(FINISHED) Grogspocalypse Prequel: Early Ages Boogaloo [Dominions 5]

Started by al_infierno, July 24, 2020, 03:10:16 PM

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Myrmidon

Awesome news Solops!

I'm good with the randomized map as well.  At the end of the day, I don't think we are going to have a perfect map for everyone, but if we gen a map, and someone feels that there is an unreasonable disadvantage, we can go from there. 






solops

Quote from: Ajidica on July 25, 2020, 08:58:37 AM

(Also, do we know how to upload a map to llamaserver? That was always a stumbling block whenever W8taminute and I wanted to use a custom map in our 1v1 games.)


<rolls eyes>  There's always someone who spoils the splendor of an idea with cold, hard facts. :)

And no, have no clue how to upload a map :\
But a lot of other people do it. Are they smarter than we are? NO!!! We can DO it!  Go Team Grog!

Now. Someone figure it out....
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

solops

Thrones -  I am fine with what we had. Or whatever. I'm really flexible on that.
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

Myrmidon

It appears easy enough to upload a map, based on what I've read.  Happy to give it a go, unless someone else wants to. 

Regarding thrones, I'm pretty flexible.  Thrones are fun to have around, so I'd rather have more than less, but I'm wide open about it.   If we want to spice things up, we can throw in a cataclysm at turn 99 (or less) to keep the game from dragging on into the Ether... of course, that wasn't a problem last game... ;D

Myrmidon

Actually... take a look at this...

http://www.llamaserver.net/createDom5Game.cgi

There appears to be a wide wide array of map options,  we can upload our own if we want, or we can generate our own from this page.  There's a lot of potentially nice premade ones though if everyone wants to browse.

EDIT: If any of the above information was already known and incredibly obvious to you guys since day 1, please accept my apologies. The Dunning-Kruger effect runs strong in me sometimes unless I check myself.

solops

I think you still have to be able to download the map, if it has been uploaded?
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

Ajidica

Not quite Solops. The map has to be uploaded to Llamaserver to it can be selected on game creation. It also has to be distributed to the players so they have a copy of the map on their computer.

Myrmidon

One of the things I like about the Clockwork Network games, the map and mods are automatically downloaded when one plays a game the first time.

Anywho, there are tons of maps already on there that we could choose from. Worst case scenario, we upload one. 

I'm sure it would be easy enough for all of us to download the map we select.  I could even setup a temporary dropbox link to distribute it, if that would make things easier.

solops

I know you all have been testing out things for the new game. Are any of you finding the EA early expansion tougher than MA, or is it just me  :)
I kind of like it, as long as it isn't just me.  :))
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

TheMeInTeam

Depends on nation played.  Some nations can massacre indies to 20+ provinces by t12.  Just one example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLmD6vWGIY

I don't think EA Agartha can do that, but it seems to be able to expand okay.  I was joking when I said I'd pick them when you weren't playing, so I haven't actually tested them.
Just now I theorycrafted a few builds and then threw this together, I think it could be optimized more: https://i.imgur.com/dX080Kr.jpg.  Still even as-is it's 16 provinces on turn 12 with 2nd fort done and 3rd fort under construction (moving to place 4th and 5th in a few turns). 

EA Agartha's regular troops are straight trash in direct combat.  Not only do they have below average attack and defense scores (so they hit less often and get hit more often), but they are size 3 so only fit 2 to a square.  So you get 2 relatively unimpressive attacks that hit slightly harder but more rarely against 3 also-unimpressive attacks that hit more often...when compared to *indy light infantry*.  The sacreds share this problem, except for three redeeming properties: 1) they have more HP, 2) some of them are recruit-anywhere 3) unlike regular troops they can take a bless.

This means EA and MA play pretty differently in practice.  Recruit-anywhere sacreds are a rare property for most nations, and EA's weak troop lineup and decent mage options lends itself to blessing based on troops.  In MA, you have some high prot standard human troops, sacreds troops are cap-only, and your by-far most common mage is sacred with known paths.  In MA I'd be tempted to take a rainbow bless that fits far caster into it for the 45 range maws of earth or (using 3 gem fire in jars) magma eruption spam.  In EA it's more blessed + buffed troops with maybe some light thugging from earth readers...though earth readers can do a lot of direct damage with maws of the earth/size 6 earth elemental summons or spamming stoneskin or ironskin onto still-resistant sacreds.

Myrmidon

The MeinTeam is of course a far senior advisor than I, but I'll share a few pointers I've gotten recently when it comes to the early expanding:

Any squads used in expansion party, should always have more than 5 per squad... minimum 8 to be safe.  When a squad falls below 5 peeps, morale checks take place every turn, which can lead to a route.  I was testing an EA Caelum build and struggling, even with Mammoths, but I had them in separate squads from my flying infantry, which was causing morale problems.  Putting them in the same squad took away some tactical possibilities, but made early expansion forces, which tend to be small, much more effective.

Even with decent expansion squads, there are still certain indies that will wreck.  Barbarians are ruthless at first, and certain expansion forces will do better vs infantry than cavalry, and vice versa.

