Dominions 5 - There is no I in team, but there is in Disciple

Agartha, TNN, and Mictlan were among our picks. At one point you wondered if our thread was public. :)

Lol, i wondered that more than once, actually.

Aren’t like all the bats base units stealthy? I thought that was the case. You aren’t going to have blessed single commanders beating up province defense like Vanheim/tnn/Hellheim, but I stealthy armies…heck flying stealthy armies sure strike terror in my heart.
I could be wrong.

Ya, they are stealthy, but they’re really fragile: 0 protection, 8 hit points 10 morale, 10 defense, 7 strength. They need substantial numbers just to take down PD. The only useful one is the sacred one, but it isn’t stealthy.

Early in the game, I was falling behind, partially due to the map and partially due to my inexperience. My first expansion party was lost on turn 4. @pyrhic secured our West border and I rushed the second expansion party East to set the border with Ur. This essentially allowed me to claim the whole lake and catch up with others.

Then team Kailasa started a war on team Agartha and inflicted heavy losses. I vultured many of Hinnom’s provinces, but I think Ulm and Hellheim actually did the heavy lifting. Ur put up a valiant defense, but couldn’t beat combined forces of TC and Xibalba. At one point, we lost a throne province to indies and decided not to re-claim the throne until it was necessary for the victory. We claimed three thrones on the same turn. It was anticlimactic, but it looked like almost everyone was ready to put the game to rest.

Ya, i forgot about that! You had a bad break and got off to a rough start. I rushed north to secure that southwest corner of your island and to establish a connection with you since we knew we wouldn’t likely be able to connect to you through the other side because UR was there.

Good game. Sad I didn’t get into any meaningful battles. There’s so much to learn about combat in the game and experience is the best teacher.

I think I was the one who ultimately decided on the nation picks for my team.

My first pick was to choose a nation for Mellified who was just getting started with Dominions. The aim was low magic complexity and good national units. I did ask about what nations Mellified had toyed with and was met with, from memory, MA Vanheim. So a nation like TNN seemed to be a solid opening pick.

The second choice, for Kelan was lost to pyrhic. You know those bats you so hate pyrhic? Yeah, well we wanted them. Seems fair seeing as we took TNN and Mictlan. Berytos as the second pick came about due to some nice air and water magic synergies with TNN. It was also a geographic pick owing to the coastlines that existed on the map. We identified early the issues surrounding gold (and resources) and I think the Berytos pick was also influenced by that. The other nation to be considered was TC. But to me, Berytos felt like the stronger pick.

The third pick was fraught with decisions. I was guided by having a blood nation in the team, and I wanted to have a second blood nation to help hunting. Especially for the Melqarts that Berytos could summon. Two nations hunting together could achieve a fair bit. And having access to the blood surge buff in our bless is always a nice feature with strong sacreds. I discarded the idea of having Hinnom, I didn’t believe the map would be appropriate to support giant units. And I’m curious to see how the Agarthan team felt about their Hinnom pick in the end. I didn’t feel comfortable with Abysia as they didn’t really bring anything to the table that Berytos couldn’t already do, albeit better. And Abysia does suffer from having too much reliance on capital mages. So yeah, Mictlan was chosen - units are cheap, offers fantastic priests, great blood hunting capabilities. I also had to spend a whole 5 minutes in a test game to make sure that Mictlan’s dying dominion only applies to Mictlan as a Pretender and not the Disciples as well. And I punched the air when I saw extra candles spawned from TNN and Berytos.

The Pretender design took me a while to develop. Mictlan was chosen as the Pretender because of the extra boosts it gets in fire and blood. I knew we wanted blood surge. I also wanted some sort of magic weapon effect which meant going for flaming weapons. Nice as awe is, it also becomes pretty useless come mid-late game with undead and demonic summons. And all the awe in the world won’t stop a fireball. Fire weapons came with an ancilliary bonus for me which was turning the javelins of my sun warriors into fiery javelins. A neat feature I didn’t consider. I also should have considered my sacred Tribal Kings and whether equipping them with a bow gives the same effect - bow of war in particular. I think it will. Not that it matters if I have a Priest that can cast Flaming Arrows anyway.

