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[symonthewise]

I had the most awesome vampire commander. THE MOST AWESOME. Then one of my half blind idiot priests misfired a banshiment...

Basically what I want to know is, can I ritually sacrifice pointless commanders who I am angry at.

[Delta Foxtrot]

If there's one thing Dominions does right it's job security. You're going to have to march that guy into enemy PD if you want him gone.

Bonus points if he survives or even takes over the province while at it

[symonthewise]

That's true, worst case scenario he beats up enemy PD and gets on the heroes board hehe

[AlStar]

A mage who can't cast spells just sits there doing nothing. They don't try to get closer, or switch to attacking, or anything else.

Blood mages can use slaves that other folks on their side of the battle have brought. (I don't recall if they have to be nearby, though)

I'd try to answer more of your questions (having just finished a game where I used blood magic heavily), but can't, really, because I almost never used blood magic in battle, since I figured it was (1) a waste of slaves compared to what else I could do with them (blood sac, high-end mass demon summons, infernal disease), (2) a waste of low-level blood mages who could be blood hunting instead.

Obviously, AlStar is desperate in whatever blood scheme he's cooking up.

It's not exactly a secret - I'm planning to have a blood mage cast Blood Lust, which I'd say is worthwhile if 1) you've got enough demons around, and 2) you know there's about to be a large battle... like say if you just broke down a castle gate.

I agree that blood mages are generally better off doing something more productive with their time, but until fairly recently I didn't have any other commanders that could lead demons outside of cap-only recruits, so I've still got some mages who are acting as glorified demonic baby sitters.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[E. Albright]

Basically what I want to know is, can I ritually sacrifice pointless commanders who I am angry at.

Give them a pretty green necklace to wear (you can take it back after the first month to make sure others don't suffer in solidarity with them), or a pretty green sceptre. The next ten months of their life should be appropriately enjoyable.

If you have 20 slaves to spare, maybe you can use a horror seed at blood 9 and have a unit discretely horror mark and spread parasitic horrors in an enemy army. Given it's a unit in the army, it will travel with that army and horror mark things until it is killed, at which point it's true self is revealed and it attacks everyone. Fun for the whole family, but maybe use it for a war going on between two people you dislike.

The last time I used Horror Seed I unfortunately infected one of the thousands upon thousands of soulless and longdead in the province, and within a turn or two, it was evaporated by my Purgatory. Tragically, this was an unhandled form of death as far as HS was concerned, so it didn't even go out with a bang. OTOH, the Horror Seed was pretty much just counting coup at that point, so no biggie...

[Shadowlord]

I've found it amusing: For instance, casting it on a castle I have no intention of attacking any time soon - eventually a horror shows up, kills the PD, and puts the fort under siege. Another time I cast it on a big army that looked poised to fight another big army. They fought, one side was losing, and then the horror popped out and went to town on both sides.

[AlStar]

Random question for you all - how do you determine if you came out ahead in a fight?

I mean, sometimes it's pretty easy - I spent 10 gold on PD who managed to kill 30 gold worth of an attacking army => that was a worthwhile investment in PD.

Similarly, in battles which involve only regular troops, a simple tally of gold/resource costs can give a good measure.

But what do you do when you start bringing in summoned troops into the mix?

For instance (and this isn't going to be perfectly accurate, since I don't have the battle open in front of me): I lost roughly 50 wolves, killing a demon knight and something like half a dozen 20 gold, high resource troops.
The wolves were either part of a werewolf's entourage as part of a 15 gem spell, or summoned up by bored werewolves for free.
The demon knight only costs 5 slaves, but required at least one turn to hunt down those slaves, then another turn to summon. 
The troops took at least one turn to build (possibly more, depending on resources required vs how resource-rich my opponent's castles are) plus gold costs.

Did I come out ahead? Personally, I'm feeling like I did, since I see those wolves as a basically 'free' resource - even the ones that came out of a spell are basically just a plus for getting a werewolf, and the ones summoned by werewolves are also free, since werewolves aren't mages, so I'm not losing research/site searching/whatever opportunity costs - whatever carnage those wolves manage to inflict before dying a horrible death is a plus.

Thoughts?

[chaoticag]

Coming out in a fight is a bit tricky. It feels the trick of breaking it down into how much gold or resources is useful to some extent, but it's hardly a deciding metric for a one off fight in my opinion. Mainly, when it comes to those fights, I tend to judge by heuristics rather than anything too technical in terms of cost analysis. As long as my armies are effective after the fight, and I have achieved or denied an enemy a strategic goal, then I have come out ahead. Mainly I'm going by this since it can be an issue trying to figure out an opportunity cost when I'm not aware how my opponents economy is going.

In terms of gem comparisons, the issue then is mostly whether it could have been done cheaper. If I'm summoning ogres, is there anything I could be doing with those earth gems that gets me a better effect that reaches the same strategic goal I have in mind? Losing those ogres on defense would royally suck compared to using PD, and curse of stones might be more effective for what I have in mind instead of summoning troops with those gems.

Generally though, when it comes to gems, I'd rather something be more permanent than a one off fight if I was summoning units. I just prefer reliable increases than one off boosts.

[EuchreJack]

Random question for you all - how do you determine if you came out ahead in a fight?

I mean, sometimes it's pretty easy - I spent 10 gold on PD who managed to kill 30 gold worth of an attacking army => that was a worthwhile investment in PD.

