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Let's Read Giant Wusses: A Dominions 5 tourney LP

Matalarata

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Relax Grim

Why do you want to ruin the fun for everyone else?

already fucked up
I'll shout at you
your COMPLETE INABILITY
Good fucking GODS
Why the FUCK
FUCK'S SAKE!


:love:


It should be ILLEGAL to allow kids to play Dominions.

Yep, it causes behavioural problems and makes you prone to Tourette!
 

sqeecoo

Arcane
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Dec 13, 2006
Messages
2,615
I am no2 very happy to have taken Niel in the 2vs2 disciple game. This thread is gold for planning.

Bro, I hope you realize you've taken Jotunheim, not Nifelheim. If you take Drain 3 with Jotunheim Grim's gonna burst a blood vessel or something.

All it takes is a couple of barely equipped Niefel Jarls. UW nations can't do shit against them, the only problem here is breaking the damn walls of UW forts. And yet you could milk those non-fortified UW provices and maybe even ended the war with a tribute.


So you made a "deal" with fucking ATLANTIS playing as NIEFELHEIM just to make sure they don't grab provinces in your CAPCIRCLE? CAPCIRCLE, SQEECOO! What is WRONG with you??

I guess I didn't explain the Atlantis deal well. Here's a picture:

cFw6w0s.jpg

This is the land division as far as I remember, with me getting stuff behind the red line and Atlantis getting the blue. It's not just about who is stronger, it's about having peaceful relations with our main neighbor and not having to worry about getting the coasts in time. The land I agreed was Atlantis' also conveniently blocks us from our northwestern neighbor (green arrow), encouraging the two of them to go to war and taking pressure off us.

I know Nifel has good UW capability, but isn't Atlantis reasonably able to counter the Jarls? They have their own SCs and they also have guys like this:
X01NbCgl.jpg


who are immune to the frost aura of the Jarls and have two high damage attacks, perfectly capable of killing a Jarl with minor gear I think (i.e. before Vineshields). And anyway you know me I like being friendly with everyone :) If you're friends with everyone you can choose who to go to war with!



This is beautiful.

Using second leadership slot for groupping javeliners together? Wasteful. They WILL throw javelins anyway, even if placed together with pure melee unit. Seems like you're attacking some indies that might have ranged units, right? Then you should've placed a single decoy unit in the second leadership slot.

But EVEN if those indies don't have ranged units, your script is already fucked up. Javeliners should be set to "fire AND KEEP DISTANCE", sorta "luring" the enemy towards your melee, backing up, forming a single group, damaging enemy's morale and numbers with those javelins.

Archer decoys don't really work in Dominions 5 though, I believe. Indy archers are set to "fire" instead of "fire closest", so the decoy might not get targeted. Using fire and keep distance on the javelineers is a very interesting idea that hadn't crossed my mind! It'd definitely take practice to set up correctly but it could work better than what I've been doing.


Not recruiting mages is not the reason I'll shout at you. I already mentioned that your godfarted Magic 0 scale is a waste, and now you're simply proving my point. Awaken Pretender would be doing research as we speak, and there would be no need for Magic scale - the boost from Pretender is more than enough.

The REAL reason I'm gonna shout is your COMPLETE INABILITY TO FORM EFFECTIVE EXPANSION PARTY! Good fucking GODS - why the hell did you bother making Jotun Jarl a prophet if you didn't plan on utilizing his leadership, ability to form lines, ability to command large squads of giants? Why the FUCK do you rely on Skinshifters ONLY? Don't you realize that giant units are easily surrounded when massively outnumbered? FUCK'S SAKE!

I dunno, in testing 5-6 Skinshifters did fine. We'll see if they do well here :) What would you use, a big line of normal giants? That would work ok but my thinking was that the Skinshifters are more useful later so I might as well recruit them now. It'd only be like 2 giants per skinshifter, not a HUGE difference.

I agree on not utilizing the Jotun Jarl prophet fully, I'm not totally happy about that either. But we did have to recruit a commander to lead this second expansion party so might as well make it a Jarl and prophet! He'll come in handy later if he survives.
 

Grimwulf

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If you take Drain 3 with Jotunheim Grim's gonna burst a blood vessel or something.

And not just a single vessel.

I guess I didn't explain the Atlantis deal well. Here's a picture:

Hrmpf. Guess it works if you didn't have the means to strike diplo agreements with other nations. Because Atlantis is a prime target for early wars, at least when you play Niefels.

