Dominions 5 - Born to be Van Wilder

which fort?

The one nearest the former Rus borders. Huge number of troops appeared that turn, like damn. I thought I had a chance, but now I donā€™t know.

Not sure why you want that one, it leads no where, and no iā€™m not abandoning it.

Hmmmā€¦that gives me an idea.

Curse you and your ideas. Now you know Iā€™m not going to sleep tonight.

That fort does lead to your capital though. It exerts a particular sort of land control that puts me in easy reach should an astral mage open a gateway from point A that leads to point B you see.

Or maybe this is all a bluff and really Iā€™m diverting your attention from what might be happening elsewhere? Likeā€¦ ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC_mV1IpjWA

my idea had me perusing reddit where i found this:

it made me laugh

My turn is in.

General query, if anyone wants to add their own 2 cents. Is it worth turning off quickhost?

Also, if I win this game, Iā€™m seriously gonna buy myself a bottle of gin to celebrate. While I live in a town renown for its rum, thereā€™s this other distillery around the corner pretty much (literally leave street, round-about, round-about) that makes gin.

Reading through that reddit thread. Can I just say that a no-magic strat would make the game absolutely boring.

I was pleasantly happy when casting the hidden in sands spell by the way :)

I do like these wild ride games. One thing Iā€™ve always struggled with in default settings is the gem cost of summons vs using them. Some summons are easy, like the elemental royalty. But even a fire drake which costs 6 fire gems to bring to life. Like theyā€™re good (even killing my sacreds that Evil_Steve warned about) but are they six fire gems good? Having the increased gem sites really helps reduce the mental overhead about summoning such a unit that can be easily killed.

In short, gems are just too rare in default dominions, and thatā€™s a hill Iā€™m happy to die on.

Hidden in sands and snow are two of those spells where theyā€™re so expensive and such a damn diceroll that i rarely ever cast them.

When you lose this game, you should buy yourself that gin and then drink and think about why you ever thought attacking caelum was a good idea :)

Because if he didnā€™t attack you, you were going to attack him?

As Iā€™ve said before, I was never planning on attacking ermor. Iā€™ve actually only attacked one nation in this game, so iā€™m not sure why iā€™m being made to be the big bad aggressor.

The turn is coming shortly - my thoughts have crystalized around one route, but i need to investigate a few things.

so iā€™m not sure why iā€™m being made to be the big bad aggressor.

Well, speaking from the sidelines, when one has most of the elemental royalty, it says something. That person is either a target to be attacked, or a person to ally with.

Of course, when one has all the arch devils, some of the ice devils, all the Heliophagi, and is working on all the Demon Lordsā€¦perhaps I should not be drawing attention to myself.

Nah, Iā€™d rather think about the mistakes on a clearer head

Lots to process this turn!

(badly cropped) Scenes from the turn:

The second is probably all soulless - I cant imagine many of them survived. The first is a bit of wow though - I havenā€™t ever cast that spell before, and at 40 gems I didnā€™t know what exactly I was going to get, but I can say that iā€™m not disappointed(wow, what an awfully complicated sentence construction). That was probably half that army. Now I just need to work on the golems, wraiths, and yay, someone is hitting me with ashen angels too!

No idea how ubar is staying in the game - about 20 turns ago i was hoping to dom-kill you, and put some pieces in play to do that and youā€™ve still got dominion somewhereā€¦

Ah you have not located my secret underground base at the south pole. Itā€™s from a rare national spell.

Very national.

Yeah roughly. I guess the problem now is that I have to rely on a different means of fighting. This is Ermorā€™s problem, big spells like that are gonna hurt when thereā€™s a lack of late game options. The good news for me is that I didnā€™t lose too many valuable units. Sacreds are fine! But where thereā€™s ice, thereā€™s fire.

man, it takes me an hour to just get through the message log now.

So many golems, and wraithsā€¦oh, and i got a horror now - iā€™m guessing akaoni sent that? And it looks like Panā€™s in a knife fight for survival against a literal horde of demons. So ermor, while youā€™re busy tackling me, please realize xib has all the thrones it needs within reach.

Eh, the Horror was one of those " I wonder what this does" and it did some damage to PD. I dont think its worth it for big armies, maybe smaller groups.

That Purgatory is impressive, though.

I do have to admit I am surprised that no comments have been made in the last day or so. I mulled over saying something about how my Russians had to defensively attack @Evil_Steve 's aggressively defensive Ukrainians, but I couldnā€™t really word it in a way that would be funny.

Oh, and in other news, I lost an Arch Devil to militia. MILITIA. Like a dozen spears, some of them not even pointing in the right direction.
Truly my dominions acumen is at dizzying heights.

I must say I was genuinely surprised, as i thought you were going northā€¦ my heart sank a few turns ago when i did something insanely stupid which has gimped me in a profound wayā€¦ but Iā€™ll try to make your invasion as painful as possible :)