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[Kagus]

I like taking W9 on Ys, actually... It plays into the obscene defense and movespeed they already have, and additionally I'm pretty sure they get the 1.5x attacks with that firebreath of theirs, which... Is amazingly deadly.

[Cruxador]

So here's a question. What kind of pretenders/disciples do you guys prefer making? Personally I might have become a little too fond of bless strategies after thinking they seemed silly. Although sometimes you just need scales.

I love over the top meme strategies, especially mid-game stuff. Anything that has a clear and simple strategy to win with gimmicky spells, bless, or both. I have had problems of over-committing to something that seemed cool and paying too high of a trade-off or failing to pay attention to flexibility against other options, but I think I'm getting better about that. Pretty much never take an awake pretender or expansion-oriented build.

[Sean Mirrsen]

My favorites, to this day, are double-bless strategies involving the strengths of particular units (example: Quicksilver Stampede, aka Fire+Water on Pangaea's White Centaurs, ridiculous combat speed and attack power), and "just for fun" rainbow dwarf pretenders that seek to be able to craft everything rather than focus on any particular strategy.

[Jilladilla]

Rainbow Dwarfs are actually a legit strategy though, especially in team games... (And Rainbow Dwarfs can be frighteningly powerful (and unpredictable) battle casters in the late game (Ring of Wizardry + Robe of the Magi + Elemental Staff anybody?))

[Neonivek]

Sometimes I wonder if battle caster is the way to go because while spells are powerful... Killing casters pretty much cripples you forever... and there are a LOT of great strategies for doing so.

[Cruxador]

Sometimes I wonder if battle caster is the way to go because while spells are powerful... Killing casters pretty much cripples you forever... and there are a LOT of great strategies for doing so.

Overcommitting mages and losing them will end you, but good luck winning major battles after the early game without significant mage support.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Sometimes I wonder if battle caster is the way to go because while spells are powerful... Killing casters pretty much cripples you forever... and there are a LOT of great strategies for doing so.

Overcommitting mages and losing them will end you, but good luck winning major battles after the early game without significant mage support.

I tried devising strategies around that, it's mostly how I figured I'd use the Quicksilver Stampede. Too bad Pangaea is not big on Air mages, a bunch of casters Gift of Flight'ing a bundle of murderhappy White Centaurs set to Attack Rear would be quite hilarious.

[ThtblovesDF]

Patch:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

General
Can change battle log details from battle menu
A few wishes got improved effects
Added a few missing adjustments when viewing strength details
Curse of Stones now affects units when they fly as well
Don't remove slave/master-vessels from overpopulation
Army of rats didn't result in the battle fright it was supposed to
Potential crash during host fix
Memory leak fixed
Description fixes
Stat fixes

Modding
Now possible to start dominions even when a mod is missing its name
New monster commands: #homeshape, #foreignshape, #addrandomage
New monster/item command: #blessfly
Can use #nextspell 0 to remove nextspell
#berserk fix
#slothpower now works for monsters too

Mac OSX changes
Portaudio support
Portaudio is default for OSX 10.12 and later

[Neonivek]

Sometimes I wonder if battle caster is the way to go because while spells are powerful... Killing casters pretty much cripples you forever... and there are a LOT of great strategies for doing so.

Overcommitting mages and losing them will end you, but good luck winning major battles after the early game without significant mage support.

I tried devising strategies around that, it's mostly how I figured I'd use the Quicksilver Stampede. Too bad Pangaea is not big on Air mages, a bunch of casters Gift of Flight'ing a bundle of murderhappy White Centaurs set to Attack Rear would be quite hilarious.

Yeah if I had to give Dominions (well just 3 and 4 I guess) one major flaw... it is that the game has little-no bounce back. Well outside certain factions and specific strategies.

[Shadowlord]

bounce-back?

[E. Albright]

I assume they mean it's hard to recover from significant loses, or even to catch up if an opponent significantly outgrows or outpaces you. I'm not sure I agree with the statement as a general rule, because it makes assumptions about metagame factors (even if it's just the AI's swarm->kill->repeat mindlessness). But I don't exactly disagree with it either...

[Sean Mirrsen]

I assume they mean it's hard to recover from significant loses, or even to catch up if an opponent significantly outgrows or outpaces you. I'm not sure I agree with the statement as a general rule, because it makes assumptions about metagame factors (even if it's just the AI's swarm->kill->repeat mindlessness). But I don't exactly disagree with it either...

I assume so too. The game is built around maintaining pressure and momentum. Either constantly pushing against the enemy, or always keeping the ability to. As soon as the momentum slips or some key variable in your strategy fails, your whole nation is liable to basically fold in, collapse without any chance of recovery. Unless you have allies, which in this game is highly unlikely, or usually happens in a situation where your enemy has allies too, so your allies are under just as much pressure.

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, it's... probably a good thing. If D4 had easily leveraged comeback mechanics the game could pretty easily end up having match lengths that are just too long to actually play. Considering MP games can already take up a few months without much trouble, if the game was designed so that it regularly got stretched out even further I'd probably wager the player base would just kinda' collapse. Very few people want to get stuck in a game that's unending back and forth. To say nothing of how unsatisfying it tends to be when you win a game pretty much strictly by dint of playing until the other side got sick of keeping things going and quit. Or being on the other side of that, heh.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The flip side to that is that the "key screwup" can happen at any point. Within the first few turns, if you slip up or get unlucky you'll lose enough momentum to allow your enemy to get an edge in territories, income, dominion, and production power, since those are all interlinked. And once that happens, it's very hard to come out on top again unless the enemy gets a similar magnitude of slip-up at some point as well. Lacking late-game comeback mechanics is one thing, but you also lack early-game ones. It's rather punishing.

(cases in point - my last two games here. First time I managed to misjudge indie strength versus my own since I'm not that used to Oceania, and lost three turns early-game building up my army again; I had no army or territory to speak of and was locked in the sea with R'lyeh. Second time I was in a very poor strategic position from the outset, but again, losing a turn of activity with a messed-up move order cost me the strategic position to block off Agartha without having to attack them, which then cost me the rest of the game as I couldn't focus on Ulm. This game causes losses to snowall very quickly, and an early loss to an early mishap can be equally unsatisfying.)

[E. Albright]

As soon as the momentum slips or some key variable in your strategy fails, your whole nation is liable to basically fold in, collapse without any chance of recovery.

This really isn't as true as a lot of people hold it to be. I'm not saying it isn't true, but you can hold out in an underdog position a lot longer than many people are willing to even consider, and if you're willing to do so (and again, many if not most people aren't) it often has a huge effect on the momentum of the person who just crippled you. Sticking it out and forcing Pyrrhic victories instead of walking away as soon as your biggest army dies or you come under siege can make what had been a snowballing power grab into a slogging resource drain. Admittedly, you're more likely to be kingmaker than king. But still, it can be possible to eke out comebacks if you can make your would-be killer bleed enough to attract sharks.

The key point is you need to plan for the possibility of failure rather than just trying to come back only if you suffer a catastrophic defeat. This means doing things like not overcommitting resources, avoiding all-or-nothing confrontations, holding back reserves, and a variety of other unpopular non-all-out-offensive strategies that conventional wisdom in most Dominions communities dismiss as playing to lose...

(And yes, I'm told I am an absolute joy to play against, TYVM.)