I know Nifel has good UW capability, but isn't Atlantis reasonably able to counter the Jarls? They have their own SCs and they also have guys like this:

Basalt Kings are nowhere near Niefel Jarls, I wouldn't worry about their SC one bit. It all comes down to equipment and available buffs in the end, which you could have had if you took Awaken Pret instead of Magic 0, but still, can't really compare them.

Warriors of the Deep have size 3 (no more than 2 units in a square), two attacks with Enc 4 each. It's near damn impossible to surround a Jarl using these things.

two high damage attacks

They are meh at best. Granted, basalt spears don't give two shits about Body Ethereal and Liquid Body, but it's not like you could have them during early wars anyways. Definetely can't one-shot or even two-shot a Jarl. Regen will neutralize the occasional successful hit.

perfectly capable of killing a Jarl with minor gear I think (i.e. before Vineshields)

All you needed, besides obv water-breathing stuff, is anything-reinvigoration, horror helmet and maybe Coral Blade / Ice Sword for their Att/Def bonuses. Then you cast Water Shield + Ice Shield + Skeletal Body and play a waiting game with their troops. The key here is to keep fatigue at zero (can't have too many reinvigor item or blesses), never overdo the buffing, never rush ahead to attack, just wait. They won't be able to surround you, at least not with their better units (too large), and you don't care about the damage from the smaller units. Sooner or later they will pass out / piss their shell panties and there you go.

UW warfare is convenient for you because you don't have to fight in extreme temperatures (can't be worse than Heat 1 underwater).

I don't see easier matches from your nations list, especially if they are played by half-decent players.

I dunno, in testing 5-6 Skinshifters did fine. We'll see if they do well here :) What would you use, a big line of normal giants?

Oh, I don't know - how about ANYTHING ELSE? Ffs. If you think you don't need numbers playing as Niefels, you're fooling yourself. Those walls ain't gonna break themselves.

In my own games, I used simple Jotun Militia (cheap) in the same squad with a COUPLE Skinshifters (for boosting Militia's morale) in one slot, and a group of Jotun Hurlers in the other. Hurlers you will need in the long run, otherwise you will NOT be able to BREAK THE FFFFFFUCKING WALLS! What are you thinking, running around with tiny groups of Skinshifters? You expect the fucking CASTLES crumble when you fart?

The BIG squad, intended for wars and led by your Prophet, consists of yuge numbers of Jotuns and expands as far as you can see.
The SMALL squads are led by ordinary commanders with Niefel Giants and some chaff (indy or Jotun Militia), they expand close to your cap, where the temperature is the coldest. While ALSO slowly building up a squad of experienced sacreds waiting for your Pretender to awake.

He'll come in handy later if he survives.

He won't.
 

sqeecoo

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Those are very good points on UW warfare and maybe goes a long way towards convincing me to use Nifel Jarls early since the temp scales can't be horrible for you UW. And I forgot you get extra water buffs UW. How do they stand up to water elementals?

Interesting, militia and hurlers! I should definitely practice that a bit. Seems like it's hard to get the resources for them in early expansion though since we've taken sloth 3. But yeah, I leaned the lesson on needing enough siege chaff quite painfully :)

Let's do a turn though!
 

sqeecoo

Arcane
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Turn 3: Using Lances as Toothpicks

Ok, let's see how our first battle went!

K79IZP2.jpg


Damn, looks like there was 4 heavy cavalry here (red marker)! These weren't seen by our scouts last turn, and they mess us up a little bit. Heavy cavalry is perhaps the most powerful indy troop you'll regularly encounter in early expansion:

HgQpGOm.jpg

They have good stats and 3 attacks, including a lance that does bonus damage depending on their combat speed (which is high) but can only used once. A cavalry charge is a dangerous thing, and as you can see in the picture above the 4 heavy cav charged right into our Skinshifters in the middle of our main group and lanced them hard, sending them into their second form. Any other giant would be dead from that charge, but our Skinshifters just turn into werewolves and snap their lances between their teeth. Nice.

