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

[Infinitum]

This highlights the importance of early scouting. 1400 gold of troops next to an undefended grain province and not going for it physically pains me (especially as its going to spend the next 4 turns in transit urrgh). Did you promise away senextro btw? Using the skinshifter pile to claim it and then having it help defend the western provinces from any Tien ideas seems like it might've been a safer bet.

Also, just noticed that throne spread. Are there any more thrones within 2 spaces of the water? That looks extremely rushable by Atlantis by midgame.

 

[sqeecoo]

Fair points, yeah. I considered going for the coastal province (Senextro) but I felt I should send more stuff to the front I chose ASAP. I try to give my plans at the time though, I think we'll actually end up going for Senextro instead.

As for the throne spread, that's a very good point:

There is indeed a throne near the water of the smaller lake (green); for reference, I've marked our capitol (orange), Yomi (black), Atlantis (blue), and Hinnom (red). If Atlantis gets to the small lake he'll be in a good position for a throne rush from the water and that's definitely a concern. I've talked to Hinnom about this, and I've suggested he try to keep Atlantis from the smaller lake by taking that landbridge province, and Hinnom agreed that's a priority.

 

[sqeecoo]

Turn 13: The Senextro Swivel

Let's see how it went with those heavy cavalries!

There were 7 heavy cav, and while in this situation our guys bunch up with a fair bit of them not being able to hit the enemy, 7 heavy cav would have been enough to possibly route a group of 6 giants on the charge if we had split into two groups, so I'm fine with our single square setup.

We lose one Skinshifter, which is reasonable given that we were going up against cavalry.

The overall situation is such:

First of all, we found some nice sites at our second fort location (orange):

Spoiler

This is very neat as it more than doubles our death income to a total of 5. Those death gems will come very much in handy for those Skull Mentors later on. We are opting not to build a lab on that second fort just yet and instead send in a brand new astral 2 (S2) Gyga from the capitol to build a lab and then sitesearch; we'll need S gems it for Shrouds, the armor item our Skratti will be wearing to make them blessed with our nice bless. Since we have no native astral income, I think that sitesearching for astral crucial is a priority so we won't be keeping that Gyga at home, and then she might as well build that lab next turn instead of the Gyga that's currently there just sitting idly for a turn.
We didn't start the lab because we are short on money - partly because we had to start the next fort level on the second fort as well. The second level on giant forts is more expensive: it takes 3 turns to make and 450 gold instead of 2 turns and 300 gold.

We also found a shitty site at our first fort (red):

Spoiler

This is unfortunate, as the unrest will always build up in our fort province and reduce our income. With our order scales it won't go too high but it'll still be a definite hit to the income of this otherwise fairly rich and forted province. The Villain recruits are shitty though stealthy archers. They could be useful in theory due to stealth but they are weak and cowardly and have real trouble fighting even weak PD. We won't be making them.

We can also see that our prophet army that was supposed to head towards Yomi is instead swiveling south (green) and heading to Senextro, the still unclaimed coastal province to the south. By the way, the screenshots show province names but I don't really use them in my descriptions since they can be kinda hard to read. Anyway, we changed our direction since Atlantis said something to the effect of "Oh, you still haven't taken Senextro? Can I grab it?" At least he's asking this time :D We say no, however, and divert to take it as soon as possible so he's not tempted. The group will head east after that.

Since our prophet won't be coming to the Yomi front any time soon, I decide to recruit a holy 2 (H2) giant commander in Nifelheim along with a Skinshifter group.

I guess this is where our money is going. Probably not a good idea to be making more of the Skinshifters, but we are gonna fight Yomi and I don't want to lose to bakemono for lack of a front line. In addition to being able to move quickly with the giants, the H2 guy is there to cast Sermon of Courage instead of the prophet. That 160 strong bakemono group to the east is looking a bit scary, and while it'd have been better to be focusing on other stuff we've now committed to the Yomi war with Hinnom and I feel I have to actually attack as promised, so a little more sacrifice of mages and money is the right move in my opinion at the time. Probably would have handled this differently now and just did everything to get our first geared Skratti out.

We're combining our eastern armies in the cave (black) this turn, creating a decent force:

We don't really want to fight the bakemono in the cave of course due to the darkness penalty we'd suffer while they wouldn't, but the non-aggression pact (NAP) that we had with Yomi has not expired yet I believe, so I still feel reasonably safe. Since Hinnom has declared also war on him (or so he says!) I also assume Yomi will be primarily defending instead of pushing into us with that army.

We're also recruiting some slingers in the tribal province to the east (yellow). Those guys are truly shitty, but any ranged fire really does a number on the bakemono while not damaging our giants - this is because the bakemono's decent defense and high density allows them to not die easily to melee, but does nothing against arrows - and with their poor morale, even a small amount of archer fire can contribute significantly to routing them.

I should be making the monkey archer in the monkey province we conquered though; they are cheaper and a bit more damaging with their bows - they are also easier to bring to the front. We'll not be making many archers overall though, just a dozen or so to help our giants out against the bakemono.

Finally, we can see that Fomoria has advanced pretty close to TC's capitol from both the south (purple) and north. TC seems to be pretty small in three expansion directions - they might have done better in their west. We can also see that Atlantis has already taken that land bridge to the smaller lake (blue). This is concerning, and I try to encourage Hinnom to not let that stand.

And that completes the turn. Next turn we'll be officially at war with another player and will issue our first attack orders against another nation!

