Dominions 4 - Season 3 - The Geriatric Wars

[thesheeep]

The never ending turn

 

[Berekän]

This time for sure, pinkie promise

 

[KoolNoodles]

It would help if my dudes knew how to aim, after casting aim.


Back to the drawing board.

Edit: Dr. Chang has made a breakthrough. Though he's already lost an eye and is going senile.

Spoiler

 

[thesheeep]

Oh come on!
It's just some undead.
Go spam some rays.

 

[KoolNoodles]

I've been spamming a lot of stuff! Six orbs of lightning on one skeleton even!

Unfortunately most of my priests and men are on the other side of the kingdom and recruiting down south has been slow. That's Ermor with BoT up for you though, annoying.

 

[Matalarata]

Let's do a little contest. My highest is 7

 

[KoolNoodles]

You win. When every hermit in the realm is a disease healer, afflictions don't pile up so fast.

 

[thesheeep]

Can't top that

 

[thesheeep]

Oh, FFS, CaptainCoxwaggle!
That would have been a wonderful last battle for Vanarus at the ruins of Eriu.
But nooooo, you gotta run away. I have enough of this bullshit. Ermor is at least a nuisance to all players, but you just go on my nerves here.

Do you really want me to chase you around like a scared chicken? Maybe until all your guys died of old age?
I'll even set all my troops to patrol on Eriu, so we can fight outside of the walls.
Who knows, maybe you would even stand a chance and kill a sea dragon*!
Just walk back to Eriu and fight, man!

Do you want this to be your final theme?

Spoiler

Or this?

Spoiler

*

*Honestly, Pelagia sucks donkey balls, I can barely get capable mages on land. And don't even get me started on the troops.

 

[KoolNoodles]

Let it be known that on turn 66, I finally got my first hero(Order!). He'll fit in nicely around here.

Spoiler

 

[thesheeep]

What a lovely chap!

 

[KoolNoodles]

Not having the Eyes anymore, I'll upload some graphs. These graphs were from about 20 turns ago, so not much is relevant now, but some trends can be seen. I believe this was before Marignon died off, and Vanheim/Agartha both expanded quite a bit after that, C'tis put another gem gen up, as well as the other documented downfalls.

Spoiler

 

[Grimwulf]

Marignon, I have no words

 

[Kane]

Marignon, I have no words

The result of driving a narrow, well known and easily countered strategy and giving it out of hand when it got out of hand.

 

[Dayyālu]

The result of driving a narrow, well known and easily countered strategy and giving it out of hand when it got out of hand.

What does this even means

Marignon was big, well-developed and on its way to midgame resources (huge Evo stacks and Astral/Air Thugs) after winning the first war. Even with that gangbang, only Agartha had a true chance of giving me a run for my money.

Overall, it's

(but costant BoTing would have been hell for Mari indeed)

AT LEAST MY DIPLO KILLED OFF ABYSIA, ONE SUCCESS!

 

[KoolNoodles]

Yeah you actually were doing really really well and the Harbingers were coming online. Problem is, you did a little too well too fast, which got a lot of people worried. Your rapid expansion + organizing/involvement in attacks on Abysia/Ashdod + seeing that you'd started making angels, turned a lot of heads. I also had graphs up, so when people started talking in diplo about relative strength, it was easy to show your strength in relation to your neighbors.

 

[Dayyālu]

My diplo set-up was already working on that, don't worry.

I'm not joking when I say that if I stayed in game you would have been dead kinda fast, as your gangbang was not as effective as you would have hoped or liked. Trust me on that one.

Sure, Late Game would have been a bitch, but what can I say.... again, BoT would have been a nightmare, but I jumped ship.

 

[thesheeep]

Well, I am going to post this myself, for proof of my shame:

Spoiler

Reason: I killed most of my own units with foul vapors.
Poison Ward is fucking useless. Poison resistance 5... wtf?! Guess you have to be lizards to begin with to make use of that spell.
And the mages did cast Thunder Ward on anything but the bulk of the army (what's up with that?) so Vanarus' lightning could do the rest.

This game must hate me, nothing works as expected

Good thing is that I have to have so many priests in order to prevent being domkilled due to my awkward position that the pretender will be back next turn, probably.

Well, what a mess.
Lessons learned: Foul Vapors suck if your units are not immune to poison to begin with. Poison Ward sucks, always. Thunder Ward... would probably work if mages would bless the actual bulk of the army instead of just themselves and maybe one unit behind them.
Curse ot Desert sucks, Dessication sucks. Really, it seems they do nothing. At least against blessed Vanarus troops.

 

[Dayyālu]

Poison is incredibly dangerous. Sulphur haze can kill even the best troops quite early game. Sure, it does nothing against common SCs and Thugs, but against the right targets is devastating.

No Thunder resist spell works well. Ground Army and Thunder Ward are limited at best, as their Shock resistance will get bypassed by Air Mages if in sufficient numbers. There is no easy way to deal with Air spam, if not giving 'em a ton of targets (skellispam, zombies) or fly to them and wack them in the head before they start destroying you. Or summons, of course.

Fatigue-increasing spells are good if employed as battlefield stuff (Heat From Hell, Grip of Winter) or if spammed a lot. Ask anyone who fought against those fun Sequani and their Stellar Cascades... but you need to reach a critical mass.

