Dominions 5 - Pretender to the Throne!

We do! We even have lizard greeting sticks!

Which reminds me, I still have to do my turn for the other game…

man, i’ve been waiting for lego to reply for like 5 minutes now. Better make it good, buddy!

I just spotted an Arco Province with my scouting. He gets around if he is border you and another player now.

Got to be careful around LA Arco, with that Death/Nature combo.
Their Heart Guard got better, but on the other hand, Orphic Mystics got more expansive.
I’m most annoyed that they get all that healing though!

@pyrhic, free my Cerulean Brethren!

Now wait a minute here! I’ve only played in one game in 6 years and while I may have betrayed you multiple times in that game, I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out on anything earlier.

And you DO recognize that the “betrayal” happened largely because you did such a good job of convincing us all that you really were going to die any turn now. If I had any belief that you actually were going to hold out for another year and a half that game might have looked differently. Diplomacy is a funny thing.

woah, way to survival-shame me, bro.

I dunno, maybe i’m confusing you and @Akaoni . The names and betrayals just sort of pile up in my mind like litter on the freeway. All i know is that @Kelan and @Strato, who have betrayed me the least, aren’t in this game, so i can trust nobody!

Uh, well, still.

Is it ok to talk about malted beverages here, or should i go to another channel?

And I love that @legowarrior assumes I’m even remotely competent. He should stop typing lest he inform me about things i know not which i have.

Well, I know I’m relatively betrayer-free. Except when I stumbled into Pyrhic’s cap circle in the last game.
In my defense, you had that hidden nation domain, so it was impossible to spot where you were until I crashed into you. And then things sort of happened.

In any event, LA Arco seems to have some cool things, that I’m very jealous of, like Keres and Lampads. And Sow Dragon Teeth. With Gift of Reason, you can get some decent mages out of Keres and Lampads, but that is pricey.

And the Khalkotauros. Actually, I have no idea if that one is any good, I just like the idea of spending Fire Gems on things that are not Lanterns/Elementals/Flaming skulls.

see, i dont have any clue what any of that means

You and me both brother.

Don’t brag about it, come show me
Come on, dance, jump on it

Both the Lampads and the Keres have hidden magic paths. If you cast Gift of Reason on them, they become leaders with magic.

The Lampads, I think, have 1 Astral, 2 Death and 1 nature.

The Keres have 1 Blood and 1 Death.

By the way, if you find a regular Gnome (not the Earth Gnome) as a unit, and cast Gift of Reasons, they become 2 Nature/2 Earth units.

If you Enslave a mage, you can turn them back into a mage by casting Gift of Reason. They might have the same paths if they had randoms, because the game just recreates the mage anew.

The one thing it won’t work on are mages that have been transformed by the Transformation spell. As soon as they are enslaved, they lose all their paths, and are considered just monsters.

If you check the Dominions Inspector, and toggle all the extra options check boxes, you can see the hidden paths of units.

Sadly, only a few units have hidden paths, and most aren’t worth spending 20 gems to turn into commanders.

What it means pyrhic is that none of those, bar one, has potential to be a stealthy raider :)

Also, for what it is worth, I always know the result of betrayal against pyrhic is swift decimation of my empire. We’ve crunched the numbers, odds of winning at 1 in 14,000,605. It starts with dark hounds emerging from the mists on some border provinces. The leaders just shrug their shoulders - cowardly peasants who are imagining things bigger than what they are. Then the reports get more dire… An army appears where once there was no army. Co-ordinated strikes, bodies of the fallen a sign of their passing before disappearing again, to re-emerge elsewhere.

I agree with @Strato. @pyrhic is an evil ruthless paragon of efficiency when it comes to dominions. Why I remember my last game with him, when I was just a wee lad. I had taken a nation and cleverly arranged for my pretender to summon great eagles at a minimal cost, but in large numbers. Back then, I was a paragon of virtue, a Saint among Cardinals, without a speck on my flawlessly white three piece suit. But in order to prevent @pyrhic from winning the game, I had to attack. I executed a blitz on the capital of someone else who had fallen to the cunning machinations of @pyrhic . All was going well…too well.

And then… the boat arrived. By air. With hundreds of summoned trolls, kitted out heroes, and mages spilling gems out of their pockets as they stepped off the boat, and onto the fallen bodies of my hapless warriors.I think my troops managed to give them a broken nail or two.

(In other news, I am still knee deep in WW2 simulations, Combat Mission and War in the Pacific. No Dom for me!)

Dude, that happened like…one time!

awww…sweet memories. My flying troll buddies! I think this may have been the original Wilde Ryde - HA! I found it! Qt3 QTtheHIll Dominions Disciples game thread - #677 by pyrhic

holy shit, i did a great write up on it ;) Hard to believe that’s like 5 years ago

booo!

The game’s mechanics are slowly coming back to me as I knock off the rust I’ve accumulated since Dom3. As a result, my scouts are no longer holding back information from me and are now reporting that @legowarrior is expanding rapidly eastward.

Does anyone know if Patala will curb that expansion? Are they trying to push as far east as they can, and then backfill the provinces they passed? We’re concerned.

I wouldn’t say rapidly. It is more of a leisurely stroll east. I’m a fan of coastal and riverside property and all.
The nice thing, is that I bring warm weather with me, unlike that frigid cold that Bogarus seems to carry with them.

But I was surprised to see your domain show up within my nation’s borders. Honestly, I can’t say I’m a fan of that.

Perhaps you didn’t assign sufficient points to Dominion when you birthed your Pretender…? Surely Bogarus can’t be held responsible for that decision.

Sure, blame the victim for the crimes you have committed.

Well, i mean, he does kind of have a history of doing exactly that…

Past performance is not indicative of future results people.

Is there any way to “unclaim” a Throne of Ascension? Dom3 didn’t have that victory condition, did it?

Had I known The Throne of Summer would add +1 Heat every month (I thought it was a one-time increase), I wouldn’t have claimed it.