The Old God has left the world and the pretenders are awakening and coming out from hiding. You start the game by designing one of the pretender gods that will compete for true ascension to godhood. The type of god can range from a magically powerful arch mage to an ancient kraken or a mystic monolith that people pray to. Your pretender controls one of over sixty different nations and with the help of that nation he will spread his word and battle the other pretenders. Dominions 3 is a turn based strategy game. You can play single- or multiplayer (1 - 23 players) with simultaneous turns. There are more than 1500 different units, 600 spells and 300 magic items in the game. The game also features a medieval musical score by Erik Ask Uppmark and Anna Rynefors, both awarded the title of Musicians of the Realm by the Swedish Zornmärkeskommiten. Dominions 3 is a highly detailed game and a 300 page pdf manual is included in the download.
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| Learning Curve - A Multi-Perspective Dominions 3 Let's Play | Locked | |
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| Feb 22 2013 Anchor | ||
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Welcome to Learning Curve, a Dominions 3 LP (Let's Play), or DAR (During Action Report) told from the perspective of multiple players participating in a single game. The game that we're reporting on in this LP was started on the indiedb.com Dominions 3 forum, and was advertised as being for new and inexperienced players. Most of us participating have not yet completed a single multi-player Dominions 3 game, and this will be the very first multi-player Dominions 3 game started for at least one of us. Dominions 3 in a mythology-themed turn-based strategy game in which each player plays as a nation trying to help the primary figure (a.k.a. "pretender") of their respective monotheistic religion achieve true godhood. In most games, this is done primarily through the means of military conquest of other nations. The game has an open-ended feeling to it, and offers a great degree of potential strategic depth, with something like 50 playable nations, 300 types of magic items, 700 types of magic sites, 800 spells, and 2000 types of military units, which can all be combined to create novel and effective strategies. You manage your nation by giving orders on a map of the game world, and the orders of each player are resolved simultaneously between turns. The map the we'll be playing on is "Vale of Variance", by elmokki. It's a wrap-around map, which means that it continuously scrolls in all directions, east-to-west and north-to-south. The Vale of Variance world map zoomed in, The same map zoomed out, Battles, when they occur, are also automatically resolved between turns. Each player can give orders to their respective units that will be participating in each battle, and position them on the battlefield ahead of time. The game provides each participating player (and any player with hidden observers present) with a replay of how that battle played out on the next turn. Example screenshot from a battle replay: A number of excellent LP's have already been created for Dominions 3, notably ZorbaTHut's "The Elephantine Armies of Mrs. Buttersworth", and the multi-perspective "Doomed to Fail" LP on the Something Awful Forums. It's our hope that this LP will be made more interesting by readers being able to see the wide range of imperfect strategies being used by us as new players that more experienced players might never consider. Readers who have never played Dominions before might enjoy this LP as means to learn the game along with us. The participating players, and the nations that we're playing as are: Each turn of the game represents one month. We've decided to each begin posting our reports of Turn 1 once we get to the end of Year 2 in the game, and keep a two year buffer between where we currently are in the game, and where we are in this LP. This is to reduce the impact of us each revealing information in our LP entries that other participating players might be unaware of. As of this writing, the game is currently on Turn 4, and at our current pace, we should begin posting our turns here sometime between March 4th and March 12th, 2013. We strongly encourage readers to give us any thoughts or feedback you might have on the choices that each of us are making in this game, and how we're presenting our turns. Your feedback will sustain us, and the more we get, the more each of us will feel motivated to create excellent posts of our turns. It would be great for this thread to become a living discussion between all of us playing in this game, and everyone following it. Please also let us know about any ideas you might have on how we can make this LP more interesting or reach a wider audience. Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Feb 22 2013 Anchor | ||
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I already wondered when the AAR's (DAR's) would come in, they're great ways to learn the game some more. |
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| Feb 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Thanks, Pluiz. I think we're all looking forward to creating this. |
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| Feb 23 2013 Anchor | ||
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Fantastic job, Robin. |
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| Feb 23 2013 Anchor | ||
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Thanks, jtgribs. I'm looking forward to seeing your LP entries. |
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| Feb 24 2013 Anchor | ||
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I had a hell of a turn just now. Got a couple screen grabs saved for my first write up. Turn 24 needs to get here faster! |
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| Mar 3 2013 Anchor | ||
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Yeah, I'm feeling the same way. jtgribs. I think that this game got interesting from really early on for a lot of us, and I think that I have a good guess about at least one of the events that transpired on the turn you're referring to. I'm anticipating the chance to see if I'm right. At first, I had a hard time finding the time to write my LP posts, but now that I've started them, it's just become natural to me. It's like I'm using it as a personal journal to process what's going on for me about each turn, and arriving at better decisions in my play as a result. Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 17 2013 Anchor | ||
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(I appreciate any feedback on ways to improve my writing, or the content/quantity of images! My end is obviously written from a metagame "this is what I'm doing" standpoint, rather than doing some kind of roleplayed story.)
TURN 1 Aah, Caelum. Flying is a very powerful ability, but Caelum's national troops are fairly weak. This can make them difficult to use when your guys fly right into the enemy and get chopped to pieces. No fancy maneuvering, just point them at a target and decide whether you want them there now, or on round 3.
It's (almost) never relevant, but I always feel the need to include the turn 1 messages. A little way of getting pumped up, I guess.
After all, it's good to be pumped up for an exciting first turn of overtax/patrol! Well, since there's nothing interesting to talk about on the map right now, let's look at our (awake) pretender.
I'm not familiar with very much in the AwesomeX/ForbiddenFriendship mods, but the Titan started at A7 and didn't cost very much, so I just pumped him to A9, leaving points for some positive scales.
Caelum wants Cold 3, which is a nice handout of free points. Order/Growth is needed for our mages (and early mammoth expansion), and Production 1 is just a small help for recruiting our heavier troops. Magic 1 is always handy for the research boost. We also choose to prophetize our starting scout, but FIRST!:
You can't rename prophets, so remember to properly name them beforehand!
Our first research goal is obvious: Get to Thunder Strike as fast as possible. Every single High Seraph we recruit will be able to cast it, and some will show up with A4-5 to be able to cast it 3-4 times before falling unconscious.
Early recruitment is also simple: Get mammoths, stomp on stuff. We only recruit an Ice Crafter for our first turn mage as the mammoths are so expensive, but at least we've got the titan around for a small turn 1 research boost. |
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| Mar 18 2013 Anchor | ||
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Note: I feel like I may have been overly verbose in this post, and I'd like to make it as readable and interesting as possible. If anyone has any ideas for improving it, I'd been interested to hear them. Thanks! The nation I've chosen for this game is Bandar Log, a nation of monkeys and apes based on Hindu mythological themes, particularly the myth of Rama and Sita as told in the Ramayana, in which an army of monkeys, led by Rama and the monkey god Hanuman, played a prominent role. There was a also a nation of monkeys in Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" referred to as "Bandar Log", whose members idly talked about grand plans they had, but never spent any energy to realize them. So that's probably an influence as well. I chose Bandar Log as my nation for this game because the spiritual practice and mythology of Hinduism appeals to me, and also because I'm adverse to blood magic and blood sacrifices, which some nations in this game focus on, but Bandar Log does not, to my knowledge. And the idea of a nation of spiritually devout monkeys and apes appeals to me. The story behind the nation is that a long time ago, there was a mountain in the middle of a jungle, known as Mount Kailasa, where celestial beings known as Yaksha entered the world from their native realm, and taught the monkeys and apes of the surrounding area to live together in a complex and cooperative civilization. Generations later, the Yaksha gradually returned to the celestial realm, and left behind the monkey people of Bandar Log to rule themselves according to the Yakshas' teachings. The People of Bandar Log The name "Bandar Log" in Hindi translates as "Macaque People", which is a little confusing, since macaques make up only one of the four castes in Bandar Log society. The four castes are as follows: Fourth Caste - Markata:
Markata seem be based on a species of small monkeys (3.5 to 9 kg) native to southern India (the area where the events of the Ramayana are said to have taken place) known as Bonnet Macaques. Bonnet Macaques are known as being energetic, inquisitive, and playful troublemakers. They do things like steal food out of children's hands on city streets, and break into people's homes to raid their stores of food. The flavor text given for them in the game seems to reflect that pretty well. From what I understand, Markata can be really powerful in the mid-game once you're capable of casting spells to buff your troops and de-buff your enemy's. The average value for most of the stats on human-sized troops is 10 (with the exception of Protection, which usually has a value of 0 for unarmored units, and Encumbrance, which usually has a value of 2 or 3). As you can see from the screenshot above, Markata have a Defense value of 14, which means that they're difficult to hit. And they're also smaller than human-sized troops, which means that more of them can fit within the same space to attack the same target at the same time. This is important because as I understand it, the more times a unit has been hit within a single combat round, the higher the chance of each succeeding hit that round to be a "critical hit" that does extra damage. There are spells that can greatly increase Markatas' strength and destroy their opponent's armor, and with those added advantages they can become just devastating. It's also notable, however, that they suffer from particularly poor morale, and magic resistance (probably representing that they are still animals for whom civilization and war are still somewhat foreign). This means that they can rout from battle easily, and in the late-game, there are a number of spells that enemies can use to take advantage of their low magic resistance. Third Caste - Vanara: Vanara seem to be based on one of the monkey species in the genus Semnopithecus, some of which are native to southern India, and are generally referred to as Gray Langurs. They are larger than Bonnet Macaques, at 11-18 kg. The word "Vanara" refers to a monkey people in the Ramayana who were the children of gods, birthed by monkeys and bears, who made up the army that Rama used to rescue Sita from Ravana. The depictions of Vanara in Hindu art seem to be based on Gray Langurs. In the game, they're counted as human-sized units, and they're decent as front-line troops, with good armor, and average values in just about everything, (and in the case of the elite Swordsman troops shown above, above-average values in morale, attack skill, and defense skill). Like Markata, they have the potentially serious weakness of low magic resistance, again probably because despite their civilization, they're still considered in the game to be "animals", and hence to have less strength of will than other sentient beings. It should also be noted that there's a special type of Vanara called Atavi that have the special trait of being stealthy (that's represented by the icon of the cloaked figure on the left, between the units stats and description; with the icons of the moose and deer respectively representing that they have "forest survival" - meaning that their movement is not impeded by forests, and that they are considered to be "animals"), which means that they can sneak behind the battle front to raid the enemy's core territories. This seems like a great trait. In a straight up fight, they're not as good as the armored variety of Vanara, but I can imagine these guys making all the difference between me winning and losing a war by forcing an attacking enemy to pull back they army to deal with one or more Atavi raiding parties. I definitely plan to get some to give myself that extra tool to work with in any wars I might get involved in. Second Caste - Bandar: It's a little unclear what species the Bandar are supposed to be based on. Despite their name, which translates as "macaque" in Hindi, they are clearly not supposed to be monkeys, but rather part of the Hominidae (Great Ape) family, of which humans are the only example of in modern-day India. It's possible that they're modeled after guerillas or orangutans, but given the game creators' attention to modeling the other Bandar Log castes on species that lived in the area of the events of the Ramayana, it seems more probable that they're based one of the three known species of the Gigantopithecus genus, which lived in the Indian Subcontinent, South-East Asia, and China, from 5 million year ago to the time that our ancestors expanded into their territory about 70,000 years ago, when, as megafauna outside of Africa tend to do when they encounter Homo sapiens, they went extinct. Adult Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest of the three known species of the genus, are believed to have been about 3 meters tall, and weighed as much as 540 kg. Given the design of their teeth, the high incidence of cavities, and the tendency of their fossils to be found in same areas as those of the ancestors of pandas, it's believed that their diet consisted largely of bamboo.
