Dominions 3 MP: Azimuthal

Well, I got my revenge on Bogus! It ended up being quite a lot of overkill, but I guess that is better than the first time, heh.

I must admit that I underestimated them this time around in this game. In Sleipnir I was playing Gath and my few blood hunters made mincemeat of them then with my decent blood research and single target spells (Leech I think it was) along with my PD. He is meaner than I remember that is for sure :).

Check the OP :)

Also, if one person is REALLY close to winning, we can always concede. I'd say hold off until they have 4 capitals at least before that happens. Unless there's someone else who also has 3 or 4...

The OP says nothing about fielding real life modern era units like Blackhawks! I demand a restart! :p

Yeah, I think that joke has been done many a time now, in a myriad of ways. It just hit me now thanks to the few Blackhawks that have been buzzing over town.

Hmm, what do you guys think about extending the turn timer? Originally I think we were going to go to 72 hours on turn 31 and we are up to turn 47 now.

While I don't want to really extend the game a long time, I could use a little more time for my turns now. Actually, even just adding 4 hours and making it 52 hours so you don't end up chasing your turn times each turn would help a bunch and be plenty for me for now.

Hosting interval changed to 72 hours. Thanks for the reminder, Kelan.

Thanks! I did get this one in in time.

That was one crazy underwater battle there, Austen. I honestly had no idea who would win at the beginning of that. For some reason my pretender totally blew her script too, but that happens.

Ya, the last couple turns have been bad for me... some bad luck, some awful play... On that fight, I wasn't really that committed to winning, my goal was really to bleed you there. However, since I'm a moron, I completely failed to implement my plan properly, so I did nothing of any real use.. :/

Heh. Austen, how do you feel now that you've scouted my capital's armies? Going for the kill?

Edit: Will I change things up a bit or keep it exactly as is? ;) Good luck!

Dom 3 is now on Steam's Greenlight.

Hinnom has taken my capital. I've got one fortress (and one province for that fortress), no armies, and unrest over 100 in that province, so I can't recruit anything. I'm going AI. Best of luck to the remaining players.

:(

A valiant defense right up to the end Nate, you never gave up. I fear my own time in this world is short, but I'll do what I can... Now, where is Pebbles. He needs more dead to feast on!


......Come here boy! Look at these tasty corpses! Oh, you are growing big and strong aren't you boy!

Even though the most likely outcome of this game is me getting brutally sodomized, I just wanted to pop in and say this has been the most fun I've had in a Dom game in a while. Thanks for letting me play! :)

Little bit of self pimpery: check out Nate's aar for a good read on a rand game (from two sides!)

http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/dominions-3-multiplayer-an-aar.1880/

"SIR!"

The courier flicked a salute, quickly depositing his package on the table in front of Rudoral, Commander of the Nemedian Armies, before he turned sharply and exited directly from the command tent.

Rudoral glanced with annoyance at the package, likely some inconsequential drivel from one of the Fomorian "Kings" about how his chambers were too warm, or his beer was too warm, or his fucking bed wasnt waaaarm enough. Damn all the one eyes.

That thought stopped when he saw the seal, shining softly (somehow) in the pale, dimly lit, command tent.

It was from her.

His lips dried immediately, and he licked them involuntarily to give them some moisture as he reached his hand out and grabbed the vellum. Cracking open the seal he unfolded the simple document.

Simple, clear, crisp and perfect handwriting flowed across the page. His goddess had wrote him a message and his heart nearly burst in its rapture.

I expired My treaty with the hinnom
you may engage My armies against them as you see fit
you will not lose

The vellum fell from his stiff, unfeeling hands, as he read and contemplated its message.

You will not lose.

This wasn't a prediction. This wasn't support. This was a statement, of which any other possibility presented with it aboslutely dire repurcussions.

The Hinnom.

My god.

Mictlan was easy. He had caught them divided and unaware. As the saying goes, they were dead before they even realized their head was off their body. And his armies, her armies, had been enjoying this past half year - taking in the fruit of their conquest. But that time was over now. Blood was going to flow in earnest now.

The Hinnom were not Mictlan.

He slumped to his chair as he eyed the ominous map on his war table.

The thoughts flowed easily:

Hinnom

Oh

my

god


It was the punctuation of them which doomed his soul.

Things are about to get really crazy in this game! Why do I feel like I just poked the hornet's nest one too many times this turn ;).

