Completed Dominions 6 - Rise of the Pantokrator: The New Decline a.k.a ProfessionalThroneSitters MP Match (Polish Victory!)

[Johannes]

I don't mind just continuing playing, doing kinda low effort turns fighting this low intensity war. Maybe in 5, 10, 15 turns I'll see a good opening again to make bigger moves (and have the patience to script them).

 

[coldcrow]

I am kinda out of it, due to this being primarily a learning experience and my patience for salvaging a possibly untenable position runs thin. Especially if, at some point, Johannes comes knocking from the other side. Don't expect much resistance, Malakal.

 

[Johannes]

Didn't realise Ulm had that Rainbow Throne, looks like they'll win the game in 2 turns.

 

[Malakal]

I am kinda out of it, due to this being primarily a learning experience and my patience for salvaging a possibly untenable position runs thin. Especially if, at some point, Johannes comes knocking from the other side. Don't expect much resistance, Malakal.

You are out because Ea Rlyeh is extremely hard to play. Its a safe learning experience in the sea but hard to win.

Didn't realise Ulm had that Rainbow Throne, looks like they'll win the game in 2 turns.

Will certainly try!

 

[Andnjord]

You are out because Ea Rlyeh is extremely hard to play. Its a safe learning experience in the sea but hard to win.

He’s playing Abysia. But I agree, his avatar makes things confusing.

 

[coldcrow]

Malakal I was Abysia!

 

[Malakal]

Malakal I was Abysia!

Ah shit your avatar has indeed misled me.

 

[Malakal]

Fairly sure I keep making this mistake too... The squid avatar got to me, vile creature

 

[Dayyālu]

With Abysia AI, I don't think there's a good way to stop Malakal. I can try to siege one of his Thrones but..... he probably has it in the bag.

Oh well, it's not like I had a winning chance from the very beginning and my performance wasn't too crap for once.

 

[Hag]

Wait, Abysia is out ? What happened ? Was there some big battle that was not reported ?

 

[Dayyālu]

Wait, Abysia is out ? What happened ? Was there some big battle that was not reported ?

Probably lategame burnout. Lategame Dominions, as we both know, is a draining and thankless business even if you're winning. I wasted hours scripting armies that never got to fight to counter moves that never happened.

 

[Dayyālu]

Also, starting the LA game. Join! Die! Join!

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...nalthronesitters-iii-late-age-edition.150783/

 

[coldcrow]

Yes, sorry guys I couldn't bear looking at the mess I created and script stuff to get slaughtered by streamlined Golems and Tartarians with army support. In retrospect I should have went with what I originally planned, instead of joining the war vs Ulm. Which would be: keep bloodsaccing, stacking up on slaves, then either cast a strong Looming Hell (with ritual communions it should resist anything) or declare war later and alpha strike locusts all over the place.
In the end my poor scripting and logistics skills made it even worse. Still it was a entertaining game. On to the next!

 

[Malakal]

Yes, sorry guys I couldn't bear looking at the mess I created and script stuff to get slaughtered by streamlined Golems and Tartarians with army support. In retrospect I should have went with what I originally planned, instead of joining the war vs Ulm. Which would be: keep bloodsaccing, stacking up on slaves, then either cast a strong Looming Hell (with ritual communions it should resist anything) or declare war later and alpha strike locusts all over the place.
In the end my poor scripting and logistics skills made it even worse. Still it was a entertaining game. On to the next!

Brother, as a man that enjoyed multiple Abysia games to great success the ultimate end goal for Abysia is Send Horror orbital ion cannons. Even lesser horrors are quite amazing and I reached 16 casts a turn in one game!

With Abysia AI, I don't think there's a good way to stop Malakal. I can try to siege one of his Thrones but..... he probably has it in the bag.

Oh well, it's not like I had a winning chance from the very beginning and my performance wasn't too crap for once.

Its unlikely anyone could get through 4-6000 points of wall defences in the time left.

 

[Tanaka]

Banish to Cocytus/Hell spells are boring for duels. One needs to win with style. Or lose with style.

