Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

So, I'm trying out the newest CBM 1.92, after not playing Dominions for a number of years. One of the things that is important to the Jomon is a good SC for a god or good scales. I went with good scales, with an enchantress, but I have a few questions about tweaking it.

The Dormant Enchantress with
Dominion: 5
Production: 3
Magic: 1

Fire: 2
Air: 4
Earth: 4
Astral: 4
Death: 3
Nature: 1

And the total left over points is 0.

But there is more for tweaks, and concerns.
I could go with turmoil 3/luck 3 and hope that I can make enough money through luck events for new castles,
Or I could go Order 3/Misfortune 3 and hope my fortune Teller abilities can stop the worst of them, and with the extra cash buy more castles.
I could also go neutral and leave it as is.

The second concern is the magic. Air, Earth, Astral are set, as is death (3 death is all I'll need to get the Dai Oni with a skull staff),
but should I have enough points to put 1 in Fire, nature and water, or 2 points in one, and one of the others. I'm pretty sure I'll take fire no matter what, so the question is, what is more useful, water or nature?
One my shugjenga I have a decent chance of 2 nature, and if I get one sea province, water is taken care of?

Any other suggestions are cool too.
Thanks.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

1 Nature is pretty useless on your god - it's no better than what your recruitables have and site searching at 1 is not good. I'd also question the purpose of taking a rainbow for a nation that already has such awesome site searchers, esp. considering you're pretty vulnerable early game and could do with some help there.

I'd suggest a dormant Lord of Plenty instead of the Enchantress. Air 4, Astral 4, Earth 4, Death 3 (for Shuras). He's much tougher than the Enchantress and brings you more gems to boot. Your Onmyojis and Shugenjas should find you enough F income to empower him in Fire should you get to the stage where you get to summon Dais.
You could also go with a Titan I suppose, since he starts with 2 Air it comes down to the same price. Or a Great General if you're just dying for some mapmove 1 infantry.

You might want to consider Death to pay for it, your mages are pretty long lived and the income loss of 1 point of Death is pretty negligible. Or you could take 1 Misfortune and hope the RNG doesn't decide to hate you.

Not sure I'd really take Production over Order. For early expansion, Yamabushis backed by Ashigarus are pretty solid provided you give them either some indep shield dudes to catch arrows, or an Air monk. A couple of ninjas can also do some damage on provinces other nations would have a hard time getting, like Elephants). Later on, you can count on having enough gold and castles to just vomit Aka-Onis. Even with Prod 3, people seem to believe you won't be able to make enough Samurai Archers fast enough that they'll be more efficient at shooting stuff than indy shortbows en masse would be, esp. in the armour heavy late age.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Don´t forget death, you have no old mages so a little bit of death is a good choice, remember that you can build castles underwater, and recruit a nice good mage, but he is coldblooded.

My recomendation is an awake rainbow, i usually choose the crone/enchantres and focus on manual site searching, THE KEY to JOMON is gems a lot of gems.

Scales: order is a must, also a little bit of production helps a lot with expanding, but 1 or 2 no more. Heat is good for points and it works with your underwater mage. Death is a very good choice for Jomon, no oldage, i usually take 1-2 death. Magic/drain depends on luck scales, i usually go for magic 1 and neutral luck/misfortune. You can tweak these sacrificing magic paths and get order 1/prod 3/heat 2/death 2/ luck 3 and magic 1 or drain 2.

For the magic paths: remember that you have natural acces to all but death and blood paths so you can remote sitesearch easy and free your pretender from manual site searching once you get good death income. Focus your pretender:
-A4 for boosters.
-D4 manual site searching and national summons, Dai oni is good BUT Ghost generals AKA Shura are really cheap good thugs undead/fear/ethereal for 6D gems.
-F1 Skull of fire and Dai oni and if you feel generous F3 for flaming helmet.
-S 3-4 rings
-N 3-4 Mother oak/regeneration to your holy spirits AKA Kenzoku. Or nature 0.
-E 1+ dai tengu
-W 1+ well you are manual site searching anyway.