Finally got home and a chance to view some battles. I felt bad enough that I forgot to script Fire Protection in a battle I knew I was going to go against Dust Walkers, but not only that happened but my brilliant Nature mage decided to cast Mass Protection instead of Mass Regeneration, ugh! I really wish there was a way to control how many gems a guy spends on a spell and I knew better than to expect the same mage to cast two spells with gems and not burn em all in the first cast, but Mass Protection? gah! Man there was a lot of burning in that fight, lol. My archers looked pretty dumb firing flaming arrows instead of being protected from fire heheh. Oh well :) I was hoping my one guy got off a lucky Bone Melter on your air queen, but looks like you had her scripted to retreat.

Gotta say, the zmey battle surprised me - i considered that an easy win - i learned some limitations to mistform i never knew.

I've won a game as Formoria, and I don't know that I love fighting Zmey one on one with a King under normal circumstances. However I was surprised that it was that big of a mauling. Had to watch it three times before I figured out what was up :P

I don't want to take away from your side... you were good there. I got paralyzed. I didn't know if you were going to attack or not. If you were, I wouldn't have enough to beat you. If you didn't, I had far more than I needed to storm. What I should have done was either fully committed to fighting, or gotten the bulk of the troops out. Instead, I left a middling squad of troops there that I didn't think could win. Which is obviously awful. As I said, I really just got paralyzed. I couldn't convince myself to commit, but I didn't want to withdraw either. So instead I half-assed it and it ended as one would expect. I suppose my hope was that if you attacked that I would be able to at least bleed your guys a bit, but I really underestimated how many mages you had present, so I didn't really have much shot of even doing that much.

Ya, still watching it, i'm puzzled. Going in, i thought I had every base covered, and it would be a simple win:

The background
King defense of 25, and with a shield with parry 7 vs zmey attack of 18. Essentially, i figure the zmey needs to get a DRN of +14 greater than the king DRN to get a hit. Yes, it has pretty high STR - but if it gets through, the king should last through about 3 hits, not taking regen into consideration.
King has FR of 150, obviously overkill, so fire should just roll of his back with no damage.
King brings a water elemental along, this will give him the time to mistform and bless, before going into the battle.

The battle
round 1
zmey(80 hp) attacks elemental. Water elemental died first round - this i thought might happen, but wasnt too worried
King gets off mistform as planned

round 2
Looks like zmey misses
King goes off script and hits with frost brand for 13

round 3
zmey breathes, and breaks king mistform (??not sure why that happened given the FR)
King hits - hard to tell, but looks like 21 damage and 1(prob chi shoes)

round 4
King gets nuked...

Possibilities,
In round 3, it's not the breath that breaks mistform, but one of the hits(prob claws or tail), it just happens at the same time
Round 4 - really not sure, for all 3 hits to hit, given the DRN needed, means either a miracle happened here, or something that I didn't factor in to the equation is happening.

First i thought about fatigue - and the king was last at 22, which carries a -2defense, to the zmeys 18 (0), but that's still pretty long odds.
The only other thing i can think of why the zmey beat the defense so easily is that maybe each of the zmey's attacks counts against the multiple attack penalty. Still, this would mean the Def for the bites were 23, 21, and 19, unless the fire breath counted as the first attack, in which case each is lowered by 2.

That's the only thing i can think of though, and it makes sense - but i never considered multiple attacks coming from the same source as against the multiple attack penalty. If that's true, I learned something new! :)

pyrhic, multiple attacks from the same source do indeed lower defence. The zmey has three bites, two claws and a tail after breathing fire, so on the last hit you'll have -12 defence. I think you've also confused something when it comes to shields but it's a bit hard to tell from what you write. The shield parry is not added to the defence rating once again, the shield is already figured into the defence rating you see printed on the unit.

If you want to go zmey-hunting with a thug like that, a frost brand is among the worst weapons to bring. Use a couple of armor-negating daggers, or an eye shield (to blind the damn thing) along with an armor-piercing weapon. Zmey are notoriously hard to kill with a teleporting thug though, that's why they're so popular. I killed some playing Eriu using two or three cloud trapezing tuatha at once wielding hero's blades, but that weapon won't work for the your giants.

Hmmm....afaik, the parry value is included for calculation of a shield hit, in which case the shield prot is added to the protection for calculation of damage So, att 27 vs def 25, and with a shield parry of 7, would qualify for a shield hit and allow for the shield to negate a good chunk of damage.

Question though, since its str is 43, does that mean all 6 attacks (3 bites, 2 claw, 1 tail) are all at that? For some reason, i was only thinking that that applies to attacks that did damage(ie bite)....so my chi shoes, on my 25str giant, should deliver 2x25str+DRN attacks (against whatever Prot+DRN) the defender has?

