Dominions 5: Multiplayer Warriors of the Feint - 2018 Stabby-Stabby Edition

Here is how I would evaluate it, and much of this may be wrong! But, it should give me(you) an idea of how the battle will be.

Compare Att and Def of the units that will be in melee and look up the DRN to see chance to hit. Make an approximate adjustment based on numbers and size (units/square) of each side and which side will end up with extra attacks on it per unit (reducing defense). C’tis infantry have mostly Att 10 and the Forest Trolls 9, so you will be hitting them baseline 54% of the time. Forest Trolls have Att 10 and your infantry has 12-13, so that would be a 24 or 30% chance for them to hit you (plus you need to add in the shield parry which helps you more). I would adjust this more in your favor as you should have 20-25 units and they only have 5-9 probably, so you will surround them causing defense reduction per hit (same in Dom 5?) and your 3 units per square vs their 2 will skew this even more in your favor. You may even end up hitting them well over 2-3 times as much each turn.

Compare damage numbers and protection. Factor in special abilities (regen here). This is where your problem comes in. I haven’t reviewed the formulas recently, but you do compare the damage of each unit to the protection of the other and add a DRN of damage to each. But, to get you an idea here, most of your spears with your strength give you a base damage of 13 vs the Forest Troll protection of 12. You get the DRN adjustment, but you will not be doing much damage here and will be relying on lucky differential rolls of the DRN (spears get 20% piercing to prot, though, so some help here). in Dom 4, the Forest Trolls have a weapon damage with str of 26 vs your protection of 5, 12 or 16 depending on the unit. These guys will be one shotting you a lot unless you get your shield to protect you, and even then it may not be enough as Two hand weapons now get 125% of Str bonus and blunt weapons do more damage on head hits and do more shield damage.

Compare morale of units going against each other. I really need to review morale check rules, but once morale checks start happening, it is good to compare which units are harder to break. Forest Trolls are Morale 11 and your units seem to be Morale 9. This isn’t good for you at all, however, if you made a commander a prophet and have access to Sermon of Courage, and have a good leader commander to boost morale, and fight in a province of your dominion, you may be able to swing this slightly in your favor.

Based on the above, I would estimate that you may do similar damage to each other each round overall, but with the trolls bigger health pool, and regen, and higher base morale, you may lose out. If you win, you may sustain heavy losses, but I would guess you would fail a morale check once guys start dropping before you can do enough damage to make them take enough morale checks to rout (you can review these morale check rules too). I am not real certain on which troops C’tis starts with, though, and assuming they have a mix of their light and med infantry, and maybe even militia.

There are other things to consider, of course, like buffed morale (Sermon of Courage/location of battle), experience stars of units that add Att/Def/Morale, fatigue effects if longer battle, repel effects, but early on it should give you a decent idea barring doing actual battle testing in game.

I just consulted the manual and learned quite a bit more that should be added to this including how shields figure in, the chance they can get damaged or break (is this new?), the chance to hit different body parts causing checks vs helmets, and what the various damage types do. But, hopefully this gets you thinking on how to analyze this, and you can use the per unit logs to watch this in action.

EDIT: Hmm, it seems they now call it Harassed, the defense reduction when taking multiple attacks per round. It is also now only 1 def per extra attack (used to be 2?) and mounted units take half of that and it has a % reduction based on whether they are continuing to be attacked or not.

Huh, guess Furies was on a timer and kicked off without Machaka while I was travelling? No biggie. I’ll jump on the next one.

Doh, really? We just started so we can just restart real quick?

Looks like we had someone jump in that didn’t sign up. I see a Berytos so we probably have to restart for sure? @Evil_Steve

Yeah, that’s weird then.

I’m fine with restarting if need be.