Of course, if despite all testing, your early expansions aren't up to what you want, than there's always the combat pretender, designed to help achieve nice expansion.  It's not a sin to go that route. I believe it was TheMeinTeam who more or less pointed out- "To make it to the late game, one has to make it past the early game".

As a final note, the folks in my discord MP have pointed out that expanding on Dominions 5 generated maps can be more challenging than the mapnuke maps or player designed ones... so if some of the maps you are genning are proving difficult, it may be due to that.

And of course, if all the above was already obvious to you from the get-go, my apologies.   


al_infierno

Quote from: Myrmidon on July 27, 2020, 05:19:27 PM
The MeinTeam is of course a far senior advisor than I, but I'll share a few pointers I've gotten recently when it comes to the early expanding:

Any squads used in expansion party, should always have more than 5 per squad... minimum 8 to be safe.  When a squad falls below 5 peeps, morale checks take place every turn, which can lead to a route.  I was testing an EA Caelum build and struggling, even with Mammoths, but I had them in separate squads from my flying infantry, which was causing morale problems.  Putting them in the same squad took away some tactical possibilities, but made early expansion forces, which tend to be small, much more effective.

Even with decent expansion squads, there are still certain indies that will wreck.  Barbarians are ruthless at first, and certain expansion forces will do better vs infantry than cavalry, and vice versa.

Of course, if despite all testing, your early expansions aren't up to what you want, than there's always the combat pretender, designed to help achieve nice expansion.  It's not a sin to go that route. I believe it was TheMeinTeam who more or less pointed out- "To make it to the late game, one has to make it past the early game".

As a final note, the folks in my discord MP have pointed out that expanding on Dominions 5 generated maps can be more challenging than the mapnuke maps or player designed ones... so if some of the maps you are genning are proving difficult, it may be due to that.

And of course, if all the above was already obvious to you from the get-go, my apologies.

Definitely not obvious, and I actually didn't even know the part about fewer than 5 per squad causing an MC every turn.   :o  I really feel like this kind of thing should be communicated to the player better than word of mouth or digging through the manual....
A War of a Madman's Making - a text-based war planning and political survival RPG

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge.  War endures.  As well ask men what they think of stone.  War was always here.  Before man was, war waited for him.  The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.  That is the way it was and will be.  That way and not some other way.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian


If they made nothing but WWII games, I'd be perfectly content.  Hypothetical matchups from alternate history 1980s, asymmetrical US-bashes-some-3rd world guerillas, or minor wars between Upper Bumblescum and outer Kaboomistan hold no appeal for me.
- Silent Disapproval Robot


I guess it's sort of nice that the word "tactical" seems to refer to some kind of seriousness during your moments of mental clarity.
- MengJiao

TheMeInTeam

^ You can also do separate squads for tramplers, but throw some trash infantry into it so it doesn't route.  That infantry will lag behind the actual trample units, but it's still a "5-8 man squad" and thus won't take morale checks unless either the tramplers themselves die or something picks off the deliberate-straggler units lagging behind them (or the rest of your army gets trashed, heh).

Also keep in mind that these last two grogs games are the only MP games I've played...I'm still relatively new to MP.  I've just learned a lot of things from listening to YouTube/speed reading through guides/forums/etc.  I was pretty obnoxious back in my days as a student in terms of time spent : performance on assignments/exams, guess that extends to learning this kind of stuff too :p.  Even so, there are going to be things I'm missing in advice. I'm a rapidly learning amateur in this game, not an expert!

Agreed wrt awake expander of course.  I took a nerfed-price awake expander just last game (earth serpent), which expands nicely at a whopping price of 270 design points (!!!) and falls off in utility after years 1-2, turning into a glorified big earth mage/sack of HP.  But it shored up otherwise bad expansion on a nation that really doesn't benefit a great deal from heavily blessing sacreds.  It was the sole reason I won the vast majority of water provinces in the game, so I don't regret taking it in the context of the settings/known opposition.  If someone had picked a water nation I'd have chosen something else though.

For EA Agartha and other nations with recruit-anywhere sacreds that aren't a complete joke it's worth strong consideration of a heavier bless or at least a high-utility bless.  Maybe not quite to the extent of trashing scales like Mictlan did last game (though that's a classic choice in the case of Mictlan, most sacreds benefit less from thunder weapons), but it's still worth sacrificing a bit for recruit-anywhere sacreds (or a lot for Mictlan/Kailasa types).

That "you have to survive early game to win late game" comment was in regards to taking drain scales on some nations.  It's an option on Agartha, but I probably wouldn't go that route on them.  Though IMO the engravers are a bit of a trap.  Efficient researchers for cost, yes, but hard to get enough forts to leverage that and much worse in fights than earth readers, which are the vast majority of mage recruitments for EA Agartha.  Some olm sages for water searching/path access/casting resist cold (if needed), an oracle per main army for divine blessing and one for E4 to boost for rituals, but otherwise earth readers all the way.

solops

I am using a Dom5 generated map with indie strength 6. The first MP game we played I was EA Agartha. I remember it being easier :) Ysonkyn was Caelum, W8taminute was Vanheim and Ajidica was relentless.
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
Wine is sure proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

Tanaka

I'd be down to join if there is still space available? If so Abysia please.