Print

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

[E. Albright]

I'm fairly certain that some of them (e.g. Charcoal, Gleaming Gold) are just giving the unit attributes like Fire Shield and others are doing on-block effects, so whether they "stack cleanly" would depend on the shields in question.

[Frumple]

Yeah. I'm fairly sure there's at least some mechanic to only trigger one of the shields if it's not fire shieldy. This is pretty easy to see if you take, say, a vine or curse shield (think there's one that curses attackers, anyway) and that eyeloss shield and advance a battle slowly, checking enemies each round. Plenty of times there'll be something entangled but not missing eyes or missing eyes but not entangled. Really want to see it in action whip out a couple of bronze (brass?) arms and throw something sufficiently tanky into a fight using quad shields.*

Now, whether it's dependent on which blocks or just randoms one when you block, I couldn't say. Don't recall if you can fiddle with the combat log whatsit to get that detailed, either.

* Incidentally, yes, I have done this relatively often. Tend to play with it if I'm late game and have more resources than I have sufficient interest in micro to spend them. It's amusing, but the whole kick problem makes it sketchy. Probably be stronger if they just didn't have an attack at all when built like that, and just walked up to the enemy and taunted them or summat.

E:what the hell are you doing clipboard

[JimboM12]

im not nearly as deep into this game as some but i have fun playing it like a simple strategy game; i barely make use of magic at all. Mass infantry led by empowered commanders. it helps that i play usually play as either middle ages Man or Marignon.
which leads me to a massive noob question; do blessings help normal troops in anyway? cuz i know it does for sacred units

[Frumple]

It does not, near as I can recall. There's holy spells that do, but blessing specifically isn't one of them. Closest thing to an exception is the shroud whatsit for commanders, maybe one or two other things.

[Cruxador]

im not nearly as deep into this game as some but i have fun playing it like a simple strategy game; i barely make use of magic at all. Mass infantry led by empowered commanders. it helps that i play usually play as either middle ages Man or Marignon.
which leads me to a massive noob question; do blessings help normal troops in anyway? cuz i know it does for sacred units

Even if you play purely troop based combat, there's a lot of strategy to the game and unit positioning. You're definitely missing a lot by not using magic, though. Try easing into it by just sending a mage or two along with your armies. But Dominions 5 has balance changes that seem likely to reduce mage dominance a lot, so proficiency with troops will become more useful.

As to your actual question, blessings are for sacreds only. There's no effect on other units.

It does not, near as I can recall. There's holy spells that do, but blessing specifically isn't one of them. Closest thing to an exception is the shroud whatsit for commanders, maybe one or two other things.

The shroud also makes them sacred. Making a unit into your prophet does the same. And in Dominions 5, your pretender will always be blessed (but in 4, doesn't even count as sacred).

[Kagus]

However, any sacred troops fighting in a battle alongside your pretender will automatically be considered blessed from the start of the fight. This makes things rather interesting with pretenders that spawn sacred battlesummons when entering combat, such as the Hun Balam and Son of Fenrer.

Ran a test game of LA Ulm yesterday, had some fun. Tried doing a rainbow dwarf, but found that nearly everything I was trying to forge with him could have been handled by the black priests, and I'd neglected to put nature on him for site searching and clam duty.

Then he walked past a hidden disease-spreading site and got himself sick. Again, no nature so I couldn't make a cure-all elixir. First response was to rush twiceborn and just accept that he was going to lose his forge master trait, but then I remembered blood feast and rushed that afterwards (after smacking myself in the head).

I've been noticing that there are some special abilities that aren't reflected in the mod inspector. MA Caelum's ice crafters have a special ice forging ability that provides extra resources based on how cold the province is, while LA Ulm's Patrifagus can summon ghoul allies (not reanimation, as province population doesn't appear to drop when doing this).


That, uh... Was an interesting game, regardless. Massively faffed around in the early game, couldn't figure out who I wanted to prophetized for the first few turns until I remembered that you can recruit undead commanders for reanimation, so I did that.  Gameplay after that basically devolved into me not quite knowing what to do with my pretender (this is when I found out that the dwarf pretender has map move 1... Not so awesome for a site searcher), putting labs everywhere and amassing hordes of illuminated ones.  Capital city made a few pikes and rangers to help pad out the expansion force (which was already an elite squad of triple-star veterans who effectively never ran from anything), then switched over to making wolfherds for the rest of the game.

By the time I suffered a couple big dumb losses (to AI Lemuria of all things, heheh) and decided to close that round of testing, I had so many wolfherds sitting in the capital that I had something like 50-60 wolves spawned every turn for the indie commanders passing through to pick up.  Big dumb fun.

I had of course neglected all research into spells that would actually buff soldiers, so these wolves died by the hundreds to any sort of resistance... Great patrollers though, haha.