Holy **** i should write a guide :D. Remember your national summons(conjuration school) the Oni general requires 2d to summon and he comes 1D +1F/E/D100%.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

So, an awake leader for site searching. I guess that could work, but death scales and heat. I hadn't thought of that. If I take death, I'm not taking misfortune.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Playing as Joman you're first choice is how are you going to survive the first 30 turns.
High resources for your troops...that's one way.
Put a decent bless on your sacreds.....that works too.
Get a killer SC and let him rip....that's just classic.

Once you are past those first 30 turns....You can't have enough money.
You just can't. Those 500 GP underwater mages are GREAT but...well, they cost 500 GP.

If you get past the first 30 turns......You will be money and gem limited. I'm just saying...In the current game where I am Joman, boy do I wish I had taken more order.

Now, as Joman unless you are really lucky with mercs, trades or sites, the only way you'll get into death and your best summons will be with your pretender, but that's a pretender build issue, not a scale issue.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

P3G3L3Mg1 is my standard scales build, using temperature extreme of choice 3 to offset, and i've used everything from O3 to T3. I would definitely go scales on Jomon. Its worth noting that P and G are very good in CBM 1.9x.

Lord of Plenty or other gem-producing commanders are great for Jomon.

A pretender with specifically tailored magic to make use of key spells can also work.

Pure scales is perfectly playable for Jomon. (O3 and possibly taking Mg3 or dropping the temperature scale entirely).

I would not take a generic rainbow (you get plenty good magic diversity). I rarely take an awake SC (too much invested in the early game).

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

So, scales are really important, Bless is less important, and diversity is not as necessary.

What about this

Lord of Plenty
4 Earth/4 Astral

Dominion 6
T:3
P:3
H:3
G:3
L:3
M:1

I can build many units with my production.
The awake Lord of Plenty can produce gems for me, and act as a research, and later produce some of the better magic items there are. I get a minor bless for my sacreds to boot.

I can trade my lord of Plenty for a Lady of Fortune, and build an army I can take under the sea (50 Samurai might do it).

Quick question = What determines how many gems and what kind the lord of plenty produces. All I seem to get in 6 turns against the AI is Earth and Astral.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

The gems a pretender produces are hard-coded. No matter what paths a Lord of Plenty has, he'll only ever produce 1 astral and 1 earth a turn. Still, that's pretty good because the only pretender that produces more types of gems is the Lord of Rebirth who creates 1 earth, 1 nature and 1 death/turn.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I went for a master lich with f2 and d4 in a game I'm playing...

Good scales too...

I'm happy with it... :)

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Well, not hard coded, mods can change the amounts of gems units give. But it is static and only depends on the unit type.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

What I wouldn't give to have just a few more pretender options. Love to have a pretender with access to death and fire natural, otherwise I'm starting to think the Liche with 1 fire and death is the best solution.

It seems that you need super high production is necessary, as is gold (I keep running out)! Misfortune is okay to take, but then so is death, but misfortune and death together is bad! Heat scales are okay in small amounts. It's really frustating making a pretender for this realm.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

If you take a temp scale, take cold, not heat. At least if you have misfortune. Misfortune and Heat burn your labs a lot. Also cold will help with your water elementals, and doesn't affect the income of any underwater province you might score.

I wouldn't say you need super high production - the samurai are higher resource than average but they're not Ulmish black plates either. 1 or 0 is quite enough, you can always compensate by having more castles (even if those castles don't have labs or temples - a ninja castle is not the worst thing to have)

I'm not sure the Lich is all that great, because it won't get you into the water any easier whereas a tough bloke like the Lord of Plenty can even with just Const-0 items and some token Alteration research (Boots of the Behemoth, Ring of Poison Protection, Ring of Water Breathing, any helmet. Script Body Ethereal, Ironskin, Personal Luck, hold, hold, attack. At Const 2 he gets a Midget Masher or Gloves of the Gladiator instead, freeing his feet for Birch Boots).
As long as you keep him away from trolls, and possibly Ichtyids as well (nets always scare me), he should be able to stomp just about anything while always being one Returning away from home.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

But if I don't go with a Rainbow or a Liche, what is my end game? Do I try to get into Dai Onis another way?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Well, you have astral mages with *5* other random paths, and the ability to craft crystal matrices in bulk to hook up any other mages you find so large armies supported by communions casting from an extremely open spellbook are a go - fog warriors, army of X, mass flight, weapons of sharpness, gaia's blessing, will of the fates, mass regeneration, relief, quickness... really, with the exception of death spells you can pretty much cast *anything* from *any castle* in the fullness of time.

