Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Thanks for playing durecellrabbit and for fighting until the end. Please send in your last turn as the server is expecting it and otherwise won't host until the deadline arrives.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Hunter of Heroes? Barely more dangerous than a regular Horror apart from more health, a few more attacks, and one MR-negates instant-death attack; no threat at all to a well-equipped supercombatant without a ton of luck. Eater of Dreams? Same deal. Abomination of Desolation? Even less dangerous than the other two, without even getting the instant-death attack. Maker of Ruins? 180 armor-negating damage per round split across four weapons with 20 attack skill.

A hundred and eighty.

One of these things is not like the others!

I guess maybe I shouldn't talk down Eater of Dreams so much, since that might not have gone quite as badly if he hadn't gnawed off the Ember Lord's shield-bearing arm with a fluke hit a few turns ago.

Also, the very last Phoenix Pyre explosion? The one that went off after his fatigue was above 100 and couldn't save his life? It blinded the Maker of Ruins. SIGH.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

The Maker of Ruins also attacked me when I put BoT up. Instakilled the vamp lord. Luckily, that doesn't stop the global.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Somehow I feel less good about slaughering Shinus with Earthquake than I did a week ago...

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

No, Pjoo, the slaughtering with the earthquake was fine. I had it coming for attacking you. :)

The business with the horrors does sound disturbing. But I want to discuss a topic that hits a little closer to home: Skrattis. Those things are insanely powerful. One of my fairly well-equipped tartarians went up against 2 similarly-equipped Skrattis and got absolutely torn apart in a single round. I'm talking 28 prot 20 defense, and he got ripped to pieces.

I'm wondering if it's reasonable that the tartarian that cost me 12 death gems to summon, 15 nature gems to Gift of Reason, and a few turns drinking from the Chalice should be such easy prey for cap-only recruitables, which can be bought 1/turn for a measly 250 gold. Oh, and I'm fairly convinced that the second Skratti was an afterthought- one could have finished my tartarian just as easily.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

27 gems plus equipment. Pffffft. My 50-gem Kings of Elemental Fire never did much better. 60-gem Conjuration 9 Ember Lords can beat them though! I never get the chance to put this into practice long-term because they'd just get banished to Kokytos instantly from most of the way across the battlefield with perfect precision and no save, but they can do it!

Back in the good old days I used to be able to take them out with mage shenanigans. Teleport squads of 4-5 fire/air mages at them and then Incinerate/Orb Lightning them to death. Boy was that ever satisfying. Those days ended when they just started equipping for 100% fire/lightning resistance, though. Lost a couple of good Harbingers that way.

Sometimes I wonder if swarms of smaller elite units would be a better bet, but quickened AoE attacks kind of reduce the viability of that a lot. I did totally see a Skratti laid low by a small squad of Bandar Log's tiger riders once, but that may have been a fluke. Royal Guards have never done nearly as well, in any case.

Their innate magic resistance is kind of lowish as far as supercombatants go (it drops to 14 in werewolf form when 17-18 or so seems to be a healthy baseline for most stuff), but that plus equipment is still a lot to overcome when they're in moderate numbers or supported by an army. An Amulet of Antimagic alone puts them at a 94% resist chance without penetration, and Gygjas have no trouble forging Rainbow Armor to bring that up to 97%.

At the end of the day, though, ambidexterity + auxiliary bite attack + high strength + Quicken Self is such a brutally powerful offensive setup even with lousy weapons that their defenses hardly ever even come into play.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

A skrattir with the stone sword. Moved in to kill the SC's. Second Skrattir was there to ensure survival if you moved multiple SC's in. For 65 egems, I wouldn't think it that unfair.

Funny thing, while my skrattir killed the wendigo and the SC. I lost one to barbarians... 250 gold + 30 gems... They just don't do that well vs heavy hitting armies. Vine men no problem. Knights... you die.

The skrattir are also heavily nerfed in cbm 1.8+

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Woops, don't know if I can play the turn in the next few hours, could I get a 12 hr extension?

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Sure, hosting postponed 12 hours.

Re: Boot Camp - Newbie intro to Dominions MP - Running
 

Well, I think that's probably just about game right there. Jotunheim is officially impenetrable even split between two immensely distant fronts. He's got well beyond a critical mass of vampires and will only get stronger the more he turtles. I don't even have meaningful access to my own national mages anymore thanks to Burden of Time (it might not yet be impossible to take it down (again), but I've lost so much over the past couple dozen turns while inflicting close to zero damage against Jotunheim that it'd surely be impossible for me to catch up anyway). I'm way at the top of the charts in gold and gem income and I still feel totally unable to make any further progress.

The sad thing is that my brilliant and/or suicidal plan to make a decapitation airstrike against the capital with my sky pirate army never had a chance because it got intercepted with incoming troops before it got to move, resulting in being crushed with Jotunheim's full force this turn (I hadn't even allocated any gems yet, so I could save them for next turn). Which is really unfortunate, because other than that the enemy did basically what I was hoping they'd do, namely move army AWAY from the capital instead of towards it, making it impossible for non-flying troops to get there in time to break the siege (I wasn't even attempting to storm Black Alps with any seriousness). Though to be honest the vampire army might have beaten me even with zero support from anything else at this point.

Speaking of which...if I HAD managed to get that entire army to Recenna unopposed, and had been ready to storm it immediately, and all those vampires flew in to defend it the turn after...would I have had to fight them TWICE, once outside the walls and again inside? Or would they not be able to come back to life? I don't really know how immortality works in that circumstance. If it's the former I'd have surely had no chance anyway. Probably something I should have found out about beforehand, but I'm pretty much out of material over here anyway.