In the game, the Bandar are great units. They have good morale and attack skill (likelihood to hit their targets), and they're very strong, which means that they'll do a lot of damage when they hit. The elite version of this unit, the Bandar Royal Swordsman, is even better in those regards, and has a decent defense skill as well. On the downside, Bandar are considered to be larger than human-sized units, which means that you can't pack very many into the same amount of space to attack the same enemy. They're also fairly expensive to train and maintain, and like the Markata and Vanara, they're particularly vulnerable to magic spells that can be resisted with magic resistance. First Caste - White Ones The White Ones seem to be based on a different (and apparently more lightly-colored) species of Gray Langur than those that the Vanara are based off of. The god Hanuman is typically depicted as having white fur, so these guys having white fur is perhaps supposed to represent them more closely embodying Hanuman's wisdom and enlightenment. From what I can tell, Langurs in general have a reputation for being more intelligent, calm, and thoughtful than Bonnet Macaques. For example, here's a story about trained Langurs helping police in Delhi to scare off Bonnet Macaques that have become public nuisances: link. So it's perhaps appropriate for them to be depicted in the game as the wisest of the castes. As a unit, these guys are a slightly better version of Vanara Swordsmen. They cost twice as much to train, but as sacred units (the icon of white candles in a candle-holder, to the left of the moose and deer icons, represents that they are sacred), their upkeep cost is only half of what it is for non-sacred units, per unit of training cost. So that works out to their upfront cost being the only thing that's more expensive. As sacred units, they also have the added benefit that they can be blessed in battle by priests, which adds 2 to their morale for the duration of that battle, and may give them other positive effects as well, depending on what magic paths I choose for my god. It should be noted that there are a number of variations of all of the troops above, with different weapons, armor, training, and costs. Nation Customization Before we each begin playing the game, we have each have 350 design points to spend on choosing and customizing the gods for each of our respective nations, increasing the level of our peoples' devotion to our gods, and creating positive effects in the provinces that out gods are worshiped. As Bandar Log, I can choose any of the following to be the god for my nation: This game is taking place in the Middles Ages Era. In the lore of Dominions 3, the people of Bandar Log in the Early Ages were ruled by the wise Yaksha who had given them civilization, and in the Late Ages they came under the influence of the Nagas, who mesmerized them with their hypnotic abilities (their susceptibility to which, I suppose is reflected in their poor Magic Resistance). So the Middle Ages is the only era in which the people of Bandar Log really have a chance to rule themselves. As such, I would really like to represent my people's empowerment and self-rule through a monkey or ape god, but there are none available for me to choose. A next-best option would seem to be one of the Hindu-inspired deities: Either the Nataraja (top row, fifth from the left), the Destroyer of Worlds (second row, second from the left), the Deva (second row, third from the left), or the Lady of Fortune (second row, fifth from the left), which would at least be something that the people of Bandar Log already identify with, and not something foreign that came from the outside and dominated them. I'm imagining that if I chose one of those gods, the story could be that the Yaksha departed the world after they gave the gift of civilization to the people of Bandar Log and found them fit to rule themselves, with one of them staying behind as a god figure to ease the transition to self-rule and offer guidance to those who sought it. But I find that I have issues with each of those gods: So I eventually decide on a Phoenix, which costs 50 design points: And he (I know it's a "he" because it doesn't have the "female" tag in the game's code) can also be a good choice in terms of how he will serve me in the game. He has some natural proficiency in the magic paths of Fire and Air (the flame and thunder cloud icons), which are paths that I otherwise wouldn't have any access to with only my national mages. He also has the following attributes, as represented by the icons underneath his stats: In addition, a special trait of the Phoenix is that when he's killed on the battlefield, he'll explode into a cloud of flame that will hurt or kill any non fire-immune troops around him, and just so long as he's not exhausted, he'll reform on the battlefield and continue the fight. These two traits together mean that I can freely suicide him at enemy armies at virtually no cost, and potentially cause a lot of damage to them when I do so. The next step in customizing my nation is deciding what magical skills my god has. At this point, I have 300 points remaining: While I'm glad for my for god providing my nation with Fire and Air magic, I don't have any specific ideas for any spells that I'd like to cast in either of those magic paths, so it's probably a good idea to not put too many points into them. I'd also like to save points for giving my nation bonuses that will help its people. One thing that I know that I would like to use my god's proficiency in Fire and Air magic for is to find magic sites that are associated with each of those paths. Most provinces have at least one magic site hidden in them, and each magic site is associated with a certain path of magic. More powerful magic sites generally require more skilled magic users to find them, and a mage with a level of 4 or higher in a magic path with be able to find all the magic sites associated with that path in a province when they search there. So I spend 96 points to raise my god's skill levels in Fire and Air magic from 1 to 4 each. It should be noted that the level of magic paths you choose for your god to start with can make the blessings of your priest in battle more powerful. Since I haven't put many points into my god's magic skills, my blessing bonuses are relatively minor: Blessed units of my nation will gain +2 Attack Skill, and have a 20% chance for any arrows shot at them to be blown away by the wind before any the normal calculations to see if those arrows hit are made. The next step in customizing my nation is deciding the strength of my people's religion, and what bonuses and detriments are given to/inflicted upon the provinces where that religion is practiced. At this point, I have 204 points remaining, and this is the last place to spend them: Each of the categories above is explained below: Dominion Strength: Raising my dominion level this high will have a few benefits that work synergistically with the god I've chosen. It will raise my god's level of Awe from +0 to +3, which means that any units that want to attack him will have to make a roll against their morale with a -3 penalty, and it will also increase the number of provinces in which his Immortality trait functions. Below are descriptions of each of my six dominion scales. Each of the provinces in which my people's religion is practiced will tend to have the mix of positive and negative effects that I choose below. Each of these scales can have a value of between +3 and -3, with positive scales costing design points, and negative scales providing design points. In the case of temperature, changing the scale in either direction from a neutral temperature provides design points: And this is what I choose: I choose positive scales in Growth, Luck, and Magic because the descriptions seem to indicate that they're the most important for providing my people with a high quality of life, and I want to religion of my god to provide benefits to its adherents that justify their worship. I choose a positive Heat scale because my people prefer a hot climate. I actually choose a little bit more extreme of a scale than what my people prefer, but that extra bit of heat will be cancelled out in the wintertime, without a significant extra hit in the summertime because the heat scale I've chosen is the maximum heat level that a province can reach anyway. So that just provides me with essentially free design points. I choose a slightly negative Production/Sloth scale because monkeys and apes, with the exception of humans, don't strike me as being particularly innately hard workers, though perhaps what makes humans seem to be innately harder workers can just be attributed to our cultural traits that the cultures of groups of wild monkeys and ape tend to not share with us. I choose a negative Order/Turmoil scale because, with the possible exception of Gigantopithecus, whose reproductive behavior we can only guess at, none of the species that the people of Bandar Log are based on are pair-bonding (i.e. use a monogamous or semi-monogamous reproductive strategy). It's been suggested that pair-bonding is one of the essential qualities that has allowed us as humans to cooperate on the scale of groups of more than tens of people, and be highly successful as a species. The argument goes that in species which, like all of the monkey species above, use a reproductive strategy in which males compete with each other for the right to mate with more females, a male that prioritizes the good of the entire group will generally not be as effective at passing on his genes as a male that prioritizes his self-interest, and the incentive that that creates for males to compete with each other makes the group as a whole less effective at cooperating on any scale beyond small intra-group coalitions. In the ancestors of humans, the development of the pair-bond reduced completion between males, and allowed them to do things like have hunting parties made up of males leave the band or tribe for days or weeks at a time in order find game, without having to feel worried that any males that stayed behind would pass on a greater share of genes to the next generation. And with that reduction of an incentive for human males to compete with each other, we have now managed to create a complex, highly interdependent, and mutually beneficial cooperative system that includes virtually every member of our species. I figure that the people of Bandar Log were only able to create the stable large-scale cooperative group on the scale of a nation through a great deal of very wise guidance from the Yakshas, and that the social norms that they've established to maintain that cooperative system are in a constant state of conflict with instincts of the males of each of the member species to compete with each other. In that light, dinging their Order scale by only one point feels charitable, and feels like giving a lot of credit to the wise principles that their society is organized around. The next step in customizing my nation is deciding what state of awakeness my god starts in. At this point, I'm at -128 design points, so I need to take a penalty in order to break even: I choose to start the game with my god in a dormant state, which gives me 150 design points, leaving me with a positive total of 22. That's a lot of leftover points, but there's nothing else that I really wanted in my design that I wasn't able to get, and there's nothing I took that I want give up, so I feel content. Taking my god in a dormant state means that he won't be available to me until he wakes up about 12 months (12 game turns) into the game, which is fine because all that I plan to use him for initially is searching for Fire and Air magical sites anyway, and putting that off for a year is worth the positive scales that I've been able to buy with those extra points. In the lore of Dominions 3, the game starts after a supreme god worshiped by all peoples of the world, known as the Pantokrator, disappears, providing an opportunity for other gods to rise. The description of my god states that he was born with the first rays of the sun, so he's been around for a while. I'm imagining then, that my god is really just an embodiment of elemental energy that takes the form of a phoenix because that's the form in which his worshipers imagine him. I'm deciding that the story behind him is that the worship of the Phoenix was widespread in Bandar Log until it was supplanted with the worship of the Pantokrator, and that when that worship was supplanted, the elemental energy that the Phoenix embodied returned to a more abstract and unformed state. Now, with the disappearance of the Pantokrator, the people of Bandar Log have rediscovered the records of the Phoenix, and have begin to reform those elemental energies into their old form with their worship, but it will take time for that reformation to be completed. And the last step in customizing my nation is to decide on a name for my god: A number of years ago, I did clerical work at the local traffic court, and my girlfriend at the time, who also worked there and I used to sometimes eat lunch together in her car in the employee parking lot, which had a lot of tree branches overhead. For a period lasting at least a month, we would often see a pair of scrub jays interacting in the tree branches above us while we ate. We decided that it was probably a mated pair; and we named the one that we guessed was the male "Makai", and the one we guessed was the female "Asala". Since then, I've always associated those names names with birds, so Makai felt like an appropriate name for a male phoenix.
