Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EnigmaticHat]

Its worth pointing out that dominions balance is hard to talk about because it varies based on your options.  Some dominions games will never hit lategame, some will go really long, and some (normal research/disciples) don't need to go long for advanced tactics to appear.

In the long term in Dominions a lot of factions have to be dragged into the lategame by very expensive empowerment + boosters + summons.  Its really complicated to explain why, but basically every path is different in terms of how hard it is to boost AND in terms of which levels will be helpful in the lategame.  Generally in the lategame what you want is a smaller number of high level mages, and that's... not easy to get if you don't already have it.  So factions vary wildly in terms of lategame power.

There are a few factions out there that in the hands of an experienced player are almost impossible to beat on even terms once it reaches the lategame.  For example several factions with high level blood mages that aren't cap-recruit can eventually replace all of their troops with powerful demons and create global spells that will be extremely expensive to remove from the globals list.  If all you've got against that is your national troops supplemented by mid-level magic/summons/thugs... good luck.  Your best bet against these factions is to own half the map, site search everything, and crush all of your problems under the massive, inefficient weight of how many gems you have.

[Jilladilla]

AlStar, aren't most of the things summoned by Swarm only capable of doing 1 damage MAX? No matter how high their strength becomes?

Huh, I didn't know that - shame (annoyingly, I'm fairly sure your mages will happily cast it on the swarm, since I've done that before.)

Do not fault them, for they do not know it's not really helping.
(Actually, I would think that Swarm would create a buff magnet, as your mages see that they can hit a LOT of units if they aim over there, never really tested this, more of a fan of earth magic you see)

Swarm is still really good at getting instant chaff walls up.

[Karlito]

I believe mages generally prefer to target high hp units though.

[E. Albright]

Lobo Guard die in droves, which is what they're for but my commanders lose hope and flee.

It's worth noting that illithids have spectacularly awful morale. Mages and heroes who in other nations might have 12, 14, 16, or even 30 have... 9. Your best morale on commanders is literally the 12 morale on Traitor Princes and Illithid Lords. Every single non-slave troop has better morale than caster illithids (and the "elite slave" Meteorite Guard have as good morale as the best R'lyeh commanders). I suppose if you're a functionally immortal alien slave master, "he who fights and runs away may live to fight another day" is pretty hard to argue with...

--

Also, generally, yes, the AI tries to hit as many HP as possible with a single cast.

[ThtblovesDF]

How is the intrest in a fast, easy research, land only game?

[AlStar]

How is the intrest in a fast, easy research, land only game?

What's the definition of 'fast' in this context? 24 hour turns (less? more?) - or something else?

Land only as-in only land nations, or literally no water whatsoever? It's worth noting that several land nations get screwed over if there's none at all.

[ThtblovesDF]

Land nations only, water on the map - "fast" would just be not going above 48 hours, its more about trying to get turns done.

[AlStar]

Curious about other's thoughts on "splashing" Blood - particularly on a nation with no Blood access on its recruitable mages, but who manages to find slave pits (or similar, like the Lower Throne), so they've got a meager (but steady) income of slaves coming in.

Worth the time and expense of researching blood (how far up the tree?) and training up one (several?) caster(s)? Blood hunter(s)?

[Jilladilla]

Curious about other's thoughts on "splashing" Blood - particularly on a nation with no Blood access on its recruitable mages, but who manages to find slave pits (or similar, like the Lower Throne), so they've got a meager (but steady) income of slaves coming in.

Worth the time and expense of researching blood (how far up the tree?) and training up one (several?) caster(s)? Blood hunter(s)?

It can be quite useful sometimes. (Although only 2 come to mind...) Note that if you empower a commander for slave hunting duty (and slave hunting duty ONLY), it's probably worth it to do so to a normal commander, to save on upkeep. They're more likely to survive stray arrows too!

Like if you have native earth magic (for Bloodstones)
A Communion focused nation can also get decent mileage out of Rejuvenation (AKA, kill slave, reset fatigue for caster+all slaves)
There's almost certainly more good cases where you can get some benefit from splashing, but I highly doubt you'll get much good out of just straight blood, it'll take far too long to bootstrap a blood economy to really leverage blood magic. Figure out what you can potentially do with it, see if you can fill in a gap or amplify your strengths. And remember, it's there to support your nations bread and butter, not stand on its own!

(P.S. I've never played a blood nation. Bootstrapped into it once myself though, but you REALLY need the Lower Throne or a province that lets you recruit Blood mages (like the ever elusive Garnet Amazons) to do so... Or you could trade I guess.)

[Kagus]

Bloodstones in and of themselves are a great reason to get just enough blood that you can start making a few of them.  Outside of that there aren't many low-level solutions that really make blood stand out, especially since it means you need to devote research into a completely separate school in order to get anything.

Rejuvenation is great for communions, as mentioned, and you can even use a level of blood instead of astral/crystal matrix to bring another mage in on the communion, but that can get really expensive really quickly.

Sadly there aren't any particularly easy ways of bootstrapping into blood since the change was made to the SDR. Before you could just get one dude into blood, and then pump out SDRs to supply a bunch of no-maj hunters and give yourself a semi-respectable economy.  There aren't even that many great low-level blood items outside the bloodstone that are really worth making... The soul contract (which is amazing for non-blood nations) requires a whopping 7B1F in order to forge one (heh, heh... forging a contract).

There's lifelong protection at Con4, which can be fun to stick onto backseat commanders so that they provide a constant annoyance/disruption factor to the enemy team. Having enough "imp portal" (imp-port-ant?) commanders on the field in a battle can actually be quite handy, as it's basically skellyspamming that can never run out of stamina and whose summons are even better at swarming enemy units.

If you do manage to get a minor blood economy going, imp familiar can actually be really handy if you've got a lot of expendable researchers, as they only cost 5 blood slaves and provide +3 to research.

[Culise]

Death access works, too. It looks like the old bootstrap guide was reposted to Moddb (beep, since I recall it being asked after before), but apart from rare indies, your options are N5 for Treelords (1/3 chance for B1, immobile), N5D2 for Lamia Queens (1/4 chance for B2), or S4D1 for Ether Gate (1/4 chance for B1).  Lamia Queens, in addition to being the cheapest by far at 25 nature gems, are also the only ones that lend themselves to propagating a blood economy via vampire lords if boosted.  Of course, vampire lords are loads more expensive in gems and mage-turns than free indies or nation-specific commanders, which can be used to blood-hunt and fuel more powerful mages for gold, resources, and fort-turns.

Otherwise, as noted, Bloodstones are pretty much the best low-hanging fruit as far as forges are concerned.  If you can hit A6B6 somehow (most likely via pretender: Air does not break into Blood easily if it doesn't already have it), Robe of the Magi are basically Rings of Wizardry in Armor rather than Misc slots, and the Black Book of Secrets is an artifact-level Death booster. 

[Shadowlord]

Boots of youth are useful for MA Marignon, and I got into blood as them by using friars everywhere as unskilled blood-hunters.

[martinuzz]

I wish this game went on sale. 32 euros is just too steep a price for me. Also not sure if it would work on win 10, steam store page says XP/Vista/7

[ThtblovesDF]

Works on win10, no issues. It shows up every now and then for 10 €/$ and is very worth it.

[martinuzz]

Yeah, I've been watching some LPs on it, and it looks surprisingly deep and complex. I hope they throw a sale sometime soon