 

[sqeecoo]

Turn 14: A Cowardly Attack

I am a simple man of simple turns. There were no battles this turn, so now the plan is this:

We're completing the Senextro Swivel (blue) with a different commander taking over for our prophet who's heading to the Yomi front instead. Our Gode (H2 commander) is taking out the Skinshifter group we produced last turn and taking them to the Yomi front, meeting up with that group waiting in the cave - we don't want to take a defensive battle there due to the darkness penalty but there's no Yomi army close by so there's no danger in staying there. We're sending a small raiding group to the temple province (red):

Five heavily afflicted giants and a normal indy commander. Still not exactly cheap since the Skinshifters are 70 gold each, but definitely expendable due to their afflictions (the little hearts on their sprites represent afflictions, i.e. limp, morale malus, armloss, etc.). We don't want to commit the rest of our Skinshifters since their numbers are still low enough that they could be swarmed if they encountered a huge group of bakemono, and it's unlikely (because he has Hinnom to worry about) but possible that Yomi will defend his temple in strength. Rather than risk that battle, we're going for the cowardly option of sitting back and sending our cripples forward to probe the enemy defenses.

We can see Yomi's army moved to the province marked black, attacking the minimal Hinnom PD there - the two of them seem to indeed be at war. I actually suggested to Hinnom to do a PD dump there and keep his chariot group there to fight - even if he lost, attrition is the way to go against the bakemono in particular: since they are flimsy, they can't win without losses, so even a bit of PD can take a toll on them). Attrition is also good against a economically weaker or outnumbered opponent in general. I guess Hinnom didn't want to risk the heavy losses though, just like we're not risking much with our own attack. Both of us would prefer that the other take the brunt of the losses, which is the curse of many Dominions alliances. Though we did very fairly agree that whoever wins the major victories gets the capitol. I like that a lot, and Hinnom seems to be a good ally so far.

Notably, Hinnom's retreat is into the Atlantis landbridge to the small lake - it looks like they struck a deal in which Atlantis gets to conquer and keep the small lake but the landbridge stays with Hinnom.

At home we are recruiting a Gyga in our capitol and chugging along at only a depressing 65 research points since we are sitesearching with some of our Gygas as well. The first Skratti is still under construction in our first fort, and we're building a lab at our second, western fort. That's all we have money for at the moment. We may lose some Skinnshifters soon though and reduce our upkeep a bit! We have a decent bit of territory but our income is merely good since our provinces are about average in income, and Nifelheim is very gold hungry.

All the way to the west we can see that TC has finally finished taking his capcircle - that barbarian province has been taken by his infantry this turn.

Finally, let's have a quick look at the army Yomi is using, since our scouts caught both these small battles.

Yomi's setup looks as follows:

Bakemono and freespawn demons at the front, bakemono archers and a few mages at the back. I'm not sure how he ended up with so many archers - maybe they were good for some indies he encountered - but he'd definitely prefer those to be normal bakemono at this point. This is a reasonably strong army but since the bakemono and demons are undisciplined they will always run forward immediately, leaving it vulnarable to attack rear orders on good troops. I guess the bakemono archers can sorta work as bodyguards if they don't move too much forward to shoot.

Let's have a quick look at his demons and mages:

This is the medium-size demon. Good stats (improved by currently being in Turmoil scale dominion) but no protection. Very vulnerable to arrows, but can definitely punch our giants real hard.

And he has a few of these mages. The nature gem may indicate they will be casting Swarm (or are hoping to once research gets there), an Alteration 4 spell that summons a lot of very weak insect creatures. Good for clogging up the battlefield.

Here are his overall numbers:

A decent force, and something we probably don't want to fight with just giants unless we can help it or fight defensively with PD support. We'll let Hinnom's trampling chariots deal with that, preferably (chariots are great against bakemono since trample will hit all of the 6 bakemono in the square and kill/rout the very quickly).

That concludes this turn, and next time we'll be able to see our first cowardly minimal-commitment attack on another player! Exciting!

 

[Infinitum]

Don't Skinshifters have a chance to heal afflictions upon transforming? Seems like a waste of perfectly good punching bags.

EDIT: Also, would like a moment to commend Sqeecoo for posting this in hindsight. With no advice to be given, what else is there but criticizing every single strategic and tactical decision he makes? Truly a noble sacrifice for our light entertainment

 

[Andnjord]

 

[sqeecoo]

Don't Skinshifters have a chance to heal afflictions upon transforming? Seems like a waste of perfectly good punching bags.

EDIT: Also, would like a moment to commend Sqeecoo for posting this in hindsight. With no advice to be given, what else is there but criticizing every single strategic and tactical decision he makes? Truly a noble sacrifice for our light entertainment

I believe they do, yeah. But the afflicted ones are still the most expendable. It is pricey, but I wanted to raid at least a little bit and those dudes were all I had at hand. I should have perhaps considered some indy troops for raiding, dunno.

Yeah, I'm fine with criticism; some of my decisions are definitely poor in retrospect and even if they are not it's always fun to hear a different perspective - like with the expansion thing, where you and Grim advocate careful consolidated expansion and I prefer reckless maximized expansion - you rarely get the opportunity to have good players dissecting your play, and for me that feedback is a big part of what makes doing the LP rewarding. So criticism is very welcome!

 

[sqeecoo]

Turn 15: Dude, Where's my Gear?

Let's look at the battles! Firstly we faced off against elephants in Senextro:

Five elephants is normally very dangerous, but our Skinshifters have enough HP to take some trampling and hit hard enough to kill/rout the elephants pretty quickly, so they fight elephants better than most troops as long as you bring enough giants. We take no losses here:

Our raid of Yomi is pretty uneventful, we fight only minor PD and two demons that presumably spawned this turn:

The PD type is weak militia (barbarians might have beaten us, for instance) so there are no issues. We can see a poor crippled Skinshifter lagging behind the rest of his bros to the far left. No losses!

And we destroyed a temple. Fine for a turn's work of raiding, I guess.

