Incline Dominions 6

[Malakal]

I'm in a dominant position with ermor in my first ever MP game . I managed to snag a death throne from someone and rushed conj7 (after lictor spam) and now have 5 harvesters of sorrows going capital to capital to ensure a slow death for all. My biggest move in this game was to vulture a post-war weakened Ind's capital to prevent them from killing me late game with their insane priests. Me taking Ind's capital started a panic and now 3 others are coalition warring me. If I hold off these players desperate attack I think it's all but guaranteed I win. My wailing ladies and dracolich shouldnt fail to rout them along side my thousands of skeletons and lictors I hope.

Darkness + rigor mortis + wailing winds is very hard to beat if you reach that far and it seems like you did! Congratulations!

I was really dumb and only have high research in conjuration (nearly 8) and evocation (5) right now. I now know that enchantment is probably the best school to research next time for ermor. Rigor mortis to put a timer on the battle in my favor seems too good to pass up. My idea behind conjuration was that the game was pretty passive and I wanted to get the extra death gems from well of misery and the immortal wraith lord, but it takes sooo long you are better off going enchantment just to claim territory for more death gems. I'd almost certainly have earned more death gems way faster by just site searching after warmongering. At least my 7 harvesters of sorrow will guarantee I win by killing everyone's population eventually, if I hold them off.

Anyway, the big battle still hasn't happened yet because he ignored the death throne and is beelining toward my capital instead. My army is right underneath his army now in a random castle because I was regrouping and got lucky even though I didnt expect this. He's an Ulm with 9 construction (saw him lose with an artifact in the arena just this turn, lol) so he's got some kitted out guys. 300 of his high quality versus 3500 of mine. I'll have more mages than him. My plan is shadow blasts and banefire darts. Not sure how it'll go but as long as I get a big cool battle I'll be happy.

Also there's a ton of random angels and stacks being blown up all around me, this is the latest I've gone in a game and it's getting crazy.

No way he can win assuming you have darkness, humans are decimated by that.

Also quality can't beat skeletons in big numbers plus his guys are heavily encumbered.

Anyway conjuration is always a bad thing to rush for combat spells because it basically only provides elemental booster spells (low conj) and elementals (good combat troops but costs get very high if you fight a lot). Conj is for diversity in magic getting more paths to use, especially gnomes and other low level summons - they allow you to site search fairly early on.


But if you had enough rp to get to conj8 you should be able to achieve alt6 and required ench quickly. Also I must point out that MA Ulm has shit MR so shadow blast at evo5, especially on boosted mages with penetration items is great.

Can someone give me a step by step guide to how forming communions works? Cause i watched hours of YT videos and I still don't think it's working. Dominions constantly makes me feel stoopid

2 slaves = 1 extra path, 4 = 2, 8 = 3 , more is rare and IMO not worth it. Masters need only S1 not more, you want to boost their other paths not S unless you want to cast master enslave or something like that.

Fatigue calculation is complicated and I always murder my communion slaves with it but if you want to be sure that doesn't happen script 'communion slave' for masters at the end of the script so there is no one left to cast spells.

Another tip is if a master casts "returning" it will grab all the slaves with him and return to the capital. Easy way to escape with massed mages in a besieged fort, for example, at a cheap few gem price - some mages may get lost in the astral plane tho.

 

[Andnjord]

Can someone give me a step by step guide to how forming communions works? Cause i watched hours of YT videos and I still don't think it's working. Dominions constantly makes me feel stoopid

To add to what Malakal said, the key to large stable communions is for the slaves to have higher paths than the masters (before communion boosts apply). Slaves that have lower paths (or no paths) than masters take extra fatigue (up to four times as much), while the opposite results in slaves taking half the fatigue.


This is very easy for nations like Sauromatia to achieve since their communion mages have no random paths, thus no risks of masters having paths the slaves don’t have. Say you want a big skelly spam communion, you can grab say four slaves and four masters Enaries and have only one of the masters cast Power of the Spheres (remember that self buffs also apply to the slaves). This will mean all but one of the masters will have lower base paths (before communion bonus), thus incurring very little fatigue on your slaves. Conversely, the 1 Astral Soothsayers make bad slaves for the Enaries since they’ll take quadruple fatigue whenever the Enarids cast a death or nature spell but make great improvised soul slay communions to defend against thugs since they’re so cheap.