However the brave cavalry charge messes up our plans. The javelineers throw their javelins at the heavy cavalry who are well protected by their kite shields and are in the middle of a melee with our troops so javelins do some friendly fire. More importantly, the normally weak militia group (marked green above) moves forward and hits giants who will be a bit strung out on either flank where they are surrounding the cavalry. The cavalry dies, but not before the militia have the opportunity to surround and kill a few giants. At least the light cavalry (blue) just fires their arrows from a distance ineffectually and eventually routs once the militia dies. We win! But we lose a significant amount of giants:

F9hAKajl.jpg


We lost 4 giants. Not the end of the world but unfortunate. If you keep away from barbarians (glass cannons who hit hard) and heavy cavalry this starting army can expand with basically no losses for a long time, so it's a pity we've taken some already. Ah well, we couldn't have known there was cavalry in that province since our scouts didn't spot it. I'd have scripted a bit differently if we had known.

Our moves for this turn look like this:

9UE0wkB.jpg


The prophet-led expansion party is moving west, in our secondary expansion direction. The province we're moving to has a pretty large number of indies, estimated at 60 as you can see in the upper left, but as we know 5 Skinshifters + a standard giant are an absolutely sufficient and well-formed expansion party even against large numbers of infantry. At least that was my belief at the time :D

To the east the red marker indicates the capitol of our neighbor, whom we haven't spotted yet. Our scout has seen that there's no chance for a bump since the provinces beyond the one we're expanding to are still independent.
So we're going to advance directly east into a Zotz cave - a cave full of weak bat-men who however can fly and are completely capable of surrounding and killing your commanders if you are not careful. It's the easier of the two eastwards provinces we could expand to eastwards, however, and I really want to grab territory we are directly competing for with our east and west neighbors as soon as possible, even if it means taking two riskier expansion this turn.

In our capitol we are recruiting a Gyga and a single Skinshifter:

ezTw1r4l.jpg


Next turn we'll finally have a researcher!
We're also making a basic non-fort indy commander in the province we just conquered, who will go to our capitol and pick up troops next turn (this Skinshifter and anything else we build on the turn after).

That concludes this turn; we have two tense battles coming up next turn!
 

Inspectah

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As someone that never played as nif, it's funny to see mourning over dead giants.
Usually it was Just glory and intense satisfaction
 

Andnjord

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The Eye of Terror
Just wanted to say that as someone with only limited experience with Dominions I am enjoying immensely the back and forth between the whimsical and optimistic Sqeecoo and the deranged 'son, I am disapoint' ramblings of Grimwulf tearing apart all of Sqeecoo's decisions.

Keep it up boys
:avatard:
 

Grimwulf

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Damn, looks like there was 4 heavy cavalry here (red marker)! These weren't seen by our scouts last turn
Ah well, we couldn't have known there was cavalry in that province

We could. If you didn't expand into this province from the start, you would notice heavy cavalry eventually, even without a scout (the province is within the capcircle). Meanwhile, you could have started with easy provinces, like tribesmen in the forest NW of the cap. These can't have heavy cavalry, they are the easiest type of tribesmen.

QMnY72f.jpg

As a bonus, you would see the Throne defenders, probably started planning on taking it over (probing with scouts, building an army, forging equip for SC, etc). As an ADDITIONAL bonus you could grab the isolated lake - nobody would dare to contest Niefelheim there.

I don't know what stopped you.

Oh. Oh, right. Kinda forgot YOU MADE THIS ABSOLUTELY HUMILIATING "DEAL", MY ARSE, WITH NO OTHER THAN ATLANTIS, GIVING AWAY THE CLOSEST FFFFFFFUCKING THRONE AND TWO ISOLATED LAKES WITHOUT A SINGLE FUCKING REASON TO DO SO, OTHER THAN "OHH, IM JES FRIENDLY YU KNO"!

cFw6w0s.jpg

Well, FUCK your "FRIENDLY", sqeecoo! FUCK IT WITH PASSION! Yeah, DOMINIONS, the MOST fucking FRIENDLY game in the world!

The prophet-led expansion party is moving west, in our secondary expansion direction. The province we're moving to has a pretty large number of indies, estimated at 60

Right, so let's send our Prophet and his 1,5 companions to the most heavily-protected indy province. That makes sense. Fuck those forests, who needs resources when expanding as Niefelheim? Nobody. Suicide is a higher priority, obv

So we're going to advance directly east into a Zotz cave

Brilliant.

a cave full of weak bat-men

Good thing we can see in the dark, and they don't! Oh, wait--

At least they don't have a lance strike. Remember how we lost half of our forces to these? Bats can't do lanc-- Oh. Wait...