Game - gold was tight. Gem sites were odd. My allies seemed to be finding plenty, and I was coming up with few, and certainly not much that was helpful. I struggled a lot with research. Plenty of low population provinces but still did well hunting. That throne province that Legowarrior at one point ridiculed our team over actually kicked my butt and I took what essentially were heavy losses trying to take it early game (turn 20). That’s an issue though with CBM. Those vampires are juiced up in the mod, and I made the mistake of looking at the vampires unmodded in the inspector. It was a level one throne with level 3 throne defenders. CMB Vampires have three attacks plus chain mail(!) armour. My losses on that throne were 135/166 troops, including three High Priests of the Sun, 18/18 Jaguar Warriors and 28/38 Sun Warriors, and the bulk of my expansion army.

War with Ulm/Kailasa/Helheim was a difficult choice against Xibalba/TC/Fomoria. In fact, the second round of peace came about due to not feeling prepared. I didn’t see a point attacking Hinnom/Agartha/Ur as our only real connection with that team felt too far away. I knew we had to attack someone eventually as when Team Agartha was gobbled up, I could see the public diplomacy the other two teams commenting on our blood capabilities and the fact we’ve been at peace doing “nothing” for x turns. Why attack Ulm/Kailasa/Helheim? The huge border that existed with Xibalba/TC/Fomoria bothered me whereas Kailasa was readily attacked by Berytos, I could swing into Ulm and TNN could also strike Ulm and/or support Berytos. I wanted the war to go quickly because I could see some of the firepower that TC was amassing. But to the credit of Kailasa/Ulm/Helheim, each player rallied their troops and put up valiant counterattacks.

It really is a case of how the map turned out, but there’s no way in hell I want to play this map again in future. I saw your comments Legowarrior about TNN costing you/Ur the game. I think the issue is deeper and comes down to the way the map layout was. I know it is hard to choose appropriate maps. I remember when we had initial troubles with this one I trawled the workshop mostly to see if there was a decent alternative. Considering that front that existed between myself and wahoo, it was awkward and difficult to work around. Borders were certainly fair, maybe to the point of disadvantaging wahoo somewhat, but wahoo’s access to the shipbreakers I think more than made up for it.

Kelan did the heavy lifting on our team. Fantastic research, got items forged (all those lightless lanterns helped my research game significantly) and managed to get some scary units on the field in good time. Mellified’s ballsy decision to take the highlands was wonderful, and I’m quietly glad it did rub a few people’s noses the wrong way. And I like to think there was some nervous conversation about stealthed units emerging from the highlands striking hard and fast. I do hope you have another shot with Dominions Mellified. There’s a lot to learn, and my biggest worry was overwhelming you with information, tactics, advice. And basically kill the fun in the game.

One critical flaw with the game is those items that adjust scout reports of how many units are present. So a little bit before I attacked Ulm, I had a scout get caught wandering the border province, and where I was expecting heavy defense, I was surprised to see the numbers didn’t match up. A quick look through the commanders gave the story away, and I felt much more confident attacking both provinces in the same turn as the start of the war. If not for that scout, I would have adjusted my army differently.

Otherwise, this final turn my first ice devil came into the world and another two were to follow soon after :(

Nice write up @Strato

Don’t get me wrong, I chose Xibalba, both for my team and myself. My hate for it developed over time.