Similarly, for LA Man your Magister Arcane also have Earth, so you can have one master cast Summon Earthpower on top of another one casting Power of the Spheres, meaning your slaves will have two extra Earth paths than your masters (on top of the reinvigoration bonus from Earthpower) allowing a very large communion to keep spamming Gifts from Heaven for a very long time. This has to be balanced with the Magister occasionally having a Fire random, since few if any of your slaves will have that path, that one fire Magister will cause a lot of fatigue to the slaves, thus forcing you to have one or two Fire randoms at most (say just the one casting Flaming Arrows).

At the other end of the spectrum, you have nation like MA and LA Arco whose mages have a lot of random paths, making a stable communion a lot trickier to achieve.


There is a limit to how big you can make a stable communion since your slaves will always take a minimum of one fatigue for each master casting, meaning a huge communion with say 20 masters will always blow any number of slaves in about 15 rounds (since they will take 20 fatigue each round minus the 4 they recover naturally).


Worth adding that you don’t have to make your communions always stable, sometimes you just need it to cast a couple of big spells after which you might either get the masters to cast Communion Slave or accept that your slaves will blow up.




To be more detailed on the Enarids example:

Let's say we have four masters and two slaves.
Two slaves give +1 Death Path, now Raise skeletons costs 20 fatigue to cast.
This 20 fatigue is then divided by your number of slaves, so each takes 10 fatigue.
That 10 fatigue is further divided by two (higher path than the masters with Power of the Sphers) so 5 fatigue.
Each slaves take 25 fatigue per round (three masters with lower paths, but one with higher paths). This would have been 40 fatigue per round had we not cast Power of the Spheres.

If you were to take four slaves, then raise skelly costs about 6.66, divided between four slaves, so 1.66, divided by a further two from higher slave paths so 0.8 rounded up to 1 since that’s how the game works. Your slaves now take only 4 fatigue per round which is balanced out by the four reinvigoration units get by default when unconscious (which is what slaves are counted as). Congratulations, you now have a completely stable communion that can spam skellies until the end of time. Of course you don’t need that much, you can freely add a few more masters without really putting the slaves into danger (especially if you add Personal Regen and even relief later on).

What this does show is that for this kind of low level mage communion the hard limit on its stability is the amount of masters. Our Enaries example doesn’t benefit from extra slaves in terms of stability, rather it allows better access to higher spells which put the communion into more danger due to their higher cost.

For example, four enarie slaves would allow casting Darkness which is Death 4 (Death 2 base plus 2 from communion slaves) but that spell costs 400 fatigue. This would result in each slave taking 50 fatigue from that one spell (assuming Power of the Spheres on the slaves) a quarter of our fatigue allowance before taking damage from excessive fatigue. But if we were to double our slaves then the cost would drop to just 12.5 per slaves. Or, for a much cheaper option you could have your Power of the Spheres caster also be the Darkness caster while keeping to four slaves, this would put her at effective Death 5, resulting in only 20 fatigue per slave.

 

[Andnjord]

One last example with LA Man's Fire random Magister Arcanum:

Say you just want him there to cast a bunch of fireballs with a basic communion of four slaves.
Fireball costs 20 fatigue base at Fire 2, with four slaves you master is at Fire 3 thus costing 10 to cast. Divided between four slaves but multiplied back by four due to the slaves not having Fire will come out to 10 fatigue (I think it gets rounded to the nearest). This is not the end of the world but is the equivalent of 10 masters spamming Gifts from Heaven and will quickly rack up if you have more than one fire random master.

Say you want to cast Hail of Burning Embers (the battlefield wide Flamming Arrows). The minimum requirement would be two slaves plus Power of the Sphers and Phoenix Power. That 200 fatigue divided by two slaves is then multiplied back by four (no paths on the slaves) to a whooping 400 fatigue, instantly blowing up the slaves.
With four slaves and the same spells the spell now costs 100 fatigue to cast (effective Fire 5 on the master) resulting in 100 fatigue to the slaves, or 200 had we not cast one of the path booster spells.
Bump the slaves to 8 and the spell now still inflicts 33 fatigue to each slave.

So we can see that these kind of random path communions need a lot more slaves to be able to survive, making the creation of communions for nations like Arco or even worse, LA Phlegra a lot tricker to balance and really begging the question: are you sure you need that communion?

There are of course a lot of shenanigans you can pull with Communions (Turbo-Communions! Crystal Gear! Blood Sabbath!) but that's the beating heart of it.

TLDR: Dominions is FUN.

 

[Andnjord]

One last thing, I double checked and the default reinvigoration for uncounscious units is 5 and the initial fatigue cost is divided between all the slave and the master casting the spell, so the whole calculus is a little more generous even though the principles discussed still stand.