Eh, we can pull thru. Let's just hope they won't surround our glorious army squad couple of crippled giants.

who however can fly and are completely capable of surrounding and killing your commanders

THEN WHY IN FUCKS UNHOLY NAME ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOURSELF?! :x

ONE TURN! Give me ONE TURN where you do NOT FUCK UP!

we are recruiting a Gyga and a single Skinshifter

:prosper:

We're also making a basic non-fort indy commander in the province we just conquered, who will go to our capitol and pick up troops


this Skinshifter
QBnVfv5.jpg


:prosper::prosper::prosper:

I could start ranting on how to manage proper expansion as Niefelheim. The importance of reinforcements and numbers. The need to re-supply your existing expansion parties rather than create new "squads" of


But I'm done. I'm done with this turn. I want to forget what I saw. Pls post next update, the sooner - the better. And put the previous one into "NSFW" spoiler, because honestly - it's a fucking rape of Niefelheim.
 

Dayyālu

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Shaper Crypt
Wait. Wait. I played with Sqeecoo.

I wasted like billions of words in endless verbal shenanigans to settle deals for a single province. Why the fuck you accepted that dreadful deal with Atlantis, btw? I play a shitton of Atlantis, fighting a competent Niel early ought to be avoided. You're giving him time to check your bless and develop a counter strategy (a thing Atlantis is usually exceedingly good at, considering their magic access) and also good gold to build their starved economy with.

You don't want Atlantis to have too much abovewater, at least in the earlygame. You don't want to give them lakes on the border, where they can use them for a variety of wonderful thingies and as support for quick offensive advances.

In b4re Atlantis is a moron and suicides itself

Also reading Grimwulf going ballistic is hilarious, it's some kind of deviant reality TV show

"Rate My Dominions"
 

sqeecoo

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Dec 13, 2006
Messages
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I wasted like billions of words in endless verbal shenanigans to settle deals for a single province. Why the fuck you accepted that dreadful deal with Atlantis, btw? I play a shitton of Atlantis, fighting a competent Niel early ought to be avoided. You're giving him time to check your bless and develop a counter strategy (a thing Atlantis is usually exceedingly good at, considering their magic access) and also good gold to build their starved economy with.

I'm a pushover friendly in dealmaking if I feel I'm getting something good in return! In this case the advantage is that I don't have to worry about expanding north and south early on, which means I can expand more to the east and west, which means more land overall, which is great!
Secondly, building good relations with a neighbor is always a plus. You never know how the game will go, so why not be friendly?

Thirdly, Atlantis can't actually take that lake before he takes that throne, so I have plenty of time. This is an expansion deal, I didn't sign anything more than that (well and a short non-aggression pact). I can still go to war with Atlantis early just like you guys suggest - except it'll be from a better position where I have the coasts and Atlantis probably hasn't taken the throne yet.

The deal gives me easier expansion but leaves me flexible on early wars, which I think is great overall.

It did lead me to risky expansion decisions that may backfire as Grimwulf gently pointed out, and he's also right that I didn't realize how strong Nifel can be early against a water nation. But I'd have taken this land deal even if I'd intended to attack Atlantis as soon as I could get my first Nifel Jarl :)
 

sqeecoo

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No deal just yet as I haven't talked to the guy and don't know who he is. But if they are UW capable that's definitely something to consider :)
 

sqeecoo

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Turn 4: Konnichiwa!

Let's see how our risky expansions went!

KzCIC3C.jpg


Our 5 Skinshifter + 1 normal giant dude group lead by the prophet faces off against a bunch of infantry, while the prophet casts sermon of courage to buff up their morale and Word of Thorns to damage and entangle (MR resist) individual enemies. Our guys hold pretty strong due to their regen and slowly kill off the infantry, but we lose the Skinshifter that got surrounded up on the left flank:

MLw5TMrl.jpg


No losses would be better, but this was a risky expansion and we can be happy it wasn't worse. Best of all, our expansion force is still intact and expansion-capable as long as we don't go for a hard province again.