Ugh, looking at the tool tip, I think that's so. So that's 2 things I learned today! :)

Heh.. ya.. ZMey have a lot of attacks and each lowers defense by 2, so the Zmey can hit the king. That's why I was saying I don't usually love it as Fomoria. The Zmey will score some hits. Normally, the Zmey would have a strengh of 24 though, so without a crit (which with a little fatigue results in a decent chance) the Mistform might hold. The thing that I have seen though is that too often, the Zmey can either get a crit (or lucky hit) to break mistform (then things go bad) Or even throw scripting off (as you saw some) by attacking before Mistform even gets up. Or maybe just a lot of hits for one and cause an affliction that starts a downward spiral. (maybe a chest wound) and then kill the king.

The thing that made this one so nuts though was the 43 strength. I didn't notice the 43 strength at first, but that strength will bust Mistform and then go wild. When I've played as Fomoria, I've lost kings in that fight, but it's usually a lot closer. The 43 Strength on that Zmey is what made that one so lopsided.

I suppose just for clarification, the strength is added on all attacks unless it specifically says "Strength Not Added" on the weapon/attack.

Also, Pyrhic.. tell me what you were referring to on Qt3 a week or two ago!

No! ;)

Oooh oooh *raises hand* I know! Maybe we can work out a deal for them, hmm like maybe 250 gems? ;)

Man, I think I got a bad DRN roll that round. My mound king with MR15 resists two mind hunts, but my MR19 Queen got destroyed on the first try. I had an amulet made for her too and an open slot, but forgot to give it to her last turn I guess. Ugh. She was pretty mean and was hoping to use her a bit.

I don't think I like Mind Hunt much. For years I thought Mind Hunt could only hurt S mages, and is actually the opposite in a way. I mixed them up with Magic Duel on that aspect and for some reason it wasn't until this game that I realized the difference, heh. Mind Hunting normal commanders is just mean - mean as in very effective.

I think there may have been some bad luck, but not really DRN based. 18 MR is not considered very much in the killzone for a kitted out hunter. Not like it will be automatic certainly, but it won't last very long. So a 19 MR on a high value target like that is not really safe from a kitted out hunter either.

Where you got unlucky is that the first kitted out hunter to cast hit her. I had some other much less capable hunters casting too and those hit your Mound King.

My plan was to use several hunters hoping the less capable would kill the chaff so the kitted one would target your Queen. It was prob actually bad luck on my part that he resisted all of them, but since the queen was already dead, I'm obv. pretty ok with the end results :P

How is there not a "dislike" I can push! :(

Yeah I was reading up on Mind Hunt a bit more and seems it checks against MR14, so you need a lot higher MR to be safer than I would have thought. Still, it was a little unlucky overall since my MR15 guy saved two times and I did make two major mistakes opening her up for that. I realized it right after I looked at the turn and you noticed it right away and focused your attacks on the right province, heh.

The hall of fame looks pretty boring now. How am I meant to drink to the passing of Attilus all those seasons ago, my most successful prophet smiting the undead around my lands.

While I'm listening to the song, well, the lyrics pretty much sum up the game for me now:

Flames to greet the harvest
Storms to face in awe
Winds to weave through every wood
Walls to dull the road

Countless waves around me
Strong until the last
Leaning into dimming dreams
All that was has passed.

I do wonder if Hinnom's undead can match the holy power of my priests. You might need some more Austen, not sure if 500-odd will cut it ;-)

I've had the plague last few days so I haven't been much up for posting. Would like to do more, but now I'm behind on everything :P

I did want to say that was some amazing teamwork/taking one for the team. In a recent game on Qt3, the leader had 2 SCs and no one would even try to stop them. You guys tho! You guys...

Between Pyrhic blowing gems and throwing away Cap Only commanders and Pyrhic ceding water provinces bordering his capitol, that is some serious self-sacrifice for the team (not sure what's up with the water, but I'm sure I will be horrified when I find out ;) )

Will try and type a bit more later.

Well, when you mind hunted the last water commander i sent, and then killed my last guys with water pills, that pretty much ended my ability to defend the water. And the commanders were supposed to retreat - however, i figured they might get caught by flying troops, and they did - and were killed before they could flee. Cap only commanders, i still have lots of...so it was a worthwhile test....there's a lot of end game stuff I've never even thought of, yet alone tried: this kind of 'market-garden' operation was something that i thought always couldve worked.