When you finish the nation customization process, the program assigns a set of honorifics to your god based on the choices you've made in design process. "God above All" probably refers to me having chosen a god that can fly and/or that I've given him a few levels in Air magic. "King of Brilliance" and "the Everburning One" may refer to any of the fire-related traits my god has, my having given him a few levels in Fire magic, and/or me having chosen a positive Heat scale for my nation. "He Who is at the Center" and "King of this World" might refer to the strong Dominion level that I bought, or some other factor that I haven't considered. Choosing a stronger Dominion will also result in your god receiving a larger number of honorifics, and to my knowledge five is the most you can get. On to Turn 1! Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 18 2013 Anchor | ||
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This game has seven players. I am playing Eriu a Nation primarily influenced by Irish Mythology.
Every game starts like this at turn 0.
The same first message appears every game....
As does the second. This game uses the Forbidden Friendship mod so my pretender build is maybe a bit unorthadox. My petender is a Partholonian Sorceress (changes and additions from vanilla include "#gcost 20" "#magicskill 6 1 [nature]" "#researchbonus 5" and the key change "#domsummon 1753 [Tuathan Warriors]") My petender build is an Awake Partholonian Sorceress dominion = 9, magic = F1 A1 W4 E1 D2 N4, scales =turmoil 0 sloth 1 cold 0 death 0 misfortune 1, magic 0, for a total of 0 points leftover.
My early game concept is to research up to alteration, till 3 to get mistform, then switch to construction till 4. Then see where we are. My starting units 15 slingers and 15 spearmen not the greatest of starting armies.
I should have 3 to 6 tuatha warriors per turn by turn 5 or 6. Once expansion is well underway, I will site search with sidhe champions, tuatha, and my goddess, at least in the nearby provinces. Once enough gems are coming in, I will go back to the capitol to remote site search, forge, or research. I hope to have friendly relationships with neighbors if possible. Ok so the first turn I set my awake pretender to research alteration.
I named my Milesian Champion as my prophet.
I sent my scout west.
I started with 6 regions around my capitol, one being water.
and I recruited 3 daoine sidhe and 1 sidhe champion. (No Pic). This ends turn 0. Edited by: happyfungi |
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| Mar 18 2013 Anchor | ||
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TURN 1 Each game of Dominions 3 can be played in one of three eras, each of which has its own selection of nations with unique traits. The earlier era nations tend to be more focused on magic, and the later era nations tend to be more focused on non-magical military force. This is my first Middle Ages Era game, and it’s also only my second multiplayer game. I'm playing this game mainly to test different tactics and a different style of play. I’m a slow learner, so I may need a lot of experience before I become skilled at multiplayer Dominions 3. The nation I’ve chosen for this game is Pythium, which is based on the Eastern Roman Empire. I chose them because they have a particularly strong infantry and a strong ability in astral magic.
My scales: I can’t start my magic research yet, since my pretender is not awake. I prophetize my scout and overtax my starting province (which is setting the tax rate of a province above 100%, and patrolling there with an army to deal with the unrest that that causes). I only set the tax rate to 120%, as I'm not experienced with overtaxation and I don't want to have any unrest in turn 2. This is the unit roster for Pythium, including my recruitment queue for the first turn: The only real ranged units for Pythium are slingers. They’re useful for catching fire from enemy archers, and as chaff units. Pythium has a few types of infantry with a javelin attack, and most Pythium infantry have nice tower shields. Most of my infantry units costs twice as many resources resources as gold. My heaviest infantry units are the Emerald Guard (the guys with the green shields), which cost 23 gold and 30 resources. That’s too expensive for me at this point, and they have a Map Move stat of only 1 (that’s the number of friendly provinces they can travel across per turn). I don't like using cavalry, so I don't care for the Serpent Cataphract. Neither do I like any of the Pythian human with no shields and slow movement speeds. They are too costly, especially the sacred units. The last units for Pythium are Hydras: The Smaller Hydra Hatchlings [35 gold and 1 resource], and the larger Hydras [250 gold and 1 resource]. Both units have 100% regeneration, which means that if they lose any number less than all of of their hit points (hp) in a single combat round, they’ll heal back up to full health at the start of the next round. Additionally, even if they do lose all of their hp in a single combat round, that just results in them losing one of their heads for the rest of the battle, instead of dying. In order to kill them, an enemy must destroy all of their heads. This makes them good against single strong attacks, because they can't lose more than 1 head per enemy attack. They also have the Poison Cloud ability, so units near them are poisoned. I will use the lighter Velite [9 gold and 10 resources] and Alae Legionnaire [10 gold and 20 resources] units for for my initial expansion. For this first turn, despite recruiting resource-cheap slingers [7 gold and 2 resources], I still don’t have enough resources to produce all the units I would otherwise be able to produce with this amount of gold. But that’s okay, because any gold that I don’t spend this turn will carry over and be available to me on my next turn. Any resources that I leave unspent will be gone for good though, so I’m making sure to use them all. Map: Also, taking provinces near the farmland will give me nice choke point to the west. I have 2 swamp provinces nearby, and swamp provinces have higher chance of having magic sites than most other provinces, so they could be useful. To the east, I'm protected by a mountain range. Setting borders with southern neighbors will be my second priority, and my last priority will be capturing a few provinces to the north. Those are my plans in this first turn. All of them might change depending on other players’ positions and the strengths of the independent provinces surrounding me. Edited by: Xeelee |
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| Mar 20 2013 Anchor | ||
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thanks for posting this - very helpful for us newbs |
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| Mar 20 2013 Anchor | ||
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TURN 2
Nothing of interest so far, just a lot of prophets. Mostly scouts, though Eriu prophetized his commander-- this is generally not a very good choice because most nation's commanders have heavy armor which really ramps up the cost of what would otherwise be 0 fatigue holy spells. It also means he didn't overtax/patrol on the first turn, which can be a very nice boost to early game cash.
Our immediate surroundings don't look too bad-- heavy cavalry to the Northeast and bloodhenge druids to our South, but otherwise basic militia/archer/infantry groups.
With a couple of easy to take provinces, there should be no problem sending Ewald Georg von Kleist out alone against one of them. In this mod, the Titan loses his big multishot ranged attack, but gains an AoE1 ranged attack and an AoE2 melee strike. As long as caution is exercised, he should be able to take care of things on his own.
We also place a bid on Hannibal's Elephant Corps, since that's a chance to get a handful of elephants for less than the cost of one of our mammoths.
We move out like this. Flying stealthy prophets are fun. Without much else to talk about, let's take a moment to go over Caelum's unit lineup!