What about the expansion against the batmen? Well, we're fighting in a cave where we have an att/def malus but the zots don't, and while the zots are individually pretty flimsy they are likely to fly in, surround exposed troops, and do some damage. We therefore placed all our troops right on top of our commander so he doesn't get surrounded and killed and prayed for the best:

LJVdbIR.jpg


The zots are not that numerous, thankfully, but since we didn't get the opportunity to form a proper line against them some of the more exposed and surrounded giants do end up dying before the zots rout:

uqCO2sKl.jpg


Our heaviest losses yet! But the Skinshifter core of this expansion group is intact, and with 6 dudes they can continue expanding to an easier province. And that's the plan:

ckrjiYI.jpg


We're not expanding any further east since that'd be going into the capitol circle of our eastern neighbor, which turned out to be Yomi, the Japanese demon nation (more on them in a sec). Instead we're heading north into some easy tribal slingers who shouldn't be a problem even for our battered expansion group. Knowingly taking a province in someone's capcircle is tantamount to a declaration of war, which we don't want to do just yet.
In the west we're continuing on into a moderately weak province directly towards our western neighbor in another effort to grab as much land early as we can. We are sadly prevented from going for the province marked in red by the fact that there's a decent bunch of barbarians there. Barbarians are glass cannons who hit HARD and are a real problem to deal with for giants. We can take them on with sufficient numbers but definitely not with our minimalist expansion parties. This unfortunately means our access to that presumably rich farmland province (blue) is blocked for now - that would have been my preferred expansion direction were it not for the barbs.

We were also lucky enough to get some Jade Amazons in our area (green). These indy troops are a bit stronger, but once conquered will allow us to recruit these gals as mages:

uGLxwwjl.jpg


and these sacred troops:

75iNbbrl.jpg


The mages are great since they can take over minor water magic forging duties from our Skratti and minor nature forging from our Gygas, both of which are way more expensive mages and have a lot of other duties. The Jade mages are also good for carrying the research-boosting items that we'll be making, since it's completely possible we will have more research boosters than mages. Nifel's mages are pricey and finding any decent independent mage is a big boon.

The cavalry unit we can recruit is sacred and can take our bless (only moderately useful for it). We'll certainly be using a few of these gals to supplement our forces, but it's unlikely they will play a significant role overall.

The commander we recruited last turn is going back to our capitol, where we're adding the following troops to the single Skinshifter we recruited last turn:

h7KhixEl.jpg


This'll make for a nice expansion party of 7 dudes, and we're recruiting another indy commander for the next group as well. After that we'll probably go back to mages and get our research going.

Finally, let's quickly discuss Yomi. A nation that was considered weakish until a recent patch, they are not a great matchup for us since they are likely to take maximum heat scales. That patch also made their previously pitiful bakemono size 1:

SxaCgAql.jpg


Being size 1 means they come 6 to a square, and with their long weapons and decent damage they can really hurt our one-per-square giants, even the Skinshifters. Not a great matchup for us unless we actually get attacked, in which case our Nifel Giants and Nifel Jarls can do a number on them with their AoE cold auras while having enough extra protection due to the heavy cold to not die to them. Offensively however our options are more limited since the heat will make our giants and their auras much weaker, and we probably don't want to get into a serious fight with Yomi until we have some Skratti and brands (i.e. AoE damage items) online, which will require more research.

Overall, Yomi is a dangerous neighbor for us to attack early on until we can get a good answer to the bakemono swarms, but not a neighbor we are especially afraid of being attacked by. Their expansion doesn't seem to be going great either as they haven't expanded in our direction so far at all. I'm not saying hi to them yet since they probably don't know we're here. The title of this update is therefore actually extremely misleading and I apologize.

And that concludes the turn! It could have definitely gone worse, and it now seems likely we'll have good expansion in all directions unless something unforeseen happens. And since nothing unforeseen ever happens we're safe on that front!
 
Last edited:

sqeecoo

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Turn 5: Expansionism

Our expansion battles continue going well. Here's the western expansion we ordered last turn:

Spu4Apul.jpg


I'm actually impressed we didn't lose any guys here, in retrospect. Heavy infantry hits reasonably hard and must have surrounded at least one of our Skinshifters on the flank. Unfortunately this is one of the turns where the actual turnfile is lost to the evil clutches of the ClockWork Bot, never to be recovered. So I can only reconstruct the turn as best I can from the screenies I took at the time and can't give you a shot of the battle, which I'd be interested to see myself.