Our nation choice evolved, initially, I put up the following ideas:

Wahoo was the one that suggested Team Death/Darkness and I liked it so we were thinking of going Agartha/Xibalba and something. Losing Agartha right off meant we gave some thought to switching it up, but ultimately stayed with it, taking Xibalba first. We chose Fomoria next because it was a pretty straightforward nation, pretty strong and (for me) one that I was pretty comfortable giving advice on since I’ve played it a bunch. I think we were considering TNN or Fomoria, and preferred TNN, but took Fomoria when TNN was picked in front of us. For our final spot, we wanted Mictlan but predicted it would be taken:

One thing that I just remembered about this was how much effort we all put in at the start. I played solo with a bunch of nations to get a feel for what would/wouldnt work in our team. Then, as we established our team, I played the map solo as one nation and as all our nations more than a dozen times. We set up 1v1v1 games on Llama(twice i think). And then I played a bunch of different builds as the pretender and disciple(we went back and forth a bit on whether Xib or TC should be the pretender). We even needed two dialog threads as we hit the cap on the first one.

My analysis after we settled on using TC (we were thinking Kailasa, TC or Sauro):

In the first game we had a dormant pretender and changed that up to awake when we restarted and that made a huge difference for us I think. Had that first game continued, i think there was no way we would win it: I was the Ur by myself on the continent and I don’t think Kailasa/Ulm were gonna let me live very long.

For being a noob, @Valambrian was the MVP. He started slow but was able to amass power quickly. The layout was less than ideal from our team as arguably our power nation (TC) was stuck in the middle with little access to thrones and having to move through really unfavorable terrain.

I think @Strato was about our mirror image. Not only did you swipe Mictlan from under us but I believe we went with similar blesses. We went with flaming weapons, invulnerabilty with a heavy fire/death on an awake pretender. We had a lot of discussions (read arguments) as we looked at a lot of different chassis/strategies and then playtested them. As @pyrhic said our plan was to be Team Darkness but then realized that it wouldn’t help us as much as you might think.

With much of the terrain being hills/forests other, that became a big advantage for us since we had the most mobility in the game. With stealthy fliers, giants and flying flame demons we had a massive mobility advantage. That was one I didn’t really anticipate but proved very helpful!

From my perspective, 2 things went really well early…1) I was able to snag some territories deep into the UR sphere of influence. Ur got stuck in a really tough spot with throne indies cutting off a line of advance and we were able to compound his disadvantage. We were already gearing up to attack Ur when the Kailasa attack happened. Team Agartha was always a target b/c we shared such a large border, Ur was in a tough space as both Xib and TC had nice lanes of attack. UR also had the least amt of provinces and took a beating from throne indies. I felt bad for UR, played by a new player but there can only be one.

  1. I was cash starved for much of the game. But I threw a ton of cash into the ShipWreckers which paid in spades. Not only could I capture the seas easily but I could show force at Mictlan by keeping a dagger in the water that could hit his underbelly. As a bonus, we wiped out an early Agartha raiding party. Without the Shipwreckers, Agartha takes my surrounding seas and the game is fundamentally changed. I think I Expresses surprise that no one ever outbid me on them. (As a double Bonus we wiped out the Ulm bird. Fun times).

  2. We felt we had the game in hand about 20 turns ago. We had a great strategic position, good nations/research and gem income. After Formoria overran Hinnom our main concern was not blowing it. Probably the biggest source of panic I had was when a bunch of Mictlan troops showed up on the Formoria border with most of Formoria on the eastern front vs. Hinnom. That was our biggest pt of vulnerability. The flipside for Mictlan was that he also bordered Xib and TC and while he could have dug into Formoria, we would haver overrun his borders and quickly threatened his cap. Mictland/TC capitals felt very close.

  3. I made a specific effort to try to kill scouts this game to make it harder to find me. I know Agartha water scouts were able to get it but I patrolled some of the choke pts very heavy whileI built up. Did this pay off at all or curoius how good of view pt did other nations have? Did folks have eyes on my water lab?

Other question: Who else was at construction 8? I thought Kailisa? I was able to get the Bell of Cleansing which made me happy.