If people are interested, we can discuss it in PM. It's a danger that a Dominions game can end up in a quagmire, and I do kinda sorta agree that Cataclysm is a band-aid.

I think a great solution for this they should implement is a points for thrones and capitals combination so you can go after both. Every capital should be a throne itself. This makes victory not all one thing and less chance of quagmires...

 

[Johannes]

Oops, meant to put 2 armies with Astral Travel to the final throne fight but didn't actually click to do that. Wasn't a close fight at all now.

 

[Dayyālu]

"Ok guys, there's a King of Banefires running around with shit gear and randomly taking provinces"
"What do we do"
"We have like, seven Amazons, one Dogman and three one-eyed Oracles, it's like a joke"
"Say no more bro we got this"

 

[Malakal]

Well if you guys could send in the turns fast we can wrap it I think.

 

[Malakal]

And its over, I managed to somehow win. Looking at the graphs it definitely should not have happened, especially fighting Agartha + Abysia + Mekone who outclassed me together in everything. I also found fuckall good stuff, no good sites no indie mages worth a damn.

Can't say I had a lot of fun with EA Ulm, the mages all suck - barely any mages have good enough randoms to be usable outside of research and low level forging - and the troops, while strong early on, fall off very fast and very hard. No summons of course.

Think my titan did a lot of work with giving me high S and A access - may he be forgiven for dying to random event vine ogres.

Haven't seen or scouted most players for most of the game so I can only comment on my neighbors. Good job Kailasa, you did great for your first game and a very shit nation!

Helheim you didn't expand nearly well enough, shame - three ponies with proper bless can beat 120 barbarians (tested).

Ur is weak but you had great land, sages, free fort site, FB amazons with a sacred gryphon rider, AS amazons with a sacred pegasus rider (I took that but had you expanded properly it was yours for taking). With those provinces fairly sure you could have done way better. again - expansion or lack of such kills games.

Agartha did great and definitely should have carried more weigh as our final battle showed.

Abysia was way too passive, going for dom kill was a weird strat. Just summon thousands of demons and kil everyone mate.

Mekone did well at the start then fell off hard. Guess didn't scale to late game, despite having well of misery? Not sure what to think about that.

R'lyeh both annoying and useless, typical squids.

Pyrene, Marverni sleep well princes, next time brainstorm early survival more.

Sauromantia got too big too fast and paid the price, happens to anyone.

 

[Malakal]

Damn, seems all the nice sites were in TC/Kailasa area.

TC had sages, lore masters, witches on top of a ton of gem sites, Kailasa had iron order adepts...

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, that was certainly enlightening for my first MP game of Dominions. I can see why UW civs are hated and expected to just sit underwater forever until they break the game- I totally should have done that instead of trying to put my thumb on the scale and keep TC from running away with the game. Lost Lands ended up being even less useful than I thought it would be by leaving the province completely dead- no income, no PD, no supplies. And while it seemed like Lobo guard would be good for cracking forts or being chaff to sling spells behind on paper, in reality they're pretty garbage because only slave mages lead them onto land; and those fuckers flee over nothing, instantly killing all the lobo guard. Undead are also a huge problem underwater, since I have shit priests and the good undead slaying spells in water and astral only work above water.

I think I should have invested more in construction and relied on my project image to threaten big stacks. The mage summons for water are pretty nice too; I threw away a couple Kokythiads to give them extra death paths with twiceborn, but that was dumb of me- they lost their stealth and invulnerability. Definitely should have made more of those to be annoying raiders and solid army support. And the 3N3W mages never got to shine either because I was kinda stuck in the corner behind Kailasa. I transformed them and got one killed and one turned into a manticore, which would have been awesome but was too late to do anything.

Definitely do not recommend luck/magic scales. I got a bunch of free gems but otherwise luck was a total shitshow. I still had so many turmoil and death events that they ate up more gold than I received.

Getting enough gold to build infrastructure, armies, and recruit mages was a constant struggle. If I do another game I'm considering making a pretender with a massive alchemy bonus just to crank out tons of gold early on from fire/earth gem conversion.