In general, the Caelians (white wings) are immune to cold and have strength 9 and 9 hit points, while the Spire Horns (dark wings) guys 50% resistance to cold and lightning. Almost everyone has ice weapons (which are magic and deal extra cold damage) and the Caelians have ice armor (which gives better protection in cold provinces). The fact that everyone has magic weapons makes etherealness and mistform kind of useless against us. I like that. First, we have two versions of the Spire Horn warrior, with and without shield. They're your typical light infantry, and flying tends to be a detriment to these guys for that whole "jump in and get cut to pieces" thing. The Spire Horn Archer, on the other hand, is very nice. They only have short bows, but Map Move 3 with flying and precision 12 while costing the same as indie archers is very nice. Expect to see a lot of these. Next in line is the Storm Guard. These guys are fully lightning immune, and have the storm-flyer trait, which still allows them to fly while the Storm (Battle Enchantment) or Perpetual Storm (Global Ritual) spells are up. They are also heavily armored (as far as Caelum goes, anyway), but that does mean they only have Map Move 2. As Thunder Strike is hilariously inaccurate, we plan on using a fair number of these guys since they will be immune to it. The Blizzard Warriors are the Caelian archers. Same as the Spire Horn Archers, but with ice armor and other clan differences. They cost almost twice as many resources, though, and I probably won't be using these. Then comes the Caelian Light Infantry. Same as the Spire Horn Warriors with shields, aside from the clan differences noted earlier. The Caelian Infantry is a generic medium infantry unit, with sword and shield. Nothing interesting to say about these. Iceclads are the Caelian heavy infantry. They don't have lightning immunity, or storm-flyer. And they're a fair bit more expensive, though more armored... and then again, more encumbered. We probably won't be recruiting any of these. The last of our recruitable anywhere units are Mammoths. Big and expensive, they've also got a crapton of hit points and trample entire squares of the enemy at a time. They're fantastic for early expansion, but the cost combined with just how many of them you'd need for them to be a big deal later on means that we'll recruit a handful of them early and probably never look at them again afterward. The first of our capital-only units is the Temple Guard. They're basically sacred Iceclads, minus the wings. They are also the only unit Caelum has with Map Move 1, though at least they aren't as encumbered as their winged counterparts. As the A9 bless is not terribly useful, and these guys are not very mobile, we won't be using these. The other capital-only unit is the Wingless. Born without wings, these guys are mistreated in Caelum's society-- "Ostracized and lonely, the Wingless often join the armies of Caelum to earn some respect or die trying. They fight ferociously and do not falter in the face of a welcome death." They're Caelian Light Infantry, minus the wings and resistances, but have a fairly high morale. Heh.. they're even by themselves on the second row. So lonely. Next, commanders!
There are no capital-only commanders in MA Caelum. The Caelian Scout does what you'd expect. Flying makes this guy better than pretty much any other scout, though. Storm Generals are the commander equivalent to Storm Guard. With Map Move 3 and leadership 80, they're solid as far as commanders go, but of course, they aren't mages. Spire Horn Seraphs are the cheapest mage available to us. A1, 3 research, 60 gold. Probably our most cost effective researcher, but not really useful as a battle mage. Ice Crafters are next, with W1 and 3 research for 70 gold. They've got a 25% Forging bonus, but water crafting isn't exactly exciting-- Nothing wrong with cheaper Frost Brands and Bottles of Living Water, though! Caelian Seraphs are the closest thing we can get to a battle mage without old age penalties. At A2W1, they're close to hitting the major air and water attack spells-- they can cast Lightning Bolt, Confusion, and Frozen Heart out of the gate, and are a booster or gem away from Thunder Strike or Ice Strike. Seraphines are Caelum's only recruitable priest(ess). Stealthy (but only Stealth +0), flying, and H2. Nothing terribly exciting. High Seraphs are the last in line, the most expensive and most powerful of MA Caelum's mages. 270 gold gets you A3W2, with 100% and 10% rolls at AWSD. A4 or W3 are very common sights, and we can still find uses for S1 or D1. Expect to see a lot of these. Edited by: SenorOcho |
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| Mar 21 2013 Anchor | ||
Absolutely. Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 21 2013 Anchor | ||
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Turn 1 Eriu Many new messages, most just announcing prophets for nations. All but one nation selected a prophet in the first turn. Eriu was the only nation that choose a commander as prophet. The conventional wisdom is to name a scout prophet and setting the commander to patrol and hiking up taxes, this kills some population however. The reason I didn't go for the early economic boost of high taxes, is because, I would have been unable to recover my lost population as I do not have growth scales, which would mean lower long term income.
I had one bad event, brigands moving into ruins causing unrest,
I recruited 2 daoine sidhe and 1 sidhe champion again.
I also had some leftover money and put in a halfhearted bid for Hannibal and his squad of 5 elephants. They would help in expansion if used properly.
End of Turn 1 Eriu Edited by: happyfungi |
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| Mar 21 2013 Anchor | ||
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Turn 1 - Mid-Spring, Year 1 Coming into this, I'm feeling a little conflicted about this game. I really like strategy games, and Dominions does great job of engaging strategic thinking. I like how it has such a large number of elements that you can creatively combine together to create novel strategies, and I like the depth of its fantasy-mythological lore. So there's a lot in this game that fulfills my needs. But the price of admission is to simulate committing horribly immoral acts. The object of the game is to forcibly impose your nation's religion on the world and wipe out all others. To do so, you need to kill many people, and there's no moral high ground to be found in doing so. It's just one people imposing their will on others. There's no option to achieve a lasting peace with all other parties. The game doesn't consider that to be a metric of success. I've found this premise disturbing enough that in singleplayer games I've resorted to only attacking AI nations after they attack me. After reading though one Dominions 3 multiplayer LP, and part of another (linked page is periodically put behind paywall), I felt inspired to participate in a multiplayer game myself. Playing this game against other people seems like it will be far more challenging and have far more strategic depth than playing against AI's. I planned to play the game with essentially the same restrictions that I placed on myself in singleplayer games in order to play it in as moral a manner as I could given the immorality of the premise.
I was a bit concerned that other people I might play with who didn't have those same reservations about the game might object to my style of play, and that their discomfort with that could lead to an unpleasant experience for both them and me. So when I found what looked like a good first multiplayer game for me to play in, I made an introductory statement in the forum thread that was being used to organize it in which I described my playstyle. I wanted to make sure that everybody else who would be playing in that game knew what they were getting, and give them a chance to raise any objections that they might have ahead of time. The admin of that game responded with a statement that included the following:
None of the other people who were signed up to play that game expressed any objections to me playing, but that may have been just because they felt like they didn't need to since the admin had expressed an objection. I thought it was probable enough the admin's objection represented the will of the group that I decided to just withdraw from that game, and wait for another game intended for new players to be organized. Which led to me joining this game, Learning Curve. When I gave another personal statement describing my playstyle to the other participants who were signed up for this game, nobody objected, so I began playing with everyone else. Starting off, I'm feeling wary. Based upon the reaction I got the first time I tried to join a game, I'm concerned that people will react negatively to my playstyle in this one. I'm also unsure of how I might balance my trying to act out of the moral considerations for the virtual inhabitants of this game world with any moral considerations that come up related to my relationships to the real people that I'm playing the game with. Below is the map on Turn 1, before I've taken any actions: In this screenshot, my capital province, Lothringen, is selected, which is indicated by it having yellow lines radiating out to each of the provinces that it's adjacent to. The castle icon on it represents that I have a fort there (in this case, a fort known as a "fortified city"). Behind that, there's a yellow banner with a lotus above it, which represents that it's owned by my nation, Bandar Log; and to the right of it, there's a white cathedral-shaped icon that represents that I have a temple there as well. In each of the provinces adjacent to my capital province, there are white flags, indicating that they are each independent nations controlled by the AI. The box in the upper-left gives information about the selected province, including its name at the top, and its scales (which we just chose as part of the nation customization process) at the bottom. I'll go through each of the other numbers in that box at a later point. The box in the upper-right gives general information about my nation. At the top, it displays the name of the god of my national religion, and an icon representing what season the current turn is. Below that it displays how much money I have available to spend this month, and my expected income next month. Below that is the amount of money that I'm spending every month on maintaining my current army. And below that is the number of magic gems of various types that I currently possess. I start with 3 Astral pearls, and 2 Nature gems. The lower box on the right displayed the buildings and magic sites in the selected province. In this province I have a fortress, which lets my recruit national units; a temple, which spreads the dominion of my national religion and allows me to hire sacred units in this province; a magical laboratory, which allows me to recruit mages in this province and gives any mages I get later a place to cast ritual spells, conduct magic research, and forge magic items; and a magic site The Lotus Gardens, which is only ever found in the capital of my nation: It lets me recruit a spell kind of mage, and a special kind of sacred soldier in my capital, and it provides me with 2 Nature gems and 3 Astral pearls per month. This is where the 2 Nature gems and 3 Astral pearls that I started the game with came from. The lower box to the left represents my commander units in the currently selected province. Above, I have a Bandar Commander, and below I have a Markata Scout. Andaka is a Bandar Commander, which is one of three non-stealthy, non-mage military commanders for my nation. His most important stat above is "Leadership", which represents the number of non-commander units he can lead. To move, attack, or doing anything else with non-commander military units in this game, they need to be led by a commander. In the box that represents Andaka, in the map above, you can see that there are two sword icons to the next to him. These swords represent that he's leading other units. Commanders leading 1-25 units are shown with one sword icon next to their pictures, and commanders leading 26-50 units are shown with two. I believe that the number of sword icons continues to increase at a rate of 1 per 25 units from there. I'll describe the specific troops that Andaka is leading next turn when I move them out. And this is Arjun, my scout. As the name suggests, the main use of scouts is generally to provide information about the surrounding lands. Like the Atavi infantry we looked at earlier, they're stealthy, which means that they can travel to independent provinces and provinces held by other players without attacking those provinces. And as trained scouts, they have a +20 bonus to their stealth skill with makes it more difficult for other players to find them when sneaking in their lands. I like that my capital is adjacent to a small group of mountains. It seems to fit well with the lore of my nation that it's centered around a sacred mountain. I also notice that the province to north of my capital is called the "Shore of Superb Simians", which makes my starting site seem even more appropriate. An experienced community organizer specially set up the starting locations of this maps for this game so that they would be fair with 7 players. The appropriateness of my starting location makes me wonder if he set it up particularly for my nation, and if I might be able to read other clues on the map to determine the likely starting locations of other nations based on their respective lores. By next month, my border guards will give me estimates of the strength and makeup the military forces of each of those independent nations. I want to try to conquer one of them soon, but it's too risky to move out my army without any information about the forces that they will be fighting, so I decide to leave my army in my capital for a month. While they're there, I can raise the tax rate of my capital, which will create unrest, and use my army to patrol, which will reduce that unrest. It's my understanding that this is a common tactic to get more money on your first turn in multiplayer games, and I expect all of the other players to use it as well.