And here's the eastern expansion by our depleted initial expansion group:

PpIq1fDl.jpg


Despite being massively outnumbered they have no trouble killing these tribals, as anticipated. The tribals could swarm them but they have slings so the AI will sit and fire the slings in box formation while the giants hit the edges of the formation until the slingers rout. If the slingers actually charged they could probably swarm and rout our giants, but they never do that. In the expansion phase it really pays to know the indy troop types well.

Our overall plan for this turn is as follows:

GDbnx2l.jpg


From left to right:

We're expanding west into infantry, which shouldn't be a problem for our prophet + 4 Skinshifters and a sword giant. We are not expanding directly west since that's in the capcircle of our western neighbor (orange marks his capitol position). We're likely to meet our neighbors in the west this turn and not unlikely to bump into someone, but as you can see I'm a fan of risky and aggressive expansion :)

We're also sending an expansion part from our capitol southwards (blue), consisting of the following:

SNxNx1jl.jpg


The seven giants should do short work of the normal infantry in that province.

We're also moving in another commander to pick up another expansion crew we're recruiting in the capitol:

ZqDq6G5l.jpg


This means still no mages to research, but I wanted to take as much land ASAP since I know I would become antsy in Atlantis' position and start taking those coasts if they were left independent too long, deal or no deal.
In general I think that it's quite rude to abuse land division by delaying taking the provinces you got for a very long time so I wanted to avoid doing that; I'm also generally a fan of making one expansion party per turn early on, even at the expense of research.
This may be less of a good idea for Nifelheim though, who wants to stop relying on his giant troops and start using thugs as soon as possible. But, as I said, this is my first time playing Nifel so I may be overdoing it a bit with the expansion parties. Still, an argument can be made it's better to grab land fast and catch up on other stuff later, especially if you can remain friendly with your neighbors and you are strong defensively (like we are in our cold lands) but less so offensively.
Setting up a strong base from expansion and hunkering down to research for a bit until I had the thugs was my plan here, since I was friendly with Atlantis and the first neighbor I met, Yomi, was not an ideal rush target for us due to his heat dominion.

In the east we finally get a direct border with Yomi and sign a friendly NAP 3 (non-aggression pact with 3 turn warning, basically pledging to give a 3 turn warning before any attacks). I tend to prefer to sign such short non-aggression pacts with everyone I don't plan to rush, just for safety and the potential for it to grow into an alliance.

I initially intended to grab the SE swamp as indicated in the screenie (red) which would be the most effective (and really only) use of our expansion party there, but I eventually decided it was not worth it and headed towards the province with the green mark instead. Expanding along the red mark was stretching us pretty far and starting to encroach on our SE neighbor there (most likely Hinnom or Abysia due to the wasteland start, both strong nations), and saying I wouldn't expand there made Yomi happy and us seem generous; he then accepted our claim on the province marked green without issue, which he could have legitimately contested. The swamp province is also poor on gold and does not have a poptype that provides us with a useful indy recruit (swamps sometimes have lizard shamans, for instance, but not this one).

That's it for now, next turn we are likely to finally meet our western neighbors!
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
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I've always been kinda puzzled by Lords of Magic.

I know it sounds like heresy, and I had it when I was like 10 or so (so I didn't understand jack shit) and replayed it like.... last year. I found it.... a tad lacking, like all the crazy ideas didn't melt together in a cohesive whole.
 

sqeecoo

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Dec 13, 2006
Messages
2,615
Turn 6: Dude, Where's My Research?


And here's another turn! Alas, with the turnfile once again lost to posterity so I can only do a short recap based on the screenies I have.

Expansion proceeds apace:

WJkgqMGl.jpg


RjQAaBBl.jpg


Both our expansion succeed, though we did lose a Skinshifter to a lance charge in the first one. The small Skinshifter expansion groups are working fine I'd say. Let's look at our further plans:

ko0FBSE.jpg


Our 5-man eastern expansion crew only has 3 Skinshifters and probably isn't capable of taking on that province (orange), so they will probably combine next turn with the crew taking blue by attacking the monkey-occupied forest between them, and then head to orange together.

Our new expansion group is heading north (green), and our western expansion group is heading back since we've met our NW neighbor. It's Fomoria! The only natively UW (underwater) capable nation in the game and our best potential ally against Atlantis.
We sign a NAP with them and tell them we're not gonna contest that throne and lake we've ceded to Atlantis, hopefully encouraging conflict between the two of them.