Let's look at the overall situation:

We're pulling back with our raiding group for now (red) - this is in coordination with Hinnom since he's moving to the province north of Yomi that we could be raiding. We can see Yomi pulled back to his capitol with his bakemono swarm. According to our scout report there's about 200 troops there + the PD and including his Pretender, a dormant Monolith just like ours. It'll be interesting to see if we have the same bless - it's quite possible since our bless is good for Yomi's sacred SCs as well. While that capitol defense is strong, pulling back to the capitol is a bit strange as it's basically admitting defeat in the long run. In my opinion Yomi should be actively looking for a decisive engagement with either Hinnom or me and hoping to kick one enemy out of the war. If he destroyed our Skinshifter army (possible with those bakemono numbers) he'd definitely cripple our ability to do damage to him. Pulling back to the capitol like this when there's no direct threat to it yet is overly passive in my opinion, although I guess it's possible Hinnom has a strong force to the east of his capitol - but I don't remember that being the case from talking to Hinnom, I think there was only a raiding group moving around there.

One advantage of pulling back to the capitol however is that he now threatens almost every province we could attack with his bakemono swarms, so both Hinnom and I are afraid to commit. We're consolidating our guys (23 Skinshifters) in green (so we don't fight in the cave if that small demon group to the east of green attacks), and we can see that Hinnom has completely retreated his southern chariot army (blue). I'd normally play more aggressively in wars, but our goal here is to take a few provinces - say, the western part of Yomi - while we get to Construction 4 with our shitty research and start deploying Skratti in a real war. We might be willing to take a big battle once our Senextro Skinshifter group arrives (heading over now), but currently we're content to play it safe and only help out Hinnom with a bit of raiding. Small risk for small gains, perfectly fair.

In the rest of the world, we found a nice site with our D2N2B2 (death magic 2, nature magic 2, blood magic 2) path Gyga that has been sitesarching (yellow):

This increases Death scale (i.e. reduces our Growth scale) in the province which is not great for its economy, but two gems of types we really want is great and it's also lucky in the sense that death scales in a province can also indicate the presence of a Well of Pestilence site which gives only one gem and spreads deadly diseases, making it annoying to move through that province since anything in it has a chance to become diseased and eventually die. This is a site I'd much rather have. Notably, our monkey forest province (north of our south fort) also has death scales. Hopefully it's another of these sites and not the Well of Pestilence.

We also spot Atlantis' pretender (grey). It's a human hydromancer mage that was obviously dormant and is now sitesearching. It seems that he has taken a dormant rainbow for that purpose. An interesting strategy for which I'd love to hear the rationale - I'll ask the guy and see if we can get some info. But it does mean that there was no scary Kraken SC or anything and is another point in favor of Grimwulf's suggestion to go for Atlantis early. However we couldn't have know before now that there wasn't some kind of murderous monster pretender swimming around in that lake.

We can also see that neither Atlantis nor Fomoria have taken that throne and lake (black) and we can presume that they both want it and that it's causing some tension among them. Whereas we have taken everything we got from the Atlantis deal. Pretty good, I think. In retrospect thought, ideally we'd now be gearing to attack Atlantis with Fomorian help in this moment of the game instead of our flimsy semi-vulturing of Yomi. I believe I offered this prospect to Fomoria around now (or earlier) who said he wasn't up for fighting Atlantis this early, and I wasn't confident enough to go in alone so I opted for the safer go with the flow option of helping out Hinnom for small to moderate gains at little risk.

Our general medium-term plan is to beat Yomi fairly quickly, taking the western part while Hinnom sieges the capitol, and then rapidly redeploy (giants are pretty fast) to the east and attack the tiny Tien Chi:

Our scouting now shows that TC is indeed tiny to the east as well (green is Tir na nOg, the Irish elves) and we know from last turn that Fomoria holds Histyra, so TC is almost confined to his capcircle. A very good target despite his scary sacreds. However, we shall have to see how quickly the Yomi war will go especially with us pussyfooting about as we are now.

As for spending, we're recruiting a Gyga in the capitol along with a couple of Skinshifters (I should have stopped making those at this point) and building a fort on the amazon province (north of Senextro). As I said, the latter is a mistake - we should have built a lab to recruit the amazon mages and made a fort somewhere else to produce Skratti/Gygas. Our first Skratti is finishing from our south fort this turn, and I should really have had some gear ready for him. With a bit more mage recruitment we could have probably been on Construction 4 by this point (we just reached construction 3 and have about 6 turns to go to Con4) but we should have had some Con2 gear waiting for him in this case so he could run into the fighting right away. Horror Helm, Ranger Boots, and any weapon(s) would have been fine to start with. I definitely got a better feel for how to get your first thugs out faster after my experience in this game, and would perform better if I played this now.

That concludes this turn, and I'll see ya next time when we shall complete building our first Skratti! A momentous moment for sure.

 

[Infinitum]

Hey, that went better than I expected it to. 6 PD in a temple province?

As for Atlantis, dormant rainbow seems weakish. I can see the rationale for all-resists + MR for the Kings (and having a Dispel caster lategame to at least contest Sea of Ice), but it isn't like those are going to carry the game no matter the bless and sitesearching an extra dozen provinces or so isn't worth 200 design points. Definite early target to bully back into the water.

 

[sqeecoo]

Hey, that went better than I expected it to. 6 PD in a temple province?

As for Atlantis, dormant rainbow seems weakish. I can see the rationale for all-resists + MR for the Kings (and having a Dispel caster lategame to at least contest Sea of Ice), but it isn't like those are going to carry the game no matter the bless and sitesearching an extra dozen provinces or so isn't worth 200 design points. Definite early target to bully back into the water.

Yeah, it was a risky attack for sure. But I felt I couldn't risk more guys for fear of running into the full bakemono stack (he had other places to defend, but the temple made it more likely he'd go defend that province) but I also thought it wasn't good or fair to my ally to be totally passive either.

