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[Frumple]

Think with aspho labs and forts have no effect... just temples. Checking a bit it looks like there's some differences between the dominion summon and the reanimation one, too. Forests and the presence of corpses can make a difference, as well as dominion strength.

Apparently the reanimation doesn't care about terrain, which is interesting. Can see a nice breakdown a few posts down on this thread.

[Cruxador]

So, it's totally these conversations that make me scared of trying multiplayer

These kinds of shenanigans are mostly just-for-fun things, and multiplayer games rarely get to the stage where they're possible, much less viable.

Did you ever see 4 full blesses pretender builds in multiplayer?( nonmictlan ones)

Even for Mictlan, it's rare. It's pretty much a meme build because you need to tank both scales and dominion. You have ways to mitigate the scales, but dominion limits the amount of sacreds per turn that you can get, so the advantage that you're sacrificing everything else for is relatively hobbled; you can't build up fast enough for a rush. Theoretically if you could get to Ozelotls, it would be great, but it's not something I've ever seen pulled off. For nations which don't have massable sacred summons, there's not even that possibility.

There was a meme game once where everyone was required to take a quadbless though. It turned into a desolate wasteland where nobody could afford anything. Anticipating that, I played as Marverni in the hopes that boars would become relevant due to being free and spammable, but was eliminated early due to being a mediocre player with a shit nation (and one critical tactics failure when Light of the North Star failed to go off, turning Stellar Cascade spam into off-script nincompoopery).

Not really in ours.  The most likely outcome of a four bless build (especially non-Mictlan) is to ruin one person's game with an early game rush and then lose to everyone else.  We have a loose understanding that we're not going to engage in super earlygame rushes, and that build would only be used for that.  Under anything approaching normal circumstances, you should be able to get what you want with a triple major (let's be honest, you don't even need that).  Adding a fourth major forces you to stick those last, most brutal scales into the red.

I did run a triple bless build in a disciples game.  But then I was running with a totally new player so I saw it as the best way to victory.

The most likely outcome of a four bless build is to get your shit wrecked without accomplishing anything. Tribless is as you describe for some nations (giants in particular) but it's a massive mid-game asset for MA Ermor and nations with sacred blood summons, and for those nations it remains a decent edge into the lategame, when the trade-off costs are long since obviated.

What's everybody's favorite era? I'm most used to the middle ages. I ask because I'm wondering about which era to do the blood magicks in.

Speaking of which, what are the best teams for blood  magic in the era?

I like Early. It has some great blood magic in Mictlan, Lanka, Berytos, and Xibalba. That said, you can browse around http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ to see which nations have good blood mages and nation-specific blood spells. To be good at blood, you need a cheap blood mage to hunt for slaves and a somewhat strong one for rituals.

Ehehe. MA R'yleh is actually my favorite for that nation. Most of the power of either one, without the domkill or the aquatic casters. Much less trouble to play, imo. Certainly the least thematic of the three but I'll take gold and/or my commanders going where I tell them to over style points just about any day of the week :V

You can say it's less thematic, but I don't think it's so compared to the average for Dominions. It's just compared to the crazy mechanics it gets in other ages. And a high imperial race of conquering squids is still interesting in my opinion, and everyone loves some good mindblast spam.

[ThtblovesDF]

In round 21 we had a Mictlan with quad bless and a ton of Ozelotl. They had:

flying, strenght near 20 (blood bless), Blood Vengance, like 17 Attack, Flaming Weapons, Death Weapons and a Nature Bless (which with the death bless gave them near 50 effective hp + regeneration)
and most importantly 3 different attacks (Bite, Claw, Claw) that could all apply the magic weapon effects - additionally "need not eat", Forest surival and a moral of 30.

Thankfully they never really left there capital.


Plug: Sign Up for the casual round 23.

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm partial to the mid era.  In early, a solid portion of the people in your game are likely to have "I don't even know how to fight this" level sacreds, particularly if you're new.  Lategame is just weird, there's less nations that are less balanced.  Mid feels like a more balanced, sane experience.  Although I suppose its also a more boring one.  EA would be my second favorite because it mostly lacks freespawn and its aquatic nations suck.  Both of those nation types can draw you into these one-sided wars where if they win they profit but if you win you get nothing.

[sprinkled chariot]

It would be really nice, if all those madmen did not require salary like undead do.

[Frumple]

It's the food that gets me more than the upkeep, personally. Salary and the effects on not having it I can deal with a'ight, having a bunch of diseased crazies sans morale (due to starvation) choking up your everything is... less treatable. At least with undead you can just leave stuff sitting around until you need it without much direct consequence... r'yleh, you either move it or worse-than-lose* it.

Though with cultists, they should probably attack or something (form splinter cults, generating those stealthy preacher thing events?) when not paid instead of just leaving. Or much better, do that to provinces neighboring your nation, or perhaps just have a high chance to not be detrimental to r'yleh (instead of causing unrest or lowering dominion or whatev', it would give a small boost to PD** and possibly just flat out act as an H1 priest, with some knock-on  events). That, actually, would be amazing, taking one of the yokes around their neck and turning it into a direct advantage, and I think introducing another mechanic (the other being the insanity) that no other freespawn nation has.

... honestly, having actually spent some time thinking about it, now,  it feels like the cultists really have just a massive amount of potential to be spiced up. Some of it would even make interesting mechanics for other nations -- having some that react differently to disbanding due to lack of pay would be both neat and rather incredibly thematic, particularly if there was a way to induce it that didn't involve deep sixing your economy. Events and magic sites that tailor themselves to the number and type of certain units also has a hell of a lot of potential... I actually want to say there's already a little of the former, but it'd be great if there was both more and more impactful/reliably activated ones.