It seems however that you killed yourself in that battle. Don't worry, until kill three Golems and 300+ of your troops because you forgot to cast Frost Fend you don't have to worry.

 

[thesheeep]

Poison is incredibly dangerous. Sulphur haze can kill even the best troops quite early game. Sure, it does nothing against common SCs and Thugs, but against the right targets is devastating..

Sure, that's what I had hoped.
And if Poison Ward actually did what its spell description says, I think I would have fared much better.
I mean... 5 resistance. That's pretty much nothing.

What really bugs is how my mages wasted the Thunder Ward spells by just casting at themselves. Twice!
I thought they are supposed to aim such spells at as many targets as possible. Mind you, the mage who cast Poison Ward did it just right, almost all of my troops had the poison resistance (even if useless).
The spell is also described as having an area of 15, but that really doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[Grimwulf]

Poison Ward is fucking useless. Poison resistance 5... wtf?!

It's more than enough. Foul Vapours rarely deals more than 1-2 posion damage per turn.

The spell is also described as having an area of 15, but that really doesn't seem to be the case.

No, it has approximately 15 squares of aoe. See for yourself:

Spoiler

The problem is your formations - they were hard to cover with aoe buffs, too spread out for the task. And you only casted two Poison Wards during the battle, which isn't even funny. Barely 1/3 of your army was protected from posion.

But most of all, with such an isane advantage in numbers, you should have chosen another strategy entirely.
- Posion - ok, but use Poison Cloud instead. You had a great N4 caster there.
- You W casters - Sailor's Death, Frozen Heart, Numbness. The cold res 3 of Oath-Bounds is nothing against your W2-W4 casters.
- Your W3F1 should have Acid Rain'd them all.
- W2S2 could cast Body Ethereal on Pretender. There was a chance to save him that way.

It's even more sad, considering the fact that this particular Vanarusian stack hasn't changed battle formation for, idk... 6 turns from now? The same line of sacreds, and all commanders standing RIGHT BEHIND IT, I mean - there wasn't any distance between them at all!

Spoiler

Not only it makes for extremely easy target for an aoe spell, but also for archers. Well, you could see it yourself - your crossbowmen killed a Vyedun and Master Sorcerer at the first turn (edit: nvm, I fuck my eyes. Master Sorceror was wounded, but survived, derp), simply because they were standing too close to frontline arrow catchers. Nevertheless, Vanarus won that battle, despite all mistakes he made.

It was rather cool to watch

 

[thesheeep]

No, it has approximately 15 squares of aoe.

I was talking about Thunder Ward. Poison Ward even has 25.

The problem is your formations - they were hard to cover with aoe buffs, too spread out for the task. And you only casted two Poison Wards during the battle, which isn't even funny. Barely 1/3 of your army was protected from posion.

Well, okay, I just wanted to not make them even easier targets for thunder strikes.
And I was assuming that an area of 25 pretty much covers half the battlefield already, so 2 casts seemed sufficient to get most of my troops.
By now I'm pretty sure that 1 area unit does not really mean 1 grid cell on the battlefield...
Because if it did, a 25 area spell should really cover all of my army. This game can be gruesomely counterintuitive at times

- Posion - ok, but use Poison Cloud instead. You had a great N4 caster there.
- You W casters - Sailor's Death, Frozen Heart, Numbness. The cold res 3 of Oath-Bounds is nothing against your W2-W4 casters.
- Your W3F1 should have Acid Rain'd them all.

Evo5, which I don't have.
Alt6, which I don't have.
I don't even have Evo4.

Really, until a year ago my research was absolutely abysmal and there was little I could have done otherwise. That war with Rlyeh was totally wasting my few mages and mage turns.

- W2S2 could cast Body Ethereal on Pretender. There was a chance to save him that way.

True, but how would that even work?
Mage aiming seems to be totally erratic. And really, I don't care about the pretender. Not with my number of priests. I'll have him back in a turn or two and he will even be rid of his affliction.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Body ethereal has so short range that, if you stick your mage next to your intended target and keep the two separated from the bullk of your troops, he has no choice but to do as you ordered. Although... better script two or three casts anyway.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

And who hired mercenary advisor Grimwulf and how much did he cost? What is the current highest bid?

 

[Grimwulf]

Poison Ward even has 25.

And I was assuming that an area of 25 pretty much covers half the battlefield already

Because if it did, a 25 area spell should really cover all of my army.

No, friend. Poison Ward has aoe 15.

Really, until a year ago my research was absolutely abysmal and there was little I could have done otherwise.

I see it on the score graphs, but I was hoping you fixed that problem by now. If not, you should really do it. Yesterday.

True, but how would that even work?

This:

Body ethereal has so short range that, if you stick your mage next to your intended target and keep the two separated from the bullk of your troops, he has no choice but to do as you ordered. Although... better script two or three casts anyway.

Just place S caster on the same square with Pretender, and place both of them away from the rest of your forces. On the flank and to the rearmost is the usual choice. There are other cool short-range buffs, for all your thuggin' needs. Mossbody should be easy to pull for Pelagia.

And who hired mercenary advisor Grimwulf and how much did he cost? What is the current highest bid?

I am currently availiable. Accepting stronk alcohol as payment.