In our capitol we're recruiting yet another expansion party:

6PxLEpDl.jpg


And still no mage! Now this is definitely overdoing it. I think the idea was to try for those amazons we mentioned and then the barbarians blocking the way to the western farm as soon as possible, but I definitely should be pumping research at this point. Got a bit greedy for land I guess; but another reason it isn't that smart to pump solely troops at this point is that I've secured our borders quite well with diplomatic deals. While taking land faster is better and safer, at this point we can definitely afford to slow down the one expansion party per turn tempo and focus on mages. It's not just the research either, we'll need mages for sitesearching ASAP as well. And we also need forts! Balancing this is especially hard as Nifelheim, and this is my first try at it. It could definitely be worse!

Let's quickly talk about our initial research plans. Our first goal (currently pursued by a lonely Gyga researching in the capitol) is Construction 4, which opens up gear for our Skratti and Nifel Jarls. With our magic paths Construction 4 is completely sufficient for a long time for gearing our dudes. We'll talk about thug gear when we get to making it, but another important thing at Con4 research is the Skull Mentor:

hFi7fsll.jpg


Stick this on a researching mage and it seriously boosts their research (as a reminder, our expensive Gygas have 15 base research). Once we start making these things we will hopefully improve our research from abysmal to horrible!

That concludes the turn. Next time we'll hopefully meet our western neighbor who is hiding in his capitol and not taking his capcircle in our direction - a prime rush target most likely.
 

Infinitum

Scholar
Joined
Apr 30, 2016
Messages
700
Nice. Briefly considered attending this tourney but have come to the realization that I have places to be and things to do this year. I'll be following this!
 

Grimwulf

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 1, 2014
Messages
4,045
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Kodex Kommunistic Kastle
the prophet casts sermon of courage to buff up their morale and Word of Thorns to damage and entangle (MR resist)

What a sorry waste of Prophet's turns. He is perfectly capable of fighting in melee, just keep him behind your main line. Self-bless and go killing, with that kind of armor and hp you don't have to fear some indy hooman defenders.

If you had a gud type of Smite, maybe it would be worthwhile. But Word of Thorns? A single-target 5-damage entangle? A shameful dispray on your part.

but we lose the Skinshifter that got surrounded up on the left flank:

You know what would prevent the flanking? A FUCKING LONGER LINE OF TROOPS!

But who needs NUMBERS, right? A "line" of 5 units is much more appealing!

No losses would be better, but this was a risky expansion and we can be happy it wasn't worse

Eh? HAPPY? How about ADMITTING IT WAS STUPID and learning from your mistakes?

Nah, let's just clap our hands and be merry we didn't loose to indies. YET.


You were lucky these are club-wielding batmen, not the lancers. But even against CLUBS you suffered losses.

We therefore [did something stupid] and prayed for the best:

Basically your general strategy in this LP. That's you. That's how you're playing.

Our heaviest losses yet!

And easily avoidable too!

The best part of it? You got YOMI at those borders. A darkvision-demon-goblin nation. Good luck protecting those caverns from them!

and these sacred troops:

75iNbbrl.jpg

Not with YOUR bless, damn you!

We'll certainly be using a few of these gals to supplement our forces, but it's unlikely they will play a significant role overall.

They will play NO ROLE WHATSOEVER unless you build a fort in this province. Which would be rather idiotic. Sorcs can be recruited using lab only, and this place is rather bad for a fort (the Throne province to the north is better). No fort means no resources to hire those units, or hire, like, 1 unit per turn. Farkin' hell, what a PAINFUL read.

The commander we recruited last turn is going back to our capitol, where we're adding the following troops to the single Skinshifter we recruited last turn:

h7KhixEl.jpg


This'll make for a nice expansion party of 7 dude

Nice expansion party, my arse. That's a reinforcement force at best. You will lose Skinshifters - expensive as all fuck, mind you, - every time you go into battle, provided you can win a battle at all with such a lineup. It's a goddamn waste of gold and troops.

Not a great matchup for us unless we actually get attacked, in which case our Nifel Giants and Nifel Jarls can do a number on them with their AoE cold auras

Great analysis as always.

EXCEPT YOU ARE WRONG.

Bakemonos are much easier to deal with using fear aura (horror helmets), due to their undisciplined nature. If you gonna rely on the chill aura, especially in Heat temperatures - get ready to get rekd. Regardless, bakemonos are irrelevant - in fact, I'll be mighty surprised if Yomi player uses them against Niefelheim at all.