Yeah, hopefully it isn't too frustrating for you, Austen, as I have been campaigning pretty hard for that for a while now. I truly felt the only way one of us had a chance to win was to team up on you, and it appears I was right. You are still managing to take out players and grind down others including Fomoria a bit from the sounds of it. I am sustaining, but feel as soon as you can direct more attention to me I will fall like a house of cards. It looks like we waited a bit too long to challenge you.

It sounds like quite a few of us are learning things, though, so hopefully it will end up worthwhile no matter the outcome. It sounds like people have lots of stories anyway that we can share when the game is over :).

Actually Kelan, I think this game is a blast. The only frustrating part is that I haven't ever been on a team that worked this well :P

The personal/social dynamics of these games are always so interesting. On the Qt3 game (Kill Scribble) I was mentioning, I really thought if we all threw everything at the leader that we could bring him down. However, there seemed to be a lot of "not wanting to play kingmaker" (although not acting was essentially the same thing) and "Well I'm not going to win, so why should I go all out to help you win?" At the time, even though it was frustrating, I kind of got where they were coming from.

In this game though, you guys are working together incredibly well. It's really refreshing. I've been in too many games where people decide to stop participating when they decide they don't have a realistic chance to win. Maybe they still do turns, but they are not really actively working to impact the game. It's almost like playing is just a chore if they don't think they will win - they will do it, but they certainly won't try.

I always try to do everything I can to have fun and influence the game, even if I am clearly fighting a losing battle. Make a big last stand, go raid someone incessantly, maybe try something I haven't done before (as Pyrhic alluded to earlier) that maybe I wouldn't try if I was in a better position.

I also think that people give up on games way too early. Maybe people play too much single player Civilization and expect to roll and just reload/restart when it doesn't work. Often people take one or two setbacks and give up. Truth is, there's always some adversity and setbacks in the course of a game. I think a lot of winning the game has to do with how you handle those setbacks. Some of it is def. skill/experience, but a lot of it is just having your head right.

I was in a vets game that Calahan organized not too long ago where I was in the bottom/middle of the pack almost the whole game. I really thought I had no chance to win, but was going to keep playing and see if maybe an opportunity would pop up. If nothing else, playing with a strong player list would be educational Eventually things turned around and I won somehow (still not really sure how). It's sort of like the notion in sports of "extending the game". Even though things may not look good, if you can just stay in it, sometimes crazy things happen.

Way too many people get one army smashed by an opponents army or SC and just give up. The end result is that they lose a game they were still competitive in, and worst of all - learn nothing.

I'm really into sports (and thus sports cliches) and believe in the power of words and symbols. I tell my daughter (who has been playing this game with me) all the time "No one likes to lose." That's not even really a sports cliche.. it holds in lots of different parts of life. In Dominions, people like to build up their armies and forge their equipment and kit out their commanders. But they sure hate it when those armies and commanders get smashed.

For a lot of folks, the first time that happens, it's game over. They march their armies and equipment back into the forts and wait for the end complaining about something being OP, or their bad luck, or even their misplays sometimes. What they don't do is keep fighting. Because then they might lose. And losing sucks.

It's even worse in a game like this that is fairly cerebral and very time consuming. You put a lot of yourself into it, designing your nation, pretender, and strategy. Planning research, calculating odds, scripting fights. Plus all the time scouring the manual and the forums, looking for tips. When you lose at something you put that much into, it's tough. You've made a real commitment of your time and to see it go down in flames (or ice, or lightning) is frustrating.

When I first started playing MP, I got murdered. A lot. I can vividly recall spending hours choosing troops and planning and scripting only to get annihilated over and over. I remember being in my fourth or fifth game and putting in lost of time in another losing battle. It occurred to me that I had never won a single fight that was remotely even. I wanted to just quit playing Dom altogether. Finally though, I won a couple battles and then before long a couple games and things got better :P

The point of this side tangent is that losing sucks and it's hard to stay committed when you're losing. And that leads to a downward spiral where you lose more because you didn't keep fighting and learning.

Heh.. soo.. wall of text.. sorry.. I do that sometimes.. I actually wanted to mention some specifics about the game, but I have to run now :P

TLDR; You guys are awesome and this game is a blast! :)

Glad to hear it Austen.

Also, Pebbles grows hungry. Stop throwing bones at him and send us something a little more meatier :-)

Actually, my Eater of the Dead will probably become independent soon. No idea what sort of ramifications that involves, whether it will then lay siege to my cap, or I can tell it to run free and cause havoc wherever it pleases. Either way, it'll be a nice parting gift for the world.

Let's please not get into that again. Leave the old games behind.

I'm not really getting into it. I'm just pointing out that what's happening in this game isn't really typical.

Well now.. that's certainly an interesting turn of events.