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[Frumple]

Haven't done too many, but those I did I... didn't. Can't really see much reason to prep much, if at all, unless you're doing something weirdly specific you haven't tried before, or need a refresher on how the nation you're playing works or somethin'. Not much else you can really do, imo. Too much depends on what happens in-game to be able to do much in the way of pre-work.

Maybe some vs AI games if there's something odd with the settings, too... changes to indie strength or whatev', just so you can get a feel of what you need to expand or whathaveyou.

And yeah, you can try test games but test games vs AI is... not going to tell you much about whether what you're doing is working or not. Everything else aside the AI is generally pretty terrible about scripting and army composition, which means if you're throwing armies against them to check and see how it'll work out you're probably not getting much in the way of helpful feedback. Best is you'll be able to see how you expand, more or less, or if there's any gapingly huge holes in what you intended to do.

Unless you intend to play both/all sides of the fight, I guess. Which is a thing you can do but... is a lot of work, tbh. And you're here to play a game, not run a side job :V

[Micro102]

How do you guys prep for a MP game with humans?

Read up on all the opposing nations and figure out the specific way your nation can dick over the others, then send messages to everyone about how they are the only ones you want to be allied with and give them a handful of gems so they ignore you eating your first victim

[ThtblovesDF]

Personally, I stare at the inspector for a while ( https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ ), then do a AI game with my nation (like 20 turns of one anyway), then try again with a less silly pretender build and then just shrug and take whatever.
During the game itself however, I do intense studys each turn.

[Kagus]

Play a bunch of test games to figure out if your strategy will work how you think it'll work or not.

Also come up with a REALLY good pun to name your god. Seriously. Wouldn't you accept an NAP from Thy Lord Cod?

Pun/joke names are the best thing about anything.  Thy Lord Cod, Rhesus Christ, Hung Lo, Merlin Haggard, 50 Centurion... Yeah.


Did some more testing out with LA R'lyeh, was gonna look for effective methods of reducing upkeep costs on the starspawn commanders.  Tested out the lychantropos amulet to see how that worked.

Well, it states that it's a MR check, which is the most immediate problem since starspawns have 20 MR off the bat. I tried it out on a couple other random commanders with less MR I had sitting around, including a goatherd that had random-evented (I'm not sure why, but noticing that the herd of goats get affected by the dreamlands dominion and go insane made me laugh).  I was moving one fellow around when he randomly transformed, underwater of course... So, yeah, he couldn't doggy paddle.

I gave the goatherd an eye of the void and a banner of the north star to hold onto, dropping his MR down to 5. He stayed that way for a couple years before I got tired of running the test.

Needless to say, not a very reliable tactic...  It was CONSIDERABLY more likely for the prospect to get tainted by the eye and then get lynched by a group of 8 belly maw horrors or whatever than it was to turn into a werewolf, so I didn't even get a chance to double check that they were upkeep free or capable of researching. This happened to the two prior subjects before the goatherd.

I also found out that not all of the void spawn are NNE, which... Surprised me, slightly. Also vastnesses can apparently still freespawn, because that's fine.


I've also been mucking around with Gath a little bit lately, got some nifty things up their sleeves... Like the iassacharite sages being effectively drain-immune, and Gath's ready access to lightless lanterns and skull mentors.

Also, Benjaminites... Oh glory glory, those delightful benjaminites...

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, in my first PBEM game and I just don't know what I'm doing. Not playing any particular strategy, have literally zero clue what I should be doing w.r.t. magic, but it's still pretty fun though

[Cruxador]

Personally, I stare at the inspector for a while ( https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ ), then do a AI game with my nation (like 20 turns of one anyway), then try again with a less silly pretender build and then just shrug and take whatever.
During the game itself however, I do intense studys each turn.

That's pretty much what I do. The other thing to keep in mind, though, is the expansion phase. Since that doesn't actually depend on the other players, you can test it pretty reliably. So you can spend a few testing games making sure to get good expansion and that'll help you out.

[Delta Foxtrot]

How do you guys prep for a MP game with humans?

Make a pretender build, play 10-20 turns. Tweak build, play 10-20 turns anew. Tweak as necessary. Object of 10-20 turns is to get roughly province a turn. If I'm really serious I do it until I can expand reliably and efficiently. Usually I get it close enough and call it done.

Then I fail at expanding anyway.

Oh and I probably look at what everyone can recruit to come up with a very vague idea of what I might be facing in the first war or two.

There's pretty much no preparation on how to conduct mid-late game MP game. It comes down to experience and gut feeling.

[E. Albright]

Did some more testing out with LA R'lyeh, was gonna look for effective methods of reducing upkeep costs on the starspawn commanders.  Tested out the lychantropos amulet to see how that worked.

It won't. At all. Anything naturally size 4+ (Amulet of Giants is irrelevant) will never transform. Anything else (...that's not lifeless or undead, I think? That'd be standard Transformation limitations...) has something like a 5% per turn chance... the Mod Inspector is a bad source of info in this case. All the above comes from the tried-and-true combination of having too much curiosity, too little to do, and too much free time.

[Shadowlord]

I usually only do test games with nations I haven't played before, or pretender designs I haven't used with that nation before. Otherwise, I just rely on previous experience. (I do fight the AI when I'm unfamiliar with a nation, because if the AI kicks my ass then I'm clearly doing something very wrong)

(I have, however, tested SC designs and items and so forth, by playing both nations in a two nation game)

[Kagus]

I tried being smart, taking a nation like LA Pythium or Nazca and then using their abundant heretics to un-dom a province, so I could create research stations outside of my drain dominion.

Then I realized I wasn't nearly as smart as I thought I was being, since the scales don't just reset in the absence of dominion apparently...



Ach vel. Back to the drawing board to squeeze more points out of nowhere.

[Frumple]

Probably your best chance there would be doing it to a province with a magic scale site, heh. Can't recall if there's any rituals that would let you do it own your own.

... actually, now I realize I can't recall exactly which scales can be modified like that. I know heat/cold is an option, and sloth, but the rest...

[USEC_OFFICER]

Doesn't Nazca have a magic boosting ritual? The Nazca lines, or whatever they're called in game. Probably too late in the research tree to use it effectively but still. That should be an option.

[Shadowlord]

Pick Bandar Log and mind control Ulm's researchers. Also convince someone to play Ulm.

[Frumple]

Doesn't Nazca have a magic boosting ritual? The Nazca lines, or whatever they're called in game. Probably too late in the research tree to use it effectively but still. That should be an option.

Geoglyphs, apparently. Ench 5 isn't that bad, but it isn't good, either. Also you need an S3E2 flyer to cast it. So an astral random coya or a chunk more research for a booster. And it has to be in a waste.

... what I'm saying is you'll probably have better results hoping you find a magic scale site :V

E: Or building your pretender around it, I guess? That's feasible.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Yeah. I suppose it's more of a midgame boost than anything else. Though you could probably gain the same boost (if not better), by conquering someone else's lands and dropping your heretics in them before your dominion messes things up. Either way, not really a strategy I'd base my game around. Seems too finicky to me.