I'm a bit uncomfortable with using it, because each unit of unrest represents a citizen of my nation who has turned to banditry, and "reducing unrest" with my patrolling army represents killing those bandits. And in addition the to the killed bandits, the increased tax rate itself will cause a reduction in my population as people move away to escape the worse living conditions it creates. So it's clear that raising the tax rate will have a substantial negative impact on the lives of the people of my nation. The boost of money from overtaxing on the first turn does seem to be important though, so I rationalize doing so by imagining that my people are feeling a lot of religious fervor, and with the understanding that it will be challenging to establish their nation and defend it from others in this post-Pantokrator era, most of them are willing to sacrifice comforts for a month in order to support the military effort in their first big push. I'm imagining the decisions of my nation being made by some sort of body made up from representatives of each of the castes. I also have the ability to designate a prophet for my national religion, which takes a month to do. Prophets gain some abilities in holy magic, which can be useful in battle, and help to spread your national religion, so it's generally a good idea to get one as soon as possible. Since my Bandar Commander will be "patrolling away" unrest this turn, that leaves my scout, so I spend the turn prophetizing him.
I particularly like the idea of a Markata being the prophet of my people's god, since it's implied that Markata aren't as well respected in Bandar Log society as members of other castes. It seems that their god choosing a Markata as his prophet would be an implicit message that he values the people of the Markata caste highly, and encourage his followers to do the same. I notice that there's a band of mercenaries available this turn: The wiki entry on this guy shows that the 30 men in his band are heavy infantry, which I imagine could make a cost-effective expansion force for me, so I make a bid on their services for the next 3 months: I bid 17 gold over the minimum bid. I expect that most of the other 6 players will be bidding on these guys too, and that somebody else will want them more than me, so I don't expect to win, but a higher bid feels a bit unreasonable, and if I don't win I'll get back the money I bid next month. At this point, I have 233 gold left over, and I decide to spend the rest on recruiting troops in my capital. The top two sections of the recruitment screen display the non-commander units, and commander units, respectively, that are available for being recruited in the selected province; and the bottom section displays any units that I've chosen to recruit this turn. Up to one commander, and any number of non-commander units can be recruited in each province each turn. Each unit has a gold cost and a resources cost. I have a global treasury of gold that can be spent anywhere, and any unspent gold from one month carries over to the next. Available resources vary from province to province, and unused resources are not carried over to future turns. I decide to recruit another scout. Since I'm prophetizing Arjun this month, I'm probably going to want him to cast holy spells in battles, so I'm going to want at least one more scout out to actually give me information about my surroundings. And I recruit an elephant and a Tiger Rider: Elephants are strong units that can take a lot of damage, but their main value is in their "trample" ability: With this ability, combined with their battlefield movement of 18 squares (the movement value before the slash represents the number of friendly provinces that they can travel through per month), they can plow through, and severely injure or kill huge numbers of enemy units per turn of battle. As their description suggests, the main downside of elephants is that they have low morales, so they can easily rout from battle, and they can be just as devastating to my own troops as they are to enemies when they rout through them. But units stay in battle or rout as squads, rather than as individuals, and a squad's chance to rout is based on the average of the morale levels of its members, so I can to some degree guard against my elephants routing by putting them in squads with other units with higher morales. Which is why I also buy one of these guys. Tiger Riders are the highest morale non-commander units available to my nation. With each costing more than half the cost of an elephant, they're very expensive, but they're also strong units in their own rights, and as essential components to my elephant squads, they're totally worth the cost. Additionally, as sacred units they only have half the monthly upkeep cost of non-sacred units with the same recruitment cost. The idea of using a predator as a cavalry mount, especially a non-pack animal like a tiger, seems like a terrible idea. I guess the idea is that whatever wisdom the Yaksha passed on to the people of Bandar Log of allow them to pacify the competitive instincts of their males and function as a large cooperative society is also effective at pacifying the predatory instincts of tigers. It's easy to imagine a variety of stresses that could be put on the tigers that would cause things to go badly for everyone involved, though.
And here's how things look at the end of my turn, with all of my orders made: Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 21 2013 Anchor | ||
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TURN 2 Turn 2, and almost every player has prophetized one of their commanders. The only nation that didn't create a prophet on their first turn was Machaka. Having a prophet is important because prophets spread your dominion. Also, prophetizing a unit will give it a holy magic level of 3 (or give it a +1 bonus to its holy magic level if its holy magic level is already 3 or higher). It takes an entire turn to prophetize a unit, so if you prophetize your starting scout, that leaves your starting commander free to patrol your starting province on your first turn with your starting troops. Raising the tax level of a province above 100% will create unrest there, and patrolling in a province will reduce unrest there. I was able to get a money boost from overtaxing and patrolling in my starting province in my first turn. Players that prophetize their starting commanders can’t get this starting money boost without creating unrest, but choosing to prophetize their starting commanders does allow them to send off their scouts to explore a turn earlier, and it leaves them with a commander that has the ability to bless all of their units on the battlefield. This might be useful for nations that are using a strong bless tactic. Prophetizing a mage is not that useful because each unit can only cast one spell per round of combat, so if your mage is casting a holy spell, their ability to cast a spell in another path of magic is being wasted. Of the nations that prophetized in the first turn, only Eriu prophetized commander. He might have nice bless and be planning to focus on producing his nice sacred units. The map with my move orders: The provinces adjacent to my capital aren’t bad, only the human provinces to the west and south have archers. The other provinces have low protection units. I will test my slingers on them. Securing the provinces around my capital should be easy. I send my scout west to find if there are any other players near the farmland province. I send my starting army to take the province south of me first since it’s both a forest province, and borders mountains, both of which traits will give it a boost in resources. Forts get a percentage of resources from the provinces adjacent to them, and my capital has a “Great City” fort, with an administration value of 60, which means that 60% of the resources in each of the province surrounding it will be redirected to it. Taking the province south of me, then, will significantly increase the resources available in my capital, and allow me to recruit more high quality troops there every turn. Mercenaries screen: Armies in capital province: Recruitable units for Pythium: Now I will describe all units for Pythium. For every few units I will add an image of the units I’m describing, and got through them from left to right.
Velite (9 gold, 10 resources) - Only 8 protection, which is low for Pythian infantry. Their other stats are standard for human units, with 10 morale, strength, attack and precision. With tower shields they have 15 defense, which is nice. They each have 2 javelins that they can throw 10 squares on the battlefield, and in close combat they use spears. They have 5 encumbrance, so they get tired fast, and after few round of combat they will get hit by more critical hits. They’re nice in high numbers because javelins have low precision but high damage. In high numbers, enemies can get close without getting weakened by javelins. They are low cost and nice for expansion, and they also only cost half of resources of heavier Pythium infantry. They have the standard Map Move of 2. Alae Legionnaire (10 gold, 20 resources) - The main difference between these guys and Velites are that they have 12 protection, 6 encumbrance, and 14 defense. Because of their higher resource cost, they are harder to produce in good numbers in the early game. Hastatus (11 gold, 21 resources) - Another type of Pythian infantry. They have higher morale than the Alae Legionnaire, and more defense. They have swords instead of spears. I will use them in the later game.
Triarius (14 gold, 29 resources) - Heavy Pythian infantry. They have long spears, which are good versus low morale enemy troops. They have a high 17 protection and high morale, but they have high 8 encumbrance and old trait so they will get afflictions during game from old age and their stats are not best for cost.They also have only Map Move of 1. Emerald Guard (23 gold, 30 resources) - Emperor's guards. They have 13 hit points, 17 protection, 14 morale, 13 attack, and 15 defense. They get tired easily during fights, and are vulnerable to critical strikes, which reduce protection to half. Also, they have a Map Move of 1. I don't plan to produce them in big numbers. Standard (20 gold, 21 resources) - Good unit for boosting the morale of my troops. They have the “Standard” ability, which gives surrounding units more morale. I might use a few of them in my bigger squads of units. I will use them as support units. Serpent Cataphract (45 gold, 29 resources) - The only cavalry units of Pythium. They have a good 17 protection, with a low 3 encumbrance, but they are costly, and slow for cavalry. I will not produce them. Retiarius (8 gold, 1 resource) - 12 protection units without shields or a ranged attack. They will die fast to archers. They have a nice net weapon that entangles enemies. I will not use them in this game. Gladiator (8 gold, 1 resource) - Similar to Retiari. Instead of a net attack, they have a flail with high damage and 2 attacks. Battle Vestal (13 gold, 4 resource) - The only sacred units for Pythium. They have 0 protection and don't have good abilities. They are also rather costly for their stats. I will not use these units.