*Which is half the reason I love BVCs and whatnot so much, the whole "here, have a unit you still have to pay for but now doesn't even work well as chaff" thing, with starvation switching that to "but now cripples anything non-mindless in your army", due to routing considerations. It just sucks to be on the receiving end :V

**Actually... if it's possible to remove magic sites, or have another building sorta' like a castle, it could act like those sites that add new PD types to the province, preferably with some kind of stacking mechanic so the more cults you have established in a single province, the larger and weirder the adds get. With losing PD or having the cults dug out (they'd still presumably be stealth armies loitering around, or something like story events you can search for) causing the PD to reduce... or having it so they stop being extra PD if someone else has control and starts being an overt nuisance.

[Shadowlord]

In round 21 we had a Mictlan with quad bless and a ton of Ozelotl. They had:

flying, strenght near 20 (blood bless), Blood Vengance, like 17 Attack, Flaming Weapons, Death Weapons and a Nature Bless (which with the death bless gave them near 50 effective hp + regeneration)
and most importantly 3 different attacks (Bite, Claw, Claw) that could all apply the magic weapon effects - additionally "need not eat", Forest surival and a moral of 30.

Thankfully they never really left there capital.


Plug: Sign Up for the casual round 23.

That was xibalba and it was me, and it was your triple-blessed boars that kept me in check.

I would join your casual round but I'm in two games already and not devoting much time or thinking to my current bay12 game.

[Cruxador]

In round 21 we had a Mictlan with quad bless and a ton of Ozelotl. They had:

flying, strenght near 20 (blood bless), Blood Vengance, like 17 Attack, Flaming Weapons, Death Weapons and a Nature Bless (which with the death bless gave them near 50 effective hp + regeneration)
and most importantly 3 different attacks (Bite, Claw, Claw) that could all apply the magic weapon effects - additionally "need not eat", Forest surival and a moral of 30.

Thankfully they never really left there capital.

Death bless does good work keeping them alive, but they probably would have been much more effective with a water bless instead; it also helps with defense, which they're kind of lacking in (unlike D, it does nothing against (most) evocations, but Blood Vengeance and the nature bless have that pretty well covered) and a water bless would bring them up to 4.5 attacks per round, each one benefiting from that strength and the fire bless. Those additional attacks are gonna be worth more than the death weapon effect in pretty much every case.

What prevented them from leaving their capital area after getting the ozelotls? It seems about right for a mid-game rush, and if the player got to Ozelotls I would think they're pretty competent. Or did they only get that far due to being ignored?

it was your triple-blessed boars that kept me in check.

How does this even happen?

[chaoticag]

Massively tanking scales. The boars also kept starving forever apparently. I never ran into them, but it seemed like they wanted to be put out of their misery by the end of the game.

[Kagus]

Tried out a blood/air bless for Lanka. Just had the pleasure of watching an indie priest blow himself up by casting banish. Also, overall effectiveness is considerably higher than what I'd been expecting... I guess it just goes to show how hysterically vulnerable they are to ranged attacks. Also the early game asaras are hurling range-34 javelins with 10 precision that do some 26-odd piercing damage.

Also tried a D9/N9/E4 bless for Marignon, just for shits and giggles. Tripling the hitpoints of the flagellantswarm is pretty funny, as is watching them just regenerate arrow wounds and then go bash cavalry with lots and lots of death weapon attacks.

Hugely effective? Ehhh... I've seen better. But is it entertaining? Damn straight it is.

[Micro102]

I like the idea of blood 9 flagellant spam. Never tried it but the idea of an army of suicide bombers is fun.

[chaoticag]

Blood nine flagellant spam kinda works, but there's counters to it. Blood vengence isn't automatic, it needs to beat magic resistance. There's also times when all it takes is a cheap caster who can cast a battlefield wide spell to kill them all. Heck, I think something like poisoning the entire battlefield might work really well to shut them down without losing the mage assuming you can poison resist your army.

[Kagus]

That's my current setup for LA Marignon, actually. Awake B9/F4 jaguar that can go around and take provinces for my other dudes to build temples in to start the holyswarm. Surprisingly cheap, all things considered.

B9 bless is great fun for those few pretenders who start every combat with expendable sacreds. Since they're fighting alongside the pretender, they get auto-buffed, and they're completely free and thus completely expendable, hehe.

[Frumple]

Major blood's one of the default blesses for flagellants, really. They're rather bad otherwise so at least making them do something while the enemy kills them en masse is a go-to idea :V

'Course the second you go up against someone able to cast antimagic or somethin' the game is done, heh. And yeah, using a disposable mage to wipe the battlefield works just fine, though to be fair a DN major does make that harder to do. Not sure how well poison works if they're running a major N bless, though.

Flagellants are one of those early game expansion things more than anything, iirc. Use 'em for the cheap rush and then transition to the sacreds worth a damn as the game goes on. You generally try to sync their bless with the other sacreds a bit more because of that... water instead of death for the MA ones 'cause calvary with major water going are nightmares, stuff like that. W9N9E4 is pretty decent almost regardless of the nation, really. Less attrition/tougher units, the earth minor everyone wants, and what's arguably the best general purpose combat bless in the game. Hard to really go wrong with it if your can handle the cost scale wise.

[ThtblovesDF]

it was your triple-blessed boars that kept me in check.

How does this even happen?

It was horrible, just starve-city. The Boars where midly effective, but mostly I had 100x 50 hp (+undying+regeneration) Blood Vengance Sacreds /per turn.

They didn't do much, since they have among the lowest MR of any unit in the game and I took far to long to get anywhere - plus of course I was next to a dom-kill-nation.

I would've been very hard to siege, since they have a ton of strenght, build up massivly and are decent as defenders...