Edit: BTW Ur made a strong defense from a very difficult circumstance. He was a) surprise attacked by 2 nations and b) had to deal with a flying stealth nation with province killing summons and then a massive mage blessed army.

This doesn’t surprise anyone, but the Agatha Pretender was stuck between the realms for almost a year, and when it finally died and came back, it has 75% insanity.

@Strato Yes. The game developed differently in large part with our borders. There were multiple entry points for you into my lands which made things a bit tricky. I felt trapped with you early on and I changed a bit of my expansion plans to make sure I at least got the forrest capital. Some weird land bridges that exposed me.

And yes, as you see in my writeup I feel like the ShipWreckers was the best thing I did this game. My goal was to have a credible water threat so if you moved on us, you had to account for a strike into your heartland. Just wanted it in your mind as a con for striking our team.

The Team Mictlan bless was +4HP, minor poison resist, dark vision 50%, blood surge, flaming weapons. The pick of dark vision was Kelan’s idea who was most concerned about a Xibalba play of a world plunged into darkness. The other reason for dark vision was the series of caves that existed. Very sound reasoning and I’m glad for it. It also meant that TNN was able to have perfect nightvision when blessed, and the throne we had nearby also meant the rest of our sacreds would have perfect night vision. Mix in demonic spawns and it becomes clear that Theft of the Sun would have been a lesser boon for us in a fight against the other two teams.

I’m curious about this as well. I was really glad to see the main Hinnom force leave Plothai area before I clashed with them. This is my first significant battle with Hinnom:

As a newbie, I had to learn game mechanics, so I was writing battle reports:

  1. Hinnom vs Fomoria
    =====================

Hinnom:

  • 3 ammis (A2, E2+1, S2)
  • a melqart (E2+1B3H1)
  • 2 avvite light infantry
  • 5 dawn guards (high magic damage, 12/16/14/25)
  • 20 rephaite warriors (sacred, high magic damage, 13/15/15/55)
  • 10 se’irs (demons, berserker +4, high damage, 13/1/7/28)
  • 4 warriors of the dawn (sacred, high magic damage, 13/16/20/55)

Fomoria:

  • 3 fomorian kings (A3W1D2H2, A3D3H2, A4D2H2)

  • 2 nemedian champions (A1D1H1)

  • 3 nemedian sorceresses (2 x A2D3+1, A2D2N1+1)

  • a nun (H1)

  • 12 sages

  • 65 fir bolg warriors

  • 27 fomorian giants

  • a fir bolg champion

  • 3 archers

  • 6 light infantry

  • 6 militia

  1. Hinnom infantry advances
    Hinnom mages start casting spells
    Fomorian giants and fir bolgs on the left flank hold position
    Fomorian fir bolgs on the right flank advance

  2. Hinnom infantry smashes advancing fir bolgs
    Hinnom demons flank Fomorian troops but are intercepted by giants
    Mages on both sides continue to cast spells

  3. Hinnom infantry and Fomorian giants battle in the middle
    Two Fomorian kings fly to attack Hinnom mages

  4. Fomorian giants defeat Hinnom infantry
    Fomorian kings fight with Hinnom bodyguards
    Hinnom troops rout

    Greater numbers and better mage support won the battle for Fomoria.
    Mistakes in Fomorian battle plan led to significant losses (the nun, 32 fir
    bolg warriors, and a fomorian giant). Fomorian giants inflicted two thirds of
    the casualties on Hinnom. Rephaite warriors inflicted most of the casualties on
    Fomoria.

    Melqart cast bless 3 times, summon earthpower, legions of steel, and curse
    of stones (fatigue 125, killed by a fomorian king).
    S2 ammi cast power of the spheres, body ethereal, stellar cascades 3 times,
    body ethereal again and mind burn twice (fatigue 96).
    A2 ammi cast summon storm power, wind guide, summon lesser elemental,
    phantasmal warrior twice, and lightning bolt twice (fatigue 96).
    E2+1 ammi cast summon earthpower, legions of steel, strength of giants,
    earth meld twice, flying shards twice, and blade wind 3 times (fatigue 102).

