in as an OP joke.

[Frumple]

... just to check, you do know most of the warhammer fantasy ones do have mods, right?

E: He~ey. Turns out shademail enables black heart just fine. Looks like non-lifeless undead are probably ideal targets for the combo. It's not the most efficient thing in the world (especially considering some stealth boosters to go with it are probably needed), but assassinating wraith lords or whathaveyou (y'know, tartarians, whatev') is an... interesting thing.

I mean, sure, a tartarian assassin is just slightly overkill in most situations, but... as psychological tactics go, goddamn. Tartarian assassin. How the hell do you react to a freaking tartarian assassin rolling up into your crib? I mean, besides patrolling like damn and praying it doesn't just roll over your patrol army anyway.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

... just to check, you do know most of the warhammer fantasy ones do have mods, right?

I do, did I not say 40k?

[E. Albright]

Frumple, don't forget that if you're willing to wait until they besiege you, you can forgo the Shademail and just send the Blackhearted Tartarian out to assassinate people in the besieging army willy-nilly, although a Wraithlord seems more appropriate for defensive measures like that. And, uh, because it's slightly less ridiculous overkill.

[tompliss]

I do, did I not say 40k?

The "problem" with W40k is the lack of Magic.
Dominions is based on the fact that nations have access to magic paths to a certain extend, to work correctly.
And if you modded all the W40k nations without magic in dominions.... Well, you would have a pretty "classic" wargame, and no use playing it as a Dom4 mod, as most other wargames would fit it better :/

[Il Palazzo]

Frumple, don't forget that if you're willing to wait until they besiege you, you can forgo the Shademail and just send the Blackhearted Tartarian out to assassinate people in the besieging army willy-nilly, although a Wraithlord seems more appropriate for defensive measures like that. And, uh, because it's slightly less ridiculous overkill.

If it ain't got stealth, then it'll assassinate a random unit from the army. Good luck targetting a commander this way.

[Frumple]

I do, did I not say 40k?

The "problem" with W40k is the lack of Magic. [snip]

... WH40k totally has magic. It has great honking swaths of magic that occasionally devour entire solar systems and start spewing out things whose entire form is raw magic. It's a setting where thousands of magic users are sacrificed daily to keep a galaxy-scale global active. You could totally stick WH40k into D4 and still have psykers flailing around and calling up cave drakes warp beasts or whatev'.

S'not really a problem, is what m'saying.

[E. Albright]

If it ain't got stealth, then it'll assassinate a random unit from the army. Good luck targetting a commander this way.

...I'm not sure what you mean. If a unit w/o stealth is given a Black Heart, it'll behave exactly like a unit with stealth and a Black Heart (or a normal assassin) when both are in a besieged fort; i.e., both will assassinate besieging enemy commanders in a completely normal manner.

Or are you just talking about targeting a particular commander for assassination? The bit about stealth is what's confusing me.

[Elfeater]

What would be a good god for MA Ulm? Should his domain be fairly high on productivity? Etc...?