As an aside, I've been wondering about something... I've noticed that even when magic paths get "removed" (such as from changing shape into a dragon or similar), the unit still keeps the side benefits of having those paths, such as +protection for earth magic. I wonder, if you have a commander with B1 and a -1 modifier to blood, will they slave hunt as a B1 mage, or as a mundane commander?

[EnigmaticHat]

im not nearly as deep into this game as some but i have fun playing it like a simple strategy game; i barely make use of magic at all. Mass infantry led by empowered commanders. it helps that i play usually play as either middle ages Man or Marignon.
which leads me to a massive noob question; do blessings help normal troops in anyway? cuz i know it does for sacred units

A lot of the advice on the internet overstates the importance and easiness of magic, because its from dom3 where fast magic research was the standard.  Nowadays magic takes a lot longer to come into play in a meaningful way.  It can be a little discouraging for new players.

[E. Albright]

First response was to rush twiceborn and just accept that he was going to lose his forge master trait, but then I remembered blood feast and rushed that afterwards (after smacking myself in the head).

If you had the death to think about Twiceborn, you could have also tried rushing Cons6 for the typically-forgotten E3D3 Eye Pendant.

[Kagus]

Hah, I had indeed also forgotten about that one!  Although, admittedly, rushing Ench 4 or Blood 3 is notably faster than Cons 6... Even though I was a fair portion of the way there already.

Making a realization, I decided to try out a little funtime experiment with a Teotl of the night and a simple blood bless for the beast bats he summons when jumping into the enemy capital on turn 3/4.

While I could indeed ruin precisely one person's day as MA Xibalba, it eventually backfired completely (got caught by province defense and died retreating) and was never really powerful enough to do much more than kill off a few thaumaturges and grand thaumaturges who thought they were safe.  Meanwhile my own forces were left completely without expansion power and just sat around in the capital having some nice random events.


EDIT: Ran a game as EA Pangaea, trying to make a focus on spamming vine ogres. Ended up taking a ghost king with 3 death, which felt kind of odd for the "thriving nature" theme of Pan, but ends up theoretically working out with their nature gem income and the kind of summons they have access to.

That said, it didn't take very long before I realized that everything I wanted to do with vine people, I was already accomplishing with national troops and commanders. The black harpy is still one of the best and most versatile scouts in the game, and Pan's revelers are amazing footsoldiers capable of punching well above their weight, especially when buffered by a meatshield of maenads.  EA also has access to minotaurs before they get it into their heads to bulk up with heavy metal armor and ruin their encumbrance values.

Their mages are bloody expensive for what's delivered though, but EA Panii can at least come out in some very useful configurations, and EA's dryads are clam-capable straight out of the gate, should you happen to have some astral mages that could use something like that.

All this led me to thinking about LA Pan though... The only one of the bunch to not have the outstanding revelers, replaced only by slightly-lighter hoplites (costing 2 more resources and having 1 less MR than their MA components) and resource-heavy snipers. They also don't have the similarly amazing berserking centaur warriors, instead having just the heavily-armored centaur cataphracts and their impressively large encumbrance due to not counting as "mounted".

What LA Pan does have are astral mages. Cheap, beefy, adept-researcher astral mages with a random pick in some of the best combat casting schools.  Perhaps more interesting is the fact that these S1 mages can actually shrug off feeblemindedness, should they happen to pick it up along the way. The little bastards even have 13 precision out of the box, and all for 90 gold! Even not being sacred, they're an awesome deal.

While the Panii of the New Era are somewhat lackluster, they are still pretty good nature mages, especially for LA. Once you hit Alteration 6 you could just eat them all with Transformation and see what sticks, since there are some nice crosspaths they can (very) rarely present with, and since they don't produce maenads there's really no reason to keep them in their natural shape unless you desperately need someone with beastmaster 1 and animal awe.

The Keeper of the Grove is... Well, it *looks* like it's a potential sacred thug, but you're paying 155 gold for something with "elite militia" levels of attack and defense, and it's a heavily-encumbered trampler to boot. Stacked on top of berserking, he's a great big toddler raging in the last few minutes before naptime.  A whopping MR 12 rounds out the whole package.

From what I can figure, the unique stymphalian bird troops are too little, too late... Against LA's generally more armored troops, a single-use area attack of 8 damage probably isn't going to get you very far... But then again, I honestly haven't used these guys enough to say for sure one way or the other.

[ThtblovesDF]

To me nature is the 3 best path, but it kind goes like this:

Earth [Amazing summons, blade storm, earthquake, the armor buffs, rust etc...]
Death [Has all the game winners [[TM]]]
Nature [Summons, best buffs in the game]
Astral [Cool tricks and globals]
Water
Blood
Fire

(air)

Air tends to come attached to complicated nations and technically has cool skills, but as stated, if you want to actually get anywhere you only have one option...

[Frumple]

... is outright not listing air in there intentional, or... ?