Hydra (250 gold, 1 resource) - Big hydra unit, 9 heads, 9 lives. These guys are big units with a high 14 attack, but they are slow with only 7 movement points in battle. They have a Map Move of only 1, and 100% regeneration, which means that if they lose any number less than all of of their hit points (hp) in a single combat round, they’ll heal back up to full health at the start of the next round. Additionally, even if they do lose all of their hp in a single combat round, that just results in them losing one of their heads for the rest of the battle, instead of dying. In order to kill them, an enemy must destroy all of their heads. This makes them good against single strong attacks, because they can't lose more than 1 head per enemy attack. They also have poison cloud ability, so units near them are poisoned. Recruitable commanders for Pythium: Now I will describe all commanders for Pythium. For every few units I will add an image of the units I’m describing, and got through them from left to right. Scout (20 gold, 3 resources) - Standard scout unit, stealthy so it can go through enemy provinces and get intelligence. Assassin (40 gold, 4 resources) - Similar to scouts, but with the “Assassin” ability, which allows them to attack enemy commander in same province, bypassing any troops they may have with them that don’t have their orders set to “guard commander”.
Legatus Legionis (50 gold, 21 resources) - A better commander for Pythium. These guys have 14 protection and the “Standard (10)” ability. Also, they can command 120 units. They don't have shields, so they can vulnerable to arrows. Emerald Lord (35 gold, 30 resources) - A commander with high 17 protection and a shield. They can command 80 units. These are the main guys that I plan to use to command my armies. Serpent Lord (50 gold, 29 resources) - Cavalry type of commander. He can command 40 units.
Battle Deacon (40 gold, 19 resources) - A cheap priest unit. They have 1 level in holy magic and can command 40 units.
Theurg (150 gold, 1 resource) - A good mage for Pythium. They have level 2 in astral and holy magic, level 1 air and water magic, and a research skill of 6. These commander have “Old Age” trait, so they’re in danger of getting afflictions every year. Arch Theurg (380 gold, 1 resource) - The best mages for Pythium. They have level 3 in holy and astral magic, level 2 in air magic, level 1 in water magic, a 100% chance to get a bonus level in fire, air, water, or astral magic, and a 10% chance to get another bonus level in one of those paths. They have a research skill 9. Good researchers, but they are old.
My recruitment in turn 2: Edited by: Xeelee |
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| Mar 24 2013 Anchor | ||
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Turn Messages: SenorOcho and Xeelee have already given their observations about the prophet messages, so I won't repeat them with my own. This is what the message announcing Pythium's prophet looks like. The other others are similar. And I won the bid on the Sonnenkinder. That's pretty awesome. I'm sure that I can use them to help with my early expansion. This is what Günter Blukraft, the leader of the Sonnenkinder mercenary band, looks like. His basic stats are little above those of recruitable independent infantry commanders, and he also starts with extra experience and a magic item. This is his magic item, the Horn of Valor, which makes it less likely for troops near him on the battlefield to rout, as indicated by the "Standard" ability: As I understand it, the "(20)" indicates the number of squares surrounding him on the battlefield within which he'll raise the morale of the occupying units every turn of battle. And he starts with one star of experience, which gives an extra bonus point to his attributes of Attack Skill, Defense Skill, Morale, and Precision. As an example, this is what the experience bonus looks like for his Attack Skill look like when you click that attribute. He also starts in the Hall of Fame, granting him an extra "heroic" ability, as indicated by the red star icon. I'll go into what how that works in a later post. And this is what each of the 30 men serving under him look like. They're all pretty standard Heavy Infantry units, but the extra experience star will give them a leg up in battle. Note that since these guys aren't commanders, we don't get to see their names. We can also tell that they're not commanders because, unlike Günter's info screen above, there is no place under their stats for them to hold magic items or gems. Turn 2 Map: There's a lot of new information to note on the map screen this turn, but before we go into any of it, let's take a look at the map itself. As was mentioned in the introductory post to this LP, this map wraps around, and at this level of zoom-out, we can see a lot of areas represented twice, once on the left side of the screen, and once on the right. But beyond continuously scrolling to the east and west, this map also continuously scrolls to the north and south. While I was unable to capture it in a single screenshot, the bottom edge of the lake in the center bottom of the screen can be seen by scrolling just a little higher to the "north" (seeing as the world that this map represents apparently doesn't have poles, the terms "north" and "south" represent different sorts of directions than they do on Earth). I have difficulty imagining how the world that's represented by this map would look in 3-dimensional space. If we were to make a standard rectangular projection of our Earth wrap around in all directions like the map in this game, one could travel "north" from Siberia, cross the North Pole, and then Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, and end up in southern Australia. I try moving around the triangles of a Fuller Projection map to see if I can come up with a way of orienting them in relation to each other that accurately (if with some distortion of relative distances) represents the relative locations of all locations to each other, and is continuously scrollable in all directions. I come to the conclusion that the task I'm attempting isn't possible, and that the world that is represented by the map we're playing on must therefore not be spherical. A torus is one shape that would seem to fit a map that wraps around and continuously scrolls in all directions, though just as rectangular maps of the earth typically severely distort the polar regions, any continuously-scrollable map of a torus world would seem to necessarily distort the size of the of the areas near its inner edge (where there is less surface area per unit of "latitude"), relative to the areas near its outer edge. To my knowledge, there may be other 3 dimensional shapes that could also be represented by such a map. Another possible explanation for the map is that it represents not just a world, but an entire universe that exists in four spatial dimensions. As I understand it, it's generally understood by cosmologists that the center of our universe, that is, the point in space where the Big Bang occurred, is not a point in 3-dimensional space that we can point toward, but rather, that it's a point in 4-dimensional space that all locations in our 3-dimensional universe are equally distant from (if anyone with a physics background feels that I'm misrepresenting this concept, I welcome any corrections you might have). So we can no more point toward it than a two dimensional being that lived on a horizontal plane could point in any direction that had any degree of verticality to it. One theory that explains the center of our universe not being in a direction we can point in is that our universe is in the shape of a 3-sphere, also known as a glome or a hypersphere, which is a shape like a sphere, but with 4 spatial dimensions, with all points on its surface equally distant from a central point. In this theory, the 3-dimensional universe that we can perceive exists on the surface of this 3-sphere, just as how we can imagine a 2-dimensional universe existing on the surface of a sphere in 3-dimensional space. And just as how a being that lived in a 2-dimensional universe on the surface of a sphere that chose to travel in any straight line it could perceive for long enough would eventually travel around the circumference of its universe and arrive in the spot where it started, if we could somehow travel faster than the rate at which our universe is expanding, any straight line we can perceive that we chose to travel along would eventually lead us back to the point where we started. If that were the case with the world represented by the map we're playing this game on, then an inhabitant of that world could travel in any direction, and end up where she or he started, not just any direction on the north-south, east-west plane, but also any direction with any degree of "upness" or "downess". An inhabitant of such a world would be able to look up and a see the opposite side of their world directly above them (and in all directions that their line of sight was unblocked), at a distance of exactly half the circumference of their universe. Anyway, I spent enough time thinking about the kind of world that a wrap-around map you can continuously scroll in all directions would represent that I figured I would share my thoughts with you guys for anyone else who found them interesting. Back to the game... We can see that due to our overtaxing in Turn 1, the population of Lothringen has gone down from 30,320 people to 30,140. That's clearly an unsustainable monthly loss in population, and it represents my people suffering, so I need to end it. After patrolling, I still have 10 unrest there (representing 10 bandits). Unrest lowers my income, so I lower my tax rate there to 90% this turn in the hopes that that will end it. I would prefer to send my army out this turn to conquer additional provinces, rather than patrol with them. Conquering independent provinces is just something that you need to agree to in order to play this game. If you're not willing to conquer independent provinces, your nation won't grow, and the other nations will quickly exceed it in power. It feels awkward to do, since one would imagine that if your nation and religion really had a lot to offer to people, there might be some way for independent provinces to join your nation willingly and peacefully. The game doesn't offer any information about the governments of independent provinces, or any means to interact with them diplomatically, so I like to imagine that there's at least some moral reason to conquer them. Like, maybe the people in those provinces that have already converted to my national religion wish to join with my nation as well, but they're being ruled over by tyrants who are unwilling to let the will of their people to express itself in that way because they don't want to give up their positions of personal power. Units will inevitably die in each battle I fight to take an independent province, which would be tragic if they were real people. But I feel that I just need to accept that I need to fight those battles, and try to play the most moral game I can in other areas. Looking again at our map above, we can see that our border guards have come back with reports about the surrounding lands. They are as follows: "Cataphracts" are European and West Asian-style heavy cavalry from the period before the innovation of the stirrup, which increased the power of the lance charges of cavalry of later periods. Even without the stirrup though, these guys are still pretty deadly, and I expect to take losses if I try to take this province. A saving grace is that the more elite troops in each independent province seem to usually only be a small proportion of the overall troops there, so assuming that my border guards' estimate of this province only containing 20 troops in total is accurate, I can expect only perhaps 3-5 cataphracts, with the rest of the units being light infantry, which are much weaker. It should be noted that my dominion (the area in which people worship the god of my nation) has spread to this province this turn, as indicated by the white candle displayed on it, and within the info window for it. As the strength of my religion grows in this province, the number of white candle will increase. My dominion allows my to see the population, income, and resources of each province within it, and it will also over time tend to cause the qualities of provinces in it to match the scales that I chose when customizing my nation. We can see in the province above, for example that even just being in my dominion for one turn has caused it's temperate to rise, as indicated by the sun icon in its info window. Heavy infantry units can be hard to take down with the forces I have available now, and archers are deadly for my units without shields, which is everybody except for the mercenaries I bought the services of this turn. If I attack this