I agree that the sitesearching may not be worth the scales for Atlantis, though sitesearching for Nature is very good in water since you can find those free fort sites with a fair likelyhood and Atlantis won't get nature searching for a long while. Getting an extra fort early year 1 is amazing, and maybe that's what Atlantis is gambling on.

I agree that makes him a good target though, and knowing what I know now I'd have probably started making Jarls and planning to go UW when I saw there was no dangerous pretender - from a strategic point anyway, diplomacy is a different question.

 

[Reinhardt]

I agree that makes him a good target though, and knowing what I know now I'd have probably started making Jarls and planning to go UW when I saw there was no dangerous pretender

NOW imagine his shock from your diplomacy.

 

[Galdred]

These latest turns lack Grimwulf 's feedback. Did you manage to get him to sign a NAP too?

 

[Andnjord]

Poor Grimwulf, he's barely back in the Codex that he's already KOMMISSARING a gaggle of dwarves, leading a band of brothers and co-writing a Dominion LP. What a slav.

 

[Grimwulf]

Been a while. Gonna comment as I read, but this time no emotions. Pure analytics. No matter what inane mumbo-jumbo you posted, I am NOT gonna lose my shit again.

Well, the plan is to not use Nifel Jarls (pls don't kill me)

ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?!

WHY even play NIEFELHEIM if you're not gonna use NIEFEL JARLS?! You took a SINGLE-TRICK nation and decided to NOT USE THE FUCKING TRICK! How about next time, instead of playing Dominions, you DRIVE A CAR WITHOUT USING THE DAMN BREAKS? That would make a DAMN GUD LP printed on your obituary!

One of our Skinshifters got totally surrounded and would have died if not for this:

Pure luck saves sqeecoo from spectacular disaster. The essence of your every update.

It's actually a great early spell, especially against stuff with high defense such as cavalry or elves. However it only hits one square and it can miss.

It's far from great, and not because of AoE or low precision. Range fucking 20. It barely classifies as "situational".

We've decided not to take the cavalry province (blue) with the prophet group we moved that way last turn. The prophet group (in the forest directly west) has 11 dudes, which may not be enough if there's like 12 heavy cav out of the 60ish toops defending

BAD judgement! Northia (blue province) is worth taking heavy losses for the sake of starting a fort construction ASAP. It's worth losing 11 dudes and the Prophet himself. If you didn't believe your Prophet was capable of taking this province at all, you STILL shouldn't have sent him in some nonsensical direction. Instead, recruit indy chaff from the forest you're standing in + provinces around Northia, then attack Northia next turn.

You're wasting tempo FOR NO REASON AT ALL!

Instead we're merging the prophet group and the group that just beat the amazons at the red mark and going for those barbarians to the west and hopefully then that farmland further west. We could beat the barbs with less, but at this point it's good to bring overwhelming force cause the barbs with their big mauls can really put the hurt on our giants if they outnumber us badly.

Yet another wasted tempo. Just attack the barbs straight away, damn you!

the barbs with their big mauls can really put the hurt on our giants.

These are SWORD barbs, not MAUL barbs. Are you eyefucking again?

We're also moving one of our few Gygas from the capitol to the location of our first fort (orange) with two turns still to go on the fort. This way she can build a lab there next turn, and the lab and fort will finish on the same turn so that we can recruit mages immediately. This kind of micro is pretty important as it saves us valuable fort turns.

Right, except the first-fort-location itself is inane.

Our brave Hall of Fame hero of the eastern front is returning to the capitol to pick up the group of Skinshifters we are recruiting and take that cavalry province.

Now that is BEYOND overdoing it. STOP RECRUITING SKINSHIFTERS ALREADY, ffs!! Use spare gold (which you're NOT supposed to have btw - you're supposed to BUILD MORE FORTS) on boulder units and Niefel Giants (you HAVE to recruit a few for your future SINGLE army stack).

We won't be making army troops for much longer (at least we're also making mages now too)

Shouldn't make them AT ALL at this point.

but I'd like some more dudes for the Yomi offensive which is now pretty much decided on

You have MORE THAN ENOUGH troops for that "war" - your expansion forces will have nothing else to do in a few turns. All you need is a bunch of Jotun Haulers for breaking walls, and a few Niefel Giants to beat PD.

NOT MORE SKINSHIFTERS!

Do you even give a flying fuck about this game? Looks like autopilot decisions to me.

fighting such an easy early war was part of our VISION described above. It also adheres to the "go with my flow" diplomatic mentality.

Forget my previous question. "Go with the flow" is exactly how you play your turns. No thought process involved.

At the time we did not have the benefit of Grim's advice on fighting Atlantis so I didn't think it'd be a good war to fight solo; even if it was, however, that's a much riskier move than fighting Yomi in a minor capacity while waiting for our research. If we get attacked by, say, Tien Chi from the west while fighting Atlantis solo, we have a war on two fronts; if we're fighting Yomi we could pull back from there if we needed to while Hinnom continues to occupy Yomi.

Eh. I would leave Yomi to Hinnom, let them drag the war for as long as possible. Meanwhile, I would start preparing SC for war with Atlantis while moving my troops on TC borders to sorta threaten them into a NAP. Then use those troops to grab Atlantis surface provinces.

If you did your planning right, Niefelheim-Atlantis war would only last for several turns. You would give him no time to gather an alliance.

Next time we fight some bulky barbarians and see if Tien Chi has expanded to that farmland - if not, their expansion is so poor we will seriously consider attacking them instead or even in addition to Yomi.

Expansion has NOTHING to do with measuring TC's potential danger, you should ONLY consider TC's bless! It's one of the WORST matches for you due to their insane sacreds!

That was just a single update. Fuck me. Moving on...

Bros, this is the greatest compliment you could give this LP and the joint efforts of Grimwulf and me to entertain you. Thank you.

Who said I'm trying to entertain anybody?