[AlStar]

Not answering for him, but my dislike of air is its binary nature - either you've got 3+ and can unleash devastating thunderbolt spam, or you've got 2 and can do... basically nothing, since all the boosters require more than 2 air to make, and even the in-battle air boost spell needs someone capable of casting storm (which a 2-air mage cannot, since it's a level 4 spell that needs an extra gem to cast.)

[Kagus]

Yeah, but that's kind of the beauty of it... a mage with A1 and just four communion slaves is suddenly a mage with A3, as well as fatigue-soakers for the impending pain of casting thunderbolt more than nonce. Outside of communions, sure, they're rather underwhelming and can basically only make a few spamtasmal warriors or fling some teeny tiny orb lightning... But with a communion? Air spells are terrifying... Sometimes literally, as is the case with false horrors.

Water has stuff like falling frost, ice strike, liquify, cleansing water for undead/demon swarms, even just curse of the desert can be quite useful... And if you feel like spending gems (such as through the cons4 5-gem water sphere which gives you a free water gem every battle) you've got quickening, wave warriors, the rather nasty niefel flames as well as demon cleansing for even more anti-demon power.

Earth is particularly notable in Pangaea's case, because the centaur sages will be able to cast gifts from heaven when boosted +2 levels, with base 13 precision and the ability for other sages to cast communion-wide eagle eye and aim for even more precision. Plus the usual earthpowering the communion, destruction+blade wind, strength of giants and weapons of sharpness (probably what was intended for the stymphalian birds, as an 8 damage AOE attack is nowhere near as threatening as an 8 damage armor piercing AOE attack).  Earthquake has some interesting usage as well, as the centaurs all start off with 23 hitpoints... considerably more than your standard humie wizardling.

Nature's nice too, having someone around with gems to put down a relief enchantment can be very nice for a taxed communion.

[MCreeper]

Didn't losed... barely... Probably will lose... 
    Jomon.  Lucked out kingdom  of Eludia just nearby home province. Captured throne of bones, get necromancer and some zombie mooks from it. Fighted for a bit with Tien Chi, built castle at but not captured another throne(forgot that you need a prophet for this, dammit), built provincial defence and some native archer cavalry, was pushed back to one province around my home and throne of bones. I then turtled down and continued to spam onmyo-jis and eludian mages for a while. Tien Chi made few attempts at capturing second throne with 20 mooks(why? bot sometimes refuses to see provincial defence?), then get a bit beaten by Ragha and turtled too.

    On turn ~45 i suddenly event on province with second throne(stuck between Ragha, Tien Chi capital with 400+ nature summons (where the hell they get so much gems?) and my unwillingness to give it up) - ruler get posessed by demon! This causes turmoil tomax out, and constantly causes unrest events. And i have absolutely no way to banish damn thing, because my closest  priest is 5 enemy provinces apart from it. Ok, patrol can deal with unrest, so i don't care much.

    Then, Ragha terrythory nearby throne of bones get captured by freaking HORDE of Ulm troops. There was 800 of them in one stack, and some more roaming around. I hastely move all my mages(25 onmyos and 9 eludians) to the throne. I formed all of them in a communion, with eludian mage leader, which was supposed to cast light of the northern star to buff everyone to 3 astral. Then 2 more eludians will cast antimagic and astral healing. Everyone else spams with soul slay and stellar cascades. Regular troops are standing in place, militia first. Probably not the best plan, but should work.

    Ulm wasn't eager to attack me for some reason, so when i noticed 200-250 army, i decided to attack myself.
    I forgot that if you want stealth units to attack, you must press Ctrl+RMB. Thrice goddamned eludians didn't show up for a party. So, no soul slays, no antimagic, no regen. I winned the battle, killed all their summons, but losed 20 onmyos, partially because i forgot about archers, and giving mages at least some protection against them. But now i have on this province 14 mages total(necromancer died too), ~300 troops half of which is militia, and 800+ army just nearby. Help.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Can someone  identify banner in a sea to the west and south? It isn't Lemuria that gone underwater?(with magic, growth, and productivity, yeah)

And before battle i had this

Seriously?
EDIT: No help needed, Ulm divivded his doomstack in many 200 stacks, which i promptly slaughtered with minimal looses. And yes, it's really underwater Lemuria. With Growth 3, Productivity 2, Order 2, Luck 3, Magic 1 and Temperature -1.  Developers really wasn't able to make Lemuria AI to not pick literraly worst things possible?

[Frumple]

Probably did have trouble with it, but there is an argument to run the domkill nations with good scales. Mostly just to squeeze out as much gold as possible before everything kicks it, hopefully so you can spam castle/temple in as many provinces as you can manage, to maximize freespawn production. The productivity is probably the closest thing to out of line for a variously enthusiastic attempt at that.

... other major part isn't really applicable to single player, but it can also be an attempt to make your nation not quite as much of a pain in the arse to have a neighbor. Attempt to mitigate the likelihood/quickness of other players ganging up on you before you dominion ruins everything it touches, heh.