province this turn, it should be with my mercenary band. Barbarians hit hard, but they're unshielded, and vulnerable to archery fire. They also have a low morale, so any tactics I use to attack them should probably be based on trying to kill enough of them to get them to rout before they can do much damage to my guys. I have a group of archers that I can send at them, but I'm not sure if I have enough to get 40 of them to rout. So, this province is pure infantry, which means that I could have an advantage if I send my archers against them. 40 units is a lot, though. I would probably want to send all of my troops against these guys together, both my starting army, and my mercenaries, if I want to try to take this province this turn. Militia are one of the weakest units in the game. They have poor morale, equipment, and combat skills; and archers aren't much of threat to units that have shields. All of my mercenaries have shields, so I could easily take this province with my mercenaries alone. And here's the garrison in Lothringen that I have to work with: At the top you can see the elephant and Tiger Rider that I recruited last turn, and below that you can see all of my commanders and the squads they lead. Andaka is leading 20 Markata Archers and 15 Atavi Infantry, and Günter is leading 30 Heavy Infantry. The only unit here that I haven't previously shown you is the Markata Archer, which you can see below: And this is the bow that they use: The short bow, which is the most commonly used bow in the Middle Ages Era, is significantly better, with a damage value of 10, and a range of 25, but the small bow is still great against lightly armored and unarmored units. Looking at the map, I'm feeling exposed and vulnerable, with open borders on all sides. I'd like to expand into a shape in which I have as few border provinces as possible, and then from there focus on building up my strength in preparation for wars with other players. The provinces circled in red seem to be the ideal borders for me to expand into. But all of the circled provinces and the territory they enclose equal a total of 19 provinces, and the average number of provinces per player on this map is only 15.3. So I can't expect to take all of them before other players do, and I need to prioritize. The circles that I've drawn for my northern and northwestern borders each include multiple provinces to indicate that I'm not certain how far I want to expand in those directions. In each case, expanding to the farther province in that direction would make my border there consist of a single province bordering multiple provinces owned by my neighbors. And that would likely cause those neighbors to feel vulnerable to and uncomfortable with me, which could hurt my ability to have good relations with them. I think that my highest priority is to secure a northern border at one of the two provinces I've circled in that direction. It's a nice choke point where a border of one province protects at least two provinces behind it. I can imagine that any neighbor I have to the north will be similarly attracted to the Shore of Superb Simians as a chokepoint to secure the provinces to the north of it, so I expect the only way that I'll be able to secure that area before them is to make it a higher priority for me than it is for them. My second priority will be to secure the pair of provinces on my side of the river to my east. I like how they each border only one province on the other side of the river, which seems like a good recipe for peace with my neighbors on the other side, and sealing off that border might reduce the competition for the provinces to my south. At this point, I'm not sure if what my next highest priority is. I'd really like to secure that line of three provinces to my south, but I also don't want to wait too long to expand west because I'd like to have a buffer at least one province thick between my capital and my neighbors on all sides. So here's what I decide to do: I send Arjun, Andaka, my starting army, and the elephant and the Tiger Rider I recruited last turn north to take the Shore of Superb Simians; I send Günter Blukraft and his band east to take the Forest of Fearsome Foliage; and I send the new scout I recruited last turn, Candrasman, south to find out who my neighbors are in that direction and begin relations with them. Here are the squad positions and orders I've set for my army going east: Even with shields, there's some chance that some of these guys may die to archery fire, so I start them as close to the opposing side of the battlefield as possible in order to close that distance as quickly as possible. I position Günter himself toward the back of my force since he's the most valuable unit in the mercenary band, and if he dies, the remainder of the band disperses. And here are the squad positions and orders I've set for my army going north: My hope here is that my Markata Archers and elephant will be able to make the light infantry rout, while my Atavi Infantry to take out the Cataphracts with the force of numbers, while Arjun helps out by picking off units one by one with the Smite spell, which you can see below: I have my 6 Markata archers set up to immediately run to the back of the battlefield and guard Andaka at the start of the battle. That's a trick that I learned from reading another Dominions 3 LP just 2 days before this turn. The idea is that units will generally try to attack the closest enemy unit to them at the start of the battle unless they have orders otherwise, and once they target a unit, they generally won't switch to another target until their original target is killed or leaves the battlefield. So what I'm trying to do is get all of the defending units in this battle to target my small group of Markata Archers and follow them to the back of my side of the battlefield so that they can be encircled by the rest of my army. Experienced Dominions 3 players will be able to see that I've made quite a few mistakes with this set of battle orders. We'll explore what those mistakes were when we see the results of this battle next turn. Lastly, I take a look at the mercenary bands available for hire: The Bandar Log banner and the number "3" next to the Sonnenkinder represents that they're in my employ for this month and the next two months, after which, I'll need to outbid everyone else for their services if I want to keep them in my employ. And here's the new mercenary band that's available for hire this month: I'm familiar with these guys from my singleplayer games, and I know that Hannibal, and the 5 "men" in his band are all elephants, which are great for early expansion because most independent provinces contain units that are vulnerable to being trampled. These guys are worth much more than 80 gold at this point in the game, and expect everyone else to make a high bid for them. In order to give myself a good chance of winning them myself, I make an offer of over 250% of the minimum bid. Lastly, I spend my remaining money on recruiting an Atavi Chieftain, another elephant, and two more Tiger Riders in my capital. The second Tiger Rider I'm recruiting is greyed out, which indicates that I don't have enough resources to finish recruiting him this turn, and that he'll continue to be on the queue next turn, with the remaining amount of resources required to produce him being taken from what I have available then. This is what an Atavi Chieftain looks like: They're a basic inexpensive commander with the "Stealth" ability. My plan is to use this guy to ferry the elephant and Tiger Rider I recruit this turn to reinforce the army I'm sending north this turn, and then send him further north to make contact with my neighbors in that direction. He doesn't have the same bonus to his Stealth ability as Markata Scouts, so he can be discovered in the territories he's sneaking though more easily, but that shouldn't matter much a this point in the game, since the forces of independent provinces never patrol for hidden units, and most players will have more important things to do with their forces at this point. Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 25 2013 Anchor | ||
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| Mar 25 2013 Anchor | ||
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Cool! I'll be reading. Robin, I'd say the first admin was probably afraid your style would compromise the integrity of the game he was running. Most people will play ruthlessly in order to win, as I'm sure you are aware, and if you will not then your immediate neighbors may obtain an advantage, right? But it's for fun, a game, so more power to you. |
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| Mar 26 2013 Anchor | ||
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thanks all for this - very informative and fun |
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| Mar 27 2013 Anchor | ||
Yeah, I would agree that that's probably why the admin of the first game I tried to join was concerned about me participating; and I agree with your perspective that just so long as everyone is having fun, it's great to have a diversity of play-styles in represented by various players in games. It seems to me that one of the strengths of Dominions 3 as a game is that it can be played in widely different manners by players with different perspectives, who derive fun from different aspects of it. It feels a bit of a shame to me that not everyone seems to appreciate the beauty of seeing all those different perspectives interact with each other in games, but at the same time, I can totally respect somebody wanting to play in a game that only includes players who have a very similar play-style to their own because that's the sort of game that they know they'll have the most fun with. One of the particular aspects of approaching the game that a significant portion of this community seems to like everyone to be on the same page on in the games they play is the degree to which everyone playing feels they should allow their attitudes and/or relationships with other players to be influenced by their experiences with those players in past games.
Thank you very much for following this LP, Doctoxic. It's great to see that people are interested in what we're writing, and I'm sure that that helps all of us to feel more motivated to continue posting. Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Mar 29 2013 Anchor | ||
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Turn 1 Lets look at my units and mages before going into pretender´s design. Huskarls: Hirdmen: Einhere: Double the cost of hirdman. Dual wielding, ok protection, slow and high encumbrance. When dual wielding you get attack penalty of both weapon length combined. In this case -3 but as they have ambidextrous 2 ability penalty is only -1. So their axe attack value is only 9 and sword is average 10. They wont be hitting much. But they have another cool ability called berserker +5. It means if they get hurt they will go berserk and gain +5 attack, +5 strength, +5 protection, -5 defence and +5 encumbrance. In berserk their stats are pretty impressive. Skinshifter: These guys are my favorite units of Vanheim. Pretty cheap and low resource cost. They are not capital only so you can recruit them from anywhere. They go to battle in skinshifter form which is pretty ok. They hit hard with two-handed sword, also regeneration 1hp/turn. Valkyrie: My first sacred unit which would benefit from bless and sacred also cost less upkeep. Sacreds are usually capital only and Valkyrie makes no difference. When looking at these gals im not very impressed. 50 gold, little above average stats. They are flying with map movement of 3 and stealthy which gives em good strategic ability. Glamour ability gives them mirror image which is 50% chance to hit them in melee, but any damage will dispel mirror image even damage from spells or arrows. Glamour units are almost impossible to find. I feel like these gals would gain most from earth bless which would give them stamina to fight longer. Another obvious bless would be water which would boost their defense even higher. But to be honest they arent worth of double bless. They only make 14 damage. I wont be using bless so Im not going to recruit any of them. Van: Fay Boar: Scout: Herse: Dwarven Smith: Its really shame Smith is capital only. These guys can do more than forge too. With luck you can get Earth 5 random (rare), who can cast powerful globals. Some battle magic they can do: To be continued... Edited by: Jaffai |
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| Apr 29 2013 Anchor | ||
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Note: Apologies for such a long gap between my last turn post and this one. I do intend to continue this series, I just got to a point where I felt intimidated by the standard that I was holding myself to in doing these posts, but I hope that I've gotten past that mental block now.