I AM GENUINELY PISSED THE FUCK OFF BY YOUR COMPLETE INABILITY TO GET A FUCKING GRIP!

I saw RAW playing Dominions better than you! The guy wasn't the most CUNNING of players back in the day, but he knew how to BRUTEFORCE! You, on the other hand, ARE JUST BEING CLUELESS!

No battles this turn as we were just moving around last turn

So what was the point of your dozen tiny groups? If it was grabbing as many provinces each turn as you can, congratulations - YOU FAILED! And now it's just average expansion done in an awkward fashion.

Our prophet-led group of 21 giants (mostly Skinshifters) is moving on the barbarian province (red) and possibly then to the farm in the west.

Exactly the opposite way of where you really need them (Northia and Yomi are to the east, not west). God fucking speed.

We have enough giants and the prophet allows us to form a nice line against the barbs, but we are still likely to lose a few giants. Barbs just hit that hard, and there probably 40-60 of them. Fighting them is always painful early on.

Nonsense. A single Niefel Giant (not Jarl, but Giant - a unit) could take on a bunch of SWORD barbs in Cold 3.

What you're doing right now is overkill. Which also makes no sense, serves no purpose, AND might lead to starvation for such a large group.

In our capitol we're building another normal giant Jarl and some Skinshifters:

STOP THIS FUCKING SKINSHIFTER MADNESS ALREADY!!

WHY would you want MORE Skinshifters at THIS point?!

It's a pure GOLD SINK for both recruiting AND keeping them around!

I know, I know, another turn without a mage

And without a new fort either. Skinshifters are more important, naturally.

I really do want to have a Jarl to make a nice line of troops and boost morale for when we engage Yomi.

You'll be fighting ffffucking PD.

If you're worried about engaging Yomi's actual forces, you should recruit Niefel Jarls, NOT SKINSHIFTERS!

We can also see that Atlantis has taken that province south of the yellow fort (black) with a decent force, and I'm a bit worried they could come in and destroy our fort. That'd be a big blow, but we are trusting to our NAP with him for now.

Which is, again, IDIOTIC of you! There is naive, and then there is YOU!

Buy PD 20 and script your Gygja to CAST SPELLS! She'll cast Hand of Dust off-script once Atlantis troops approach point-blank range. PD 20 + Gygja will fend off his chaff no prob.

DO NOT fucking TRUST the guy who CUCKED you before!

We've also pinged the SW throne (green) and found out that it has a decent crew of mage defenders:

Four wizards spamming elementals is not something we want to mess with using just Skinshifters, so we'll leave it alone for now.

Unless one of them has W3 (which is what, 5% chance?), we're talking lesser water/air elementals. A NAKED Nifel Jarl would claim this province in Cold 3. Equipped in Constr2 loadout, he wouldn't even break a sweat.

No losses! Very nice.

The stupidest overkill I have ever seen.

The overall plan is as follows:

And now you're sending your Prophet and his insane army back. SUCH EFFICIENCY, MUCH LOGISTICS!

What was THE FUCKING POINT?!

We can see that Tien Chi (TC) has taken the farm province beyond the barbarians we were aiming for (red). Ah well, too bad.

Said the guy who seriously considered ATTACKING TC playing as NIEFELHEIM.

Similarly, we can see a barbarian leader sitting in the province Atlantis nabbed from us (black) which means that they may be building a fort there. Since EA Atlantis can't actually recruit anything from non-UW forts this probably means there is some indy mage type that can be recruited in that province - hopefully not something very valuable that they grabbed from us.

Aye, let's hope there is nothing valuable in the province Atlantis BLATANTLY STOLE from us. We don't want to take it back, of course. That would be rude. And also against our current cuckold agenda.

The army that fought the barbarians is moving back east and will go fight Yomi as fast as it can get there, while our expansion group in the east is attacking that cavalry province (blue). They are set up in an incredibly boring single square:

The fuck? 12 units? What the fuck?

Hold on, lemme refresh my memory from your pre-previous update.

We've decided not to take the cavalry province (blue) with the prophet group we moved that way last turn. The prophet group (in the forest directly west) has 11 dudes, which may not be enough if there's like 12 heavy cav out of the 60ish toops defending

Okay, so

11 dudes, which may not be enough

but

our expansion group in the east is attacking that cavalry province (blue).

Right. 12 units will do what 11 units could not. Totally worth the 2-turns holdup.

WHAT. THE FUCK. IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

It's generally better to set your dudes in two squares in this situation so you get more surface area (i.e. closer to a line). But I'm not doing that here since it's a cavalry province

No, you damnable idiot! It IS better to form two squares, sending the most crippled, useless Skinshifter a bit ahead to soak up the lance strikes!

As you can see we are also recruiting

troops

in the capitol.

That Skinshifter will make a difference for sure.

STOP!

STOP!!

FUCK!!!

We can also see a decent-sized group of bakemono to the east (red), perhaps gearing up to take that indy province north of them. Interestingly, a lot of them are archers.

Nothing interesting or unusual here. Bakemono archers are vastly superior to any other type bakemono. All of them have abysmal morale, no melee combat capability, same cheap-ass price. But archers can actually cough up some damage before engaging in melee.

Bakemono get packed really close due to being size 1 and 6 to a square, so you want as many as possible to get as much frontage as possible - archers go against this idea since they will stay behind and fire, possibly hurting your own bakemono fighting in melee.

No. Can't do "as much frontage as possible" due to undisciplined trait. They will be scattered all over the place, no matter what. Just use archer-only bakemono groups and keep them in the same stack, that's the only viable approach.

Finally, our pretender has awoken this turn!

Lord of Eloquence, very fitting for this LP.

Not Lord of Cuckery? Doesn't fit.

He will research in the capitol for now, and with his nice 35 research he doubles our research points per turn to a massive 65!

