Same here. :( I was hoping for some dramatic battles this turn.
Perhaps we should pause the game until the sub is found, unless Clark can make his turns while looking for sub? It would really whack the balance of the game if the largest nation would begin stalling their turns in the middle of the war with two of its neigbors.
What do you think guys?
Don’t get you get hit by a lot of indie barbarian hordes? I imagine it gets expensive on the PD to be secure from that.
Yes, you do get hit with barbarian events time to time. But Barbarians are so easy to defeat. And PD against barbarian hordes is a waste of money. Personally I just keep fast moving firefighter brigade that quickly puts down any rebellion/invasion from random event. And I always have mutually supportive chain of castles, which I can use to raise barbarian-fighting army in one turn if I need to.
Against even 120 barbarian event just 30 indep archers and 10 medium infantry will win the battle any day, with right use of decoys and scripting. And most nations have national troops that are better than indeps.
The huge factor why it’s often a good idea to take Misfortune 3 in MP games is the way Dom 3 engine treats random events. There is a hardcoded limit on the number of events per turn. Under normal circumstances you can’t get more than 4 events per turn. So even if you have 80 provinces empire you will still get no more than 4 events per turn. With Misfortune 3 in average 3 of these events are bad, one is good. And in such situation you’ll barely notice it. But 120 “free” desing points is a huge bonus.
P.S. Oh, and if you’ve managed to snatch Sickle of Pain, the “bad” barbarian events that come more often with Misfortune 3 is a very nice bonus. Just drop a teleporting golem armed with Sickle and some cheap items on barbarian horde, and you will get 30 death gems from it without suffering any risk. Not too bad, IMHO. =)
Rollory
2724
I agree.
It really is a damn shame that this game has had so many players essentially vaporize. I’m almost to the point where it doesn’t matter to me much whether or not I win - the victory feels meaningless when it hasn’t been the same people playing consistently from the start, and when multiple people simply stopped being factors at all for no good in-game reason.
Rollory
2725
!!!
…
That is NOT how I would have expected it to work.
Enidigm
2726
Yea but you also get a much higher chance of having those wonderful Plague events in your capital early on as well.
I’m not going to totally disagree since rape-and-pillage your empire seems to be the strategy du jour in Dominions, and 3-Order 2-Mistfortune is a pretty common scale choice, but Misfortune does suck in many ways, especially if you have some powerful heroes. I tend to play thematically though, just a habit, so i generally only take Misfortune when the “theme” calls for it in my judgement.
Now of course i can live without Abasi and his club, or that retired Pythium gladiator.
Yes, it is one of the less known facts about Dominions. And I understand your reaction, I had a similar one when I’ve learned about it myself.
Hetzer
2728
Yeah but with misfortune -2 or even -3 you are calling for an early end… even the bad events get worse, there arent only barbarians out there but vampire attacks, or mummy attacks or the good old adventurer party that i have seen in dawn of dominions at my neighbor… if such an event comes in the first three turns it is often game over for you…
First of all - new change in dominion 3 means that some of the worst events simply can’t happen in the first 5 turns. Also the faster you expand the less chances are that the bad event would happen to your capital. And in MP games you have to expand fast to compete.
Besides from the examples that you’ve used, the mummy attack is rare. Vampire attack is very easy to repel, since vampires have protection 0. If you play your cards right you can have your archers (not to mention priests) fire at vampires at point blank,. The vampires would fly to the screening infantry on the first turn, which you can position right in front of the archers/priests. That means all arrows would hit their targets, and just two arrows is will likely to kill the vampire.
And I love Bogus&K attack - it is good source of items, including some nice unique onces.
Plus as I said earlier, with Sickle of Pain any of these “bad” events become awesome +30 risk-free death gems event for you. There are no “good” events in the game that beats that gem-wise. :) Of course Sickle is a minor factor and not the real reason to choose Misfortune 3, since other people could beat you to it and unique artifacts come late in the game, but still it is something you should keep in mind while playing Misfortune scales.
walTer
2730
Just to let everyone know, Marcin’s cable is down, so Squidz and Androphag servers are currently down- the earliest they could be up is Sunday…you know how those cable guys are.
I went back and checked the manual’s suggested pretender for Early Era Mictlan, and it is indeed F9W9B6, Imprisoned Fountain with Dom7, Order 3, Sloth 3, Death 3, Misfortune 3, Heat 2 and Magic 1. It felt like a fairly robust starting position, but you really have to keep on your toes to pump up the dominion. And I don’t think I played it up to par in Shirley, but that’s purely my fault (just because you can roll over indies with impunity, doesn’t mean you should attack Ermor on turn 10.).
No, make that three dire portents, all cast on the same turn, by three different nations. Who didn’t invite me to the global spell party? Was there a baby shower? A bar mitzvah?
You really must stop blowing your nose with the memos, Dave. Even the AI managed to cast a global this turn.
Speaking of Bandar - are you going to play anymore, Clark? If not, do we need to decide on some ground rules for going forward without an active R’lyeh? I’m not sure I’d like to see the chaos of such a big nation as AI. One idea might be to let him continue to stale, and declare his underwater holdings off-limits, except perhaps for those ocean provinces directly adjacent to Mictlan’s island. Any other ideas/preferences?
Rollory
2734
WTF? Lictor just hosted. I thought nobody objected to pausing the game while waiting for a replacement Utgard?
Well shit, that was my bad. I’ve had a busy weekend and I flat forgot to take the game off timer. I shall do so immediately.
jeff01
2736
Somebody must be willing to play R’leyh. They are doing very well.
Ah finally, the Pangaean mega-air-mage phoenix backfires for Jeff. I’ve gotten so used to that guy casting storm on the first turn that I just stopped brining flying forces to any fight he might be in. Jeff on the other hand brought a crapton of harpies who basically have no movement at all in a storm. After the Pan armies routed very early in the battle (I’m not sure why, some flukey morale check I guess) I was able to mow down most of the harpies as they tried to retreat at a snails pace.
After something silly like 20 turns of stalemate warfare with Pangaea, I feel I’m starting to finally secure my beach head.
Quaro
2738
Quick tech question: Do flaming weapons, the kind you’d get with a fire bless, count as magical against ethereal?
jeff01
2740
Yeah, bad idea on my part. Storm is a necessity against you, so the harpy wasn’t a good choice. They did route pretty damn early. Try, try again, though, eh?
And I like those poison cows :)