Wow, @Kelan, thanks for the detailed analysis! Your thought process on this is really useful for knowing how to analyze these kinds of situations.

yeah, some weird Berytos person? do I try an find out who it is? or just close the game and start another. i can’t think of another way unless sharaleo wants to play Weird Berytos

I’ve sent a message to Berytos saying we have to restart with the correct player and to post here if they want to play :)

if I go to “unstart game” (ie waiting for pretenders) can I remove Berytos?

QT3Lizzies Ur

Dragon took out one province without the light infantry even getting close. My army, however, contained a Mushusu who decided to tank the entire indie army by itself. Not surprisingly, it died. Thats 150 gold down the drain. I think I will hold off on including them till I build up a mass of them.
Each force gets orders to go after other provinces, I build a mage and sacreds at home, and a smattering of longbowmen and another scout in my newly liberated provinces.

I also see my first neighbor! Howdy neighbor! Lets see where your home is.

Speaking of neighbors, Kailasa and Pan waited till the second turn to declare prophets. Kailasa wanted a leader who could lead his sacred magic troops, not just monkeys, so he probably waited a turn to take provinces with his normal army. Or maybe he has incredible scales, bought tons of bananas, and is expanding with lots of monkeys as well as sacreds. Mmmm, bananas. He is the only one besides me who favors Heat, so it would be good to support him against the Cold-ites.

And Pan wanted a centaur, who will have a bit of magic (N1 or E1 for the male Centaur) as well as good map move, be sacred, and sneaky. SNEAKY PROPHET.
When I played Pan in Dom4, I would usually prophet a Harpy, to take advantage of the flying and the sneakiness. It worked…okay. They died a lot. Hopefully Pan knows to go after the forests - will be beneficial to him, as long as they dont have bananas.

OKAY deleted Berytos, so @sharaleo send your one in!

Ok, Pretender is submitted and furies is away proper this time.

WOOT!

I presume the more experienced Furies game is not running with the open strategy/learning dialogue of Lizzies?

Actually, seems we do have some newbies in Furies as well, so I am happy to just cruise and dump info and thoughts of my strategy as I play as well, if that’s the consensus.

Apologies, have not been feeling too well so have been remiss in my game reports. To be corrected…now.

Strangely enough, I also started in the same place as one of my test games. So, slightly familiar with the area. But seeing as how that test game got all the way to turn 5 before i deleted it…maybe not overly familiar.

I am lucky enough to have relatively wimpy provinces around me, though maybe I’ll avoid a big mess of barbarians for now. I send my bull off toward a juicy populated province for the gold it can generate, while my beginning army heads into a nearby woods…because PAN! My blessed troops (working with the prophet now) are working out just as planned - they kick butt.

Akaoni called it right - I waited until turn 2 to declare a prophet, so I could have a centaur prophet. It’s much more durable than the harpy (as nice as a flying stealthy prophet is…and it IS nice!), especially with the regen/invul bless I’ve got going on. I recruit a small force to reinforce my main army, and have the prophet take them off to meet the main army on turn 2 in a neighboring neutral province (planning!). I’ve recruited a dryad to start site searching too.

My harpies have scouted around the various thrones (love flying scouts) and my sense is they will likely be taken relatively quickly…so I’d better look at getting one of my own. I’ll have to look around and see what’s available.

Hello neighbors! My harpies have seen you from afar…and will be keeping an eye on your expansion. :D
Tight quarters here, indeed.

QTLizzies Ur
Disaster! My Ur army does not wrap around the Cavemen properly, and they promptly wipe out my chaff before my sacred units can do enough damage. And I lose more on the retreat.

Good news? My dragon took another province, and I still have a buffer of a province or two between me and Pan. I recruit a mage, a few sacred, a scout, and a few longbows. I will have that Cave men province on the coast. Shhh no one tell Therodos.

Very soon I will have to reach out to Pan and offer some peace treaty of a sort. But not until i bump up against him , “oh, I just now noticed you, pay no attention to that scout that has been wining and dining your Maeneads for 4 turns now” type of thing.

Where are the others? hmm

I SEE MONKEYS!