Oh, wow. Good thing you took that Magic 0 scale! If you did Drain 3 + awaken Pret, you would gain additional 384 RP by this turn. Clearly your approach is superior.

This is too painful to catch up in one go. I need a goddamn break.

 

[Grimwulf]

"11 units not enough", my arse.

7 heavy cav would have been enough to possibly route a group of 6 giants on the charge if we had split into two groups, so I'm fine with our single square setup.

Crippled units are barely better than dead ones. Should have put a single cripple in a separate stack to soak the lances, but I'm repeating myself. It's not like stating the obvious again and again would make the information GO THRU DAT THICC SKULL OF YOURS!

We are opting not to build a lab on that second fort just yet and instead send in a brand new astral 2 (S2) Gyga from the capitol to build a lab and then sitesearch

Waste a Gygja's turn to sitesearch the province that you've just searched. Refusing to build a lab in favor of MORE SKINSHIFTERS.

Is this a competition for you? "How many fuck-ups can I theoretically make in a single update"? This one is OFF TO A GREAT START!

Since we have no native astral income, I think that sitesearching for astral crucial is a priority so we won't be keeping that Gyga at home

Then send her to the provinces YOU HAVEN'T SEARCHED YET!

This fort will have a LAB, meaning you could RECRUIT GYGJAS RIGHT THERE! Wait for the S one, then search the province with HER!

STOP WASTING TEMPO, you piece of

We didn't start the lab because we are short on money - partly because we had to start the next fort level on the second fort as well.

NO!

You are short of money because of THIS:

STOP DOING THIS!!

We also found a shitty site at our first fort (red):

Villains are not bad. Having access to monkey leaders (which you recruit anyway instead of scouts) and no access to other stealth units, you could recruit small groups of villains and give them to your scouts. This way your scouts would be able to beat poorly defended provinces in the ass locations of your enemies, when needed.

Atlantis said something to the effect of "Oh, you still haven't taken Senextro? Can I grab it?" At least he's asking this time :D We say no, however, and divert to take it as soon as possible so he's not tempted.

That's gonna b rich. Atlantis luring your forces in an OBVIOUS TRAP, preparing his own army to wipe out yours. I can already see him puking his guts out in laughter, saying smth like "ooops, apparently our forces BUMPED - no hard feelings, mate, we're still bros"

And sqeecoo b like "ohhhh, Atlatis so friendly, he apologized"

Since our prophet won't be coming to the Yomi front any time soon, I decide to recruit a holy 2 (H2) giant commander in Nifelheim along with a Skinshifter group.

Vastly superior to a Niefel Jarl, good job.

HAVE YOU SUFFERED A FUCKING BRAIN TRANSPLANT?!

Probably not a good idea to be making more of the Skinshifters

Yeah, PROBABLY!!!

but we are gonna fight Yomi and I don't want to lose to bakemono for lack of a front line

My balls can make better arguments than you.

Just. Recruit. A Nifel Jarl.

Or a Niefel Giant even. A single one.

That 160 strong bakemono group to the east is looking a bit scary

What's up? Having DOUBTS about your brilliant "FRONT LINE" plan already?

Probably would have handled this differently now and just did everything to get our first geared Skratti out.

No need for a GEARED one; doesn't have to be a Skratti either. You should have recruited a NIEFEL JARL

LONG

FUCKING TIME AGO! A single Horror Helmet is all you need to get rid of ANY NUMBER of bakemonos! Failing that, cold aura WILL DO THE TRICK either, if a bit slower. If the idiot relies on bakemono ONLY - too bad for him!

But you picked the ONLY tool that doesn't work against Yomi - your SKINSHIFTERS.

Why am I still here

We're also recruiting some slingers in the tribal province to the east (yellow).

any ranged fire really does a number on the bakemono while not damaging our giants - this is because the bakemono's decent defense and high density allows them to not die easily to melee

What HIGH DENSITY are you blabbering about?? EVERYTHING Yomi has is UNDISCIPLINED!!

I should be making the monkey archer in the monkey province we conquered though

Stop. Recruiting. Units. AS NIFELHEIM!!

NEVER RECRUIT SHIT UNITS AS ANY NATION!!!

Niefelheim deploying slingers and monkey archers. At least the others will never forget you. Years will pass, but the legend of "That Guy From Codex" will live on.

Invading Yomi was a stupid idea to begin with. You have no use for Yomi's provinces. You should have focused your troops on taking over Throne provinces, better yet - start a war for provinces you NEED!

Instead, you're jumping right into Yomi's capring, risking to face Yomi's main forces, while agreeing to give up Yomi's cap in favor of Hinnom. You've been a cuck to Atlantis, now you're playing errand boy for Hinnom.

"Go take the heavy hit, you may have a shitty province or two in the worst possible location. Keep suffering until I decide to send my forces to Yomi." - Hinnom.

I thought you were going to jump on Yomi's remaining provinces AFTER Hinnom basically destroys the nation. Instead, you're the one who takes one for the "team".

Shamefur dispray.

I actually suggested to Hinnom to do a PD dump there and keep his chariot group there to fight - even if he lost, attrition is the way to go against the bakemono in particular: since they are flimsy, they can't win without losses, so even a bit of PD can take a toll on them).

What did he say to that? Just wondering how did he put "You are an idiot" into a more polite-like reply. I bet he didn't.

Do you REALLY think he would have ANY problems defeating 200 bakemonos with a GODDAMN ARMY OF AVVITE CHARIOTEERS?!

Granted, it's not something I would use in his shoes, but these are probably remnants of his expansion forces. Then it makes sense.

I guess Hinnom didn't want to risk the heavy losses though, just like we're not risking much with our own attack. Both of us would prefer that the other take the brunt of the losses, which is the curse of many Dominions alliances.