 

[Malakal]

This here communion autism is why I don't care if my communion slaves die. I usually use communions to cast a few big spells.

Another trick is using very hard to kill communion slaves, historically those were golems or trolls or skratti - big hp pool, regen if possible. Hand out slave matrixes and do whatever.

 

[luj1]

Guys do you like 4, 5 or 6 the most?

 

[Sinilevä]

Guys do you like 4, 5 or 6 the most?

6th is the best, because of all QoL improvements, but there isn't really much difference between them.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Another tip is if a master casts "returning" it will grab all the slaves with him and return to the capital. Easy way to escape with massed mages in a besieged fort, for example, at a cheap few gem price - some mages may get lost in the astral plane tho.

Wow that's pretty strong. I knew some buffs were shared but didnt know about returning. That makes communions a little less risky, thanks. I'm trying sceleria after ermor so that will be useful to know.

 

[coldcrow]

The best mods aren't ported to 6 though. That are: Legendary, Confluence, Hellenika, Dom Expanded

 

[Johannes]

All games that I've played, 3-6, have their positives and negatives... UI stuff is nice but not necessarily THAT different, when you also consider extra hassles and complexity added game to game, like mapmove going from simple 1-3 provinces, to variable value per province that is a bitch to calculate.

The battle simulation change going 4 -> 5 was the biggest single change across the games really, though the old turn-based system has its flair just as well.

Each game has its own feel and balance, they play just differently

 

[Trash Player]

I'm in a dominant position with ermor in my first ever MP game . I managed to snag a death throne from someone and rushed conj7 (after lictor spam) and now have 5 harvesters of sorrows going capital to capital to ensure a slow death for all. My biggest move in this game was to vulture a post-war weakened Ind's capital to prevent them from killing me late game with their insane priests. Me taking Ind's capital started a panic and now 3 others are coalition warring me. If I hold off these players desperate attack I think it's all but guaranteed I win. My wailing ladies and dracolich shouldnt fail to rout them along side my thousands of skeletons and lictors I hope.

Darkness + rigor mortis + wailing winds is very hard to beat if you reach that far and it seems like you did! Congratulations!

Fyi, WW is G/A in 6. It is pretty much elves only now. Not that Darkness/RM can't win you the game. Harvesters are good raiders too. They do fine naked but a cheap shield, like the black steel ones, helps.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

I'm in a dominant position with ermor in my first ever MP game . I managed to snag a death throne from someone and rushed conj7 (after lictor spam) and now have 5 harvesters of sorrows going capital to capital to ensure a slow death for all. My biggest move in this game was to vulture a post-war weakened Ind's capital to prevent them from killing me late game with their insane priests. Me taking Ind's capital started a panic and now 3 others are coalition warring me. If I hold off these players desperate attack I think it's all but guaranteed I win. My wailing ladies and dracolich shouldnt fail to rout them along side my thousands of skeletons and lictors I hope.

Darkness + rigor mortis + wailing winds is very hard to beat if you reach that far and it seems like you did! Congratulations!

Fyi, WW is G/W in 6. It is pretty much elves only now. Not that Darkness/RM can't win you the game. Harvesters are good raiders too. They do fine naked but a cheap shield, like the black steel ones, helps.

Yeah they're even good at backline harassment in test battles I've done because the 15 fear makes people run away instantly. They're just kind of expensive and risky if a random hit or two lands before fear takes over. 20 gems is pretty costly. I'll see if I have time to make a shield for them, but for now they're strictly being used as farmland killers

 

[Popot]

Got this event in another mp game, Luck 2 paid off for once.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

dead ulm

I crushed him, and he gave me a sick loot drop too

loot

Now I need to deal with agartha's doomstack as he's been trying to throne rush...

 

[Andnjord]

What's up with him only having 4 priest smiths? Was he too enamored with thugs to bother with magic?

 

[TheDarkUrge]

What's up with him only having 4 priest smiths? Was he too enamored with thugs to bother with magic?

Yeah pretty much, this is a noob game so it's to be expected to make a lot of mistakes. He also didnt expect 4000 skeletons. He'd 100% wipe anything reasonably sized it took like 30 turns of wearing down his defense skill to kill them.

 

[Malakal]

What's up with him only having 4 priest smiths? Was he too enamored with thugs to bother with magic?

Yeah pretty much, this is a noob game so it's to be expected to make a lot of mistakes. He also didnt expect 4000 skeletons. He'd 100% wipe anything reasonably sized it took like 30 turns of wearing down his defense skill to kill them.

Why not cast EQ at least though what the fuck.

 

[Johannes]

And no reinvig items in that list.