You also should have a large and varied gem income - the only paths you're missing remote site searching in are death (which you can take on your god) and blood (which is semi-easy to bootstrap into with scouts and a death god, or that you can just ignore entirely). There's very little mundane equipment you can't make.

If you take D magic on your pretender, and you most definitely should strive to, you'll have tons of Shuras to raid with - without equipment a pair of them can take just about any amount of PD with little or no equipment. Sure, a proper SC will cream them, but you can make a lot more Shuras than the other guy can make SCs. All other things being equal, if you can take 2 provinces of his while he takes 1 of yours, you win.

Or you could indeed go Dai Onis (as I said earlier, with a D3 LoP they're just one booster and one empowerment away), but honestly they're not that great for their gem tag (not to mention they still carry upkeep over from the EA, so unlike other summons they'll wreck your bank account). I would take 4 Shuras over 1 Dai Oni any day, especially without a bless tailored for them.

If you're playing the latest CBM, treants are pretty neat and you shouldn't have too much trouble recruiting them using your bootsrap Nature summons (Kitsunes). Mechanical Giants are also good additions to your armies, and your E4 god will have no problem summoning them. You can get Grendelkins easily, too - any W1E2 Master Shug can get them with easy to forge boosters.

If the other guy is fielding communions too, you can pull a really nasty trick with your Dai Tengus and minimal equipment (a hat, MR & luck amulets, gems ): Cloud Trapeze in, Rain of Stones, retreat. Rince, repeat. Very tough to counter for anyone who isn't Pythium, especially if you put astral mages in the provinces he could retreat into so your opponent can't just Mind Hunt him.

Try and look up Baalz' guides to Tien Chi for more ideas, or even guides to Arcoscephale, both nations are comparable with Jomon in that they have lots of varied but weak paths. But suffice to say, as Jomon, don't sweat the endgame. You *rock* the endgame.
It's the early game you gotta watch out for.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Cool, thanks. I have more questions if I may. Teaching Sign, how does that work with the Crystal Shield or Power of the Spheres? Does it stack and can you use it with communion. And Mediation, is it worth it to make a Master Matrix, and stick it on a Monk, so that they can cast mediation?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I'm honestly not sure (haven't actually played with Jomon in MP yet, most of my "wisdom" comes from playing Shinuyama and TC), but on paper both seem like great additions to a communion... until they run out of script, that is.
If you're fielding a large communion, once his scripting is over your Mediation monk could well get into his pixel head to cast Falling Frost or whatever over and over. The fatigue wipe seems neat for reverse communion purposes, but I'd probably give him a bow of some kind on top of the matrix and script him to cast Mediation x5, Shoot Whatevs. The teaching sign seems *extremely effing great* to stick a matrix on, even more so if it stacks with PotS (I don't know that it does, though).

As always, if you have any doubt whether this or that particular tactic works or not, the Debug mod is your friend.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

This has been a really helpful thread.
I might ignore death completely or use a Nushi to boot strap into it when the time is right.
How do Kenzoku compare to Shura?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I haven't tested this, but I believe Teaching Sign is the same effect as PotS, which would mean it won't stack.

Easy enough to test if you want to be sure.

Look for the Debug Mod if you want to make it really easy.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

It wouldn't cast Teaching sign, after I cast Power of the spheres. So I guess that answers that!

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I'd say heat is better. Jomon's best mages/recruitable thugs are the cold blooded Ryujin, and high heat makes it harder for people to wolven winter them to death.

Hopefully, the Onmyoji researching in those labs keep them from burning down too often.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Yeah, I rigorously tested this and I can confirm that PotS and Teaching Sign do not stack.

Test 1:
Order of commanders
4 communion slaves
1 N1 monk with slave matrix
1 master with crystal matrix

Script
Slaves cast communion slave, monk casts teaching sign, master casts PotS.

Result
Monk gains +1 N and H from Teaching sign before PotS is cast. After PotS is cast, all other slaves gain +1 to all paths, monk remains unchanged.



Test 2:
Order of commanders
4 communion slaves
1 N1 monk with crystal matrix
1 master with crystal matrix

Script
Slaves cast communion slave, monk casts teaching sign, master casts PotS.