Niefelheim and Hinnom. ALLIED against YOMI.

AFRAID of attacking BAKEMONOS.

Resign. Just resign. You should be so ashamed of yourself at this point, it's high time to visit a therapist - because ANYONE ELSE IN YOUR PLACE WOULD SERIOUSLY CONSIDER SUICIDE!!

Though we did very fairly agree that whoever wins the major victories gets the capitol. I like that a lot, and Hinnom seems to be a good ally so far.

He's feeding you bullshit, you eat it with a big-ass spoon and asking for more. Yeah, keep it up. Make sure not to choke.

Notably, Hinnom's retreat is into the Atlantis landbridge to the small lake - it looks like they struck a deal in which Atlantis gets to conquer and keep the small lake but the landbridge stays with Hinnom.

Which means THEY ARE ALLIED!

AGAINST YOU!

HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT??

Yeh, let's ignore Atlantis and help out Hinnom.

At home we are recruiting a Gyga in our capitol and chugging along at only a depressing 65 research points

Gonna b the King of I TOLD YOU SO Kingdom.

We have a decent bit of territory but our income is merely good since our provinces are about average in income, and Nifelheim is very gold hungry.

You wouldn't be gold starved in the slightest if it wasn't for those retarded Skinshifter stacks.

We may lose some Skinnshifters soon though and reduce our upkeep a bit!

Brilliant.

Here is another brilliant idea. How about NOT RECRUITING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Yet another GENIUS. Who recruits yari bakemonos? Just stick with archers, ffs

I'm not sure how he ended up with so many archers - maybe they were good for some indies he encountered - but he'd definitely prefer those to be normal bakemono at this point

Have you even PLAYED Yomi ONCE? There is NO REASON to use other bakemonos, you should play with archers ONLY!

guess the bakemono archers can sorta work as bodyguards if they don't move too much forward to shoot.

Undisciplined units cannot be assigned as bodyguards. Learn the fucking basics already.

And he has a few of these mages. The nature gem may indicate they will be casting Swarm (or are hoping to once research gets there), an Alteration 4 spell that summons a lot of very weak insect creatures. Good for clogging up the battlefield.

I find this guess to be HIGHLY unlikely. Yomi rushing Alt4 before Conj4/Conj5 or Constr2/Constr4 doesn't indicate SC-based Yomi, it indicates a clueless player. That gem is a mistery indeed, but my bet is on Maggots, not Swarm. Conj4 is far more likely first goal of Yomi, and Maggots might be useful against Niefelheim SC's.

A decent force

A shit force. All you have to do is rout bakemonos, the rest will suffer a morale break right after that.

Yomi player should have kept 15-20 bakemono chaff in front, while sending the rest to raid your provinces in stealth. THEN this would be a formidable army.

We'll let Hinnom's trampling chariots deal with that, preferably (chariots are great against bakemono since trample will hit all of the 6 bakemono in the square and kill/rout the very quickly).

This came from the same guy who said that:

I actually suggested to Hinnom to do a PD dump there and keep his chariot group there to fight - even if he lost, attrition is the way to go against the bakemono in particular

"Attrition is the way to go against the bakemono" - Sqeecoo, 2020.

Seriously, this quote is golden. The single most noobish thing I heard in my Dominions experience.

One last update left. Not sure I have enough mental stability to survive this, but I'll try.

And we destroyed a temple. Fine for a turn's work of raiding, I guess.

If you attacked Yomi after declaring a war, I would call it a good job, and labeled Yomi player as careless at best. But you didn't.

So what the hell are you gloating about? If anything, this is the WORST surprise attack in the history of mankind. Just one province. Was it worth the honor of having a fair fight?

Let's see what you prepared for the follow-up.

... Nothing. Should have guessed.

You are a major disappointment.

While that capitol defense is strong, pulling back to the capitol is a bit strange as it's basically admitting defeat in the long run.

He does the right thing.

Two strongest (arguably, but still) nations of EA ganged up against YOMI. Fucking YOMI. What did you expect him to do?

I would hole up in the cap too, placing bet on out-researching both of you. Which I would do easily. If he managed to recruit a couple Dai Onis, say goodbye to your wet blirzkreig dreams - you're stuck in this war for eternity.

In my opinion Yomi should be actively looking for a decisive engagement with either Hinnom or me and hoping to kick one enemy out of the war.

Attacking Niefelheim in his own dominion? Going aggro on Hinnom while leaving the cap defenseless against Niefelheim? That's not just stupid, that's suicidal.

If he destroyed our Skinshifter army (possible with those bakemono numbers) he'd definitely cripple our ability to do damage to him.

No. He would do you a favor. Your Skinshifter-only army is borderline RETARDED! Not to mention expensive.

One advantage of pulling back to the capitol however is that he now threatens almost every province we could attack with his bakemono swarms, so both Hinnom and I are afraid to commit.

both Hinnom and I are afraid

Even I feel ashamed of simply posting in this thread.

I'd normally play more aggressively in wars, but our goal here is to take a few provinces - say, the western part of Yomi - while we get to Construction 4 with our shitty research and start deploying Skratti in a real war.

Few provinces isn't anywhere NEAR a worthwhile reason to start this kind of war. Your decisions are not just poor judgement, they are LOLRANDOM - and I'm being POLITE right now!

Our general medium-term plan is to beat Yomi fairly quickly, taking the western part while Hinnom sieges the capitol, and then rapidly redeploy (giants are pretty fast) to the east and attack the tiny Tien Chi:

Okay, you bested me. Can't finish reading this update. Can't even comment on it anymore - the PAIN is simply too strong. I'm skipping it entirely, gonna wait for the next one.

Surely it can't be worse.

Surely

 

[Reinhardt]

We missed you.

 

[Infinitum]

That's some impressive Rage, even by codex standards.