Not sure how you wouldn't expect mass skeletons, they're kinda hard to hide even if you don't know ermor as a nation at all

 

[Malakal]

And no reinvig items in that list.

Not sure how you wouldn't expect mass skeletons, they're kinda hard to hide even if you don't know ermor as a nation at all

Well with the new system of hp from items I can see human nations infinite thugging against skeletons but that does indeed require neutral encumbrance. Also a lot of gems and effort better spent equipping some summons...

 

[TheDarkUrge]

What's up with him only having 4 priest smiths? Was he too enamored with thugs to bother with magic?

Yeah pretty much, this is a noob game so it's to be expected to make a lot of mistakes. He also didnt expect 4000 skeletons. He'd 100% wipe anything reasonably sized it took like 30 turns of wearing down his defense skill to kill them.

Why not cast EQ at least though what the fuck.

He said that he TRIED to cast rain of stones, but messed up his scripting somehow . I think earthquake would have been good too, I didnt expect that he even had evocation to be honest. I dont think he even made the earth boots though

 

[Andnjord]

He TRIED to cast rain of stones, but messed up his scripting somehow.

Just, how? Take an air random Master Smith, give him two gems and you're done. Or cast Summon Earthpower and one gem. Or give him Earth Boots, one gem and you can cast it round one (give him a helmet though). HOW?

That being said, Rain of Stones would have been a great idea considering how easy it is for Ulm to craft cheap helmets for his mages, his own troops being immune to it and it being unilkely for you to be able to protect against it.

 

[Johannes]

He TRIED to cast rain of stones, but messed up his scripting somehow.

Just, how? Take an air random Master Smith, give him two gems and you're done. Or cast Summon Earthpower and one gem. Or give him Earth Boots, one gem and you can cast it round one (give him a helmet though). HOW?

That being said, Rain of Stones would have been a great idea considering how easy it is for Ulm to craft cheap helmets for his mages, his own troops being immune to it and it being unilkely for you to be able to protect against it.

You can just cast ironskin and skip making helmets. Doesn't have to be by the mage himself, another smith in the same square can use the aoe1 version. The RoS caster can also cast Mistform after the RoS to minimize the random chip damage that could get through. Temper Flesh, BE, Twist Fate, etc further buffs can be used too.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I just realized that there is a fucking summary of how much RP you have that turn in the research screen.

I fucking made spreadsheets to track how much RP based on how much mages that I have researching and updating it every turn to optimize timing/preventing i am like a dozen point short of finishing a research level that turn

And there is actually a summary there on the screen

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck

 

[Malakal]

I just realized that there is a fucking summary of how much RP you have that turn in the research screen.

I fucking made spreadsheets to track how much RP based on how much mages that I have researching and updating it every turn to optimize timing/preventing i am like a dozen point short of finishing a research level that turn

And there is actually a summary there on the screen

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck

Yea quality of life improvements... remember having to remember and double check aiming ritual spells/ritual movement? for 20 cloud trapezing/teleporting thugs? Good times heh.

 

[Popot]

Today's update brought a new mechanic:

In this update Grand Communions are added.

From the not yet updated manual:
Some nations have perfected the communal casting of rituals. These public rituals are usually religious in nature and performed in the nation’s capital by ordained mage-priests.
When a mage with the Grand Communion ability casts a global ritual, other mages with the same ability can use the ‘Grand Communion’ order to increase the power of the primary caster, adding their skill level to the power of the ritual. This adds to the strength of the casting or dispel attempt by the Grand Communion.

Example: An Arch Theurg is casting dispel. In the same province there are three Theurgs and five Theurg Acolytes. The primary caster invests 12 extra gems to empower the dispel attempt. Two of the Theurgs and four of the Theurg Acolytes forego other activities and join the casting using the order ‘Grand Communion’. Dispel is an astral ritual so the astral scores of all joining members are added to the dispel attempt. The Theurgs each have an astral skill of 2 and the Acolytes have a skill of 1. The total added value is four for the Theurgs and four for the Acolytes bringing the total strength of the dispel attempt up to 20.

---

Units capable of joining Grand Communions
Pythium's Theurgs (MA and LA)
Marverni's Druids (not gutuater nor Stargazer)
Abysias Anathemants (All eras. Not Warlocks)
Ur (priest mages)
Uruk (Moon priests and Gala)
Mictlan (Priests in all eras. Not Nahualli)
Berytos (Brides and priests)
Gath (Kohen Gadol and Kohen)
Ermor (EA Pontifex and Flamen)

Also a few pretenders (such as the divine emperor) and some heroes.