Result
Monk gains +1 N and H from Teaching sign before PotS is cast, as do all the slaves. After PotS is cast, master gains +1 in all paths but none of the slaves do.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

So, Teaching sign only effected the slaves?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

In test 2 (which is the one I believe you are referring to), teaching sign effected the monk (who was 1 of 2 masters in the communion) and all the slaves, giving them all +1 in all paths. The other master in the communion then cast power of the spheres. While all the slaves + the master (but no the monk) had the little sparkle/cloud graphic you get from being effected by power of the spheres, none of the slaves received a path boost from it (though the master did).

This means that teaching sign and power of the spheres are considered identical effects and therefore don't stack.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Right now I'm trying a lady of Fortune with 4 Water, 4 Astral, 5 Domain, 3 Order, 3 Production, 2 Misfortune, 1 Magic.

The idea is that Water and Astral are to two types of mana you don't start with, so hopefully, she can find some, and with 25 troops and some armor take a sea province early in the game. The scales are good, so I can build a lot of troops, and with hopefully early misfortune won't be an issue with my mages.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

They're a little worse in general, for a couple reasons.
The most obvious one is that their price tag is higher (and in pearls, the most valuable of gems). The first piece of gear they'll respectively want is also in favour of the Shura: Shuras call for a Golden Shield which is 5 gems+5 gems, while Kenzokus want a Horror Helm, which is 10 of a single type. Finally, Shuras have a cold aura, cold+poison immunity and can swim, while Kenzokus only have a crummy standard which doesn't help them hurt or scare away anyone.

Still I mean they're not *bad*, not at all. Just comparatively weaker. And they can't be banished or dust to dusted, nor targeted with anti-undead weapons, so there's that. On the other hand, they can be Controlled or Opposed. So if you're attacking a nation with ubiquitous D, go Kenzokus ; and Shuras will work longer on nations with high S.

But besides that consideration, and until your opponent starts gearing up anti-thugs equipped with undead-killing weapons, I'd probably just stick with Shuras if I had a choice in the matter.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

The lantern shield is also 5+5 in CBM, adds fear, and is awesome. You can get the F/D crosspath with Oni Generals which aren't a terrible summon themselves. That said, you really need luck with astral income to afford any real number of astral summons.

The Shura annoys me. It's awesome, but that cold aura calls for taking cold scales, which cripple your Ryujin. Why are Ryujin cold blooded anyway? The other dragons, including the Tatsu aren't.

Come to think of it, how do you use Ryujin? There are so many contradictions. It has ridiculous mobility in dragon form, reasonable stats, and sacred, which says raiding thug, but they can't bless themselves and nothing else can and keep up. They can still thug even without a bless, but with only 1 slot in dragon form plus the cold blooded problem, it's really lackluster and easily killed for a 500 gold commander. Even the obvious buff for them, Breath of Winter, is useless since the same cold scales to empower it will kill the Ryujin. The only synergy I've been able to come up with is summoning a Dai Tengu and some additional tengu, giving it a crystal shield so it can cast divine bless and storm, and bring along Ryujin in dragon form so you have an entire flying army of storm immune casters, but even that sacrifices some of the Ryujin's mobility.

Now, if they have a priest level (their description says they spread their father's dominion which suggests some priestly power) and/or aren't cold blooded at least in dragon form, they'd be awesome, but as it is, my underwater forts tend to not recruit any commanders most turns.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I'm doing some research with LA Jomon to help with MA Jomon a bit.
I'm going with a Lady of Fortune, Dormant
4 Fire, 4 Water, 4 Astral and 2 Death. (This gives me 3 weak blesses, and some death access for Shura).
Dominion 7, Order 2, Productivity 2, Misfortune 1.

What do you think?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

As a general rule you should only ever take Magic 3, Magic 1, or Drain 2, regardless of nation (unless it's for a game with crazy settings). This is because any other choice for the Magic scale is either just an awful idea (Drain 3) or is purely wasting design points and/or research potential (Magic 0, Magic 2, Drain 1) due to the way the Magic scale settings are spaced out with regard to gaining or losing RP's.