More importantly sqeecoo where is the next turn damnit? You're getting to the good part

 

[Reinhardt]

Niefelheim is already ded. Killed by Atlantis.

 

[vazha]

Or Sqeecoo was murdered by Grimwulf, I d be less surprised about that to be frank.

 

[sqeecoo]

I'm sorry bros I'm a bit lazybusy but the LP will continue, most likely tomorrow!

 

[Galdred]

If you attacked Yomi after declaring a war, I would call it a good job, and labeled Yomi player as careless at best. But you didn't.

So what the hell are you gloating about? If anything, this is the WORST surprise attack in the history of mankind. Just one province. Was it worth the honor of having a fair fight?

Let's see what you prepared for the follow-up.

Actually, that had me surprised too (I am not well versed in Dominions, so it is hard to comment on the rest...):
Why take such a reputation hit for helping another player get the upper hand?
Backstab can really dent your "meta" reputation among several games, especially if you benefit little from them. And someone who is about to lose could use whatever resources are left to help someone else win only to spite you.

 

[Chaosdwarft]

Grimwulf You have not seen me play in Dominions SP, your despair would multiply by 100. The first few games I played it like an AGEOD title and could not figure out how to use magic casters on the battlefield ( I still don't get how you do communions).

It's been a while, maybe you would recommend a good Dominions guide(s).

Also avoid too much anger it is not good for your health. Or you might die from "heart attack" like any beloved soviet official. Cheers!

 

[mondblut]

The first few games I played it like an AGEOD title and could not figure out how to use magic casters on the battlefield

I still do.

Not like you need to bother. Just plop an elemental royalty or three to cast a few battlefield enchantment buffs, the grunts will do the rest. Scripting dozens of battlemages individually for every battle? Pantokrator, how droll.

 

[Storyfag]

Also avoid too much anger it is not good for your health.

No. Use your anger. Give in to your hatred.

 

[sqeecoo]

Turn 16: The Tiniest Turn

Well friends, we're back in business! Unfortunately I've spent a lot of time futilely trying to find my turn 16 for the game (digging through folders, messages). Looks like this is one more turnfile lost to the abomination they call ClockworkBot. I've only managed to scrounge up only two pitiful screenshots to share with you:

On the Yomi front, we're holding our army and preaching with our prophet while reinforcements arrive, but we're raiding with that same 5-strong crippled Skinshifter group (red). We can also see a Hinnom army coming up from the north. As I said, our hope here is to grab 4-5 provinces here with minimal risk and losses while we wait on our research to catch up, so we won't take any unnecessary risks.

Our Skratti is complete and sitesearching in (blue), but he really should have some basic gear ready and going to the front immediately. At the time, I was waiting for Con4 (which is like 3 turns away), but you can actually gear a decent Skratti/Jarl at Con2 already - Skratti have inbuilt regeneration and the Ranger Boots provide some reinvigoration; beyond that any shield and weapon and you have a decentish thug. Still, we will want to eventually search for water and it's the Skratti who will be doing this (one of their many tasks) so it's not exactly a wasted turn. But we shouldn't be relying on pure Skinshifters any more, certainly. However that's why I decided to join this low-intensity war in the first place, to have something to do while our stuff gets online.

We also start a fort in the amazon province - like I said, a lab would have been sufficient there.

We can also see that our non-prophet Jotun Jarl attached to our main army will be participating in a deathmatch this turn. This is a random event where all nations can send out one commander to fight it out in a round-robin free-for-all until a champion is crowned, who gets a decent artifact. Our Jarl is strong and fairly capable of winning and perhaps becoming powerful enough to thug it up with our future Skratti, while not being a terrible loss if we lose him. A decent bargain, so I'm sending him in.

In our capitol we're recruiting as follows:

(spoliered for Grimwulf's sanity, DO NOT CLICK IF GRIMWULF)

Spoiler

We're making two Jotun Jarls and a few Skinshifters. The two Jarls are cause we might lose one in the deathmatch this turn so we'd like to have a replacement, and the second is really an opportunity hire so we don't waste a commander point, and our capitol is currently our only fort with a temple and may remain so for a while, so I thought I might as well get two of these guys if I'm buying one anyway. The thinking for the extra Skinshifters is simple: if our main force is Skinshifter based, we might as well have enough of them for it to be effective. I kinda realized at the time that this wasn't ideal, but I don't think half-measures would cut it either - if this is what we have gone for, we should invest enough for it to work.

And that's basically everything I have to offer you for this turn, so I'll pad the update a bit with a short response to the latest Grimwulfian commentary.

As always, most of the stuff he says is spot-on - I'm definitely not playing optimally, although it's really not that bad. YET.

Yet another GENIUS. Who recruits yari bakemonos? Just stick with archers, ffs

Niefelheim and Hinnom. ALLIED against YOMI.

AFRAID of attacking BAKEMONOS.

I think I've mentioned this although I might not have made it totally clear: a recent patch (after Grim here stopped playing) reduced the size of bakemonos to 1, which puts them 6 to a square instead of 3 as it was previously. Their square density doubled while their Yari spears remain length 4 piercing weapons with decent damage, so with 6 of them in a square they are now a force to be feared. Obviously they are vulnerable to spells later on but this early they are quite strong, especially against the single unit per square giants. Using them as the main part of your force early is totally legit.

You should have recruited a NIEFEL JARL

Would a Niefel Jarl here even be usable against Yomi in his heat 3 dominion, given that that's the war we are in? Isn't a Skratti better in every way for that task? While Nifel Jarls are much stronger than I thought initially, I haven't been able to make them work in heat dominion (heat 1 is somewhat bearable). I'd be interested to know if it can be done.

Anyway, that concludes this short update. I have at least the next turn in my archive so next time we'll get to see some battles and the performance of our brave Jarl in the DEATHMATCH!