Yomi has access to cheap-ass D mages recruitable in any mountain with a lab. Do you have any idea how easy it is to counter your "troops" with a bunch of D1 casters or even simple commanders with Amulets of the Dead? I remember this game when I played as Niefels against Ulm, he managed to counter my low-number/SC/thug forces using those amulets only. It was ridiculous.

And if gets to Conj 4 before your war begins, oh boy. You're in for a whole new world of pain.

Not to mention Dai Onis. They are on par with your Niefel Jarls when it comes to SC chassis. Hell, they might be even better given their superior magic paths.

Overall, Yomi is a dangerous neighbor for us to attack early on until we can get a good answer to the bakemono swarms

Horror Helmet is the OBVIOUS answer! A single goddamn Skratti wearing a Horror Helmet! He doesn't give two shits about bakemonos OR heat scales! You'd better do it BEFORE Yomi gets access to national summons and heavy skellyspam.

Isn't this shit obvious? Are you fucking with me?

It could have definitely gone worse

It couldn't.

Here's the western expansion we ordered last turn:

Spu4Apul.jpg


I'm actually impressed we didn't lose any guys here, in retrospect.

Are you even keeping track of WOUNDS, damn you? If all your FIVE (!!!) units - a glorious expansion army, no less - have no arms and legs, HEADBUTTING those humans - maybe it is time to SEND REINFORCEMENTS already?

Our new expansion group is heading north (green), and our western expansion group is heading back since we've met our NW neighbor. It's Fomoria! The only natively UW (underwater) capable nation in the game and our best potential ally against Atlantis.
We sign a NAP with them and tell them we're not gonna contest that throne and lake we've ceded to Atlantis, hopefully encouraging conflict between the two of them.

So you made a deal with Atlantis. And now you made a deal with Fomoria, hoping it will attack... Atlantis..?

WHY NOT SIMPLY CONQUER ATLANTIS YOURSELF, what the fuck is WRONG with you? Are jes SCHEMING for the SAKE of scheming?

Our overall plan for this turn is as follows:

GDbnx2l.jpg

Here we go again.

:prosper:

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY HOPE TO HOLD PROVINCES SO FAR AWAY FROM YOUR CAP!

YOU HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED BUILDING A FORT

THE FFFFFUCK ARE YOU DOING?

I'm a fan of risky and aggressive expansion :)

More like a fan of gangbangs. Because right now YOU'RE BEGGING FOR ONE!

This means still no mages to research, but I wanted to take as much land ASAP
And still no mage! Now this is definitely overdoing it.

Just why. The fuck. Did you grab that Magic scale?

I'm also generally a fan of making one expansion party per turn early on
This may be less of a good idea for Nifelheim though

YOU DON'T SAY!

:x

Still, an argument can be made it's better to grab land fast and catch up on other stuff later

Oh, ffs, you GOTTA be trolling!

1. None of those lands you'll be able to hold for long.
2. You're wasting troops and gold.
3. You could buy FORTS instead of wasting gold on troops. What Niefelheim really needs is FORTS, not single-use-expansion-parties, not even early mages, just FORTS. Your main power are the slow-to-recruit Skrattis!

What you SHOULD have done instead of this ridiculous suicide fiesta is CONSOLIDATE, grab nearby lands, fortify them SAFELY (because they are within reasonable expansion), then go aggressive on a good match (Atlantis!!). Meanwhile trying to NaP with the others.

Instead you are wasting your units, time, gold for the sake of one thing only: becoming the prime target for a gangbang.

Let's quickly talk about our initial research plans. Our first goal (currently pursued by a lonely Gyga researching in the capitol) is Construction 4

Although Constr 4 is the correct first milestone for Niefels (it was impossible to fuck up, so don't get cocky), good luck to that SINGLE GYGJA trying to reach it. God fucking speed!

It's not just the research either, we'll need mages for sitesearching ASAP as well. And we also need forts! Balancing this is especially hard as Nifelheim, and this is my first try at it. It could definitely be worse!

First try. That's the WORST excuse I've heard in me life. You are playing in a TOURNAMENT, FFS, the only Codex player there! Could you, I don't know, RUN A FEW FUCKING SP GAMES, TESTING YOUR EXPANSION STRATEGY?!

FUCK!
 

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