Well, Hinnom was selected because we wanted nations that benefited from High Order, High Heat, and we didn’t have Blood. Honestly, we wanted Formoria for Ur, to complete our Giants United Theme, but settled on Ur instead.

Cash starved seemed to be the rule on this map.
I bid against you for the ship wreckers. Apparently you wanted them more. Drat.
Lost of folks being stingy on their borders about scouts.
I was at construction 8. We built the Bell on the same turn and you ended up with it.

Yeah. I was doing my best to keep folks off balance and never sure what was where. I think I only purchased 5-6 non stealth troops in the game.

I was short of commanders and the troop commander had that item on his person. It was not so much an oversight, but more a resource issue. As many scouts as I have I always need more.

I find it amusing and interesting that there was so much unwitting back and forth between the teams:

  • Team Strato(TS) and Team Wahoo(TW) both choose a darkness strategy.
  • Team Agartha(TA) takes Agartha so TW takes xibalba instead to pursue darkness
  • TS takes TNN(?) and chooses a different strategy because TW took Xibalba
  • TS gets spirit sight in anticipation of TW using Theft of the Sun
  • TW doesn’t use Theft of the Sun because it really only effects Team Kailasa(TK) which is the one team TW shares no borders with
  • TA doesn’t get Fomoria because TW chose it because TS chose TNN
  • TW chose TC because TS chose Mictlan

I dunno, i think it’s funny…

Gratz to team Xi/TC/Fomoria. They played it perfectly once the war was finally on. I would have attacked Ur too had I been in their shoes. This was quite the learning game for me and I can’t thank @legowarrior enough for the guidance and running the game.

So this is my Ur AAR as it were.

I am very new to the diplomacy side of this game (via the forum) and prefer a much more straightforward form of communication. Managed to step on myself a couple of times in this thread trying to not put a foot wrong and hurt either of my teammates. Mostly out of panic trying to salvage my start position given that I knew I was in a bad spot and not skilled enough to work my way out.

So from my seat, I was super bummed after we restarted the first game. I got a great start and had a mid game pretender build with heavy death and astral to complement the Ur nature focus. I normally play (in SP) an SC pretender as that is more forgiving so I was really pushing my comfort zone in this game (probably not the wisest choice ;) It was exciting to have it working well and having the Ur troops expanding so quickly despite Ur being fairly mediocre.

Then we restart and within 5 - 7 turns I realized my game was over. Early expansion had TC immediately at my cap. They picked the right direction and I had an impossible time trying to understand this map. I tried to quick and form a border with them hoping I could expand south and not get cut off. Sure enough, Formoria was there already. TC and Formoria knew of course. My last play was to try and head north through the valley which ran me right into Xi. At that point I had 8 provinces at like turn 15 and I knew it was going to be a long slog while I siphoned resources from my team to stay afloat. @belouski and @legowarrior were good sports to toss me some provinces to help.

Don’t take the above as me whining - I’ve played plenty of in person games where this stuff happens (Twilight Imperium comes to mind) and you gotta play through a losing hand. I just didn’t think through what that would mean when playing a game for 6 months where I knew was out of the running on turn 10.

Sorry for dumping to AI once TC took my cap, but at that point I had figured I’d done my best for the game and didn’t really have anything to manage.

The game certainly wasn’t all bad. I had fun trading blows with Xi and got some good hits in. It was fun trying to outfit bands of stealthy reavers and spectres and I learned quite a bit about proper Dom 5 army composition. Having a killer stack is useless if you are raided and can’t get to the places you need to be.

-Jay

One thing I really liked about team Agartha was that a swamp province near Agartha was given to Ur and a wasteland near Ur was given to Hinnom to capitalize on each nation’s strengths.