Similarly, in battles which involve only regular troops, a simple tally of gold/resource costs can give a good measure.

But what do you do when you start bringing in summoned troops into the mix?

For instance (and this isn't going to be perfectly accurate, since I don't have the battle open in front of me): I lost roughly 50 wolves, killing a demon knight and something like half a dozen 20 gold, high resource troops.
The wolves were either part of a werewolf's entourage as part of a 15 gem spell, or summoned up by bored werewolves for free.
The demon knight only costs 5 slaves, but required at least one turn to hunt down those slaves, then another turn to summon. 
The troops took at least one turn to build (possibly more, depending on resources required vs how resource-rich my opponent's castles are) plus gold costs.

Did I come out ahead? Personally, I'm feeling like I did, since I see those wolves as a basically 'free' resource - even the ones that came out of a spell are basically just a plus for getting a werewolf, and the ones summoned by werewolves are also free, since werewolves aren't mages, so I'm not losing research/site searching/whatever opportunity costs - whatever carnage those wolves manage to inflict before dying a horrible death is a plus.

Thoughts?

As your opponent in that fight, I'll answer honestly and truly: I won, you lost.
Besides, your puny analysis omits the only factor I ever consider: Who has the province at the end?  Answer: Me.

Also: See my comment in our thread on this game.

Finally:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If I hadn't run away like a snivelling coward, I would have lost a lot more than a Demon Knight.  If you want a more technical analysis, both the wolves and the Demon Knight are equal to two turns, one by the werewolf and the other by a blood/earth mage.

[AlStar]

If you want a more technical analysis, both the wolves and the Demon Knight are equal to two turns, one by the werewolf and the other by a blood/earth mage.

Sure, but as I mention in my initial post, a werewolf's time is a lot less valuable then that of a blood/earth mage. If a werewolf isn't summoning up more wolves, he's just sitting on his ass.

I was sad to see that you'd fallen back - I had a nice greeting party ready for that demon lord of yours, and the hope was the wolves would cut off your retreating troops.

[Shadowlord]

I'd look at whether you need to replace your losses, and how difficult it would be to do so. Getting 50 more wolves would take a while, for instance, unless you have a lot of werewolves or burned a lot of gems summoning more. On the other hand, you could replace them with a non-shit unit that would be less likely to die in droves  . Of course if your army was strong enough and they were just chaff you could replace them with any other chaff unit or use in-battle summon spam.

Getting another demon knight, otoh, is easy if EuchreJack has even a tiny blood hunting operation going, although you have to ask yourself whether it's worth the mage-turn to summon a single demon cavalry unit (unless he has blood 9 and can summon 10+ per mage-turn with boosted/empowered mages). If he wanted to replace the lost conventional troops, I'd guess that his main constraint would be the time needed to produce them and ship them to the front. How fast he could do so would depend on obvious factors that you've probably already considered: where he wants to make them, the amount of resources available there, and the resource cost on the units, and how long it would take to ship them forward.

If he's using them as standard troops it's entirely possible that he could be producing and streaming them to the front constantly, so replacement time would be effectively zero, so there is that, too.

[sprinkled chariot]

What is parasitic horror? How horror seed works?

[Shadowlord]

About horror seed:
The spell description is pretty much spot on:

A Horror is sent to possess a far away enemy. The Horror hides its true self and spreads its evil ways, marking and cursing soldiers in the province. The most horrible ability of the possessing Horror is to infect living soldiers with Parasitic Horrors. These Parasitic Horrors sooner or later break the mind and body of their host, transforming them into full fledged Horrors. Should the host of the Master Horror be slain, the true Horror will manifest and attack everything alive.

The horror seed plants a master horror in a random unit in the province you cast horror seed on. It stays in that unit no matter where said unit goes. Killing any unit with a horror in it will release said horror, I believe, or a parasitic horror can pop out and attack the army, which can cause a chain reaction if it kills more units that have horrors in them.

If the host of the master horror dies really soon after it's planted with horror seed, it may not have created any parasitic horrors yet, but may still kill some people.

Hey AlStar, got any Nature gems left?

Trolls are more economical then you'd think - the nature ones, anyway. A mere... 37 gems, I think? A steal compared to the 55 needed for earth trolls.

Can you do something useful with nature trolls? I ask because boosted earth trolls can cast very useful E5 spells, including Crumble, Earth Attack, Forge of the Ancients, King of Elemental Earth (casting that twice gets you two natural E5 casters), and if you want to use them in combat, Army of Gold and Army of Lead. Most of those are mid/lategame spells, though. Crumble's the lowest-level one, I think (Alteration 6).

After Father Illearth, troll kings are also my preferred demon knight mass-producers once I have blood 9. (A regular E1 mage with earth boots would be cheaper to empower/buff up to the required level, but also far easier to kill)

[Cruxador]

Did Desura just die? ;-;7

The company has been dead for like half a year. The site was presumably only up because nothing had expired yet (aside from the mail service, the lack of which prevented new people from joining) and nobody had gone out of their way to take it down.

Talking about a waste, i do love the concept of horror marks, but I recall they where useless in dom3 and it was always better to mind hunt or wish-spam or do anything else excep that. Does it have bite, now in dom4?

The problem with them is that while they do spell inevitable annihilation, they don't do anything in the immediate sense. So while you can slap a bunch of horror marks on an SC and it will be taken down eventually, in a straight army-vs-army fight, they're far less useful.