[Dominions 5] Grogs4way (in progress)

[solops]

Clarify-willing to play LA, but I know nothing about it. Probably like EA best, but I am happy with any age!

[Ajidica]

TOTALLY won't be a meme bless on Mictlan .

MA Mictlan doesn't have blood until the very late game, so I can't go quite as memebless as EA or LA Mictlan who can lean heavily on Ozelotl.

My pick will somewhat depend on map played.  If we're doing a random map or something I might pick a water nation, but water nations are outright broken on Biddyn for example (as in, they can spawn 2 provinces from multiple opposing capitals and have no real expansion options).

I'd be down for a different map, if we can figure out how to use a custom map with Llamaserver and if someone wants to make sure the start positions are vaguely balanced. The Dom5 map generator is much better than the Dom4 one, but still creates terrible start locations far too often to be reliable.

@Solops: Oh god, not more Agartha! You trying to traumatize me here?
The big thing with LA is that magic paths are much lower, forcing a greater reliance on breaking into new paths, forging, and pretender paths. These are all things that TheMeInTeam showed he is pretty good at last game. LA also has tougher indies which makes expansion more difficult. On the flip side, provinces are better so income and blood slaves are higher.

[solops]

My one-eyed noble folk are 0 of 2. No reason to be apprehensive.

[Ajidica]

My one-eyed noble folk are 0 of 2. No reason to be apprehensive.

The Germans haven't won any world wars, still no reason to trust them with Panzers!

[solops]

I played around with the Dom5 map generator a couple of months ago and after a number of tries got a few maps I liked. But, the game kept putting me right on the map edge. There is a third party generator that allowed editing of the map and I was able to mark individual areas as "do not start here." Someone who knows more about it might be able to take a map custom sized for our player count and fix it with a dozen good starting spots....maybe? Wish I knew more about it.

[al_infierno]

Actually, if we're doing EA or MA, I changed my mind and decided I'd like to play the monkey bois (Kailasa & Bandar Log) if nobody's claimed them 

My picks for EA LA stay the same.

On second (or third or whatever) thought, for my first online game I'll go with somebody with better priests.  My latest and hopefully final picks, if these are avilable:

OK, third time's a charm.  I decided I'mma just go with C'Tis no matter what age we go with, since they're my most-played nation.   

EA: C'Tis
MA: C'Tis
LA: C'Tis

[al_infierno]

Also, has anybody tried taking Ind online yet?  After watching DasTactic's series on them, I played them for a game and fell in love with the bizarro playstyle.  Definitely wouldn't want to try 'em online for my first game.   

They seem like the perfect faction for a memebless playthrough.

My one-eyed noble folk are 0 of 2. No reason to be apprehensive.

The Germans haven't won any world wars, still no reason to trust them with Panzers!

Also, underrated exchange.   

[TheMeInTeam]

I've seen a wide range of opinion on how to approach Ind even from good players, it's an interesting nation.  I'm inclined to agree they're probably best as scales.

I'm starting to lean towards taking Eriu out for a spin, but I need a lot more practice with them.  Also considering Machaka.

The big thing with LA is that magic paths are much lower, forcing a greater reliance on breaking into new paths, forging, and pretender paths. These are all things that TheMeInTeam showed he is pretty good at last game. LA also has tougher indies which makes expansion more difficult. On the flip side, provinces are better so income and blood slaves are higher.

Heh, towards the end of the game I had the 3 elemental queens, a faerie queen, and had one of the fire kings up after everyone went AI in final turns before claiming throne.  I made too many dwarven hammers unfortunately, otherwise I could have pushed up earth and had all of earth blood deep well, maelstrom, well of misery, mother oak, and vengeful water going (other than EBDW I did get all the others).  I think everyone else took more base dominion candles than me though, I could keep dominion in my own provinces but pushing it was pretty slow.

LA is also the most communion/sabbath heavy age.  I thought blood slaves scale with site search probability and thus that offset the higher pop of LA somewhat?  Still, LA has a several high end blood nations and several more that start with reasonable access.  MA has the least emphasis on blood, and it's true that includes Mictlan.  Mictlan has pretty nice native path access though.  Breaking into death is easy for them, so it's really just earth and blood missing.

The Germans haven't won any world wars, still no reason to trust them with Panzers!

Yeah, fighting Agartha's troops/summons is a pain even w/o path diversity from them.  It performs kind of badly in LA, but in EA and MA it's a top 5 pick and winrate nation.  Huge prot + good damage doesn't have a lot of bad matchups, especially not with earth buffs and national summons that just ignore morale, multiple elements, and throw around a damage type Agartha doesn't otherwise have much.  I needed multiple level 7 branches to deal with that stuff.

Still, I'd rather see Agartha again than someone using Ermor, Sceleria, or Pangaea at a high level in MA.

[solops]

And yet, I managed to lose twice! It must be a skill thing .... hmmmm.

[Ajidica]

Breaking into death is easy for them, so it's really just earth and blood missing.

MA Mictlan still has access to the EA/LA Mictlan blood spells, which include summonable blood mages. Need to decide if putting blood points on my pretender would be worth some economy scales.

[W8taminute]

My one-eyed noble folk are 0 of 2. No reason to be apprehensive.

The Germans haven't won any world wars, still no reason to trust them with Panzers!

Ha!  Nice one.

[TheMeInTeam]

Breaking into death is easy for them, so it's really just earth and blood missing.

MA Mictlan still has access to the EA/LA Mictlan blood spells, which include summonable blood mages. Need to decide if putting blood points on my pretender would be worth some economy scales.

Yeah it's a tough choice.  Especially because if you want to put that blood path to work before mid game, you don't want to go imprisoned which will remove even more scales/limit other options. 

I'm not sure what I'd do with MA Mictlan either.  Blood is nice, but they can go a very long way with a scales setup with a small bless too.  They still break into blood guaranteed late game and some of their astral/nature options in the late game are really brutal.  It's always hard to pick when you can do so many different things but they require heavy investment of research into different schools of magic.

[solops]

Map size effects game length effects pretender design.