I only had a tiny splash of glamour but it seems like a really, really good path. It's just way too versatile if it's got cross paths to work with. Doing some kind of fear based glamour expander seems like it would be viable too.

 

[Malakal]

UW sucks because most spells don't work there so UW combat devolves into massed troops and summoned sea serpents and in battle water elementals. Also some nations are vastly superior to other in UW and those usually can't even get on land well, winning UW but then languishing in the water.

That having said EA R'lyeh is one of the worst UW nations since it has barely anything on land. EA Atlantis is way better if uncontested in the water - ok troops and mages.

Can't agree on glamour, for me it sucks a lot. No good spells in combat and fae summons, while excellent, are very pricey.

 

[Dayyālu]

I can see why UW civs are hated

I love UW nations. It's true that their combat routine is essentially stacks of buffed troops and elementals, but they have a certain charm. Methinks a better starter nation in EA for a new player is for sure EA Atlantis: it has good troops (varied even if they fall off due to MR shenanigans) varied mages, good premiere stuff in Basalt Kings (once you could even light thug them, don't know if it's still viable) while squids are very difficult to get out of the water with and most of their premiere units are aquatic. They exacerbate the problem in interaction between sea/land.

Caves are an innovation, but they're sadly similar even if easier to interact with. Killer indies and native nations have a clear advantage in being there, but they're considerably richer and with the 20% fort income bonus my cave economy was great. My capitol alone had 1k gold value, I don't think I've ever seen that in a previous Dominions game. It's better than UW but uh.... I don't think it's such a needed innovation, much like mounts.

That said, if someone cares here the graphs.

Spoiler

A few things: I'm amazed that I was in the lead in some regards, and I believed to be far weaker than I was. No surprise that Malakal was in the lead for most of the game. My alliance against him was deeply flawed by morale problems (Mekone flat-out abandoned the game, thanks BING XI LAO for being a true hero and subbing) and Abysia was dabbling for the first time in lategame blood, a daunting experience. Ulm just needed to contain me and Mekone and fuck Abysia up, and he succeeded despite a campaign of raids and assassinations, plus my final advance on his Helheim holdings. But he just needed to kill off Abysia, and I seriously doubt that both me and Mekone could have dealt with his full power alone.

That said, of my wars, Pyrene gets my congratulations for almost driving me insane with his unpredictable moves, Sauro did his best with his killer stack against a terrible situation and the Ulm war was a lategame war, Malakal was a good sport enough to let me test my premiere stack against one of his armies.

Spoiler

Yeah, lategame fights are brutal and often one-sided if you simply bring 40+ mages and counters to anything. Fun fact, I fucked up and my anti-Air magic battlefield buffs did not come online so Wrathful Storm would have devastated me, but srs lategame fights are such a bother, you need to script to counter Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison/Antimagic/Direct damage/Morale and pray everything goes well.

As for EA Agartha, I choose a Olm-based strategy and the lovely little creatures are amazing. Good earlygame for expansion, good midgame for fights, good lategame for sniping fliers/large monsters. A good stack of Olms with support can fuck up a heavy thug/light SC. The main problem of Agartha is that it's slow as fuck and your mages need a constant flow of gems to keep their damage potential up, but you can get obscene amounts of reinvig from blesses and Earthpower. Maybe if I was more aggressive I would have gotten more, but the RNG fucked me up by placing me away from almost all Thrones and the only one I got was the Throne of Darkness. very useful for Agartha. But at least I did not break the Seal and the Dwellers of the Land Without a Ceiling now know that the Agarthans can fight with strategies fit for a sunlit world.

Also, I just want to admire the horror of my Empowered Air Oracle because it's an abomination against the Pantokrator for the amount of gems I wasted on him.

(what's that, 120+ gems in empowerment plus 100+ A gems in equipment plus 40 Astral gems for the portable province Dome)

Congrats Malakal again, and thanks everyone for the match!

 

[Optimist]

Cheers!

 

[Andnjord]

The Polish Diplomancer strikes again. Congratulations to the manly men of Ulm and their noble ancestors for their victory.