Turn 3 - Early Summer, Year 1 Turn Messages: Let's go through the messages in reverse order to how they appear above so we can deal with the shortest ones first: Each nation in Dominions 3 has a small selection of national heroes that can become available at any time as random events. I expect to get a lot of positive random events like this one because of the high luck scale I chose during my nation customization. I rename the hero "Vikram", after a friend of mine in college and because it sounds like a warrior's name to me. I don't feel inspired by "Aksaja". This guy is great. His Level 3 in Holy magic means that he'll be able to cast a powerful version of a spell called "Sermon of Courage", which will help to prevent my guys from routing in battle, and his levels in Water, Earth, and Nature magic will allow him to cast "self-buff" spells later on that, in combination with magic items, will allow him to be a powerful combatant himself. So I got the elephant mercenaries. That's awesome. I'm going to be able to do a lot with these guys. Here's what Hannibal himself looks like: And here's what each of the five members of his band looks like: They look just like the elephants that I can recruit in my capital, except they've got humans riding them instead of langurs, and their stats are essentially identical, with the only difference being that these elephants don't have the "Forest Survival" ability. Hannibal himself has an extra bonus of a "heroic ability" though, as indicated by the red experience star underneath his stats: This particular ability allows him to move further in battle, which actually isn't that great for him since it could cause him to move ahead of the other elephants in his band and get himself in a situation where all of the enemies in the area are attacking him. He got this ability by being in the "Hall of Fame", a list of the ten commander units in the world with the greatest amount of experience (with each month lived since recruitment and each battle participated in counting as one experience point, and each kill counting as two experience points). Every unit that makes it to the Hall of Fame gets a random "Heroic" ability assigned to it, and the strength of that ability increases just so long as they stay in the Hall of Fame. As you can see, Günter Blukraft, Hannibal, and Dagan have significantly more experience than anyone else. Dagan is another mercenary who is available for hire this month, and the three of them automatically made it to the Hall of Fame because mercenaries start with experience, and other units generally don't. Also notable are Ewald Georg von Kleist, and Kowabungi, which have both already gotten 13 kills. Looking at the list of the gods of the world, we can see that both of those units are the gods of their respective nations. And judging by the number of kills they've each gotten, we can assume that they're both well-suited for combat. Generally speaking, choosing a god that's good at combat will give you a boost to your expansion and overall power at the start of the game, but will proportionally contribute less power to your nation later on as other powerful units become available. So those will be two nations to be particularly careful of during this early expansion period. It's also notable that Kowabungi is listed as having 0 experience in the Hall of Fame, and made it there through kills alone. That means that it has the "mindless" trait, and there's only one god available to Machaka that has trait. But I'll let phobosexual describe her god his or herself is her LP posts if she wants. If she doesn't, I'll describe it myself later. Back to our messages, let's see the result of our attack on the independent forces in the Forest of Fearsome Foliage: This is about what I expected. They have 5 Heavy Infantry, each of which are roughly equivalent to each my 30 Heavy Infantry mercenaries. Behind them are 14 Militia and 9 Archers, which are less threatening, and 3 Captains. Let's take a look at our second battle report, on our attempt to take the Shore of Superb Simians: Wow, this isn't good; there are 7 Cataphracts, which is about twice as many as I expected, and there are 3 Light Cavalry with bows as well, which my guys are vulnerable to because they don't have substantial armor or shields. They also have 12 Militia and 3 Mounted Commanders. What I didn't consider, though, is that since I didn't specify what type of units my Markata archers should fire at, they chose the closest target, the Cataphracts, who have heavy armor and shields, making them virtually immune to arrows. Now that My Markata archers have chosen them as their targets, they'll continue to uselessly fire at the Cataphracts for the remainder of the battle. Graphs There are a series of graphs available to each player in the game that display information about each of our nations. Let's take a look at a couple of them to see what we can glean about where everyone else is in the game at this point. Looking at the research graph, we can see from the large amounts of research done by happyfungi (playing as Eriu), jtgribs (playing as Shinuyama), phobosexual (playing as Machaka), and SenorOcho (playing as Caelum) on Turn 1 (20, 19, 19, and 12 research points, respectively) that they each started with awake gods and researched with them on the first turn. We can see from the dips in phobosexual's and SenorOcho's research last turn and the fact that their gods made it to the Hall of Fame that they each stopped researching at that point, and moved their gods out to take independent provinces. We can see by the increase in happyfungi's research, and any research being done at all by phobosexual, SenorOcho, or Xeelee (playing as Pythium) on Turn 2, that each them recruited a mage on Turn 1 and set them to research last turn. At this point, Jaffai (playing as Vanheim), and I are the only two players who haven't started doing any research yet.
Looking at the provinces graph, we can see that nobody took any provinces on Turn 1, which means that everybody who chose an awake god almost certainly did magical research with them on Turn 1, and happyfungi, jtgribs, phobosexual, and SenorOcho are the only four players who chose to start with awake gods. On Turn 2, we can see that SenorOcho took two provinces, likely one with his god fighting solo, and one with his starting army; and everyone else took just one province. I appear to be only person who lost a battle with their starting army this turn. I wouldn't have taken any provinces at all if I hadn't won the bid for the mercenaries. I'm glad that I was able to take at least one province on this turn, because otherwise people could have seen that and taken it as a sign of weakness or ineptitude, which could have hurt my ability to effectively use diplomacy with them, and caused them to be more inclined to attack me. Chat Transcripts Excerpts We have an IRC channel set up for the players in this game (info on how to connect to the main Dominions 3 community IRC channel here). There's a norm in the Dominions community that one does not reveal any substantial in-game information to, or begin diplomacy with any other player until they've encountered them in some way in the game. So there isn't much related to the game itself that we can talk to each about at this point, but we've been using the channel to get to know each other as people. In the chat transcript excerpts below, and any others I share in this LP, I'll present others' messages exactly as I received them, but I'll make spelling and grammatical corrections to my own messages, and in some cases reword them for clarity because I know what I was trying to say in those cases, and I give myself permission to do that. I didn't save the beginning of the excerpt below, but SenorOcho was describing how he broke non-aggression pacts (NAP's) with two other players in another game he is currently playing. He said that he had agreed to those pacts early on in the game, and that the players he made them with essentially hadn't communicated with him since then, which in his mind justified breaking the pacts. He said that he didn't like "fire and forget" diplomacy, and I asked him what that term meant:
I find it to be surprising how cavalier Ocho was about both breaking NAP's and letting other players know that he did that. It certainly seems to contrast with the style of play used by the players in the "Doomed to Fail" LP (linked page is periodically put behind paywall), which I read before starting this game. Each of the players in that game seemed to be highly conscientious to not do anything that might give them a reputation for being agreement-breakers. It makes me more wary of Ocho to know that he isn't concerned about making that reputation for himself, but I also appreciate how open he's being, and I wonder if I might be able to defend myself from him unexpectedly attacking me by creating a strong mutual understanding and friendship with him. Later on in the chat I basically express my concern that other people might not respect my play-style, and try to effectively communicate what my play-style is to preempt Ocho or others from not respecting it:
At another point in the chat that I didn't save, happfungi gave me a link to a battle simulator, which one can use to see how battles will likely play out before you actually commit to them. I'm eager to not have anything like a repeat of the series of mistakes that I made in the battle in the Shore of Superb Simians this turn, so I download the simulator and familiarize myself with how to use it. Turn 3 Map: And here are the three newly-visible provinces to my east:
So I send my Sonnenkinder band east to Bumpy Land. It works out pretty perfectly that that's the path of least resistance, seeing as that's the direction I'm trying to expand into anyway. After they take Bumpy Land, I plan to send them south to help carve out my southern border.
I decide to send the elephant mercenary band against the force of Heavy Infantry, Militia, and Archers holding the Strand of Awesome Crabs to my northeast. I choose a positioning for the elephants that my testing seems to show will allow them to inflict the highest number of trample attacks on the independent forces before they have a chance to counter-attack. Lastly, I send Vikram, the surviving Tiger Rider, and other two surviving Markarta Archers from the Battle of the Shore of Superb Simians, plus the newly recruited elephant and Tiger Rider to north to try to take the Shore of Superb Simians again. If I win the battle, I'll be able to have Vikram search the province for magic sites while the elephant mercenaries I'm sending to the Stand of Awesome Crabs take a month to meet up with him to push further north as a combined force, and if I lose the battle my tests seem to indicate that Vikram will almost certainly survive. So I'm taking a gamble with this battle, but it's a gamble with a bigger potential payoff than the potential loss. And lastly, I send my Candrasman, my Markata Scout, to explore further to the southeast. This is what the map looks like once I've made all of my orders: Edited by: Robin_Claassen |
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| Apr 29 2013 Anchor | ||
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My understanding is that in the Something Awful community (re: the Doomed to Fail LP. Paywall's currently up for me!) they don't make as much use of NAPs and NAP-3s in particular are unpopular. Diplomatic agreements tend to be more along the lines of "I won't attack you unless you start looking weak and/or it's blatantly the correct move for me if I want to win the game". I suspect the psychology of diplomacy in Doomed to Fail (and this LP) is also affected by the knowledge that it's likely to end up aired in public and players will want to present themselves in a certain way. Thanks for the writeup! Incidentally, you got me to google "Aksaja" out of curiosity - it means either "the knowledge which can be obtained through the senses" or "thunderbolt". Edited by: gothefungus |
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Standard first turn messages, nothing important. But it's the start of new game, and a new opportunity to learn. My pretender is still sleeping well at this moment.
My army in turn 2. Maximus the Centurion and his men will be invading the province to my south. I leave my slingers in my capital to be part of the next expansion army I send out. I didn't script anything for my invading army.
I recruit a second commander for my next expansion force. I also get a few slingers to fight the independents to my north. My first mage is starting to research Thaumaturgy.
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