I have not seen, or will I ever see, a good build for any nation that involves either Magic 0, Magic 2 or Drain 1 (not unless some major gameplay changes get patched/modded in). There might be a decent design involving Drain 3 for one of the nations that can ignore the RP lost with Drain, but even that is unlikely unless it's a small game, and not unless you like possibly losing sack loads of gems to the Magic Fading event (this event alone can often be enough to avoid taking Drain scales).

So while I won't comment on your build for Jomon, I will say that by taking Magic 0, you are instantly making your design a poor one, and the very first thing to do when designing a Pretender for Jomon should be to take (at least) Magic 1 and proceed from there (as is the case for 95% of nations)

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I can understand that if you are going to take Drain 1, you might as well take the battlefield hit and take Drain 2 since it won't make your research any worse and it gives you +40 for your pretender to use elsewhere.

Likewise, I can see that taking Magic 2 makes spells marginally easier to cast than Magic 1, but is not worth 40 design points.

I'm a bit surprised to see Magic 0 on your list and I can't immediately come up with a straightforward reason why you think this would be prohibited.

On the other hand, I've read enough of your posts to be confident that you have a good reason for excluding what seems to me to be the balanced magic 0 option. Would you mind explaining?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

The vast majority of non-cap Mages in the game have base research of between 3-5RP. And since (in a normal game) these are the guys or gals who are likely to be doing the main bulk of your research over the course of a game, then it makes sense to make them more efficient and more cost effective. So when you consider the difference in RP you get with Magic 0 and Magic 1 for these typical mages...

(Magic 0 -- Magic 1 = +%increase)
3RP -- 4RP = +33%
4RP -- 5RP = +25%
5RP -- 6RP = +20%

...then for just 40 design points you are substantially increasing your RP output. And IMO no other use of design points gets you anywhere near as much bang for your buck as what you get by going from Magic 0 to Magic 1. Magic wins more games than anything else does, and Magic 0 - Magic 1 is the best value for money scale purchase IMO. This really is a case of 1+1 equalling 2.

And so given that, you need to have an insanely good reason for going with Magic 0 over Magic 1, as just about anything and everything else should be sacrificed to find the 40 points needed to tip the Magic scale one nudge in the positive direction.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

The advice, generally, is good, but I think it overstates it a tad in the case of Magic 0.

Take Bogarus, as one example. From memory, their master of names is 8 RP. +1 on the magic scale yields about a 12.5% increase in research. (Lessened by mages that are crafting, searching or engaged in battle of course).

Whereas +1 on the Order Scale results in a 6-7% increase in the value of all income on all provinces.

Likewise Mictlan and other blood nations can use dome of corruption to increase the magic scale to m+3. If you are setup to endure the horrors - then you can enjoy M+3 without paying the design points for it.

But, like Calahan said - usually magic+1 is a very good design choice.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

No offense, but when talking about Magic scales/research efficiency, you can never simply say "Take the most powerful research nation in the game, as one example". As if you do that then any point you make, no matter how valid it might be, is rendered mute because you chose the most extreme example possible to make the point with.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Look man, I'm not going to match your Forum-foo. I've little interest in arguing about how to make an argument.

If this were an interesting discussion, I would likewise say that any advice that says "I will *never* see a good Magic-0 build (paraphrase)" is also rendered moot.

I gave two examples that occurred off the top of my head. But it really is not that difficult to give other examples.

For example:
You have a pretender choice that you *really* love and want to play. The build is

[Exact build here, includes: Unluck 3]

And you still have to come up with 40 more design points.
You may well choose to drop magic to 0 rather than drop to death -3. Not so much because of the - to population, but because of unlocking the horrendous death events.

For another example:
You have EA-Arco with the Titaness pretender. You have something like 35 RP per turn with the pretender - and tons of available RP with the philosophers.

In many cases, all you need to do is obtain your research objects fast enough to support your goals. Once that occurs your priorities are better spent in other areas.

Or you start with expensive old age mages. You may need growth more than research to keep your mages alive.

Always true - no, of course not. But, lets take a step back: Do you really think there are *no* good magic-0 builds?

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I don't think anybody has ever been able to pull this off and end up better than he started using the dome of corruption.

It's one of those forum myths, like. Use bad scales but don't spread them. Move your mages around so you don't have the drain 3 problems.

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

Your Forum-foo is strong, but it is no match for my Pretentiousspellnazi style!

Re: Scales for the Jomon in CBM 1.92
 

I agree totally with this comment.